Plumbing the depths of my DIY inadequacy
I got a call from the plumber at 8.30pm the other night night. He could repair my bathroom taps the following morning. I was impressed, having only put in the request earlier that day. When suited me, he asked. I work in the afternoons and evenings, so I replied that before midday should be fine. Could he do it first thing? What do you mean ‘first thing’, I replied, apprehensively. ‘7.30,’ he responded.
I grimaced a little, knowing that saying yes would sentence me to an extremely abbreviated sleep, but I needed to get it done. For weeks, my bathroom taps had been like the cartoon ones that Bugs Bunny often finds in the desert. Bugs would turn them on frantically, dying of thirst, and then one single solitary drip would make its way into his gaping mouth. Later in the cartoon a huge gush comes out of them – that was what I was hoping to achieve.
A gentleman cannot keep himself looking debonair and handsome without running water for personal grooming, you’ll understand, and the lack of adequate bathroom facilities has been seriously impeding the awesome-bachelor-pad vibe I’m trying to cultivate chez moi. So I said yes, first thing tomorrow was fine.
At around 2.30am that night, I finally started to drift off to sleep, after watching several episodes of the 1990s British teen comedy-drama Press Gang. Yes, teen. Yes, I’m 35. But honestly, it’s very witty – the writer, Stephen Moffatt, went on to createSherlock and Coupling and is currently in charge of Doctor Who. Apart from the hilariously cheesy titles, it’s aged far better than I have, in fact.
At 7.15am, a mere four and a three quarter hours later, my alarm went off. I was just about to throw my bleeping phone against the wall when I remembered the plumber’s looming visit. Cursing, I dragged myself out of bed, and gave my apartment a perfunctory tidy. Why didn’t I do this last night, I wondered. And why does it matter whether a tradie I’ll probably never see again thinks my place is messy, anyway?
Still, I fear the judgement of others even in such inconsequential circumstances, and so I carefully tidied, finishing by 7.28am. Just in the nick of time, I thought. It was a moment of maturity, at least by my standards. The younger me would have set the alarm for 7.30 and still been tidying when the plumber arrived. Congratulating myself, I settled down to wait for the plumber.
By 8.30, I was feeling a touch irritated. It was a very rainy day, which seemed ironic, since there was an abundance of water everywhere except out of my taps. I had been promised that I’d be the first call in the morning, and the booking had been made only made a few hours ago. How could they possibly have lined up other jobs in the interim?
I texted, not trusting myself, in my sleep deprived state, to remain calm over the phone. The reply, at least, was rapid. “Sorry he has been stuck on an emergency, will be there 9.30ish.”
An emergency. Can’t argue with that, can you? It would be churlish of me to feel slightly resentful if someone’s tap had broken and was flooding their bathroom. Or worse, something involving sewage. My tap problem was merely an inconvenience. Of course, I have no way of knowing whether it actually was an emergency or one of the plumbers doing what I’d been unable to do, and sleeping in. But you have to take these things on trust. So I tried unsuccessfully to doze for the next hour.
9.30ish, turned out to mean 10.30, a mere three hours after “first thing”, as they’d promised. I could have slept for the requisite eight hours despite my foolhardy Press Gangbinge. You can imagine that by this point, I was now rather regretting the decision to spend quite so many hours enjoying the quickfire banter between the Junior Gazette’s hard-nosed editor Lynda Day and her cheeky investigative reporter Spike Thompson.
As the plumber unscrewed the various components of the tap, I attempted to make conversation. “Is it a washer thing?” I asked. I know very little about plumbing, but I do know from prior experience that when something goes wrong, it’s generally the washerthat’s to blame. “Yep,” he replied, giving me a look that somehow managed to convey both pity and contempt.
Fixing the taps took him, oh, about a minute. I’d put up with these taps being unable to adequately dispense water for weeks, cursing them daily, and it took him all of sixty seconds to fix. And it’s then that a familiar refrain returned to my mind: why can’t I do any of this handyman stuff? What kind of man am I, anyway?
My dad could have fixed the taps himself. He wouldn’t have stuffed around waiting for three hours until the plumber finally showed up. He’s the kind of dad who built my brother and I a treehouse when we were kids, something I hope he can also do for his grandchildren someday, because I wouldn’t allow any child of mine to get onto a wooden platform constructed by me. I failed woodwork every year at school, and the teacher had to help me finish even the simple pencilbox we made at the start of Year 7. (Thanks for that, Mr Hamilton.)
My grandfather is, if anything, even more hardcore. He’s in his nineties now, but even ten years ago he was doing most of his own renovations. In his prime, he thought nothing of laying his own concrete slab and building a shed on top of it and I understand he also did quite a lot of his own electrical wiring, which is impressive, if perhaps illegal. He was a self-reliant Real Man who rolled up his sleeves and got Stuck In, whereas I just get stuck.
Somehow I, the firstborn son of a firstborn son, have entirely failed to inherit a single one of these impressive Do It Yourself genes. I can’t handle any domestic task more complex than changing a light globe, and one of those even managed to confound me the other day when the bulb party had broken off. When I go to Bunnings, I feel intimidated by everything besides the sausage sizzle.
