Nick's Blog
Bloggy Conn Part 4
18/5/2008 @ 12:51
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So into the 2nd verse and Bobby sings “when I’m on the hustle, I always play the punk. I don’t have to move a muscle as I’m a little drunk”. Wait a minute, is he singing about what it’s like to be a rent boy? TMI! And he does a little drunken stagger and komedy drunk look to underline this point and to illustrate the tragedy of young men who sell their body to The Man! Bad Man! Naughty Man! What would Mrs. Man say? Bobby drops to the floor and the camera has difficulty finding him again. Clue: He’s on the floor guys. Point down. Bobby gets back up and the green letters telling us we’re watching BOBBY CONN reappear. WE...KNOW.
Stompy has been doing her metronomic stomps throughout and showing everyone else there that she’s the boss and Queen of the dance floor. But wait! There’s a challenger to her crown! I’m going to call him Vinnie because he looks like a loanshark hiding from the cops on Chic-A-Go-Go. His dancing is more elaborate than Stompy’s with a little number called the “punched in the gut” dance. Stompy’s seen him and her big toothy smile vanishes as she realises that she’s being usurped. So what does she do? SHE STOMPS EVEN MORE AND BIGGER. Hey, little black girl in green...get out of there! Run for your life! So on the right hand side of the screen, Vinnie’s doing his shuffling and James Brown impressing and on the left we have Big Stomping Girl and her jackbooted homage to German stormtroopers. And doesn’t she look grimly determined to stomp everyone into the ground?
Bobby drops down again but this time the camera crew have wised up to his schtick and manage to keep him in frame. Bobby’s now pleading, “Lord knows I’ve tried”, as if fellating millionaires is akin to a crack habit. Maybe there’s a “blow jobs anonymous” group he could join? Then he mutters something about the children, yes, think of those kids standing behind you, before grovelling to the dancers. Oh get up man, this is demeaning! Maybe if you spend less time on your knees and more time standing up then you wouldn’t have this need to fellate Ivy Leaguers so much. He compounds the embarrassement even more by singing way too falsetto and now I’m thinking that his last customer bit down a bit too hard. A quick shot of the dancers shows that Red Girl is smiling even more at him, almost laughing. Cruel Red Girl, mocking his pain. If only she knew just how sensitive it is for us guys down there. Stompy at least gives him a look of concern, although whether it’s out of compassion or just plain pity is hard to tell. In the background, Big Black Guy’s just given up and is virtually motionless.
Then Bobby gets up and is looking very serious now. You see, the man don’t love his brother and we must all love each other. Bobby turns to his “people” as if to get confirmation of this but they’re all “whatever, Bobby” with Stompy’s rivalry with Vinnie hotting up and Red Girl on the verge of cackling maniacally. Stompy nods in agreement that they all love each other and then she starts pumping her fist. What’s she implying there? That Bobby perhaps conducts the solo symphony? That he plays the pink oboe? Indulges in a spot of Onanism? Cavorting with Madame Palm and her five lovely daughters?
Anyway, an impassioned Bobby rises up and starts screaming his plan to stop The Man. “We’re going to show that Man with actions now” and that action....yes, bite it off. I do hope he’s speaking metaphorically here. He becomes hysterical at this point and I wonder if taking on corporate America, he’s going to biting off more than he can chew. Sorry. So he launches back into the chorus but this time he accidentally says the original line “never get ahead giving head to the man” which he then apologises for saying in the next line. And if anyone is still missing it, the big green “BOBBY CONN” caption comes up....again. Yes, I will now never forget the name of Bobby Conn thanks to that.
Stompy is still jerking Bobby off in her mind but Vinnie has counteracted this with a dance like a Penguin. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. First prize, being part of the chorus line for the Fatboy Slim “Praise You” video. Stompy’s got nothing left in her arsenal...seriously, she’s barely got enough flesh on her for starters. Then the music stops and Bobby passionately sings the last line...which he manages to get spectacularly wrong: “You’ll never get ahead giving...saying...yes to The Man”. Giving yes to the Man? “Mr. Gates, I recommend starting with ‘Going For The One’ or ‘Close To The Edge’...here are some CDs”. On the last note, Bobby is now singing to any dogs in earshot. Come back Mariah Carey, all is forgiven. Then he starts babbling away “well tried, children...listen to me now...don’t....” and he just peters out there. Nooooooooooooooooo! Now we’ll never know!
