- Culture
- 16 May 08
MTV draws our attention with foul-mouthed puppets, Steve Albini answers your questions in an online poker forum, and we tell you where to get your Deportivo Wanka football shirts.
True, they ought to be done under the Trade Descriptions Act for still having ‘Music’ in their name, but MTV have come up trumps with their potty-mouthed new puppet show, Fur TV, which airs every Sunday night at 10pm.
“They rock out, put out and fall out, cage-fight, hang out in illegal dentists’ drinking dens, try to avoid drug dealers, cannibals and deranged landlords, pull the hottest girls and clone themselves,” reads the sales pitch.
While “good-natured serial self-abuser” Mervin J. Minky and “frog sex god” Lapeno Enriquez have much to recommend them, our fave character is Edward ‘Fat Ed’ Tubbs who has just three simple passions in life – beer, food and heavy metal.
The series – which is handily archived at www.mtv.co.uk – is the brainchild of Chris Waitt and Henry Trotter whose Warp Films were responsible for the equally fabulous skinhead flick, This Is England. Incidentally, if “Play it fucking louder, you pussy!” hasn’t joined “Ooh, matron!” and “Back of the net!” in the Lexicon of Great Comedy Catchphrases by the end of the summer, we’ll chain-listen to Chris de Burgh’s entire back catalogue, B-sides, rarities and bootlegs included.
From there it’s but a mere mouseclick to snipurl.com/steveblitherson, a poker message board frequented by a chap called Electrical who just happens to be ace producer Steve Albini. The discussion is normally limited to bluffs, full hands and royal flushes, but last year he spent almost an entire day answering all manner of rock ‘n’ roll questions – it’s fascinating stuff with Liz Phair, Urge Overkill and Billy Corgan all coming in for a keyboard lashing, and loads of skinny on Jesus Lizard, Sonic Youth and some guy called Kurt.
Which just leaves time for quick visits to www.subsidesports.com (our fave Peruvian footie team, Deportivo Wanka); tale-of-tales.com/thegraveyard (who’d have thought that existential video games about death could be so fun?); and steampunkworkshop.com (retro Victorian computers. We want one!)