Archive for October, 2007
So he’s gone
by Twenty Major on October 24th, 2007
The FAI last night sacked Ireland manager Steve Staunton. About time. Poor old Stan was a good player for us, even if he did resemble a new born foal with his bandy legs who looked like he was about to fall over every time the ball came near him, but a really terrible manager.
Now that he’s gone though you can’t be too cross with him. It’s not his fault he’s crap. It’s not his fault he was given the job without having any experience. I mean, who amongst us would turn down a highly paid job just because we didn’t quite know what to do.
Certainly if the Mater Hospital were to ring me up and say “Hello Twenty, we need a new transplant surgeon and we’ll pay you €750,000 a year” I wouldn’t turn it down. I have a fair idea of what to do.
Scalpel > crack open rib cage > old heart out > heart machine on to keep patient alive > lash the new heart in > sew up the aortas and ventricles and what have you > glue rib cage back together > sew up chest gash > stick patient into ICU.
At least with heart transplants you’d get the hang of it after a few goes and the only downside is people might die. No football matches would be lost. And that’s how it was with Staunton. He sort of knew what he was supposed to be doing but was in over his head.
You’ve got to blame the FAI and in particular John Delaney who for the whole of Staunton’s reign was firmly behind him and the decision to appoint him. Then when the going got tough he showed himself for the spineless chickenshit he is by saying “Well, it wasn’t just my idea to give him the job. It was a committee decision.”
Fuck you, cowardy custard. I saw Delaney out in the airport hotel some months back and I should have tripped him up when I had the chance. He’d have gone chin first into a glass table. Goodbye, head. Dammit.
Still, should we take pleasure in seeing a man lose his job? Some will say that we should not. I say that we most certainly should. There are lots of people who I would very much enjoy seeing lose their jobs.
Bertie Ahern - I would dance a jig in front of him if he lost his job, the wretched little turd.
Ryan Tubridy - How I would laugh if he got fired by RTE and had to go back to Nerdland or wherever the fuck he came from.
The bloke who gave me a really bad hair cut one time - Stick your clippers up your hole, you cunt.
The entire Green party - fuck off, you simpering shitbags.
Anyone who sells Damien Rice food - you idiots, without sustenance he will die. What are you thinking?
So who would you like to see lose their job?
How many listens…
by Twenty Major on October 23rd, 2007
…does it take you to decide you like or dislike an album?
Is it better to like it straight away or for it to be a grower?
The Sunday twenty
by Twenty Major on October 23rd, 2007
When John Daly phoned the Joe Duffy show to argue with me, Ireland’s greatest living crime reporter, little did he realise the fate that awaited him.
Not only did that phone call bring about a crack down on mobile phones and other luxuries in Irish prisons, he found himself with many more enemies as he had disrespected me live on national radio. As one senior Gardai source told me “The lads are furious with him. They love the snappy nicknames you give them and they reckon Daly is only jealous because he doesn’t really have one.”
Well, he has one now. Two nights ago John “No face” Daly was gunned down in a taxi on his way home from a city centre nightclub. The passengers included fellow criminals like Alan “Blood splatter” Doyle and Joey “In shock” Ryan.
This week I took my life in my hands traveling blindfolded through Dublin in the back of a Lexus driven by a lacky for one of Ireland’s most well known criminals, Archie “the foal” Folan. When we eventually got to his lock-up somewhere in West Dublin I was brought into his spartan office from where he runs a crime gang worth millions every year. His words may shock you.
“I know lads on the inside, right, they were p****d off that Daly’s phone call meant their mobile phones, plasma TVs, Playstations, African slaves and personal masseuses were taken away from them but they could have lived with that. It was when they heard him slag you off that things took off. You’re just too important to the gangs of Dublin, providing them with just the amount of coverage they need to have people living in fear, to let anything sully your glorious reputation.”
One of The Foal’s henchman, known only as Henchy the Henchman, claims to know exactly who carried out the murder of No Face Daly.
