The Cutprice Guignol

I think I’m suffering from university withdrawal. I’ve been home three days and have spent them in bed, writing, drinking beer and in a state of perpetual almost-readiness- if something terrible happened, you’d just have to give me ten minutes to sort myself out. For some reason, I’ve felt slightly hungover for the last week or so; I think your average layman would call it flu, but I refuse to admit weakness so have decided it’s all the hangovers I should have had when  first started drinking come to haunt me. Overall, it’s a pain: much as I love my home, I do miss my small corner of a foreign university campus and the central heating forthwith.

I’ve spent much of my time drinking San Miguel in front of the food channel (which one, I’m not sure; the slightly less classy one with far more American programming). There are some true gems of shows to be found therein- from The Spice King, which, considering the presenter is channeling a particularly camp Kenneth Williams, should be re-dubbed The Spice Queen, to the outrageous grease-inhaling antics of Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. But nothing has outdone the jaw-dropping obscenity of Man v. Food Nation.

If they made you watch sin-appropriate programming in hell, this would be the show for gluttons (incidentally, lust would be punishable by Micheal Winterbottom’s 9 Songs on eternal replay). The “food reality” show (because, as we all know, most food is only hypothetical) features hyper-gurning Adam Richman baiting an iron-stomached madman/woman (one of whom is my Nascar crush Joey Logano, inexplicably) into eating some huge plate of food: six-pound burgers made with buttered beef, five pounds of nachos smothered in melting cheese, twelve-egg omelettes….

The attitude towards the food is almost pornographic; close-ups of dripping dairy products being slathered on sandwiches and slabs of meat sizzling in grease seem more suited to a potential new Redtube category than a food show. Suspiciously, Richman is often only seen from the waist up, so perhaps his presenting role has more to it than a scholarly grasp of shite puns and describing all food as tasting like some kind of sandwich.

If food is sex, then the whole show is a bizarre exercise in populist snuff movies. It certainly does look like some of the contestants might die- they usually end the competition (I use that in it’s loosest sense considering the opponents are inanimate and edible) pouring with sweat, looking like they want to be quite sick and possibly die. It’s like watching cardiac arrest in fast-forward.
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I’ve had two tragically humiliating experiences involving sandwiches this week. The first came in a dash to Subway tonight. My companion, being the  socially adept Londoner he is, ordered competently and literally. After I had blundered through asking if I could use my card, I then announced a filling in panic, and the sweet girl behind the desk pointing questionably at the bread, at which I felt I had to pretend I cared and spent at odd amount of time leering at the loaves. Like a fool.

The second came last night. After waking up mid-afternoon, realizing I had guests, powered through disinfecting my room to the best of my abilities, had a shower, changed, made-up, I had not eaten. Sprinting to the bus, I grabbed the first sandwich I saw in the Union shop and proceeded  to eat one half on the bus and accidentally get up two stops early. Let me get this straight; this was the worst thing in bread. It had curry, brie, mango chutney and tomato, and tasted like snorting crack off the floor of an Indian restaurant toilet. But, as I began to glance at my watch and realize I needed to start running again, I decided to down the whole thing like Gatorade. As I ran past a young family, the remains of that sandwich began to disintegrate, and that pulpy, spicy, sweet, vegetable-laden bready mush in my hands brings me neatly onto my topic today- America’s Next Top Model.

I have watched almost all the seasons in the last three weeks, with three failed blog posts in sheer disbelief. Settle in, lads; it’s a long one. ANTM is hosted by Tyra Banks, supermodel and national forehead, and, as the name suggests, has a collection of girls doing modelling challenges to win a lucrative modelling contract and loads of good shit. It starts with fourteen girls, with one eliminated after two challenges and a sort of camp Apprentice-style board meetings each week.

