parismarisamadonna

Sex on Fire – Kings of Leon 2009

Grimey men with long grimey hair, more blood and guts than Tarantino, more torture than all of the SAW’s, a giant frozen wall, a couple of CGI dragons, a hateful ice-eyed adolescent boy, a handful of BAFTA winning actors and more exposed nipples than a dairy farm. Game of Thrones is not so much a game as it is an ordeal, a herculean trial that I prepare myself for every Monday evening, wondering whether I will make it to through 50 minutes without vomiting, without shouting or indeed, without running to the toilet and locking myself within.

I’ve been watching GoT since it first began 2 years ago. I was drawn in by the medieval appeal of a Tudors-esque family drama, that it was produced by the ever-reliable HBO and by the slightly sexy gruffness of everyone’s favourite, requisite English Baddie, Sean Bean…Sean Bean playing the good guy.

I had not, and still have not, read the books, so signing up for the pleasure of Sean Bean’s Ned Stark dancing across my screen would prove to be somewhat short-sighted.

Sean...but not for long

 

For those of you who have not yet joined the addicted masses, GoT recounts the lives and deaths of those who are attempting to win the grand prize on the fictional Monopoly board of Westeros, the Iron Throne. Like Monopoly, everyone cheats their way to get more money and more territory, unlike Monopoly; you cheat while pointing a blade at an eyeball, or pointing a penis at a prostitute. 

Warring families wear long robes in their family colour, their backs adorned with their family blazon (think Harry Potter’s houses with more boobs) and kill or shag each other in a seemingly futile effort to steal the Iron Throne from the blonde adolescent Patrick Bateman that sits upon it. Then they all find a half-baked excuse to have more sex.

George R R Martin, the identical twin of Captain Haddock, began writing what will become seven novels over ten years ago. Every pre-pubescent boy on earth pushed his faded Dungeons and Dragons under his bunk bed to make way for the far more grown-up GoT. Fantasy board game and Playboy centrefold melded into one; the teenage boys of the western world armed themselves with tissues and tube-socks and got to work discovering the mythical mayhem of Lannisters and Starks and Targaryans. Ten years later, GoT is the most downloaded TV show in the world. No one was more surprised than the executives at HBO.

Why has GoT become such an unprecedented success? More to the point, knowing the target audience of the books, why is anyone with a vagina or anyone over the age of 25 watching it? Representing both the chicks and the aged, let me tell you why.

Not everyone in Westeros is primetime TV beautiful. In fact, the first billed cast-member is what many of us would call a dwarf. Peter Dinklage might not stand as tall as your usual TV heartthrob, but he can act. He is lucky to portray the only character that demonstrates a modicum of humanity, he commands his scenes, his recently broken face draws you in, he is the centre of King’s Landing, he is the star…and he is four feet five. 

Peter Dinklage...pre-face destruction

 

I love that Doogie Howser is actually gay, actually married to a man and plays TVs most watched Lothario. I love that Christina Hendricks shakes her Joanie boobs and bum and is still considered TVs sexiest woman. I love that Zooey Deschanel is kooky but not blonde. I love that Big Bang Theory made stars of a gay Texan, an Indian man and a woman who has a Phd in Neurology and an exceptional nose. I love that the world of network television, after gorging itself on scripted reality and competitive cooking, is turning towards clever, interesting and unique stories. We seem to be turning away from Carrie bloody Bradshaw’s shoes and the usual homogenised stars and turning on (or illegally streaming) a show that does not only feature, but stars, a Little Person.

Beyond Peter, there is the rotund lad who whisked away a woman and her baby, there is Alfie Allen, Lily’s brother, who is certainly not a Don Draper matinee idol. There is Dame Diana Rigg, an RSC trained stage actress, head covered with a sky blue tulle, wispy veil uttering the word c**t with all the grace and eloquence of the Queen of England. GoT has filled our screens with people who look like people. True, the women all speak out from underneath long manes of perfectly woven hair (which is odd because the men are all grubby) but they are not your typical Hollywood beauties. Even Emilia Clarke, the ethereal Dragon Mother Daenerys and much youtube-d beauty of GoT, who gets her kit off and wanders the desert in little more than a turquoise slip, is, unlike your usual Supermodel, only a little more than four feet tall and in real life, a bit of an Emo who is more often seen in dark eyeliner and biker boots than Manolos and Marchesa. 

Has Dragon. Doesn't have clothes.

 

Game of Thrones, while telling a fantastical story in a fantastical place, does not follow the trend usual television trend of using fantastically beautiful actors; actors who are cast for their looks, not their talent; actors who are more Kardashian than Keith Michell.

Beyond the actors, there is the story.

Doted with a plot more complex than the human genome, if I had the space, or a wall that wasn’t rotting from rising damp, I would have flipcharts posted to track the family trees, Buzan mind map style. As it is, I resort to watching, my iPad in my lap, so I can Google everyone’s name and keep track of what is going on. There are a lot of people in Westeros; mothers have myriad sons, fathers have brothers who bed witches, men are married to princesses, but fornicate with lovers who are usually more integral to the plot and there are girls who look like, and act like boys (Brienne, Arya) in an effort to survive the patriarchal, women are bought and sold, flesh-sword and steel-sword decorated landscape of the Seven Kingdoms. 

Arya in search of a hairdresser

 

Perhaps, the fact that there are so many characters, affords George RR, the opportunity to surprise us so regularly, and kill them off.

Sean Bean was knocked off in the first series. I was convinced that despite witnessing a long sword slicing his head from his body, there was a magical trick at play, until I looked him up in IMDB and discovered that he was not a cast-member of season 2. I was horrified that my favourite, and one of the only decent, characters was dead…and then…this week…we had the Red Wedding. Spoilers!

Youtube has come alive with videos of friends who had read the books, filming other friends who hadn’t, watching the last ten minutes of last week’s episode. You can see some of it here. See the dog at 4 minutes, priceless. 

