A few words on the subject
A few words on the subject
A Few Words On September 2011
A few words on...hey you guys!
Sun 18th Sept 2011
Good morning, or evening or afternoon or whatever the cock time it is that you’ve stumbled over this.

I’m back. Did you miss me? I expect not, leading as I know you do, exciting and fulfilling lives. I expect you were glad of the silence from this end. Well, that silence – like the reign of Cheryl Cole over our Saturday night viewing pleasure – is sadly over. I return.

None of you, of course, will be wondering where I have been for 2 months. And frankly that’s good, as I have absolutely no idea myself. I’ve been up to a handful of things – a new writing project, a holiday, some further education, mastering “Too Hip, Gotta Go” on the electric guitar, seeing rockabilly and skiffle acts a plenty, getting my psyche probed by some Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and eating pasta – more of which, no freakin’ doubt, in the fullness of timeness.

But nowt, for reasons passing human understanding, has moved me enough to put pen to paper – or more accurately – jabby fingers to clicky keyboard. I know, it’s extraordinary, but almost nothing has amused, irked, troubled, entertained, confused or bothered me for months. I have merely been plodding through the coil of mortality in an fluoxetine-fuzzed daze, showering, shaving, dressing, working, staring off into space, drinking, sleeping and trundling my podgy, malformed nearly-forty form about the planet.

That is, until last Monday night. Oh...last Monday night.

Picture the scene if you won’t – I’m back from work on a Monday night indistinguishable from fumfty other Mondays of my life. I’ve done the washing up. I’ve stacked drippy, sudsy wet crockery in a rack full of clean dry crockery I couldn’t be arsed to put away first. I’ve stared at this. I’ve then thought that this might cause my wife to make a remark. I’ve then laboriously dried all the new stuff with a Sciliy Isles tea towel and wiped bubbles of Fairy Liquid off of the dryer stuff and clanked it all away into the cupboards. I’ve check my aol account and found nothing of interest apart from people on Facebook announcing things I’m not going to attend. I’ve hoisted my Gretsch 6120 onto my lap and twanged out some rockabilly double-stops (two notes at the same time...like the beginning of Johnny B Goode? No? Oh suit yerself) and I’ve put on a white’s wash. Y’know, my usual rock n roll lifestyle.

So then my wife returns from work having skipped Pilates to get some crapola done in the office. Usually at this time there would be kisses, supper and a double omnibus of Friends on E4 or T4 or Channel 4 plus 2 or whatever the buggery fuck it is. But as you may or may not care about, this has now come to an end. Leaving in our life – and possibly yours – a 60min shaped whole in our weekday evenings. So we shoot the breeze and sip the dregs of some Cab Sav left over from last week and moot “sticking a movie on.”

And this, dear reader, is where the trouble began.

Do you ever do that thing? Y’know, when someone during a conversation makes an admission of something they’ve never seen or haven’t read or whatever? And you repeat this fact back to them in a frustratingly irritating high voice? Like this.
Someone: “Actually I’ve never read Catcher In The Rye.”
You: (raise eyebrows) "You’ve NEVER READ CATCHER IN THE RYE?"
Someone again: "No. I just said that."

That sort of thing? I’m sure you do. We all do, pointless and absurd a non sequitur as it is.  Well I walked face first into such a squeaky voiced, brows-in-the-cornices remark not so long ago when, for reasons I can’t recall and you won’t care about, conversation turned to a 1985 family action adventure comedy motion picture called “The Goonies.”

Yes, okay. I can sense you’re doing it right now, aren’t you? Yes you are, shut-up, stop pretending. Your eyebrows have raised a bit and in your head, a squeakier voice than yours is saying “you’ve never seen The Goonies?!” You are, I know you are. Fuck off.

Well, anyway, no I haven’t. Now this may surprise you. If you have had the speccy quaffed sarky pudgy faced displeasure of meeting me, you will know that all thing 1980s and cinematic are something of a fave. Not only that, but the ouvre of summer-blockbuster glossy comedy action adventure of the Ghostbusters / Short Circuit / Back To The Future / Mannequin 2 On The Run etc are pretty much my internal wallpaper. So how was it I managed, in the last 26 years (holy fuckburgers) to miss this “classic” slice of adventure? Especially as it was not only produced by Steven Speilberg but directed by Richard “Superman The Movie” Donner?

Well I don’t fucking know, do I. But I had. I recall having the joys of the “movie novelisation” one Christmas. A glossy paperback of the story with – yes! – 8 pages in the middle of photos from the movie. The front cover illo’ on this book was a particularly perilous painting – by either the amazing Drew Struzan or bit-like-Drew –Struzan Richard Amsel (you know their stuff, links here to remind you) – of six kids hanging from a stalactite. But even this for some reason wasn’t enough to send me packing to the Granada Cinema or the ABC in Harrow for a thrill ride matinee. Again, as someone who paid money to see Bruce Willis in “Blind Date” and Tony Danza in “She’s Out Of Control”, I don’t know why I had been so discerning in ’85.

