Tag Archives: romance

Movie Review – Philophobia: or the Fear of Falling in Love

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Philophobia: or the Fear of Falling in Love (2019, Gravitas Pictures)

Released Blu-Ray/VoD: November 12th

Director: Tyler Cole

Philophobia: or the Fear of Falling in Love follows Damian Booster (Aaron Burt), a popular LA podcaster and perennial playboy, as he wrestles with his true feelings in the wake of an ultimatum from his non-Bechdel-test-passing girlfriend, Danielle (Emily Pearse): Come meet my mother for brunch in a few days to demonstrate your commitment to commitment, she tells him, or kiss our conjoined, couple-shaped ass goodbye.

One man’s tragedy is another man’s comedy, after all; and one man’s love story is another man’s horror. So why not blend them all together? Damian spends the duration of the movie dealing with a mounting crisis of mind and soul, his fear of falling in love manifesting itself through a succession of scary movie tropes.

Accompanying Damian into this hinterland of horror, hopelessness, har-de-hars and horniness is his visiting friend Alan (David Lengel, who resembles a sort-of elongated David Schwimmer) and a nightmarish assortment of neighbours and nutty, night-time denizens of the town.

First-time film-makers Tyler Cole (the movie’s director and co-producer) and Aaron Burt (the movie’s writer, co-producer and star) also know a little something about suffering for love, having gone through extraordinary struggles to commit their vision to the screen. Between them they’ve sacrificed jobs, homes, savings and sanity. Tyler even sacrificed bodily autonomy by following through on a promise to have his wrist tattooed with the logo of a hire company if they agreed to lend him audio-visual equipment for the movie.

So was the struggle worth it? Will Tyler smile wistfully each time he looks down at his branded wrist, or will he find himself wishing that his inked limb could join the discarded hands of Luke Skywalker and Ash Williams in some fleshy, rotten pile or pit somewhere?

Mercifully, Tyler’s self-vandalism wasn’t in vain. There’s much to enjoy in Philophobia: or the Fear of Falling in Love: it’s fun, inventive, ambitious, creepy, consistently surprising, rarely dull (with the possible exception of a clunky scene in which Damien invites Alan to be a guest on his absolutely abysmal podcast) and occasionally laugh-out-loud-funny. Burt is a down-to-earth lead; a great straight-man who gives generously to his fellow performers, both on the page and on the screen. With his help, and Cole’s, the cast brings a naturalistic, quasi-improvised feel to the movie that really fits its style.

The dialogue can occasionally feel clunky, but when it works, it works brilliantly, especially in those segments when the movie activates the ‘com’ portion of the horr-rom-com triangle. Its greatest assets in the laughter stakes are Nancy (Carly Reeves), a nutty, stream-of-consciousness-spouting wild child from the neighbourhood, and Travis (Darren Keefe Reiher), Aaron’s boozing, belligerent next-door neighbour. Nancy and Travis may be broad characters, bordering on caricature, but they’re so well played, and outrageously funny, that you won’t care a jot.

Burt and Cole have achieved so much in this movie with such limited resources. Visually, some of its finer flourishes wouldn’t look out of place in a low-budget, studio-funded project. Never-the-less, while the film has lofty ambitions, and an undeniably unique and fascinating conceit, it never quite manages to live up to its full potential.

Experimentation with form and content in cinema is to be lauded. Sometimes the weirdest of gambles can push the boundaries of what’s possible, or even re-invent cinema itself. But melding such a disparate trinity of genres into a coherent, meaningful shape is a tall order. Horror and comedy make great bedfellows, as do romance and comedy: it’s the threesome that’s the tricky part.

Ultimately, Philophobia: or the Fear of Falling in Love never quite coalesces into something that fully justifies its Frankensteinian approach to film-making. Instead, we get a very entertaining, mutant mish-mash of The Shining, The Hangover, Swingers and every generic slasher and romance flick of the 80s; well-crafted vignettes that work well in isolation, but rest uneasily when sitting next to each other.

The responsibility for the movie’s structural problems lies more with the composer than the conductor. After all, the success or failure of the movie’s central, genre-busting conceit rests solely upon the shoulders of Damien’s character, and, alas, he hasn’t quite the weight or the heft to carry the burden. He feels more like a cipher than a real guy; a blank-faced agent of plot. As a consequence his breakdown, and subsequent breakthrough, feels hollow and unearned.

It perhaps would’ve served the story better had Damien’s sense of horror been wedded to some disturbing pattern from his or his family’s past, or had sprung from some long-buried guilt or shame. As it stands Damien is nothing more than a mildly narcissistic man-child who’s reluctant to grow up and sheath his shaft, like most of LA’s aspiring entertainers, and, I’d wager, a significant portion of the planet’s male population. His journey, like him, is shallow, whatever he appears to have learned about love by the end of the movie.

Tyler Cole makes up for the short-fall in tone and theme by really throwing himself into his role as director, clearly relishing the opportunity here to flex his creative muscles. He must’ve felt like an actor whose agent had secured him every single role in a movie, the chance to run free and do, and be, everything at once.

As Cole deftly jiggles, juggles and muddles the aesthetics of three distinct genres, it’s hard not to see the finished movie as an extended demo reel for his extensive talents. This could well be Tyler Cole’s ‘Scott Derrickson’ moment (a director whose path led him from Hellraiser: Inferno to Doctor Strange).

Cole’s use of light, and lighting, is particularly strong – bathing the dingy rooms and corridors of Aaron’s apartment complex in the red and blue hues of his shifting moods – as is his understanding of how to build and release tension, all of which serves the eerier moments well. He also knows how to get under your skin with a good jump-scare.

It’s just a pity that the movie makes you feel terror more effectively than it does relief and happiness for the protagonist’s plight.

Who knows? Maybe that’s an apt description for love in the real world, too.

THE VERDICT

Philophobia: or the Fear of Falling in Love might not inspire you to tattoo yourself with its logo, but you won’t come away feeling short-changed.

It begs repeating that this is a first-time movie whose creators should be celebrated for their tenacity and dedication; whose vision and ambition should be applauded. Just because I judge it to have failed in some of its loftier aims, doesn’t mean that I consider it a failure. Far from it. It’s raw. Brave. Bold. Original. Haunting in places, hysterical in others.

