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ISSUE 2 / SEPTEMBER 2011
OK KIMPUTER
TIGHT SUPREMACY
THE DAVID ICKE STORY
MODERN LIFE IS RUBBISH
UNUSUAL HOBBY
MATCH.COM
TEEN DRAMA FUCK UPS 2003-2009
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Issue 2 / September 2011
Editors
Romney Taylor
Tom Pounder
Deputy Editor
Sonny Baker
Contributors
Andrew Brooke
Ben Perdue
Duncan Robertson
Amy Stone
Ute Zucker
Follow @gutpap
www.gutpaper.com
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OK KIMPUTER
Duncan Robertson
The corpus callosum. That’s the connective tissue between
the two hemispheres of your brain. Its job is to filter out
unnecessary information. If you’re born without one it’s
unlikely you’ll ever amount to much. Although it’s possible
– just possible – you could be a MEGA SAVANT! The
human Google. Powerful beyond your wildest dreams.
Imagine: instead of filtering out that discarded infomatter,
your brain retained it. Forever. Instead of two halves of
your brain functioning hermetically, they combined to form
a super database. This is the story of Kim Peek – a truly
unique individual. When he was just a child, neurologists
diagnosed him with mental retardation, recommended
giving him a lobotomy and institutionalising him. The
advice to his parents was “forget about him”. But his dad,
being a nice guy and having limited grasp of science,
ignored their advice and decided to bring him up with the
rest of the family. At the time of his death in 2009, he was
an inspiration to millions.
His arbitrary and obscure talents have long been a source of
fascination. He was considered an expert in fifteen subjects
even though he never learned to dress himself or brush his
teeth. He was the subject of the film Rain Man and became
an icon to people everywhere who thought it would be
cool to be so good at maths they could beat the casinos in
Vegas or impress girls by memorising the phone book, thus
knowing their numbers before even meeting them.
Peek’s trademark was his ability to read two pages of a book
simultaneously, one with each eye, in 10 seconds – even if it
was upside down. He retained 98% of everything he read and
could recall some 12,000 books. After reading a book he would
place it upside down, signalling that it had been downloaded to
the Kim-puter. Another favourite pastime was to tell strangers
who their neighbours were decades ago. Today, these activities
would be fairly redundant, not to mention a bit creepy. With a
Kindle and an iPhone I could have access to all that and spend
my time doing something more productive. But in the preinternet days it was probably quite impressive.
revealed Kim was not even autistic) – was that he took
everything literally; meaning that he often adopted a narrowminded and pompously moralising stance on life. In addition
to this, Kim was boisterous and could not follow directions.
The scene in Rain Man where Raymond uses his dazzling
mental arithmetic skills to beat the casinos was not allowed
to take place in reality (despite the best efforts of the director)
because Kim felt it was ‘unethical’. If you ask me, that’s pretty
rich coming from someone with the cognitive development
of a five-year-old. HURRRR! DOES NOT KIM-PUTE!
Fucking hell.
We should also remember that for the most part, Kim squandered
his talents – he never went on game shows, entered pub quizzes,
edited encyclopaedias or got a job, refusing even to be paid for
public appearances. Sure, Kim memorised texts verbatim, but
could he comprehend them? Not a jot. One time, as a test for
NASA, he read Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October in
under an hour and when asked about it four months later, could
recall the name of the book’s Russian radio operator, the page
on which he entered the text and quote the entire passage at
length. However, he was completely unable to analyse the book
or say anything about the way it was written.
Kim told every lady he ever met she was beautiful, but the truth
is he was not interested in relationships, being unable to respond
to normal sexual stimuli. Unfortunately, this meant that he
never reproduced so we’ll never know whether his genes were
of superhuman calibre, or whether he was a freak occurrence.
What’s more, despite appearances, Kim’s IQ was a mere 87
(intelligent apes have an IQ of around 90) meaning that any
advances towards him would carry hefty legal ramifications.
It would also be quite weird. Although in middle-age he was
a lively, affable character, he clung dearly to routine and his
private life was heavily guarded.
