Love this.
Courtesy of righteous dudes @keris and @sarramanning on Twitter.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
On... pregnancy obsessions
Fact: Life milestones cluster.
First, everyone you know turns 21 and all you seem to do is go to 21st birthday parties every damn weekend. Then everyone moves into grubby-floored shared apartments with friends, and all you do is go to housewarming parties where someone ends up sleeping in the bathtub. Then everyone moves in with their significant other and you go to a lot of dinner parties (and eat either roast chicken or lasagne). Then everyone breaks up with said significant other, and decides they hate their career, and you all go out to bars in hope of widening the social gene pool and drinking away the worries about how much you hate your career. Then everyone gets engaged and married, all at once, so all of a sudden you spend every second of your life travelling to, shopping for and recovering from weddings.
And then everyone gets knocked up. And that’s where I am right now. It’s baby baby baby, plop plop plop. Everyone I know is clearly getting laid. A LOT. And high five to all of you for that. (You smutty little filthmongers.)
Now, some women waft through pregnancy, looking amazing and feeling fantastic, barely noticing any difference in their day to day lives. Others are slayed by nausea, exhaustion, and general aches and pains, and wake every morning wondering what fresh hell will arrive that day. I was firmly in the latter camp. And these are the items that helped me survive. So if you’re knocked up, or know someone who is, enjoy. If you’re not in this place at all, then this post will really bore you. But then again, my bourgeois analysis of the concerns of 20- to 30-something yuppies like moi was probably highly tedious too, and you clicked away on like, line three. So never mind.
ANYWAY.
If you’re plagued by nausea / vomiting / acid reflux / heartburn, nothing will taste very good for the entire nine months. On the plus side, you can impress your friends by burping like a trucker. And nothing says 'mother' like someone leaning over a toilet bowl for the sixteenth time that day, screaming 'THIS IS BULLSHIT' in between mouthfuls of [insert foodstuff here].
Super Lemons are a Japanese lemon-flavoured candy that are so sour they make you wince and drool and swear. They also may stop you feeling godawful for an hour or so. Apparently extra saliva helps create enzymes that relieve nausea. We ate a lot of these in Hong Kong when I was a kid (though we were not, I hasten to add, knocked up). And we liked another candy called, I think, Toxic Waste. No confirmation if Toxic Waste is good for pregnancy or not. You can usually find Super Lemon in Japanese food shops, or try Amazon or Ebay.
Next, Pink Lady Apples, cold from the fridge and sliced into 1cm rounds, also helped my nausea. I don't know why; I'm not a nutritionist. Warning: chew them VERY well. If they come back up, apple skin will slice the shit out of your throat.
Ditto cucumber. Sliced thin, on buttered toast, with cracked pepper. If you are great with child and feel meh, try it.
For the last trimester, heartburn can be a real bitch. Sometimes it gets so bad you'll throw up. At least, I did. Eating almonds will keep you going without feeling sick. Something to do with the alkaline/acid levels of your stomach, or some shit like that. (I’m not a doctor, either.) Man, I ate a lot of almonds. I also ate a steak sandwich cooked in butter every day for breakfast, as it was the only meal that was guaranteed not to give me heartburn. God, that was awesome. I’d love a steak sandwich right now. Let's put a photo of a steak sandwich in, just for fun.
Nice.
Of course, you can take drugs for nausea and heartburn... I tried Vitamin B6, Omeprazole, Zantac, Motilium, Gaviscon, and a bunch of other things. Tums were the most calming and the yummiest. Sometimes I’d fall asleep, sitting up (lying down makes heartburn a lot worse), with a Tums dissolving in my mouth. A few hours later, I’d wake up with heartburn again, pop another Tums, and drift back to sleep. I'd wake up with coloured spittle dried around the outside of my lips. Which means I was also probably drooling. Did I mention pregnancy was sexy? No? That’s good. Because I would have been lying.
I have a thumping great girl crush on this woman. Tara Lee. I did her pregnancy DVD every single morning from week 12 onwards, even when walking or sitting for longer than a few minutes was no longer an option (pesky back and hip problems). She's sort of gentle and calm and kind, and so pretty, and she has a nice voice, and um, oh, she has really great hair, and oh no, am I gushing? I feel like I'm gushing... The yoga moves are very easy, and really stretch out all the muscles that are working hard to carry that 30 pounds of babygut around. All in all, it was a lovely way to start the day. By week 37, I could recite the entire thing, word-for-word, with Tara’s calm-but-wise-inflexions, including lines like 'feel like you are doing an internal dance with your baby', WITHOUT IRONY. More worryingly, so could Fox.
You can’t sleep on your back during pregnancy for a number of boring-but-scary reasons. This pregnancy pillow is comfy as hell and doubles as a nursing pillow once your baby arrives. My sister asked if it was from Pacha in Ibiza, and I replied ‘no, Peter Jones in Chelsea’. That kind of highlights the different stages of life we’re at right now.
Support belt. It’s ridiculous, it’s unattractive, and it’s silly. But it really helps with aches and strains you might have if you are large of bump. No, of course this photo isn’t of moi.
Lastly, a reminder of why you are enduring the hell of pregnancy in the first place. Because babies are awesome.
Errol Fletcher Barry. This morning.
First, everyone you know turns 21 and all you seem to do is go to 21st birthday parties every damn weekend. Then everyone moves into grubby-floored shared apartments with friends, and all you do is go to housewarming parties where someone ends up sleeping in the bathtub. Then everyone moves in with their significant other and you go to a lot of dinner parties (and eat either roast chicken or lasagne). Then everyone breaks up with said significant other, and decides they hate their career, and you all go out to bars in hope of widening the social gene pool and drinking away the worries about how much you hate your career. Then everyone gets engaged and married, all at once, so all of a sudden you spend every second of your life travelling to, shopping for and recovering from weddings.
And then everyone gets knocked up. And that’s where I am right now. It’s baby baby baby, plop plop plop. Everyone I know is clearly getting laid. A LOT. And high five to all of you for that. (You smutty little filthmongers.)
Now, some women waft through pregnancy, looking amazing and feeling fantastic, barely noticing any difference in their day to day lives. Others are slayed by nausea, exhaustion, and general aches and pains, and wake every morning wondering what fresh hell will arrive that day. I was firmly in the latter camp. And these are the items that helped me survive. So if you’re knocked up, or know someone who is, enjoy. If you’re not in this place at all, then this post will really bore you. But then again, my bourgeois analysis of the concerns of 20- to 30-something yuppies like moi was probably highly tedious too, and you clicked away on like, line three. So never mind.
ANYWAY.
If you’re plagued by nausea / vomiting / acid reflux / heartburn, nothing will taste very good for the entire nine months. On the plus side, you can impress your friends by burping like a trucker. And nothing says 'mother' like someone leaning over a toilet bowl for the sixteenth time that day, screaming 'THIS IS BULLSHIT' in between mouthfuls of [insert foodstuff here].
Super Lemons are a Japanese lemon-flavoured candy that are so sour they make you wince and drool and swear. They also may stop you feeling godawful for an hour or so. Apparently extra saliva helps create enzymes that relieve nausea. We ate a lot of these in Hong Kong when I was a kid (though we were not, I hasten to add, knocked up). And we liked another candy called, I think, Toxic Waste. No confirmation if Toxic Waste is good for pregnancy or not. You can usually find Super Lemon in Japanese food shops, or try Amazon or Ebay.
Next, Pink Lady Apples, cold from the fridge and sliced into 1cm rounds, also helped my nausea. I don't know why; I'm not a nutritionist. Warning: chew them VERY well. If they come back up, apple skin will slice the shit out of your throat.
Ditto cucumber. Sliced thin, on buttered toast, with cracked pepper. If you are great with child and feel meh, try it.
For the last trimester, heartburn can be a real bitch. Sometimes it gets so bad you'll throw up. At least, I did. Eating almonds will keep you going without feeling sick. Something to do with the alkaline/acid levels of your stomach, or some shit like that. (I’m not a doctor, either.) Man, I ate a lot of almonds. I also ate a steak sandwich cooked in butter every day for breakfast, as it was the only meal that was guaranteed not to give me heartburn. God, that was awesome. I’d love a steak sandwich right now. Let's put a photo of a steak sandwich in, just for fun.
Nice.
Of course, you can take drugs for nausea and heartburn... I tried Vitamin B6, Omeprazole, Zantac, Motilium, Gaviscon, and a bunch of other things. Tums were the most calming and the yummiest. Sometimes I’d fall asleep, sitting up (lying down makes heartburn a lot worse), with a Tums dissolving in my mouth. A few hours later, I’d wake up with heartburn again, pop another Tums, and drift back to sleep. I'd wake up with coloured spittle dried around the outside of my lips. Which means I was also probably drooling. Did I mention pregnancy was sexy? No? That’s good. Because I would have been lying.
I have a thumping great girl crush on this woman. Tara Lee. I did her pregnancy DVD every single morning from week 12 onwards, even when walking or sitting for longer than a few minutes was no longer an option (pesky back and hip problems). She's sort of gentle and calm and kind, and so pretty, and she has a nice voice, and um, oh, she has really great hair, and oh no, am I gushing? I feel like I'm gushing... The yoga moves are very easy, and really stretch out all the muscles that are working hard to carry that 30 pounds of babygut around. All in all, it was a lovely way to start the day. By week 37, I could recite the entire thing, word-for-word, with Tara’s calm-but-wise-inflexions, including lines like 'feel like you are doing an internal dance with your baby', WITHOUT IRONY. More worryingly, so could Fox.
You can’t sleep on your back during pregnancy for a number of boring-but-scary reasons. This pregnancy pillow is comfy as hell and doubles as a nursing pillow once your baby arrives. My sister asked if it was from Pacha in Ibiza, and I replied ‘no, Peter Jones in Chelsea’. That kind of highlights the different stages of life we’re at right now.
Support belt. It’s ridiculous, it’s unattractive, and it’s silly. But it really helps with aches and strains you might have if you are large of bump. No, of course this photo isn’t of moi.
