Vuvuzela: The Brown Sound for Dogs

Since the World Cup began, this is the first night without a game on the televison, and the return of normal dog behaviour.

The husband put two and two together after I told him about this video where the horn makes a dog crap in the house.

When the hyper-obnoxious horn blares in the background, Kima and Omar launch into spasms of aggressive barking, wrestling and general bad manners against all commands or rules of the house. They're two and a half now, yet have had to be restrained on their leads inside these past nights.
Unprecedented.
The pair have their demands for exercise met every single day.
After four hours minimum of three separate jaunts, they normally settle down after the post-dinner walk.

Tonight they are gentle lambs, which proves the vuvuzela is an instrument of torture for canine as well as human ears.

Public Toilets in Dublin

In a recently aired episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm," viewers were given an update to the "Seinfeld" characters when Larry David helmed a new production of the programme. George's plotline revolved around his invention of the i-toilet, an application for the i-phone, which would alert users to the nearest public facilities. He then lost the money in the Bernie Madoff pyramid scheme. What a great idea.

An insider's view to getting around any city is learning where you can pee when the need arises.

In Dublin's city centre, there are plenty of pubs and fast food restaurants, but I'm wary of trying to use them when I'm not going to spend any money, so I avoid those when I'm on walkabout. I also feel weird going to a hotel to use the toilet. For ages I used the pay toilets for 20 cents at the top of the St. Stephen's Green shopping centre. The problem there is that you have to go through the crowds all the way to the top using the escalator and stairs, and even then, you may have to wait in line to pee. Same with the toilets at M&S or Brown Thomas on Grafton Street.
The best facililties to use are in the National Gallery (second floor) on Clare Street or at the Irish Film Institute on Eustace Street. Both are clean and I've never had to wait for them.
Any others you would suggest?

Time for Something New

This poor little blog has been my pet project for more than four years.
A change seems in order.

Sinéad Gleeson has invited me to join a resurrected The Anti Room.

Thus I shall be in new blogging digs in the company of fine women writers.

Go, read and tell all your friends.

Where's Omar?

Domenic West and Catherine FitzGerald married at Glin Castle in Limerick.

Some of his fellow cast members from "The Wire" attended, including Andre Royo (Bubbles), Sonja Sohn (Kima) and Wendell Pierce (Bunk).

What, no Omar?

Tell me Michael K. Williams was too busy on a film set to come over.

Ken Wardrop's Martyred Mammy Fetish

The most memorable scene from “I Shot Andy Warhol,” the one that often pops in my mind’s eye, is the rehearsal of Valerie Solanas’ play in the NYC diner, with Candy Darling in the lead role of the female protagonist who has lost the turd she took out to dye yellow. She explains that she’s having two “dynamic, fascinating men” over for dinner and needs to locate the turd for the party. No, she assures her interlocutor, the poop is not for her guests, it’s for herself. “Everyone knows that men have much more respect for women who are good at lapping up shit,” she says to explain her choice of entrée.

While I growled my way out of the Irish Film Institute this afternoon at the end of Ken Wardrop’s “His & Hers,” the scene returned to me again, because that’s exactly what the film says about Irish women: they sure are good at eating shit. Wardrop’s retrograde documentary seems like a relic from 40 years ago, more so than a contemporary take on Irish women. Politically loaded, what it chooses to celebrate are women who excel in self-abnegation and service to men. Wardrop confines his subjects to talking about their fathers, boyfriends, husbands and sons. We wouldn’t want to hear of their own lives apart from a relationship to men, now would we? Wardrop restricts the focus so it's all about the men.

It’s as though the idea of ‘pleasure’ apart from a role as caregiver never occurred to the filmmaker. The majority of women onscreen are engaged in domestic toil such as cooking, laundry, vacuuming, lawn cutting, farming, straightening, as they fret over the men in the house. The message that a good woman is subservient occupies centre stage in “His & Hers” in a bid to suggest that the country was better off before all that feminism hooey came along and ruined everything. Now that most Irish women work outside the home, have an opportunity for education and career, and assume that they have a right to their own interests, this calculating and manipulative film seeks to propose that women were happier and better off when life revolved around serving men. Little wonder that the majority of the 70 women onscreen are elderly, because Wardrop would be unlikely to locate a number of young women willing to sacrifice themselves to an adjunct role as women had to in the past.

There are multiple cues about how girls and women had better accept secondary status, along with their unwavering loyalty and service to the household. One girl shares that her father often threatens to give her dog away. A middle aged mother deadpans that she knows nothing according to her own teenaged son, just as with the natural order for his age. A retired woman rolls her eyes over her bully of a husband who refuses to relent control of the remote, even when he’s asleep in front of it. One harried woman notes that even though her son’s now married, he still stops by to peek in her own pots on the way home, just so he can have the menu options open, the viewer is to assume. Another elderly woman recalls the routine scolding she gets from her son for her independent streak. Why won’t she wait for him to take her around when he’s free after work, instead of walking and taking the bus as she sees fit. He also belittled her with a snide remark about the stylish purple handbag she carries, as if the idea that his mammy would care about her appearance or lay claim to fashion was ridiculous. The woman in question looked fit as a fiddle in addition to rocking a chic red mac with her purse.