Kim was raised a Mormon and cited the Bible as one of his
favourite books. His problem – and one shared with many
people on the autistic spectrum (although it was subsequently
Kim was not expected to live beyond his teenage years. He
passed away on December 19th, 2009 at the age of 58. He was
survived by his father, Fran.w
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TIGHT SUPREMACY
Ben Perdue
The International Exhibition of Arts and Techniques opened
in Paris on May 4, 1937. Of the 52 countries invited, two
marked their inclusion in this global celebration of creativity
with a sabre-rattling display of brutal proportions. At either
side of one entrance to the Pont d’Iéna, across the Trocadero
gardens of the Champs de Mars, sat the opposing pavilions
of Germany and the Soviet Union. A Nazi eagle carrying a
swastika in its talons – perched atop architect Albert Speer’s
towering cubic columns – was locked in a monumental face
off with Boris Iofan’s bronze statue of cooperative farm
maids and workers, brandishing their shared hammer and
sickle from an immense stone plinth. In the shadow of these
monstrous paeans to iconographic tyranny it would have
been easy to forget the aims of organiser Edmond Labbé, a
man who wanted to explore the relationship between art and
technology in order to prove that beauty and functionality
were inextricably linked. Prizes were awarded to pioneering
designers whose work exemplified his theory, and the
recipient of the Grand Prix de l’Exposition Internationale
was Étienne Valton. He was the owner of a hosiery label
called Petit Bateau and the innovation he was recognised for
was the invention of briefs – something Valton had achieved
back in 1918 by simply cutting the legs off his long johnstyle underwear.
Petit Bateau still makes the best briefs. The French brand is
best known for its children’s clothing – in the UK at any rate
– so their range of men’s underwear is usually overlooked.
This is compounded by the fact that their sizing is based on
age, with the oldest and therefore biggest choice available
being 18YO. Getting to those means flicking past 12YO,
14YO and 16YO on the display rail – an experience that
only increases the feeling that you’re shopping for children’s
clothing. Hopefully anyone watching assumes you have
young sons at home. That or they understand the mindset of
customers on the Continent who have loyally stuck with the
same brand of underwear they grew up in – underpinning
the label’s recent market growth in the process. Chances
are no one actually gives a shit, but it doesn’t help that the
packaging has illustrations of toy cars on either. That aside,
the slips (briefs in French) are definitely for men – albeit
those who haven’t gained weight since their late teens. Polo
shirts, sleepwear and jersey basics for adults sit elsewhere
in-store, but the underwear is always merchandised in this
way – on one wall for all ages. It can be viewed firsthand
at the last shop in London to carry them, situated on the
King’s Road. You could buy older boys’ and men’s apparel
at the South Molton Street branch up until a few years ago
when they stopped stocking them (coincidentally Muji have
ceased selling their hip briefs in the UK altogether now in
favour of boxer briefs). And if you want to shop for them
in Paris instead just avoid the branch around the corner
from Colette on Rue de 29 Juillet because they only have
swimwear; the store on Rue de Sévigné is always a safe bet.
Men’s style magazines in France, notably L’Officiel Hommes
and Vogue Hommes International, have a strong tendency to
include shots of male models in their underwear. The idea is
not so much to showcase the brands or styles, as it is to show
off the bodies wearing them. A creative direction that should
be seen as a reflection of the way that sister titles like Paris
Vogue frequently use female nudity in their fashion stories.
Nothing to do with art directors drooling over ectomorph
twink boys – in the same way that using images of a female
model with no top on in a women’s fashion title has nothing
to do with fuelling the lesbian fantasies of its editors or
readership. The upshot being that Petit Bateau briefs appear
frequently in these publications, ultimately because they are
small and tight, but also due to their good French industrial
heritage, and the fact they display a basic design ethos
that combines simple functionality with quality materials.
Discovering them outside of France – where they are
already an established men’s underwear staple – has usually
been a case of checking the credits from the aforementioned
editorials.
The brand legacy is built on two key shapes, first of which is
a five-panel hip brief with a self-covered stretch waistband
in 100% cotton. A double-layered front panel features
understated overlocked seams as well as a central closed
seam – mirrored on the reverse – for comfort and a more
body-sculpted fit. This style is available in black, marl grey
and Air Force blue. The second iconic design is another
hip brief that this time uses a two-panel construction and
has a jacquard elastic waistband with the signature boat
logos. Cut as high in the leg as the first shape but with
a wider waistband, they give the impression of greater
coverage than their counterparts. A closed overlocked seam
runs from halfway down the front panel to its seam with
the back panel. This is lined with another layer of jersey
and again helps create a contoured shape. The fabrication
is 100% cotton but colour availability is limited to white.
