Just pretend she's talking about Ashley Cole's dick.

We've been a bit quiet here at The Marilyn due to it being Christmas and such and for that we apologise. We apologise profusely. We're sorry. As it was the season of Christmas cheer and much brevity we feel our internet inaction can be explained away by the fact that we've been spending most of our time over the past week or so gleefully stuffing our fat faces with food, seeing family (cousin Charles mainly) and doing a large amount of lying down. Entwined into this hotbed of cultural action has understandably been a large portion of television watching. So as a little precursor to things to follow in 2010 we thought we'd take this opportunity to mark the end of 'the noughties' (good god we've got to think of something better to call it than that; history will not forgive us if we don't) to provide a small televisual footnote to the year that was 2009. Strangely enough it comes in the trim, yet none the less harrowing vision of Cheryl Cole and her new advert for Loreal.

It was undboutably the year of Cole as she wooed the nation on the X Factor with her incessant patronising 'concern' and 'admiration' that she seemed to hand out by the bucketload to an ever ready and willing stream of reality-blinkered cretins. She proved this by crying loads. We at The Marilyn can't think the last time we cried. It was probably when something sad happened as apposed to EVERY TIME A TELEVISION CAMERA WAS POINTED AT OUR FACE. To be fair she does have a face that warrants having a camera pointed at it so maybe (not maybe, definitely) we're just jealous, seeing as she looks like a porcelain angel and we look like a bunch of malnourished owls slowly pecking away at a beehive of shame. See here for a montage of what the nation now deems endearing. It's enough to make you sick. And then kill everyone.



Anyway, collective forgetting is a wonderful thing and her past mishaps such as, oh I don't know, say committing a racially charged assault on a girl in a nightclub (Whoops a daisy! Done herself a mischief) have long been forgotten and she is now the new face of Loreal, promoting some hair shit or something. The advert is strange though. Very, very strange. Her troubled relationship with professional footballer Ashley Cole is well documented and this advert seems to be not only hinting at, but completely and utterly playing on the accusations that Ashley's heart may not be 100% in the relationship, to put it gently. Just replace the word hair with 'Ashley's Penis' and the advert takes on the vision of a macabre nightmarish scene where every woman in the world stands laughing and pointing chanting "Mister floppy, Mister floppy!"*

The opening lines of the advert are even more brazen and unsettling, and have you looking around the room in a state of befuddlement asking yourself internally, "is Cheryl Cole selling viagra?". Anyway the advert speaks for itself, so do enjoy.



If you're looking for the best Cheryl Cole-related snippet from the internet it undoubtably has to be this Twitter profile belonging to Cheryl Kerl that documents her everyday activities done entirely in Geordie dialect, it's as hard to read as she is to comprehend.

Now we wait for 2010 to see who will rise from the lowly ranks of sociopathic nightclub racist, to the giddy heights of constantly-weeping pop starlet. Whoever it is, we can be safe in the knowledge that they will most likely be guided by the invisible and unstoppable power that is the hand of Simon Cowell.

* The Marilyn Mansion is well aware this says more about our damaged psyche's than the advert itself. It's still quite funny though (the imagery, not erectile dysfunction).

Vassell's World (Darius starts a blog)

Darius Vassell starts a blog about life as a pro-footballer in Turkey. The Marilyn tracks his progress…

Not many British children, in the budding days of their halcyon youth, dream wistfully of one day becoming a monolingual ex-England international footballer plying their trade in the lower reaches of the Super Lig. So it must have been an awakening of sorts when Ankaragucu came a-knocking — successfully it turned out — for the out-of-contract Darius Vassell at a point in his life when things already seemed to be taking a turn for the worse.

The Ankaragucu fans reacted to news of Vassell’s impending signing with what we can only describe as utter euphoria (much akin to the jubilation one feels after a particularly nasty and prolonged bout of projectile vomiting). Footage of such celebration is usually filler for newscasts detailing regime-changes and other massive cultural earthquakes, so it’s no insult to suggest that for Vassell this seems somewhat misplaced. Even if he does an insane skill like this every week.