Inevitable upshot of this however is that, at some point in the past, my wife had done the squeaky-eyebrowed, raised voice thing about The Goonies and my lack of experience and I had purchased for her the DVD. Which sat, unopened, between Top Gun and Fatal Attraction on our shelf last night.

You can see where this is going.

So, supper finished and wine poured, I spent 110 minutes experiencing Richard Donner’s “The Goonies” for the very first time.

Okay, so a caveat before I go on. I am only too aware that The Goonies is not and never has been a peice of motion picture entertainment designed to appeal to 38 year old men in 2011 on DVD. Okay? I get that. It is very VERY much a movie “of it’s time.” So my analysis of it, you can obviously dismiss, as being rather skewed by age and time. I am well aware that what I thought of The Goonies last night has almost nothing to do with what you think of The Goonies, if you saw it in the summer of 1985 or on television one Christmas, aged between 8-12. Okay? I get that. But I also believe that there is something to be said from gazing at art from the wrong end of a telescope and viewing it fresh – with no nostalgia or innocent candyfloss recollection – two and half decades later to see if it stands up.

So here we go anyway.

Hopes were high to start. The skull motif in the credits sequence and the stark white text on the inky black background suggested we were up for something a bit scary and a little bit thrilling. A mood continued by a frankly brilliant opening sequence. You remember it? The Fratellis (Joe Pantoliano, Robert Davi and that woman from Throw Momma From The Train) stage a jail break and then hair about the town being chased by standard Speilberg small town cop cars causing carnage and accidents and whatnot. The music is exactly what John Williams would have done if he hadn’t been busy on Indiana Jones & The Temple Of Doom. Or Alan Silvestri would have done if he hadn’t been working on Back To The Future. Lots of dan-dan-dahhhh thrills. Fantastic.

At which point we cut to the establishing scene where we meet “the kids”. They’re being all American and white-picket fencey and 1980s and hangin’ out at the weekend. So far so standard. We get the range of kids required for a 80’s family advanture: The ordinary joe (Mikey): the gym-buffed hunk (Brand); the asian nerdy gadget freak (Data); the chubby Hawaiian shirt klutz (Chunk); the cool smart mouthed wisecracker (Mouth); the blonde cheerleader hottie (Andy)and the speccy naysaying plain girl (Stef).

But here’s what’s great: Just as the opending chase was full of derring-do and fast stunts and peril – setting this up as a quality movie – the intro to the characters likewise puts this ahead of the usual Disney fare. This is smart and feisty and modern. We have jokes about immigrant cleaners, jokes about erect penises, jokes about cocaine and heroin stashes, jokes about sexual torture cupboards.

The Waltons, this ain’t.

So by now, I’m on my second glass of wine, dinner plates on the floor and I’m sat back with my wife beginning to realise that I’ve missed out on an all time classic. Now I get why people say “Whaaaat?! You HAVEN’T SEEN THE GOONIES!!” at me when I say “I haven’t seen the Goonies.” We’ve has thrills and spills, some bad guys and some bawdy adult based nudge-nudge gags with some very competent child actors, it’s clear why many of whom went on to greater successes (John Brolin, Cory Feldman, Sean Astin, Martha Plimpton etc).

But sadly, much like my sexual technique, all the best stuff is in the first couple of minutes. The movie then appears to change tone, director, theme and style and everything previously great get’s pushed aside for dumb ass kiddie funfair harmless It’s A Knockout nonsense.

Falling off a pirate ship into the sea?! Whoopsie! Sliding down a water slide?! Whooo-hooo! Swinging on a rope?! Ha-haaaa! For Chrissakes people. What begins with sass, style, edge and a level of hipness ends up like “Chuckle Brothers – The Motion Picture” with all the knife edged thrill of the end of “We Are The Champions” when Ron Pickering shouted “Away you go!” and lots of school children jumped into a swimming pool.

Rubbish.

Now you might think I’m being Harshy McHarsh, here. C’mon Rich. This is just good old family fun for the kids. If you’re 11 years old, this is laughs and surprises and adventure aplenty. No it isn’t. For proper laughs, genuine surprises and more adventure than you could possibly cope with, you had Ghostbusters the year before. And the same summer of The Goonies, there was Back To The Fucking Future. What’s that? Goonies is for younger kinds? Oh right. Hence the gags about pissing on your face with a hard-on, boyfriends trying to get a gawp at a cheerleaders tits and the drawer Mikey’s dad keeps his heroin in.

