Smoker's Breath

Out of this frackin' world

So I was a bit behind but I finally caught up with the rest of season 3 of Battlestar Galactica this week after several 'stay up until 3am watching it' nights. How is this show not the biggest thing on television? For the past three seasons, it has continually raised the bar for both science fiction and episodic television itself (its series 2 finale has only been matched by the recent conclusion of series 3 of Lost for narrative daring).

No other television show has engaged so much with our troubled, fucked-up (or should I say "fracked up" to use BSG terminology) modern world as BSG. In telling the story of how a scattering of human survivors must battle with a robotic enemy - of their own creation - that's out to annhilate them and their way of life, BSG takes the post 9/11 world and refracts it through its own ingenious sci-fi prism.

The War on Terror, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Israel and Palestine all cast an oblique shadow over BSG, as does America itself. In fact, when TV historians come to analyse this golden age of television, they will pick BSG as the definitive television show of George W. Bush's and Dick Cheney's America. Just look at some of the major themes and topics that are recurrent in the show: terrorism, torture, invasion and occupation, insurgency, state security, religious fundamentalism, revolutions, coup d'etats, witch hunts, paranoia, imperialism and imperial presidencies, assasinations, political corruption, suicide bombings, mutiny, military dictatorships, civil war, love, marriage, infidelity, sex and sexuality, gender politics, abortion, racism, xenophobia, existentialism, political philosophy and what it means - literally - to be human.

A brilliant ensemble cast, led by Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell (all hail President Roslin!), Katee Sackhoff, Jamie Bamber, James Callis, Tricia Helfer, and Grace Park, only add to the quality of the show. And while BSG remains a cult hit, slavishly, devotedly obsessed over by people like me, critics have been falling over themselves to praise the show (don't get me started on how the Emmys have blanked it every year). BSG won a highly prestigious Peabody award last year, MSNBC and Entertainment Weekly named it as the Best TV Show of 2006 and the New Yorker, New York Times and Rolling Stone all carried rhapsodic cover feature reviews of the show throughout last year.

As for the series 3 finale - I was left stunned. I'm still processing the shattering twists and revelations so if any fans out there want to help me out, it'd be much appreciated. As for the rest of you, please get watching. As another BSG-loving friend of mine says: if you're not watching Battlestar Galactica, you don't deserve a television. In fact, if you don't love BSG, you just don't love television.

Brian O' Who?!

Donncha O'Callaghan. Now THAT'S a "bod"

Isn't it Bionic?

Former EastEnders star Michelle Ryan (Zoe Slater) looks like she has a hit on her hands with the new version of Bionic Woman, which premiered on US TV this week, and beat Grey's Anatomy spinoff Private Practice in its audience share. Read about it here.

All the Pretty Things

This Life column from Day and Night magazine in today's Irish Independent

There's nothing like a good old fashioned, politically incorrect, dubiously-sourced survey reducing men and women to crude, basic stereotypes to get the mind ticking over on matters of love and lust. German researchers recently published the results of a study they conducted on the sexes that essentially says men are shallow, looks-obsessed Neanderthals and women are more ruthlessly shallow gold-diggers.

The "boffins" (it's never "scientists" when it comes to these types of surveys) based their findings on an examination of a group of speed daters, and by analysing their behaviour, concluded that men pick their mates based on physical attractiveness, while women are more selective, and can "adjust their desire for a 'high-quality' mate". And lest there be any confusion, "high quality" is taken to mean "he's loaded".

This is all Darwinian stuff, the boffins tell us, and it would certainly give credence to those moments when you pass a couple in the street and find yourself silently asking, 'What is she doing with him?' Oh come now, you know you've done it.

And who are we to question all of this if it is indeed encoded in our natures? But speaking as a man (be nice), I feel moderately qualified to comment on the laws of attraction that are wired into our XY chromosomes. It is indeed like survival of the fittest out there - and by 'fittest', I mean, of course, the hotties (if you listen really carefully right now, I think you might just hear Charles Darwin spinning in his grave).

