Blimey there’s a lot of dust in here. Whose idea was it to choose the blog template that looks like a petrol company website designed by an eight year old? Was that fashionable in 2011?
Ah 2011. A year when it was still acceptable to hum the Jim’ll fix it theme without parents eying you suspiciously and sweeping their children from your path. When the book of celebrity sex offenders was the size of a ‘visit Blackpool’ tourist leaflet rather than a multi-volume tome that would impress Norris McWhirter. When Peter O’Toole was not only famous for being a great actor, but also for being inexplicably alive despite decades of boozing. When Miley Cyrus’ bottom was less famous than her face. When there was no doubt about Jim Davidson being a lesser man than Rolf Harris. When I was wondering how long it would be until the amazing girl I had recently started dating was going to tell me that it wasn’t me, it was her*.
Since 2011 this blog has been dormant, occasionally reminding me of its presence with an email to say that something spammy has arrived in the comments section of various stagnating posts. Curiously enough most of these comments have come from ‘Jim’. Spam from beyond the grave, who’d have expected that? Sometimes the comment would look like an actual comment – a delightful prospect when you assume you are typing into the wind.
“I was not expecting that I’d get so much out of reading your write up!” they say.
“How nice!” I say.
“Buy windows 7 ultimate!” they say.
“Oh…” I say.
And yet here we are again, back from the grave. In the words of Martin Riggs in Lethal Weapon 2 “we’re back” (of course he also says “we’re bad; he’s black; I’m a terrible anti-Semite” but let’s not get into that.)
*Incidentally she never did say this. What she did say, two years later, was “yes”.
Friday, 10 January 2014
Monday, 19 September 2011
Alarums
I don't know much about cars. My knowledge doesn't extend much further than "that is a blue one"; "that one has four doors" and "that is a boring one, why are we talking about cars anyway?". Having said that, one thing I do know about cars is that, if you can possibly help it, you don't want them to be stolen. To prevent this many of them are fitted with alarms called, rather unusually, 'car alarms'.
Car alarms are naturally one of the things about cars that I neither know nor care about. At least I didn't until this evening. You see as I walked home from work this evening I passed by a fancy looking Mercedes. There might be other types of Mercedes, but if there are I've never seen one.
As I passed this car a black couple passed it (and me) whilst pushing a pram (black, two wheels) in the opposite direction. As soon as they passed the vehicle the car alarm burst into life. Lights flashed, the horn honked and high pitched beeps beeped high pitchedly. Needless to say the couple leapt put of their socks, giggled at their surprise and continue on their way. I'm not sure what the baby did. Come to think of it I'm not even sure there was anything in the pram.
Now the sensitivity of the Mercedes alarm has truly put me off buying one at any point in the future. I don't own a car at the moment but when I do get one it won't be a Mercedes. I'm simply not prepared to buy a car whose alarm is set to 'racial stereotypes from the 1970s'.
Of course I might be wrong. Like I said, I don't know much about cars. But I do know that this one was black.
And had four doors.
And was a racist.
Car alarms are naturally one of the things about cars that I neither know nor care about. At least I didn't until this evening. You see as I walked home from work this evening I passed by a fancy looking Mercedes. There might be other types of Mercedes, but if there are I've never seen one.
As I passed this car a black couple passed it (and me) whilst pushing a pram (black, two wheels) in the opposite direction. As soon as they passed the vehicle the car alarm burst into life. Lights flashed, the horn honked and high pitched beeps beeped high pitchedly. Needless to say the couple leapt put of their socks, giggled at their surprise and continue on their way. I'm not sure what the baby did. Come to think of it I'm not even sure there was anything in the pram.
Now the sensitivity of the Mercedes alarm has truly put me off buying one at any point in the future. I don't own a car at the moment but when I do get one it won't be a Mercedes. I'm simply not prepared to buy a car whose alarm is set to 'racial stereotypes from the 1970s'.
Of course I might be wrong. Like I said, I don't know much about cars. But I do know that this one was black.
And had four doors.
And was a racist.
Published with Blogger-droid v1.7.2
Tuesday, 13 September 2011
Emblazoned glory
I apologise for the lack of posts, I seem to have blinked and missed three months. Are you still there? Ah, brilliant. Nice to see you. Are you well? Splendid. Now before we move on can we please make sure that all cans of worms are securely fastened. With that sorted, let’s talk about disabled people…
Apart from the parking, there aren't many benefits to being disabled. It is possibly for this reason that so many people (though inevitably not enough) put themselves out to provide disabled people with the opportunity (the kind of opportunity that able-bodied people take for granted) to take part in leisure activities such as swimming. But when you have set up a group that does this sort of thing, how do you decide on the name?
