NO ENTIENDO LO QUE HABLA! (I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT!)

I may seem to you guys to be a well-bred, learned and well-rounded lady, brimming to the upturned pinkie with sophisticatedliness. But this is simply not true. I know a selection of things very well (deli meats, Rolling Stones music, Harry Potter, filmographies of English and American character actors and Star Wars), the rest I pick at like a giant life buffet.  This being the sitch, I sometimes embarrass myself by not knowing something that a lot of other people know.
Case in point: I was having a conversation with my friend, Colonel Beardsley, about strip clubs and how I’d never been to one. The Colonel had been to ‘one of these hell holes’ and offered to take me, saying that he would be Virgil to my Dante. This is the point that the conversation stopped making sense to me because I, like at least a bunch of other people, have never read Dante’s Inferno. Even though it was a really very good analogy at the time and probably would have made someone slightly better read than I chortle knowingly whilst smoking a pipe, I drew a blank and looked like a moron.

Luckily I have the ability to retain some information to a point of freakishness, and I really do enjoy discovering new things to learn, squirrelling facts and data till it can be put to good use. So I have totally saved that Dante one for a time where I can bring it out and look clever at a party.

Do other people do this? Talk about things they haven’t read, seen or experienced just to keep up with the rest of the world?  Good, you’re all fakey fakes like me. Here are some things I haven’t read/seen/heard/experienced that I only understand from absorption:

Hip-Hop: As a child of the 90s I know a disturbingly little about hip-hop. Seriously, if you asked me who my favourite hip-hop artist was I would say Kanye West or Snoop because I have no fucking clue about anyone else. I manage to get away with this whole discrepancy by singing along to the sample, enthusiastically making finger guns, going 'oh yeeahh, o'course' during music discussions and dropping like it’s hot at any opportunity. Now that I have admitted to this I will probably get invited to way less parties.

Superannuation: Let me see if I’ve got this right. Rather than being conscientious about my savings, my job will steal money for me and save it should I live till later, instead of letting me spending it now on stuff I need like food and iPhone covers? This means that when I’m old I can spend it all on investment art and guitars? That’s what my parents seem to have done.  I don’t really understand my health insurance either because I’m a human ‘being a grown up’ fail.

Twin Peaks: It’s like Northern Exposure but with murder right?

Fifty Shades of Grey: I would be more interested in the names of fifty shades of grey paint chips than I would be in this whole phenomenon. Really, it sounds like a really boring and serious version of Secretary. Snooze. But! Just because I haven’t read it doesn’t mean I can’t Wikipedia it to get the main plot points and make jokes about BDSM-enjoying, confused, submissive ingénues at its expense right? Same goes for Hunger Games, which is kinda like Hard Target but with kids. 

Deer Hunter: In my limited understanding Deer Hunter means 1.Christopher Walken, 2. red bandanas, 3.screaming in Asian languages and 4.Russian roulette. I can say ‘going all Deer Hunter’ for one or any combination of these things, yes? Note for 2. ‘Rambo-ing up’ is also appropriate if your target is justifiably muscle bound or ironically puny.

American politics: Everything I know about current American politics I’ve picked up from Bad Lip Reading. Mitt Romney =disturbingly stupid. Rick Perry = 'Save a Pretzel for the gas jets'.  Santorum= ewwww. Obama = knows how to drive the car. Fantastic. As Keanu once said ‘I know kung-fu’.

The Break Up Diary

So I started writing this when Tom and Katie split, which was what, like two weeks ago? And now I sit down afresh and the news has passed. Thankfully, this whole RPatz/Kirsten Stewart* implosion has happened so this is all still valid. (BTW in other celebrity news, Michelle Williams’s getting engaged to Jason Segal, and I really approve of that because if I can’t marry him, it might as well be her as she seems sane. Moreover, I think he’d make a really nice stepdad, so go them!)

Annywaay.

Breaking up with people, or them breaking up with you, kinda sucks. Regardless of whether you’re having all your personal Scientology sex secrets are being dragged through the headlines of Ninemsn or just setting fire to each other’s stuff in the back yard of your fibro, when someone decides they don’t like you as much as they did - or you arrive at that decision about your partner -  feelings get hurt, egos get bruised and people are sad.