Lastly, a reminder of why you are enduring the hell of pregnancy in the first place. Because babies are awesome.
Errol Fletcher Barry. This morning.
Friday, December 2, 2011
On... The Afterparty
I chose this book just for the cover.
The Afterparty by Leo Benedictus.
And then I read it.
It's brilliant.
I wish the cover for The Dating Detox looked like that, by the way. It would seem so much more appropriate, don't you think? Only with vodka instead of whiskey, and maybe a cigarette stubbed out in it instead of a floating dude (which, by the way, I only noticed after staring at it for a very long time).
People sometimes email me asking for recommendations for books like mine. My suggestions are usually pretty useless. For one thing, I don't read a hell of a lot of chicklit. And though I know there's some great chicklit out there (and, of course, a lot of fluffy shit), I don't know many chicklit books with heroines who drink and swear and screw and work hard and hope and fuck up and recover... and who are, most importantly, funny. And that's why I started trying to write in the first place: I felt like reading something comforting-yet-sharp and nothing satisfied me.
These are the dependably satisfying reads that I usually recommend: Talli Roland's The Hating Game, starring a hilariously strong and snarky heroine. Plum Skyes' Berdorf Blondes always cracks me up. Jennifer Weiner and Candace Bushnell are consistently excellent (they're bestsellers for a damn good reason...). I always enjoy Emily Giffin books, though they're sometimes a little heavy on the concept and light on the laughs. Jilly Cooper is laugh-out-loud funny, but she writes bonkbusters and that's not everyone's cup of hot cha. And Helen Fielding is of course the funniest of all... but don't we all know Bridget off by heart by now?
Anyway, read The Afterparty. It's smart, fast and very funny.
The Afterparty by Leo Benedictus.
And then I read it.
It's brilliant.
I wish the cover for The Dating Detox looked like that, by the way. It would seem so much more appropriate, don't you think? Only with vodka instead of whiskey, and maybe a cigarette stubbed out in it instead of a floating dude (which, by the way, I only noticed after staring at it for a very long time).
People sometimes email me asking for recommendations for books like mine. My suggestions are usually pretty useless. For one thing, I don't read a hell of a lot of chicklit. And though I know there's some great chicklit out there (and, of course, a lot of fluffy shit), I don't know many chicklit books with heroines who drink and swear and screw and work hard and hope and fuck up and recover... and who are, most importantly, funny. And that's why I started trying to write in the first place: I felt like reading something comforting-yet-sharp and nothing satisfied me.
These are the dependably satisfying reads that I usually recommend: Talli Roland's The Hating Game, starring a hilariously strong and snarky heroine. Plum Skyes' Berdorf Blondes always cracks me up. Jennifer Weiner and Candace Bushnell are consistently excellent (they're bestsellers for a damn good reason...). I always enjoy Emily Giffin books, though they're sometimes a little heavy on the concept and light on the laughs. Jilly Cooper is laugh-out-loud funny, but she writes bonkbusters and that's not everyone's cup of hot cha. And Helen Fielding is of course the funniest of all... but don't we all know Bridget off by heart by now?
Anyway, read The Afterparty. It's smart, fast and very funny.
Friday, November 25, 2011
On... just for Dubliners
Do you live in Dublin? Or know someone who does?
If so, I have ace news for you: just go to South Anne Street today, or on Saturday 26th or Sunday 27th, and visit the NOHO pop-up store, say ‘Conor sent me’ and get 20% off the cost of NOHO!
What the hell is NOHO, you ask?
Well, it’s the hangover defence to end all hangover defences.
Now, full caveat: I haven’t tried it myself (preggers + nursing = booze-free 2011 for Gemgem) but Fox has, and it really does work. Normally, his hangovers render him bedridden for at least a day, groaning piteously, begging me for toast / water / coffee / the laptop / the papers / some cola bottle candies / a head massage / anything else his poisoned liver demands. But the morning after he tried NOHO, he sprang out of bed, chipper and ready to face the day. And the man was drinking martinis, wine, and G&Ts the night before. He’d come home at 1am, serenaded me with ‘Goodnight Sweetheart’ (yep, from Three Men And A Baby), and then snored like a dinosaur bear all night. He had no business being chipper. No business at all. When I am back in the drinking saddle again, I shall be on the NOHO bus faster than you can say ‘double vodka on the rocks’.
Anyway. Here’s the stuff you need to know: it’s a little shot bottle sold in packs of two, you take one before you go out, and one before you go to sleep. There’s no sugar, no caffeine, no crazy stimulants. Just the perfect combination of vitamins and nutrients (like Ginger Root Extract and Prickly Pear Extract) that help your body break down alcohol. And dudes, I’m pretty sure it’s the real deal. NOHO is the No.1 hangover solution in the US.
And now my brother-in-law Conor is bringing it to Ireland. For Conor, being hangover-free is every Irishman's God-given right.
For the next six weeks NOHO will be available from a pop-up store on South Anne Street, just off Grafton Street. So swing in and say hello. It’s normally €5 for two bottles, but you can get it for €4 for the next three days just by saying 'Conor sent me' at the check out. And €4 is, after all, less than the cost of a drink in Dublin these days. So please, check it out, and then let me know if it works for you.
Conor has a cameo in The Dating Detox, by the way, as the smart-mouthed Irishman at the country house party. When he found out I was writing a book, he asked if he could be in it, and I thought: why the devil not? (When I tell people that, they tend to ask ‘why isn’t Foxy in it?’ and Fox replies something like ‘because I am both JAKE AND ROBERT! Rolled into ONE PERFECT SPECIMAN OF MANLINESS!’ And then I reply 'sure you are dude, whatever gets you through the night'.)
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
On... outfits from the past
Age four. Daisy bikini. Would totally still wear this.
Age eight. Pale pink pencil skirt, grey suede booties, hot pink sweater with a balloon appliqué. I would wear this outfit today, except for the sweater (I'm over 30; I can't do ironic appliques). Man, I loved that skirt. My mother told me I looked like I worked in a bank. I loved that even more.
Age 12. Black opaques, DM boots (only six hole, wasn’t allowed the eight hole), seriously frayed denim shorts, oversize burgundy cardigan. I may have hit my sartorial apex at the age of 12, as this look is still pretty much perfect.
Age 14. Pale blue Levi’s 501s, oversize black belt with daisy-shaped belt buckle, white tshirt, black blazer with the sleeves pushed up, silver peace sign pendant on silver chain. Totally Cindy Crawford ya know? Also, peace signs were really big in Hong Kong in the 90s. Ditto hypercolour tshirts, high top sneakers, and enormous carryall bags made of purple and orange wool that we bought from street vendors from, I think, Nepal. Holy shit, those bags were ugly.
Age 16. Secondhand flowery tea dress with the hem cut off far higher than it should have been and a pair of huge steelcapped (no, they really were steelcapped) brown farmers boots that were two sizes too big. I bought the boots from a secondhand shop in a small country town one summer vacation, somehow got them home though they added about 5kg to my luggage and my mother had threatened me with death if I overpacked again. I wore them constantly for years, even though they were so heavy I could hardly lift my feet. I was trying to do a grunge thing, I guess. What can I say.
Age 17-20. These were my university years. My friends and I were lucky if we got out of PJs. We often didn’t. We also wore a disturbing amount of extraordinarily unattractive rugby jerseys. If one of us actually wore jeans, or – gasp – a belt – we assumed that person’s parents were taking them out for dinner or something. When I look back, I am mildly surprised any of us ever got any action at all.
What about you?
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
On... sartorial outrage
I really want these.
Unique Flare Jeans by Goldsign.
But US$278 on a pair of jeans is ricockulous. What are they made from? Unicorn sperm?
I am starting a new 99% movement for the 99% of people who think nearly US$300 for a pair of goddamn jeans is an outrage. Join me! (Fear not, we're not gonna do the whole sleeping-in-tents thing. I've never slept in a tent and I'm not about to start now.)
Unique Flare Jeans by Goldsign.
But US$278 on a pair of jeans is ricockulous. What are they made from? Unicorn sperm?
I am starting a new 99% movement for the 99% of people who think nearly US$300 for a pair of goddamn jeans is an outrage. Join me! (Fear not, we're not gonna do the whole sleeping-in-tents thing. I've never slept in a tent and I'm not about to start now.)
Monday, November 14, 2011
On... an email that I love
I have an email to share with you.
I got it a few months ago, opened it by mistake, read the whole thing as it made me laugh so much, and every now and again I remember it and think 'I should so blog about that'.
Yeah, it's a phishing scam spam thing.
But it's strange and hilarious and kind of beguiling.
The first few paragraphs are, though lexically tickling for the copywriter, rather predictable. So if you're in a hurry, skip to the paragraph starting 'Yes it's true the world is a global place'.
FedEx UK Head Office
Parkhouse Industrial Estate
East Chesterton
Tel (+44) 7024018994
Date:17/09/2011
Attention: Dear Valued Beneficiary,
CLAIM NOTIFICATION.
This is to notify you that your parcel is still in our possession, this parcel contained an International Cashier Bank Draft/Cheque worth the sum of $1,500,000.00(One Million five hundred Thousand USA dollars)only and it is ready for delivery to your door step. Meanwhile, before the delivery or shipment will take place, you are advice to send to us the following data's
mention below:
1. Your full Name :
2. Residential Address:
3. Private Telephone:
The above requested information's will enable us deliver your parcel correctly without any mistake or delivering your parcel to a wrong person. Further more, you might be asking yourself how comes this email, cheque or draft, Anyway, your cheque was brought to this office by a Lottery Fiduciary Agent Or Claim Agent, signifying that you are a rightful winner to their Lottery Award selected randomly from 10 lucky email addresses which your email address is one of the lucky email address.
FedEx Courier Service mailing you as per your parcel that was brought to this company to be delivered to you by the lottery groups, along the delivery process that brought a misunderstanding between you and the lottery claim agent and in regards of their request as per their insurance certificate cost, tax fee and lots of other universal corps and drug searches which happened to be the course of your parcel being pending for the past months/year.
