Worst Philly Accents on Film

Who knows what these actors were channeling for their roles, but not one of them sounds like they really came from Philadelphia.
Not one.
William Hurt's painful performance and vocal stylings in "A History of Violence" are indeed cringeworthy.
The Philly mob would have bitchslapped him.
In "Marnie," Sean Connery, believe it or not, actually does try depart from his normal brogue only it's a big fat fail.
Harrison Ford in "Witness" doesn't even try to sound Philly.
Giovanni Ribisi's delivery in "10th and Wolf" casts him as a runaway from the "Donnie Brasco" set. It's Philly, Ribisi, not the 5 Boroughs.
Trust me, there's not one woman in South Philadelphia who sounds like Amy Poehler's character in "Baby Mama."
Boo hiss.

Misogynists Can't Write Chick Lit

“Misery” was on television last night so we watched it after Mr. M’s training session with his team. There was lots of moaning, not just from James Caan onscreen, but from the husband who logged 800 miles this month on the bike. My stars.

When most folks talk or write about the film, they focus on what a berserker-nut Kathy Bates is as Annie Wilkes. Her character is always at the top of any list about screen villains and yes, she’s utterly creepy when she delivers innocent lines such as “I’m your number one fan.” This time around, I noticed what a complete cocksucker and unethical asshole Caan’s Paul Sheldon is along with being a misogynist ratfink . Paul’s another guy that thinks whatever women like is silly, inconsequential and frivolous. He made a successful and profitable career on the Misery books. Yet he thinks the series rates as stupid and beneath him, just like the fans who adore his heroine. He kills off Misery so he can write macho books with lots of profanity. All the girly stuff he wrote made him so sick he could barely look himself in the mirror. He’s not a “real” writer if women are his audience. Paul’s work left him de-sacked so cue the macho themed work.

I call bullshit on the idea that the romance genre could be so easily penetrated and appropriated by some guy who hates it but can expect to waltz in and write books that readers will love. It doesn’t work that way in any genre. Plenty of folks have tried to slap out a chick lit novel to make a name or paycheck and have failed. A writer’s contempt would leak out to the page, tainting the characters and plot and destroy the passion or conviction that readers can detect. In a novel, everything has to be the truth, at least to the author. If there’s no integrity there, it’d show up on the page. To say otherwise, that women will pick up and drool over a series that was born from an authorial sneer is ridiculous and insulting. His whole approach to his readership is that they are simpletons. There’s no way that women would not understand this or glean it on the page. A misogynist would never be able to write a series that had a deep and meaningful appeal to women. Now that just trumps by ability to suspend my disbelief for the rest of it.

So Paul, you’re a prick, and maybe you had it coming.

Dresses for Ladies Who Lunch

Last week I found this little treasure in Arnott's on Henry Street at 40% off, down to 60 euro.
It's from the Danish fashion house St. Martin's.
While I'm not crazy about the writing and references to bossa nova, the cut, material and fit of the dress are superb, especially for the price. There's even a full silky lining underneath, a touch that you rarely get to see in affordable frocks these days.
This one is perfect for a Ladies Who Lunch gadding about.
We've a new recruit today so it should prove a chatty afternoon.

Eric, Let Me Dance for You

FMC just sent me the first mini-episode of TrueBlood's third season.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

What the What?

There was a version of this ice cream commercial on at least five times last night. I kept pulling a double take.
What the hell is Benicio del Toro doing in a shite advertisement spot with an Angelina look alike?
How do you move from "serious thespian" to shill so quickly?

Funnier Than Sedaris

As an ardent admirer of the witty stylings of David Sedaris, I do not say this lightly, but Joshua Ferris' novel "Then We Came to the End" is even more hilarious. Only 100 pages in and I had to put the book down three separate times to wait until the hysterical giggles spun out.

If you're having a shitty day, pick this up for an instant mood elevator.

Dangerous Liasons and Old Ladies

"How was the play?"

"Good. Really good. You would have lost your mind though. Three hours long."

"Yeah, they need to warn you about that."

"All the performances were accomplished. Costumes were great. There was an uncomfortable moment when he was grabbing the teenager's vagina."

"Was it meant to make you uncomfortable?"

"Yeah, he forces her to relent. There's no real consent. The play glosses over it by showing you how much she enjoys it afterwards. Then during his death scene he was whispering and I couldn't hear a thing."

"That's because you're going deaf. You've been losing your hearing since we met.

"When was that again? What year are we in?"

"This is year 19. Next month."

"Oh dear christ I'm old."

New Weekly Feature--Dress Drooling

Check out this sheath from Tory Burch. This works the floral fashion without being too girly-girly Stepford about the trend. I dig the cut of the shoulders, the waist, the pattern and the length. Saw it online at Saks for $365. Verily, the only thing better about living in the U.S. is the shopping. Oh, and soft pretzels. I had a dream the other night where I ate four of them.