Predictably, it’s not all fun and (football) games (…see what we did there?). The blog that Vassell has started up is hilarious for its blend of strange detail and frankly bizarre reflections, while at the same time has an air of resignation and melancholy about it that tells of a broken man seeking to piece together the shards of a life that once held so much promise. After the initial comedy of reading “I really hate losing football matches, so i just stayed in my hotel room for 3 days running now…”, it makes for some depressing viewing, rather like the feeling of sitting in the bath and letting the water slowly drain out (ten points if you get that reference). Par example:

“My dog has swollen glands, and theres a risk of Lymphoma... ive researched this and its not good.”

“The journey home seemed alot longer [than the reverse journey], but im currently watching season 3 of Dexter so that passes the time well”

Needless to say, we’ll be supporting this cultural learning mission by keeping up with Vass’s (hopefully) successful career path and saying, as one, that we are with you Darius, welcome to the World Republic of Bloggers, welcome comrade, brother, friend!

Click here to read Darius' blog...

'The Razor'

This week we've begun a new art project. It's a photojournalistic review of a young man's life from the age of 18 up to the present day. It seeks to trace the embers of youth as they fall through the hourglass of time, only to reappear as the murky vision of historical trauma and perpetual suffering like the liminal spectre of Old King Hamlet...

Ok so none of this is actually true at all, however this is supposed to be a vaguely culture-orientated blog so we thought we best ham it up a bit as a way to try and justify this post. What we've really done is waste a lot of time in the (Holy) name of procrastination.

A while ago we noticed a strange phenomenon concerning one of our dear friends. One Mr. Benjamin David Shave (I think his middle name is David). It turns out that when Ben's photos are examined, it becomes very clear that in the majority of them his is either a) Swearing, or b) Asleep. We've collated some of the best that we could find. The Marilyn Mansion is proud to introduce, without any further ado, Ben 'The Razor' Shave (swearing or asleep).

Starting as you mean to continue...

Slowly....

Here comes the nap.

It's all downhill from here.

This is just really weird. The blood tats make the swearing more aggressive. Especially as it's situated around the throat. Is it a candle or a dick?

'The Pick' swear. Inventive. 

Nice house nap.

Falling asleep on the DJ booth of a club in Leamington is great. Especially when it's your own night.

Asleep on Nicky.

This chair was Ben's chair. It was a fine chair.

Swearing at your own flyer is fun.

Yeah, asleep on the booth again. Clearly this was our 'vodka orange' stage.

Sometimes all you need is a cold hard floor. 

Notice the delicate parting of the lips.

Yeah have some of that, darling.

I will hurt you...

The dance and swear; oldie but a goodie!

The use of the wine glass is just amazing. Perfect. This is my favourite photo. Ever.

The 'charm swear'. Boyish charm works a treat.

Look how nice that pillow is! What a sweet shade of green.

"These are for you McNulty"

This = The Razor. Notice the eyes lolling into the back of the head.

Boom. Pit stop.

Still boom. Festival nap.

Yeah.

Festival fuck you.

Cardigan fuck you.

No man ever slept so sound.

Apart from sleeping and swearing, Ben also writes probably one of the best sports blogs we've come across on the whole sodding internet. Make sure you spend the time checking it out: HERE HERE HERE ALERT ALERT ALERT LINK ALERT!

Those BT Total Broadband adverts...

Ah, so that guy from My Family seven seasons ago is now looking for a house with the prospective spouse. Or rather, she’s sitting on the phone and the net at the same time (God she's smart) while he’s looking about (tschaa! Doing all the leg work as usual right guys? Are we right? Are we right?... Are we?... Guys?...).

So, like the last time we saw them (when they announced their wedding to everyone over the phone — obviously they’re not tweeters) they were conducting the construction of their future on the phone. Do they never visit each other? Ever since he moved to Cornwall or wherever that stupid place is that he had to go for work purposes, or whatever stupid reason it was, they’ve not seen each other at all. The kids (hers) seem to be absent from the whole thing and haven't been seen since they were looking round that house where the best part was the BT Home Hub (why didn't they just move in there?) — they’ve probably gone into care and ended up in the hands of benevolent Mormons, because this couple obviously have issues with inter-personal relationships.

