Words to Live By

The Sunday Times interview with Sade this week was a total treat.
Who among my generation has not had sexy times to the purr of her voice?
The best part was the shot of the defaced poster for a New York show.
"This Bitch Sings When She Wants to"
Fuck. Ing. A, buddy.

Girls Told to Expect Assholes

There have only been two occasions calling for me to don a beret in earnest.

My Halloween costume as Patty Hearst’s Tonya would not have been complete without one. Hell, the beret meant more to her revolutionary chic than the gun itself. Then there was my underpaid gig doing Saturday Story Hour at a bookshop. They even got me to put on a furbie costume of some beloved character just so kids could kick my shins and pummel my thighs. The bulbous head had a built-in fan to keep you from passing out whether because of heat stroke or a panic attack. Indeed, it was a strange transitional period for me between the restaurant biz and grad school.

Ludwig Bemelman’s “Madeline and the Bad Hat,” refers to Pepito in the title, a very naughty Spanish boy, and not to the chapeau I wore for the reading. Madeline is the Gallic Ginger Girl who lives with the nuns and girls at a boarding school. In this particular installment of the popular series, Madeline watches the cruel antics of Pepito, a boy who beheads chickens and tortures animals for shits and giggles. Madeline is a confirmed animal lover and tries to reform the Bad Hat. Post-hijinks, Bemelman celebrates Madeline’s success in the line I have committed to memory: “And lo and behold the former barbarian turned into a vegetarian!”

The kids all cheered for her firm corrective resolve.

Until I recalled this the other day, I thought the only bad lesson I had left with the knee highs was that they could consider the beret as a kicky accessory. But no, the real damage to a young audience is located in the message that girls (and later women) should expect to rehabilitate the boys they hang out with. Madeline should have told the creepy sadist to fuck right off instead of making it her mission to “save” him from being a bully who gets off on hurting others. Pepito most likely transferred his early predilection for pain into an adult BDSM lifestyle.

Run, Madeline!

Run!

New Yack-Inducing Restaurant in Blackrock

The Irish are plagued by bullshit begorrah cultural stereotypes the world over, and not just those that haunt March 17. What a real fucking shame to witness similar taunts leveled here against another group.

Miss Oriental, a new restaurant slated to open in Blackrock in the space where Enrico’s recently closed, no doubt due to the piss-poor service, contains cringeworthy racist and sexist stereotypes. The last time oriental was used as an acceptable identity description, Mickey Rooney was delivering an outrageous yellowface performance in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” The cartoon lady in the sign telegraphs white dude fantasy spank-bank material drawn on the assumption that diminutive Asian ladies are hotties designed to serve them.

What’s next, Mr. Darkie’s Chicken in Monkstown?

Another Psycho Killer Dude on Film? Pass.

One of the hallmarks of twentieth century popular culture may be found in the abundance of books and films dedicated to the serial killer. From Jack the Ripper slicing up women in the 1880s, the number of accounts, both of real and fictional dudes who operated without empathy or a moral compass in order to prey upon women is staggering. The serial killer combines bully and woman-hater into a pervasively toxic mixture. Jane Caputi identifies the obsession with serial killers as a symptom of a deeply misogynistic culture in her book “Goddesses and Monsters: Women, Myth, Power, and Popular Culture. Men are invited to assume the point of view of the psycho sex killer; women are warned that they are fair game just for the very reason that they exist. The story line remains almost a constant that a loner dude, usually one who considers himself an unrecognized genius, skulks around and tallies up a female body count. The killers, and by proxy the male audience, get to feel powerful, invincible, invigorated by the torture and bloodshed.

