An actual SMS I received today on my work phone (which until very recently belonged to someone else in the office):

Mate what is that procedure called when they stick a tube up your ask [sic] and pump your bowels full of water to flush it out?

In lieu of me having anything interesting to say...

... this is a wonderful (if now a year old) set of links to some truly great bits of (US-centric) journalism for some great Sunday afternoon reading.

Things that disturbed me about tonight's episode of the (really quite fucking terribly trashy ) show Pretty Little Liars

1. The fact Belle and Sebastian's "Boy With the Arab Strap" was playing in the bar scene.

2. The fact I was more disturbed by point 1 than by the still-incredibly-creepy relationship between a 15 (uh maybe 16 at MOST) year old girl and her 30 (late twenties at BEST) teacher - the creepy part being that the show completely endorses this romance as some sort of beautiful love story, as opposed to a tale of two hormone-fuelled morons who make Bad Life Choices. That much said, her teacher IS pretty hot and if the show hadn't made him into such a neutered stick-in-the-mud (they haven't had sex? Oh please) I might be more invested in this creepy shit. Smut I understand but True Wuv? Vomit.

Things I have tried over the past to get my sleep cycle back on track:

1. Going to bed early.
2. Going to bed at a reasonable hour.
3. Staying up as late as I can until my eyelids are practically crawling down my cheeks.
4. Taking pills designed to make me sleep.
5. Taking pills that aren't designed to make me sleep but do list 'drowsiness' as a side effect.
6. Taking no pills at all.
7. Drinking wine.
8. Drinking no wine.
9. Reading in bed.
10. Not reading in bed.
11. Reading books in bed that are so boring I FEEL like I'm already asleep.
12. Staring at the ceiling, wondering if it's early enough to qualify as morning. Repeat for 5 hours.

What has happened to me...

... that I KNOW I'm going to go and see this schmalzy bit of schmalz, possibly on a Sunday afternoon and possibly on my lonesome? Also I might cry. Yes, sometimes I like to see sentimental crap and weep. It's Bridges of Madison County all over abloodygain.

Things I did not expect to learn about via email from a casual work contact and, in fact, would probably be happier not knowing:

1. His wife's traumatic sexual assault four years ago. Way to just... drop that in there.

Questions that plague me at 3 in the morning

1. Is it possible my temazepam has expired or have I grown freakishly immune to its wonderfulness?

2. Is 'wonderfulness' a real word and, if not, can I please make it one?

Dumbogedden

My one-time favourite columnist Charlie Brooker has been a bit hit or miss lately. Perhaps it's that he's got a lot more projects on the go these days, or maybe I've just grown accustomed to his ways (as Henry Higgins didn't sing) but in the past six months or so I've found some of his columns have failed to land for me. What a pleasure, then, to see this brilliant return to form, which is worth reading for this line -

"Many leapt from the tyres they were swinging in to furrow their brows and howl in anger. Others, tragically, began tapping rudimentary responses..."

- alone.

Five Days in Cape Town

The first thing everyone in Cape Town wants to tell you is how friendly everyone in Cape Town is. They’re a bit obsessed with friendliness, these Capetonians, and although they tell you this thing about everyone being friendly in a very friendly kind of a way you get the sense it could start to become tiring or feel a little bit aggressive if you had to spend more than five days in the city, which I haven’t.

I say “these Capetonians” like someone who has recently completed a census but in my five day stay a good 70 per cent of the locals I dealt with were the taxi drivers who ferried me from hotel to conference centre, conference centre to drinks, drinks to dinner, dinner to more drinks, drinks back to my hotel. It doesn’t seem fair to judge a city on its taxi drivers and in the case of Cape Town it would be more or less impossible: those I encountered didn’t seem to fall into any one category or share any particular characteristic, apart from the aggressive friendliness I mentioned before. There was the driver who listened to rap music very loudly, singing along and using the steering wheel like a drum when we stopped at the traffic lights; the driver who couldn’t write a receipt and seemed dozy as fuck in a dozen other tiny ways that made me slightly nervous in the back seat where I was pretending to read my Kindle, the driver who watched me walk into a pole but was too polite to laugh; the driver who didn’t say anything except for the number on the meter at the end of the trip and the driver who told me the story about American tourists asking him if they had computers in South Africa. He was my favourite.

My least favourite was the driver who picked me up outside the Cullinan Hotel – one of the many quite posh CBD-adjacent hotels in South Africa, where I’d been having drinks with finance-types, including one I’d supposedly met in a bar a month or three earlier and who had attended my school but who I did not remember and could not have picked out of a line-up (which gave me some pleasure because 1)he was super dreamy and successful in a way that made me feel unreasonably irritated by him and 2)I later met a friend of his who told me Dreamy Stranger was a massive player, thus semi-justifying, I felt, my unreasonable irritation.)

I digress. I was leaving that party and en route to another when this crappy driver picked me up outside the hotel. His maxi taxi was already mostly full of passengers, one of whom leaned out the window to ask if I was heading towards the Waterfront and wanted a lift. Writing this on the plane home from Cape Town (ten hours to Dubai, an hour stopover, another ten hours back to Perth next to a women who won’t stop sniffing – use a tissue) it seems like a really stupid thing to have got into a taxi with these strangers who turned out to be part of a Virgin crew in town for a few days (“We’re Virgins” they told me within 30 seconds of my getting into the front seat) but could just as easily have been murders and/or rapists. But at the time they looked too fresh-faced and wholesome and young to be white-slavers. And they were lovely, these Virgins, so if the taxi driver hadn’t turned out to be a total dick by double billing us in a really gross and duplicitous way, I would have had fond memories of our little 15 minute drive together. Instead the experience left a bad taste in my mouth so that the next time a taxi driver told me, over his shoulder while changing lanes, how friendly South Africans were in general and Capetonians in particular, I only smiled and didn’t say a word.

The other thing about Cape Town everyone wants to tell you is how beautiful it is and they’re right. So long as you have money in Cape Town everything you see is liable to be beautiful: hotels and apartments are stacked up around the water like South Africa’s answer to the Amalfi Coast and the view of Table Mountain from my hotel bed every morning is one of the better things I’ve ever seen, including the two days I spent working on Company magazine’s Bachelor of the Year photoshoot. (You can get little hints of how it might not be so beautiful in Cape Town without money only on the ride to and from the airport because the drive takes you close to the slums, which look exactly like you’d expect slums to look. It is possible to go on tours of the slums, which I was assured are nowhere near as gross and exploitative as they sound but I opted not to because, you know, it sounded gross and exploitative.)