Me, alone in a hotel room in Istanbul, had tuned into GoT to wind down after a busy day escaping riot police and teargas, expecting to be asleep within 20 minutes. I remained reluctantly awake, convinced that finally, something good, even just a better haircut, was going to happen to Arya. Little did I know what was to come. Tired, and with eyelids closing down in fatigue, I was certain I had missed something, so I rewound the last 15 minutes, I watched again, my eyes had not deceived me, I could not believe it. At 1am, determined to understand what had just happened, I took to the Internet. I learned that everyone else knew it was coming, that the producers had just killed off three of the main characters, including the son upon whom all my hopes rode that we’d one day see an end to the blonde adolescent sociopath who must get spat at when he walks down the street. 

Joffrey. When will HE die?

 

In America, they even rolled out George RR on late-night talk shows to chuckle gleefully at the videos of horrified viewers cowering under their couch cushions. The whole of America, and much of the rest of the world, is talking about a TV show that has a drama-school trained cast, that is filmed on location in Iceland and Morocco and Croatia, a show with a script that the actors have to learn in advance, a show that features a motley crew of real faces and real bodies and ok, lot’s of gratuitous lesbian sex scenes, a show that culminates in the bloody massacre of half the characters and not a $250,000 prize or a modelling contract or more cash for Cowell.

Game of Thrones is epic watercooler television with bums and boobs. If you aren’t watching, you should be

 

...before they kill off the rest.

The People in Your Neighbourhood – Jeff Moss 1969

For those of you that are not aficionados of all things felt, technicolour and googly eyed, this song featured on my all time favourite children’s’ television show, Sesame Street. Starring giant birds, talking frogs and microscopic people that live in a milk cartons in the window, Sesame Street is the second best thing to pop out of Jim Henson’s brain. Beaten only by the original The Muppets* and only marginally ahead of Fraggle Rock, Sesame Street was the home of the sexually obscure skivvy-ologists Bert and Ernie, a blue blob that stuffs it’s face with cookies, the numerophilic Count (mwa-ha-ha) and like their Muppets cousins, an anthology of catchy tunes.

To this day, as I count out 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12, I can still sing the rhythm of the song that plays as a giant ball jumps around some sort of psychedelic pinball machine. Joking with friends, I might spontaneously pipe a quick ‘one of these kids is doing his own thing’ when you see a weird looking youth in a pub. But the ditty that darts most frequently around my mind today is the one I hum as I wander up my local street. 

“these are the people in your neighbourhood, in your neighbourhood, in your neigh-bour-hoo-ood”

On the infrequent weekends that I am at home, my greatest pleasure is my Saturday morning wander. I’m happy for this to become my second greatest pleasure if the Butcher ever comes good on his salacious winks, but I will get to him in a moment. The day starts with about two hours spent in the lifting darkness reading the papers, reading blogs, watching videos, generally reminding myself that there is a world out there beyond the tip of my own nose… even if I experience it mostly in pixel rather than in person.

After I have managed to paint on the face that I washed way with Pouilly Fumé the night before, and wrapped something clean around my modesty, I head out into the wide world and I fais mes courses.    

As I wander down my local high street, the Rue des Abbesses, I wave hello to the same people at certain points along the narrow way. I feel like a little bit of a Rockstar as they wave hello, or on occasional, more intimate instances, kiss me on the cheeks. It’s always the same handful of people; they know me for the big hair and red shoes but most especially for the invisible Australian Flag that flutters above my head as I walk. I know them for the little pieces of sunshine they bring to my life, or at the very least for their contribution to my rounded tummy and wobbly thighs.

During this hebdomadal promenade, I am reminded that despite living in Paris, France’s largest city and Europe’s second, I am known, I am at home, I am safe. The faces are familiar, the repeated rhythm of my steps is comforting and the world is rendered a little less chaotic, a little less cold, a little less unbearable.

So here they are… the people in my neighbourhood.

 

Samir..working hard

 

First up, just as I pass by the Place des Abbesses and the metro station that spews hundreds of inert tourists proffering maps onto the little remaining open space, are the Tunisian brothers who own Au Verger des Abbesses. 

Samir and his brother and Tariq their cousin and the multitude of sons that work there during holidays when they are not studying somewhere, else are the second most famous greengrocers in Abbesses; the first being the fictional pair that featured in Amelie ^. Their family know mine intimately. They ask after my mother and my sister, whom they got to know during their stays in Paris, in fact they followed the Art-sist-ologer’s pregnancy with almost as much interest as I. More recently, they ask after Sapphire and Smack, the little people they bribed with free strawberries each time I went there to buy “kids bananas”.

 

Tariq..filling up my caddy for another week.

 

They’ve taught me what grows when, what it is called in french, which apples are crunchiest and why French people prefer clementines to mandarines (no seeds). They correct me if I get the LE or LA wrong on a vegetable, they show me photos of Tunis and I show them photos of Sydney. They almost always give me a free bunch of parsley and they drive the most interesting truck you ever did see.

I had noticed, but never bothered to ask why, that every single fruit truck in Paris is daubed with a mural graffiti. The Smartarse, curiouser and curuouser than I, had me ask them why. Rungis, the massive central market in Southern Paris from whence all fresh produce is sent out into France is full of trucks every morning from 3am. Robbed of safe places to paint and practice their craft, the street artists of Paris took to the enormous carparks of Rungis guaranteeing themselves an endless supply of fresh canvases and the cover of early morning darkness for safety.

 

The Truck.

 

Next door to Samir is Marie, the cheese shop (let’s call her my dealer) who has only just opened and next to her is the Chemist.

I don’t know their names, but they are husband and wife. They know me well; they remember me with a leg coated in plaster and a feeble aluminium crutch holding me upright. They taught me how to job a syringe full of blood thinner into my upper thigh. They remember me buying illicit substances in bulk to send home to Australia. They remember measuring the alien foot for my sexy support socks. They remember absolutely every detail of my medical history since I landed in Montmartre. 

A particularly special moment was when she asked me ‘how I was going’ after handing over a fresh box of drugs that keep me sane. I hesitated to say, ‘I’m fine, I just take anti-anxiety pills because being interrogated by strangers makes me anxious’. Even so, given they actually take an interest in my health, I count on them to keep me healthy more than the Hannibal-esque misogynist of a GP I am obliged to visit next door.