As the day went on, I wondered what kind of father I’d make if I couldn’t fix anything around the house, let alone successfully assemble Ikea furniture without having mysterious, suspiciously structural-looking parts left over.
But then, in the depths of my emasculation, I remembered economics. When we hire someone else to do something we can’t do – like, in my case, everything – it helps the economy. My complete lack of self-reliance creates employment for others. Rather a lot of it, in fact. But hey, I’m a patriot. I’m willing to feel this inadequate if it helps tradies to feed their families.
And then I remembered that we all have different abilities. Sure, the plumber is good at fixing taps. But I bet he isn’t as good at staying up until 2.30am and watching Press Gang as I am. And that’s how we all make our own distinct contribution to the complex machine that is our economy. To use the analogy of a car, the plumber is like the windscreen wiper – he gets rid of the excess water. I’m another, far less essential part – let’s say the cup-holder. There’s no point me wishing I could wipe the windscreen too – I can’t. But what I can do is hold the driver’s beverage. And while in this analogy, my grandfather could probably do much of what a car can do all by himself; well, cars are more complicated these days. FJ Holdens probably didn’t even have cupholders.
So I’ll keep calling tradies when I need a new washer for my tap. And any tradies out there should feel free to call me if they need someone to watch archaic children’s television programmes in the wee hours of the morning. And that, folks, is economics.
I am soooo over Instagram...
Whenever you make an outlandish claim on the internet, you will get the same snarky response – “pics or it didn’t happen.” The English writer and commentator Charlie Brooker discovered this a few days ago when he claimed on Twitter to have concocted a chocolate and mackerel paté. He duly posted this photo.
So, if you claim to have a tattoo of Hello Kitty in an attempt to seem quirky, or claim to have met One Direction in a misguided attempt to connect with a misguided tween, or claim, as I once did in a highly unsuccessful attempt to gain the favours of a certain young lady, to be a relative of Prince William’s, you can expect to be asked to provide photographic proof. In which case all I can suggest is “Photoshop and it did happen.”
Actually, let me just stop there for a moment and offer a warning. Do not claim to have met One Direction unless it’s actually true, because your tween will literally never forgive you. I can’t begin to understand why they’re popular. I only know, from the 94 million views this video has received, that they are. Yes, even though they sound about as musical as an angle-grinder, and have far less personality.
I should also clarify that I never Photoshopped myself next to Prince William. But mainly because I don’t have the skills.
The "pics or it didn't happen" phenomenon provides the key to understanding the popularity of Instagram, which is probably the best service out there for sharing photos from a mobile phone. It’s become so important because we now expect everyone to take photographs all the time, whenever anything noteworthy happens – and even when it doesn’t.
I’m as guilty of this as anybody. For instance, when I was on holidays in Tokyo last week, some of my travelling companions claimed that they saw Jedward on the street. It took me several minutes to recover from the disappointment of not seeing two individuals who look this ridiculous in the flesh. (Although the linked video very much overcompensates for that. Shudder.) It took several minutes more to recover from my disappointment that my friends didn’t even take a photo. I honestly couldn’t believe it. One of them had a smartphone handy, and what could possibly be more important than photographic proof of an encounter with Jedward?
Our instinct to constantly take photos documenting every tiny triviality is whyInstagram is worth $1 billion to Facebook. Well at least, that’s why it's worth quite a bit of money – I have no idea why Mark Zuckerberg paid $1 billion for a free app when he could have done what he did with Foursquare's location check-ins and offered an identical feature without handing over a cent.
By contrast, SMH.com.au quoted the ultimate example of an Instagrammer yesterday – an architect from Brooklyn whose name is Darwin. I don’t even need to look up his Instagram account to envisage his lopsided haircut and thick black rimmed glasses. Probably also a trilby or flat cap. It’s not a surprise that Instagram’s chief competitor is called Hipstamatic.
(Well actually, in the interests of honest journalism, I think I found Darwin on the internet, and he looks more like this. Whatevs – he still probably wears knitted neckties when he’s out sipping microbrews.)
The tech commentator Stilgherrian wrote a convincing analysis of why Facebook bought Instragram yesterday, and I particularly chuckled at his point about Facebook’s Borg-like assimilation of users’ private information as being the real source of the value in the acquisition. Facebook now owns the photos of endless Darwin types who have pooh-poohed Mark Zuckerberg’s service, and thought they were using something cooler. And yet, even as we speak, Facebook’s face-scanning engine is no doubt churning through millions of Instagram images of bearded faces, and its location map is popping up with millions of new data points in Williamsburg and Surry Hills.
But I wonder whether Facebook’s very acquisition will kill what value there is in Instagram. They’re the largest social network, and because of that, they’re no longer anything like cool. And surely the twee novelty of Instagram images will wear off, especially when those same effects become natively available in Facebook? I won’t be at all surprised if in two years’ time, architects in Brooklyn would rather die than use Instagram. If it isn’t already on the verge of being passé, I reckon adding the much-reviled Facebook brand will finish the job.
And yes, I know the app only just came out on Android. Pfft, Android.