The seals outside my hotel window were my favourite thing about my view of Cape Town’s harbour, although I never really figured out if it was the same two seals there every day - alternately swimming around and sleeping on a low-lying wooden structure I guess is probably not a jetty but which I’ll call a jetty because I don’t know how else to describe it - or a whole lot of seals that only ever appeared two at a time. I tried not to anthropomorphise the seals and make them into Mr and Mrs Seal but it was hard because they looked pretty comfortable snoozing together in the sun. When they weren’t sleeping they’d be doing somersaults in the water and waving their flippers around like the world’s laziest semaphore practioners. What I’m trying to say is: they were freaking adorable and if I could have found a way to slip them into my luggage and bring them back to Perth with me I would be rubbing Mrs Seal’s belly right about now.

Drive an hour out of Cape Town and it gets more beautiful very quickly. South Africans are proud of their Stellenbosch wine region, which looks incredibly beautiful unless you’ve spent much time in Margaret River or the Yarra Valley and then it just looks very pretty.

Wine tasting and lunch had sounded like a pretty cruisey way to spend the day right up until the point where I realised it was me and 49-odd dudes, including exactly two I’d met before.. On the drive up I talked to Trent in the seat in front of me, who was expecting his first grandchild and… Ben?... across the aisle, who had been cage diving with great white sharks off the coast of the South African coast. At the first winery I talked to two analysts from BCF whose names I’ve forgotten about Cape Town generally and the Mining Indaba conference in particular, including some semi-disturbing stories from last year’s conference that I won’t forget in a hurry. At the second winery, where we stopped for lunch I wound up next to a Canadian geologist who gave me the best explanation of the US housing crisis I’ve ever heard and I think we got along pretty well generally right up until the point I realised I’d completely forgotten to take the photos intended to accompany an article and had to snap them all in two minutes, half cut, before we all got back on the bus.

On the way home I slept for an hour, oblivious to the fact I was being whisked past some of South Africa's most expensive real estate. Back in Cape Town, with the bus parked a five minute walk from my hotel I woke up groggy and disoriented, along with the rest of the bus, wishing I was at home in Perth where it was possible to hang out with people with whom I didn’t have to make small talk.

The stages of starting a new writing project

1. Excitement. This is going to be the one, you just know it. Forget about those fucking awful two 'novels' lying in the bottom of your desk drawer: this time it will all be different.

2. Disbelief. It's coming so easily, you never knew it could be so easy. Who said writing was hard? Liars, all of them. Or maybe I'm just a genius and never knew it? Fuck I AM a genius, I know it.

3. Niggling Doubt. Okay so it's slowing down but you're still writing, you still think what you wrote yesterday and the day before and the day before that is pretty good. Time to put your head down and Get It Done.

4. Boredom. I really thought sitting at my desk every day would be more fun than this.

5. Despair. I hate this story, I hate these fucking characters, I hate every word I've ever written.

6. Excitement. This is going to be the one, you just know it. Forget about those fucking awful three 'novels' lying in the bottom of your desk drawer: this time it will all be different.

Shame

Him: "We've actually met before. Like, 3 months ago."
Me: "Oh shit sorry, I'm awful with faces."
Him: "We talked for an hour."

Am I crazy or...

... does Daniel Radcliffe seem like he's turned into kind of a nice, funny young guy? I don't fancy him - Dear Lord No - but I saw a quote from him somewhere the other day saying it freaks him out a bit when girls are entirely bereft of pubic hair, which made me smile. Now here he is being positively cute about my beloved Ryan Gosling. This quote via The Superficial:

“This year I have a talent crush on Ryan Gosling. I think he’s fantastic and… (ahem) you know he’d be nice afterwards. He seems smart. If I was gay, I would go for a smart man.”

Nice work DR: I thought the kid who plays Ron Weasley would turn out to be the charming, well-adjusted one.

An open letter to a certain unnamed online bottle shop -

Please stop sending me emails suggesting I might like to stock up on booze ahead of Valentine's Day. I'm not sure what's creepier: the idea that I might like to get blackout drink on a box of cheap white wine (although Lord knows I love a box of cheap white wine) come February 14 or that I might like to express my love for the object of my affection through the distribution of discounted liquor. Valentine's Day is already a bullshit, completely bogus holiday and should I ever decide to start celebrating it, it won't be with you.

Must Love Glass

I was going to write about this week's Savage Love podcast because it featured the charming Ira Glass but, wouldn't you know it, that hussy Lindsay has beaten me to it. I think this is why she is one of my favourite people in the world.

Anyway, if you own an iPhone (and I assume you can download it on other phones, I just don't know how) you should SERIOUSLY be downloading the (free) Savage Love podcast from iTunes every Tuesday. It's so good. Why aren't you downloading this week's episode right now? Don't you WANT to hear Ira Glass - Ira freaking Glass! - give advice to a woman who throws up every time she gives her boyfriend a blowjob? You do, don't you, you know you do so why are you pretending you don't?

In related news I am now crushing pretty hard on Ira Glass. I mean, more so than usual. Tragically I was supposed to interview him when he was in town last month with David Sedaris but, for boring reasons, it didn't happen. I was sad at the time but now I'm just plain GUTTED.

Things I wish I'd said to my dwarf lemon tree before it was (I'm really pretty sure it is) dead

1. I love you, lemon tree.
2. Why haven't you ever grown me any lemons?
3. What am I doing wrong? Am I giving you too much water or not enough? Why are you not responding appropriately to these expensive citrus fertiliser pellets I got from Bunnings? Is it because I accidentally got them wet and they all stuck together in one giant clump that I can no longer scoop out of the box?
4. Why do you hate me?

Revelations

I don't often link to the lovely Nick Lezard's "Down and Out in London" column for the New Statesman. The link is permanently down there on the right so I figure you can click it whenever you like if you have the urge. However, I make an exception for this week's column, which served as a fresh, almost profound, reminder that it is possible to meander through 29 years without ever having realised a simple truth about yourself. In this case I find myself shocked to realise: I have never in my life defrosted a freezer.

It's true I've been awake for 3 hours...

... and it's only 6.30am. (I don't know what's up with that - insomnia is a bitch and I have a theory, which I'll expand on another time if you're very unlucky, that lying awake in the wee hours for hours at a stretch changes a person.)

But trust me when I say it is not just my sleep-deprived brain telling me I must have these shoes.

People who make me roll my eyes and die a little inside #34

People who say they "like black and white movies". I know I'm not being fair. There are, of course, loads of great black and white movies and His Girl Friday, Sunset Boulevard and Manhattan (oh God, I wish I was watching Manhattan right now) would all be near the top of my list. But there are also loads of shit ones (the b&w classics that are still so popular today survived because they were, you know, classics) just like there are plenty of great colour movies and loads of shit ones. So when I hear people saying they just loooove black and white movies, you know, just generally, all I hear is the wanky film snob equivalent of a dude I once knew who turned me off forever with the immortal line: "I don't watch TV, I really only watch documentaries". I die, I die.

