The Cutprice Guignol

It’s the middle of the bloody night,  I have lectures in seven hours time, and my body has just laughed in my face and decided that sleep is a commodity I can simply do without today. So, what to do? Raid the vending machines upstairs, wrap myself in a duvet, and feebly mock something that’s far more popular than I will ever be. Namely, a wanker’s literary reaction to River City. Take that, BBC who have created some of my all-time favourite shows and generally been a paragon of broadcasting virtue throughout my entire media-consuming lifespan!

Ah yes, the theme music! The opening sequence features 24-style split-screening and extensive shots of a stone lion, despite the fact that said lion rarely features as a key player in any of the episodes. What I’d like to draw your attention to at this point is the fact that River Shitty (too easy, really) does make a point of hiring the worst actors you can imagine. In fact, they’re so bad I started to think halfway through the episode that this was a deliberate parody of really terrible acting and that I was actually viewing some of the most innovative performances of my generation. What’s particularly striking is that many of the actors look like other people on TV- there’s one lad who looks like Bruce Forsyth might had he chosen a career as a pornstar, and another who looks like John Simm as redesigned with a plank full of rusty nails. The one thing all the performances have in common, aside from the lookalike factor, is the awful, dead look behind their eyes, the look that says they know their only viewers are themselves, peering into the camera as if trying to work out if their future selves are actually watching or have finally ended the sweet torment. I glanced over the Wikipedia page to do some “research” before starting this post- the article seems to sum up the passage of the show, starting out with thorough, brisk paragraphs, before descending into staccato half-sentences like a lost soldier futilely radioing for help from a platoon he knows is long, long dead.

I’d totally forgotten this soap was set in Scotland till I was greeted by what I can only describe as the west end Glaswegian shriek. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Glaswegian accents for the most part, but for some reason here it feels as if someone is forcing a handful of  switchblades into my ear for half an hour. And I say that as a born-and-bred Invernshneckian, having been subjected to the horrendous Invernesian caw for seventeen years before I made my escape. Unlike many other mainstream soaps, River City is pretty much a relentless stream of grimness; depicting Scottish life as a bombardment of drizzle, corruption, promiscuity and booze. I find this a little unfair, considering we have at least a few good chippies.

So there’s Scotland’s top soap for you: life’s a bad-weathered bitch, then you end up in River City. Oh, flower of Scotland…

I’ve done several new things of late. One of them was going to a club for the first time. Predictably, I didn’t like it. The glamorous establishment, known as “Dusk”, was the purveyor of one-pound drinks and pumping choons. I wouldn’t have minded, but the one time I did elbow my way into the slithering pit of writhing bodies and practically liquid pheromone (the dance bit), me and my male friend were forced into comedy slow-motion mime falling over by a couple getting to a Canadian third base right next to us.

On a related note, I am currently festooned with club paraphernalia. It was given for me to free and, in my defense, they were quick and I was hungover. In addition to a stubborn wristband, flyers and badges, all adorned with the bright neon Refreshers Week logo that makes my eyes smart a little, they also have themed condoms. Normal condoms have been snazzed up with these bright stickers, so you can catch a glimpse as you go to use it at some point during the week and remember that you’re probably going to get an STD anyway.

I’ve also started listening to Aim & Ignite, which is an excellent album that I heartily recommend. It’s the 2009 debut album by your band fun. (of We Are Young fame), and you should listen to it. And not just the singles. I’ll know.

The third and final thing is this:  my blog (two words that strike fear into the hearts of rational men) recently hit a thousand views after being around for four months. I assume that means someone somewhere is reading it. If this person is you, and you like what you’ve read, it’d be just the tops if you’d point people in the direction of The Cutprice Guignol or subscribe or some shite. Writing is what I do for money and the more popular this blog is the better. Cheers. To continue the theme of pulicity whoring, here are a list of famous porn websites to trick people into reading: redtube, youporn, pornhub, redporn, youhub, redhub, porntube.

Here’s something I’m a little embarrassed to admit: I was cautiously looking forward to The Carrie Diaries. Although I’m not one of the apparent army who’d lay down their life for Sex and The City, I’d quietly enjoyed most of the series and, when I found out there was a prequel with Doctor Who actress Freema Aygeman in the works, I vowed to watch the pilot with interest.

Imagine my disappointment, then, when I actually saw it. What made Sex and The City such a success, and what sets it apart from other programmes skewed towards the fairer sex, is the wise decision to focus on the titular city as almost a fifth character; New York looked, by turns, glamorous, dilapidated, unbearably modern and attractively quaint. Another major player in the shows success was-and let’s be honest about this- all the graphic-for-populist-TV sex. There was still a mild novelty in the explicit banter about the sex lives of the lead characters (and apparently everyone else they even had a casual acquaintance with), although it’s difficult to imagine anyone in this day and age who would need to have the function of a rampant rabbit explained to them. It was a pleasant, slightly risqué drama-comedy, the televisual equivalent a cheeky seaside postcard wrapped around a dildo. And that was fine.