My pigeon-y shoulders might be embiggened in this Diane Von Furstenberg chiffon print dress. The waist and colours are beyond dreamy. This is up at Neiman Marcus for $398.

If I were to get on board with the neutrals trend for a dress, it would be this stunning nude sheath from Andy the Anh with pleats at the neck. It's also over at NM and goes for $515. Love it.

The Stern Principle

There are many things about folks that continue to prove a head-scratcher.
I don't understand how you can be an overweight vegetarian. The actor Chi McBride once tried to explain it by saying "ice cream ain't got no meat in it." Still, though, it proves a puzzle.

I don't get folks who avoid walking to their destination or would never take public transit.

Those free sample stations in the market, usually in the cheese or deli area, I'm mystifyed how anyone could put that stuff in their mouth in light of all the studies showing that it's swarming with fecal matter, just like those bowls of unwrapped mints.

Why do people make so much drama in the workplace in order to get their own way instead of just doing the fucking task already? I don't get that.

In the same league are folks who adhere to the Howard Stern principle (I know, how odd to see that descriptor next to his name). What I mean by that may be explained through the dialogue from his autobiographical film "Private Parts":

Researcher: The average radio listener listens for eighteen minutes. The average Howard Stern fan listens for - are you ready for this? - an hour and twenty minutes.
Pig Vomit: How can that be?
Researcher: Answer most commonly given? "I want to see what he'll say next."
Pig Vomit: Okay, fine. But what about the people who hate Stern?
Researcher: Good point. The average Stern hater listens for two and a half hours a day.
Pig Vomit: But... if they hate him, why do they listen?
Researcher: Most common answer? "I want to see what he'll say next."

I really, really fail to understand this mentality.
When I don't care for a television programme, film, radio broadcast, blog or whatever, I don't tune in, turn on or read it.
So what gives?
Are the folks operating under the Stern principle mental defectives or what?

Human Beings vs. Sluts

The quickest way to feel your age is to watch a show about eight people in their early twenties.

Strike that, because even in my early twenties, my life bore no resemblance to what you see in the reality show “Jersey Shore.” That’s not a bid for a snobbish stance or response to the folks onscreen, it’s just an admission that the programme shocked and saddened me more than anything else. There were two reasons that I checked out two episodes of the show. The first is that the Jersey Shore was a vacation destination from my infancy due to its proximity to Philadelphia. As a child and a teenager, down the shore was a place to have fun what with the Boardwalk, the rides, the surf. My mother tells a story about how I lost my pacifier in the sand one day and cried inconsolably. She and my grandmother worked to suck on replacements to shut me the hell up. Hah. Hello, future smoker. Second, not long before his talk show crashed and burned, Conan O’Brien had some of the cast members on and the segment was one of the worst interviews I’ve ever seen. O’Brien’s attitude was utter smug condescension. The way he patronized his guests was disgusting, while the other guests on the couch threw him knowing glances in the manner of mocking the earnest working class kids who suddenly hit the lime light. The Guido culture is a real component of many Italian American communities. When I was growing up in Philly it existed and still does today. The young folks have a certain aesthetic around tanning, weight lifting and fashion that only seems safe to mock because it’s done by poorish white kids. Guidos and Guidettes are entitled to dress and adorn themselves however they like. And so what if they use stupid slang such as calling themselves “The Situation” or “JWoww.” Just about everyone uses some brand of colloquialism in their speech. This show has been an opportunity for lots of folks to pull the snob routine, and you know I fucking hate snobs and snobbery, that mean spirited pose which attempts to ballast personal social standing or position by putting other folks down for their taste.

So, no, I will not participate in all the smirking and eye rolling over the gelled hair or skimpy clothes on parade in “Jersey Shore.” My criticism instead would single out the scary gender politics on offer. How you treat other folks should always be more important than how you play dress up. There is no sense of the last forty years of feminism at all in how anyone relates to each other on this show. It’s like the second-wave never happened. That came as quite a shock, let me tell you. In the words of the men in the house, women are either “human beings,” a very small and select group, or they are “sluts.” In the two episodes, there were only three girls outside the house who received the concession that they were “human beings” who the men should be nice and respectful towards. I’m not exaggerating, the men were actually granting personhood to three women in their midst. The scene wasn’t very long, but I tried to zero in on how they arrived at the exception for these particular young women. The only answer that sounds reasonable is that the ladies were not drinking, at least not in that scene. They must regard booze as instant slut juice or something, never mind what stupid shit the guys get up to when they’re drinking. Three human beings in a sea of hundreds of sluts is how the men view the world. Every other woman exists for their potential sexual pleasure and that’s it. Mike “The Situation” operates like a shark, circling every social setting with a grim determination to get laid. Like many guys of his ilk, he doesn’t seem to like women one bit; his pursuit seems more about bragging rights and male bonding than it does about sexual pleasure or expression. How sad.

