A 6 Lessons Review: Halo 3: ODST

So I’ve been thinking for a while that I should use this blog for something other than ill-informed rants about The Daily Mail (although at least I can accept that they are ill informed rants). It’d be nice to attempt to give something back to the world other than sheer negativity. The Daily Mail does it with skincare products and early 90s BBC dramas, I can do it with advice on purchases of games or films or music.

I’ve been dragging my feet on kicking this reviewing milarkey off as I haven’t really had anything worth reviewing- the 1990s has yet to reach the town in which I live, we’ve recently heard about this great new band called The Pet Shop boys- however, today a copy of the new Halo game dropped through my letterbox (courtesy of a very good friend who found himself with 2 copies after a slow delivery from amazon and an impulsive trip to game), I spent the day playing through it and figure I can probably write something informative about it.

Since I’ve started this blog, I’ve started thinking about everything in terms of sixes, so I’m going to try and cut it down to 6 major points. So yeah, see you at the other end…

1: Halo 3: ODST

For anyone who has lived in a cave for the last 8 years, Halo is a game developed by Bungie for the Xbox and Xbox360 (and the PC if you’re that way inclined). It has had 3 instalments so far (plus a strategy game that doesn’t count because its not a first person shooter), all of which have followed Master Chief, an awesome genetically modified super-soldier capable of jumping a couple of metres in the air, running face-first into battle and basically committing some of the biggest acts of badassery known to the gaming public. It has never failed to be a huge critical and commercial success.

ODST, the fourth (or third-and-a-half, I guess) instalment of the Halo series has taken a rather large departure from this run-around-an-alien-planet-and-spray-bullets-mindlessly approach. The entire game is set on Earth, in New Mombassa, shortly after the covenant (alien) forces have attacked, and you play a member of the Orbital Shock Drop Troopers- the Halo equivalent of the Paras. Gone are the shields that render you near-invulnerable, gone is the ability to leap sheds in a single bound, gone is the battle rifle. Now it’s all about the pistol.

2: A Geek’s dream

The first thing I noticed in the opening FMV was the voice acting. Halo stalwarts Nathan Fillion, Adam Baldwin and Alan Tudyk are all on hand to voice the main characters in the game. Anyone who has seen Joss Whedon’s Firefly (and it should be everyone, it’s a superb series which was cut down before it truly had a chance to blossom) will recognise these stars as members of the crew from there, and in ODST they’re essentially playing the same roles.

The voice acting is good, although it’s a bit odd to see a computer-generated version of Nathan Fillion (the only actor to have his likeness used in the game) enacting movements very similar to mincing. After getting over the initial shock of seeing an actor- who had still managed to look tough whilst wearing an old fashioned bonnet- waving his hands about like Graham Norton, I was able to actually get on with the game and enjoy it.

As the story developed, I actually found myself caring for all of the members of the team- and even the other random troops who had been dropped in, something which I hadn’t done in any of the previous Halo games, because I was too busy charging into battle, firing two guns simultaneously whilst throwing grenades and punches like Rambo and Bruce Lee respectively. And whilst I wasn’t as affected by the plight of my team as much as say, the first Modern Warfare game, it was still nice to see.

3: ODST: Like Halo 3, only different

When ODST was first announced, I was a little dubious of Bungie tackling stealthy aspects of game play. I liked Call of Duty for the fact I had to engage my brain to play it, I liked Halo because it made me feel like Sly Stallone. Mixing the two just wouldn’t work.

On the surface, ODST appears to be a lot like its predecessors; there’s a similar HUD and you’re still fighting the same enemies with the same weapons. But the gameplay couldn’t be more different, it’s more intelligent, and there is a far greater sense of achievement when you manage to get through an area without alerting any groups of aliens than just killing every one of them.

It’s like walking into your living room to find a complete stranger wearing your recently deceased uncle’s skin. Only he’s far more articulate than your uncle and is far kinder regarding Christmases and birthdays, he even offers to help with the dishes after you’ve had Sunday lunch. Basically it’s weird, but in a good way.

4: I’m all alone, there’s no-one here beside me…

The general mood of the game is also very different to the previous Halo games. In Halo 1, 2 and 3, aside from you playing a near invincible super soldier, you nearly always have assistance from a few NPCs (who if nothing else, are fodder for the alien’s guns).

In half of the sections of ODST, you play a rookie trooper (intelligently named “Rookie”) who is left on his own in a city teeming with alien invaders, attempting to regroup with the other members of his squad.

I had been told that the game was far better to play through on your own (Halo is always fun to do on co-op, so I was planning on playing through with a friend) and I can see why, the sense of solitude is incredible in places, I genuinely felt alone. Having someone else on my team probably would have prevented this.

These feelings of isolation are helped by some rather superb musical scoring. Usually after you’ve just played through a section as one of the other characters-who typically had at least one additional NPC with them- you’re thrust back into the place on your own, and treated to a swell of strings which helps add to the feelings of loneliness.

The parts of the game where you’re not playing as the rookie are still enjoyable- it’s still fun to fly around in a banshee, or drive around in a warthog or tank with explosions and gunfights going on all around you- and they serve to accentuate how lonesome the rookie is.

5: The ending

The game finishes with a drive along a highway in a tank and then defending a building from a few waves of jetpack toting apes. It is, despite sounding promising on paper, a slightly anti-climactic end to the game, and (unsurprisingly) leaves a bit of room for a sequel. But ODST takes place during the events of Halo 2, so it simply wouldn’t work if they were to win this intergalactic war. Also, the game is short. I completed it (albeit only on Normal) in a single sitting. I will no doubt go through it on co-operative on harder difficulties, but its still fairly short.

Still, these are minor qualms, Halo ODST was only meant to bridge the release gap between Halo 3 and the upcoming Halo Reach game (another prequel) due in 2010, and it does that nicely.

6: Multiplayer

I imagine you’re thinking that the previous paragraph sounds like a fairly conclusive paragraph for a review, but I’ve glossed over what is likely to be the strongest part of ODST for replay value: the multiplayer.

Bundled along with ODST is an additional disc that allows you to play the Halo 3 multiplayer. The same Halo 3 multiplayer that hasn’t left the top 10 most played online games on xbox live since it was released 2 years ago, that’s a success rate in line with Bryan Adams’ “Everything I Do”. In fact, it’s been number one for the majority of those weeks. It’s a varied selection of games both involving deathmatch and objective games, and its good, scrappy fun.