Things I hate about my downstairs neighbours having a domestic late at night...

1. It's really, really, really hard to hear what they're arguing about.

Women Be Shopping

News out this month to surprise absolutely no one who has ever met another human being: men and women are not the same.

Yes, apparently it’s taken science to confirm what every sub-par stand-up comedian appears to have been onto for a while now.

The source of this astonishing claim is a study published on the Public Library of Science website and called “The distance between Mars and Venus: measuring global sex differences in personality”.

The boffins behind this study crunched the numbers on personality tests taken by 10,000 people. And in a break from past research – which suggested the personality differences between men and women were minimal – found men and women have firmly entrenched characteristics.

Living up to stereotypes women scored higher than man on sensitivity, warmth and apprehension, meaning they’re more likely be sentimental, deferential, attentive to others and worry more. On the flipside men scored higher on dominance, aggression and - though I can scarcely believe it - emotional stability.

The two sexes were roughly the same when it came to perfectionism, liveliness and abstract versus practical thinking.

Obviously it’s worth pointing out that the findings do not, of course, apply to everyone. There are plenty of aggressive and dominant women out there who don’t give a fuck about anyone just as there are sentimental men I could mention who go to pieces while watching Beaches. I won’t name names.

Nor are the findings uncontested, particularly by the scientists behind past research, who have criticised the methodology behind the latest study.

Not being a scientist (I know - I surprise you) I won’t make any claim for the veracity of this latest study’s findings.

What I DO wonder is who, exactly, is funding this kind of research? And, more importantly, why?

Probably I'm being too cynical and this kind of research is making a valid contribution to society's collective knowledge.

But it seems to me the only people who benefit from this kind of bogus pseudoscience are the journalists, who use these kind of studies to write harmlessly inane dross like this, this and this. (As my favourite character from my new guilty pleasure TV show Happy Endings might say "Women Be Shopping".)

Of course now I've written about it on this bloody blog, thus adding to the collective inanity. Sometimes I hate myself.

Question:

Does this "Fuckin' Sale" (courtesy of a Japanese store, apparently) just mean a really big fucking sale or are they actually selling fucks? Enquiring minds want to know.

That's a dealbreaker

The second time I broke up with someone I had to do it twice.

The relationship was pretty serious - he was seriously into The Smiths and I seriously considered ending it all via a note slipped under the door, like an early Martin Amis hero ("It's just not on, is it? It's nearly on but not quite"). I did it in person, in the end, but - for reasons I really won't go into - the first time didn't take and so I had to do it again at a party. The worst part? Driving him home afterwards.

I wish I could say that was my least well-executed break-up but I'd be lying. Tragically it was actually a step up from the first time when I had to... and then I.... and later played "Walking on... well, no, perhaps I won't go into it.

I'm terrible at breaking up with people is what I guess I'm trying to say. And I hate it. Obviously. (Although I guess only sociopaths actually enjoy breaking up with anyone.)

Perhaps that's why I so greatly enjoy reading this awesome Dealbreakers series in which people explain why they broke up with exes, albeit usually in kind of shitty and/or pretentious prose. And the reasons for the 'break-ups' are... well, okay I can honestly they make my reasons for my (very teeny tiny handful of) past-breakups (I hate him, he only ever wants to go to the fucking pub, he's way too into Suede in a way that sometimes makes me think he might be secretly into dudes) look incredibly sane.

Damn you, sun...

I understand that sometimes journalists have to write things they don't necessarily agree with. I understand that in quite news time of the year, like January, sometimes it becomes necessary to engage in some shameless beat-ups. I understand that getting angry at the Daily Mail for incredibly poor journalism is like getting angry at the sun for being hot.

But the DM has outdone itself this time with this shocking (no, seriously) expose on how kids cartoon Peppa Pig is corrupting the nation's children. Or something.

I mean, come on, either this is a massive pisstake -

"One father spoke of his despair at how his four-year-old son had taken to splashing in what he gleefully called ‘muddy puddles’ on his way to school – copying Peppa’s favourite pastime.

"Others reported that their children had started shouting ‘chocolate cake’ whenever they were asked what they would like for breakfast – just like George Pig. ‘The more I see, the more alarmed I am at the choice of behaviour put into this “cartoon”,’ one mother wrote on parenting website Mumsnet.
‘George Pig, who my son loves, says “yuck” at vegetables and only wants to eat chocolate cake."

- or it's one of the signs of the coming apocalypse. Best stock up on some canned beans to be on the safe side.

I am not worthy

Sometimes one is so struck by something so simply amazing that all one can do is marvel in silence. It happened to me the first time I saw Cillian Murphy's cheekbones and the first time I read The Great Gatsby. It's happened again now I've read this, which is just... I'm speechless. I am... without speech.

Things I am looking forward to more than seeing the new Michael Fassbender movie "Shame".

1. Absolutely nothing.

UPDATED: With a pic of Fassy that came across my desk. Because... well, why wouldn't you?

Token Smokin' Hottie: "Malcolm Tucker"

What is it about a man swearing that is so hot? I have no fucking idea, just as I have no idea why exactly it is I fancy the hell out of Malcolm Tucker, the sweary, craggy-faced Scotsman who gets all the best lines in the brilliant TV series The Thick Of It but could not enthusiastically be deemed "conventionally attractive" by any known measure.

Probably this crush of mine hints at something disturbing, like a secret desire to be shouted at and knocked into the kitchen cabinets. Maybe I should be seeing a therapist.

Things I think but do not say to the woman who sits across the aisle from me #34

I KNOW THIS TIME OF YEAR IS REALLY BUSY AND CRAZY FOR EVERYONE BUT SERIOUSLY IF I HAVE TO LISTEN TO YOU DISCUSS THE PROGRESS OF YOUR CHRISTMAS SHOPPING FOR ANOTHER 5 FUCKING SECONDS I AM GOING TO EXPLODE. OR IMPLODE. DEFINITELY ONE OF THE TWO AND EITHER WAY IT'S GOING TO BE MESSY. I'M NOT TRYING TO BE A BITCH BUT SERIOUSLY HOW IS IT THAT I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE BUYING EACH OF YOUR NEPHEWS? THAT'S INSANE: I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT I'M BUYING MY OWN NEPHEWS AND, FRANKLY, A) THE PERSONAL DEODERANT PREFERENCES OF YOUR VARIOUS RELATIVES IS INFORMATION I COULD REALLY REALLY DO WITHOUT AND B) A LYNX MULTI-PACK IS KIND OF A BULLSHIT GIFT TO BEGIN WITH.