Then there was the violent scene that I had read about on other blogs, the one where Snooki gets punched in the face by a large man in a club. Snooki seemed to be just about invisible to the men in the house before she was assaulted. After she was clocked in the mouth, she suddenly becomes valuable to them as a means to demonstrate their macho posturing and credibility. Victimized women have value for men who want to play the white knight hero role. Otherwise they couldn’t care less about her because they don’t want to fuck her and she’s not a relative. To the guys on this show, they need a reason for women to exist. Their moral economy revolves around how women can be useful to them personally. I know that sounds like a fairly obvious statement, but if you pause upon it, the idea can really launch a case of the heebie jeebies. Women don’t get a history, desires, an agenda, experiences, status or even a future outside of their relationship or service to men. The basic principles that women fought to establish in the past four decades are not even a blip on the radar for the Jersey Shore cast.

Horror show.

Bloodless Leader

Much to my chagrin, a check on the running time of “Il Divo” after I finished watching it reported the film as coming in less than two hours long. I could have sworn this was a three hour-plus picture. The opening scene proved an electric start which the rest of the film had no hope of sustaining. The murder montage demotes the guys in Goodfellas to rank amateurs by comparison. Tony Servillo plays Giulio Andreotti, the Italian leader who helmed seven terms in the wake of Post-WWII reconstruction, a man who holds his physique in a full on clench topped by a pair of floppy canine-esque ears. He holds himself as tight as all the bloody secrets he keeps, maybe in a turn of overkill in conveying character to the audience. The man is a poster guy for repression.

If the whole film builds upon the moral ambiguity enveloping his legacy, in terms of whether or not he colluded with the Mafia in order to assassinate his hard-line rivals, why the big, heated confession scene where he looks into the camera and addresses his wife? It deflates our ability to empathize with him as the rest of the film spirals into a tedious round of 26 trials, at the end of which he was ultimately acquitted due to a lack of evidence. It’s a fairly obvious judgment when you put a cadre of thieves and murderers behind the prosecutorial case.

Andreotti tells us he was fuelled by a desire to fulfill god’s will and secure a modern centrist nation away from the commies and the fascists. That may read as noble to some, but it also makes giving a shit about him more difficult. The Mafia’s motives are easier to understand and explain. They want money and power to fend off their otherwise abject peasant status. They enjoy the pleasures of the table and the bedroom. But Andreotti is milquetoast, a shy retiring type who drinks his headache powders and goes to bed early. His pleasures are taken only in power and control, in murder and cultivating fear of his reprisals. It’s hard to care about this passionless robot. And so in the end, I say “meh.”

Lad Mags are Gross

Really?
This is considered funny?
Men are babies?
Babysitters are fucktoys?
Hideous.

Shame at the Table

Recently I was shamed for eating a whole avocado that came in a tapas dish, because, you know, eating a whole one makes me a greedy cunt. You would have thought that I had an orchard of them on my plate. I mean what the fuck, I'm a size 8 (size 4 in North American terms) and still I'm fair game to be charged with that special brand of policework that women do to keep each other in check and a nervous wreck over what we consume.

Is it any wonder that so many women have food issues?
For most of us, this bizarro cycle doesn't start until puberty.
Today in David Coleman's "Ask the Expert" in the Irish Times, all I could think was thank god this woman didn't have a daughter instead. Had the child been a girl, she'd be fucked in the head over food for life. And yeah, I realize I'm contradicting the earlier post about how you can't blame your parents, but if your mama's calling you fat and greedy before your third birthday, there's a big eating disorder in the pipeline.

She asks:
"Our two and a half year old seems greedy, always wanting what everyone else is eating regardless of what it is or what he has recently eaten. We feed him healthy food as we ourselves would have pretty good diets, but he still has a 'belly' despite the fact that he is a very active child."
She's worried about a belly size on a toddler?
For reals?
Then she goes on to admit how she obsesses over everything he puts in his mouth and how the boy pulls a guilty face at her when he eats because he knows she disapproves.
At 2 1/2 this kid already has issues.
"If one more person says, 'it would be worse if he wasn't eating,' I'll scream."
So you'd rather that he wasn't eating?
This is so fucking bonkers I could scream.

Vintage Fashion Fair

The vintage fashion fair at the Royal Marina in Dun Laoghaire had a line through the lobby and down the stairs by the time we left yesterday. Get there early is always my motto.

