Television Can Blow Me Page 4
The bottom line is that there is a surplus of documentaries and not enough authentic subjects to justify them. Narcissist tools need to be targeted, neutralised and asphyxiated - then we can hear the grown-ups talk.
My Penis And I
We all have our demons and our ways of dealing with them. Film-maker Lawrence Barraclough has dealt with his tiny penis by making a film about it and broadcasting it to 1.5 million people. I think that takes big balls (or maybe they just look big next to his wiener?)
Whether My Penis and I shows a remarkable faith in his fellow man or a need to be the centre of attention is unclear. Either way, he's certainly putting it on the chopping block with this high-risk strategy. Would you really want every girl in Britain knowing your secret?
That's not an immediate issue for Lawrence as some lucky lady has already snapped him up. They've been together for nine years but the girl in question takes some persuading to appear in the film. “I don’t want be thought of as the girlfriend of the guy with the small dick.” she explains. I forget her name as she wasn’t sexually attractive. Let’s just call her “the girlfriend of the guy with the small dick”.
Lawrence wonders what it is about penis size that so obsesses men. “So, I’m going to Birmingham to talk with my dad about his penis”. There’s a sentence I hope I never have to say again.
He first approaches his mother and there’s a very strange creepy scene where he talks to her about his father’s penis. “What did you think when you first saw it?” His mother replies “That’s personal”. I should bloody think so too. The Oedipal complications of this scene would require a sturdier stomach than mine to untangle.
Mammy proudly informs him that he comes from a long line of small cocks, so he quizzes his father about his experiences in the army, changing in front of his well-hung comrades. “My dong wasn’t as big as some of the guys there” dad reveals. Thus, the film brilliantly establishes early on that Some Boys Are Bigger Than Others.
Lawrence’s investigations then takes him uptown - doing the nightlife with five girls who all tell him it’s all in his head, it’s what you do with it that counts and other fatuous phoney baloney. Then he meets two pissed scuttlers, unaware of his film-making, who proudly tell him “of COURSE it matters”. There’s always someone.
The girlfriend of the guy with the small dick finally allows herself to be filmed and she takes a phlegmatic “there there” approach to the issue. You can tell she really wants to be dicked down by the type of monster that Aerial Telly be packing but she’d want to get those teeth sorted out before that happens.
A trip to visit Cynthia Plastercaster (the famous groupie who takes plaster-casts of rock stars erect penises) sees her take a cast of Lawrence’s flaccid penis in one of the most pointless scenes I can remember. The suspicion that Lawrence just likes travelling around and talking about himself is difficult to shift.
He returns to school where he was bullied for his schlong deficiency. There didn’t seem to be much point to this outing and the school changing room door seemed to agree, refusing to admit him entry. So there we stood in mute contemplation outside the door of the location where some of the cruellest jibes may have been thrown. Not quite the Berlin Wall footage is it?
He finds some kind of closure by visiting a Manhattan support group for men with small penises. Once he knows he’s not alone, cooped up in an ivory tower of needle-dickdom he perks up a hell of a lot. The girlfriend of the guy with the small dick is happy because he’s happy. Their relationship improves because he learns to love himself.
And yet she seems kind of bored with the whole thing. I know the feeling.
The verdict on My Penis And I: Like jumping over buses, brave but ultimately pointless.
Marks out of 10: 6
Fix My Fat Head
In the end, the self-pity always comes through. Once the self-deprecation, tales of previous diets and bad observational stand-up culled from 45 abortive open mic nights are over, the whining will begin. Every single documentary about a fat person who apparently can’t lose weight is inevitably drawn into a whirlpool of ‘poor me’. And man alive does this tub of guts know how to whine? Hannah Jones, 36 years and 22 stones of wobbly narcissism writes a column about being fat. Not that she is self obsessed or anything but she believes that her gunt is so fucking important that in addition to her weekly first person waaaah-waaaah shtick she has spent six months investigating psychological treatment for obesity. Fix My Fat Head she cries. Because it just has to be psychological.