If you’ll forgive an attempt to get ahead of the hipster curve by someone who’s already established that he’s in no way hip, I’m already sick of Instagram and its dodgy kaleidoscope colours. Can’t we just take photos with our phones that are authentic, y’know? Organic? Without artifice? Like people used to do, back in the good old days of slightly more low-res digital cameras?
Oh, and one more thing, as the guy who invented the iPhone liked to say. I’d like to gratuitously boast that I’ll be seeing One Direction perform live at the Logies on Sunday. But you’ll have to take my word for it, because there’s no way I’m posting a picture of myself with them on the internet.
Why you shouldn't watch The Hunger Games
I consider myself something of a trendspotter. I like to keep my ear to the ground, find out what the Kids Are Into These Days. So let me give you a little exclusive, the lowdown, the skinny, about what I’m tipping to be the next Harry Potter or Twilight. It's a little series called The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, it tells the story of a rather special young lady named Katniss Everdeen, who...
Oh look, I can't keep this up. It’s already earned $250 million at the box office, and, remarkably for such a massive blockbuster, has had excellent reviews, scoring 85% on Rotten Tomatoes. You’ve probably already seen the trailer, if not the film itself. But if you haven't heard about it, just read the Wikipedia entry or one of the 27,700,000 articles that come up when you Google "hunger games suzanne collins". To be honest, I'm just trying to compensate for the fact that I hadn't even heard of it until a month ago. Although if I had, the oft-cited comparison with Twilight would have put me off.
Honestly, I promise that it isn’t like Stephenie Meyer’s book, even though there are teenagers and a love triangle. For one thing, Katniss kicks far more ass than either of the doting dudes. For another, there are a grand total of zero vomit-inducing descriptions of Edward’s nobility and handsomeness.
And while it’s been pointed out that Collins’ series has a lot in common with other works like the Japanese film Battle Royale and Stephen King’s The Long Walk, it’s no more derivative than Harry Potter or Star Wars or Twilight or any of the other cultural properties that reprocess myths for a modern audience. If anything, the Hunger Games owes most of all to Ancient Rome, a debt the novel freely acknowledges, and I think that the Roman Empire has lost its copyright by now.
Besides, it’s not the premise that makes a story compelling – Harry Potter was hardly the first book about boarding schools or wizards. It’s in the characters and narrative –the execution. And – spoiler alert –there certainly are executions in the novel, one of which had me on the brink of tears. Yes, I’m not afraid to feel, even in a fictional dystopia that’s been sneakily manipulated to induce precisely that response.
But despite coming incredibly late to the Hunger Games party, I still have one reason for attempting to assert cultural superiority. And that is because even though it's already been made into a movie, and even though the movie is supposedly really good, I read the book. That’s right. I did it old skool.
And I’m so glad I did, because it allowed me to imagine the world of Panem for myself. I have my own mental Katniss, who looks nothing like Jennifer Lawrence, and my President Snow is a great deal more hideous than Donald Sutherland. Whereas when I watched the first Harry Potter movie, it simply replaced my imagined version of JK Rowling's world with the film's one. And my version was better, because it didn’t contain Daniel Radcliffe.
Unfortunately, when I read the subsequent Potter books, I saw the film’s Hogwarts instead of my own. Now, when I think of Hagrid, I see Robbie Coltrane. My mental version of Dumbledore has even changed from Richard Harris to Michael Gambon, as the film’s did. And since whenever I thought about Harry himself, I saw Radcliffe woodenly trying to convey anger, it's a miracle I remained a fan. It's not as simple as waving a wand and shouting "Accio acting", you know.
What's more, a movie of a book can only be a tiny sketch compared to the fully realised canvas of the original novel. Even with two films, many of the details of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows were lost in translation, infuriating a number of over-involved bloggers. By reading The Hunger Games, I know far more about Panem than anyone who’s seen the movie, and have had a considerably richer experience. I’m sure the cinematic visuals were spectacular, and the action sequences thrilling, but then again, they were in my mind, too.
I don't think books are inherently better than movies. I wouldn’t bother read a novelisation of a movie, either, where a novelist has added their own inconsequential details and I already know the ending. But the simple fact is that an enormous amount of the experience of a novel gets lost in the transfer to the screen, especially when a novel is first-person. The Hunger Games is written from Katniss’ perspective, and the bleak, sardonic tone of her narration will inevitably evaporate on the screen.
The joy of first-person fiction is that it allows you unfettered access to a narrator’s mind. It simulates the portal from Being John Malkovich, only without dumping anybody beside the New Jersey Turnpike. Whereas a movie can’t allow you access to a narrator’s thoughts, at least not without a great deal of clunky voiceover. This is why The Catcher In The Rye has often been described as unfilmable. It’d just be a dude wandering around New York, failing to connect with anybody.
So, I've decided not to watch the Hunger Games movie, at least for the time being. I'll wait until the vivid images of the book that currently fill my imagination have faded, and it doesn't seem quite so destructive to overwrite my mental version of Katniss’ world with somebody else's. And if you've yet to experience either version, then I pass on the excellent advice a friend gave me, and suggest you start with the book. Not only is it a substantially better experience, but best of all, it will allow you to patronise those who’ve only seen the movie.