There are some groups where it is fairly transparent why they have chosen to name their club in the way they did. A swimming club composed of thalidomide victims called ‘Flippers’ for instance. Now I’m not saying they would sell many promotional t-shirts (or indeed armbands) and I’m not saying that it would be morally sound to call their group such, but at least you could understand how they arrived at the name. The same cannot be said for the bus that was unloading its passengers when I left my local leisure centre last evening.
As you can see, “Seahorses” it reads along the side of the bus, “Swimming for the less able”. By the euphemistic ‘less able’ of course, it meant ‘disabled’. I’ve no problem with the suggestion the group are simply less able, but this was quite clearly for disabled people. There were no people standing around who simply couldn’t swim very well. I’m pretty sure that they might not even qualify for membership but it’s tempting to apply to find out for sure. Like going up to an AA man with ‘join us here’ on the side of his van and when he asks what car you drive you say ‘Drive? My dear fellow, I don’t drive. I walk everywhere’ and watch your time-wasting cause a layer of their dignity to peel from their soul and flap away on the autumnal breeze.
Also, it didn’t appear to be for the entire disabled spectrum. For example, there wasn’t a man with one arm stood next to them who qualifies as less able because he can’t swim in a straight line. There was just a steady stream of wheelchair users being lowered carefully out of the minibus and parked up by the side of the leisure centre like the household cavalry on a day out. They had to be lowered carefully because if they injured one they would be even less able to swim and would have to join a swimming club called 'Stones'.
But why ‘Seahorses’? Why should a seahorse’s swimming ability be besmirched in such a way? If they wheeled themselves around the ocean bed grumbling about the lack of ramps I could understand it. If crabs were heard complaining about seahorses getting to park close to the coral it would be a different story. But they don’t. And they don't. They float through the water with an ethereal grace. They don't totter around the reef like aquatic cranefly. If it's a size thing and the club's members are simply learning to swim why not name the club after something that is more obviously in a stage of development? I for instance learned at a club called ‘Tadpoles’. And yes, I have subsequently grown into a toad.
I feel that the best course of action when naming a group of (euphemism alert) less able people you should opt for something that is relevant but not demeaning. Maybe even empowering. Actually, if it was good enough I’d probably take a hammer to my spine just to qualify. Just so that I can say “My name is Ben, and I swim with ‘Ironsides swimming club’”.
Apart from the parking, there aren't many benefits to being disabled. It is possibly for this reason that so many people (though inevitably not enough) put themselves out to provide disabled people with the opportunity (the kind of opportunity that able-bodied people take for granted) to take part in leisure activities such as swimming. But when you have set up a group that does this sort of thing, how do you decide on the name?
There are some groups where it is fairly transparent why they have chosen to name their club in the way they did. A swimming club composed of thalidomide victims called ‘Flippers’ for instance. Now I’m not saying they would sell many promotional t-shirts (or indeed armbands) and I’m not saying that it would be morally sound to call their group such, but at least you could understand how they arrived at the name. The same cannot be said for the bus that was unloading its passengers when I left my local leisure centre last evening.
As you can see, “Seahorses” it reads along the side of the bus, “Swimming for the less able”. By the euphemistic ‘less able’ of course, it meant ‘disabled’. I’ve no problem with the suggestion the group are simply less able, but this was quite clearly for disabled people. There were no people standing around who simply couldn’t swim very well. I’m pretty sure that they might not even qualify for membership but it’s tempting to apply to find out for sure. Like going up to an AA man with ‘join us here’ on the side of his van and when he asks what car you drive you say ‘Drive? My dear fellow, I don’t drive. I walk everywhere’ and watch your time-wasting cause a layer of their dignity to peel from their soul and flap away on the autumnal breeze.
Also, it didn’t appear to be for the entire disabled spectrum. For example, there wasn’t a man with one arm stood next to them who qualifies as less able because he can’t swim in a straight line. There was just a steady stream of wheelchair users being lowered carefully out of the minibus and parked up by the side of the leisure centre like the household cavalry on a day out. They had to be lowered carefully because if they injured one they would be even less able to swim and would have to join a swimming club called 'Stones'.
