The Greatest Song Ever Written- Insane Clown Posse.

Insane Clown Posse now only make music in Space, one thousand years in the future atop of inverted, neon pyramids. The song exists beyond our abilities of comprehension and instead moves us into a new state, a state of total and pure being where the body is both obsolete and perfect. This is a utopian hyper-reality where science has been discredited and reduced the whimpering, beaten child that it will surely become. For Insane Clown Posse do not fuck around with science and these arrogant god's of certainty. No, they have discovered the true underlying mechanism that unfolds the modus operandi of this infinite and terrifying universe; Mother-Fucking-Magic (and miracles, don't forget miracles).

In this revelation Insane Clown Posse ask the vital questions we need to know the answers to; like "Fucking magnets how do they work?" Who knows ICP, who knows? They draw our attention to the fact that "Magic is everywhere in this bitch" and that it should not be questioned by contrary scientists who just want to piss us all off. Experience the wonderment, the magnitude, the glorious and eternally burning sun-moon of our collective, harmonious future, where KKK-Clown Wizards concoct beautiful and harrowing experiments with the dark matter of our very souls. Revel in the jubilation of billions, of haunted ghost stars and super-nova spells. Cast your mind into the danger-zone of the blackest of all magic. This is Insane Clown Posse, and your soul belongs to them.

The worst song ever written.

Occasionally a band comes along that changes the face of music forever. A band that blurs genre's in a perfect and heady concoction that leaves you and your friends gasping on your knees like a pack half puking, half crying piss-mutts, begging with your tongues and your bodies for just one more song. Final Placement, a Christian rock group hailing from Midland Texas are not one of those bands. There's nothing particularly offensive about them, they doesn't polarize people, they're not even crassly mediocre. They're just really really shitty.

We (in the Royalist of senses) were in a punk band when we were 15. It was called Cutout and we sucked hard. We did even manage to get on a local compilation with a song called Clowns. The point being, we understand what it's like to be in terrible bands when you're a teenager, some would say it's even a right of passage, so in a strange way we feel for these young chaps. The difference being however, we had the foresight to burn, bury or ingest any evidence of our flirtations with the horror show that was our band. Final Placement put their's on Youtube.

To be fair this might actually be a joke, a satirical jab at people who feel the need to slam bands that no-one has heard of on a blog that no-one has ever read. The problem being, we here at The Mansion have become detached to the point of autism (that line is stolen from somewhere, we can't remember where) so are hanging up the gloves, in the ring of 'trying to understand what the fuck is real and what is fake on the internet' so have decided there's no point anymore. The only thing that suggests to us it might be real is that the band removed the video from youtube after receiving what can only be described as a tidal-wave of degrading abuse from Internet folk, only to put it back up when they realised that it made them look like a bunch of tiny bitches. Our personal favourite is from Tommy Briscoe who quips;

"This is a joke right? A bunch of talentless god botherers, that's all we need!! Why doesn't anyone tell these idiots that rock and roll wasn't meant for them. Now go get me a fire breathing whore!!!"

Oh Tommy, you card.

It might be a joke, it might not be, who cares? Here's Final Placement with their new single Shine. In store's probably never.

This might become a rolling topic. If you know of any bands that are so shocking that they need to be brought to the attention of other Internet people then post them below and we'll showcase the shit out of them.

Clash! Of! The! Titans! in! 3D!

Has anyone gone to a 3D film yet? Well, we did and it's very weird. You get a little packet with a pair of glasses in them and you sit down through the adverts wondering when the 3D will start [it tells you glaringly by the way]. When it does you feel a bit sick, right?

Well, that goes away after a while but basically it's only 3D in close-up and mid-range shots. Which only makes the long distance shots look all the flatter. Also if there is any hint of shakey-cam then the whole thing makes no sense whatsoever. This may be that the 3D was super-imposed later rather than being shot in 3D like say, Avatar, but perhaps we should watch more 3D.

But we digress... You're all dying to know what Clash of the Titans is like right? Of course, who wouldn't? Well, it makes no sense at all. Perseus (Sam Worthington) is a demi-god who, with the help of the other demi-god (played by Gemma Arterton), kind of wage war on the gods that no one likes. Throw in Liam Neeson (Zeus) and Ralph Fiennes (Hades) and you've got a blockbuster!

[As an aside where the fuck is Sam Worthington from? Australia? London? South Africa? San Fran... Oh, he was born in Surrey and schooled in Australia. Well, he sounds fucking weird.]

