Sweet Valley High

When I was a youngster my sister was really into the Sweet Valley High series of books. I wanted to read them - the covers alone looked AMAZING - but my Mum said they were too old for me and forced me to read the totally ball-bag spin off, Sweet Valley Twins instead. Lame.

Actually, all that happened was that I snuck the SVH books out of my sister's room and read them in my bedroom, starting with the brilliantly awesome Double Love. Because, yes, I loved a pretty wild and crazy life. In hindsight, I really don't know what Mum was so worried about: Sweet Valley is the lamest, whitest, most genital-free town EVER. Seriously, Elizabeth the 'good twin' is held up to be some kind of perfect perfection despite the fact that she dresses like a grandmother, can't open her mouth without patronising someone and has a weirdly sexless relationship with her beige (probably gay) boyfriend Todd. Admittedly Jessica is... kind of a sociopath, actually, but at least the books acknowledge that she's a selfish tramp, even if she usually manages to come good by the end of most of the books.

Anyway, to celebrate(?) the release of Sweet Valley High Confidential (a book that picks up where the original series left off OMFG), I feel obliged to point you to The Dairi Burger, which has re-read all the SVH books and recapped them for your viewing pleasure.

It's pretty fucking funny. For example, from Deceptions:

Scene 2: Enid Rollins’ pathetic fucking non-Spanish tiled house.

ENID ROLLINS: (answering the phone): Hello?

EW: Enid, omg! What am I going to do? This is SUCH a disaster!

ER: Ok, I’ve cleared my schedule. I’ve canceled visiting my dying grandmother to talk to you.

EW: Oh my gaaaawd! Nicholas is like totally in love with me! And he’s so rich and good-looking! But I am supposed to be in love with my good-looking boyfriend Todd! Two guys are in love with me! Life is SO HARD!

ER: Wow, that IS a huge problem. I mean, forget that I have a drunk father, I once almost killed a kid, and I was born with frizzy brown hair, how can you stand to be you! [puts a gun to her head]

Almost makes me want to track them down for the joy of re-reading them myself. Almost.

My heart is just BREAKING for Chris Brown

I mean can't a dude beat the shit out of his girlfriend's face and not have people ask him about said violent beating two years later? Stay strong, Chris, violent spouses around the world are standing strong behind you on this one.

I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.

I don't know how closely everyone has been following this story out of Sydney showing footage of a fat older kid being bullied by a younger boy. For anyone who hasn't seen it the older kid is being picked on and hit, picked on and hit until he retaliates by picking up his bully and dumping him on the ground. I've been fascinated by the story, in part because it's pretty tough to know how to feel about it.

On the one hand, I genuinely don't think that violence is ever the answer but only breeds more violence blah blah blah. If the younger kid had been badly hurt, which he could easily have been, we'd all be talking about the case in a very different way and the older kid's life would be even more fucked. I know kids who were bullied but I also know kids who were the bullies, and they're not evil people who deserved to die - they were just little shits who didn't know any better and were probably being bullied themselves. I'm sure there are plenty of childhood bullies who didn't come good but the people I know did.

On the other hand I can't help being a little bit delighted by the story, like a lot of other people apparently. I could pretty much watch the footage of the bullied kid picking up his tormentor all day because somehow this little incident seems to have become a flashpoint for something much bigger. It's pretty tough to have any sympathy for the younger boy when you hear the older one talk about how he contemplated suicide as a result of all the teasing that he seems to have suffered for most of his school life. Similarly it's tough not to feel admiration for the victim because he so obviously just took it and took it and took it until he... didn't take it anymore.

For some reason it makes me think of the brilliant film, Network, and its protagonist's mantra: "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore".

It's a pretty shitty lesson for kids to learn but I'm betting that the older kid's situation at school will improve as a result of this incident, in a way that years of asking for help from his parents and teachers has not.

I would love to see someone revisit this story in five years time to talk to both boys about how it shaped their lives, as I'm sure it will.

Best Coverline Ever on the current edition of Australian Vogue

Do Women Really Like Sex?

