Oct 19: There's no mention of Matt Groening or The Simpsons on these (new in at Lidl). Do you think they're legit? Well, it says enjoy them while they last. Who am I to refuse?
Oct 3: Just found myself whistling the theme tune to Taxi then a train of thought led me to remembering Mike Post's TV theme tunes and how none of them fitted the shows.
Taxi was too wistful and not comedic at all. Hill St Blues was too whimsical and nothing like a cop show. And Quantum Leap? It's a daytime soap theme, not a science fiction show. It's hard to find one show he wrote the theme tune for where you couldn't have found way more appropriate library music.
So, anyway, RIP Mike Post. (Joke!).
Oct 17: Who's for a game of Things-Guys-Do Bingo using this list, during tomorrow night's Apprentice? Pretty sure I saw all these things last week.
Don’t talk over women.
When you see another guy talk over a woman, say: “Hey, she was saying something.”
Learn to read a fucking room.
Don’t call women “crazy” in a professional setting.
Involve women in your creative projects, then let them have equal part in them.
Don’t make assumptions about a woman’s intelligence, capabilities or desires based on how she dresses.
If a woman tells you that you fucked up, and you feel like shit, don’t put it on that woman to make you feel better. Apologize without qualification and then go away.
Don’t punish women for witnessing your vulnerability.
Don’t get defensive when you get called out.
Don’t expect women to be “nice” or “cute” and don’t get upset when they aren’t those things.
Pay women as much as you pay men.
Don’t need to literally witness a man being horrible in order to believe that he’s horrible. Trust and believe women.
Don’t use your power to get women’s attention/company/sex/etc.
Don’t use your “feminism” as a way to get women to trust you. Show us in your day-to-day life, not in your self-congratulatory social media. *
Don’t make misogynistic jokes.
If you are asked to be on a panel/team and see that it’s all men, say something. Maybe even refuse the spot!
Do you feel that any woman on earth owes you something? She doesn’t. Even if you’re like, “Hm, but what about basic respect?” ask yourself if you’ve shown her the same.
Don’t touch women you don’t know, and honestly, ask yourself why you feel the need to touch women in general.
Be aware of your inherent power in situations and use it to protect women, especially via talking to other men.
Stop thinking that because you’re also marginalized or a survivor that you cannot inflict pain or oppress women.
If you do the right thing, don’t expect praise or payment or a pat on the back or even a “thank you from that woman”. Congratulations, you were baseline decent.
If a woman says no to a date, don’t ask her again.
If women’s pain makes you feel pain, don’t prize your pain above hers, or make that pain her problem.
Don’t read a list like this and think that most of these don’t apply to you.
When you see another guy talk over a woman, say: “Hey, she was saying something.”
Learn to read a fucking room.
Don’t call women “crazy” in a professional setting.
Involve women in your creative projects, then let them have equal part in them.
Don’t make assumptions about a woman’s intelligence, capabilities or desires based on how she dresses.
If a woman tells you that you fucked up, and you feel like shit, don’t put it on that woman to make you feel better. Apologize without qualification and then go away.
Don’t punish women for witnessing your vulnerability.
Don’t get defensive when you get called out.
Don’t expect women to be “nice” or “cute” and don’t get upset when they aren’t those things.
Pay women as much as you pay men.
Don’t need to literally witness a man being horrible in order to believe that he’s horrible. Trust and believe women.
Don’t use your power to get women’s attention/company/sex/etc.
Don’t use your “feminism” as a way to get women to trust you. Show us in your day-to-day life, not in your self-congratulatory social media. *
Don’t make misogynistic jokes.
If you are asked to be on a panel/team and see that it’s all men, say something. Maybe even refuse the spot!
Do you feel that any woman on earth owes you something? She doesn’t. Even if you’re like, “Hm, but what about basic respect?” ask yourself if you’ve shown her the same.
Don’t touch women you don’t know, and honestly, ask yourself why you feel the need to touch women in general.
Be aware of your inherent power in situations and use it to protect women, especially via talking to other men.
Stop thinking that because you’re also marginalized or a survivor that you cannot inflict pain or oppress women.
If you do the right thing, don’t expect praise or payment or a pat on the back or even a “thank you from that woman”. Congratulations, you were baseline decent.
If a woman says no to a date, don’t ask her again.
If women’s pain makes you feel pain, don’t prize your pain above hers, or make that pain her problem.
Don’t read a list like this and think that most of these don’t apply to you.
*I fully realise I just literally did this item off the list.