Both of the designs come in multipacks of two and although
it says on the website that traditional small, medium and
large sizes can be translated into 14YO, 16YO and 18YO
respectively, anyone with a 28” waistline or larger should
opt for no less than 18YO. Why a company that is actively
trying to increase its commercial reach in the adult market
has so far failed to offer its best underwear shapes in sizes
geared to a more realistic image of the modern male build is
anyone’s guess. Good news for emaciated young men with
a working knowledge of the French style media. Not so
great for the average menswear customer looking to update
their underwear drawer. But then that’s why the British
invented Sunspel.w
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THE DAVID ICKE STORY
Tom Pounder
Childhood
Football career
TV presenter
David Icke was born in Leicester, England in 1952. His
father Beric Icke was a former RAF mechanic decorated
for gallantry after saving the lives of an aircrew that had
crashed in Oxfordshire in 1943. After the war he worked
in the Gents clock factory and the family lived in meagre
accommodation on a slum terrace in the centre of Leicester.
“To say we were skint,” Icke wrote in 1993, “is like saying
it is a little chilly at the North Pole.”
Describing himself as a loner and an outsider from an
early age, Icke found solace playing football, in goal. He
was talent-spotted at the age of 15 and eventually went
on to play at a professional level for Hereford United and
Coventry City. His career was cut short when he developed
arthritis in his knees and he was forced to retire at the age of
21. Later on, he began to flirt with fringe medicine and New
Age philosophies in an effort to find relief from his arthritis.
In 1973 he got a job as a reporter with the weekly Leicester
Advertiser. He advanced through local radio to television,
and became a regional sports presenter for the BBC’s South
Today in 1982. He then appeared on the first edition of
British television’s first national breakfast show, Breakfast
Time, presenting the sports news for them until 1985. He
worked for BBC Sport until August 1990, often as a standin host on Grandstand and snooker programmes, and also at
the 1988 Summer Olympics. He later wrote that he found
television workers insincere, shallow, and vicious, with
rare exceptions. His contract with the BBC was terminated
in 1990 when he refused to pay his poll tax. He became
involved with the Green Party from 1988 to 1991, rising to
become one of their four national Speakers.
The Turquoise Period
The Biggest Secret
International Acclaim
In March 1990, he decided to visit Betty Shine, a psychic healer
in Brighton, to ask for help with his arthritis. She told him she
had a message for him, and said he had been sent to heal the
Earth. In February 1991, he visited the pre-Inca Sillustani
burial ground in Peru. He felt drawn to a large mound of earth,
at the top of which lay a circle of waist-high stones. He said
his body started shaking as though plugged into an electrical
socket and new ideas began to pour into him. In March 1991,
a week after resigning from the Green Party, he held a press
conference to announce that he had become a “channel for
the Christ spirit,” a title conferred on him by “the Godhead”.
What followed became what Icke calls his “turquoise period.”
He began to wear only turquoise because, he believed, it is a
conduit of positive energy. Notoriously he then appeared on
the Wogan chat show clad in a turquoise shellsuit and implied,
amid laughter from the studio audience, that he was “the son of
God,” and said Britain would be devastated by tidal waves and
earthquakes. He became a laughing stock.
Icke said the Wogan interview had been the making of him,
that the laughter had set him free, giving him the courage
to develop his ideas without caring what anyone thought of
him. He continued to write, turning himself into a prolific
author and speaker. The Biggest Secret (1999), his most
commercially successful book to date, outlines how the
world is becoming a global fascist state controlled by a
secret group of reptilian humanoids called the Babylonian
Brotherhood. These same interconnecting bloodlines have
controlled the planet for thousands of years, and many
prominent figures are reptilian, including George W. Bush
and Queen Elizabeth II.
Icke has dubbed himself “the most controversial speaker on
the planet”. They used to laugh at him, but now they come
in the thousands to hear him speak all over the world. He is
the author of 16 books and among them are: ...And the Truth
Shall Set You Free (1995); Children of the Matrix (2001);
Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster:
Why the Official Story of 9/11 is a Monumental Lie (2002).
Tales from the Time Loop (2003), Icke claims, is “the most
comprehensive exposé of the global conspiracy ever written
and all you need to know to be truly free”.w
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MODERN LIFE IS RUBBISH
Sonny Baker
The Brief
Sunday Nights Are Shit is an hour-long, satirical, comedy panel show being
developed by FOG Productions. A non-broadcast pilot was produced in
association with BBC3, but we feel they didn’t quite ‘get’ what we were
trying to do. We are now actively looking to find a channel with better
chemistry to progress SNAS further.