Things that Do and Do Not Feel Good After Finishing a Brutal Workout at the Gym

DOES FEEL GOOD: The sense that I am getting my fitness back ("back"? Really?) and could maybe run away from a very slow, possibly wounded, predator.

DOES NOT FEEL GOOD: Walking into the (otherwise empty) change room to find a (male) cleaner mopping the floor. Am I seriously expected to take my clothes off in front of this guy or do I just pretend to be super interested in my little locker and the two pairs of shoes within it? Enquiring minds want to know.

Pemberton, I love you, but you're bringing me down

To Pemberton where I spent my weekend watching a load of very skinny boys ride past me very fast on very expensive bikes. To my slight surprise it was great fun (and not only the bit where I got to legitimately spend a day staring at one of my favourite things in the world: skinny boys). It has, however, put me off my One Day plans to watch a stage of the Tour de France because, without the commentators to explain what's happening, it is, to put it mildly, fucking hard to work out what's going on.

My spectator chum, Marnie, and I spent several hours curled up on a handy park bench in what we thought would be an advantageous spot to watch the race. We were half way up a big hill so we got to see the riders dying on their arses on the way up and then moving scary fast on the way down. In between the laps when we saw nobody I re-read Madame Bovary and she read something on her e-reader, shivering in the freezing cold. (And damnit if don't now kinda want an e-reader, having spent so long railing against them).

Anyway, it was all fine when the riders went off in their respective groups at the start but by the time they came around for Lap 2 we had no idea whether the lone riders were completely shit stragglers or amazing riders who had pulled off a one-man breakaway. Should we have clapped or averted our gazes politely? We chose the latter. Adding to the, er, fun, was that several riders got completely lost and would ride by at random times, looking confused. To top it all we managed to miss the finish and didn't realise the race was over until someone cycled up to tell us so. Brilliant.

The best/worst bit of the weekend, though, was our motel - which I won't name here lest I manage to defame ten types of hell out of them.

Clearly I am a massive snob - I must be, I've never stayed in a motel. But the weirdness started with the man at reception ("Just don't leave any sugar out, or the ants will come") and ended with the cleaning lady who performed her duties while wheeling a wheelbarrow. No, I don't know either. Adding insult to injury was that when we went out for breakfast at the Lavender Farm (exactly like it sounds) the next day we discovered they rent out some darling wee cottages with a view of the lake and, yes, the lavender. Opportunity missed.

I guess what I'm saying is that I am already planning my return trip to Pemberton for the Pemberton Classic road race next year. But this time I plan to book ahead at the Lavender Farm. And possibly bring some binoculars. Those skinny boys are worthy of a close up.

A Roasting

A slightly grim article from the Courier Mail about women getting shitter at doing "female" things like roasting an oven, vaccuming and - presumably - taking a beating from one's husband without reporting his sorry arse to the cops. Because the year is 1950.

But I paraphrase. Let's go to the primary source:

BASIC "female" skills are becoming endangered with fewer young women able to iron a shirt, cook a roast chicken or hem a skirt.

Just as more modern men are unable to complete traditional male tasks, new research shows Generation Y women can't do the chores their mothers and grandmothers did daily. Only 51 per cent of women aged under 30 can cook a roast compared with 82 per cent of baby boomers.

Baking lamingtons is a dying art with 20 per cent of Gen Y capable of whipping up the Aussie classic, down from 45 per cent for previous generations

The thing is, as a Gen Y woman myself I have some concerns with the phrase "able to", as in "fewer young women are able to...". Handed a cookbook and a raw chicken I think most Gen Y women would, in fact, be "able to" roast said chicken, even if they haven't done so before. (I'm not a great cook and I can do it, so how hard can it really be?) I think what the survey was probably asking is whether the women would be able to roast a chicken off their own bat, implying that they'd done it so many times it would be a cinch.

Similarly I can bake a good cake or tray of muffins but I've not the slightest idea how to make a lamington. Mostly because I find them to be ultra weak sauce on my list of tasty treats.

But, wait, it's not all bad. Don't sterilise us en masse just yet.

But Gen Y women are taking on other skills.

