EightBit.Me

Will Twitter-based social networking gizmo/ iPhone app EightBit.Me capture the public’s imagination? Explained to me as ‘like foursquare squared’, I worry I may be 2square to appreciate its possibilities. There again, at the time of its invention, I couldn’t see how the wheel might enrich my existence. So, silencing my Luddite inner voice, I say ‘tell me more, dude!’ First, you recreate yourself as an old skool computer game-style 8-bit character - in my case, Woody from Toy Story in Allan Carr’s bins and an Orphan Annie wig is a vast improvement on the real McCoy - then your pixelated mini-me roams a realm where checking into venues and Tweetable ‘shouts’ win prizes and….. hold on! Why am I concerned with such vacuous ventures?  Didn’t I used to have a life? Friends that weren’t just avatars? Stop the world, I want to get off...preferably, on activities non-virtual. Besides, the backlash has already begun (see http://.eightshit.me/) 

Blogjammed

I’m a sucker for an enlightening blog: Southern Sudan's Northern Soul Scene; 2,000 Ways With Wasabi; Big Fat Gay Inuit Weddings. The problem with the ultimate form of vanity self-publishing is that too many blogs are just too ruddy wordy. Bookmarked for future reference, are hundreds I’ll never actually find time to read. Blog-jammed, I feel anxious (am I missing The Next Big Thing?) and simultaneously narked (life was a breeze before we got enmeshed in the Web). Self-important food and fashion bloggers are among the worst offenders. I could hunt down, cook and scoff an organic, sustainably sourced, twenty-course Mughal feast faster than it takes some Marina-manqué to describe her ‘unique dinning (sic) experience’ at a Glossop gastro/gastritis-pub’s all-you-can-eat buffet. Pics and captions, not a thesis, are all we need from an alt Emmanuelle Alt to appreciate Lanvin’s new collection. Blog, but blog concisely, you verbose bluggers! 

Rastamouse

Spare me the controversy surrounding reggae ridim king Rastamouse and his band, Da Easy Crew. The new hit CBeebies animation is currently enrapturing rugrats, not to mention big kids like Lily Allen and Dizzee Rascal too. Despite RM’s admirable mission to ‘make bad tings good’, publications such as The Guardian wonder ‘Is Rastamouse a righteous rodent or rank stereotype?’ Outraged of Tunbridge Wells rants about Jamaican patois corrupting the mother tongue. Please! One of the joys of English is its willingness to evolve by absorbing other cultures’ lingo, capisce? Others, such as Reggae Reggae Sauce's Levi Roots, reportedly,  condemn Rastafarians being portrayed as mice (as opposed to lions, presumably) as blatantly racist.  Get over yourselves! Rastamouse is a ranking role model, the cutest, cuddliest mega-star since that (Russian) meerkat. Reespek to his creator, author Michael de Souza, a proud Rastafarian.

The New Lady Gaga

However soulless I may find her manipulatively manufactured, over-produced yodelling, I get Gaga’s pop appeal, but those ‘envelope pushing’ get-ups? Fail! To a true style icon -  Anna Piaggi, Issy Blow or Elsa Schiaparelli who was working Gaga’s lobster look back in the 1930s - it comes naturally... and effortlessly. Ms Germanotta’s pose is clumsy, contrived and cynically sensationalist ; like La Ciccone, before her, a homely bridge and tunnel New Yorker desperate for a brand-building gimmick. Meat dress? Miss Steak!  Sparky British discovery Jessie J - next up on ‘the new Lady Gaga’ comparison conveyor belt, book-ended by Nicki Minaj (a Kylie Minaj tribute act?) Ke$ha and Natalia Kills  - reckons old Poker Face has set the bar so high, other female artists seem boring by comparison. A dressed-down Jess’s acoustic performance on Jools Holland was the real deal, her Gaga tribute vid for Do It Like A Dude? Now, that really is boring! 

Ned Style

 ’We called the new baby Ned,’ says a Lib-Dem voting, Guardian reading, London pal. For Ned’s sake, I hope the child never attends uni in Scotland. For, north of Carlisle, NEDS implies non-educated delinquent 'schemies' - scourge of the Bearsden/ Morningside genteel classes who live in fear of being ‘chibbed’ for crack spends by tooled-up, rickets-y youth with in trackies with track marks all over their spotty, self-tattooed skin. As fashion so often takes its cue from film and TV -  if you had a tenner for every Mad Man manqué out there, you could buy up all of Greenock, Giffnock and Port Glasgow , should you so desire - how long before the streets are awash with doppelgängers from Peter Mullan’s Neds? For pure 70s period effect, adopt flares, long leatherette coat, feather cut hair and a penchant for kissing, Glasgow style. Alternatively, take a masterclass in contemporary Ned-ism courtesy of The Wee Man at http://tinyurl.com/cqwuky Either way, not a good look.