Now, the film kind of insists that the hero does things "as a man" and that he is NOT a god. But in the end he's all for the gods. If anyone has a idea was happens inbetween then let us know...

BUT... Tiny-fucking-Fey is on Jonathan Ross. Let's go watch!

Justin Bieber New Song Horror Confession.

Is this song about a rape? Was Justin Bieber raped?



Lyrics:

You know you love me
I know you care
And I would never, not be there
You are my love
You are my heart
And we would never, ever, ever be apart

Are we an item?
Girl quit playin'
We're just friends,
What are you sayin'
Take another look right in my eyes
My first love, touch my heart for the first time

And now I'm like
Baby, baby, baby noo
I'm like
Baby, baby, baby noo
I'm like
Baby, baby, baby noo
I thought you'd always be mine (mine)
Baby, baby, baby noo
I'm like
Baby, baby, baby noo
I'm like
Baby, baby, baby noo
I thought you'd always be mine

For you, I would have done whatever
And ya stick it with me when we're together
And I'm gonn' play it cool
While I'm losin you
I'll buy you anything
I'll buy you any ring
Cause I'm in pieces
Baby fix me
Come see if you wake me from this bad dream*
I'm goin down, down, down

Baby, baby, baby noo
I'm like
Baby, baby, baby noo
I'm like
Baby, baby, baby noo
I thought you'd always be mine (mine)
Baby, baby, baby noo
I'm like
Baby, baby, baby noo
I'm like
Baby, baby, baby ohh
I thought you'd always be mine

You can give me all of your love
Once a time it wont be enough
Nobody told me this day would come
Now I'm all gone
You can give me all of your love
Once a time it wont be enough
Nobody told me this day would come

I wa- I was like
Baby, baby, baby noo
I'm like
Baby, baby, baby noo
I'm like
Baby, baby, baby noo
I thought you'd always be mine (mine)

Yeahh, yeah, yeah
Yeahh, yeah, yeah
Yeahh, yeah, yeah
Yeahh, yeah, yeah
Yeahh, yeah, yeah
Now I'm all gone, gone, gone, gone
I'm gonee.

The first bit is fairly innocuous but then it takes a turn for the deeply disturbing. Especially the chorus.

A few snippets from the web.

We've been a little slow lately with our output of posts and we feel really terrible about it. Please forgive us? Ok good. Done. Anyway here's a few bits and bobs from the deep recesses of the Internet that have helped make sitting slumped in bed (we all share a big bed) with a laptop slowly frying our genitals a daily routine. We used to go out and meet people.


As our compatriot Adam Wilbourne notes, 'EPIC is an overused word in today's society. This time however it is justified" He's not wrong either. This is what Dogs experience every time they eat. This is what Precious was aiming for in terms of dramatic impact. You can hear the Dogs internally screaming "Here it comes. Here it fucking comes."



We at The Mansion, like so many others, have been swept into the devastatingly addictive Chatroullette and pictures diaries of us 'spinning the wheel' are on the the way. However, for now entertain yourself with this little piece of Chatroullette improvisation on the piano. We tried this last night with guitars and soon realised that it helps to know more than two and a half songs. This guy has the chops. Question is; Is that Ben Folds? Probably not no.



This is just fucking awesome. Great teddy bear animation disaster time.



This maintains a healthy balance between weirdness, arousal and things melting in the microwave.

Everything (Ep. 4) from dannyjelinek on Vimeo.

It's the close up that makes this so disconcerting.



This kid hates Cats.




ORPHAN!



Here's to never sleeping again. Ever.

Mouth Eyes from Jessica Harrison on Vimeo.

This kid is going to live forever. All levels of strange from this Mexican rap cild superstar Mini-Daddy.



Ok, there you have it. A bunch of stuff from the Internet we like (This is easy, can this be our job?).

The Oscars blowback

First off, it is pretty impressive how we didn’t even watch the Oscars ceremony yet still managed to pick up from various news outlets a pretty decent wealth of information to work off. The PR machine is obviously earning its dough.

Anyways, moving on… We may as well state that man, there were some serious omissions. We’re punning of course about the Coen’s note-perfect reworking of the tale of Job: A Serious Man [insert laughter here]. But then again the Oscars isn’t about rewarding the best films is it?