As well as working full or part-time, they are doing tasks previously done by men.

More than 70 per cent of women under 30 say they often take out the bins, 77 per cent mow the lawn and 70 per cent claim they wash the car.

Phew. Close one.

Fuck me, I'm in love

Could somebody pretty please put me out of my misery and buy me this bag?

Things I think but do not say to people at the gym:

1. Please put on some pants.
2. Please, please stop talking. I cannot run on this treadmill and chat about the state of the education system.
3. Seriously, the pants.

Token Smokin' Hottie: Vincent Cassel

I went to see Black Swan the other week and the moment Vincent Cassel came on screen the two biddies behind me started crapping on to each other in the way that, in my experience, Women Of A Certain Age seem to feel they have the right to do.

"Now WHERE do we know him from?" one said to the other, not making any attempt to keep her voice down.

"Oh he is SO familiar," the other one said.

I wanted to turn around and tell them to shut the fuck up - I'd just forked out 15 bucks - but of course I didn't.

It's not just that I hate people who talk during a movie, although I really really do. I think maybe it's more that I can't fucking stand people who talk during a movie when Vincent Cassel is on screen.

Interviews with Cassel always seem to refer to him as an "unlikely" sex symbol to which I think Hmm, Really? He seems like a kinda likely sex symbol to me. I mean, firstly the man is French which is, honestly, pretty hot. Yes it's a big fat cliche to find the accent hot it just is. Secondly he's married to Monica Bellucci, one of the most blazingly scorchingly smoking hot women who has ever graced the silver screen so obviously he's got something going on in the looks department.

And yet, of course, I can see what they mean. He shouldn't be hot. His nose is too big. His face is... kinda cragged. It's sort of difficult to believe he's hiding a smoking hot body under his clothes. Yet somehow he comes off sexy, like a hot professor and semi-dangerous, not like he's going to cut a bitch but like maybe he might be willing to put his hand up your skirt at a party before you've been properly introduced.

Oddly enough he hasn't been mentioned all that much in the reviews of Black Swan that I've read but I think he deserves a lot more credit. Part of the reason that Black Swan works in spite of the fact that it's kind of nuts over the top and ridiculous is that it's also pretty sexy. And the sexiest thing about it? Well, the boys will disagree, but my vote goes to Cassel, even though his character is a bit... um... well I guess...look, I'm trying not to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it, but he borders on the side of being kind of a sexual harasser, is all I'm saying.

And yet, perversely, he makes it look good.

The thing I hate today...

Facebook bores. I don't mean people who update their status' All The Time (because I am almost one of them) nor people who leave utterly inance status updates about their children/pets/accomplishments. I mean people who like to brag that they have either never used Facebook or used to use it but don't anymore as though they believe it makes them a better kind of person than the rest of us. You're not better and nobody cares*.




* Because one of my favourite people in the world is NOT on Facebook I should point out here that my problem isn't with people who don't use Facebook but only with those who think they deserve a medal for it.

Mia culpa

Sorry for being an insanely slack blogger lately. I haven't had much time off, so I can't blame the holidays. Really it comes down to the fact that I have been a bit down in the dumps work-wise and have been trying to avoid bitching about it. Which is clearly what I'm doing right now. So apologies. Again.

Next week: some jokes!

Christmas, 2011

At least I now know what I'll be getting for Christmas NEXT year.

White Out

I really wish more Australian boys would get onboard the white look for summer.

The other week I found myself all but following some random guy into the city. It's not as creepy as it sounds: we were just walking the same way for about 15 minutes and - yes - I could have gone another route but I preferred to follow him because I was completely entranced, even though I could basically barely make out his face. The reason - it occured to me after about two blocks - was that he was wearing all white: a loose white shirt and a pair of quite delightful white pants, worn with what looked like a really simple pair of thongs. Better yet he was carrying absolutely nothing - no bag, not texting away - and gave off a vibe of being about as carefree as a boy can be on a warm summer day.