Anti-Social, moi?

For me, it was love at first sight: twenty years on, I’m still besotted with my sexy Mac. That’s Mac as in not-a-PC, equally addictive machines according to users. When not developing curvature of the spine, hunched over lap-or-desktop catching up on Corrie, comparing the market.com, off my face on Facebook or marveling at YouTube clips demonstrating Peaches Geldof’s  command of English - y’know? the one at http://tinyurl.com/y9a7xc5 - I’m tweeting utter twollox. Enough! This obsessive relationship is unhealthy, as my stranger-to-the-gym bod demonstrates. Could salvation lie in the software equivalent of Antabuse, a drug designed to deflect alkies from the cooking sherry?  Anti-Social,  networking block software available to download, promises to deny (s)Mac addicts their daily fix. For PC junkies, there’s Freedom. Either way, isn’t it time to get a life that’s not 99% virtual?

http://anti-social.cc/

Nigella Quick Collection App

What could be more wickedly delicious than Nigella vibrating in a lucky chap’s trouser pocket? (A rabid rat chewing his 'nads off, I say) For those who find her sugar-coated patter a turn-on, download the cook-teaser to your iPhone for just £4.99. As the domestic goddess ain’t ever going to drizzle and lick her way around your sad bachelor kitchen, this app is the next best thing to the real thing - even if  'real' isn't an adjective I readily associate with Ma Saatchi's TV shtick.  For those short on time but big on taste, the application promises advice, inspiration and recipes for super-quick weekday suppers. Hopefully, these include her 'squink risotto'. But as Nigella is like Marmite -  love it / hate it - reviews at the iTunes store are somewhat mixed. ‘Her linguine with lemon, garlic and thyme mushrooms just smiled at me’; ‘not a PATCH on Jamie Oliver's’; ‘kinda screams money grabbing and taints her brand’ - just some of the opinions ventured. Do I detect that some disappointed customers rate it a wee bit on the  cr-app side? How beastly! Time to comfort yourself with a Big.Hot. Steaming. Mug of yummy cocoa, Nigella. 

This Week at Waitrose I'm hoping to find..........

More oil, Madam?

Tradition dictates that Britain’s Italian waiters grind their crotches in unison with pepper mills bigger than the Leaning Tower of Pisa and enquire, all oily slick, if ‘la signorina’ fancies anything else? Their act is cheesier than mozzarella, but as they are merely confirming our prejudice of Milan man as a harmless bum-pinching Latin Lothario out of Carry On Up The Tiber, it’s dismissed as all part of the trattoria tradition. When it comes to home-grown British waiters, however, we expect Basil Fawlty or worse, to have mentored them. So what to think of Pizza Express, now reportedly training staff in the gentle art of flirtation? Minefield! Come-hither looks over the lasagne? Extra sauce with your pasta? That’s strictly for Continentals. I see trouble ahead if other chains adopt this initiative. Imagine the scene around midnight at the nearest nosherie: ‘Coffee, tea or me?’ winks Romford Romeo waiter. Cue lagered-up of Luton, ‘Oi, tosser! It’s the salad that’s supposed to be fresh. Look at my missus like that again and I’ll tear those dough balls to shreds!’ 

Political Comedians

(Doris Karloff - Hell mend her!)

Once, has-been MPs quietly faded into obscurity or spent their dotage dozing in the Lords. No more! Now, they want to be entertainers. The trend took off when Neil Hamilton and battleaxe Christine, became a sort of peripatetic Punch & Judy show. Next, came George 'The Cat' Galloway in his red leotard - possibly THE most embarrassing five minutes of  TV ever, from which I am yet to recover -  followed by Andrew Neil’s resident stooges, Abbott and Costello - sorry, Portillo - who surely have a future in panto once failed Labour leaderine Diane departs da House. The latest political comedians are Lib-Dem oddball, Lembit Opek - whose stand-up routine is, by all accounts, as cringeworthy as his turn on Come Dine With Me - and Strict(ly) virgin Ann Widdi-Waddle attempting to reinvent herself as our favourite cuddly aunt - like we’ve forgotten Doris Karloff’s toxic Tory horror show. Whither next? MP Alan Keen and defeated MP/ wife, Ann, camping it up, Kim and Aggie style, as ‘Mr & Mrs Expenses’, sifting through members’ claim forms on a Westminster special of How Clean is Your House?