Cor, do you remember the end of last year, when as a nation we all descended into a screeching, flapping panic and were convinced the end of civilisation was upon us, because we had a dim, distant memory of once buying an album on cassette in Woolworth's in 1991, and now we would never be able to do perform that precious action again? When we thought it would be mere hours before the whole concept of "money" would be rendered as dead as a big old papery dodo, and we would be forced to return to a barter economy where our meticulous collection of Wire DVDs and original Alan Moore comics would suddenly only be fit for teeny amounts of fuel and as effective shiny surfaces to reflect the sun and singe the circling vultures? How hilarious was all that hoo-hah, eh? What's that? It's very real, it's here and it's going to get worse, you've already lost your job and you're wasting your last pound in an internet cafe reading this? Oh, er... Um. Awkward.
Screw the credit crunch, I say. I'm going to buy a bloody house and you can't stop me, unless you are one of two things: 1) a bank who is unwilling to lend me enough money to fill a decent-sized suitcase (although only if it's in 50ps - one thing that working in a casino taught me was how laughably small a stack of money £200,000 in notes actually is. You could, if you'll forgive the vulgarity, shove it up your arse and still walk like a general) or 2) a house-seller who is unwilling to let me traipse my outside muck through their corridors, sneer at their wainscotting and then chuck a fiver in their direction and yell "S'all you're getting in the current climate, sonny-jim!" I'll ignore the fact that these are not so much stumbling blocks as bone-crunching-fall monoliths.
Anyway, my father has wailed himself into a coma on hearing this news, and I can't say I really blame him. His analysis that I am a lily-livered sap who would be panicked into buying sunscreen in a monsoon, especially if the salesman was a suave, suspiciously dry, gentleman in a nice coat and a big Audi, is pretty much spot-on. "They love people like you," Papa muttered darkly, before he gently slipped into his semi-permanent slumber. And so far, I have been bamboozled into thinking if we do not make an offer in the next 35 seconds, all available decent housing stock in this quadrant of London will be swept back into the stratosphere on a wave of young urban professionals earning slightly more than me, and I shall be left quivering in fear in a high-rise in Streatham, waiting for the moment when the local feral youth scratch through the paper-thin walls, staple-gun my ears to the floor and mess up my XBox Live rating.
So, as every other facet of my admittedly weak-broth-plain life is now infected with a pulsating lust for square-footage, outside space and APR, I apologise in advance if this blog turns into a long Rory Bremner dinner party sketch without any sign of humour, wit or subtlety. Welcome one and all to my world.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Cry Up A Liver (If That Is Indeed Possible)
All right, all right, I admit it. Much as I sometimes wish it isn't so, although never quite enough to start winking lasciviously at anything with legs from here to yah-yah and binding down my bosom (baby, there just ain't enough binding in the world, noewaddimean?) I just have to come to terms with the fact that I am a girly-woman-lady type. And thus, I am occasionally prone, when I let my guard down, to engaging in girly-woman-lady type activities, like looking at videos of animals trampolining (thanks, Mippy!), paying inordinate amounts of money to have people apply poisonous chemicals to my hair with micrometre precision, and chronic self-hatred. Also, crying at things on the TV that are not upsetting, even through the foul-mouthed stream of invective that such things usually provoke in me. Here are a few things that make me cry:
1. The Coffee And TV video, specifically the moment at the end where Graham returns to the homestead and his family, who have been sadly gazing out of the window, suddenly hear him enter and rush to...well, one assumes greet him, but it's offscreen - they could be so maddened by his total disregard for their feelings and selfish skulking about in Britpop bands behaviour that they beat him to a pulp. I'm guessing that's not the way Hammer and Tongs pictured it. Peculiarly, the death of the milk cartons leaves me cold, the cheery Tetrapak idiots.
2. The episode of Futurama where Fry's fossilised dog is almost brought back from the dead, before Fry realises the dog lived a long life after Fry had gone, and so leaves him to his stony rest. But oh no, then the sucker punch - the dog had in fact stayed in the spot where Fry left him, pining after his lost master, for years and years until he grew old and died, lonely and unloved. Heartbreaking. Tragic. But a stupid cartoon set 1,000 years in the future, for the love of all the ponies!