C’mon people. Let’s take this one off the “classics” list and bung it on the list with “Basil The Great Mouse Detective” and “Short Circuit 2.” We have “Raiders Of The Lost Ark” which does the whole treasure map thing smarter and better, we have “Back To The Future” which does daring escapes, chases and rope slides with style and smarts and wit, we have Gremlins, Superman 2, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and The Princess Bride.

Hey You Guys? Let it go. Just let it go.

That’s it. Nice to be back.

Love to all
Rx

A few words on phones, evolution and gift giving
Tues 27th Sept 2011
And it’s hello from me, and it’s hello from him. Hello.

Something for the Two Ronnies fans out there in the ionosphere. How the McChicken Sandwich are you all today?
As ever – in fact more than ever but we’ll get to why in a bit – I can’t imagine where you are right now. At your computer, presumably. Although what with the Usain Boltish speed of technology, you may be somewhere in the Sudan squinting at this on your telephone.

NOTE: It has just right now as I type this occurred to me that we don’t call mobile phones “telephones” anymore. Try walking into a branch of Carphone Warehouse or the O2 store this weekend and approaching a chappie and asking for a new “telephone”. Like as not, he will gibber at you like a twerp. Although, given my experience of mobile-phone salesman, the phrase “like a twerp” might be somewhat redundant. He’ll gibber at you like a mobile-phone salesman. Telephone now appears to mean exclusively “land line.” Even though, from a etymological standpoint (which you’re unlikely to be in) tele, from the greek meaning “far” and phone, from the greek meaning “voice” does just as well at describing mobiles or “cells” or “handsets” or Nokia oojahs or iWhatnots or whichever. Hmn.

Anyhow, enough of that, as the controller of ITV2 once presumably said about Keith Chegwin’s penis.

You’ll be at a screen of some type. I don’t know when because I haven’t a clue as to the time and/or date and/or time I’ll finish this drivel and bung it up on the web. Possibly this evening (Monday 23rd Sept in the year of our Lord 2011). Possibly next Micklemas Eve. See, I’ve a lot to get through.

This may, like my motorbiking story (April 2011) stretch over more than one post. But I suppose there’s no way of knowing without shutting the cock up and getting on with it so howsabout we do that?

Two things. Well three things if you count the fact I’m going to end up talking about the relationship those two things have with each other.

First thing. Evolutionary Psychology. You may know an awful lot about it. You may not. You may think it’s breathtakingly graceful and worth banging on about to everyone in the world, or you may not be Richard Dawkins. Anyway, it’s a science. Probably – like say media studies – not an actual science. But it ends in –ology and if Maureen Lipman has only done one thing for this country, I’d like to know what the hell it was.

Like ordinary, run of the miller’s crossing psychology, it’s a way of trying to make sense of actions and behaviour. However, where it differs from your Thank Crunchie It’s Freudy, beard and couch, stare at this inkblot* type of psychology, is this: It attempts to look at our actions from an evolutionary stand-point. It asks, when faced with our actions, “what good did this behaviour do our ancestors?” And as an extension (and this is where it gets controversial) – as our goal as mammals on earth is to reproduce successfully, can we look at ALL human behaviour as merely complex systems of getting laid?

It’s from this we get all sorts of fascinating theories about why we as a species act in ways that perhaps now, at the beginning of the 21st century, don’t make much logical sense, but might be explainable as behaviour that benefitted peoplekind thousands of years ago. The reason we still do it is to do with imbedded behaviour. It also covers behaviour that, while seemingly meaningless, is designed deep down to aid the spread of our genes to the next generation.

Okay so you’ll want an example. Or you’ll want to go and lie down with a cold compress on your head. Can’t help you with the latter.

The obvious one is to do with choosing sexual partners. You’ll have heard it before I’m sure so I won’t bore you with details.
Way back when the human race was evolving, it did a female no good to mate with a useless bloke. And by useless, I mean no good at hunting, bringing home food, making a fire, protecting the dwelling and getting the lid off the Brontosaurus Piccalilli. (forgive the historical inaccuracies). It benefitted a woman to find a mate who was not only good at all of the above – in order to protect and nurture the young – but who was also going to stick around and do the nurturing. So dames chose these stay-at-home hunter hunks to mate with. As a consequence, the genes that encourage this sort of male behaviour spread to the next generation in the surviving kiddy and onward and onwards. We see this behaviour still in the eagerness of beautiful women to find muscly handy outdoorsy broad-shouldered fellows something of a catch. I mean we don’t need to anymore. Waitrose isn’t populated by wild beasts and one’s house has a chubb lock and we all have gas central heating. So this sort of anachronistic behaviour is rather oldey fashioned (as my mum would say). But behaviour is deep rooted so we still see – while not universal – a trend towards this sort of attraction.