As well as this, there is the firefight mode, which is a completely new thing for ODST, much like Nazi Zombies in Call of Duty: World at War, or The Horde in Gears of War 2, it involves killing wave after wave of enemies until they kill you. I have yet to play it with 4 players, but playing with 2 players, it was an enjoyable addition to an otherwise fairly packed game.

Also worth mentioning is the fact that ODST comes with an invitation to play the multiplayer beta for Halo Reach when they release it. This will no doubt be a worthwhile addition when it becomes available.

So now for the proper summary bit: Halo 3: ODST is a pleasant addition to the Halo series, I feel that focusing on a character who isn’t a genetically enhanced supersoldier gives the game a beneficial element of stealth, and the general feel of the game is better than its prequels. Or sequels.

Halo ODST changes enough things to make it more interesting than the other ones, whilst keeping enough aspects of it in place to maintain the feel of a Halo game. The narrative is more interesting than previous instalments, seeing the story through a variety of character’s eyes. It feels more like a Tarantino film in its style than most games, and this works to its favour. It allows sections that are heavily action led, and stealth sections, which, as you can probably tell, I really enjoyed.

Sadly though, by the end of this game, this unique style (at least as far as Halo is concerned) is jettisoned in favour of an action ending, when I was hoping for something more.

There are other flaws in the game too, whilst its length makes it easy enough to play through in one sitting (although admittedly it does help if you’re jobless and bored), I would have liked it to have been a bit longer. Also the graphics, after playing Call of Duty, leave a little to be desired. The controls aren’t as intuitive as Call of Duty- I’ve never liked having the beatdown button assigned to a face button (but refuse to do anything about it as it would make me a horrendous geek), and for a game involving elements of stealth, the lack of a sprint button can be quite frustrating. I got caught casually strolling to stationary cars I was planning on using for cover a couple of times.

The online multiplayer doesn’t have enough new things to tempt me to throw out my Halo 3 disk any time soon, but anyone who hasn’t already played a genuinely embarrassing amount of time on Halo 3 online would probably appreciate being able to play online.

These are all fairly small things, which I would like to have seen fixed in the new game. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the game and look forward to playing through it again.

Using the new 6 Lessons rating system, I’d give Halo 3: ODST

5/6. Or 83.3%.

6 Lessons learned from advertising (recent edition)

One of my final year modules for my degree was “Behavioural aspects of Marketing”. This was, without doubt, my favourite module in my entire degree. It provided an interesting insight into the minds of consumers- and more often than not a rather more disturbing insight into the minds of advertisers- and basically revolved around using psychology to make people buy your stuff.
Usually, you can see the thought processes of the marketers at work in adverts, you can see how they use attractive models- whom you wish to associate with- eating a KFC or other equally unattractive meal, and it makes you want to buy it. In theory.
However, some of the adverts seem to be making a fairly concerted effort to dissuade you from purchasing their product, by clearly aiming their advert at the wrong audience, or just by being so odd or useless that you sort of forget what the advert is actually for. There are some absolute classics from the past (The Flintstone’s flogging cigarettes anyone?) but I’m going to attempt to write only about adverts you’re likely to see in an ad break this evening. I'm also going to try and avoid going into great (and often rather boring) psychological detail.
6 Lessons learned from advertising (recent edition)…


1: The Lesson: People can’t tell the difference between an actual sporting hero and a terrible 128-bit rendering of them

Learned From: Gillette Fusion



There isn’t anything fundamentally wrong with this advert. I think Gillette’s strength of branding- and frequent use of Tiger Woods, Thierry Henry and Roger Federer- is good enough to overcome this utterly bizarre change of direction.
The previous Gillette adverts featuring the sports equivalent of the super friends (assuming that the super friends was based around Superman and company mildly inconveniencing people until they ditched their old razors) were not bad. They showed a particularly mercenary side of Woods, Henry and Federer as, in the pay of the Gillette corporation, they used their not inconsiderable collective sporting talents to force one poor bloke into ditching his razor- completely ignoring the risks of hitting balls at a guy with a razor sharp, er, razor to his face. But, after their initial success getting this man to adopt the Fusion (having confronted him in a public restroom), something odd happened.
Perhaps it was a member of the Wilkinson Sword faction enacting some devious plan (straight out of a terrible comic book from the mid-60s), but all of a sudden Tiger Woods and Roger Federer were both replaced with what appears to be Playstation 2 generated doppelgangers. And there seems to be a bitter rivalry in the place of the co-operative (albeit slightly malicious) spirit of the former advert.
As I said at the beginning, there is nothing wrong with this advert; it’s just that it makes absolutely no sense considering the previous advert. And in the English version (it’s the American ad featured above) they aren’t even shown jumping out of the television, so there is no clear reason why two of the best loved sporting heroes of this generation are suddenly rendered in awful 128-bit shadows of their former selves.


2: The Lesson: Clearasil: May cause confidence, also rape.

Learned From: Clearasil



Ok, admittedly this sounds like an extreme and irrational conclusion to make- largely because it is. But I'll stick with it anyway. In this advert, having used his daily cleansing solution, this teenager has come over all ‘confident’ and ‘capable of talking to women’. It’s sickening to see.
In order to show off his newfound confidence and his lack of spots he approaches a girl putting on lipstick before going into the cinema and asks if he can borrow some. Being a generous and kind hearted soul, she obliges, albeit whilst wearing a quizzical expression.
But as she hands the lipstick to him he lunges towards her, in an attempt to place his lips upon hers. Now I’m not a fancy big city lawyer (nor am I above quoting the Simpsons), but I’m fairly certain that there is a law against forcing yourself upon someone without their prior consent. I was genuinely hoping to see him dragged off her by cinema security and delivered to a police station.
Then, as the scene cuts to a judge, he is sentenced to a couple of years in juvenile detention. And then 2 months into his 2-year sentence, covered in spots having been cut off from his precious supply of Clearasil he is shivved by a 12-year old arsonist for taking the last of the Apricot Munch Bunch. Fade to black. Admittedly this probably wouldn’t have sold any more Clearasil, but at least it would have been gritty and realistic.
Hell, disregarding the sexual assault, it’s not even a very good line.


3: The Lesson: The internet is a good place to find romance.

