Stimulation

No, this is not an interesting, kinky, sexy-type article. The title refers to energy drinks. One in particular which used to go by the name of Kick but has been rebranded to Kx (‘A change in name but the kick stays the same!’) A much more dynamic name, I think you’ll agree, although I have no idea of how you might pronounce it.

Reading the back of the can (which is preferable to reading criticism at this point) I noticed that it is in fact a fruit drink. You will be entirely unable to tell this from drinking it of course, although to give it credit where it’s due, it does taste slightly less vile than Red Bull. Anyway, it contains extracts of carrot, apple, hibiscus, lemon and safflower. Whatever safflower is.

Now I know that all sounds very pleasant but if you’re downing energy drinks full of caffeine and sugar, I feel it is unlikely that you care to much about your health. I don’t like the pretence. I know my body is not a temple, I’m fine with it, stop trying to convince me that Kx is going to do me any good whatsoever. I do grant that it is having some effect though, this post is proof of that.

Blog On Eddie Izzard

Sheer essay boredom. That is why I’m here. This is the level of procrastination we are talking about. I do realise this is incredibly tedious. I don’t like blogs where people talk about their day or how bored they are either. It’s impossible not to sound like a moron, so…

Yesterday, I went to see Eddie Izzard at the SECC. Without resorting to short, dismissive, undescriptive words which don’t tell you very much, I would say that he was crap. He sold out the SECC, I don’t remember which auditorium we were in but it was MASSIVE. I thought that I was bad at visualising numbers but my number dyslexic sister was impressed to the point of exclaiming, “there must be nine hundred people in here!” Bless. Anyway, there were several screens so I was resigned to looking at a very large projection of a very tiny man whose jeans were too tight from approximately two miles away.

I’ll start with some positives: 1. He was very punctual. 2. He did a long set. 3. He was very punctual.
You’ll see that I’ve only listed two positives there. And one is a technicality. He was onstage for a long time so you felt you were getting your money’s worth, unfortunately about 60% of his set was non-verbal (i.e. stupid noises and time-killing improv) and 80% was old material (you’ll see that these highly scientific and accurate figures overlap). What’s left is about 10% of new spoken material. None of it funny. I was with a group of people who were too polite or too in denial at having paid £30 for a ticket for anyone to say outright that watching it felt like a groan that lasted an hour and a half. Instead people say things like “he’s gone too political and mainstream”, “he’s got to think about a wider market now that he’s got his film career”.

Izzard is carving out a film career as a bad actor. That’s the whole charm of watching his acting, you know it’s bad but also that he’s trying really hard to impress the big boys/shots. It’s endearing. The other thing is, Izzard’s brand of comedy is very mainstream now, or is was about three years ago. He addressed the 900-or-so-strong audience that we must be ‘outside the box thinkers’. No. Really not so. I admit it (although I didn’t buy my ticket). His show would only appealed to those who actually enjoy hearing the same jokes over and over again. For about ten years. How many times can you tell the story about the Ark? How self-referential can you be and still expect a laugh?

I know he’s done good things like run excessively long distances for charity but I’m not convinced that’s an adequate excuse. I’d like to be more witty in my disapproval but it was so dull that I’m not even moved to, there’s not one thing he said that I can pin down and pour scorn on, it just wasn’t anything at all. It’s sad because I used to think he was really funny. True, I was about ten but I don’t think the problem is that I’ve grown up. His comedy was just stagnant and phony. He went through all the motions of comedy, very vigorously at times, but did little to produce anything more than a smirk. I had to be nudged awake at one point. As for political, making jokes about Bush doesn’t count, they’re hardly the hallmark of an informed or even humorous person. Doing stand up in a small venue and dying on your arse is permissible, even expected, but to stand up in front of thousands for an extended period of time and not even recognise (read: admit) the patently obvious is just a little bit rude.

What I mean is, he’s sold out. That probably doesn’t come as a shock to you but I was slightly awed to see it on such a vast scale. No one even heckled. Was there a secret agreement? ‘Eddie Izzard, he’s well known, he’s meant to be funny…he must be funny…because he’s well known.’ It’s the Treaty of the Bland. When something or someone is accepted as being good, you take the whole family and you get a Boneless Bargain Bucket on the way home. You don’t particularly enjoy any of it but it’s inoffensive and it’s what you’re used to, so why kick up a fuss? I could be wrong, maybe Eddie’s comedy is just a bit too quaint for me these days. Terse language and jokes about disabilities and paedophilia and mass murderers, you get inured to those, especially with so many repeats of Mock the Week. Ninja sheep just won’t cut it any more. Especially when people are tweeting about it during the interval before he’s even got to that part his set, assuming he has one. And no one spends thirty quid to watch you look up Wikipedia on your iphone, that I actually do find offensive, I’m perfectly capable of keeping myself misinformed.

