TAKE THAT SHIT TO THE-BRITS.COM

[Ocka]

Okem said:Ocka said:Okem said:I'm tempted to play my wildcard already to avoid the early price drops and get the hyped players to gain from their rises. 50,000 players have bought Andy Carroll after his hat-trick yesterday.They kinda need to score another hat trick tho for it to make any difference since 0.1 rise won't get you any money when you sell them. I jumped on Harewood for easy ?????? but they keep his price the same. At the same time Malouda has gone up 0.2 with less transfers in. Mathematics, over my head.

I think it's about 30,000 in, before the price increases. So to go up 0.2 you'd need 60,000 odd.





At the moment it's more about, first, not loosing money on the picks you (and everyone else) made based on last seasons form, who've flopped. And second trying to pick up this seasons risers.


Last season I remembered um'ing and ar'ing about whether to bring in Dunne & Johnson, before I knew it, I couldn't afford them anymore. It's these kind of players that you really want to get on early, and not sell till they dip, or get injured.Yeah, true. I was talking more about making quick cash with cheap mediocre players who got lucky but in the end will only go up 0.1. Then again that Albrighton kid went up 0.2.





I'd like to trade Ferreira for Alex but can't since his prince went down. Or better yet, Ivanovic could get injured. And Arsenal needs to buy Schwarzer so he can make up the 16 points I've lost playing without a goalie.

 

[Okem]

So I had the Xfactor repeats on in the background whilst I was waiting for the Xbox to load up, curious to see what class of nutter will be wheeled out this year. What greeted me was quite strange, but not in the expected way.

I thought maybe my ears were deceiving me, (I had to turn the tv up, to hear more clearly over the din my newly fixed xbox now makes FUCK YOU RROD) yes there it was, the unmistakable sound of AUTOTUNE!? It can't be, I reasoned, this is a singing competition. Nope, it was. http://www.mirror.co.uk/celebs/news/2010/08/23/x-factor-fakery-storm-as-itv-admit-using-voice-changing-gadget-in-auditions-115875-22506939/

 

[Okem]

 

[Jimster]

Cowell and dem now feeding us our own faeces and we go back, like a workaholic Oliver Twist, for more.





They'll be miming next.

 

[Junior]

Ever since I got my Xbox fixed from RROD it sounds like a vacuum cleaner when it's on and a simple disc read is enough to drown out what ever exciting activity is happening on screen. Curse you Microsoft.





I would be much more up for watching the X Factor if all the judges were dubbed post production.

 

[Jimster]

Can't they just have Sherralllll jiggling about in not much for 50 minutes to some dubstep with inset shots of Cowell's face as he slowly caresses himelf into the vinegar strokes?

 

[DocMcCoy]

See, now I have defended this show in the past, on the grounds that Saturday night prime-time entertainment oughtn't to be taken too seriously, and besides it's good fun - sometimes. I don't think there's anything to be gained from bashing it because it's populist or mainstream, either, but I may soon have to concede that I've been on the wrong side of the argument here.





The girlfriend of one of my boys works on The X Factor on the production side, and she describes it as four months of nervous breakdowns every day. All kinds of nefarious shit goes on behind the scenes, apparently, and this latest "scandal" could quite easily be no more than a double-bluff designed to keep the show's media profile as high as possible.





All the same, it reminds me a bit of a couple of lines from Quiz Show; "If you look around the table and you can't tell who the sucker is, it's you", and "It's not as if we're hardened criminals here. We're in showbusiness". As a rule, people won't get upset about being conned or deceived, so long as they don't know they're being conned or deceived, or if the intent behind the con is basically benign. There are plenty of people who don't object to being manipulated by the likes of Steven Spielberg, for example. But once they realise they're being taken for mugs - or even if they only think they are - and they begin to suspect that the people pulling the strings might actually have nothing but contempt for them, then that's a different matter. You should be careful not to treat your audience like idiots, even if you think they are idiots.





Personally, the thing I used to enjoy about the show was that it seemed to operate as a meritocracy of sorts. The prettiest/pushiest/slickest didn't always prevail over the person with the best voice (generally, anyway), and I liked that. This is how you'd imagine a singing contest ought to be, but that idea's pretty much been abandoned now. I've been listening to people on phone-ins and TV talking about it this morning and it's interesting to hear how widespread the misconceptions about autotune are. One presenter estimated that it's used on around 10% of everything released. I wonder if I'd have called in and said, actually it's more like 90%, whether he'd have believed me. Punters were actually saying when they found out how widely used it was that, in future, they wouldn't be buying records by artists who relied on it as it was 'faking it', so it's gone from one extreme to another.





Funny thing is, a really good engineer can use autotune on a vocal and make it sound almost imperceptible, but now that it's no longer familiar just to studio rats, and is ladled all over modern pop of all stripes with no regard for whether or not it actually sounds any good, an audience can easily tell when they're hearing it. They don't even need to be particularly savvy.