But why ‘Seahorses’? Why should a seahorse’s swimming ability be besmirched in such a way? If they wheeled themselves around the ocean bed grumbling about the lack of ramps I could understand it. If crabs were heard complaining about seahorses getting to park close to the coral it would be a different story. But they don’t. And they don't. They float through the water with an ethereal grace. They don't totter around the reef like aquatic cranefly. If it's a size thing and the club's members are simply learning to swim why not name the club after something that is more obviously in a stage of development? I for instance learned at a club called ‘Tadpoles’. And yes, I have subsequently grown into a toad.
I feel that the best course of action when naming a group of (euphemism alert) less able people you should opt for something that is relevant but not demeaning. Maybe even empowering. Actually, if it was good enough I’d probably take a hammer to my spine just to qualify. Just so that I can say “My name is Ben, and I swim with ‘Ironsides swimming club’”.
Friday, 3 June 2011
Sweet like...oh
Jolly in both the literal and the euphemistic sense of the word (and black in the completely-irrelevant-to-everything sense of the word), Alison was presenting her chocolate souffle for the judges' delectation. As a souffle, it was light and fluffy and generally as far from a proper pudding (trifle) as is realistically possible. As a chocolatey thing it was...ahem...brown. Now, of the three judges the first liked it thus granted her a point, the second liked it but not as much as the other dessert (trifle) so denied her a point and when it came to the third, he also denied her a point. His reason?
"I just don't like chocolate".
Surprisingly he didn't go on to complain about "coming over here, cooking our souffles".
Published with Blogger-droid v1.7.0
Wednesday, 1 June 2011
Chocolerotica
[Disclaimer: Racism’s bad, kids.]
Okay, so you know black people? You know the ones. The ones that are white people, only black. The ones that were brought over to our country to do all the jobs we considered ourselves too good to do after WW2, which we subsequently complained about doing the jobs we don’t want to do, but would equally complain if we were stood at a bus-stop for three years because noone “comes over here and drives our buses”. The ones that have dreams that get them shot. Well, have you ever noticed they are [glances furtively about self]…black? Really? Why? Because, actually, they are not are they. Black people are black in the same way chocolate is black. By which I mean, it isn’t. It’s brown. But brown looks silly on placards. If we saw a bunch of un-thinking drones waving placards about with “Get browns out!” we would assume they were all constipated and were sluggishly pleading for an aid drop of Senokot.
With the exception of a 50 year old Greek owner of a bar I used to frequent, who suggested I came to his R&B nights as they were “good for picking up chocolate girls”, the fact that black people are actually brown doesn’t seem to get much of an airing. This could either be because:
a) Racism tends to concentrate on how ethnic group 1 is causing trouble for ethnic group 2, and even they, in their tiny minds, know it’s ridiculous to suggest they are doing that through skin colour alone.
b) Racists would have to give up chocolate, which would be a terrible shame as that’s probably one of the few pleasures they have left. Well, that and telling other British people to ‘go home’.
That black people are actually brown isn’t lost on children, and the fact that they are often heard to say that their black people have ‘skin like chocolate’ forms the basis for Naomi Campbell’s offence at a recent advertising campaign for Cadbury’s new product. I say “new product”, but it’s still bloody chocolate so there isn’t much that’s ‘new’ (apart from the Kraft logo on the wrapper).
Now personally I consider Naomi Campbell to be truly beautiful. Her lips look like they could suck your bones through your mouth and leave you flapping contentedly in the breeze like satisfied sock. Her legs are so long they may as well finish above her head, and her eyes have a ‘come to bed’ expression that could cause her to wake up next to Christopher Biggins if she wasn’t careful with her feminine voodoo. She is arguably one of the most famous faces in the world, and certainly one of the most successful in the world of slinking about in strange frocks. She does have a habit of getting a bit upset about things though [at this point I have flipped the switch on my ‘understatement’ sign, and it is cheerfully blinking away behind me], and that is exactly what she felt (the ‘offended’ kind of upset this time, rather than the ‘has to give back the blood diamonds’ kind of upset she felt a few weeks ago) when she opened her newspaper and saw the advert for Cadbury’s ‘Bliss’ bar.
The advert in question has an image of the CADBURY’S chocolate on a pillow, with the words ‘Move over Naomi, there’s a new diva in town’. Now personally, if it was me, I would be more offended that the advert was relying on an assumption that I am considered a preening high-maintenance diva rather than be offended by the reason she was offended. At a stretch, possibly, that she could easily be replaced by an inanimate object would be irksome. But no, her reason for distress was that the advert had ‘described [her] as chocolate’. I clearly haven’t read enough into the advert.