The Format
Every week two teams made up of four comedians each must write and
perform a sketch that takes a sideways look at a current news event. They
must also give their team a humorous name.
These skits are then screened in front of a studio audience, after which the
panel of comedians must criticize and mock the sketch of the other team. At
the end of the show, the audience votes on which sketch was “the shit skit”
and which was “the it skit” based on which team they felt argued their case
the strongest. The team who are deemed to have produced “the shit skit”
must carry out a forfeit as decided by the team that produced “the it skit”.
The Audience
We see our audience as being part of a new generation who are sick and
tired of bullshit in the media. They want something that is quality to watch
and reflects the kind of no-holds-barred banter they have with their mates
in the pub. Our panels will be made up of real comedians who don’t do the
cheesy punchline-humour crap, but instead expose truths (and don’t give
a damn who they offend when they do it). We don’t have any boundaries
with our jokes and sketches, and people who are offended can go and
watch Fawlty Towers or something. This is television for the post-YouTube
generation, who will blog and tweet about the show to create an open
dialogue with the producers and talent.
The Pilot
The host for our non-broadcast pilot was Jimmy Carr.
Guests for the pilot were as follows:
Team A
Frankie Boyle
Lucy Porter
Ronni Ancona
Russell Kane
Team B
Sean Locke
Sue Perkins
Katy Brand
Lee Mack
Team A named themselves “Princess Di’s Posse” and produced a semiimprovised skit based around the Amanda Knox murder trial in which Knox
(played by Ancona) flirts with each member of the jury in order to escape
conviction. She continually re-emerges in increasingly provocative outfits
(taking a swipe at Lady Gaga and Rihanna) until she ends up having a
steamy lesbian kiss with the prosecution lawyer (Lucy Porter). She is then
“let free” without charge.
Team B dubbed themselves “The Real Fucking A-Team” and re-imagined the
European banking crisis as an X-Factor style talent show in which a panel
of ‘random’ judges (including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Simon Cowell and a
rude version of Bungle from Rainbow) decide which countries are allowed to
have their debt cleared.
Creative Telly Goodness For The T'Interweb Age
Creative Telly Goodness For The T'Interweb Age
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The Banter
The teams then engaged in debate with each other and the host about the
sketches. A typical example of the banter is below:
Russell Kane: Katy (Brand), you’re a worse actor than Keanu Fucking
Reeves, and he’s made of wood!
Sean Locke: If he’s made of wood, do you think he can still GET wood?
Russell Kane: Yeah but it’s like a twig innit!
Frankie Boyle: Oh, you WOULD know that wouldn’t you great big twatting
bender! [In Keanu Reeves voice] “Hey. Russell dude. Totally come here and
bone me” [makes sucking noises for 30 seconds]
Katy Brand: Oh KEANU Reeves, I thought you meant Christopher Reeves,
the bloke in the wheelchair! I was like “that’s a bit fucking random!”
Lee Mack: Imagine that! Him and Stephen Hawking as Bill and Ted! He’d try
to say “69 dude” and the fucking calculator he talks through would try and
do a sum
Frankie Boyle: Do you remember them shit calculators you’d have in
school? You’d scratch your name in the back with a compass, and someone
would always write “is gay” afterwards, and the weird old paedo PE teacher
would see it and try it on with you in the shower… No? Oh, just me then…
Moving swiftly on!
The Judgment
We then throw the power over to the audience. Every member is given a
table-tennis paddle with a photo on each side – one side is used to vote
“shit” the other used to vote “it”, and each week we use new photos to
represent these options. For the pilot, Ross Kemp’s face was used for “Shit”
and Simon Bird from the Inbetweeners Movie was used for “it” (this was in
collaboration with 4Films – we see this “it” sponsorship as being a potentially
big thing going forward. Imagine for example the Killers release a new album;
sponsorship from Universal Records would mean Brandon Flowers was our
‘it’ that week).
The Forfeit
Now that the “shit skit” has been decided, it’s time for the team to face
punishment. We have several awesome ideas for forfeits, such as:
Death by Cheese
The team must dance for a full minute to a cheesy pop song, for example, “S
Club Party” by S Club 7 (we know, we know… Epic cringe!)
Mum’s The F-Word
Each member of the team must phone up either their mum or dad on
speakerphone and say a series of nasty phrases. In the pilot, Katy Brand
made her mum cry (on her birthday!) by calling her a “donkey-ballsswallowing old slag”!
