Michael Bay vs Rupert Murdoch: Clash Of The Twats

I can't believe almost every blog includes my visiting the cinema, but, in the words of West Coast Ghetto Heisman, Dub C, "Uh oh! Here we go again!"

I went to see Transformers: Dark Of The Moon. I've now seen all three movies in the franchise, returning like an inquisitive index finger to a ripening scab. That's over seven hours (!) of no discernible plot, explosions, slow motion sequences, more explosions, gratuitous ass shots, ever more explosions and cringe inducing dialogue permanently set to "CONSTANT SHOUTING!". All of which should make for the perfect popcorn experience, shouldn't it? Shouldn't it?!? However, in the hands of Mr Bay you feel like the poor stunt driver who was injured during its production: permanently brain damaged with one eye stitched shut.

Mr Bay describes his style of filmmaking as "Fucking the frame". I spent the whole movie thinking "Damn! Can I at least get a blow job, or an enthusiastic tongue between my oiled buttocks to get me excited first?" But no. No foreplay. It's all about the penetration with Michael. A sinister penetration which recalls Robert De Niro as Max Cady in Cape Fear. Bay is laughing at us as he rips at our flesh with his teeth. How else to explain the execrable Rosie Huntington-Whiteley in her film debut? Her bee-stung lips are more animated than she is and, undoubtedly, pre-assembled flat pack furniture in Swedish pine would have proved far less wooden. She manages to make Megan Fox appear as accomplished as Dame Judi Dench. Bay doesn't care though. He's essentially saying "My movies are just about blowing stuff up. I don't even need actors. Look!" That's how little he thinks of us as the audience.

Fans of the movies (I know! Incredible. How they stay upright is beyond me) claim that Transformers: Dark Of The Moon is better than Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen, which is like me saying that my tonsillectomy was a better experience than having my wisdom teeth out.

The most annoying thing though isn't the interminable asinine juvenility, it's the caption: "Middle East: Illegal Nuclear Site", which appears just before Bumblebee and the rest of his Autobot homeboys start kicking a little raghead ass.

What the - What?!? Is Michael Bay doing politics?!?

I felt so dirty I left the cinema vowing to wipe myself down with the last ever edition of the News Of The World. I'm kidding. I've never bought that filthy little rag, its sister paper The Sun or subscribed to Sky, so my conscience is entirely clear. Well, at least when it comes to the funding of Murdoch's empire. I remember being in the studio recording a track with guitar legend Jim Davies (he of The Prodigy fame) who arrived one morning a tad upset that he'd received a volley of abuse from a newsagent for purchasing the latter publication. David Goldring, who was laying down beats, explained the revulsion in Liverpool for the paper. It dates back to the 1989 Hillsborough disaster and the headline:

“The Truth.

Some fans picked pockets of victims

Some fans urinated on the brave cops

Some fans beat up PC giving kiss of life.”

A policeman was quoted in the article claiming that Liverpool fans "were openly urinating on us and the bodies of the dead.” David summarised succinctly, "So we were picking the pockets of our own dead friends and families and pissing on their corpses, yeah?" The Sun have yet to apologise. Kelvin McKenzie even stated recently that he was happy to stand behind the veracity of the story.

The Milly Dowler revelations came as no surprise to those who have nothing but utter contempt for Mr Murdoch, his twisted world view and his hijacking of a party which was supposed to represent all of us who have to go to work tomorrow. The leader of the Labour Party can't even support workers voting to strike for fear of how it would play in the press. The only thing separating us from my bound and shackled forebears is our right to withdraw our labour.

When Our Tone became Labour leader in 1994 he flew across the globe to pay homage to Big Rupe, assuring him he'd play by his rules. It's been revealed that he spoke to Rupe on three occasions in the days leading up to the Iraq invasion on March 11th, 13th and the 19th, which was the day before the invasion itself. Rupert said at the time, "I think Tony is being extraordinarily courageous and strong... It's not easy to do that living in a party which is largely composed of people who have a knee-jerk anti-Americanism and are sort of pacifist. But he's shown great guts…"

Yep. "Great guts" to go to war on a stack of lies and rape a country of its resources. And he's so brazen he had no fear in referring to that three letter word our governments are far too scared to whisper. "The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy...would be $20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than any tax cut in any country." So it's not like it's a bad thing.

The same fella recently ran a story saying that DJ Gadaffi issued his troops with Viagra, the easier to commit mass rape. The motivation for this lie being the same three letter word. The same fella who claims to support our brave boys overseas runs an organisation which hacks the 'phones of dead soldiers' families.

I'm looking forward to him scapegoating his sacked journalists as workshy benefit scroungers. The question now is whether or not people are disgusted enough by these recent revelations to make Rupert's gleaming edifice of shit crumble to dust. I doubt it though. Boys like Page 3 don't they, eh? They like their boobs, don't they, eh? And it's just a bit of fun, innit? Phwoar, eh?

PPPPPPHHHHHHHWOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRR!!!

Which, I believe, was pretty much the first draft of the script for Transformers: Dark Of The Moon.

What the f$%k is NLP?!?

I went to a party last night. I know! I don't drink and I don't socialise. But it was a surprise birthday celebration for my mate Irv. Or rather Ian Irving. So I had no choice. Right now he's a very big player in the Experiential Marketing scene, but back in the day he was part of a team who made a music video for my previous band and we've kept in touch ever since. The festivities kicked off in Londinium at 8:00pm, but having to wend my way via Britain's terminally blocked arteries (M6 and M1) meant my perfectly laid plans were fucked and out of the window as the tailback from Hades finally spat me out in Clapham 2 hours late.