It’s clear that Burt and Cole are both going places. Don’t be frightened to join them on the first leg of their journey.

You might very well end up falling in love with their work.

Watch the trailer here

Jamie’s Outlander Binge: Season 1, Eps 9 – 12

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Part 3: Burn, baby burn

Wherein things get a bit too hot for Geillis to handle, and Jamie gets addicted to smack

Non-Scottish Outlander fans: “It must be great being Scottish and watching Outlander. It must enrich the story for you, knowing the history inside-out, especially all the stuff that happened with the Jacobites.”

Me: “Och, aye. Teach a class in the bloody Jacobites, I could. I know more about the Jacobites than Bonny Prince Charlie and, erm… that other guy, eh… what’s his name… Jack… Jack O’ Bite?…” [nods]

[opens Google and frantically types in ‘Was Jack O’Bite an Irish King?’]

My friends, I know absolutely nothing about the Jacobites, save for the broadstrokes. And when I say broad, I mean broad. If I were painting my knowledge of the Jacobites instead of writing it down, I’d be using the Jolly Green Giant’s sweeping brush to paint a portrait of Bonnie Prince Charlie onto the head of an atom.

My knowledge of the subject largely stems from these two things:

  1. When I was eight, my primary school class did a project on the Jacobites. I can distinctly remember drawing some wee ginger people in kilts. I can’t remember anything else.
  2. Scottish comedian Ricky Fulton once played Bonnie Prince Charlie in a comedy sketch on TV at New Year’s, circa 1988. I didn’t think that it was very funny.

And that’s it. Class dismissed.

Of course I know that my ancestors were beaten and bowed by the English state, and eventually decided to kick back against it, only to get their arses kicked, but the political and dynastic intricacies of the era escape me. Well, maybe ‘escape’ is the wrong word, because that would imply that I ever had the facts imprisoned in my skull to begin with.

Most of us here in Scotland are at the mercy of whatever liberties American writers and film-makers wish to take with our history. I was 14 when Braveheart hit cinemas. The Australian Mel Gibson and the American Randall Wallace (no relation) became, in effect, my history teachers. It was only in retrospect that I learned about the glaring historical inaccuracies present in the movie. Really, though, Gibson and Wallace had enormous power: they could’ve shown me the Scottish front-line propelling towards the English archers on unicycles as they juggled carrots, while William Wallace led the rest of his army in a rousing rendition of Rick Astley’s ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’, and my teenage brain would’ve entered those ‘facts’ into the permanent record, no questions asked.

I sometimes hear people say things like, ‘Who cares about the historical accuracy if it’s an exciting story?’ It’s mostly American people who say things like that, but I’d like to see their reaction to a movie about the Civil War that featured Robert E Lee charging down the battlefield on the back of a rhino as Ulysses S. Grant prepared to take him out with a rocket launcher.

I know more about the American Revolution, The American Civil War, the French Revolution and medieval Europe than I do about Scotland’s past. Outlander, then, is teaching me bits and pieces about Scottish history as its story bobs and weaves and cuts and thrusts along, which is something I really shouldn’t be relying upon it to do. I should be immersing myself in books and educational films about my nation’s fraught and fascinating history, but I can’t. Not yet. Because, get this: I don’t want any spoilers. Not even from history itself.

That’s pretty messed up.

Anyway, a poor student of history I may very well be, but I’m reasonably confident that Scottish soldiers didn’t make a habit of carrying out daring raids on English forts to rescue kidnapped ‘princesses’. And if they ever did, they probably didn’t find themselves leaping from incredibly tall towers into the freezing water below as massive explosions rocked the fort behind them. It must be pretty hard to keep trumpeting historical realism when your 18th Century Scottish swash-buckler suddenly turns into a cross between Robin Hood Prince of Thieves and The A-Team.

“This is Mr McT. He’s absolutely terrified of horses.”

“I ‘aint getting’ on no mane, fool.”

Do you know what, though? To paraphrase that mish-mash of Americans I’ve encountered over the years, I didn’t really care about the improbability of it all, because it was pretty damn exciting. After all, this is a show about a woman who travelled through time by touching a rock, so let’s not cleave too hard to history, here.

If Claire’s rescue from a thoroughly rapey Black Jack seemed just a little too improbable for my tastes, then I was happier to embrace the realism – or what I supposed was realism – of the event’s aftershocks, namely the consequences to Claire of ‘running off and getting herself kidnapped’.

Now, I know very little about the specifics of gender relations in the 18th century, beyond the supposition that they must have been fraught and unfairly weighted in the penis-weilding sex’s favour, but a husband feeling entitled to spank his wife for ‘stepping out of line’ seems to fit with my impressions of the era. I guess it would’ve been unrealistic for Jamie always to have acted like an enlightened 20th century man, immune to the influence of the culture and country around him, especially since most of his pals are sweary brutes who always act like they’re on a stag do in Malaga.

As the show worked up to its possible spanking I stared at the screen in disbelief. ‘If Jamie puts Claire over his knee and belts her bum like she’s some naughty schoolgirl,’ I thought to myself, ‘then that’s him finished as fuel for female fantasies the world over. I know some like it rough, some like a dominant man, but not Claire, and not like this; never like this. This is domestic abuse, 18th century or no 18th century, and that sort of thing’s only sexy if you’re a fucking mental case. What’s this show turned into now, 50 Shades of Tartan?’

But he did it. Christ, he did it. I have to give the show credit for that, and extra credit for conveying Jamie’s change of heart, mounting guilt and eventual redemption in a plausible and relatable way. That’s no easy feat. Jamie realised that if he could pledge peace, respect and fealty to a miserable, duplicitous old bastard like Colum, then he should be able to pledge those same things a billion times over to the woman he proclaims to love above all else.

We can now safely file Jamie’s transgression under ‘I’ for [put on your best Basil Fawlty voice here] ‘I’m terribly sorry, he’s from 18th Century Scotland.’ [and now prepare to put on your best Manuel voice] ‘Ken?’