Meanwhile we are hereby happy to inform you that the FedEx Company has finalized and resolved the whole issued with the legal offices like the International Monetary of Funds(IMF),and the Internal Revenue Service(IRS) offices, the company organization has also listed 24 valuable parcel's to be intact in their office after the released of the parcel's from universal corps and drug searches.
We are happy to inform you once again that your parcel that contains the sum of $1,500,000.00 is among the 24 parcel's listed which is now in our office and also with your name as the receivers despise, that we lost your private residential address's, which is an indication that you can now re-send your residential address, telephone as stated above back to the FedEx Company where your parcel can be delivered to you without hesitation.
Meanwhile remember that the sender of this parcel to you that's the fiduciary agent still owes this company the sum of $121 usd before the incident occurs, Note that this fee is not just for delivery but with the immigration and customs stamp duty, this company has spend out of their incomes in the process by the recovering back your parcel? so dear customer we once again appreciate your patronage in our favour.
Without hesitations you are to pay for just the balance left by your sender since we have lost his contact. this payment have to be made via Western Union Money Transfer or Money Gram with the below payment information so that your parcel can be delivered to your residential address before it accumulate a demurrage after one week, only,as you know your parcel is not just an ordinary parcel but with a huge amount and I think you understand what I mean by accumulating a demurrage?
Which you will not allow that to happen to your recovered parcel that almost gone if not for the love that God have for you by favoring you with his favor by now there could have been no hope at all.We assure you that your parcel will arrive at your home country in two days time and it will get to your door step the third day as soon as this company receive the balance payment of $121 usd the tracking number of your parcel will be sent to you via e-mail immediately so that you can track it yourself to see your parcel on the way and you will also know when it will arrive at your home country because we operate in trust and loyalty in your favor. And also the FedEx Courier Service hereby inform all their customers through this media by heradicating all their communication with the scam mails that are going all-over the world be careful with their e-mails so that your parcel will not be in danger with their evil planes.
FedEx provides access to a growing global market place through a network of supply chain, transportation, business and related information services.
Yes it's true that the world is a global place that people would easily go and scam people most especially on the net because the internet is the easiest way to reach to people and making them believe that the transaction they are offering is real. Therefore i must say that you deemed it fit and did right for explaining all to me in details so that you won't misunderstood the whole issue.
I need you to know that i'm a man of dignity and keeps to my word. It's therefore an insult on my face and on me as a person for you to have thought that i belong to those imposters, though i saw your reasons.By the virture of a man's word, you could tell who is geniue and not.Though have been involved in such like this does not mean that when you see a legit one you can't tell it's really. God our creator has different ways of restoring all our wasted years and this is the restoration that the lord has ordained for you.
Furthermore, i would want you to know that there is scam in the globe and i would advice you to be careful with the kind of emails you reply to so that you won't be a victim of circumstance anymore . it's my duty to protect your interest and also advice you on legal matters on how to go about it. I promise you will be revived and regain all that you've ever dreamt of at the end.You must also know that you will be surprised that the delivery will be made to you as soon as you make the payment and at that point and level of success, you will live to remain greatful to me, I want you to have your mind rest and make a delivery choice and your consignment will get to you safely with any more problem.
PAYMENT INFORMATION FOR THE IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS STAMP DUTY CHARGES BEFORE DELIVERY EFFECT, FIND BELOW the information for Western Union or Money Gram to enable you make the payment of $121 usd before the delivery commence:
Receivers Name: Diakunu Standwell
Receivers Address: Accra Ghana
Senders Name: ------------
senders Address:------------
Text Question: In God?
Answer: We Trust
MTCN or REF Number:--------------
Amount to be sent: $121 US Dollar
Please you have to send the full payment information including the MTCN Number to enable us fully proceed on your delivery FedEx is one of the world's greatest successful story, the start-up that revolutionized the delivery of packages and information. In the past 30 years, we've grown up and grown into a diverse family of companies as FedEx that's bigger, stronger, better than ever.
Mr.Steven Billias
email: stevbillias0@secretarias.com
WAITING TO READ YOUR E-MAIL.
YOURS AFFECTIONATLY.
FEDEX COURIER MANAGING DIRECTOR..
FEDEX BROCAST DESK
Agent Jan Ward
Don't you find the ranting-yet-patient tone of voice so charming? "I think you understand what I mean by a demurrage?"
From now on when I'm pissed off, I'm going to say "that is an insult to my face and me as a person".
I almost hope the dude got some money. I feel like he earned it.
I got it a few months ago, opened it by mistake, read the whole thing as it made me laugh so much, and every now and again I remember it and think 'I should so blog about that'.
Yeah, it's a phishing scam spam thing.
But it's strange and hilarious and kind of beguiling.
The first few paragraphs are, though lexically tickling for the copywriter, rather predictable. So if you're in a hurry, skip to the paragraph starting 'Yes it's true the world is a global place'.
FedEx UK Head Office
Parkhouse Industrial Estate
East Chesterton
Tel (+44) 7024018994
Date:17/09/2011
Attention: Dear Valued Beneficiary,
CLAIM NOTIFICATION.
This is to notify you that your parcel is still in our possession, this parcel contained an International Cashier Bank Draft/Cheque worth the sum of $1,500,000.00(One Million five hundred Thousand USA dollars)only and it is ready for delivery to your door step. Meanwhile, before the delivery or shipment will take place, you are advice to send to us the following data's
mention below:
1. Your full Name :
2. Residential Address:
3. Private Telephone:
The above requested information's will enable us deliver your parcel correctly without any mistake or delivering your parcel to a wrong person. Further more, you might be asking yourself how comes this email, cheque or draft, Anyway, your cheque was brought to this office by a Lottery Fiduciary Agent Or Claim Agent, signifying that you are a rightful winner to their Lottery Award selected randomly from 10 lucky email addresses which your email address is one of the lucky email address.
FedEx Courier Service mailing you as per your parcel that was brought to this company to be delivered to you by the lottery groups, along the delivery process that brought a misunderstanding between you and the lottery claim agent and in regards of their request as per their insurance certificate cost, tax fee and lots of other universal corps and drug searches which happened to be the course of your parcel being pending for the past months/year.
Meanwhile we are hereby happy to inform you that the FedEx Company has finalized and resolved the whole issued with the legal offices like the International Monetary of Funds(IMF),and the Internal Revenue Service(IRS) offices, the company organization has also listed 24 valuable parcel's to be intact in their office after the released of the parcel's from universal corps and drug searches.
We are happy to inform you once again that your parcel that contains the sum of $1,500,000.00 is among the 24 parcel's listed which is now in our office and also with your name as the receivers despise, that we lost your private residential address's, which is an indication that you can now re-send your residential address, telephone as stated above back to the FedEx Company where your parcel can be delivered to you without hesitation.
Meanwhile remember that the sender of this parcel to you that's the fiduciary agent still owes this company the sum of $121 usd before the incident occurs, Note that this fee is not just for delivery but with the immigration and customs stamp duty, this company has spend out of their incomes in the process by the recovering back your parcel? so dear customer we once again appreciate your patronage in our favour.
Without hesitations you are to pay for just the balance left by your sender since we have lost his contact. this payment have to be made via Western Union Money Transfer or Money Gram with the below payment information so that your parcel can be delivered to your residential address before it accumulate a demurrage after one week, only,as you know your parcel is not just an ordinary parcel but with a huge amount and I think you understand what I mean by accumulating a demurrage?
Which you will not allow that to happen to your recovered parcel that almost gone if not for the love that God have for you by favoring you with his favor by now there could have been no hope at all.We assure you that your parcel will arrive at your home country in two days time and it will get to your door step the third day as soon as this company receive the balance payment of $121 usd the tracking number of your parcel will be sent to you via e-mail immediately so that you can track it yourself to see your parcel on the way and you will also know when it will arrive at your home country because we operate in trust and loyalty in your favor. And also the FedEx Courier Service hereby inform all their customers through this media by heradicating all their communication with the scam mails that are going all-over the world be careful with their e-mails so that your parcel will not be in danger with their evil planes.
FedEx provides access to a growing global market place through a network of supply chain, transportation, business and related information services.
Yes it's true that the world is a global place that people would easily go and scam people most especially on the net because the internet is the easiest way to reach to people and making them believe that the transaction they are offering is real. Therefore i must say that you deemed it fit and did right for explaining all to me in details so that you won't misunderstood the whole issue.
I need you to know that i'm a man of dignity and keeps to my word. It's therefore an insult on my face and on me as a person for you to have thought that i belong to those imposters, though i saw your reasons.By the virture of a man's word, you could tell who is geniue and not.Though have been involved in such like this does not mean that when you see a legit one you can't tell it's really. God our creator has different ways of restoring all our wasted years and this is the restoration that the lord has ordained for you.
Furthermore, i would want you to know that there is scam in the globe and i would advice you to be careful with the kind of emails you reply to so that you won't be a victim of circumstance anymore . it's my duty to protect your interest and also advice you on legal matters on how to go about it. I promise you will be revived and regain all that you've ever dreamt of at the end.You must also know that you will be surprised that the delivery will be made to you as soon as you make the payment and at that point and level of success, you will live to remain greatful to me, I want you to have your mind rest and make a delivery choice and your consignment will get to you safely with any more problem.
PAYMENT INFORMATION FOR THE IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS STAMP DUTY CHARGES BEFORE DELIVERY EFFECT, FIND BELOW the information for Western Union or Money Gram to enable you make the payment of $121 usd before the delivery commence:
Receivers Name: Diakunu Standwell
Receivers Address: Accra Ghana
Senders Name: ------------
senders Address:------------
Text Question: In God?
Answer: We Trust
MTCN or REF Number:--------------
Amount to be sent: $121 US Dollar
Please you have to send the full payment information including the MTCN Number to enable us fully proceed on your delivery FedEx is one of the world's greatest successful story, the start-up that revolutionized the delivery of packages and information. In the past 30 years, we've grown up and grown into a diverse family of companies as FedEx that's bigger, stronger, better than ever.