In short, he looked amazing and so much cooler (in, I guess, both senses of the word) than the Aussie muppets who run around in boardies and thongs all summer long. I'm just putting it out there in the hope that it will catch on and I can take full credit but I reckon this is The Look for boys this summer. So come on male reader(s): buy your white clothes now, thank me later. Oh, and for GOD'S SAKE please send me a photo.

Scenes from a Bon Jovi concert

ME (To the person next to me): Is he... not wearing a shirt under his leather jacket?
RANDOM GIRL IN FRONT OF ME (Turning around): HE NEVER WEARS A SHIRT! HOW HOT IS HE!!
ME (Nervous smile. Long pause): I bet he gets really sweaty.

Cute boys and cats

So I saw someone else linking to this site, Cute Boys With Cats, and my immediate thought was that I have not entirely normal taste and the chances that I would find these boys cute was slim to none. Then I realised the truth: any boy looks 100 per cent cuter with a cat on his lap/arm/face. True story.

Brilliant

Do you remember that scene in High Fidelity (both the book and the film) where the main character meets up with an ex-girlfriend, the one he has put on a pedastal for years and year, only to discover that she's awful. That's the word he uses: "She's AWFUL." Still hot (played in the film by Catherine Zeta Jones) but pretentious, boring and completely self-obsessed.

Turns out, I've had a very similar experience. I recently met up with someone from my school days (nobody, I should note, who reads this blog). In the old days this guy was the object of half the school's desire. He was beautiful, super smart and seemed like he had all the answers. I mooned over him for a good wasted year or two, too blind to realise he was probably actually a bit of a wanker.

Then I met up with him again, through pure chance that thrust us together for a few days. He was still gorgeous, still apparently very smart. And he was awful. Just AWFUL. I don't want to transcribe any of the things he did or said here, just in case he stumbles onto this blog and recognises himself, but it was bad. He was pretentious, completely self-obsessed to the point where he couldn't talk about anything else, and utterly deluded about his place in the world.

I loved it.

I loved being able to subtly take the piss out of him without him appearing to realise it. I loved having some of my friends ask me who this wanker was. I loved completely blowing him off towards the end because I just Could Not Be Arsed Dealing With Him.

The whole experience made me wish I had gone to my 10 Year School Reunion earlier this year. Would have been great fun.

Quotable Quotes: an oldie but a goodie for a very grim Tuesday

“I am sad, sad as a circus-lioness, sad as an eagle without wings, sad as a violin with only one string and one that is broken, sad as a woman who is growing old.” (Jean Rhys)

Yeah apparently her parents let her out of the house like this. A lot.

This one is just for the saddos like me who harbour a deep and abiding love for the following things:

1. The TV series Gossip Girl.
2. The TV series Project Runway and, more specifically, the delightful Tim Gunn.

I have apparently been living under some kind of rock. How else to explain the fact that I missed Mr Gunn utterly unloading on Gossip Girl's least talented, most annoying actress: Taylor Momsen, who plays "Jenny" in the series. You know Momsen: the 16-year-old who dresses like a 38-year-old meth-addicted hooker whose rent was due yesterday.

Gunn recently filmed a guest spot on Gossip Girl (which was, I admit, kinda painful to watch) and apparently found Momsen something of a douche:

"What a diva!" he told E! News. "She was pathetic, she couldn't remember her lines, and she didn't even have that many. I thought to myself 'why are we all being held hostage by this brat?'"

Gunn said that Momsen's constant Blackberry use was the main problem and the director told him it happened "day in, day out, my life." He said that if he was a regular on the show he would give her some advice.

"I'd say, 'You know young lady, there are hundreds of thousands of girls who are just as attractive and even smarter than you. Why are you acting like this show is a huge burden on you?'" he told E! "She was on her phone during every break, I wanted to tell her, 'If you weren't on your BlackBerry, you can retain this stuff.'"

You can read the rest here.

Like I say this is seriously old news (I'm talking September) but I couldn't resist because I love it. I love it so much that I want to beg Gunn to shadow me in my daily life, taking potshots at all the people who get up my nose and doing so in charming, well-clad way.

I don't know what you're talking about...

... everything in my life is just going PERFECTLY. Honest.