So rest easy, my adoring Heughanites (or are you Heughanistas?). Jamie was pretty much back to being an ardent feminist again by the end of the episode, so you can now safely resume the heaving of your bosoms. You must be relieved to discover that you aren’t in thrall to an ancestor of Trevor from Eastenders [Hi North Americans – Eastenders is an English soap-opera, where nobody has ever smiled, and everybody dies. Trevor was an evil Scottish character who mercilessly beat his wife – it’s nice that our neighbours across the border don’t like to stereotype us].

Aptly enough, all that was missing from the closing moments of episode 9 was Eastender’s trademark dirge; that quickening drum-beat to signify that a cliffhanger was in progress: dum dum dum DUM DUM du du du du. And what was Outlander’s shocking cliffhanger that would’ve lent itself so well to this particular drum-beat?

Had the English stormed Castle Leoch? Had Dougal barged into their room with his cock in one hand and his sword in the other to challenge Jamie to a duel to the death? Erm… no. No, Eh… Claire and Jamie… had found…they’d found… you see they’d found some flowers under their bed.

But they were nasty flowers, right? A wee girl had put them there. She was jealous of Claire.

I scoffed as the credits rolled, and probably said something like, ‘Ooooh, shit’s about to go down,’ in a really sarcastic tone of voice, possibly while pulling a face. But lo and behold, a couple of episodes later, shit did go down. Bad shit. Sorry for laughing, cliffhanger. I should never have questioned your cliff-hanging prowess.

Episode ten began with some slo-mo writhing and ye olde cunnilingus (Jamie got a tongue-lashing in the previous episode, so it’s only fair that he starts the next episode administering one), which was mercifully interrupted by Murtagh banging on the door with news of the Duke of Sandringham’s impending arrival. A lot happens in episode 10: Dougal’s wife dies; Dougal and Geillis are revealed to be lovers; Geillis is revealed to be pregnant with Dougal’s baby; Geillis’s big, farty husband dies; said big, farty husband is revealed to have been murdered by Geillis (and oh my God, it’s John Sessions – I didn’t recognise him when he first appeared earlier in the season); Colum sends Dougal and Jamie into temporary exile, and somebody puts a dead baby in a tree. Just another day at Castle Leoch. But it’s a testament to Simon Callow’s absolutely note-perfect performance as the Duke that he’s by far the most memorable element of the episode.

I love his vanity, his pomposity, his casual but polite disregard for everything but his own sense of aesthetics. He’d stab your back or cut your heart out, but he’d do it with a shrug, and send you on your way dripping with his false, honeyed charm. The Duke promised Jamie he’d deliver his letter concerning Captain Randall’s scurrilous behaviour to the appropriate persons in the King’s court in order to secure him a pardon, which of course means that he won’t, and Jamie is, in fact, doomed. Villains are always the most fun to watch (and I’m sure to play), even more so when they’re handled by someone with Callow’s range and skill.

Jamie’s legal problems take something of a back seat to Claire’s when she and Geillis find themselves arrested for witch-craft. This is the point at which young Laoghaire reveals that the bundle of flowers she left under Jamie’s marital bed augured much more than mean thoughts.

The subsequent trial is gripping and engaging. I love the big bag of quips Ned brings with him to the courtroom, and of course the return of Father Bain, who at first presents himself as a broken and contrite figure weeping in Claire’s defence, but swiftly – and slyly – reveals himself to be the final nail in her coffin, the twisted, cunning old rat.

I sat there throughout most of that episode, shaking my head and thinking, ‘How could those poor, daft, ignorant peasants have believed in such outlandish horse-droppings? I’m glad we’ve moved past all that nonsense.’ At that exact moment my brain smiled a smug little smile, said to me, ‘You’d better take a seat, son’ and then pressed play on the cinema screen inside my mind. On that screen I saw slack-jawed men with side-burns and side-arms wearing MAGA hats and shouting about locking people up; people flopping and gyrating on the floors of evangelical mega-churches like they’d just been strapped to invisible pneumatic drills; Flat Earth shops opening the length and breadth of the country, with angry little people walking out of them, handing out pamphlets proclaiming that Gallileo, Copernicus and NASA had just been having a bit of a laugh these past 600 years; and I saw people enjoying Mrs Brown’s Boys. ‘OK,’ I said to my brain. ‘Point taken. We’re all still mental. We’re just mental about different things.’

Most people back then probably didn’t believe in witches anyway. Not really. Not in their heart of hearts. I’ll wager that the biggest barrier to people embracing the truth about witches was the ease with which the powerless populace could use the bat-shit crazy belief system to settle scores with those they hated (the flip-side of that was the state being able to use it against you for whatever spurious reasons best suited their agenda).

Can you imagine if that belief system made a come-back today? Half of the population of our housing estates would be wiped out. People would look out of their windows, see their neighbours coming home with a new car or a 50-inch TV, and snatch up their phones in a jealous rage:

‘Hello, is that the WitchBusters Confidential Hot-Line? Yeah, I just saw my neighbour doing some spooky shit with the Provident Loan guy, I swear she had him levitating six feet above her doorstep. How soon can you get here? Great news. See you soon. Oh, and she stole my 50-inch TV, so I’ll be needing that back.’

Even though I never really found myself taking to Geillis as a character, she got to shine in this episode. Her sacrifice was brave and poignant, and of course the revelation that she was a fellow stone-touching time-traveller, from 1968 no-less, was an unexpected and very welcome surprise. I wonder who else is from the future? What if they’re ALL from the future?

“Dougal, you’re from this period of time, right?”

Dougal shakes his head. “I’m a bank manager from 1988.”

“Colum??”

“I played Trevor in Eastenders.”

“Are you kidding me? Murtagh? Murtagh, come on, you’re definitely from this era, right?”

Murtagh bows his head in shame, and mutters: “Space pilot.”

“For fuck sake, is there anybody here from 18th century Scotland? Anybody? Raise your hands! …. Jesus Christ!”

