Is It Just Me or Is Everything Shit? (11 page)

GRAVY TRAIN, THE

Transport for bastards, laid on by The Man.

Not to be confused with: the gravy boat, which is transport for gravy, by Your Mam; “Love Train,” which was laid down by the O’Jays.

GUINNESS BOOK OF WORLD RECORDS, THE

Genuine Guinness world records include making the World’s Largest Dog Biscuit or constructing the Fastest Thirty-Level Jenga Tower. Why not just go for the World’s Single Most Pointless Individual Obsessively Engaged in a Heart-Sinkingly Futile Act?

The Guinness world record for holding the most Guinness world records is held by Ashrita Furman of New York—including Longest Milk Bottle Head Balancing Walk. This fucking freak walked eighty miles with a fucking milk bottle on his empty fucking head. Furman also holds the Milk Crate Balancing on Chin record, the Fastest Pogo Stick Jumping Up the CN Tower record, and the Orange Nose Push—Fastest Mile record (24 min. 36 sec. Woo! Woo!). Since the 1970s, he has set more than eighty Guinness world records. As of November 2004, he held twenty: This means that people see these pointless records and then aspire to break them, presumably saying things like, “434 games of hopscotch in a 24-hour period? Ea-sy!”

Ashrita puts his amazing success down to his daily meditation regime. After discovering the spiritual teachings of Sri Chinmoy, he renamed himself Ashrita in 1974. His real name is Keith (you couldn’t actually make this up). GuinnessWorld Records.com explains: “Ashrita is on a spiritual mission and uses his inner spirit to perform the record-breaking feats. Under the instruction of his guru he says he’s been able to attain a new level of self-transcendence—meaning he can overcome the physical pain and mental anguish of his testing record attempts.”

Didn’t fancy using your “inner spirit” and “self-transcendence” for, say, the attainment of world peace then, Keith? At least Furman merits inclusion in the book. So many people are setting world records that many don’t even get a mention. Imagine that: You’ve just set the record for the Longest Jack-Off in a Bath of Beans, and it’s not even in the book. How are you going to feel then?

The book—the best-selling copyright title of all time, at more than one hundred million copies (haven’t all these people considered going for a walk or something?)—was set up (in the 1950s) and edited by Norris McWhirter (with his brother Ross), who was not far off being a fascist. He was forever funding strike breakers and defending sportspeople who went to South Africa during apartheid. A rabid anti-European, McWhirter was caught altering the 1975 edition book proofs just before they were sent to the printers, adding: “World’s Worst Country: the Krauts.”

H

HANDBALL

People would take the Olympics a lot more seriously if they didn’t include handball. They’re just throwing a ball to each other like a bunch of kids. It’s just stupid. And if you win, how do you look, say, the marathon gold medalist in the eye?

HANDBALL GOLD MEDALIST:
What did you get your gold for?

MARATHON GOLD MEDALIST
: I
RAN TWENTY-SIX MILES IN EXTREME HEAT
.

HANDBALL GOLD MEDALIST
: G
REAT
. I
THREW A BALL BACK AND FORTH FOR A BIT WITH SOMEONE ABOUT TWO FEET AWAY FROM ME
. T
HEN
I
HAD A BATH
.

MARATHON GOLD MEDALIST
: G
O DIE, ASS-CLOWN
.

HARE KRISHNAS

Hare, hare krishna

Hare hare

Hare bullshit

Bullshit

Bullshit krishna

Hare bullshit

Bullshit hare

(REPEAT)

TERI HATCHER, PHILOSOPHER

As Bertrand Russell once noted: “Philosophy bakes no bread.” This is true: Philosophy is no baker. And bread has never been especially beneficial to philosophy. But that all changed when one modern philosopher was struck by inspiration while thinking about bread. Toasted bread. Toast, in fact.

The philosopher in question was, of course, Teri Hatcher, philosopher, whose subsequent treatise
Burnt Toast: And Other Philosophies of Life
expanded upon her belief that, when presented with burnt toast, women often eat it rather than throwing it away and starting again. The thing is, it’s not just about toast—the toast is a metaphor, you see. For all poorly prepared breakfasts. Not that Teri Hatcher seems to ever eat breakfast, what with her looking so thin and all. Or, indeed, a PowerBar.

