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

Keep in Touch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bad to the Bone(r)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Switch Off

From Day and Night in the Irish Independent, Sept 14

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Driving Offences

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

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

Bigging it up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ode to San Fran

This Life column from last Friday's Day and Night magazine in the Irish Independent.

Right now, I'm moaning to anyone who'll listen to me that I just want a week lying on a beach in the sun. I don't want to see anything, learn anything or talk to anyone. I just want to lie there, baking and turning intermittently like a rotisserie chicken.


But I know that's just the stressed-out, washed-out side of me talking. I think anymore that I'd just go mad after a few hours of doing nothing. Maybe it's the nature of my job, or, more likely, that I'm just an atrocious time-keeper, but my free time has become very precious to me of late.
It's almost gotten to the point where I can't decide on anything to do because I feel I should be maximising every last second of my time off on something that really matters to me. That mentality has inevitably seeped into the way I approach holidays too.


So earlier this year, four of us decided to hit the States for a round trip to Vegas, LA and San Francisco. It was an amazing experience: cultured (kinda), mature (sorta) and sober (not at all). But for me, the last part of the trip was more than just a holiday. It was more like a big gift wrapped in a giant rainbow-coloured bow had been handed to the little inner Declan (not him again!) who had dreamed of visiting the City by the Bay for as long as he could remember.


One of my all time favourite books, Tales of the City (Armistead Maupin's 78% gay ode to San Fran) opens with the following line: "Mary Ann Singleton was twenty-five years old when she saw San Francisco for the first time."


I was also twenty-five years old when I saw San Francisco for the first time, and while I'm not a woman named Mary Ann (not anymore, anyway), I was a singleton when I got there. So I took it that the connections between me, the book that I've loved for years, and the city that I've always wanted to visit were all mystically aligning themselves. Not bad going for a holiday.

I loved every second in the place, and if holidays are supposed to rejuvenate you, a holiday that's also the fulfilment of a youthful fantasy is the energising equivalent of pouring a bag of Skittles into a bottle of Coke, shaking it and downing it one.


People love San Francisco for all sorts of reasons, but for me, like so many other gay men, The City is like the mothership. It's a city where a quarter of the population are gay, and probably the only place on earth where straight folk are a minority - spiritually, if not statistically.


What's more, the images of the city are intricately linked in my mind to the TV adaptation of Tales of the City, which I saw when I was 15 or 16, and of trying to sneakily watch it, with my hand on the remote, ready to flick over to the Oireachtas Report the second anyone came into the room, lest they rumble what you were watching and perhaps figure it – and you - all out.
Of course, the content of that show is harmless beyond belief by today's standards, but when you're young and have found something that makes a little more sense of your life for the first time, that can take you on its own kind of holiday, the likes of which you've never experienced.


So walking those streets, visiting those landmarks, throwing myself into that city's indescribable essence – that did for me what no seven days attempting to get a farmer tan on a packed beach could ever hope to do. I’d recommend that everyone ask their own ‘inner Declan’ where they want to go next year.

A Moving Experience

This Life column from Day and Night magazine in last Friday's irish Independent (17 August)

I don’t know about you, but I love nothing more than having a gnawing knot of despair lodged in the pit of my stomach, a fountain of sleepless nights and involuntary weight loss that shoots stress right up through the whole of your body like Old Faithful. If all that really gets your motor running, then moving house is just the thing for you.

Of course, the term ‘moving house’ is somewhat misleading. That would imply that there’s a house to move to. No, what I’m talking about is house-hunting, the most dispiriting, soul-crushing, heart-breaking experience that ever the invention of man contrived.

It has taken over every waking minute of my day. I’ve become a property zombie, barely registering anything in my brain that’s not to do with ‘all mod cons’ or ‘full fittings’. In fact, I might not even be entirely conscious writing this so you’ll forgive me if… viewing is highly recommended.

But, as anyone who is renting in the capital will tell you, an extra layer of misery has been piled onto the whole experience. If you weren’t aware before, you should know that rent in Dublin has shot through the roof, owing (so we’re led to believe anyway) to the fact that nobody is buying due to mortgage rate increases and uncertainty over the status of stamp duty.