Any show that features a main character who exists out of time must inevitably deal with the moment when they’re either discovered or choose to explain their origins. Claire’s explanation was always going to be a tricky one. Without any evidence to back up her claims – no VE-Day edition of the Inverness Courier sealed inside a Tupperware tub and tucked inside a leather jacket with ‘I Love 1945’ stitched into the lapel, for instance – and lacking any detailed historical knowledge of any specific events set to befall her friends and patrons (barring the broad-strokes of the Jacobites’ slaughter at Culloden), she risked sounding like the sort of person who in later years would be wrapping their head in tinfoil and having a bath in jelly while screaming about aliens.

In the end, faith was on her side. Or at least its bedfellow, love. Jamie believed the message because he trusted its source. Implicitly. Aw, that’s lovely, isn’t it? Mind you, he does live in a village where everyone believes in fairies and witches, so admittedly getting on-board with a story about a nurse who uses rocks to travel through time isn’t that much of a stretch. Nicely done, though. And as much as every fibre of my being tries to resist and fight against Outlander’s romantic side, the scene where Claire forsook the journey home in favour of her Scottish husband left a little lump in my throat, predictable as it was. Claire now belongs in Scotland, and at Jamie’s side. That’s sure to end well.

Jamie and Claire, then, go on to assume the mantles of Laird and Lady of Lallybroch, an interesting new direction and dynamic. I thought the way in which Jamie and his sister worked through their guilt about their father’s death, and their feelings towards each other, was satisfying, earnest and emotionally resonant. One thing’s for sure: there’s no way Jack Randall can survive beyond the end of this season. The story’s building towards too neat a conclusion. His presence beyond the end of the inevitable final confrontation between Jamie and Jack would be superfluous, and risk tipping over into cliche-ridden moo-hah-hah territory.

On the other hand, Jack’s such a good villain, how can they kill him? I guess I’m going to find out. But only once Claire and Jamie manage to extricate themselves from The Watch. Oooh, that’s a good cliff-hanger.

Dum Dum Dum DUM DUM du du du du.

READ THE REST – Click below

Why I want to binge-watch Outlander

Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 1, Eps 1 – 4

Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 1, Eps 5 – 8

Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 1, Eps 13 – 16

Jamie’s Outlander Binge: Season 1, Eps 5 – 8

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Part 2: In and Out-lander

Wherein change is a constant, truths are revealed and Claire gets her hands aw covered in pish

My partner Chelsea is something of an Outlander veteran, having watched the first season-and-a-bit without me last year. She wasn’t being mean by leaving me out, you understand. She asked me at the time if I wanted a piece of the tartan action, and I said, well… I believe my exact words were ‘Fuck that.’ I didn’t think it would be for me. I loved porn, I loved Scottish scenery, I loved time travel, but I didn’t necessarily feel that I needed them all together in the one package, especially with the added threat of romance.

Five episodes into my binge she asked me if I was enjoying the show so far. Well, I know better now, don’t I, having dipped my toe in the heeland loch. I told her I was enjoying it greatly. How could I not be? It was well-acted, fast-paced, intriguing, and looked vibrant and beautiful to boot. What pleased me most, though, I told her, was that the heavily-promoted romance element of the show had remained somewhat in the background, or at least wasn’t as strongly emphasised as I’d feared it would be.

She gave me a puzzled little look, like I’d just announced that robots were great because they were almost exactly the same as bananas.

“No, really,” I continued, doubling down on my rave review, “I thought Outlander was going to be this quirky, 17th-century rom-com, where the main characters would get married really quickly, and there would be endless soft porn scenes, but, you know, mercifully, it doesn’t appear to be that kind of show at all.”

She looked at me with eyes full of sorrow and pity, as if a doctor had just told her I had weeks to live, and she didn’t yet know how to break the news to me.

At that exact moment, she must have been thinking about episode 7, The Wedding. I was soon to discover that said episode was essentially a quirky, 17th-century rom-com, where Claire and Jamie got married really quickly, and which featured endless soft porn scenes. What’s the Gaelic for bow-chick-a-wow-wow? Honestly, ten solid minutes of that episode were just the newly-weds checking out each other’s arses, followed by another ten minutes of them rutting like dogs.

I’m not entirely sure that what I just made there was a complaint.

Anyway, while it was a nice touch to see the typical male/female dynamics of the era (and of the genre) subverted, by having Jamie play the wet-behind-the-ears virgin to Claire’s experienced and in-control woman, it seemed ever-so-slightly gratuitous to focus on Jamie’s first ever blow-job, and even dwell on his delighted gasp and cheeky wee grin. ‘What’s this bloody show turning into now?’ I cursed at the TV. ‘Scotch Pie? Are McStiffler and McFinch about to burst in wearing lederhosen and trailing a shaved goat behind them?’

I thought about the hygiene aspect again, not to mention the lack of contraception (not even a stab at the rhythm method!). If this was real 18th-century sex, and not a fantasy-rich, heaving-bosomed, skin-bathed-in-candle-light sort of a romp, then Claire would almost certainly have emerged from her marital bed riddled with everything from ringworm to the bubonic plague. And very probably pregnant. A man and a woman only had to shake hands, sneeze or play catch with a turnip in order to fall pregnant in the 18th century. An enlightened 19th-century nurse surely would have known better than to doff her daisy at a wrangler’s dangler like that.

Sex is a funny little devil, though, isn’t it? It’s not just love, lust and longing that joins our sweating bodies together like sexual Tetris pieces. Death, despair, anguish, fear, and anger – and alcohol, too, on its own or in conjunction with one or more of the aforementioned – can make us rub our bits in places and at times and with people we might not otherwise have considered to be sensible choices.

Even though poor haunted, hunted, homesick Claire had at that point been six weeks without a ride (Hi Americans – I’m using the crude Scottish vernacular to describe a bodily act again) I’m still not fully convinced by how quickly she abandoned her scruples and plunged into a carnival of carnal abandon with Jamie.

I was expecting, and hoping for, a bit more in the way of moral posturing and feminist fury, given how headstrong Claire had been up until then. I was, however, pleased that their wedded union was brought about in an interesting and unexpected way, in a bid to frustrate, through legal means, Black Jack Randall’s move to imprison and interrogate Claire. The flashback-framed farce that told the story of the hoops the Mackenzie men had to jump through in order to facilitate the couple’s wedding at record speed was undeniably fun and funny in equal measure.