The last elderly woman featured in the film reflects on the reality that she may have to go to one of those places, since she can hardly expect her children to care for her, now that they have their own families. She’s so self-effacing I could have burst into tears. The last shot lingers on one lonely woman in a nursing home. So that’s the pay off, ladies, for all your years of care and service: shunted off to the home to wait for death.

This ultra conservative film creeped me out big time.

First Bra and Boyfriend

Watching “32A” (2007) reminded me why I haven’t owned any white bras since adolescence. A white bra is the aesthetic equivalent of a menstrual pad for your tits. You’ll find yellow, chartreuse, chocolate, black, beige, blue tucked in my drawer, but you’ll never catch me with one of those institutional white models that make you look like a clinical subject. My first proper brassiere was also a 32A, so I jumped at the chance to view what turned out to be a winsome and familiar look at growing pains among girls in North Dublin in 1979, written and directed by Marian Quinn. Among the four friends onscreen, bra ownership holds paramount importance for all but the feminist-minded Orla (Orla Long) who eschews the garment as “just another symbol of female oppression.” Aw, she’s so cute. The girls are 13, concerned with getting the gear for women’s bodies and their first kisses. There’s no piece of clothing which carries the same degree of importance among boys growing up, not even a protective sporting cup, since those are worn before and after puberty. I’d say the landmark significance for boys on par with wearing a bra would be the moment when boys have to shave. Bras and shaving draw the line in the sand between childhood and the murky aftermath of puberty when the body launches into a mode of riotous change.

Protagonist Maeve Brennan, played by Ailish McCarthy who sports a swingy, longer version of the Dorothy Hamill bowl cut that every girl was cursed with after Hamill hit the Olympic spotlight, catches the eye of the cool older boy Brian Power (Shane McDaid in a Leif Garrett curly ‘do). The scenario around Maeve’s first boyfriend is less interesting than the dynamics between her friends Orla, Ruth (Sophie Jo Wasson), and Claire (Riona Smith). Women in the audience will wince as the predictable back-stabbing occurs when her friends smile one minute and then talk trash about Maeve the next in order to alienate and punish her for choosing a boy over their own company. The verbal attacks launched by the girls smart much deeper than Brian's inconstant affection.

What a blessing it is to only have to be that age once.

Worst Pizza in the World

A bad pizza in Italy is as wrong and shocking as a bad pint in Ireland.

But there were so many levels of awful served at Il Salotto in Milan that it needed to be captured on film and shared.

We waited nearly an hour for pies that made Pizza Hut seem palatable by comparison.

The three ingredients on my plate wanted to part company or stay their separate selves, as though they had no idea what their function was.

I sliced into the centre and the watery cheese pooled away from the raw white dough.

The tomato sauce encouraged the liquid ooze on the plate.

When I tried to pick it up by hand or fork, it flapped and disintegrated

I had three half-hearted bites and gave up.

Mr. M's pie with salami looked just as wretched but he still ate it. He's a champion plate cleaner.

The lunch was joyless.

You do not want to go to there.

The New Dumb Blonde

Hollywood learned by casting Sigourney Weaver in “Alien” (1979) that they could pull a gender switcheroo and rally audiences with a new perspective on an established formula. Had Ripley been played by Paul Newman, or whatever actor they originally slated to play the role, the film might have still won audiences over, but not as easily as with the novel, lithe, no-nonsense lady captain facing down the space monster. Possibly it came as a surprise to them that folks really did want to see women in leading rather than supporting roles. Nonetheless, the gender switch again proved popular with “Thelma and Louise,” produced by Ridley Scott, director of the first “Alien.” The dudecentric road movie genre made famous by Bob Hope and Bing Crosby reimagined itself as an energized version of the formula by making it about female bonding, that is at least until it concluded by arguing that friendship between women serves as a catalyst for murder and suicide. Audiences loved the characters played by Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, even if the whole cautionary tale made me want to rip my eyelashes out. Additionally, Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” duo had a vital appeal because he cast women in the warrior roles normally reserved for men. He did the same in the second portion of “Deathproof.” Zoe Bell hugging the hood of a muscle car in the chase scenes gives us a level of courage and moxie above what any guy has done a million times over onscreen can now hope to match. What becomes cliché for men finds new life when a woman takes the role. Catherine Zeta Jones may even breathe some life into the midlife crisis flick which resolves the conflict by taking up a young lover in “The Rebound,” a formula too cringeworthy for any man to repeat. Funny, since she played the cheesecake lover role in the awful film she did with Sean Connery when he was more than 30 years her senior. A recent article up at Variety notes the continuing trend of casting women in roles traditionally held for men.

Hollywood should be wary of thinking they can just plug a woman into roles written for men, however. My guess is that it leads to misguided results such as with “Kick Ass,” where audiences are invited to watch a girl who looks as though she’s 8 years old getting shot and beaten and who exists as a brainwashed zombie. Instead, the gender switch might invigorate some well worn formulas if filmmakers tried putting men in women’s roles.