Learned From: eHarmony, Match.com

Good news! eHarmony, the website responsible for setting up 2% of marriages in America is coming to the UK! eHarmony is a business (I find that it sounds much more romantic if you put it that way) responsible for matching people together using some sort of complicated algorithm which compares their interests and beliefs and stuff like that.
Admittedly, if I were the sort of person who would be tempted by some sort of online dating service- which I’m really definitely not- I would probably appreciate the use of “science” (or at least someone’s ability to match up favourite films or books) to find me a match.
In fact, I am actually quite tempted to sign up on there. Posing as a staunch anti-Semite whose favourite film is Bambi, and who passionately loves Belle and Sebastian. Also enjoys weekends away on his 42-ft yaught, during which he throws kittens in bags overboard. Loves dogs. Go on eHarmony, find a woman with flexible enough morals for this fictitious man.
Also worth a mention is match.com, with their brilliant(ly lazy) approach to tv advertisements. Every few weeks they flip between having too many men, and having too many women. To be fair, this probably is the case; after all, if there are more fish in the sea and less anglers attempting to catch them, you have a better chance of hooking a really hot fish even if your rod is useless. So there will be more people going out attempting to be fishermen, so the fact that they're suffering from stock problems (I find it more romantic if you think of people as 'stock') shouldn't really come as a surprise.
Crumbling metaphors aside, I just think this is a fairly lame approach to marketing, surely match.com wants to be showing off the vibrancy of its clientele? Focusing on how wonderful they are, rather than just repeating an identical advert every 4-6 weeks and drawing attention to the fact that they’re not particularly discerning when it comes to screening. I wonder if they’d happily accept my neo-nazi-kitten-drowning profile.
Perhaps in both of these cases I’m just being rather petty because I’m fundamentally opposed to dating websites. I actually enjoy getting to know someone though conversation, and if every minutia of someone’s interests and beliefs is clearly spelled out in their profile, then that experience is lost. Nevertheless, it seems to be an increasing trend in America, where 1 in 8 marriages are between people who met online (and 4 in 8 marriages result in divorce), so the UK will no doubt be close behind. But yeah, I'd still prefer to date someone the traditional way...


4: The Lesson: ED is the most uncomfortable thing on television

Learned From: 40over40.com



Whilst on the subject of uncomfortable social situations involving love, let’s talk about erectile dysfunction in over 40s. Sure, it may be a prevalent problem, but if you’re wishing to show someone being a formerly-impotent-person-who-suddenly-has-a-new-lease-of-life, surely it would be better to have someone more, well, attractive.
If 40over40 had come to me to design this advert, I would have got George Clooney in (sure he can impregnate a woman just by exhaling within 30 feet of her, but that doesn’t matter. He's an actor. He can act impotent), doing some sort of car chase- driving into a tunnel, diving into some water, perhaps kissing in front of a fountain. Basically I'd fill it full of rich, disgusting imagery. Perhaps have Julia Roberts in there somewhere in a bikini. I'd more or less just be condensing the 3 ‘Oceans’ films into a 30 second spot.
As it is, there is still some sort of imagery- only in this event it involves some unattractive 40-something bloke shuffling around uncomfortably with his wife in a manner akin to dancing, whilst bolero plays in the background.
Actually thinking about it, I think this advert is brilliant. So many people are going to be permanently turned off by it, sales of whatever they’re selling will rocket.


5: The Lesson: Actually…

Learned From: Bird’s eye salmon fingers



First of all I’d like to doff my cap to Birdseye for trying to make fish fingers sexy. Secondly I would like to severely chastise Birdseye for trying to make fish fingers sexy.
I first saw this advert a couple of weeks ago, whilst my parents were in the room. Its 30-second duration was so heavilly laced with innuendo that I found it very difficult not to burst out with laughter at how plain horrible it was. About fish fingers.
It was frequently touched upon in the marketing units of my degree that humour is a good way to convince people to buy things. Typically with things like chocolate bars, or alcohol (where strict guidelines mean that they can’t actually sell the beer on its own merit as encourages alcoholism, so they have to focus on the brand) this works well.
I’d say this doesn’t work so well with fish fingers, to be honest I was mainly disturbed by the fact that they were a) animate and b) possessing some sort of libido. This advert caused me to yearn for the days when Captain Birdseye would roam around his little boat, looking like John Peel after a few years at sea. Then he'd give frozen goods to children, without being hideously unpleasant.


6: The Lesson: It sounds scientific, it looks scientific, so it must be scientific.

Learned From: Any cosmetic product







Cosmetics adverts are possibly the most transparent of all advertisements when it comes to using psychology to make people buy things. They use celebrities on the grounds that people want to emulate them and have hair just like Davina, or a face just like Andie MacDowell’s when they’re 50 (although its probably easier to look prettier when you’re 50 if you’re a famously attractive person who used to earn millions of dollars for her film roles). Then they use make up science to substantiate their claims.
This is possibly the best known of all of the sneaky tricks that businesses use to sell products, they use long words which the average layman won’t understand (pentapeptides anyone?), then they show diagrams of blue dots melting into the hair follicles and making them stand up, or showing little white orbs filling up gaping crevices in an elderly woman’s face.
Then they bring in studies that have shown (usually quite inconclusively if you read the small white text, using a very small sample group) that 82% of people agree that their wrinkles ‘appear’ to have been reduced. This rather ambiguous language allows them to get away with boasts which otherwise wouldn’t be allowed through the Advertising Standards Authority.
All of this gives a façade of the product being good (according to science, no less), despite the fact that typically it’s not hugely different from the regular Tesco shampoo or conditioner. Except, of course, for the price tag.
Still, I can’t complain too much about cosmetics products. Were it not for Pantene, there wouldn’t be this advert:

6 Lessons learned from Tim Minchin

This (much like my last post) is probably going up fairly late (although I do have a legitimate reason this week other than a lack of ideas- but hopefully it wasn’t too blaringly obvious).

Anyway, the excuse this week is that I spent the weekend (including my usual Saturday evening writing/lamenting my lack of social life time-slot) in Norwich, going out, clubbing on Saturday night and seeing Tim Minchin on Sunday evening (usually when I go through the arduous task of attempting to edit my posts), the gig was amazing, and I contemplated doing some sort of review of it, but figured that rigidly adhering to the 6 Lessons format was more important (and more interesting for the 6 billion people who didn’t attend the specific Tim Minchin gig I went to last night).

I’ve also found through my miscellaneous ramblings that I find it fairly difficult to write about something inherently funny without inadvertently pilfering their jokes and ruining them with a lack of comic delivery and timing- its far easier to take a cheap shot at The Daily Mail.