“Yeah, I know who done it an’ all an’ anyway. Some people might call dem vicous tugs but dey’re just protectin’ what dey’ve got like.”
Once the word spread around the underworld, a place so horrific and scary that I can only look at it with one eye open at times, Daly’s days were numbered. I’d heard rumours but nothing specific enough to go the Gardai with. When a top Dublin gang boss told me, ‘Yeah, well we’re going to get him on the night of October 21st/22nd when he’s coming back from town and we’re going to shoot him loads of times but don’t tell anyone, ok?’, there just wasn’t enough evidence and that lack of evidence cost No Face his face, and his life.
Criminals need to learn that only I, the voice of Irish crime, know what’s really important as the struggle to control Dublin’s lucrative drug and protection rackets gets ever more bloody. You can shag the wife of ‘The Jester’ or even beat up Colin ‘The Lord of Lucan’ Dwyer’s son but if you mess with me then things are going to get tricky for you.
No Paul Daniels tricky either. John “No Face” Daly might have been sitting down this morning over a bowl of Shreddies and a cup of scald but instead he lies in a box with no face where he face should be. It’s a salutary lesson for men who think they’re above the law. You’re not.
Only I am.
Don’t want to
by Twenty Major on October 22nd, 2007
Ever have one of those days where you just don’t want to?
Got up this morning. Wanted coffee but did not want to make it.
Got to put the finishing touches to the second draft of the book (it’s nearly finished Ed, I promise!). But don’t want to.
Need a poo but just don’t want to.
Everything seems like way too much effort. I think it has to do with having to get up for a slash at around 6am and then not being able to get back to sleep again. I hate when that happens.
No amount of twisting and turning and bashing of pillows (I said bashing) makes the slightest bit of difference.
Despite it all though you just have to, don’t you? Especially the poo bit. I can not want to all I like but when you’re prairie dogging you do not have much choice.
Fuck off Katy French
by Twenty Major on October 21st, 2007
For those of you who don’t know, Katy French is a very average looking model who became famous for posing in her underwear in her then boyfriend’s restaurant. She did this after he had told her he didn’t like her doing underwear modelling.
Conveniently he comes into work one day to find her spreadeagled on a table in lingerie doing a photoshoot. So, this is either a total set-up to get publicity or Katy French has all the manners and consideration of Buckfast sozzled tramp. It’s all a set-up of course. Publicity for her and for his restaurant (which nobody can remember the name of now).
‘Ironically’ featured by Blogorrah Katy French somehow managed to get a column in a Sunday newspaper and is now ‘Ireland’s top model’. She’s going to appear on one of those ‘Celebrity’ (used in its very loosest sense) Get Me Out Of Here shows. The kind of television that dumbs down entire nations. It has as much merit as I have vaginas.
Katy French is that modern phenomenon, a celebrity who is famous for doing nothing whatsoever. They don’t write or sing or act or anything that might have some value, no matter how badly it’s done. She’s famous for being famous. Yet this appears to be no deterrent for the rags that provide her with the coverage she craves. The Sunday Independent, home to the worst kind of lecherous, obsequious hack, runs an interview with her today.
Brendan O’Connor’s pathetically fawning piece sums her up perfectly. She tries to display some gravitas by talking about abortion and how people are trying to drag her down, then when asked what one ‘luxury’ item she’s bringing on that God awful TV show she says:
I was thinking about bringing my vibrator, but I’m giving up cigarettes for the week so I wouldn’t be able to have a smoke. But, in the end, I plumped for mascara. After all, a girl’s gotta look her best.
You can almost hear O’Connor’s drool pooling at his feet. She thinks it’s about being empowered by sex - it’s not. It’s about being a stereo-typical bimbo. People who feel the need to bleat on in public about how much they enjoy their sexuality are not doing it because that’s what they really think. They’re doing it because they know there are people out there who loved to be titillated and excited and there are idiotic journalists and editors who will print it without a thought. Ooooh, a vibrator. Aren’t you about 5 years and 4 series of Sex and the City late, Katy?
