Siri and iPhone 4s Update.

I've had the iPhone 4S since release date and the first month is drawing to a close. Usually, I'd post my Apple related blogs on my new posterous space (goodbye tumblr - i'll blog on that later) but that's gonna be a short and sweet venture. So this blog is a recollection my first hand experiences of what to expect if you have the new thing for the first month.

Be prepared to be social.
Siri is social. It gets attention - a lot of attention. And because I'm a bit of a wanker I unboxed in Starbucks (yeah, yeah okay, it has good wifi) when people caught on an intimate crowd gathered, including a couple baristas. "I'll go straight to Siri then". It was a tense atmosphere I wont lie. It felt like a small scale keynote. Surrounding me was the creme de la creme of coffee culture pretentiousness and I could see the eyes of the pedants (ahem linux advocates) draw sharp. The scent of snobbery was so potent I couldn't smell the filter coffee anymore. Some were skeptical, some were genuinely very excited, some really, really wanted me to make a tit of myself, but all were pushing their full attention onto me. Good job I love this stuff. I knew exactly what to ask Siri to impress the majority. Woodchucks, what's the best phone, the weather, the time, set an alarm, cancel an alarm, ring Danielle, text Danielle, humorously link Danielle with the title of wife and text her how many minutes late I'll be. It worked seamlessly. In fact, one of the biggest critics there was myself. I wasn't fully convinced of the iPhone 4S before I placed an order so justifying myself the expense was relieving.

It didn't end there, last week I was stopped in the queue at ASDA cafe and a disgruntled Blackberry user questioned me on it. Day after I got the wrong train to Cottingley (apparently it's a normal thing if you're wanting to be on the Manchester line) where again, at the train stop, an enthusiastic gentlemen asked my thoughts and if he could test out Siri.

Are people convinced? I'm not sure. 
Apple products will always bare a mix of cynicism, awe, excitement and undiluted hatred and a phone, to many, well, it'l sometimes only ever be just a phone. It only took a couple of random and chance encounters with people to discover that. Remember, it was only 10 years ago that phones started to get shabby cameras. Cameras aren't a selling point anymore, rather they are expected and expected to be good, even on cheaper phones. So I am convinced. Think of the future product and for now isn't it groundbreaking enough to have a phone with semantic and to some extent a pragmatic understanding of human communication. It has opened up an exciting and competitive new market. This is the first step in a great direction. Come on Google, make something ten, twenty, thirty times better. People are now expecting it.

Which actors will play us in 40 years?

Reading my last two blog posts, I seem like a sniggering little misanthrope who should have written for PC Zone in the mid 90s.

So I digress. Here's a nice story.

Mad Men is the best TV show since The Wire. I know they are two quintessential critic darling shows and I'm not trying to throw around titles here, but Mad Men is a true delight.

The backdrop of Madison Av, the cigarettes, silhouettes and hint of vinyl really appeals to me. It's very, very cool. Today I went to buy a new notebook (the paper ones) and at number 3 on the chart was The Real Mad Men - Story of Madison Avenue's Golden Age. I like visuals so I flick to the pics.

Damn, these cats were way cooler than Don Draper. One guy looked like a cross between Rick Moranis and Elvis Costello. So I stood there for a while day dreaming about how exciting it would have been to be 21 then. My eyes tightened, I closed the book and realised something spectacular. I'm probably living it. I'm in PR in the biggest shake up and re-definition of communications since the Moranis Costello hybrid smoked 60 Marlboro a day. Life at the moment is not bland, it's full of insecurity, drama and talent. I think PR may just be entering a new golden age.

Please take this post with a pinch of salt though, I'm feeling dandy tonight. It would make for a fantastic spiritual successor to Mad Men though wouldn't it. Well, if I keep up the tennis hopefully I'll be around to see the fictional version of it all when I'm 64.

You watch, I'll get the bastard equivalent to McLovin' playing me.

Oh, christ.

How Mario turned me into Derek Vinyard.

How easy is notoriety! How glorious is the blessing of being so infamous, so disreputable that people will not only watch but in fact get excited prior to the release of your shit sequel of a film. The Human Centipede 2 has had to slice over 2 minutes of footage to get certified and aren't they the first to tell you about it. Easy publicity. The writer and director, Tom Six (what a name) needs to be championed on that guys blog about Good and Bad PR because this is fabulous PR. Strange though, the two minutes people wont see - until they release it anyway - is the reason Mr Six will be eating this Christmas. People are attracted to the frenzy surrounding the director's cut. Dive bars will play this film this Halloween and there will grow a culture. Well done Tom, I'm sure you'd have happily cut another couple of minutes. The lines are blurry whether this is a film or a publicity stunt.