So whilst I would love to regale you with how amazing Tim Minchin was last night (very), perhaps steal some of his jokes, and subsequently rob them of their humour, I will instead be using him as some sort of framing device. Or something a lot like that... 6 Lessons learned from Tim Minchin (complete with videos!)…

1: The Lesson: Socially responsible anthems don’t have to be completely didactic

Learned From: “Canvas Bags”

I’ve never had a particularly comfortable relationship with socially responsible songs (I must have had a bad experience- aside from having to listen to Bob Geldof- in my youth when “Do They Know Its Christmas?” came on one Christmas in the mid-90s), I always find them to have an astonishingly patronising tone, and in order to keep the general message of the song intact trade offs have to be made which causes the song to suffer somewhat.

When I saw Greenday play headline the Reading festival in 2004, they played a lot of material from their (then) upcoming album, American Idiot. In between this they were frequently saying how they were going to vote Bush out of the white house upon their return to America, everyone cheered and 8 weeks later, when the elections were over and American Idiot had been released to commercial and critical success, George W. Bush was still president.

And the album, whilst not saving any children in Africa, was meant to be conveying some sort of message (War is wrong? Suicide is bad? The destructive ‘Punk’ approach vs the ‘Hippie’ love approach?), and although I was glad to see that the world valued more than just simple three minute long pop songs, as far as I concerned, whilst the album was an interesting exercise in making an album based entirely on a theme- which had already been done 30 years before by The Who and Pink Floyd- it lacked any of what made Greenday truly brilliant (namely their simple three minute pop songs).

Tim Minchin originally became widely known for fronting a campaign for canvas bags, with his song, er, “Canvas Bags” but far from being a typical socially responsible replete with preaching tone, it managed to be amusing whilst conveying the message. I now own a canvas bag.

2: The Lesson: How to take criticism in a calm and mature way

Learned From: Song for Phil Daoust

3 years ago, Phil Daoust wrote a really rather scathing 1-star review of Minchin’s set at the Edinburgh festival. This included some fairly personal slights about some reasonably significant aspects of Minchin’s set. Understandably he was hurt by this, and has penned a hilarious song (for Phil Daoust) about forgiveness.

I hope when (and for that matter I hope it’s when rather than if) I have anything notorious enough to be graded with a 5 star rating system- or even a percentage system, I’m not picky- that if I were to get a poor review, I would be able to take criticism in the same way that Minchin does…

3: The Lesson: Its possible to be critical of the perception of what love is, but still be quite romantic

Learned From: “If I didn’t have you”, “You grew on me”,

A couple of months ago I wrote about romantic comedies, and it’s quite possible that I came across more than a little critical of them. Despite really liking them. It’s quite difficult to live in a world where there is a plethora of awful, predictable and far-too-watchable romantic comedies suggest with certainty that there will be some sort of positive resolution. Particularly when half of those marriages would end in divorce. I bet it’s the ones with Hugh Grant in, I reckon when he’s not pleasantly befuddled he’s no longer attractive.

Tim Minchin has a number of songs that are critical of the notion of love at first sight and how it is typically more valued by Hollywood producers than “the creepy uppy kind of love” he discusses in “You grew on me”.

Anyway, I came up with a theory why people are so desperate to believe that this specific brand of love exists. And it’s only slightly misanthropic. People are lazy and pathetic. They want to be able to gain the benefits of being in a relationship (which according to scientific studies, include living longer and being more likely to get employed as well as all of the obvious stuff) without the effort or risk involved in the typical rigmarole associated with clumsily stumbling into a relationship. But perhaps that’s just me.

Obviously it’s a good thing as far as Hollywood’s concerned; they only have an hour and a half to two hours max in which to build up the appearance of a meaningful relationship. It’s just easier to have a couple of lingering shots of smouldering gazes whilst Damien Rice plays in the background.

All spoken like a true cynic, still, it appears that despite Minchin’s similarly critical views of the portrayal of love in films and Mills and Boon novels (if indeed, they can be called that), he’s been in a relationship with the same woman since he was 17. That’s half his life. Which strikes me as pretty romantic really.

4: The Lesson: The distribution of talent in this world isn’t fair

Learned From: Any Tim Minchin song

Not a whole lot to say about this really, as you can probably tell from the videos featured so far (and if you haven’t been watching them as you’ve gone along, and I’ve gone on and on, shame on you, go back and do it now), Tim Minchin is a brilliant pianist, a superb singer, and he can write brilliant, funny and nonetheless, thoroughly intelligent lyrics. It’s just not fair.

Watch the solo in this song, and just the general diversity of his voice.

5: The Lesson: Its hard to get noticed on the Internet

Learned From: “The Youtube Lament”

Something I’ve noticed from the few weeks I’ve been maintaining this blog and generally trying to gain some sort of presence on the Internet is that it’s difficult. The most success I’ve had so far is this article on romantic comedies (done off the back of that first post a couple of months ago), which has managed to gain over 1200 hits.

On the other hand, this video of a kitten, with bad grammar and a blocky face has been on youtube (where there are many videos of kittens for it to compete with) for two days, and has already amassed a view count of 2,000.

But look at its little legs. Aww.

6: The Lesson: The notion of an omnipotent god is a little silly

Learned From: “Storm”

I recently made the leap from agnostic to full blown atheist (and to show true commitment to this decision I changed it on facebook and everything). Agnosticism is a wonderful, comforting position for people to take in the grand religion debate. It is non-committal (my favourite argument was to say that humans couldn’t possibly even begin to contemplate the sheer scale and awesomeness of a god as good as religious types are keen to tell me about), and means that tirades at parties (both religious and anti-religious) are less likely to be directed at you (unless you're the only agnostic at a party full of ravenous atheists).

This was a position I was content to take for many years, until I listened to “Storm”, which details a dinner party where Tim Minchin locks horns with a hippy girl about her support of alternative therapies and eventually goes off on an extended rant taking in many aspects of religion and spirituality.

This led me to give more consideration to my long term, comfortable position, I’ve always found science great, without it we wouldn’t have cures for deadly diseases, we wouldn’t have the ability to experience and immerse ourselves in the staggering beauty and the cultures of the other side of the world, without science, I wouldn’t have electricity to run my xbox on.

Despite this appreciation (and occasionally, even an understanding) of science and all it’d done for me, I was content not to ponder the existence- or lack thereof- of god, homeopathy or Santa.