Presenting Knight’s Ten Laws of Karaoke Etiquette
Humanity has achieved so many extraordinary things in recent times. We’ve invented space travel, self-driving cars and the little red light that tells Kyle Sandilands when to shut up. But I would argue that of all the rich bounty which science has bequeathed to humankind, there is nothing finer than karaoke.
Sure, I wouldn't win that argument, but, in the best spirit of amateur karaoke performers everywhere, I'd give it a solid go anyway. Because karaoke gives everybody the chance to be a star. A star with a dodgy synthesised backing track, a voice swamped by clunky digital reverb, and music videos that only ever seem to feature trams trundling around San Francisco, but a star nonetheless.
Karaoke is the most democratic art form. Literally anybody can do it, and if you’ve ever stuck an ear to the door of an adjoining karaoke room at 2am, literally anybody does. Karaoke gives all of us the chance to sing ‘My Way’ our way, whether we’re tone deaf or are able to rise to the greatest height possible in the realm of karaoke, that of the RSL cover band vocalist. That's right – by paying a mere $10 at your local karaoke boutique, you can live out your fantasy of becoming the lead singer of 'Non Jovi: The Bon Jovi Experience'. Karaoke lets anybody experience livin' on a prayer, and for that it deserves our admiration and most heartfelt thanks.
But as Australia heads inexorably towards Japan, which has a karaoke palazzo on practically every corner, it's important to educate ourselves on certain points of sing-along etiquette. I have spent dozens of nights in dingy rooms, loudly advising Mustang Sally to slow that Mustang down, and I have distilled that hard-won experience into the following list of dos and don'ts. What’s more, I am willing to admit to making all of the following mistakes in my early days except one - can you guess which?
1) Don't double up
If there’s one golden rule, this is it: putting two songs on in a row is the most annoying thing you can do. And sheepishly saying “Oh, this was me too” as though you didn’t notice and just got carried away with sheer enthusiasm, is no excuse. I've even seen the occasional triple up, which really does stretch any friendship.
2) Don't hog the second mike
This is the sneaky way to double up. Every room has a minimum of two microphones, and occasionally someone appoints themselves everybody else’s backup singer. Put. Down. That. Microphone. Srsly.
3) Never allow the mask of irony to slip
Some of us fancy ourselves as pretty good singers. That’s fine, of course. But what isn’t fine is betraying this through your song selection, and choosing a song that isn’t designed to amuse your fellow karaokeistas, but to show off your voice. There’s a fine line with this, of course, but a good test is this: would the song you’re choosing set off the dancefloor at at 21st where the Responsible Service of Alcohol legislation had been largely overlooked? By way of example, ‘I Will Always Love You’ fails this test, yet curiously ‘My Heart Will Go On’ does not.
4) Don't force anyone to sing
A bit of good-natured encouragement is fine, but for some people it's their biggest fear. What this means is that if they're forced to sing, they'll never come back to karaoke. This is not in your long-term. People who don't want to sing but still enjoy it at least tolerate karaoke are priceless, as they give you a precious audience for your rendition of Toto's 'Africa' without taking up any of your turns. They're even more valuable if they like to dance on the sofa.
5) No more than two Oasis songs per session
They are so long and so dull and so self-indulgent, seriously. You won’t remember how long and dull they are until two minutes in, but they are. This especially applies to ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’, ‘D’You Know What I Mean’’ and ‘Champagne Supernova’ and ‘Stand By Me’. ‘Wonderwall’ and anything from Definitely Maybe is generally acceptable – it’s the tedious ballads with lots of lame guitar noodling you want to watch out for. Speaking of which...
6) No Guns 'n' Roses
That’s right – none. Ever. The reason is this. As yet, karaoke producers haven’t learnt to cut out long guitar solos. And that means that even though ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ is an awesome song, you spend solid minutes listening to a crappy MIDI recreation of Slash’s licks. The same goes for ‘Patience’, but worst of all is ‘November Rain’, which is NINE MINUTES LONG, nearly all of which is instrumental.
7) Pass the microphone around during ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and ‘Paranoid Android’
Not only is it more fun, but singing a song that long all by yourself can tend to seem a little too much like showing off. Unless you’re actually Thom Yorke or Freddie Mercury, in which case... yeah, it still seems a little like showing off.
8) A little R&B goes a long way
This is probably a taste thing, but unless you actually are Beyoncé or Rihanna, their songs can be fairly tedious. Those songs also tend to fail the irony rule, especially when sung by women with good voices who can tend to sound a little like they’re auditioning for Australian Idol.
9) Don't do rap tracks unless you've rehearsed
If you’ve ever thought rap was just talking, and therefore easy, then give it a go sometime. Unless you know the exact rhythm of each line, you’ll find it surprisingly difficult. Eminem is particularly difficult because he raps so quickly, but even sluggish ol’ Dr Dre uses complex rhythms. In general I don’t advocate rehearsing at home because it’s way too much like effort and therefore not ironic, but if you want to pull off something like ‘Baby Got Back’, one of the great ironic karaoke numbers, you really need to be across the rhythm. And you thought Sir Mix-A-Lot wasn’t capable of complexity!
10) If isn't working, press STOP.
