Saturday, February 14, 2004
Peaches and Herb
So, Valentine's Day and the best thing to be said about it is, "at least I'm not teaching". Trust me, facing a class full of 16 year olds first period on Valentine's Day is an educational disaster zone of titanic proportions. Half the class are mooning and drooling, and insisting for the first time all year that you give way in favour of their ten minute Level 3 Key Skills Communication presentation (without notes) on the subject of "what my boyfriend/girlfriend gave me this morning" with multimedia visual support in the form of padded cards that play a ringtone Stevie Wonder warbling "I just called to say I love you". What with that and the back catalogue reissue of Lionel Richie's oeuvre on every ad break, it's no wonder the suicide rate doubles in February. And that's about the state the rest of the class are in, and no amount of wheedling, stropping or cajoling will turn anybody's head to the finer points of Chaucer's poetic technique.
But I digress... Well, actually, only slightly, as today the legendary Peaches and Herb (who?....) classic "Reunited" is the soundtrack to my thoughts, and such schmaltzy gag-inducing muzak serves exceedingly well to make the point that organised romance has about the same capacity to enlighten the human race as organised religion. I'm thinking about the whole juggernauting phenomenon of The Reunion.
Where the past is concerned I am an ardent proponent of the Edith Piaf "Je Ne Regrette Rien" school of philosophy. (Hmm, Edith Piaf and Peaches and Herb on stage together? - that's a deliciously surreal thought...) Keep going forwards cos whether you like it or not you can't go backwards. I like to think of it as moral pragmatism, a sound basis for keeping one's feet on the ground and one's head squarely upon one's shoulders. If you don't look down, you won't fall off the tightrope.
And so it was that the minute I found myself clutching my A Level results in my hot sticky hands, I burned rubber out of the arse end of the universe, never looking back, never going back. I kept in touch with just one person, my former PE teacher and basketball coach, who a hundred and fifty semi-disastrous life choices later asked me the innocuous enough question "so have you been on Friends Reunited yet?"
I scoffed and I scorned in an Edith Piaf kind of way, but before I knew it, one night when the sky was dark and the streets were quiet, I found myself strolling in the FR cyber-hood. I hadn't meant to click that way. It just happened.
To start with, there was a kind of dark furtive pleasure to be had, checking out the profiles of school friends without any of them knowing, fingering the details of their lives electronically - and wondering how on earth we all got so old and sad.
It genuinely shocked me how many feisty young people, hell bent on living fast and destined to die young and beautiful, seemed just to have got stuck, set in the slowly drying cement of a denuded working class culture of zero expectations and fuck-all chances. The ice-rink boot-boy I secretly admired all the way through A Level Geography says he is fat, balding and lives alone with his cats. I thought maybe this was a witty post-modern ironic comment on the nature of our perception of identity, and my former PE teacher says "call him" every time I see her, but I couldn't go back. What if he wasn't laughing?....
There was some good stuff though. The girl who shacked up with her policeman boyfriend while the rest of us (well, okay, maybe it was just me...) were still having the rude bits in Keats explained to us by a blushing English teacher, and in whose pressure cooker I once notoriously vomited while under the influence of a Merrydown-Cinzano cocktail (recipe - half a bottle of each, shared with a bloke with a rockabilly quiff sitting on the bonnet of a Ford Escort), well, she was there. And coolly cynical - describing herself in relation to a number of tempestuous divorces, and now gladly relieved of the burden of any domestic relationship more demanding than putting out cat food for her favourite mogs. In fact, cats became a bit of a theme....
But it wasn't all depressing. I got back in touch with my old buddy, Andy, and we catch up with each other once in a while, competing hotly for the "who has the most dysfunctional life/relationships/family" title while congratulating each other richly for continuing to live the dream of not dying of terminal boredom in the London Borough of Hounslow. It's good to have him back around.
But that is as far as I've got so far with the whole Reunion concept, and it's quite far enough for my liking! What I hadn't realised, though, is just how obsessed the rest of the world is with coming face to face with its own immediate past, and especially the people who once populated it.
