Lets Celebrate Our Provincal Cities

This weekend Frapp Mag was in London having a lovely time in one of the great capitals of the world, when flicking through the entertainment section of the London Lite, we had a sudden and surprising passionate defence for our home city of Manchester. This was because of a small article by a London base journo, who was actually praising northern clubbing, yet started the piece of by saying that in his youth he spent his time moving from one grim urban sprawl to the next, this was Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham, so at least it was criticism across the board!, and that as soon as he visited London he never wanted to go back to those grim awful waste lands. Apart from being dreadfully out of date, its true that cities such as Manchester were on their knees in the early 90's, but since then have been rewarded by some of the best best urban regenerations in Europe, the piece was in the vain of the well trodden paths of being in two camps: London is great, everywhere else is shit! or Cities like Manchester or Leeds are the centre of the universe (which is clearly bollocks) and London is overrated and shit!

So i ask why can't we celebrate our great Capital without the need the slag of our other big cities and visa-a- versea. We can all at some point be accused off being in at least one of the camps. I, myself remember first living London thinking it was great, because it is! but at the same time in some strange way needed to justify this by making out that living in some other city was being on par as being sentence to living on death row. I had nightmares of moving back to Manchester! Then thanks to reasons out of my control it became a reality and its not so bad and not perfect either. Manchester has a few good restaurants, like London Journo admits, some good clubs, and some people (though not me) would argue without the expense and hassle of London. On top of this we can probably also at some point also be accused of non-London in-fighting, people from Manchester and Birmingham feel the need to slag each other off, 'Birmingham's a shithole', 'Manchester thinks it bigger and better than it is' whilst people in Leeds bang on about 'being the London of the north' which it ain't' purely because it had a Harvey Nicks first. People will always want to live in London and so they should it an amazing city one of the World's greatest, but it good enough to stand on its own, without the need for people who move there to big it up by slagging of the Britians other urban cities. Instead we should be grateful that we have a capital that is one of the worlds best but that we can also back it up with some great second and third cities. So from now on we're going to love London and appreciate the others too, although still think Leeds is overrated :-)

Twittering Demi: How Modern Technology became the Friend & Foe of the Modern Celeb

Over the last year Demi Moore has seemingly stepped back into the A-list limelight, because she has re-launch he career with a major blockbuster picture, a Oscar for a critically acclaimed smaller art house movie? No because she has become the celeb queen of Twitter with an impressive 1.92 million followers, following her every twit whether be her telling us about what she's had to eat or some philosophical Kabbalah rambling. Can anyone actually remember the last big film Demi appeared in? Yes there was the Charlie Angels film but there she was a secondary almost novelty character to the angels themselves. Yet thanks to a social networking site she is a big relevant star again and that why she's the best example of the relationship between modern technology and the modern day celeb.

This was never more apparent this week when, as we like to keep our fingers on the pulse, we dropped in on Twitter, and saw that Demi had basically accused celeb bitch gossip Perez Hilton of being no more better than a paedophile, and that the hundred of thousands of people who follow him were supporters of distributing child porn. Now this was all because Hilton had posted a pic of Demi's 15 year old daughter kissing dad Bruce wearing what can only be described as short shorts. Perez, a slimly gay ugly celeb obsessed man who has made huge money through no talent but the ability to be a good bitch and to invade the privacy of the rich and famous, and once wrote an delightful article in a British rag predicting who would die first Britney or Lindsay? Nice? doesn't come across as the noblist of people but to accuse him of a vile and hideous crime is perhaps taking it a step too far. What the hell was Demi thinking? Apart from giving Hilton the one thing he craves more than anything else, exposure, and meaning that many more people have now seen the pic that she was so outraged about, Moore has left herself open to a huge libel case to be slapped on her. Hilton has tweeted that he's already contacted his lawyer and this is the crutch of the twittering celeb. It may help them connect with us ordinary folks and create a new bigger fan base keeping them in the public eye but like all of us on social networking sites it opens them up to the unguarded moment of stupidness, a click and a moment of madness set to millions of people, who intern sends it on until it can become career destroying.

In the past the only time a celeb would be in such danger would be on live TV and even then most big celebs go into robot mode to make sure no stupid slip ups happen, a rare occasion of near career destroying slip ups were Madonna on Letterman in the 1990's, other than that they have the PR's and Publicists who at magazine interviews, radio shows etc.....keep a close eye on proceeding, stepping in whenever the subject matter moves on to something risky, stepping in before a celeb has chance to say something dumb. But on Twitter, with a twitter like Demi, its gives the celeb the control and this is dangerous, one on the spot reaction sent via Twitter and its out there in a instance where it takes on a life of its own before the publicist can do anything about it. Whats even more interesting in the fact that it drags in other celebrities as the orginal celeb friends without thinking jump in making themselves at risk, where as in the past they would of be guarded and kept out of it. On this occasion it was Kirsty Allen making a prat of herself in the row, Perez has threaten to sue her too, but then again she is a Scientologist. Also what Demi forgot before twittering and banging around the word Paedophile, is that there are probably real victims of such horrible crimes on twitter, who could be affected, by this row amongst the self-centred celebs, but she didn't and the tweet has backfired with Demi looking like a Pratt. So whilst Twitter, Facebook et al are great tools for celebrities to connect with a huge net of people and rejuvenate their careers, its a risky business as it allows for one instance of madness to ruin it all.

Uppers & Downers

Uppers

1) David Bowie's Cat People in Inglourious Basterds

Great film but the inclusion of this song in the theatre scene is just inspiring

2) Lourdes

Age 12 already being touted as the world's next superstar

3) Celebration

Proving Mum's not done yet releasing another dance buster

Downers

1)Madonna Fainting

The queen bee appeared to pass out during last concerts of her fab Sticky & Sweet tour signs that's she been over doing it or age is finally acting up!

2) Celebrity Twitter Feuds

Modern technology showing us just how pathetic these people really are i.e Demi, Kirsty et al

3) Failure to Launch Boys

More and more men are staying in the family nest way into their 30's. Don't! Its depressing we know!