Still, can’t really grumble about the romance element kicking into gear. It’s pretty much stitched into the show’s DNA. It’d be like watching Sherlock and moaning because he kept solving crimes. At least Outlander embraces blood and brutality to balance out the Mills and Boone-esque schmaltz. The world around Claire and Jamie, with its corruption, thieving, lying and killing, does a fine job of disabusing any notions of Scotland’s romantic past that even the most swooning of viewers may have brought to the show with them. In almost every episode someone is left with a big bleeding, spurting gash cut into their body, absent an ear or an arm, or almost raped. It’s a lot like present-day Airdrie.

Ned’s great, isn’t he? It was nice to see Claire interacting with someone who was her intellectual equal, someone a bit more ‘1945’ than the rest of the rabble; a man who had loftier ambitions than to spend his days farting and fucking. And I bloody love Bill Paterson, the actor who plays him. The last time I saw Bill Paterson in something about time travel (excluding Doctor Who) he ended up bludgeoned to death by cavemen, so maybe things don’t augur too well for old Ned.

Change was the over-riding constant across these four episodes. Most of the major players went through significant changes, both in the way they saw each other, and in the way they saw themselves. The Mackenzie men moved from regarding Claire as a potential traitor or a bothersome sassenach to someone they’d happily fight, lie and die for. Claire, in turn, finally seemed to be finding a place for herself among the Mackenzies, and didn’t seem to view her time with them merely as a prelude to her next daring escape attempt. She also demonstrated that she could mulch piss with the best of them.

Ever since Claire was rescued from Randall’s rapey clutches at the end of episode one she’d viewed Dougal very much as a scary, starey, glarey bruiser of a man (good job she hasn’t seen him in AMC’s Preacher); an image he’d done little to soften by his habit of continually scowling, drinking, and talking about tits and dicks all the time. Her road-trip around the Highlands with the men as they collected rent from their tenants – coins here, a goat there – really seemed to open Claire’s eyes, both to the wider world and to Dougal’s true nature.

At first, though, she believed Dougal was even worse than she’d first imagined. She thought that he was supplementing his private income through skullduggery; using Jamie’s tale of harsh treatment and disfigurement at the hands of the English as a way to extort extra gold from the village-folks – to line his own pockets. Claire being Claire, she wasn’t content simply to think of Dougal as the 18th-century Highland equivalent of Negan from The Walking Dead, she pretty much accuses him of being a knave, an usurper and a rustler, right to his big hairy face, a move that struck me as either evidence of Claire’s skewed sense of privilege and entitlement, or an incidence of iffy writing. Given how much almost every single one of the men barring Jamie hated and mistrusted her at that point, it was nothing short of lunacy for her to take an angry, spiteful stand against Dougal.

Still, if she’d kept schtum she would never have worked out that Dougal was actually a secret freedom-fighter, raising funds to mobilise a Jacobite army to send the English homewards to think again, and to put the ‘rightful King’ back on the throne.

The following episode, ‘The Garrison Commander’, was a great episode of Outlander, but an absoutely peerless episode of ‘Come Dine With Me’. Jesus, that was tense. I think the dinner party at the end of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre was possibly a little less fraught.

I wonder if the English gentry and middle-classes ever get tired of being portrayed on screen as the world’s biggest fops and arseholes. Claire flies the flag well for England, but every other English character we meet – or have met thus far – is a blustering, vain, arrogant, unscrupulous little toad. It makes me glad to be on Team Itchy-Skirt. The world loves us, man, even if they can’t always understand us (and even if we don’t always deserve it). I liked how Dougal got a little taste of what it was to be an outlander, a stranger in a strange land, as he stood at the foot of that English dinner-table being cursed and condescended to. He took it well, for his pride’s sake, and for Claire’s.

I’d like to talk directly to Claire now. Claire? I’ve got some good news and some bad news, sweetheart. The good news is, Dougal’s now your protector and chaperone; your very own little Greyfriars Bobby. The bad news? He wants to give you his little grey bobby. (Hi Americans, I’ll pause this sentence to give you time to get back from the Urban Dictionary). This surely won’t end well.

Black Jack Randall, of course, was a surprise – and deeply unwelcome – addition to the dinner party. He too showed that he was capable of change: capable of changing into something even more monstrous than our first impressions had allowed for.

Tension and terror flood from Tobias Menzies whenever he appears on-screen as the reprehensible redcoat. He plays it just the right side of cartoonishly evil, yet still somehow manages to make Black Jack feel feel blood-curdingly authentic. It’s a pitch-perfect study in cruelty and madness. The scene where Claire sits tear-stricken at the dinner table as she listens with mounting horror to Jack’s tale of how much he enjoyed brutalising Jamie is deliciously uncomfortable to watch. I, like Claire, allowed myself to believe, just for a fleeting second, that Jack was reaching out to her in his turmoil, that he was redeemable. Like all psychopaths, though, Jack mined hope as a means to further and better torture his victims, reveling in the quiet savagery of his deception. All the more agonising and impactful when he rips the mask from his face a second time. What a fucking bastard he is.

I’m glad he’s in the show.

And poor, poor Frank (Black Jack’s great-great-great-great-erm-great-don’t-know-how-many-greats-I-should-have-here-grandson), marooned and alone back in the 1945 version of Inverness. The mid-season finale taught Frank that time, anger and desperation can send even the most civilised of men running head-long into superstition and violence. Grief, and the shadows of his ancestral self, threatened to turn him into a monster, a theme I’m sure the writers will pick up again should he ever return to the story – which of course he must. He must, right?

I’m convinced that some sort of evil twin/sci-fi swapsie scenario is going to unfold, with Black Jack escaping to 1946 Inverness and becoming a serial-killer, or Frank accidentally landing in the past and having to convince any would-be murderers that he isn’t the infamous Captain Randall.

Anyway, because it’s the mid-season finale, something suitably seismic had to happen. And thus, Claire finally reaches the stones in 1743, at the same time as Frank does in 1945. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending upon your viewpoint) instead of running into her (first) husband’s arms, she runs straight into Black Jack’s clutches.