So what do you get when you replace New York with high school, assured thirtysomethings with bellybutton-staring teenagers and people who can actually act with Freema Aygeman? A big, sloppy mess. The majority of the actors grapple commendably with the disgraceful writing, in particular the teen cast, who go at it (the acting, you gutterminds) with a wide-eyed gusto the adults can’t seem to muster. Matt Letscher as Carrie’s recently widowed father is particularly weak, less phoning in his performance than texting it in from the inside of a tunnel. And who can blame him? Featuring characters that are essentially a cross between a flashcard with a stick figure on it and a particularly lingering fart, the set-ups for the stories for this season were about as compelling as gluing your fingertips together and the direction apparently nonexistent. They’ve simply transplanted the characters from Sex and The City- the outrageously camp one, the comedically promiscuous one, the sensible one, Carrie- from somewhere where their characters made sense, stuffed them into a pigeonhole marked “High School Drama” and hoped no-one would notice. When the characters first appeared they were at least moderately fresh and witty, and seeing, for all intents and purposes, what is the same cast in an eighties high school scenario is blisteringly silly. The moral of The Carrie Diaries thus far? Let sleeping dogs- and Rabbits- lie.

Firstly, I’m not offering any excuses for finding myself so frequently on the Cosmopolitan magazine website. Like my quiet enjoyment of prawn cocktail crisps and porn parodies, it’s simply not something I can even begin to defend on any kind of intellectual level, save for to laugh at the spelling errors and awful writing which make this blog look like The Origin of Species by comparison. A publication built on a precarious tower of articles about celebrity hair, attempts at serious journalism and blowjob tips, it essentially summates to an Amnesty International flyer with a crudely drawn cock scrawled on it in lipstick. After several deeply taxing visits to Blowjob Central, I’ve compiled a list of reasons why none of us should ever return. Be warned.

1. The across-the-board comedy dating advice.

Think about the last person you dated, or slept with, or got to second base with outside a pub in the drizzling rain. Chances were they weren’t hewn from molten sexy in the fires of Mount Take Me Now (myself excluded, but then I’ve never settled for anything less than a ripped Adonis hung like a rhino on steroids). So can you imagine “pretending to fall against him, then saying “Wow, your pecs are so hard it’s like falling against a wall””? The likelihood of that being even slightly believable are lower only than the chances of not accidentally faceplanting when you “pretend to fall” on him. Fuck’s sake.

2. They use too many distracting euphemisms for vagina.

Fanny. Hoo-ha. Ladybits. Not only do these all sound like potential Americas Next Top Model contestants, but beg the sentence I hoped I’d never have to say again: stop trying to sugar coat your genitals. Call a vag a vag and be done with it.

3. They relate everything to Fifty Shades of Grey.

Like a demented labyrinth built by a madman that only leads to one conclusion, the Cosmo staff have been squawking hysterically over the book in every article since it’s release. Find your Christian Grey! Spend £318 on nipple clamps! Jiggle balls! Jiggle balls! JIGGLE BALLS! Yes, what was once a throwaway joke on Scrubs has now become the crest of a sexual wave that Cosmo is surfing with one hand down it’s wetsuit. Terrific.

4. The writing is dire.

“…and have an orgasm that is both intense and powerful!” No, you can’t just use a synonym to bulk up your word count. It might look like bastard nitpicking and it is; but this is one of the most internationally recognizable women’s magazines in the world. They could at least write like professionals and spell things correctly. “God, Lou, you look peaky, sick, nauseous and additionally under the weather!” “Probably all this fucking Cosmo”.

Now, run away and never look back.

Xamping began as a simple twist on the usual abseiling sport somewhen in the sixties, the pastime of the genteel and elderly. By the mid-nineties, it had developed into what some critics would have called a brutally sadistic Battle Royale amongst insane toffs if they hadn’t been murdered by the so-called Extreme Xampers.

The rules were few and the deaths were many. What started as basic hand-to-hand combat moved onto various, more creative variations; some of the  most popular being horse Xamping, jet Xamping, and the self-explanatory Nightmare on Xamper Street. Unfortunately, some were combined to detrimental effect: the mess of Xamper Wars was, some argue, outweighed by the splendor of the Xamper Deathlympics, including the ever-popular Gattling-gun 100 Metres and High Jump into a Neverending Pit. Most weapons and forms of combat were permitted; only balloons had been actively banned due to the original creator’s dislike of them. Although it was only permitted into the Olympics once (a horrific and deadly misunderstanding with the Olympic Torch in Bristol), it has had it’s effect on the world of sport, with Daryl “The Xampmeister” Haroldson being named Sports Personality of the Year in two nonconsecutive  years.

After arousing the suspicion of the RSPCA after the lavadog death match, Extreme Xamping was reviewed and reluctantly banned, causing outrage nationwide. Although many illegal Xamper pits are in action today, many are still campaigning for the re-institution of what was truly the pride of Britain.