Screw the Phone Hacking Thing

For weeks, I've been trying to compose a post about the phone hacking scandal, but I couldn't figure out a way to make it interesting. Yawn -- it has something to do with accessing people's voicemail and covering it up and then stopping and restarting and investigation about said offence. Yawn.

Then I saw this one Facebook. It depicts my friend, Billy Cometti, meeting Chuckie himself!!!!!!!!

Wow, Billy, wow. You've come a long way from the Cameron Diaz Biography we did together, my friend.

Russell Brand in the Chokie

I was alerted to the tragic news after the Jewish holiday by a tweet from Wossie: "Good morning everyone. I am currently baking a cake with a file and hack saw in it for my dear friend Russell."

Seems the comic bad boy was involved with some typical celebrity bad-boy antics. While attempting to approach the terminal at LAX, he and domestic partner Katie Perry were completely surrounded and harrased by paparazzi (notice I didn't use the double plural ... that drive me crazy). I guess the yoga master suffered one humiliation too much -- according to Perry, the photog tried to shoot up her skirt. Well, I don't have to describe it to you. Here is it. These are paparazzi after all, so it was bound to get caught recorded for all to see.

Ill Papa!

As everyone knows, the Catholic Church and the Church of England have been at odds for -- well, since King Henry VIII.

Thirty years ago JPII visited the the UK in a grand gesture of reconciliation, even as the Troubles continued in Ireland, and other disagreements brewed. Now, even with the RCs turning to the right and the Anglicans turning to the left, who knew that Rome's biggest bone to pick would not be with the Archbishop of Canterbury, but with the British people themselves!

The row escalated when one of the former German cardinal's top aides, another German cardinal (I point this out because it's not like the Germans and the Brits have had an easy time of it over the last 100 years or so) responded positively when asked if Christians were discriminated against in the country his boss was about to visit. He railed against the UK's "aggressive secularism," calling it [gasp] a "third-world country." Ouch. And quite pot-calling-the kettle. I mean, which one is more of a dictatorship?

Cardinal Kasper's comment comes as a letter signed by 50 top Britons -- people like Dawkins, Fry, and others -- hit the news. It says that the Pope is leader of a religion, not a head of state and is therefore not entitled to the "honour" of a state visit.

So, again: Interesting times -- the churches are playing nice but the people are snipping. Progress? I'm not sure but according to Guardian, the pontiff was barely off the plane when he started with the anti-secularism talk.

BBC America have been maintaining a blog called Anglophenia, even longer -- and with far, far more regularity -- than Phonybrit.

I like it, I suppose. It does have excellent entertainment news, especially stuff related to TV content. And the clips are great -- all what you would expect from the Beeb. After all, their first priority is going to be making sure people watch BBCA.

I'm just starting to plow through stuff and I'm happy to say that you can still enjoy both this blog and theirs without too much overlap. I don't see much personal writing and almost no politics, for instance, in the cursory read I've given it so far.

But it is an excellent resource and I'm happy to tell you about it. No Britain-junkie should have to do without it.

Oh, Tony!

I'm writing a longer post at the moment on a different topic, but in case you missed it, you must read about Tony Blair's new autobiography. It's just out now and near as I can tell, it is taking Britain by storm.

The Guardian is the best place to get the highlights.

They Had Me at Who

As mentioned ad infinitum, my cable provider does not carry BBC America. There are a lot of reasons why this shows that they know f**k-all about what people want, and it causes me a lot of personal grief. It meant that I had no idea how the Tenth Doctor, played by David Tennant, met his demise. And I had never seen anything other than stills of the Eleventh Doctor, Matt Smith,

But in celebration of my getting a brand new Roku box, I decided to download the final David Tennant specials and Series 5, the first featuring number 11.

The new Doctor Who does not disappoint. (BTW, be careful here -- when referring to this show, the character is called "The Doctor" and the show is referred to as Doctor Who. I slip up all the time, but that's the rule. I also think the Doctor's new companion, Amy Pond is brilliant. Amy is played by Karen Gillan and looks just like my friend Mariah Wilson. (That's neither here nor there, but I did want to sneak in a plug since her film, Revealing Hate, is now available on DVD.)

