If England’s youth don’t have jobs, it’s because both the private and public sectors have put too much emphasis on higher education and not enough on teaching skills and creating an environment where people can perform those tasks with a sense of pride and dignity.
Cowboys & Aliens, meanwhile, opened in fourth place behind Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, a not-particularly-hyped blockbuster in its second week of release, and – this has got to hurt – The Smurfs 3D.
It’s a fascinating, watershed moment, from which the film industry will naturally learn all of the wrong lessons.
I was still DJing, but what we were trying to do was create dance music for the head, rather than the feet.
Though I lay on this gurney, seconds away from my death, I am at total peace. Hate is going on in this world and it has to stop. Hate causes a lifetime of pain. I feel it; I am going to sleep now. Goodnight, one, two, three, there it goes.
“How would you explain it, Pooh?”
“With a song,” he said. “A little something I just made up.”
“Go ahead.”
“Certainly … (cough).”
How can you get very far,
If you don’t know Who You Are?
How can you do what you ought,
If you don’t know What You’ve Got?
And if you don’t know Which To Do
Of all the things in front of you,
Then what you’ll have when you are through
Is just a mess without a clue
Of all the best that can come true
If you know What and Which and Who.
“That’s it,” he said, leaning back and closing his eyes.
“A Masterpiece.”
“Well, better than average, maybe.”
Sooner or later, we are bound to discover some things about ourselves that we don’t like. But once we see they’re there, we can decide what we want to do with them. Do we want to get rid of them completely, change them into other things, or use them in beneficial ways? The last two approaches are often especially Useful, since they avoid head-on conflict, and therefore minimize struggle. Also, they allow those transformed characteristics to be added to the list of things we have that help us out.
In a similar manner, instead of struggling to erase what are referred to as negative emotions, we can learn to use them in positive ways. We could describe the principle like this: while pounding on the piano keys may produce noise, removing them doesn’t exactly further the creation of music. The principles of Music and Living aren’t all that different, we think.
“Wouldn’t you say, Pooh?”
“Say what?” asked Pooh, opening his eyes.
“Music and Living —”
“The same thing,” said Pooh.
Judge: So, young oaf. You are accused of getting a bit drunk and setting up a Facebook group to start trouble. How do you plead?
Wannabe looter: Guilty, m’lud. Though I’d like to point out that me and my mates were so pissed that we fell asleep, so none of us turned up for the ruck.
Judge: That only makes it worse. You are typical of the work-shy youth of today who is unable to stick to his promises. In my day, if you said you were going to do something, you did it. Four years.
First date ended with him running to a bus stop shouting “I have to go to my friend’s cat in Tottenham”. We were outside his flat.
I am clear that I no longer wish to continue to live and hope that people can respect this wish and now allow me to die. I want it over with without delay.
We originally shot Spencer — one dunk, give him a little shove, bang bang bang — and that was it, a half a roll of film. But that’s a difficult thing to deliver to a client, like, “Here’s your one frame, gimme my check,” and it was such a dick shot. So I went to this school where they teach babies to swim and offered $50 to bring their kids to try out and $200 if we picked them as a model. This one girl was like a machine — couldn’t walk, couldn’t talk, but she would just motor around underwater. The labels saw the photos and were like, “We want the dick, we want the dick.” It was bizarre.
