Moist astronomy (moistronomy)

Mars – REVIEWED

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve nothing against Mars. Inspiration to so much science fiction, our best hope of a new home should we irredeemably knacker this one – the red planet has got a lot going for it. But as a reviewer I have to be honest. I have to say what I think. I can’t pull my punches, especially on a planet where the pull of gravity is so low that I might end up flying backwards through the air.

Here is my honest review of the planet Mars: it’s a bit rubbish. The colour is great. Rusty red? Love it. But erm, what else have you got? Running water? Apparently so, say the bods at Nasa/Universal Studios marketing team. But that water is likely to be pretty much brine – as much salt as sweet, life-giving H20 – and I ain’t drinking that. Life on Mars, meanwhile, if it exists at all, is likely to be something akin to your six-year-old nephew: small, ugly and incredibly stupid.

Yes it has substantial mountains, so does Earth. And they’ve usually got snow on them too, which makes them look as if God has dusted them with icing sugar. While we’re talking about snow, it’s worth observing that the Martian year is twice the length of one on Earth and, therefore, winter goes on for six months. Think about that: the heating bills, the 60-day January detox, 95 episodes of Celebrity Big Brother. Think about that and then tell me you’re keen on going on an exploratory mission to see if there’s a market for a Cereal Killer cafe franchise.

We are unfathomably lucky to live on a planet whose abundance is not only ecological but geographical and climatic too. The next time you’re sitting in a traffic jam on the school run in your Volkswagen diesel 4x4, sing a song of hallelujah at your good fortune. And if that doesn’t work just look at a picture of Mars. Really, it’s a shithole. 3/10.

PM

Misguided musical nomenclature

Archi Deep And The Monkeyshakers – REVIEWED

Just let the title of this trio sit with you for a moment. Archi Deep And The Monkeyshakers. Let it roll off your tongue. Perhaps say it in an accent. Imagine you’re in the Double R Club, getting chatted up by one of Tom Hardy’s Krays, and the Monkeyshakers are playing in front of the red velvet curtain. Nope, can’t, there is no way that this band will be any good. Your mate asks you down the student union: “What’s that gig you’re off to tonight then?” And as you down your fifth pint of snakebite, you slur, “It’s that new band Archi Deep And The Monkeyshakers” and you feel your street cred deplete quicker than your serotonin. They look as if they could have been T4’s in-house band, three Gallic models vacuum-packed in matching River Island T-shirts, or the product of someone in a label boardroom, who still wears loafers with jeans, going: “Yes, that Royal Blood band, they’re cool now aren’t they? Quick, to the laboratory!”

Anyway, the song: minimalist monster riffs, scrotum-twisting vocals that Chris Cornell might be proud of, lyrics about “strange senses fucking with my mind” as they run through graffitied underground passages. These aren’t Nowhere Men – they are not the kind of dudes that didn’t get chatted up at Oceana, or picked for the school football team. This brooding loner posturing is about 100% less believable when it’s played by guys who clearly had queues behind them for their yearbook signings. Nowhere Man has that vaguely sexy rock plod that Arctic Monkeys have managed to master if you close your eyes and imagine that Arctic Monkeys aren’t playing it but three Sam Claflins. Which is kind of what Archi Deep And The Monkeyshakers are. Wait … Archi Monkeys? If the whole rock god thing doesn’t work out, they could shorten their name and start a covers band instead. 4/10.

KH

Retro libations

Hooch – REVIEWED

First of all, they still sell Hooch! Can you believe it? Hooch! You can buy Hooch in pubs in 2015! What a time to be alive. In that, it feels exactly the same as being alive in the freewheeling bohemia of 1999. Good ol’ 99, what with its All Saints, and its Kickers shoes, and its hopeless, unending, howling virginity. Actually, what am I talking about? I hated 1999! I had spots the size of wrestler’s kneecaps, concussive BO, and a rank Fila jumper I wore absolutely all the time that smelled like a spaniel’s back. Hooch was the taste of underage boozing in Doncaster. Of exam panic. Of rejection. Of mobile phones that were poor on both counts. Of the catarrh-loosening guff of Joop. What if 2015 Hooch is a Proustian avalanche of 1999’s teenage awfulness? A lemony reminder of what a tossy little scrote I certainly was, and probably still am?