Anyway, what follows is a kind of aphoristic free-for-all reminiscent of the work of Friedrich Nietzsche. For instance: “When my waters broke with Emerson, I was in the middle of cooking dinner. I called the doctor who told me to come straight to the hospital. I asked her if I had time to blow dry my hair. She said, ‘What?’ ”

And: “When I hung up the phone I burst into tears. That motherfucker. I opened myself up and what did I get? Scorched. I rallied a couple of girlfriends for burn-victim treatment.”

And: “When we’re kids, our instincts are raw and untempered by all the pros and cons and second-guessing that take over our adult lives. But we suffer the consequences. I kept the cat. Kitty was her name.”

Fairly soon, you realize that the desperation is no act, that Hatcher really is that desperate—for truth! Among other things.

We wonder what Eva Longoria’s great philosophical investigation will reveal. She’s certainly due her own “eureka” moment sometime soon. What with all that sitting around in the bath.

“HAVING ONE OF THOSE DAYS?” ADVERTISING

Having one of those days? Someone at the office dumping their work on you? Got rained on at lunch? Hair? Him? And that?

Don’t worry, girls. Just relax on a big, snuggly sofa with a steaming mug of hot chocolate (lo-cal, natch!) and think about crummy guys, etc., etc. With ads for products aimed primarily at females aged 20–35, you can virtually hear the brains of lumpen creatives filling in the cliché boxes with a big lazy tick: okay . . . vulnerable, likes snuggling up, “having one of those days?,” shake it all off with . . . bubbles, thinking about crummy guys, lo-cal hot chocolate . . . pamper pamper, more hot chocolate, mmmm, steamy and warm, mmmm, bubbles, luxuriant bubble bath absolutely everywhere . . . “having one of those days?” . . . more bubbles. Candles!

HEALTH-FOOD ENTREPRENEURS

Wholemeal breadheads.

HEDGE-FUND BOYS

In a get-rich-quick world, hedge-fund boys get rich the quickest. How they spend their cash influences whole lower stratospheres of vacuous consumption. Currently, hedge-fund boys prefer to splash their cash ordering bottles of every liquor under the sun, ostensibly opening their own lounge-side bar within the bar.

If professional watchers of the super-rich are to be believed, these “lords of havoc” (so dubbed by the UK’s
New Statesman
) drive the tastiest motors, eat at the fastest restaurants, swim in the wettest pools, and stalk London and New York like Knights of the Bastard Table. The
Sunday Telegraph
estimated that in 2005, around 200 to 300 UK hedge-fund managers carved up $4.2 billion of pure profit among them. In 2005, according to the U.S.
Institutional Investor
magazine, the top twenty-five hedge-fund managers earned an average of $251 million each. The amount of money the world’s hedge funders handle could be as much as $1.5 trillion.

So how do they do it? Well, it’s tricky. Even people who understand economics do not understand hedge funds. These secretive, privately owned investment companies are massive—if they were a country, they would be the eighth biggest on the planet. But it would be a country you could not visit or even see: Hedge funds, of which there are reckoned to be eight thousand in the world, mostly based in the United States, “fly under the radar” (CNN) and cannot be regulated—mainly because regulators don’t understand what’s going on, even though hedge funds may be responsible for over half the daily turnover of shares on the London stock market alone. After looking into the matter, the Financial Services Authority, Britain’s regulatory body, said: “Fuck it.” It’s very much like
Deal or No Deal:
People claim to know what’s going on, and superficially there would appear to be some logic, but actually they’re making it up as they go along.

We’ve looked into it and have to say it sounds a lot like Internet gambling for the super-rich. Investors must place a minimum of a million dollars into a fund; at enormous risk, the fund managers take these tax-haven stashes and place stakes on anything and everything—FTSE 100 companies, commodities, options, stocks in developing countries, anything that might shoot up in price or can be made to. Often they will take the tax-haven cash and borrow against it—that is, borrowing money in order to gamble it; which is exactly the sort of responsible activity that should remain unregulated. When the hedge funders lose their shirts (one Japanese fund lost $300 million in a week), it’s okay because they’ve got more shirts. But often, other losers—like Colombia or Egypt (both of which saw their stock markets slump after the hedge funders parked their mobile casinos in them)—don’t have any more shirts. Which makes riding with hedge funders quite a bare-knuckle ride, with no shirt on.