Along with the estate agent, our newly goateed fiancée is being shown various houses (two) of varying quality (completely average either way), but for some reason the agent needs to be online to remember this shit: obviously he doesn’t have paper and can actually access the internets in these vacated houses that are up for sale — they must be stealing the neighbours’ internets (nice choice of estate agent guys). Either that or they are breaking into people’s houses while they're out and will sell the property before they get back, move the new family in and leave the former owners homeless (estate agents are like cuckoos).

So the solution to all this? GET BT TOTAL BROADBAND! Of course, because then you’ll have more reason not to actually spend time with the people you love, and your work can take advantage of your stupidity, send you to the other side of the world etc. and it won’t matter at all — you can keep in touch on MSN messenger, send emoticons as to how you’re feeling:

-- How’s things in Mozambique darling?

-- :-(

-- Ah, shall I come visit

-- :-(

-- Yeah, good idea, it's much better this way. We wouldn't want to get too serious by actually spending time together before we get married...

-- I agree. I'd better go deary, I just got a text: it's my agent telling me he found my career last night taking ketamine in a pub toilet in Kettering with Barry Chuckles and Paul Burrell...

Art Attack - on Jonathan Jones

The blogoplanet being what it is (no, to be honest, we don’t know either – everybody else seems to, though), that tiny minority paid to do very little except blog are, rightly, the subjects of an extraordinary scrutiny. A scrutiny far more intense, that is, than any kind of journalist has been the subject of at any other point in history – and far more public, in fact: yes, the scholar Peter Holland was right to point out, in a recent lecture about reviewing theatre, that online comment-makers invariably savage each other rather than the actual, y’know, authors of articles/blogs/posts/etc. But more than ever before, the blogosphere has ensured that paid journalists can expect to see their work displayed alongside comments insulting their methodology, correcting their grammar, or often just thick with personal abuse, on a daily basis. Often bi-daily. However good they are.

Poor old George Monbiot instigates a relatively major online civil war whenever he thinks a thought. James Macintyre at the New Statesman receives a gushing torrent of Nu-Tory abuse each and every time he put throws down one of his (admittedly, Labour-fisting) gauntlet-polemics. Tanya Gold is another prolific comment firestarter – not that we blame that particular journalist’s critics. She is, by any reasonable human being’s standards, a spadefaced killjoy with all the brutal, pleasure-chapping imagination of a particularly virulent strain of syphilis.

All of which represents a context which brings into the sharpest of reliefs a question that, in a way that I’ve found unfathomable for several months now, the blogoearth refuses to ask: why, WHY does the Guardian still pay monies, MONIES THAT THE ENTIRE GODAMN WORLD KNOWS IT CAN’T AFFORD, to Jonathan motherfucking Jones. You know, Jonathan Jones. The art blog guy. The strawberry-coloured art blog guy who writes the art blogs. With the tumour-head? For the Guardian? You know, that guy? With the art blog? The blog about the art?

God, lucky you. Take it this means you haven’t been luxuriating in the shimmering pointlessness of Jonathan Jones’ astonishingly facile yet curiously addictive ‘thoughts’ about ‘art’ for the last manymany weeks like we have then? God. Weird. We thought everyone else was too. Shit, guess that’s why the Guardian still gives him the monies then. Right.

Well then, here's Jonathan Jones’ art blog. We’re genuinely sorry to do this, but it’s important that you read a few posts by way of catch up – otherwise what follows this paragraph might appear a little injudicious. We recommend you start with this one (published on November 18). It serves as a particularly good introduction to Jones’ uncompromisingly useless approach to blogging about a subject that, for reasons that haven’t yet been made clear to us, he’s considered an expert on (if ‘art’ – yes, the whole of art, all of it, all the art – can indeed be considered a ‘subject’). Let's go through it step by step, really get to the heart of what JJ’s about…

‘Art snobs can keep Poussin: next to the sensuality of Botticelli or the danger of Cezanne, Poussin’s haughty, bloodless landscapes leave me cold…’