Matt Smith is great and although I've just seen the first episode and some coming attractions, I can report that he completely embodies the spirit of the Doctor. It is too bad that they didn't go with a Black Doctor, as was rumored, but again Smith does a fine job. And although I will miss the show's head writer, Russel T Davies, we are in good hands with Stephen Moffat, who many of you know from his show, Coupling. As you may remember, Coupling, had a lot of clever playing with time and space -- good practice for Doctor Who indeed.

Photos by alun.vega. Thank you!

@Wossy, i < 3 u

While Phonybrit does have a Twitter account, I have not ramped up for tweeting. But thank goodness, Jonathan Ross has.

It kind of hit me like a ton of bricks when I was listening to the podcast of Wossy's Radio 2 show and he started saying his goodbyes. Somehow I missed his announcement earlier this year that he would be leaving the BBC entirely in July. Apparently, he was still a little irked by the Sachsgate business and there have been reports over negotiations over money not going well either. So no more Friday night chat show, no Saturday radio show, and no film round-ups on the Beeb.

Whatever the reasons were, I was happy to find out that he will be starting the chat show again on ITV ... but I'm not to optimistic about that being transferred to this side of the pond.

In the meantime, we will content ourselves with his very good Twitter stream, which he seems to update very regularly. It's no podcast, but it's something.

Guess WHO's back

Due to some wonderful, encouraging folks at a bloggers dinner the other night, fine folks who claim to have been readers when I posted nearly daily, I have decided to revive Phonybrit.

But so many amazing things have happened since the apples fell off the cart. What to blog about first? The Lib Dem “win”? British Petroleum? The World Cup? Jonathan Ross retiring? The fact that I haven’t seen Get Him to the Greek?

Here’s one: My daughter’s at camp. During their “color wars,” they took the theme of classic rock bands (i.e., Red Rolling Stones, etc.) My daughter was on the Blue Who. When my wife and I were looking at the pictures of the opening exercises, she noticed the Who logo and said, “What’s that bullseye for?" Evidently, I looked at her like she just asked, “Was Paul McCartney in band before Wings?” Of course, I had my trusty DVD of Quadrophenia within arm’s reach and showed her, in seconds, the Who’s logo.

Since then, we’ve asked a couple of very intelligent people about the logo and they claim not to have realized that the Who even had a logo, analogous to the Rolling Stones lips or the Grateful Dead skeleton.

So okay, here’s the thing about the “bullseye,” for those who are trying to gaslight me by still pleading ignorance. During World War II, the airforces of the various sides had logos that they would put on the wings of their aircraft, I guess so they wouldn’t get shot down by friendly fire. The USA’s Army Air Corps and Navy had the five-pointed star. The Luftwaffe had the twisted cross. The Japanese had the Rising Sun. And the Royal Air Force had concentric circles of (from outside in) blue, white and red -- the colours of the Union Jack. During the 60s, the Mods adopted the logo as their own. (I don’t think the Rockers had a logo, beside greasy hair.) As the mod-est of mod-dy bands, the Who took on the logo, along with an adaptation of the “male” symbol (same as the symbol for Mars in astrology) as their own.

Okay? So when you see the RAF/Mod/Who logo, please do not call it a bullseye. Unless it has yellow in it. Please?

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Another One Bites the Dust

Well, it's real and they're freaking out a bit on the other side of the pond. Cadbury, the inventor of the chocolate bar, the company that every British kids grows up loving is no longer British. The international mega-corp Kraft has bought Cadbury. Is this the final blow to the Empire?

Sir Jean-Luc?

There's nothing like knighthood. It's an essential difference between America and Britain: no peerage. Nowadays that translates to Obama not being able to bestow the coolest honor on anyone. I mean really, the Kennedy Honors? Leave it to the U.S. to turn something that's cool into a TV special. And in the UK, you get to change your name.

But strange that an actor made famous for playing a Frenchman made the top of the list. But he did do a lot of plays by that English playwright from Stratford.

So, congrats to Sir Patrick Stewart. I wonder if it comes with land in Cardassia Prime or something.