Things that piss you off that shouldn't

[chrisp65]

28 minutes ago, sharkyvilla said:

Critics in general piss me off.  What is it that actually qualifies people to review music, films, dinner or whatever?  Pretentious bell ends, all of them.

I like the Jay Rayner restaurant reviews in the Observer. Every so often he goes somewhere he didn’t like and they’re really funny.

 

Yes, I read restaurant reviews in the Observer. I am truly a man of the people.

[sidcow]

11 hours ago, sharkyvilla said:

Critics in general piss me off.  What is it that actually qualifies people to review music, films, dinner or whatever?  Pretentious bell ends, all of them.

The number of music reviews I read where it's plain obvious they just don't like the band. 

Review the song/performance not your opinion of the band. 

Edited November 11, 2019 by sidcow

[bickster]

38 minutes ago, sidcow said:

The number of music reviews I read where it's plain obvious they just don't like the band. 

Review the eong/performance not your opinion of the band. 

I read to many reviiews of albums where they talk about the bands history far more than the album itself. You're lucky if they mention more than two tracks

[mjmooney]

38 minutes ago, sidcow said:

The number of music reviews I read where it's plain obvious they just don't like the band. 

Review the eong/performance not your opinion of the band. 

This was a big irritant for me during the punk era. The NME in particular would give a gig or album review to someone guaranteed to hate the band, for 'comedy' effect. Utterly pointless. I'd far rather have a fan do it, who would be prepared to be critical if the performance was sub-par, because they at least understood the genre. 

[bickster]

1 minute ago, mjmooney said:

This was a big irritant for me during the punk era. The NME in particular would give a gig or album review to someone guaranteed to hate the band, for 'comedy' effect. Utterly pointless. I'd far rather have a fan do it, who would be prepared to be critical if the performance was sub-par, because they at least understood the genre. 

Trouble is, fans of the band tend to be fawning in their praise and the album is still shit

Current Nick Cave album is geting rave reviews, personally I think it's not that listenable and I'm a fan

[chrisp65]

7 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

This was a big irritant for me during the punk era. The NME in particular would give a gig or album review to someone guaranteed to hate the band, for 'comedy' effect. Utterly pointless. I'd far rather have a fan do it, who would be prepared to be critical if the performance was sub-par, because they at least understood the genre. 

When I had no money I remember buying an NME and somebody had done a rave review of a gig and a record by a band called RedSkins.

Basically said you need to get on this quick they’re like everything you love.

Having spent money on the NME I then went out and spent money on Redskins..... it was crap.

Then I noticed the lead singer in Redskins was the clearing in the woods who’d written the review.

Genuinely, that was the very last copy of the NME that I ever bought.

[Chindie]

2 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

I like the Jay Rayner restaurant reviews in the Observer. Every so often he goes somewhere he didn’t like and they’re really funny.

 

Yes, I read restaurant reviews in the Observer. I am truly a man of the people.

Any excuse to link this classic

Quote

...

It wasn’t meant to be so. Irritated by reader complaints about the cost of eating out I decided to visit a classic Parisian gastro-palace, as a reality check. I imagined it less as review, and more as an observational piece, full of moments of joy and bliss, of the sort only stupid amounts of cash can buy. We’d all have a good laugh at rich people and then return to business as usual, a little wiser. I chose Le Cinq, restaurant of Christian Le Squer, named chef of the year by his peers in 2016. I assumed it would be whimsical, and perhaps outrageous. Never did I think the shamefully terrible cooking would slacken my jaw from the rest of my head.

The dining room, deep in the hotel, is a broad space of high ceilings and coving, with thick carpets to muffle the screams. It is decorated in various shades of taupe, biscuit and **** you. There’s a little gilt here and there, to remind us that this is a room designed for people for whom guilt is unfamiliar. It shouts money much as football fans shout at the ref. There’s a stool for the lady’s handbag. Well, of course there is.

Menus the height of Richard Osman are brought. My female companion, who booked the table, is given one without prices. Waiters look baffled when we protest, but replace it. Then again, having looked at those prices I suspect many people would wish never to see their like again. Starters and mains are roughly the same price, running from €70 to €140. Currently the exchange rate is 0.86 to 1. So that’s £121 for a single plate of food.

All this comes with canapés and amuse-bouches, pre-desserts and bread and serious attitude. Almost all the pleasant things we eat come from the pastry section. There’s a compelling flaky brioche, to be eaten with cool, salty butter. There is, among the canapés, a tart of extremely thin pastry with a filling of whipped chicken liver mousse topped by diced cornichon. I could eat that again. At the end there are some pleasant enough chocolates. At these prices there should be.

