Let me get this straight...

Sideline from today's Irish Independent

For a while there, it seemed there had been a backlash against the so-called 'metrosexual' culture. A breed of raw action man — epitomised by the lean, mean and detached style that Daniel Craig brought to the James Bond role last year — appeared to be metaphorically raiding the metrosexual's bathroom cabinet and throwing out all those wimpy male moisturisors, exfoliators and face packs.

Yes, the grunts and knuckledraggers tried to convince us that the 'retrosexual' was now the dominant male archetype in popular culture, and we had better all start getting used to it. Or not. Feel however the bloody hell you like — retrosexuals don't care about girly-man things like feelings.

But this week, it seems the metrosexuals have claimed back lost ground — if not evolved into something else entirely, something bigger, stronger and more metro than ever before.

That was the news that a quarter of Irish males aged between 18-25 own a GHD hair straightener. The very idea that any man would use such a taboo beauty appliance to tame their unruly mops was just too much for the retros to handle. As news of the survey broke, there was surely a collective shudder felt throughout the land as these last bastions of pure manhood punched a wall or a nearby well-groomed metro in sheer frustration, horror and disbelief.

Of course, the automatic accusation/taunt that was flung around was that men who used a GHD were "gay". What would the retros do without that default, catch-all insult, eh? But I would be very interested if researchers somewhere delved a little deeper and found out what type of men have GHDs. Is there one lurking in the changing rooms of, gasp, a GAA club? Does that burly builder working on that site opposite your office have one stashed in his bag in case he gets caught in a shower while working and the rain plays havoc with his carefully maintained curls? Does the Taoiseach's hefty make-up bill include a miracle hair straightener?

The GHD, it seems, has the same stigma today that moisturisor or male waxing kits had back pre-Beckham. But seriously, what's so shocking about men using a hot tongs to straighten their hair? It's not exactly as if these guys are wearing glittering nail polish or stilettos with their suits, now is it? To you 'tuft' guy retros, I ask: how can we help you get over this post-traumatic 'tress' disorder?

Shopping mad

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

Morning radio is supposed to light, perky, and should have some content that has potential to inspire in you some kind of good will towards mankind. Otherwise, how on earth could you get up out of bed on a freezing, wet November morning and face the world? Morning radio is not meant to make you feel bad about yourselves and others, as happened to me last week.

There I was, minding my own groggy business, sleepily tucking into my porridge, when this woman popped up on a morning radio show and pronounced that she had all of her Christmas shopping done since the end of October. All that was left for her to do now was enjoy the festive season’s abundant opportunities to be jolly.

Thankfully, the presenter was in tune with my thinking and told her, ‘You seem nice, but I hate you’. I can’t even begin to fathom the organisational skills and commitment it would take to be that prepared for Christmas – or ‘Chrismoween’ as it’s now apparently known ever since our capitalist overlords decided to merge the world’s biggest pagan festival and the most important date in all of Christianity into one convenient, if hard-to-dress-for, holiday season.

I’m not a fan of shopping at the best of times. Don’t get me wrong: I love having, you know, clothes and stuff, but whenever it comes to actually having to venture into town to buy them, I revert to my default state as a whimpering four-year-old, tugging on my mother’s sleeve, wailing that I want to go home as she drags me into yet another shoe shop.

Now that I can no longer rely on my mother to buy all my clothes – and if anyone old enough to read this is still in that position, put the paper down, and slowly back away- I try to make my own shopping excursions quick and painless. Well, as painless as something that’s so easily hindered by the random and infuriating behaviour of the general public can be.

My plan always is: get in early, wear clothes that are easy to change in and out of, have your Laser card and/or all ATM needs sorted out first, and get the heck out before the hordes of merciless consumers arrive en masse like an invasion of zombies from a George A. Romero horror. And whatever you do, for the love of all that’s holy-pagan, don’t attempt to shop at weekends.

But in the two-to-four months that constitute the Chrismoween period, all those rules disappear faster that a pot of mulled wine and your dignity at the office party. Every day is like a weekend in terms of trying to navigate shopping centres. There’s no such thing as ‘early’ because everyone else now plays by that game too. ATMs have queues long enough to rival a run on a Northern Rock branch no matter what time of the day it is. The list of festive mood-sapping shopping hurdles just snowballs.

So what’s one to do? Internet shopping seems like the best option, but you better get clicking now. Also the problem with that plan is that you really have to know what you’re buying for the person beforehand. Otherwise, you’ll end up doing the cyber equivalent of running around Dundrum frantically trying to find the right PJs and Brut toiletry set for your dad.

As for me, I think I have no choice but to resurrect my adoringly charming, if not very well-received, gag from my impoverished student days when I cheekily gave people imaginary “boxes of love” as gifts. Or maybe I’ll give them “my time” or send them “best wishes”. Anything but brave the crowds and go shopping. I don’t wanna Mammy, I wanna go home!

In the blink of an eye

I woke at 5.30 this morning after a really restless night, so instead of lying their frustratedly trying to get back asleep, I grumpily started work on a book I've had beside my bed for a few weeks. Having just read this book the whole way through, I don't feel I can ever be grumpy, or complain about anything ever again.