Mr.Steven Billias
email: stevbillias0@secretarias.com
WAITING TO READ YOUR E-MAIL.
YOURS AFFECTIONATLY.
FEDEX COURIER MANAGING DIRECTOR..
FEDEX BROCAST DESK
Agent Jan Ward
Don't you find the ranting-yet-patient tone of voice so charming? "I think you understand what I mean by a demurrage?"
From now on when I'm pissed off, I'm going to say "that is an insult to my face and me as a person".
I almost hope the dude got some money. I feel like he earned it.
On... a new lip balm
Last night I was almost asleep when I realised I'd forgotten to apply lip balm. Dry lips are the bane of my life (uh, after my eyebrows... and the perma-hangnail on my thumb... and - oh, never mind, back to the point), so I drenched up the energy to reach into my nightstand and fumble around the mess for my trusty tube of Homeoplasmine .
It was not there.
Instead I pulled out a tube of Lanisoh nipple balm, the most useless item I bought when I was pregnant. I never needed it. My puppies adjusted to breastfeeding pretty effortlessly, bless their not-that-little souls.
So I gazed at the tube of Lanisoh sleepily through my lashes, thought 'fuck it, if babies are allowed to eat it it must be safe enough', and smeared some on my lips. It's very thick and clear, like a balmy-paste thing. It doesn't taste or smell of anything, either.
I woke up eight hours later with the stuff STILL ON, lips perfectly plump and moisturised, no cracks, not even a hint of dryness.
I thought you guys should know about it.
Best. Lipbalm. Ever.
It was not there.
Instead I pulled out a tube of Lanisoh nipple balm, the most useless item I bought when I was pregnant. I never needed it. My puppies adjusted to breastfeeding pretty effortlessly, bless their not-that-little souls.
So I gazed at the tube of Lanisoh sleepily through my lashes, thought 'fuck it, if babies are allowed to eat it it must be safe enough', and smeared some on my lips. It's very thick and clear, like a balmy-paste thing. It doesn't taste or smell of anything, either.
I woke up eight hours later with the stuff STILL ON, lips perfectly plump and moisturised, no cracks, not even a hint of dryness.
I thought you guys should know about it.
Best. Lipbalm. Ever.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
On... getting dressed
I've figured out the major flaw in the whole 'being a fulltime writer' thing.
Clothes.
Back when I was copywriting 9 to 5, I looked forward to getting dressed. I'm that kind of girl. I like clothes, I like looking good, I like makeup, I like all of it. I like putting on my iPod, striding to the tube, getting a takeaway coffee, and looking at people and shops and the morning unfolding around me, all with that happy little inner fizz that you feel when you're happy with what you're wearing.
Now, for most of this year, being pregnant made getting dressed a chore, and it coincided with, almost exactly, the moment I stopped copywriting. I felt like shit, I looked like shit. My boobs became crazy Jane Russell missiles seven months before their cue (by the way, I have no idea how anyone can dress if they have big boobs, they're honestly a living hell). My skin was dry, my lips were cracked, I kept breaking blood vessels in my face from throwing up. To sum up: I did not do the whole elegant glowing thing.
But now that I'm not pregnant anymore (yay!), and fitting back into my old clothes (double yay!), I've realised that I now wear about 2% of my wardrobe.
Fact: this is what I have worn for most of the past two weeks.
One of Fox's old jumpers that looks a bit like this.
Boyfriend jeans. (Actually, mine are from H&M and just huge, worn and ripped thanks to the natural wear and tear of time, but if I had money to burn, I'd get the Current Elliott ones too.)
Pink thermal socks (or army green thermal socks, depending on the day). I hate having cold feet.
Grey slippers.
My hair is always in messy bun thing, and despite owning more makeup than I'll ever actually admit to, I don't wear anything except La Roche-Posay Anthelios SPF50.
This is what I write in. I look, frankly, terrible. If I had to name it, it'd be something like Colourblind Sloth. I've contemplated getting properly dressed, just for the hell of it, but putting on a blazer and changing the socks and slippers for heels (which is pretty much all I would need to make the above outfit office-appropriate, in my eyes) to walk from the bedroom to my office is even stupider than being upset about the current lack of reasons to get dressed. N'est-ce pas?
PS Oh, I meant to say. One thing I do wear every day, without fail, is perfume. And, after months of nothing but L'Eau de Rien by Miller Harris, I have a new scent obsession.
Mure et Musc by L'Artisan Parfumeur. It. Is. Divine. 'Mure' is blackberry in French, 'musc' is - you guessed it, you clever thing, you - musk. It's not too sweet, not too fruity, not too anything... just gentle and sexy and yummy. Love it. If you're not near somewhere you can sniff it, you can buy a Mure et Musc sample for US$3 at LuckyScent. While you're at it, try L'Eau de Rien, too. It's sort of warm, salty and lickable. Goddamnit, I love being a girl.
Clothes.
Back when I was copywriting 9 to 5, I looked forward to getting dressed. I'm that kind of girl. I like clothes, I like looking good, I like makeup, I like all of it. I like putting on my iPod, striding to the tube, getting a takeaway coffee, and looking at people and shops and the morning unfolding around me, all with that happy little inner fizz that you feel when you're happy with what you're wearing.
Now, for most of this year, being pregnant made getting dressed a chore, and it coincided with, almost exactly, the moment I stopped copywriting. I felt like shit, I looked like shit. My boobs became crazy Jane Russell missiles seven months before their cue (by the way, I have no idea how anyone can dress if they have big boobs, they're honestly a living hell). My skin was dry, my lips were cracked, I kept breaking blood vessels in my face from throwing up. To sum up: I did not do the whole elegant glowing thing.
But now that I'm not pregnant anymore (yay!), and fitting back into my old clothes (double yay!), I've realised that I now wear about 2% of my wardrobe.
Fact: this is what I have worn for most of the past two weeks.
One of Fox's old jumpers that looks a bit like this.
Boyfriend jeans. (Actually, mine are from H&M and just huge, worn and ripped thanks to the natural wear and tear of time, but if I had money to burn, I'd get the Current Elliott ones too.)
Pink thermal socks (or army green thermal socks, depending on the day). I hate having cold feet.
Grey slippers.
My hair is always in messy bun thing, and despite owning more makeup than I'll ever actually admit to, I don't wear anything except La Roche-Posay Anthelios SPF50.
This is what I write in. I look, frankly, terrible. If I had to name it, it'd be something like Colourblind Sloth. I've contemplated getting properly dressed, just for the hell of it, but putting on a blazer and changing the socks and slippers for heels (which is pretty much all I would need to make the above outfit office-appropriate, in my eyes) to walk from the bedroom to my office is even stupider than being upset about the current lack of reasons to get dressed. N'est-ce pas?
PS Oh, I meant to say. One thing I do wear every day, without fail, is perfume. And, after months of nothing but L'Eau de Rien by Miller Harris, I have a new scent obsession.
Mure et Musc by L'Artisan Parfumeur. It. Is. Divine. 'Mure' is blackberry in French, 'musc' is - you guessed it, you clever thing, you - musk. It's not too sweet, not too fruity, not too anything... just gentle and sexy and yummy. Love it. If you're not near somewhere you can sniff it, you can buy a Mure et Musc sample for US$3 at LuckyScent. While you're at it, try L'Eau de Rien, too. It's sort of warm, salty and lickable. Goddamnit, I love being a girl.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
On... The Nail Files
Voila my story THE NAIL FILES for Tatler magazine! I hope it doesn't offend anyone. If you ask me to write 900 words about what I like and dislike about nails, you're gonna get some snark.
This story was in the October issue, which you can track down if you call the Conde Nast old issues office, or if your local newsagent is particularly lazy.
Saturday, November 5, 2011
On... The Boytician
Missed the September issue of Tatler magazine? (For shame!)
Here's The Boytician piece that I wrote. Hope you enjoy it...
I'll post The Nail Files piece from the October issue tomorrow. It's somewhere in my inbox, I just can't find it because, you know, I'm shit like that. My next Tatler piece isn't out till the New Year...
I highly recommend Tatler, by the way, my friends, and not just because I get to write silly little stories for them, but just because it's kind of ace. It's been totally transformed this year and is now the ONLY high-end glossy fashion magazine that is smart, sharp and - here's the kicker - funny. (Trust me. I read all of them. American, British and French. It's an expensive but highly enjoyable addiction.)
Here's The Boytician piece that I wrote. Hope you enjoy it...
I'll post The Nail Files piece from the October issue tomorrow. It's somewhere in my inbox, I just can't find it because, you know, I'm shit like that. My next Tatler piece isn't out till the New Year...
I highly recommend Tatler, by the way, my friends, and not just because I get to write silly little stories for them, but just because it's kind of ace. It's been totally transformed this year and is now the ONLY high-end glossy fashion magazine that is smart, sharp and - here's the kicker - funny. (Trust me. I read all of them. American, British and French. It's an expensive but highly enjoyable addiction.)
Friday, November 4, 2011
On... Fraggle Rock
So, I was playing on YouTube the other morning, looking for old Sesame Street clips to play to Errol, and I found this.
Awesome. Song.
Also, reminded me how scary I found Fraggle Rock. Being stuck in the dark underground with giant monsters above and things living in the rocks all around you and constantly static hair? Petrifying.
Awesome. Song.
Also, reminded me how scary I found Fraggle Rock. Being stuck in the dark underground with giant monsters above and things living in the rocks all around you and constantly static hair? Petrifying.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
On... a book print
I love this print.
It's from 20x200.
I want to commission one with my favourite books.
But then I'd have to decide what my favourite books are and oh God, that would be a nightmare.
Because how on earth do you choose your favourite books?
Do you choose the books that stunned you and made you gaze at the world / yourself / writing in a different way? (For me, that'd be - off the top of my head - A Farewell To Arms by Ernest Hemingway, A History Of The World In 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes, A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers.)
