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.

Charlie on Flirting

Charlie Brooker in today's Guardian talking about flirting. High-larious.

24/7

Official UK trailer for 24, season 7. It looks like it may be a real return to form! And how hot does Tony look?!

Dumb and Dumbsey

Surely, SURELY even by Fianna Fail's laughably, abysmally low standards, Transport Minister Noel Dempsey's position just isn't tenable after the provisional licence...what's the word? Joke? Debacle? Fiasco?

Whichever one you pick, this man should not be in office by the end of this week. The Taoiseach should fire him, and not even allow him the chance to resign.

But what are the chances? As the Taoiseach himself has more than proven over the past year, he nor his ministers nor anyone in Fianna Fail don't do accountability. Incompetence is consistently tolerated and, indeed, rewarded by Bertie Ahern. But then, who's he to adjudicate on what constitutes fitness for office anymore considering what he's been up to?

Bounce

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

Guess what my pick is for movie scene of the year. The awesome Dunkirk panorama in Atonement? The pants-wettingly intense Waterloo Station segment of The Bourne Ultimatum? Every single frame of Ratatouille?

No, no and no. I'm plumping for that scene in Knocked Up where Leslie Mann unleashes a tirade of abuse at a snotty bouncer who won't let her character into a nightclub. When I saw that, I nearly had to be strapped down in order to stop me from jumping up in the middle ofthe film, and sassily shouting, 'You go girl!', all while making animated snapping movements with my fingers.


We all have had our run-ins with rude and obstinate door staff and bouncers. Show me someone who goes out on a regular basis who hasn't had at least six infuriating experiences with bouncers and I'll show you someone who obviously drinks so much that they've blocked out the said encounters.


People point to George Dubious Bush or Vladimir Putin as examples of how absolute power can corrupt absolutely. Well, we have mini-Bushs and Putins on the doors of every bar and club on earth. Granted, there are some bouncers who wield their power benevolently, but there are twice as many who go insane on their power trips, the ones who cackle maniacally while stroking a cat as they watch mile-long queues form outside their superbars or clubs for no other reason than to make the place look more popular and fabulous than it really is.


That kind of petty behaviour I can just about tolerate. It's the rudeness that I can't stand. And I think I found the all time champs in that regard while on a weekend away to London a fortnight ago.


Our nightclub of choice that night was hosting a major girl group so we expected there to be crowds. The queue was manageable, but when we got to the top, some lovely lady with a clipboard barked at me, 'How many in your group, love?'. 'Five', I replied, presumably in some rare Inuit dialect thatI didn't know I possessed, because she glowered at me and repeated very slowly, 'How many in your group, are you deaf?'


Now if it had been an episode of Ally McBeal, that would have been the point where I fantasised about biting off her head and then using it as a sled to ride down the side of a craggy mountain. Instead I patiently repeated, 'Five' and she rolled her eyes and growled at us to go around the corner into another queue.


Except there was no other queue. It was more like an enclosed pen for grazing cattle, which, it turns out, is the best metaphor for our general treatment that night. We were herded inside, and literally pushed along by an army of staff who prodded us like cows at the mart and bellowed orders at us all like we were the fresh meat arriving on our first day at Shawshank.



When the gig ended, we went out for a cigarette, and were again shouted at for daring to ask for a stamp to get out. But when we all got out, they wouldn't let us back in, saying the club was too full!


I could go on, but space and rising blood pressure are constraining me. My point is that this club was a perfect demonstration of what happens when a place becomes successful: inevitable complacency and arrogance. Why bother treating people as humans anymore? We're just commodities afterall. Move along now cattle. Moo!

I tell you, that whole experience was so traumatising that I had to double my vodka intake once I got inside. So like a mindless bovine, I played right into their hands and was milked for all I was worth.

Did Brokeback change anything?

Interesting article in Entertainment Weekly looking at the cultural legacy, if any, of Brokeback Mountain and why TV is leaving Hollywood in the shade in terms of gay related projects and characters.

"In the weeks before the 78th annual Academy Awards, Brokeback Mountain producer Diana Ossana already suspected what few outside Hollywood could imagine: Her film was going to lose the Best Picture race. ''Several people told me they knew a lot of Academy voters who just refused to see the film,'' says Ossana, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Larry McMurtry...

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Are you a phoney liberal?