Yes, I, like many other men, am drawn to the Pretty People™ and I'm not ashamed of it. After all, they're here on earth for our entertainment and edification. Acting in a manner truly befitting our simian ancestors, we gather around them, knuckles dragging along the floor, making noises and suppressing our innate urges to reach out and groom them by picking flies off their exquisite forms. If it were a movie, it'd be called Gorillas in Their Midst.

And in keeping with the evolutionary process, you find that you must learn a whole new language to even talk to a lot of the Pretty People™. In my specific, man-centric case, it's Hunkish, which I speak poorly in a broken, pigeon dialect that all too often fails to be understood by the intended pretty target. Regular English deserts us when we try to chat up the Pretty People™, leaving us floundering with the few words our primate minds can cobble together, causing us to come out with masterful seduction lines such as, 'Socks are great aren't they?'

However, not for the first time, I think the girls might be right. Looks, shockingly, are not everything, and I can say that having done a few intensive crash courses in the “all that glitters is not gold” school of dating. Based on my own experience and that of my consiglieri, I can confidently say that a lot of the Pretty People™ - and I mean the ones who know they're hot - are just dull. There's no endearing flaw, no little insecurity to arc the attraction and make you want to furrow deeper to find out more.

So what's one to do? Obviously, the solution is to find a way to get through to a Pretty Person™ who has the personality and the goods to back those looks up, and then follow the example of that great, misunderstood romantic heroine, Kathy Bates in Misery, and force them to love you in an environment of torture and intimidation. Alternatively, you can go for the more "traditional" route of being open-minded, shamelessly flirty and, most of all, persistent. And if that person happens to be loaded, all the better. Whatever about looks, we all know money is the sure-fire way to happiness.

I Need a Hero

Milo Ventimiglio. Gratuituous torso shots. Even more reasons to be excited about Heroes Season 2

Roth. God.

For those of you who missed it, the Sunday Times had a great refreshers course in the work of the peerless, magisterial American novelist Philip Roth in the Culture mag last week. It can be viewed here. Roth publishes his latest novel Exit Ghost this autumn, but for those who haven't had the pleasure yet, I'd recommend tackling his astonishing 'America' trilogy from the late 1990s - I Married A Communist, American Pastoral and The Human Stain, three novels that are breathtaking in their intellectual, linguistic, social and historical sweep. This guy is just awesome. Nobel Prize in Literature NOW! Don't make me come out there to Stockholm.

Classic TV Openers

The latest in Entertainment Weekly's weekly and entertaining 'CLassic Lists' - 15 Classic TV Show Openers.

Ah, memories. Best entertainment site and magazine bar none.

Love It, Part Deux

Love it

Keep in Touch

This Life column from Day and Night in today's Irish Independent

By now I'd imagine just about everyone in the country has seen the movie Superbad, a teen comedy about three underage guys trying to buybooze to impress girls at a party. It's a crude, funny but very sweet tale that has no doubt already penetrated (har har) popular culture sodeeply, that if you hear the word 'McLovin' one more time, you might just cry.

I have to admit that watching Superbad left me with a lump in my throat. On the surface, the film's all about sex and chicks, but really it's about guys and their friendships, and specifically, that moment when the realisation hits that life is about to take erstwhile best friends in different, often far-flung directions.

I think this movie has struck such a chord with audiences because nearly everyone can relate to that experience. It can be traumatic when the safety net of secondary school or college is whisked away and your whole network of friends is sundered and cast out into the world for the first time.

And as we all know, it doesn't end with school or college. On the dayI'm writing this, I have to wave off a friend who's heading to Australia for a year, and am on the way out to catch up with another ex-pat pal who's back for the weekend and whom I haven't seen properly in I don't know how long. On top of that, one of my oldest friends just moved to Manchester last week to start a whole new chapter in his life. I have to tell you, I'm beginning to feel it now.

One of the over-riding preoccupations of your twenties is just how to maintain your old and new friendships, when everyone is so busy travelling, or pursuing their career, or simply just living their busy lives. Of course, technology and low-budget (and even lower frills) air travel can be an enormous help, but it takes commitment. It's shockingly and tragically easy to fall out of touch with even really good friends.

Take pals who are living in two different countries. All it takes is afew hectic weeks on both sides, when the two of you miss that phonecall or forget to email, and before you know it, the gap between you has grown wider. Leave it too long, and that ocean that separates you begins to stretch more and more into the distance, causing you to inevitably wonder at what point a friendship can be officially declared missing in action.