Sniff. I went through every rack of clothes. Nothing for me.

Fat Mammy Cat snapped this because I was too shy. The lady was one of the vendors and let me tell you, she was rocking her Dior turbin.

This little number was an almost-maybe. I hesitated and then said nah.

FMC, on the other hand, found a gorgeous dress at the first stall in less than ten minutes. And later, an Italian leather belt for jeans paired with a white shirt.

Authentic Oirish

Andrew McCarthy, he of the frozen fish-eyed reaction shot from those 80s movies about spoiled white kids is now a travel writer of sorts for the Atlantic.
Check out this greenface claptrap about "authentic" Ireland in Doolin, Co. Clare.
What Americans mean to romanticize with this kind of feature is an impoverished, parochial woolen twee-ness which doesn't have any truth to it outside the cinema.
Stop looking for the Quiet Man nonsense.
What an embarrassment.
Also, he sounds pretty fucking drunk in his voiceover for the cringeworthy video.

New Version of an Old Story.

A few weeks ago when it was reviewed in the Sunday Times, Mr. M exhibited some excitement about Philip Pullman’s book “The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ” as perhaps containing an original or fresh view on the legend. Mr. M has never read the bible, not a word of it, so maybe that’s why he retains an interest in what it says. Me? I could not give less of a shit about anything related to the book or religion in general. It’s the literature of thuggery and domination designed as a mechanism to control the masses and keep women underfoot. We bought tickets to see Pullman speak today at Trinity as part of the Dublin Writer’s Festival since the husband enjoyed the novel. An email came yesterday explaining that the Volcanic Death Cloud from Iceland caused him to cancel his reading. Instead of watching him read it, I read it myself in a zippy three hour stint today. I suppose the meta-reading, the story-behind the story and the twinning of the supposed lord was indeed an interesting twist. Most of the account is re-told straight from the New Testament, all the parables and sermon on the mount examples included.

Reading this reaffirms my incredulity over why anyone would be drawn to the man, or the son of god or whatever he claimed and his teachings, because really, he sounds like a dick. A dick who prefers to see folks in penury and misery rather than comfort and pleasure. Only assholes tell you that poverty is a vocation. A man who tells you that you are as guilty as having committed an offence if you just only just think about it is peddling one of the sickest forms of self-surveillance and guilt-enabling beliefs that I can think of. Hello, dysfunction when thoughts become crimes. Or how about the one where he tells folks who were labouring all day not to complain when he pays folks who only worked for an hour the same wages they received? His theology is bent of cruelty and caprice more so than human justice. I don’t know which scares me more, what Jesus had to say or the folks who take it all as gospel truth and would like to roast this little book in the town square as consequence.

An equal match, I reckon.

Cool Comics

Check out Canadian comic strip artist Kate Beaton's Hark, A Vagrant.

The strips are funny, inspired and several have Irish subjects.

It's All About the Men

It may come as no surprise to hear that I have a history of animal rights activism. Clandestine stuff meant to sabotage the meat industry mostly. Those heady days in my youth, I even thought spray paint could be wielded as an act of revolution and civic dissent. The problem with that crowd, as I soon learned, was that they did not give one teeny tiny fuck about women. Guys who are involved in animal rights work are often really similar to those who become Marxists. They think by campaigning for animals or the working class that they can claim the mantle of the oppressed and shift the focus away from the privilege they enjoy from their own gender, race and class. Because it’s almost always white guys from the middle or upper class who wear these fashionable politics upon which you must never call them out to account. The fact that they talk about the animal slave trade means that they are absolved when they engage in the human sex trade. I’ve seen some really shady shit and behavior from men in this group, to be sure. When you call them on their sexist nonsense or ask why they would put more effort into saving a lab rat than they would lift a finger to help a woman, they invariably say something like “it’s not my fight.” Women, and often only young, attractive women, are allowed inside their activist ranks for the purposes of making the tea, listening to their “brilliant” opinions and of course serving as cum dumpster. Women are as disposable to the animal rights guy as bunnies are to Revlon.

I watched “The Cove” with a dry eye last night since all the dudes involved wholly embody the “I’m so fucking important in my rescue work” stereotype of men in animal rights. Take for example the guru Ric O’Barry. When asked in the opening five minutes how many times he’s been arrested he responds “what, this week?” with a braggadocio that made me want to glass him. O’Barry admits his responsibility in the global trade in cute dolphins because he was the trainer involved in the television series “Flipper.” For ten years he made a huge profit from exploiting the dolphins for human entertainment in television and then in those sea park prisons. You see it’s all about him, his redemption, so now, he tells us, if there’s a dolphin in trouble anywhere in the world, he knows about it. I just could not get beyond this fucker’s ego. Yes, the film is well made and what it shows you is horrible and shocking, but I could not swallow the posturing and righteousness of all the men onscreen. The few women we see are the token arm-candy you’ll always find these men bring along.