Sweet Valley... Cry?

You can’t go home again. But that doesn’t stop us trying.

Earlier this year bookstores across the world took delivery of a slim novel called Sweet Valley Confidential — a title that may mean little to many but means a great deal to women of a certain age and disposition who had the date March 29 circled on their calendars for months beforehand.

The novel in question was the long-awaited (uh, by someone I assume) follow-up to the insanely successful Sweet Valley High series of books that shaped the teenage lives of millions growing up in the 1980s and 1990s.

The series should never have worked, focused as it was on the lives of nauseatingly beautiful and irritatingly popular twin sisters growing up in California. With one twin a boring goody two-shoes (Elizabeth) and the other a thrill-seeking tramp (Jessica) many of the books culminated in preachy conclusions that had readers believing girls who rode motorbikes were doomed to wind up — at best — in a coma and — at worst — suffer an identity crisis that would have them believing they were their own twin sister. Seriously, that actually happened.

But the series was hugely successful, running to more than 150 books, spawning a TV series (god that was bad), a slew of spin-off books and leaving in its wake a generation of fans whose formative teenage years would be forever entwined with that of the Wakefield Twins.

So perhaps we should be thoroughly unsurprised that publishers wanted to cash in on the nostalgia of those fans with the release of SVC, which picks up ten years from the end of the series.

The assumption at the heart of that decision — that the girls who once gasped over Jessica’s selfishness or swooned over Elizabeth’s weirdly sexless relationship with her beige boyfriend Todd will want to know what happened next — was probably not entirely correct. But even if the book does make squillions (and, er, the jury's still out on that one) there's something a little bit gross about dipping so thoroughly into the nostalgia well.

Nostalgia itself is a positive thing — even science says so.

After a brief stint in the 17th and 18th century where nostalgia — the term comes from the Greek words for return (‘nostos’) and pain (‘algos’) — was viewed as a serious illness modern science has gone in the other direction and decided that it’s good for us. Studies have shown that reminiscing about happy times past can give us a sense of belonging, increase self esteem and boost our happiness. According to a recent study daydreaming about happy past memories can even help us deal with fears about our own mortality, imbuing our empty, pointless lives with something resembling meaning.

But — and it is a big but — there is a difference between indulging in nostalgia and trying to recreate the success of a past phenomenon whose time has come and gone.
Even the most devoted fan of the original SVH series would have to concede that the material has not aged well. Attempting to drag the Sweet Valley universe into modern times is only going to expose all the flaws that fans failed to notice as innocent teenagers: that the Wakefields were vapid brats, that Jessica might have been a sociopath and that having one sip of alcohol in the front seat of your boyfriend’s convertible will not necessarily turn you into a drunk slut who is throwing her life away.

Though it shames me to admit it, last night I finished reading SVC and it was... one of the weirder books I've ever read. I genuinely couldn't work out whether it was deadly serious (Liz cries after she orgasms? Really?) or taking the piss (I'll admit it, I laughed when the Wakefield's insufferable mother, Alice, screamed at her husband to "bring out the fucking cake, Ned" after her mother's 80th birthday party goes off the rails).

So the book didn't make me want to kill myself. But neither did it fill me with a warm glow of love for the original material. Instead it made me faintly embarassed to have SVC sitting in my bookcase alongside the likes of War and Peace. Doubly so as I've never, er, got around to reading War and Peace.

If we have learnt nothing from the travesty that was the last three Star Wars movies it is that some things are better left alone.

We need to preserve our happy memories where they belong — in the past — and where we can enjoy them through rose-tinted glasses, not try to cash in on those memories, fail, and ruin them for good.

Token Smokin' Hottie: Ryan Gosling

I know what you're thinking: I'm surprised it's taken me this long too.

How is it that I've not yet tapped Ryan Gosling as a token smokin' hottie, given the extreme depth of my crush? I blame the fact that I'm quite a slow developer, having only stumbled onto Gosling in 2006 in the movie Half Nelson, a couple of years after everyone else had already fallen in love with him for his turn in the guiltiest of pleasures that was The Notebook.

Since then my crush, initially simmering on the back burner over a medium flame, has exploded into some kind of, uh, fireball? I'm going to say fireball. The reason for this is simple: suddenly Gosling is motherfucking EVERYWHERE.

He's schmoozing it up as an insanely well-dressed charmer in Crazy, Stupid, Love - the romantic comedy I loved to pieces until the last half hour. He's cruising behind the wheel in Drive, definitely one of my favourite movies of the year and the turning point at which my Gosling Love morphed into Gosling Mania. He's even storming down the halls, West Wing-style, in The Ides of March, the film I finally got around to seeing tonight and thoroughly enjoyed, not least because it poured Gosling into a delightful black winter coat I can't stop thinking about.

The thing is, in some respects Gosling is not spectacular looking: he's got nice facial symmetry, yes, and a cute smile (definitely my achilles heel when it comes to the boys) but if you look at a still photo of him you can start to see that there's nothing so spectacular about his looks. His jaw could definitely be stronger. His eyes tend towards the squinty. He even, although it pains me to say it, looks pretty fucking creepy with a goatee. Then again, doesn't everyone?

What makes Gosling work is that he has charm, oodles of it, so much charm it probably drips into his bed sheets at night and he wakes up in a puddle of it, so much charm he can afford to put it all up there on the screen and still walk away with charm to spare, so much charm that he manages to make George Clooney - George Clooney - look unappealing just by virtue of that fact that Gosling is standing next to him onscreen.

That right there is quite an achievement, in itself making him easily one of the most worthy holders of the TSH crown.

UPDATE: As Bec points out in the comments, I totally should have pointed to this.

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said

As I suspect many other do, I often judge books by their covers. I'm not being metaphorical. When I'm browsing in a library or book store I'm prepared to overlook a dud cover if I've heard good things about a book or I already like the author. If, however, I'm flying blind then I'm more likely to pick up books with covers that interest me or convince me they're concealing the kind of novel I want to read.

With that in mind, I've been looking at different covers over the years used for one of my favourite Philip K Dick novels, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. The premise of the book is that insanely famous television star, Jason Taverner, wakes up one morning to find that nobody knows who he is. It's a great read and a classic of the genre but, seriously, the cover art that's been used over the years? Cracked. OUT.

Going only by the title (Dick is soooo good with the titles) and the cover art what the hell would I make of these if I stumbled across them for the first time?

A homoerotic look into the psychology of body building triplets as they struggle to get off the 'roids so they can join the police force, just like their father always wanted...

Jason Taverner was just another good looking cop who plays by his own rules until a chance encounter with the mob sends him fleeing to the Amalfi Coast where he goes deep under cover by becoming an art dealer. But he's about to find out you can't always outrun your enemies...

