The Dubliner Magazine

We'll Be Watching the Watchmen

Certifiable censors

After years of speculation, the grandaddy of all graphic novels, Watchmen, is finally hitting the big screen. Across the water, the British Board of Film Classification has given it an 18s cert, while here, after some pleading from Paramount Pictures, our own board has made it 16s.

This despite the fact that, according to the Brits, the film contains one rape scene and is filled with graphic violence, including one scene in which " a man is stabbed through the arm, with it forcefully twisted and broken, as the knife is shown penetrating his arm and emerging from the other side."

"In another, a man is shown being struck in the head with a meat cleaver followed by repeated bloody sight of the cleaver striking the head."

Blood, cleavers, knives? Sounds like our kind of movie - see you at the flicks!

Eleanor Tiernan

Never apologise for your ridiculous spending during the Celtic Tiger. You’re worth it

Weren’t we awful Celtic eejits all the same? Imagine! Who did we think we were? Earning money and spending it on ourselves! The cheek of us. How dare we be so self-indulgent? No respect for the value of money. The devil put the Celtic dollar there to tempt us and we spent it. Like Icarus, we flew too close to the sun and now look at us, in freefall, with no clue of how far we have to go before the unknowable happens.

I never bought a house during the Celtic Tiger...but I did buy a wheelchair. It wasn’t that I had given up on the idea of walking, but I was working hard and I deserved a little time off my feet, didn’t I? Of course not. I bought it for a joke.

I was in the creative fog of preparing a standup show. In that fog, every idea that the comedian gets must be tested. One idea was to play a practical joke on the audience: I would make my entrance onto the stage in a wheelchair, making much of the difficulty of taking the microphone out of the stand to elicit sympathy from the audience, and then simply step out of the chair and perform the show. It doesn’t sound very funny now, but last summer I was eager to try it out.

Max McGuinness

Ireland v the Rest of the World in the Credit Crunch Championship: A game of two halves, both bad for us

‘Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of this affair are [Irish Life & Permanent’s] claims, in private, that its actions were in keeping with a ‘green jersey agenda’.” The Irish Times, February 2009.

Welcome, sports fans, to another blustery afternoon at Croke Park, where it’s Ireland versus the Rest of the World in what promises to be another gripping encounter in this year’s Credit Crunch Championship! Ireland has hit a rocky patch lately and can expect some formidable opposition today. But one thing about these guys, they’ve got some team spirit. Isn’t that right, George?

Absolutely, Popey. We’ve seen it time and time again that when the chips are down, the Irish pull out all the stops to cover each other’s backs. Their club form has been poor recently, but when they pull on the green jersey, it’s a different story altogether. These guys never let each other down, that’s for sure. We saw it in the last match, Popey, when half the team stumped up €30 million apiece to try and dig scrum-half Seán Fitzpatrick out of that slippy patch by the centre circle. They still lost, but it was a heroic piece of speculation all the same.

The Dubliner St. Patrick's Day Debate

The Dubliner is hosting the official talk event of this year's St. Patrick's Day Festival on Monday 16th March at 6.30pm in Liberty Hall, followed by a Hennessy drinks reception.

NewsTalk presenter Eamon Keane will present a lively debate on Irish national identity with contributions from Dublin GAA legend Brian Mullins, playwright Ulick O'Connor, comedienne Anne Gildea, Irish Independent columnist Ian O'Doherty and the Sunday Independent's Carol Hunt. There will be special guests on the evening and plenty of opportunity for Dubliner readers to get involved.

Before the event, we want to know what are the people, places, events, achievements and traditions that YOU will be celebrating on St. Patrick's Day.

In short, what makes you proud to be Irish? Tell us HERE 

If you would like two FREE tickets for The Dubliner event on 16th March and the Hennessy reception afterwards you can apply by sending an email to editor@thedubliner.ie with 'tickets' in the subject line.

UnaQuits

Irish Blogageddon!

"It is not really self-assured or proud or impressed or impressive. It's a weird little thing. Needy, scruffy, pretending to be cool, sometimes not needing to pretend to be cool because it has moments of serious awesomeness. It runs on the energy of a few and the abuse of many, the apathy of plenty and the busyness of most. There is a recklessness to it, a constant weekend, an immaturity coupled with a bizarre wisdom. A downbeat attitude and a hopeful outlook in spite of being told that what is to come is not particularly fun."

Una Mullally (aka UnaRocks) writes about hersel... er, Dublin in Sunday's Turbine. And she says she's going to quit blogging.

We don't believe it for a second.

How Will We Survive Without the Gardai?

Better, seemingly

With news that the pension levy is going to cause the rozzers to down tools (or at least speed cameras) and strike, it looks like the Defence Forces may be called into take over essential services like prisons and even emergency public transport.

Of course, if the boys in camo could just take over the policing of our roads, we might be in a lot better shape since it was recently revealed that at least 50 Polish road offenders had given their name to Gardaí as Prawo Jadzy, the Polish for 'driving license'.

It's nice to see that the €61 million PULSE system needs a €10 Polish dictionary to work effectively.

The beautiful Miss Prawo Jadzy

Drifting Standards

The country seeps further into a misspent gutter

There's no respect for the Gardaí (see below), Bubble Hits has slouched off our screens and the long hairs are getting cash handouts. We need strong leadership, Mr. Cowen!

Ah, not really.

Tumbrel Weed

Let them eat cáca milis

Just in case you missed it, you can watch Brian Goggin's tumbrel remark about earning less than 2 million euro next year here.

It's right up there with the Duke of St. Alban's comment that an ancestor his had lost around 50 million pounds while speculating on South African goldfields.

"That was a lot of money in those days".

The Three Faces of Recession

The Cry Chart

Super props to the Irish Times and their graphic of the week, showing the three mandarins of Irish politics in various emotional states.

Our next prediction for the country (or at least its infographics) is a series of Soviet-style public executions for top bankers, as public opinion begins to border on a mob mentality and even more frighteningly, the "Government's corporate enforcer" is let loose from its cage.

Hugh Leonard RIP

Tony-award winning playwright and author dies

"I went through life like an idiot for a great deal of the time, saying there's nothing I would change. That was a very arrogant thing to say. There's a lot I would change. There are people I would have steered clear of."

In another blow to the country and the arts in general, Hugh Leonard died today, aged 82.

Like Flann O'Brien, the name was simply a pseudonym, adopted to avoid the frowns and pursed lips of a cantankerous 1950s Civil Service. But unlike his colleague, Leonard would go on to be enormously prolific in the theatre, with three of his plays going on Broadway.

His most famous, 'Da', ran for a staggering 20 months and earned him a Tony award and a movie deal. And best of all for us here back on the old sod, it earned him a Sindo column from which he could pour scorn on just about everything. Rest in peace.