However, the reassuring thing is that, while some friendships might fall by the wayside, many continue to prosper, despite the many modern obstacles. As the frantic coming and going of friends continues unabated, and even accelerates, you really do gain a better understanding of what friendship is.

For instance, I have a very good friend's wedding coming up. Many pals that I've known for years but haven't seen in a long time will be there. With these friends, and a select few others, I'm confident that within a few minutes of chatting, we'll have caught up on the headlines from each other's lives, and as the evening progresses, any gaps in detail will have been bridged and we'll be the same as we always were.

When you can pick up easily after even a great length apart – that's when you know you have something special. But you shouldn't ever take it for granted. Like Seth and Evan in Superbad, you don't want to lose that old friend who always had your back, or who you chatted to on the phone all the time (even when you were on your way to meet them), or who uncomplainingly carried you home from a house party when you were too inebriated to stand. They're the keepers.

Bad to the Bone(r)

Q&A with starsof Superbad, Michael Cera (19), Jonah Hill (23) and Christopher Mintz-Plasse (18) from the Irish Independent, Sept 14

Why do you think a movie about the nerds and unpopular kids has struck such a chord with audiences?
MC: I think people can relate to it. Even if you were popular in school, you can relate to it. You knew these kids even if you weren’t them.
JH: I think people are also really sick of comedies with no sense of reality. It’s like when I first came across Freaks and Geeks [cancelled cult TV show]. I remember thinking, ‘ I can’t believe there’s a television show like this’. Then they axed it! But the fans who loved it were obsessed with it. That showed that people wanted something they could relate to, that seemed familiar or realistic.

Did the studio suits ever become nervous that the movie had too much swearing and sexual content for the US audience in particular?
MC: It was never an issue. We never had to censor ourselves either. Besides, it’s not that shocking.
JH: Judd’s earned a lot of confidence from the studios. If someone with less assurance had been involved, they probably would have had to tone things down.
CMP: Yes, like if Steven Spielberg had been making it.

What are your favourite comedies and who are your comedic heroes?
MC: I love Rushmore and Wes Anderson
JH: The Big Lebowski and the Coen Brothers in general. The Jerk is also one of the classics. Does Harold and Maude count as a comedy?
CMP: Dazed and Confused was awesome. I watched that a lot before starting this movie.

Are you guys getting any more action with the ladies since the movie’s success?
MC: I can safely say I’m getting the exact same level of action that I’ve always gotten.
JH: Really? That little?
CMP: Women like actors so there are those benefits. That’s all I’m saying.
JH: I seem to have gotten a lot more handsome in the past month.

Do you have any favourite chat-up lines that you like to use?
MC: I have an Irish-themed pick up line: ‘You must be Irish because my penis is Dublin’.
JH: ‘Is that a mirror in your pocket because I can see myself in your pants?’ No, I seriously don’t use that one. Ahem.
CMP: ‘Did it hurt when you fell from heaven’?
MC: Chris, remove yourself from my company please.

How long before the McLovin’ merchandise hits the streets?
CMP: There are T-shirts already!
JH: I’m waiting for the Superbad videogame. It all takes place on the one night and you go around trying to steal beer and increase your scoring ability – literally.
MC: I’m personally waiting for McLovin: The Album.
JH: McLovin’ Sings the Classics
MC: It could take other songs and replace key words like ‘love’ with McLovin’ - You’ve Lost That McLovin Feeling’.
CMP: I’m copywriting that.

What’s the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to you at a party?
MC: I have a whole lot of stories about other people at parties. Turn off the tape recorder.
CMP: A friend of mine fell asleep in the bath, but must have thought it was a toilet. Gross.
JH: I met a girl at a party in high school and we were fooling around. I thought I was being very cool, but I was so drunk that I got sick on her shoes. And I had just eaten Subway.
MC: The perfect 12 inch.
JH: No girl wants that 12 incher!

Finally, can you sum up Superbad in three words?
JH: Let’s all give a word.
CMP: Friendly
MC: Super.
JH: Bad. No wait, it’s good!