In which Jason Taverner is a banker hopelessly late for an important client meeting. CAN HE MAKE IT?...

Jason "Babyface" Taverner never wanted to be on the force. But when he gets sent undercover to investigate a series of attacks at the local high school and encounters the free spirited Kelly Ripper he's going to find out that some things are worth fighting for...

So I guess the police are the puppets... or are they the puppeteers? Can puppets feel pain? Let's find out...

KHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!!!!!!!!

Things I like Slightly More than My Job Tonight

My (still kinda new) pair of shoes, even though they don't go with anything.

My morning Epic Espresso soy mocha, even though it costs $6.70.

My afternoon diet coke.

The new Jeffrey Eugenides novel, The Marriage Plot.

Turning off the light at night when I'm really, really tired.

Waking up on a Saturday morning with nothing much to do.

The so-so couscous salad I had for lunch today.

Taking out the recycling bin.

Cleaning out the regular kitchen bin.

The super painful cut on my foot that I managed to get while (literally) running to be on time for my haircut at the weekend.

Having my wisdom teeth removed.

Token Smokin' Hottie (by proxy): Paul Newman

So I agree with more or less everything in this charming article on the lovely Paul Newman, and this bit made me laugh -

"Racing fast things, however, added the needed counter-point to Newman’s otherwise steady image. But just in case you thought he might be getting too wild, DON’T WORRY, he’s also making salad dressing. Yes, that big, broad, smiling face on your food items? That is an aging Paul Newman, so eager for you to make a Caesar Salad so that all proceeds can help ill children go to summer camp."

(The only part I disagree with is the two second throwaway reference slagging off X-Men: First Class, which I enjoyed thanks almost entirely to all the crazy hot Ho-Yay chemistry between James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender). But, yeah, Paul Newman. Faaaawk.

Reasons why I am madly in love with the new drama/soap/trashfest show, Revenge

1. It's (supposedly, anyway) based on Alenxander Dumas' awesome (though nuts long) novel, The Count of Monte Cristo.

2. As you might imagine from the above point, the main character is uh kind of a sociopath who pursues revenge at the expense of her own happiness.

3. Its supporting cast includes a skinny, shaggy-haired software billionaire who dresses like the preppiest prep you've ever met and utters this line - "I'm about a three on the Kinsey scale myself" - just before he totally nails some random scheming dude to get him onside/stop him from medding.

4. It's the soapiest show on TV right now and I mean that in a very good way. People scheme, other people die, mistresses get thrown off balconies and then creepily taken in to recuperate by the very people who (albeit unintentionally) were responsible for her getting thrown off the balcony in the first place. In short: IT'S AMAZING WHY AREN'T YOU WATCHING IT RIGHT NOW?

For the love of... Annie Hall

It seems like kind of a cliche to list Woody Allen's 1977 film, Annie Hall, among my favourites. It's a critically beloved film, recognised by some as one of the great American movies, so I'm hardly breaking new ground. If I was smarter I'd say I enjoyed his earlier, more screwball/insane movies. I like his old stuff better than his new stuff etc. Actually I should be doubly embarassed because the only reason I got into Woody Allen in the first place was a boy: he was smart, bespectacled, older and more or less indifferent to me - with good cause. I was a dorky teenager sporting (at various times and - for a bad year or so - all at once) glasses, braces and orthodics. But he was always sweet to me and would chat about books, music and movies while I daydreamed about what our wedding would be like. So it was because of him (he was hugely into Woody Allen... he actually kinda looked a bit like Woody Allen) that I sat down one sleepy Saturday afternoon to watch Annie Hall.

I'm not sure what I expected: this object of my affection was a lot smarter than me and seemed so serious and bookish that I guess I was bracing myself for two hours of turgid screenplay I didn't understand, no plot and certainly no laughs. Instead I found... oh man, what did I find?

1. Happiness
This sounds like an aside but it's not: Antonia Quirke, in her very good novel Madame Depardieu and the Beautiful Strangers, said something true about Woody Allen and his ability to write happiness.

"Happiness in movies is a bit like love - the camera's always cutting away. You hardly ever get to see it. All you get those ultra-casual but ever so slightly speeded-up kitchen sequences over breakfast just before Harrison Ford's wife gets murdered by a terrorist or his kid gets crushed by a hit-and-run HGV. Instead we have happy montage sequences, like the one in Manhattan where Woody Allen dangles a hand into Central Park lake and comes up with an armful of muck. Woody was the master of these sequences. So happy they've been playing on the inside of millions of skulls for twenty years."

Quirke wasn't writing about Annie Hall in particular but she was so right: is there a better scene of what a happy relationship can look like than when he and Dianne Keaton are in the kitchen with the lobsters? Or any more depressing than when he tries to recreate it with another girl?

2. A Great Hook
Movies (and indeed books) are like relationships: if they're not great at the start I have no faith that they're going to get better and no enthusiasm to see if they do. I love the start of Annie Hall: not so much the flashback stuff but just that stupid joke he tells at the start and the way he rolls it all out there. It still draws me in, even when I know how it's going to end. The only one of his movie's that did it better was Manhattan and that was, you know, pretty fucking amazing.


3. Jokes
Before I got into Woody Allen I think I had a vague feeling that movies couldn't be serious AND have jokes. But Annie Hall is a serious movie, or at least it has something serious to say, and yet it's also really funny, just packed with one-liners I mostly missed the first time around and long dopey jokes that shouldn't work but somehow do.

4. Romance
Rom-coms these days are a pretty sad bunch. For every good romantic comedy I've seen I reckon I've seen five bad ones, or maybe two truly bad ones and three that just stopped short of making me want to stick a fork in my eye. For this reason I hesitate to call Annie Hall a romantic comedy but of course it is. And unlike the vast majority of bullshit rom-coms I see these days, Annie Hall makes the stakes feel both real and high. It even kinda made a love interest out of Woody. I... might not have thought that was possible. The scene on the balcony with the subtitles still holds up, I think, pretty damn well.

5. A Perfect Ending
I won't go into details, in case someone who reads this hasn't seen the movie but this is just perfectly done. Just like the starting sequence, it gets me every time.

The Angel and Devil on my Shoulders: A Conversation

Angel: You definitely do not need this beautiful, beautiful Cambridge Satchel Company satchel.

Devil: Don't you?

Angel: No. You have plenty of bags already, including a perfectly fetching black handbag that you only bought a year ago.

Devil: But do you have any... satchels?

Angel: Satchels are for uni students or pretentious wannabe writers who sit around in coffee shops ostentatiously scribbling in a notebook or tapping away on a laptop.

Devil: YOU could be one of those pretentious wannabe writers... if only you had this satchel.