Life! Death! PRIZES!

Printed in The Student, 13 October 2009

It was like a grotesque set of dominoes. Instead of uniform black-white dotted tiles toppling over each other, it was gran that had lost her balance. She fell into her grandson and in turn into granddad, and so it went on in gut-churning slow-motion.

My mother and I stamped on the emergency stop sign of the escalator, unaware the stop button was underneath. A cool-headed Good Samaritan ushers us out the way and brings the machinery along with the horrid spectacle to a halt. A medical student appears and looks the crumpled family members over as an ambulance is called.

It’s at this point I see a woman parked in one of the cafe seats that looks onto the escalator. Her bags are arranged around her, her pudgy hands folded in her lap and a look of morbid fascination plastered across her face. She’s relished every moment of this hideous scene. She has no intention of helping, she shows no sympathy, she’s just captivated by the sight of human suffering.

She’s not alone. True, put in a situation such as this, the majority of people would try to help, they would feel empathy. However an industry does exist for people who enjoy such things: books and magazines that shy behind the title of “human interest”. Read as “the suffering of others distributed for entertainment”. The subheading of Chat! magazine probably sums it up more succinctly, and more brutally: “Life! Death! Prizes!”

Chat! is by no means the sole offender, other publications to be singled out include That’s Life!, Pick Me Up and Take a Break which has an incredible weekly circulation of 920 000. A typical front-page will consist of splash headlines designed to shock: “I ran over my fiancé – No wedding just a funeral”, “Dying? But I’ll have a boob job first!”, “I slept with my hubby’s brother FOR A BET”and “Ancient Egypt’s King Tut gave me a baby”. Combine this with the symmetrical grinning face of an attractive woman (but not so attractive as to be intimidating), the promise of money to be given away and some cute pictures of animals or children, and you’ve hit the target market.

You could argue that these magazines have a legitimate role, people only read these horror stories to feel better about their own lives and those who contribute them receive payment. Catharsis and compensation, everyone’s a winner, or at least has a chance at winning a “family seaside holiday in Blackpool.” But that’s before you look too closely at how some of these stories are written. The writers, editors and interviewers have an admirable talent for portraying people in the worst possible light yet in an apparently sympathetic fashion.

Last week Closer excelled itself in covering the story of a woman who had been ravaged by drug addiction. Next to a picture of her grinning with decaying teeth and her skin patchy with broken blood vessels, the article tells of how she took GBL daily and her ex-boyfriend “used to put it into my Pot Noodle”. These magazines have a very cynical idea of the intelligence of both their sources and their readers and exploit them accordingly.

Many of the stories, dramatically titled “True-Life!” are distinctly surreal, bizarre to the point they are beyond irony, particularly in the way they written and the skewed perspective they give on the world. My personal favourite centred on a woman who claimed to have objectum-sexuality; she had a physical attraction to walls. The article was loaded with cheap gags such as “I knew he would stand by me” and “I go for the strong, silent type” and a gratuitous picture of the Great Wall of China captioned, “Do walls do it for you?” Worse still, it details how she married the Berlin Wall (“The sex was amazing, just touching the hard brickwork and rough edges sent me into a frenzy.”) and was “horrified” when “her husband” was torn down in 1989. The fall of communism in Western Europe pales into insignificance by comparison.

Perhaps I’m getting too worked up. Maybe I’m just bitter after selling one too many “Painful Lives” biographies or because a woman never took piggy eyes off me, or stopped masticating on her panini, when I once cried in a cafe. Public humiliation used to be an effective method of punishment (and continues to this day in the form of televised X-Factor auditions) and executions were public events, witnessed by children and adults. Upon reflection, morbid fascination is nothing new and magazines such as Chat! cater to an unpleasant aspect of human nature . They are a slightly lesser evil to public hangings and who doesn’t love a Sudoku?

Film Review: Creation

Really not the best review I’ve ever written. Everyone in the cinema was crying though. That’s an excuse.

Printed in The Student, 29 September 2009

Overturning the history of human thought and discrediting the foundations of the church in Victorian England was never going to be a pleasant task. However, Charles Darwin had much more to contend with than fury from the public sphere as their beliefs were shattered by irrefutable biological facts and a lifetime of research. The private story behind the ‘most explosive idea in history’ is almost as turbulent.

