Setting the Record Straight

If there is to be a theme for Project Pump, it will be moaning. As an Englishman, I feel compelled to moan about everything. Even if I have nothing to moan about, I can take solace in the fact that I can moan about having nothing to moan about. A good rant can be fun. Whether it is a political concern, or something more trivial, such as the correct pronunciation of the word 'scone' (which for all you idiots out there, is most certainly not the pronunciation that rhymes with 'gone').

But today I come to you with a rant not about people's ignorance of baked goods, but of something that is altogether more important to me. Years ago, many would associate me with an immense appreciation of a certain single-glove-wearing eighties icon. Still to this day, people that I haven't seen for years ask me if I still like Michael Jackson.

Now let me get this straight, the answer to that question is not 'no'. I still listen to his music regularly. MJ has made some great tracks over the years, and has some truly classic albums. But for me, I fail to see him as an artist anymore.

He is like the old uncle that you only see at weddings. Fairly pleasant on face value (believe me, there's no pun intended there), but you do not see him often enough, so there's always the suspicion of something sinister underneath the surface.

I feel the need to address this now, before I go any further. When the trials went on, I believed Michael Jackson was innocent. I still to this day feel that in that particular case, Michael Jackson was the victim. Whether or not MJ possesses sexual desires towards young boys remains to be seen. There is obviously something not right going on there, but we can never really know his intentions. But I am outright dismissing this as the reason for me losing my interest in MJ. I will not be talking about paedophilia any more, you'll be glad to read. Unless of course you're Gary Glitter in which case I'm wondering how you ever stumbled across this.

I also feel the need to disregard any thoughts concerning his appearance. Vitiligo or just plain paranoid, I am not concerned with his appearance. Okay, I am, because he looks like the offspring of Teri Hatcher and Jack Skellington. But this blog is not concerned with that.

I'm scrutinizing Michael Jackson as though he'd never been to court, and possessed a lovely head full of soul-glo. The trouble with MJ is that he is just a manufactured pop puppet, in exactly the same way that Justin Timberlake and Chris Brown are today. The only difference is, he came from an era where it was good to be different and (pun intended here) Dangerous.

Michael wrote some of his own material, just as Timberlake does today. But had today's 'producers first' culture existed back then, maybe his tracks would have been listed as Quincy Jones ft. Michael Jackson. It's just a good job that the legendary Mr Jones was not as nauseatingly obnoxious and overbearing as Timbaland is today. But my intense hatred for that man will have to wait for another day.

There's nothing wrong with being manufactured, to be perfectly honest. If you're talented, it doesn't really matter, in fact, it just helps your career. So that cannot be the reason that I have lost my passion for Michael Jackson.

It may lie in the fact that if he is to be considered an 'artist', Michael Jackson is very lazy. An album every four or five years is remotely acceptable. But we have not heard a peep from him since 2001. What's more, we have had greatest hits after greatest hits compilations thrown at us, just to keep the cash coming in. In 1995, he released HIStory, which as well as a disc of new tracks, contained a good overview of his hits. Since that he has released one album of new material, the inconsistent Invincible in 2001, and half an album in the remix CD of Blood On The Dance Floor in 1997. So how does that merit Number Ones, The Essential Michael Jackson, a four disc Ultimate Collection and the second special edition release of Thriller? Personally, I thought HIStory would suffice for someone who has not really had any new material of note. I refuse to buy Thriller 25, partly because it's ruined by money whoring remixes by today's wave hoggers, and partly because Thriller 26 will be out next year. Probably. I say probably, because we will not have that new album he keeps promising us. Ever. And if we do, it will be so corrupted by trying to include as many producers (stay away Timbaland!), shit guest vocalists, and out-of-place faux shit-hoppers; that I probably will not buy it anyway. He's an artist now comfortably living in the past.

Speaking of where he's living, he has now moved to a village near Barnstaple. Sweet Jesus and the Seven Dwarves! Why Barnstaple of all places? Maybe I should challenge him to a Devon Dance Off. Keep your eyes peeled on Youtube for that one.

His life is no longer about music, it is just a circus. I can try to ignore all that the press label him with, but there is no music to turn to. He doesn't even perform anymore. For that, I no longer have time for him, because in my mind he is finished. In the eighties and nineties, he was an unstoppable record selling machine. But now that there is no record company to promote him, and no place for his music in today's pop industry, he is muted as a talent. It is not as though he has the variety of talent to do a jazz album, or an acoustic album to regain his favour with critics. Other than his crazy-ass hardcore fans, who think he is some kind of deity, and who should stay away from other members of society at all times; people have moved on. Ultimately, without record sales, he is nothing. Eventually people will get tired after 45 versions of the same CD, and he will possibly put out something new. Unfortunately by then, no one will care.