Hair Monster!

Last night I washed my hair, put the usual 7 pumps of Oscar Blondi jasmine serum in there and then let it air dry while we watched "Zombie Land."

Then it went up in a bun for sleeping, just like every evening.

This is what it looks like now.

When I have to gird my loins to raking the Ghd fucking tongs through it to make it somehow resemble hair rather than a woolen blanket.

I tell myself to be grateful because it's bound to fall out sooner or later.

Formula 101

Hollywood depends on formulas to play it safe with all the money needed for making and marketing films. Never mind that they could focus on producing better movies and rely upon glowing reviews and word of mouth to sell you a ticket, rather than showing commercials and plastering posters everywhere for the latest film about two mismatched folks who hate each other but inexplicably fall in love. Yes, Hollywood loves a bankable formula. Misogynist bachelor who hates women yet suddenly decides one woman is tolerable and worth acting like a human being for in exchange for sexual and otherwise service remains a popular convention in film. There’s the dude who “man-ups” and proves he has a pair by going on a violent killing spree. Hollywood also loves a reliable hero with a thousand-peens-I-mean-faces on a quest plot as in the Star Wars-LOTR franchises, or more recently in Clash of the Titans. Plots about winning her back may authorize all sorts of subterfuge and unethical scary stalking, but audiences want to see the guy “get” the girl, whether that’s done in a romance or a serial killer genre. Marry the bitch or slice her to pieces, so the formula says. Shirley MacClaine famously condensed the formula for women’s characters into “hookers, victims and doormats.”

Not all formulas are bad, however. I can think of one in particular that works well and still has life in it.

The old superstition about three on a match bringing bad luck could be easily extended to the plot about three on a bag of money. In John Huston’s “Treasure of Sierra Madre,” (1948) it was a pile of gold, nonetheless, we knew it was going to be changed to a pile of money. Dobbs’ (Humphrey Bogart) cultivates a voracious greed which transforms to a disoriented paranoia and then a frenzy over the dough. There’s no moral ambiguity on offer or little doubt that Dobbs lost his head with untoward desire. Howard (Walter Huston) gets rewarded for his lack of avarice when the impoverished locals decide to worship him as their god and give him a young wife. Talk about white male fantasy fulfillment. This film also had an added dramatic element about the three having to work together to extract the gold from the mine. Howard again gets the mantle of reason when he insists that they leave the mountain the way they found it and dismantle the mine. Of the three, Curtain (Tim Holt) seems to strike the right balance in regard to how invested one should be about the treasure. Howard cares so little, you wonder why he’s even there, and well, Dobbsy is on the express to a meltdown since that’s all he can think about.

Danny Boyle’s “Shallow Grave” (1994) lays the groundwork for his take on the three on a bag of money plot by emphasizing what an ideal trio they are in the beginning of the film as they cast about interviewing potential new flat mates. Despite the ridiculous mullet that Ewan McGregor sports as Alex, the film looks ageless. The audience naturally contemplates their own reaction to finding a dead guy in the next room and a big bag of cash. I don’t care how fastidious you are in navigating your moral compass, when a bag of money shows up you will figure out how to keep it. The trio foolishly refrained from sharing out the messy details with Juliet (Kerry Fox) and Alex bailing out of the dirty work of dismemberment. When David (Christopher Eccleston) pulls the short stick (or match, wasn’t it?), they let him bear the burden in their own relief at escaping the hacksaw and gore. That right there was their big misstep in foisting the bloody part onto the weakest link. There’s a great deal of moral ambiguity for the audience to consider amidst the double-crosses and even past the happy ending. At least someone got to keep the lovely money.

Sam Raimi’s best film “A Simple Plan” (1998) failed to get the recognition it deserved despite it being just about perfect. Each character and performance is completely believable. Bill Paxton has since creeped me out forever as his Mormon harem-owner, but in this film he’s the rock steady moral centre until he isn’t. When his character Hank finds four million in a plane wreck while out with his brother, Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton, who steals every scene) and another hick Lou, (Brent Briscoe) the struggle to keep a lid on the loot begins. Raimi alternates the triangulated dynamic between Lou and Hank’s wife Sarah (Bridget Fonda), a new mother with tons of bills and worries about the future.

The three on a bag of money formula works for the simplest reason: we can picture ourselves in the scenario, and we’d all welcome an unexpected boon in a bag.

Tits for Tots

That's right folks.

Padded bras for 7 and 8 year-old girls.

The cum dumpster training starts early this year.