For the duration of my arduous journey - soothing soundtrack provided by Miles Davis - I was thinking: "I could just drop him an e-mail or a text... Why am I even doing this?" The answer arrived most eloquently in the slack-jawed, joyous incredulity on Irv's face as I stepped into the venue. Awesome! It was fantastic to see him again. Many, many emotional, manly hugs later and Irv plays the perfect host as he introduces me to his guests (the great, the good, the beautiful and the celebrated) variously as: "The first celebrity I worked with", "The poshest man I know", "The coolest man I know", "He's an intellectual" and "Watch out! He'll NLP ya!" as he pulled a dramatic Bruce Lee pose.


The last of these intros generated the response which forms the title of this blog. Joel Beckett (Lee from The Office, Jake in Eastenders, Stand-up comedian and voice over artiste without compare) asked if it meant I could get inside girls' knickers really quickly: his enquiry accompanied by some extraordinarily sexually graphic hand gestures. Erm...


In those tumultuous and rambunctious surroundings it was difficult to give an appropriate response. So I figured I'd do a quick intro.


Ready?


Ok...


Whatever you do, do not think about a quaint little cottage situated at the foot of a mountain, the immense, glistening white slopes stretching ever upwards to a cloudless azure sky. Snow enveloping the cottage, covering the windows and piling up against the ornate wooden door. A beam of sunlight tumbling into the white, frozen valley and illuminating it with a bitter, glittering fluorescence.

What happened as you read the above paragraph? Did you picture in your mind's eye the cottage, the mountain and the snow even though I advised you not to? If so that's because the only way to make sense of what you read or hear is by engaging a little with the experience yourself. Once you grasp that truth the rest is all fun and games because just by saying a few words in the right way, you can transport people to specific places and influence the way they think. Richard Bandler and John Grinder, the founders of NLP, integrated Noam Chomsky's concepts of language and hypnotic patterns used by Milton Erickson to identify powerful tools of influence and persuasion. Thus, NLP is essentially the study of communication and its effects.

The most high profile exponent of NLP (amongst all his other trickery) in the UK is probably Derren Brown and in his book Tricks of The Mind he details how he attained his qualification in this discipline by attending a seminar with 400 other people for 4 days. My experience in becoming a certified NLP Practitioner was totally different. I studied with only 3 other people for about a fortnight under the tutelage of a world renowned NLP authority, Rintu Basu, and I had to competently demonstrate hypnosis, fast phobia cures, swish patterns and the accessing of eye cues amongst other similarly freaky things before I could graduate.

I volunteer this information so that you know that I know what I'm talking about. And whilst I may be an avid student of social interaction and its consequences, you're sitting there, reading this blog and that means you're already aware that language affects perception.

And politicians know this.

They know that in inter-personal communication if you're able to control the level of abstraction, you control the communication itself. The 'hierarchy of ideas' is a model which allows us to move (or 'Chunk') up and down, through and between different levels of abstraction from vague and ambiguous to definite and specific, and is one which everyone from Winston Churchill to John F Kennedy to Barack Obama has exploited.

If we take 'sex toy' as an example. The phrase 'sex toy' is at a particular level of abstraction. If we then chunk down on 'sex toy' we move to a lower level of abstraction - something more concrete and specific. So if the subject of the communication was 'sex toy' we might ask 'What type of sex toy specifically?' and chunk down to 'Rabbit Vibrator'.

If we required further detail we could 'chunk down' one more level by asking something like 'What type of Rabbit Vibrator specifically?' And we might get a response of 'Ultimate Remote', 'Aquagasmic Double Pleasure' or 'Wet n Wild Waterproof'.

With each increasing level of specificity we are moving down through the hierarchy of ideas and down through levels of abstraction. And, of course the further down you go, the more specific you get and the more opportunity there is for contention. For example, I might, as my personal political campaign platform, say we need to look to build a better, more vibrant Britain. Very few would disagree with that. However, were I to more clearly delineate the component parts of my policy and state that we would work our way towards this Utopian vision of Britain by feeding bits of Dermot O'Leary to a grizzly bear spazzing out on amphetamines on prime-time television every Friday night, the less creative amongst you might disagree with what seems a radical strategy.

When Obama talked about 'Change' and 'Hope' and 'Yes, we can' these were all concepts abstract enough for everyone, the world over, to be seduced by and rally behind. The specificity and day by day revelation of the detail of his programme of 'change' is what has so disappointed us all. And we see a similar tactic employed by David Cameron and the Tories. This is from Our Dave's website:

"David's vision is of a country where people have more opportunity and power over their lives; a country where families are stronger and society is more responsible; a Britain which is safer and greener."

See? It's impossible to disagree with ANY of those statements. Keep it vague and you'll invite complicity. In this instance most now perceive Dave as the Prime Minister in waiting. For now he'll avoid debate on definitive budgetary and taxation plans, for fear he and his party come across as cold hearted, Vampiric entities.


Pity, then, Gordon Brown who, at the last Labour Party conference, felt compelled to outline specific policy details with timescales. And figures. And percentages. And projections. All in an effort to make us love him more and instead lost the support of both his party - who recently staged yet another (failed) coup against him - and The Sun. Personally, I think the latter's a very good thing indeed. New Labour's lasting legacy will be that they presided over a near pornographic widening of the gap between rich and poor whilst grinding their collective tongue ever deeper into Rupert Murdoch's sphincter of supreme, nefarious darkness. Seriously, why would you want to consort with pure evil like Mr Murdoch? A man whom, it's fairly obvious, spends his waking hours hacking the limbs off orphans.

Anyway, Gordon is in desperate need of some basic instruction on the use of language to persuade, influence and reshape perception. If you see him, put him in touch with Basil Creese Jr. He'll NLP ya!


Now, take your knickers off and bend over.