Cupping Balls, Stroking Men. And Talking to Londoners

A couple of days ago I went to see a bit of rugby. If you think this sounds improbably laddish of me, you'd be correct. I didn't really watch it; I just kept my eyes open and let it happen in front of me. It mostly seemed to be a lot of nomadic cuddling (I wonder if they ever did find that intimate spot they kept breaking up to keep looking for), but there was a couple of moments where one of them took a sort of floaty penalty which was exciting enough. Mostly I got drunk and yelled ironic chants about the opposing side's relative lack of wealth compared to ours. Then we all got a bit scared and went home.

However, the experience was spoiled somewhat by my sitting next to two people who actually knew what was going on, and kept telling each other.

"Ah, see, that was Coogan with a knock-on. Watch this; he's always taking liberties in the scrum."

"He can't go for a drop-kick! What does he think we're playing, effing league?"

"Nah, he was DEFINITELY going for the second movement there. MacFarlane had him pinned down."

"Ahh, schoolboy error. He'll be eating THREE gherkins out of coaches anus tonight if he keeps this up."*

This annoyed me. Then I felt guilty about being annoyed, which was even more annoying. Here were two perfectly nice people discussing rugby in perhaps the most suitable place there is to do so, and I felt somehow aggrieved by this. I didn't deserve my annoyance. They deserved to be pissed off by me; a jumped-up little tourist hopping on their hard-man bandwagon. I'm the kind of dipstick all sports fans hate. And rightly so. The fucking temerity of me.

But then, there is nothing more annoying than listening to two people talk about a specialist subject you know and care nothing about. For one thing it stirs within you an inevitable sense of inadequacy, no matter what the subject matter. They could be discussing relative gem value in Magic: The Gathering, and I'd still start to regret not having spent the last 10 years inhaling Cheeto dust instead of oxygen. They know something you don't, and they're talking about it in their Special Top Secret Super Friends language. It makes my inner five year old go nuts. Also, after a while, they start to sound almost...aroused. It's like they're flirting with each other. You know how when you're flirting you can say anything and it always means I'd Really Rather Be Fucking You. It's like that, except what they happen to be talking about is F1 engine sizes. I feel like I've inadvertently become trapped behind the shower curtain and am listening to two people bonking over by the sink. And I don't want to go through that again. Once was enough.

Usually the topic of these conversations is sport, or less frequently, music. But they often spring up in unexpected contexts. There's a funny thing that happens when two people from London meet each other, for instance. When two people from any other city meet they'll usually say something like;

"Oh really? Where abouts?"

"(X)?"

"Ah cool. I live around (Y)."

"Nice."

But if they're from London, they'll say;

"Oh really? Where abouts"

"On Hampton Street. It's in Richmond, you know, between Finchley Park and Penwick Avenue?"

"Yes, I know it! Isn't that the one with the DARLING little Pret on the corner?"

"Yes, opposite the Costa and the dodgy Czechoslovakian grocery!"

"Of course! But it's near Tuffington Walrus isn't it? That's on the Albert line; it must be a PIG to get to!"

"Oh, not really. I take the Eastern Line to Chiswick Harper, then the 131 through Marlborough Green or the 82 down Humphrey Bridge. It's two stops!"

"But the 131 and the 82 don't run on Sundays!"

"Well, then I have to change at Morton Cemetery and walk, but it swings through Atcorn Park, so I don't really mind. It gives a nice view of the Winslow Memorial and gives me a chance to pick up a bagel at the MacArthur Delicatessen, which is always a plus!"

"Oh, you MUST try my local; Castruchio's, on the Raleigh Roundabout. It's right next to the Teller and Pelby Gallery, AND you get a view of Tulky Fugtrotter Square on the other side!"

They could keep on going, but by this point I've pulled one of them to the ground and am trying to claw their face off so they never find a husband.

Speaking of London, I was down there on the weekend to watch some rowing. Again, you might think this sounds improbably laddish of me (or at least uncharacteristically knobby) but, alas, rowing the one thing I've gotten into at Uni. Mainly because they're so desperate for people as long as you turn up at six am and can do up the velcro feet straps on your own you qualify; and even if you don't they'll still stick you at 2 if you promise to not to dribble. Which meant I spent about three hours saying things like "Golly, a tandem rig? That's a risky strategy!" and "Ah, see, they've been forced to take the rate up. They'll struggle with that in the bow" to the back of people's heads until I realised what a monster I'd become. I was about to apologise to all the people I'd brought along until I remembered that they'd taken the piss out of me for my poor knowledge of London geography earlier that day ("You're so northern!" one of them trilled, forgetting that since Peter Sutcliffe came from the North there were other ways I could emulate my heritage).