I’ll start with the contestants. I mean, the show does really fuck with the girls. This episode I happen to have on has a sequence in which a girl is put  in a sexual situation with another woman for a photoshoot, and it all gets uncomfortably, intimately sapphic. Lots of very sexual shoots with some surprisingly handsy male models, more shoots than I could count where they portray corpses; a lot of it is kind of ludicrous. There’s a lot of vicious editing, casting specific heroes and villains every cycle. Although most of the bitching looks petty and relatively surface, but some of them seem to be going through genuine emotional distress, which is pretty uncomfortable. The girls who cry over their makeovers, though? Pish. I cut half my fringe off by accident last week. My reaction? Not possible to register. But what’s most unpleasant is the body issues some of the girls evidently have; even the curvier women (who aren’t all eliminated in the first round, actually) looking a little unhealthy. I’ve lost a lot of weight recently and am now at the thinnest I’ve been in several years, and I look at these women and wonder what they had to go through to get that, because only the lucky few just have it. Some of them do seem genuinely stupid, too; not just vapid but sometimes vehemently defending a cause they don’t totally understand, and it makes me want to batter people with my laptop.

Then there’s the judges. Different series have different collections of judges each time; the golden age of ANTM featured handsome photographer Nigel Barker, seemingly intersex Miss Jay, Mr Jay, the masculine equivalent (using masculine in it’s loosest form here), Tyra, and Janice Dickinson,   apparently an ex-supermodel, but really a leatherbacked offending machine that spends almost an infinite amount of time with her tongue in Barker’s ear. Janice was a complete provocation device and naught more, but she occasionally sledgehammer insulted the girls in a way that I agree with, delivering a verbal equivalent of beating someone to death with an old can of Budweiser in a rainy backstreet in Glasgow. I love  Miss Jay too; the wild fashion choices, copying the models screwing up and attempts at comic relief make him the try-hard toddler of the show, and that’s kind of endearing.

Then there’s Tyra. TYRA FUCKING BANKS. She rose from being a benevolent judge, to a mother-figure, to an actual demi-Goddess. The prizes have gotten worse and worse each year, because meeting Tyra has become half the winnings. Girls weep upon meeting her, they receive the sinister TyraMail to inform them of their missions for the day, and nobody laughs at her when she tries to demonstrate two slightly different expressions and both times her face looks the same. I piss myself every time this happens so it must be fear of being struck down by her wrath. Maybe they’re right and I’m doomed. We’ll see.

But I can’t stop watching. It’s somehow compelling and with properly argument-worthy results, and the passion for such ludicrous bits and scenes and outfits and people it’s heartening. So you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to walk to Tesco, buy a sandwich, and watch the season 15 finale.

Reasons why politicians should start acting like Doctor Who.

1. He remembers people’s names. Nick Clegg took inspiration from the Time Lord during the election debates, standing out as the candidate with the most social aptitude. Unfortunately  this wannabee Galifrean turned out to be more of a Martha Jones- poorly acted, permanently twitchy, and endlessly inviting ridicule.

2. He always has a spunky female sidekick. Imagine all the little sub-Cleggian types, but played by  shouty, nostril-flaring Billie Piper or leggy Scotswoman Karen Gillan. Much as she’s tried, Ann Widecombe just hasn’t been up to assistant standard yet. Replacing her with Emma Watson would help.  Or Nigella Lawson,who’ve I’ve always seen as this assistant from some soft-core, erotic porn parody called Doctor Whore.

3. He dresses well. Imagine David Cameron sweeping up for parliament in a knee-length suede jacket, hands rammed in pinstriped pockets with his hair swept off his face like a  Kerouac who ended up teaching English at high schools. I’d hate him half as much.

4. He’s sexually ambiguous. Though William Hague apparently tried to fuel rumors about his sexuality, it all looked a bit seedy and not as swishy and rollicking as the Doctor makes the rough and tumble of homosexual activity seem. Solution: Replace William Hague with John Barrowman.

5. The theme tune. They could play it while everyone was filing into their seats at the start of Government. Doo doo doooo…..

I look down on people for a lot of reasons. I look down on people for binge drinking, for sleeping around, for judging people, for being indolent, for posturing, for stupidity, for being that one person who does “Brown-Eyed Girl” at karaoke. Luckily for me, I don’t look down on people for being massive hypocrites.

But I have never- never- hated anyone or anything more than My Super Sweet Sixteen UK. I’m being contained here, but only because I’ve gone beyond rage and entered into a zen-like trance of pure fury. I’m filled with such rage it’s almost all I can do not to set the building on fire with a smile on my face as my insignificant corporeal form is eaten up and finally, finally the anger will dissipate.

