Ridiculous Sex Tips for Men

Not sure why these were even in Men's Health magazine as I'd always assumed it catered to gay men, what with using the same homoerotic picture of sculpted pectorals and ripped abs in every issue since the beginning of time.

Most sex tips articles are shite purely because they recycle stuff from the 70s – whipped cream, handcuffs, positions-that-aren’t-missionary, etc, etc.

However, this one not only re-uses bad ideas, the author just makes stuff up. Like, from his brain. Here’s one:

TIP NO. 12
“Chocolate syrup and whipped cream get all the kinky play in movies.”

Yeah, I bloody hate how they do it, that’s well unoriginal. Bet you’re not like that, Mr Men’s Health…

“Instead, turn her body into a juicer.”

Oh, you mean give her vagina whirring blades that run at two separate speeds? And a special foam separator that allows for the option of clear or cloudy juice? And a drip tray? Do you mean that? No, didn’t think so, prick.

“Then devour both her and the fruit.”

Right. And cook her in rosemary butter, like that German.

TIP NO. 21: “Ask her permission”

“Before you enter her, ask if it's okay. "Some women find it incredibly endearing," says Barnaby Barratt, Ph.D., president of the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists. "It gives them a sense of respect. It gives them the security to become more sexually relaxed."”

Yeah, I always find it endearing, respectful and relaxing for someone to ask for my consent before putting their penis in me. Mainly cause – now I could be wrong here – I like the feeling of NOT BEING RAPED. Yeah; yeah I think that’s it.

TIP NO. 15: “Give her a Massage”

”But make it interesting:”

By sticking your penis in her. That would work a treat. ‘Ooh, just getting a nice massage’ she’s thinking to herself, then ‘Oh! Some sex as well. That’s nice.’ That’s not what Mr Men’s Health thinks, though:

• “In hot weather, roll a chilled can of soda along the backs of her thighs.”

(Falls asleep on self)

• “Season her belly with a little salt, and then slowly lick it off. Add tequila to taste.”

I think the author’s been getting carried away with the current culinary trend for pork belly. Women aren’t tasty bacon-y snacks (and even if they were, either eat them or fuck them, mixing the two is just twisted).

• “Turn winter gloves inside out, put them on, and massage her with the soft side.”

Because there’s nothing ridiculous about the sight of a naked man wearing inside-outy gloves while looming over you.

TIP NO. 29: Get Bigger

“When you're on top, place her legs over your shoulders. This shortens her vaginal canal, so your penis feels bigger inside her.”

A shortened vaginal canal can only do so much to correct Mother Nature’s cruelly arbitrary distribution of penis sizes.

TIP NO. 28: Washing-machines are Vibrators

“"The washing machine is the biggest vibrator in the house," says Hodson. Sit on it and have her sit on top of you—the vibrations carry through your penis. Cottons get the longest, fastest spin.”

Ah yes, for a moment there I forgot I was living in the 70s. In fact, what is this before me? In-ter-net? What be that? Sex toy website? What’s a website? Here in the 70s women make full use of their household items once the day’s work is done.

TIP NO. 10: “Apply her lipstick”

Fucking hell, this is like that film with Harvey Keitel and Kate Winslet and Harvey Keitel spends the entire film either naked or wearing a clingy red dress then Kate Winslet pisses down her own leg in the desert and Harvey Keitel is crying and then he puts some lipstick on her. Or she puts lipstick on him, I can’t remember.
The point is, neither of them had very good sex in the film. And she probably smelled of piss.

Marley & Me

Ever had a dream in which everything is an exact replica of your daily routine? Boring, isn’t it? Well, Marley and Me is a little like that, except the dream is a nightmarish vision of your life’s descent into lukewarm banality as you crawl slowly towards middle age. Essentially, this is the celluloid equivalent of a trip to IKEA.
Even if you are the type of person who finds watching a dog being alternately cute and boisterous infinitely entertaining (in which case, you are a child and accidentally picked this up, thinking it was the Beano) this alone still won’t be enough to carry you through the achingly dull retelling of journalist John Grogan’s career and marriage. In fact, it’s around sixty minutes into the film that you’ll begin to hate both Grogan and his wife for pursuing their self-indulgent delusion that their story - of what is fundamentally just a badly-behaved pet – was of any interest to the general public.