Instead of saying ‘famously beautiful Naomi Campbell is a bit of a diva isn’t she, well so is this chocolate bar’ as it appears to be, in it’s dumb chocolate-bars-have-emotions way, it’s apparently saying ‘everything you have previously wanted to do to famously beautiful Naomi Campbell can now be done with this chocolate bar’. Now there are many things I would like to do with Naomi Campbell. Melting her down and using her to coat strawberries is not one of them. They may as well have advertised the bar by declaring that it has a swallowing reflex.
We shall see which ‘option’ she opts for, my guess is a massive payoff but I might be wrong (I won’t be wrong). There are lessons to be learned, and as ever it remains to be seen whether or not they are actually learnt. Sweet and savoury is always a controversial mix. Perhaps Kraft should have stuck to making cheese.
Okay, so you know black people? You know the ones. The ones that are white people, only black. The ones that were brought over to our country to do all the jobs we considered ourselves too good to do after WW2, which we subsequently complained about doing the jobs we don’t want to do, but would equally complain if we were stood at a bus-stop for three years because noone “comes over here and drives our buses”. The ones that have dreams that get them shot. Well, have you ever noticed they are [glances furtively about self]…black? Really? Why? Because, actually, they are not are they. Black people are black in the same way chocolate is black. By which I mean, it isn’t. It’s brown. But brown looks silly on placards. If we saw a bunch of un-thinking drones waving placards about with “Get browns out!” we would assume they were all constipated and were sluggishly pleading for an aid drop of Senokot.
With the exception of a 50 year old Greek owner of a bar I used to frequent, who suggested I came to his R&B nights as they were “good for picking up chocolate girls”, the fact that black people are actually brown doesn’t seem to get much of an airing. This could either be because:
a) Racism tends to concentrate on how ethnic group 1 is causing trouble for ethnic group 2, and even they, in their tiny minds, know it’s ridiculous to suggest they are doing that through skin colour alone.
b) Racists would have to give up chocolate, which would be a terrible shame as that’s probably one of the few pleasures they have left. Well, that and telling other British people to ‘go home’.
That black people are actually brown isn’t lost on children, and the fact that they are often heard to say that their black people have ‘skin like chocolate’ forms the basis for Naomi Campbell’s offence at a recent advertising campaign for Cadbury’s new product. I say “new product”, but it’s still bloody chocolate so there isn’t much that’s ‘new’ (apart from the Kraft logo on the wrapper).
Now personally I consider Naomi Campbell to be truly beautiful. Her lips look like they could suck your bones through your mouth and leave you flapping contentedly in the breeze like satisfied sock. Her legs are so long they may as well finish above her head, and her eyes have a ‘come to bed’ expression that could cause her to wake up next to Christopher Biggins if she wasn’t careful with her feminine voodoo. She is arguably one of the most famous faces in the world, and certainly one of the most successful in the world of slinking about in strange frocks. She does have a habit of getting a bit upset about things though [at this point I have flipped the switch on my ‘understatement’ sign, and it is cheerfully blinking away behind me], and that is exactly what she felt (the ‘offended’ kind of upset this time, rather than the ‘has to give back the blood diamonds’ kind of upset she felt a few weeks ago) when she opened her newspaper and saw the advert for Cadbury’s ‘Bliss’ bar.
The advert in question has an image of the CADBURY’S chocolate on a pillow, with the words ‘Move over Naomi, there’s a new diva in town’. Now personally, if it was me, I would be more offended that the advert was relying on an assumption that I am considered a preening high-maintenance diva rather than be offended by the reason she was offended. At a stretch, possibly, that she could easily be replaced by an inanimate object would be irksome. But no, her reason for distress was that the advert had ‘described [her] as chocolate’. I clearly haven’t read enough into the advert.
Instead of saying ‘famously beautiful Naomi Campbell is a bit of a diva isn’t she, well so is this chocolate bar’ as it appears to be, in it’s dumb chocolate-bars-have-emotions way, it’s apparently saying ‘everything you have previously wanted to do to famously beautiful Naomi Campbell can now be done with this chocolate bar’. Now there are many things I would like to do with Naomi Campbell. Melting her down and using her to coat strawberries is not one of them. They may as well have advertised the bar by declaring that it has a swallowing reflex.
