Gloomy

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With everything in place for our trip to the UK next month, the time between now and the holiday is dragging. And, after an unpleasant day at the football yesterday and a pleasant evening drowning sorrows and celebrating a birthday, today is dragging a little too, as is my head.

A quota photo is required and this one fits the bill just perfectly.

Something, somewhere is telling me that I’ve used this as a QP before, but I’m so tired and “jaded”, that I really can’t recall or indeed be arsed to recall.

This picture, as with life at the moment, is probably better in the dark.

Nick Taras reviews a One Direction concert

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for beat magazine in Australia:

(Please excuse the occasional bad language.)

For those unaware, One Direction are a teenage British boy band who are just the right combination of good looks and shitty pop music to seduce the hearts of young girls worldwide, and just young enough for Kony to kidnap. They released an album calledUp All Night (which has dominated charts worldwide) and got away with it because of their young, clean image. It was considered “cute” and “playfully naughty”. Yet if Dr Dre put out an album with the exact same title it would be considered “extremely vulgar” and “too heavy on references to hardcore everlasting sex”. One Direction are in their late teens. Just sayin’.

I must admit that I was not in a grand mood before One Direction. Firstly, in some form of sick joke, I was asked to review this band, and then I was told I couldn’t get a +1. I was alone. At One Direction. And I paid $10 for parking. And then I was seated between two groups of horrifyingly loud 14-year-old girls. It wasawesome depressing and a low point in my career. But then things got better, and I was transformed into a good mood becausethese girls were hot! I was interested in seeing why such a colossal chaos was made of this boy band.

One Direction, with less collective hairs beneath their underwear than hairs on my face, came out to the sound of a screaming pre-pubescent frenzy. I knew I was in for a musical orgasm after Niall (is that even a real name) started strumming his cool air guitar in time with the drum beat. As both instruments do in fact make a form of noise, I will refrain from further criticism.

Not long after, they performed their most puzzling hit, What Makes You Beautiful, a gem which contains the bizarre lyric: “You don’t know you’re beautiful/Oh oh/That’s what makes you beautiful”. I can’t understand how this lyric has gone under the radar. It roughly translates to “You have no sense of self-worth/Oh oh/That’s why I like you”. One Direction are obviously sickeningly attracted to girls with low self-esteem. Other lyrics from that song include the repetitive chanting of “Nana Nana Nana Nana Nana Nana Nana Nana” – quite reminiscent of the schoolyard tease chant of “Nana Nana Na”.

By far the highlight of the evening was a break in the performance where the band read the tweets from audience members which featured various questions. My favourite tweet was “Who can jump the highest?” The members of the band then all attempted to find out who was the most talented jumper. They each took turns, one by one, jumping on stage and then high fiving each other. It was a moment that will go down in rock history; a moment where I can say, “I was there”.

I hate my fucking shitty job.

BY NICK TARAS

LOVED: When Louis jumped really high.

HATED: The expensive price of chips.

DRANK: Didn’t serve alcohol but I had chips. They were good but not cheap!

*shrug* At least he enjoyed the chips.

Eddie & Mike

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Ah – another proud moment for South Africa as the world looks on.

Eddie Izzard’s attempt to run 27 marathons in 27 days in South Africa has had to be postponed, “just” four days in:

I set out to run 27 marathons in 27 days as a tribute to Nelson Mandela and his 27 years spent in prison.

Having completed 4 marathons, unfortunately, I have had to put my attempt on hold due to unforeseen medical complications that have arisen due to a multitude of factors including severe terrain, humidity and altitude. But I wish to say that my attempt is not over and I will return to South Africa and run the 27 marathons and finish this story.

I owe that to Nelson Mandela who has inspired the world to struggle and succeed no matter what obstacles are thrown at us.

There are literally hundreds of supportive comments in response to the post.

And then there’s this one from Mike Finch:

This is awkward and embarrassing, at best. Is it meant to be funny? Is it meant to be a bit of a dig at the English?
Or maybe a dig at Eddie personally?

Even runners like you?

It’s not surprising you only lasted four marathons

Really?
This is the guy who did 43 marathons in 51 days a couple of years back. I’m no huge fan of Eddie Izzard, but that is a pretty huge achievement.

Now he is in SA supporting and honouring the South African hero. And yet you ridicule him?

And what on earth is:

This is Africa… where men never cry and women do… a lot

meant to mean?

All in all, it would be a pretty awful comment from anyone, really, but then it turns out that Mike is the editor of Runnersworld magazine.
He’s educated.
He allegedly “knows about running”.
He edits the most popular running magazine on the continent.

And yet he gives us that condescending, uninformed crap?

No wonder I’m not a subscriber. Are you?

UPDATE: Opinion seems divided over the Mike Finch post. The overwhelming majority are with me: the comment is rude, disrespectful, uninformed and crass. Mike does have some support though.
The division exists almost completely (although not absolutely) along the line of whether the individual knows Mike or not. Those friends of Mike are incredulous that I or anyone else could read anything but humour into his Facebook comment. And that, to me, probably shows that Mike’s comment was probably an attempt to be humorous. (I still don’t get the “women cry a lot bit”, though.)

However, what these unobservant birds fail to notice is that the vast majority of Eddie Izzard’s 445,000 fans on Facebook aren’t personal friends of Mike Finch. So on their reading, his comment will have come across as rude, disrespectful, uninformed and crass.

As someone charged with editing a popular magazine, and when commenting to 445,000 fans of Eddie Izzard, perhaps Mike should have thought about writing more for the masses and not for his mates.