Or books that you couldn't put down, that you kissed and stroked and nuzzled with delight as you were reading them? (For me: The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas, Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris, This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper, Persuasion by Jane Austen, Tess Of The D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, Evelina by Fanny Burney, The Best Of Everything by Rona Jaffe - oh golly, this particular list would be very, very long, I love a LOT of books.)
Or books that you loved passionately in the past but have since moved on from? (Anne Of Green Gables, The Babysitter's Club, Pollyanna, Little Women, Wuthering Heights, anything by Judy Blume, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, etc.)
Or, last but certainly not least, do you choose the books that you've read over and over and over again and know like old friends? (Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, Heartburn by nora Ephron, anything by Jilly Cooper or Nancy Mitford, Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis and of course dear ol' Bridget.)
The whole thing just stresses me out. What would you do?
It's from 20x200.
I want to commission one with my favourite books.
But then I'd have to decide what my favourite books are and oh God, that would be a nightmare.
Because how on earth do you choose your favourite books?
Do you choose the books that stunned you and made you gaze at the world / yourself / writing in a different way? (For me, that'd be - off the top of my head - A Farewell To Arms by Ernest Hemingway, A History Of The World In 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes, A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers.)
Or books that you couldn't put down, that you kissed and stroked and nuzzled with delight as you were reading them? (For me: The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas, Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris, This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper, Persuasion by Jane Austen, Tess Of The D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, Evelina by Fanny Burney, The Best Of Everything by Rona Jaffe - oh golly, this particular list would be very, very long, I love a LOT of books.)
Or books that you loved passionately in the past but have since moved on from? (Anne Of Green Gables, The Babysitter's Club, Pollyanna, Little Women, Wuthering Heights, anything by Judy Blume, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, etc.)
Or, last but certainly not least, do you choose the books that you've read over and over and over again and know like old friends? (Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, Heartburn by nora Ephron, anything by Jilly Cooper or Nancy Mitford, Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis and of course dear ol' Bridget.)
The whole thing just stresses me out. What would you do?
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Thursday, October 13, 2011
On.... childhood movies
I was watching Back To The Future with Fox the other day, and impressing / annoying him with my ability to say all the lines, verbatim, a split-second before they’re said on-screen (“Stella! Another one of these damn kids jumped in fronta my car!”).
I’ve seen it about 6,214 times, because I grew up in Hong Kong, where television was incredibly, astonishingly bad. So bad that there was only one kids’ TV show, a no-budget piece of trash called Megaquiz (Gemma trivia: I was on the first ever episode).
So if we had something on video, I watched it to death.
At school, we bartered tapes of TV shows sent by cousins living in normal countries like they were gold dust. Saved By The Bell, Saturday Night Live, Beverly Hills 90210, Blossom... I watched those tapes so often I knew how long to press fastforward on the remote to skip each individual commercial break perfectly.
My sister and I were allowed to rent one movie a week each. And then we'd watch it non-goddamn-stop. And because the choice at the video store was not only outdated but deeply limited, we borrowed the same movies. Again and again. And again. And again. And... well, you get it.
An aside (what, you thought I’d write a blog post without an aside? Have we just met, or what?): when I was about 10 my mother picked a video for us and accidentally came back with a lovely movie about a lady mechanic looking for love. TOMBOY. It was soft porn. I kid you not. My mother will want me to point out that she realised during the opening shower scene that it wasn't a jolly romcom and turned it off. (Between you and me, it was like 15 minutes after that that she realised.) This is the cover of Tomboy. In fairness, it was an easy mistake to make.
So, apart from Tomboy, these are the films that will always make me think of my childhood. And as a little killing-time-on-a-Friday present from me to you, all the original trailers.
BACK TO THE FUTURE
As mentioned, one of the most perfect films of all time. Can still quote every line. Will watch entire thing whenever it is on. Man, I love Michael J Fox, he’s so great.
My sister and her best friend Jackie really, really, really loved Michael J Fox. Not as much as they loved Val Kilmer, which brings me to -
TOP SECRET
This is an incredibly funny film, funnier than Airplane! (Or Flying High! Depending on where in the world you grew up. Note to branding people: STOP FUCKING DOING THAT. It makes life really hard for international kids when we don’t know which goddamn film we saw. Like Adventures In Babysitting: apparently in England it was called Night On The Town. I don’t know, because I wasn’t here. Night On The Town: Talk about a soft porn title. Actually, let’s add that to the list too, because it was awesome.)
ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING
This is a great goddamn film. If you haven’t seen it, find it and watch it. It’s hilarious.
Also known as Night On The Town. Check it out:
Lamest. Poster. Ever. And shit copywriting. 'After she finished with the crazy gangsters... cheating boyfriends... car chases... wild parties... climbing skyscrapers... staying alive was just part of the fun of... A Night On The Town'. Grow a brain, nameless copywriter from the past! The verb 'climbing' doesn't fit, in fact, the entire sentence sucks ass. Also: why is there a picture of Brenda with the rat / kitten with the line 'car chases'? So many things annoy me about this poster. And yes, I'm a pain in the ass when it comes to copywriting. I fight the urge to take out a red pen and correct bad copy everywhere I go.
CHARLOTTE’S WEB
Templeton the rat. Nuff said.
GREASE
Every girl I know would probably name Grease as their No.1 childhood movie. It's not our fault: it's the law. And it's in the Bible. (It is.) (Maybe.) It's just one of those girl things, like everyone wanting to be Claudia in the Babysitter’s Club and making up extended dance routines and one-act plays and forcing their mother and sister to watch them – oh wait, that one was just me? Okay. Anyway, I can still close my eyes and play Grease in my head, word-for-word. You probably can too. We all can. Like I said, it's the law.
GREASE 2
The slutty cousin of Grease. Still kind of ace. Michael Carrington is hot. I totally would.
As an extra present, because I can't resist: the Reproduction song...
...And the We're Gonna Score Tonight song. Because IT. IS. AWESOME.
CALAMITY JANE
Yeah, I don’t know why either, but this was a major Burgess childhood movie. Includes the song 'A Woman's Touch', with the immortal line: "A woman and a whiskbroom can accomplish so darn much!". We embraced it without irony. We were just nuts for Doris Day. Full admission: these days, I'm not Little Miss Musicals (My friends: Gemma! We're all seeing Rent / Joseph And His Technicolour Dreamcoat / Cabaret! Wanna come? Me: No freaking way. Friends: YOU HAVE NO SOUL). But when I was little, you could place me in front of anything with a long-dead MGM starlet and a jaunty dance routine and I was transfixed. I was basically a very short gay man with a blonde bowl cut.
THE COURT JESTER
I give you Danny Kaye: the Adam Sandler of his generation. And, allegedly, Laurence Olivier's luvah.
BYE BYE BIRDIE
This is such a great movie! You should totally find it and watch it. Like all musicals, it goes a bit nutso-slash-boring in the middle, with far too many long songs and dance routines instead of oh, I don't know, plot / character development, but the first hour rocks. Interesting fact: the man who voiced Templeton the rat in Charlotte's Web plays the father in this. (Okay, that wasn’t that interesting. Let’s move on.)
Also just for my sister: The Telephone Song. ("HUGO AND KIM?")
ANNIE
Unlike most little girls, I didn’t want to be Annie. I wanted to be one of the nameless blond girls with their hair in braids who can do handless cartwheels in the Hard Knock Life song. Yes, I aimed low. I was also such a scaredy-cat that I never watched the helicopter-bridge scene. I’d hide and read Anne Of Green Gables or Malory Towers or something till I was sure it was over. As a result I am still not sure what happens in that scene. I think it’s something to do with the Sikh dude’s turban.
GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN
This movies pops into my head a lot, ie, when someone asks me 'Do you have change for a twenty?' and I say 'Gosh, I don't have anything smaller than a fifty!' and then they look at me like I'm an asshole.
Again, made me wish I could do cartwheels. It just looks like such a cool thing to do, ya know?
OVERBOARD
Fact: Overboard was created to make kids obsess about it. Four kids having a crazy childhood? A reverse Cinderella story: the princess gets saved by the pauper? Mini golf?! COME ON! It’s also goddamn hilarious, ie, ‘a falsetto child?’ And the fact that she keeps calling one of the kids Roy. And the video cover had some seriously awesome liquidy stuff in the plastic wrapper so that made it even cooler.
SUPERGIRL
Man, this is one cheap-ass looking film, it must have cost about a buck to make. I presume Faye Dunaway dumped her agent immediately after it came out. But anyway, I thought it was amazing. The chick went on to star in Secret of My Success with MJF and Ruthless People with Judge Reinhold, Bette Midler and Danny DeVito.
DIRTY DANCING
Like Grease, a sleepover classic. I distinctly remember being at a sleepover and when Johnny tells the old cougar lady that he can't teach her how to dance, a very precocious nine-year-old turned to the rest of us and said crisply: "That means he doesn't want to fuck her anymore."
BIG BUSINESS
I once won a pub quiz at university when the tiebeater question started 'born in Hawaii in 1947' and I screamed 'BETTE MIDLER!' My street cred was HIGH after that, my friends. HIGH. I only stopped loving Bette Midler when I saw Beaches, which, even as a child, I realised was fucking lame. Big Business features two sets of identical twins separated at birth and reunited in NYC as adults! The jinx are so high! But I can't find a trailer, dudes. Sorry.
HEATHERS
This movie made me feel far cooler than I was. Also set me up for a mini-Winona obsession with repeated watching of Mermaids, Reality Bites, etc. I adored Winona. Then I grew weary of her. As did everyone. I also loved Christian Slater so much that I spent a long time training myself to raise one eyebrow. I combed Tiger Beat and Teen Beat and every other teen rag I could get my hands on and cut out photos of him, no matter how small. There is a photo somewhere of me at 13 in front of my Homage To Christian Slater wall. No, I will not post it. (Okay, I will. But it's in Hong Kong. You wanna talk my folks through how to scan a photo, you go for it.)
The trailer is, frankly, shit. So let's watch this scene instead:
It's okay! It's okay. He's shooting blanks. (Titter.)