The book is called The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly, written by the former editor-in-chief of French Elle, Jean-Dominique Bauby. In December 1995, Bauby suffered a debilitating stroke that left him utterly paralysed with a condition known as 'locked-in' syndrome. The only movement he could make was with his left eyelid, and through a laborious system of blinks, he dictated this remarkable, profoundly moving account of his life as a 'locked-in' patient. Bauby describes the condition as like having your body trapped and held down under a giant diving-bell, while at the same time your mind retains the ability to flutter like a butterfly.

The words 'life-affirming' and 'inspiring' cannot even begin to describe the effect this book has on the reader. Through his insightful, often funny, often unbearably sad prose, Bauby (who died in 1997) will be able to make you fall on your knees in weeping, grovelling gratitude for being able to even fall on your knees, or even swallow your own spit. Without any self-pity, or preachy, Tuesdays with Morrie-esque sentimentality, Bauby will forcefully remind you just how so very, very blessed you are to be able to go about the routine things in your life, for good and for bad.

The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly will - should - encourage you to live the life you want, to take chances, to not take anything for granted, and to not miss out on any of life's opportunities, no matter how massive or how insignificant you might think them to be. Reflecting on his lost chances by reference to a racing bet he never placed on a sure thing, Bauby says that, from his current vantage point, life looks like "a race whose result we know beforehand, but in which we fail to bet on the winner".

The book had been made into a movie directed by Julian Schnabel, which will be released next year, and which understandably has attracted attention as an Oscar darkhorse. Please, please read this book. It literally shook me to my core with its message that your entire life could be gone in the blink of an eye.

A Sight to See

Movie critics are prone to say, "If you only see one movie this year, make it this". However, rarely has that term been more appropriate than in the case of Charles Ferguson's self-financed documentary, No End In Sight, a brilliantly edited, calm and lucid, but utterly devastating examination of how the Bush Administration mishandled the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

You know most of the reasons for the chaos in that country, and No End doesn't present you with any new facts. But the concise and precise manner in which this documentary chronicles one catastrophic decision after another from an unfathomably incompetent, arrogant, intransigent and just plain idiotic US Administration, and the way it is so clearly and incontrovertibly argued, makes the film literally jaw-dropping to behold.

No End is compiled from interviews with military experts who were there on the ground, all of whose concerns and advice were largely ignored by the Bush Administration before, during and after the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Their insightful contributions are intercut with footage of press conferences held by former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who was in effect running the operation. I didn't think it possible, but you come away from No End with an even lower opinion of Rumsfeld than you had before. On foot of the arguments here, history is sure to regard him as arguably the worst Secretary of anything in all the history of the United States. But then again, there are a lot of figures in the Bush Administration jostling for 'Worst Ever' positions, including the president himself.

All you can do is watch in disbelief and increasing anger as the damning evidence mounts: how there was zero post-war planning; how the Department of Defence ignored all advice from military experts with combat experience (unlike the cretinous quartet who planned the war, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz); the Administration's reliance on, and indeed pursuit of, dodgy and plain false intelligence to bolster their case for war; the failure to halt the looting in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam; the disastrous policy of De-Baathification that left most of the country's public sector unemployed and disenfranchised for life; the failure to guard ammunitions dumps; and, most calamitously, the decision by the Coalition Provisional Authority (who had never even visited Iraq at that point) to disband the Iraqi military not only without consulting those people trying to contain the chaos on the ground, but without even informing the State Department or even Bush himself. As the documentary spells out, this move put 500,000 soldiers on the streets, unemployed, impoverished and furious, fuelling an insurgency that they could have helped to prevent.

No End in Sight is shattering stuff, that in its profoundly depressing but essential examination of just how insanely rotten the last eight years of American "leadership" have been, predicts an even more dispiriting future for the US, the Middle East and the world, regardless of who takes over the White House in January 2009. This is almost unbearably sad to watch, but No End in Sight could legitimately lay claim to the title of film of the year - if not the decade.

Going down the tube(s)

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

I have been living without TV for the past three months. Seriously, it’s been a whole 90 days and counting. Well, kind of. I should explain. I moved apartment recently, in the course of which I splashed out on a glorious 37 inch LCD screen that came highly recommended from that increasingly popular website, moremoneythansense.com.

But when it came to getting a TV cable package, the wheels came off the wagon. After a series of infuriating and blood-vessel popping encounters with a certain cable company who shall remain nameless (let's just say they are Not Too Laudable), my housemate and I decided to see how long we could go without any channels.

As it happens, this isn't the first time I've undergone such an experiment. While in college, a friend and I moved into a place with four others. None of us had a TV set, and what with us being scroungy, broke students, none of us bothered our fundaments getting one either.
On that occasion my friend and I lasted two months, and only finally cracked after we found ourselves not only doing the crossword in a daily broadsheet, but actually taking the more complicated crossword, redesigning it with markers, and devising new clues to create our own, new super crossword to distribute amongst friends. As you can imagine, it takes a spectacular kind of boredom to drive two sane people to such an activity.