One brilliant example of the gender exchange in popular culture is The New Dumb Blonde, played by men. I’ve posted about how the genre is tired and exhausted of all pleasure when it comes to women in the role, because it’s nothing more than a bad joke, a hack stereotype tinged with misogyny, degraded over the years since the perfection Judy Holliday delivered as Billie Dawn in George Cukor’s “Born Yesterday” (1950). Today the female dumb blonde serves as another opportunity to snigger at and despise women.

When I point to The New Dumb Blonde, I’m not discussing the Mimbo identified on Seinfeld through Dan Cortese’s character, the dim, cruel jock who dated Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Elaine. He misses the mark because he wasn’t really blonde; he had no sense of humour; he wasn’t likeable, only pretty; more importantly, the guy never learned anything or grew as a person. I could say the same for Brad Pitt in “Burn after Reading,” though I suspect that people fail to share my instant aversion to all things Pitt. The most delightful NDB features on the small screen. Ryan Kwanten as Jason Stackhouse in “True Blood” takes the dumb blonde cliché and spurs it on to a loveable, funny, heroic character with heart.

He’s come closest to capturing the joy that Holliday brought to Billie Dawn as the dumb blonde audiences root for with glee. Like Billie, Jason starts off by trading on his looks to get by in a life bent on a serious lack of reflection or curiosity about the larger world. Billie Dawn was kept in bon bons and furs by her gangster boyfriend, while Jason was content to chase skirt and gather notches on his belt. Both characters reveled in their own ignorance and a poor facility with deep thought or critical thinking. Jason especially mouths fabulous malapropisms such as his definition of evil as the decision to act like a premedicated dick. When the conscience clicks in the moral compass of the best dumb blondes onscreen, they have to grow to meet the obligations that follow. Billie has to embrace her tutorship to learn about government, ethics and culture in order to distance herself from her corrupt beau and become her own person.

In the second season of "True Blood," Jason realized that his apprenticeship with the Fellowship of the Sun was a hoax covering a nasty campaign of vampire extinction run by the corrupt church. He helped defeat their plan and then even went on to save Bon Temps from the maenad Mary Ann. In the opening episodes of the third season, his conscience kept him from resuming his lothario role, despite Andy’s instruction that he needed to turn it off and his dick on. Andy tells him that he could excel at anything if only he could harness his focus. He follows up by noting that Jason is prettier than many women. Jason may well straddle the conflict of beauty over brains for many more episodes, but the guy has potential. During the last programme, he applied himself and exhalted, “look, I got me a drug dealer!” He may just take over for Bud Dearborn and run the sheriff’s office.

At any rate, Jason is The New Dumb Blonde: sweet, adorable, a comic genius (catch Kwanten’s delivery when he asks Sookie if Santa’s real), and capable of becoming a better person.

The Pretty Side of Fashion

Someone must have written that fashion houses are the new cathedrals or spaces of reverence, whether a positive or ill reflection on culture. Prada reeks of the expectation for you to bow and scrape. Still, lovely dresses in the window if you overlook the nightmare kabuki flourish.

Of all the dresses on display in Milan, this one from Missoni was my favourite. It looks one of a kind and has a compelling blend of texture and colour. I couldn't bring myself to find out the price. You hear about the great shopping in Milan, yet I didn't purchase anything, mostly because there were just a few mid-range shops available. The city has High Street retail chains such as H&M, Zara, Mango and such or the shops selling the hoochie-mama club clothes. Other than that, everything is high end designer boutiques where a dress runs 700 euro minimum, which is too rich for my blood, much like the risotto we shared one night. (By the fourth bite, I was ready to vomit from the forced amalgamation of truffle and fat in every incarnation steeped in rice).

Ditto this ensemble for men from Missoni.

This top coat from MaxMara looks so strange and borderline quirky that it holds appeal.

My flats with the cobalt satin band over wedgewood blue patent are two years old and were drenched for the first time ever. Shoe protection had to go out the window for the trip. Might I also add in the shoe topic realm that Compeed acts as the best invention since shoes themselves? The cushion, protection and relief for blisters stands without parallel. Thanks, Johnson & Johnson!

Loved the red number in Ferragamo, only it'd be better in another colour for me.

The shops were full of linen, floaty dresses, those sporty trousers gathered at the ankles, and lots of high waist lines.

The Ugly Side of Fashion

Turns out I wasn't bold enough to snap all the candid street shots of folks exhibiting a head turning style as I had planned for our trip to Milan, which is just as well since other bloggers have that method down to an art. While it's true that Milan boasts style out the ying-yang through a populace who grace the city with a flair for extraordinary combinations and effortless chic, you would have to be blind to miss the component in the industry that exacts a heavy price on the well-being and very humanity of the style mavens.

In the past I've posted in exasperation over folks who bash on skinny women, as if the state of being thin offers an excuse to use them as a pinata for frustrations about body image. Some women are naturally thin, some feel better eating less, some enjoy the belief that a smaller body affords a measure of control in life. I'll always step up to say that a woman's size is none of your business, that we should stop the bully tactics about dress size, but I had to re-think that on this trip. Milan is singular in my travels for having the largest amount of skeletal women on the streets, not an impossible coincidence in light of its reputation as a fashion mecca. At least every five minutes in our sojourn about the town, a woman would walk by who, if not for the cigarette dangling from her hand, would defy the odds that a body so slight could contain and transport life. I'm talking hips that appeared concave, sunken throats, blade sharp shoulders. The women who did not fit the urgent care unit model were indeed super slim regardless.

