You Wanna Piece Of That?

The only way I get to see the popular musical charts these days is keep one eye on the tunes they play in my gymnasium, which tends to be thumping, dizzying nonsense with lots of people ‘featuring’ people and rapping. That’s until 9.30am, when all the hardcore people have trotted off to their proper jobs, and then they play somewhat more sedate things for the likes of me who is more content to do a weight set and then pick at their nails for five minutes. Music similar to that in a supermarket when they start playing Duffy’s ‘Warwick Avenue’ to make you plod in time down the Haberdashery aisle in slow, dead-eyed steps and get beguiled by the overly-stimulating packaging of Jayes Fluid.

Anyway, in that golden post-9.30am gym playlist, a brand new Take That song came on. I was beguiled. It is called ‘Kidz’ and if you care to, you can watch it here. I advise you do, because I did the same and couldn’t quite get my hat on. Take That have gone steampunk! We have lisping homunculus Mark Owen giving us social commentary from underneath a cloak stolen from the Scottish Widow. Now I'm not a fan of Owen's reedy voice, certainly not when he's asking for us whether we 'wanna piece of that?!' where he's apparently inviting us to fight, and not offering us a section of Terry's Chocolate Orange. Later on in the album he sings an unfortunately visceral apology to his wife for his numerous affairs that have been made public in the last year. "And I," he sings, chewing the words as if they're made of packing sponge, "still wanna have sex with you." his sibilant 's' making 'sex' far more prominent than I'm comfortable with, and I'm really not comfortable with the idea of Mark Owen rutting at my leg like a horny spaniel.

I love trying to follow the plots of videos through a band's career. I did formulate my own storylines through the many promos of pop reality show Frankenstein's monster Liberty X (pronounced 'Liberty Kiss' to my mind) which would explain why one video they were stealing (and unfortunately dropping down a drain) a giant diamond one week, hanging around a luxury house in the Bahamas the next, before times becoming hard and finding themselves working in a factory under pop overlord Richard X making clones of themselves. There was a clear path in my head how one situation got from one to the next; Take That less so. We last saw the grinning five-some accepting down-on-his-luck Robbie Williams back into the group so they could enter a rowing competition and mournfully sing about the weather in a boat house (cf. 'Take That and The Flood') before rowing off to sea. They must have rowed all the way to their secret Thunderbird-style base, because they now inhabit a grimy space ship on the edge of the Earth's atmosphere where Robbie is happy to tinker with his BMX like he's 30 years younger than he actually is and Jason Orange can wear inconvenient steampunk spectacles while drinking cups of tea.

Oh lovely Jason Orange. He's always been one for me since I saw him cavorting topless on a beach during a formative moment of our childhood (cf 'Take That and the Pray'). He's so... Lithe! And I'm still holding out on the rumours fuelled by the fact he's the only one not wearing a ring on his finger. Well, a wedding one, if you catch my drift. If I fluttered my fan any harder, the Butterfly Effect means we'd probably cause a tornado in Texas. Yes, Jason was always my number one of the boys to accidentally meet at a premiere to something, where we'd hit it off over a bag of popcorn and a diet Sprite before he whisked me back to his glamorous London pied-a-terre (is that right? I do mean townhouse, not potato) where we make love on beautifully upholstered sofas. And as it's a fantasy sequence, I'm not fishing popcorn bits out my teeth or have to stop three times to empty my bladder of the bucket of Sprite.

But. Well. You see, I had this dream once. About his band mate Howard. A dirty, dirty dream. In real life, I tend to bumble through situations and events with barely any cares in the world and it takes something monumental to make me sit up and listen. And to my mind, there's nothing better than a dream to make my molasses-slow brain finally get the time to put all the pieces together and go 'hang on a minute...' It happened recently, waking one morning from a dream to discover I'd become smitten with a certain make of toaster (I shan't name names - I'm not completely about free advertising) and that I'd been popping my hand in and out of the gap between the pillows every three minutes until quite sore.

You see Howard is much more ‘Premiere Inn’ than ‘premiere, film’ (sorry, very tortured, but there you go). Honestly, it was a revelation! He took me this way and that in some ghastly hotel room. He was in his dredlocked stage as well, and I noticed that his hands that pawed at my 'Clarissa Explains It All' underwear had the most shockingly filthy fingernails. I've put this down to my semi-inexperienced youth and equating dirty hygiene to dirty sex. My therapist had a field day over that. We then proceeded to enjoy each other with such vim, vigour and finality that I remember coming away from the dream and going to check that my backside didn't actually look like a donkey's yawn after all. I haven't been able to look at Howard in the same light again. Thankfully, Take That broke up before my fixation became an obsession, but even to this day, each time a Take That video comes on, I get a misty look in my eye. And I was doing fine, thank you for asking, right up until this moment in the video:



That noise you just heard was the deafening clang of dropping knickers. Look at him! Look! What a man. You'd barely get away with your life in one piece, let alone your dignity. As I speak, I'm recalling the odd sensation of polyester sheets rubbing against my cheeks. The ten dollar, not the five dollar cheeks.

