It’s here!! Yes, for just three of your Earth ‘pounds’, you too can be the proud owner of the debut issue of Talk About The Passion, the magazineular spinoff from the popular website of the same name wherein people talk about, um, their passions, only with the clever twist of doing so in an amusing and informative way.
Inside this first issue, you’ll find such delights as:
- the inside story of the rise and rise of your Sarah Jane Adventures-preceding puppet pal, Oucho T. Cactus
- the life and times of old-skool city smasher Godzilla, replete with rare facts dragged up from the depths thirty storeys high
- the first part of a guide to the highlights, lowlights, and Alan Randall, of the singles released by BBC Records
- a look back at those heady days of 1999, when Clint Boon and My Parents Are Aliens were all the ‘rage’
- friend-dazzling facts about records that just missed out on the top slot
- quizzes, thinkpieces, random facts, and someone complaining about stickers!
Wanting to know how you get hold of it? You’ll be looking for http://www.tatp.org/, then…
Regular readers of this here corner of the internet may have noticed that, over the last eighteen months or so, new posts have been dominated by hilarious ‘joke’ distortions of Griff Rhys Jones’ name and oblique references to Lisa Scott Lee seeking alternative career options. They may also have noticed that a fair number of said new posts have also been dominated by reaction, albeit humourous (yet pointed), to what can only be described as mass campaigns of ‘moaning’.
Those who demand that Heroes should be cancelled because they, personally, don’t like it. Those who call for the firing of a highly skilled and passionately dedicated producer because his vision of Doctor Who doesn’t tally with some rubbish fan fiction they made up in 1993 and has resulted in some of those ‘common’ people what laughs at You’ve Been Framed! watching it now too. The ludicrous, nonsensical, and frankly disproportionately personal and vicious reaction to someone saying they liked a half hour programme in which a funny man tells some funny jokes. And now, a chorus of cheers and jubilation following Jonathan Ross’ self-imposed departure from the BBC.
It seems that even the over-the-top censure that followed ‘Sachsgate’ (which, you may remember, inspired some furious rejoinders in blog entries passim) wasn’t enough for the baying mob – and it is a mob – and they have wasted no time in sticking the boot in, repeating the same old wilful misinterpretations (ie lies) about salaries and viewing figures and what actually happened on the Russell Brand show in the first place, and repeating the same old nonsense predictions of a brighter future where the now-rescued thirteen pence of their license fee contribution will be spent on ‘quality’ programming instead (and, yes, one headcase on Have Your Say has already referred to “new episodes of Morecambe & Wise”).
It’d be easy, not to mention fun, to give this latest outbreak of silliness a tongue-in-cheek battering with the assistance of TV ‘Taub’ (House) and The Waltham Green East Wapping Carpet Cleaning Rodent & Boggit Extermination Association… but it’s just so despair-inducing to contemplate having to go through all of that again. We could spend all day picking holes in the sneering glee and misguided sense of ‘victory’, but the real overriding issue is that the world is far too full of people who delight in getting worked up by things that are, in reality, causing little or no harm to anyone.
Honestly, if you don’t like something but have no good reason to ‘fight’ it (and getting upset on someone else’s behalf over an only slightly tasteless remark made on a programme that you didn’t hear yourself is not a good reason), just leave it be and let the people who enjoy it get on with it. Immerse yourself in what you do like, whether it’s freely-available DVDs of ‘classic’ Doctor Who, or some other more pleasing comedy show being repeated on Dave, or whatever else is on at 10:30pm on Friday nights (OK, that one might be pushing it a bit), and the nasty flying politician won’t bother you any more. Why waste time and energy bringing yourself and other people down when there’s so much out there for you to… enjoy. And that negative energy can so easily spill over into something truly horible too… what was the vicious and undeserved kicking of a dying Jade Goody ultimately rooted in, if it wasn’t people thinking they were somehow ‘cleverer’ than anyone who liked ‘reality’ TV?.
Jake Thackray probably wasn’t thinking of hounded media personalities and an imagined ‘golden age’ following their departure when he sang “how could you fail to notice that your paradise is here?”, but he had a point. Maybe it’s a cliche, but in entertainment terms, we really never have had it so good – you can create your own ideal television, radio, pop music, whatever literally at the touch of a button. It’s a new year, a new decade, and many people have seen it in having seen off much greater troubles than not liking something that probably wasn’t aimed at them in the first place, so please, let this be the full stop to far too many years of senseless whining. Happiness is happening, dragons have been bled, gentleness is everywhere, fear’s just in your head, only in your head, fear is in your head, only in your head, so forget your head, and you’ll be free… (or, if raining, while the chief puts sunshine on Leith, I’ll thank him for his work, and my birth, and your birth, and Morph, and The White One too).
The personal sketchpad of writer and occasional broadcaster TJ Worthington, full of reviews, silliness and the odd bit of shouting. Feel free to stick around and enjoy the ramblings, but if you're going to sneer about grammar, scoff at people who enjoy popular TV drama, expound mental conspiracy theories or generally just act like a weird stalkerish freak, the rest of the internet is over there...
It’s here!! Yes, for just three of your Earth ‘pounds’, you too can be the proud owner of the debut issue of Talk About The Passion, the magazineular spinoff from the popular website of the same name wherein people talk about, um, their passions, only with the clever twist of doing so in an amusing and informative way.
Regular readers of this here corner of the internet may have noticed that, over the last eighteen months or so, new posts have been dominated by hilarious ‘joke’ distortions of Griff Rhys Jones’ name and oblique references to Lisa Scott Lee seeking alternative career options. They may also have noticed that a fair number of said new posts have also been dominated by reaction, albeit humourous (yet pointed), to what can only be described as mass campaigns of ‘moaning’.