However, hidden within the comical stanzas and couplets of “Storm” are a number of incisive and, most importantly, rational arguments against not only specific facets of the alternative lifestyle- such as psychics- but also the nature of faith and the terrible fact that these fictitious characters, fabricated beasts and dubious activities ultimately distract us from the beauty of existence itself (and Jungles and fish and grass and Velociraptors, even though they technically no longer exist). It was hard not to take note of such humorously composed and eloquently voiced arguments and not agree.

I’m aware of the irony that being indoctrinated into this set of beliefs by words and nice chord progressions bears a startling resemblance to joining a cult. In fact, whilst sat in the theatre last night, with a thousand people laughing in the simultaneously and singing along together, there were some very definite comparisons that could be drawn between a religious service and the gig.

This wasn’t lost on Minchin himself, who laments the loss of coming together to share music and sing together in a more secular society, and proceeded to lead the audience in singing a song about loving Jesus. It did feel like joining a cult. And now I’m indoctrinating you.

6 Lessons learned from The X Factor (and similar shows)

So its finally happened. I have hit rock bottom. This Saturday night, in lieu of going out and socialising- financial constraints put that idea out the window- I stayed in and was subjected (I will insist to the end that I had absolutely no choice in the matter) to The X Factor. Then the Xtra factor.

And the worst part is, this isn’t even an isolated incident, it appears that my mother is already undergoing a hefty dose of senility, which means that she procures enjoyment from the X Factor’s flashing lights, the contestant’s flat tones and (somehow) Dermot O’Leary. If this continues, I may have to prematurely put her in a home. Not to for the sake of her sanity, but for the sake of mine.
And whilst on the subject of cruelly and callously taking advantage of the mentally ill in order to elicit a cheap laugh; 6 Lessons Learned from The X Factor (and similar shows)…


1: The Lesson: It doesn’t really matter how talented you are

Learned From: Chico

In a surprisingly large number of cases it seems that there is little connection between the talent of the singer and the round they eventually reach. Yes, in the early rounds the terrible singers generally go out, and the good singers mostly stay in.
However this isn’t always the case, more often than not the judges will put through someone who butchers the original melody of the song with excessive use of vibrato (which I suspect they imagine makes them sound like Christina Aguilera rather than a cat being run over by a variety of different sized vehicles) and this seems a trend that is likely to get worse with the new format featuring the public (who will clap anything approaching warbling) in the early stages.
It’s not just the Aguilera wannabes that get through to later rounds despite sounding terrible. If you’re capable of posing like Mick Jagger in the final of a musical statues competition with Michelangelo’s David, that should at least see you to a level of some success before the nation snaps to its senses.
Except for in the case of Chico, who even had time to release a number one single before people realised he couldn’t sing. Proving that the record buying public of the UK need a collective lobotomy. But more on that later.


2: The Lesson: There is a strong positive correlation between the number of relatives killed by cancer and singing ability. But this adversity also causes reverb.

Learned From: Roughly 3 or 4 contestants a week

It’s a fact of life that people love a tragic songbird. This is more or less the only possible reason to account for the popularity of Amy Winehouse. She could die at any time.
But so unquenchable is the thirst of Joe Public for tragic songbirds that Cowell and company deems it necessary to turn anyone who has undergone any struggle into a heart-rending story of some poor unfortunate’s conquering of hardship.
First comes the VT, in which they talk at great length about their deceased brother/mother/dog and how there is some tenuous link to their singing talent. Then they come on and sing. And they’re good. Really good.
Or so it seems, more often then not when they start singing they have huge cavernous voices. This is assisted by hefty amounts of reverb- something the awful contestants don’t typically tend to get. Some uplifting music plays in the background, and the audience is whipped up into a frenzy. And never so much than in the case of one Susan Boyle.


3: The Lesson: Ugly people cannot possibly have any other redeeming talents.

Learned From: Susan Boyle

Susan Boyle made headlines all over the world this year. In the 2009 Britain’s Got Talent, she got the full ‘uplifting music’ treatment, complete with VT showing how sad and miserable her pathetic life was, but mostly how inexpressibly hideous she was.
The audience was initially somewhere between apathetic and hostile, this horrendous looking woman had dared gatecrash their stage- reserved only for the beautiful people. Then she started singing, and the music began and everyone (quite literally in some cases, for this was quite clearly the single most significant televisual event ever to take place) completely lost their shit.
From this point it was like a fairy tale, it turned out that the grotesque ogre had a soul and a beautiful singing voice, Americans came across the channel to patronise her, like in this rather repulsive video of some bint from Good Morning America.

Hollywood wanted to make a film chronicling her depressing life, and charting her meteoric rise to fame. She seemed on the brink of international success. She was going to be bigger than John Lennon being bigger than Jesus. Then she had a breakdown, came second in the show and everyone started asking questions about the efficacy of the psychological tests applicants for talent shows undergo.


4: The Lesson: Deranged people are ok to laugh at if its packaged along with bright lights and VT demonstrating how good they think they are.

Learned From: 90% of contestants in the early rounds

The auditions in the early phases of the competition have some hilariously bad people singing. I’m not for a moment going to suggest that I’m above laughing at them. The Pope wouldn’t be able to stop himself. Even Ghandi would have trouble stifling a giggle.
Still, when I stop sniggering, I find myself feeling like a cog in a terrible machine which chews up, swallows, then violently projectile vomits over a 6 million strong crowd. Ok, not a great metaphor seeing as I’m both a cog and crowd member, but I feel like part of the blatant exploitation of some people who really don’t seem all there.
There was one contestant, a few years ago (I spent ages searching for this on youtube to no avail) that brought in a tape that they’d remixed of a John Lennon song. Then he sang (quite terribly, I might add) alongside it. At no point in this audition did I laugh.
As it went on, and the contestant said that he thought it meant that John Lennon would be able to release some more records, it felt increasingly like I was in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, watching Leatherface’s family insist that he was not a murderer, but a nice boy. It was like watching someone desperately clutching at the final vestiges of hope for a better life, then watching said remnants slip into an overflowing gutter, and missing by mere inches in an attempt to grab them before they are lost to a drain and oblivion. Basically it was really uncomfortable.
Then watching Cowell and whomever they had on the show pick him apart was worse still, this poor delusional guy was having his idea, which he’d clearly put an absurd amount of work into mercilessly torn asunder by some cackling idiots, whilst more cackling idiots watched on from the comfort of their homes.
Many contestants get riled up and lash out, or cry hysterically, but this guy seemed like he would go home on the bus in silence, microwave cook his final ready meal, write a hastily scribbled note to no one in particular making apologies if he causes a powercut, before taking his tape player into the bath.
This admittedly probably didn’t happen, but it still seems a little bit horrible to laugh at the dreams of others being crushed in such a way, particularly when some participants seem fairly unstable.