Other things are the stuff of therapy. The canapé we are instructed to eat first is a transparent ball on a spoon. It looks like a Barbie-sized silicone breast implant, and is a “spherification”, a gel globe using a technique perfected by Ferran Adrià at El Bulli about 20 years ago. This one pops in our mouth to release stale air with a tinge of ginger. My companion winces. “It’s like eating a condom that’s been left lying about in a dusty greengrocer’s,” she says. Spherifications of various kinds – bursting, popping, deflating, always ill-advised – turn up on many dishes. It’s their trick, their shtick, their big idea. It’s all they have. Another canapé, tuile enclosing scallop mush, introduces us to the kitchen’s love of acidity. Not bright, light aromatic acidity of the sort provided by, say, yuzu. This is blunt acidity of the sort that polishes up dulled brass coins.

We hit it again in an amuse-bouche which doesn’t: a halved and refilled passionfruit, the vicious passionfruit supplemented by a watercress purée that tastes only of the plant’s most bitter tones. My lips purse, like a cat’s arse that’s brushed against nettles.

The cheapest of the starters is gratinated onions “in the Parisian style”. We’re told it has the flavour of French onion soup. It makes us yearn for a bowl of French onion soup. It is mostly black, like nightmares, and sticky, like the floor at a teenager’s party. There are textures of onions, but what sticks out are burnt tones, and spherified balls of onion purée that burst jarringly against the roof of the mouth. A dish of raw marinated scallops with sea urchin ice cream is a whack of iodine. It is the most innovative dish of the meal, though hardly revolutionary. Sea urchin ice cream turned up on Iron Chef America back in the 90s.

A main of pigeon is requested medium, but served so pink it just might fly again given a few volts. It comes with brutally acidic Japanese pear and more of that flavourless watercress purée. A heap of couscous is mined with a tiny portion of lamb for €95. Like the watercress purée, it tastes of little. It comes with gummy purées, unpleasant spherifications of lamb stock and mushy, one-note “merguez” sausages which are nothing of the sort. A sad, over-reduced sauce coagulates on the plate.

A dessert of frozen chocolate mousse cigars wrapped in tuile is fine, if you overlook the elastic flap of milk skin draped over it, like something that’s fallen off a burns victim. A cheesecake with lumps of frozen parsley powder is not fine. I ask the waitress what the green stuff is. She tells me and says brightly: “Isn’t it great!” No, I say. It’s one of the worst things I’ve ever eaten. It tastes of grass clippings. Parsley is brilliant with fish. But in cheesecake? They take it off the bill. With our mint tea, we are served an on-trend kouign amann, a laminated caramelised pastry. It’s burnt around the edges.

With this, we each drink one glass of champagne, one glass of white and one of red, chosen for us by the sommelier from a wine list that includes bottles at €15,000. The booze bill is €170. The overall bill is €600. Every single thing I ate at the restaurant Skosh for a sixth of the price was better than this. It’s bizarre. Not that the older gentlemen with their nieces on the few other occupied tables seem to care. The restaurant is never more than half full. Pictures of plates are snapped. Mind you I also take pictures, but mine are shot in the manner of a scene of crime officer working methodically.

I have spent sums like this on restaurant experiences before, and have not begrudged it. We each of us build our best memories in different ways, and some of mine involve expensive restaurants. But they have to be good. This one will also leave me with memories. They are bleak and troubling. If I work hard, one day, with luck, I may be able to forget.

...

Jay Rayner is a national treasure.

[bickster]

10 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

When I had no money I remember buying an NME and somebody had done a rave review of a gig and a record by a band called RedSkins.

Basically said you need to get on this quick they’re like everything you love.

Having spent money on the NME I then went out and spent money on Redskins..... it was crap.

Then I noticed the lead singer in Redskins was the clearing in the woods who’d written the review.

Genuinely, that was the very last copy of the NME that I ever bought.

X Moore always was a Representative for Wellingborough

[mjmooney]

11 hours ago, bickster said:

Trouble is, fans of the band tend to be fawning in their praise and the album is still shit

Current Nick Cave album is geting rave reviews, personally I think it's not that listenable and I'm a fan

I agree, that's equally bad. But I was thinking of the better journos. For example, Charles Shaar Murray was a huge fan of The Faces (as was I). But he quite rightly slated their "Overture and Beginners" live album, and explained why - he knew they were capable of better, and justified his criticisms. That's the only sort of bad review I like. 