 

The Chemist..I would love to know why there are no green crosses in Australia.

 

After the Chemist I wave across the road to Stephane, Murielle, Lucie and Vincent, the hairdressers at Profession Coiffeur. They are the lovely, if over-theatrical, crowd to whom I have entrusted the maintenance and care of the Kate Bush that sprouts from my scalp. They are directly across the road from the Greek Guy who sells me hummus and semi-dried tomatoes, a Greek Guy who is always shocked that I say hello and thank you in Greek, a Greek Guy who gets my money each week because it is impossible to find pita bread or haloumi in a generic supermarket. Pita bread is, you see, exotic.

A couple of shops down from the Greek God of chickpeas is the home of my most entertaining purchase of the week, Boucherie Jacky Gaudin. Jacky and his band of Merry Men are widely believed to be the best butchers in the quartier.

 

Veal Brains, Rabbit thigh and Lamb Kidney..but wait! There's more!

 

Filled with naked contortionist birds#, the street-facing window appears to be a funeral home for poultry (their still-attached heads bent around plump breasts in supplication). While the queue to be served wends its way beyond a standing rotisserie oven that is home to even more dead, if slightly warmer, rotating birds. Entering via the glass front door, passing the passport posted on the wall that details the provenance of all the different dead things, is the interior display case. 

If the outside has all the horror of Freddy Krueger’s tribute to chicken, the inside is the Evil Dead of offal. Little brown kidneys, tubs of bloodied brains and a giant slab of veal liver vie for poll position with the traditional logs of loin. There are dried sausages dangling from the ceiling along with giant metal plates awarded to Jacky in honour of his ability to kill and then dissect a five-star joint of carnage. They laugh at my ever-wider eyes as they carve up something’s right leg in front of me, you would think I had become accustomed to it. But just last week, they offered me a glass of water as I nearly passed out in shock at a gutless, skinless lamb that just caught my eye as it was cradled in the strong arms of Guillaume.

 

Guillaume..and something's entrails

 

Aaah, Guillaume.

Guillaume is a rather strapping example of manlinees who with his father, Guy, might be the only people in Abbesses who follow Rugby…not counting me. Each week, I am subjected to jibes and jokes at the expense of the land I love simply because we lost…again. Each week they offer to sell me Wallaby, usually followed up by some comment about how they’d be better barbecued than trying to catch a ball. Each week they make fun of me for not being able to say magret properly. Each week I watch Guillaume flinging his giant butcher’s knife around in front of his carefully tied apron and wonder what giant things the apron hides from view. Each week I wonder what it might be like if he trussed, tenderised and spatchcocked me rather than the pale yellow bird on the bench.

 

 

Guy... behind a trellis of phallus

 

Essentially, despite the fear of seeing an actual lamb actually sacrificed in my honour, I still go to the butcher so I can stare into Guillaume’s big brown eyes while he debones my duck.

Should the opportunity to get roulade with Guillaume ever present itself, I would pay a pre-purchased visit to Laura, the Baker’s daughter, to whom I pay very large amounts of money to pour hot wax over my nether regions… but never after noon.

My Saturday lunchtime’s are sacrosanct.

 

The view above my table at Le Miroir ... marginally less nauseating than the Butcher

 

Regular visitors to my life on these pages, or even to my actual life, are familiar with Le Miroir. There have been some changes over the last year, some for the worse and some for the better. The food is still exceptional, the service is getting back to where it was and each week I entrust my digestive tract to the dynamice duo, Sebastien Squared.

Seb, the one who cooks, is spending increasing amounts of time on the floor, so I’ve gotten to know him a lot better. He is trying very hard to set me up with someone who’ll cook for me. He recently invited me to the party for the birth of his daughter. Seb, the one who gives me wine, is the new guy out on the tiles. His enthusiasm for art and design are matched only by his enthusiasm for a hairdo that is bigger than mine.

Like a dimly lit independent play, this little drama unfolds in a space only 5 blocks from my door. It features a small cast of reliable performers. Like Much Ado, I know the story inside and out, but I will pay to see it over and over again. I happily hand over the fruits of my fruity labour for the opportunity to smile, the opportunity to be entertained and the certainty that I will be delighted.

 

 

Something delicious with Scallops.

 

* In related news, I could write another War and Peace pledging my love for The Muppets and hence my manic obsession with Jason Segel, especially 4.26 minutes into Forgetting Sarah Marshall…

^ It is a real greengrocer!

# The human variety is just down the hill at Pigalle

Somethin’ Stupid – Frank & Nancy Sinatra 1966

Somewhere between I pick my nose while no one is looking and I drink tequila on ice, by myself, in the dark, lies the guiltiest of all possible confessions. While not quite as shameful as admitting I have an addiction to sexting a man in Oklahoma, it is far more shocking than admitting to a secret desire to violently assault at least three of my colleagues, preferably with scissors, in order to cut off their fake hair even if I can’t quite reach their insides and cut out their fake personality. 

My name is M, and I watch My Kitchen Rules.

 

The tweezers: the tool to remove your eyeballs

 

For those unfortunate residents of anywhere that is not Australia, let me explain the premise of a television show that is the visual equivalent of Jabba the Hut; horrid to behold, all consuming, spoken in a foreign tongue, dripping with purple pus or jus.

My Kitchen Rules, nicknamed MKR for those who watch it and cannot spell kitchen… or rules… or my, is a reality television competition drawing upon the theme of all televised entertainment since Jamie’s excessively large tongue invaded our excessively large cathode rays in 1999; cooking. However, rather than pit qualified chefs against each other, MKR pits qualified stupid people against each other. They geo-located the most idiotic people in the country, divided the morons by state and challenged them to cook against each other at a mythical place known as Kitchen Headquarters, nicknamed Kitchen HQ for the contestants that never learned to spell words of more than two syllables.

That the contestants come from different states allows for u-bend skimming humour and clichés to describe the “state of origin” duels that no Australian actually cares about. Unlike in America where the history of an actual Civil War during which people from some states shot and killed people from other states resulted in a true cultural state-border-demarcated divide, being native of one Australian state or another demarcates only at what time of the year tomatoes ripen, not your political leaning. State sponsored rivalry is best left to Rugby League players. Having spent their lives being beaten about the cranium, they are marginally cleverer than MKR contestants.