So I went and bought a Hooch (£1.99, Wethers). Aaand, you know what? It was... actually pretty nice. It slipped down well; refreshing, tart, and yet sweet. Clearly it has more sugar in it than 2014’s entire Brazilian cane harvest, but so does a McFlurry, and McFlurrys don’t even have the decency to get you all squiffy. Rather than being a shuddering reminder of past woes and idiocies, there were notes of carefree summer eves in bars, beard as thin as a Dan Brown plot, high on the buzz of just being drunk with your mates; subtle hints of thrilling first loves; whiffs of that joyous, strawpedo-heavy A-level lads’ holiday when I was gently sick on the front of that Subaru.

And now, once again, I’m pro-Hooch – in the middle of a Hoochnaissance if you will, which I know you definitely won’t. In fact, I’m off to Wethers right now to get another because it’s Thursday evening, and the sun’s shining like it was back in the Hoochy haze of good, crazy ol’ 99. You should try it for yourself. Plus, it’s £1.99 ffs, which wherever you are is cheap. Though there is, admittedly, a price for this corking value: the barperson serving you your sweet, sweet Hooch will do so wearing an expression that can only be described as “horrified by pile of rotting offal”. So, as it stands, I can only give Hooch 8/10.

LH

Cringey conversational cack-handery

Eamonn Holmes’s interview technique – REVIEWED

Move over Frost/Nixon, it’s time to digest Holmes/Corbyn. We all know by now that Jeremy Corbyn is a saintly, almost godly man; sent among us to rest his gentle, healing hands on the fevered brow of British political discourse. Clearly, this presents a problem for Sky News. But they’re working on it. In fact, they’ve already bought out the big guns – and the only worry must be that they’ve gone off too early.

There was a woman in Chris Morris’s dark comedy Jam who was brilliant at winning arguments because she was too stupid to understand that she’d lost them. Sky obviously bore this sketch in mind when they chose Eamonn Holmes to quiz Corbyn about his first conference speech as leader. This brilliantly subtle grilling was an elaborate set of bear-traps disguised as open goals. And the football parallel is apt because one of the more damning allegations Holmes levelled at Corbyn concerned his failure to sufficiently resemble Alex Ferguson. Also touched upon were ties, sandals and the weather in Brighton. Admittedly at one point, Corbyn insisted on droning on about inequality; tellingly, the camera cut away from Holmes here, presumably because he’d stopped paying attention and started making a paper aeroplane on his desk.

The bad news for Labour is that this studied banality already looks like a shrewd tactic for undermining the New Decency. If, like Holmes, you really don’t care how you look, you might be able to drag Corbyn down to your level and have him either weeping in frustration and rage or joining in with the drivelling idiocy. And the even worse news is that Sky haven’t even deployed what political theorists refer to as “The Burley Bomb” yet. Corbyn, you’re done. 8.5/10.

PH

Hypothetical frying pan violence

The concept of rewatching the whole series of Bottom – REVIEWED

Some people think consumerism is the new opium of the people. It’s actually box-set level television shows. It’s now got to a stage where about 90% of them are about zombies, which seems a cruelly ironic joke considering they pretty much exclusively soundtrack people pissing away their lives like the laptop-lapped dead. The tyranny of these programmes is something that makes Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson’s early 90s BBC sitcom Bottom (three series, 18 episodes, a mere nine hours of viewable footage) seem like sweet, noncommittal respite.

Yet the one thing the oppressive new generation of television programming does have going for it is that you never even have to consider re-watching them: there are patently not enough hours in this life. Once you’ve done your time and contributed successfully to a number of workplace conversations on the topic, you can ceremonially bury the 55 DVDs in a shallow grave in your back garden and never think about them again.

The modesty of a show like Bottom, however, presents a dilemma, because the idea of watching the whole thing not just once but twice lies within the realms of possibility. But is it a good idea? Or, to put it another way, is transforming this blessedly undemanding comedy into a mental marathon, which you’d have to end up burying all evidence of in your garden just so you weren’t constantly reminded of the inherently pointless nature of contemporary life, a good idea? No. It’s not. 1/10.

RA