All for fashion.

It kinda put a downer on my ability to then enjoy what the ladies were wearing.

The level of harm fashion inflicts seems less demanding or cruel for men, although I still recoil to see dudes working half naked to shill jeans. Equal opportunity exploitation doesn't float my boat. The trend towards marketing underwear or other products to men by using guys with unattainable body type fosters the same corporeal alarm and self-loathing that the ladies have been swallowing for more than a century.

Seattle Cop Assaults Two Women

He's pushing at her throat.
Slamming her into the car.
Wrenching her arms behind her back.
Punching another woman in the face.
Tearing at her clothes.

For jaywalking.
Horror Show.

Kick Ass Says Abusive Fathers are Groovy

“Kick Ass” rates as a patriarchal grotesquery where life is cheap, violence has no consequences, and an audience should cheer to see a brainwashed 11 year old girl conditioned into a killing machine from her Big Daddy, a man with a mammoth chip on his shoulder, a man willing to sacrifice his daughter to exact revenge. Mindy (Chloe Moretz) is an unblinking pig-tailed or a purple wigged automaton who is groomed to love gore and instruments of death. She parrots the cop-speak from her father, negotiates an ice cream sundae and round of bowling out of being used in target practice, just so that she’ll know what taking a bullet feels like. Are we so jaded and immune to violence that we can watch Nic Cage shoot this girl and not recoil in horror? The loathsome, creepy, twisted father appears crestfallen when Mindy asks for a puppy rather than a weapon for her birthday. Nah, she’s just yanking his chain. A set of switchblades will do nicely.

This film made my skin crawl.

In battle as Hit Girl, Mindy tells the crime boss “I never play” in a tone that’s supposed to deliver light-hearted action flick banter, but instead, sets up a comparison with “The Manchurian Candidate.” When Angela Lansbury’s evil mother turned her son Laurence Harvey into a killing machine, no one played cartoon music and presented it as camp delight, because the very proposition should have our moral compass turn us away in disgust.
Fuck the fanboy superhero genre in its totality.
“Kick Ass” is derivative, puerile, cruel and lacks a moral centre.

Girls Don't Play Electric Guitars

There's so much to warm the cockles of the feminist heart in "The Runaways," although a more accurate title would be "The Cherie Currie Story."

The largest revelation of the film is Kristen Stewart's performance as Joan Jett.

Holy hell, girlfriend has it going on. No lip biting or licking, just lots of butchy swagger.

If I were 15, I'd be copying her black shag, no question.

From the minute she dumps out the contents of her piggy bank and says that she wants what the guy at the counter's wearing, a set of punky leathers, I was hooked.

As Currie, Dakota Fanning is no slouch herself, from when she shrugs off her menarche with a clump of toilet paper in her panties on the way to a night out, she's nailed the world weary pose of a sullen teen. In the school talent show, she walks out with a Bowie haircut and Aladdin Sane face paint to lip synch "Lady Grinning Soul."

Oh yes.

Cameo turns from Tatum O'Neal as Currie's mother and Robert Romanus (forever known as the "Little Prick" Mike Damone from "Fast Times at Ridgemont High") as a creepy guitar teacher who tries to discourage Joan Jett from realizing her destiny.

And the sole romance onscreen develops between Cherie and Joan.

Brilliant.

Training Pays Off

Ever the efficient packer, Mr. M grabs our passports on the way out the door.
Only, yesterday, when he left for a week of cycling in the German Alps, he took my little blue book as well, which I kind of need in order to meet him in Bergamo in a few days.
He texted the news while I was out with the pair.

That means that I had them out at 7 for a beach run this morning.
On the way back, I stopped at Spar to pick up tea for myself and eggs for them.
This was the first time I've taken them alone to the shops.
How fast could I be in and out?
There really wasn't any way to secure their leashes, so I placed the loops around the door handle since the door was wedged open. As I paid at the register, it was right out of the scene from "The Accidental Tourist," when Geena Davis' character teaches William Hurt how to train his son's dog so that he would sit calmly outside the shop and wait.
From the register I clocked them sitting like perfect angels in the doorway.
They ignored all the folks heading to work and just watched me.
So proud.
*Sniff*

Fucking Aces

After four hours to download (seriously, does it always take so long?) I finally figured out how to secure my own True Blood fix instead of mewling at Fat Mammy Cat to ask her Paramour to make a copy for me. Except for the time-suck, Vuze was otherwise easy for a technophobe such as myself to negotiate.

The third season did not begin as I expected, with Eric running naked through the woods as in the start of the 4th book in the series, but no matter. The episode was full of twists, sexy times and stellar dialogue.

Arlene tells Tara something like "I'm sorry you fell in love with a serial killer, but really, who here hasn't."

Bwah!

Andy tells Jason to act normally, which means "Conscience off. Dick on."