Just getting round to reading the Sunday papers today (I know), and came across this in the Sunday Times. It's a test to gauge where you stand in the culture wars and what your true political philosophy is. Fun/disturbing.

No Barack, don't do it!

Seems like Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama will campaign with just about anyone to close the gap on frontrunner, Hillary Clinton. Disappointing, Barack.

Life Goes On

With Claire Danes' new movie Stardust now in cinemas, how about revisiting the TV show My So-Called Life which made her name back in 1995 (yes, if you watched it on TV then, you are old!!!). This is an interview from the new Entertainment Weekly with Wilson Cruz who played Ricky Vasquez on the show. Bless. I really must dig that show up on DVD.

Rowling outs Potter character...

Harry Potter author JK Rowling has outed one of her characters from the books. Which one is it? Find out here.

Writers Strike Back

It looks like the much-feared Hollywood writer's strike is inevitable. Read about it here - and then store up on DVDs for the months and months of TV repeats and substandard dreck that will hit movie screens because of it.

On the market

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

Did you know that a certain swanky food market on the southside of Dublin is now one of the top three pick up joints for single people in the capital? I have it on good authority – you know, rumour – that people on the lookout for love deliberately target this food emporium hoping to pick up something sweet while buying a bag of sugar, or bag a beefy hunk while perusing the meat counter (best double entendres on a postcard please).

Joking aside, I for one welcome this development, if for no other reason than it shows that we Irish are finally thinking a bit more laterally about how we meet potential love interests, and are perhaps no longer relying solely on those fickle temples of temporary self-esteem (or pubs as they’re known elsewhere) to expand our romantic horizons.

Of course, supermarket cruising has long been a feature of single dating scenes elsewhere. A friend of mine was in Australia a few years ago for Valentine’s Day, and she took part in a singles event called Cereal Dating. Those taking part turned up at a designated time in the cereal aisle of a food market and picked up a brand that best summed up their personality. It was the perfect icebreaker and a huge hit.

I think it’s only when you meet or go out with someone not from Ireland that you fully grasp just how big a part pubs and clubs play in Irish hook-ups. Being something of a natural born diplomat with a flair for foreign tongues, I’ve stepped out with several non-Irish guys in my time, and each one has expressed their utter fascination/horror at this phenomenon. Where they were from, it was all about the dinner parties, meeting people through friends and – the major thing missing here – just approaching someone they like anytime, anwhere, even on the street.

My own favourite non-pub hook-up story was at the baggage terminal at Dublin Airport. We’d both been on the same flight and he’d apparently seen me on it. I then spotted him while we were waiting for our bags. We kept making eyes and eventually got chatting. Of course, as it turns out, carrying baggage around ultimately proved to be suitably metaphorical for that whole brief affair, but it’s still a pretty nice story.

One of the first things I always ask couples is how they met each other. And yes, many did meet in bars and clubs, and they’re perfectly happy. But that can be risky as we all know, what with the personality “enhancing”/transforming nature of alcohol and what not. What’s more, bars and clubs are just not everyone’s scene, so some people must find more inventive ways of meeting others.

The good news is that there has been an explosion of such singles events here in recent years. One firm is dedicated to organising meals out where everyone in attendance has gone through a thorough vetting process, and were selected for their group based on compatibility with the other diners. And there are many others sprouting up, like singles dance lessons, fitness classes and tour groups. The gym seems to be a huge pick up joint anymore. My one certainly is – with a beer pump and slightly less sweating, it could well pass for one of my regular weekend haunts.

Of course, a spectre is haunting this article, and it’s the one avenue for singles that I haven’t mentioned thus far. Yes, I’m referring to the internet but, quite frankly, I don’t think I have the strength. That’s a whole other article in itself that I may return to should I ever summon the courage. In the meantime, I’m off to that food market I mentioned at the start, because it so happens that I’m all out of, oh let’s say, tea.

Another sucky week for the Church. Tee hee hee

Just when you thought the Catholic Church couldn't get anymore ridiculous... read here

Al Gore wins Nobel Peace Prize

Al Gore has won the Nobel Peace Prize. Who said there are no second acts in American lives? This is just the latest step in the greatest political comeback in American history. Go Gore! (Sorry Hillary).

The citation reads: "for their [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Gore's] efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."

Hari: Gay bashing should not be a hate crime

Johann Hari from the London Independent 11/10/2007. Thought-provoking stuff. Still not sure if I agree or not though...