This time it's different though, and it's not just down to the fact that I work when most quality TV (a paradox in terms) is on. Thanks to downloading, my housemate and I can watch our favourite TV without ever having to switch on a box. So whereas before I might have watched 3 hours of TV just to catch an hour-long show, now I can just access said show in its stripped-down, ad-free, time-saving 42 minute form.

So when I say I'm living "without television", I guess I mean I'm living without everything else that comes with having access to TV land — namely the endless stream of soaps, reality shows, daytime dross, makeover programmes, self-consciously zany adverts, property vehicles and Vernon Kay-fronted pap that could only charitably be referred to as the fat clogging up the arteries of the televisual body.

Do I miss all of that? On the whole, no. Working in a newspaper, it's pretty easy - in fact, it's unavoidable - to keep abreast of soap news and reality TV’s goings-on, whether you want to or not. Otherwise, I genuinely have not seen an episode of Corrie or EastEnders since last Christmas Day.

The only things I can hand-on-my-heart say I miss watching regularly are X Factor (though by the sound of things, this year's version sucks) and, on fragile Sunday mornings, repeats of 8 Simple Rules, which gets my vote for the most perfect and infinitely comforting hangover TV show in history.

Mind you, while at a fancy dress party over Halloween, a male friend, who was gussied up as a disturbingly attractive version of Tyra Banks, led a chorus of horrified and increasingly violent abuse against me when I admitted I wasn't watching, nor had I ever seen a single episode of, America's Next top Model. When instructed to “smile with my eyes” for party photos, I could only reply with a bewildered, “Ya wha?” Never have I felt like such an outcast from the telly-watching world.

Since then, I’ve been considering just caving in and getting my TV package back. That America's Next Top Model backlash at the party has instilled a fear that my lack of the TV bare necessities has sent me hurtling (further) towards the bottom of the social ladder. And I want to be on Top! There Tyra, I said it. I guess I’m all yours.

Quote of the day

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by" - Douglas Adams.

Amen brother.

Na, too easy

Congrats Bertie, yours is no longer the worst Government in Europe

Wow, just when you thought Bertie's Amazing Technicolour Dream Vote Government was the most incompetent in Europe, along come New Labour with the biggest security blunder in British history. Frightening stuff.

Oprah-Obama dream ticket

Oprah's to hit the campaign trail to stump for Barack Obama in the crucial final few weeks before the January primaries. Read here.

The Decline of the American Empire

Good piece from Salon.

Obama makes gains on Hillary...

It's heating up. Read here.

Weekend's 10th birthday

My contribution to the 10th anniversary feature of Weekend magazine in the Irish Independent, 17/11/2007

From the vantage point of 2007, it’s almost inconceivable to believe that the same laws that were used to persecute Oscar Wilde in 1895 were still on Irish statute books in 1993. But in June of that year, Ireland’s first female Justice Minister, Maire Geoghegan-Quinn, courageously introduced and pushed through legislation to decriminalise homosexuality.

With that most fundamental hurdle overcome, the past ten years have seen a flourishing of equality legislation that extended further rights to gay people. A year after Weekend began, the 1998 Employment Equality Act was introduced that outlawed discrimination in relation to employment and the workplace on 9 grounds, including sexual orientation.

I don’t think that the effect of this can be overstated. Since that law was first implemented by the Equality Authority in 1999, it has helped to usher in a crucial, trickle-down change in attitudes towards hiring practices, as well as issues of respect and dignity in the work environment. Today, it’s so much easier, and indeed common, for many gay workers to be out in the workplace, with some more progressive companies even having their own LGBT societies! The glaring exception in this regard is religious-owned organisations, which are exempt from the equality legislation, making life as an out worker more difficult for some teachers and medical staff.

The law has also changed life for Irish gay people in a wider sense since 1997. The Equal Status Act 2000 looked beyond the workplace to outlaw discrimination in the provision of goods and services on 9 grounds, again including sexual orientation. Even though decriminalisation was in place since 1993, it was still possible 5 and 6 years later for gay people to be refused an apartment, a hotel/B&B room or even to be served a drink in some establishments. This, again, seems unbelievable in 2007, but there are many gay people of a certain generation who will be painfully able to recall meeting such hostility, even in the late 1990s.

This all seems like a history lesson to me, even though I’m only 26, and this has occurred in the past 10 years. Mine is the first Irish generation to come of age at a time when homosexuality has become ‘normalised’ by rapid social and legal change, so much so that many of my peers, and younger, see the proposed Government civil partnership legislation as a given right, and cannot understand the current delays and hesitation. Things are not perfect, but that sense of innate worth that seems to be instilled in gay people today has only been achieved by reaping the benefits hard won over the past decade.

Set for Life

Sideline from the Irish Independent, 17/11/2007

Did it really come as that much of a shock to us this week when Barnardo’s reported that one-third of five to nine year olds had a TV set in their bedrooms? Television sets are to modern Irish homes what Sacred Heart paintings and JFK shrines were to the dwellings of yesteryear: ubiquitous must-haves (that can also be quite creepy).

The TV in the bedroom debate normally gets aired in a more adult context, when some sexpert adorns newspaper and magazine feature pages warning about how the presence of the goggle box can put paid to a healthy sex life. But, as Helen Lovejoy would cry in The Simpsons, won’t somebody please think of the children?