Jack the Ripper, Norman Bates, Charles Manson, Son of Sam, Boston Strangler, Michael Myers/Jason/Freddy, Ted Bundy, Hannibal Lecter, Patrick Bateman, Mr. Brooks, and now yet another film adaptation of Jim Thompson’s “The Killer Inside Me.” Instead of Stacey Keach, Casey Affleck’s playing the maniac lady-killer, Lou Ford. Director Michael Winterbottom insists that the extended graphic scenes of Kate Hudson and Jessica Alba getting pummeled, mutilated and murdered are supposed to shock us into recognition. In a culture saturated with violence against women, where dudes can beat women to a pulp and then smile for the cameras, or where men are invited to orgasm to porn scenarios featuring women in distress and humiliation, you can’t claim any further shock value. Instead, you’re just another thug adding to the vast array of misogyny for entertainment. We are responsible for the stories we create and share. Why we as a culture choose to cling to portrayals of men as amoral, murdering savages is something that’s beyond proper rationale or justification. Beating up women onscreen isn’t shocking, it’s just same-old, same-old.

Time to grow up, dude.

Coat Envy

So I've been trying this new thing for about two months?
It's called eating.
Well, eating three meals a day.
Problem is those "issues" are already freaking me out, say for example, yesterday, when I was running to catch the bus into the city centre. My dress rose and wedged itself around my bloody hips because my bottom has thus trebled in size. Despite my waist remaining around the same measurement since the food bonanza began, my ass now rivals that diva lady's with the shoe fetish.
This fetching coat in the Kilkenny shop window had me in a drool, until I realized I'd resemble Big Bird with too much junk in the trunk.
Yes, I am fucking nuts.
Grrrrr.

Eat Babies & Look Younger

Like most folks, I enjoy tucking into a fine film with a focus on food, or how the preparation and sharing holds significance to a group. Think of fare such as "Babette's Feast," "Like Water for Chocolate," "Big Night," "Goodfellas" or "Age of Innocence." Not the second rate stuff like that film with the mormon dude and the lady who's married to the poster boy for patriarchy and plastic surgery. When I placed "Dumplings" in my An Post/Screen Click movie queue, I anticipated a feel-good movie about an ancient recipe.
Silly me.
In "Dumplings," Miriam Yeung's Mrs. Li, is getting older and wants desperately to keep her dickhead husband from straying, so she turns to noted dumpling maker Aunt Mei (Bai Ling) for her secret rejuvenating recipe. Turns out the little dough balls are filled with bok choy and human abortions. Aunt Mei gives a few speeches about the role of cannibalism in history and how romantic love boils down to the desire to devour the other person, but as she says, she herself is the best advertisement for her specialty. She's 64 and looks 30.
Fuck me. I'd eat the human guppies for those kinds of results.
The problem with the film is that it tries janus-faced to both push the envelope and then issue a moral payback for the youth-obsessed characters without much conviction.
There's an element of gross-out gags, yet it's fairly limp overall.

Masochist of the Moment

Irene Vilar's all over the media promoting her masochistic memoir about having 15 abortions. I could give a fiddler's fuck if she had ten times as many. Let's look at what she's really saying in "Impossible Motherhood": women are crazy bitches who should not have control over their own bodies; abortion is a terrible tragedy; biology is destiny.
An alternate title could be Women are Fucked Up.
A surefire way to get a book deal is by being a lap cat of patriarchy and providing further testimony to how utterly awful and unstable women are.
The author's pathology can't be located in terminating successive pregnancies, but rather, in submitting herself to a controlling misogynist for so many years in a passive-aggressive battle taking place over her womb. Vilar met the much older professor when she was only 16 years-old. She was a child who he determined to be a "seducer." It's always the woman's fault that a man fails to control his penis or take ethical responsibillity for his sexual behaviour.

All this hand-wringing over abortion misses the point, as does her new agey tone of confessional designed to have women "share" the stories of their bodies.
Vilar's whole argument revolves around motherhood acting as some magical balm that healed her psyche and body. Her basic message promotes some conservative and retrograde gender mythology. The unstated conclusion levels condemnation upon women who have abortions, women who opt out of motherhood, or even women who find frustration within the role of motherhood. Her book offers the latest evidence on the lot of suffering reserved for women.
Although the majority of women can use birth control and exercise choice to become a parent, Vilar's experience echoes the nonsense physicians were saying in the 19th century about womens' bodies being under seige, a battleground because of the uterus which made them unfit for university, the workplace, a role in the public sphere.