3. Any advert for Cancer Research or somesuch where a big-eyed teary child looks into the mirror and sees their departed mother smiling back at them. Or the Mastercard advert where people joyfully greet their long-lost relatives in airport terminals.
Ah-ha! Sky One seem to have run with this last idea, straight into a wall made of emotional manipulation. A new show starts this week called "Hello Goodbye" (I base all of the following on the trail alone, BTW, I have no intention of watching - misinformed opinion once again the best opinion!) which hangs around Heathrow and sticks a camera into the faces of people saying - yes, yes! - hello, or goodbye, to friends and family. It's hardcore emotional pornography. None of the backstory, nothing you need to fast forward through, just straight-up crying, sobbing, and snuffling. Look, look at them cry. You can cry too. Look at those tears, running down their faces. Ohhh, yeah. Do you like that? Do you like those tears? Oh, the anguish! Oh, God! The anguish! More, more! Cry harder! Harder! And...! Quick, get a tissue, you've made an awful mess all down your face.
Disgusted? You should be. It's a ridiculous idea for a show, but it's somehow genius in its simplicity. You just have to beam footage of people suffering, but not in a horrible "my whole family's just been gunned down" kind of way, into the living rooms of saps who'll watch so they can "just have a good cry". There's no such thing. Just as there's no such thing as a hilarious homicidal rage. Trouble is though, it would make me cry in a way that, for example, watching footage of far-flung wars or real terrible human suffering wouldn't. And that is what is worrying to me.
Ah well - just have to fall back on the saviour of all girly-woman-lady types - blame it on the hormones. I knew there was a good side to it somewhere.
1. The Coffee And TV video, specifically the moment at the end where Graham returns to the homestead and his family, who have been sadly gazing out of the window, suddenly hear him enter and rush to...well, one assumes greet him, but it's offscreen - they could be so maddened by his total disregard for their feelings and selfish skulking about in Britpop bands behaviour that they beat him to a pulp. I'm guessing that's not the way Hammer and Tongs pictured it. Peculiarly, the death of the milk cartons leaves me cold, the cheery Tetrapak idiots.
2. The episode of Futurama where Fry's fossilised dog is almost brought back from the dead, before Fry realises the dog lived a long life after Fry had gone, and so leaves him to his stony rest. But oh no, then the sucker punch - the dog had in fact stayed in the spot where Fry left him, pining after his lost master, for years and years until he grew old and died, lonely and unloved. Heartbreaking. Tragic. But a stupid cartoon set 1,000 years in the future, for the love of all the ponies!
3. Any advert for Cancer Research or somesuch where a big-eyed teary child looks into the mirror and sees their departed mother smiling back at them. Or the Mastercard advert where people joyfully greet their long-lost relatives in airport terminals.
Ah-ha! Sky One seem to have run with this last idea, straight into a wall made of emotional manipulation. A new show starts this week called "Hello Goodbye" (I base all of the following on the trail alone, BTW, I have no intention of watching - misinformed opinion once again the best opinion!) which hangs around Heathrow and sticks a camera into the faces of people saying - yes, yes! - hello, or goodbye, to friends and family. It's hardcore emotional pornography. None of the backstory, nothing you need to fast forward through, just straight-up crying, sobbing, and snuffling. Look, look at them cry. You can cry too. Look at those tears, running down their faces. Ohhh, yeah. Do you like that? Do you like those tears? Oh, the anguish! Oh, God! The anguish! More, more! Cry harder! Harder! And...! Quick, get a tissue, you've made an awful mess all down your face.
Disgusted? You should be. It's a ridiculous idea for a show, but it's somehow genius in its simplicity. You just have to beam footage of people suffering, but not in a horrible "my whole family's just been gunned down" kind of way, into the living rooms of saps who'll watch so they can "just have a good cry". There's no such thing. Just as there's no such thing as a hilarious homicidal rage. Trouble is though, it would make me cry in a way that, for example, watching footage of far-flung wars or real terrible human suffering wouldn't. And that is what is worrying to me.
Ah well - just have to fall back on the saviour of all girly-woman-lady types - blame it on the hormones. I knew there was a good side to it somewhere.