Coping mechanisms! Figure out your way of handling this shit. Katie Holmes and RPatz** were sensible enough to extract themselves from their situation with as little drama as possible. Kirsten Stewart, in her 22 years of wisdom,  has decided to traipse out her infidelity as publicly as possible like the rest of us actually give a shit, like it’s world flippin’ news. Tom Cruise chose to throw money at the problem*** and continue being crazy, a business plan that has certainly been good to him in the past.

You might choose to tragicraft, experiment with your sexual orientation for a while, or become a cat burglar and destroy a department store for fun. You could also let yourself go in a spectacular pancake flop of hairy jumpery gross.  I chose to keep a diary. Below are some excerpts from the last heinous break up I underwent.

Day 1: Cried in the shower, cried on the way to work. Was told to go home because of the crying. Mother and sister watched me cry and eat. Met a friend in similar position. We cried. The waiter didn’t ask, he just poured the wine and walked away…

…Day 5: Went for incredibly long walks. Began drinking, eating and dressing like John Goodman. Have been crying so hard I think I have dehydrated myself. The purple giraffe put me to bed…

…Day 12: Decided to pack up everything he’d ever given me into a box under the bed. Found it really hard to heat up chocolate pudding with the microwave down there. Went to sister’s to do other stereotypically cliché breakup things. Watching Steel Magnolias is very boring. Ice cream and pizza is not. Ha fucking ha…

…Day 15 Monday: Have finally stopped crying all the time. This is good. May be able to regain dignity now and stop buying frozen Bavarians in bulk...

 You may have noticed a bit of a theme running through that - oh the eating I did! That’s not really a recommended coping mechanism, binge eating. I made it worse for myself by having a nervous condition which makes me throw-up when I’m stressed. That particular emotional stop-gap ended up being an incredible waste of money, equivalent to making a children’s piñata out of fifty dollar notes.  

But this diary thing really helped me. I re-read  passages and chortled myself back into reality. At the end, when you are further away from the horror of realising that someone doesn’t want to kiss you anymore, you can start to have fun because some break ups are kind of hilarious, funny because they can be so amazingly tragic.

I think it’s important to enjoy some of the operatic, deep and ridiculous tragedy of a breaking up; cancelling the romantic holiday you dreamt up, returning your hypothetical wedding dress, killing off a family of imaginary children you’ve housed in your fantasy the castle in the sky. Treat your break up like a temporary end of the world! It’s sad, this is sad, you’re allowed to be sad, so do it!

Enjoy that for a couple of weeks then get your shit together and start behaving like a grown up again. Regardless of feeling frequently confounded, slightly destroyed and a smidgeon relieved, there’s a good reason this has happened. Maybe you’re going to be better off, maybe they will come back when the timing is better or maybe you were just supposed to learn something. Cos think about it, you rarely break up with the person you are meant to be with in the end.

*Kirsten, seriously, what the hell did you think you were doing? You are what, the highest paid actress in Hollywood right now, how did you think you could do anything secretly? Surely you’ve worked out you can’t eat a sammich without someone taking photos of you, how the fuck did you think you’d get away with an affair with a married guy!?! SERIOUSLY, YOU ARE A MORON!

** Apparently he’s ‘inconsolable’ and ‘distraught’, and that’s totally understandable, cos he’ll never find love again or anything like that, cos he’s so unappealing, and I’m a giant spotted elephant named Fritz.

***He must have put down a bit of cash to avoid a crazy divorce circus, I know it’s none of my business, but he must have.

Dear Michael Fassbender

Dear Michael Fassbender,

What’s up, you ridiculously smoking German/Irish man you?

As your future wife I have to say that I'm thrilled with your current popularity. I don’t think I’ve used the phrase ‘on trend’ in regards to a person so much in my life as I have in the last year and a half. You’re the current talk of the town, the cock of the walk and the captain of my heart and I have to say I’m really glad you’ve found a niche playing handsome weirdos in every other movie going.

Moreover, I'm really glad that the time has come where everyone stopped all this ‘OMG RYAN GOSLING IN MY PANTS PLS!’ nonsense and remembered that there are actual men still alive in the world. Actual real men, walking around on strong, manly, Olympian thighs of gods, with thrillingly sharky sharky smiles.  Are you about to kiss me, or take a bite outta me? I dunno, but I think it’s just… neat.