Pam flirts with Sookie, saying "Now I don't remember telling you that lavendar was my favourite colour."

The only part I didn't love was Evan Rachael Woods as Queen Sophie-Anne, what with those oversized fangs and inability to act.

All kinds of awesome, especially Lafayette's ensemble.

Should Have Known from the Cover

How many clichés can you squeeze in Important Dick Lit in less than 100 pages?

By page 76, I had had enough of “Atomised,” Michel Houellebecq’s novel which won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, picked up as an impulse buy at the airport. How many boxes does it tick in the angry man’s bid at literary fiction genre?

Anthropomorphism—appears in order to mirror the psychological states of characters, such as a canary too scared to exit his cage without shitting itself. Naturally, the bird dies to SYMBOLIZE a character’s inner crisis. There’s also a snake that schoolboys drive witless, whereby the animal throws itself against the tank until it passes out. Oh, the symbolism!

Sex that isn’t sexy—a boss who pulls on his dick watching gay dudes at the beach but who later admits that he cannot remember his last full erection. See, it’s not creepy if the dude is impotent. We also get the details of Bruno wanking while ogling girl’s panties on the train.

Feminism Blamed—Bruno and Michel, half brothers, trace the source of all their misery and personal failures on their mother who embraced the sexual revolution in the 60s without committing to raising her sons. They get farmed out to grandmas and boarding schools. No blame for the daddies, though. Michel’s grandmother considers the boy “another victim of Janine’s parenting skills.” The grannies are good women because they do all the shit work and raise the children. Janine’s a cunt because she opts out of playing mommy.

Scenes of Abject Cruelty—Bruno recalls “his earliest memory was one of humiliation.” Cue the scenes of ritualized sadism at the boarding school. There’s a whole paragraph comparing boys to animal pack societies where he goes through the alpha to omega roles, as though we haven’t already encountered this rhetorical move a million times already.
Tragic Beauty—Annabelle dreams of her future husband from age thirteen, because that’s all the vagina-bearers can think about. She looks at Michel as her future husband. The narrator identifies Annabelle as a girl with singular beauty, which makes such girls seem “unreal.” “Great beauty seems to protend some tragic fate.” You don’t say? No, I’ve never come across this tired narrative trope before now. In another prediction of how Annabelle is doomed for being pretty, he notes that “more often than not, she will lose her virginity to some filthy lowlife in what can only prove to be the first step in an irrevocable decline.” The idea of a woman’s consent or choice in the matter not to mention her intelligence in sniffing out a lowlife, nay, a woman’s very own personhood eludes the author. Pretty women are just simpletons waiting for a nasty end. Bah.

Garden Variety Misogyny—“The girls, most of them in white dresses, sat on a small bank watching, their faces already betraying the dumb resignation of women. Bruno desires women yet he also hates them for his inability to control his own lust. Chapter 10, “Caroline Yessayan is to blame for everything,” points to a moment when he placed his hands on said bitch’s thigh and experienced joy, that is until she moved his hand away. “Years later, when some bitch or other was sucking him off, Bruno would recall those few seconds of terrifying joy; he would also remember the moment when Caroline Yessayan moved his hand away. What the boy felt was something pure, something gentle, something that predated sex or a need for sensual fulfillment. It was the simple desire to reach out and touch someone, to be held lovingly in someone’s arms. Tenderness is a deeper instinct than seduction which is why it is so difficult to give up hope.” Hey, buddy, you can shove your so-called tenderness up your hole. What the little jerk did was act with the entitled sense that Caroline was there for his taking/usage. Keep your nasty hands to yourself. Since women don’t acquiesce to his horndog requests, he hates them outright and makes every other woman pay for Caroline’s bid at autonomy. Bruno credits Caroline with the “power to undo all the humiliation and the sadness of his childhood” if only she had accepted his awkward grope. “Caroline Yessayan’s mini-skirt was to blame for everything.” If only she realized that her existence was contingent on his fantasy and satisfaction, then he would not have decided to hate women. That little prick tease was only asking for it with the short skirt. Give me a fucking break, author-man. There’s also this description of the boys’ mother: “She was 45 years old now and her vulva was scrawny and sagged slightly, but she was still a very beautiful woman.” Quite the compliment.

Note to self: avoid impulse purchases in Eason’s at the airport.

Take Out Worth the Phone Call

Years ago I gave up on the illusion of tasty food delivered to the door.

It sounds like a great idea, and by the dogs, I do so enjoy having a night off from cooking.

Problem is I'm ultra picky about food (although not as bad as that woman on the new "Come Dine With Me" last night who was actually wretching at the table when the dude placed the duck egg with cold eel coiled around it).

Most delivery places feature industrial strength sauces and frozen food.

Hands down, there are few places I've ever called a second time and plenty of the boxes have gone straight in the bin after I get that look on my face.

A few weeks ago we started getting menus in the box from Cafe Mao advertising their new delivery service.

We've eaten there a few times, at the Dun Laoghaire and Dundrum locations.

This is real food and worth the bother of ordering.

I had the roast pumpkin springrolls, the chili prawns and the side salad that comes with a light citrus dressing and carmelized shallots.

The husband had the halloumi salad and the chili chicken ramen.

