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It’s the Summer of Love, ‘69. Four guys with a vision to create a small music and arts festival managed to stumble on one of the biggest moments in Rock and Roll history. Woodstock. Originally planned as a small festival it became a 400,000 person menagerie that transcended reality into legend. And 2009 sees the 40th anniversary.

It’s been included in Rolling stones 50 Moments That Changed the History of Rock and Roll, and for good reason. This was the first of the big festivals, the daddy of them all. The brainchild of 4 guys from New York, who just wanted to show what would happen if they were in charge.

The festival was characterised by the mud, the nudity and the music. And of course the drugs. One stage announcement made was, “We’re told the Brown Acid is bad”. This was the epitome of Sex, Drugs and Rock n’ Roll. It will forever more be remembered and the attempt made to emulate it.

What made the festival was the music. Every act has become, or already was legendary. Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane (who played both White Rabbit and Somebody To Love), Santana, Janis Joplin, The Who (who played a 25 song set starting at 4am), Arlo Guthrie, Crosby Stills and Nash with Neil Young and many many more. What a line up. On one stage, playing forever.

At the time, The Man didn’t approve of the festival. News and radio focused on the tailbacks getting there and the unsanitary conditions. They wanted this to be the story but the truth couldn’t be suppressed. It was an awesome event. Everything worked. There was little lawlessness or injury despite inadequate safety provisions. There were two deaths, 1 of a heroin overdose and a guy in a sleeping bag who got run over by a tractor but to balance this out there were also two births.

There was even a movie made about it. The movie was funded by $100,000 from Warner which was near bankrupt at the time. It ended up saving the company. It was edited by Martin Scorsese and received an Oscar. It has also been deemed culturally significant by the United States Library of Congress. Not bad for a music festival.

Probably the biggest legacy that Woodstock has left us is in the modern music festival scene. Cheap commercial rip-offs of a grand dream. It seems everything has a festival these days. School Leavers Festival, End of Exams Summer Festival. It’s unfortunate as it cheapens the idea. The youth getting together to enjoy music, peace and love. It’s been 40 years but it’ll be a lot longer until the memory of Woodstock fades. Rock on, peace out…

It’s a question that’s as old as the hills. Are you a cat person or a dog person? Both animals were domesticated by humans from their wild counterparts, the wolves and wildcats and have been around for a while. As our species have intertwined it’s only natural that people should prefer one to the other.

Let’s start by looking at “man’s best friend”, the dog. Dogs have been domesticated for the last 15,000 years and have been used by humans for all sorts of tasks. Hunting, pulling loads, herding, guarding and loads more. The species is truly mans bitch. We’ve been working them to the bone for millenia. They are so well domesticated that you can get away with doing anything to a dog you own but as long as you feed it, it’ll always come back for more.

Then there’s the cat. Cat’s have only been domesticated for the last 9,500 years. I say only, that’s still a pretty long time but hey. Cats may not have been domesticated at all but merely formed a symbiotic relationship with humans. Humans tolerated them because of their ability to rid places of rodents whilst cats adopted humans because humans would give them food.

In terms of numbers as an indicator of popularity the cat would win hands down. Currently in the world there are an estimated 600 million domesticated cats compared to 400 million dogs. It is also true in Britain, with there being about 7.5 million cat owners compared to 6.1 dog lovers. Also, in a survey taken of women, 98% revealed that they prefer to date someone who likes cats.

At this point you may be wondering if I am indeed a cat or dog person. Or not, but to break it to you, I’m a cat fan. This is for a few reasons. Firstly, cats have a stronger personality than dogs. Some people may find this contentious but it’s merely true. It comes with their independence. The fact that they don’t really need you but choose to hang around says something about them. Secondly, dogs are just way too submissive. If a dog owner hit it’s dog then it would look back dumbly, not understanding or wanting to understand. If you hit your cat you probably wouldn’t see it for a while or at least expect a good clawing.

Dog owners may say that they prefer dogs because they are smarter. However, if you consider this fact then you’ll see it’s a complete lie. You could say that dogs are easier to train and that would be true. They have a wide amount of benefits in that way. Cats can be trained, even to use a toilet (click here if you don’t believe me), though they choose not to be. For millenia, dogs have worked hard while the cats have lounged in the sun being stroked by their owners. You tell me what’s the smarter decision.

And if you don’t agree with me, I’ll have to go to the childish but true statement that dogs smell…

Recently, I was recruited for a role in a film. It’s a short and in it I have to run being pursued by police. I received a text from the producer saying “How fast can you run and are you cool with long distances?”. I replied, in a bit of a gung ho manner, “Very fast and very far”. So I tried to put this into practice and well, er, it didn’t go too well. And it got me thinking about the whole exercise/health thing.

We see plenty about being healthy. It’s in every magazine, newspaper and TV channel. Diet, exercise and eat healthily. We aspire to be thin and beautiful but it’s a bit of problem for us. A) It’s hard work and B) It’s pretty expensive if you wanna do it how they sell it to us.

For if we believe everything that gets fed to us we have to not only exercise but maintain a healthy lifestyle as well. This involves eating five a day and taking vitamins and the like. Have you ever tried to eat five a day, every day? It costs. Especially if you try to aim for a different 5. It’s the best marketing idea that anyone every had. Mummy and daddy tell you to eat vegetables for 15 years and it doesn’t work but market it right and you’ll have the whole country eating 5 a day in a week.