What’s the deal with Gosling anyway? I completely fail to see that dork’s appeal. Honestly, you, mo mhuirnín,  make him look like a wet cocker-spaniel puppy with a cold who has just been told about Bambi’s mum from the bottom of a well , i.e.  drippy, wet and annoyingly pathetic (P.S. could you please shield me with your amazing manly arms of wonder when the Gosling fans come baying for my blood? Those hounds! Thanks.)

All your hotness aside, it doesn’t really change the fact that you are a probably more than a bit creepy. And it’s not just because my mother thinks your eyes are too far apart. It’s your collected body of work. I just watched the viral for Prometheus, David 8 in which you appear to be some sort of TERRIFYING FLOWER SNIFFING ROBOT BUTLER from the future.  Add that to:

• Serial Shagging addict 
• Serious Doctor/Patient confidentiality breach
• Secret Wife Haver
• Masochistic Spartan 
• Sadistic Roman
• Giant magnet with a serious chip on his shoulder

And those are just the one off the dome, I'm sure a couple of hours of IMDB research would yield more proof of your sexy creeping, occasionally in German. Oh Michael, just how many languages can you act in, mein lieber schatz?

On the crazy and hot celebrity scale (1 being the lowest, Justin Timberlake = Surprisingly Normal and 10 being the highest aka Christian Bale = probably would eat someone) your collected body of work (not to mention, you know, your body) would probably earn you a solid 8. This means you've probably got a couple of years before you go Oliver Reed/ Richard Harris style bonkers, drink yourself to death or start narrating IMAX features.

But Mikey… Fassi… Bendi? We’ll sort out the nickname situation later. It should be said that it’s not just your glorious jolie laide face, stupefying bod or air of crazy danger that has us so excited, it’s the fact that you may have the ability to refresh the power of the edgy UK actor once more. 

The golden boys of the nineties are gone; the Rickmans, the Oldmans, they have become jowly and old.  The hotties of the 2000s- Ewan McGregor, Ralph Fiennes and Gerard Butler-  have failed us with shitty rom-coms like Down With Love, Maid in Manhattan and that one with Katherine Heigl… eurgh Heigl, she is pure whitebread boring and I'm gluten intolerant!

And what are we left with? Can we really rely on Rupert Penry-Jones to deliver strength, or Benedict Cumberbatch to supply sensuality? Neurotics and mad geniuses maybe. The truth is, Mister Fassbender, fan girls of the world need you to deliver obscure United Kingdom hotness out of the dark depths of Middle America date movies and ABC costume dramas and into the white hot light of good films with self-respecting actors.  Come on, Toms Hardy and Hiddleston can’t do this all by themselves. Fassbender, my heart, we are all counting on you.

You future frau/bean chéile,

Joe

Dear Davy, I thought you were wavy gravy...

A couple of weeks ago, someone in the media referred to the late Davy Jones as a ‘prefab- Paul McCartney’. Does that seem like a veiled way of saying that this guy’s entire career was just a cynical attempt to cash in on the Beatle phenomenon and he was an evil facsimile of a sham pretendy man, or is it just me? A bit inappropriate considering he died, and this was a eulogy style situation, but maybe I’m just being sensitive.

Liking the Monkees is a little contentious as the band has come to represent music marketing at its most contemptuous. Everyone knows that the group was put together as an attempt to create the American Beatles, marketed almost exclusively the ‘the kids’. This proved to be very lucrative for a very short time and annoyed a very large group of people. However, you’d think 45 years on everyone would be able to stop being offended and concede the point that they did play their own instruments and they did write their songs… eventually. Authenticity, in some situations, is a matter of time.

Talking about the manufactured Monkees kinda brings up the Lana Del Rey issue. Poor Lana has been given a lot of shit lately. ‘They’re not her real lips’. ‘That’s not Mike’s real hat’. The arguments are the same and in the end I think we should stop and ask ourselves ‘do I really have time to give a shit about this? Shouldn’t I just focus on staying alive, comfortable and happy?’