So that’s it, in a nutshell. We think [*TAG_COMPANY_NAME*] would be an
awesome home for our show. Ping us at the address above if you want to
talk more over a cuppa.
Yours,
Julian, Martin and Soph
FOG
Creative Telly Goodness For The T'Interweb Age
Creative Telly Goodness For The T'Interweb Age
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UNUSUAL HOBBY
Andrew Brooke
The man appears on a gameshow in 1989. He has that dartsplayer look – you know; moustache, permed mullet. Like
some people might have chuckled at back in the 1990’s,
having moved on to more sophisticated grooming territories.
At the time of writing, 2011, the darts players themselves
(even they) would likely chuckle ruefully at the past, would
know the tropes. Steve ‘The Bronzed Adonis’ Beaton, a
past-master of the form, in terms of both the darts-player
look, and the game of darts itself, has long ditched his
formerly highlighted&frosted Princess Di/George Michael
look and gone for a shorter, more conservative style; a kind
of classic crop with a little bit of length on top. He’s kept
the moustache – but then, in the current climate, with all
the young folk at it (surely too young to even remember
being young enough to mock real moustaches the first time
round?) his moustache can pass. It’s all blown pretty wide
open now, up to a point: The difference between a chosen,
nurture-tache and a culturally inherited nature-tache can be
clearly seen in the other semiotic tells of bearing, clothing
etc, so; no confusion – try sporting your lustrous Wing
Commander London Fields look in certain pubs in certain
former mining towns in the north and see how it goes down.
A kindly fiance urging your attacker to stop as he peels your
scalp back with a single blow from a Fosters-branded pint
glass. Then again, you could just get chuckled at. Like in
the 1990’s, which followed on from the 1980’s.
The man appears in a courtroom twenty-odd years later,
accused and subsequently found guilty of horrific crimes
that took place circa one month after his appearance on the
darts-based gameshow Bullseye. A clip of him appearing on
the show is used in court as evidence to show his appearance
at the time in relation to a contemporaneous police sketch
of the suspect. Amongst all the details of his life, amidst
all that uncontrollable narrative, knowns and unknowns, his
appearance on Bullseye is the thing that defines him in the
media commentary/reportage. Google ‘bullseye murderer/
killer’ and there he is, in all his elliptical narrative entirety.
Apart from sheer, Victorian paperboy ‘laaahvley murder!’
ghoulishness, what is the action for us in making narrative
from people’s lives in this way? Invited to view events
framed through a certain lens: You, the Victims – You, the
Bullseye Murderer. Presenter Jim Bowen asks the man in
the Bullseye clip to tell us about his ‘unusual hobby’. The
hobby is fairly usually unusual in that it is Scuba-diving.
The entity John Cooper; ‘Farmhand’, ‘Scuba Diver’, ‘Game
Show Contestant’, ‘Murderer’, ‘Bullseye Murderer’, ‘Lifer’.
We are defined, constrained and ultimately frozen for others
by mediations, by narrative choices. Hacked voicemail
messages, leaked emails etc extract private actions, private
conversations out of their labyrinthine private contexts,
cathedral-like innerspace in all its unending multiplicity,
and turn them into component parts of starkly reductive
narratives. Our words’ mediation of events, or our words
taken purely as new action in themselves, whether written
or spoken aloud (’You better be ready Friday the 20th to
meet with me. Pig. Oh, also, tell your mother I said “Go
fuck yourself.” This is Dad, ring me back when you get a
chance’ ‘Darling I got me time zones confused and missed
you blessed birthday by a day. I want to wisk you away to a
deserted island beach, honey glase you, let you cook slowly
before a torrid and passionate embrace’) get repackaged for
consumption, become a new action, are given a new context
in a new narrative. What is the particular chord struck by someone having
appeared on a Gameshow, getting on for a Quarter-Century
ago? Are the extraordinary acts Cooper committed made
more extraordinary by their brutal proximity to frivolity.
Barbarity playing kissing cousins with the chance to win
The Teasmade/The Speedboat on a gameshow, have a laugh,
participate in Showbiz as a Punter, feed a vanity? Are we
invited by the media to chuckle at the kitsch within the
reportage? Do we look to see a sign? A look in the eye? We
know the media trope by now of the Banality of Evil; ‘he
seemed like an ordinary man’. The banality of those details
that we may find we can imagine better, simply because
they belong to a more recent past may be a big part of what
fundamentally disturb. Ripper Tours? East End Fun. Ripper
Tours in Yorkshire? Too close to home – no fun, no thanks.