A hobbit-like Thomas Huxley, in an unskilled attempt at encouraging Darwin to publish his theories comments: “You’ve killed God.” However, Creation is at pains to portray Darwin as a gentle family man. Paul Bettany’s repertoire of ‘adoring father’ expressions, while meticulously detailing the development of his firstborn, Annie, are cringe-worthy. Jennifer Connelly’s interpretation of pious Emma Darwin is as wooden as a pew, and with lines such as, “Charles is like a barnacle: if you scrape him off his rock, he will die,” her dialogue is similarly stodgy.

Yet despite these defects, Creation is a moving film. Inconsistent performance can’t contend with the tragic, inspirational and gruelling twists of real life. For all of Bettany’s initial strained expressions, his depiction of Darwin’s psychological suffering and hallucinations after Annie’s death are difficult to watch, but this time, for the right reasons. The conflict of interest between his love for his wife, her strong religious beliefs and his own passion for scientific enquiry, particularly when it comes to raising their children, is deftly handled. The very idea of Darwin looking extremely shifty at church through the drone of ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ is inspired.

As Annie, Martha West is the perfect combination of cute precociousness and foot-stamping indignation. The other children are little more than fluffy-headed extras at story time. However, it is hard not to think that Darwin would have had an inexhaustible bank of bedtime tales. Darwin’s exploits across the world, from landing at Tierra del Fuego to meeting the first orang-utan in the London Zoo are well-shot and engaging diversions from the narrative.

Time-lapse nature sequences are used when Darwin ponders his work: the chick falls from the nest and is fed on by insects until it becomes part of the compost that nourishes the plants, and the trees around it in turn provide shelter for more chicks. However, the law ’survival of the fittest’ must have seemed particularly cruel to Darwin. He married his first cousin and in their reconciliation, he and Emma admit that when they thought they were creating ‘the perfect child’ they perhaps endowed Annie with a weakness that prematurely ended her life.

When I was a Fresher

Printed in The Student, September 15 2009

Even if The Student’s survey proves that, for the majority , sex during Freshers’ Week is limited to dipping your hand in the ubiquitous condom bucket outside Potterow (not to mention plenty of well meaning, if slightly hyped-up advice) there is a definite association between Freshers’ Week and sex. However, this hasn’t always been the case. It can’t be overstated that attitudes towards sex have altered vastly over the past fifty years.

‘Sexual intercourse began in nineteen sixty-three (which was rather late for me)’, laments Philip Larkin in his 1967 poem, Annus Mirabilis which documents the tectonic shift during this decade of apparent “free love”. He continues, ‘Between the end of the Chatterley ban / And the Beatles’ first LP.’ Mention of sex was no longer taboo in popular culture. It could be said that discourse about sex didn’t start until 1960s. When British academics surveyed the nation’s sexual behaviour in a manner similar to the Kinsey report in 1949 the results were deemed too scandalous to be released into the public domain. It wasn’t until 2005 when the data was retrieved from a dusty archive that researchers discovered attitudes were far more liberal than first thought, they were just never discussed.

The “sexual revolution” of sixties heralded many changes. D.H. Lawrence’s 1928 novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, wasn’t printed in Britain until 1960 after a landmark court-case where his use of “four-letter words” and explicit depiction of a love affair between an aristocratic woman and her rough-speaking gamekeeper was deemed of sufficient intellectual merit , sociological and cultural concern to warrant publication. There’s a phrase “education is the best form of contraception” and it could be argued that a more liberal attitude towards sex was the result of more open dissection about sex in literature, popular music and more detailed research into sexual behaviour. However, in practical terms it was the invention of the pill in 1961 that proved a challenge to traditional values about sex.

If the fifties marked the invention of the teenager, then the sixties was perhaps the first time where young people were aware that their interactions with the opposite sex were different from that of their parents. John Nolan, who attended Freshers’ Week at Edinburgh in 1966, remembers some of these social changes, “Things changed very quickly in the Sixties.  For example, girls were only allowed in male rooms in Pollock Halls between 11am and 11pm. However, by 1968 the rule had disappeared.  The halls became mixed.”  Previously, the sexes were much more segregated, meaning Freshers’ Week was a very different experience from what it is today: “Also, in 1966, as far as I remember, girl students were allowed in Men’s Union (now Teviot) only at dances on Fridays and Saturdays. Unofficially this was known as the “Cattle Market .””

It is no coincidence that the rules changed in 1968. The now legendary student protests of May ‘68 in France were a rebellion against traditional morals, including notions of sexual freedom. One of the incidents that sparked off the protests was a dispute between student leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit and the French minister for education over banning male students from female dormitories at night.