I’m sure I’m forgetting some absolute classics.
Even as I write this paragraph, I'm remembering She's Out Of Control, My Stepmother Is An Alien, Teen Witch, Mr Mom, Mask, Foreign Exchange, My Secret Admirer, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure... but seriously, I have to get back to the day job (writing your next favourite book, my friends). You would not believe how long I have spent on youtube cackling at these trailers and then clicking through to best-of clips... And in case you're wondering: I didn't really get into John Hughes films till I was well into my teens and they were already retro. But then I OBSESSED ABOUT THEM. TO THE POINT WHERE I SHOUT WHENEVER SOMEONE EVEN SAYS JOHN HUGHES. ARGH. SIXTEEN CANDLES. FERRIS BUELLER. SOME KIND OF WONDERFUL. WEIRD SCIENCE. SO GOOD.
EDIT:
Trini reminded me about The Princess Bride.
YIKES! How could I have forgotten The Princess Bride? Such a classic that we watched over and over and over again. Have you seen it recently? The set looks like it's made of cardboard. It's also a gorgeous and hilarious book, written by William Goldman, who was also the screenwriter. In case you are interested. I hearted Cary Elwes, who recently surfaced with a beard and about two lines of dialogue in No Strings Attached. What the hell, Hollywood. That is WESTLEY. Aka THE DREAD PIRATE ROBERTS. Give the guy a decent part why doncha.
I’ve seen it about 6,214 times, because I grew up in Hong Kong, where television was incredibly, astonishingly bad. So bad that there was only one kids’ TV show, a no-budget piece of trash called Megaquiz (Gemma trivia: I was on the first ever episode).
So if we had something on video, I watched it to death.
At school, we bartered tapes of TV shows sent by cousins living in normal countries like they were gold dust. Saved By The Bell, Saturday Night Live, Beverly Hills 90210, Blossom... I watched those tapes so often I knew how long to press fastforward on the remote to skip each individual commercial break perfectly.
My sister and I were allowed to rent one movie a week each. And then we'd watch it non-goddamn-stop. And because the choice at the video store was not only outdated but deeply limited, we borrowed the same movies. Again and again. And again. And again. And... well, you get it.
An aside (what, you thought I’d write a blog post without an aside? Have we just met, or what?): when I was about 10 my mother picked a video for us and accidentally came back with a lovely movie about a lady mechanic looking for love. TOMBOY. It was soft porn. I kid you not. My mother will want me to point out that she realised during the opening shower scene that it wasn't a jolly romcom and turned it off. (Between you and me, it was like 15 minutes after that that she realised.) This is the cover of Tomboy. In fairness, it was an easy mistake to make.
So, apart from Tomboy, these are the films that will always make me think of my childhood. And as a little killing-time-on-a-Friday present from me to you, all the original trailers.
BACK TO THE FUTURE
As mentioned, one of the most perfect films of all time. Can still quote every line. Will watch entire thing whenever it is on. Man, I love Michael J Fox, he’s so great.
My sister and her best friend Jackie really, really, really loved Michael J Fox. Not as much as they loved Val Kilmer, which brings me to -
TOP SECRET
This is an incredibly funny film, funnier than Airplane! (Or Flying High! Depending on where in the world you grew up. Note to branding people: STOP FUCKING DOING THAT. It makes life really hard for international kids when we don’t know which goddamn film we saw. Like Adventures In Babysitting: apparently in England it was called Night On The Town. I don’t know, because I wasn’t here. Night On The Town: Talk about a soft porn title. Actually, let’s add that to the list too, because it was awesome.)
ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING
This is a great goddamn film. If you haven’t seen it, find it and watch it. It’s hilarious.
Also known as Night On The Town. Check it out:
Lamest. Poster. Ever. And shit copywriting. 'After she finished with the crazy gangsters... cheating boyfriends... car chases... wild parties... climbing skyscrapers... staying alive was just part of the fun of... A Night On The Town'. Grow a brain, nameless copywriter from the past! The verb 'climbing' doesn't fit, in fact, the entire sentence sucks ass. Also: why is there a picture of Brenda with the rat / kitten with the line 'car chases'? So many things annoy me about this poster. And yes, I'm a pain in the ass when it comes to copywriting. I fight the urge to take out a red pen and correct bad copy everywhere I go.
CHARLOTTE’S WEB
Templeton the rat. Nuff said.
GREASE
Every girl I know would probably name Grease as their No.1 childhood movie. It's not our fault: it's the law. And it's in the Bible. (It is.) (Maybe.) It's just one of those girl things, like everyone wanting to be Claudia in the Babysitter’s Club and making up extended dance routines and one-act plays and forcing their mother and sister to watch them – oh wait, that one was just me? Okay. Anyway, I can still close my eyes and play Grease in my head, word-for-word. You probably can too. We all can. Like I said, it's the law.
GREASE 2
The slutty cousin of Grease. Still kind of ace. Michael Carrington is hot. I totally would.
As an extra present, because I can't resist: the Reproduction song...
...And the We're Gonna Score Tonight song. Because IT. IS. AWESOME.
CALAMITY JANE
Yeah, I don’t know why either, but this was a major Burgess childhood movie. Includes the song 'A Woman's Touch', with the immortal line: "A woman and a whiskbroom can accomplish so darn much!". We embraced it without irony. We were just nuts for Doris Day. Full admission: these days, I'm not Little Miss Musicals (My friends: Gemma! We're all seeing Rent / Joseph And His Technicolour Dreamcoat / Cabaret! Wanna come? Me: No freaking way. Friends: YOU HAVE NO SOUL). But when I was little, you could place me in front of anything with a long-dead MGM starlet and a jaunty dance routine and I was transfixed. I was basically a very short gay man with a blonde bowl cut.
THE COURT JESTER
I give you Danny Kaye: the Adam Sandler of his generation. And, allegedly, Laurence Olivier's luvah.
BYE BYE BIRDIE
This is such a great movie! You should totally find it and watch it. Like all musicals, it goes a bit nutso-slash-boring in the middle, with far too many long songs and dance routines instead of oh, I don't know, plot / character development, but the first hour rocks. Interesting fact: the man who voiced Templeton the rat in Charlotte's Web plays the father in this. (Okay, that wasn’t that interesting. Let’s move on.)
Also just for my sister: The Telephone Song. ("HUGO AND KIM?")
ANNIE
Unlike most little girls, I didn’t want to be Annie. I wanted to be one of the nameless blond girls with their hair in braids who can do handless cartwheels in the Hard Knock Life song. Yes, I aimed low. I was also such a scaredy-cat that I never watched the helicopter-bridge scene. I’d hide and read Anne Of Green Gables or Malory Towers or something till I was sure it was over. As a result I am still not sure what happens in that scene. I think it’s something to do with the Sikh dude’s turban.
GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN
This movies pops into my head a lot, ie, when someone asks me 'Do you have change for a twenty?' and I say 'Gosh, I don't have anything smaller than a fifty!' and then they look at me like I'm an asshole.
Again, made me wish I could do cartwheels. It just looks like such a cool thing to do, ya know?
OVERBOARD
Fact: Overboard was created to make kids obsess about it. Four kids having a crazy childhood? A reverse Cinderella story: the princess gets saved by the pauper? Mini golf?! COME ON! It’s also goddamn hilarious, ie, ‘a falsetto child?’ And the fact that she keeps calling one of the kids Roy. And the video cover had some seriously awesome liquidy stuff in the plastic wrapper so that made it even cooler.
SUPERGIRL
Man, this is one cheap-ass looking film, it must have cost about a buck to make. I presume Faye Dunaway dumped her agent immediately after it came out. But anyway, I thought it was amazing. The chick went on to star in Secret of My Success with MJF and Ruthless People with Judge Reinhold, Bette Midler and Danny DeVito.
DIRTY DANCING
Like Grease, a sleepover classic. I distinctly remember being at a sleepover and when Johnny tells the old cougar lady that he can't teach her how to dance, a very precocious nine-year-old turned to the rest of us and said crisply: "That means he doesn't want to fuck her anymore."
BIG BUSINESS
I once won a pub quiz at university when the tiebeater question started 'born in Hawaii in 1947' and I screamed 'BETTE MIDLER!' My street cred was HIGH after that, my friends. HIGH. I only stopped loving Bette Midler when I saw Beaches, which, even as a child, I realised was fucking lame. Big Business features two sets of identical twins separated at birth and reunited in NYC as adults! The jinx are so high! But I can't find a trailer, dudes. Sorry.
HEATHERS
This movie made me feel far cooler than I was. Also set me up for a mini-Winona obsession with repeated watching of Mermaids, Reality Bites, etc. I adored Winona. Then I grew weary of her. As did everyone. I also loved Christian Slater so much that I spent a long time training myself to raise one eyebrow. I combed Tiger Beat and Teen Beat and every other teen rag I could get my hands on and cut out photos of him, no matter how small. There is a photo somewhere of me at 13 in front of my Homage To Christian Slater wall. No, I will not post it. (Okay, I will. But it's in Hong Kong. You wanna talk my folks through how to scan a photo, you go for it.)
The trailer is, frankly, shit. So let's watch this scene instead:
It's okay! It's okay. He's shooting blanks. (Titter.)
I’m sure I’m forgetting some absolute classics.
Even as I write this paragraph, I'm remembering She's Out Of Control, My Stepmother Is An Alien, Teen Witch, Mr Mom, Mask, Foreign Exchange, My Secret Admirer, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure... but seriously, I have to get back to the day job (writing your next favourite book, my friends). You would not believe how long I have spent on youtube cackling at these trailers and then clicking through to best-of clips... And in case you're wondering: I didn't really get into John Hughes films till I was well into my teens and they were already retro. But then I OBSESSED ABOUT THEM. TO THE POINT WHERE I SHOUT WHENEVER SOMEONE EVEN SAYS JOHN HUGHES. ARGH. SIXTEEN CANDLES. FERRIS BUELLER. SOME KIND OF WONDERFUL. WEIRD SCIENCE. SO GOOD.