The 17th Century ruffian, hung for a thief at Tyburn, would
have breakfasted on, I don’t know...No, I literally don’t
know – my guesses; Ale/small beer or similar. They didn’t
drink water back then for hygiene reasons, right? With...
something plain? Millet/Wheat-based? Bread? Or was
it cold meat? Meat would surely have been hard to come
by, for the poor? Offal maybe? Tripe? Still seen as a funfood/treat thing now though, so maybe even that would’ve
been hard to come by...Eggs? With our ruffian’s 20th/21st
Century equivalent; we can go into a wealth of detail, as
people that have lived in close proximity to/within his/her
times – a lot more reasonable supposition can flood in. Full
English? Content can vary of course with that dish, regional
specialities etc, but basic ingredients will stay reasonably
consistent. Just eggs and bacon? An acknowledged Classic
after all, good for a day’s labour. Loads of white toast
and butter on the side – or on the plate, get the juices up;
lovely. Farmhand; hardy work. Was it cereal maybe? One
of the well-known British brands of the era; Ready Brek?
Weetabix? Bit of Steve Wright on the radio on the drive in to
work? No; he was in the afternoon, and Farming starts early.
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Ellipsis hooks us in; the fascinating endless unknowable
otherness of other lives. The aspect of our lives that
renders us perpetual wedding guests/speed-daters sees us
voluntarily presenting narrative versions/elective readings
of our selves when we meet other people in a multitude of
different contexts. We are increasingly encouraged to freeze
our selves into evermore rigid narratives; define yourself
and align yourself in a social marketplace, for example
on social networking platforms; No place for diffident
dissidents; stand up straight and tell me to my face. Justify
Your ‘Tache. Co-ordinate yourself on the map, tell us your
favourite, defining consuming preferences.
‘Hello, I’m (a shortening of my given name) I work for a
Major Pharmaceutical Company in the Wiltshire area. In
my spare time I like to go Scuba-diving and Rock Climbing.
My favourite groups are The Christians, and Wet Wet Wet’
‘Look; you’re all here to have a laugh - dont worry about
the intro’s, ok? Its just; name, job, hobbies, ok? Jim’ll see
you right, nothing to worry about. Now; there’s tea, and
coffee – no expense spared! – on the trestle over there,
and we’ve apparently just run out of Blue Ribands, but...
someone....very talented, is running out to get some more
from the...Kwiksave over the-ok, gotta go; have fun, ok?
Just enjoy yourselves’
‘why when i feel to stop with Jessie J she do a gud 1?!!!! lol’
Episode 1, back in 1986. Beginning of the endeavour; dewy
mornings, dry-haired puffa-jacketed (not contemporary
North Face, but the genuine Puffa brand) 80’s crew, hope in
their hearts. Nevertheless, much is there; decades-worth of
seeming-knowns.
It’s a kind of cultural-temporal cringe that elicits the
response. It reaches out to the passive nihilist in the
spectator; you know there’s Funny in here, you shouldn’t,
but...oh go on then; its naughty, but not nice. Laugh at the
things you most fear; the randomly-encountered brutalisers
out there, subject to the same vagaries of time as the rest
of us. This middle aged man, unknowable to us, except by
the news-media-disseminated still image, featuring a kitsch
near-past personal-grooming element that we might feel
able to chuckle at, that is held up by the media for exactly
such a purpose – such men live! Lived! Kill! Are killed! Not
us! Saddam the shuffling old man on the scaffold. What is
the purpose of this action on their part and ours? Our mutual
action? Our collective mediation of these elliptical facts? What is to come? Will it be hurt me? In the unknown space
might be the Terrifying Bogeyman Other of childhood
nightmares. Are people more acccessible, and therefore
more comprehensible to us in the current age because they
electively perform ever-denser narratives of self for us? I’ll
tell you everything. I’m a really really open person. What
you see is what you get. You know what? I’m just doing me.