It was an awful revelation; I'd become that guy. I talked about rowing almost constantly. When I was bored of that I talked about my course, and all the dead authors I thought it was cool to say I enjoyed. Yesterday I even described someone's performance at a game we were playing as "like something out of Mourinho-era Chealsea", and I don't even like cricket.

I'd learnt the art of bullshitting, see. Because it WAS bullshitting; in actual fact, I knew approximately fuck-all about rowing, or English, or anything else. But pretending I did gave me and endless source of shit to say. It's pretentious small-talk. Technical language used to mask the shuddering truth of my boring personality and my inability to genuinely relate to anyone. I have nothing to say. So I talk about rowing a sodding boat. Bugger.

P.S. If you're ever stuck in a London Geography conversation, just chip in with "I knew a girl who was raped down there." It generally does the trick. Which takes us up to two rape jokes in one entry, and my lawyer says that's the limit, so we'll end it there. Adios, Sports fans!

*Admittedly I might have misheard this one. It sounded consistent at the time

A Stark(ey) Vision of the Chasms of Hell (Otherwise Known as Jamie's Dream School)

Has anyone been watching Jamie's Dream School? I've been at university so haven't watched anything except redtube and whatever comes up when you mis-spell redtube in Google, but now I'm back I've decided to plunge my head into the pool of the telly zeitgeist, and this is the first thing that's come up. It's been getting a lot of coverage in the media by TV critics and satirists, so I told myself I wouldn't write about it for fear of being unoriginal, but it's such an event in history omitting reference to it on the blog would be akin to a Dictator ignoring the revolution going on outside his window.

Anyway, episode one (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDFt5Qp3vSg&list=SL).

*

00:00 - It kicks with a load of kids explaining how few GCSEs they've ended up with. Then Jamie Oliver strolls on screen, his boyish face making him look virtually indistinguishable from the kids; except that he's spent so long whoring himself out to supermarket advertisers you can smell what a shit he is through the screen. The system has failed these kids, says Jamie. Oh good, so he's on their side then. He then shows a load of clips of the celebrities he's chosen to teach them for the next two months. 'It's the great and the good, versus the bored and the badly behaved' says Jamie. Wait, so he...isn't on their side, then. If Alastair fucking Campbell is considered more 'good' than a bunch of disadvantaged teenagers then my grip on morality is tragically skewed. Maybe I'll go and stab a load of pensioners to make up for it.

03:30 - Jamie introduces his celebrity teachers for this week. There's David Starkey teaching History, Simon Callow teaching English, Rolf Harris teaching Art and Ellen MacArthur teaching...Expeditions. Actually I'm not sure we offered Expeditions at my school, which is a shame, because a lot of kids do go on to make their living doing Expeditions, and it would have been a good way to make use of the million dollar yachting fleet and the small tropical sea we had lying around behind the science labs. Presumably next week will feature Levitation taught by David Blaine and Killing the Elderly with Harold Shipman.

4:40 - 'You're not in the minority' explains Jamie, who's raised his hand to show solidarity with those who have less than 5 good GCSE's, 'you're actually quite normal'. Good, so he's back on their side then. Except then he wheels out a load of uniforms and makes them put the on. Hooray for equality. 'When you're finished changing we'll be waiting out in the cloisters, or whatever you wanna call it, the hallway' he says. Yes, it's called a hallway. I wasn't sure it was possible to sound supercilious just while referring to a hallway, but he managed it.

5:25 - 'To help me run the school I've got a real head-teacher - his name's John d'Abbro, aka "Dabbs"'. 'I think these are really cool' muses Dabbs, awkwardly manhandling one of his female students as he does so. He couldn't have come across as out of touch in five seconds if he'd walked on wearing a backwards cap and calling everything 'wizard'.

7:35 - 'Inspirational Expert' Simon Callow walks into his first class. 'Lovely faces, very good' he remarks, sitting down in the chair he's positioned directly in front of several rows of students, which makes him look not like a teacher but someone performing a tragic Alan Bennett monologue about a Nazi doctor.

9:30 - In an astonishing sequence Jamie cynically admits that the kids don't actually give a toss, and then does a fantastic impression of both them and Callow. It's a display that contrasts so utterly with his bullshit about 'inspirational experts' and 'dream schools' that it's giving me whiplash. 'Was I like that? A little shit?' he wonders.

