i presume you mean the new warp thing. it's sub-onion rubbish, on the evidence of this he's lost it.

blah blah..been down this road before. It's just a website and websites can never be Python. Little ideas pop up now and then.

yeah but..."sheepdogs can be trained to take art classes - whitehall memo leak"...its just embarrassing.

What's the exact address for this site?
I'd rather see that Morris has lost it than have someone tell me.

>yeah but..."sheepdogs can be trained to take art classes - whitehall memo leak"...its just embarrassing.
>

sounds just like the sort of headline you would get on brass eye, which cant be that much of a bad thing can it?

Yes, yes, but what's the URL?

http://thesmokehammer.warprecords.com/

>What's the exact address for this site?
>I'd rather see that Morris has lost it than have someone tell me.

Here's both!

http://thesmokehammer.warprecords.com

...and he's lost it. That is, if it *is* him. My money's on Gervaise Lee Brooker.

I can't imagine this is him, since it's not really "in the style". There's none of the usual fuckery with words, and so on. It's very, very bad, isn't it?

>Better than nothing.

*sniggers*

Bum.



*sniggers*

It's exactly in his style. Better than Jam. More like his Radio 1 news stuff.

>It's exactly in his style.

We need proof that he is before we send in any Jam-comparison troops.

> More like his Radio 1 news stuff.

There's nothing there that can compete with "Simon Weston wins Bill Beaumont lookalike skipping race". In fact nothing I can quote verbatim after one reading, which is what top quality CM "news" stuff does. The "catchiness" isn't there.

>We need proof that he is before we send in any Jam-comparison troops.

It's on Warp.

>In fact nothing I can quote verbatim after one reading, which is what top quality CM "news" stuff does. The "catchiness" isn't there.

Possibly because you're just reading it off a screen, rather than hearing it delivered by Morris.

The hippos, fire escape man and hen night laughter exploding taxi seem pretty unmistakeable to me.

>>We need proof that he is before we send in any Jam-comparison troops.
>
>It's on Warp.

It's him or his pals, I'm sure.

More important than *who* did it, is why everyone is keen to decide whether he has 'lost it'. As far as I can see, he had a particular style and sense of humour in the early 90s, which developed very little. Now loads of people are doing the same thing, and it's no longer very fresh. Still sometimes funny, more often not.

He's not 'lost it' - 'it' has just been done to death.

The use of the word 'glob' points to the Sid Peach credits on TV GO Home...

>>We need proof that he is before we send in any Jam-comparison troops.
>
>It's on Warp.

Yes, makes it more likely, but still... Could be 'from an original idea by' or something, with little monkeys filling in the gaps.

>>In fact nothing I can quote verbatim after one reading, which is what top quality CM "news" stuff does. The "catchiness" isn't there.

>Possibly because you're just reading it off a screen, rather than hearing it delivered by Morris.

Perhap. Anyone know if this is intended to be an ongoing, topical thing, or one-off?

>More important than *who* did it, is why everyone is keen to decide whether he has 'lost it'. As far as I can see, he had a particular style and sense of humour in the early 90s, which developed very little. Now loads of people are doing the same thing, and it's no longer very fresh. Still sometimes funny, more often not.

True. My 'lost it' was more in jest, but I don't really think much of Smokehammer so far. Then again, I've never been enamoured by Morris's more topical stuff.

2000 farmers bankrupt in "we forgot to plant the wheat" hell. There's another one.

"Seven hippos are rumoured to have walked into a Chicago department store yesterday while an eighth was mysteriously presented as a gift to the actor Ben Afflick."

That's *extremely* Radio 1-period.

The message at the top about Michael Jackson made me laugh a lot.

But a lot a bad stuff in there.

Um...

Not sure where I'm going with this message.

Possibly the effect of Smokehammer has been decreased because we've been deluged with spoof news websites recently, and this one doesn't seem to offer anything new. Still, I like some bits, especially -

"There will be no plan to build skyscrapers that duck", said Bush later. "It is a wholly foolish idea."

>Possibly because you're just reading it off a screen, rather than hearing it delivered by Morris.

That's true. If you imagine the Gordon Trodd stuff spoken in a Ted Maul voice it becomes a lot more palatable.

Why was that shit?

I don't understand. It was perfectly Morris to me.

I think (just like BES) people are finding any new Morris material to be disappointing simply because they've memorised the old stuff and convinced themselves that every single, golden utterance was dropped from heaven.

There are as many good laughs on that page as there were in any of the news strands on his Radio 1 series, and no one said he'd "lost it" then.

The portrayal of the Dubya character in Smokehammer is superb, for a start. "Appeared to arrest his hand". Great.

"There are as many good laughs on that page as there were in any of the news strands on his Radio 1 series, and no one said he'd "lost it" then."

