You won’t believe it but a week or two ago I was full of the joys of the new year. “Bring it on!” I thought. “Go Team 2012! Woo-hoo! New year, new start!” I cheered to myself. Thankfully it only took a day or two to wear off, but luckily it did and I was back to my old cynical self before long. I like to think that brief period of optimism was a inbuilt function of my brain to carry me over the most depressing day of the year (January the 3rd is what most people claim) without imploding.
To celebrate shaking off the Optimism Flu, I thought I’d start off the year blog-wise with a look at the top three things I’m going to hate in 2012. I could complain about stuff happening right now (the stupid indecisive weather, the cost of heating oil if it ever does get cold, my cats insanely expensive tooth problems) but no. I’ve got bigger fish to fry.
There was a TV programme when I was a kid (and I’m showing my age here) called “Why Don’t You?” and was basically aimed at moaning minnies like me. The basic premise was that you should stop moping around the house feeling bored when there was lots of stuff you could be doing out in the big wide world. The fact that they seemed to have unlimited access to art materials for their big posters and a steady stream of helpful adults to drive them to interesting and entertaining places was neither here nor there, apparently. It wasn’t my cup of tea and since then any sentence starting with the words “why don’t you…” has brought me out in a cold sweat.
Here’s something I let everyone know, and usually within about an hour of meeting them (regardless of whether I have met them before or not): I love Doug Hyde and his art – I’m basically obsessed with the way he paints things and his outlook on life (which is very positive). Aside from the fact he’s been described as the UK’s most popular living artist, I like his style and the meaning of his paintings (type his name into Google and you’ll get his web-site, which is well worth a look).
To me it just seems to be a lot of people shouting LOOK AT ME! until someone does
But that’s not to say I love ALL art. No. That is most certainly NOT true…
Because let’s be honest, somewhere along the way real art and this fake art that we see today got mixed up and became a messy perversion of itself!
Now, please, let me clarify: I am not talking about much of the ingenious stuff housed inside the Tate Modern. Nor am I talking about abstract work which possesses real meaning and love. I am talking, instead, about all the fake ‘concept'art that is out there. To me it just seems to be a lot of people shouting LOOK AT ME! until someone does. That’s not art. It’s merely people vying for other peoples'attention.
Which is not how art used to be…
Art, back in the days before photography, was about capturing a moment: get it down before it vanishes. About recreating a mood which would otherwise be lost forever. Yes all the faces looked the same and that wasn’t exactly great, but the colours and the compositions of many oil paintings were incredible and still hold up today as some of the best ever. And the magic hasn’t dissipated – in some ways, it’s actually become more magical. Now more than ever access to look at paintings of this stature is better than ever. Wander around the National Portrait Gallery and see that I am right!
Will art ever return to the way it was? Doubtful. Extremely doubtful and about as likely as going back in time to when Shell-Suits were all the rage. But in many ways that doesn’t matter. There will always be a select hardcore of quality artists out there, doing it because they love it, irrelevant of the money.
And that, my friend, is what I think we ought to hold onto for as long as we can, no matter how many people try and convince us that ‘progress'is better.
TV is incredible. I am sick of people moaning about how terrible and awful it is, and so I am bucking the trend here – as is obvious – by having a good rant, firstly, about how amazingly wonderful it is.
And it is. Wonderful, I mean.
To appreciate just how wonderful, you really need to think and un-do everything you know about TV.
Imagine we live in a world where TV was never invented. There was never the rush to get home for Eastenders…
would you have wanted to be born pre TV? When disease ravaged the earth and left each and every one of us in a right old state?
…and there was never the need to remember to tape Grand Designs. In fact, that corner of the room we all stare into? It was filled with nothing. And in fact we wouldn’t even notice it’s lack of anything, because it was never full in the first place!
Seriously, TV is great: anything you want to watch – from babes prancing about to gardening or documentaries on Space travel – is there at the touch of a button. It’s all so simple, so impossibly simple…
And now, for some bizarre reason, people say it is bad. That having the TV is a curse. That the TV is stopping people from getting exercise. That we are a generation of so-called ’couch potatoes'that can’t be bothered to do anything if it involves actually getting up off our butts…
I say WAKE UP and understand just what TV is all about, and how beneficial it can be to so many different kinds of people. I say, would you have wanted to be born pre TV? When disease ravaged the earth and left each and every one of us in a right old state? I think not, somehow. In fact, I highly doubt that anyone, given the choice, would want to live in that time.
And take shows like Embarrassing Bodies, for example. Not only is it great to laugh at people with hideous conditions – I know it’s wrong, but are you honestly telling me you don’t? – but it’s highly educational. And one great thing about always being connected to the box is that you always know what is going on in the world. A blessing if ever there was one, right?
For now I am off to visit a website – http://www.theoldbridgehousehotel.co.uk/en/webcam , to be precise – but I do hope that if you’re a TV hater you will start re-thinking your hatred of TV. After all, there isn’t anything you can’t learn from it!
I really do hate to keep banging on about the same thing, but as I was going through my mail the other day my quarterly gas bill erupted out of the envelope.
Now I’m the first person to admit that I like my creature comforts as much as the next bloke, but I don’t expect to have to pay through the nose for basic things such as heating and electricity. I already pay more tax and national insurance then is More
Do you know what I hate more then anything? Well actually I hate a lot of things and love to grumble as regular readers of my blog will know. But what I hate more then anything else in the world is how much petrol and diesel prices have gone up in the past ten years!
I went to a garage to fill up the other day and paid well over the odds to get the tank just half full! My More
People often moan about the negatives of criticizing. But what about all the good and joy it brings? Without it, we’d all be in big trouble.
And now, if I may be so bold, I shall demonstrate why.
1) Reviews of books and movies are the only thing standing between you and wasted money. Without them we’d all be a lot more unhappy, and Amazon would probably go bust…
2) Reviews mean that you can book into the right hotel More
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