Anyway, back to the plot. Mark Owen is singing about authority and how it's all going to go out the space-window as soon as 'the kidz' come out, which I took to be a reference to the student riots that rampaged through London. Rampaged? Is that the right word? I didn't think the British rampaged at anything to be honest. We'll tut if someone pushes in front of us in a queue, but rampage? Just not us. Besides, that would be a complete volte-face for Gary Barlow, who revealed his support for the Conservative party by appearing at a school with then-Prime Minister candidate David Cameron hanging off his piano, one sequined dress away from Michelle Pfeiffer's role in 'The Fabulous Baker Boys'. He really does have an unpleasant face, that Cameron. My boyfriend says it looks like a freshly-wanked cock and I can kind of see his point.

So I think this is the moment where the 'kidz' come out - in this case the budget stretched to one teenager with a Polaroid camera. Clearly steampunk spectacles and tea cups are more expensive than I thought. Take That leave their space station for a bit of a jig, and the soldiers look on impassively. Now I'm not knocking jigs; I'm reliably informed that people used to turn up for the traditional trip around the stage at the end of the play just as much as they did for any of Shakespeare's works preceding it. It's just... All that effort and just for a bit if a dance? It does remind me of the mid nineties where I'd spend the afternoon getting ready just to go on the dance-floor for the Spice Girls' 'Who Do You Think You Are', the only song I knew how to dance to. But I wasn't arriving in a space station. Usually a clapped out Vauxhall Cavalier driven by a taxi driver who always tried to get a little fresh when you said you were going to Streetlife, the only gay club in Leicester.

But then, as Robbie Williams jumps on his BMX and rolls back and forth with all the charm and intent of a bored teenager in front of the local Spar, you realise that Take That are meant to be The Kidz. Good lord. Does the 'z' at the end now imply middle age? Gary Barlow's saddlebag cheeks are thrown wide in a bygone approximation of a cheeky chappy grin that doesn't quite meet his buried eyes. And this - this! - is why a band like this should never do anything as dismally serious as this, because we remember them cavorting on the beach, or having jelly thrown at their arseholes (cf. 'Take That and the Do What You Like'). Can you imagine them causing the trouble that Mark Owen promised in the first verse? Can you bogroll. Wisely, they just get back in their spaceship and go back into space. The kidz came out and the revolution never happened. Fancy.

Frankly, I went back to picking my nails and wondering if that man behind me in the gym had a job.

Reboot

New Year's Eve. Someone gleefully pointed out that you don't get a blindingly shiny new year after midnight. You don't get the promise of a exponential list of possibilities. What do you get? You get January.

I was sober for New Year's Eve due to complications of having my wisdom teeth out and fallen foul of a 'dry socket', which is where the hole where the teeth once were doesn't scab properly and you get an infection. You also get a group of whimsical gay friends completely without sympathy when you mention you have 'dry socket' because there's lots of braying and "...I'm not surprised at your age, dear..!" leaving you with little more than a wry smile and a glass of water to swill whatever crisps are left in what feels like chasms where your teeth used to be. I find New Year's Eve to be a miserable affair anyway, with a forced Butlins-style jollity forcing everyone to stay up to 2am to fire weak party poppers off a balcony somewhere. Celebrating that you're now into the dank joys of January, where you're going to be inundated with interminable Facebook status updates of how many days people haven't drunk a drop of alcohol, how people's diets are going, and how hideous the Sales were. Although those Runkeeper things on various smartphones are an utter joy, updating us all to how far around the park people have wheezed on the 2nd of January before the updates slowly disappearing til next year. I love those things. Highly detailed monuments to human failings, chittered off with technological indifference and accuracy, and only just stopping short of how many times you stopped to lean up a wall and clutch at your chest before limping back via the newsagent for a Mars Bar.