One minor quibble. Did the closing moments of the mid-season finale really have to lean into the cliché of the damsel in distress being saved from death and indignity at the last possible moment by her muckle, gun-toting man? Ach, that’s such a 2018 thing to say. It was exciting, ye ken?

I’m all in now.

Here’s to the next four episodes. Bring on the nakedness, Outlander. Just as long as you bathe it in blood from time to time.

MISSED ANY INSTALLMENTS? CLICK BELOW

Why I wanted to binge-watch Outlander

Part 1: Season 1, Eps 1 -4

Part 3: Season 1, Eps 9 – 12

Thoughts on ‘Love’

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love1I recently participated in a charity event called ‘Scrapbooks and Rapbooks’, where I read from the diary of my 16-year-old self. The event inspired me to dig out these two complementary yet contrasting pieces on the subject of love. I say ‘pieces’. More like pieces of shit. Especially the first one, the poem. It’s basically a few nifty lines surrounded by a sea of overly sentimental faux-profound pretentious fuckery. Instead of going to all the effort of penning a poem I could just as easily have written ‘I KNOW A COUPLE OF BIG WORDS, NOW WILL YOU PLEASE FUCK ME???!!!’ on a piece of A3 paper, photocopied it and stapled it to trees and lamp-posts throughout the local area. As a strategy, it wouldn’t have worked, but at least it would’ve been honest. I wrote the poem when I was 17, and it makes me want to vomit up my heart and squish it underfoot like a dying fish.

The second piece, which is more of a rambling essay-of-sorts, I wrote when I was 25, and was inspired by an episode of Ross Kemp on Gangs. I wonder if you can also tell that I wrote it not long after a break-up, another in a long-line of healthy relationships my younger-self was addicted to machine-gunning to death in fits of faithless, fickle, sexually feckless behaviour.

I don’t know if ‘enjoy’ is the correct word in this context, but I certainly bid you to tolerate the following musings. First up, the piss-ass poem. Bits of it really are reminiscent of a song written by David Brent.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Science Vs Religion

–

A paradox, a fraud amongst feelings,

A laboured lie cursed upon souls:

Of all the bonds that bind a man,

None can be so false as ‘love’.

–

Our minds control our destiny, not our hearts,

And what we feel can run no deeper than the

River of blood that runs through us all –

A deformity, a bastard born of man,

A twisted, deceptive purity! Inconceivable! –

it grows from our ignorance, not our instinct;

what lunacy a force as such could join the

feelings fortified in man.

–

To grieve a child can not be love.

Can it not be seen that creator weeps when creation fails?

What we grieve in loss is not empathy for the lost

But for an emptiness in ourselves –

Pity for a hole in us, not in earth.

–

To take a woman can not be love.

Nothing more can couplings be than means to lust and procreate,

A web of neurones, nerves and volts, making mortal drives seem great!

Another held above one’s self –

That’s tantamount to suicide!

–

Then dead am I.

–

For this that shudders down my veins,

From pounding heart, through all my brains:

but bubbling broth of DNA?

Have faith, my friend, join hands, let’s pray:

–

Once fingers fondly skirt the flesh,

All limbs entwined and hearts enmeshed;

Once the cliché’s been embraced

the ugly beast in each soul faced;

Then once you’ve watched the whole world die

Deep down dark, in mans mind’s eye,

And asked yourself (but please don’t lie),

Tell me, friend, but did you cry?

–

No?

–

My friend, once you’ve experienced that…

Atheism, as your doubts, will crumble to dust.

To ask how love can be is futile.

To simply know that it does must suffice.

–

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Excruciating, eh? Anyway, on to the next one.

Love

mongIn a television documentary series entitled ‘Ross Kemp on Gangs’, British actor Ross Kemp travelled the world to spend time with various gangs renowned for their brutality. The episode I watched featured the town of Auckland, New Zealand, where Kemp chronicled a native gang called ‘The Mongrel Mob’.

The Mongrel Mob’s members all feel shunned or abused by society in some way. Thus they have formed a clan of like-minded sociopaths hell-bent on visiting violent retribution upon society for these perceived slights and wrongs. Some of the group rage against society with a twisted sense of propriety and righteousness ; others gravitate to the group simply because they enjoy raging for destruction’s sake.

In this particular episode Kemp spoke with an elderly member of the Mongrel Mob about the role of women in the gang dynamic. It became clear that the gang members valued not subservience in their women – as a master would a pet – but instead didn’t value women at all. Those women who were permitted entry to a Mongrel Mob clubhouse entered on the proviso that they left their human rights at the door. They were expected to surrender themselves into the Mongrels’ fold as nothing more than shrieking, sucking, walking, fucking vaginas.

tampOne of the old charmers recalled to Kemp a distant time when, in one of these very clubhouses somewhere in the dilapidated suburbs of Auckland, he ripped off a woman’s pants with his teeth, and then used them to pull out her tampon. The tampon, as you might expect, was soaked in blood – as, very quickly, was the chap’s face. Naturally – as you do in these situations – he then asked a male friend to lick the blood from his face, and then invited his acquiescent comrade to share with him the tampon feast. Maybe this recital will have more impact if I present it in plainer English: they ate her fucking tampon.

Kemp asked the romantic so-and-so why he thought the woman had tolerated being treated in this manner. “She was in love with me in those days,” he replied.

Kemp, stony-faced, asked what happened next. I got the feeling Kemp wasn’t holding out hope for a sanguine ending to the tale. Neither was I. “I made love to her on the bar in front of me mates,” said the Mongrel, somewhat softly.

Did I really hear that? Did you just really read it? Love? A guest appearance from such a word in this old man’s lexicon seemed as incongruous as Kemp himself appearing in an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. [VOICE OF PRESENT-DAY JAMIE – I WROTE THIS PIECE IN A PRE-EXTRAS WORLD. YEARS LATER, RICKY GERVAIS WOULD INDEED CAST KEMP IN PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. VERY FUNNY IT WAS, TOO.]

kemp2

If this act was performed in and, if we assume, received in the spirit of love, then what can the rest of us mean when we lay claim to the same concept? What price a declaration of love when its currency has been devalued so by wretched creatures such as these?

