Facehead

Every living person on earth has a head. Usually you'll see heads sitting atop a neck, sporting a face in front on the bottom half. Nothing to be concerned about. Occasionally though, you'll spot a facehead. This is where the face is so large that it eclipses the head, the head becomes incidental to the sheer scale of THE FACE. I've drawn this diagram to help you identify a facehead:

Lady Gaga pretender "Sunshine" from this season's Big Brother is a classic facehead.

She is so proud of her massive face that she bleets from it constantly at top volume, waves it around and thrusts it at lesser faces. Imagine that thing flying towards you, screeching about shopping lists and making a bad romance; that's the Big Brother experience this year. Oh, I love it. Nothing in the world fills me with more pointless anger than Big Brother.

We're almost two weeks into Big Brother, I'm enjoying it. My favourite moment so far was when Mario snuck away from the other housemates to trash the pizza party that John James was preparing; Big Brother stalling John James in the diary room all the while with ever more desperate conversation, "So...what will be your pièce de résistance?" It got even better when the other housemates discovered the destruction and just decided to eat the pizza from the floor.

Friday was the first eviction, good-bye to bargain-bucket Beyonce Rachael and her shiny shiny legs à la Bo' Selecta Destiny's Child. Lardilicious!

For anyone who's never watched Big Brother I've outlined Nicky's eviction night emotional rollercoaster:

SHOW BEGINS: Feel intrigued. Who will be evicted? Looking out for interesting placards in the crowd.
LINES CLOSE: Angry now. Caught up in mob mentality and baying for blood. Express this by chanting.
EVICTEE ANNOUNCED: Disappointed. My predictions never come true. Am I that out of touch with public opinion? Disillusioned with life and humanity.
THE EXIT: Fixate on evictee's face as he/she leaves the house. Schadenfreude. Also shame.
THE INTERVIEW: More shame. As interview progresses start to think evictee isn't so bad, actually seems quite nice!
SHOW ENDS: Lament loss of brilliant housemate and all-around fantastic person.

Anyway I have high hopes for this year's Big Brother. Haven't decided on a favourite yet though, any suggestions welcome.

Eurovision 2010

I really enjoyed Eurovision this year. I'm so sad it's over! Here are the performances I liked.

SPAIN
Generic dude singing his generic song flanked by toy-costumed dancers. Boring, right? WRONG. Enter famed pitch invader Jimmy Jump a.k.a. some douche in a red beanie, who stormed the stage and joined in with the dancing toys. Security didn't remove him right away because:
a) He moved with such natural grace that the only way you knew he wasn't a real dancer was the shit-eating grin.
b) The Spanish performers were such pros that they didn't even let this guy bother them. They welcomed him into the dance!
So kudos to everyone involved. Watch it on YouTube!


NORWAY
This wasn't a highlight of the show just a highlight for me. I took this boring ballad as an opportunity to go to the kitchen and make cocktails for everyone. Then I thought about how Eurovision comes but once a year and I should cherish each song, no matter how dull.

CYPRUS
One year everyone had giant drums onstage, another year the wind machines were turned up to 11, then there was the fire year and so on. The theme for this year was 1990's fashion. I think Cyprus's entry was the best example. He had the 1995-style floppy-hair-and-large-white shirt-look of the late Stephen Gately; right down to the choker necklace thingy.

Despite repping Cyprus this guy is actually from Wales and kept exposing his torso; on which he'd written HELLO MUM.

SERBIA
In Eurovision there's no point rooting for your own country (well, in the case of the UK anyway) so pick your favourite and back them till the bitter end. My favourite this year was Serbia. It was a bold and jaunty number with sassy lyrics led by a character from Final Fantasy. We had the lyrics as well as the English translation scrolling across the bottom of the screen. It was something mental like, "This is the Balkans, bitch. I'm so naughty and shameful. Here in the Balkans we kiss three times. So suck it."

If this isn't amazing I guess I don't know anything about music. YouTube! I think that's a semi-final performance but you get the idea. I've listened to this song about 18 times now. Rad!

BELARUS
The commentator led us to believe that something pretty spectacular was going to happen during this performance so we were watching closely, waiting for it all to kick off. The song had almost ended and we'd given up hope when OH MY GOD! I was holding out for a key change or some wind machine action and did not expect all the female singers to sprout huge, sparkly wings. This delayed gratification approach did not impress the voters. The only country to place lower than them was the UK. Awkward!