We shall see which ‘option’ she opts for, my guess is a massive payoff but I might be wrong (I won’t be wrong). There are lessons to be learned, and as ever it remains to be seen whether or not they are actually learnt. Sweet and savoury is always a controversial mix. Perhaps Kraft should have stuck to making cheese.
Tuesday, 3 May 2011
Don’t cry for me, Angina
“It’s not easy being fat”. That is not entirely true of course, it is very easy to be fat, you just need deep pockets along with a swallowing reflex and either strong teeth or a good quality liquidizer. It is true that it is miserable to be referred to by any of the various labels that relate to lardy bums. 'Morbidly obese' is certainly less jolly than the one employed by the producers of ‘Britain’s Best Dish’…
…however that also means it’s more powerful. This applies to any term that means “you are so [adjective] you will die” of course. Although come to think of it I can’t think of any more. Quite why ‘morbidly thirsty’ hasn’t been applied to alcoholics is a mystery. Certainly there’s a practical use for ‘morbidly sexy’. Perhaps for the frequently molested.
Anyway.
It is difficult when you are confronted with labels such as these, but they are accurate and those doing the labelling are frequently doing it for our own good. No self respecting GP says “you are morbidly obese, don’t forget your complimentary cake on the way out” (a bun with ‘big is beautiful’ iced on the top), but should it not be the case that if I want a pork pie for breakfast I can just have the bloody pie? Well, no as it happens. Not if unnecessarily buff Julian Sands look-alike Dr Christian gets his hands on your Supersize self. And let’s face it, you’re not going to outrun him.
The concept of ‘Supersize Vs Superskinny’ is both simple and, ultimately, disappointing. This is not a hilariously mis-matched wrestling bout. Instead we have a fat person of around 25 stone (a very round 25 stone). We also have a disturbingly skinny person, generally of around 6-8 stone. They swap diets for a week and learn the lesson that one needs to eat more and the other needs to eat less. I have not seen many episodes, but I’ve yet to see one where the lesson is learned the wrong way around. I live in hope.
There was a time when ‘Supersize Vs Superskinny’ was not very confrontational. We just saw the people sit down and start eating each other’s menu. This was after we’d been introduced to them. After the requisite footage had been shown of the supersize wheezing about; eating and generally being wobbly, followed by shots of the superskinny wafting around like a twiglet in pants. But, possibly due to the feeble, withered influence of food witch Gillian Mckeith, the programme now begins with the ‘food tubes’. This is the moment when the players are shamed into admitting that their diet is not very good. Mckeith did it by covering a table in a mountain of chips and cake. This wasn’t very effective as the subjects of her programme would just stare it with their stomachs rumbling, only snapping out of their carbohydrate-induced hypnosis when chip city was cleared into a hundred black sacks and driven away to chip doom. Gillian Mckeith was essentially a wizened vegetable Hitler gleefully masterminding a fried-food holocaust.
Time’s marched on and now we are confronted with the food tubes. This, amazingly, is a set of two large tubes into which food is deposited. It is clearly designed to disgust all concerned so that ways are changed.Whereas Mckeith showed a table of nicely cooked greasegasms and relied upon the quantity to shame the subjects, now we have the image of curry; fries and pasties being farted out of a black gutter to plop sadly into a murky lagoon of coffee and burgers. It’s all deeply grim and the episode I saw recently was no exception. It’s a shame because the supersize fellow, Stu, was very cheerful when he arrived. Unnecessarily buff Dr Christian soon saw off the smiles of course, liberally sprinkling his conversation with references to death like he was applying croutons to soup. Or perhaps a stu. As Stu’s food tube was filling up Christian looked up at him with sympathetic eyes. “Do you have chips with everything?” he says, rhetorically.
“Yes,” said Stu “with cheese”.
Alice, the superskinny’s tube was predictably less full than Stu’s, consisting as it did of coffee and a tomato.
It was quite nice to see the two of them together, Stu beaming down at her like a tyrannosaur eyeing up a gecko. “How much do you weigh?” he asked, and was clearly shocked when she said how much (7stone). Not just because he knows he weighs a lot more than her, but also because he knows that her size is just as wrong as his. Sitting down to their first meal together, Stu declares “I don’t expect you to eat all of that”. Stu weighs three and a half Alices apparently. Which coincidentally is what he was hoping to have for breakfast. Instead he gets a thimble of porridge. By Alice’s third meal of the day (coincidentally, her second visit to McDonald’s of the day), she unsurprisingly complains of not being hungry. Stu is close to tears at this point, desperate to lick the air around the burgers. The narrator informs us that Stu’s diet contains too much salt.