Angel: Dude, that's not a good thing.

Devil: Isn't it?

Angel: Anyway, it's leather: you don't wear leather.

Devil: But, looked at another way leather could be the environmentally responsible option. You can buy a cheap synthetic bag every year, one that falls apart and will end up in landfill, or you can buy a handmade leather beauty like this and keep it forever.

Angel: Or you can use your perfectly fine existing bags and not buy a new bag at all.

Devil: But you can have these satchels embossed...

Angel: I really don't think... did you say embossed?

Devil: With one's initials. Or...

Angel: Or?

Devil: Or one's name.

Angel: You sure are saying 'one' a lot.

Devil: That's because I own a Cambridge Satchel Company satchel. You too could talk like this. If you owned a Cambridge Satchel Company satchel.

Angel: I.. you've beaten me.

Scenes from my street

Random dude walking past: Hey, how're you going?

Me (standing next to my car, clearing out glass from the window that some dicksnaps smashed in overnight): Oh, I'm doing great, obviously.

Random dude walking past: Yeah you're really living the dream.

Is it me you're looking for?

So I don't usually just post links to other blogs but this is highly amusing.

The moment that just blew my mind

Watching the (thoroughly enjoyable) 2007 sci-fi movie, Sunshine, and thinking "hey that dude looks like a hot version of Chris 'I brought my own mic' Evans" before realising that, Holy Shit, that fucking IS Chris Evans.

Hey, what can I say: I live a simple life.

An open letter to my new office neighbour

Let me start by saying that I know it's not your fault that you've been kicked out of your cushy office and moved to a cubicle directly opposite mine. I'm sure that sucks for you and you're miserable about it, although I'm happy to see you've managed to bring those blown up photos of your(?) cats along with you.

Let me continue by saying, however, that things cannot go on like this. I am not a hateful person but we've been neighbours for four days and already I hate you.

I take that back: hate is a strong word and I'm sure you're not hateable. If I'm honest, instead of being nasty, you seem harmless enough, even sweet, certainly friendly and well-intentioned if kind of... dumb. No, wait, I take that back too. I'm sorry, it's just that I've honestly never heard anyone call up the Coles information line to ask them how you can order Coles groceries online before.

My real problem, when I get down to it, is not so much the cat photos or the random calls or your voice (which is WEIRD by the way, I'm sorry if nobody's ever told you that) or even your perpetual snuffling. It's... the way you drink your coffee. Okay so I know that sounds like maybe I'm the one with the problem here but hear me out. It's not that you slurp it, or that you drink a lot of it or that I hate coffee. It's just that when you drink it you, for some reason I cannot fathom, feel compelled to stand up at your desk and stare directly at me across the aisle like you're staring into my soul.

Do you... think I don't notice a grown woman staring at me from three metres away? Or do you just... not care? What are you thinking about? Are you staring into space randomnly or staring at me in particular? Do I have lipstick on my teeth?

These are the kinds of questions I just can't afford to waste time thinking about. Yet these are the questions that have been plaguing me all week.

I'm not saying that I have all the answers or that I'm a perfect neighbour myself (I know the Phoenix ringtone gets on other peoples' nerves too, it's been brought to my attention). But what I am saying is this: sit the fuck down when you drink your fucking coffee or I'll throw it in your fucking face.
Regards,

Your neighbour

Ch-ch-ch-changes

So I've been a very slack blogger lately because I've been distracted by very dull, very unpleasant things, most of which centres around a bit of unwanted change that has been foistered upon me. Have I mentioned how much I hate change? I hate, hate, HATE it. I hate it like I hate.. well, let me see.... what DO I hate?

Not being able to sleep

The smell of seafood

Suped up ("souped up?") cars and the people who drive them

Gin

Tonic water

Laziness, especially my own

Unrequited love (well, come on)

Cockroaches

The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul (otherwise known as Sunday evening, TM Douglas Adams)

Finishing a book you love

Calories

Needles

Pins and needles

February heat

Early nights

Not having a dishwasher

Peas

The novels of Dean Koontz

Summer TV

People who cut in line, particularly at bars

Mess

My hair

Coming home from an awful day to find no wine in the house

The dripping tap in my bathroom

People who walk across the road reaaaalllyy slowly

Drivers who don't indicate

Moths

Rudeness

The day after my birthday

Day-after drunken text remorse

And when you take all of that - the insomnia, the too-bitter drink, lying in bed trying not to hear the drip, the creepy, creepy, creepy crawling bugs and the loafing around listening to Elliot Smith and weeping in the bath - and it's still nothing compared to how much I hate change.

Quiz Night Shame or Why I Should Probably Read More Thick Books

Questions I got right:
1. Recognising Eminem lyrics.
2. A question about The Sound of Music.

Questions I got wrong:
1. Flags of the world.
2. Everything else.

Things I Bought Last Night or Why I Should Not Drink And Shop Online

1. The most least practical pair of heels that I have ever seen. I literally cannot imagine a single outfit that I own with which they might work and I don't even know for sure if they're going to fit. But they are very very cute. Plus, you know, who DOESN'T need a pair of green-and-cream heels with a giant red bow on the front. Am I right?

2. Lawrence Sanders' entire back catalogue. Because can you have enough comic mystery novels in your bookcase? No. No you cannot.

3. A USB port thing shaped like a robot. I... don't even know.

Token Smokin' Hottie: Cillian Murphy

How much do I love Cillian Murphy? Let me count the ways.

1. I love his eyes. Holy SHIT his eyes are amazing. If he was my boyfriend I can just imagine being mid-fight and maybe snapping something like "look at me when I'm talking to you!" and then melting instantly as soon as he glanced my way. Sure, this would probably mean that he could get away without lifting a finger around the house and, I don't know, maybe knocking me around once in awhile, but would it be worth it? Totally.

2. Every interview I've ever read with him makes him sound like a total sweetheart - neither an up-himself prick nor one of those dudes who tries to hard to be all I'm-not-Hollywood-I'm-Just-a-Regular-Guy-Like-You-Even-Though-I-Fuck-Supermodels: just nice, well-spoken and sometimes a little bit funny. He doesn't have to try to hard and I think a certain 'effortlessness' is an underrated personality trait. Obviously I'm deluding myself but I feel like maybe if we got stuck in a really long queue for, uh, the bathroom or something we could maybe have a little bit of chat.

3. I really loved 28 Days Later. That's... it. I just seriously love that movie - it's such a perfect zombie film - and him in it. And I think I quite like his taste in picking movies generally: even though he's been in some movies that weren't exactly successful in either the critical or the commercial sense I feel like they were all at least interesting failures (well, maybe not so much with Tron: Legacy but, eh, we all make mistakes).