FRANCE
What I want from France's song, nay, what I NEED from France's song is to be left elated, confused and patronised. 2008 was a good example; Sebastien Tellier rode onto the stage in a golf cart brandishing an inflatable globe. It was baffling. Even though it was mainly in English I couldn't tell you what that song was about in a million years. This year's French Eurovision song is also their World Cup song. It's very rowdy and dumb. You can probably guess how I feel about the ubiquitous football competition enroaching upon my beloved Eurovision. Damn you, World Cup!

RUSSIA
Notable for the spoken word bit near the end. The singer started staring at a picture in his hand and a voice off-stage said, "What are you doing, man?" To which the singer replied, "I'm looking at her picture. What should I do with it?" and the voice told him to burn it! Skip to 1:16 to see it. It's even weirder on second viewing. According to the YouTube comments it's supposed to be funny, in an ironically overwrought kinda way. It's really growing on me!

GERMANY
Eventual winner Lena for Germany was another 90's fashion entry. The choker, the berry lip colour, the Bjorkiness of her voice. It made me want to don a Kangol hat and listen to (What's the Story) Morning Glory?

Books in April

THE ANATOMY LESSON

The third book of the Zuckerman books sees our hero plagued by a mystery illness that forces him to spend his days sprawled on a play mat, getting soused and receiving visits from an array of ladies. In the latter half of the book he leaves the mat and heads out to Chicago to interview for medical school. What a nut. Of course he's in no state to interview for anything so after a slow start, a mad pitch of lunacy and bullshit builds when Zuckerman's out and about.

THE ONLY ALIEN ON THE PLANET

Most online reviewers of this book allowed the appalling cover art or the lack of extraterrestrials to ruin this book for them. Idiots. It's a book intended for teenagers about a boy who never speaks and the classmates who try to befriend him. I found this book very refreshing. It has all the typical elements of a YA novel but never gives in to melodrama, it's very wholesome and grounded. The romance is subtle and tense but it doesn't eclipse everything else that's going on. I don't want to say too much about it for fear of ruining it. Buy this book and read it. They have copies at Amazon for a penny! Thanks to Jane for the recommendation.

EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED

I started reading this book about five years ago but gave up on it after ten pages or so. I read the first part of the book quite closely this time to see what could have made me abandon it all those years ago, but I still have no idea about what could have bothered me. Perhaps it was the way the story was told. I thought it was ingenious but it could so easily have been irritating. Chapters from a kind of magic realist novel about the history of a Ukrainian village interspersed with the story of an American in the present day trying to find the village, told by his tour guide. I really enjoyed this book. I loved the relationships between the characters. Hooray, I liked a book.

I MARRIED A COMMUNIST

I Married a Communist is beautifully written and as stout a novel as you would expect from Philip Roth, it's just not very interesting. There's little humour and it's so serious it's almost earnest. Uh-oh. Last time I disregarded a book by one of my much-loved authors he died. I hope Philip Roth is made of sterner stuff than George McDonald Fraser.

Eurovision Imminent

Tomorrow is Eurovision. In my family Eurovision is second only to Christmas in terms of excitement and money spent on food and drink. The show is on in the evening and we traditionally build up with a long day of Scrabble, Kettle Chips and houmous. Hummus? Whatever. Norway is this year's host country. The contest is being held in Oslo.

The show is divided into 3 sections.

1. There's a couple of hours of songs which is the best part. We note our favourites so that we can root for them during the arduous scoring process. Each song is preceded by a 30 second (or so) film showing us something good about the host country. They're supposed to be like tourism advertisements but they're so weird sometimes that the message gets lost.

2.After all the songs have been sung there's a recess while everyone votes. The host country puts on a stage show. It's usually a mixture of deranged and dull so this is a good time to go to the loo or grab a drink or take a nap.

3. Next is the arduous scoring process. Each country votes for their top acts and awards points. The host country links up one by one (via satellite probably) with each participating country and they give their scores in both French and English. This takes a while as there are 40-odd countries participating. In the distant past the winners would be decided by a panel of judges. Recently they tried phone voting but that didn't work because no-one voted for the UK because everyone hates us. Now it's a combination of phone voting and a panel of judges.

Remembrance of Eurovisions Past

2006 - My boyfriend got sick and missed most of the songs including this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z75mLlg4uO0
Thanks for rocking, Lithuania. Lordi won this year's contest. One of the stand-out moments for me was when the hosts linked up with Holland and the scores-man remarked, "Ha ha ha, you look like Will and Grace!"

They really really did!