Random Girlie shuffles back in and declares it an astonishing performance. That’s one word for it. “Shit”, “Crap”, “diabolical” are other words that spring to mind. Bobby clutches his heart and starts to pant heavily...now THAT would have been the best video ever; sing a song and then die at the end! Random Girlie looks concerned but Bobby assures her he’s just out of breath from all the indifferent bopping, shuffling, crouching and lip synching he’s had to do in the last 3 minutes. Maybe the Beatles’ wig has made him all hot and sweaty. Random Girlie, to compound the stupidity she’s already shown on this show, asks Bobby why this was a special version of the song. “Gee, I don’t know, maybe it’s because the original was all about giving rich guys blow jobs?” Bobby, to his credit, politely side steps this by saying that version was more “adult”. But she then won’t quit and asks “how’s that?” Do we have to spell it out? B-L-O-W J-O-B. Maybe she’s never heard of them. Actually, that would make sense. Again, Bobby politely says “that’s not really important” and the camera crew all do that innuendo laden laugh you hear on live kids TV whenever someone says something a bit naughty. Then he gushes on about the political aspect of the song (whatever that is) and Girlie doesn’t seem to know when to hold the microphone to him or to her. Tip: Give it to the person talking is a good starting point. Then Bobby says it’s important to realise that The Man wants to take stuff from us and we don’t have to give it to him. Well, I’m sold and I can safely say that I will never, ever, give a blowjob to any man wearing a suit. Now give me my $20. Random Girlie says that message has been received loud and clear today. Well, loud at least.
And that’s it. Bobby’s still singing and recording and presumably free spending his money. Maybe he’s responsible for the sub prime mortgage fiasco? Chic-A-Go-Go is still on the air and I like to think that somewhere out in the world, Stompy is still stomping on stuff.
Bloggy Conn Part 3
18/5/2008 @ 12:51
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Starting on the far left of the screen we have Little Miss Get Me Off This Show. She’s in red like Bobby and she tends to dance her way off screen, only to have the floor manager shove her back into shot.
Next to her we have a true star; Miss Stompy. She’s a tall, skinny fair haired girl who’s all bone and sinew, and like Random Presenter Girlie, she’s appears to be photophobic with the merest hint of sunlight in danger of frying her to a crisp. In light of her skinniness and albino tendencies, she’s decided to wear a short sleeveless frock and black combat boots which shows off her bony knees just before she crushes the toes of the poor saps standing next to her. Stompy loves to stomp in big extravagant foot movements and she is determined to be the big star of this number with her stamping, hand waving and pearly white smile. Dammit, I can’t decide if she’s attractive or not!
Then, we have proof that white guys have no rhythm. Check Shirt is a guy in his 30s who dances like your dad does at a wedding. He’s mastered that dancing style called “The Indifferent Bop” but he’s doing it totally out of sync with the beat. Like your dad.
Little Black Girl is wearing a green number, ideal for parties, going out and making yourself look like a dick on TV. She’s surrounded by a load of much taller people and dances in an dodging way to stay alive before Stompy crushes her with a jackboot.
Miss Blue is perhaps the “looker” of the group, if Stompy doesn’t float your boat. She’s a redhead who does that thing a lot of red headed girls do; dress mostly in blue. She’s gone the whole hog with a blue minidress, blue tights and blue shoes.
Next along, as if to provide some colour balance with Miss Blue, we have Miss Red. She’s all in Red (or salmon pink) from top to toe and has a prepetual blissed out smile on her face throughout the whole song. She’s having the most fun here, more than Bobby, and her message to the world is “it’s good to be Gamma because Gamma is good”.
Miss Indifferent is just wearing a shirt and jeans and shuffles in an anonymous way. Nothing more to say about her really.
Next along is The Dork. He’s got a pseudo teddy boy quiff and Buddy Holly glasses and has obviously been dragged from running tech support to even up the gender balance of this clip.
Last for this bit, but by no means least as there will be MORE Bobby Conn dancers in shot later on, is Big Black Guy who wears a white T Shirt and looks like he really doesn’t want to be there.
Big ugly green letters appear on the screen tellilng us that we’re watching Bobby Conn. Thanks, I would never have guessed after the introduction. Bobby starts singing in a shrill voice that suggests that a new golden age of Castrato might be on the way back. Bobby does his own stomping dance but he’s no match for Stompy behind him so he adds the maniacal stare into the lens to boost his appeal and frighten the kids back home. The ugly green letters are still up for the incredibly slow readers and to say they clash with Bobby’s track suit (not to mention Stompy, Miss Blue and Miss Red) would be an understatement.