I don’t care about any of those reasons. What I do know having viewed a lot of these places with their shiny new rent increases is that, while the price of them may have gone up, the quality most certainly has stayed static. Right now you could take any old grothole and charge basically whatever you want for it, and someone, somewhere will have to pay it.

I’ve seen places without an actual fridge, bedrooms without windows and, my personal favourite, the “double room” that was really just a converted alcove above the kitchen, accessed by a ladder stairs. Seriously, it was like a hammock hung over the oven, and all for the bargain basement price of E750 a month. I’m not making that up – you couldn’t make it up.

Then there was the place that ticked all the boxes: great location, in our budget, the right number of rooms. But upon viewing, we were told that instead of being a 2 bed with parking as the ad clearly stated, it was actually a 1 bed with no parking. Simple mistake to make I guess, but this is what you’re up against.

But, without doubt, the worst aspect of the wretched smorgasbord of horror that is house hunting is the waiting. Sitting around the phone, waiting for that person who could change your life to call you back with those three magic words: “It’s all yours”.

And when this doesn’t happen, you’re plunged into the pit of depression and naturally start blaming yourself. “Why didn’t he call?” you wail. “I thought this was the one” you cry, until a smart, supportive friend pulls you aside and firmly tells you, “He just wasn’t that into you.”

So I guess you have to approach house hunting in the same way you do love. As I have stressed on these pages ad nauseam in the past, you have to stop looking, and not want the things you want in order to meet someone decent (that theory is still being scientifically tested).
I have been very needy with the landlords and letting agents I’ve spoken to over the last fortnight. Nobody is attracted to a Desperate Dan or a Needy Nora. It’s time to be mysterious, aloof, beguiling – just like I am when it comes to romance…

Lord, I really am going to end up on the streets.

You're So Vain

'This Life' column from the newly-designed Day and Night magazine in last Friday's Irish Independent(August 10)

Like all people who claim that they don't care about such trivial matters as their appearance or how they look, I really care a lot about important matters like my appearance and how I look. Of course, I would never have admitted that until very recently, when the full extent of my own preening vanity was laid bare for the neurotic freakshow that it is.


You might have noticed that there are new byline pictures on this page, which meant that new byline pictures actually had to be taken.The problem is I genuinely hate posing for photos. Years and years ofdisappointing and, frankly, disturbing snaps of myself have wiped out any scintilla of joy about the picture-taking process. I've even had friends return digital cameras thinking they were faulty after they saw how the pictures featuring me turned out.


So needless to say I had to pull out all the stops for OperationByline, seeing how I wasn't going to be able to avoid the pic for awhile. Afterall, my professional credibility was on the line here.
I should note at this point that every shallow and Bree Van DerKamp-esque thing you read from this point on, sadly, tragically, is in fact, true.


The first step was tackling the thick birds' nest that I call my hair.I went to get it cut three days before the shoot, so that if, by chance, there was some kind of catastrophic follicle folly, I would at least have a few days to engineer a back-up plan. Thankfully, it turned out ok, but only after 45 minutes of politely grimacing as thebarber made small talk, all while I silently screamed, 'Stop talking!Concentrate so that I don't end up with a cut like a GI from the1950s!'


Next up was carefully planning the shaving routine. I normally shave every 2-3 days, but if there's something involving a high degree ofself-consciousness on the horizon, then timing becomes even more crucial. If you shave the morning of the event, you end up looking like a man-child with chicken pox. So it had to be the night before, but early the night before, or else you're limiting the recovery time (have a headache yet?). Luckily, my skin's typical response to shaving – which is akin to an Agent Orange attack – was absent. I was in the home stretch.


Oddly enough, the outfit was the easiest part. I just kept it simple, like myself. My over-riding concern in this department was - how should I put this delicately - controlling my over-active glands in the arm pit area. Yes, it's been a long, sweaty summer (in name only of course), blighted by more than one snap of me sporting Lough Corrib under both arms.


Coming up with a plan to tackle this dilemma was when I really acknowledged just how vain I was. I wore one shirt on the journey down to the hotel for the photoshoot, knowing well the sticky state I'd bein by the time I got there. I brought two other shirts with me, and quickly changed in the hotel loo. But alas, my healthy glands beganworking their magic while I was waiting for the shoot to begin, necessitating another shirt change. Then I changed my mind a few minutes later, and changed back again, at which point the photographer, bless him, got some hotel staff to physically restrain me from any more costume changes.