I take against January because its meant to be a time of change, and it never is. And it certainly isn't going to help eating my body weight in yoghurt, Martine McCutcheon. And I have to do my taxes because I'm self-employed graphic designer and I will now be spending four weeks flopping dramatically around my office with my back of my hand against my forehead, wailing "Why me? Why do I have to find the reciept for those pencils?" The whole thing is an up-hill struggle for me as I now only use one side of my brain and the side for numbers has atrophied like Samantha Mumba's career. It is not helped by my accountant, who steps up the somewhat tart-in-tone letters to almost daily during this month. They tend to start 'As per the letter we sent you dated August 23rd...' with a following request for how much I have spent on blank DVDs, cinema tickets and drinks for 'entertaining' 'clients' for my tax bill. These letters are fine in September, but as you're actually in another year now, it's just a little embarrassing. Add to that the appearance of pre-dame Moira Stewart, the lovely trustworthy newsreader on banners and billboards around the city, telling me that I really should do this by the 31st or I'll be fined. The only way to calmly do this is to imagine the lovely Moira is sitting behind me, coaxing me on. Her honied voice telling me that I'm doing really really well, and as soon as I do this, my reward will be the entire presenting team of Blue Peter will enchant me into a dark closet where they will proceed to lightly lick my forehead. But they never come. They never come. All that happens is I send them off and my accountant will stop the letters. And you can stop looking at me in a sassy, accusatory manner from your billboard perch, Moira Stewart.

Worse, this January atmosphere of semi-revolution is infectious. I promise myself that I'll do it earlier next year, that I won't cause the fuss and the drama. That I won't make fun of people's statuses or sudden can-do attitude that will last for a fortnight. And yet, if I look back over this blog I reckon that this proclamation will be there every year. And that's human nature. And that's January.

Knocking Through To The Back Parlour

So currently, I’m all about the painkillers and the Dame Shirley Bassey remix album. I didn't want to be a gay cliche, it just sort of happened. I got some white pills that fizz on my tongue, and some pink ones that go well with my pyjamas, and some turquoise ones that make me drowsy and when I take them I they’re a bit like a K-hole, and I come round discovering I’d been looking at clips of ‘Suddenly Susan’ on YouTube for two hours.

There is a reason, other than reading ‘Valley of the Dolls’ and thinking ‘Hey, I could totally rock that rustic-look Lawrenceville mansion of Anne’s’ - I’ve just had my wisdom teeth out. To be honest they’ve been annoying me for years, but I’ve only just had the time to get them sorted. And this isn’t the first time I’ve had a doctor poking around down the back of my throat (stop leaping ahead to your own punchlines) as I’ve already had my tonsils out too. It’s almost as if I’m making room for something back there, though I can’t think what. Of course, having friends who are as gay as tinsel, every time I mentioned I was going to be in intense pain for a week, every single one of them said “Still! No eating for a week! Oh, I envy you doing that just before Christmas...” and they would trail off before looking wistfully at a mince pie. And it is true - I’ve lost about half a stone simply by having a mouth the size and shape of the slot Princess Leah uses to put the stolen rebel plans into R2-D2.

Oh how I miss food! I would happily murder someone for a bag of crisps. And I can't WAIT to get better to see Burlesque. And by 'better' I mean 'off the drugs so I can turn it into a drinking game in the cinema’.

Wankr

So far I haven’t been seduced by the smartphone revolution because I’m a luddite who barely understood teletext when that was on. And yet, here I stand on the cusp of a contract upgrade, willfully holding back on whatever must-have gadget that is currently doing the rounds. I am naturally reticent to get an iTelephone because I’ve made my feelings on any and all of Apple’s smug Talking Tupperware products clear within these garishly pink pages; although I will now add to my distrust the bizarre phenomenon of, as soon as you mention an iTelephone, any and all users in the vicinity removing them from their pockets and bags and stroking the screens. Do please try it, if you can bear the strange sight of man petting machine so lasciviously. Just the name of the device, and this will cause the owner to subconsciously reach for it, as if to affirm that such wonderful technology does truly exist and they didn’t just dream up this life-changing cultural zeitgeist in the night. Most bizarre.

What I cannot get my head around is it clearly is terribly bad at a good percentage of the functions it proclaims, yet all of these owners still dote on them with the forgiveness of a backward child. As I’ve been edging towards getting one, I’ll ask these bewitched owners about the terrible camera and the fact that it drops calls and they’ll just stare at me with glassy eyes and say “But it’s changed my life...” before going back to pecking away at their Apps like hens with A.D.D. So it doesn’t function as a phone? “Oh, but its so much more than that...” they’ll say. One can only assume that the spinning little wheel that appears whenever its processing is a tiny little hypno-disc that calms and soothes the user as it fails to work on every other level.

