Here’s the trailer for ‘Let Me In’ the big budget, bells’n’whistles remake of the 2008 Swedish lo-fi romantic horror ‘Let The Right One In’. I fucking adored the original flick. I find the Hollywood obsession with recutting the classics benign at best and vexatious at worst. The original smashed it at Tribeca and Méliès d’Or…  so did we really need a bastardized, bowlderized version? Apparently so. But, not being one for conjecture for conjecture’s sake, and ever the optimist, I’m quietly, cautiously hopeful this might not be a total catastrophe. Yes I’ve been here before and disappointment reined supreme. We’ll just have to wait and see.  Check out the trailer for the original here.

Some two years ago The Football Association in the UK decided to tackle homophobia, an issue which continues to blight the face of the beautiful game.  Serious box ticking ensued in earnest.  They diligently put a working panel together, agreed a strategy, commissioned an agency… and then one can only assume they spent the remaining 15 months dithering around on the sidelines.  But eventually they were ready to give anti gay prejudice the red card with the release of this campaign video.  The plan was to have FA Chairman Lord Triesman launch it with great fanfare on the pitch at Wembley Stadium, plus a heavy-weight viral campaign and stadium broadcasts at all professional games nationally.  But for some reason Triesman lost his bottle.  A lame ‘postponement’ notification has been dribbled out and there is much speculation that the FA are planning to quietly shelve this brave piece of work, fearing it to be ‘too offensive’.  I think they’ve scored a home goal.  Grow some balls for fuck’s sake.

(if you can’t be arsed with the buffer wait time, watch it on the Guardian website)

Nothing fills me with more dread and loathing than hearing the words ‘…or we could just do a flash mob?’.  Thankfully Dr Pepper have, I sincerely hope, hammered home the final nail in the flash mob coffin.  In April 2009 American police were criticised for getting a little heavy handed with the pepper spray at a student flash mob.  If Dr Pepper ever do ANYTHING like this again, I’ll be prayin’ for a pepper flavoured sprayin’ from the law enforcing donut munchers, Stateside.  This is the shittest branded content piece I’ve ever seen.  Further words escape me.  Instead I draw your attention to some choice feedback courtesy of the You Tube community. ‘Anyone here got an email for Osama Bin Laden? I’d like to recommend somewhere to fly a fucking plane into’.  Now that’s what I call consumer engagement.

Today, in my pocket of Sydney at least, social status is defined by an irritating array of clichéd criteria.  If you drive a Toyota Prius, drink fair trade coffee, extol the merits of amateur competitive cycling, shop at farmers markets (yet spend obscene amounts of money on baby strollers) and pay hippy dipshits to teach you how to bend over backwards, then you’re almost certainly living the dream, so congratulations.  But personally, I still hanker for the days when lascivious ostentatiousness was far more real than the hypocritical faux humility of stealth wealth.  Take carbon offsetting for instance.  You want to take that trip to ‘Injarr’ to find your inner sanctum, but the 500 kilos of pollutants your flight will produce challenge your ‘green credentials’ and this keeps you awake at night, no matter how much organic decaf you’ve necked.  Ah but hang on, this nifty new system allows you to chuck a few dollars at the problem in the form of carbon credits.  It’s the modern day Catholicism.  But instead of achieving atonement with a few hail marys, you just purchase penance via PayPal from some anonymous green fingered new world god, who pots a few plants with your name on them.  Hey presto, all is forgiven; you’re guilt free and sipping organic champagne in your premium economy bucket seat.  It’s a swizzle, a sham goddamnit, a plaster saint.  Which is why I love this ad.  It takes me back to a summer’s day in June 1989, when someone’s old man brought one of these to my junior school fete.  Total wanker of course, but out and proud of his blatant wealth.  Now that was class.

Thirteen. Now suitably distanced from that particular milestone birthday, the transition from tween to teen is parma violet tinted in my memory. Without the hindrance of mobile phones, punctuality was king. If you were supposed to meet your mates at midday outside Debenhams, you were damn well there. The only thing that came by the gram was bought by your gran at the Spar and invariably ripped your NHS fillings out. Or was it ounces back then? Thirteen was a year when musical tastes radically evolved; rather than wearing your heart on your sleeve, you displayed your ‘Look In’ magazine stickers on your homework diary. The Farm’s ‘All Together Now’ was a playground anthem and being cool meant smoking superhero candy sticks before PE and occasionally a real tab after. Too young for pubs, we kept the local Odeon in business seeing Mermaids, Ghost, Arachnophobia and Pump Up the Volume multiple times. A first date with a mate’s brother to watch Memphis Belle was thwarted at the last moment because I couldn’t pull off looking 15, resulting in ultimate humiliation, two tickets for Home Alone. It didn’t work out. Friendships shifted to tribal groups, you were wholly defined by who you sat next to on the bus. The less fortunate hung out with ‘Bacon’ (Tracey Hogg.. Sorry Trace, it seemed hilarious at the time) which meant you were into Michael Bolton, rhythm gymnastics and ponies (which thanks to facebook would return to haunt you decades later). School was a chore, days spent counting down to the daily 3.30pm pit-stop at Crouch Street News, to stock up on Wham bars, Fizz Wiz Space Dust, Lovehearts, Anglo bubbly, Dib Dabs, Black Jacks, Fruit Salads, Dolly Beads, Alphabet Letters, Drumstick lollies and the occasional Mr Freeze. I hung about in parks drinking cider a bit, but memories of that are vague.

Then there was fashion. Aside from picking the stripes out of my school tie and wearing it skinny, clothes weren’t high on my agenda. If I remember correctly, civvies consisted of a band t-shirt (PWEI) Levi’s, Doc Martens and liberal applications of black Rimmel eyeliner. The term fashionista wasn’t a part of my vocabulary. Celebrating sweatshirt corsets, tent capes or McQueen Moto Booties would have been lost on me, unlike young Miss Tavi Gevinson; an American thirteen year old taking the fashion world by storm with her teen-angst (and typo riddled) fashion blog Style Rookie. Describing herself as ‘a tiny dork that sits inside all day wearing awkward jackets and pretty hats’, this undernourished little poppet is commanding 1.5 million hits a month and bagging a front row seat at virtually every major collection show in New York. Of her recent exposure to fashion week, Tavi said ‘For one week I was in utopia, full of people who can recognise that my jacket is Luella. A lot of my classmates don’t get it’. To be honest I’m not sure I do either. Whilst it’s novel that she’s as fragile as a baby sparrow and appears to be achingly hip, I can’t find much of merit in her over hyped, overrated childish ramblings to warrant the adoration. And I can’t help but think she’s missing out. My advice - neck a kilo of Wham bars and stop skipping English. Parma violet tinted spectacles are so this season.

Further cost cutting at the Beeb?  Perhaps, but a friendly word of advice for my favourite Aunty, don’t let the work experience kid write the auto-cue.  It may start with a forgotten full stop, but where will it end?  Expect to see a contribution from my parents to the Daily Mail letters page, petitioning for the abolishment of the license fee in the very near future.