5: The Lesson: Water is a more effective form of revenge than, say, a fist to the face.

Learned From: Several contestants who we barely learn the name of.

It is indicative of the mental instability of X Factor contestants that the way they want to inflict revenge on the judges for not putting them through is to throw the judges’ water on them. Like this woman attempted to:

I was under the impression that having your dreams crushed in front of a national television audience, in a prime time slot on a Saturday night (and lets not forget youtube!) would probably warrant a little more than a mild inconveniencing, and in a worst case scenario, a dry cleaning bill.
I’m not saying it has to be a full on Kill Bill rip-roaring tale of revenge (although I’m all for that), but surely someone could at least threaten to kill Simon Cowell’s dog. and possibly follow through with it.

Unless they were expecting this to happen:

6: The Lesson: The record buying populace in the UK are idiots

Learned From: The last 4 year’s Christmas number ones

I shall forewarn you, this is the most depressing point on the list (which takes some doing). The fact is that people are largely aware of how exploitative the X Factor and similar shows are. They are aware of the fact that none of the acts apparently have any songwriting talent of their own and solely depend on covers in order to win over an audience who couldn’t possibly take hearing an original song. They are aware of how shamelessly manipulative the programme is. They are aware that phoning in and voting fuels Simon Cowell’s jet, in addition to his ego.
And yet, week in, week out they watch and they vote. And then, after buying their favourite star (or at least the star most favourably portrayed in the final edit) to pole position in the final, they go out and buy the single when its released at Christmas.
And then, having spent all this money and time on this person, they apparently completely forget about them- possibly passing comment when the follow up single reaches number 22 in the charts and little more- before getting hyped up come August the next year (or sooner it Britain’s Got Talent Is On). And it has happened. For the last 4 years. The last song to top the charts at Christmas that wasn’t performed by an X Factor contestant was Band Aid 20’s “Do they know its Christmas”.
Last Christmas, someone took a stand against this trend and attempted to get Jeff Buckley’s (far superior) version of Hallelujah to number one, instead of Alexandra Burke’s version (incidentally, both are covers of Leonard Cohen’s original). Unfortunately the idiots rallied and ensured that Burke’s version became the fastest selling single ever released by a woman in the UK. Meanwhile, Buckley’s came second, with 80,000 sales. Some 496,000 sales behind Burke’s.

6 Lessons learned from tv and films featuring Bromance

This week I had an interview and completed guitar hero world tour on bass (on expert). Other highlights included me watching “Pineapple Express” and “I Love You, Man”. I think its safe to assume my life has hit a rut.

Anyway, these films are both swathed in a healthy amount of ‘bromance’, and much like the piece I did a few weeks ago about romantic comedies, I think there are lessons to be learned from these films about the nature of true male friendship. Because this post would be very short if I didn’t.

1: The Lesson: Wives and girlfriends don’t matter.

Learned from: Scrubs, Flight of the Conchords

As Confucius once wisely articulated “Bro’s before Hoes”. Ok, perhaps not Confucius and perhaps not even one of the lesser philosophers, such as Jagger or Lennon.

Nonetheless, the saying seems to have been around for an eternity, uttered from friend to friend in bars, usually close to closing time. The essence of this phrase is that a bro will always place the needs of his fellow bro above the needs of his hoe (or is that perhaps ho?). This means opting for a night out with your bros rather than spending the night in playing Monopoly or whatever people in a committed relationship do.

It almost feels like cheating to include Scrubs in this list; the bromance between Turk and JD is one of the most enduring and well-known bromances in the world of tv and film. Its duration and the ups and downs experienced within it allows it to fit into almost all of the points on this list. Still, despite Turk and Carla being engaged and later married, and later still, with kids (Scrubs went on a long time), Turk and JD nearly always made time for each other.

Some films don’t even bother with girlfriends- Pineapple Express removed the girlfriend from the picture fairly quickly to enable the remainder of the film to be a celebration of the burgeoning bromance between a man and his dealer.

2: The Lesson: Wives and girlfriends do matter.

Learned from: I Love You, Man (spoiler alert!), You, Me and Dupree (or many other films featuring Owen

Wilson), Scrubs.

Watching I Love You, Man, the other night, I noticed some striking resemblances between the general arc of the plot and plots from romantic comedies. Only with 2 blokes. And less kissing. Slightly.

Obviously this was the intention of the writers, and it was well executed. I laughed a lot when they even incorporated the stereotypical ‘dating’ phase of a rom-com. The only noticeable difference in the catalyst which resulted in the reuniting of the happy couple (of bros) was the girlfriend.

Typically in romantic comedies it is an epiphany triggered by seeing a falling blossom land on a perfectly still lake whilst walking a dog through a park, or some previously unmentioned daddy issues (thank you very much Made of Honour), which causes the couple (actual couple this time) to get back together.

In brom-coms (yeah I’m coining it), if they fall out- and the typical trajectory of the plot suggests that this is likely to happen, it’s typically the girlfriend or wife who sees how sad her spouse is without his brethren, and gets them to start talking again (usually to ask him to be the best man at their wedding or something).

3: The Lesson: Three-ways (or more) are ok.

Learned from: How I Met Your Mother, The Hangover

Another notable difference between Bromance and regular Romance is the fact that with the former, it’s perfectly legitimate to have more than two bro’s. Whereas a archetypal love triangle in a film or tv series is always going to leave someone crying at the end (be it one of the actors, or, if a Hollywood producer allows them to indulge in polygamy, a large part of middle America), its not the same with bromances.

I would like to use friends as an example, but Ross (the one I probably associate with the most due to knowing the difference between a Therapod and a Sauropod without checking wikipedia) always seemed on the outside of the bromance between Joey and Chandler.

However, the (in my opinion far superior) sit-com How I Met Your Mother, the three central male characters are all really close, and regularly go off on adventures as a group or even just two of them. There are debates regarding who is who’s best friend, but these are often short lived. Go and watch it if you don’t understand what I mean.

4: The Lesson: Bromances always have a sweet indie rock soundtrack.