Like all fat people, Hannah is a slob. She looks like shit, feels like it, acts like it but is too lazy to do anything about it. Every effort she makes is a token one. She’s a never-ending source of feeble excuses. We should get one thing clear from the off: fat people feel no more hunger than the rest of us. They’ve just adopted the strategy of talking about it more.
Hannah has tried every diet going. Well hasn’t every fat bastard you’ve ever met? They’ve tried Atkins, good carb, low-fat, Cambridge, Beverly Hills, cabbage soup, Dr Phil, Rosemary Conley and Aerial Telly’s personal favourite Neanderthin, a diet based around that of Palaeolithic man (Hannah passed this when she heard woolly mammoth was not on the menu). Yes, she’s tried every diet going. Tell you what though, chubby: you ever tried the consuming fewer calories than you burn off diet? It’s got a 100% success rate. No? Colour me stunned.
As is often the case, Orca has a slim borefriend who is half decent looking, who could certainly do a lot better than her. She’s not even got a good face and the rest of her is shite. Whatever, this chump supports her as she tries Lighter Life, a weight-loss programme that focuses on the dieter’s emotional relationship with food; Susan Hepburn, hypnotherapist to the stars who aided Lily Allen’s crash diet that saw her plummet from a size 14 to a size 12 and a psychotherapist who finds out she was sometimes lonely as a child and that food was her very best friend. Bombshell.
So the six months come to a close and Hannah proves beyond all reasonable doubt that the psychological approach is the only humane and effective way for people who are addicted to food (because it is an addiction, it really is) by shedding literally stones of weight. Oh wait, no she doesn’t. Because the abysmal pleb has actually put on weight during her self-pity orgy. One semicircuit of the Sun to waste our time and eat more pies offering no insight, no closure and no weight loss.
Hannah has once again “tried” everything. But the stumbling block is always the eating less part. The moment she realises the current program she’s on involves being less of a hog she pulls a face like Les Dawson’s Ada Sidebottom and wobbles out of the room, jowls a-judder. “OK, I haven’t lost any weight” she says breezily “but maybe, just maybe - I’m finally on the right track”. And thus finishes one of the most worthless documentaries ever commissioned. It monumentally fails in everything it set out to do. It is catastrophically stupid and lazy. But seriously: what you expect when you employ a fat bastard? That’s what they do, that’s what they are.
Successful living is about sacrifice. You can’t have your pie and eat it. Grown-ups understand this. But people like Fat Hannah think they’re entitled to everything without any effort. She plays lip service to the idea of self-denial but she never had any intention of going without fatty food, reducing her portions or exercising more. Not for a heartbeat, never in a million years, even with cameras following her every move. Because this is not about weight loss, it’s about Hannah being a self obsessed twat. It’s about her being acknowledged as the brave, plucky, self-deprecating, have-a-go hero she’s categorically not. This is a flabby documentary about a flatulent fraud with an insatiable hunger to talk about herself. She can fuck right off.
The verdict on Fix My Fat Head: As futile as buying a gym membership.
Marks out of 10: 4
Guys And Dolls
The commodification of human intimacy is an inevitable by-product of advanced capitalism. Everything has a price tag after all. And with most jobs and lifestyles
being bereft of fulfilment, joy or any prospect of emotional connection with your fellow man, it’s a wonder we’re not all on the game. The existence of the real doll subculture should therefore only come as a surprise to those head-in-the-sand Pollyannas who think there’s a boy out there for every gal and a gal for every boy. All you suckers out there need to know just one thing: there IS a girl out there for you. The trouble is she’s already slept with Aerial Telly and the prospect of dating a man like you is one too awful for her to contemplate. She’s had Prime Beef and now you’re going to try and feed her Quorn substitute? What kind of “man” are you?