The Line in the Sand

This is my 2,199th post.
Nearly half of what I’ve written for the blog has been dedicated to dismantling the overarching idea of an essential gender difference, a concept which has been hardwired into culture since it began.

The junk you carry around in your jeans, whether peen or vadge, has nothing to do with the quality of character, your hopes, dreams and ability in life. All the sound and fury over how men and women are worlds apart on separate planets amounts to holding no more veracity than any other mythology present in the process of enculturation. Jesus and the Mars and Venus stuff are all part of the same impulse for systemic domination and control by a small group of men. They hope to keep the masses in check through disseminating narratives that reduce complex issues around identity and the search for a meaningful life into a simplistic and reductive formula. Don’t anger god or he’ll bring floods to New Orleans or an earthquake to Haiti makes about as much sense as the noxious parable about how men only want sex and women only want a gold band.

But there is, oh gentle reader, a line which even I do not want to cross.

The unisex toilet, bathroom, washroom, restroom or whatever you want to call it.
Maybe it’s the fact that I’m not thrilled about having my pants down in the proximity of strange men.
Or that I can’t rely on the person in the next stall to have a tampon if the need arises.
Or that I won’t have that bit of privacy to pull spinach from my teeth in front of the mirror or spin around to see if my ass looks fat.
I know that they are the inevitable trend because it’s cheaper for restaurants or any facility and there is some basic democratic principle to first come, first pee rather than having a line for the ladies snake around a corridor. I can’t really defend separate facilities other than my own personal comfort level.
And isn’t that all that matters?
In addition to being unisex, the toilets at Pintxo on Eustace Street are a germaphobe’s nightmare. There’s no need to have all that fabric and decoration where bodily fluids are being expressed. Is this a hipster thing where sitting on a throne is supposed to be ironic? Go to Salamanca on St. Andrews for tapas instead. You’ll get better food and service there and those pristine white toilets.

Happy Birthday, Beckett

As a little gesture to celebrate the anniversary of Samuel Beckett's birth on April 13, 1906, I read “Beckett Remembering: Remembering Beckett” edited by James Knowlson, author of the fantastic biography “Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett.” I had enjoyed the bio, especially the section detailing Beckett’s friendship with Jack Yeats and the role that art in general had played in the author’s work. There are so many gems and even laugh-out-loud moments in the compiled interviews for this volume.

By all the accounts given by more than two dozen people who had known and worked with Samuel Beckett, each individual emphasizes his exceedingly generous and thoughtful nature. Billie Whitelaw, who performed as Winnie in “Happy Days” and Mouth in “Not I” in the 1970s, reflects how when her son was recovering from meningitis, Beckett called and asked after the boy daily, and brought him little presents, even a massive chess set for the seven year-old. Robert Pinget tells Knowlson that Beckett divided the Nobel Prize money out to all of his struggling friends such as the director Roger Blin with notes attached saying “Neither thanks nor ‘no.’” Beckett paid rent for people, paid for friends to have their kids educated, bought thoughtful gifts, fended off creditors. He was no cold-hearted nihilist or misanthrope as many folks may like to characterize him. Edna O’Brien wrote of him in the mid 80s that we should note “He has the reputation of being austere and hermetic, but those who have met him always attest to the mildness and courtesy of the man. On his face, though, you see evidence that must have wrestled for every second of its waking life with the cruelty, crassness and barbarity of mankind.” O’Brien pinpoints what I’ve always found from his earliest story, the one after which this here blog is named. Beckett’s work as a writer was to lay claim to empathy as the only bolster against the wanton cruelty that attends the human condition. His affinity and compassion for the trembling beast not long before the pot echoed through the rest of his work.

Of the many highlights from Knowlson’s collection, I’d like to share a few.
Anyone familiar with Beckett’s life knows about the strained, difficult relationship he had with his mother, May. One might say that nonetheless they shared common traits. Beckett tells a story about how his mother got up in the middle of the night to investigate a barking dog while the rest of the family slept in their home Cooldrinagh in Foxrock. She traced the sound to a nearby home, went inside the yard, and found the dog enmeshed in a trap and in distress. May rescued the pooch, and Beckett obviously admired his mother’s plucky resolve for the daring mission. Of his father, Beckett enjoyed the long country walks they shared until his father’s death. He speaks of how proud he was when he had a lecture position at Trinity and could use his keys to open gates for his father and how disappointed the elder had been when Beckett decided he hated teaching.

In a discussion about the role of religion or faith, Beckett says “The Bible was an important influence on my work, yes. I’ve always felt it’s a wonderful transcript, inaccurate but wonderful.” Hee, that had me in giggles.