EDIT:
Trini reminded me about The Princess Bride.
YIKES! How could I have forgotten The Princess Bride? Such a classic that we watched over and over and over again. Have you seen it recently? The set looks like it's made of cardboard. It's also a gorgeous and hilarious book, written by William Goldman, who was also the screenwriter. In case you are interested. I hearted Cary Elwes, who recently surfaced with a beard and about two lines of dialogue in No Strings Attached. What the hell, Hollywood. That is WESTLEY. Aka THE DREAD PIRATE ROBERTS. Give the guy a decent part why doncha.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
On... character-abuse
The other night I read an interesting piece in the New Yorker about Anna Faris. (Read it here if you're on an iPad.)
I can't stop thinking about this excerpt:
‘To make a woman adorable, one successful female screenwriter says, “you have to defeat her in the beginning. It’s a conscious thing I do. Abuse and break her, strip her of her dignity, and then she gets to live out our fantasies and have fun.”… Relatability is based upon vulnerability, which creates likeability.’
Wow.
This is exactly - EXACTLY - what I do when I write. And yes, it's deliberate. But to see it put in terms like that is kind of depressing.
My name is Gemma Burgess and I am a character-abuser.
Let’s analyse:
THE DATING DETOX, my first book, starts with Sass being cheated on at a horrific house party, resulting in her swearing off men. So even though she's a flirty smart-arse with a lot of attitude, we know she's just like us.
A GIRL LIKE YOU, my second book, starts with Abigail on a disastrous, panic-stricken date, so we can see that though she’s an investment banker who just left her long-term boyfriend without a second glance, she’s also just like us.
I’m currently finishing my third novel – the first in the UNION STREET series for St Martins Press, about a group of post-college girls sharing a house in Brooklyn through their 20s – and yet again, the protagonist’s life pretty much collapses in chapter one. I’ve plotted the second and third: again, a disaster followed by trials and tribulations followed by victory.
I also write romantic comedy movies. (In fact, I deliberately structure my books to be like romantic comedy movies: I read romantic comedy scripts, and books about plots and screenwriting, when I’m planning outlines. I write to entertain: heavily on the dialogue, light on prose.) At the moment I have three movie scripts that are in decent shape. Each also features a female character whose life disintegrates in the first 15 minutes. In one script, it happens in about four minutes.
See? Character-abuser.
I feel like such a bitch.
So why do I do it? Firstly, because I feel that a disastrous event is the fastest way to jumpstart the story and make you wonder 'what next?'. (There are probably better ways, but I’m new at this, remember. I was an advertising copywriter for most of my 20s.)
Secondly, in a lot of chickflicks/chicklit books, it often seems like the main character is meant to be lovable because she's a clueless idiot and I'm meant to feel sorry for her. And I've always hated that.
I don’t want to write about (or read about, or watch) clueless idiots. I want characters who feel real to me, who are funny (without being neurotic or crazy or pratfall-y), smart (not ditzy or streetsmart or too-smart-for-her-own-good), have real jobs (I swore I'd never write about a florist), work hard (without being harridans that sacrifice a lovelife for their corner office), who genuinely like men and sex (without being crazy sluts or insecure pining-for-their-devilish-boss types), and who are doing their best to figure out where they're going in life. I want them to be funny, swear, drink, fuck, have real friendships, have a social life, make mistakes, dress the way real girls dress on a real girl's budget, be a bitch/stupid sometimes, have a normal amount of confidence that isn't lifted by a man alone, etc. A girl like you, in other words.
So when I first started writing, I quickly realised that if I wanted to keep my character as a non-loser, but make people like her whilst making her journey immediately compelling, I needed something bad-but-relatable to happen to her, fast, in order to establish a connection. And to keep her likeable, I needed it to be relayed in a first-person-present-tense, with a confiding, chatty tone of voice, so that the reactions and emotions feel immediate and real and personal.
And that's what I did.
The result is more than just feeling sorry for her. (I hope.) We immediately recognise the universality of her experience. (I hope.) We empathise with her reaction/decisions and feel like we understand her / want to protect her. (I hope.) And - ta-da! - we feel euphoric when she ultimately succeeds and finds an emotionally satisfying happiness. (I really, really hope.)
I wonder if that's emotionally manipulative character abuse? Or just an extension of how women make friends? We console each other - and ourselves - by sharing and empathising. If my friend has just been dumped/fired, I comfort her with similar stories so she knows she's not alone. I always feel better when I know that what I'm going through is something someone else has gone through, and survived. Misery shared = bonding. So a disastrous event makes me care what happens next.
By the by, I also bank heavily on the hope that the reader/viewer finds my stuff so hilarious that they can't stop reading/watching. But humour without plot and character is nothing. It has to all work together.
One day I might try to write, or plan, something that doesn’t involve an emotional Hiroshima before you know the character’s last name.
I wonder if it will work.
I can't stop thinking about this excerpt:
‘To make a woman adorable, one successful female screenwriter says, “you have to defeat her in the beginning. It’s a conscious thing I do. Abuse and break her, strip her of her dignity, and then she gets to live out our fantasies and have fun.”… Relatability is based upon vulnerability, which creates likeability.’
Wow.
This is exactly - EXACTLY - what I do when I write. And yes, it's deliberate. But to see it put in terms like that is kind of depressing.
My name is Gemma Burgess and I am a character-abuser.
Let’s analyse:
THE DATING DETOX, my first book, starts with Sass being cheated on at a horrific house party, resulting in her swearing off men. So even though she's a flirty smart-arse with a lot of attitude, we know she's just like us.
A GIRL LIKE YOU, my second book, starts with Abigail on a disastrous, panic-stricken date, so we can see that though she’s an investment banker who just left her long-term boyfriend without a second glance, she’s also just like us.
I’m currently finishing my third novel – the first in the UNION STREET series for St Martins Press, about a group of post-college girls sharing a house in Brooklyn through their 20s – and yet again, the protagonist’s life pretty much collapses in chapter one. I’ve plotted the second and third: again, a disaster followed by trials and tribulations followed by victory.
I also write romantic comedy movies. (In fact, I deliberately structure my books to be like romantic comedy movies: I read romantic comedy scripts, and books about plots and screenwriting, when I’m planning outlines. I write to entertain: heavily on the dialogue, light on prose.) At the moment I have three movie scripts that are in decent shape. Each also features a female character whose life disintegrates in the first 15 minutes. In one script, it happens in about four minutes.
See? Character-abuser.
I feel like such a bitch.
So why do I do it? Firstly, because I feel that a disastrous event is the fastest way to jumpstart the story and make you wonder 'what next?'. (There are probably better ways, but I’m new at this, remember. I was an advertising copywriter for most of my 20s.)
Secondly, in a lot of chickflicks/chicklit books, it often seems like the main character is meant to be lovable because she's a clueless idiot and I'm meant to feel sorry for her. And I've always hated that.
I don’t want to write about (or read about, or watch) clueless idiots. I want characters who feel real to me, who are funny (without being neurotic or crazy or pratfall-y), smart (not ditzy or streetsmart or too-smart-for-her-own-good), have real jobs (I swore I'd never write about a florist), work hard (without being harridans that sacrifice a lovelife for their corner office), who genuinely like men and sex (without being crazy sluts or insecure pining-for-their-devilish-boss types), and who are doing their best to figure out where they're going in life. I want them to be funny, swear, drink, fuck, have real friendships, have a social life, make mistakes, dress the way real girls dress on a real girl's budget, be a bitch/stupid sometimes, have a normal amount of confidence that isn't lifted by a man alone, etc. A girl like you, in other words.
So when I first started writing, I quickly realised that if I wanted to keep my character as a non-loser, but make people like her whilst making her journey immediately compelling, I needed something bad-but-relatable to happen to her, fast, in order to establish a connection. And to keep her likeable, I needed it to be relayed in a first-person-present-tense, with a confiding, chatty tone of voice, so that the reactions and emotions feel immediate and real and personal.
And that's what I did.
The result is more than just feeling sorry for her. (I hope.) We immediately recognise the universality of her experience. (I hope.) We empathise with her reaction/decisions and feel like we understand her / want to protect her. (I hope.) And - ta-da! - we feel euphoric when she ultimately succeeds and finds an emotionally satisfying happiness. (I really, really hope.)
I wonder if that's emotionally manipulative character abuse? Or just an extension of how women make friends? We console each other - and ourselves - by sharing and empathising. If my friend has just been dumped/fired, I comfort her with similar stories so she knows she's not alone. I always feel better when I know that what I'm going through is something someone else has gone through, and survived. Misery shared = bonding. So a disastrous event makes me care what happens next.
By the by, I also bank heavily on the hope that the reader/viewer finds my stuff so hilarious that they can't stop reading/watching. But humour without plot and character is nothing. It has to all work together.
One day I might try to write, or plan, something that doesn’t involve an emotional Hiroshima before you know the character’s last name.
I wonder if it will work.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
On... an awesome trailer parody
I've been laughing so hard at this I have to share it.
First, in case you haven't seen this, enjoy. Zero coherency. Strangely exciting.
And now watch this.
I actually barked with laughter when 'Wocka' happened. (I rarely bark with laughter. I chortle and giggle and HA! a lot. But not bark. I barked constantly during Bridesmaids, particularly when she fights with the little tweenie in the jewellery store. I bark when I read David Sedaris or watch Arrested Development or Eastbound and Down. I actually choked during Eastbound and Down once. I was drinking water and chose the wrong moment. I could have, like, drowned. Okay, this aside has become totally unwieldly. I find it so hard to end asides, have you noticed? It's a real problem for me. Anyway, let me know what makes you bark with laughter.)
First, in case you haven't seen this, enjoy. Zero coherency. Strangely exciting.
And now watch this.