Vilar markets her memoir as a cautionary tale and hopes that her daughters won't end up in an abortion clinic. What, it would be so much better for them to have babies they did not want? To submit to reproduction no matter their personal inclinations, plans or decisions? This sort of reasoning does no one any service.
She's sure to sell lots of books to the rubberneckers who want confirmation that women should not be left to their own liberty as human beings because they'll become "addicted" to a medical procedure that scrapes out clumps of cells.
Vilar's fated to be feted by the right-wingers who hope to keep the females knocked up and out of the way.

Greenface 101

We're sitting in a pub in Brussels, casting a glance at the round of "Best Dance Tracks of the Last Decade" on the television when Steve Mac's "Paddy's Revenge" froze our faces in horror at the ultimate greenface performance.

Who thought it was possible to combine cheesy cultural stereotypes marketed to morons plus the added bonus of having women appear in softcore porn?
Lecherous Leprechaun!
Lusty Comely Maidens Dancing at the Crossroads!
40 Shades of Wrong.

A Few Pics from Belgium

Three days in Geel in January is a bit much. Folks were pleasant enough, it just was fairly dreary and not much to do in the cold.
Getting a treat for Mr. M after his race, I saw this sign at the concession stand. A macho is some sort of meat treat shaped like a popsicle. Food and drinks were on the cheap in general.
Mr. Beer Lover chose the Kriek which was as sweet as a cherry soda. Lambics are just too girly for my taste.
Brussels really is a pretty, walkable city. Love the Art Nouveau building style.
These are all from the Grand Place/Grote Markt behind our hotel. Shutterbugs everywhere gawping at the urban grace of the square.

This was a lovely sight to see folks standing outside in the rain having a champagne brunch.
Champagne in the rain!
These last two are a testament to the new camera's flash because it was as dark as a teenage goth's fantasy in the teeny pub Le Cerceuil. The funereal decor charms the blue from your jeans.

Blogger Updates

(A broadsheet caricature of Oscar Wilde's daddy).

Nominations for the Irish Blog Awards are open until 3pm February 5.

Go ahead and vote.

The awards ceremony is slated for March 27 in Galway.

I'll be dress hunting in Spain next month.

Also, welcome back Manuel and the Irish Sentinel.

Mr. M Breaks a 19 Year Record

Upon waking, I was met with the inquisitive, hyper-alert husband who had already been up for hours.

"Guess what I did this morning, that I haven't done since before we met?"

That frozen look Kima gets, the one when you catch her on the bed after she's been to the beach and she's all wet and shouldn't be there is probably the closest description to my body language. This year will be #19 together. I could feel my eyes rolling back in my head as my memory scan went over the possibilities.
Something he hasn't done for coming up on two decades?

He let me off the hook.
"Threw up! I puked this morning after walking the dogs."
Mr. M went on to say that it was a hell of a lot nicer regurgitating a banana and peppermint tea than the day-old booze in his youth.
Quite.
There was no black and white cookie to blame, either.

Irish Gothic

Triple-deckers, those sprawling Victorian novels which were often serialised in popular magazines and then published in three separate volumes, promise a mini-universe of characters and plot lines. You can't really approach them with a casual pick up for an hour's reading. They require some level of time blocked off in order to let them wash over your imagination. Almost always, triple-deckers are worth the investment. They were the 19th century version of a dvd box set. "Jane Eyre," "Vanity Fair," "The Mill on the Floss," "Can You Forgive Her," "Great Expectations," and more recently, "Little Dorrit" rank among my favourites in the genre.

Last week I devoured Sheridan Le Fanu's "Uncle Silas" after an earlier false start. Serialised in "Dublin University Magazine" and later produced into volumes in 1864, Le Fanu's Gothic tale has a delicious array of dramatic flourishes including a sinister French governess, the opium-addled titular relative, closet alcoholism, an unsolved murder, clandestine plots and a bit of woo-wackery concerning Swedenborgian mysticism. The first volume lags with too much exposition and a stalled plot, but once the protagonist Maud Ruthyn leaves her isolated childhood home for an even more isolated familial manse, the novel will force you to stay up later than you'd like to see what happens next.