I tell you, it was exhausting. But ever since that whole rigmarole, I've had a classic saying of my father's ringing in my head, a pithy piece of wisdom from a generation who wash with an old wire brush and shave with a sharp piece of roof slating: "After all that preening, you'd think you'd be good-looking at the end of it". Touché father, touché.

A Little Sumthing

From Day and Night magazine in today's Irish Independent

I hate maths - probably more than anything on earth. All through school it was the bane of my existence. I had the same maths teacher for my whole time there, and Lord, if I didn’t age the man prematurely. I can still see the look of despair on his face as he tried to drum what a cosine was into my innumerate skull.


But what got me through it was knowing that once I left school, maths would cease to have any impact on my life, apart from basic addition and subtraction (which I can just about pull off).


But new research from one Dr Clio Cresswell has blown that assumption right out of the algebra-free water. Cresswell is a numerical sexpert – surely a first – who claims that there are very deep connections between love, sex and mathematics.


She maintains that maths formulas can be used to detect patterns in our love lives, and so can be used to guide the search for our perfect partner (Up until now, the only way maths infringed in that area of my life was when I tried to pose in clubs from my most a-cute angles).


So for instance, Dr Cresswell argues that you should make a list of all the things you’re looking for in someone and test them on 12 consecutive lovers - and reject them all. You then pick the best one that comes after that – a formula which, apparently, guarantees a 75 per cent chance of happiness.


Pure hokum? Maybe. But it would make sense in the context of my love life. I barely scraped through ordinary level maths in the Leaving, ergo I’m destined to scrape through an ordinary level love life. And there I was wasting my time on English and History!


So maybe I should buck up now, and put in the hard work I should have done in secondary school in order to change my dysfunctional relationship with maths. With a little help from my unsurprisingly non-dog-eared copy of Less Stress More Success, I’ll soon be an A1 love student, right?


I wouldn’t count on it.

Manny from Heaven

From Day and Night magazine in the Irish Independent, July 20

You might have gauged in recent weeks that my love life has experienced somewhat of a downturn – a crash, some might say. Seeing how my romance budgeting has proven to be somewhat sloppy, I am seriously considering outsourcing the running of my love life to someone else in order to restore my competitiveness on the market.


Think about it. People hire professionals such as personal stylists and life coaches all the time to help them make decisions about things that they can't, won't or shouldn't do for themselves.

My plan would be to take one of my closest friends – one who knows me inside and out – and appoint him as a Love Czar to take over my dealings with the unfair sex (i.e. men). The role would essentially involve nannying me from men – a Manny, if you will.


So, for instance, if someone wishes to chat me up — and vice versa — it would have to get through my Manny's strict vetting process first. If that happens to be successful, any future correspondence with said romantic target - texts, emails and calls - would be relayed through the Manny.


Tolerance of bad boy behaviour or signs that you’re not being treated like a gentleman would be flagged early on and your Manny could stage an intervention to extricate you from the dangerous situation, and all with minimum impact on your precious self-respect and humanity.


Arguably where the Manny would be most useful is in dealing with exes. This especially slippery group will have extra ability to get under your skin and wiggle their way back into your affections, even though you should know better. Your Manny will intercept these overtures, battle them at the coalface and drum it into you why these people are exes in the first place.


You might laugh, but need I remind you of the alternative? Do you really want to be dealing with this crap for the rest of your life? My romance capital is low due to a series of bad investments. Until I build back up the finances, I see no harm in letting a prudent head save me from myself for a while.

Moliere the merrier

Review from Day and Night magazine in today's Irish Independent

The French comedy Moliere is a post-modern take on the formative years of the legendary Gallic satirist and author of such canonical works like The Misanthrope and Tartuffe. The action of this jaunty confection of a movie focuses on a short spell in the writer's life when he mysteriously disappeared for a number of months and imagines him in a scenario where he essentially becomes a character in the type of farce he later became famous for.