Everything was yummy.

Everything For Men: Don Draper Brings the Boys to the Yard

The editorial "What Irish Men Want" in the first issue of "EFM" (Everything for Men), a supplement in the Irish Times opens with a large whinge:

"It was so much easier for our father's generation. Men were men and women were wilting flowers who made sure our houses were clean and the beds made. Gary Cooper and Rock Hudson had the handy knack of being able to go up to a girl, grab her, kiss her and make her swoon. This idyllic behaviour had one slight drawback: women around the world, who might have stretched a point to accomodate Gary and Rock, were certainly not going to stand for this behaviour from the likes of you and me."

My eyes were rolled so far back in my head by the end of this.

Where to start?

How about with the observation that Cooper and Hudson were both gay, so the only women they were grabbing were onscreen for a film. Most men had to stay deeply closeted to protect their career and reputation because of heterosexist views. We should not lament the passing of this period.

Nor am I comfortable with nostalgia for when women were just the maids who oiled the wheels of social reproduction. It's creepy to get misty eyed over an era when women were just servants. There's also a subtext about missing the lack of consent, a time when you could just grab a woman and do what you liked with her. Now those pesky dames insist on women's personhood and a lack of consent being defined as sexual assault.

Then the author wrings his hands over the perceived loss of male privilege and the de-sacking that amounted to the rise of the girly-boy metrosexual.

He then cites a poll which found Don Draper (a fictional character) to be more influential than Barack Obama. Why I had no idea that "Mad Men" had such high ratings. I was under the impression that only a few million folks watched it. Still, the poll's hardly proof that folks admire a cheating sexist ad man. Sure, plenty of men might envy Draper's position of white-men-on-top-everyone-else-underfoot, but anyone who really believes that life was better in 1963 has a host of issues to deal with, including an overdose of entitlement.

"EFM" was little more than a gigantic advertisement. It's funny how women always take the heat for mindless consumerism and fluffy copy. The men's issue contained 101 product ads and placements that I caught in a quick count, more than a fair amount in a 63 page insert.

Another annoying feature within articles was the addition of yellow highlighting, supposedly to help along the impatient, short-attentioned, skimming male reader, as if it would be too much to ask him to read the whole thing or figure out the important bits by himself. The highlighting reeks of lazy students more so than copy worthy of the Irish Times.

Hollywood Says Only Crazy Bitches Masturbate

During my final year as an undergraduate, I wrote a research paper for a History of Sexuality course which argued that masturbation should play a role in school curriculum in order to promote public health, lower pregnancy and disease rates, and to combat the stigma many religious and conservative folks attach to it and in turn transmit to children. My research included what the holy books had to say about it, along with the history of masturbation in culture, including how it had been strenuously policed in the 19^th century with barbaric practices such as tying children to bedposts, clamping devices on young peen to administer electric shocks if an erection occurred, and wholesale circumcision to girls who like to engage in self-pleasure. There are plenty of rational adults who are unable to discuss the topic without a degree a shame or embarrassment. Even Bill Clinton, the most sex-obsessed man in the oval office in decades bowed to the pearl-clutchers and withdrew support from Jocelyn Elders as Surgeon General for among other issues, her belief in teaching kids about masturbation, one view among many that sparked vitriol from the repressed.

I keep my eye out for stories on the topic, especially when women are concerned, because we all know that sex for women cannot exist without a penis present. Penetrative sex with a man remains the definition of sex in patriarchy. After reading about a scene with Jennifer Aniston in the upcoming “Horrible Bosses,” it strikes me that we’ve been down this road more than once before. According to reports from the set, Aniston “breaks a nail while pleasuring herself” to an episode of “Gossip Girl.” I’ll bet anything that this completely unrealistic scene is supposed to act as a shorthand for how nuts or unstable the character is, because Hollywood enjoys using scenes of women masturbating as evidence of how unhinged women are who do engage in self-pleasure. In mainstream cinema, only crazy bitches play with themselves.

For example, one of the earliest inklings Bridget Fonda gets in “Single White Female” (1992) that her roommate Jennifer Jason Leigh is a wacko is when she catches her masturbating. Only crazy, needy, identity-stealing women touch themselves. Sane women have boyfriends to take care of their penis-related needs.

In “The Temp” (1993), Timothy Hutton’s reservations about the precarious nature of Lara Flynn Boyle’s sanity reach confirmation when he spies her ringing the bell. If I recall correctly, she’s thrashing around a great deal in the scene so that Hutton’s character initially thinks she’s in bed with a man. When the camera reveals she’s alone, it cues the extra creepy factor that any woman could be so into sex with herself, pure evidence of a crazy bitch right there.

Sharon Stone has an absurd masturbation scene in “Sliver” (1993), where she’s screaming in the tub as though a horse is in there with her, again proof that she’s an insatiable and unstable woman. There must also be at least one scene where she gets herself off in Basic Instinct 1 or 2 to illustrate how nuts her character is for the audience, but I haven’t seen them.