I love TV as much as the next person, but even I have my limits. Nothing irks me more than when I’m watching MTV’s Cribs or one of its carbon copies, and you see some smug, empty-headed celebrity showing off their TV sets in their wardrobes, bathrooms and even their showers.

Heaven forbid they actually take a few minutes to themselves and their own thoughts (for want of a better word) without the incessant blaring of the tube! Is there such a thing anymore as some quiet time in TV-less solitude? Or should I just give up now, sell my brain on eBay, connect a USB from my head to the telly and just let it do all the work from now on?

Making kids comfortable with and proficient in technology from an early age can only be a good thing. And I’m not saying children should not be allowed watch TV. I doubt I’d be the functional, well-adjusted adult I am today (be nice) without some of the classic TV shows from my youth.

But there has to be a line in the sand, and I think TVs in the bedroom should be it. Leaving aside the fact that it makes kids giddy at a time when they should be winding down, it robs them of what is possibly the only time they have in their day to freely delve into their own heads without interruption from any external forces like parents, teachers and technology.

Someone once said that television is called a medium because it’s neither rare nor well done. You can’t control the quality of viewing, but you can control the quantity. Why not pull the plug in your Crib?

My So-Called Quarter Life

From slate.com

Co-creator of Lost: "TV is Dying"

Damon Lindelof in New York Times

Million bucks or the US presidency. Hmm

So John Kerry is willing to (finally) tackle the outrageous distortions and lies peddled by the Swift Boaters that cost him the White House in 2004 now that there's a million dollars at stake, but wasn't willing to stand up for himself when the actual presidency was at stake?? And this is the guy that Democrats thought could beat Bush three years ago??

Bush Watch...

One US journalist's countdown to the end of "the long national nightmare of George W. Bush". It's now less than one year until the 2008 presidential election. Tick tock indeed.

The Suspect

My review of the new book The Suspect: The Story of Rachel O'Reilly's murder from today's Irish Daily Mail


The Suspect: The Story of Rachel O’Reilly’s Murder
By Jenny Friel



THE trial and conviction of Joe O’Reilly for his wife Rachel’s murder in June and July of this year held the nation in morbid fascination like few cases of its kind ever have. As 146 witnesses took the stand over the 18 day trial, the Irish media lapped up every detail, and devoted mini-rainforests worth of coverage every day to an insatiable and captive readership.

Irish Mail on Sunday journalist Jenny Friel is in a better position than most to comment on the sensation that was the Joe O’Reilly trial, seeing as she interviewed O’Reilly on several occasions from the time of Rachel’s grisly murder in the bedroom of the O’Reillys’ home in north Dublin in October 2004, to mid-2006, just before the DPP instructed Gardai to charge O’Reilly.

Friel’s new account of the killing and trial, The Suspect, provides a succinct yet detailed overview of the three-year case. Friel is unsparing in her presentation of the gruesome facts, but is always careful to balance that by showing the devastating effect that the case had on mother-of-two Rachel’s surviving family and sons, a move that crucially ensures that the victim is never reduced to a mere abstraction in a case that bears many of the hallmarks of a Hitchcockian piece of fiction (from the adultery, and meticulously-planned uxoricide ultimately undermined by psychological failings, down to the propitiative letter placed in the victim’s coffin that was later exhumed).

Looming over all these proceedings is, of course, the Hitchcockian protagonist himself, Joe O’Reilly. I think it’s fair to say that The Suspect is partly Friel’s attempt to retrospectively understand how she, along with very many others, came to be taken in by O’Reilly on both a human and professional level (O’Reilly favoured Friel and the Mail because of what he deemed the paper’s fair coverage of the case).

But The Suspect is no mere self-critical, dark-night-of-the-soul piece. Friel quite rightly turns the question on the reader, and repeatedly asks: What was it about this case, and this man, that so enthralled us?

Friel posits the theory that it was the very ordinariness of Joe and Rachel’s lives that made their chilling fate so extraordinary. To the outside world, the O’Reillys were seen as the perfect couple. Teen sweethearts, Joe and Rachel were viewed by all as a deeply committed and loving pair, bound together by their love of sport and fitness. Indeed, one of the tragic and grim ironies of the case is that a gym dumbbell, a symbol of the energetic qualities that attracted the two to each other, would become the very instrument that O’Reilly used to brutally shatter the seemingly romantic idyll.

It was this unexceptional aspect of the couple’s marriage that made the horrific nature of bubbly housewife Rachel’s death, the increasing focus on O’Reilly as a suspect, and the emergence of details on how the marriage had soured all the harder to grasp.

More than anything else, however, Friel examines how O’Reilly’s contrived “perfect murder” came to unravel so spectacularly. The author recounts a series of interviews she conducted with O’Reilly in the aftermath of Rachel’s death, in which her first impressions were that “he was a lovely man” who was always polite, friendly and forthcoming (too much so). Indeed Friel’s initial assessment of, and reaction to, the man was an accurate reflection of our own: she was sympathetic, and wanted to accept his innocence, but couldn’t ignore those niggling doubts that his calm, clinical manner (mistaken for grief and shock) and later his outlandishly suspicious behaviour just didn’t add up.