Good lord JJ. You mean a fifteenth century Florentine and a nineteenth century Frenchman can not only be slapped together and made sense of with single, well-chosen (because who, after all, doesn’t feel altogether menaced when confronted by Cezanne’s still life curtains) adjectival flourishes, but are also represent, together, a basis for your anti-snob lack of affection for a sixteenth century French painter who, intriguingly, requires TWO similarly well-chosen adjectives to be similarly summarised. What a remarkable hypothesis. Let’s see where you go next with this…

We paraphrase (it’s easy with JJ – here's two paragraphs in ten words): ‘I’m not an art snob because I don’t like Poussin…’

Now, we’re pretty sure that most snobs’ snobbishness is defined by what they don’t like rather than what they do – and, indeed, that if too many snobs like one thing, then that thing immediately becomes an inappropriate subject for snobbish approval, and therefore no longer a ‘touchstone of high taste’. Think – let’s use an example JJ will be comfortable with – Picasso. But whatever, we’re still with you…

Again paraphrased: ‘I once stayed in a town which was hosting both a Poussin and a Botticelli exhibition – I preferred the Botticelli. Cezanne admired Poussin – I prefer Cezanne to Poussin.’

THAT’S THE LINK? THAT’S THE FUCKING LINK?

‘But on Poussin, I’m a philistine and fear I always will be…’

Ah, a bit of self-deprecation (slotted in, mind, between fatty, buttery layers of self-promoting pretension – ‘I once got to spend a night in the Villa Medici in Rome to see an exhibition of Poussin and his contemporaries curated by Neil MacGregor’ anyone? How about the bastard’s use of the word ‘milquetoast’?) to make it all okay again, to smooth over the fact that your blog isn’t framed around, we dunno, something that’s HAPPENED deserving of comment, the publication of a new book (the one he mentions is three years old), a new exhibition, something like that – that your blog represents NOTHING more than your banally-expressed opinions about three STAGGERINGLY UNCONNECTED artists.

Imagine, for a minute, what would happen if a paid ‘literary critic’ decided, spontaneously, to blog the following (and once again, we paraphrase): James Joyce is the touchstone of high-taste but I find his work rather BLOODLESS – James kind of sounds like Jones and I like Tom Jones by Henry Fielding, which isn’t bloodless, and I once read Portrait… and The Canterbury Tales in the same day and I definitely preferred the latter – more blood. Therefore James Joyce is bad, aren’t I a philistine, HO HO HO.

Said imaginary critic would, it goes without saying, be ridiculed. JJ isn’t ridiculed. JJ gets comments thanking him for his interesting opinionations. And this, thank Christ, rather more perceptive comment from ‘Dowland’:

‘I'm not having a go at JJ (specifically) here, but this is what bothers me about so much “criticism” of the arts (see the Guardian’s music reviews – any category – for similar examples, or even Peter Bradshaw’s breathtakingly uninformative review recently of An American Werewolf in London).

It basically comes down to “I like this but I don't like that”.

Come on critics – give us some insights! Expand our horizons! Show us things we might never have noticed about a piece of art! Not “I went to a Poussin exhibition and found him bloodless but maybe that’s just me.”

Any fool can do that. Even I could do that.’

You’re on the right track Dowland, really you are. But you really SHOULD be having a go at JJ specifically. Bradshaw’s nothing like as bad. The above really, really isn’t, we should add, an isolated case. Consider this, JJ’s list of the five most famous art galleries in the world complete with an explanation of which one’s his favourite – alas, the recent redesign of the MOMA ‘has left it less lovable’. Loveable? Fuck does that mean JJ? Or this altogether more troubling little bollock of wisdom: hey guys, leave state-funded tax-ducker Emin alone, she’s an artist, artists are meant to be, y’know, different an' strange an’ stuff. So just chill out yeah, silly British public.

So yeah, basically, shut up JJ. Shut the fuck up. Go have the heart attack that your pallor suggests is more than imminent. Please. You don’t know how blogging works. You’re disproportionately successful. Your work soils the Guardian's exquisite website. And you’re so, so much more physically repulsive than Rachel Campbell-Johnston. You’re ruining art for us. All of it. All the art.