In his introduction, Victor Sage explains that in the 1940s Elizabeth Bowen argued that despite his publisher's instructions for his work to feature British settings, Le Fanu's novel held a covert Irish significance, most visibly in the decline of the Big House tradition through his treatment of the Ruthyn estate holdings. Several literary critics have discussed the association between the colonial condition and the Gothic genre, so it's worth further investigation.

Single? Married? You're Fucked Either Way

The paucity of intelligent jokes at the cinema means that critics will fucking genuflect before a film that delivers a few decent laughs, and then they'll rush to confirm its Oscarworthiness based upon the sheer gratitude of being absolved the usual barrage of dick and fag jokes audiences have to suffer through in awful fare such as "The Hangover."
There were indeed some funny quips and exchanges in "Up in the Air," which had the packed house chuckling with delight this evening.
But you know what?
This film has no more substance than a marshmallow queef.

The central metaphor used to illustrate how particularly fucked up George Clooney's character Ryan Bingham is, as that Hollywood stock character, the Midlife Male Misanthrope, resides in a backpack used as a motivational speech prop.
A fucking backpack.
Do you even know any adults who carry the ungainly student satchels?
As the perennial island-unto-himself, Ryan zig-zags around the country as a hatchet man for companies too cowardly to fire their own staff. Instead of contemplating what happens to the folks onscreen and verily, in the audience who are getting shit-canned, the film has us consider the plight of the axe-man and his protege (Anna Kendrick).
In his spare time, Ryan tells folks in hotel conference rooms that they have to imagine the things they own stuffed into a backpack. All of it. Gee gaws, appliances, furniture, houses, automobiles. He advises they unstrap the load and torch the lot. It's getting a bit whiffy of that cinematic turd "Fight Club" at this point. Ryan wants the assembly to do the same exercise with the emotional-familial relationships they have, without setting them on fire, tee-hee. Those hangers-on are still just dragging your ass down; cut yourself loose, let everything and everyone go. Who are the folks absorbing this Philosophy of Privilege? Because if I paid money to get advice on viable life strategies or whatever the fuck, and some suit talked to me about complex human relationships in terms of a backpack, I'd at least want to toss the pitcher of water in his face.

If Ryan's impersonal, uncomplicated, no-strings but my frequent flyer cards and perks serves as the thesis of the first act, then what do we get as a proposed antithesis or alternative?
How about nada.
We're not left with any salvo to counteract or cushion the ham-fisted fallback that we all die alone. Single and married folk alike are miserable and disappointed in others. There's no upside to moving outside your own little protective bubble, except maybe for the party on your wedding day.

Acting on your own self-interest regardless of consequence is a right reserved for the men-folk, according to Reitman's movie.
Women, on the other hand, have to mooch around for some dude's affection, defer our own prospects to follow him around to Midwestern shitholes, and hope the mulleted goober will relent to marriage. We'll swoon over an invitation to be "co-pilot," which is really code for "servant."

Over-rated is an understatement.

Parody in Yellow

via videosift.com


Has it really been twenty years since The Simpsons premiered?

This Duff commercial kills me because it lays bare the low-brow logic employed in beer marketing. Those bitches just need a drink and a string bikini to set them straight towards the fuckability mandate.
Haw-haw!

Screw "Nine," Watch 8 1/2 Instead

Lookit, Daniel Day Lewis' dream-boatiness and a cast of talented women aside, just the thought of having to sit through "Nine," a tawdry paean to the primacy of the peen over all those bearing a vagina with nothing better to do than obsess over a dude all day makes me as woozy as the idea of having to go to that town in California where they hold the all-things-garlic festival each year.
Could. Not. Endure.
Musicals place a singular strain on my nerves as it is, let alone one which amounts to a catfight for the attentions of a self-absorbed philanderer.