I mean so what if Del Ray does not necessarily write her own music? Who cares if she might not make her own clips? So what if her fantastic Gangsta Nancy Sinatra trash chic image was perhaps crafted by a group of cynical execs to sell records? I still want ‘Video Games’ played at my wedding.

I think everyone’s beef with Lana/Lizzie/Gangsta Nancy is that she’s denying all these things so emphatically and even I’ll admit that there comes a point where you have to stop trying to justify your lies, wave your hands mysteriously and whisper ‘smoke and mirrors, my friends’. Just admit that you can’t have art without artifice and move on. The Monkees, starting life as a TV show, never had to pretend they were something else.

Ironically the careers of both Del Ray and the Monkees suffered without appropriate marketing. I had never heard of Lizzie Grant and from what I saw on Google, very little could have convinced me to care. Enter cynical musical marketers and boom; I want ‘Video Games’ played at my wedding. The Monkees were running along fine until they demanded creative control (threatening physical violence apparently) at which point the whole endeavour started haemorrhaging money and sense faster than stuck pig.

In any case, I’m sad that Davy Jones is dead. I liked seeing him crop up in teen sitcoms and strange movies, and I was really looking forward to the Monkees tour that was rumoured to be happening this year. He may have started off being the strategic Dream Boat in a fictional band but he went on to be a widely appreciated pop-star, cruise-line attraction and all round good sport, which is more than can be said for Mike Nesmith.

And as I am such a bad sport I’m laying down all my arguments supporting the credibility of the Monkees now before I go:

- The Monkees had a number of credibility increasing connections. Carol King, Neil Diamond, and Harry Nilsson were all involved in the Monkee music making process, either as song writers on performers. Jack Nicholson and the creative minds behind Easy Rider helped with their experimental film Head.

- Mike Nesmith was an established musician who went on the develop the concept of the music video to something of an art form, watch anything form Elephant Parts and tell me I’m wrong.

- Peter Tork was good friends with Steve Stills, if he hadn’t gotten his Monkee break it would have been Crosby, Stills, Nash and Tork (and sometimes Young).

- It would be a very sad thing if we only judged people by a section of their whole career. George Clooney may very well have been in Return of The Killer Tomatoes, but he also gets nominated for Oscars

- One of Lou Reed’s favourite songs is ‘Goin’ Down’- a Monkees song. And if Lou Reed does not have discerning taste then I don’t know what else I can do!

- They are famous and you are not so there.

Remind me again

I woke up this morning and looked in the mirror and thought ‘you know who I remind me of? Miss Piggy.’ I’m essentially a slightly less glamorous, brunette version of Miss Piggy… with teeth. Like if Miss Piggy had been a hamster… Miss Guinea Piggy. Now, whilst some of you may think I have some tickets of myself to compare myself to the Devine Swine; I’m definitely less stylish, less high maintenance and less skilled at hitting people than she is. But like it or not, at some point we all remind others and ourselves of someone, or something else.

People often tell me that I remind them of someone they know, to which I usually reply ‘I’ve just got one of those faces’. I may very well have ‘just one of those faces’, you know, the kind with two eyes, a nose and a mouth that could pretty much be anyone. I totally see why folk are frequently mixing me up with completely disparate people. If you’ve ‘just got one of those faces’ it likely that you don’t care that you look just like their sister’s boyfriend’s second cousin either but will politely agree that you look just like some person you’ve never meet as long as it lets you get on your life.

Having said that, I really don’t mind if I remind you of someone, especially if it’s someone you like or think is fun and tells good stories. It’s kind of nice that there’s another version of me. I hope we meet up one day and mess with everyone in a series of wacky misunderstandings.

I am also totally happy to remind people of celebrities, as long as they are vaguely attractive, intelligent and sane celebrities. No one wants to hear that they're a dead ringer for Mickey Rouke. Someone once told me that I reminded them of Maggie Gyllanhaal and I was like ‘that’s such an insane leap of reasoning that I’m actually flattered that you’d attempt it just to make me smile’.

