GL3 Stat-Tracker: Sci-Fi Edition

Commander Reno Clio

Space Captain

Weapons: Authority, Awesome lasers

Allegiance: The Alliance 

Coordinates: Punched-in

 Space Driving: Circuitous

Diet: Narrow-minded. There are a lot of tasty aliens out there.

Special Ability: Avoiding Enemy Lasers Until A Critical Moment In The Plot

Chief Isaac Mobo

Engineer

Weapons: Mining Equipment, Mobile Turret, Tech Support

Allegiance: Windows

Career Choice: Unpopular

Memory: Upgraded

Star Sign: RAM

Special Ability: Turning It Off And On Again

Dr Strangerlove

Zeno-Geologist

Weapons: Again, really?

Allegiance: SCIENCE

Specialization: Earth Oil
Relationships: Rocky

Usefulness: Deluded

Special Ability: Methodical Research

Darf Zen

Dark Space Wizard

Weapons: Purple Lightning, what else do you need?

Allegiance: Whoever he likes, he's a fucking Space Wizard

Philosophy: Awesomely deranged

Dress Sense: Ditto

Sex Life: Risky

Special Ability: Choking You With His Mind If He Gets Bored Of Electrocution

InEBr1-AtD 22

Malfunctioning Droid (on the right)

Weapons: Lost Portal Gun, Awkwardness

Allegiance: Cake or, if pushed, any form of confectionery

Thinking: Rarely lateral

Motor Skills: Fucked

Bromance Receptors: Overloading 

Special Ability: An Ironic Degree Of Willpower

Things Regular Sport Could Learn From MMA

There's a reason the social pole is slippery. And you find out pretty early on in your school career that it's because it's been greased by the sweaty taint of sportsmen who got up there before you. But nerds are destined to inherit the earth - as technology marches onward through this information age, there will come a time when knowing how to farm experience points with maximum efficiency will be a more applicable life skill than being able to score trys or touchdowns or whatever. And I've decided to help this process along. By accelerating that precious moment when we, the doughy, weezing, Pop Tart repositories of the human race make our glorious ascent to supreme power. Which could be done pretty easily if the most influential dignitaries of the most popular sports in the western world, took a few cues from the MMA community.

***

MMA stands for Mixed Martial Arts, a full contact bloodsport with a history of hilarity. I say history, but it's only really been going since 1993 when the Ultimate Fighting Championship was founded, but in that short time, the sport has racked up a record of shattered dreams and brain damage that's never been equaled. I've never even watched a complete match, being content to watch or read about the highlights of historic moments and my God there are so many. From taped-up faces to emotional breakdowns, MMA takes everything you love about regular sports, pumps it full of untested steroids and throws it in a ring with a gorilla. People like FIFA need to learn from this. Because if every sport started taking this reckless approach to the value of human faces, we nerds would be running the world within a month. 

Sportsmen have a reputation for bullying, thanks to spectacles of disappointment like Footloose and other 80s High School movies. But they're all pussies really. Cricketers run screaming for cover when it starts to rain and won't stand in the path of the ball unless they're covered from head to toe in body armour. Boxing, generally accepted by people unaware of the existence of MMA to be the most savage of legally sanctioned sports is just two professional dietitians gently slapping each other until one of them remembers when he was paid to fall down. Not to say that you don't get boring matches in MMA. Fighters run away, endlessly circle each other, throw punches with all the excitement of a bored receptionist hitting refresh on her Twitter feed, or just lie down in the ring together to have a bit of a cuddle. Except that last one is kind of meant to happen. See, MMA is, supposedly, a descendant of Pankration. The Greek martial art which combined punching with wrestling in an oily tangle of man parts.

It sounds like bullshit when you consider that it's mixed martial arts, fighters square off against people with completely different fighting styles - Jiu Jitsu, Karate, Muay Thai, but generally, the more clinically batshit insane guys (that's most of them by the way) just make up their own name for what essentially is Pankration with slightly more clothing. Slightly. 

Don't tell me you looked at that and didn't instinctively want to give them some privacy.

How many other sports can claim such distinguished Classical ancestry? Fucking Alexander the Great enjoyed a roll in the grass with an opponent from time to time. And he kicked ass at Pankration. Fine. That was pretty weak. Point is, you're not getting into that ring if you have a chronic aversion to forcible male bonding. Unless you're this guy. Thing is, most sportsmen are that guy. They're rippling sacks of emotional issues of which homophobia isn't even in the top 5. Your average boxer wouldn't step in the ring against a real mixed martial artist. It wouldn't matter how much money you offered to have his ass handed to him. He's not going to get groped by another man in front of an audience of screaming drunks 'like some kind of fag.'

So we've established that if more sports involved some Ancient Greek manhandling most jocks would defect to us. Maybe we'll let them live. But we can cross that bridge when we come to it. How do we get shot of the rest of those aggravatingly sculpted athletes? Easily. That's how. All we'd have to do is throw them, one at a time, into a cage with this monster. Or this one. Or if you're feeling really sadistic, this one. MMA isn't just a competition to see which of two men is more adept at tantric massage, it's also a grand exhibition of the human form. And how quickly it can be liquefied by a kickboxer that's more cyborg than man. 