I'm sure we've all thought it would be hilarious to sing something like ‘Music Of The Night’ from Phantom of the Opera, and it is, oh it is, but only for about a minute. After you've had a bit of laugh, don't subject everyone to the rest of the song. Press Stop. It’s rude to press Stop in the middle of somebody else’s song (as I once proved during a friend’s rendition of the very languid ‘No Surprises’ by Radiohead’) but sometimes it doesn’t hurt to drop unsubtle hints. Miming a throat being slit often communicates the message quickly and effectively.
I have set out these rules in the hope of encouraging harmonious karaoke in both senses, and am the first to confess that I’ve repeatedly broken almost all of them (except the R&B one, in case you’re wondering). But karaoke has been great for me because it gave me the confidence to try singing in public. The first time I was terrified, but now I have no shame. And that’s the beauty of the karaoke mask of irony, because you need never seem like you’re making an effort, or you think you can sing. Sure, my embrace of karaoke may not be a great thing for those who have to listen to me do it, but in my mind, I’m a star. And for that, I say thank you, Japan. Arigato gozaimasu.
If I’ve forgotten any vital karaoke rules, please add them in the comments below.
Place a boomgate in front of your televisions
I hate The Shire, and it hasn’t even been filmed yet. I hate it even more than the Mayor of the Sutherland Shire does, and she hates it so much that she’s threatened to put a boom gate over all of the bridges in her area to stop them filming there. I hate it even more than I hated Sylvania Waters, unless you remember that the Donahers laid the ground for all the other reality TV that’s followed, in which case we really should hurry up and invent time travel so that somebody, presumably Bruce Willis, can travel back and make sure it never happened.
The main reason I hate The Shire is because they’ve stolen the title of my hilarious parody series of The Wire set in Middle-Earth. Police hobbits like Jimmy McFrodo and Merry BrandyBunk would have faced off against the ultimate evil, Sauron Barksdale. Rhonda would’ve been Galadriel, Clay Davis would’ve been Gollum – you get the idea. It would have gone viral around the world like this video about Mitt Romney which my friend Hugh Atkin made which actually has no place in this article but you should watch anyway because it’s amazing, and besides, I’ve already digressed onto a very self-indulgentWire/LOTR mashup fantasy from which I really should return before I lose you completely. Ahem.
The media coverage of The Shire has centred around the idea that it’s an Australian version of Jersey Shore. The producers have tried to defend it by saying that it’s more like an Australian version of The Only Way Is Essex, which like saying “no, the nuclear accident I caused wasn’t another Chernobyl, it was more of a Three Mile Island”. Admittedly I haven’t watched it, but surely The Only Way Is Essex can’t possibly work as television when it doesn’t even work as a pun.
Shine, the production company responsible for unleashing The Shire upon an unsuspecting planet, has suggested that people suspend judgement until the show is aired. And that’s fair enough from the perspective of a television critic. If I were one, I wouldn’t dream of actually writing off the series until I’d watched at least ten minutes, after which time I suspect most of my melted brain tissue would have dripped out from my cranium through my nostrils.
For better or worse, those shows just don’t work for me. And I’ve tried, or at least they’ve tried me – a former flatmate of mine regularly watched Real Housewives, Rachel Zoe,Australia’s Next Top Model, Project Runway and the like in our lounge room, and even though I tried to watch them to be sociable, I just found them annoying and boring. I wouldn’t enjoy having most of the participants of those shows in my lounge room in person, so the televisual equivalent didn’t do much for me either.
But it’s easy to write about the awfulness of reality TV, especially when it’s pitched as “a bold, highly addictive ‘dramality’ series that follows the often outrageous lives and loves of a group of people who are destined to become the most talked about in Australia” like The Shire. I’m sure they will. The more interesting question, though, is what the popularity of shows like these says about us.
The major appeal of these shows, if it’s not too blitheringly obvious to say, is that they’re real. The storylines and characters aren’t sufficiently engrossing that if they appeared on a soap, we’d be hooked. There’s an enormous difference between fact and fiction in terms of the credibility an audience gives to a story, as Mike Daisey has discovered this week. A fictional Snooki, surely, would never have gained anybody’s interest. Nor would a guy who decided, for reasons I’ve no interest in fathoming, to refer to himself as “The Situation”.
But carefully selected real people, when viewed through the filter of skilful editing that removes the most tedious 97% of of their lives, have proven fascinating to millions of people, who marvel at the taboos these human gargoyles break when the camera’s rolling. Viewers constantly find themselves unable to believe that the participants actually said or did those things, ignoring the fact that to guarantee the maximum amount of drama, the producers of these shows overly manipulate the situation and/or The Situation.
It’s hard to pinpoint precisely what the appeal of reality TV says about our culture, but I’m convinced it’s nothing good. Its appeal is a noxious blend of voyeurism, Schadenfreude, celebrity culture and gossip. The participants become famous, but don’t win the public’s admiration the way famous actors and sportspeople do. The Kardashians aren’t exactly respected by the wider community, for instance. And if Snooki has one thing going for her, and I’m not yet convinced that she does, it’s that she can make almost anybody feel comfortingly superior.