This is why I feel nothing for films like this. I don't feel the urge to go see them because of how disgraceful this piece of art is, and I really don't have any incline to see it for the irony or just because..
Films or music or anything notorious for notorious sake just does not make me flinch in the slightest. It's not real. I just can't detach from the reality of thinking behind that camera, is Tom Six hawking a diet a coke in a cowboy hat and probably some t-shirt with a slogan on it along the lines of  'One, Two, Freddy's Coming For You!" So yeah I'm detatched, I've become as they say, desensitized to the effects of violence in films and video games.

Why though? Why is my attitude towards this film and/or publicity stunt so passe, whilst other people are sewing together their brothers and sisters in homage, at the same time as others are rallying against its release? The rest of this blog is a bit of a cross examination of  how I've become desensitized to the annual notorious film or game and why I may have the aptitude to judge whether a taboo film/game actual has more to offer.

5. The Shoryuken. 

. 
I'm about 5 years old and I pull this move off for the first time. Essentially a jumping, twisting, uppercut so powerful that the speed of Ken's fist against the air causes enough friction for there to be an eruption of fire. I proceed to  do this continuously for the next 16 years of my life. Much to my friends dismay when playing competitively.

4. The Exorcist. (Oh, by the way, I've never seen it) 
As a kid, this was still the film you told your mates you've watched, like a million times. Truth is, I'm 21 and I've still never seen it. I never will either. The Exorcist is an enigma of a film. It's scary simply because it's The Exorcist. The front cover gave me chills. Was that guy The Exorcist? Is the Exorcist the name of the monster or what? What I do know though, is that what went through my mind past 10 o'clock laying in bed as a kid on my own is way, way scarier than The Exorcist could ever live up to be, and I got over that.

3. Manning up and rolling Chris Redfield in Resident Evil.


This is highly significant for two reasons. Firstly, you didn't have Barry to help you take down THAT zombie. Secondly, you started the game with only a knife whilst all your mates were taking down zombies easily with Jill's barretta. This took some seriously big balls to not restart your PlayStation and choose Jill. It was so tempting too. Barry was built like a brick shithouse had a beard and was packing a colt bigger than our pre-teen arms. I'm just glad I had some big pre-teen balls.

2. Tom and Jerry.


Look at the joy in the little bastard's face. Jerry is addicted to inflicting excruciating pain on the cat, usually unprovoked and those scissors are definitely blunt. He is a sadist and the first sadist the majority of us are familiar with. Our parents made us watch this, we didn't ask for Tom and Jerry, they made us watch this and the thing about Tom and Jerry that stays with me the most is that you can feel Tom's pain. Out of everything on this list, the countless traumas Tom goes through are as tangible as you can get without actually committing self-harm. Remember the golf ball shattering Tom's teeth? Too real.

As an off point.

  You may not have pulled off a Shoryuken and you may have played Jill but you did not escape Tom and Jerry, nobody escapes Tom and Jerry. There you go, desensitized from being a toddler. In fact, I think the entire reason Tom and Jerry was made was entirely political. They foresaw the saturated future filled with extreme do-gooders and faux-concerned right on politicians and had to come up with a way to keep these populations to an absolute minimum. The solution was Tom and Jerry. When our parents sat us in front of the TV to watch this programme they weren't saying watch a cat and mouse fight. They were saying don't become a fucking moron, spouting Jack Thompson' esque bullshit, don't picket the premiere of taboo films, be normal son, please god almighty grow up to be a normal person!

1. Pennywise the Dancing Clown. (Stephen King's IT) 



Every single 90s kid we are all in complete agreement already. In fact I just felt your spine tingle. Yep, this is the clown that shattered the safety glass we had around us as kids watching movies. That's the significance. We thought we were safe didn't we? Bad guys never went after the kids.  Stephen King comes along, strips that away and now there's this clown who actively seeks under 12's, hides in grates, school showers and fresh linen whilst proclaiming that he is the "Eater of worlds... and of children".  Once more, the EATER of children.
While Jerry was the first sadist, I think Pennywise was probably the first incarnation we knew that closest resembles  that of the pedophile.

And you know what happened next? We got over it. Wanna know why? Because it's a film or a game. They're not real and they pose no threat. Why do I sound so patronising? Because we grow up and we realise this. Well, the majority of us do anyway. The rest of us picket the premiere of a film/publicity stunt hybrid so insignificant as The Human Centipede 2.

Oh and one last thing to sum up, if my mother plays Grand Theft Auto, she stops at a red light and proceeds when the light turns green. She never speeds and wouldn't dream of overtaking anyone. I guess you could say games are what you make of them. 

Hollywood is a Blood-Clot

Hollywood, ring the bells old girl you have alienated me and now you've killed me. You are a blood clot clogging up the arteries of the film industry with your bad habbits. Because of you little money is pumped into original ideas and talent is being overlooked in favour of yet another sequel.

You see, because of the mediocrity of films currently being churned out at the moment  I don't judge a person like the rest of us any more. In fact, contemporary Hollywood has completely changed my world view. I now hold the belief  that there are two (and only two) types of people in this world. Person A and Person B.