"It's always strange and sad when you have to disagree with people who have purely good motives and purely good goals. Over the past week, I have smacked into disagreement twice with friends and allies in the fight for equality for gay people. Both times, the rows have boiled down to one core question: should the people who hate and detest us just because of a trivial and irreversible biological fact – homosexuality – be subject to extra criminal sanctions?"

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Club Life

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

Like many people, I haven't spent an entire night out in town or in a club ever since that Centra TV advert dictated a few years back that "staying in was the new going out". Of course, what that catchy phrase really implied was "go out all you want, but not before stocking up on our high quality but cost friendly plonk, getting nicely toasted insomeone's house before inevitably stumbling your way into town after midnight to do your bit for our apparently whimpering Tiger economy by making some much-needed investments in social capital". And being easily prone to advertising, that's exactly what I've done ever since.

However, a fortnight ago there were a handful of birthdays within my consigliere so we decided to break with our weekly tradition of having a tipple at home first and spend a whole night out in a club to celebrate. Our group arrived in town uncharacteristically sober at the ungodly hour of 8pm on the Saturday night and by 10pm, we were tottering off to our club of choice.

I hadn't been in a club that early in a long time, but it didn't take long to become reacquainted with the rituals and patterns of the nightclub experience. For your edification and mine, I've compartmentalised the night into distinct time segments (kind of like an episode of 24) that I think covers just about any club experience in its entirety:

The PG-13 Phase (10pm-12am). It's early in the night so most of the arriving revellers around you are clear, upright, coherent, even classy. It's all pretty dignified. You're loosening up, you're chatty and witty. Your focus is on your friends. There's that one nutter upon a stage on the dancefloor, bopping away on his lonesome in his own crazy little world. But, as midnight approaches, and the glasses pileup around you, the atmosphere changes, ushering in…

The Witching Hour (12am – 2am). The focus shifts more and more to mating rituals. The group fractures as friends wander off for little stalks, or pair off to form pulling tag teams. The dance floor gets progressively busier and suddenly that sole crazy dancer is a hero amongst men. Speech, though less coherent, is bubbling over as you hold forth on some topic and marvel at how these brilliant, philosophical points and arguments keep spilling from your mouth. Shot glasses appear. You alternate between dancing, shouting in friends ears, infiltrating the smoking area and marking your territory around an object of your affection, until your watch points out that it's now approaching…

Desperate O'Clock (2am - ?). All bets are off. The dance floor isjammed as everyone's inner Shakira breaks out and we all collectively flap about like a bunch of epileptic seals. Those who have scored already are slinking away, leaving the rest of us to dart our eyes around and throw our most seductive – for want of a better word –looks around. The music stops. People boo. Bouncers arrive on thefloor like stormtroopers and manhandle you out onto the streets. The smart people decide to go home, but the rest lurk around outside, refusing to admit the night's over waiting for friends, scouring for parties,. Before you know it, it's 4am and you're perched on a windowsill on Dame Street with pizza that materialised from somewhere with your new best friend with whom you bonded in a queue somewhere…

And this is where it always gets a little blurry, but you all can insert your own ending at will. As for me, while it was fun doing an epic, old-school club night, I was back to my Centra-fied social existence the following weekend. My bank account was clubbed to debt by that night out, and I'd forgotten that that lightweight gets crippling hangovers.

Go Jimmy!

Former US President Jimmy Carter lashes out at Darth Cheney.

Nobel Prize in Literature

Doris Lessing has won this year's Nobel Prize in Literature. Philip Roth ignored YET AGAIN.

Lessing's Nobel citation describes her as: "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny".

Lovely. Roth was still robbed.

Gore for Peace

After an Oscar and Emmy win, can Al Gore add a Nobel Peace Prize to his honours haul? He's the current joint favourite to win for his climate change campaign. If he wins the Prize on Friday, can we expect a presidential announcement on Monday? It could change the whole dynamic of the Democratic race next year.

Silver Tongue

She sure aint everyone's cup of tea, but there was a good interview with comedienne Sarah Silverman in last Saturday's Guardian. I think she's highlarious. YouTube her vicious Paris and Britney routines at various MTV bashes. Or her wistful abortion sketch. Green Day's Time of Your Life will never be the same.