11:50 - 'Basically they're unruly' concludes Callow, 'what's called, er...' - 'Feral?' suggests Jamie. His switch from Mother Teresa to Jeremy Clarkson looks set to be the most entertaining thing about the show.

16:20 - Actually scratch that; by far the most entertaining thing (or at least the most jaw-dropping) looks set to be David Starkey. 'You've failed' he says simply to the class, then, picking on of them out, 'C'mon your so fat you couldn't really move'. Normally this is the sort of baiting I'd find quite appealing but since it's a successful Cambridge historian unprovokedly attacking an unqualified teenager, one who came across as a pretty decent guy in an earlier interview, it's just insidious. Is this Starkey's method of correcting the 'low self-esteem' he identified as an issue with these kids? What a colossal shit-muncher. He deserves everything that gets flung at him.

19:00 - 'Aw, c'mon, did he really say that?' asks Jamie disbelievingly when two girls leave Starkey's class. Yes, he fucking did Jamie. I know, I'll need counselling for the shock too. Jamie then chastises them for not taking advantage of the oppertunity of examining the £30 million's worth of Anglo Saxon gold. 'You might even get to touch some of it' he enthuses. What a persuasive incentive. Presumably they'd buy into education for life if he just let them have a bit of a lick.

20:45 - The classroom having descended into anarchy, Starkey simply begins rocking silently back and forth like one of those bottom-weighted tilting dolls, one wearing a suit and carved in the shape of a prick. 'I survived' he summarizes, a criteria for success that would surely render the death of everyone else on earth in a nuclear disaster as no bad thing.

21:50 - Oh look, now he's claiming ADHD is a 'description of an entire age-group'. What trenchant analysis. I often find it hard to listen to and respect someone who's just insulted my physical appearance, but it's comforting to know that there's an incurable medical reason for this. I'd never have worked it out otherwise.

30:40 - Having taken a full 8 minutes to recover from Starkey, the program introduces its next inspirational expert, Rolf Harris. A smart choice, since Rolf is physically impossible to dislike. 'The first thing you do is you kill the white' he says to his students, subtly inciting racial hatred , but everyone laps it up because, hey, it's Rolf Harris. I'd let him sodomise my dog if he whistled a bit of 'Jake the Peg' while he did it.

32:20 - Rolf is also the only teacher to seem genuinely upset by his failure to reach every student. What a hero. Starkey would be unimpressed. What's he complaining about? He survived?

32:50 - For their 'Expedition' lesson, the kids...wait no, only four of the kids, since it turns out a yacht isn't the best place to hold a lesson for a full class. So only four of them get to learn. How inspiring! What a dream school this is!

35:35 - 'What's the most exciting thing that you've done?' asks Ellen. 'This' answer the kids. So there's the answer! Lessons should be held on boats! To be fair, Starkey had the right idea; swaying around like a captain who's drilled a hole in the bottom of his boat and can't understand why the rest of the crew are yelling at him.

38:20 - FINALLY Dabbs takes it upon himself to watch the Starkey tapes. Unfortunately he can't quite appreciate the post-modern genius of it all, and suggests that the comment would normally have led to a disciplinery hearing. 'It's difficult' he explains, presumably trying to decide whether Starkey's face looks more like a wrinkled ball-sack or a discarded foreskin.

39:00 - Plumb out of ideas, Jamie invites Super Mario to inspire the kids, who's presumably ingested the 'boffin-in-chinos' powerup. I think you can find it in world 3.

40:00 - ...And proceeds get the kids to slice up mice, and then a pig. It seems a remarkably time-consuming way of getting rid of enemies. What was wrong with stomping on them?

42:30 - Shit, it's Starkey's next lesson. True to form, he's...wait, where is he?

42:48 - 'But sadly, David Starkey's decided to stay at home' Jamie explains. We then cut to him outlining his plan for a perfect school which IN NO WAY resembles the guidelines for maintaining a happy concentration camp. He seems to hesitate on the word 'children' as though he's have preferred a different term for them. 'Untermensch', perhaps?

47:20 - ...But don't worry kids, he'll be back next week. Along with Alastair Campbell. Yay.

*

So what have we learnt? Well, that teaching kids is difficult. That they prefer not to be taught by pricks. That being on a boat is more fun than a classroom. And that Satan himself exists, and he teaches history. Badly. All of which I could have learnt by living in the world for half-an-hour, but it is at least entertaining to watch.

Actually I feel I've been a little unfair on Jamie Oliver, who's displayed a healthy degree of skepticism in the exercise and at the end of the day is only trying to help kids who've got a shit deal in life. I can't tell him off for that. There's no forgiving those Sainsbury's ads though, you hypocritical tool.