Five’s Guys And Dolls gave us a glimpse into the lives of some doll fuckers and was commendably matter-of-fact about it. Perhaps feeling that the subject matter was strange enough and not in need of sensationalising, they gave their subjects a fair run at explaining themselves without sneaky editing, phoney set-ups and other such documentary dirty tricks. For those of you who missed the Real Dolls memo God sent (and you’re in good company there) they are lifelike rubber replicas of attractive young women who are purchased, dressed and fucked by slightly less lifelike men
Men like Everard, a 48 year-old computer technician who is in a long-term relationship with his doll Virginia. As her latex tits point up at him from the bed he says “She just lies there. (The dolls) are very static. They don’t react at all”. Oh no fucking shit? I was expecting her to be doing the can-can. He insists that having the doll is “certainly better than going without any female company at all” something which he at least seems to have extensive knowledge of.
With Everard you are struck by the sheer banality of his perversion. He’s quite up front that his doll hobby exists because he can’t get any real ass. But Virginia certainly gets out a fair amount - Everard is a keen hang-glider and she sits patiently in his car, head assiduously turned in his general direction as he glides over hill and dale.
Everard can’t understand why women aren’t impressed by his hang-gliding. “I would expect women to be naturally attracted to the types of blokes who do exciting things” he says in his turdly nasal monotone. It’s all in the delivery, Everard. “Here I am, a superhero but it’s deemed irrelevant”. I wouldn’t worry too much - The Silver Surfer had his women troubles too. You didn’t catch him porking puppets on the quiet.
Costing around £4,000 each it’s not surprising that the men see them as a long-term commitment. In America, Mike owns eight which is enough for a volleyball team with a couple of substitutes. Unlike most real doll enthusiasts, Mike dates real women and he’s recently hooked up with Jody, a woman he met through the internet. “As soon as he saw this” said Jody, pointing to a barely visible nose stud “He knew I was open-minded”. Shit girl, it’s all about scale. A chick having a nose stud merely means you might be able to get a blowjob without giving three weeks’ notice. Your man’s fucking the cast of Malibu Barbie: The Porn Years. Sporting a piercing last considered outré in 1957 ain’t preparing you for this.
But with admirable faith in human nature, Mike invites Jody to his birthday party where he will introduce the full extent of his obsession. She enters his house to be greeted by two of his dolls, fully dressed but with panties showing, legs splayed, comedy breasts and sporting party hats. “I need a beer” is her understandable response. After some discussion and getting used to the idea she says “I’m perfectly fine with it”. A week later she ends the relationship. It seems the Sisterhood Of Nose Piercing just didn’t have what it took. Shame.
Contemplate the real doll. She sits there, mute and glaring. You can never have anything in common. She can never love you and your love for her is an illusion. You can’t have a proper conversation, can’t ever ask her opinion, can’t relate to her as a real human - she is simply a very expensive cumbucket.
Let’s be honest - we’ve all had girlfriends like that.
The verdict on Guys And Dolls: “I’m a Barbie girl in the Barbie world. Life in plastic, it’s fantastic”.
Marks out of 10: 7
Cutting Edge: My Kid’s Psychic
Children make things up. It’s a thing they do before they develop a moral sense and can fully distinguish between fantasy and reality. They rely upon their parents to interpret this the correct way and quietly tell them that it’s wrong to tell fibs and that no one in life likes a bullshitter. Of course, if the parent ignores the lies or, worse still, actively encourages them, then you’re left with a situation where the child wields a huge amount of power over the parent, the tail wags the dog and that never ends well.
Yes, it’s My Kid’s Psychic, folks - just another non-judgmental look at lunatics from the nation’s TV makers. The “documentary” followed a pair of useless parents Nicola and Simone on their deluded quest to prove that their children have psychic ability. Replete with pink hair and tattooed tit, Nicola is the kind of insane menopausal New Age flagcracker you can’t move for round my way. She believes her 15 year-old daughter Heather to have great psychic and healing abilities. Heather used to see strange things as a child, though we’ll have to take Nicola’s word for this as Heather doesn’t remember seeing anything.
Nicola had seven miscarriages before she had her children. She now believes that her miscarried foetuses live with them in the house. “If some things are missing from the room we know the children have taken them.” Oh for the love of fuck.