First, Andy shows me pictures of the informal reunion of our year group that happened a couple of years ago, and to which I thankfully wasn't invited as I had so successfully managed to conceal my tracks in the intervening 20 years that noone had a clue how to find me! Now he tells me another one is planned and this time I'm going if he has to drag me there - which won't actually be at all difficult as I'm a 5'4" lightweight and he's 6'6" and 20 stone of muscle!
But it doesn't end there... The 2nd Bedfont Guides are after me now, for a 50th anniversary reunion next Sunday! Being well versed in the traditional arts of hunting and tracking (badge #436), they found my lair far more quickly than any of my old school chums. Well, actually, they just asked my mum... And what does she go and do, after all I've done for her (hmm... which is what, exactly?...) but give them a flamin' photo of me aged 16?! Cruelty itself! I should be taken into care immediately!
I politely declined the invitation, but after my mother's charming betrayal I have had to up the ante and offer them a "what Guiding did for me" article, in order to have an opportunity to present myself in the way I want to be seen, not as dumpy dark girl with so few friends that she just sits at home sewing badges on her sleeve.
And therein lies my whole problem with reunions, photograph albums and the past. It is another country and we definitely did do things differently there. Going back, people say "you're exactly the same" with a sadistically delighted grin on their faces. Well, I'm tellin' ya now, that's a god damned lie! You might be, but I'm not - and I sure as hell ain't finished travelling yet. Death will be soon enough for this reunion lark.
So, Valentine's Day and the best thing to be said about it is, "at least I'm not teaching". Trust me, facing a class full of 16 year olds first period on Valentine's Day is an educational disaster zone of titanic proportions. Half the class are mooning and drooling, and insisting for the first time all year that you give way in favour of their ten minute Level 3 Key Skills Communication presentation (without notes) on the subject of "what my boyfriend/girlfriend gave me this morning" with multimedia visual support in the form of padded cards that play a ringtone Stevie Wonder warbling "I just called to say I love you". What with that and the back catalogue reissue of Lionel Richie's oeuvre on every ad break, it's no wonder the suicide rate doubles in February. And that's about the state the rest of the class are in, and no amount of wheedling, stropping or cajoling will turn anybody's head to the finer points of Chaucer's poetic technique.
But I digress... Well, actually, only slightly, as today the legendary Peaches and Herb (who?....) classic "Reunited" is the soundtrack to my thoughts, and such schmaltzy gag-inducing muzak serves exceedingly well to make the point that organised romance has about the same capacity to enlighten the human race as organised religion. I'm thinking about the whole juggernauting phenomenon of The Reunion.
Where the past is concerned I am an ardent proponent of the Edith Piaf "Je Ne Regrette Rien" school of philosophy. (Hmm, Edith Piaf and Peaches and Herb on stage together? - that's a deliciously surreal thought...) Keep going forwards cos whether you like it or not you can't go backwards. I like to think of it as moral pragmatism, a sound basis for keeping one's feet on the ground and one's head squarely upon one's shoulders. If you don't look down, you won't fall off the tightrope.
And so it was that the minute I found myself clutching my A Level results in my hot sticky hands, I burned rubber out of the arse end of the universe, never looking back, never going back. I kept in touch with just one person, my former PE teacher and basketball coach, who a hundred and fifty semi-disastrous life choices later asked me the innocuous enough question "so have you been on Friends Reunited yet?"
I scoffed and I scorned in an Edith Piaf kind of way, but before I knew it, one night when the sky was dark and the streets were quiet, I found myself strolling in the FR cyber-hood. I hadn't meant to click that way. It just happened.
To start with, there was a kind of dark furtive pleasure to be had, checking out the profiles of school friends without any of them knowing, fingering the details of their lives electronically - and wondering how on earth we all got so old and sad.
It genuinely shocked me how many feisty young people, hell bent on living fast and destined to die young and beautiful, seemed just to have got stuck, set in the slowly drying cement of a denuded working class culture of zero expectations and fuck-all chances. The ice-rink boot-boy I secretly admired all the way through A Level Geography says he is fat, balding and lives alone with his cats. I thought maybe this was a witty post-modern ironic comment on the nature of our perception of identity, and my former PE teacher says "call him" every time I see her, but I couldn't go back. What if he wasn't laughing?....