If the contestants are fools, tricked into competition by the promise of prize money, fame, fortune and a cover photo on TV Week, then the hosts are sadistic fennel-foam-fetishists and pumpkin-purée-pushers participating in this culinary car crash for no good reason other than to give their bored PR teams something to tweet about.

 

Pete & Manu; running away from the shame?

 

Pete Evans, once a genuinely talented chef who with his brother Dave, gave Sydney it’s first gourmet pizza shop, Hugo’s, heads up the dynamic duo of commentary cultural cringe. Hugo’s was a gourmet pizza shop because they sold pizza with gourmet toppings like bresaola (old beef), semi dried tomatoes (old fruit) and aged mozzarella (old cheese). Not satisfied with pushing over-priced pizza to the pretentious people of Potts Point, or eating his activated almonds at breakfast, Pete needed a new challenge. That challenge being to stare vacantly at people from behind his surprisingly blue eyes, pretend to smile even though his blue eyes don’t crinkle and pretend to understand what the guy beside him is saying. 

The guy beside him, Manu Feildel, is frairnsch. We know he is frairnsch because his syrupy accent renders most of what he says completely incomprehensible when he demands increasing amounts of sauce. Sauce, according to Manu, is the only output of a kitchen, (whether it is mine or yours, it rules or it doesn’t), worth judging. I am secretly hoping that at some point, answering Manu’s commands for more condiment, a contestant will proffer a Squeezie bottle of Fountain Tomato.

Many, many Manu-less years ago, in a time when the simple act of preparing a meal warranted a state championship, I met Manu in real life. He is handsome, he is a talented chef and he speaks English almost perfectly with just a hint of guttural Gallic. When he was cast to host Mah Keechain Roolz, a producer told Manu that middle aged mothers would only put down their damp, dog-eared copies of Fifty Shades of Grey long enough to watch if he could out-sex Christian’s butt-slapping and hand-cuffing. Manu, whose only career move was leaving France, where ALL men speak as though they’re rolling a clitoris across their tongue, listened to what the producers told him, and has not pronounced an understandable word in English since.

Manu is French; he was born in another country and spoke another language for the better part of his formative years. His inability to articulate, while fingernail-down-a-blackboard annoying, is, at the very least, valid. What excuse do the contestants have?

MKR is not really a show about cooking, it is a show about how not to speak English and it is televised aural assault.

The producers slash talent scouts slash speech pathologists that cast this show, have managed to find the 16 people across the nation who have mastered the art of abusing the English language beyond all semblance of sense or structure. The fact that they can cook is ancillary to their ability to assail the ears of the audience with their masses of mispronounced mouthfuls. 

If only they would stick to cooking stuff they can say. Call it potato bake and not gratin, or gratarn, or gratine, or grahtain. Call it cake and not clahfooty, or profit-a-rolls or garnarche. Call it sausage and not booed-anne. Call it soup and not vellootay. Call it an appetiser and not an ahmooz-bush. FFS, just leave the French words to Manu and you can keep the English ones. After all, he doesn’t need them!

 

Ashlee & Sophia; the Vietnamese Vipers with Venison

 

The two Asian girls that were cast as the wicked witches in the Kitchen of Oz, are incapable of remembering anyone’s names, even their own. Babes, pass me that Babes, pass me this Babes, ramp up the bitchiness Babes. Thank God then for the other bloke with an accent we can’t understand, Colin Fassnidge. Colin is the Irish bloke whose most significant career move was leaving Ireland, and shampoo, behind in favour of Sydney and a coif cum deep fryer. Colin, saying what everyone in Australia, and even some who weren’t, was thinking, chided the two Asian girls for not calling each other by their names. His reason for demanding nominal appellation was that ‘dis ees eh kutchun’. 

Colin, I’ve got a question for you. If one is required to call each other by name in your kitchen, why have you not applied all of the other basic rules of cuisine etiquette? Why are Angela and Melina permitted to prepare food with rivers of romantic Roman hair dangling across their plates? Are Ashlee and Sophia’s fake nylon eyelashes not a risk to basic food hygiene? And what about the danger of Mick & Matt’s cheesiness to those who are lactose intolerant? Why are the women even bothering to wear aprons when their cleavage is so exposed as to create additional food storage? More to the point Colin, you are the chef at the Four in Hand, my local pub when I lived in Sydney. The food was great and the atmosphere was greater…why on earth would you sell out and start up Comeback Kitchen? Surely you’ve now earned enough to buy some shampoo, perhaps even some of Pete’s Activated Almond Shine Shampoo?

 

Colin... and some well place graffiti

 

The Asian girls, bitchy little vipers whose natural charm has been ditched in favour of acidic acrimony for the benefit of the viewers who can’t decipher the good guys from the bad guys unless they get subtitles, suffer the humiliation of describing their native cuisine, cuisine that represents the heritage of at least two dozen different countries as simply Asian, are at least able to cook. The siblings from the sunshine coast, the campest young man south of San Francisco and his whiny sister, cannot. Favouring style over substance, they simply arrange food on plates and wait for Manu to shout for more sauce and for Pete to shout for less colour.

Who cares?

Based on the fact that I just hit 1200 words without stopping for breath, it would appear that I do. I just wish I knew why.

Watching something that portrays Australia in such a shameful light makes me feel better about not being there? Spending hours watching Australians who demonstrate the worst elements of Australiana reminds me why I left? Listening to a language I passionately adore be shaved, braised and bruised beyond all phonic recognition reminds me that I can speak two languages with some degree of Michelin-starred skill? Spending hours alone in hotels with nothing better to stare at beyond my own navel, this kind of trash TV distracts me from taking a plastic vegetable peeler to my own jugular? Mad Men is not on every day while MKR is?

 

The answer, after the break…

Horror Movie – Skyhooks 1975

I’m not a parent. I’m not a partner. I’m not sure I’ll be seeking out either commitment anytime soon. I’m not sure my overly aged ovaries or my overly agile mouth would accommodate such a desire even if my overly active imagination does.