But then words are nothing more than representations of concepts; arbitrary symbols that refer to a framework we have erected to make sense of the things and ideas around us. They aren’t the actual thing that they represent, merely esoteric representations presented in a form tangible to certain human groups of representations of things filtered through our fallible, objective senses; and isn’t pinning down the nature of love a million, billion times more baffling than trying to unravel the middle section of this nonsensical and heavy sentence? [VOICE OF PRESENT-DAY JAMIE – MAYBE IF YOUR SENTENCES WERE BETTER AND MORE COHERENT IT WOULDN’T BE SO MUCH OF A PROBLEM, JAMIE]

We must remember, however, that The Mongrel Mob has chosen the Nazi interpretation of the swastika as the symbol of their ‘struggle’ against society. The irony that the Nazis were a mob of mongrels who would gladly have purified this assortment of mainly ethnic, dim-witted alcoholics with extreme prejudice is sadly lost on them. So, perhaps their definition of love should not be unquestionably accepted as definitive.

Man marries cushion

But isn’t that the point? I could profess love to a calculator, and no man on Earth would have any right to question my commitment or feelings towards the object. I could love that calculator more than a man loves his wife. I could love a sunset, or a painting, or a dung beetle. I could love with an unmatched burning intensity a woman who steals my house, or love a woman I’ve just brutally raped. I could love fifteen women at once. What do I, do we, mean when we say that? How is my love for a woman the same as or different from the way that any number of men love women; or that women love men, women women, and men men?

I’m sure we all have our own sense of truth in this matter. The English language may be standardised, but the emotion of love (if it can be called an emotion) varies in its form from person to person, culture to culture. I have read many interpretations of and theories about love in books on religion, psychology, sociology, philosophy, biology, anthropology and history. [STILL DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT THE FRENCH I TOOK, THOUGH] I’ve read comprehensive studies and reports (even Cosmo-fucking-politan), asked many friends and acquaintances, searched my own thoughts and feelings, and still I’m not sure whether or not love even exists.

sad_cupid

We all agree what it means and feels to be angry, sad or afraid. But ask us of love and each will offer a different and ‘definitive’ translation: the woman married for 60 faithful years to a loving husband will cite the trials and tribulations of holding together a union over six decades as the epitome of love; the woman who holds her newborn child in her arms may know no greater case for the manifestation of love than the feelings stirred in her by the tiny pissing puke-bag under her care [I’VE GOT A SON NOW. HE IS INDEED A TINY, PISSING PUKE-BAG, BUT THE BEST TINY, PISSING PUKE-BAG IN THE UNIVERSE, AND I WOULD CRAWL NAKED OVER IRRADIATED BROKEN GLASS TO KEEP HIM SAFE]; the teenager who stands at a girl’s house in the early hours of the morning with a bunch of flowers and a fluttering heart believes that no-one has felt such strength and purity of love as he has at that moment, believes that love itself wasn’t born until his eyes fell on the object of his affections; the men at the altar, both the priest and the groom, have different ideas about, but perhaps equal intensity in their feelings, of love, for God and woman respectively (some may say the two aren’t mutually exclusive); the man who cheats on his wife but still loves her; the Muslim man who loves his daughter but kills her to restore family honour; the woman who takes an overdose of pills through an overdose of love; the stalker who waits unseen outside of his idol’s home with a wedding ring in one hand and a knife in the other; the woman lying at the bottom of the stairs in a broken, bruised heap, her husband towering over her triumphantly on the landing above: all love.

And the man who makes love to a brutalised woman on a bar in the presence of his mates.

All love.

charles11

But, again, that’s the point; if indeed there is a point. None of us can do more than see the world through our own eyes. My analysis of love, however more elaborate, is no more or less useful than any analysis that may be offered by a member of the Mongrel Mob. Whether you believe in love at first sight; or that love is forged through hardship over time, or whether you believe that love itself is a questionable concept doesn’t matter so much as the thought that all of this belief is just personal conjecture.

Yes, it’s interesting to discover how highly people revere love and the idea of love, or what in regards to it they believe to be true, but it can never be anything more than merely interesting. Revealing about the person doing the soul searching, yes; but not conclusive: never definitive.

In this respect belief in love – perhaps specifically romantic love – requires a similar leap of faith to belief in God.

I could state that we are all animals and no more capable of romantic love than starfish or kangaroos. To attempt to convince you of this I could fashion an intricate argument that harnessed power from the fields of zoology, anthropology, biology and every episode of Trisha; tell you that survival and reproduction is our over-riding goal, and even our love for our offspring is essentially love for the continuation of our own genetic and ancestral line. Which would tie in very nicely with what I might claim next: namely that all love emanates, at root, from the self, to the self. I could even rattle out a witty little aphorism that runs a little like this: ‘You can’t make people fall in love with you; you can only help them to fall in love with themselves’. Pretty trite and catchy, yeah? I could tell you that you’ve all watched too many bloody movies and that real life is more like The Sopranos than Ghost.

wedding

I could even, if you so wish, quote a study which found that the brain of someone supposedly in love exhibits the same waves and patterns as the brain of a bona fide lunatic. Is there a man or woman alive who wouldn’t agree with that? I could even, in final desperation, disavow love as a Frankenstein emotion, or expose it as nothing more than other emotions like guilt, anger, pride, fear and vanity wearing a clever disguise.

Would it matter? If love is indeed the new religion, then its associated supporters and fundamentalists will care not for any of my opinions. And why should they? Faith is their bulwark. Maybe it’s yours too.

It’s nice to hear and say sometimes, isn’t it? To love and to be loved. What would we in the West do without it? Besides, what’s the alternative? To remove ‘love’ from the dictionary, to wipe it from our hearts and minds would be as successful an endeavour as one faced by your average grumpy, secular British father should he wish one year to ban Christmas from his house. Sure, it’s a load of overly-sentimental tacky shite that has significantly decreased in impact and worth over the millennia, but just try explaining that to your kids or your wife.