Moliere opens in Paris in 1644, where the 22-year-old actor Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (Romain Duris) – also known as Moliere – is struggling to keep his Illustrious Theatre Troupe out of the red. His problems with various creditors see him imprisoned and released on a regular basis, until, after finally being cleared by his jailors, Moliere disappears for several months.

Real-life historians have been unable to account for the writer’s activities in those missing months, and this is where Moliere unashamedly lets creative licence runs wild. The movie supposes that the broke actor came under the debt of wealthy aristocrat Jourdain (Fabrice Luchini), who wanted the young thespian to teach him how to act in order to win over a potential mistress. If his teachings bear result, Jourdain tells Moliere he will pay off his debts.

Jourdain installs Moliere in his stately home disguised as a private tutor named Monsieur Tartuffe. Once there, however, Moliere becomes embroiled in a series of comedic schemes involving all manner of cartoonish and duplicitous characters that would later form the plots of his famous works. At the same time, he also begins a passionate affair with Jourdain’s opinionated wife Elmire (Laura Morante), a romance that’s doomed to end sadly for all.

Director Laurent Tirard brings an assured hand to Moliere, borrowing heavily from the successful in-joke formula patented by the multi-Oscar winning Shakepeare in Love. However, Moliere lacks that movie’s accessibility, mainly down to the esoteric nature of Moliere’s life and work, making this a tougher sell to non-French audiences.

Nevertheless there is still a lot to enjoy in Moliere, notably the strong lead performance from Duris, who made a striking debut in last year’s quirky festival hit Dans Paris. Moliere also successfully milks the narrative’s many farcical misunderstandings for all they’re worth, as well as landing some good digs at the pompous hypocrisy of the social, sexual and class divisions of the time.

Moliere might not be the back-up option if Die Hard 4.0 is sold out on the night, but it’s worth a look nonetheless. Rating: 3/5

Old Farts

From Day and Night magazine in today's Irish Independent

You might remember a few weeks ago I mentioned that I had just turned 26 and I was kind of, er, troubled about the prospect of getting older. I was defiant that I was going to be the same young buck in my late twenties as I was before, despite slagging from friends that I was now 'middle-aged, free, single and gay'.

However, it pains me to report that age might very well be catching up with me. The night of my actual birthday, I found myself in a club in silent agony because of the pain coursing through my body (I might even have moaned about having to stand and the loud music).

You see, I was still a bit fragile from the festivities of the night before, plus I had a cold. None of which would have stopped me in the past, but this is what the advancing years do to a body I guess.

Thankfully, one of my best friends, who was staying with me that night and is of a similar vintage, was equally decrepit. One hangover and a few sniffles were enough to fell both of us. We carried our tired, creaky frames home at 2am.

When we got to my place, I made us wait up a few minutes while the electric blanket warmed the bed for us old fogies (I don't have a spare bed and he's too fussy for the couch). Slowly we began the painful process of getting into bed, all the while our old bodies creaking like the Tin Man before he found his oil can. Once we were settled in bed, I dispensed out our potentially dangerous cocktail of flu-fighting pills to take, nagging him to take his medicine now or he'll pay for it tomorrow.

We then lay there lamenting our aching carcasses, but more so our youth, which was clearly now far behind us. That was how I spent my first few hours as a 26-year-old. The signs for my planned late-twenties renaissance of youthful vigour are not good, are they?

From yesterday's Day and Night magazine in Irish Independent

It's impossible to know how to behave in the first few weeks you're seeing someone, isn't it? You have to be interested, but not needy; available, but not clingy. You have to open yourself up, yet retain some mystery. You must spend time together, but not compromise the other's independence.

The whole Game is just one giant head-wreck and, as I was reminded recently, I still apparently haven't mastered the rules yet. It's not all my fault of course, but I can't help thinking that I made the most rookie mistakes yet again. This is after spending years telling myself I would learn from the bitterly-acquired experience of every failed romance just how to do it right the next time.

But with nearly every new man-venture, I seem to be living the reincarnation of every previous courtship for the good, and, especially the bad. Old wine in a new bottle, if you will (and some guys would drive you to the bottle).