I’ve recently learned that there are myriad events, objects and instances that exist in the world that have thus far escaped my attention. Most of this exists in the hours between 6am and 10am, a period of time where I can usually to be found half-dressed in the kitchen concocting an industrial strength brew of coffee, while quaffing orange juice direct from the carton and chugging Nurofen to ease the nausea and guilt of another night out on the tiles.

So it was a rather eye-opening experience for me to welcome The MotherChef, Sapphire, Smack and The Smartarse to the Relais Rouge for 3 weeks of fun, sun and family bonding.

I have a vivid imagination and live in a Fairytale Land to avoid confronting the depressing reality of my loneliness, so I may have mildly underestimated just how intense an experience this ‘holiday’ would turn out to be. But did you know that children excrete liquids by the litre? From every orifice? Simultaneously?

My niece and nephew are two of the most precious people in my world, but any member of my family who ever accuses me of being a loud mouth will be refuted forever more. At approximately four times their size and with a fully developed pair of adult sized lungs, I am biologically incapable of creating any noise as loud or as irritatingly high pitched as the tiny twins.

Everything that a child does, is and creates is louder, is more concentrated and strangely involves more primary colours than anything an adult does. With my infinite wisdom and unique talent for drawing universal conclusions based exclusively on my own opinion, I think I’ve worked out why.

Children’s television.

Smack discovers Waltzing Matilda ..Bollywood Style

 

I am rather proud of my encyclopaedic knowledge of television. Frequent readers will be aware of my passion for Glee, my addiction to MasterChef and my obsession with Don Draper and the Mad Men. Even so, I’ve been living in sheltered ignorance of the world of Peppa Pig, the Cloudbabies and Mike the Knight.

Welcome to the wonderful and more-than-a-bit-creepy world of Cbeebies.

I was a child once, and like every child in Australia, I watched Play School. Play School has repeatedly won awards and accolades both at home and abroad for its educational value and positive contribution to the lives of Australia’s children. It was as integral to my growth under the Southern Stars as my daily dose of Vegemite. I also watched a bit of Sesame Street and DangerMouse. Beyond the few hours the cash-strapped ABC could afford to purchase from the far-better resourced BBC, the choices for us children of the eighties were rather limited.

Thirty years later, the technological advances in animation have created a magical universe that children inhabit everyday; a technicolour universe that is bizarre and seems largely influenced by hallucinogenic agents and alcohol.

Let’s start with the programme that ends Cbeebies marathon of fluorescent imagery every evening; In the Night Garden. This sequence of psychedelia features the talents of Iggle Piggle, a blue splodge of terry-towelling who doesn’t speak and carries a red blanket, Upsy Daisy, the token girl character, Makka Pakka, a brown splodge, the Pontypines, small red people who squeak instead of talking and the Tittifers, some colourful birds whose purpose I was never quite able to discern. This collision of colour, odd names and squeaks is designed to send children to sleep. Seriously? The lurid colours and unmoving plastic eyes of the characters shocked me into a panic attack every evening.

Preceding the evident drug use of the creators of In the Night Garden are the series of shows I’d like to call the Occupational Quartet; Bob the Builder, Postman Pat, Fireman Sam and Mike the Knight. Each of these four gallant lads gads about saving the day with a spanner, a letter, a ladder or a lance. They are all honourable British boys, they solve problems, they are intrusively friendly with all their neighbours and they all carry the name of their profession. Ironically, professions that very few British children will ever aspire to.

In order to be marginally more representative of the actual British employment market, I would very much like to see the addition of the following shows to Cbeebies’ daily line-up.

Firstly, there will be a girl, Anna the Analyst; she will be the person that works in an office doing no one is exactly sure what. She catches the tube to work and spends her days chatting with her colleagues about Corrie before she binge drinks her problems into oblivion three nights a week. Anna the Analyst’s string of merchandise could include plush bottles of vodka and a male friend called Mark the Moocher who has no job at all. 

Secondly, I would propose another lady character, Wendy the Wife. Wendy will hang about at Cath Kidston and Debenhams with her male friend Ivan the Investment Banker when she isn’t tending to her prize-winning garden in Ponsonby-upon-Tyne.

Finally, I would like to see Piotr the Plumber. Of Polish origin, Piotr will represent the unique group of people who actually work in Cameron’s Kingdom. He will have few friends or family and will be abused every day by the racist majority who would rather sit at home on benefits than clean out dirty drainpipes. Piotr’s show will be cancelled when the UK successfully negotiate their way out of Schengen and finally go bankrupt. 

When not occupied with the Occupational Four, CBeebies rocks the acid rinsed world of Cloudbabies. These four colour-coded babies ride around the sky on colour-coded seahorses while talking to the moon and the sun and rainbows. They also grow stars on trees. The only things missing from this amphetamine anarchy are Lucy and her Diamonds.

Providing employment for the actors who could not get a paying job anywhere else are the Zingzillas. These humans dressed as monkeys play instruments and live in a beach shack that doubles as the Magaluf set in Eastenders. Lacking actual eyeballs and dancing around like lunatics, the Zingzillas reminded me of many a night spent karaoking the night away with well intentioned male friends who cannot breathe a sound that sits upon any octave heard by a human ear.

A favourite of Sapphire and Smack, as well as most people under the age of six and the Union Jack, is Peppa Pig. A pig is the most adored character on British television, really? She may wear a pink dress, but she is a pig. Peppa and her family oink non-stop. Can we not do any better than teach the kids to snort and snarf? Can we not give them a character with eyes on either side of her nose rather than having both pasted on the same side in Picasso-esque profile?

‘Anatomically correct’ is not a priority among the creators of children’s television. Peppa has both eyes on the same side but head over to Timmy Time for an anatomically incorrect Aardman architected menagerie. Timmy, a sheep, must chew tobacco. He is only able to bleat out of one side of his mouth. However I’ll make an exception for Aardman; they are making all of those little creatures out of Play-Doh. Animators are using computers and they should make more of an effort to get Peppa’s eyes in the right spots on her face. 