That is why I have lost my passion for The King of Pop. The King is dead.

Peach and pumps

Welcome to The Pump Dome!

This is Project Pump. My name is Golden Pump. Well, actually, it's not, it's Daniel James Whitell. But that's not the most exciting name, so I like to go by the name of Golden E. Pump. Not that anyone actually calls me that apart from myself, of course.

Project Pump comes about from extreme boredom. I could claim to be an exciting person, but the reality is more disappointing that way. I am a writer who likes to write about himself, and is in desperate need of a hobby. So, I racked my brain for hours, and then it hit me like Ray Charles and a lampost. Maybe I could write about myself for a hobby! And other things that are just as unappealing and trivial!

Once I had finished the meticulous planning for this huge project, I then decided it was time to embark upon a journey. Waving goodbye to inactivity and tedious dullness; I stand before the road with nothing but a keyboard.

As I type, my fingers tremble with responsibility. I have but one reader (myself), and am plagued by the sudden realisation that maybe my writings will not even be enough to quench even a single thirst for reading about nothing. But fear not, young Pump, for there is already enough meaninglessness on this interactive dual-carriageway that surely yours cannot be singled out for being the most unfathomably boring blog in the universe!

So go and type, my Golden little friend. Type as though you were on a television sitcom, and you were randomly pressing keys so as to give the illusion of typing! Type as though you were a monkey, one of an infinite number, and enslaved in order to be sat at a typewriter amongst your endless fellow captives, and were doomed to type constantly until the complete works of Billy Shakespeare were extracted from your raw, weary fingertips.

It is with the image of the latter that Project Pump begins. For surely if I press enough keys, and follow enough tangents, then I'll end up with a masterpiece?

I think that's what Tarantino thought when he made Deathproof.

"Sure, I'll make my characters dull and one-dimensional. But there will be enough of them, and they will say so many inconsequential things, that if I maintain this balance for long enough, I'll end up with a new Pulp Fiction."

Oh Quentin, how I baulked at the very notion. Seriously, over the course of a couple of hours you turned Kurt Russell from a badass into someone who resembles a very good friend of mine when drunk. Whinging and moaning, but unable to stay away from girls. Albeit not because he wants to maim them with a stunt car. And what it the blue fudge was that ending about?

I would normally place a spoiler alert here. But I'm not going to, because the ending to this movie is not an ending. It's a stilettoed kick in the face. Literally. Bah, girl power wins, and Mr Tarantino gets unduly praised for crapping in the name of 'art'.

As one may gather from the previous sentence I am not a fan of girl power. This may or may not make me a misogynist. Don't get me wrong, I love strong females. Just so long as they don't hurt me. What I don't like to see is unnecessary feminism.

"Unnecessary feminism?!" I hear Emily Pankhurst cry with disgust from underneath some hooves. "Fie and poppycock!"

Women's rights. Yes. Strong badass female characters. Yes. Normal women being made into superheroes in films, whilst all their male counterparts die. No. It all stems from the rule of thumb in horror movies, that women cannot die if they are on screen for x amount of time. Michael Myers should have made Jamie Lee Curtis' (surprisingly attractive in a boyish way: see True Lies) ass into a belt in the first Halloween. Just how Kurt 'Snake Plissken' Russell should have turned these annoying wenches into chow mein at the end of Deathproof. Call it retribution all you like, but the whole male audience (read: whole audience) wanted to see them bitches get dead. Way to lose your key demographic to 'girl power'.

What if Tarantino had done this in other films? Like if in Reservoir Dogs, Mr Blonde had been played by Susan Sarandon, and instead of Michael Madsen's macabre dance of mutilation to the sounds of Stealers Wheel's 'Stuck in the Middle With You', we got Sarandon trying to look threatening, whilst listening to The Eurythmics & Aretha Franklin's 'Sister's Are Doing it For Themselves'. Girl power is good when used in the correct context. Just as rocket launchers and miniguns do not belong in Sex and the City, girl power does not belong in an action thriller. Ever.

And so ends the first ever random tangent of Project Pump. And with it, the post itself. The journey has begun, and we've learnt much already. Namely, Deathproof sucks, and so does needlessly indulgent feminism. Don't hate me, girls. More than you already do, anyway.

Peach and pumps!