The instinct that makes us enthralled by reality TV is the same one that packed the Coliseum in Roman times, and still fills cockfighting arenas in South America and the public gallery at Question Time. It’s the same instinct that makes a crowd gather around whenever there’s a fight in the street. For better or for worse, we love watching conflict, and excess, and rudeness as long as we aren’t involved ourselves. And above all, we love watching stupid people saying stupid things so we can talk about how stupid they are. The Shire, I’m certain, will offer ample opportunities. But marvelling at participants in reality TV is like watching performing animals debase themselves in return for a lump of sugar, or in this case, a TV Week profile. It may be superficially entertaining, but it’s ultimately just sad.
This piece originally appeared at Daily Life.
What went wrong with WotWentWrong.com
When the definitive history of bad ideas is written, right alongside the guy who gave up a 10% share in Apple, the company that paid Shane Warne to give up smoking for a year and Ben Elton Live From Planet Earth, there will be a special chapter onWotWentWrong.com.
I discovered the existence of this organisation on Twitter this week, and I simply couldn’t believe it. It’s a website that lets you to send a survey to somebody who dumped you, or stopped returning calls, or whatever it was, so you can find out why.
When faced with the sting of rejection, the greatest temptation, and worst thing you can do, is to get back in touch to ask for explanation. But just because you can now outsource that sobbing 3am voicemail to a convenient cloud-based system doesn’t make it any less dumb an idea. And I think the assumptions they have made in setting up this system for electronically picking over the entrails of one’s shattered dreams reflect the errors many of us make after a breakup.
The sample template they provide in the “How It Works” section of their website suggests sending an email to your ex that goes like this:
I had a dream that we went out.
With the first four words, Martin Luther King has been evoked. Surely a bad start for any communique with a less lofty aim than achieving racial equality.
But surely that couldn’t have happened, because you stopped calling!
This is meant to sound amusing and light-hearted, I’m guessing, but actually sounds as though the sender has entirely let slip their grasp on reality.
What went wrong??
Is it just me, or does that second question mark imply utter desperation?
Help me out and let me know. I won’t hold it against you ;)
There may never have been a more terrifying wink emoticon.
Seriously, who among us, on receiving such an email, would not make a mental note to tell all of our friends that we dodged a bullet because our ex turned out to be a psycho with a perplexing fondness for feedback?
The most common assumption we make after a dumping is that we made a mistake, and that if we hadn’t made it, everything would be fine. We want a do-over, much as, if you’ll allow me to recall arguably my most successful effort with a woman, I once saved Princess Peach in Super Mario Bros by figuring out how to sneak past various pipes containing fire-breathing Venus Fly Traps. Sure, I died hundreds of times along the way, but I triumphed in the end.
And then Peach had the nerve to go and get kidnapped again in the next Mario title. I’m beginning to think she genuinely prefers Bowser’s company.
The “mistake” analysis is often assisted by the language that dumpers tend to use in a misguided attempt to soften the blow. They’ll justify the breakup by saying that they’re really busy at work, or aren’t ready to commit yet, or it’s the wrong time, or they want to go travelling – citing some reason that’s external to the relationship.
This is almost always rubbish. Breakups occur because the other person either doesn’t love you any more, or never really did. They’re either interested in somebody else, or want to have the space in their life for the possibility. And it’s what nobody ever says, because we tend to avoid, y’know, stabbing one another through the heart.
In this situation there is only one piece of advice with any value: Find somebody who feels more for you. Of course, this sucks, but it’s the truth, at least. And grasping that nettle is less painful in the long term, and far more educational than getting some stupid page of ticked boxes.
Besides, wouldn’t you feel worse receiving impersonal, heartless multiple choice answers about why the person you wanted chose to stomp on your dreams? How, in any way, would this help? Wouldn’t it snap the few remaining threads of self-esteem you have left? Wouldn’t it give stark certainty to all the nagging self-doubts you tried to quell during the relationship?
The other problem with WotWentWrong issue is the impossibility of change. Sure, you can change your behaviour, but not your personality. If you need a lot of time with your partner, or conversely large amounts of space, then why would that change, and why should it? I’m not saying you don’t need to communicate and put effort into making a relationship work, but square pegs don’t go into round holes, if you’ll forgive a metaphor that’s slightly obscene in this context. Better to find a square hole, and again, let’s assume we’re just talking about woodwork.
But there is a reason to be genuinely optimistic, and it’s because the entire premise of WotWentWrong is flawed. A relationship is the sum total of two people’s strengths and vulnerabilities. Unless you’re one of these unfortunates who’s serially attracted to partners who are bad for them, there is absolutely no reason to assume that your next relationship will be anything like your last one. Call this the 500 Days Of Summer theorem: some relationships just don’t work, and some just do. (And that’s not a spoiler, because they begin the film by saying it doesn’t work out for Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, so there.) Why? Just because. There is no deeper explanation.
All of this is bad enough, but WotWentWrong has one last dastardly trick up its sleeve: an option that lets the dumper send unsolicited feedback.
To clarify, it lets you send a feedback form to someone you’ve rejected who hasn’t asked for it. Yes. That.
At first, this made me think that WotWentWrong should be banned under the international conventions against cruel and unusual punishment, but then I realised its usefulness. What better way to get over somebody than receiving a hideous, prefabricated template detailing their moral justification for breaking your heart?