Yes, I'm in a bitter phase right now, but my best friend reassures me that it's all about kissing frogs to find a prince. Yet it seems to me that more and more frogs are slipping through the vetting process, and it's becoming harder and harder to distinguish between man-phibian and royalty.

I tell you, it's enough to make a man cynical. But something tells me that's not going to help matters. Sarky eye-rollling, pithy asides and a suspicious response to all nice gestures will expedite the end of a potential relationship just as quick as jumping into it all too soon will.

The solution is obviously some half-way point between the two mindsets: healthily-cynical kinda-availability with a non-man-phibian. I'm still figuring it out, and, burned as I am at the moment, I'll hopefully gain a little more temporary wisdom before I inevitably make the same mistakes all over again.

Golden Door review from yesterday's Day and Night magazine in the Irish Independent

Golden Door (Nuovo Mondo)

Golden Door opens in Sicily in 1904 where peasant Salvatore (VincenzoAmato) decides to sell everything he owns to move his sons and hisold, superstitous mother to America. Propelled on by visions of gigantic food crops and coins falling fromthe skies, Salvatore and his family make the arduous sea journey on anemigrant ship to the US.

During the sailing, he falls for a mysteriousEnglish passenger (Charlotte Gainsbourg), whom he arranges to marry.But leaving the Old World behind — literally and figuratively — proves to be much harder than he thought.

Director Emanuele Crialese certainly has an ambitious, sweeping visionfor this magic-realist tale, but its fallow characterisation, and inert middle section, robs the film of any real emotional punch. Golden Door is most affective in the final section where it depicts the admission procedures the immigrants meet at Ellis Island, but the rest of the movie, like the characters' sea journey, is a long and uneven ride to that point.

Rating 3/5

Family Man

From Day and Night magazine in last Friday's Irish Independent

Antonio Banderas is suffering from serious jet lag - not that you'd be able to tell from the level of energy he invests in his interviews to promote Shrek the Third. "This junket isn't so bad because we don't have to defend the product," he says. "Sometimes on these things a journalist will say something harsh about the movie and you think, 'He's absolutely right', but you can't say that because your producer is right there!"

I'm talking to Banderas in the Dorchester hotel in London, where he has just flown into from LA the night before. The Spanish star is taking part in a frantic European promotional tour for the threequel to the mega-successful, pop culture behemoth Shrek (the first two movies have grossed $1.4 billion and sold 90 million DVDs, while Shrek the Third earned $122.5m in its opening weekend in the US).

Banderas reprises his role as the Casanova-esque feline side-kick Puss in Boots, a role that Banderas says he was more than happy to return to.
"I love him. He's kind of dangerous," Banderas says. " He's very irreverent, which is weird for a kids movie, but we're very careful about how far we can go with the character. You don't want to mess up the kids! He's a Casanova, a Don Juan in the body of a pussy cat which is absurd, but because it's absurd, it's funny. I think that contrast between what he is physically and what he is in his mind is a constant source of comedy."

In Shrek the Third, the green ogre (voiced by Mike Myers) and Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz) are reluctantly thrust into the roles of stand-in King and Queen of Far Far Away when King Harold (John Cleese) suddenly (or not, as you will see in the movie) croaks. Proving to be a disastrous and clumsy monarch, Shrek decides to shake off the role by finding the only other heir, the King's teenage nephew Arthur (voiced by Justin Timberlake). While Fiona and her scene-stealing Princess buddies try to foil a coup d'etat by the dastardly Prince Charming (Rupert Everett), Shrek sets off to Artie's boarding school to bring the nerdy teen back to be King, accompanied by his loyal companions Donkey (Eddie Murphy) and Puss.

Banderas relished the chance to develop Puss' character and to deepen his pivotal (and hilarious) relationship with Donkey. "In Shrek 2 we had to introduce the character because he came into the movie to break the group," he explains. "Little by little, the concept of Puss fell into place. Initially, he wasn't to be a recurring character, but he connected very well with audiences and here we are.

"I think he's such a good pairing with Donkey, because, at heart, they are both so lonely. They are sole characters. They don't have anyone around so they have to fight for and conquer Shrek as their only friend."

