If Susan Boyle doesn’t win Britain’s Got Talent 2009 I will eat my hat. Click the pic for some unfettered joy:
It will have escaped no-one’s notice that the narrative of Susan Boyle is very similar to that of Paul Potts: the undiscovered talent, sitting dormant until middle-age. Both tell stories of a mundane life, and both defy the judges’ expectations in the most satisfying manner. Simon Cowell is the wicked-witch and faery Godmother, rolled into one: he is the cynic to be flummoxed, and also the bestower of fame.
Its a double-delight to watch Susan and Paul ‘turn’ the crowd in the process. Unlike the cool kidz and the prettyboys who expect the mobb’s support (until the proven otherwise), Boyle and Potts have to win over a crushing cynicism. And it is that sweet, sweet triumph which makes these clips so throatblockingly beautiful.
A third delight is the fact that these performances emerge from a TV format that, elsewhere, depends on precisely the cynical, sing-by-the-numbers yawnery that usually serves to suppress people like Susan and Paul. This is clearly a feature of the auditioning process, which takes place with a live audience in situ. Contrast this with the X-Factor, which is auditioned in lonely, acoustic-poor conference rooms. With just Simon, Louis, Sharon and Dannicherylpaula in attendance, there is little to rein in the instinct to follow the tested formula, and the whole ungodly affair is quickly homogenized. While token fat and/or middle-agers do get through to the second round, its generally a highly conventional face-voice combination that will win X-Factor. The opposite seems to be true with BGT, which strikes me as much more interesting and obviously better.
Also, expect to see a Paul Potts/Susan Boyle duet album and co-tour, sometime in 2009/10. They complement each other in appearance and demeanor, and as an added bonus, their surnames could not be better suited. Their story could be a great little Potts Boyler. If I was a more cynical I person I might even hint at a Chart Throb/Wag The Dog style conspiracy… but watching that clip of Susan, again, drains me of all such heresy.
Month: April 2009 (Page 2 of 3)
Having lost many an hour’s sleep playing Linerider, I can only imagine the hours that went into this delightful piece of Heath Robinson:
In the past, a person who created this in his flat would have been branded an obsessive nutter. In the Internet Age, however, he’s an entertainer. His dedication is only validated by his audience. Is that a good thing?
The state legislature of Vermont has just voted to extend the right to marry, to homosexual couples. Meanwhile in Iowa, the state supreme Court has ruled that denying gays the right to marry is unconstitutional. If you believe Andrew Sullivan, then the floodgates have opened in America and gays are finally nearing the promised land that is full equality. However, Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight predicts that it will take a little longer for some of the deep south states to vote in favour. His model says that Mississippi would not liberalise until 2024.
Predictably, there is a backlash from the socially conservative segment in American society. The most intellectually inept I have seen comes from Michael Savage at WorldNet Daily:
There is a rising tide of pink fascism in this country, and it comes as a result of the election of Barack Hussein Obama.
The I think the ‘Hussain’ meme, which implies that the President is a secret Muslim, offers increasingly diminishing returns. That some columnists in America are still earnestly deploying it is quite, quite sad. However, to use it in the same sentence as the ‘pink fascism’ slur makes no sense whatsoever.
In last month’s Prospect, David Goldblatt gave a couple of interesting statistics about Golf:
you have a global [golf] industry worth around $350bn. This is roughly the same as the GDP of Belgium, which coincidentally covers about the same land area as the world’s golf courses.
I was reminded of this just now, when I read a couple of statistics in the Shift Happens presentation by Karl Fisch.
- Nintendo invests double the US government in R&D (slides 31-32)
- If MySpace were a country, it would be the 11th Largest in the World (slide 35)
These are further examples of how companies and communities are now operating on a scale that dwarves the efforts of some nation states. As I said in my notes on the Clay Shirky’s ‘Hello Everybody’ Demos podcast that accompanies his book, I find it fascinating that the nation state might wither in the face of alternative communal bonds:
However, I wonder whether the most profound shift might come when people transcend ethnicity as well as geography. With people spending so much time, and actually making money in worlds like Second Life, or building large guilds of allegiences in Eve Online or WarCraft, perhaps those bonds could be the basis for some other kind of nation or ‘polity’ with real power and relevance.
To Be Continued, I’m sure.
Update: 24th Sept 09
If all the gaming consoles in the US formed their own city, that city would use as much power as San Diego, the 9th-largest city in the country. (via Kottke)
Nick Whyte has an interesting discussion of þorn, the old letter that signified the “th” sound. He also mentions eth (ð) which does a similar job (via the LibCon netcast). These are letters that are no longer used in English, but are retained in Icelandic and Faroese.
It reminds me of the ezett (ß), a German letter that replaces a double-s in some cases, like groß schloß for example.
What I want to know is this: Where do all these letters appear in their respective alphabets?