 

[Junior]

J i m s t e r said:Can't they just have Sherralllll jiggling about in not much for 50 minutes to some dubstep with inset shots of Cowell's face as Louis slowly caresses him into the vinegar strokes?




It'd certainly be more than a few steps above what ITV currently advertise as Saturday night entertainment. I don't know though, too highbrow? Maybe throw Martin Clunes in there to narrate it as well so the mums are catered for.

 

[neil_something]

DocMcCoy said:But once they realise they're being taken for mugs - or even if they only think they are - and they begin to suspect that the people pulling the strings might actually have nothing but contempt for them, then that's a different matter. You should be careful not to treat your audience like idiots, even if you think they are idiots.




The X-Factor has displayed nothing but this kind of cynicism since it began so it's about time the audience caught on. It's nothing but an overlong sales pitch for a Christmas album with a manufactured narrative (usually of overcoming the stigma of being poor or ugly or whatever) tacked on to draw people in each week.

 

[Beatnicholas]

and the rage against the machine fiasco proves that people will deliberately undermine the "winners song" nowadays, its kinda like the narrative has changed to one of recognising what poo simon cowell is force feeding us at all times.





i'm fascinated by the motivation for the autotune thing - why are they doing that. why? doesn't make sense. unless as someone said its to generate articles and message board posts like this one speculating about why. in which case i guess it worked. but why lend the better candidates a computerised advantage, then it's no longer a singing competition.

 

[Okem]

It's obvious the show is contrived, how else do they manage pick the right nutters/stars/tragic cases to interview from the queue of millions. I don't honestly see why one more contrivance should get people any more upset.


But the way they used the autotune effect was baffling, it was just too clumsy. So, I think you're right Doc it does smell like a publicity stunt. And it worked.

 

[Okem]

Oh, and please speak more on "All kinds of nefarious shit goes on behind the scenes".

 

[DocMcCoy]

Okem said:Oh, and please speak more on "All kinds of nefarious shit goes on behind the scenes".




Well, I can't say too much, but...





1 / I'm given to understand that this isn't the first time autotune has been used on this show.





2/ You don't usually end up in the Priory after contracting malaria.





3 / It must be nice to have enough clout to keep underage sex scandals out of the Sunday papers.

 

[Okem]

Booooooo.. We want some Gene Pitney on all fours type gossip, damn it!!





Looking a Sherralllll's gaunt face it's not that hard to guess she's got some problems. (I've always assumed that 90% of the people on tv or in pop, either have, or have had, a coke habit.)

 

[Jimster]

I believe in times of darkness "Wor Cherrallll" resorts to her mum's toast and noot else.





"He's a bas-tadddd, mam."





"Aye pet. They aaaall are. Merr terst?"





"Aye mam. Plenty buttah."





Maybe she's been on the Gallagher Breakfast plan?

 

[DocMcCoy]

You love it, you slags.





1 / All three of Cowell's charges from the last series had their vocals autotuned at the audition stage, at Cowell's insistence. One might assume from this that, even at that early stage, the judges had already decided who they'd be putting through to the final... *





2/ Wor Cheryl The Nation's Sweethorrt was suffering from a serious bout of post-Cashley anorexia rather than malaria, and was in intensive care at one point before being admitted to The Priory for specialist treatment/counselling.





3 / During the last series, one of Cowell's charges took a shine to one of Wor Cheryl The Nation's Sweethorrt's charges, a younger lad who reciprocated his advances. This became a bit of a problem when one of the Sunday papers got wind of it, because a) the young lad hadn't come out to his family yet, and b) he was below the gay age of consent. Following the promise from Cowell of exclusives and greater access, the paper in question (Sunday Mirror IIRC) was persuaded to spike it.





* - Bonus beat: a friend teaches audio engineering at a college in the Midlands, and one of her pupils reached the bootcamp stage for this series. She was disillusioned to discover that the judges had already decided who'd be going through to the next stage beforehand, and that the lucky ones had even been filmed receiving the good news. The whole boot camp stage was conducted purely for the benefit of the cameras.

 

[discos_alma]

God damn you Gareth Barry!

 

[DocMcCoy]

musica said:God damn you Gareth Barry!




We were very ordinary tonight. May as well get used to a future without Mascherano as well, although I dunno if Poulsen is going to be able to fill the gap he leaves. Finding a quality replacement for Masch will be tough.





Adam Johnson was outstanding, though. Pretty much unplayable.

 

[magnetic]

DocMcCoy said:


Adam Johnson was outstanding, though. Pretty much unplayable.




So was Milner :cheese:

 

[Okem]

LIverpool looked very ordinary tonight, unless Roy can pull a rabbit out of the hat before the transfer window closes, I think they might struggle to get back in the top 4.