This one collision of an otherwise unknowable subject’s life
– an Ordinary Person – with the shared, mass narrative of
tv makes it disjointed for us. Totally unknowable is maybe
somehow more comprehensible and easier to process, to
create a coherent narrative from, than this part-participation
in a wider narrative. Google-Image Ian McShane; go right
back to the 60’s, the young pretty-boy, through the bit older
(though still handsome) Sylvia Kristel Hollywood-Hustle
years, through the Lovejoy years, through to the current
Deadwood-Renaissance period, via Sexy Beast etc; not so
many blanks to fill in. And thats just still imagery; there is
a wealth of text (interviews and commentary pieces) and
video, and of course the performances themselves. This is of
course predominantly closely subject-controlled, or at least
subject-as-active-participant content. You’d have to chase
up the true fans, the Stage Door Jonnies/Joans for a Stage
Door picture of McShane maybe looking a little sallowskinned and peaky on a wet wednesday during the run of the
Musical of Witches of Eastwick at the Theatre Royal, Drury
Lane, London in the year 2000. Even then, McShane might
have done his best to mediate the encounter by a slicking
down of a wayward lock of that raven hair, or at least making
sure a Morrisons bag was out of shot. Though, back in 2000
I’m not sure the latter issue would have arisen (when did the
chain come South?) Unless he’d been up north on a visit to
of course. And you’d have to form your own narrative of,
say, a quick interlude of smalltalk between him and Dudley
Sutton as they both happen to relieve themselves at the same
time in the location honeywagon, maybe during the filming
of the first Lovejoy episode ‘The Firefly Cage’, Season 1,
sea-mammal in that moment, in those several, multiple,
endless moments. An astronaut in another world, reachable
from ours, as long as you have a reasonable income; enough
to afford All The Gear, the transport, the time. English feet
poking out like birds claws, cuffed by the Scuba-suit legs.
A bit of veiny humanity just there, reminding their way
out of the the bottom of the Scuba-suit on the way to the
car. Admiral flip-flops (footballer-style, not thongs) Redgrained yellow/white feet there; long toenails, bit yellow,
bit dry. The cream for the salt-rash. The Athlete’s Foot
powder, unloved and functional old plates.
‘On our way to the coast. Its always fun, but its a fairly
solitary thing actually, really, even when you’re in a group.
We talk on the way. A bit. Not loads. Gary’s never organised,
always has to get sandwiches from the Texaco station. Thats
not me’
A packet of ham, petrol-rainbow on top, bought at the tesco
attached to the larger petrol station, bought for sandwiches
‘I’ve some Kingsmill in, butter’n’mustard’n’that. get
tomatoes from the grocers. Or the other tescos...’
Read All About it; It’s All About Me. Newspaper reports
with candid shots of Killers and Victims alike, lifted from
facebook profiles, or could be. Certain candid snaps look
implicitly facebooky, look like they belo
ng on a news
report – graduation shots a particular speciality of course;
all that potential. Clever lad/lass too. We know that people
are capable of terrible acts of violence, and that they live
amongst us. The statistics augur against an encounter, but;
what did that man who ate the guessable breakfast think
that day? What did he do last tuesday? Is he close? How
can I comprehend him, the hims out there, and therefore
leaven my fear? The past is sloppily archived for all of us.
The years between extraordinary events so full of missing
space and detail. And none of that knowing may help you
anyway, on the day.
And finally it may just be that you end, swimming
wordlessly in nature, a beast alone, an encased isolate, all
noise and gewgaws gone, sea or no sea, turned off like a
fridge full of meat. In sheathed isolation, viewing through
a portal, in nature and of it, but not communing with the
generality anymore. Locked in yourself at the end, all talk
and noise gone. Just all of your world inside your skull.
All unending mystery, until the end, in the head. At least
some of us may be lucky enough to look into another’s
eyes and comprehend love before we go off diving, with no
sandwiches.w
APPENDIX
Many scuba divers have compared the “thrill” of their sport to that of
piloting a plane. The scuba diver is exposed directly to the underwater
environment. He has no contact with the surface and depends entirely
on his breathing apparatus and its limited air supply. Even though he is
diving with a buddy (a basic rule of scuba diving), he must face most
of his problems alone. These conditions demand an ability to adjust
mentally to diving. The mobility of scuba diving is perhaps its greatest
appeal. The diver has no bulky equipment to hamper his actions. At
neutral buoyancy he can swim under water in any direction. He can
A performed life, a narrative defining, taking place in the
curious mix of real-time and archive/elliptical space that
the Internet allows us, means many of us are perpetually
living self-consciously (whether they’re aware of it or not)
within inverted commas, in a comments box, archive box,
evidence box. The degree to which platforms and modes of
discourse such as social networking sites etc have created
this aspect in some people, where it might not have been
there before is moot. If I am encouraged to define myself on
a constant basis (The language is clear; Sign Up) what does
that do to my sense of self? Perform, Performer. cover considerable distances unaided, and with the use of any of a
number of propulsive devices he can greatly increase his operating
range. Depth control is another major advantage of scuba. There is little
buoyancy in the equipment. This eliminates the need for carrying heavy
weights. As a result, the scuba diver can maintain or change his depth
at will. He can cruise under water at safe depth, can search deep areas
from shallow depths, can explore underwater caves and travel under ice
floes. The water is his domain.