Instead it seemed wise to go back to the source and see what the Fellini fuss was all about. My word, 8 1/2 is a vision. His 1962 feature allows a greater scope of character, association, memory than what the recent rip-off could hope to conjure, mostly because Fellini doesn't seal Guidio (Marcello Mastroianni) off in some dudely imaginary boink-fest with the prospective ladies. "Nine" culls its inspiration from one dream sequence where the protagonist frolics in his fantasy harem lair, but here in the original, the ladies stage a revolution and tell him he's shitty in bed. So the Italian director in 1962 acknowledges the macho hokum and delusion at play in male fantasy more honestly than in the contemporary version. Interesting. There's also a clear psychological thread traced from the sensuality of his childhood bath-time ritual (when he was the centre of attention, pampered and adored) which echoes into his adult libido when he's lost in his harem reverie. Audiences rarely get to see the origin of a fetish with such a candid, opaque treatment. It's always already about mama. Fellini's character says that he doesn't want to tell another phoney story or produce a movie full of lies, and in a sense, that's just what he himself does in 8 1/2.

The opening scene embedded above, one of the most beautiful in the film, telegraphs the soul-crushing horror of the modern commute in rush-hour traffic. Note the paralysis, the dehumanising stalemate at play. Check out the shot craning up to the public transport bus, where the citizens are shown from the chest down with their heads obscured. If I had to select a single celluloid image to capture the underbelly of urban living, it'd be those headless commuters penned in like calves to slaughter.
Brilliant.

Dun Laoghaire Sunrise

This is what Mr. M and the dogs get to see while I'm still in bed.

Mad Men Season 3

RTE provides access to the first two seasons of Mad Men for free online.

That'll get you up to speed for season 3 which they begin running tonight at 11:30.

You'd be foolish to miss it.

After and Before

The terror twins will be two years-old tomorrow.

The terrible twos mean that these dogs need as much exercise as two humans can muster.

Cattle Collies are whip smart but are fairly impossible to tire out.

Kima's near the point of instant recall and she's patient and adult in a way her brother is not.

Omar often seems to be developmentally stuck as a 10 month old puppy.

No doubt without his sister-as-security-blanket he would have been forced to mature sooner.

He's starting to relax to the role of lapdog for affection, which pleases me.

The pair are a fuckload of work, to be sure.

They are also lotsa fun when you get over that.

These puppy pics are from their first day with us.

Fantasy Shopping

All three dresses are far beyond my price range, but that's why it's called fantasy shopping.

This Michael Kors sheath is the teal dress I've been looking for now over the last year. Love the asymmetrical neckline, waist detailing and the back darts. This is perfection.

This Missoni dress has a really interesting blend of grey and yellow, two colours that I've been hoping to find together in a frock for the past few months. There's something soft and eye-catching about the pairing; here with the trademark Missoni modernist design flourish, it's a collector's piece.

The coral-hued coat isn't really my colour, but I love this Milly ensemble for the way that it screams 1967, the last year before the hippie contingent came along and ruined everything that pleases me about fashion. You know, like bathing and wearing clean clothes.

This would work better overall if the coat were in robin's egg blue

There are No Words (NSFW)

*The Horror*
Just look at it.
I'm watching the Channel 4 programme "The Perfect Penis," one segment of which featured this dude who is obviously mad as a bag of badgers.
He injected his peen with silicone for 6 years to get it to look like some ill-used sporting gear from the third world.
Eeeeeeeeeep.

All in the Eyes

In only a two-year period from 2003 to 2005, there were at least four films featuring eye-gouging scenes. Could it be a symbolic demonstration of collective frustration over being forced to endure the tyranny of the shrub administration? Sounds like a good paper maybe. In "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" (2003) Johnny Depp's semi-benevolent crooked CIA dude had his peepers poked out by William Dafoe's despotic character who schemed to bring down a democracy. The same year, Keanu Reeves' Neo was blinded by an evil computer programme set to enslave and destroy humanity. Then in the next two years we have women enacting the ocular attacks in "Kill Bill" (2004) and "The Descent" (2005). Individual women Uma Thurman as Beatrix and Shauna Macdonald as Sarah are set upon by folks designed to destroy them. Eye-gouging gives them the upper hand on assailants.