The not-New Journalism - rise of the viral

Upon reading the Observer this Sunday* as we are wont to do, our eyes were caught by an article on Glenn Beck, the American news -anchor? -journalist? -presenter? -preacher? We smiled wryly at the typically deadpan treatment by the British left-leaning press of the freak show that has come to embody Murdoch’s chest pumping, liberal-baiting Fox News network. We sipped our mocha pot espressos while a thought came to us...

Of course, anything that brings to people’s attention the utterly perplexing insanity-masquerading-as-political-opinion or even cultural-representation that is Glenn Beck has adequate justification in itself, be it for the cause of entertainment or comment. But the Gaby Wood article — accepting that it was a Sunday-edition comment piece — didn’t really have any newsworthy angle to it. Yes, Glenn Beck sounds like what a retarded sack of hemorrhoids would do if it were given a microphone. Yes, he and the White House don’t get on because the President is a Communist. Yes, he’s popular with a lot of people that seem to have eaten their own brains. This much — being such enlightened creatures — we know.

So rather than being to inform and to reflect concurrently, this article is an example of how newspapers are increasingly separating these two into distinct spheres. Glenn Beck’s rants on his radio show, his calling Obama ‘racist’ and his myriad other performance pieces are gaining presence this side of the Atlantic owing mainly to Youtube and the like's hosting of Beck’s finest moments. [Any posts linking The Marilyn Mansion to some Beck videos would be welcomed below.]

Beck is, however, newsworthy in the context of going viral. This is nothing new of course: SuBo is a recent testament to former internet greats like Charlie Bit My Finger and Tron Guy. But what is new is how journalists and their editors seem willing to give more currency to cultural peculiarities generated from sources outside of the usual ‘news’ remit, be that the internet in the Beck case or in older forms of viralism (yes, viralism) such as word-of-mouth.

We’re talking specifically about The Wire (the last season of which ended on US TV on 9^th March 2008 — nearly two years ago). It's a social fact nowadays that people either don’t know The Wire, or if they do communicate their love for it through the medium of semi-sexual groans and ululations. For example it may go:

--Have you seen The Wire?

--No.

Or otherwise:

--Have you seen The Wire?

--Arrrghhhh! Ooooorrrhhhh! The Wwhhhyyyyeeerrrrr!

Considering that the show isn’t even airing on the BBC anymore and is only available through DVD boxsets or online streaming, the sheer space and time given over to the David Simon and Ed Burn classic doesn’t match up with the usual, more contemporary press love-ins about admittedly decent TV shows (such as the recent The Thick Of It obsession). This may just be because The Wire is so awesome. Which it is. Or perhaps it is the pervasive blogification of the press (yes, that’s right — blogification) in which the more open, reflective tone befitting the blog reaches beyond into wider editiorial practices.

What is really going on here is clearer in the newspapers' reactions to the viral mode itself. How the older generations of journalists write about Twitter, Facebook, Spotify et al reveals the generation gap that they endeavour to close by whispering into the ear of readers of similar age just what those young-uns are doing, be that on those internets of theirs or otherwise. Andrew Brown’s blog on Twitter language and Tom Service’s comment on the ‘dangers’ of Spotify searches for classical music fans are perfect examples of this anxiety over technology of the thirty-pluses, summed up wonderfully by The Onion here.

*Note: We did not in fact read the paper. We looked at the website. Yes, we're those mysterious people you’ve read about who are ruining the newspaper industry.

Things about Amsterdam what we have learnt.

The Dutch are tolerant. Only by proxy though.

In Amsterdam, you can sleep with prostitutes and smoke weed whilst doing it and so on and so forth blah blah it's awesome, yes we know, thank you Holland, great work. However, this has had a strange effect on the Dutch people. Because their laws are so tolerant it means that there is an assumption that so are the people, which they are ...mostly... until it comes to Christmas, that is. Which is insane. Really insane. As apposed to our Anglo-American view of this wholesome, commercial and sometimes (but mostly not) genuinely religious holiday, where people give us nice things for free, the Dutch do things a little differently. We witnessed their version of Christmas and it scared the shit out of us. So what goes down that is so unsettling? We'll try to explain.