Person A likes The Hangover

Person B: Does not like The Hangover.

If you are Person A then, well let's be honest if you're that person then we clash so it's best if you click off now because it will only get more awkward.

Person B is the rest of us, it's me and it's you. It could even be a guy, stark naked sporting a 20 foot horse-mullet which cascades down his back, but as long as he keeps watching The Wire, at least this guy has some soul and a tiny speckle of taste.

It actually has quite serious implications. This is artistic ineptitude.

The success of films like The Hangover is the precise reason why I can't go to a cinema and see a decent film any more. Martin Scorcese and Woody Allen aren't getting younger and nobody is replacing them. Name a film actor now who is as genuinely funny as Steve Martin was. There's the problem too, Steve Martin isn't funny any more and people actually think it's due to his age. Steve Martin isn't funny any more because he isn't allowed to be. Nobody is.

 Films are now made packaged and parcelled through nothing more than some demographic passed round a water cooler on an iPad. Films made with love, films that have heart and could perhaps even be considered a work of art wont be made because Hollywood have decided that right now  films are for the dumb peon masses that suckle on the teet of Judd Apatow and his entourage.

 The longer Type A's keep pumping money into this gutter trash the longer the rest of us have to be subjected to the impossible task of avoiding the shrapnel flying from it. Shrapnel such as Horrible Bosses and Hall Pass. What other choices do we have to help us take the tail pipe out of our mouths? In Screen 2 we have a mouthy CGI whale embodying the stereotypes of the voice actor, this one being Jonah Hill. And in screen 3 we have some  macho 3D Superhero flick. I can actually see them going through the alphabet on Wikipedia when deciding on the next one. So.. well gee, this is just pretty shit aint it?

But that's your opinion Jon, personally I can't wait for more saturated, meaningless.. comedies.

I don't like the term 'best films' rather I feel it's far less subjective to judge based on a wider scale. So in this case I'm judging not on best but on importance and relativity. For example, you wouldn't judge your review of Python's Holy Grail against American Beauty, it would be more fitting to judge it against Airplane and American Beauty to The Royal Tenenbaums.

 Similarly the same formula applies to games, Space Invaders cannot be compared to the Mass Effect trilogy but relatively, neither is culturally more significant. They are on the same pedestal of importance to the respective medium and that is why both games received universal critical acclaim.

Only difference is, video games seem to be the only medium that does garner universal critical acclaim for  it's pieces of artistry.

Now isn't that something to think about.





As a note this is what I mean by Hollywood:


When I say Hollywood what I mean is, a panel of the same 30 somethings writing to a formula put together by a panel of 40 somethings - probably in Marketing - probably like money)

Sheep

It's funny you know, almost everyday I'll get an e-mail notification informing me a new person is following me on twitter. I now have two options.

A. Follow them back instantly because oh my lord, this is ridiculous, I'm a PR student I need to get these numbers of followers up, or

B. I feel pleasant that someone genuinely wants to follow me without the real intention of self-promotion, but really I'm not too interested in their tweets after a quick scroll so I don't return the favour.

If I choose option A, I have a follower for life, we are now attached at the hip and my girlfriend is getting jealous.

If I choose option B, then well, we break up. In fact, we break up in a matter of hours. This same person that at 6:01 PM, once so interested in my thoughts, my throwaways and my knee-slapping sense of humour at 9:01 PM has severed all ties.

Sometimes, followers from America add me at 6:01PM their time and I don't even get the chance to return the favour because whilst I sleep they have already unfollowed me by the time I wake up.

A point to note is that this happens by all media-related professionals. Seemingly interested only in self-promotion and that look of having 999 followers whilst only following 333. You're up and hip by 666 and boy, don't you little devils look popular.

Hopefully this will encapsulate what I mean:

Twitter for professionals relating to the media is largely the same as going to Edinburgh Fringe and witnessing the issue that the only people seeing your performance are other actors.

Analogy Part 1 - Journalism.

So the relationship between PR and Journalism really can be explained by the fragile political sphere that revolves within the walls of the modern comprehensive.

Journalism is kinda like that  friend we had at school that prides their self on being the honest, no-nonsense moralist. Ya'know, the one that will have dobbed you in for something and said it's for your own good, saying that it's just not in their acute nature to keep secrets. Ya'know, the friend that really just loved the gossip. The friend that seemed to be just a little too eager to tell you when somebody said a bad word about you. The friend that didn't really care much for social consequences, in fact the juicer and more senstational the better. It was a win-win situation for them, their unfathomable craving for honesty provided all this. The friend that actually, you questioned what your relationship was with them. In retrospect didn't they seem rigid, opinionated and actually for all their self-confessed moralistic honesty and apparent objectivity... a-ha! they were a little more bias and a little more honest and a little more objective towards other people!

Yeah, these friends shaped who you are and they played their part but man, did you have to keep on your toes around them.

Google's alert below will save lives.