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Rejected Idea On Grounds Of Taste: Walliams' Thallium Dalliance
I have no comment to make on the snow. Oh, all right, one comment. Snow is no fun when you're stranded at 2am in Trafalgar Square with nary but a hysterical four-month pregnant stranger and your ex-boyfriend for company. It is also no fun when you wake up on the wrong side of London with no phone and public transport nothing but a dim, distant memory. In all other instances, it is masses of fun. So guess which two instances I experienced during the Great London Snow-pocalypse? Anyway, let's not dwell on that. Let's dwell, instead, on this.
There is a phenomenon round here, which I think is particular to London, if not just this tiny section of West London - which is very popular with film crews for some reason., possibly because of its proximity to the great mothership of media, Television Centre - where you will often see little florescent arrow signs cable-tied to signposts, directing crews to location shoots and filming bases. Because they're only tiny signs, and possibly to mystify and amaze the neanderthal minds of the hoi polloi, they usually have written on them just the initials of the show and then "base" or "loc" or whatever. Eg: LS for Love Soup, which was filmed just round the corner from me. Thrilling, I know. But that's given me a little game to play, which is to guess the show from the initials. For example, this morning I noticed lots of signs for WTD. So! Without further ado, let's play!
Start with an obvious one:
What The Duck?! - culture-clash sitcom where lovable geek is punished for hacking into Downing Street website and changing all instances of words "Prime Minister" to "Great Orc Overlord" by community service at wetland centre. Soon has corralled reticent birdwatchers into forming most brutal battalion World Of Warcraft has ever seen, and learns a few interesting truths about bitterns along the way. Starring Kris Marshall in NHS specs, Geoffrey Palmer and the ghost of Compo.
Wet Thatcher Dream - Nostalgic coming-of-age drama set in Eighties mining village. Young boy dreams of escaping life in rundown terraced house and becoming commodities broker in deregulated Thatcherite economy. Befriended by school's economics teacher, who helps him build up full Filofax collection, including rare astrology guide. Starring Kelly Le Brock as Thatcher. Contains intense scenes of free marketeering from the outset.
When Thickets Divide - Boring old period drama about a wealthy landowner and the poor, beautiful maiden who tills the adjoining fields, or whatever. Lashings of heaving tits to keep the grunts amused, all the will they, won't they, will they, won't they crap. In alarming break with tradition, they do, but he then immediately kills and eats her in repugnantly graphic fashion.
I may have got a little bored with the game at the end there. With enormous great guffs of apology to TV Go Home.
There is a phenomenon round here, which I think is particular to London, if not just this tiny section of West London - which is very popular with film crews for some reason., possibly because of its proximity to the great mothership of media, Television Centre - where you will often see little florescent arrow signs cable-tied to signposts, directing crews to location shoots and filming bases. Because they're only tiny signs, and possibly to mystify and amaze the neanderthal minds of the hoi polloi, they usually have written on them just the initials of the show and then "base" or "loc" or whatever. Eg: LS for Love Soup, which was filmed just round the corner from me. Thrilling, I know. But that's given me a little game to play, which is to guess the show from the initials. For example, this morning I noticed lots of signs for WTD. So! Without further ado, let's play!
Start with an obvious one:
What The Duck?! - culture-clash sitcom where lovable geek is punished for hacking into Downing Street website and changing all instances of words "Prime Minister" to "Great Orc Overlord" by community service at wetland centre. Soon has corralled reticent birdwatchers into forming most brutal battalion World Of Warcraft has ever seen, and learns a few interesting truths about bitterns along the way. Starring Kris Marshall in NHS specs, Geoffrey Palmer and the ghost of Compo.
Wet Thatcher Dream - Nostalgic coming-of-age drama set in Eighties mining village. Young boy dreams of escaping life in rundown terraced house and becoming commodities broker in deregulated Thatcherite economy. Befriended by school's economics teacher, who helps him build up full Filofax collection, including rare astrology guide. Starring Kelly Le Brock as Thatcher. Contains intense scenes of free marketeering from the outset.
When Thickets Divide - Boring old period drama about a wealthy landowner and the poor, beautiful maiden who tills the adjoining fields, or whatever. Lashings of heaving tits to keep the grunts amused, all the will they, won't they, will they, won't they crap. In alarming break with tradition, they do, but he then immediately kills and eats her in repugnantly graphic fashion.
I may have got a little bored with the game at the end there. With enormous great guffs of apology to TV Go Home.
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