4. According to IMDB his mother is a French teacher. This delights me because, in my mind, he is also fluent in French and flits about the house saying things like "Bonjour Mama" and... no, wait, I don't know anymore French.

5. Ye Gods, I just went back to stalk him some more on IMDB and he bloody IS fluent in French. And Gaelic. Be still my beating heart.

6. He's vegetarian, which automatically makes anyone ten times hotter. True story.

7. He's really, really, really good looking. Don't look at me like that: you know that Token Smokin' Hottie always comes back to looks in the end. If anything I almost feel like maybe he's just a little bit too pretty to seriously fancy a few flaws in someone's face usually make them much more attractive to me. That much said, if I had to be a dude I'd want to look exactly like him and it's not just the eyes. His cheekbones are, obviously, pretty freaking striking but there's also his beautiful skin, so pale you can just imagine how adorable he'd be if he blushed. Plus, looking a little bit further south (still on his FACE, get your mind out of the gutter) he also has a really cute smile and if there's one single thing about a boy that makes me go absolutely weak at the knees - forget about the skinny, forget about the eyes and the cheekbones and a decent wardrobe and a cool personality - it's definitely a cute smile.

How To Do A Remake Right (or Why I Sorta Loved The New Footloose Movie)

1. Choose a movie to remake that wasn't so great to begin with. Oh, sure, Footloose is an iconic 80s movie and all but it's also uh... not that memorable when you go back and sit through it in the cold hard light of 2011. The story, about a town that has outlawed dancing, is obviously ridiculous, the dialogue lame and there are seriously whole stretches of that movie where Nothing Happens. Repeatedly. Also barring Kevin Bacon's general awesomeness and John Lithgow, who brings it as reliably as ever, it's full of a bunch of actors who, call me crazy, probably didn't go onto bigger and better things for a good reason. (Yeah sorry, Lori Singer I'm kinda looking at you).

2. Cast a hottie hot hot hot as your star. Okay, so Kenny Wormald (ugh, Kenny, change your name already) doesn't look like much if you check him out on IMDB but I swear onscreen he's really got a certain something something. That something something may or may not include a certain resemblance to - call me crazy - James Dean and/or James Franco. Boyfriend Andy would like it on the record that he strongly disagrees but for my two cents he has the kind of gravitas onscreen that makes you want to watch him instead of anyone else. It doesn't hurt that his dancing is pretty ace. Also, despite playing a teenager in the film, he's not even jail bait so you don't have to feel creepy: dude is 27.

3. Put black people in the movie. Hmm, yeah, okay it looks like kind of a gross thing to say when I see it on the page, like the next thing I'm going to say is how black people just have a great natural sense of rhythm. But the thing is, when the original film was made there were seriously ZERO black people anywhere in the movie: maybe it didn't seem weird at the time but in hindsight it's... odd. Plus, the black chicks in the new version are about ten times better dancers than any of the white chicks, who mostly just writhe around and look like they're thinking about fucking their partner's belt buckle.

4. Recognise That You're Not Making Citizen Kane. Part way through watching the new movie I leaned across Boyfriend Andy to hiss at my friend Alex (who, God Bless Him, sat through both Burlesque and Step Up 3D with me... and secretly loves this sort of thing just as much as me) something along the lines of "Shit just got real". Onscreen the movie's first proper dance scene was just about to kick off and I was both nervous and excited: nervous because there is absolutely nothing lamer than a tasty bit of trash that takes itself too seriously and excited because I didn't think Footloose was going to fall into that category. It did not: I don't think anybody making this movie had any illusions about what kind of movie they were making and so, for the most part, the serious bits of the movie were outweighed by the deliciously ridiculous. How many movies could pull off an awesome segue from "teenage boy who just watched his mother die of cancer" to "now he's racing an on-fire school bus around a race track for no apparent reason"? Well, this one does it.

5. Inject some (desperately lacking in the original) INTENTIONAL humour into the film via a wise-cracking best friend. Okay, so I know I crapped on a bit back there about Kenny Wormald but, I must confess, I think Miles Teller is the real scene stealer of the film. From the moment he appears on screen, smacking into our hero in the school halls, this guy had my lips twitching. He does everything you want a Funny Best Friend to do: crack jokes, be awesome and make the hero look better just by being friends with him. I don't want to spoil the end of the movie or anything but in the final scene his character, Willard, and Kenny's character dance together and... I don't even know. I may never recover from seeing those glorious two minutes. And I mean that in a very good way.

An open letter to the douche outside Epic Espresso this morning,

If this (alleged, probably fake) "big deal" you're (allegedly, probably not) working on is really so fucking "top secret" (read: does not exist) then maybe, just maybe, you shouldn't stand on Outram Street for 15 fucking minutes SHOUTING ABOUT IT INTO YOUR PHONE. You were wearing a very nice suit, though: I will give you that.

That awkward moment where you walk in on a male stripper getting changed at a hen's night

You (trying not to stare at his Good China): Oh, shit, sorry!

Him (trying to cover said Good China): Don't be shy...

You (by now approximately the colour of a ripe tomato): Um, you had really good comic timing out there. Seriously, good work. Um, I'll be over there.

"How can I stay mad at you?"

(Screen-shot courtesy of Eye on Springfield)

Token Smokin' Hottie: Freddie Mercury

It's not exactly a secret to anyone who has read this blog for awhile and/or heard me crap on about the subject in person that I dig the HoYay.

So a big part of my love for the late Freddie Mercury is surely his penchant for shagging dudes, much in the same way that Zachary Quinto has weirdly become even more attractive to me since he (very recently) came out. (Then again Quinto has always been hot: he appeared in What's Your Number for approximately 2 minutes and yet he was - far and away - the sexiest thing about a movie ostensibly all about sex. It was hard to get very involved in the movie's storyline when I couldn't help but feel sorry for Anna Faris for her serious downgrade from Quinto to Chris "I wish they taught shopping in school" Evans. Who would rather watch Evans work on his fucking abs for the three hours a day he presumably spends at the gym than stay in bed with Quinto for hot vegan sex? The mind boggles.)

I'm wandering from my point. What I started to say was that there's something undeniably appealing about knowing that you can't have someone. Even assuming I could click my fingers and turn myself into some kind of Mila Kunis-meets-Charlize Theron-via-Monica Belluci sex bomb and, you know, bring Freddie back from the dead, he probably still wouldn't be into me, by virtue of my not being a dude. Seriously I don't understand why EVERYONE'S not into HoYay, unless all the chicks I know who claim to find the concept of two dudes utterly unappealing are just lying about it. It's all very weird to me. (In case there are any raging Freddie fans reading this, which uh seems unlikely, I should recognise that yeah OKAY, so he was apparently bi not gay but whatever - reality shouldn't stand in the way of a good fantasy).