The only reason I’m still thinking about getting one is the Apps - most of which sound like a delight to use. I tell you, if I were single I’ll be all over the Grindr application - the mobile version of gaydar. The idea is that you activate it, and it shows you how many Gentlemen Who Moisturise are in your vicinity who are up for a bit of bum fun. Although clearly as it was designed by gays, it can’t do measurements for toffee: one of my friends activated it in his lounge and was most startled to discover there was a gay apparently one meter away. Cue a horror film slow-motion turn to have a look behind him, only to discover no-one’s there. Apparently some bars now hold Grindr Parties, the thought of which fills me with a unearthly horror as I picture crowds of zombie screen-jabbers talking through the medium of their tedious device, lined up the walls like Borg in their alcoves.

Of course, the other option is Google’s Android phones, which seems far more efficient... and deathly dull as a result. Yes, its got lots of worthy apps to help you shop and recognise buildings via pictures you take, but can you throw Angry Birds across the screen? Can you bogroll. To cement this, one of my other friends decided to get the Android version of Grindr - and all that popped up was a man called Barry who worked in IT who was 42km away. I do not want to be these people. I want to be fun, and interesting... and yet you’d think that would point towards the iTelephone, but from everything I’ve seen of it, it is anything but. It removes part of your brain and only enables you to communicate via displaying YouTube clips and pictures of other friends sitting in other bars. Can’t I just stick to my old phone? Please?

Set The Outrageometer to Moir

Oh yes, the Daily Express. Well done. I thought you’d take the positive view on this one.

Bit of back story for you Johnny Foreigners: the Daily Express is read by six people, all of them hate anyone who doesn’t like Antiques Roadshow and wears ‘a funny hat’. They normally spend their headlines saying either saying that an everyday object can give you cancer, or that Diana, Princess of Wales was killed in a horrible conspiracy and not enough of us own plates with the Queen’s face on them. Not that you should ever use these plates, you proles - how dare you sully Her Majesty’s face with your Sommerfield arctic roll. That’s treason, that is.

And the headline story is the victory of two gay men at the high court, both of whom were facing deportation back to their own countries where homosexuality was illegal. This was the appeal to a previous judgement that was going to return them with the note saying ‘Basically, keep your trap shut, don’t mention the manicure, and you’ll be fine’. What quality of life this must be. Finally, the High Court saw sense and let the two defendants stay in the country - with the hilarious summing up from Lord Rodgers ”...so male homosexuals are to be free to enjoy themselves going to Kylie concerts, drinking exotically-coloured cocktails and talking about boys with their straight female mates.” Oh La Rodgers, when did you sneak in to see ‘Sex And The City 2’, you sly old dog! You got us pegged exactly right! That’s all we do!

Wait, that was a knee-jerk reaction: I would like to say I do more than drink multi-coloured cocktails, listen to Kylie and bang on about nice cocks, but I'd be lying. Absolutely bare-faced falsehood. For Cher’s sake, there’s been over a thousand posts on this dastardly pink site, and all of them are to do with the above trio Points of Interest. I think I’m delighting more in the bigger issues here: all of a sudden, gay people can ask for asylum here, opening the floodgates for feather boa-wearing queens in hot-pants. This a bad thing, I have to ask? Ever since the cheap-yet-diligent workforce of Poles have buggered off to where the money is (apparently Sweden) we’ve a yawning gap in our capacity for manual labour, mostly because we British are too happy at home watching Jeremy Kyle to clean McDonalds toilets. Personally, I wouldn’t mind any hole filled by a delightfully swarthy Gentleman Who Can’t Catch, but that’s a whole other story.

Slight sideline: as there’s a test for British Citizenship (try it if you’re a UK national - the pass rate is apparently 75% - and I got 40%. I’ll get my Louis Vuitton luggage and get out...) does this mean that there’s going to be a Gay Test for asylum seekers? And can I watch? Although one would assume it would be a government official holding up pictures of female soap stars of the 1960s and being told to indicate which ones were fabulous or not (here’s a clue - if they’re wearing curlers, it doesn’t instantly mean that they’re dowdy).

The problem is, as this media swirl ramps up from when it started, the idea of drinking exotically-coloured cocktails and popping along to see Minogue K do a set (hopefully Old Sexy Kylie. New Hyperventilating Kylie can float off) is more and more appealing as the morning wears on. It’s a hard life, I know. Personally I’ve found it tough to include multi-coloured cocktails in every part of my life, but have just gotten used to my All-Bran Daquiri of a morning. But that’s me: drunk and regular.