Right then, I'm going to be the 1st person to say he lost it years ago... which means I am the best, nah nah nah...

I haven't memorised any of his stuff - I haven't even heard most of Blue Jam *ducks*

Even if couple of the lines from that site were on a par with some Radio 1 show news items, it simply doesn't work in print. In the Radio 1 show it would've come across as playful and throwaway, but it's impossible for that to come across on a website. Completely the wrong medium. At least, I hope that's what the problem is.

Plus some of those lines were shockingly substandard. Is this really, really Morris? "we have pneumatic drunken whores to do our bidding many times per day while you can only drip your grainy gelatinous nutspew into your fellow soldier's rough and bitter arse, you hairy cavefuckers". That's sub-Gusset Weekly.

The stories themselves are uninspired and completely without insight, except pehaps the running gag about Bush continually contradicting himself. I can't imagine The Onion leading with any of these articles. And again - while the Onion exisits, what is the point of this? The format is so old & shagged-out, every possibility and angle has already been explored a billion gillion times, and the material here is nowhere near strong enough to justify using it.

>I think (just like BES) people are finding any new Morris material to be disappointing simply because they've memorised the old stuff and convinced themselves that every single, golden utterance was dropped from heaven.

It was. I've got taped proof.

Look at the wider picture though. Morris 'losing it' is sad, but not really the issue. Instead, ask yourself why the 'well, it was alright - the bit with the hippo made me smile' mentality has replaced real love-of-comedy, bringing everyone's expectations down with it. Who allowed this to happen, and what does it mean for the future?

>Look at the wider picture though. Morris 'losing it' is sad, but not really the issue. Instead, ask yourself why the 'well, it was alright - the bit with the hippo made me smile' mentality has replaced real love-of-comedy, bringing everyone's expectations down with it. Who allowed this to happen, and what does it mean for the future?

That's assuming that everyone agrees it was substandard, and that he's "lost it". I don't. After reading the above, I checked out the site and couldn't see what was so disappointing about it. It made me laugh out loud consistently, and made a fair few salient points in the process - isn't this what Chris Morris has always done? A few people being a little bit disappointed hardly heralds the end of "real love-of-comedy". Also, the fact that you've got "taped proof" kind of proves Unruly Butler's point, doesn't it?

>That's assuming that everyone agrees it was substandard, and that he's "lost it".

No, it was all in Mike's first line - "look at the wider picture". He wasn't just talking about this specific example.

>
>>I think (just like BES) people are finding any new Morris material to be disappointing simply because they've memorised the old stuff and convinced themselves that every single, golden utterance was dropped from heaven.
>
>It was. I've got taped proof.


Er, that was my point. Everyone has tapes of which they've become inordinately fond, warts and all. (Jokes that first fall flat often become funnier over time.)

I think the real weakness in Smokehammer isn't the writing - which is pretty much typical Morris, some good, some not so good - it's choosing to do a news-website parody.

Most internet news parodies owe a great debt to On The Hour and Day Today, but the Morris-helmed originals are immeasurably superior to the web copies because of the media in which they existed (radio / TV). These formats are far better known, with their own codes and habits to be subverted.

The web's too new a form to be parodyable. Noone knows the conventions of web media well enough yet to laugh when they're made fun of. It's not as funny to see HTML code made silly, since most of the web's pretty silly anyway. Much funnier to see expensive "serious" equipment like TV cameras and CGI graphics misused.

Overall, I don't think Smokehammer's that bad a set of jokes, just not a particularly vibrant subversion of the format. It depends what you expect from Morris. I mean, apart from Blue Jam, he's never really done anything but current affairs / broadcasting / media parodies. That's his schtick. So why act so crestfallen when he does another one?

A so-so website gets a so-so reaction, forum is stunned.

The point is, if it wasn't Morris, and we weren't us, then that website wouldn't be given a second glance.

What we should be asking about this is, "why are we asking anything about this?"

poooooooooooooo

>poooooooooooooo

Ah, but would you say 'pooooooooooooo' to a goose?

>Er, that was my point. Everyone has tapes of which they've become inordinately fond, warts and all. (Jokes that first fall flat often become funnier over time.)

Some of us haven't 'become' inordinately fond of it. If anything, time allows you see the cracks. There are few cracks in Morris' past work.

>Most internet news parodies owe a great debt to On The Hour and Day Today

Not "owe a great debt". "Rip off". Totally. Coveting what they see every day. No need to frilly it up.

>but the Morris-helmed originals are immeasurably superior to the web copies because of the media in which they existed (radio / TV). These formats are far better known, with their own codes and habits to be subverted.

Daftness incarnate. Sounds like a Bill Dare Guide To Patronising Your Audience.

Anyone can do a bad joke about radio, TV or the web. But it helps if you genuinely care about what you're lambasting. Otherwise you're reduced to the level of a two-a-penny humourist doing parody for the sake of parody.