We are left to digest this bombshell whilst we check in on a group of recovering anorexics. It’s sad seeing the anorexic people. They have survived for years it seems by drinking a cup of coffee every few days and prodding their protruding bones complaining about being fat. It’s tragic and therefore heart warming when you see this group getting better. This week they were looking at photos of each other before they (euphemistically) “became ill”. They all coo over the beauty that the subjects never saw. I imagine they’re thinking “fat fuck”, but we have cut back to the matter in hand before the thought is verbalised and a very slow fight takes place.
Back at the feeding clinic, Alice observes “these portions are huge”. She can barely see Stu over the top of her snack (tower) of cheesy crumpets with cheese and beans and cheese. Stu didn’t really say anything to this. Perhaps he realizes that it’s a moot point. Perhaps he thinks that in the absence of all other protein his body has started to digest his brain, and that’s why the crumpets are talking to him. By dinnertime she is fighting her way though two muffins and four sausages, snugly parked beneath a melting igloo of cheese. Stu gets a yoghurt, which is less than he had hoped but on the plus side the pot never empties since his tears keep topping it up.
It pays to be a supersize on this programme, because whilst Alice stays at the clinic and eats two portions of cheese with some cheese on top, served on a bed of cheese with a cheese garnish, and unnecessarily buff Dr Christian shows her pictures of people with rickets, Stu is off to America. Hooray for Stu! “I love Universal Studios” he must be thinking. “And the Mouse. And Shamu!”. Sadly it’s just a trip to meet a fat bloke who lives on a broken bed in a foil tray filled flat. “Fuck”, thinks Stu.
“Don’t end up like me,” says Tony, the fat bloke who lives on a broken bed in a foil tray filled flat. “jump off the elevator as there’s only one place it’s going”. This question is left hanging in the air as the camera closes in on Stu’s face. The penny has dropped for Stu. He has been confronted by his own mortality. He is clearly a little distressed. After all, how is he supposed to jump anywhere weighing 25 stone? He hasn’t jumped since House of Pain was in the charts.
Back in the UK Alice and Stu shake hands and go home to eat more healthily and do some exercise. It turns out that’s how you look after yourself. Who’d have thought it? A few weeks later they meet up with the good (but unnecessarily buff) doctor. He weighs them and wouldn’t you know it, she’s lost weight (hooray!) and he has lost weight (jump around!). It’s all very positive and we are left with a feeling of cheerful optimism. Stu is clearly not finding the change of lifestyle as easy as Alice though. For a start he mentions cheese 45 times. He may never be thin, but he will remain with us for longer than he would have done without that yoghurt. And that can only be a good thing.
…however that also means it’s more powerful. This applies to any term that means “you are so [adjective] you will die” of course. Although come to think of it I can’t think of any more. Quite why ‘morbidly thirsty’ hasn’t been applied to alcoholics is a mystery. Certainly there’s a practical use for ‘morbidly sexy’. Perhaps for the frequently molested.
Anyway.
It is difficult when you are confronted with labels such as these, but they are accurate and those doing the labelling are frequently doing it for our own good. No self respecting GP says “you are morbidly obese, don’t forget your complimentary cake on the way out” (a bun with ‘big is beautiful’ iced on the top), but should it not be the case that if I want a pork pie for breakfast I can just have the bloody pie? Well, no as it happens. Not if unnecessarily buff Julian Sands look-alike Dr Christian gets his hands on your Supersize self. And let’s face it, you’re not going to outrun him.
The concept of ‘Supersize Vs Superskinny’ is both simple and, ultimately, disappointing. This is not a hilariously mis-matched wrestling bout. Instead we have a fat person of around 25 stone (a very round 25 stone). We also have a disturbingly skinny person, generally of around 6-8 stone. They swap diets for a week and learn the lesson that one needs to eat more and the other needs to eat less. I have not seen many episodes, but I’ve yet to see one where the lesson is learned the wrong way around. I live in hope.