Again I wander from my point. Tokin' Smokin' Hottie status is not just about being unavailable: it's also about being hot and in this respect it doesn't hurt that Freddie ticks several of my boxes (and you can insert your own 'he can tick my box any day' joke here) in that he's kinda skinny, dark-haired and decidedly snake-hipped. His face is... well it's weird, I guess is the only way to describe it. I'm not being mean but he had a very weird-looking face that really shouldn't work: I guess that's an overbite that makes his mouth so prominent but it certainly is a whole LOT of overbite. Then on top of that he has just about the poutiest pair of lips that every pouted. Seriously: dude looks like he's just snogged a bee hive. And then there's the moustache, which... no. Just no. But somehow all these ridiculous elements work together to make him, at the very least, extremely interesting to look at. (He also, now that I come to think about it, looks a very very little bit like my first boyfriend. Holy Shit, I can't believe I only just noticed that. But in the unlikely event that you're reading this, Jason, seriously: no hard feelings. I think it might just be the overbite).

Then there's the fact that Freddie was clearly uber talented and a very large part of Queen's success must be laid at his feet. If you have four free minutes I highly recommend watching the film clip for This Thing Called Love in which Freddie has never looked better. Who doesn't love a dude who can dance and, at the same time, give the impression that he wants to fuck everyone else onstage. Even the chicks. The whole film clip is one of the campiest thing I've ever see and it's also completely awesome, right down to Freddie's facial expressions, the motorbike (dear LORD, the motorbike) and the way his shirt keeps getting more and more ripped off. Dude even makes a hairy chest look like a brilliant idea.

How does he do all of this? I have no idea but it's super hot and I really wish someone else who's still around today would learn how to do it too.

In lieu of me having anything interesting to say today: a little Philip Larkin to ease me back into the week.

This Be the Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats
Who half the time were soppy stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can.
And don't have any kids yourself.

(Philip Larkin)

A question for any dude wearing this (admittedly kinda cute) T-shirt emblazoned with the cover of The Sun Also Rises....

... Soooo, you do know that book was about impotence. Right?

Songs that initially sound upbeat but are actually kinda depressing when you start to think about it

Belle and Sebastian, Jonathan David

The only thing worse than unrequited love: unrequired love when the object of your affection fancies your best mate. Got to love the understatement of "I thought she liked me but somehow I was wrong". BURN. (Also, I don't mean to be harsh but, based on this music, video, the girl made the right choice because LORD Stuart looks as good as he's ever looked).

The Cure, Boys Don't Cry
Sure, nine of ten Cure songs pretty much make me want to slit my wrists but this one lures you in with its jangly guitar and Robert Smith dance moves. Only halfway through do you get sucked into a massive downer without quite knowing why.

The Smiths, You Just Haven't Earned it yet, Baby

See above entry for The Cure's Boys Don't Cry. The perkiness of this song makes me want to dance, while the line "you must stay on your own for slightly longer" fills me with the simultaneous desire to drown myself in the bath.

Nina Simone, Love Me or Leave Me
These days you can humiliate yourself by sending a dozen crawling mails/texts/voicemails to the (indifferent) object of your affection, who will politely ignore them. On balance I think I prefer Nina's approach.

Dear religious leaders of the UK,

When English PM David Cameron, a conservative politician who looks and sounds like the biggest toff that ever toffed, is "emphatically" in favour of gay marriage then maybe, just maybe, you're out of touch.

Regards,
Kate

Things I think but do not say to the security guard on reception at work #34

You're playing solitaire on your computer, really? That's the absolute best you can do?

Dude of the week: Sean Maher

The delightful Sean Maher, who I will love forever for his involvement in short-lived sci-fi TV series Firefly came out in EW magazine this week and the interview gives you a nice idea about how completely balls it must be to be a gay man in Hollywood, where pretty much everyone wants you to stay in the closet ("My agent was also like, ‘It’s best if you keep your options open. Maybe bisexual?’") So naturally I'm slightly gutted that the chances I will ever get to sleep with Maher have dropped from 0.1 per cent to 0 per cent but you've got to respect a man with balls. Plus, you know, he's still kinda smoking.

Only 113?

Have I linked to this post, 113 Reasons To Lead A Barren, Childless Existence That Ends In Your Death, by the charming Tara Ariano before? I feel like I have but... fuck it, I want to do it again. From now on whenever someone asks me why I don't want kids I plan to direct them to this link and say nothing more.

Token Smokin' Hottie: Milo Ventimiglia (again)

If you've never seen the short-lived TV show The Bedford Diaries then I URGE you from the bottom of my heart not to do so. Although filled with a lot of very attractive people the central concept of the show - it follows the lives of a bunch of students who all attend the same sex seminar at Bedford University - is just too super creepy to get over.

It's not just that the sex class is RIDICULOUSLY unacademic but that the Professor who runs the class and is, I'm pretty sure, supposed to be cut from the awesome-if-unconventional Dead Poets Society vein, instead comes off as a total perv who gets off on asking his super hot students to make video diaries about their sex lives. You just KNOW he's "reviewing" those homework assignments with one hand. The stupid show even tries to convince us that this class is one that simply eeeeeveryone in the entire university really wants to get into, although exactly why that would be is a complete mystery. Hilariously although the class appears to consist of about 15+ people, the show only follows the lives of the good-looking ones. Every now and again you get a shot of the rest of the class - the ugmos and fatties, basically - and it's pretty clear why those extras aren't playing a starring role.

The Bedford Diaries is a really shit show, I guess is what I'm trying to say. So why then have I just sat through the entire first (indeed only) season? Two words: Milo Ventimiglia.

Milo has appeared on this blog once or twice before because he is an extremely good looking boy and if this blog is about anything it's about extremely good looking boys and the women who ogle them (me). I loved Milo in Gilmore Girls as the tough-though-very-short rebel Jess who steals Rory away from Dull Dean and loved him even more as Peter Petrelli in Heroes, where he managed to stand out even among a cast of super hot hotties by virtue of a)being the hottest of them all, b)getting to play an adorable character with a heart of gold and, even better, Issues.

The reason Milo's cracked another mention as a Token Smokin' Hottie now is that his work in The Bedford Diaries (which predates Heroes) just goes to show how impressive he really is, and I don't just mean his delicious bone structure. Even saddled with some GODAWFUL dialogue that I really can't do justice to here, Milo is the one person onscreen you just can't take your eyes off. The plot of this show is, as I say, completely ludicrous, and yet I found myself caring what happened to Milo's character, not just because he's hot but because he's a decent actor who has, most importantly, something nobody else onscreen does: gravitas.

Also he is really, really good looking.