Some time in late November, Saint Nicholas comes to town. Now, he does not live in the North Pole like a good Father Christmas should. He doesn't even live in the South Pole where we assume all the Polar Bears live. He's from Turkey. Okay, that's fine actually. Saint Nic was the Bishop of Turkey. That makes sense. However he lives in Spain now. As far as we're aware Father Christmas has never been much of a fan of Tapas, but that's ok too. We can live with the fact that he has chosen to live in Spain. Spain's nice. We like Spain, we all like Spain. Spain is FINE. 

Every year good ol' Saint Nicholas makes his trip over from Spain to The Netherlands to hand out sweets to children, ask them what they want and be generally pleasant. Or so you'd think. Instead of the threat of coal in the stocking, the children are literally threatened with the promise that if they misbehave Saint Nicholas will put them in a bag and pretend to kick them and then beat them with a cane. Note, he won't actually do it, just threaten them with a beating. It's like when film or theatre critics note that a piece of work is "made all the more horrifying not by the use of violence, but by it's immediate and impending threat". We're sure they say stuff like that all the time.

Anyway that's the tip of the iceberg. The real kicker is who Saint Nic brings with him, a character called Zwarte Peter. Zwarte means black. Black Peter, or Black Pete for short. It doesn't really matter. Now, the fable behind the myth of Black Pete is that he is based on three moorish children who Saint Nicholas, who was at the time presumably just known as Nicholas, saved from execution. One story cites that they chose from that time on to help Nicholas go about his days delivering presents to smiling, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, strapping Dutch children (The Dutch are the tallest nation in the world). The other version of the tale is a little more uncomfortable. They're his slaves. The third version goes so far as to suggest that Black Pete may simply be the devil, enslaved (there's that word again) by Nicholas. 

As a story goes, this all seems fine. Old and a bit weird, but for the most part fine. However, the real fun comes with the parade. Parade? Oh yes there's a parade. A mind-boggling, awe-inducing, reality-bending, traumatic parade that will reshape all notions of time, space and history. At least that's what happened for us, everyone else just seemed to be having a fairly pleasant time. We'll try and run through these life altering events as best we can, but like the death of a child, it's hard to talk about.

We headed out to where we heard the parade was passing through. We knew things were taking a turn for the surreal when, as we approached, we saw a child. A child in a little colourful chimney sweep outface. In blackface. And a wig. An afro wig. He was dressed as 'Black Pete'. We'd heard this happened but were shocked into an immediate state of psychological repression and continued to walk on, slowly shaking our heads and muttering under our collective breath "get it together Marilyn, get your shit together".  It didn't get any easier. For a few minutes we waited by the side of the road, crowded with hordes of Dutch people who all looked on eagerly into the distance. It was like the Pope was coming to town. Except The Dutch are Calvinists, so maybe it was like Calvin coming to town. Then it happened. We weren't sure at first but soon enough it became very clear what was happening. Seven hundred white Dutch men, women and children dancing through the streets, throwing out sweets and crisps, playing music, singing. They were on floats, some were playing instruments, some were even on roller-skates! The one thing they had in common? Blackface. The lot of them, all dressed as Black Pete. We looked around ready to see the horror, the outrage, people screaming, police holding back angry crowds of incensed, violent Dutch, who in their utopian city of tolerance, understanding and communal happiness, would not stand for what can only be described as the largest minstrel show on Earth. 

Nope. They sang songs instead. 

The whole time our mouths were open, our eyes wide and our minds fried. We were suddenly in 1920s America and this was all ok. At one point we were shot in the face with sweets from a cannon. A cannon! On a float! Saint Nicholas finally appeared on a big white horse, but no one seemed too interested. It was Black Pete's day in the spotlight. After the parade finished we stumbled away, dazed and a little shaken, as if we'd just escaped a small car crash. And once home, immediately made a few medicinal cups of tea and had a well-needed sit-down.

We would recommend everyone sees it at least once. It is genuinely incredible. You can also sign up to be Black Pete. We're going to do it next year.