There was some good stuff though. The girl who shacked up with her policeman boyfriend while the rest of us (well, okay, maybe it was just me...) were still having the rude bits in Keats explained to us by a blushing English teacher, and in whose pressure cooker I once notoriously vomited while under the influence of a Merrydown-Cinzano cocktail (recipe - half a bottle of each, shared with a bloke with a rockabilly quiff sitting on the bonnet of a Ford Escort), well, she was there. And coolly cynical - describing herself in relation to a number of tempestuous divorces, and now gladly relieved of the burden of any domestic relationship more demanding than putting out cat food for her favourite mogs. In fact, cats became a bit of a theme....
But it wasn't all depressing. I got back in touch with my old buddy, Andy, and we catch up with each other once in a while, competing hotly for the "who has the most dysfunctional life/relationships/family" title while congratulating each other richly for continuing to live the dream of not dying of terminal boredom in the London Borough of Hounslow. It's good to have him back around.
But that is as far as I've got so far with the whole Reunion concept, and it's quite far enough for my liking! What I hadn't realised, though, is just how obsessed the rest of the world is with coming face to face with its own immediate past, and especially the people who once populated it.
First, Andy shows me pictures of the informal reunion of our year group that happened a couple of years ago, and to which I thankfully wasn't invited as I had so successfully managed to conceal my tracks in the intervening 20 years that noone had a clue how to find me! Now he tells me another one is planned and this time I'm going if he has to drag me there - which won't actually be at all difficult as I'm a 5'4" lightweight and he's 6'6" and 20 stone of muscle!
But it doesn't end there... The 2nd Bedfont Guides are after me now, for a 50th anniversary reunion next Sunday! Being well versed in the traditional arts of hunting and tracking (badge #436), they found my lair far more quickly than any of my old school chums. Well, actually, they just asked my mum... And what does she go and do, after all I've done for her (hmm... which is what, exactly?...) but give them a flamin' photo of me aged 16?! Cruelty itself! I should be taken into care immediately!
I politely declined the invitation, but after my mother's charming betrayal I have had to up the ante and offer them a "what Guiding did for me" article, in order to have an opportunity to present myself in the way I want to be seen, not as dumpy dark girl with so few friends that she just sits at home sewing badges on her sleeve.
And therein lies my whole problem with reunions, photograph albums and the past. It is another country and we definitely did do things differently there. Going back, people say "you're exactly the same" with a sadistically delighted grin on their faces. Well, I'm tellin' ya now, that's a god damned lie! You might be, but I'm not - and I sure as hell ain't finished travelling yet. Death will be soon enough for this reunion lark.
Tuesday, February 03, 2004
Terror TV
I spend a lot of time at work. Most of it, to be honest - except for the summer holidays when I spend six weeks wandering around in shorts and bare feet vaguely wondering where my friends went all of a sudden. But at work, I make a lot of decisions and deal with a lot of problems - large ones, small ones, big fat juicy ones, enough some days to make you want to go and eat worms. And in a sick and very twisted kind of "I just can't get enough" way, for my leisure and recreation I love to watch films and TV shows about people who make a lot of decisions and deal with a lot of problems. In fact, nothing soothes me more than watching people with far more stressful and demanding jobs than my own struggling to do what is right in completely intolerable circumstances. I kick back and relax, and go, "hey, at least I didn't kill anyone when I screwed up today".
I love ER. Well, okay, so I have to hide behind a cushion at the really gory bits, but I floated languidly across a millpond of tranquillity when the new med student killed her first patient last week.
24? Jack's just doing his job, and I'm grateful every Sunday night for six whole months at a time that when I'm doing mine I don't have to cope with my daughter alternately being held hostage and turning into a gun-toting nutter; my partner going and getting her dumb cardigan-brained skull murdered and my luscious lover mutating into a Balkan terrorist with a terrible accent; or being killed and resuscitated and having to climb off the life support machine to save the universe from imminent destruction.
Then there's The West Wing and I have endless re-runs and mini-seasons at home with my first season box set. Oh frabjous day! Calloo! Callay! People who work even longer hours than I do, who make far more difficult decisions, and still manage to be beautiful, intelligent and phenomenally witty! I spend happy hours deliberating over what I wish for most - to join the cast or write the script? Tough call, but either way I die and go to heaven.