A more open attitude towards sex continued in the following decade, Jane*, an Edinburgh 1978 medical graduate, now a local GP recalls: “The student helpers t-shirts said “Feel a Little Fresher Every Day” so that set the tone.” When it came to Freshers’ Week and sex, the 70s was a transitional period: “We came after the sixties, no-one wanted to be a virgin and no-one worried about safe sex. We were the “Pill Generation”, completely different from our parents – but we paid for it! Most of us to this day have never told our parents that we “did it” before we were married. I think the AIDS scare and emphasis on safe sex has slowed this down a bit, and a good thing too, we were very young and easily hurt, and there seemed to be no good excuse not to. Fortunately none of my friends have suffered cervical cancer, I like to think our intelligence and self-respect saved us! We knew about HPV but there was nothing we could do about it, condoms were considered naff and old fashioned. The pill did its job, but of course provided no protection against STD and cervical cancer.”

In some respects, current attitudes towards sex appear to have reached a happy medium; it is no longer an unspeakable subject but “rampant sex”, or “free love” as it was known, is no longer a social trend. Jane* believes that today’s students have a more enlightened approach to sex but has other concerns: “I am more worried about alcohol than about sex – almost a reversal – I think where we didn’t realise the risks of sex, they don’t realise the risks of alcohol. [In the 1970s] licensing laws were draconian – nearly everywhere shut at 11pm and nowhere opened on Sunday. This reduced our intake. We had a lecture where we were told that most people will consume half their entire lifetime’s intake of alcohol during their student years. I have tried to tell my student friends of today about the risks but they glaze over and think I am just a middle-aged killjoy. I think you should never drink until you are unconscious or vomiting in the street, or having sex with someone you wouldn’t normally look at, or can’t remember what you did.”

Freshers’ Week is an introduction into university life but it is worth bearing in mind that your first impression, be it positive or negative, may not be a realistic one. For some it might be a 9-day party but for those of you who might be underwhelmed by the experience, take comfort  in the words of those who have been there: “Freshers’ Week [in the 60s] was still recognisably a preparation for university life.  Today it seems a hedonistic week-long pop festival.  Great entertainment but is that what university is really about?”

35 Shots of Rum

Explanation:

I decided to go and see 35 Shots of Rum on Thursdayat the Edinburgh Film Festival. I had no idea the director, Claire Denis, was going to be there to do a Q&A (although if I’d read the programme properly I would have realised it said: “Director’s Showcase, UK Premiere” which was a bit of a hint…) So it was a great evening for all involved (I’m sure she was pleased to see me too). What I’ve written isn’t exactly a review, I’ve tried to include as much as I can remember of what she said which is why it’s longer. However I did leave bits out, such as when she started talking about how they sedated the stunt cat and gave it a makeover…

35 Shots of Rum (35 Rhums)

Although just about old enough to be my grandmother, Denis comes across as though she could give me pointers on how to emanate effortless cool. Dressed in a biker jacket she growls before the screening that she will attempt 35 whiskys in order to be less hoarse before the Q&A.

As it is, 35 Rhums is an open-ended and fairly ambiguous film, to have Claire Denis present to demystify aspects of it was almost a relief. She explained that she set out to portray the perfect father-daughter relationship. She was inspired by her own family, her mother talked openly of how faultless her own father was in the presence of her husband. Denis wanted to explore the notion of this flawless relationship before she even considered film-making, she had doubts whether something so intimate could translate onto the screen. Others might say that Denis’ attentiveness and delicate touch make her the ideal director for such an undertaking.

Lionel (Alex Descas) is train-driver and single father, his wife died when Joséphine (Mati Diop) was only a baby. They live and care for one another in their small flat, there is a closeness between them and their neighbours that extends far beyond a sense of community. Later Joséphine finds a letter from Gabrielle (Nicole Dogue) to Lionel asking that she look after Joséphine as though she were her own. Her attraction to Lionel is apparent but so is her devotion and affection for Joséphine. One of the early scenes of the film features Gabrielle trying to cajole Josephine into having dinner with her, Josephine declines with polite weariness; she appreciates how much Gabrielle cares for her, but she does not want a substitute mother. Her bond with her father is such that she does not feel the need for another parent.

Perhaps what it most striking about the film is the physical closeness between Lionel and his daughter, Joséphine kisses him with a spontaneity more often associated with an uninhibited child rather than the awkwardness that marks adolescence. They make sure to eat meals together and try to hide things that may upset one another. Lionel is a quiet but not distant father. He seems to take Joséphine’s maturation in his thoughtful stride. Their interactions are very naturalistic, Mati Diop is a film student and never aspired to an acting career, Denis spotted her in a class she was teaching and knew she had the face she wanted. Alex Descas is a particular favourite of Denis and has starred in several of her films. Joséphine’s neighbour and love interest, Noé, was another unknown. Although much of the film is true to the original script, Denis relied upon chemistry between the actors and often limited the number of takes so that nothing was too rehearsed.