Through the course of her interviews, Friel began to notice “regular Joe’s” hitherto shrewdly-maintained mask slipping. He revealed a bilious and unsubstantiated anger towards Rachel’s family, the Callellys, and, most astonishingly, brought Friel on a “murder tour” of the house. As would emerge after the trial, O’Reilly led several family members and friends on that gruesome pilgrimage to the scene of Rachel’s death, even going as far as to recreate the murder in bizarre OJ Simpson-esque ‘If I Did It’ moments of self-incrimination (that were later deemed too prejudicial to be shown to the jury).

In their tense final conversation (on the topic of a row between O’Reilly and the Callellys over Rachel’s headstone), O’Reilly chillingly joked to Friel that she must have feared for her life coming to interview him about the dispute. A shaken Friel, perhaps once and for all realising his true nature, could only reply yes.

Given her close involvement in the case, Friel’s book is a tightly-structured, informed and analytical piece of work, an impressively non-sensational examination of a case that continues to pique prurient, macabre and curtain-twitching forces in the Irish public.

The Suspect: The Story of Rachel O’Reilly’s Murder, by Jenny Friel, Maverick House, e11.99

Date with Dense-ity

This Life column from today's Irish Independent

What did we Irish ever do before the concepts of dates and dating fully took hold here? We know that people, like our parents for instance, must have "dated" at some point or else we wouldn't all be here (let's not dwell on that one too much), but you can be sure that it wasn't called a "date". They went to "a dance" or box social, and referred to their budding courtship as "stepping out" or "doing a line".

But then into this dateless backwater swept the Americans with their money and their benign cultural imperialism, and very soon, people were going on fancy "dates", seeing as we all now had the cash, resources and curious mid-Atlantic accents to ape our US benefactors' social customs and mannerisms.


One side effect of this dating culture explosion is the first date, and, with it, all its pressures and opportunities for mortifying embarrassment and drama. Friends of mine, bless their cotton socks, often come to me looking for ideas about where to go and what to do on a first date. With every one of those brainstorms, we always strive for monumental originality; otherwise you'll make no impact and the person you're trying to woo will forget who you are, possibly even while on the date with you. Or so our logic goes anyway.


Now, the Lord herself knows I'm no expert in this field, but I'm going to publicly and inversely respond to those appeals and gift to you three things you shouldn't do on first dates, little gems roughly hewn from the experiences I've had ever since my first steps into the world of romance (for want of a better word) back in my mid-90s teen disco heyday where "dates" were arranged by lining the boys up against one wall and girls along the other and some ambitious youth club organiser paired you off at random. Good times.


My first, and most important rule is, never go on a first date on a weekend night. Think about it: they're the busiest nights of the week where everyone you know is out. This means that chances of you two finding a quiet-ish place to talk on your own , without running into truckloads of increasingly bladdered friends are very slim indeed. You just end up competing for attention, and that kind of confidence-shaking humiliation is more suited to the third or fourth date at least.


Secondly, don't fall into the dinner trap. A simple meal can rival filming-time at Abu Ghraib for sheer horror if you're stuck with some header who drones on about his collection of pet ferrets or who texts his ex the whole way through the date. Not that that's happened to me (Declan shuffles uncomfortably). Same goes for cooking someone dinner. Associating some first date disaster with the place you call home would ruin your feng shui irrevocably.


Lastly, don't get too drunk. If you're anything like me, as the glasses pile up, the conversation will veer between rants about the Government and Britney, to babbling on with nerdy recruitment pitches for my favourite TV shows, to mocking someone who turns out to be a friend/relative/lover of theirs. Stay in control of your senses. That way, if there's a second date, there's also the added bonus that you'll remember the person's name, and what they look like (and yes, sadly both of those have happened to me).


Keep all those in mind and I think you'll get through it ok. But whether you abide by those tips or not, at the very least please remember this final little first date nugget courtesy of a wise lady friend of mine: "The face that over cocktails looks so charming can oft o'er breakfast be quite alarming". Indeed.

Eat my words

You can read my restaurant review of Kinara in Clontarf, Dublin, here. Published in Day and Night magazine in the Irish Independent today.

Greatest TV Icons

Entertainment Weekly's 50 Greatest TV Icons. A whole lunchbreak of fun.

Numbers 100-51

Numbers 50-1

Sexiest Man Alive 2007

Controversial.

It's never too early...

Nominations for this year's Golden Globe awards are announced in one month exactly, and the predictions have begun in earnest. Read here.

Elegy for Great American Novel

From today's London Independent.

John Walsh's theory that Norman Mailer's death is another nail in the coffin for the concept of the Great American Novel, which, in my humblest of opinions, is either Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby or Roth's American Pastoral.





"If any writer believed in the existence of the Great American Novel it was Norman Mailer. He believed in it utterly, called it the "big one" and dreamed of bagging it – like a hunter in search of game. Now, he and many of his fellow hunters are gone. Can anyone take their place?" Continue

Fianna Fail's 50 ways to laugh at voters

Essential reading for Irish people...correction, a certain amount of Irish people who voted a certain way last summer. Cheers, That's Ireland!