Which of these likely lads do the odds favour to sustain a meaningful union long enough to have children?:

Man A: “I love you, darling. Will you marry me?”
Man B: “You see, sweetheart, love is an artificial construct born of our own narcissism and naivety. Something foisted on us and indoctrinated into our fragile minds from birth. Often one of the first words we’ll ever hear. It’s perpetuated in the classrooms, the churches, the cinemas. And, interestingly, the Marxists believe that love ultimately leads us to marriage, which in turn ensures that the working man is sufficiently pacified and preoccupied to almost guarantee that he will never wish to or be able to revolt; he’ll be nothing more than an efficient cog in the machine, thus preserving the balance of power in society and protecting those in its higher echelons. Anyway, since everybody else seems to be doing it, and since I don’t want other men to be able to sleep with you too easily, do you want to put this ring on?”

marky

You’d die alone, wouldn’t you?

So maybe you agree with me; and maybe you don’t. Maybe you think that love is one of the constant forces of the universe, and I’m just a cynical, selfish, failed-romantic motherfucker. Your opinion, then, is as irrelevant to me as mine is to you. It doesn’t mean you still can’t be right.

In conclusion, then: it seems to me that if love can mean so many different – and often contradictory – things to so many millions of different people, then the word and the idea begins to be stretched to the point where they are rendered almost completely meaningless… but then what do I know? I don’t believe in God either.

Maybe He loves me anyway.

‘You’ll find that one in the ‘Vaginal Fantasy’ section, Sir.’

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What’s happened to book genres recently? We knew where we were with Western, Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Adventure, and the like, but now the branches of the Genre Tree bear the fruit of some strange and confounding sub-genres. One that caught my eye recently was Vaginal Fantasy.

What’s that then? Any book written by Derek Acorah? It got me wondering, and I imagined a few possible explanations for the phrase. At first I thought Vaginal Fantasy might be a whole sub-genre written for women who spend their lives dreaming of possessing increasingly absurd and far-fetched vaginas.

‘And so, as the sun set behind the hills of Dakota, I squatted in the half-dark, wishing with all of my heart that my fanny could be a leopard. In the morning, my wish had come true, and Tiddles, my pet cat, had paid the ultimate price.’

Perhaps it is the vaginas themselves that are fantasising:

‘Oh what a tortured cunt am I! How I dream of art, of culture, of music! What music I could play as a pianist, were I not condemned to be rammed by one… if only the world could hear me perform I know it would show its appreciation. Oh, how I long for that clap!’

(This next bit hinges on you pronouncing the word ‘vaginal’ in your head so that it rhymes with ‘Lionel’. Potato, pota-toe.) Or is Vaginal Fantasy the latest instalment of the weird Japanese video game series, but with a mingey twist?  If so, it’s begging for a Pokemon cross-over.

But, no, unsurprisingly, it’s none of these things. A book qualifies as Vaginal Fantasy if its intended readership comprises the sort of women who want a dash of porn with their schmaltzy romance. I suppose it’s just a snazzier way of saying ‘erotic fiction’. Thrills and Boom, if you like. Or Thrills and Broom, if you’re feeling really, really adventurous: JK Rowling take note.

‘I just made up the Titticus Outticus spell for a laugh. Who knew it would actually work, Hermione?’

Incidentally, JK, if you’re reading this, sweetheart, I’ve come up with a few ideas you can use if you want to do a Vaginal Fantasy version of Harry Potter – squeeze a few millions more out of the franchise before everyone gets swept away by the next big thing in young adult publishing, which will probably be a fantasy romance about a time-travelling, sex-mad college kid who just happens to be a flesh-eating zombie. Anyway, here are my suggestions for new, sexy Harry Potter titles:

Mary Squirter and the Thrill Officer’s Bone

Hairy Botter and the Chained Bear Secretes

Old Harry Scatter and the Pensioners of Ass-Kablam!

Hell, JK, why be so subtle? Why not just go the full hog and call it:

Harry Potter Goes Absolutely Fucking Bongo Mental and Pumps Everything That Moves, Even Dumbledore, And I’m Talking About the One That Died AFTER He Died

If more Scottish writers get in on the act then we could have our own sub-sub genre, simply called ‘Fanny-tasy.’ Anyway, 50 Shades of Grey is a good example of Vaginal Fantasy, although, having endured some of its chapters, I’ve decided that if a woman wants the book to have a sexy effect on her vagina then she should probably just roll it up and fud herself daft with it.

~~~~~

I stumbled across another sub-genre a few years ago as I was wandering zombie-like around 24-hour Asda. When passing through the book aisle my eyes chanced upon a ticket on a shelf that read: ‘Misery 3-Pack.’ Misery 3-Pack? Who the Hell thinks to themselves, ‘Ooh, I’ve got a wee night to myself here. Get the fire on, put my feet up, get a book out, all cosy. And do you know what I’m hankering after? A nice bit misery, that’s the ticket.’

And not just one chunk of misery: but a three pack! Human history is a long, bitter struggle for survival, throughout which we’ve made it our mission to remove as much misery as possible from our existence, largely through advances in sanitation, medicine and technology. And now, as most of us in the West are privileged to live in an era of comparative safety and luxury, we’re turning to misery as entertainment? What a peculiar little species we are.

Books in this genre are usually autobiographical, and always harrowing; tales of abuse endured and survived; stories that would make even Hitler reach for a box of hankies (although he probably did reach for a box of hankies when his lieutenants reported mass Jew deaths to him; using them to mop up something other than tears, I’d imagine). Typically, Misery Lit books contain sentences like this:

‘It was then I realised, as granny tethered me to a rat in the dungeon and prepared the greased javelin for my helpless starfish, that we probably weren’t going to Disneyland after all.’

As with sex, there’s big money in misery. I wish I could write some Misery Lit. The trouble is, before you can do that you need to have suffered quite a horrific childhood, so that you can draw from those experiences. And my childhood was quite decent. Not perfect – whose is? – but broadly speaking I had quite a comfortable, lower-middle-class upbringing, during which I never feared for my life, or wondered where the next meal was coming from. And the point is this: if my mum had taken the time to beat and shag me, I could’ve been a fucking millionaire by now. Selfish bitch.