You can probably guess from the trailers that the film is horrifically formulaic (couple get dog – unconventional dog makes couple happy – couple have problem – dog’s unconventionality resolves problem, making couple realise grand truths about life and love and God). The fact that the Hollywood execs have tried to disguise this utter lack of original thought by replacing the friendly retard or maverick teacher (see Rainman, I am Sam, Dangerous Minds) with an animal, doesn’t make the proceedings any less tedious.

It’s difficult to determine whether it’s the piece of shit script or poor casting that renders John and Jen Grogan one of the worst onscreen couples ever (even their names seem to reflect their middle-of-the-road uniformity). Jennifer Aniston’s portrayal of Grogan’s wife is nothing short of hateful, with her aggressive, almost maniacal desire to continually procreate, like some kind of massive, angry ovary.
Owen Wilson – a man whose voice is like a cross between a creaking car door and the sound of someone chewing their own face from the inside out – gives a decidedly average performance in the role of Owen Wilson, a disappointment given that he’s played this same part to perfection in many other projects.

One of the most jaw-droppingly shite moments of Marley & Me is when Aniston and Owen’s characters take a holiday in Ireland. Cue comedy fiddle-dee-diddle-dee music accompanying token shots of emerald green fields. They may as well have had the leprechaun from the Lucky Charms adverts dancing madly in the background. (“To be sure, we don’t have the old electricity here” is the reply to Aniston’s request for an electric blanket). As if it couldn’t get any worse, the holiday is the triggering factor in the conception of three kids, all with good, Oirish names like Shamrock, Potato Famine and Guinness.

One of the sole redeeming factors of the film are the outstanding performances of the eighteen dogs who took on the difficult role of Marley, a character who is by turns nihilistic, endearing and complex. A notable highlight is the scene in which Marley fucks Kathleen Turner’s leg, an episode which captures the character’s powerful, yet destructive sexuality. Further, Marley’s death scene constitutes one of the most captivating in cinematic history, if only because it lasts for an hour and by the end, you’ll be gripping the arms of your chair growling ‘DIE. JUST FUCKING DIE’ through gritted teeth.

Incidentally, as we leave the cinema, a small child skips past us singing ‘Marley’s dead, let’s celebrate’ to the tune of London Bridge is Falling Down, a sentiment which neatly condenses the feelings of every other cinema-goer and ultimately says more than any review ever could.

Skins: Series 3

Here's a modern-day phenomenon for you: the number of people I know with an all-consuming hatred of Skins runs in inverse proportion to the number of journalists that publicly claim to love it. This almost definitely isn't because the show's amazing and definitely is because no-one wants to have the crushing accusation levelled at them that they're just not down with the kids. Similarly, this'll explain why every respected British actor is falling over themselves to get a shitty bit-part as 'Pandora's Mum' or 'Uptight Teacher' (Sophie from Peepshow is so keen, in fact, she's went and got the same haircut as Naomi in a desperate bid to impress). It's a lot like that toilet roll ad, the one where the entire company's being run by a baby and all the adults shift about uncertainly before attending to his irrational demands.

I went on a date once with someone who appeared to be very, very normal. Except he kept making these noises. I don't mean sex noises; thankfully it never got that far. It was right in the middle of conversation he'd make this honking noise that was like a cross between a sheep and a duck. By the time they'd called last orders in the pub, The Noise had become intolerable, drowning out everything else. I tried to ignore it, blaming my own misanthropy for magnifying people's faults and all that, but there are only so many instances of pretending not to hear 'ERGH!' emitted mid-sentence.
The point of this analogy is that I'm reminded of that painful event every time I watch Skins, which is like my night with Sheep-Duck Boy in the sense that every time I think I can tolerate it, it comes out with some staggeringly bad dialogue ("You're just a cocaine-snorting, low-budget, corporate puppet" was a new low in Episode 5).