You could not find a more ugly or disturbing scene of a woman masturbating than Naomi Watts in “Mulholland Drive” (2001). That wince-inducing bit of celluloid channels so much hatred for women it’s doubtful I could sit through it a second time. Watts telegraphs rage, despair, hatred, bitter envy into a scene that looks more like self-mutilation than pleasure. There’s no room to second guess her psychotic break.

Steve Carell’s character in “The Forty Year-Old Virgin” reflects the normative disgust heterosexual men should reserve for women who enjoy masturbation. He recoils in horror when Elizabeth Banks’ character enjoys a little action with the shower nozzle in the tub. He regards her as a twisted pervert, and therefore so should the audience.

There are countless jokes and winks concerning male masturbation onscreen. For men, it’s, as they said in the “Seinfeld” episode, as routine as shaving, a natural function of being a dude. But the double standard among a billion still holds that the rules are different for women. Women shouldn’t do it or else they risk getting lumped with the psychos or deviants. For women, sex should be all about the peen.

Just When You Thought it was Safe to go Back in the Water

The creeping algae rot first appeared in April on the otherwise pristine shores of Dublin.

At its nadir, the coast smelled like the inside of a fish's anus long baked by the sun.

Some days I could venture no further than the steps, held back by the sodden, mossy waste which produced a quicksand like suck to lodge you in the muck.

More than a few folks warned me from taking the dogs out during May, saying that the brown gloop would make the dogs sick. There were conspiracy theories bandied about both in person and on the radio about it being a product of the Ringsend sewage treatment facility.

Thing is, you could not attribute the slop to anything other than the sea's own detritus, so other than being massively grossed out, I was not about to deny the pair their run time.

Last week it seemed to have finally dispersed, only now, the creeping rot returns.

You can see it in the pictures above, the loose brown clumps clinging to the beach.

It reeks even worse than a guy I knew who worked at a fishmonger's shop.

The rational folks chalk it up to a rise in sea temperatures.

In a pleasant contrast, adorable little wee jelly fish with purple innards are also on shore.

And Omar's learning to fish.

Choking Sure is Sexy

The next time someone claims that Canada resists the overall pornification of culture, I'll send them this raunchy PSA from a Canadian advertising firm mashing up porn with first aid.

Choking bitches are totally an inroads to get to humping because she can't say no.
Yackity-yack-yack.

Dress Envy

Stop staring at the actors flanking Ms. Sookie and check out the dress she wore to the season 3 premiere of True Blood.

Give. It. Here.

Love the kicky split panel in front.

The surge of the green eyed monster also accompanies Ms. Vicky wearing her own swingy design topped off with a shrug.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

I am an Asshole

Did you see the clip of Salma Hayek recoiling in terror during an interview for the soon to be released film "Grown Ups"?
Jezebel has it.

Sitting in the middle of Maya Rudolph and Maria Bello, Hayek tries to escape a snake that suddenly appears.
I watched it with the sound off and laughed.
Oh, did I chuckle as she attempted to climb upon Rudolph's shoulders.
Then I viewed it again with the sound and felt like a heel.
Her voice is in full panic, fear, revulsion.

I've been conditioned to view women's distress as entertainment since Janet Leigh in the shower or her daughter running from Michael Meyers, both of which I saw in the same year. Not that the significance would have struck me as a girl, a daughter carrying on in the womanly tradition of getting hacked up or nearly hacked up by predatory men. Consider for a moment all of the women on the large or small screen you've watched wail while they ran for their fucking lives or did their level best to fend off an attacker. The ending isn't usually the one that Salma gets, with some dude coming to her rescue.
Meanwhile audiences are invited to soak up terrorized women for pleasure and laugh at them for being stupid bitches who frighten easily.


Not one of my proudest moments.

Forgot the Real Camera

Most of these shots from the phone's camera lack definition and colour. Still, they can give you a sense of Porto, Portugal. Mr. M said it was strangely familiar in places which resemble our neighbourhood in Toronto. I tried to account for all the miserable looking folks without conclusion.

By far the cheapest city we've been to in Europe. You can find a cup of good coffee for 60 cents, half a pizza and chips for 3.25 and a pack of Marlboro Gold for 3.60.

Not surprising, Port wine is a big deal in Porto since at least the 18th century. We toured one of the houses that stocked tawny and ruby varieties in 30,000 litre barrels. No samples though. Brandy has about as much appeal for me as cough syrup. It strikes me as a measure to cover up shitty wine, which would be understandable hundreds of years ago much less than today.

Aside from the poor resolution, can you see the skinny pole cat stalking a rooster?

We watched them for ten minutes until the cat realized he was outside his weight class

Here's a tip: don't plan a trip to Portugal over a sunday and monday when just about everything's closed. We did get to see the Franciscan church with the gilded wood interior and a crypt containing a panel of glass revealing loose bones in a pile. It put John Connolly's novel "The Black Angel" in mind with all the skull sculptures and spooky history steeped in blood.

(Read all of his books now, btw. "The Reapers" ranks as my favourite from the Charlie Parker series because I am smitten with Louis and Angel).

Your hate clipped and distant

We were four in Santiago de Compostela, there to eyeball the pilgrims carrying big sticks adorned with scallop shells. Turns out the shells were used as drinking cups in the way back.