While so many of these programmes appear to made by addicts and mind-altered animators the award for the craziest and most unexpected 20 minutes of preschool viewing must go to Rastamouse. 

Google it and watch it. I recommend a glass of wine as you do. I never quite figured out what Rastamouse does, I could not stop laughing long enough to listen to the story. With a syrupy brogue reminiscent of Bob Marley or Rihanna, Rastamouse has been created to respond to the politically correct need for CBeebies to represent all minority groups in Britain. Covering off the many who sailed north from Kingston or Trinidad is a skateboarding mouse that wears a crocheted beanie to cover up his dreadlocks. The only thing he didn’t do was actually smoke a joint. 

So concerned with their political correctness, CBeebies is presented in part by a woman who has no arm. While this is almost as momentous as Adam Hill’s Last Leg for the visibility of disabled people, I am not sure I ever managed to provide Sapphire with the correct answer as to why the blonde lady had no arm. 

More to the point, if they can have a show with a Jamaican Mouse hosted by a One Armed Woman why can’t the BBC create Nancy the Nurse, Trish the Teacher or even M the Manager?

 

Disappointingly ..this was as close as Sapphire got to the queen

 

 

 

...much more to come on the European Vacation when I’ve had enough sleep to construct a coherent sentence.

Glamorous – Fergie 2006

Last month, as I sunned (OK, cremated) my alabaster cheeks under the great southern sun, I was struck dumb by singular remark. 

We’d just hastily ingested two bottles of very cold white wine; we’d spent 3 hours talking almost exclusively about sex. We laughed so raucously and so loudly that the neighbouring tables stared in disgust, and then rolled their eyes in disdain, then glared in envy wishing they were having as much fun as we were. We had not seen each other in eight months, we barely see each other once a year, we never run out of things to talk about, and he is my first Gay Husband. He is Pauli Lupone. 

Typical night out with Pauli...Well Stocked Bar. Check.

The words he said, words that stunned me into silence, words that seen from outside are not at all earth shattering, “M, we’ve known each other twelve years you know”.

Twelve years….

I haven’t known a great many people longer than I’ve known my current hairstyle. Switching latitudes as often as I have, I tend to be one of those, ‘now you see me, now you don’t’ kind of people. Not so much a fair-weather friend and a fair-GPS kind of friend. If we are in the same postcode, I’m happy to spend my entire life with you. If not, well that is why we have Facebook.

Not dissimilar to French grammar, for every rule, there are exceptions…

There are the family, those who have had the pleasure of my company since I (or they) was born. Motherbear, the Art-sist-ologer and the Smartarse, UPAD and AGBA and all of the cousins that are now strewn across the globe, are certainly glad that we are blood relatives and thus obliged to see each other only once a year.

I went to school and then university with other people, but I had so little in common with most of them that I didn’t make an effort to stay in touch. I have never read more than one whole page from the Bible, no longer live in the Blue Mountains and I am not the heiress to a department-store fortune. That pretty much ruled me out of long-term friendships with most of my classmates; I wasn’t too sad. The ones I really did like mostly live in other countries so it was difficult, in the Neolithic age (pre-Facebook), to stay connected*.

So all that remained were my colleagues.

The American Coffee Company forged some very long-lasting relationships. I have close friends that are married and have multiple offspring, couples that met each other on either side of a frozen coffee frappe or a Venti something-or-other. Maybe it was the caffeine, or maybe we worked for a company that valued passion and required one to look especially glamorous while wearing a green apron. Either way most of the people I am closest to today look especially beautiful when clothed in primary colours.

So Pauli and I have known each other for twelve years…longer than any other relationship I’ve had with a male I’m not related to. That got me to thinking…Why is it so much easier for a woman to have a gay husband than a straight one?

 

They buy you age-appropriate gifts...

Blame the media.

Everywhere we look, the telly is telling us to invite beautifully manscaped men into our lives rather than rough it with straight ones who do not know the difference between Marc Jacobs and Makita. On Glee, Rachel shares her Barbra duets with Kurt. Goldie, who gave up on straight men all together has found Bryan and David to create her own version of normal, let’s call it The New Normal. Even back in the Jurassic nineties, Charlotte, the uptightest of uptightiness among Sex & the City’s Cosmo sipping quartet had an Anthony to ensure her Chanel Bolero didn’t clash with her Martha Stewart cupcakes. More recently, Girls’ zeitgeist heroine Hannah has Elijah to tell her that her tattoo looks fantastic even though the rest of us girls are still not so sure.

It happens in real celebrity life too. Elizabeth Hurley may be shagging that manliest of fake-haired Australian men, Shane Warne, but she runs to tell Elton and David about it afterwards. Madonna had Rupert Everett until she binned him for telling her the truth about her wrinkles and Cate Blanchett has professed her love for Ian McKellen ever since Galadriel and Gandalf first made eyes at each other in Middle Earth, sorry, New Zealand.

Why do we love our glamorous boys so much?

 

So very Glamorous. Always and For Ever.

There is something to be said about non-threatening interpersonal relationships. Relationships where one person can be completely honest with the other without fear of retribution, exclusion or rejection. A straight woman and a homosexual man are like Blue Cheese and Apricot Jam. Each has enough personal strength and unique character to exist in their own right, the one superbly sweet, the other a bit mouldy and rather nasty looking at first glance. Each have their own unique traits, their own place in the world, their own usefulness…but my, oh my, throw those bitches together and you have found the most heavenly spoonful of decadence that your brain melts down in titillated ecstasy. And he won’t look at you sideways if you have a second spoon, or a third…

Not content with only Apricot Jam, I’ve chosen to add Dried Muscatels and Onion Marmalade; I am lucky enough to have three sugary accompaniments to my penicillium roquforti self.

Pauli Lupone, the original and the only Australian, has done his best to convince me that Madonna is nothing more than Liza 2.0 without a good plastic surgeon. Braveheart still thinks Kylie gave rise to Madonna (when it is obviously the reverse) but is gifted with the ability to wax lyrical about the cultural significance of Made in Chelsea and Haggis. Finally, Louis XIV, my French King, listening ever so patiently to my tales of woe and womanhood, well Louis deserves a page all to himself.