And then there’s the vitamin supplements. The supplements industry is worth a whopping amount of money in the UK. 13.5bn to be precise. On vitamins and minerals. That’s pretty intense but is a strong indication of how much we want to be fit.

Then there’s the ultimate place to exercise. The gym. The fitness industry is worth 3.7bn. But what are we spending that money on. Gym equipment and free towels? Most people who sign up never use the gym at all. It’s just a talking point and a ticket to the dream lifestyle but no matter how great your gym, it’s the determination to get fit that they should sell.

For that’s what it comes down to. You can work out perfectly fine in your own house or local park. It’s just difficult to wake up in the morning and think, “Yes, today I’m going to work out!” Exercise is something that everyone should do. It plays a major role in being healthy. It doesn’t mean signing up to the gym and not going or even eating 5 a day and guzzling 13.5bn of vitamin supplements. It takes hard work and determination. Something that I’m hoping will grow with my fitness level!

Last week a film came out that is set to truly split the film world. It’s called Anti-Christ, winner of a Cannes film award and nominated for another. It’s an art-house, erotic horror but if i remember correctly there was an adage created for just this situation and that is falling between too many stools.

The film follows a married couple whose child dies in an accident falling out of a window. This is all explained in the opening scene, filmed in black and white with a hardcore insertion scene randomly placed for shock value. It then loses all scope after Willem Dafoe playing, ambiguously and ridiculously called “He”, a therapist, tries to treat his wife, actress Charlotte Gainsbourg pompously named “She”. They go to the source of her fear, grief, whatever, a cottage called, wait for the cliche, Eden where all sort of marital hell breaks loose.

It was written and directed by Lars Von Trier who has obviously lost his mind. He created critically acclaimed Dogville and has let the film go to his head. It’s the most unadulterated ego wank ever made. Stunning cinematography blends with a bland dialogue and a nonsensical plot including self castration and a talking fox.

However, this film should be lauded in some way. Not for the cinematography, which is great in an arty kind of way, but for the fact that it expose the film critics for the pompous idiots that they are. The film world is one where rhyme doesn’t always follow reason. Naked ambition combined with a large budget and good crew can often act as a crutch for directors with an off the wall lust for artistry.

And it’s films like these that are baffling and shockingly bad that exposes critics with their comments such as “Twisted, depraved and troubling… And also brilliant” and “A fun house of terrors that rattles the bones and fizzes the blood”. Have you ever been to a movie that got panned by the critics and thought, “hey, that wasn’t actually too bad. I wanted a light romantic comedy and that’s what I got”.

For example, Bruno. Stars were falling out of the sky to be racked up in movie critics columns so they could continue on their Sacha Baron Cohen lust. It seems that the critics are finding it challenging to except that we live in a world where porn and violence exist and people are aware of it and most of all crave it. If a director includes a high level of violence and sexuality, such as Saw, Hostel and Crash, the critics shower praise on them for being avant guarde.

But are they really? Call me cynical but it seems that directors are simply becoming lazy. They know that if they want to sell a film then all they need do is include a heady mix of sex and violence and they’ll have rapturous statements from the critics to splatter all over the movie poster. “The most shocking thing you’ve seen since you discovered decapitation videos on the Internet”. But that’s the point, we have access to true horror on the Internet and movies don’t really cut it. Especially when they choose to neglect dialogue and plot for “grotesque” scenes that will shock the critics but leave the audience bored and wanting more.
P.S. Don’t pay to see the movie…

We all know how do read text language, or to use it’s proper name textese. In recent years it has mushroomed through texts and instant messaging. The youth of today use it all the time and slowly it’s creeping into the English language, much to the annoyance of the establishment. John Humphreys, the news reporter and host of mastermind was famously quoted as saying it was “wrecking our language”, but is it so bad?

From what you read in the press about it you’d think that everyone under 25 permanently uses it. The Daily Mail and Times publish articles about is explaining the lol’s from the brb’s. But textese may already be on the way out before it really got it’s foot in the door.

Textese came about because of the cost of sending texts and therefore the need to abbreviate. “R u gona b l8″ saved valuable space and everyone was getting their heads round the whole texting phenomenon. But now we have Blackberry’s and seemingly free texting so what’s the point of abbreviating?

It has also been seen before. Textese isn’t the first time the human race has developed a way for shortening messages due to cost. There was also Telegraphese for those people who used many telegrams. The words weren’t so modern and sexy though. For example “Emolument” meant “Think you had better not wait”.

But i doubt we’ll get rid of it entirely. It must have happened to you, where you’ve been sitting on a bus and you’ve heard some chavs who have just crawled out of a hell, past the gutter and onto the bus to be noisy, screaming “lol”. Ergh. Can you imagine if in the future that is one of our legacy’s. Grim.

Where the language really took hold and will most likely stay is the world of computers. Sitting as a kid on the computer on chat rooms or msn meant that you had a lot to learn and fast. You wanted to look cool when the 45 year old man in an anorak named HottieDaisy69 was chatting you up and came out with “rofl”. A brief moment of panic. Wtf is rofl? “soz duno wat tht is”, you type back. “Rolling on the floor laughing… Durr.”

And that’s most likely where it’ll stay, ever growing and expanding as a new generation gets online and creates more language. But we should have probably expected it. For even on the keyboard there are examples of Textese. Or should that be Txtese? Look at the ctrl (control) key and the alt and the del and cmd. They’re everywhere. I wonder if the guy who created them ever thought that he’d be on the bus listening to people shouting LOL?