Then comes the chorus, a really catchy bit where Bobby sings “you’ll never get ahead no no saying yes to the man”. See, it does work better with that lyric change, Bobby. Everyone behind him is way out of time with their dancing, but one or two of them seem to be having fun...either that or the ritalin is wearing off. We cut to a slightly different angle and wait....two more Bobby Conn Dancers! One is Zebra Skirt woman, who is a bit older and bears a resemblance to former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s wife, Cherie. Poor woman. Next to her is Dad Dancer, a man resembling Ned Flanders grooving and holding his baby at the same time. Maybe he’s trying to burp her? I know that dancing out of time and singing “you’ll never get ahead” to my little one is a sure fire way of getting him to throw up.
Bloggy Conn Part 2
18/5/2008 @ 12:50
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The show is so cheap, a techie in the corner has to provide his own electronic test signal before we cut to Random Presenter. She’s obviously no friend to sunlight by her very pasty white skin and she’s got a droopy look in her eyes, as if existing is too much effort. She strikes me as the kind of girl who snorts when she laughs and has an awkward running style with arms and legs flailing as well, but I know I shouldn’t judge her by appearances....let’s see how she does with talking, shall we?
We’re told that it’s time for one of Chicago’s hottest young stars...she means Bobby Conn by the way, and at this stage I have no reason to doubt that he is what she says. She also tells us that he’s about to perform a “special” version of his song, Never Get Ahead. I think she means “very special” because the story behind this performance is that Conn’s original lyrics to Never Get Ahead go “You’ll never get ahead, ahead, oh no GIVING HEAD TO THE MAN” which, you’ll agree, is a bit out of place on a kid’s TV show, even Chic-A-Go-Go. So he’s changed it to “never get ahead saying ‘yes’ to the man” which I think scans a bit better and doesn’t give me an image of Bobby Conn felating Donald Trump in my head.
Next, Random Presenter Girlie says it’s out on tru...tru...TRUCKSTOP records. OK, she’s fluffed the line but this is cheap cable TV...just go by like you’re fighting! Like you’re fighting! So she says please welcome Mister Bobby Conn, there’s a lukewarm round of applause from the studio audience and she walks off....taking with her the show’s only microphone. She has to walk back into shot and hand it to Bobby. Smooth. Apparently Leno’s always doing that as well.
We get a close up of Bobby Conn for the first time and...oh my god, is that Mark Hamill in a Beatles’ wig, wearing blue eyeliner? So that’s what he does in between voicing the Joker and turning up to Star Wars conventions? I could start a new conspiracy theory here but no, Bobby just looks like Mark Hamill in a Beatles’ wig and wearing blue eyeliner. The music starts and Bobby tells us “listen up people...a valueable lesson in life...you only get one chance to learn it...” good job I’ve tuned in to this show right here and right now then. “...only one chance to learn who the man is...” well, after becoming a dad, I think I’M DA MAN and I know lots of other guys who do cool trick shots whilst playing pool and we call them the Man but Bobby means Mr. Man, the corporate bloodsucking leech type person. Apparently we’re to say no to The Man, even if he asks us directions to the nearest toilet. Bobby says he doesn’t ever want to see us saying yes to the man! Even if the guy is really busting to go.
If the song sounds familiar, even listenable, then it’s because a lot of it is cribbed from a Jackson 5 number. However, one man’s homage is another’s blatant rip off but at least it makes the next 4 minutes just about bearable from a audio point of view. We go to a wide shot and get a look at the satorial elegance on display. Now I happen to think the 1990s was a great looking decade in terms of style and to back that point up I refer you all to the early seasons of “Friends”, the French film “L’Appartement” and the whole Cool Brittania thing but this video gives us the reject end of things. For starters, Bobby is wearing a red satin tracksuit with a pink cravat, which sets his Beatles wig off nicely. But then we get “The Bobby Conn Dancers” in the background, AKA the Studio Audience, AKA some random people who have been kidnapped off the street.
A word about these guys. Whilst Bobby is meant to be the main “star” of the video, it’s these background dancers who steal the scene every time. They’re like a freaky version of the original Magnificent Seven, trying to steal from Yul Brynner in every shot. I wonder which one is the knife expert? So let’s meet them...
Bloggy Conn
18/5/2008 @ 12:49
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Here's something that I wrote for the website, The Agony Booth, which specialises in reviewing bad movies and TV. I liked it enough to copy it and put it here:
It’s not often you get a recap of a music video in here, but then few videos have either the notoriety and sheer awfulness of Bobby Conn’s “Never Get Ahead”. Once it was voted VH1s worst music video of all time, which by the time you read this will have probably have gone to some act-of-the-month, but rest assured there’s a special place in all our hearts for this one...that place marked “CONDEMNED”.