There was a time when ‘Supersize Vs Superskinny’ was not very confrontational. We just saw the people sit down and start eating each other’s menu. This was after we’d been introduced to them. After the requisite footage had been shown of the supersize wheezing about; eating and generally being wobbly, followed by shots of the superskinny wafting around like a twiglet in pants. But, possibly due to the feeble, withered influence of food witch Gillian Mckeith, the programme now begins with the ‘food tubes’. This is the moment when the players are shamed into admitting that their diet is not very good. Mckeith did it by covering a table in a mountain of chips and cake. This wasn’t very effective as the subjects of her programme would just stare it with their stomachs rumbling, only snapping out of their carbohydrate-induced hypnosis when chip city was cleared into a hundred black sacks and driven away to chip doom. Gillian Mckeith was essentially a wizened vegetable Hitler gleefully masterminding a fried-food holocaust.
Time’s marched on and now we are confronted with the food tubes. This, amazingly, is a set of two large tubes into which food is deposited. It is clearly designed to disgust all concerned so that ways are changed.Whereas Mckeith showed a table of nicely cooked greasegasms and relied upon the quantity to shame the subjects, now we have the image of curry; fries and pasties being farted out of a black gutter to plop sadly into a murky lagoon of coffee and burgers. It’s all deeply grim and the episode I saw recently was no exception. It’s a shame because the supersize fellow, Stu, was very cheerful when he arrived. Unnecessarily buff Dr Christian soon saw off the smiles of course, liberally sprinkling his conversation with references to death like he was applying croutons to soup. Or perhaps a stu. As Stu’s food tube was filling up Christian looked up at him with sympathetic eyes. “Do you have chips with everything?” he says, rhetorically.
“Yes,” said Stu “with cheese”.
Alice, the superskinny’s tube was predictably less full than Stu’s, consisting as it did of coffee and a tomato.
It was quite nice to see the two of them together, Stu beaming down at her like a tyrannosaur eyeing up a gecko. “How much do you weigh?” he asked, and was clearly shocked when she said how much (7stone). Not just because he knows he weighs a lot more than her, but also because he knows that her size is just as wrong as his. Sitting down to their first meal together, Stu declares “I don’t expect you to eat all of that”. Stu weighs three and a half Alices apparently. Which coincidentally is what he was hoping to have for breakfast. Instead he gets a thimble of porridge. By Alice’s third meal of the day (coincidentally, her second visit to McDonald’s of the day), she unsurprisingly complains of not being hungry. Stu is close to tears at this point, desperate to lick the air around the burgers. The narrator informs us that Stu’s diet contains too much salt.
We are left to digest this bombshell whilst we check in on a group of recovering anorexics. It’s sad seeing the anorexic people. They have survived for years it seems by drinking a cup of coffee every few days and prodding their protruding bones complaining about being fat. It’s tragic and therefore heart warming when you see this group getting better. This week they were looking at photos of each other before they (euphemistically) “became ill”. They all coo over the beauty that the subjects never saw. I imagine they’re thinking “fat fuck”, but we have cut back to the matter in hand before the thought is verbalised and a very slow fight takes place.
Back at the feeding clinic, Alice observes “these portions are huge”. She can barely see Stu over the top of her snack (tower) of cheesy crumpets with cheese and beans and cheese. Stu didn’t really say anything to this. Perhaps he realizes that it’s a moot point. Perhaps he thinks that in the absence of all other protein his body has started to digest his brain, and that’s why the crumpets are talking to him. By dinnertime she is fighting her way though two muffins and four sausages, snugly parked beneath a melting igloo of cheese. Stu gets a yoghurt, which is less than he had hoped but on the plus side the pot never empties since his tears keep topping it up.
It pays to be a supersize on this programme, because whilst Alice stays at the clinic and eats two portions of cheese with some cheese on top, served on a bed of cheese with a cheese garnish, and unnecessarily buff Dr Christian shows her pictures of people with rickets, Stu is off to America. Hooray for Stu! “I love Universal Studios” he must be thinking. “And the Mouse. And Shamu!”. Sadly it’s just a trip to meet a fat bloke who lives on a broken bed in a foil tray filled flat. “Fuck”, thinks Stu.
“Don’t end up like me,” says Tony, the fat bloke who lives on a broken bed in a foil tray filled flat. “jump off the elevator as there’s only one place it’s going”. This question is left hanging in the air as the camera closes in on Stu’s face. The penny has dropped for Stu. He has been confronted by his own mortality. He is clearly a little distressed. After all, how is he supposed to jump anywhere weighing 25 stone? He hasn’t jumped since House of Pain was in the charts.
