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.