Nicolas Cage in Bringing Out The Dead - very, very reassuring. I may think I'm being driven insane by my job, but hey, look, actually I must be okay cos I ain't rolling ambulances for kicks!!
But oh joy of rapturous joys, what did I find for my televisual delectation tonight but The Bunker: Crisis Command - Could You Run The Country? Won't win any prizes for snappy titles, but what a concept! Shove tonight's pilot and get on with making the whole series, because it was just too good to be true... Missed it? Well, here's how it goes...
You get 3 middle class punters who fancy themselves as competent and authoritative decision makers, the kind of people who think they could definitely run the country better than the hard-working morally upstanding politicians of our day. They get put in a studio (this is 10p TV...) with a couple of expert advisers, and they have to manage the country during a simulated crisis. As a viewer you get to turn into the secret rabid dictator you know you really are, shouting "shoot the bastards down now" and "for Christ's sake get the poor fuckers out of there" at your telly, your neighbours wondering all the time whether or not to call social services. You get to know which of their decisions are right, and you get to howl with contemptuous laughter as once again they get it wrong. No "press the red button now" yet - this is only a pilot - but oh, it's already interactive TV at its best!
Getting it wrong tonight involved 500 people getting crushed to death as the Thames crashed through an Underground tunnel after a couple of bomb explosions at Waterloo station; also failing to shoot a terrorist controlled plane down (in order to save 100 American oil worker passengers - well, durrr, that was so obviously a dumb choice....) and letting it plough into Big Ben in a 9-11 style attack. Cool or what?!! You just should've seen their faces when the presenter told them their namby-pamby limp-wristed decision-making had just cost an unknown number of privately educated lives, 52 billion quid, and a grade 1 listed building!!
The people in the hot seat were entirely compelling. One chap who definitely used to hang out with the Young Farmers doing unspeakable things; one frightfully right-on young woman who looked like she might vomit when she found out how many deaths she'd personally caused (hello in there, it's only pretend!!!), and one tosser of the highest order, who in the Weakest Link style talking head bit as the credits rolled had the temerity to say "well, this experience has made me think I could be a politician - I've got what it takes". Remind me not to move into his constituency any time soon...
And that Weakest Link connection is only the beginning. On the one hand the pretence to middle class high-mindedness is a whole new game show concept; on the other, it's mercilessly ripping off every other game show in recent years that has hoiked in the viewers. Critical? I'm excited!! The 4 bullet pointed options for crisis management - straight off Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (New title - "Who Wants To Be A Minister of State"?...) This week middle class twats, maybe next week it'll be Test The Nation and we'll have magicians in the studio dealing with Al Qaeda - now we're talking!! Attempt to negotiate a hostage transfer, or put the problematic passenger aircraft into a hat, say abracadabra and make it disappear?!! And then there are the wheelclampers and the beauticians in episodes to come. Oh, sweet sweet sick and terrible joy - this could bring a whole new range of creative thought processes to government, and a reason finally, for all those of you who needed one, to shell out on a TV licence...
You have done us proud, oh the British Broadcasting Commission. And whilst you may be in a tiny tad of disarray after the sacking of all your Chief Executives, please, please, will someone in there get straight on to selling the rights to the US of A! Another tough call, but my pick for first in the studio is George Bush, Homer Simpson, and Niles Crane.
Reality? What's that again?.....
I spend a lot of time at work. Most of it, to be honest - except for the summer holidays when I spend six weeks wandering around in shorts and bare feet vaguely wondering where my friends went all of a sudden. But at work, I make a lot of decisions and deal with a lot of problems - large ones, small ones, big fat juicy ones, enough some days to make you want to go and eat worms. And in a sick and very twisted kind of "I just can't get enough" way, for my leisure and recreation I love to watch films and TV shows about people who make a lot of decisions and deal with a lot of problems. In fact, nothing soothes me more than watching people with far more stressful and demanding jobs than my own struggling to do what is right in completely intolerable circumstances. I kick back and relax, and go, "hey, at least I didn't kill anyone when I screwed up today".
I love ER. Well, okay, so I have to hide behind a cushion at the really gory bits, but I floated languidly across a millpond of tranquillity when the new med student killed her first patient last week.