Back in the UK Alice and Stu shake hands and go home to eat more healthily and do some exercise. It turns out that’s how you look after yourself. Who’d have thought it? A few weeks later they meet up with the good (but unnecessarily buff) doctor. He weighs them and wouldn’t you know it, she’s lost weight (hooray!) and he has lost weight (jump around!). It’s all very positive and we are left with a feeling of cheerful optimism. Stu is clearly not finding the change of lifestyle as easy as Alice though. For a start he mentions cheese 45 times. He may never be thin, but he will remain with us for longer than he would have done without that yoghurt. And that can only be a good thing.
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Wednesday, 16 March 2011
Not coming over here and killing our villagers
Yesterday I had this link sent to me:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/uk-12741847
Like Ash Atalla (who, as producer of ‘The Office’ and ‘The IT Crowd’, is someone who warrants a prole walking in front of his wheelchair sprinkling rose petals before him), I don't watch the programme. However I wonder whether the colour of the villagers' faces really matters? I would suggest not, unless the storyline is going to deal with race. If it does it is always better to have 'minority' actors involved since white folk blacking-up looks ridiculous. Unless they happen to be singing 'Mammy', obviously. If it isn't a race-related plot, shouldn't it just be about whether the actor is any good? Is the producer actually saying that people will turn it on, see an ethnic face and then immediately turn it off on the grounds that black faces don’t 'belong' in Midsomer? I hope not. Maybe it is simply the 'realism' aspect, being that in the 'traditional' English village there simply isn’t the racial diversity that you find in, say, the east end of London. Fair enough, but also in the traditional English village there are not fifteen murders a year. In fact, in the traditional English village the best you can hope for is a cake sale. Try stretching that out for fourteen years.
It's a curious thing. Noone ever worries about the realism of Coronation Street do they, a street which has to be the only street in Salford with a population that verges upon Aryan. Until recently, ethnic minorities were represented by one slightly tanned man that resembled David Essex after a nice holiday. I can almost hear the producers asking each other "how dark shall we go?" before nodding in agreement after one trailblazer suggests "south of France?". And what did they have him do? Own a corner shop and steal men's wives. They may as well have dressed him as a Golly and have done with it.
And this is Manchester, so presumably (were it to be made by the same people) 'Midsomer' would be populated exclusively by actors so white they are in fact transparent. The only way you would know they were onscreen would be that one hazy form was standing over another hazy form, lamenting that it couldn't put up with the affairs any longer and had to do them in. We would then be treated to the sight of a pair of floating handcuffs being bundled into a police van.
At which point I might tune in.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/uk-12741847
Like Ash Atalla (who, as producer of ‘The Office’ and ‘The IT Crowd’, is someone who warrants a prole walking in front of his wheelchair sprinkling rose petals before him), I don't watch the programme. However I wonder whether the colour of the villagers' faces really matters? I would suggest not, unless the storyline is going to deal with race. If it does it is always better to have 'minority' actors involved since white folk blacking-up looks ridiculous. Unless they happen to be singing 'Mammy', obviously. If it isn't a race-related plot, shouldn't it just be about whether the actor is any good? Is the producer actually saying that people will turn it on, see an ethnic face and then immediately turn it off on the grounds that black faces don’t 'belong' in Midsomer? I hope not. Maybe it is simply the 'realism' aspect, being that in the 'traditional' English village there simply isn’t the racial diversity that you find in, say, the east end of London. Fair enough, but also in the traditional English village there are not fifteen murders a year. In fact, in the traditional English village the best you can hope for is a cake sale. Try stretching that out for fourteen years.
It's a curious thing. Noone ever worries about the realism of Coronation Street do they, a street which has to be the only street in Salford with a population that verges upon Aryan. Until recently, ethnic minorities were represented by one slightly tanned man that resembled David Essex after a nice holiday. I can almost hear the producers asking each other "how dark shall we go?" before nodding in agreement after one trailblazer suggests "south of France?". And what did they have him do? Own a corner shop and steal men's wives. They may as well have dressed him as a Golly and have done with it.
And this is Manchester, so presumably (were it to be made by the same people) 'Midsomer' would be populated exclusively by actors so white they are in fact transparent. The only way you would know they were onscreen would be that one hazy form was standing over another hazy form, lamenting that it couldn't put up with the affairs any longer and had to do them in. We would then be treated to the sight of a pair of floating handcuffs being bundled into a police van.
At which point I might tune in.
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