America's Next Top Spouse

Salon.com has a great guide to the partners of the main candidates gunning for the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations. As with all things in this race, I'm all about the Obamas.

So bad they're good

The awful movies we love to hate to love.

Bloggers join writers' strike

Solidarity baby.

Mailer 1923-2007

Some memories of the late Norman Mailer by famous friends and enemies from Salon.com

Strike: Week 1 down

Good 'where are we now one week later?' piece on the Hollywood writers' strike in yesterday's MediaGuardian. Read it here.

Rude Awakening

Sideline commentary from yesterday's Irish Independent

By now, everyone must have seen or read about the live row that took place during a highly-charged interview on TV3's Ireland AM show thisweek. Even those of us who were sensibly not awake at that ungodly time of the morning were very quickly swamped with a deluge of texts,emails and blog links excitedly notifying us of the scrappy sofa squabble.


And it's that fervour and glee with which people greeted the news of the telly dust-up that leads me to ask: is Ireland at last ready for its own Jerry Springer-style talk show?Up until this week, we might have all believed that Ireland was too small a country, too reserved, too concerned with what Betty and Jimmy next door would think to take part in or condone the kind of hysterical, car crash television experience that The Jerry Springer Show specialises in.



Alas, as our reaction to the Ireland AM spat demonstrates, it would seem that as Ireland has become more sophisticated, our entertainment tastes have become more feral. Every TV and newspaper report on the Ireland AM row was fascinated by, and almost fetishistic in its description of seeing people attack each other live on air, a seemingly accurate reflection of the public's hunger for the story.



We might not like to admit it, but after years of watching family members, lovers, co-workers and friends lay into each other on shows like Springer, and the British equivalents Tricia and Jeremy Kyle et al, we Irish are perhaps hankering for a native talk show wrestling ring in which we can revel, and through which we can exorcise our own demons by way of those people brave/crazy/fame-hungry enough to air their really dirty linen in public.



There is a lot of anger, resentment, frustration and pain bubbling away on or near to the surface of Irish life today. It seems inconceivable that some wily producer has not considered appealing to our basic instincts and devising a TV forum that could expertly exploit that social and personal malaise for our wider entertainment.They are the shows we love to hate to love.



You have to admit that it's fascinating to speculate on what kind of content such an Irish show would include, the guests it would attract, and even on who would host it? And how fitting is it that an early morning show might just have awakened the beast in all of us?

Audiences shun Iraq-themed movies

Read about it here.

Landmark Moments in Gay Hollywood

Why I'm just shamelessly pilfering from the EW site tonight! But I just love it so! Here's another of their great lists, this time with video clips, of Landmark Moments in Gay Hollywood

Streeps Ahead

For all you fellow Streep-nuts. EW's guide to the essential Meryl Streep, on the day that her talky, ripped-straight-from-the-headlines, admire-it-more-than-like it political drama Lions for Lambs opens.

What are my favourite Meryl roles, you ask? It's like asking a not-overly loving parent to pick between children! But if I did have to, I'd pick her performance in The Hours, in which she exquisitely channelled middle-age existential angst (and acted Nicole and her nose off the screen), and her, frankly, barnstorming turn as Lindy Chamerlain in A Cry in the Dark, in which she turned the infamous mother in the "dingo ate my baby" case into a bravely unlikeable protagonist. A truly haunting performance in a so-so movie that won her an Oscar nomination and the Best Actress gong at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival.

Write on, guys!

Wild Thing

Just back from a screening of Sean Penn's new movie, Into the Wild. I've been waiting ages to see this true story of Christopher McCandless, an intelligent college graduate, who gave up all his possessions to journey across America with no money, and
just relied on his wits, and sometimes the kindness of strangers, to eventually make a fateful trip to Alaska to fully bond with the stripped-down, non-materialistic world (or nature, as some call it).

Into the Wild is a problematic movie to watch, in the same way Werner Herzog's documentary Grizzly Man was. Like Herzog's protagonist Timothy Treadwell, McCandless can be infuriating, annoying, and bewildering, but also inspiring, charming and admirable. Both men, however, seemed to be on some kind of subconscious suicide mission, and, in Into the Wild especially, lots of people just sat back and let it happen. It's discomfiting, but maybe it's supposed to be.

The movie is a bit long, at times too self-regarding and is punctuated by too many voiceovers relaying McCandless' pseudo-philosophical and, at times, pure codological thoughts. But there's no denying that Penn has fashioned a thought-provoking story, that's beautifully shot, filled with a few sharp insights, and anchored by a fiercely committed and engaging central performance by young star Emile Hirsch. And just as Christopher's story is hurtling towards its shattering conclusion, up pops Hollywood old-timer Hal Holbrook as the last person Chris encounters, and for him he develops a deep affection. Holbrook's quietly devastating performance will leave you in tears - and, no doubt, will leave him with next year's Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

This isn't for everyone, but if you approach with an open mind, and stick with it despite a gut feeling that there's something not right about this guy, you'll end up being deeply moved, but why, I can't say for sure.