>The web's too new a form to be parodyable. Noone knows the conventions of web media well enough yet to laugh when they're made fun of. It's not as funny to see HTML code made silly, since most of the web's pretty silly anyway.

That site isn't a parody of "the internet" though. In fact, on the strength what's there, it doesn't look like Morris really gives a fuck about the web, the War On Terror or any of it. I don't get the impression, as has usually been the case with his past work, that he's ready to explode at any given moment. And I certainly don't get the impression that he's "excited by the possibilities of the new medium". It doesn't have the hands-on feel of past projects, more that he's just scribbled something quickly on the back of an old script, then passed it on to someone else to finish off and design.

>Overall, I don't think Smokehammer's that bad a set of jokes, just not a particularly vibrant subversion of the format. It depends what you expect from Morris.

I expect him to realise quite soon that the lairier (and more internet-vocal) portion of his fanbase can't recognise the difference between his past attitude to the media/comedy and some chancing little hopeful with a desktop full of badly-encoded OTHs, a cacheful of boring Onion pages and aspirations to be a 'comedy writer' despite having nothing whatsoever to contribute.

Perhaps when he realises this he'll aim a bit higher.

>I mean, apart from Blue Jam, he's never really done anything but current affairs / broadcasting / media parodies. That's his schtick. So why act so crestfallen when he does another one?

That's a twee, superficial observation. Morris' schtick extends to far more than dank parodies or 'look at me I'm a humourist' prattlings.

But it's being reduced to a mere media/news parodist that's allowed so many people to assume they can do it themselves.

>What we should be asking about this is, "why are we asking anything about this?"

Some of us are putting it into a wider context.

>Some of us haven't 'become' inordinately fond of it. If anything, time allows you see the cracks. There are few cracks in Morris' past work.

But you can't deny that good jokes often take two or three goes to really sink in. I'll stand by this as a reason for any new material by a much-loved creator being given a harder time than old stuff ever was.

>>Most internet news parodies owe a great debt to On The Hour and Day Today
>
>Not "owe a great debt". "Rip off". Totally. Coveting what they see every day. No need to frilly it up.

Yes. "Headmaster Uses Big Faced Boy As Satellite Dish" may be the Ur-Joke of modern news parody. No argument there.

>Anyone can do a bad joke about radio, TV or the web. But it helps if you genuinely care about what you're lambasting.

Aye. And that's what I'll concede is a bit disappointing about Morris doing the web. There's not enough of a precedent, not enough history for him to destroy, or make ludicrous. He's not pricking any balloons. Stormhammer makes no atempt to engage the form - but that's because there isn't yet a rigid enough form for him to rip apart - it's not the fault of the writing, it's the fault of the web.

There is something intrinsically funnier about a joke news piece "wasting" the resources of a major television / radio station compared to a joke news piece "wasting" ten minutes of HTML programming time. The material may be the same, but it's the difference between a
king falling over on a banana skin, and an HTML programmer slipping on one.

And you're right about the small amount of involvement he seems to have had in this little project. It certainly looks like someone else's handiwork (the rogue apostrophes are a bit of a giveaway). Unless he's as excited by Dreamweaver as he used to get about eight track machines, which I somehow doubt, it appears that some drudge got the coding job.

>>I mean, apart from Blue Jam, he's never really done anything but current affairs / broadcasting / media parodies...

>That's a twee, superficial observation. Morris' schtick extends to far more than dank parodies or 'look at me I'm a humourist' prattlings.

Yeah, but some people were objecting to the form (news parody) he'd chosen for Smokehammer. I was just pointing out that he usually chooses this form. What he puts in it is another matter, but Blue Jam excepted, you have to admit that Chris Morris does do news / media parody. Even his music shows feature extensive pastiches of DJ presentation / radio news reporting. It's not an opinion, twee or otherwise. It's a fact. He - on the evidence of the past - mainly does broadcasting parody. It's his chosen vehicle.

However, I do agree that the "Media Terrorist" label is his albatross, meaning that attempts to do something outside his celebrated field (Blue Jam for instance) often confuse sections of his audience.

Maybe any "losing it" he may have been doing recently is because this insistence on the importance of one side of his career - through favourable criticism and imitation - is affecting the man himself. He's doing what he thinks is his job, and he's been told over and over again that he's valued as a media satirist. His use of pure, ungrounded-in-reality whimsy and fantasy is so often ignored, which is a shame, since that's the most lasting and creative part of his work.

Because of this, the bits of Smokehammer that did it for me were the silly gags behind the netnews veneer. And those were recognisably his, and much better than the competition or any wannabes could manage.