Indeed, such is the popularity of Puss that a movie spin-off for the seductive kitty is in the works. "It seems it's going to happen," Banderas reveals. " We have the script, but I haven't had a chance to read it yet. What I've heard is that it will tell his story from his time when he was little until the time he, probably, becomes a noble killer. It will be fun and will bring more colour to the whole story." Banderas will also reprise his voicing duties in a half-hour TV special called Shrek the Halls, and, of course, Shrek 4, which has just been greenlit by producer Jeffrey Katzenberg.

It can be easy to forget just how long this ineffably handsome and charming actor has been knocking around in this business. Today, he looks deceptively younger than his 46 years, with the only signs of ageing being a few greying chest hairs spurting out of his opened blue shirt. Banderas was born in Malaga in Spain, and moved to Madrid at age 19 to pursue acting. He soon became a huge star at home by making five movies with acclaimed auteur Pedro Almodovar over an eight year period.

Banderas arrived in America in 1990 without a word of English, but slowly built up an impressive resume of work in The Mambo Kings, Philadelphia and Interview with the Vampire. Banderas continued to play a wide range of roles, from the sweaty action of Desperado and Once Upon a Time in Mexico, to acting and singing Madonna clear off the screen in Evita. Banderas' star rose higher with his roles in the Spy Kids franchise, The Mask of Zorro and its sequel, and a highly successful stint on Broadway with the musical Nine.

Despite his status as a Latin sex god, Banderas is very much a family man. He has one of Hollywood's most surprisingly stable marriages to husky actress Melanie Griffith (since 1996) and is a devoted father to two children. Indeed, the over-riding theme of Shrek the Third is fatherhood, and, in particular, Shrek's terror at becoming a dad. Was that how Banderas felt when his own daughter Stella came into the world?

"No it was the opposite," he replies. "I was so happy for the whole nine months. I was just waiting, waiting, waiting for my baby. So the night of the birth was one of the most beautiful nights of my life. Just being there to recognise parts of her that are mine, like 'Oh my god, she has the same hands as me'. It was magic. I even remember the exact time she was born, 9.18pm."

As in the other Shrek movies, the lesson imparted in the third instalment is that beauty is on the inside and that we must all accept who we are. It's a philosophy that Banderas is eager to instil in his children.

"I want my children to be free, independent and to have an opinion about things," he explains. "I don't want them to be manipulated. We're living in very confusing and violent times, and I worry more because I have two girls. My step-daughter is now 17, and she's having a hormones festival.

"My 10-year-old Stella is a straight A student, and I don't where she got that because I wasn't like that, or her mother either! In But she gets very upset when she gets a B+ and I have to tell her, 'Hey, failing is fine'.

"I'm afraid sometimes that she thinks the world is ruled by the same perfectionist spirit that she puts onto herself and I don't want her to live life that way. So as a father I seem to go in the opposite direction of most dads. I say, 'You don't have to study so much!'
"I just want them to be strong. I don't want them to find people like Puss!"
What would you do if one of your daughters came home with someone like Puss? Banderas breaks into laughter. "Oh I'd put on my Zorro suit and sort him out," he replies.

Banderas is equally passionate when it comes to discussing his marriage and how he makes it work. "Melanie and I love each other – it's really that simple," he says. "Both of us came from failed relationships and we both learned from that.

"And she's an expert on Hollywood. She was born there, her mother [The Birds star Tippi Hedron] is also an actress and Melanie paid a price for that. She paid for the divorce of her parents. One was in New York, the other in LA so she was like a little package between both worlds.

"When we met each other, we fell in love and we just went for it. I know that people didn't give a penny for our relationship. I remember reading the papers, thinking, 'Wow these people know more about us than we do ourselves'. People actually betted that we wouldn't last three months." He smiles slyly. "I should have taken those bets. I'd be a millionaire now!"

Attitudes in Hollywood towards international stars have also defied expectations in recent years. More and more non-English speaking actors –particularly Hispanic ones - are triumphing in Hollywood, as evidenced in the 19 nominations for polyglots at this year's Oscars. Banderas welcomes that cultural shift, but also sees that change as being somewhat inevitable.