Gotta love some Charlie

Charlie Brooker, the funniest writer and TV presenter in the world (prove me wrong people), is on flying form in today's Guardian, tackling David Cameron, fat and incontinence caused by slimming pills. You can read it here.

And his peerless Screen Burn TV column from last Saturday can be viewed here.

Get Lost in Showbiz

If you're not reading Marina Hyde's Lost in Showbiz column every Friday in The Guardian's G2, then shame on you. Seriously, go stand in the corner facing the wall, I can't even look at you.

Here's the link to today's brilliant instalment.

Ex-pert Advice

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

I have a pal who's chronically fixated on remaining friendly with his exes. In fact, he becomes positively, genuinely miserable if the break-up doesn't lead to a new acquaintanceship with his erstwhile flame. And to my utter horror/wonder/envy, he manages to pull it off.


This guy is obviously a student of that freakish Bruce Willis-Demi Moore school of keeping the ex in your life, whereas most of us — notice how I'm grouping you all with me? — would go the Jennifer Aniston-Brad Pitt route of totally ignoring one other, and, if called upon, communicating solely and passive-aggressively through the tabloid press (admittedly not an option for most of us).



I've written about the topic of keeping exes on the payroll before, but feel compelled to return to it, as it's becoming harder and harder to avoid these days. The exes are everywhere of late: there they are starting in your office or moving into the apartment across the way. And look, there’s two of your exes hooking up in a club. Aren't they cute? What's that now? An ex is now marrying into my family? How wonderful! I'm just waiting for my Empire Strikes Back moment when an ex reveals to me that he is actually my father (welcome to the dark recesses of my mind. I should remind you at this point that there are no refunds).



So considering all of this, maybe my friend is onto something by strenuously maintaining diplomatic relations with former squeezes. The world - nay, Dublin - is too small a place to accommodate any major wars between exes and their respective allies. If you localise such 'Exes of Evil' conflicts to the infinitesimally small gay scene, you can get total carnage.


However, I’m not a total disaster in this field, having managed to keep on good terms with a few exes over the years (while still photoshopping others out of existence). I even have one shining, unqualified success story. One of my best friends in the world also happens to be an ex. We saw each other for a little while about three years ago. It ended, but we got on really well, so after a few months, we got back in touch and here we are today. It was one of the best things that ever happened to me.


So, as much as I joke about it, it is possible to salvage something fantastic from a break-up, but certain conditions needs to be met first. The most crucial ones are:



1) There has to be a time gap between the break-up and the start of friendship. Even if it was just a casual fling, there still needs to be a respectful period where you don’t see each other, where whatever feelings that there were can be played out and where you won’t throw a hissy fit if you see that person scoring someone else. We all know that last one in particular stings. This hopefully will then lead to a situation where…



2) There is zero attraction left between the two of you. This might seem thunderingly obvious, but very often two exes decide to go the friends route when one party still fancies the other one rotten. This is a recipe for disaster of immense proportions (which is why you can never really be friends with someone you have a crush on either). When it comes to my best friendly-ex, I know that in terms of attraction he sees Maggie Thatcher when he looks at me, and vice versa. But until you reach that stage, successful friendship is out, out, out.


Believe me, it can work. But as for the next major diplomatic push – establishing détente with the sour-experience exes – I’m not sure I’m fully there yet. There’s being friends, and then there’s just being plain stupid.

Delicious. No other word.

I saw Disney-Pixar's Ratatouille yesterday morning and I can safely say that its rave reviews (96% critics average on Rotten Tomatoes) are thoroughly deserved. Breathtaking animation, eye popping set pieces and laugh-out-loud humour are souffled into a funny, thoughtful, moving and, most importantly, entertaining movie.

And what a great, dare I say it, inspiring (and inspired) message: Remy, the sophisticated rat who wants to be a chef, is a deceptively simple stand-in for every dreamer and artist out there. Some of us are in the gutter - literally in Remy's case- but we truly are looking at the stars. I'm man enough to admit, I even cried during it.

In terms of what cinema is capable of doing, and what it should do, this is as close to perfection as you could hope to get.

Medellin - it's for real!

Entourage fans out there (and why aren't there more of you? You don't know what your missing) will be interested in reading this art imitating life imitating art story here

Yes, I'm unpatriotic. Sue me.

Okay, I know he led the onslaught against the Irish rugby team yesterday, but look at him! Juan Martin Hernandez everyone.

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