I actually barked with laughter when 'Wocka' happened. (I rarely bark with laughter. I chortle and giggle and HA! a lot. But not bark. I barked constantly during Bridesmaids, particularly when she fights with the little tweenie in the jewellery store. I bark when I read David Sedaris or watch Arrested Development or Eastbound and Down. I actually choked during Eastbound and Down once. I was drinking water and chose the wrong moment. I could have, like, drowned. Okay, this aside has become totally unwieldly. I find it so hard to end asides, have you noticed? It's a real problem for me. Anyway, let me know what makes you bark with laughter.)
Friday, September 16, 2011
On... stuff I've been doing
So, inspired by Cup of Joe, I’m going to post about things I’ve been enjoying in the past couple of weeks.
Now, I’ve mostly been feeding Errol and/or gazing at him in a nauseatingly adoringly way and/or catching up on sleep with coma-like cat naps. But the rest of the time I’ve been...
Writing my next feature for Tatler - follow them on Twitter at @tatleruk and, if you like, read my current story in the October issue (it’s a rather snarky piece called The Nail Files, but you try writing 900 funny words about nails, my friend - snark happens). Or, if you can, track down the September issue and read all about how Fox is my Boytician.
Craving returning to the edit of my next book, the first in the Union Street series. I’m starting on Monday and cannot wait. It’s the strangest feeling: I miss it, and the entire world within it, like a friend.
Feeling inspired by this post – again, by Cup Of Joe. (I like her.)
Thanking the Lord that these exist. They work. And they work FAST. And for this woman. Her book Baby Secrets is the shizzle. (I am so hip the lingo.)
Buying these, now that I know they're still a sartorial option and the bump did disappear (see above). God! I've missed high-waisted jeans! And by the way, the fashion wasteland of the last 10 months was bad. I mean, I like clothes. Clothes like me. We’ve always been friends. But pregnancy clothes... man, they suck. What’s that? I sound shallow? Dude, I AM shallow. Did you not realise this by now?
Having baths with this whilst doing this. I read about it in US Vogue, so it must work, right?
Forwarding this to Fox as it is really goddamn time he learned to cook. He’s 33 for Pete’s sake.
Making one of these out of the 2,503 photos we've taken of Errol in the past few weeks.
Thanking hell these exist as breastfeeding would be extremely boring without them.
Enjoying this site, this site, this site and this site, on the above.
More soon. Am writing a long Q&A blog in response to a bunch of email questions I’ve received over the past few months, so if you have any questions for me, bring it on.
Now, I’ve mostly been feeding Errol and/or gazing at him in a nauseatingly adoringly way and/or catching up on sleep with coma-like cat naps. But the rest of the time I’ve been...
Writing my next feature for Tatler - follow them on Twitter at @tatleruk and, if you like, read my current story in the October issue (it’s a rather snarky piece called The Nail Files, but you try writing 900 funny words about nails, my friend - snark happens). Or, if you can, track down the September issue and read all about how Fox is my Boytician.
Craving returning to the edit of my next book, the first in the Union Street series. I’m starting on Monday and cannot wait. It’s the strangest feeling: I miss it, and the entire world within it, like a friend.
Feeling inspired by this post – again, by Cup Of Joe. (I like her.)
Thanking the Lord that these exist. They work. And they work FAST. And for this woman. Her book Baby Secrets is the shizzle. (I am so hip the lingo.)
Buying these, now that I know they're still a sartorial option and the bump did disappear (see above). God! I've missed high-waisted jeans! And by the way, the fashion wasteland of the last 10 months was bad. I mean, I like clothes. Clothes like me. We’ve always been friends. But pregnancy clothes... man, they suck. What’s that? I sound shallow? Dude, I AM shallow. Did you not realise this by now?
Having baths with this whilst doing this. I read about it in US Vogue, so it must work, right?
Forwarding this to Fox as it is really goddamn time he learned to cook. He’s 33 for Pete’s sake.
Making one of these out of the 2,503 photos we've taken of Errol in the past few weeks.
Thanking hell these exist as breastfeeding would be extremely boring without them.
Enjoying this site, this site, this site and this site, on the above.
More soon. Am writing a long Q&A blog in response to a bunch of email questions I’ve received over the past few months, so if you have any questions for me, bring it on.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
On... reading
Hello chaps.
Gosh, what an annoying start to a post. My apologies. I used to live with a couple of terribleh Sloaneh boys who used words like 'chaps' all the time. They called me 'Burgo' and had thousands and thousands of 'mates' called things like 'Rotter' and 'Poo'. And those were the girls. No one has as many mates as Sloanes. It's like they're born with an in-built Yellow Pages with the details of every other Sloane in existence. It must be marvellous to be that sure of exactly where you fit into the universe. (Actually, I think it would be incredibly stifling and dull. But I digress. As ever.)
For les Americains, by the way: Sloanes = WASPy preppies. I went to school with Americans called things like Chet and Sailor who are basically exactly the same. It's just that preppies have a lot more popped collars.
ANYWAY. This post isn't about Sloanes and preppies, it's about books.
I'm reading a lot right now in between being a 24-hour human snackbar for Errol and gazing at him in what is probably a nauseatingly adoring way, drinking as much water as I can without drowning, and sleeping. (The sleep deprivation with a newborn, by the way, is nowhere near as bad as everyone tells you. I slept far less when I was finishing THE DATING DETOX and then A GIRL LIKE YOU and working 9am to 6pm as a copywriter at the same time. Nor are the hormonal jags particularly severe. Okay: I cried when describing the plot of 'Waitress' to my mother, but it is a rilly rilly sweet film, dagnabbit. Anyone would cry. Yeah.)
This week I read:
BOSSYPANTS by Tina Fey.
Delightful, very funny, and not long enough. More please.
THE WIFE by Meg Wolitzer.
Hmmm... an interesting one. Exquisitely well-written but ultimately, put me in a really bad and sad mood. Without giving too much away, I think that was the idea: to turn every reader into a feminist. (Too late, sister, I'm already there.) Oh, and I'm also not sure why 1. The quote from Allison Pearson says it's 'funny' - this is brilliant, sharp, smart book but not laugh-out-loud by a long shot or why 2. She's packaged as chicklit when her books have a thousand times more in common with the likes of Curtis Sittenfeld than Lauren Wiesberger. Come on, publishing industry. Just because the writer has a vagina doesn't make it chicklit.
BUSH FALLS by Jonathan Tropper.
LOVING THIS BOOK. I'm only 1/3 of the way through it so if it takes a nosedive then I'll come back and tell you, but so far, I love it. LUFF. LURVE. I found out about it because a lovely woman emailed me and said she thought I'd enjoy it. And I am. (If you have a book recommendation for me, by the way, bring it the hell on: gemma@gemmaburgess.com) I dropped it in the bath last night and screamed with such genuine anguish that Fox came running to see if I'd fallen over. We dried it out overnight and I'm pleased to report it's now a little weathered but still perfectly legible. (Yah. I bet you were worried about how that story was going to end.)
More next week when I've read more. How the devil are you?
EDIT: Update on Jonathan Tropper. Confirmed: he is awesome. Am currently knee-deep in This Is Where I Leave You and have all his other books lined up on my bedside table, waiting to take off, like little literary airplanes.
Gosh, what an annoying start to a post. My apologies. I used to live with a couple of terribleh Sloaneh boys who used words like 'chaps' all the time. They called me 'Burgo' and had thousands and thousands of 'mates' called things like 'Rotter' and 'Poo'. And those were the girls. No one has as many mates as Sloanes. It's like they're born with an in-built Yellow Pages with the details of every other Sloane in existence. It must be marvellous to be that sure of exactly where you fit into the universe. (Actually, I think it would be incredibly stifling and dull. But I digress. As ever.)
For les Americains, by the way: Sloanes = WASPy preppies. I went to school with Americans called things like Chet and Sailor who are basically exactly the same. It's just that preppies have a lot more popped collars.
ANYWAY. This post isn't about Sloanes and preppies, it's about books.
I'm reading a lot right now in between being a 24-hour human snackbar for Errol and gazing at him in what is probably a nauseatingly adoring way, drinking as much water as I can without drowning, and sleeping. (The sleep deprivation with a newborn, by the way, is nowhere near as bad as everyone tells you. I slept far less when I was finishing THE DATING DETOX and then A GIRL LIKE YOU and working 9am to 6pm as a copywriter at the same time. Nor are the hormonal jags particularly severe. Okay: I cried when describing the plot of 'Waitress' to my mother, but it is a rilly rilly sweet film, dagnabbit. Anyone would cry. Yeah.)
This week I read:
BOSSYPANTS by Tina Fey.
Delightful, very funny, and not long enough. More please.
THE WIFE by Meg Wolitzer.
Hmmm... an interesting one. Exquisitely well-written but ultimately, put me in a really bad and sad mood. Without giving too much away, I think that was the idea: to turn every reader into a feminist. (Too late, sister, I'm already there.) Oh, and I'm also not sure why 1. The quote from Allison Pearson says it's 'funny' - this is brilliant, sharp, smart book but not laugh-out-loud by a long shot or why 2. She's packaged as chicklit when her books have a thousand times more in common with the likes of Curtis Sittenfeld than Lauren Wiesberger. Come on, publishing industry. Just because the writer has a vagina doesn't make it chicklit.
BUSH FALLS by Jonathan Tropper.
LOVING THIS BOOK. I'm only 1/3 of the way through it so if it takes a nosedive then I'll come back and tell you, but so far, I love it. LUFF. LURVE. I found out about it because a lovely woman emailed me and said she thought I'd enjoy it. And I am. (If you have a book recommendation for me, by the way, bring it the hell on: gemma@gemmaburgess.com) I dropped it in the bath last night and screamed with such genuine anguish that Fox came running to see if I'd fallen over. We dried it out overnight and I'm pleased to report it's now a little weathered but still perfectly legible. (Yah. I bet you were worried about how that story was going to end.)
More next week when I've read more. How the devil are you?
EDIT: Update on Jonathan Tropper. Confirmed: he is awesome. Am currently knee-deep in This Is Where I Leave You and have all his other books lined up on my bedside table, waiting to take off, like little literary airplanes.
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