You could play full-contact Rugby for your whole life and not receive a tenth of the physical punishment some unlucky souls get during one fight. The fighters with long careers only survive them if, like Ernesto Hoost they've got a solid enough defense to not get pounded within an inch of their lives every match or, like Kazuyuki Fujita, are simply unkillable. Most of the latter breed of fighters are Polynesian, which, in MMA, is kind of like being a bulletproof road-sign in Alabama. And even these guys get smashed open like so many uncooperative walnuts by men with nuclear-powered pile drivers for limbs. That guy Fujita, managed to maintain a career with one very specific gameplan in mind: letting the dishonourable foreigner in front of him unload on his face until they got tired and fell over when he pawed at them. That's not a joke. During Fujita's fifth fight, his opponent Ken Shamrock had a heart attack because he'd been pounding on Fujita so hard. And you thought The Simpsons came up with that.

If every sport was like MMA, those people that laughed at your pathetic attempt at the sit-ups your bitch P.E. teacher forced you to do, would destroy themselves. We wouldn't even need that virus that kills anything with a BMI in the 'Good' section that we engineered while they thought we were playing World of Warcraft. 

BUT WHAT CAN THEY DO ABOUT IT NOW? NOW IS OUR TIME. 

Jukebox: Tracks of 2011

Another year, another list. As 2011 draws to a close, it's time again to take a look back at the tracks that really stood out from the masses. And here they are. 

***

Labrinth – Earthquake (feat. Tinie Tempah)

In terms of mindless, unassuming fun, nobody produced a polished urban pop hit of the same magnitude as Labrinth this year. On a meaty set of speakers, Earthquake really will make the planet shake. Probably the best club hit in recent memory, the chances that you haven't heard this are slimmer than Kyle Falconer's jeans.

Listen here.

Jay-Z & Kanye West - Gotta Have It

The most surprising thing about Watch the Throne is that it took this long to happen. The men are like peanut butter and jam, gin and tonic, or hookers and cocaine - they just belong together. They share this contradictory attitude to material wealth which borders on the ridiculous. Being equally happy to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a sample, and then spend four minutes rapping over it about the simple lives they want for their children (New Day); right after this punchy number, smacks of the kind of narcissism that's usually impossible to stomach. Gotta Have It is violently selfish. In it, J and K manage to transcend consumerism, operating with this impossible, almost imperialistic need to drink the world dry. Galactus listens to this song and feels like an altruist.

Listen here.

Friendly Fires - Helpless

Friendly Fires have made larger strides in pop than most, but took quite a risk with their sophomore album, Pala. Their self-titled debut was glorious, for the most part, thanks to vocalist Ed MacFarlane's rousing voice, but also for the hints of exoticism tucked beneath the songwriting. Taking those undertones, and basically constructing a whole LP from them was brave, and brilliant. Again, mostly. Helpless is actually the exception, bar a few bars at the end, being mostly concerned with crooning 'helpless' over a rent-a-synth chorus. In the best possible way. 

Listen here.

Rizzle Kicks - Dreamers

Starting up the debut from Brit-hop duo Rizzle Kicks, you wouldn't be clinically deranged to assume their defining thought in the studio was, 'Cat Empire are cool, let's do something exactly like that'. But then album opener Dreamers fizzles out in a flash of ecstatic, jazzed-up beat wizardry, and they delve into literally everything else. Sure it's hip-hop, but there's such a wide-eyed approach to backing in Stereotypical that it's hard to care about their lyrics, which are suitably inane. Never has so much fun been had by so few.

Listen here.

Lana Del Rey - Video Games

As an entirely label-moulded personality, Lana is quite unique. Styled as a pin-up beauty with a baroque pop sound, there's a charm to her whole act which really sets her apart. And there's no doubt she's got the voice to match it, Video Games is an powerful ode to devotion, channeling the essence of Americana and a demanding need to be loved. 

Listen here.

Theophilus London – Love Is Real

Theophilus has become the latest poster boy of Brooklyn hipster-hop. With an interest bordering on obsession with The Smiths, he ticks all the right genre-bending boxes, and his first real LP (Timez Are Weird There Days) after a multitude of mixtapes has become a bit of a Music section favourite at Redbrick this year. We’re still waiting on a collaboration with Nicki Minaj to make all our pipedreams come true though, Theo. Just sayin'. 

Listen here.

Washed Out – Amor Fati

2011 was the year chillwave died. Toro Y Moi went all disco on us, Neon Indian’s sophomore LP didn’t emerge, and Ernest Greene, aka, Washed Out, decided he’d rather write songs about the politics of love than getting high on a sunny day. His debut Within and Without is still astonishingly lovely, like a slowed down, synth-heavy cutting from Bloc Party’s Intimacy, but it’s got that all-important soothing influence that made the Life of Leisure and High Times EPs such a joy.
Listen here.

Active Child – You Are All I See

I can’t recommend Active Child enough. I’m In Your Church At Night was one of the sleeper-hits of last year, and his unique formula of choral synth-pop is all the more refined on his debut of this year. Its titular opener You Are All I See is a thing of wondrous beauty. There’s something deeply touching about it, but at the same time, with it's heartwarming harps and raining bells, it's distinctly festive.

Listen here.