Cash flow crisis

Sideline article from today's Irish Independent

I think – in fact, I know – that if I ever end up in front of a judge, it will be for causing a disturbance while queuing to get cash from an ATM. Queuing, and delays, and dealing with idiots are all part of city life, but nowhere do all those qualities converge in one sanity-testing exercise than at the cash machine.

First and foremost, there are not enough of them, not by half. Paying by Laser is all very good, but not everywhere accepts that card, and sometimes you just need cash in your wallet. But in Dublin, for instance, there is a chronic shortage of functioning ATMs. Take Parnell Street on the northside of the city. There's no ATM machine – that's right, NONE - along that whole stretch.

There's one machine along the whole of Capel Street. Cross over the river, there's none on Parliament Street, and one on the whole of Lord Edward Street and most of Dame Street.It's insane! At the busiest times of the day, and on most weekend nights, you could be queuing at a machine for up to 20 minutes.

That's of course if you can find one that's working. There have been nights in the capital where I am socialising on, say, South George's Street,and have had to walk to Stephen's Green or further to find a functioning machine.

What I don't understand is, surely, SURELY it would be in the best interests of our "customer friendly" financial institutions to install more cash points or ATM lobbies? And considering the 100 million euro+ that the Government makes on the back of ATM charges and the like, surely they can see the benefit of making it easier for us to access our money?

But what makes the whole ATM experience most frustrating are the people you encounter at them. Why is it that the person or people in front of you always seem to be ATM virgins, and so spend an eternity jabbing at the keypad with a bewildered look on their faces as if taking out cash was akin to operating the Hubble Space Telescope? Move it along people for the love of God!

I'm on my knees here begging for banks to step in and sort out this mess. Otherwise, I might have to turn into Michael Douglas in the movie Falling Down. But that wouldn't be worth it: I'd have to queue for a half an hour at an ATM to get the bail money first.

Living Apart Together

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

I was reading an article last week about Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and the piece inevitably turned into an examination of the state of her marriage to Bill. According to the writer's sources, the past seven years have been the finest of the Clintons' marriage, precisely because they spend so much time apart. The journalist argues that there's something about the pacing and spacing, and the coming back together again that is perfect for their relationship.

Of course, Bill and Hill's admittedly odd relationship probably shouldn't be taken as any yardstick against which to measure your own, but what's interesting is that the former (and possibly future) First Couple appear to be believers in the modern relationship concept of 'Living Apart Together' (LAT).


The average LAT couple is firmly committed, but both partners live in separate residences, sometimes by circumstance (i.e. work) but mainly by choice. Research has shown that many of these LATs tried cohabitation and found it to be a disaster. But the distance and independence provided by this new arrangement proved to be the saving of their relationship, be they married or in a civil partnership. And lest you think this is some mad fantasy or loopy theory of mine, British records show there are some 2 million such LAT relationships in the UK alone.


Now I should state at this point that I've never lived with someone I was involved with, so this is all the view of an inexperienced, semi-objective outsider. I might not know the ins and outs of living with someone personally, but I sure have seen others do it, a lot of the time with not very pretty results.


Some might call the LAT style cynical, pessimistic and unromantic. Others like me view this arrangement as practical and an appropriate reflection of the way men, women and society itself has changed.


I think we've established by now that this generation is the most independent, privileged and, frankly, self-involved this country has ever seen. It's a largely positive consequence of success, better education and increased opportunities. There's no huge pressure to get married or shack up, and, increasingly, little desire to either. All of that's not going to change anytime soon, so why not embrace this change and customise our relationships accordingly?


When people have so many options, and such hectic lives, relationships can be seen as suffocating and prohibitive. How many have perished because they appeared to run counter to that sense of independence that (most of us) cherish so much and work so hard to preserve?
Take actress Helena Bonham Carter and her partner, the director Tim Burton. They have been in a relationship for five years and have a son together. Yet they live in their own homes right next door to each other. Both cannot praise the situation highly enough.


And who's to argue with them? Just think of the advantages. How many arguments have been resolved after the couple give themselves "some space"? Well, with LATs, you both have your space so you are not wrecking one another's heads. You don't have to fight over what to watch on TV, who is and isn't doing their share of the housework, the other's dreadful taste in music, or pets and boorish/annoying friends. If one of you is in a mood, just slip back to your place, saying goodbye forever to the concept of 'walking on eggshells' around each other because your stuck together in the same place.


Both partner’s freedom would keep that vital spark in a relationship, if it's done right and, if, of course, both want it to work. Surely it’s worth a try if it does away with that fatal relationship ennui? By getting closer with distance, LATs might just save modern romance as we know it.

Aw, boo-urns!

Stephen Colbert Drops Presidential Bid...read here

Strike

Well, the Writers Guild of America are officially on strike from today. The late night talk shows will be the first to feel the pinch, then the day time soaps, and eventually the prime time dramas and comedies, which will run out of episodes by January/February. The studios have enough movie scripts stockpiled to last until next year.