2008 - A.K.A. worst Eurovision ever. Kevin was off at a party celebrating his brother's recent wedding, Lucie was too drunk to show up and Ellie was hepped up on pain killers and fell asleep on the floor after about 15 minutes. So it was just me and Ellie's boyfriend left to awkward around for four hours. It was almost as bad as the time I had gastroenteritis and missed Christmas.

2009 - This was the first Eurovision we watched in high definition. Also the first Eurovision without Terry Wogan's wry brogue commentating throughout. Graham Norton did a good job though, I think! Can't really decide who's better.

Journey

I wanted to post a little bit about things I spot on my bus ride to work. It's a lot less weird in Leeds than back in Cottingham/Hull but there are still plenty of things to enthrall and fascinate.

The Lion

The first thing I like to spot is the best thing and sadly the only thing I have not photographed. When I first noticed The Lion I was very eager for my boyfriend to see it but feared that we would drive away before he had the chance; so I kinda screamed and grabbed at him. He saw The Lion and was impressed but I could tell he didn't think it warranted a scream-grab. It's a sculpture of a lion's face that gazes out at the street. It is proud and benevolent. The Lion knows it is better than you but would never be tacky about it. I think seeing The Lion brings me good fortune and if I forget to look at it as I pass I feel a kind of terror. That's weird, right? Here is an artist's impression:

I had planned a rather fancy photoshop collage as a more fitting tribute to The Lion but I don't have photoshop on this computer and it was too hard to do on paint so I basically pasted a picture of a lion's face onto a picture of someone's window. Effective!

The Sign

Behind these showhouses the development is very much a work-in-progress. You would not be this happy if you were going to live in a muddy bog with a crane in the middle.

It's not a great shot but the bus moves quite quickly and I can't get out of the bus in this area for fear of having my iPod and camera stolen then being beaten because my camera is old and my iPod doesn't have any dubstep or whatever on it.

After The Sign we enter a bit of a wasteland. Partially demolished rowhouses on one side of the road; semi-detatched houses sporting England flags on the other side. In one of the driveways there is a burnt-out caravan that seems to get meltier every time I see it. Maybe the residents of the house re-light it at night for warmth. One of the houses has bright green shamrocks (about the size of a large human face) worked into the curlicues of the fence. I didn't photograph it because the owners of the fence are probably deranged.

Bellbrooke Cafe

This cafe is noteable for being the purveyor of both hot and cold sandwiches.

If I have a travelling companion I turn to them at this stage, nod and say, "Hot and cold sandwiches."

Nowhere Bench

Usually a bench will be near a bus stop or outside a building but this one is just plonked in the middle of a field. I've never seen anyone use it but it's often surrounded by spent cans of Special Brew which would indicate that it is a late-night homeless drinking spot.


Gas

The last thing is this amusement arcade that closed down years ago. It used to boast a light-up LAS VEGAS sign and windows full of classy and expensive goods like pharaoh death masks and urns.

Now look. Nothing in the windows, the previously dazzling LAS VEGAS reduced to mere GAS. I don't think they could even try to restore it to its former glory because a goth shop has set up next door. Tragic.

Books in March

THE VAMPIRE DIARIES: THE RETURN: NIGHTFALL



The good thing about this book is that it was all action. No navel-gazing, will-they-won't-they nonsense, just a lot of stuff happening. None of the stuff made sense and it was very silly but you have to commend the book for being pro-active. If I tried to explain the plotline now my head would probably explode. I'll give it a go anyway. At the end of the last Vampire Diaries book Elena comes back from the dead. Dunno why. In this book she's back and she can fly. There are these two evil foxes. They are influencing people. But the trees are also evil. Elena has multiple wings. And it's just dreadful. When the fourth book in this series was released I thought, "Why?" and it wasn't great but it was short and readable. The Vampire Diaries colon The Return colon Nightfall is neither short nor readable. There are hints in places of that old L.J. Smith fun and creepiness but it's not worth wading through 500 pages of boring, embarrassing, bollocks to get to them. I don't know if I'll bother with the next one; it's longer than this by about a hundred pages and (I hear) it involves Bonnie and Meredith being led into the underworld on leashes. Yikes. Just yikes.

ADORED



This series is dumb now. I mean it was dumb before but it was fun. Now it's not fun. Stopping in the middle of a series of books is more serious than deleting a series link on V+ but here I am thinking of cutting ties with both The It Girl and The Vampire Diaries. Harsh times.