And surely that’s the best thing you can hope to get for from any breakup. Not an explanation, not handy tips that’ll make you less of a candidate for Dumpsville the next time around, but coming to share your ex’s belief that it wouldn’t have worked, and that you’re better off without them.
And you don’t need WotWentWrong for that. You wouldn’t even need a site with a properly spelt name for that. So I’m sorry, WotWentWrong - it’s not me, it’s you. Consider this article unsolicited feedback.
This piece originally appeared on Daily Life.
Full equality is still a lingerie way away
It’s to the credit of the women’s movement that very few men now dare question the need for International Women’s Day. So instead of some of my more douchebaggy brothers try to run that tiresome argument that there should be an International Men’s Day as well. “If you want equality,” they bray, “shouldn’t we be treated exactly the same?”
Arguing that men are subject to “reverse sexism” and “political correctness gone mad” is one of the few complaints about feminism that men are still socially comfortable with making, and while of course it’s no less misconceived than any of the others, it does deserve some credit for at least conceding the ideal of equality. This silly line of argument should be confined to the realm of talkback radio, where there are practically no female announcers*, neatly illustrating why we in no way need an International Men’s Day.
(And yes, I’m aware that I’m yet another male radio announcer, and have therefore probably undermined my entire argument. Ahem.)
(Oh, and by the way, it turns out that there is an International Men’s Day. Honestly, I give up.)
For every area in which women have made impressive strides forward, there is some new devilish concoction devised by the patriarchy to try and reverse it. Sure, we may be unspeakably evil, but you have to admire our ingenuity. Which is why, women of Australia, we give you the Lingerie Football League.
An email announcing the LFL’s impending arrival on our shores popped into my inbox yesterday, on International Women’s Eve. It was sent by a woman working in one of the most female-dominated of professions, public relations. So I can only conclude that the spirit of Vichy France is alive and well at Ferris Davies PRM.
“US' LINGERIE FOOTBALL LEAGUE SET TO LACE 'EM UP IN AUSTRALIA”, shouted the headline. Let’s just stop there for a moment to admire the ingenuity of the pun. Just in case you missed it, footballers lace up their boots – but lace is also whatlingerie is made of! Hang onto your codpieces, boys, the fun’s just starting!
“Can females play serious contact sport?” it asks. “You bet!” And it was at this point that my irony detector overloaded.
The marketing pitch for the LFL is a curious one. While it offers all the scantily-clad sophistication of mud-wrestling, it simultaneously claims to be a serious sport. “Don’t make the same mistake others have made elsewhere,” the press release urged. “Don’t let the uniforms, or lack thereof, deceive you!” What a coincidence! That’s exactly what it did for me.
“These women know how to play ball,” it continues. Ball, get it – oh, god, let’s just move on. “And they do just that with all the passion, skill and athleticism of their male counterparts but with an added touch of glamour and finesse and a whole lot of attitude!” Not enough attitude to tell the male owner of the LFL, Mitch Mortaza, exactly where to shove his padded brassieres, evidently, but enough to want to win.
I can believe that, most sincerely. Focusing on the contest and ignoring your outfit is probably the only way to get through such a demeaning experience. And given the lack of exposure given to women’s sport in general, and particularly football, who can blame the players for taking one of the few television paychecks on offer in any women’s sport?
I mean, it’s called the Lingerie Football League. Why is that not the end of any discussion about its athletic credibility?
And yet, it seems desperate to reassure its viewers that it's a proper sport, as this highlightclip illustrates. Practically every soundbite is of a (male, naturally) commentator insisting that yes, it is a real football contest. Perhaps that suspension of disbelief is also required by certain male viewers, who can’t quite bring themselves to watch several hours of women cavorting in their underwear without telling themselves that their primary interest is a sporting one. Claiming you watch the LFL for the contest is surely the boofhead equivalent of claiming to read Playboy for the articles.
Lingerie football is notionally raunchy and yet thoroughly unsexy, a characteristically American blend which probably reflects the psychological baggage of their Puritan past. It reminds me of those Hooters restaurants which, despite all the winking focus on the waitress’ cleavage, offer a strangely anodyne experience, so much so that it’s not entirely incongruous for the chain to offer a children's menu. The evolution of high-school cheerleading is a similarly curious attempt to de-eroticise and legitimise male ogling by pretending it’s a serious athletic activity.
American football is a tedious, technical sport no matter what clothes the players wear, and if you recall just how much protective gear is worn in any gridiron game, you can probably begin to understand why the LFL offers a viewing experience that’s roughly as voyeuristic as, say, regrouting your bathroom tiles. While the skimpy panties and frequent bending over will certainly delight buttock fetishists, the LFL players also wear helmets and shoulderpads, making for a peculiar form of eye candy; half-feminine and half-butch.
Although the press release boasts of the fanbase that LFL enjoys in Australia on Fuel TV, I fully expect the sport to fail in Australia. For one thing, we don’t much enjoy gridiron, let alone understand it. And Hooters has struggled to establish itself in Australia, even failing at its first attempt in the late 1990s, even though tasty ribs are far more popular here than tasty touchdowns. This, I suspect, is because Aussies find that kind of overt boobage either unremarkable or embarrassing.
