almost witty

So it’s Glastonbury weekend - a weekend where I traditionally muse on the fact that I’m starting to get too old to go to such a weekend as a first-timer, and that I really need to get off my backside, and make arrangements to go.

Except this weekend, if I really wanted to go by myself, I could - tickets are still available for a festival that usually sells out within the first day of tickets being made available. Scalpers are probably walking the hills of Pitdown bereft and blaming the credit crunch.

Some commentators blame the lack of sales on poor weather, although most of them are blaming it on the fact that rapper Jay-Z is headlining what used to be a rock music festival. Although since the Pet Shop Boys have also headlined it in the past, I’m not sure that excuse stands up.

An element of the truth may be heard in a work conversation I overheard, where someone expressed a genuine fear that because a rapper was headlining, the crowd would essentially be full of chavs and violent gangsta dudes. Which therefore meant this person wasn’t going, because he/she was afraid of all the violence that would ensue.

and there was me thinking Glastonbury was meant to be a haven of openness, love to your fellow man, and meeting cool new people and all that.

Then again, one of my friends is working it this year, and she’s taken a 12-pack of condoms…

Simply hilarious.

Thinking about my previous post on how terrible an American version of Spaced would be, it occured to me that I have seen a film which features two twenty-something pop and sci-fi culture obsessives living life in the late 1990s, with pop culture references shoved in left, right and centre with a few film homages and girls who dig comic books (pah! fantasy I tell you!).

Granted, it being American, everyone is impossibly handsome - it starred the future Will of Will & Grace, had the gorgeous never-to-be-seen-again Lori Lively, the two people live in Los Angeles and have jobs most people would kill for (scriptwriter and editor). And of course, everyone is impossibly attractive looking. Oh, and it features William Shatner rapping.

The film whereof I speak? Free Enterprise. Have you heard of it? Even seen it? Am I the only one who’d draw a reasonable comparison? Obviously it’s not as good as Spaced - what could be? - but take a look, see what you think…

As you may know, I’m a bit of a fan of Spaced, a British sitcom that could only have been made in the cusp of the Millennium with its two key protagonists utterly consumed by geek culture and pop culture references, so much so that the two main characters never even kissed one another.

Skip to today, and Variety announce vague plans by Fox to make a US version of it. Brought to you by McG - the man who directed Charlie’s Angels and didn’t make Superman Returns because he was too scared to fly on a plane to Australia - and some guy called Adam Barr. So far, the original creators of Spaced haven’t been consulted. But even if they were involved, I can’t see how a US version of it would work.

Half the fun was watching British people essentially re-enacting a wide variety of Hollywood pop culture moments. Having Americans re-enacting Hollywood moments with a twist wouldn’t be funny - it’d just be Scary Movie 15. With extra mugging.

You would have thought that after 30 years, finding people who had never seen Star Wars would be nigh on impossible. Especially people who ostensibly worked in the media.

But no, it’s not impossible. The BBC’s entertainment reporter Kevin Young claims to have never seen Star Wars - or any science-fiction save The X-Files, for that matter. This I find a tad impossible!

Surely if you have even an inkling of an interest in entertainment or pop culture, then you must at least have an inkling of science-fiction and what it is. And surely in thirty years Star Wars cannot have completely passed you by. That would be impossible. I submit, sirrah, that the BBC has lied to us!

But more importantly, the BBC sits him down to watch Star Wars for the very first time (awooo… awooo….). And some of the quotes he comes out with while watching Star Wars must mean that he’s completely being ironic and taking the piss. Such as:

“Luke seems quite taken by this holographic vision in blue and wants to know more about her. I have a sneaking suspicion that they might end up as this film’s golden couple, but there’s still an hour and 38 minutes to go yet.”

“It’s a light-saber. It looks cool. I wonder how it works, though - does its laser burn enemy combatants or does it shoot some kind of fatal beam?”

“Important plot twist here, I predict - Darth killed Luke’s dad.”

There is just no way one can be an entertainment reporter and not have picked up on what a light sabre does, and who Luke’s father is. It’s just impossible, surely?