THE CHILDREN'S BOOK



I went for this book because I loved Possession (I even read the long-ass fairy poems but if I did a re-read would definitely skip those bits and just enjoy the rompy, exciting, romantic bits) and the cover art is irresistible. This book concerns a group of irritating people, creative types, who blunder around doing whatever they feel like. They all have children who are at least a hundred times more sensible than they are. The book is about the children coming of age during the early 20th century and then all going off to war. I really liked this. It was nice and thick, it had sumptuous descriptions of fancy fancy things, about a million characters all angry about something, all incestuously interwoven and it was interspersed with edifying chapters on the history of the time that were surprisingly not boring.

ZUCKERMAN UNBOUND



After spending most of the month on The Children's Book I got through this in about an hour and enjoyed it thoroughly. Do I even need to say anything about this? You either like Roth or you don't. This is the second book in his Zuckerman series and it deals with Zuckerman's fabulous success as an author. He's zipping around the country, banging famous actresses, alienating his family and hating every minute. He's one of my favourite characters in all of bookdom and although this isn't as satisfying a reading experience as say, The Human Stain it was absorbing, I was moved in places. I don't mean moved like in a Jodi Picoult way I just mean that it stirred me, I reacted to the events of the book rather than just sitting there cramming Wotsits into my mouth waiting for the book to end (see: Adored).

Cooplands

When I lived in Hull, Cooplands was my bakery of choice and the lunches I bought there were the finest I've ever had. Also, I was in the Cottingham branch of Cooplands the time that hippy stole my pork and apple roll right off the counter, so we've got history there as well as delicious sweet/savoury snacks.

Now Ainsley's has gone into administration and Cooplands has taken over the near-work branch. I was pretty excited at the prospect of having pork and apple rolls on tap so I went into the bakery to get one the first day they put out the Cooplands signs.

NICKY: Hi, may I have a pork and apple roll please?
MUTE COUNTER WOMAN: ...
NICKY: Do you not have any?
MCW: (shakes head)
NICKY: Do you sell them?
MCW: ...
NICKY: Okay, nevermind. (leaves shop)

So I went back to work, googled Cooplands and according to Wikipedia the Cooplands I frequented in the halcyon days of my youth was part of the Coopland and Son outfit based in Scarborough. The near-work bakery has been taken over by Cooplands Ltd, based in Doncaster. Rubbish. Same name, very different bakeries. I'm boycotting it. The pasties they sell there are squashed looking and come in weird flavours like cheese and broccoli; the shop doesn't glow like the one in my memory; they play Radio 1 in there! Gah.

Books in February

I read some books in February that I can barely remember. Must read better books next time.

The House at Midnight

Very indulgent. I read an article by the author where she named the The Secret History by Donna Tartt as her favourite book of all time (it was on the Guardian website) and you can see how she's tried to do something similar here with the group of friends and the country house. Where The Secret History is kind of ethereal and mysterious this book is just banal and written in a prissy, humourless way that's quite depressing after a while. There was one joke in it about Dalziel and Pascoe but that was it for the whole book. The main woman whose name I've forgotten (it was something like Sarah or Michelle) is an exasperating pushover with a Babysitter's Club-esque obsession with sophistication, "So-and-so was dressed in a red dress and had dark hair and a cigarette holder. I looked down at my workaday shoes and felt insecure. Blah blah blah. Then I let someone swear at me and pull my hair."

We Have Always Lived in the Castle



A jolly, short read. Its blackly comic tone was a relief after suffering through The House at Midnight. I never have as much to say about books that I enjoyed as I have to say about books I disliked. I guess that's my failing as a human. In my book notebook I wrote scores of angry notes about The House at Midnight but for this one I just wrote, "Short. Too short?" and "Similar to The Wasp Factory" and it was a bit similar to The Wasp Factory, the unhinged, isolated siblings burying old bits of animal and nailing stuff to trees.

The Lake of Dead Languages



Utterly predictable mystery novel. What to say about it? It's about a woman teaching Latin at the school she attended oh so many years ago. There's a suicide; but is it a suicide? There's a brother and sister; but are they brother and sister? There's having sex with some dude in a mask; but is it the same dude in the mask who you think is in the mask and on and on until you want the book to end. Another one that drew me in with promises of The Secret History. When will I learn? Probably never.

Evil at Heart



Why did I buy and read Evil at Heart? It was on sale when Borders was closing down. It's part of a series, I'm a sucker for a series. There were a few stand-out parts that unnerved me a little, but for the most part I was unmoved. People were wandering around finding mutilated corpses, there was a kidnapping and someone with pointy teeth...that stuff's gross and scary but I just didn't care. The reason for my apathy is the hackneyed characters. Obnoxious "jounalist" and wacky dresser Susan has a Sweet Valley High-esque disregard for danger that gets her into all manner of scrapes. Detective and serial killer-bonker Archie Sheridan is so dark and intense that I read his dialogue in a Christian-Bale-is-The-Dark-Knight voice. Bumbling police man whose name I can't remember always shows up just in the nick of time. Tripe.