Louis was there, banging out messages of self-assurance on the morning after my ill-fated interlude with Soldier Says. He is always ready with a kind word, a glass of bulles and a text message (or twenty) reminding me that the world will still turn even as my will to live, or the contents of my stomach, is stuck somewhere between the U-bend and the sewer. His dedication to making me feel like the Queen I know is buried deep beneath my bitter exterior has kept my chin above water on more than one occasion.

 

It sounds trite, I know it does, but these three men in all their pop-cultural fabulousness are so very dear to me, I’m not quite sure I could function without them.

Trite, simplistic or plain old stereotypical, whatever you may think, without them, my world would be a little less colourful, a little less melodramatic, a little less sparkly… a little less happy.

 

 

*I hate that modern day euphemism too

Are you old enough? – Dragon 1978

“He tastes even better than a Pine Lime Splice”

This week was the culmination of one of the best things ever to air on Australian television. It was an eight-part drama with a stellar cast that because it aired on the worst possible channel, suffered fewer viewers than it deserved. Clinging to the outer reaches of the interweb’s ever expanding filaments, I have been watching every week, usually early on a Thursday morning before heading off to work.

Puberty Blues was a sensation when I was in primary school. Even in the heady days of transsexuals like Marilyn and heroin addicts like Boy George, the idea of a teen novel that actually described the act of coitus between two youths was scandalous. So many copies of the book were stolen from our primary school that the librarian eventually caved to parental demand and removed it from the Dewey decimal shelves. Considered to be so very shocking and corrupting of Australia’s naïve youth, it was, for some time, banned from sale to people who were not over 18.

 

Debbie and Sue

 

Co-written by one of the most singularly sensational people on earth, Kathy Lette, Puberty Blues caused a sweaty-suburban-steamfest when it was released in 1979. Kathy, who has since gone on to achieve every Bridget’s heart’s desire, and married her very own fancy-human-rights-lawyer-type-Mark-Darcy, Geoffrey Robertson QC*, is a writer of exceptional wit and wisdom, someone I really wish I could be, someone who has inspired me, a role model to many a girl who grew up in suburban Sydney.

Puberty Blues recounts the tale of two teenage girls growing up in the Seventies in Sydney’s very own Hobbit-ty hairy-footed domain, The Shire. The Sutherland Shire is a suburb bounded on the east side by white sanded beaches of Cronulla and on the west side by a river that perfectly imprisons their resident population of narrow-minded Chiko-roll chomping surfers.

 

The Moles look on as the Spunks Surf

 

At first glance “The Shire” of Puberty Blues appears to be some kind of time capsule; a far off, long forgotten place where boys rule their women like they rule the waves, a place where House & Garden wives submit to their V8 husbands, a place that belongs to the innocent times that existed before we discovered Max Headroom, E.T. and Marty McFly.

Anyone who knows The Shire knows that little has changed since Kathy co-wrote Puberty Blues; it is still the only place in Sydney where you can buy a Pine Lime Splice and a Chiko Roll and call it lunch or dinner, or even breakfast. The rest of the metropolis has long ago adopted the cosmopolitan influences of Pistachio Gelato or Red Bean Jelly or Baklava. The Shire has a chequered history. While blessed with spectacular natural beauty, it was the scene of Sydney’s race riots and is the only suburb of Sydney where commercial signage must be written only in English. But then, it is also the place that gave us the most excellent and intelligent Adam Hills.

Puberty Blues got me all misty eyed and nostalgic. I don’t long for the singular cultural or genetic strain of the Shire, or the simplicity of the seventies. I am very happy to be living in a globalised world where I can access the answer to any trivia question or Google the marital status of a preferred celebrity in no more than two 3G’d seconds. I love existing on a worldwide web that allows me to live in France and talk almost daily, via video, to my family in Sydney.

What I do miss, is the comparative naivety of the books I read and the films and TV shows I watched as a young girl, way back when... A time when boys really did taste like Pine Lime Splices, a time when a girl worried about a pimple on her nose not whether or not to go Landing Strip or Brazilian, a time when being scared of catching aids from your boyfriend during sex did not mean having a phobia of him throwing you butt-plugs or nipple clamps.

 

I remember People Might Hear You by Robin Klein, a book that told of religious extremism among re-married parents, but didn’t mention terrorism. Robin also wrote Hating Alison Ashley, a novel that addressed the hot topic of schoolgirl bullying, but without the bit about using Facebook to publish nude photos of the unpopular girl.  I watched Degrassi Junior High, a little known Canadian TV show with characters that braved the challenge of teen pregnancy without being featured on an MTV reality show that glamourises the lives of 16 yr old mothers. 

The first novel I remember reading by the then (world-dominating) teen novelist Judy Blume, was Deenie. Deenie had scoliosis; one of my cousins and one of my friends at school had scoliosis as well. As school girls, in addition to the ritual torture of the Rubella vaccination jammed into your left butt-cheek, we and not the boys, were subjected to the group health examination, having our spines measured to ensure they were straight. We’d line up, we’d walk into a classroom with shaded windows, we’d strip, a doctor ran a ruler type thing down our backs and we’d be told that this was all part of becoming a woman.

 

Degrassi, the best thing from Canada since Ryan Reynolds

 

In 2012, if a teenage girl wants to know what it means to become a woman, she can tune into to see any number of Kardashians marry-divorce-kanye and earn a viable living with more wit in her butt than in her brain. She could also tune into the beyond ridiculous and insulting “Beauty and The Geek”; the premise of which is that the blonder you are, the more silicone you carry over your sternum and the more fun you can make of a man who studied physics. According to 2012’s pop culture, being a woman means being dumb or dumber. 

So I’d like Kathy to write another book. A book for all of us who read about Sue and Debbie when we were young, and saw it more as a warning than a way of life. A book for those of us who grew up and went beyond the Corning Ware Casserole Dishes, those of us who went beyond the beach, beyond the suburbs, beyond the boundaries of being a woman. A book for those of us who don’t’ have the security of the Human Rights Lawyer, who suffer the odd bout of post-puberty blues but who know the respite and cool refreshing tang of a Pine Lime Splice.