Gay-away

I have a sudden urge to hang up my Ruby Slippers. I’m no longer feeling like the gayest gay in the neighbourhood.

This weekend was Pride, for one. I’ve never been proud in the slightest, and can’t abide crowds. Gay crowds even more. Where crowds of straight men tend to bellow (cf football matches), a mince (a clutch? a squeal?) of gay men tend to bleat. Whenever Hazel Dean is inevitably wheeled onto the main stage, there’s going to be a thin, penetrating squawking, as if someone had squeezed 2,000 vuvuzelas into nasty TopMan t-shirts and run loose with the glitter make-up. I do not want any part of this.

One friend tried to strong-arm me into going, saying it was ‘important’ and ‘political’, but I really can’t see the solidarity in fellow man by wandering from a pasteboard table covered in butt plugs to the bear tent and back again in the sun. Instead I elected to pop into town early and get all my shopping needs out of the way before city filled up with provincial gays completely beguiled with the idea of a two-storey H&M. Turns out I was too late, and lo, got trapped on Oxford Street as the Pride March tottered past. And all the parade seemed to be was open top buses from nasty nightclubs from Milton Keynes, whippet-thin creatures of indefinable sex leering over the side at the passing crowd and blowing whistles like it was the only way they knew how to breathe. Does anyone else find it apt that whistles are the weapon of choice for shrill gays across the world?

And while we’re on the subject, I notice that Minogue K has a new album out (a cunning segue there, I think you’ll find). Here’s a simple review: ‘Aphrodite’ is perfect music to hoover to. Minogue K is once again diminutive proof of the law of diminished returns after her career peaked with a song that is basically ‘La-la-la’ for three minutes, and ever since then has been trying to recapture that nursery-rhyme high point by throwing as many big name producers at an album as will stick. This latest album does bounce along with the best of intention, but the more I listen to Minogue K’s voice, the more I’m reminded of an angry wasp in a biscuit tin. Like the gays on Pride Saturday, you’re best to avoid.

I do hope I’m not leaving the gay community entirely. There’s always been a slight instinct to fade away over time, like a slightly-fruitier Cheshire Cat, and with two touchstones kicked away, you do have to wonder. I shall let you know the moment the posters of Cher come down out the bedroom, darling viewer.

Quick Thoughts On The Lost Finale. With Spoilers

You know, I haven't seen an episode of this quagmired sci-fi sitcom since giving up at the end of Season Two when someone was pressing buttons and the island exploded. It had been two years and firstly,there'd been no answers of any kind, and secondly, there'd been absolutely no toothpaste dropped on the island, leading me to shudder whenever Sawyer played kissy-kissy with that one with the hair. I mean, he'd probably smell like one of the 2 girls 1 cup ladies by then. Just no.

Apparently my friends who 'stuck with it' claimed I was missing a treat, but I'm lazy like that so just went straight to the last episode. I don't think I lost (ha!) anything from the look of it, bar Emily De Raven pulling her own ripcord - I mean seriously, she's huge now. To the point I was mixing her up with Hurley in long shots. I was also content to make up the intervening seasons where, in my head, Season Three they found a pet store on the island. Locke chose a gerbil. He called it Jessica. Season Four had an arc about some washed up boxes of jeans, and they put on hilarious fashion shows. The Others wore things made out of hemp. And Season Five: Sawyer actually got some shoulders, rather than his neck sloping down to his arms at 45-degrees like they do. I think my favourite thing about hisDavidoff advert is they've made him look rugged and masculine coming out of the sea, rather than his neck and shoulders were based on the same angle and proportions as a wirecoathanger.

So, anyway. This finale. To me it felt like a school reunion that won't take no for an answer. I could see it trying to scrabble around for answers, but I think the more important question was when did Jack decide to try a kicky side-parting? I don't know, but it would probably involve a lot of angst. Ultimately, the whole affair came across as a very 'male' thing. For example, the solution to all the island's problems was to take the plug out and put it back in again. That's such a 'boy' thing - girls would have sensibly read the manual and called IT by now.

Oh yes, and then it all turned out to be Heaven, of course, which I clearly Took Against. At least 'Ashes to Ashes' had done it with a little more style - though in that show it was more simply a limbo specifically for police officers. One has to wonder whether there's a specific Hell for all professions. For example, I'd personally be in a Hell of graphic designers, which would be very temperamental yet very lovely to look at. Though I doubt very muchthere'd be a Hell for Starbucks baristas as they're probably there already...