The Cutprice Guignol

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.

It’s late and the night has not be good to me thus far.  I can’t close my window the whole way, my light is playing up and I’ve been cursed with the most pathetic little cough in the whole world (I sound like a mouse with the first stages of lung cancer). So, it’s time for A Good Film marathon. And those good films? The Final Destination series.

First off, anyone who’s spoken to me for more than, say, ten minutes will know I love horror films. And not in the same way that people love their My Chemical Romance albums, or their dogs, or their wives. I would kick a leprous seal in the face to spend a minute in the company of John Carpenter; I would cut my index fingers off with a smile on my face to hug Robert Englund. I’d even consider first-degree murder to have a good sit-down chat with Rob Zombie.  I really, really love horror films.

I am a huge fan of the FD series. After the first film (by far the weakest) the makers seemed to rub their hands together with glee and decide to have a bit of fun. In a universe where fences are lethal and everyone is a bag of jelly waiting to be disseminated into pieces, the level of creativity is frankly astounding; death by everything is possible, even amateur gymnastics and Thai massage. I blame my general paranoia and antisocial activity on the fact that  I once spent a month watching these films on repeat; the world becomes a deeply suspicious place when you face death at least eight times by walking to the shop for some crisps.

I couldn’t choose my favorite  if pushed, I’d have to say the fifth or the third. The third has the added bonus of Mary Elizabeth Winstead, a piece of eye-candy so delicious that she makes even Deathproof (Why, Tarantino, why?) watchable. The plot is the same as the other films; after a brief set-up in which one of the characters has a vision of people dying, people don’t die, then death comes after them. And, apparently, so does Tony Todd, in his star-making role as a local undertaker in regular correspondence with death.

One of the most commendable things about the films is their use of models as opposed to special effects; for the most part, the filmakers actually built replicas of the actors, filled them with a comedy amount of squirty strawberry sauce and ketchup, then actually demolished them in a variety of increasingly hilarious ways; my top FD moment has to be a scene in which someone is launched backwards through a fence and diced up into manageable, diamond-shaped chunks. It does take a particular mindset to really get into the films (and, once found, you can never return from it), but the fact that the villain is actually death itself lends a fantastic air of “OH GOD, WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN NEXT?!”to the series, as literally anything can happen at any time, leading to fantastically self-aware scenes such as this one (I wouldn’t reccomend watching it if you plan on eating soon)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LODv11y59I in which the filmmakers  gleefully toy with the audience before a fantastic and ludicrous payoff.

But my light has finally given up the ghost and I’m being treated to a frankly astonishingly bad rendition of Que Sera, Sera, and it feels time to settle down and point and laugh while people  I don’t know die. Just like watching BBC News then, really.

The title of gimmicky reality show Don’t Tell the Bride doesn’t just refer to the wedding the groom has to organise with no communication with his wife-to-be. It also refers to the presumable gag  friends and family must take in order to let the groom make huge, blundering, errors, and let the bride throw the inevitable strop while merrily stoking the fires of their discontent.

The couple this week are made up of a nice-but-dim metalhead whose name is irrelevant, and his rock-chick girlfriend Terri, a heavily tattooed and pierced, flame-haired enigma whose voice-over also claims to love pink, girly, sparkly bits, over shots of her positioning gems on an iPhone. The best man is an extraordinarily camp, bald man who, within seconds of appearing on-screen, has become by far my favorite member of the party this week. But what’s this? Here’s Man saying he wants a metal, rock, hardcore wedding, and a cut shot of Terri implying she won’t marry her finace unless she gets “a princess wedding”.  Conflict? Surely not?

And here the production team begins to twist the knife.  Dragging in family, there are endless shots of the groom and entourage driving around talking about venues. At one point, on the disappointment of a venue being closed on the Sabbath, the groom turns his heavily tattooed, pierced face to the camera and announces “Sundays suck”, which I can see being made into some sort of gif for the next Conservative election campaign. Obviously staged fights take place to indie soundtracks, but things only really start spraying blood when the bride finds out what the wedding’s going to be like.

Fustratingly, he actually does a reasonable job of picking a dress. I’ve never got the appeal of a wedding dress myself, not having had my ovaries put where my brain used to be, but even I have to admit she looks all frothy and booby. Then the wedding happens. The bride walks up the sort of stage-aisle while some sort of bland metal band chugs away distressingly on stage. After endless vox pops of Terri telling the camera emphatically that if Groom #14 made a metal wedding she would not be best impressed. But it seems this week that the selection process has failed dismally. Most weeks, the couple will be so volatile anyway, that any sort of deviation  from the Bride’s vision will end in storming out and bawling. But this week, although she looks a little perturbed at the men howling into microphones, Terri and her husband actually seem pretty happy and content.

I felt totally cheated. Sentimental bastards.

It’s late, I’m tired, I’m miserable and the usual parade of drunks are chattering away outside my window with no forseeable intentions of shutting up.  Yes, it’s time for The Great British Bake Off again, a show which combines stodgy puddings with heart-stopping trials-by-cooking, like a Saw trap designed by Delia Smith.

I grew up with a clutch of Mary Berry cookery books as a child, enthusiastically baking to her kind, slow, matronly recipes. To see her here, then, a great, sweeping, almost avian matriarch, is somewhat of a shock. By far the judge with the most gravitas, she brings a layer of haughty, slightly sulky, expertise to the show. The other judges-Paul Hollywood,who both sounds and looks like an ageing male stripper, Mel Giedroyc, and Sue Perkins, all seem quite extra-requirements as the contestants are so astonishingly knowledgeable about what they cook. It’s gratifying to watch for much of the time, cooking is a science as opposed to an art, which is surely where some if this so-called “Britishness” comes from.

The food looks so good I tried at regular intervals to crawl through the screen to eat it. And there’s something quite relaxing about listening to the cool narration describing the catastrophic effects of steam on pastry. And the competitions are genuinely nail-biting- everything looks such an incredible improvement on something I, a sufficient cook, could make. These people are the sort of people who have families, kids, a full-time job, and can still whip up what appears to be a stag beetle fighting a dove out of crisp bread on the hop? Now that’s something I can buy into.

The whole programme would be perhaps more truthful if it were renamed “The Great British Pastry Fetishists Club”, as everyone is focused on pastry. There are countless crash-zooms of pastry going into ovens, coming out of ovens, being kneaded, being rolled out. Frantic vox-pop interviews with exhausted competitors  on their hopes and their fears for their pastry. And the narration which I’m certain had hours of outtakes in which she descended into “Your pastry better turn out all right, you bitch, otherwise you’re totally fucked. Yes, God help you if you don’t use lard to get a crisp pastry. Who knows what they’ll all say. They’ll all laugh. Mary. And Paul. And Mel. And the other one. Yes. You’ve got to rotatae it while squeezing the pastry into the doily…..”

Well, I like to think so.