First, a bit of background information on Mr. Conn and the shooting of the video. His real name is Jeffrey Stafford, which isn’t very rock and roll, he hails from Chicago which is slightly rock and roll, his wife is called Monica Bou Bou which is very rock and roll and he developed the Continuous Cash Flow system whereby he hands his audiences a $20 bill on the instruction that they have to spend it. So, this is a man who has to PAY his audience...does that tell you anything about the man and his music yet? Ah, but he pays them so they can immediately spend it and thus send the US economy into financial meltdown and thus liberate mankind from capitalism....right before Armageddon comes. Admittedly, the US economy can handle 6 emos at a gig spending their $20 simultaneously but from small acorns...
Anyway, in 1996 he got a chance to appear on Chicago’s cult cable TV music show, Chic-A-Go-Go and now a quick word about THAT. This is a classic cable TV show in that it’s cheap as chips to make and very amateurish but over the years it’s become a cult classic...don’t ask me why. It has a weird premise; get a load of kids and hangers on to come and dance in the background whilst various indie bands play their songs. Pre-teen kids and spaced out indie bands; great combination. Who’d have thought that garishly dressed munchkins jumping up and down as if their playing a game of Simon Says at a 7th birthday party whilst an anorexic floppy haired lead singer drones about coming down from a heroin trip whilst his girlfriend dies in the corner would make such compelling viewing? It’s usually hosted by Miss Mia “older than she looks” Park; a fortysomething Korean-American woman who dresses as if it’s still 1966...hey, that kind of thing wins points with me everytime (I’m a closet Shonen Knife fan after all).
Alas, Miss Mia isn’t in this video. Instead we get a blonde girl in her early 20s who looks either bored or spaced out (it’s hard to tell which) hosting the show and let’s just say that the producers did a good thing in basing the show around Miss Mia rather than her because her presenting style owes everything to the “throw a random member of the public onto the air and see what happens” school.
Anyway, if you want to follow the action in this recap, go to
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rm9dzLxLvxc
Hello Blogger!
13/5/2008 @ 10:12
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A few years ago, Nick Jarvie and m'self were brainstorming some ideas, but not for a sketch. He had a gay work colleague and the two of them were thinking of ideas for holidays and vacations targeted especially for the gay community. They came up with the name "Away Gays" for the scheme but wanted some more ideas.
I joined in and together some ideas coalesced:
COME TO AUSTRALIA, QUEENS' LAND
was one, designed for the Sydney gay carnival (largest of its kind in the world).
TURN YOUR PINK POUNDS INTO BOTTOM DOLLARS
was a way of promoting a gay themed bureau de change.
WELCOME TO BANDIT COUNTRY
a variation on Marlboro country for travellers to San Francisco.
Any of those slogans are available for gay package tourist companies (whether fudge or not) for a reasonable fee.
Bouncing Baby Blog
06/5/2008 @ 11:39
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I have sown my seed, readers. Yes, last Tuesday 29th April little Adam Cronos Hughes entered this world. Wifey and I are overjoyed by this as he's a little beauty.
In the build up to the birth, people did wear me down quite frankly with their own horror stories of having children: "You'll never see your friends again!", "that's the end of your lives" and "as soon as you can, move to a house next door to your parents". And to these people I say thank you, thank you so much for your pessimism. It's not enough that you're swimming in quicksand, you want us to swim about in it with you.
I'm a positive kind of guy; I see things not as burdens but as challenges. I love the power of community as well so to see young parents wallowing in stories of child rearing hell instead of coming together and encouraging one another bums me out. It was worse when I was single; some people made the gap between the childless me and the fecund them VERY obvious. I can't help it if I showed some displeasure when their child vomited over my shirt, which I had to wear for the whole day and evening. I didn't shout at the baby, or show any kind of violence...I just looked less than pleased and no court in the land would have convicted me! Likewise, I can't help it if I'm kept awake all night by a screaming baby for hours and I look less than with it the next day. Look, it's simple...you don't get any sleep, you're like shit the next day. It's the law. Fortunately, little Adam likes to sleep long periods at night so we only have to feed him once between 10pm and breakfast time. It's like he knows his old man instinctively.
Anyway, after his first week in Boris' Brave New London, he's settled in nicely at home. Oh and single friends out there...I won't have him yak on you and then somehow blame you for not being pleased.