Of course the Greeks did everything first. Sophocles had the foresight to have the petty tyrant take his own eyes out, with the pins from his mother/wife Jocasta's brooches. The clip is from the production of "Oedipus Rex" starring Michael Pennington and Claire Bloom. (I've shown this to students before after we read the play and it never ceases to amaze me how many undergraduates buy into the idea of "fate" and that the dude was helpless to prophecy and the whimsy of the gods.) Shakespeare gives Cornwall one of the best lines "Out vile jelly!/ Where is thy luster now?" in another scene of unchecked power which abuses the vulnerable, when poor old Gloucester loses his sight and the run of his sons in "King Lear."

The eye scenes always induce a queasy spell.

Eat, it's Cold Outside

My dinner:
Soy and plum sauce glazed salmon;
Mash with chives;
Sauteed curly cabbage and broccoli;
Salad greens with shaved fennel and red onion in olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
My ass needs some padding for when the maniac twins drag me down on the icy streets.

It's a Man's World, Baby

"The Hangover" manages to condense so many mythical narratives from the Mars and Venus playbook that I felt in dire need of a Silkwood-style shower afterwards to scrub the filthy residue from my body. For every asshole mewling about how feminism has de-sacked the culture, all you have to do is point to this retrograde film that apparently everyone went to see in 2009. It made just under $500 million internationally. Let's see what it tells us about men and women, shall we?

Real Men:

Have voicemail messages which say "don't text me; it's gay." Or they greet friends by saying "paging Dr. Faggot" because real men hate gay dudes just as much they loathe women. The same dude, primary school teacher Phil (Bradley Cooper, who we will now be doomed to see in every other film released) steals money from his students set aside for their field trip, and when he's meeting friends after school, tells them to "shut up and drive before one of these nerds asks me another question." Real men recoil from children and resent having to earn a paycheck through their company. Real dudes don't have time to nurture or care about kids.

Real men are oftentimes hen-pecked and emasculated by cruel harridans who fuck bartenders on holiday and even beat up their dude from time to time. But said dude Stew (Ed Helms) will learn to grow a pair when he meets and marries a single mom stripper (Heather Graham) who is without any demands. A woman who he is free to refer to as a hooker and a whore. Even though all women exist to service men sexually, men reserve the right to despise them for it.

Real men such as Alan (Zach Galifianakis) are often lonely, introverted losers who think nothing of secretly drugging the friends they claim to love and cherish. It's not a huge stretch to guess that he'd think nothing of slipping a roofie to a lady who did not warm to his advances. It was all about his plans, so fuck-all to the idea of getting consent. That's a rapist's point of view right there.

Men who say they are in love and want to marry disappear for most of the movie. These dudes are nothing short of whipped and are prime targets for a practical joke that could have potentially caused death from dehydration and exposure. Hey, but it's all in the bro-game, yo! Real men steal, trash shit, lie, betray trust and humiliate those around them into ripping out their own teeth. All while sexually demeaning women. Vegas, baby! Dude heaven.

Real Women:

Are out of the fucking picture almost entirely.

We're only at the other end of the phone to be pushed off and lied to while the real business among dudes happens. Real women control, demean, and abuse the men in their life as the only way to keep hold of them because otherwise what man would willingly consent to marriage?

Or else we just worry and frown and wait patiently for the man to ring.

Real women should be sexed up and working for dollars in our g-strings during which time most men will offer disparagement over their horny praise.

But again? Most of the time we don't exist.

Hollywood Draws the Covers on Woman over 50

Meryl Streep has garnered more critical acclaim and award nominations than any other living actor, plus her projects pull in an enormous gross across the international box offices. Folks will even go to watch a shitty film such as "Mama Mia" to watch the fabulously talented actor. She commands a range that few in her business could ever hope to match.

And yet, Hollywood shirks from the sight of her post-menopausal lady flesh.

You've seen the poster for "It's Complicated" plastered all over mainstream media and the internet, the one pictured below, which is a clearly doctored shot from the film.

The first screen grab from the film shows a disheveled couple in a postcoitus moment.

Streep has the remains of her O face frozen on her face, her bra is clearly visible from underneath a camisole, and her thigh is exposed to just beneath her panty-line. Her character's posed in a realistic depiction of what a woman looks like after a quick, passionate turn in the sheets. Her co-star Baldwin looks equally pleased and half-dressed.