The Gifted One, Heather, is obviously loving the attention and keen to develop her psychic abilities. Brother Christopher is less convinced. He is asked “Do you think your mother’s making it all up?”
“Yes.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Mid-life crisis.”
No stranger myself to delivering the verbal Mexican liver punch, I must immediately take my hat off to this young man for his devastating matricidal response. Getting to the heart of his mother’s pathology in a two-word phrase and it was not even the more obvious “loopy cunt”. Maybe she’s not such a terrible parent after all if she produced him?
But Nicola is not alone in her lunacy as we find out when we are introduced to Simone and Oliver. Oliver, 8, sees dead people - like the kid in The Sixth Sense. The truth is more prosaic. Oliver’s the thick kid at school and Simone can’t believe that she’s raised a dummy. “He twitches and starts running in circles.” Yes, that’s because your kid is fucking mental. Keep him away from other kids for the love of God. Oliver was diagnosed with ADDH and put on Ritalin but Simone has taken him off the drug because it upsets her. “I’m on a quest to find out what’s wrong with Oliver”. He’s a lunatic - just like his mother. Quest over.
Oliver, of course, is also fucking loving the attention. Though as the cameras roll and his mother shamelessly prompts him to come up with some visions, Oliver steadfastly refuses, preferring to lie down for a kip. “Yeah, the spirits are making me go to sleep now mom”
“Isn’t that strange?” Simone asks the camera crew. Strange doesn’t begin to cover it, sister.
When not favouring her idiot daughter over her intelligent son, Nicola gives pisspoor cold readings on the Destiny Channel and runs courses promoting the development of indigo and crystal children - children who New Age types believe have psychic powers and are an evolutionary leap forward. Yes, they really, really are.
When she was little, Nicola’s parents didn’t believe in her psychic abilities, what with them not existing and all, and she’s plainly never forgiven them. She’s working out her issues through children and she’s a controversial figure even among the crystal worshipping indigo freaks. There’s a suppressed hatred of children at work here - a resentment of their potential and a twisted desire to control them and put them to work for her own needs. It’s vile.
It’s obvious to anyone that Nicola is a sick piece of shit who should be locked up in a rubber room for a long, long time. But all Cutting Edge can do is play moody Sapphire and Steel background music and sit on the fucking fence. Cutting Edge, when are you actually going to do a number on the
se cunts and actually have the balls to stand by it? Do the documentary, take the stance, put your tin hat on and take the shit when it comes. You don’t believe this woman is a harmless idiot - you think that she’s a dangerous fuck.
Well fucking say so.
The verdict on Cutting Edge: My Kid’s Psychic: Just another cop-out.
Marks out of 10: 3
Inside Waco
I guess what we can all agree on is that a bunch of children being burnt alive was a bad thing. They didn’t ask to be there with these god-awful freaks - you don’t choose your parents after all. If you did then Apple Martin Paltrow would have opted for a less toxic pair of parents (Rose and Fred West perhaps). So yes, barbecued infants: bad. And it can’t have been much more fun for the adults but at least they were 100% responsible for the unholy fuck up they had created in the name of Armageddon and selling out their humanity to a spiritual huckster.
Inside Waco was a revealing look at the colossal Waco fuck up of 1993. Dramatic reconstruction and news footage from the time portrayed the events when a raid by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms on the Branch Davidian compound went badly wrong and a resulting siege made things about 10 times worse. The raid left four agents and six Davidians dead. A fire that ended the siege killed 80. By anyone’s standards, not a stellar chapter in the FBI’s history.
Inside the compound, David Koresh was accepted as the second coming of Christ. He preached polygamy for himself and abstinence for everyone else. He raped children of 12 and 13 with their parents’ consent and fathered children with them. He accumulated an impressive arsenal of rifles and illegal automatic weapons. The sound of gunfire from the firing ranges was an ever-present feature of the compound and it was this that initially alerted the authorities to the potential dangers at Mount Carmel.