Add to this her quotes from a 7 page spread in Hot Press as reported by Una (and amazingly it’s not in 26pt Helvetica to take up all that space):
I have kissed a girl. I did it when I was 10; I think I did it when I was 12 or 13 or something. You kind of did it before you were kissing boys and when you were really young it was like a peck, and then you are like, ‘OK what’s it like to snog?’ So you kind of try and then you go, ‘Oh, God! That’s not right.’ But all girls do it! Most of my friends have kissed a girl at one stage. No, we didn’t do it when we were older! If I need boobs and a pussy to play with I have my own! Why would I want someone else’s?
Honestly. You couldn’t make it up. I thought about not writing this piece at all because denying these people the oxygen of publicity is the best way to hurt them. The more you talk about them, good or bad, the more famous they become, I suppose. However, when something in society is so distasteful it’s hard to ignore it.
And it is distasteful and all too prevalent in Ireland nowadays. As a nation which has produced so much in the world of the arts it’s sad to see nothings like Katy French become household names while the same sycophantic press that ingratiate themselves with them can’t wait to stick the knife into somebody like Anne Enright who, whether you agree with the decision or not, was awarded a prestigious prize for her writing. Forget that though, let’s selectively quote a three week old article she wrote about the McCanns - because it’s the McCanns, famous for being neglectful parents, that matter. Not art, not literature, not proper culture.
I fucking hate this insipid, humdrum culture that has invaded ours where we celebrate mediocrity, where it’s not just ok to be famous for doing nothing, it’s something to aspire to. I hate that nobody stands up and says ‘What the fuck is this woman getting so much media coverage for?’ I hate that people like Barry Egan and Brendan O’Connor write with their dicks and are allowed to do so. I hate that this talentless non-entity has elicited this kind of piece from me.
It’s a sad indictment of our times that someone like Katy French can permeate our culture so widely. She is the perfect icon for the sex-tape generation. Pathetic, shameless and unimportant.
I hope she never Gets Out Of Here. I really do.
If I could invent one device…
by Twenty Major on October 19th, 2007
…it would be a button which would explode people who ring up radio stations and whose opinions I disagree with.
There’d be a lot of fucking exploding, let me tell you.
Waking up singing
by Twenty Major on October 19th, 2007
I don’t know what’s going on at the moment but every single morning this week I’ve woken up with a song in my head. As I lie there dozing, trying convince myself I’m not actually bursting for a piss, there’s a song going around and around in my head.
This morning it was ‘Dirrty’ by Christina Aguilera. What the fuck is that about?
Other smash hits this week have included ‘Make me smile’ by Chicago (right out of left field that one, I mean I haven’t heard that for years), two lines of a song by Jellyfish repeated over and over again and most irritating of all ‘Drop the pressure’ by Mylo. That is not a song to have in your head first thing in the morning, it really isn’t.
This is a relatively new phenomenon too. What’s causing it? What part of my early morning mind is trawling through the musical archives of brain?
Does this happen to you? I am perplexed.
10 better than Steve Staunton
by Twenty Major on October 18th, 2007
Ireland are fucking miserable, led by that wretched goon Steve Staunton. He can say what he wants about it being up to the players once the whistle blows but when your manager is as much use sun cream during an Irish summer it must be hard. Here are my 10 candidates who would do a better job.
1 - A shoe
2 - Pete Postlethwaite
3 - Helen Keller
4 - Hitler
5 - Bill Oddie
6 - Fortycoats
7 - Emo Philips
8 - Pick a child from any special needs bus, any child
9 - The bloke in the chains from Howard Jones’s New Song video
10 - An inanimate carbon rod
In Rod we trust. Fuck off Staunton and fuck off Delaney, you couldn’t pick your nose let alone a decent football manager, you cheap cunt.