You have to love Morrissey. Well, at least I do. The former lead singer and lyricist of the seminal 80s indie band The Smiths, and avowed vegetarian and animal rights activist, he has never been shy to voice his opinions on politics, royalty, the state of the planet, the very state of the world. The pic below of him on stage says it all:
Dubbed by some of his detractors as an 'anarchist' (and so what if he were?) and 'perpetually gloomy' (which makes perfect sense), the man speaks his mind because he is no doubt one very pissed off man who is highly attuned to the sheer hypocrisy and pedantry of the modern world. Which is why every time he says something which alienates and outrages half the world (who know of him), then I'm with the other half - with all those who relish what he has to say.
A well-known anti-royalist (right there he's one of mine), Morrissey has now taken a full-blooded swipe at the ongoing London Olympics, whilst also taking a well-aimed swipe at the British royals. Call that two very hard punches, in fact. It's left some howling in disdain, and others (myself included, of course) clapping and cheering in gleeful agreement.
This is what he had to say about the Olympics and those tiresome Windsors, as quoted on www.dlisted.com, and as reported on the excellent gay news site www.towleroad.com:
"I am unable to watch the Olympics due to the blustering jingoism that drenches the event. Has England ever been quite so foul with patriotism? The "dazzling royals" have, quite naturally, hi-jacked the Olympics for their own empirical needs, and no oppositional voice is allowed in the free press. It is lethal to witness. As London is suddenly promoted as a super-wealth brand, the England outside London shivers beneath cutbacks, tight circumstances and economic disasters. Meanwhile the British media present 24-hour coverage of the "dazzling royals", laughing as they lavishly spend, as if such coverage is certain to make British society feel fully whole. In 2012, the British public is evidently assumed to be undersized pigmies, scarcely able to formulate thought."
Brilliant. He goes on to say:
"As I recently drove through Greece I noticed repeated graffiti seemingly everywhere on every available wall. In large blue letters it said WAKE UP WAKE UP. It could almost have been written with the British public in mind, because although the spirit of 1939 Germany now pervades throughout media-brand Britain, the 2013 grotesque inevitability of Lord and Lady Beckham (with Sir Jamie Horrible close at heel) is, believe me, a fate worse than life. WAKE UP WAKE UP."
Hmmmm. They sure as hell don't make music stars like this anymore. Makes me even more proud to have been an 80s teenager! Seriously, at least this is a man who thinks about the world around him, and doesn't speak as if he were being thought-managed and opinion-styled by some Hollywood agent creep or 'image consultant.'
Maybe that's why I admire a guy like Morrissey so much. Yeah, he made lots of money. Yeah, he disses all the jingoistic paraphernalia at the Olympics (which I have to admit I have always loved, and still do, so there!). But at least he has an opinion that goes beyond what some other celebrity said or what the media is saying about him.
At least Morrissey is an original that is self-thought, self-styled and self-created. In this age of regurgitated celebrity fluff, that can only be described as refreshing.
He is not just another walking corporate hack who speaks in soundbites and has, like, really, no opinion whatsoever, like, you know. That in itself is avant garde in this shallow, soundbite-ridden day and age. And for that alone I easily make Morrissey the Man of the Day.
Off with their heads indeed!
Well, at least the opening ceremony (of which I have already ranted earlier today) can be summed up in one word; that is, to quote the delectable drag queens from The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert: as they enter a diabolically tacky hotel in the Australian outback, they deliciously quip:
TACKARAMA!
That sums up that opening ceremony in a nutshell. In fact, the same can be said of the logo for the 2012 London Olympics:
Has there ever been a tackier-looking logo for an Olympic Games?
The mind boggles at what drug-addled London advertising execs came up with this monstrosity...
Tackiness is alive and well in the City of London, I see.
Jeepers, was that a mess of an opening ceremony for the 30th Summer Olympics in London!
Talk about a mish-mash of the most bewildering, confusing and at times utterly stupid set-pieces, very few of which worked, never mind made any sense.
So, in the midst of the mess, what did work? Well, I did think that the rings of molten steel gliding in the air and coming together above the field looked quite beautiful, as shown below:
And Rowan Atkinson did quite an amusing stint on synthesizer in Mr Bean mode as Simon Rattle conducted the ever-rousing theme to Chariots of Fire.
But when a silly schtick by Mr Bean is amongst the best moments of what is the biggest show on Earth, then one has some idea of just what a crap opening ceremony it was.
That big grassy knoll of overgrown emerald green grass slap bang in the middle of the arena was disconcerting to say the least (grassly knoll pictured below - even the flags look forlorn). But it was the opening scenes that really set off the ceremony on such an awkward, even embarrassing tone. The grim, grey, wretched past of Victorian England was paraded before all, replete with people playing cricket on a village green (imagine!) being overrun by grimy, grim, grey workers invading the pitch like 19th century football hooligans. The look was tacky Dickensian, and hardly the stuff of an opening ceremony.
That grassy knoll and undulating patch of unkempt grass has to be the worst production design I have ever seen this side of The Ten Commandments.
Kenneth Branagh strutted around in a stovepipe hat looking eerily similar to Abraham Lincoln, all cheesy grin and put-on awe - a bland actor for a bland ceremony.
And as for that toe-curling paean to the National Health Service with the field strewn with children in pyjamas atop huge beds being pushed manically by nurses in 1940s garb on cocaine - what the hell was THAT?! I loved the delicious irony of the NHS being praised with such reverence at a time when it's being slashed to nothing by the Tory-Liberal government.
And what was that neverending schtick with Daniel Craig as James Bond picking up the Queen at Buckingham Palace in a helicopter and then the two of them 'flinging' themselves over the stadium? And as for the ever-gormless David Beckham speedboating up the Thames with some hussy clutching onto the Olympic flame...enough said...
The British really have lost all sense of self, never mind irony.
The dance-music routine was another mess, this time of incoherent, dull choreography through the decades set against only half-interesting salutes to British cinema projected on an odd-looking house - never before has the centre of an Olympic arena looked so middle-class homely.
The rest was either dull, silly or downright stupefying. And I couldn't be bothered to go over it all. Rather let me quote an anoymous poster on a discussion thread about the opening ceremony on Yahoo:
"I have to say, the London opening ceremony was rather underwhelming, an
incoherent hodgepodge thrown together haphazardly. Watching it was akin to
observing a pool of damp vomit: oh, there are some corn kernels in there, and
some pasta, and that must be the avocado I had for dinner last night, and the
white stuff must be swiss cheese. The coup de grace was Sir Paul McCartney
looking like an old lesbian and singing like a turkey with laryngitis... Just
awful. Between watching it and getting conjunctivitis, I'd choose the latter."
Hear, hear.
And I didn't even bother to stick around for the fireworks at the end - and I am an absolute sucker for a good fireworks show. That really says it all.
I kept imagining how the Paris Olympic Bid Committee (Paris came 2nd to London in the Olympic voting in Singapore in 2005) must have felt as they watched the goings-on from London:
'Mon Dieu...and we lost against zees?! Merde!'
Sacre bleu indeed.