Oct 17: Re: Point number 3 on this list: "If you are asked to be on a panel/team and see that it’s all men, say something. Maybe even refuse the spot!" Can I once more put in a word for The News Quiz on Radio 4. For at least the third consecutive season, it has never had fewer than 50% women on the teams, and has managed all female teams more than once. HIGNFY has hardly ever done this (hamstrung by always having to have the two male regulars), and Mock The Week (which has no such excuse) has never ever managed to have more than two women - out of its 7 participants - and has had innumerable all-male shows.
Hooray for the News Quiz.
Oct 20: The latest Private Eye is painful reading when it comes to the Weinstein story. We all revel in seeing how hypocritical the 'other' papers are (we expect it of The Sun and The Mail), but reading Weinsteipocrisy in The Guardian is embarrassing for a woolly leftie who always thinks he's on the side of the angels.
Who knew The Guardian writer John Patterson attacked and slightly revealed Weinstein's activities back in 2002, only for the editor to kowtow to Weinstein so as not to lose Miramax's advertising money, banning that writer from covering Weinstein films? And that Weinstein's aggressive PR man at the time is Claudia Winkleman's husband?
As for Marina Hyde savagely dismissing Myleene Klass, when she spoke up about Weinstein back in 2010: "We must merely add this to the mounting pile of questionable Klass-related anecdotes, and await the next one with eyebrows pre-raised." That's Marina Hyde, one of my favourite column writers, basically victim-shaming and calling a woman out for crying wolf.
Street Of Shame indeed.
Oct 17: And the floodgates are open. If we thought popstars and DJs acted inappropriately, just wait till we discover how dictatorial and, yes, mysogynistic movie directors have been since forever. If you've not already stopped watching Hitchcock movies, Tippi Hedren and a dozen others could tell you some #MeToo stories that'll put you off. And he's only in the middle of a very long list.
On the plus side, the 2019 Oscars are shaping up to have way more female directors in contention. Why, by 2020 we may be up to 20%.
Oct 3: You can tell how old someone is by whether they're more disillusioned by the right wing blatherings of John Lydon or the right wing blatherings of Morrissey.
Oct 3: A shame to lose Tom Petty so young. American Girl remains one of my favourite rock singles. A surprising thing for me, reading about him this morning, is that he hardly had a hit single in the UK. American Girl got to number 40 (though it didn't even chart in the States) and the best he ever managed here was I Won't Back Down getting to number 28. Very much an album act, but with such memorable songs you really thought they did better in their own right. I may be the only person who's so hung up on the performance of 45rpm singles in Britain in the 70s and 80s. Can't imagine Tom was that fussed.
Oct 14: By Toutatis. And having read this story I looked up Asterix & The Banquet on Wikipedia. Who knew the characters in the bar were caricatures of actors from the films of Marcel Pagnol? Earliest comic book in-joke? (Probably not).
Oct 18: My genuine Jongleurs story. I did a tryout showcase at Moles in Bath back in 1999 (when I was still doing stand up) in front of Julia Chamberlain. Out of half a dozen new comics, I was the one that got the actual Jongleurs gig (at Camden where I died on my arse and went back to square one). The acts who didn't get the gig? Who I was deemed funnier than, one night in 1999? Shappi Khorsandi, Andy Zaltzman, and Russell Howard. Huh. Where are they now?
Oct 18: Okay Google, that's just creepy. I go to Google, to Google something, and the logo is birthday candles. I figure it's the anniversary of the invention of cakes with candles on, but no. It's my birthday. How do you know that Goo... okay, I know how you know it, but do you have to remind me in such a creepy stalkerish way? You might as well just have a logo with "We also know where you live" written in blood. Ech.
Oct 9: We watched a Dick Van Dyke show this week, from 1962, at the end of which there's an additional scene with Dick & Mary which turns out to be an ad for washing up liquid. How shameful we thought. Then, today, Mike Kaluta posted a link to this great Pinterest page of comic book ads from my childhood. Every single Marvel character, drawn by their actual artist at the time, whoring themselves to sell Twinkies. (NB: What the hell are, or were, Twinkies? They look vile).
https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/139541288427186447/
Oct 4: Don't get put off by the title of this essay, it's (spoiler alert) deliberately ironic. This chap really has tried to engage fellow Americans who, unlike him, are gun lovers and reaches a dispiriting conclusion.
Gun-love strikes me like religious belief. It transcends reason, and can be held quite genuinely in the minds of people who also believe in rationality, science, and empirical fact. Unlike religion, gun-love revolves around owning objects whose sole purpose is to make holes in things a long way away, and those things are often other people. Religion spends almost all of its time trying to get people not to do that kind of thing.
So I honestly don't believe anyone will ever change the mind of any gun-lover in the USA. All we can hope for is that their mania doesn't spread to any civilized countries.
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