Comparing someone to a celebrity is a weird pick up gambit because it could go so terribly wrong. Forgetting subjectively attractive celebs like Sarah Jessica Parker - those ones that really divide people- you could just pick someone who’s played someone unattractive once. Saying ‘you look just like Charlize Theron’ to a person who has only seen Monster would probably crush their living soul.

I use like to use celebrities as a point of reference; say if I am trying to describe a hair cut or a clothing style or some person that I know. It makes life easier because they’re a visual reference that most can recognise or Google. It also helps because I use up all my adjectives here I actually run out during conversations. ‘You know Whathisface? He looks like that dude in that thing with the monkeys... Franco! That’s the one! He looks like James Franco if he was ginger and had a hunch.*

*I know no one who even remotely looks like Franco, so stop asking.

Hack Literature: The Celebrity Story

I just finished reading The Bryan Ferry Story by Rex Balfour (1976), an unauthorised biography about my equal 1st favourite rock-star

For those of you that don’t know who Bryan Ferry is, he’s the front man of the 1970’s rock band/ art project Roxy Music, with a simultaneous solo career that’s been going on for about 35 years now. He was the guy who caused a bit of trouble about ten years ago when he was misrepresented as a Nazi sympathiser, when in fact he had just expressed a liking for the work of Leni Riefenstahl. Not the same thing, but deffinately not great publicity...

Whilst they may be no argument as to Ferry’s musical innovation, inspiration and slight genius, this biography portrays him as the mad stylish reclusive wizard who single handily invented music. An all-round toadying piece of fanatic clap trap.

Moreover, the book was written only three years into Ferry’s career and since then he’s had many more hits, fox-hunting children, divorces and affairs, not to mention the whole Nazi thing, and I can’t help but think ‘wouldn’t it have been better if they had waited?’

Something I have learnt about biographies is that they should be all about mystery, scandal and intrigue. A Kim Kardashian book would just not be interesting because we already know EVERYTHING about her. I don’t think there’s anything I could find out in a book about her and her deepest darkest personal life that I couldn’t find out by simply walking past a news agent. Her life is not so much as open book as it is a large billboard on Broadway, and I don’t care.

Biographies are also all about timing.

It’s strange when young or uninteresting celebrities get biographies about them before they’ve had enough life lived to fill them. I just looked on line and discovered that Justin Bieber has a biography, Justin Bieber: First Step 2 Forever- My Story. Isn’t he about five? To fill a 100+ page book he would have had to start doing coke and getting divorced in kindergarten. All I’m asking is wait until the story is at least two thirds through.

Having said that, it would be wrong to say that celebrities should put out biographies until they are dead, in fact it’s probably good that they don’t, because we know how the story ends and because it means that they can do a big old money grubbing sequel when their lives go to shit. Take for example Rolling Stones Guitarist mark III Ronny Wood, whose biography Ronny came out for Christmas 2007. Not even a year later later he was in rehab, on sabbatical from the Stones, broke and divorced living with a 21 years Old Russian model. I can’t wait to read about that in Ronny 2: Oops, my bad.

I picked up where The Bryan Ferry Story ended in 1975 with another book, the autobiography of his erstwhile fiancé Jerry Hall, Telling Tall Tales. In this ‘book’ Hall goes into great detail about the cuckolding she did to poor Bryan with Mick Jagger, as well as everything she didn’t like about Ferry and how mean he was. Not only was this the airing dirty laundry to the equivalent of putting shitty undies on your doorknob, but it made her come off as a naive, foolish, mean, vain and self-sensationalising moron, which is a shame because I actually like her. Tell all, but don’t be cruel, or people will laugh derisively at the fact that the perfect home life you were so happy about by the end of your book will end in within 20 years.

By contrast Keith Richard’s Life is a beautiful book, one of the best autobiographies I’ve read. It’s told in the spare and wandering style of Richard’s own words, which aren’t half as confused as one would expect. Love, fame, fall-outs, appalling excess and deaths creep into the narrative in a quiet, funny way without wallowing in appalling excess or praising his fortunes. Richard’s neither attempts to rationalise or descends to self-pity.

In short, I would advise you to read this book, and if you are a celebrity considering a biography, I would advise you to wait for your life to become more interesting and so that the disadvantages of hindsight don’t come back to bite you in the arse. I would also recommend a good ghost writer, my services are available.