In 2006, the “hedgehogs” came into the light with Hedge-stock, a festival in Britain that mixed bands and utterly incomprehensible business seminars (“Incubator Alligator?—sowing the seeds, but do they stay for a cigarette?”). It even had its own jingle, which sounded like the worst thing ever. To the tune of “Sex Bomb,” it went: “Hedgestock, Hedgestock, Groovy Hedgestock, a little bit of business and a whole lot of rock . . .” And you thought Lollapalooza had gone “a bit corporate.”

HELPDESKS

After being shunted among four different clueless cretins, after an epoch of holding on at 35 cents a minute, being subjected to what must be the world’s only extant Deep Forest CD, your psyche oscillating between impotence and rage, there is a voice, a connection, a lifeline . . .

“Okay, I’ve found a Web site about it.”

So, I’m paying you two kings’ ransoms plus a small fortune and a pretty penny to browse around software company Web sites, ambling toward some kind of nonresolution that I could just as easily have been stumbling across myself on the very same software company Web sites if I were not sitting here listening to your insensate minion ooze bewilderment down my fucking telephone.

I DON’T THINK YOU EVEN
WANT
TO HELP.

HIP HOTELS

Hip hotels might have boxy rooms, bad beds, and shrill staff seemingly beamed in from another planet. But there’s a great selection of Latin chill CDs.

• At Milan’s übertrendy Hive Hotel, beekeeping is the theme. Visitors can join in the beekeeping themselves or just relax, put their feet up, and let the staff take care of the bees.

• At Notting Hill’s boutique hotel BOEulk, they’ve got an eight-year-old girl on a swing. Sometimes she sings “Son of a Preacherman.” Sometimes not.

• Every room in West Hollywood’s Barker Ranch features a mural of a different member of the Manson family rendered in the blown-up-cartoon style of Roy Lichtenstein. Sheets are flecked with fake blood. To further resemble a cult of homicidal White Power hippies, all staff have tiny swastikas tattooed on to their foreheads (guests can get their own done, too).

• Berlin’s superb Hotel Hostel has knocked away the interior walls, so guests effectively sleep in unisex dorms. Around the clock, the kitchen staff offer classic hostel fare like sausage ’n’ beans and macaroni ’n’ cheese.

The word
hip
is actually believed to derive from the Wolof (the dominant language in Senegal) word
hipi,
meaning “to open one’s eyes” or “to be aware.” Of course, anyone who truly opens their eyes and becomes aware while staying at a hip hotel might well be moved to declare: “I have just become completely aware that I am being totally fleeced for a poky room, crap service, and decor that’s like the imaginings of a pretentious mental case.”

HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTIONS

So you’ve devoted two years of your life to a prestige documentary series about Auschwitz. You’ve got hitherto unseen photographs, interviews with survivors, shitloads of CGI, and a narrator with more authority than Charlton Heston. But there’s still something missing. What if viewers think you’re making it all up? It could happen. You’ve been reading all about this David Irving guy.

So, obviously, you hire some actors to dress up in German uniforms and stand in a field (possibly in Poland) pointing meaningfully at a map. Ah, so
that’s
what Nazis looked like. Thank God for that. Because I thought they just wore pinafores and hoodies. That silly walk! It’s mad!

The makers of the recent documentary
Munich: Mossad’s Revenge
had the cunning wheeze of juxtaposing contemporary footage of Palestinian terrorist suspects assassinated by the Israeli secret service with reconstructions featuring actors who looked nothing like them. Unless you were drunk, squinting at them through tracing paper. Which is not something you do often. Anymore.

During one revenge job, future Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak was obliged to dress as a woman to get close to his target. To illustrate that this
really happened,
the docudrama makers re-created the event using the world’s shittiest transvestite, thus giving the impression that Mossad entrusted the biggest, riskiest operation in its obsessive mission to track down and eliminate its sworn enemies to Dr. Frank-N-Furter.
^*

HITLER, PEOPLE CALLING EACH OTHER

The Bush administration loves comparing people to Hitler. Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is apparently considered a “new Hitler.” Much-missed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld compared everyone to Hitler. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in hiding was like “Hitler in his bunker.” Saddam Hussein has joined the pantheon of failed, brutal dictators, “alongside Hitler.”

Even Venezuelan “people’s hero” Hugo Chavez was like Hitler because “he’s a person who was elected legally—just as Adolf Hitler was elected legally.” (The presumed implication: Because George Bush was not elected legally in 2000, he is therefore unlike Hitler.)