Television II

Just updating on my Televisioning for the past month. This is the right time for TV as there's so much stuff on that I've had to abandon my nightly episodes of The Waltons and Star Trek: The Next Generation. I miss John Boy's mole! I'm still watching Lost and thank God that Nurse Jackie has ended because I'd taken to shouting at the TV during episodes.

Glee

I had this pitched to me as Election with songs. Pair this with the general buzz around the show and as you can imagine I was expecting big things including very dark humour and thrilling musical numbers. It started off well but is becoming a chore to watch. I guess they stopped putting jokes in the show about four or five episodes in so there goes the humour, and more often than not I find myself hiding behind a cushion out of embarrassment during the musical numbers. I'm thinking specifically of the bit where the teacher dances around the other teacher (who's wearing a wedding dress) and sings The Thong Song. I felt embarrassed for the teacher singing, I felt embarrassed for the teacher being sung at, I felt embarrassed for me, I felt embarrassed for humanity for having produced something as excruciating as The Thong Song.

Jiminy Christmas.

The characters are terrible. Without exception, the men are dumb, the women are psycho. This leads to all manner of exasperating meta-soap opera storylines that eclipse scenarios that might be more interesting. I would like more focus on the choir competition, but, "Hey, we've gotta do this if we wanna make it to regionals!"once or twice an episode is all we hear about that. I've had enough of fake pregnancies and fake stutters and lying pregnant cheerleaders. I want them to get on with the business of being a FUDGING GLEE CLUB.

American Idol

I watch American Idol from start to finish every year. My enjoyment of it has increased in the past couple of years because I've been able to record it and fast-forward through the boring bits like the "getting to know you" videos before the contestants sing their songs. Last week I watched the videos and regretted it.

Tell us something that America might not know about you.

"I like to colour!"

One of the best things about watching Idol is reading the Television Without Pity re-caps:
http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/show/american-idol/
They're good for at least three "Ha!"s per re-cap.

Also check out:
http://www.votefortheworst.com/
Because there's something so delightfully spiteful about it.

So this week on American Idol we lost Katelyn (noodlehead), Alex Lambert (mullet), Todrick (Tondrick) and most lamentably Lilly Scott, answer to the question: What would happen if Lord Fear from Knightmare and Stephanie Pratt of The Hills fame had a little musical baby?

The Vampire Diaries

I was prepared to dislike this show but I'm actually kinda digging it. At first I was annoyed at how it was so different from the books. Nowhere in The Vampire Diaries does it describe Elena as an alarmingly thin, pinch-faced brunette. Then I remembered that I didn't even like the books that much and that I only read/owned them for a sense of L.J Smith completism. It's a fun show. They got the casting of the brothers ass-backwards though. I always pictured Stefan as the pretty-boy and Damon as the one with the big jaw. Also I think Ian Somerholder, while attractive, is too old to play an eternal teen. Depending on the make-up he reminds me of Super Hans from Peep Show.


Plus Damon would really be on board with putting a snake in a salad spinner.

Calendar

For 2009 and the latter end of 2008 I had this calendar:

Possibly the greatest calendar ever. A cat calendar with an edge; all the cats are moody and homeless. They're not chasing yarn or lapping up cream or upgrading ur RAM; they're huddling together for warmth on the mean streets of Corfu! My sister bought it in Greece and as such it'll tell you what month it is in both English and Greek. The only downside is that there's no space on it to write down appointments or DVD release dates.

But whatever, it ticks so many other boxes that you don't even want to write on it. Clearly Rebel Street Cats was going to be hard to top. I wanted something similar. Not necessarily in subject matter, just something with the same combination of wry and earnest. This is why I went for:


It's funny ha ha ha it's a calendar with a picture of a toilet for every month. It's educational also due to the edifying blurbs accompanying each loo. The best of both worlds.

That was my thinking behind getting the toilet calendar. I had the most honorable of intentions. However, it is now March and already the sight of a new toilet on the first of every month is wearing me down. Looking at a place where possibly hundreds of people have defecated every time I sit down at my desk is making me sad. Having to consult what is essentially a pamphlet of latrines in order to find out what day my birthday falls on this year makes me want to slap myself in the face. I have only myself to blame! Stupid toilet calendar. Gah.



Ugh.