Incidentally, I've tried to get into Nick Cave, including the new album, but I can't. 

[rodders0223]

2 minutes silence and people can't stop clicking their mouse and keyboard for 120 seconds.

Just **** arseholes.

[Mic09]

People who go to offices in smart business dresses & suits, nicely groomed and smelling of Dolce & Gabbana, looking the real deal. 

And then, putting bright blue and yellow Asics on their feet.

Seriously?

[rodders0223]

16 minutes ago, Mic09 said:

People who go to offices in smart business dresses & suits, nicely groomed and smelling of Dolce & Gabbana, looking the real deal. 

And then, putting bright blue and yellow Asics on their feet.

Seriously?

I find the current trend of wearing what I would describe as "trampy trainers" utterly baffling.

[a m ole]

18 minutes ago, rodders0223 said:

2 minutes silence and people can't stop clicking their mouse and keyboard for 120 seconds.

Just **** arseholes.

mad that people can’t contain themselves for a moment.

I do find myself confused around this time of year though, this is the 6th moment of silence I’ve observed over the past few days and I will be doing another tonight before a match. I think people would be a bit more observant if every football match and so on weren’t conducting them on any nearby date and time. Somewhat dilutes the message unfortunately.

[Mic09]

47 minutes ago, a m ole said:

mad that people can’t contain themselves for a moment.

I do find myself confused around this time of year though, this is the 6th moment of silence I’ve observed over the past few days and I will be doing another tonight before a match. I think people would be a bit more observant if every football match and so on weren’t conducting them on any nearby date and time. Somewhat dilutes the message unfortunately.

Tricky one as everyone wants to pay a tribute to those people, but yeah, I agree. Just have it on the 11th. If there are no football games, that's fine, I am sure every one of the 30/40k people in the stands will observe the minute's silence in their workplace or home anyway. I don't really have to watch Sadio Mane or Leonardo Bacuna do it on the 7th of November at 5:30pm. 

[chrisp65]

Nothing quite says dignified and respectful silence like Poppy the football mascot.

[blandy]

3 hours ago, mjmooney said:

I've tried to get into Nick Cave, including the new album, but I can't.

What songs/albums have you listened to?

'cus if you've tried to get into his music, then that means you'd like to. And there will be a way in for you, because the range of stuff he's done is so wide. If you start in the middle there's a chance. And if you don't like this, then you can at least play at spotting famousers in the vid.

People who don't like Nick Cave

[stuart_75]

On 08/11/2019 at 08:48, Vive_La_Villa said:

The way Netflix starts showing a clip of a program before you select it.  

I don’t think I’ll ever forget that his name is Billy Kimber and he runs the races! 

I wish you could turn this feature off. I hate it with a passion.

[choffer]

I have a similar issue with some of the screen grabs they use to promote a show. I’m watching something just now (the name escapes me) where the shot they use is clearly from fairly deep into the show so you know the main character didn’t top herself and made it to court to fight her case. Kinda removes all the jeopardy from they storyline up until that point. 

Edited November 11, 2019 by choffer

[lapal_fan]

Twitter responses to a lovely clip with the veteran paying homage to his fellow (fallen) soldiers on BBC Breakfast.

The amount of "The young people of today are useless shits who are entitled etc etc" tweets from people born in the 50s and 60s is so hilariously ironic it's untrue. 

1.  what did they ever fight for?

2. Why are they somehow living vicariously through their parents/grandparents achievements? 

3.  Do they not realise that their input into parenting has led to this generation they are insulting? 

4.  Is the reason all teenagers now are "a bunch of pussies" because they were over-protected by parents thinking their little cherubs were going to get bummed by a paedo if they went outside on their own in the late 90s/early 00's? 

5. Are they entitled because they were given everything and if that happens entitlement generally happens because getting everything "now" becomes normal?

I obviously realise it's a small sample size, and not all people born in the 50s and 60s are like this, but a few thousand tweets is enough. 

[mjmooney]

1 hour ago, blandy said:

What songs/albums have you listened to?

'cus if you've tried to get into his music, then that means you'd like to. And there will be a way in for you, because the range of stuff he's done is so wide. If you start in the middle there's a chance. And if you don't like this, then you can at least play at spotting famousers in the vid.

People who don't like Nick Cave

Yeah, I do think he's somebody I should like. And I certainly don't hate what he does. But it just doesn't seem to grab me. I've mainly listened to the Bad Seeds stuff. 

Dunno, maybe it's just the voice.