 

…or in Paris, Haagen Daaz Speculoos Ice Cream.

 

 

 

Kathy and Geoffrey, I hope it was fancy dress!

 

 

 

*Rumour has it that Helen Fielding based her modern day Mr Darcy on Geoffrey because she found him rather sexy.

 

 

Girls (Who Rule the World) – Beyonce 2011

In recent weeks a political David and Goliath struggle played out for the leadership of the Great Southern Land, Australia. Julia Gillard, that exceptional redhead who leads that exceptional red land almost lost her job to the only prime minister Australia has ever known who looks more like Southpark’s Eric Cartman than Eric Cartman himself, Kevin Rudd. The long and the short of it is that after some toing and froing, Julia came out on top, she is still the Prime Minister and she still has excellently coiffed red hair.

Since becoming Australia’s first female Prime Minister two years ago, Julia has attracted more than her fair share of criticism. People don’t like the way she speaks (bogan^), despise her red hair (common) and they never stop commenting on the fact that she is Australia’s FIRST female Prime Minister. Despite being in a long-term relationship, she has no children and despite being Prime Minister of the second largest economy in the Asia Pacific Region, an economy that has been barely sniffed at by the Global Financial Crisis, she really can’t do anything right#.

At the Royal Wedding of William to his Kate last year in London, all the journos commented on was the design elements of what Julia was wearing. You may or may not know that there were about 20 leaders from the various Commonwealth countries in Westminster Abbey that day, Julia was the only one who, like the eight months pregnant tabloid nothingness Victoria Beckham, was dissected for her fashion choices.  Victoria is a fashion designer, what she wears is essential to her success. Julia is a politician; I am far more interested in what she has to say than the colour or cut of what she is wearing while she says it. 

More importantly, if she were a man, would anyone care what she wore? When John Howard, who occupied the top job for twelve long and arduous years, made a political speech, did anyone begin their opinion piece with those famous words, “opting for a double breasted Armani and shinier than shiny Florsheim brogues, Mr Howard addressed the caucus and bored everyone senseless from underneath his under-epilated eyebrows”. Certainly, I never read that in the Herald.

When, on Australia Day 2012, attending an official gathering, Julia suffered a frightening and violent attack to her personal safety, the press did not comment on her grace under pressure as she was manhandled into a waiting car. Rather, the ‘Cinderella Story’ focussed on the brand of shoe she lost as she was whisked away by her manly bodyguards. A shoe that was later sold on eBay.

The shoe that was gloriously thrown at George W. Bush’s head at a press conference in 2008 was not sold on eBay, nor do I imagine you know its brand or its size. Bush was a moron. He led the (then) largest economy in the known world. He was a man. We didn’t care how items of apparel affected his day-to-day political life. 

Did you know Christina Aguilera had put on weight? Did you know that Duchess Kate wears shoes from Russell & Bromley? Did you know that Helena Bonham Carter wore Vivienne Westwood when she received her Order of the British Empire from the Queen? Do you know the identity of the father of Rachida Dati’s child’s father*?  

Let me re-ask these questions. 

Did you know that Justin Timberlake is going bald? Do you know who designed Prince William’s suit? Do you know what Sir Richard Branson was wearing the day he received his Knighthood? Can you name the child that Tony Abbott allegedly fathered when he was at university?

I am not a feminist, but…I am more than a little bit over the double standards.

I earn my own living, I look after myself (apart from the recreational alcoholism), and I do not ask for any help from the government and nor do I abuse that which is offered. I would not classify myself as a burden on society and do not judge those who are incapable of helping themselves. Call me Socio-Capitalist if you like. But I am sick and effing tired of the comments about my marital status, the number of my issue (none) and the fact that what I do counts for nothing given the answers to the first two questions. 

I am a woman who has made decisions that have inexorably defined her path, even if I wish they hadn’t.

Some years ago, I was the other half of a man, a good and kind man, who wanted me to be his good wife. Wanting something more, something that would push my intellect beyond its known realms, I pushed the Danish designed diamond ring back across the dining table we had bought together at a Swedish furniture store and wished him well as I ventured off into the then unknown wilds of French socialism.

I did not know then what I know now.

When a woman chooses to live a life less ordinary, she will ultimately give up that which to so many seems commonplace. Respect. Affection. Equality. At least if I had red hair like Julia, I’d be really different.

Had I have made the decision to marry that good man, I would no doubt be living a somewhat happy life in a somewhat happy family home somewhat happily somewhere in the south of Sydney.

At that time, I had recently witnessed the death of my father, a man who had somewhat happily given up his musical ambitions to become the carpenterily breadwinner of a somewhat happy family. I decided that I did not want to die having never at least tried to fulfil my dream of living abroad in the country I dreamed of and speaking the language I had spent 12 years learning by rote. 

Like Julia, I have no children. Unlike Julia, I have no life partner.

You see, when you can take care of yourself and you have demonstrated that even in a land of language foreign unto you, that you’ve survived, broken leg and broken heart, you take a profoundly deep dive on the desirability-for-partnership scale. When you have managed to do everything, without the assistance of a manly presence, when you can cope without an abdominal six-pack to carry you off into the sunset, everyone assumes you are Snow White, equipped with seven dwarves to do the hard graft, eating an apple a day to keep the doctor away, but in no need of a Prince Charming to whisk you off into the sunset.

Francois Fillon, the very manly and very heavily eye-browed Prime Minister of France this month enacted a law that the word Mademoiselle will no longer appear on official government documentation. From now on we are only Madame (me) or Monsieur.  Robbed of the title ‘Ms’ in French, the idea is that there will no longer be discrimination against unmarried women…of a certain age.

Despite his revolutionary bill of parliament, Francois has obviously never spent a night with me in a bar in Paris.

 

^ Google it, you will learn something

#For the record, I am not here to comment on her politics, just the media representation of her, the Prime Minister

* How many male politicians have born children onto this earth unbeknownst to them, to the voting public or to anyone else.