"It wasn't like that when I started out," he states. "I remember shooting The Mambo Kings, and the other Hispanic actors saying to me, 'If you're going to stay in this market, you're going to play delinquents, narcotics traffickers and bad guys. There's no space for us to just play normal characters and heroes and stuff like that'.

"People say, 'Antonio B anderas opened the door for us', but I think that change is due to many different factors, not only from the art world, but also social and political influences. The Spanish community in LA come from countries with a lot of injustices, lots of poverty, hunger, you name it. They work very hard to put their kids in university and all their kids, the second and third generation, have come out and now they can occupy any position in American social life.

"That's very different even from when I arrived there. There's more acceptance of the Spanish community in America, and I just happened to get there at a time when the wheels started to turn in a different direction. It was good for me because I got a lot of roles that were meant for someone else. For instance, Zorro was offered to Tom Cruise before me."

Right now, Banderas is very happy with his lot in life. He has set up his own production company specifically to make film projects in his native Spain and to provide the kind of support and encouragement to young filmmakers that wasn't there when he was starting out. He's also comfortable enough in his career to not follow the safe, easy track.

"I don't worry about box office anymore," he says. "I'm absolutely sincere when I say this: my life is financed. I invest my money. I have more than enough for me and my family, and my kids when I die. So now I'm looking for projects and roles I can chew on.

"I'm very much considering going back to Broadway next [in a musical production of Don Juan de Marco]. I think the best time I had in America was not in front of a camera, but on the stage on that theatre on 49 th Street with Nine. I had a blast for 138 performances and it was just so beautiful to find the material I was looking for in movies, on the stage.

"Theatre is the source of where I am as an actor, it's where I started. But I abandoned the stage for 16 years because I got so caught up in movies and Hollywood.

"And it's risky. Broadway is a merciless place. But it's exciting. If you don't do things you're afraid of, then what's left? You'll be immobile. That's not me. My whole life, I've taken risky decisions and I have to respond to those expectations of myself."

However, Banderas also recognises that he can't work at the same level that he's been operating at up until now. He's content to shun Hollywood glitz and glamour to spend time at home, but also to move away from action roles for material that reflects and acknowledges how comfortable he now is in his own skin.

"It is an age thing, mostly," he tells me, as we get up to leave. "Melanie is 50 this summer and I am heading towards 50 too. We're on the same path. There are certain things that your body asks at certain times and you can't ignore that." He pauses, and then delivers his best feline smile again. "I wasn't always like that. In the '80s, I was very wild. I was much more like Puss in Boots."

Declan Cashin, 2007





-- http://lowlyjourno.blogspot.com/

Birthday Boy

From Day and Night magazine in last Friday's Irish Independent

By the time you see this dear reader, I shall be another year older and wiser (Well, I'll be older anyway). Of course, any self-respecting gentleman would never reveal his age, which I think more than qualifies me to tell you that I will have turned 26 years young.



As of writing, I have no plans for the event, though its general timing does conveniently coincide with this year's Gay Pride parade. The two have blended into the one potent cocktail — literally and figuratively — in the past so I assume this year will be no different.



I'm weird about birthdays though, espcially this year. The trend over the last few years has been that my odd-aged ones have tended to rock (my 19th, 21st, and 25th were great), whereas the even ones, as Bart Simpson would say, managed to both suck and blow (J'accuse 20th and 22nd!). So even the birthday gods deem that I'm happiest when I'm odd!





My main beef with the birthday this year is this however: I just don't like that I won't even be considered an 'early twenty-something' anymore. In fact, it seems to me that the ages of 26-29 simply cease to exist by themselves once you enter that age bracket.





I'm discovering that everyone just rounds up those ages to 30. "26 you say? Sure you're practically 30 now". Geez, I know we live in an accelerated culture, but could you please give me a chance? I have a whole set of objectives and goals that I intend to have met by the time I reach 30. I'm not going to be robbed of those crucial years.





So for that reason, I think it's time for everyone in this age group to reclaim the Lost Four Years by politely slapping anyone who dares round up from now on. They have to learn.





Sure, people might get mad (friends, relatives, judges). But you can use your newly liberated latter twenties to atone for it, so by the time you actually turn 30, you'll be a fully functional, contented grown up. See, I've got it all figured out.Just leave my four years alone and we'll all get along fine.