Be Excellent To Each Other

Anybody else watch the start of his new series on Sunday night? We watched it last night during dinner and by jove it was rather excellent. A frankly terrifying look at the violence and drug/gun culture in Philadelphia. The neighbourhoods depicted in it were my idea of hell.

That reminds me, I Sky+'d this and haven't watched it yet, cheers for the reminder.

I saw a trailer for this. Louis going "Why have you got a gun?" in a very surprised way to a guy in the process of being arrested and the guy looking at him like he's speaking martian and saying "I haven't" even though the police were literally pulling a gun out of his pants. I forgot to record it so might iplayer it later.

The best bit in that trailer was the look on the perps face when he was told that they were filming it and that they had him in possession of a gun on camera.

Yup, thanks for the reminder. Sounds a bit like The Wire only real life.

I've just logged in to my mac at home over ssh, and started iplayer-dl downloading 'b00fy4cz', which when I get home will automatically appear on my xbox as 'Louis Theroux - Law and Disorder in Philadelphia', so I'll be able to watch it on the telly rather than on the computer, with no pausing due to my crap bandwidth or anything.

Geektastic

We saw it - I also thought it was rather good - Craig preferred 'Ross Kemp on Gangs' but I thought that Louis was actually more in the thick of the action. The 'series' concludes this week in Johannesburg, so it seems only to be two parts, but I hope to watch it.

I was a bit disappointed to be honest, he didn't get to do much of his usual thing that makes his programmes good to watch.

No, but I don't think that there was really room for that - I think the situation was, unfortunately, nothing more than grim.

I think it was good to see that he could do some more serious journalism.

I bloody love Louis Theroux. Have his boxed set, book and everything. Unfortunately my tellbox was broken when this was on, so I will have to see if I can get it from iPlayer or something.

I'm just not sure that covering gang violence suits his style, it didn't seem to offer much in the way of a revealing look at what is going on. I can't say that I learned anything from it that I didn't already know. Lots of his other films are serious, it's just that there was scope there for him to do what he does best.

I only saw the first half. It was very, very Wire-y indeed.

I very much like him also, I very much like his 'usual' style as well, but I guess the difference is that I was shocked by the amount and frequency of teh violence on those streets in the couple of days he was there, and how much of that terrible lifestyle he got to see. I knew that violence was hgh there, but I didn't realise it was to that degree. I have seen similar programs before, but never seen it to that degree or where the journalist/presenter has been so close to the action. It wasn't what I was expecting from what I knew of his past stuff, but I was not disappointed.

I thought it was well done.

And I quite fancied the junkie hooker that was on near the beginning.

I thought he looked genuinely scared much of the time, which is possibly why he wasn't as sharp as usual.

That was supoib. I thought the Theroux Questioning Style really worked quite well, not that he got any answers, but just in contrast.

I felt sorry for the hooker. And that Reds character, you couldn't make him up could you.

The game is the game y'all. Shows you how close to real life the streets of the Wire were.

Next week looks like a corker of an edition of Nerdy-white-guy-asking-simple-questions-without-getting-punched

Anyone watch the frankly terrifying Sunday night episode? I was astonished at how the people calling out (and actually carrying out) for the murder of people absolved their consciences in the idea of "The Community". "The Community" wants to burn him.

Wow, that guy he was talking to that killed two cops. The way he just kept repeating 'I want the money. I do it for the money. I put a knife to your wife throat and then you'll know I want the money'.

Crazy stuff. Plus afterwards I was able to do an amazing impression of that same guy to my gf, which freaked her out.

I'd forgotten about that Maleven guy. Yeah, he was terrifying. "I like crime"

"I put your baby in the oven"

Haha, that too. Man, some people.

I don't know. He kind of disgusted me for his sneering nonchalance at the idea of hurting people and their families as a way of threatening them whilst he took all their meagre possessions. He really did sicken me perhaps more than anyone else. 'I like crime'. He seemed to have no morals whatsoever, and it made me feel very uncomfortable, but Craig said he though he may have been partly playing up for the cameras, and saying he put a baby in a microwave? Yeah, maybe he was 'bigging himself up' as they* say.



* 'they' = people I know, 'cos I'm so street, yo. Maybe not.

Dinky McPondscum? What happened to Dimrill Bells? That was cute and festive. Now not so cute. or festive.

It reinforced my belief that i never want to go there. I was amazed and shocked inn equal measure. Then I got to thinking:

"is the SA situation comparable with the UK, say, 200 years ago? Do states need to progress through a 'dark age' to arrive at a point where the UK is now?"

As I think that, by and large, the US is about 40 years behind the UK in the legal sense.

By that sort of ting I mean, did we start with the death penalty, and then slowly got rid of it as people grew accustomed to behaving over the generations>?

Dunky is/was my tribute to The Monkees. http://dimrill.com/index.asp?pic=105&sec=pics

No, we got rid of it because it's really fucking difficult to release them when it turned out to be a mistake.

That's three names in two days, man.

which channel is this on?

BBC2

I was going to post about this, the "we want to burn him" thing. Almost like something out of monty python..

iplayer-dl b00g1vdq
Louis Theroux - Law and Disorder in Johannesburg.mov

iplayer not like my ip dirty foreigner et al....

(do wonder if that is allowed in the european free market etc.)

If you've got an FTP server I'd be happy to upload both eps

"Free Market" doesn't actually mean "We pay for it, you get it free", you know

Tell that to the French farmers.

Watching it last night.

That was genuinely mental. Also, Louis appears to be immune to fear.

"Can we go into this hijacked building?"

"No, it's dark and there might be people with guns."

"Oh go on, I'd like to go in."

"Okay, but just the first floor."