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Barbenheimer's polar opposites

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  Quite interesting, the recommendation (half-serious, surely) to tackle Barbenheimer head on and see 2023’s two blockbusters one after the other. This is because Christopher Nolan’s opus can be seen as the polar opposite of Barbie’s patriarchy-smashing, and not just because all the significant characters in Oppenheimer, all those suited scientists busily working to destroy personkind, were male. The two female characters in Oppenheimer, played by Florence Pugh and Emily Blunt, are cyphers, seemingly just there for either a bit of cheesecake, or a moaning harpie continually warning Robert that it will All End Badly.  It is a common observation that Christopher Nolan “doesn’t do women” and this long, long film bears that out. Pugh is a magnetic screen presence but her character was superfluous, even if this was not the case in Oppenheimer’s life. Had she, a Communist, been the proven cause of his downfall then her presence would have been justified, but there was little if any ...
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Guilt-edged view of history

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  Guilt, guilt, guilt. Guilt, guilt, guilt. (Can be sung to the tune of 70s band Sailor’s “Girls” if you are in that space.) Everywhere you look listen or read, more guilt being  heaped upon us for a misspent life before wokeness, hot yoga, gender pronouns, etc The recent one is the inquity of body-shaming programmes, even those which did not directly set out with a shaming mission, such as  America’s Top Model . This, hosted by Tyra Banks, features a parade of lovely young hopefuls trying to ascend the ladder of catwalk success in their six-inch heels. Even the boys. Or those who identify as ... whatever. It started in 2003 and is now in its twenty-somethingth season. My daughter as a teenager absolutely loved it, and I didn’t mind sitting down with her sometimes to reflect on how different life might have been if I’d had cheekbones like  geometry  (copyright Lloyd Cole) and a figure like, er, trigonometry. But I was wrong, I was bad, negligent, a cruel mo...
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Incredibly annoying

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  Creative Commons image of Elvis Presley Isn’t it incredible, the number of times “incredibly” is used in conversation and written communication. It featured numberous times in the UK leadership debate on July 17, but we don’t have to go that high (or should I say low) for examples. In the background as I write is the peerless quiz   Pointless , where the host Alexander Armstrong has just told a contestant that her description of her rather ordinary job is “incredible”.   Incredible and incredibly mean “impossible or difficult to believe”. Think of the claims that Elvis is alive and working in a chip shop in Birmingham. I know you are going to say, come on Angela, people say “amazing” all the time when they are not actually amazed but just being polite. So it’s not just the hyperbole I am criticising, but the crushing frequency with which it inappropriately pops up. We turn to the Financial Times …”the departing prime minister is now incredibly unpopular”.   Does th...
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Ancient rockers help change public perception of ageing competence

A big thanks to you, Macca! And also, slightly less enthusiastic to Nancy Pelosi, William Shatner and Henry Kissinger. This rogues’ gallery has one thing in common: they are old. Not just objectively, OK boomer old, but really old, with ages of 80,  82, 91  and 99 respectively. And look at ‘em! McCartney’s set at Glastonbury might not have been his finest musical hour, but after a ragged start  he didn’t sound too bad , and he played for two and a half hours. Take note, Barbra Streisand, Van Morrison and other famous entertainers who have left their crowds wanting more after barely a half-hour. All of these oldies are still goodies; although it might make those of us decades younger wince at the prospect of still having to deliver our professional and social contribution so much longer, they are doing fantastic work in raising the age bar for relevance.   Whereas you were on the scrapheap in your forties a few years ago (I speak from experience, more or les...
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Boris is to. blame for the House of Commons decay

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                                Photo:  chris robert  on  Unsplash TRACTORS are having their moment in the sun, or in the memes, with the artistic comedians among us trying to present a porn-y encounter between the agricultural behemoths.   And are wives and girlfriends everywhere nodding in recognition at ex-MP Neil Parish’s explanation that “he was looking for something else and the porn site popped up”, so he had a good look at that, and then a second look. Really, darling, I was trying to find electric foot massagers for your birthday!   For all of us except the Parish family the story about the MP who watched porn during a session of the House of Commons in Westminster has been rattling good entertainment. ‘Serious commentators’ have been bemoaning the disgraceful dishonouring of the Mother of All Parliaments, the precipitous low to which standards have fallen in Britain.  ...
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Anxiety epidemic based on a fable of contentment

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  08 March 2022: ANXIETY   “A culture of achievement … destroys my students in terms of anxiety” – Harvard “professor of happiness” Laurie Santos, quoted in The New York Times   We must be happy. We think we should always be happy. If we’re not, something’s wrong. But this is like the illusion that led so many doctors to prescribe opioids to patients in the US, creating a situation in which  tens of thousands a year were dying of desperate addiction: there must be no pain. Pain is not to be tolerated. Life is to be painless. That’s mad, right? As mad as Vlad the Invader. Pain is part of life, unhappiness is part of life, happiness is part of life – but it’s not ALL of life. A rich tapestry, as a heartbroken reporter (failed romance) said sadly to me once back in Australia. Life is a tapestry, but that tapestry is not made up of threads of all the same colour. We are just bobbing along most of the time, sometimes we are happy and feel great, sometimes we are unha...
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Unihuman or split personality?

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  Work can be a distraction from our private woes or worries. Going to the office – if you are back in the office now – can be a relief even if drudgery awaits, because it is a different setting, where you perhaps play a different role than you do on the home front. Granted, there are other anxieties here, especially if you feel the job is getting beyond you, the boss has unrealistic expectations, or you are not being promoted as fast as you deserve. But the kitchen-table concerns at least are left behind. This is one of the reasons why this fad for “bringing your whole self to work” is a bad idea. Leave the baggage at home, the cracked plates in the kitchen. I didn’t know about “bringing my whole self to work” but a piece by Douglas Murray  in the Spectator magazine  enlightened, as well as mystified, me. So this is a thing – has your organisation embraced it? There is a  2018 book  by US author Mike Robbins which spells out the idea. You should not try to supp...
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