The inappropriateness of the form aside, I think most of the jokes on Stormhammer were fine. It's just a misjudgement, perhaps, weighing into an arena overcrowded by imitators. Perhaps the best way to see it is the equivalent of Bob Mould writing that Pixies rip-off tune on Sugar's Copper Blue; a way of claiming back something that was originally stolen from you, and showing the whippersnappers how it ought to be done.

He hasn't succeeded - again I don't think the net is a form that can yet support his level of attention to detail and talent for deconstruction - but I don't think that's a reason to say that the man who wrote that webiste is a spent force.

Shitkickers. Sorry.

For "Stormhammer" read "Smokehammer". For a second there, he'd started a Heavy Metal band.

I'm tired.

makes you wonder what it would be like if Morris knew as much about making web pages as about manipulating sound/video. You'd click on the web page and God knows what would happen. Only that way could any Morris web comedy have the same capacity to surprise.

One or two gags aside, I don't think that page sounds like him at all. Not because it isn't all "comedy gold" or anything, it just lacks any of his style or defining qualities whatsoever. I wouldn't be altogether surprised if it turned out that someone else at Warp had put it together and just used one or two of his lines.

Then again, I fell for the Corpses' J**** S****** hoax, so I may not be best qualified to judge this...

I'm going to try to tell Chris Morris to read this forum right now sir.
If I mention that Lee and Herring post on it he might show interest. Although, frankly, it's beneath him. Obviously.

Personally, I think reading the thing whilst imagining CM's 1FM Radio Show voice makes it work much better. The same way that reading Facts and Fancies in Armando Ianucci's voice makes that thunderingly more pleasing.

Wasn't the web stuff in BES done by Zeppotron? Parts of the site seem very TVGH-ish, and the whole design seems a lot less style-over-content than the rest of the Warp site.

Also this: note that pretty much all of CM's previous news-based comedy make hardly any reference to real events (and when they have, pretty oblique references; IRA bombdogs, the Heseltine 'death'). 98% of TDT and Brass Eye were made up events, occasionally using the names of real people. This (if it is him. Sorry, Him) would be a first step into direct Private Eye / Rory Bremner type 'proper' satire. Not necessarily a good thing.

Maybe he's testing the water for a new topical comedy radio show. Think The News Huddlines with more references to frozen piss.

i think we ought to kill him now, before he starts ruins his legacy. and if we did, they might repeat On The Hour, it's win-win.

>i think we ought to kill him now, before he >starts ruins his legacy. and if we did, >they might repeat On The Hour, it's win-win.

That sounds eerily like the Village Voice critic who wrote "if only Bob Dylan had died" after the premiere of Renaldo and Clara. Kill him by yourself.

Chris is already well aware of sotcaa and has posted hee before. Not that you'd know as you're just a poser who pretends to know him. Too many of your sort around.

i sincerely hope morris doesn't read this thread, because although there are voices of clarity peeping through here and there, there's an almighty amount of guff sloshing around.

i'd be interested to know which embarrasses him more, though: seeing himself inflated to comedy god status by distressingly enthusiastic enthusiasts, or having his stratospheric elevation brought crashing to the ground by the same people transmogrified into enthusiastically distressed enthusiasts?

don't know him, never met him. Wish I had.

So, Mr Morris, do you really think I could be in the movies? Really? You're not just saying that to make me get my little bum out?

Speaking of which, does the the warp site look really good or really bad. I can't decide.
The morphing logo seems a bit ugly and over the top. Done by shit hot designers I think. Not that this is an art forum.

>
>Wasn't the web stuff in BES done by Zeppotron? Parts of the site seem very TVGH-ish, and the whole design seems a lot less style-over-content than the rest of the Warp site.

i;m seeing more and more funnee on that site. the news ticker is wonderful.

"michael jackson refused permission to lie in the rubble at ground zero and sing song into the ground"

it's not brilliant, some of it looks a bit rushed, but there *are* great jokes in there. don't dismiss it just because you dislike web-based news satire.

Something can make you laugh a few times but still be essentially rubbish. There are many funny lines in I'm Alan Partridge, for example. Like I say, it's all about the wider picture.

He's just recovering old ground. Nothing interesting there. I didn't laugh aloud once, and I've laughed aloud at my Brass Eye videos each of the many times I've watched them.

Over reliance on whimsy to spice up tired formats seems to be the problem with this and the BES. With the BES at least it was his own tired format.

en again, I fell for the Corpses' J**** S****** hoax, so I may not be best qualified to judge this...

Sorry- what is this?

Er, nothing.

Let sleeping cliches lie, and all that.

I don't have anything against web news-based satire per se, it just needs really strong material to pull it off, and there isn't any of that here. It's all so lame.
It needs loads of jokes packed in there, not just one joke padded out to fill more space. And good jokes, too.

It just doesn't look like Morris to me. A very poor Morris immitator, like houseofcommoners or something. Hey - if it turns out not to be Morris, is it okay to say it's rubbish then?