Switch Off

From Day and Night in the Irish Independent, Sept 14

The email of the species is more deadly than the mail. I wish I had been the smarty-pants that coined that quote rather than that hack Stephen Fry, because it perfectly sums up my love-hate relationship with "the electronic mail" of late.

Fry meant those words in the context of how email can destroy careers, relationships and even whole societies (probably) with one mistaken click. But I use the quote to throw email in the dock and charge it as the shameless, domineering time thief that it is. J'accuse!

You see, I think I have a problem (now now, be nice). I just might be addicted to email — as well as other online messaging services. Hell, throw in the whole internet in general. It's not enough for me to be available on email for 8-10 hours whilst at work 5 days a week. I'll come home at night and I'm straight back on it.

As soon as my laptop turns on, it automatically signs me in to MSN, which then notifies everyone I'm connected with that I'm online and ready, if not always eager, to chat. As soon as my Gmail account is open, I can become available to instant message every other Gmailer in my phone book. A quick sign-in into Bebo then opens me up for messages, mails and comments on that front too.

I think my email, compulsion let's call it, stems from the fact that it's my main contact point for work. It's actually possible these days to be employed by someone without ever once meeting them and so I've become accustomed to just constantly checking in to see if anything has come up. It's exhausting just describing that whole process, never mind actually participating in it. But this seems to be the reality of modern life anymore.

Even take mobile phones as an example. Mine seems to be constantly on the go, mainly due to my insane text message trigger-happiness. Even when I try get some peace by turning off my phone at night, friends can react with bewildered admonishment. "I was trying to call you at 2.30am," they say. To which I reply, a) that's why I turn it off in the first place and b) if George W. Bush can go to bed at 9.30 every night and not be disturbed until 6.30 the next morning, surely it's okay for me not to be contactable 24/7?

It seems that it's just impossible anymore to completely shut off for any length. That's partly my own fault, I admit, but the problem is, if everyone else is living this way, it can be very easy for you to fall way behind if you don't keep pace.

Or can it? I recently moved apartment and so didn't have broadband for the first few weeks. I was going up the walls waiting for it, but, after a few days of cold turk-E, I realised that I didn't really miss the time thiefs of Bebo, MSN or Facebook all that much.

What was I missing really? Hours spent trawling through friends' photos, doing their surveys, chatting idly over nothing in particular, looking up clips on YouTube, following link after link on various blogs?

All those things are fine in moderation, you'll agree. But what I can't escape is the fact that I don't seem to have the time to finish reading a book these days. Newspapers pile up unread. CDs purchased weeks ago are still in their packaging. That gym pass is turning yellow from age and neglect. I'm not getting enough time to myself, or enough sleep for that matter. And if all it takes is something as simple as pushing a button to achieve, why then is switching off — in every sense of the word — so damn hard?

Driving Offences

From yesterday's Day and Night magazine in the Irish Independent

I haven't sat behind the wheel of a car since I was 18-years-old. I had received a gift of paid driving lessons for the birthday that marked my entry into manhood, and what better signifier of manhood could there have been than revving through town in a suped-up boy racer sexmobile with head-thumping, 'untz untz' music blaring out the windows? I was going to be so frickin' cool.


The first lesson went well – mainly because it involved just being stationary in the driving seat, getting used to the clutch and accelerator, and, you know, not driving. Lesson two, we practiced stop-starts, and then it was out to an undulating road to master uphill ignition.


It was all going fine until the instructor made me drive through the city centre. I freaked out, forgot everything he taught me, conked out several times and idiotically took my eyes off the road on more than one occasion.


The final straw came when I took the training car – which might as well have had stabilisers –up on a path and a young mother and her offspring had to literally jump into some bushes for safety. The instructor pulled me over and took the keys out of the ignition. My teenage boy racer fantasy was over.


Ever since then, I've deployed an exhaustive catalogue of reasons (PR-speak for 'excuses') as to why I've never gone back to get my licence: I was too busy with college, I had no money, no family member was willing to risk their life by getting in a car with me, and so on.


But now that I'm in my late twenties (that still doesn't sound right), my reasons are beginning to wear thin. Up until now, I wittily deflected the topic of not being able to drive with my cutesy line, 'I don't drive, dear, I'm driven', which was a variation on my, 'I don't queue, I'm queued for' bon mot that I wheel out whenever I have to wait in line for anything.