www.water-sports-guide.com
I hardly have anything to say when i’m down there; i just know 5 or 6
basic signs that we all use. i’m not an underwater chatterbox. I go down
And could it be that the man became transmogrified in the
amoral space of the sea, tightly encased in the manmade,
yet simultaneously free of the world of men; simply another
there for the silence and the sensation of being alone
Forum user Seagul on divingtalk.com
10
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Ute Zucker
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PEYTON SAWYER VS.
MARISSA COOPER:
TEEN DRAMA FUCK UPS
2003-2009
Amy Stone
L I FE
S U B S TA N C E S
MC High school golden girl, dating a misogynistic, unfaithful
water polo player, lives in a gated community in Orange
County. Dad’s a fraud-scamming accountant of sorts, mom’s
a yogalates and cardio bar fanatic. Has one bratty younger
sister who has fanatical attachment to her alopecia-ridden
horse (one turns up in a later series all hot and stuff). Hooks
up with the town outcast, car thief Ryan. One of their earlier
dates sees them unintentionally setting fire to a show home.
MC Initially favours champagne at mom and dad’s parties,
later moving on to secret handbag stashes of vodka, drunk
driving and full blown alcoholism with some class As and
pot thrown in for good measure.
PS High school golden girl, dating a misogynistic, unfaithful
basketball player, lives in a red-painted bedroom full of
Fall Out Boy graffiti. Dad’s mostly in absentia thanks to
his mysteriously nondescript job in computers, and mom’s
already dead before the first show. No siblings, but a spunky
best friend who likes boys and cheerleading. Hooks up with
the town outcast, child out-of-wedlock Lucas Scott. One of
their earlier ‘dates’ sees him getting a black eye from his
half-brother, who also happens to be Peyton’s boyfriend of
the moment.
PS Dabbles with cocaine but decides she’s bigger than
peer pressure and ditches the white to set up a booze-free
underage club night.
L O V E
MC Ditches long-term childhood boyfriend Luke for an
eternal on-off-on-off semi-relationship with Ryan. In the
interim periods flirts with the mentally unhinged Oliver,
becomes a part-time lesbian, prick-teases a clueless spod
who jumps off a cliff for her and goes on a sex bender with a
surfer who pretty much hates everyone’s guts.
PS Ditched long-term childhood boyfriend Nathan for an
eternal on-off-on-off semi-relationship with Lucas (which
actually concludes in marriage). In the interim periods gets
busted for macking on her best friend’s guy, fends off a
lesbian’s advances, falls for a runaway single dad and has a
go at an ill-fated love affair with Pete Wentz.
L OOK
MC Precursor to the Gossip Girl generation of wardrobe
supervising: teens on telly in prêt-a-porter by day, couture
by night. So much so that even after her dad Jimmy Cooper
gambles away all his cash on shitty stock market deals, and
her step-dad Caleb Nichol (Neighbours’ Jim Robinson in his
current favourite role as the wealthy, overbearing patriarch)
dies of a heart attack leaving her dollar-less and living in
a trailer, she’s still pulling out Marc Jacobs camisoles and
$300 Seven jeans to go to class. Great hair.
PS Representative of her emo streak. Straight-outta-the90s cropped leather jackets, denim mini skirts, Vans and
obligatory band t-shirt. Consistently terrible hair.
D E AT H
MC Killed off in a car accident caused by her ferally jealous
drug dealer/boyfriend and carried down the highway by
Ryan (not in a vest for once) to the tune of Leonard Cohen’s
Hallelujah, sung by someone that isn’t Leonard Cohen, or Jeff
Buckley, or in fact Alexandra Burke.
PC Survives all eight seasons (only just), although does
get written out after the sixth when she, Lucas and the new
(unimaginatively monikered) baby Sawyer, speed off in a beatup Comet to wherever he’s going to work on a film based on a
book based almost exclusively on his own love life.w