Which is why on reflection it was a fucking godsend that Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon didn’t get any awards. A lot has been made about the director’s ‘evolution’ from the ‘less refined’ Benny’s Video and Funny Games (1997) to the ‘more nuanced’ Hidden and now, The White Ribbon. And there is weight to the argument that Haneke has noticeably altered his more avowed antagonism to his audience, and that this has made them — for neither better nor worse necessarily — more palatable and suitable to award ceremonies such as these. (Which is a strange comment to make considering what a brutal experience it is to watch Hidden and The White Ribbon.) But the minute something like the Oscars decides that Haneke is award-worthy then something terrible has happened and that his ‘evolution’ is not for the better. But they haven’t and it isn’t. So… great.

But mainly the issue we have is with the success of The Hurt Locker. Why the hell did it win so many big gongs? [herr herr herr] Well, let’s look at the possibilities:

Bigelow is like, a woman and shit… Whether you want to believe that the Oscar panel decided to give a woman the Best Film and Best Director awards simply because it hadn’t (ridiculously) happened before or whether you do not, we’ll leave at that.

OK, the symbolic impact of this landmark could have some positive outcomes. However, the fact that The Hurt Locker is one of the most masculinist films we’ve seen in recent years means it seems pretty unlikely.

Also, that everyone in reaction to Bigelow’s success constantly referred to her previous relationship with James Cameron shows that simply giving out awards to female directors will end sexism as much as Obama getting into the White House will end racism (but maybe (definitely) we’re giving the Oscars way, way too much power here). Obviously if Cameron had won then no one would have even mentioned Bigelow.

It’s all like anti-war and stuff… Bullsheeeet. The Hurt Locker is not anti-war. It offers the American public (and British public for that matter) a convenient narrative that obscures the hellishly destructive role of the invasion and occupation of Iraq with a benevolent neo-colonialist apologia. That it chooses the narrative of a surgeon-like defence of the Iraqi population and infrastructure in the face of a brutal and outright evil insurgency is telling.

The Hurt Locker implicitly supports the idea of a smart war that can be waged by entering a foreign nation, hitting the offending targets with minimal damage and come out without impacting the native society. The film avoids the more problematic parts played by the allied forces in the conflict. Not least in that its protagonist is a bomb disposal expert that doesn’t come across unexploded US bombs every single day. The allied bombing campaign is completely obscured from the narrative. Instead you simply see in the film an inverse impression of the smart war ideal upon a post-war insurgency.

Mark Simpson makes the argument, in a different context, that apparently anti-war films often become extensions of the ideology that argued for the war in the first place.

‘The somatic interface of the military-industrial complex manages to colonize—or, indeed, to weaponize—even the most stringent critique. [This] undermines the very concept of the anti-war film, jeopardising the presupposition that some films can critique the wars they recount…’

And this applies directly to The Hurt Locker. This bomb disposal narrative justify a part of the war machine that while appearing to clean up the mess of war, in fact serves to apologise for the destruction.

But for all the above it is a decent action movie. And we actually enjoyed watching it at the time. Yeah, there are some clichés chucked in, but mostly it manages to avoid the more obvious pit falls in that respect. Plus, Bigelow gets some kudos when she steals some music from There Will Be Blood, which reminds us just what a good job Paul Thomas Anderson did (and what a more powerful anti-Iraq film TWBB is compared to The Hurt Locker).

Looking back on it now this didn’t really grapple with why THL won so many big gongs [pa-ha, it’s still funny]. Maybe it was an insidious award campaign. Maybe it is a good film after all and we should watch it again. Maybe it’s Maybelline. Maybe you’re right and maybe you’re wrong. But I ain’t gonna argue with you no more, I’ve done it far too long.

What do y'all think?

We Like The Onion

The move to an online, multi-media format is a big step for any print publication to take. The issue crops up a lot at the moment, from the arguments about what (if anything) the ipad is good for to Murdoch's planned pay walls across the websites of the Wall Street Journal, The Times, News of the World.... etc.

But a quiet success story is without a doubt that of The Onion. Founded in New York in 1988 it now holds a reputable print circulation of around 700,000. Judging by the quality and success of this it was no real surprise that in 2007 they moved into video with the Onion News Network (a 24hr TV News parody) with great results.

Maintaining their parodic style but with a production value that seems absent outside the US, The Onion have made the move online seamless. Advertising has obviously helped in funding the move (and for UK readers the aggressive ad-sales of the US can irritate) but hopefully an over-reliance on this revenue stream won't hurt their output.

But anyways... enough chat, here's some of our favourites:

'Denmark Introduces Harrowing New Tourist Adverts Directed by Lars Von Trier' (thanks to CK)

'Victim in Fatal Car Crash Tragically Not Glenn Beck'

'Most College Males Admit to Regularly Getting Stoked'