Hollywood didn't want to use the fleshy and realistic portrayal of two middle aged folks after hooking up, so they altered the scene in order to not only cover up any of the lady parts that might otherwise sour an industry used to pimping out barely legal starlets, but then they also plaster a guilty, sheepish, pensive look on her face all while leaving Baldwin looking smug and satisfied. Dudes over 50 have been cast shirtless and still deemed sexually appealing at least since Jack Nicholson played the astronaut in "Terms of Endearment." No executive in Tinseltown worries about losing box office to an older dude in the semi-buff.

Instead they'll go to great lengths to cover up a gorgeous woman because she's considered over the hill.

Brad Pitt Makes Me Wince #25

Pitt's performance as Louis in "Interview With the Vampire" echoes Keanu Reeves laced up, tight-assed, affectless delivery as Jonathan Harker in Dracula two years earlier. Pitt's the Emo-vampire, a passionless sulker as this lackluster bloodsucker. Check out Antonio Banderas' face while Pitt clutches his head. The dude looks chagrined to be playing a supporting role to such a hack. At the end, when he raises Christian Slater's reporter dude to the ceiling and affects a haughty howl in order to ask if this is what he wants, to be "food for the eee-Mort-ahls I was curled up in a full-body wince. Not cringe; a painful wince.
And he's not even pretty.
He rivals the Sparkly Chaste fanged one for worst vampire onscreen.
Well, next to Cruise as Lestat, that is.

Something for the Bare Walls

At parties, in pubs or taxis, Irish folks expect me to complain about living here.
Often the attitude is why would we want to come at all?
Mr. M tells them:"You won't get her to say anything negative. Shit, she's had her purse stolen and has been hit in the face on the street and still she won't say a bad word about the place."
I've been waiting to get here for years. Why would I want to focus my energy on carping about our guest stint? That would be acting like the folks on "Come Dine With Me" who sit at the table and proceed to outline every mistake the chef made with a dish. I may be many things, but crass and vulgar I ain't. Or else it brings to mind Kathleen Turner in "The Accidental Tourist" when she issues a long-suffering exhalation "the problem with you, Macon" on more than one occasion, and then he finally snaps out of his somnambulent haze to tell her to stop cataloguing his shortcomings. You can't sustain a relationship (romantic or residential) on complaints.
Yesterday a box with the mask pictured came for the husband.
Looking at it brought to sharp relief that the rental here is kind of cold and naked.
Lotsa plain beige.
So yes, if there's one thing I'd bitch about, it's not having all of our stuff here.
The recent addition to the thirty or is it forty something strong mask collection we've built up over the years hails from New Zealand, from a master carver A.P. Te Pou. It's using the Maori design "raperape" and is made with Totara timber and Abalone.
Now if only I had my books over here.

Condiments and Culture

There's an episode of "Northern Exposure" where Joel (Rob Morrow) goes back to Maggie's (Janine Turner) home in Gross Point, Michigan for some reason. He surveys the buffet that her mother has put out and observes "what's with you people and mayonnaise?" Hah. It's true that for Irish American families, fictional like the O'Connells or in reality in my own childhood home, mayo was the condiment of choice. Ladies dress sandwiches and every kind of salad (potato, macaroni) with the whipped egg spread. Mr. M, being one of the sorta chosen people shares Joel's aversion to mayo. Woody Allen famously highlighted the shiksa faux pas when Diane Keaton's Annie Hall ordered pastrami with mayo on white. That shit's just not done.
So I've developed quite a taste for mustard over the years.
It has virtually no fat and way more flavour than mayo anyhow.
Last week in "Fallon and Byrne" on Exchequer Street I found this French citrus mustard that's a revelation. The mustard carried a healthy tang to the marinade for some monkfish last night.
Really, you'd be hard-pressed to find another condiment with so much character.

So-Called Cult Classic Sucks

"People love this film" I said pulling the "Withnail and I" dvd out of the television.

"Who? Where are they? They need to answer for wasting my time with this shit."

Male privilege with a veneer of faux-squalor topped with a heaping dose of heterosexism.

What is there to love about this?

Mr. M fidgeted and I was bored to the tits.