In such a meditative film it is hard to speak of something as brutal as a climax but arguably it occurs after Gabrielle’s taxi breaks down on the way to a concert. She, Joséphine, Lionel and Noé are stranded in the pouring rain and have to persuade the owners of a local bar to open up until they can find a way home. What ensues is the discreet unravelling of all the sexual tensions present between the characters. Noé has been smouldering since finding flowers given to Josephine from a fellow student who asked her to the concert. Gabrielle’s low-backed dress has provided Lionel with ample view of her smooth shoulders. The bar-owners provide food, rum and music. Denis has often collaborated in the past to great effect with Tindersticks (think of Stuart Staple’s haunting vocal on  2001 gorefest Trouble Everyday) however on this occasion she opted for ‘Night Shift’ by The Commodores to underpin the atmosphere of longing, seduction and anticipation prevalent in the scene, hinting that the song had a special significance in her own life.

Gabrielle and Lionel dance with the confidence and deference of those who have loved before. Noé and Joséphine have the tension of two people who have long anticipated such a liasion but when Noé ventures a kiss Joséphine is shocked and fearful, however not before submitting. It is delayed shock precipitated by the remembered presence of her father. It is apparent that father and daughter are happiest when dancing together.

The ending is oblique yet happy, Joséphine marries Noé, symbolically refusing the help of Gabrielle when getting ready and then stands before Lionel in her dress, eager for his approval. However for those disposed towards cinematic imagery, there is little more to be interpreted from symbolism. Denis flatly denies there is any implicit message in the fact two of the main characters drive passengers to their chosen destinations for a living. She claims she admires the camaraderie of train-drivers and the patter of cabbies. And as for the reference to ‘35 rhums’, that’s just “une vieille histoire”.

Trials

I checked the clinical trials section of Scotsman jobs last night. Fortunately there was nothing there. Although I did briefly nurse a fantasy of having a mouse’s ear grafted onto my back for an obscene amount of money. It wasn’t to be. It would probably have been quite socially awkward anyway. For example, for one reason or another, you are getting undressed in front of someone:
“What’s that on your back?”
“What? Oh, it’s nothing…”
“Is it a mole?”
“Well, if you want to be species specific, it’s a mouse’s ear.”
“A mouse’s ear?! I was asking you if you had a small congenital pigmented spot on the skin“
“Oh I thought you meant I had a small velvety-furred burrowing mammal having small eyes and fossorial forefeet on my back.”
“Why would I think that?”
“No reason…”
“What is it?”
“My first answer was right: it’s NOTHING.”
“I’m not sure if I like you any more…”

Now that will never happen. I’m not sure that’s the sort of thing they do in clinical trials anyway. I always thougt it was just lipstick on badgers and rabbits wearing mascara. No…I’m thinking of cosmetic testing.

Wouldn’t it be great if everyone spoke in definitions?

Arsonists and murderers need not apply

I enjoyed a sign in the dry-cleaners today. It said:

WE DO NOT ACCEPT ITEMS SOILED WITH WET BLOOD AND FLAMMABLE SUBSTANCES.

I wonder if this has been issue in the past? Have Euroclean turned away people with bags of petrol and gore soaked shirts, trousers, santa costumes etc.? Take note, aspiring crims, Newington is not the place to go if you require a “discreet” cleaning service.

N.B. Too scared to tag any of this. Who knows what I might end up linked to?

God Help the Girl

Apparently Stuart Murdoch is now a Guardian blogger. Well, not apparently, he is:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/jun/01/stuart-murdoch-god-help-the-girl

His new project is a sixties style girl group called God Help the Girl. The main attraction of this project that I can see is that he gets to put words in girls’ mouthes and then take slightly seductive pictures for vaguely arty EP covers and then pretend to be some sort of coy, softly-accented, small-time svengali. (And I like Belle & Sebastian.) Perhaps I’m just a wee bit peeved that I’ve listened to Come Monday Night and felt distinctly disappointed.

http://www.godhelpthegirl.com/music

However, I’m going to give it some time to settle in and write something more substantial and less dismissive later.

It just grows and grows

Until I can think of a better name, this is Blog On. The Film, TV and Music sections are filling up and some of them even have pictures however I will (hopefully) be making the whole thing a lot prettier than it is currently. Have a look!

Sadly, this, the Home page, is the least interesting part. I’m not sure I can commit to regular updates. It’s because I’m embarrassed about what I get up to. Ha. No. It’s just not particularly interesting.