Besides, the gap in the Australian market for bizarre, exploitative male fantasy hybrids has already been taken by Bacon Busters, that curious magazine that combines hotte babez with pig shooting.
International Women’s Day is a time to remember how much feminism has achieved, and with a female Prime Minister and Governor-General, hearty pats on the back are no doubt in order today among the sisterhood. But the fact a Lingerie Football League is a serious commercial proposition in 2012 instead of being laughed right off the drawing board shows how much is still to be done for the status of women.
And if we must suffer the LFL, let’s at least even the score by creating a Gentlemen’s Netball League, where barechested players who look exactly like Ryan Gosling have to stop and say something sensitive and affirming every time they get the ball. Hey girl, happy International Women’s Day.
This post first appeared on Daily Life.
Wax like an Egyptian
If nothing else, my body serves as an admirable definition of irony. I’m blessed with hair in abundance everywhere except atop my head. Despite the current hipsterish fashion for beards, I’m unable to grow a convincing one because large patches of my facial hair are now white, making my luxuriant beard appear piebald. I also have a fairly solid upper body, which makes me look reasonably strong until it’s actually time to lift anything. If nothing else, my body has proven an excellent basis for a career in comedy.
Objectively this is silly, of course – there’s nothing much wrong with my body. But of course, these things are in the mind. And reading Lina Ricciardelli’s recent article about body image and boys, I realised that in fact, I’ve always suffered from a reasonably poor body image. Which probably wasn’t helped by my friend Charles once casting me as the “ugliest man alive” in my vulnerable teenage years for a sketch that we performed in front of most of our school.
Ricciardelli’s analysis of the body image pressures on men enabled me to feel one of my favourite things – victimhood. “Just like the female body, the male body has been depicted, evaluated and scrutinised as an aesthetic product since ancient times”, she writes. And yet “male beauty and body image receive far less attention in the media and academia than the female body”. Us poor men, how we suffer, and in silence too!
Okay, so a large part of the need for extensive study on the portrayal of female body is the fault of men, what with that whole ‘patriarchal objectification’ thing we've been doing for millennia. Fair cop, guv. Ricciardelli is in no way suggesting that the distribution of emphasis to date is in any way unfair, and I’m not going to pretend for a moment that I understand what it’s like growing up bearing the Sisyphean weight of our culture’s neurotic obsession with women’s bodies.
But what I can say is that her observations about the pressures that apply to men certainly ring true to me. She identifies muscularity, leanness and youthfulness as the contemporary male ideals. And indeed there are no hairy, bald, pot-bellied Calvin Klein models. Nor will you find them in Playgirl, one source that Ricciardelli refers to. (I assume the researchers noticed while reading it for the articles.) Finally, if anyone still doubts that some men are buffeted by body image pressures, simply watch an Advanced Hair ad.
What surprised me about Ricciardelli’s argument, though, is that she doesn’t really refer to what I would have thought was the most important factor affecting body image – looks. Female facial ‘perfection’ is undoubtedly emphasised in our culture, and largely explains Keira Knightley’s acting career. I would have thought that the popularity of gentlemen like Ryan Gosling and Jon Hamm demonstrates that it’s an important factor for women too, since they’re both perceived to be such hotties that women are able to overlook their ridiculous surnames.
But looks aside, there is hope for men struggling with their body image. Two of the factors Ricciardelli emphasises, muscularity and leanness, are largely controllable. Even youthfulness can be attained to some degree through cosmetics, which have increasingly been marketed to men in recent years. She also cites “metrosexuality” – a term that makes me cringe, so I will substitute “well-groomed” – but which is also merely a matter of effort.
Of course, some men’s genes make it harder for them to lose weight or gain muscle mass, but the reality is that the majority of us who feel puny and overweight have it in our power to do something about it, even though surprisingly few of us do so. Sadly, my own research in this area has conclusively proven that neither whinging nor self-deprecating humour will burn calories or tone your abs. But diet and exercise will, if we can be bothered.
Even hairiness is entirely controllable, and Ricciardelli notes that the ancient Egyptians obsessively removed their body hair, which they associated with impurity. It’s something of a taboo in our society as well - I’m sure those iconic Old Spice ads wouldn’t have proven so popular if Isiah Mustafa was hairy. You could flick through the pages of Cleo and Cosmo and not spy a hairy chest anywhere. In fact, the bias against hair is so great that a female friend of mine once told me that she couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t just get full-body electrolysis. Ouch.
And yet, self-image is ultimately determined by the mind, not the body. The ultimate answer, I think, is to take the genetic cards you’ve been dealt and try to be happy. Sure, put effort into the things you can control, like leanness, muscularity and grooming. But obsessing about things like looks and baldness is only going to make you miserable. Sure, this is sometimes easier said than done. But the alternatives are too hideous to contemplate – in particular the world of hair replacement “therapy”, which as I understand involves gluing imported Eastern European hair follicles onto your own scalp. Better to be comfortable in your own skin, I think. Even if, like mine, it’s hairy.
This article originally appeared at Daily Life.