This is still a near-disaster though, particularly for television, which was riding high up until now. The best work coming out of Hollywood for the past 6 years has been on TV, but if this strike lasts as long as the last one in 1988 (22 weeks at a cost of half a billion to the industry), that golden age could come to an end, never to be reclaimed. Sort it out people!

Praise from Caeser?

Former Veep and 1984 Democratic nominee Walter Mondale has endorsed Hillary Clinton for President. But as this report stresses, Hillary has backing from Mondale and George McGovern so far, the two candidates who lost in landslides to Republicans Reagan and Nixon respectively. Bad omens maybe?

Strike from Monday

The Writers Guild of America is se to shut down Hollywood from Monday unless a last minute deal can be hammered out tomorrow. Read here...

Michael D. Kicking Ass

Michael D. Higgins eviscerates the Government over their failure to back Labour's Civil Unions bill. Passion in the Dail? Who'd have thunk it?

Write to Strike

John Patterson has a great piece on the looming Hollywood writer's strike in today's Guardian.

Also, Andrew Gumbel has a handy breakdown of the contentious issues in the dispute in today's London Independent

30 Rocks!

In my profoundly jet-lagged state yesterday, I took to the Buddha Bag and started watching season 1 of Tina Fey's Emmy winning comedy 30 Rock. Some 6 hours and 12 episodes later, I was still chuckling, and YouTubing scenes to send to people. It's an excellent show that hasn't really been given a chance here. Worth investing in!

Life's a...

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

Have you caught a glimpse of the new show Gossip Girl on the interwebby thing? It's from the same guy who brought us The OC, and just like that show, it propagates an insanely aspirational lifestyle, is populated by gorgeous 30-year-olds playing teenagers in a glamorous setting (New York in this case), and it's an unashamedly addictive time thief (it even dared interrupt the writing of this very column at various points).

Yes, I have a feeling in my waters that Gossip Girl is going to be huge when it hits the increasingly irrelevant television box, mainly because it positively glorifies and revels in mankind's number one pastime: bitching.

And I mean 'mankind' literally, because all you ladies out there might not be aware that men are the biggest bitches of all. And despite what movies and TV shows would try have us believe, being a catty sniper is not just the sole reserve of gay men.

Oh yes ladies, your rugged and burly boyfriend that thinks nothing of knocking the shins off some lad in a soccer match in a mucky field on a cold Sunday morning before downing pints of Harp in the local while watching Setanta Sports likes nothing more than joining his pals to skewer everything and, more importantly, everyone around them (poor Stan is the current fave). I've been party to such bitchfests with men of every background, orientation and belief. If I told you everything, you gals would all be reaching for the smelling salts.

Have you ever stopped for a second to consider how much of your social interaction involves bitching about people, even friends of yours? We all do it, and I defy anyone who says they don't to look me in the eye and hold visual contact while they deny it (then I'll bitch about them for being such good liars).

There are occasions when my friends and I go out, huddle in a corner of a pub and just let rip on whoever we have a beef with at that particular moment in time – man, woman, child, Britney. On such occasions I like to christen our bitching corner 'Withering Heights', and woe betide anyone that crosses our paths whilst we reside there. Our regular haunt has a direct route from the front door to the backbar, and making that trek is like an obstacle course replete with eye-throws, whispers and hand-over-mouth twittering.

But can bitching be all that bad when it's often so healthy and cathartic? If you were to just bottle up all the things that annoy you about your friends, your job and so many other categories, your head would end up exploding like something from David Cronenberg's movie Scanners.

Which is all very well as long as you remember that there's a time and a place. For mortifying example, I have learned from painful experience that you should never, ever start flapping your lip whileon any kind of public transport. I was caught rotten one day on a buswhile in college many moons ago, where I animatedly held forth to a friend for several minutes on everything that was wrong with a tutor I had for English. Of course, he was right behind me.

Needless to saythat was an uncomfortable semester for all concerned, but ever since, I look over my shoulder every time before I even open my mouth to say anything, anywhere about anything or anyone.

Alas, this all ultimately means you're going to be the bitchee from time to time. But there's no need to become a total paranoid android because the laws of this universe dictate you won't be the bitchee for long. That's life baby, and we all know what life is, don't we?

New Dawn

Got in the door this morning after a loing haul flight from San Francisco to find Charlie Brooker's new collection, Dawn of the Dumb, waiting for me (if you don't know who he is...Google because I'm jet-lagged to bits. And then slap yourself for being a philistine). I've nearly wet myself laughing from it already - and that's just from reading the blurb on the back. Essential, essential reading.

Hair's to you Hilary

Hilary Swank takes the chop for charity. Read here...

Civil Action

It seems Brian Lenihan and the Government will be ready to maybe think about some poor-man's version of civil partnership from some time after next March. I'll still believe it when I see it. If the Catholic Church get to Altar Boy Bertie, he could well chicken out. I wouldn't put it past him.

And of course the Gutless Greens - who are now so watered down that they are more an Aquamarine colour - are just sitting by and supporting Fianna Failure's vague legislation, despite giving their full-throated support to the defeated, and substantially more equal, Labour party proposal on civil unions last year. But then again, reneging on all they believed in while in opposition is the only thing the Aquamarine Party seems to stand for now.