thelump.net

This Year in Lumps
[2007]

· Now that the celebratory dust has settled on the holiday season, the empties have been taken out, the thousands of cold vol au vents and mini sausages have finally been eaten, and you’ve put away the overly repulsive wrapping paper and stick-on bows for another year: it’s time to reflect on 2007; what happened, what went on, and what was made of it. To keep with the trend of the past 30 weeks of entries, this weeks will be a ‘lump summary’ mainly focused on films, video games, television, tech news and reviews. It may also include the odd major news story, sporting event or celebrity incident, however as I prefer to keep those to a minimum, I suggest to those of you who are looking for an entry full of C-list rumours, failed re-marriages and sluts with no underwear, that you may be better scurrying off to read Heat magazine, or some other dull publication that bases its stories on how much of a celeb-obsessed circle jerk it may start.

Start the year the way you mean to go on, I say.

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· January started with terrible weather hitting the UK, in which 11 people died, This Life returned to our TV’s with +10, getting 3.4 million views (although not impressing any of them), and leaving our screens this month was BBC flagship sporting show Grandstand which came to a halt after 48 years. The cinemas were quiet with no big named film released to catch anyones’ attention, unless you count Epic Movie which we wont because it was dire, we said goodbye to Magnus Magnusson, and people turned into thieving scavengers when some rather random items wound up on a beach. Oh, and there were a few stupid racists in this years Celebrity Big Brother, but if I start talking about that we run the risk of having a three hour debate on if she was really being racist or not. So, moving on to…

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· February, which was a good one for Helen Mirren, as she won Best Actress at the BAFTAs, and also a good one for Ennio Morricone (who is, in my humble opinion, the best music score director and composer ever), as he picked up a Honorary Award for Career Achievement. Bad weather was still around and refusing to go away, M. Night Shyamalan won Worst Director and Worst Supporting Actor in the Golden Raspberry Awards, TV phone scandals were starting to be uprooted, with Richard and Judy being one of the biggest culprits, as well as lies from Blue Peter, and the ever growing amount of late-night quiz channels, which only seems to broadcast to insomniacs, students and the drunk (some people I know could possibly fit in all three of those demographics).

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· The BBC’s Alan Johnston was kidnapped in March; he was the only foreign reporter from a major media organisation based in Gaza at the time. This was sadly overshadowed in the news, as the soon-to-be-out-of-a-job Tony Blair wasn’t “bovvered”, as seen on Comic Relief. Castaway was restarted, this time to the chagrin of a much thinner audience, due to strange TV timeslots, and, well, a crap format. In summary, the guy everyone hated, and shunned won it, and Joe Public didn’t bat an eyelid. The Apprentice was a much bigger hit, with sultry bedhopper Katie tried to seduce and weasel her way to a new job, which Sir Alan seeing through it because she couldn’t move home. The job eventually went to pencil-necked suck up Simon. The better news was that the last two winners of the position within Sir Alan’s company had both left their million pound jobs and gone elsewhere. Finally, probably most dramatic headline of the month was the capture at gunpoint of 15 British Royal Navy personnel. Impressive as that may sound, the actual story was far from it, as under a fortnight later they returned home, without a scratch on them, and went on to sell their stories to the media for a stupid amount, considering nothing happened really.

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· Something did had in April, though. In fact lots of things, including earthquakes in Kent, the discovery of Kryptonite, Richard Gere tried pulling Shilpa Shetty, and Keith Richards snorted the ashes of his late father during a drugs binge, apparently. No wait, he actually did, Have I Got News for You started to produce a semi decent video podcast featuring unbroadcast material, crooning Scottish duo The Proclaimers somehow managed to score 3 weeks at the top of the singles chart with the unofficial Comic Relief single, “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” with Brian Potter and Andy Pipkin, selling over 200,000 copiesso far, and Grindhouse was released in the US and went on to achieve big success. It featured two films – Planet Terror and Death proof, directed by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino respectively.

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· May was just as eventful, with the arrival of TWiL later in the month, the beginning saw The Simpsons reaches its landmark 400th episode, The man who married a goat last year because he was caught having sex with it was saddened by its death, Spider Man 3 arrived, as did another Pirates of the Caribbean, Shrek the 3rd, and Oceans 13… just a handful of the many rehashes, sequels, prequels and spin offs we had to endure, The UK didn’t come last in the Eurovision song contest (2nd to last, I think you’ll find), Poo in Curry was not a big hit, The Beeb broadcasts “Scientology and Me” a Panorama investigation into Scientology by journalist John Sweeney. You may have seen this as the guy was being as loud as he possibly could barely inches from some idiots face. Fantastic.

So yes, the end of May is when the first lump appeared (that sounds a bit too personal, doesnt it? I assure you I’m talking about this website), and I started things off by talking about Facebook applications, drinking at work, and how dangerous blogging can be to your job status.