Learned from: Scrubs, How I Met Your Mother, I Love You, Man, House

A smaller point here, traditional romantic comedies often seem to have a specific kind of soundtrack. This usually contains a mixture of upbeat contemporary pop music (Cliché ridden Bridget Jone’s Diary features Gabrielle’s “Out Of Reach”), and a lot of soul music (Aretha’s “Respect”) and a few 80s standards (The Weather Girl’s “It’s Raining Men”- although in Bridget Jone’s Diary it is the Geri Halliwell version, satisfying both the first category and this one).

Bromances on the other hand typically have a far cooler soundtrack, consisting mostly of indie music. I Love You, Man features Vampire Weekend amongst others. Scrubs and How I Met Your Mother have a whole host of various indie bands throughout their 12 collective seasons, and The Hangover features a load of indie guitar bands I haven’t heard of. And also Phil Collins.

Music in bromances isn’t simply limited to the soundtrack though…

5: The Lesson: Bromance automatically leads to prolific bands, or at least an abundance of impromptu songs.

Learned from: Flight of the Conchords, The Mighty Boosh, I Love You, Man, Scrubs

This is one which I think has certainly applied to me in the real world, I play guitar, and have gigged with all of my best male friends. We have even formed bands that have lasted three or four years (a very long time as far as secondary school is concerned). Whilst in my first year at uni there was even one dynamic pairing that wrote an entire album (still unreleased) based around a housemate’s voracious sexual appetite. Towards rabbits.

I guess it’s quite an obvious outcome for men who are into music to the degree where they play instruments to be friends with other men who play instruments, so the next progression is likely to be jams, and perhaps even bands.

And it seems a staple part of the bromance diet to portray struggling musicians, Flight of the Conchords and The Mighty Boosh both show the ups and downs of being in an unsuccessful band (only watched by millions of people on television). The Mighty Boosh’s ‘crimping’ and a lot of the songs performed by Flight of the Conchords are good examples of impromptu songsmithery (only, you know, pre-written).

Possibly the greatest number of impromptu songs comes from Scrubs, despite the fact that neither Turk or JD play instruments with any regularity (not onscreen at any rate- there is a guitar in their apartment), there are still plenty of songs which they perform together, including the seminal song about guy love entitled, erm, “Guy Love”.

Clearly guy love can even overcome a lack of instrumentation and any semblance of writer’s block during spontaneous songs. But not Yoko Ono.

However…

6: The Lesson: Guy love conquers all. Including bullets, explosions, smoke inhalation, zombification, blood loss and much, much more bullets.

Learned from: Pineapple Express (watch for spoilers again), Shaun of the Dead (and more spoilers)

Shaun of the Dead has everything that anyone could ever want from a bromance film. It has suspicions of more than just bromance- “He’s not my boyfriend”- it has the protagonist having problems splitting his time between girlfriend and not-boyfriend. It even has the eventual zombification of one of the bros.

However, despite this, Shaun still keeps the zombified Ed in his shed and by the end of the film they were still playing Timesplitters 2 (and yes I did recognise it from the brief glimpses onscreen).

So what about the far more realistic plot of Pineapple Express, where a couple of stoners survive frequent attempts made by drug-ring bosses to kill them, and manage to escape with their lives. Ok, marginally more realistic.

Anyway, in the action packed ending of the film, in which a new bro joins the pre-existing bros, he is riddled with bullets (around 7 according to the film), whilst another had his ear shot off. Despite these impediments, they shared a meal before going to the hospital.

Perhaps this is why they don’t want to legalise pot. It turns you into a bullet absorbing superhuman.

6 Lessons learned from a recent spate of alcohol fuelled nights out (or a needlessly wordy recounting of last weekend)

So, after managing three posts in as many weeks, I have gone silent for a couple of weeks, due mainly to being quite busy. And lazy. This (the busy part) included visiting relatives, and then (with the intonation differently placed to imply me going to them) visiting relatives. Then, after going out for the first time in my now-native city of Peterborough last Friday, I went to Norwich on the Saturday, leaving on the Tuesday. Busy times indeed.
During this time I took in a party, a pub quiz and a rather long and enjoyable night clubbing. Whilst partaking in these activities I thought about the nature of alcohol and how awesome and frightful it is.
Or, more accurately, I thought about it when I got home fatigued and slowly sobering up, seeing and fearing the hangover that was looming- like catching sight of a prospective murderer’s feet poking out from beneath a set of curtains.
Actually, that is an oddly appropriate metaphor- anticipating looming violence, considering the first point. So I’ll get on with it. 6 Lessons learned from a recent spate of alcohol fuelled nights out…


1: The Lesson: Intoxicated people are immensely difficult to reason with

If you’ve ever tried to usher some thoroughly inebriated friends into a cab home, or been the most sober or, failing that, most socially responsible person partaking in a pub crawl you may appreciate this.
However, I don’t just mean that drunk people are hard to reason with when it comes to shepherding them around, I mean the people who get angry and begin desperately seeking a fight.
Yes, in a move that made no attempt to dispel my feelings that Peterborough is an awful, awful place compared to Norwich, someone made a desperate attempt to start a fight with me this weekend. For having a conversation with the DJ’s 28-year-old girlfriend.
Now while I admire the fact that the friend of the DJ was so adamant in protecting the integrity of the DJ’s girlfriend, I turned 21 this year, and I’m pretty certain that 28 year olds aren’t the typical demographic of a 21 year old, and I’m even more certain that the average 21 year old’s topic of choice whilst attempting to woo a woman is talk of said woman’s children and what goes on at christenings.
These were points I made at least three times, along with a smattering of complaints that the art of conversation had been bastardised by people using awful chat-up lines (which probably only hindered my case) whilst he was imploring me to go outside so that I could fight with him. Suffice to say, I spent 5 minutes declining his invitation before one of his friends thankfully stepped in, made apologies on his behalf, and took me to the bar and bought me a drink, making it the best fight I’ve not got into.


2: The Lesson: I am utterly useless at chatting women up

Whilst on the subject of chatting women up, I feel I should share with you the greatest thing anyone has ever drunkenly said to a woman in the history of clubbing (probably). I like to think that I have the capability of turning a phrase (I probably wouldn’t bother with this rather self-indulgent blog were it not for that fact), but it typically fails in a hilarious manner when it comes to talking to women in a bar or club, it is car-crash conversation, much like Hugh Grant, only without the charm. Anyway, I had just purchased a drink at the bar and turned to see a lady behind me wearing a nice dress. I figured I should tell her, only it came out like this:

“That is a very nice dress, I don’t mean in a pervy sort of “I’m using it as an excuse to look at your breasts” kind of way, but in an “it is actually very pretty” sort of way. And the belt brings it all together very nicely. I’m not gay, by the way”.