I've made up a game for watching Skins. It's called 'Spot the Amateur Screenwriter' where you try and discern the point at which the smug little shit writing has to stop because his hands are tired and the professionals take over. This is harder than it looks. Like, who creates the two-dimensional caricatures that constitute the 'grown-up' characters? And who comes up with the embarrassingly bad GCSE English attempts at symbolism? "You just skate around, Freddie, you just...skate around!" cries his dad (Ah, this is like a play on words, see? Cause he skateboards but like, it refers to his aimlessness in life too.)

There's not much of a difference between the ages of 15 and 21, you might think (and certainly not if you're Jerry Lee Lewis). Except in the case of Skins viewers, where the variance in appreciation is a gaping chasm. Despite watching almost every episode in a fit of masochism - I always end up clawing my face with my hands, screaming "mine eyeees", a bit like Oedipus - I continually fail to pick up on the multi-layered meanings of the script. My kid brother, on the other hand, once explained to me that a particular episode was actually “a dream sequence where Tony's, like, realising an aspect of the Self”, leaving me feeling a bit like someone was blowing one of those whistles that only dogs can hear.

And another thing: no matter how many times they say 'fuck', it's never going to distract me from the massively overblown sentimentality that worms its way into every scene. In The World According to Skins, no confession of undying love or moment of intense profundity is complete without the addition of a magical lake as the backdrop (see Episode 5: Freddie swims topless to declare love to Effie in Magical Lake; Episode 6: Token Lesbian declares love to Closet Lesbian beside Magical Lake). Which only results in feeling crap about the fact that most of the significant events of your adolescence took place in a bus shelter or outside the local Lidl.

The whole thing is as entertaining as listening to a description of someone else's LSD trip and in reality, Skins is as disaffected and edgy as an emo kid crying whilst masturbating in front of a mirror. All the sex and drugs in the world aren't going to change that.

Paul Burrell: What Really Happened (C4)

Watching a Jaques Peretti programme is always taking a gamble with your valuable viewing time, principally because he seems to have attended the Dawn Porter School of Investigative Journalism. “You mean, Jacques Peretti sucked wall-to-wall cock to fill the gaping void where talent should be?” you cry. No, no, not that, I was referring to Dawn Porter-style research methods.

Peretti has been touted as ‘Channel 4’s answer to Louis Theroux’ but it’s difficult to discern any connection between the two, other than that they both have heads and facial features. Where Theroux uses a tried-and-tested method of faking naivete to lure subjects into a position of trust, Peretti simply is naïve, creating programmes that are essentially a clumsy rehashing of Wikipedia pages and tabloid stories that are already widely available to anyone with a functioning broadband connection.

There’s a strong degree of ambiguity in the series’ title. The ‘what really happened’ part announces itself authoritatively, offering an insight into the dark underbelly of a story that we, the ignorant viewer, can’t possibly see. Instead, the show’s title is more consistent with Peretti driving around aimlessly and repeating “What really happened…what REALLY happened?”, while never actually managing to answer his own burning hypotheses.

Placing Peretti’s complete incompetence aside, watching anything featuring Paul Burrell is invariably brilliant train-wreck TV. Public revulsion of him appears to stem from the fact that he is the concentrated incarnation of every middle-Englander that displays a disarmingly servile admiration for the Royal family. You know the type: they’re the same people that buy commemorative Diana plates that sing Elton John tunes at the touch of a button. And they’re responsible for every Christmas number 1 that Cliff Richard’s ever had.

Unfortunately, it still all comes back to whether the programme sheds any new light on the question of “Why is Paul Burrell completely mental?”