When it starts, as a science, trying to explain why men build rockets and women wear lipstick and why cars look like penises and why women wear heels it all gets either
a.Intriguing and fascinating
b.Cobblers
rather depending on your world view. But anyway, that’s it in a nutshell, as breakers-of-news-about-testicular-cancer-try-to-avoid-saying. You buy it or you don’t. I know smart people who do, I know smart people who consider it a load of Ocelot innards. Books are out there, you decide.

Second thing: Gifts
I need you to imagine now, that you have a birthday party coming up for a friend. They’ve done a facebook thing or tweeted something or posted an email round-robin style invite. Or maybe, hell, they’ve gone to WHSmith and bought some “please come to my party” stationery and sent it out old school. But whichever, you have a birthday party to go to next weekend.

And you’ve found the perfect gift.

I don’t just mean a voucher for their favourite online haberdashers or a ticket to a show you both want to see. I mean you’ve unearthed the most spot-on, guaranteed, face-light-up, squeal for joy present. Maybe they’ve wanted one for ages? Maybe they thought they weren’t made anymore? Maybe they used to have one as a kid and lost it. Maybe all three? But whatever it is – you just know it’ll be the thing they love the most.

Imagining that?

How are you feeling as you pay for it? How are you feeling as it’s bagged up and you shove your digits into the debit card machine thingy? You can’t wait to tell them, right? You’re going to want to keep it a surprise, but you can’t help yourself.

Even as you travel home with it – a whole week before the party – you’re imagining their glee. You’re picturing their face. You’re practising your “aww shucks” look. You genuinely feel excited about this.

Then as the days approach, you can’t help it. You casually ask others, oh so very by-the-by, “have you got a gift yet? For the party? No? At the weekend? Oh right, right . . . have I? You’ll never guess...” and you squirm a little bit. You want to tell everyone what you found. Get a little of their excitement to stir into yours.

Then the day comes. You’re showered and dressed and the gift is there, wrapped with paper and a bow. All the way to the party, with it in a Superdrug carrier bag on your lap on the bus, on the train, in the cab...the feeling grows. You can’t wait.

Then you’re there. Helloos and hey theres! Can I get you a drink? Glad you found it! Love your outfit? Is such and such here yet? Go through, dump your coat. Music playing, people jostling. But in your hand, gripped tight, the carrier bag. Hands a bit sweaty now. Heart’s a little faster. Not too much. But excited.

Do you dump it on a pile with the others? Do you hand it to the birthday girl/boy along with armfuls of cards and other gifts? No. No, of course not. You hold back.

This? This is going to be big.

You wait until all the other gifts are opened. Then you reach for yours. You raise your voice a bit. “Okay...well...now I don’t know if you’ll like this...”

The build up. You know they will. You’re certain they will. But you want to make this feeling last. Plus, you want others to glance over. To share the moment. To see the effect. (Has anyone got a camera?)

Then they take it. And they smile. Maybe their eyes begin to glint as the shape or the weight means it just...might...be...no it couldn’t, you can’t get them, they’re so rare, they’re so expensive, you couldn’t possibly have . . .
And the paper tears.

And there it is.

And the smile. The smile that becomes a great bark of a laugh. Joy and glee. They stare at you and they are a child again, fingers scrabbling at the paper – quickly now, but also with care. Then there is a hug. A squeeze, a kiss. Let me see! What is it?! Ohmigod! Where did you..? What have they got..? Is that..?! Holy shit!

And for a moment, as you hug, you feel it.

Joy. Absolute human joy.

What this has to do with evolutionary psychology, we’re going to get to another time. Until then, try and hold that feeling. That joy.

I have some things to say about it.

Love, more than ever, to all
Rx


*A emotionally troubled man goes to see a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist decides to do a Rorschach test on him with a selection of inkblots. He holds the first one up. “What does this make you think of?” he asks. The patient pauses and says “a man being sucked off by a horse.” The Psychiatrist, a little fazed, but professional, picks up another blot. “And this one?” Again the man looks at it and says “two lesbians top to tail in a vat of jam.” The Pyschiatrist produces a third inkblot. Again the man describes what he sees. “A black guy taking a small oriental woman from behind with an ornate dildo.” Eventually after a dozen of these, the psychiatrist puts the inkblots away. “I think the problem is,” he says to the patients, “that you’re clearly a twisted degraded pervert.”
“Me?” the patient says. “You’re the filthy fucker with the drawer full of porn.”