There’s lots of testimony about what an accomplished athlete Beckett was, including funny anecdotes like one from a school chum, Cyril Harris shares: “I shall never forget the way he dealt with me in a school boxing tournament. I met him in a semi-final bout and he quickly knocked me through the side ropes and out of the ring. That was the end of my boxing career.” So much for the stereotype about smart boys being ill-equipped for athletics. Beckett excelled in golf, rugby, tennis, boxing and cricket.

Beckett tells Knowlson that he was a weekly visitor to the Abbey and admired the actors Barry Fitzgerald and Frank McCormick in particular, and gushes over having seen multiple productions of Synge and O’Casey’s plays. He even remembered the seats he always chose and what they cost compared to the pricier section.

Knowlson includes a snippet that he also inserted in the biography about Beckett’s stint teaching at Campbell College in Belfast. He had passed out final grades that the headmaster had deemed too low for the reputation and standing of the student body. He asked Beckett if he knew that he was teaching the cream of Ulster, to which he replied that they were indeed like cream: “rich and thick.” That’s already in chapter two of my novel, btw.

Ruby Cohn, who was probably the first person to write a doctoral dissertation on Beckett became friends with him in the early 60s and they remained so for the rest of his life. She remembers sitting with him in a café in Paris and casually asking if he had written anything new for the theatre in the late 60s. “He answered almost angrily: ‘New? What could be new? Man is born—vagitus. Then he breathes for a few seconds before the death rattle intervenes.’ I may not be quoting his exact words, but I remember ‘vagitus’ because it was a new word for me—Latin for crying or squealing.” He was hella succinct about the lifespan.

The biggest surprise in the collection comes from Jocelyn Herbert, a British theatre designer who offhandedly divulges that he’d been with many other women over the years. I haven’t come across any other mention of lovers he had outside his marriage to Suzanne Descheveaux-Dumesnil. Herbert confides that she thinks Beckett stayed with Suzanne based on loyalty after so many years together from before the French Resistance work they shared. She surmises “he felt remorse for the fact that he had so many friends whom he got drunk with. She didn’t drink. And he had after all endless other women. And when people say to me he was a saint I say: ‘Oh no, he wasn’t a saint at all. And thank God he wasn’t.” Scandalous! Tell me more, please.

During rehearsals for a production of “Endgame” with the San Quentin Drama Workshop, a woman asks Beckett why the three yawns in the original had been cut down to two. He replies it wasn’t important. She asks again. Beckett gives an answer and then whispers to a crew member “Maybe it was for fear of inducing another in the audience.” He had many other jokey asides onset. Hume Cronyn talks about returning to his hotel after rehearsing all day with Beckett for “Act Without Words.” Two old ladies were sitting on a bench waiting for an elevator, complaining about the trials of daily life. One of them opined that the only solution was to die young. Hume said after all that he expected to jump from his window.

Lookit, I could go on sharing the stories. Chapters had copies for €5.99. Read the rest of it.

No One Fucks with La Liz

Lauren Collins begins her review of Kitty Kelly's new biography on Oprah Winfrey for The New Yorker with an anecdote about the talkshow host's first big celebrity interview:

"In February of 1988, Oprah Winfrey, the host of a year-and-a-half-old, already extremely popular talk show, landed her first big celebrity guest and flew to Los Angeles for what she has called “the worst interview of my life.” Its subject, Elizabeth Taylor, wore a purple peplum suit, sat in a floral armchair—they were filming at the Hotel Bel-Air—and refused to entertain Oprah’s halting inquiries about her romantic entanglements, one of the themes of the book, “Elizabeth Takes Off,” that she was there to discuss. “None of your business,” Taylor said at one point, fixing Oprah with a hyacinth death stare."

Hah.

Hyacinth Death Stare is my new favourite expression.

Macbeth at the Abbey

When I was here as an undergraduate student back in 1996, I attended a production of Macbeth at the Abbey. I had been suffering from a case of the icks, with a head cold alternating between feeling like I had concrete clogged in there to a loosened snot-fest. All I remember about the show were the Nazi storm trooper costumes.

There are moments from the current production running at the Abbey until mid-May that have burned themselves into memory. The emphasis the cast placed on the physical, corporeal reckoning of the play surpasses any other I’ve witnessed. An actor worth his or her salt knows it’s all about the bodywork, yet all too often audiences get shafted by only getting half the package of vocalized stylings, like you’re watching a bunch of heads stuck to sticks, much as the pig’s head on the set reminds us. An actor needs more than a mouth. Micheal McElhatton as Banquo was especially extraordinary with his bodywork onstage. Each time he appeared, he drew my full attention to his shoulders, arms, hips, legs and hands. When we speak of what it means to inhabit one’s body in a performance, McElhatton illustrates the perfection of stance, posture, carriage. He’s always as his character should be. In the banquet scene, he haunts the guilty ruler by gracefully floating up to mount the tables as if he really were a ghost.