Surrounded by folks consumed with the holy-holy makes you feel naughty.

My own mini-epiphany came in the way of a first taste of Albarino, a yummy Spanish white wine that rivals Pinot Grigio for its fruity splendour. Dinner at Don Gaiferos was a faultless recipe for guest satisfaction: take the freshest creatures from the sea and present in a simple preparation.

When the quality is there, you don't need to do much to make the fish dazzle on the plate.

Reportedly the oldest hotel in the world, the Paradores Dos Reis Catolicos was opened by Isabella and Ferdinand in 1499 to house the pilgrims. Palatial in design (pictured at the top), it smelled of the rubber soled shoes nuns wear with a hint of long dormant minge. No really, it's a lovely grand building harbouring just a smidge of repression and abnegation.

Santiago maintains cozy wee corridors nestled with tavernas, vendors and snacky cakes.

Great for a short diversion.

Adios

The pooches are in dog jail so we can skip out of town for the bank holiday.

Back mid-week.

New Books

Yesterday I caught the news of Charlaine Harris' 10th Sookie Stackhouse novel, "Dead in the Family," to be released here next week. Huzzah. Eric's on the cover.

Now I'm also anticipating "Furious Love" the collected letters Richard Burton sent to La Liz. Vanity Fair reports all but the last one he sent are in the book.

Sold!

Female Misogynists

In patriarchy, women learn as knee-highs that everything associated with being a female is already less than the male phenomenon. We’re not as smart, gifted, curious, capable or fun to hang out with. Plenty of women taking breath choose to describe themselves as a “guy’s girl” which serves as bid for getting token status apart from all those other worthless vagina-bearers in exchange for not calling men out for shit like their porn habits or sexist jokes, but it also sends the signal that the woman in question understands how worthless her own kind is in the social order. If I had a coin for each time I sat at a table watching a woman roll her eyes at feminism or bat her lashes at men while cooing her disbelief in the veracity of feminism, I’d be a very rich woman indeed. Ditto for the company of ladies who say they don’t like or trust women without lingering a moment on the social mechanics that lead them to feel that way.

Although all women receive instruction in order to learn how to cultivate male approval as a means for social mobility, some women come to regard the favour of men as essential as oxygen. I’d be lying if I said I was not complicit in this dynamic, where I turn on the bright smile, nod my head and play the default spouse position, that non-threatening persona called for in everyday life. For example, just recently I needed to perform this role, and when I’m in a dress, hair done, a coat of slap applied, such survival tactics mean I get through dinner and everything’s easier when some guy tells Mr. M how lucky he is to have me, because presumably I’m such a paragon of femme wifehood or some such thing. (Hah.) But I draw the line at being a cunt to other women in exchange for male approval.

Far too many women cull an extra thrill from doing just that. This week’s “I, Anonymous” column in The Stranger is additional evidence of women who delight in savaging other women as an attempt to curry the favour of men. The quickest route women trade in to win the warm countenance of men is to denounce a woman as fat, stupid, slutty or any combination thereof. Women pull this rhetorical move to placate men, and for many of the penis-bearers, it works as an aphrodisiac of sorts. Nothing gets a little blood flowing to the nether regions for some dudes faster than in hearing how much women hate other women. It’s proof of what he’s long known and who doesn’t like being told they’re right? As a result, as with the feature in the Seattle weekly, many women move from suffering a general case of misogyny instilled from birth to developing a raging case of woman-hating as teens or adults.

Ms. Misogynist should realize that lots of women have been trained to use gossip as a weapon and news of marital discord holds just as much value as currency in the workplace. What her sister-in-law did was pretty shitty, but the only sane course of action for the betrayed is in the recognition that SIL plays by the patriarchal rule book when she blabbed. SIL used underhanded and clandestine tactics to suck up to her husband and others about how they were not the poor unfortunate couple having issues. She’s acting the role set for women for ages. Don’t hate the player, or in this scenario, women, as the kids say. Hate the game. SIL is nothing short of a lap cat of patriarchy, a role so retrograde and lazy it should come with a big scarlet "L." Instead of the old playbook, let’s try not to be cunts to other women. Sounds simple, right? Sisterhood is reaching too far, perhaps as an impractical leap, but the very least we can do is refrain from the temptation to shit on women in order to win smiles from men.

Red Conspiracy

"What colour is that" asked the husband when the wool rug on my head finally dried.
"You saw the boxes labelled 'brown,' did you not? Uh-huh, it's red again."

My hair has seen more dye jobs than Ronald fucking Reagan, so I'm qualified to tell you that the new product out in Irish shops, the L'Oreal Casting Creme Gloss was more disappointing than even anything by Clairol. The product didn't give me a rash or hives the way Clairol has in the past, but the solution bears a watery, weak consistency without enough moxy to cover all the gray hair around my temples. My hair feels more dry and frizzed out after a fresh coat of dye than it normally does as well. Oh and it's fucking red again.
I'm tempted to see if I can get a box of blonde goo to also produce red results.
What kind of follicular hijinks do I have going on upstairs?
How on earth do you manage a brown hue that doesn't seem too opaque and dark?
Geez.
It's hair dye, not rocket science.