Although from this point, we somehow struck up a reasonably long conversation about universities and life after it in general, so I guess it can’t have been that bad, although her friend informed me that she had a boyfriend sometime later in the evening, so nothing came of it anyway.
And I feel that I should stress at this point that the women mentioned in these first two points are not the same.


3: The Lesson: The differences between parties at university and parties after university.

So with Friday evening’s events out of the way I moved onto the far more pleasant climes of Norwich to go to a party of the friend of a friend. This was the first house party I had been to since graduating from university, and I had no idea what to expect. With my head still reeling a little from the previous evenings proceedings, I was hoping it wouldn’t be too much.
I knew as soon as I entered that it would be nothing like the house parties I was used to, the hosts of the party have both been out of university for a couple of years, so have had an opportunity to establish themselves with jobs and recreational activities which don’t revolve around drinking.
There were large canvas prints on the walls of photos taken by the male host, there was a 42-inch LG television carefully placed on a smoked glass tv stand, along with HD DVD players and sundry other new and expensive high tech items. There may even have been a vase on the mantelpiece.
Our group was the first to arrive, so it was relatively quiet when we got there, with my friend catching up with the host and other early comers whilst I attempted to hold my head together for the coming onslaught I was anticipating. Eventually the alcohol started flowing more liberally- from bottles that had been left unattended in the kitchen rather than from a bottle kept by on one’s person at all times to prevent alcohol theft- and rather than partake in one of the myriad of drinking games we’d picked up as students, we merely discussed the merits of some drinking games over others. Then we talked about god.


4: The Lesson: Drunk people- particularly atheists- are pack animals

Drunken philosophical arguments are a large part of student parties, and it usually involves making the same points over and over again with no-one willing to back down over their firmly held views that there is/isn’t a god. They also seem to insist that he accepts, or even condones the fact that they are drinking.
This party was no different; the group involved around 6 atheists (sporadically dropping in and out of the conversation) and an agnostic. Perhaps it was the blunt way in which he argued his point, or the fact that he was the only person willing to entertain the notion that there was a god, but everyone rounded on him like a pack of hungry dogs, spouting sound bytes of Richard Dawkins (or in my case, Tim Minchin). By this point in the night, everyone was defying my expectations and getting rather drunk; although it was hidden better- no one had passed out or thrown a mattress out of a second storey window by the time that we left.


5: The Lesson: Alco pops are acceptable to drink. Even if you’re not a 15 year old chav.

By the time Monday rolled around I was (I’d like to think) understandably quite tired. Over the previous 3 nights I had amassed a total of 14 hours of sleep, although admittedly it was the deep sleep that comes with alcohol.
Tom, my friend who was kind enough to allow me to use his couch hadn’t had much more, and our other fellow conspirator in dancing, Matty, had managed no sleep the night before in order to complete an essay- instead snatching a couple of hours on the train from Derby to Norwich.
Nonetheless, the three of us- along with Tom’s girlfriend Rachel- started drinking and eventually went to the club. I ordered a VS, a vodka-based drink that is beloved of underage chavs for its cheapness, alcoholic content and general taste- a hideous amount of sugar covers any taste of alcohol. In the words of one of my friends from the first year of uni, although numerous people have claimed the phrase since “you’re more likely to get diabetes then get drunk off that”. All in all I found it quite refreshing.
After an hour or so our group, with the exception of me (riding on a sugar high) began to falter, Rachel left- although in fairness she did have work the next morning- and Tom and Matty sat in a corner, exhausted by the heat of the place. So I suggested that they joined me on my VS cloud. We stood under an air conditioner for the rest of the night and danced the remainder away, ordering further sugar hits from time to time. Then went onto another club.
Due to the wonderful and surprisingly sustaining effects of it, I’m considering rebottling and rebranding VS as an energy drink for the athlete who doesn’t really care too much about his performance or the welfare of his liver. Or teeth.


6: The Lesson: Hangover cures. Sort of.

So inevitably, after a brilliant night out, there will almost certainly be a hangover. There are things we can attempt to do in order to prevent them, but its merely damage limitation when you attempt to do it after a certain point (usually around the point at which I begin drinking spirits it is too late). Here are 6 things (of course) I have found a modicum of success with in the past:

1) Staying up: There are few things worse than going to bed with the spins. If I get to the stage where I can’t even shut my eyes without feeling giddy, then I will probably stay up and at least see them away. Or read a book, and then have to reread it the next day, as I couldn’t remember anything that I’d read the previous night.

2) Gravy, on anything: Stemming from student days, when I would often stagger home to find the cupboard bare save for some gravy and a loaf of bread. So I combined the ingredients- the thicker the gravy, the better- into something relatively edible. Although on one occasion I spent an hour cooking bangers and mash on which to put gravy, which was possibly one of the greatest meals I ever cooked at uni.

3) Dr Pepper: The ‘cures’ I’ve listed so far have been preventative measures that I have had to enact the night before, but this is something I’ve typically done on the morning- or more likely afternoon- of the hangover. Somehow, in the typical post-club kebab or chips run, I always remember to pick up a can of Dr Pepper, which despite intolerable thirst, I manage to save for the morning after. There have been many occasions I’ve quietly thanked my drunken self for not only picking up a Dr Pepper the previous night, but also having the foresight to put it in the fridge.

4) Bacon: Bacon is scientifically proven to help people get over hangover cures. I’m not going to go into details, but its something to do with amino acids or something. Also it smells nice. Here is the article.

5) Exercise: This is something that many of my friends have disagreed with me on in the past. It comes from Saturday morning badminton sessions at uni, but I would usually find that on the occasions I successfully got up, braving the risk of unbridled sunshine outside, and went to badminton, after the initial shock of attempting to run about whilst still a little drunk, by the end of the session I had typically seen off the hangover.

6) Hair of the dog: I only employ this if I see myself going out again the night after the morning after the night before, but it does tend to work. My record is 6 consecutive highly inebriated- and cumulatively speaking, highly expensive- nights out, and I’m fairly certain I’m not going to do it again.

Still, these are things that apply to me, and I imagine that they would be met with disbelief and disgust. Usually a combination of them works quite well.