For me, learning to drive was filed away in the 'Things to Do By The Time I'm 30' folder, along with writing a book, taking up pilates, learning Spanish, living abroad, and finally getting round to playing a Wii.


I figured that when I finally made up my mind to get this driving thing done, I would buy a car, and the very sight of it sitting there, unused, wasting my money, would propel me into action. But that plan doesn't seem any closer to fruition either, even though I have various people telling me that I have to learn now before I get 'the fear' and lose my nerve.


The funny thing is, it would make a lot of sense for me to get my licence, seeing as I am Ireland's – nay, Europe's – number one critic of public transport, upon which I'm tragically dependent. I'm going to give myself an ulcer one of these days ranting and raving about buses and trains, and pursuing my one-man campaign for an EU-wide harmonisation of public bus timetables so ours can be more like the punctual Germans.


In that regard, it would be logical for me to take my transportation destiny into my own hands, but the other illogical, lazy side of me asks why bother, when I can just harness and exploit the enthusiasm of recently-licensed friends, who are so ready and willing to drive you anywhere for any reason just so they can get behind the wheel. It makes them happy and it gets me where I need to be, so we all win. I'm such a giver.


Maybe I'll just leave getting a car for another 20 years, when I can use the inevitable mid-life-crisis as my cover for trying to be a boy racer in a flashy, over-compensatory vehicle one more time.

Bigging it up

This Life column from yesterday's Day and Night magazine in the Irish Independent

We all have at least one person who can effortlessly trip every insecure switch in our bodies and put us on the defensive the minute they come within an inch of our personal space. These are the people that you just have to out-do in everything because they thrive on thinking they are better than you, which makes you instinctively rise (or sink) to their game as a matter of pride.

This conscious PR overdrive to big yourself and your life up just so you can best this person at all costs is petty and childish, and borne of some grave injustice, or long-sublimated trauma that involved bullying and/or social exclusion, jealousy, envy or some kind of intense personality clash. For all those reasons, it's normally people from your schooldays who hit this raw nerve.

I have one such person. This is a guy from school whom I never got on with for a variety of reasons rooted mainly in sad secondary school politics and social divisions. We were polar opposites in terms of friends, pursuits and personalities, so inevitably disliked each other for the few years we were forced to orbit in each other's spheres.

It also made us competitive in a totally unhealthy way. He could always trounce me sporting-wise (which, in fairness, a hobbled, one-eyed badger could do), but in almost every other area it was a case of Cold War-style one-upmanship. But no matter how much I may have gotten the better of him, he always had this innate ability to reduce my victory to nothing with just one look or comment. Of course, I always thought of the right retaliatory comment or action about 4 hours later when it was too late.

Anyway, I ran into him in a shopping centre a few weeks back. I momentarily considered pretending I hadn't seen him. I could see him do likewise, until, after a few uncomfortable seconds, we both acknowledged each other and said hello. Now I hadn't the foggiest what this guy had been up to since we finished secondary school and I'm sure he held the same level of interest in me. But this was 7 or 8 years later: you'd think things would be different now that we were both grown-ups (in theory anyway).

It turns out that it doesn't work that way. There was faux civility as we caught up very briefly and I think I responded with the requisite amount of interest in what he told me. But I soon found all my news bouncing back to me off his old patronising, smug reflective shield. So my back went up and before I knew it, I had thrown in that I was in the process of buying an apartment (since he told me he was still renting) and that I had just bought a car (since he said he was on his way to get the bus to work).

The thing is, it's not like he was doing so much better than me in terms of career and so on that I had to embellish the truth like that. It's just I couldn't risk giving him any opening to pounce with one of the self-satisfied looks or condescending putdowns of his that I had come to know and loathe back in school.

However, I think I won this time round as he seemed genuinely stumped. So what if some of the things I told him were technically not real? It's just like adding a few minor stretches to your CV to make yourself seem the more attractive candidate. But hopefully I won't run into him again for another few years, because, just as with the CV, I need some time to nail some of those skills and achievements I've already laid claim to.-- http://lowlyjourno.blogspot.com/