But where to direct my hatred? There are three main targets; the first is, obviously, the birthday girl/boy. Each week features a different entitled goblin as it’s focus; swinging between squealing, pixel-thin sloanes and idiot chavs. And they are just astoundingly shallow. I mean, I dye my hair, I wear make-up, I’m hardly a butch lesbian lumberjack- but Christ. One of them explains that without shopping, she’d kill herself. Another has a two-thousand pound custom dress handmade in India. One of them demands a thirty-thousand pound wristwatch as a gift. One of them auditions girls to dance with him, and is also Welsh. The mind fucking boggles. Everything to these people is a vapid fashion statement; their clothes, their venues, their hair, their friends. And the sheer cost of these things. You know what I did for my last birthday? I had an evening in with my Dad, and we watched American Werewolf in London with a curry. Later in the week, I had a quiet drink with a couple of close friends.I didn’t do it in a Swarovski-crystal-embroidered dress, and I didn’t have my father on the phone trying to fly Shane Ward in on two days notice.

And that brings me neatly to my second hatred-target; the parents. Constantly coddling to their putrid spawn, they spent outrageous amounts of money on utter bollocks. One girl refers to her father as “Daddy” which is, frankly, sickening; leaning out of the window of her new convertible and blowing a kiss at the camera, intoning “I love my daddy!” like a violated Bratz doll. It’s tempting to blame the parents in this case, and there’s no doubt that they are responsible for their bastarding little offspring. But it’s difficult to watch a seventeen-year-old throwing a strop because he doesn’t get the car he wants and say it’s not his own fault. It’s even harder to watch a fifteen-year-old dressed as a rapper and sprinkling money on two pretty, wide-eyed juveniles as he poses for promotional photos and not want to cry, to just cry.

The third and perhaps most soul-crushing element is the guests. Gurning, grinning, dancing, snogging, sweating little toads desperately grasping at even the implied offshoots of fame. Pushing their fat little heads in shot as they deliver shiny-faced vox pops on how amazing the party is. Comfortingly rubbing the host’s back as they weep over the fact that their cake hasn’t got enough money on it. All of them coiffed, curled, buffed, tanned and made-up to the max, looking like nervous foals taking their first high-heeled steps; they want to get involved with all the debauchery but aren’t quite sure where to stick it. Weep for them. Weep.

The worst part of it? This is exactly the reaction I’m supposed to have had. Outside of the people of questionable taste who aspire to this sort of thing, it’s sole aim is to outrage people like me with it’s ludicrous decadence. And they’ve done it, the bastards. They’ve won. What does that make me? We’ll see. We’ll see.

I woke up this morning to discover I’d committed complete, unprecedented dignitycide. Still wearing last night’s jeans and very little else, I was roused by the opening riff of Have Love, Will Travel, which may or may not have been completely imagined. My right hand is covered in light burns, I can still taste brandy right at the back of my throat, and I can recall very little past ten; one particularly potent memory was standing in front of my mirror and almost sobbing with laughter at my own reflection which, although depressing for my waking self, at least gives me the option of a career in facial comedy if the whole university thing doesn’t work out. I’d also like to take this opportunity to apologize to everyone I tried to “communicate” with last night; I use that term loosely, because all evidence suggests that it took me almost four minutes to spell “I” correctly before giving up on conversation and slipping into a brandy-induced coma, face firmly entrenched in the keyboard of my laptop.

But none of that- none of that- contributed to my diginitycide as much as this.  I have an awful, humiliating secret. In fact, yesterday, I sat down in front of Netflix mid-afternoon and only rose again many hours later after watching the entire series of Secret Diary of a Call Girl back-to-back. A series starring ex-Doctor Who assistant Billie Piper in what must be one of the most confusing roles in the world for young Whovians, it’s all about the kinky exploits of high-class prostitute Belle du Jour (potrayed with nostril-flaring self-awareness by Piper). Bizarrely, the main love interest throughout the series looks the spit of Arthur Darvill.

