What Are We Going to do About Justin Timberlake?

And don’t just sit there and think to yourself: “Well… nothing.” – remember Burke’s words about the triumph of evil and then re-think your Timberlake-neutral position.

My argument – in simple terms – is that this can’t go on. Either we must have him stripped, covered in cow shit and put on a rotating wheel at which the populace can throw stuff, or we have him electrocuted.

The preening little FUCK has just ruined my breakfast (or rather, MTV has just ruined my breakfast, by broadcasting “Justin Timberlake’s All Time Top Ten” at a time when people are trying to cope with the fact that they are at work, but that they will bloody well have a coffee in the cafe before they start dealing with the day’s inanities), with his pouting, arse-wiggling, one palm on sternum, head-nodding ARSERY. I don’t know if I’m more incensed by his collaboration with Madonna, and the sight of her crepe-y tits walloping up and down as she does her “enthusiastically-still-with-it” face; or the HORRIFYING “Love Sex Magic”, wherein Timbercunt is cast as some kind of discerning connoisseur of the female form, and the anonymous female singer of the track pushes her vagina into his face and crotch, desperate to please him. However, HE has seen MUCH better vaginas than THAT! And he knows her vagina to be RUBBISH. So he pops a dog lead on her (I shit you not) and then rests his feet on her. He’s just not going to give her the time of day – but he WILL bite her lip later, lucky her (but only when she is dressed up as a prostitute). If you’ve got a daughter, this sort of thing really makes you angry. If you’ve simply got ears it’s no laughing matter, of course, but there is something about seeing sniggering frat boy fucks like Timbertwat collude in this horrible presentation of women as prostitutes and themselves as very desirable clients that makes me want to lock Daughter up in a tower so that she never sees a world that thinks that this is OK.

So, I suppose my plea is: let’s kill Justin Timberlake. Of course, he isn’t the cause of all that’s wrong – even of all that’s wrong in pop culture’s stomach-turning portrayal of women – but he is a high profile symptom. And it would be funny to see if that little squeaking sound he does when he’s a-slidin’ to the left is the same noise he would make when his feet are on fire, wouldn’t it?

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Grading Hangovers

1. The one where one opens one’s eyes in the morning, in a wary state of investigation. It wasn’t an insane night: you were in bed before 1am, and you didn’t do anything unwise involving shots. As you sit up, the headache begins to massage your temples, but lightly: like an otter on a bank. A couple of glasses of Ribena, two  Nurofen and a banana, and you’ll be right as rain.
2. The one when the headache is what wakes you up – often in the middle of the night, and sends you trotting off to look for pain relief. Often complemented by an opportunity to stare with loathing at your pouchy-eyed reflection in the bathroom mirror at 3am, wondering if throwing up would make you feel better, or MUCH worse. Sleep is the only cure for this one: about nineteen hours of it.
3. The one were you feel like you have been attacked by a hooligan with a baseball bat, and then coerced into a bath full of ice.

This is the one that Wife and I experienced yesterday, in the wake of Woman Whom We Didn’t Know That Well Before We Went On Holiday With Her’s fortieth birthday party celebration: a brilliant occasion, where (sadly) the Champagne didn’t dry up all evening.

I’m a tit when there’s free Champagne: I simply cannot say no – and then I get over-excited and start smoking as well – so Wife and I arrived at eight and neither one of us once managed the phrase “No, I’m alright for the moment, thank you”. Wife added to her misery by wearing a pair of stupidly painful shoes and dancing (I, as I have mentioned before, adhere to my father’s admirable “No dancing after 35 or six foot: whichever comes first.” rule – as it seemed did all the men present).

Anyway, a little after midnight, I decided to go off and relieve the babysitter, and set off on foot. Half an hour later, I arrived at home, having been apparently blown home on a very cold gust of wind. So it was that when I awoke, I had all the trappings of a hangover AND an aching back, which has since blossomed into a persistent and sharp ache. Wife and I barely moved all day and watched shit TV and had a picnic in the sitting room. I still feel as though someone is bell-ringing inside my head, and have thus gone in for my standard “I’m never drinking again” refrain.

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“Can You Brainwash a Guatemalan Orphan?”

This was Woody Allen in Robert de Niro’s Body Creative Director’s Body question to me as we sat together on a flight to Milan, pondering the identity of a colleague’s adopted children.

Said colleague is gay, and he and his partner have adopted two Guatemalan children, both boys. The youngest of these two boys (who is about five) is shaping up to be an enthusiastic transvestite AND shoe fetishist. Now, I am not in the least advocating anything that might read like a “healthy, natural inclinations” manifesto – but I suppose that we were both in our conversation wondering at what point do you actively encourage your son to become the next RuPaul?

If a four year-old boy is requesting a Barbie Doll, red sequined slippers, and wants to watch “Cabaret” again, do you say “OK” – or do you try and say maybe (not an Action Man) but a jigsaw puzzle, or a viewing of “Fantasia” might be better? I mean, clearly, you don’t equip him with a toy gun, a John Huston box-set and a pit-bull – but is furnishing him with The Best of Cher, a Bob Mackie gown and “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” any more right?

We couldn’t work it out. Maybe someone out there can…

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