With a line of enquiry as inane as “who would play Paul in the film of his life?” it’s unlikely that we’ll ever find out, though the viewing of this programme does serve as a valuable reminder of Burrell’s weirdness.

Half Ton Son (C4)

“It’s like a prison that you just…move around in!” sobs Billy Robbins who, at 60 stone, has the dubious accolade of being the fattest teenager in the world. Your body may be a prison Fatboy, but it’s arguably a tasty prison of your own making, one in which the bars are made of sausage rolls, with walls of delicious puff pastry.

Bodyshock’s Half Ton Son is markedly different from the series’ previous efforts: Half Ton Man, Half Ton Mum and Half Ton Dad. Oh wait…No, it’s not at all different as once the fatties pass the 30 stone mark, categories such as age, race and gender are all rendered invalid as distinguishing markers of identification.

Let’s deconstruct the title of ‘Bodyshock’ here: where, precisely, is the ‘shock’ factor in the programme? We’re told that Billy’s mum (who isn’t getting asked to do Paris Fashion Week anytime soon) has been feeding him up to 8000 calories a day. This is the equivalent of eating 26.66667 Scotch eggs, all day, every day. Shocking, would be if Billy’s massive caloric intake was utilised to create a new kind of super-efficient magical fuel that would solve the world’s energy crisis. Not shocking – taking up eating as a full-time occupation makes you porky.

One of the crueller ironies I’ve noticed in documentaries on the morbidly obese is that they’re often obliged to spend a significant chunk of their screen time buck naked (it would seem clothing manufacturers have only so many Xs they can add to an L).

Admittedly, there is a certain freedom made available to fatties as lumbering around in the buff does not bring the usual host of worries it would with the majority of the population. For instance, the thought of ‘don’t want to be naked on telly, might ruin future sexual opportunities’ probably flew out the window for Billy Robbins, right after he realised finding his willy from under a vast apron of fat is much akin to a game of hide-and-seek, a game he loses all too often.

Loose Women UPDATE

Jayne MacDonald had a Xmas single. No expense was spared on the video.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=jonwKvsK6oc&feature=related

Mum, Heroin and Me (C4)

Two things I hate: the English upper-classes and junkies. As an Edinburgh Uni student living in Leith, I'm subjected to a bit of both every day, often swinging wildly from one end of the social spectrum to the other in the space it takes for the Number 14 bus to drive me from university to home.
Still, never did I expect to see the two spectacularly combined as I did in the extravaganza that was Mum, Heroin and Me last Thursday night.

Naturally Channel 4 were eager to commission a documentary about posh junkies: it's so much more palatable than their previous efforts. Anyone who remembers Krishnan Guru-Murthy's horrific presentation of a live detox - an unsavoury cross between Big Brother and America's Toughest Prisons - will understand why.

Irrespective of Jane Treays's merits as a documentary maker, this was never going to be the most heart-rending of subject matters. Because if you had grown up in Niddrie, with a life resembling a montage of the worst of Jeremy Kyle, heroin addiction as a lifestyle choice would be easier to understand. Somehow, telling us that it got so bad your mum had to sell the Conran sofa doesn't quite have the same ring of tragedy to it.

Consequently, I felt it necessary to illustrate my point with a list entitled "Why being a posh junkie is hard (but not that hard)":

1) You have to tie off the circulation in your arm before injecting (with a vintage Hermes scarf).

2) You cook up your fix in a spoon (a silver one).

3) You were once rattling so bad for a fix that you couldn't move. Mum sent Agnieska (the Polish maid) to pay the dealer.

4) You go through the chilling effects of cold turkey. Luckily, you can do this in the East Wing of the house, thus limiting any mess.

5) While detoxing, you have to puke and shit into buckets. Buckets made of gold.

6) Mummy and Daddy raid their ISA account and send you to rehab. In South Africa. Which is fabulous as your friends Freddie and Georgina are doing their gap year over there.