Oh, and this is perhaps the only time in history that the voice of morality is a man known as Dabbs. That's got to be some sort of achievement

Charlie Sheen: Master of the Universe

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5aSa4tmVNM

You've definitely already seen this. I feel entitled to make this assumption based on the fact you've got a pulse and an internet connection, because every vaguely sentient being within 500 metres of a Wifi hotspot has seen this. But just watch it again. You can't see it too many times. I've been watching on a loop on nearly four days now, and I'm okay. Well, I've lost ten stone and drunk so much coffee I've had to connect my arse to the toilet by a length of hose, but I kind of see that as a bonus.

I'm transfixed by it, see. 'It' being Charlie Sheen, who on the basis of this video can only be called an 'it'. It's no something from this particular terrestrial realm. It says so itself (actually fuck it, I'm switching back to 'he'. I can't keep this up without stabbing myself in the eye with a pen).

It took me a while to figure out what I was so entranced by. The comedy of him was a big draw; the sheer pig-headed, pseudo-beatnik, drug-chic'ed, cock-ended irreverancy of him. But its effect has worn off, and yet watching him hasn't. Disregarding my earlier quip, he does actively seem to be something un-human.

His face is a marvel. Thirty odd-years of solid substance abuse have certainly taken their toll, but he doesn't seem to be aging, more sort of...hollowing; as though instead of getting older he's slowly morphing into Skeletor, from Masters of the Universe. At one point he takes a swig of something so brightly coloured it looks like it was manufactured as a way of killing Superman. And just some of those lines...

"Can't is the cancer of happen."

"...your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body."*

"I'm tired of pretending I'm not a total bitchin' rock star from Mars"*

"I've got tiger blood, man."

"The run I was on made Sinatra, Flynn, Jagger, Richards, all of them just look like, y'know, droopy eyed armless children."

Droopy-eyed armless children? Most poets would be jealous of that kind of construction and he came up with it as a throwaway remark in a morning news interview. This isn't boring real life, this is a performance. Specifically it seems to be Robert Downey Jr's performance from A Scanner Darkly (seriously, I'm not even kidding here, it's uncanny: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQmGH61OoNI).

What does this mean then? For one thing it means that every single Charlie Sheen role has involved him becoming less interesting than he actually is, making him possibly the worst actor in history. But what it really means is that the American News media has absolutely no idea how to cover the story. Which can only be a good thing.

News interviews are, by and large, attempts (as Sheen puts it) to 'normalise' the subject; to crowbar them into an existing framework of understanding. You can see this in the questions the interviewer asks him; how often do you takes drugs, how many, do you regret it, etc. They're copy-and-pasted from every other interview conducted with some celebrity burnout in the last sixty years. These attempts usually work; the celebrity expresses remorse, apologises to friends and family and embraces their new life of sobriety. But the only interviews anyone remembers or enjoys are the ones where the subject refuses to succumb to these attempts to understand them and instead go actively mental. Think of the Bob Dylan press conferences in the mid-60's, Oliver Reed's chat show appearances in 70's, or Tracy Emin on that 90's art show, proving that when a wanker gets pissed off by other wankers they become almost bearable to watch. Sheen is following in this tradition, even embracing it; referencing the attempts the media make to 'normalise' his life, taking the piss out of the white-bread interviewer for asking about the last time he 'used', mocking subjects who claim that "it's all my mom's fault;-Shut up! Shut up! Move on, forward". Hear Hear.

All of which means that the media has no idea how to report the story other than by simply pointing a camera at him and going "Look! It's Charlie Sheen! In the headlines tonight - more Charlie Sheen! Tune in tomorrow for more of Charlie Sheen being Charlie Sheen, played by Charlie Sheen with dialogue by Charlie Sheen in The Charlie Sheen Story directed by Charlie Sheep-humping Sheen!" And it makes great television. What people are entranced by is not an understanding of people, but an active failure to understand; sheer fucked-up incomprehensible mystery. It's why we prefer Lennon to McCartney, Cook to Moore, Britney to Christina. It's what Joaquin Phoenix spent the last 18 months trying to emulate for his mockumentary I'm Still Here, and who's attempt is currently being completely upstaged by Sheen (imagine a time when we thought having a beard and mumbling counted as a radical fuck-up). Christ, it's why God is so popular.

Oh, and apologies for anyone expecting that film blog I promised who are now foaming at the mouth at my flagrant disregard for continuity. It's coming, don't worry. And Sheen is a film actor, so nyaaaah!


*Taken from other interview clips, currently unavaliable to view