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· June, and the start of the summer we never had. There were some failed Terrorists attacks in my home town of Glasgow, It was to be the end of life at Number 10 for Tony Blair, as he stepped down as Prime Minister and was succeeded by Gordon Brown, The Queen awards Sir Tim Berners-Lee the Order of Merit for his pioneering work on the world wide web, A Harry Potter themed amusement park was planned, Last.fm was purchased by CBS, Microsoft revealed plans for Surface, which caused Alex and Kevin to have a bit of a drunken disagreement on the 100th episode of Diggnation, the London Olympic Logo was panned nationwide for being a waste of time and money, some mad German tried to jump on the Pope, Bernard Manning died, Kevin Spacey retired from films, Rupert Murdoch wanted to sell Myspace to Yahoo (which he later decided against) and Billy Corgan started bleeding his fans dry.

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· July saw England finally catch up to Scotland and Wales with a nationwide smoking ban, not that anyone noticed because most of the country was under water, Alan Johnsons’ terrible ordeal finally ended when he was released, The BBC were in hot water again, this time a “Royal scandal” when it was wrongly implied that the Queen had walked out of a photo session in a TV documentary, I slated the Transformers film, JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series of books for children and adults who struggle with big words were completed, Heroes started showing on BBC2 much to my delight, and it went on to be one of the steals of the year for the Beeb, while I go all weak at the knees whenever Eden McCain comes on the screen, meanwhile Ricky Gervais was making a complete tit of himself at the Concert for Diana tribute concert, which he would make up for through the class of Extras, especially the big rant towards the end of the Christmas Special, The Live Earth concert also raised some eyebrows as well as questions, mainly “Why?” and “How much is this useless event costing us?”

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· Watch out for gorillas in August, especially those fronting Cadbury’s adverts. If you haven’t seen it then you obviously don’t watch any television at all, therefore you’re supremely blessed; the fallout of which saw ‘In the Air Tonight’ by Phil Collins re-enter the charts at #17. A road bridge collapsed in Mississippi, The world went Bioshock mad, a horribly scary shoot-em-up (which wasn’t that scary honestly) which later in 2007 would rightfully win game of the year. Even typing this I’m tempted to go start another session. Meanwhile, Sir Elton wants the Internet shut down, Tony Wilson passed away, and Tribe made it’s way back to our TV screens for its last series.

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· September saw parts of the UK hit by tornado’s, we all said goodbye to Pavarotti, and Marcel Marceau, and hello to the iPhone, the latest attempt from Apple to steal all of our hard earned money, and it proved to work. Not contempt with just taking over the mobile industry, Apple then went back and released new models of all the iPod range, causing even more money to disappear from our collective wallets. The Foo Fighters got mixed reviews for their latest album, Jeremy Kyle was accused of having a TV show the equivalent of bear baiting, Mickey from Supergrass broke his back, the word shirt-lifter came back into peoples’ vocabulary after a lengthy absence no thanks to homophobic Jim Davidson, a comedian so unfunny he makes Bernard Manning look like Lenny Bruce.

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· October was a good month for chicken freedom in Scotland, but not such a good month for Heather Mills, Channel 4 celebrated 25 years of life, Terry Wogan appeared to be hung like a donkey, Radiohead told us to name a price for their latest album, after cutting out the middle man and sending everything to us via the web, Diggnation came to the UK to a huge success, Everyone started to question if Facebook was actually on our side or not, McKellen is gagging to be Gandalf again, Charley and Ewan and the Long Way Down team picked up where LWR left off, the digital switchover began, the 82 year-old woman who married the 24 year-old man died, OiNK bit the dust, Dumbledore is a big fat gay, and pudgy squirrels were making the news.
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· Before you could say “The Mighty Boosh is back“, November was upon us, where BBC news had it’s 10th Birthday, Friends Reunited became free, but still no-one uses it, toads are really slutty, The Peter Kay backlash began, Parkinson called it a night with some friends (I stopped watching after David Attenborough, and apparently I didn’t miss much at all), and everyone made a fuss about the ‘is’ being removed from Facebook status update, and no sooner had the two letters been removed, did groups start appearing for it to be put back. Madness.
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· The main Christmas talking point for December turned out to be whether you’d get a Wii or an Xbox, or If you’d buy Guitar Hero or wait for Rock Band. Led Zeppelin performed together for the first time in 19 years, Peter Jackson will be involved in The Hobbit, Heston Blumenthal, the man behind bacon and egg ice cream, made the best Christmas dinner you’re ever likely to see, Microsoft purchased Multimap, w00t is the word of the year, a man spent 4 days trapped in a toilet, Netscape Navigator has had its day, The Times Square NYE ball is green, and Christina Aguilera put everyone off their Christmas dinner.

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So there you have it, that was the year in lumps, a year in which: a man dressed as a tree robbed a bank, a really big man met a really small man, seagulls in Aberdeenshire like Doritos, The UK now has a channel called Dave, and a Woman ran over her own legs at McDonald’s drive-thru.

Well, in the words of the great Robert Scott: “It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more.” On a final note, If you haven’t already seen it, I strongly recommend Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe, and the review for 2007. If you’re still yet to see it, you can see it in three parts here, here, oh and here.

Have an amazing 2008.
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