24? Jack's just doing his job, and I'm grateful every Sunday night for six whole months at a time that when I'm doing mine I don't have to cope with my daughter alternately being held hostage and turning into a gun-toting nutter; my partner going and getting her dumb cardigan-brained skull murdered and my luscious lover mutating into a Balkan terrorist with a terrible accent; or being killed and resuscitated and having to climb off the life support machine to save the universe from imminent destruction.
Then there's The West Wing and I have endless re-runs and mini-seasons at home with my first season box set. Oh frabjous day! Calloo! Callay! People who work even longer hours than I do, who make far more difficult decisions, and still manage to be beautiful, intelligent and phenomenally witty! I spend happy hours deliberating over what I wish for most - to join the cast or write the script? Tough call, but either way I die and go to heaven.
Nicolas Cage in Bringing Out The Dead - very, very reassuring. I may think I'm being driven insane by my job, but hey, look, actually I must be okay cos I ain't rolling ambulances for kicks!!
But oh joy of rapturous joys, what did I find for my televisual delectation tonight but The Bunker: Crisis Command - Could You Run The Country? Won't win any prizes for snappy titles, but what a concept! Shove tonight's pilot and get on with making the whole series, because it was just too good to be true... Missed it? Well, here's how it goes...
You get 3 middle class punters who fancy themselves as competent and authoritative decision makers, the kind of people who think they could definitely run the country better than the hard-working morally upstanding politicians of our day. They get put in a studio (this is 10p TV...) with a couple of expert advisers, and they have to manage the country during a simulated crisis. As a viewer you get to turn into the secret rabid dictator you know you really are, shouting "shoot the bastards down now" and "for Christ's sake get the poor fuckers out of there" at your telly, your neighbours wondering all the time whether or not to call social services. You get to know which of their decisions are right, and you get to howl with contemptuous laughter as once again they get it wrong. No "press the red button now" yet - this is only a pilot - but oh, it's already interactive TV at its best!
Getting it wrong tonight involved 500 people getting crushed to death as the Thames crashed through an Underground tunnel after a couple of bomb explosions at Waterloo station; also failing to shoot a terrorist controlled plane down (in order to save 100 American oil worker passengers - well, durrr, that was so obviously a dumb choice....) and letting it plough into Big Ben in a 9-11 style attack. Cool or what?!! You just should've seen their faces when the presenter told them their namby-pamby limp-wristed decision-making had just cost an unknown number of privately educated lives, 52 billion quid, and a grade 1 listed building!!
The people in the hot seat were entirely compelling. One chap who definitely used to hang out with the Young Farmers doing unspeakable things; one frightfully right-on young woman who looked like she might vomit when she found out how many deaths she'd personally caused (hello in there, it's only pretend!!!), and one tosser of the highest order, who in the Weakest Link style talking head bit as the credits rolled had the temerity to say "well, this experience has made me think I could be a politician - I've got what it takes". Remind me not to move into his constituency any time soon...
And that Weakest Link connection is only the beginning. On the one hand the pretence to middle class high-mindedness is a whole new game show concept; on the other, it's mercilessly ripping off every other game show in recent years that has hoiked in the viewers. Critical? I'm excited!! The 4 bullet pointed options for crisis management - straight off Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (New title - "Who Wants To Be A Minister of State"?...) This week middle class twats, maybe next week it'll be Test The Nation and we'll have magicians in the studio dealing with Al Qaeda - now we're talking!! Attempt to negotiate a hostage transfer, or put the problematic passenger aircraft into a hat, say abracadabra and make it disappear?!! And then there are the wheelclampers and the beauticians in episodes to come. Oh, sweet sweet sick and terrible joy - this could bring a whole new range of creative thought processes to government, and a reason finally, for all those of you who needed one, to shell out on a TV licence...
You have done us proud, oh the British Broadcasting Commission. And whilst you may be in a tiny tad of disarray after the sacking of all your Chief Executives, please, please, will someone in there get straight on to selling the rights to the US of A! Another tough call, but my pick for first in the studio is George Bush, Homer Simpson, and Niles Crane.
Reality? What's that again?.....