I have no problem with a series being about sex. And, much as it tries not to be, SDoaCG (pretty pleased with that abbreviation considering it’s twenty to seven in the morning) has only one redeeming feature: the novelty of seeing sex on prime-time TV. Everything else is completely without merit, and I say that as someone who has seen all the Jackass films. The characters are nil-dimensional, the plot is non-existent, the characterization is outstandingly weak, the acting (save for Piper who is sort of alright) is across-the-board dire.

And the sex is awful, too.  All her clients are either pretty buff or hilariously ugly.  Even after a night of glamorous romping, Piper is barely disheveled; after an evening of light drinking, I woke up looking as if I’d slammed my face repeatedly against my make-up bag.  And this is a series about one of London’s top call girls; it’s likely she’d have had sex with her bra off more than once. As I always say; if you come to ITV for uncensored sex, the internet is going to blow your mind.

I wonder what it says about the attitude towards women at my university that,in the ladies bathroom, you have to basically have your entire fist inside the hand dryer before it’ll blow for you. 

You know what I love? I love Mythbusters. I’m re-watching the early series and I’ve fallen back in love with the berets, the bits and the banter. It’s like an American Scrapheap Challenge meets Urban Legends; two glorified pub buddies with science degrees test myths to see if they could possibly be real.

I’m cruel about the presenting team of Adam Savage and Jamie Hineman only because I love them so; most of all, what comes through in their onscreen appearances is that they genuinely look like they’re having a good time; taking the piss out of each other while trying to blow up a petrol station with a mobile phone. The panting puppy of Savage mixed with the steely science-teacher-looking Hineman bounce of each other perfectly. Yes, it’s shitely scripted but it’s funny. A damn sight more amusing than the bland brain-poking of rip-off Braniac: Audience Abuse.

And I hate science and mechanics. I try and pick fights with people in lab coats because they probably fucking deserve it, the uppity shits. Think you’re better than me, do you? With your genuinely useful contributions to society? What has science done that this blog hasn’t? Shut up. I really don’t like science. But it’s hard not to enjoy this cushy sofa-science, mixed as it is with a ennervatingly enthusiastic voiceover and shots of one of the two wearing some piece of women’s clothing or doing something unspeakable with breast implants. It’s the scientific equivalent of inhaling Doritos and torpeodoing Pepsi but it’s fun as all hell and at least feels like an attempt to make science and mechanics accessible by people who care not, say, belated- Top Gear hosts with the look of a condemned man behind his eyes. Just off the top of my head, Hammond, you shit.

There are things no-one tells you about university before you go. You look at pictures of accommodation  poke round the campus, download all the study materials and harden your liver for the inevitable drinking frenzy. But I thought I’d divulge to you my top tips for university, and so on.

1. Smokers are by far the most interesting people on campus.

All the interesting people I’ve met, smoke. They’re the people who don’t give a flying fuck what happens to their lungs, their health, or their sperm count (the women are particularly loose with this ethic). They don’t mind huddling in the rain, cold, snow and wind just to feast on some delicious cancer. See that person opposite you at the union doing fourteen tequila shots? Thirty quid and a rum and coke says they’re a smoker. Anyone who cares that little about their health is instantly more interesting (even if their doctor would beg to differ).

2. The water in the tap in your room has lead in it.

Why? Why? Why? The kitchen’s a positive quest away when tipsy. Is this how they’re keeping tuition fees down? Murdering us off? Alex Salmond, you cunning bastard.

3. You’ll likely die in the library.

Always happens to me; I bring a companion for a sort of Hilary and Sherpa Tensing situation should one of us actually pass away while looking for Linda Colley’s “Forging the Nation” in a library so labyrinthine I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find David Bowie in spandex tights in the politics aisle. Also, the photocopiers have a similar manual to the Da Vinci code. Avoid.

4. Roomates will do inexplicable things.

Football, in the corridor, at three in the morning? No, don’t let me stop you. I wasn’t doing anything important, just trying to  sleep for the first time in three days. Don’t worry. I’ll just get up and make some dinner. It’s been ages since I’ve had rage-filled Spaghetti.

5. Tequila shots count as study breaks.

Nothing to see here.

Don’t say you learn nothing coming here. I’m a thoughtful bloggerer.