Eileen Walsh’s hair as Lady Macbeth initially proved a misfit to the production until the “unsex me” scene, where the rationale behind the cropped tresses was made manifest. Walsh would have been unconvincing and absurd if she had been dressed with a wig suitable from the Cromwellian era in which the production’s set. The short hair lends the edge of gender-mixing to underscore her ambition in pushing her husband to see the murder through. She’s hard-edged and calculating under her bared nape and shorn locks. Lady Macbeth implores the fates to “unsex me,” to take her spell on fallen knees and then leans back upon her heels, and as she does so, she achieves the nearly impossible, by allowing the audience to grasp or comprehend her body under the stiff unyielding cut of her period costume, with its almost armour-like bodice and flounced hips. Those dresses were designed to hide all trace of female sexuality and still Walsh manages to make her body known by thrusting against the social circumscription it signifies. The audience witnesses the Lady’s heaving torso, convulsive in spasms of desire and ambition. I could actually see her ribs, stomach and groin heaving against the cage of a dress. There’s a palpable sexual heat to her early scenes with the husband, s Walsh is raw and physical as she paws the husband’s buttock and chest. Lady Macbeth bears a great appetite beyond the social climbing, which Walsh’s performance underscores.

Aidan Kelly as Macbeth gave a delivery that was more Tarantino than Shakespeare up until he appeared with his hands covered in blood. Perhaps the elixir of life transferred a grounding effect, to paint the gravitas of the plot onto his skin so he could bear down and breathe out the part. As king, he grows expansive, his barrel chest taking form, his body claiming the stage with confidence.
Among the elements of a gorgeous set, I really enjoyed the shadow play as a technique to lend extra scope and depth to the performance.
Don’t miss it.

Let's Talk About Sex, Baby

In my early twenties, I used this verbal tic where I punctuated sentences with the appellation “hon,” as in short for “honey.” I'd say "So nice to see you, hon." "G'head, hon." It was an automatic ending for my sentences. At some point a friend stopped me cold and asked why I kept calling her that. She may have added how the habit made me sound like the waitress from the American sit-com “Alice” who always told people to “kiss mah grits” as she shook her dangly earrings and snapped her gum. It became clear to me that I only called women “hon” and it was a shitty diminutive to use in speech, even though my friend never said it directly, she was right to point out that it was a dismissive and infantilizing conversational feature. Calling women “hon” was a belittlement. And I want to own my shit and be able to possess a vocabulary reflective of the way I’m trying to steer my moral compass. The last thing I want to do is fuel and perpetuate the long history of misogyny wherein women are always already less than men, beings a rung below on the civic ladder, to be patronized and demeaned just for the accident of birth. So yeah, I cut that tic from my verbiage because I don’t want to be lazy about language.

You will be hard pressed to find a bigger enthusiast for all things Irish, dear reader. Mr. M sums up my tenacious optimism thusly: “nothing bad ever happens here in Ireland.” That’s not true, of course, but the point remains wherein Ireland is the only place where I can wear the rose-coloured glasses, see the glass half full and step outside my normal bitter pessimism. Just walking down the fucking street brings happiness. Keep that in mind as I offer my first serious criticism of Irish pop culture. I’ll always have an ear open for slang from a North American and North Atlantic context. Until recently, I had never heard the phrase “get your hole” or “get my hole.”

Let’s parse this out.
Now Fat Mammy Cat assures me that this phrase has no gender-specific reference to it and that it’s just a mildly juvenile way to talk about sex. Gimme told me the same and I’ve no reason to doubt their sincerity. But I’ve had this ugly, rancid little phrase stuck in my head, mostly because it horrified me to hear a woman using it to talk about another woman.

What could “hole” possibly connote other than vagina?
If a male speaker says he’s going to get his hole, the listener knows he’s talking about penetrative sex with a woman. If a female speaker says the same, well, she doesn’t mean that she’s planning to strap a dildo on and then go for pegging her boyfriend. The only possible way the phrase makes sense is if she’s referring to receiving vaginal sex. Again, “hole” signifies vagina, into which the peen goes. There is no possible cultural connotation for a man being or representing a hole, therefore the slang can’t claim a gender-neutral value or significance. Men are not being referenced as holes. The target here, in a culture steeped in male dominance, and predicated on the belief that women are the sole representatives and tempters to the sin of sex further explains how the woman is being hailed as a hole. Any search for a derivation which provides historical explanation for men being equated in terms of a hole does not exist in patriarchy. Male has always been the generic subject position against the polarized female negation. Men are the active penetrators; women the passive receivers.

You may tell me I’m full of shit. But can you really own this phrase and say that the hole in question is not an insulting colloquial abbreviation for women? I think not.