Evil – demis lyall-wilson

Category: Evil

January 8, 2015

When Good Hangovers Go Bad

The night started so innocently, but don’t they all?

We’ve all taken part in an epic evening where the intent was (and remained) evil from start to finish, but this wasn’t one of those. No, the nights out with the most horrendous aftermaths have a lot in common with effective, successful serial-killers: it’s always the quiet, respectable ones you need to keep an eye on.

This was back in Sydney, toward the end of ’11. Some friends of ours had invited us to a one-off family celebration, a special night for a unique milestone : all three generations of women in the family were celebrating their thirtieth, sixtieth and ninetieth birthdays that year. For extra points, the ‘thirty’ component belonged to a set of non-identical twins, dear friends of ours for years. The roundness of those numbers — their pattern, their alignment — was impossible to ignore, especially for a family renown for bringing together their wide circle of friends and extended family to celebrate far less auspicious-looking events.

The clan leaders booked out a great restaurant by the harbour, and invited about a hundred people to what looked and felt a lot like a wedding (minus the happy couple). Multiple tables full of well-dressed people, many of whom didn’t know one another, all loosened up with the generous “bottomless” champagne and whites the respectable per-head had bought us.

Now, I know what you’re thinking : already, that sounds dangerous. And yes, you’re right: any event that can be compared to a wedding banquet in terms of the expected alcohol volume, and the whole ‘your glass is always full thanks to attentive waiters’ factor should have had us predicting some kind of fall-out the next day. We knew it too. Duh. I’d planned ahead. I’d eaten a big lunch. I’d thrown back a lot of water during the afternoon. I’d come up with a strategy (“Stick with champagne and white wine, only. No beer. No spirits. No mixing, period. Then, water every second drink”) that, by all accounts, remains a sound and worthy alcoholic mantra even today.

In short, I was prepared for the worst. Despite the precautions, it was never far from my mind that this was still, technically, a ‘family gathering’, and that such heavy preparation was likely overkill. The elderly were to be well represented at this party, as well plenty of children. It’s not like we were heading out on a stag night — there was always going to be a certain lid on festivities, no matter how heavy those waiters were going to pour.

The last thing I remember with any clarity was of the few minutes following the main course.

There were speeches. I think. There was definitely a piper — as in actual bagpipes — wandering around at one point, but even then that memory is a little watery. What I do know is that for the couple of hours prior to where the mental tape-recorder cut out, I’d stuck to the plan. White. Sparkling. Water. Very well behaved, albeit far too talkative.

Then, nothing.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I have a single-image memory of sitting in the back seat of a taxi in the dark, and of not being able to focus on anything outside the window. That, and another single-image flash of our bedroom, of trying to make an impassioned point, the topic of which I have no solid recall.

My next memory was of what I always start off a Sunday morning hangover with: that pounding headache that wakes me up (like clockwork) somewhere very close to 7am.

(Side note : there’s not much to be said about that headache. We all know that pain. It feels like death. It goes on and on. The only thing special about it and its attachment to The Most Disturbing Hangover I Ever Had was that none of the regular tricks and cures had any effect on it until much later than they would on any other Sunday hangover. No, not “after I finally ate something”. Not even “somewhere around lunchtime”. That bastard lingered all the way through until about 7pm, presumably the point where my liver had finally cleared enough debris to finally consider dealing with the paracetamol. Unheard of.)

I’m not one of those bed-bound hangover types. I get up. I jump in the shower. I pace around. I go for walks, breathe fresh air. Sometimes I even go for a bike ride. Nothing was different about that particular hangover. Yet. I got straight out of bed, wandered over to the other end of our apartment where the main bathroom was (the non-ensuite one). Cat’s definitely a bed-bound hangover person. I figured if I was rolling a classic 7am up-and-at-’em routine, she was probably rolling her standard static/grumbly/anti-social routine as well. Meaning : I needed to clear the room, fast. I headed for the bathroom at the other end of the apartment.

Words can barely describe what I found next.

The best comparison would be to an aftermath scene in any modern zombie film: walls, floor, mirrors dolloped and splattered in red (vomit, not blood), the intricate spray-patterns only broken by the long, chaotic smears of hand and footprints. The handprints were the most mysterious. Sick and hungover as I was, I took the time to walk into the room and take a good look around at them, to try and figure it all out. Hell, there were even prints smeared all over the back of the door. WTF?

None of it made any sense. I was certain none of it was my handiwork, as I’d been drinking white and champagne all night, waters in between. Nothing to explain the redness of the puke, in any case. Perhaps Cat? But no; she’d have definitely woken me up at some point, either to complain about being that close to death, or the sheer volume of the liquid cacophony that would have been echoing out of that room and down the hallway at the time. Surely I couldn’t have slept through that. Just how drunk had I been?

It wasn’t long before the stench overpowered me, my body stepping in with a not-so-gentle reminder that I was both severely hungover myself, and a sympathetic vomiter. However, during that intimate first trip to the toilet bowl, I noticed more curiosities. There was a massive splash against the wall beside the toilet itself, far, far away from anywhere someone could hit by simply ‘missing’ the bowl, no matter how sick or uncoordinated. Then, after I’d finished emptying my own mostly-empty stomach (clear liquids only – I checked), a further mystery appeared when I closed the lid to the toilet : red vomit all over the cistern and the top of the toilet seat, and more handprints. Bizarre swirls.

Finally, a picture began to form. I imagine it’s how those crime-scene investigators work; quietly assessing the scene, putting themselves into the mind of their imagined perp, reliving every action and reaction. Piece by piece I was seeing a chronology, a possible timeline, something of a sequence, the only one that all the jigsaw pieces would fit nicely into.

So far as I could figure, I’d passed out drunk not long after we got home, Cat fleeing the room, clearly unwell. She would have closed the bedroom door, cause she’s nice (and wouldn’t have wanted me to hear what came next). Perhaps she’d puked a little in the ensuite first, then, anticipating more, came down to the other bathroom, closing all doors behind her. By then she was desperate — she’d started the initial heaving just before she got to the bathroom (Exhibit: A – first spray of the floor just inside the door). The handprints near the light switch would have been the hand that covered the mouth as she ran, printing the wall as she switched the lights on. The ones on the back of the door? Her closing yet another door for sound-muffling purposes. The random spraying around the room between there and the toilet was explained by all this light-and-door business taking up far too much time. Yes. Definitely that. The footprints backed it up.

So far so good.

But then we get to the mysterious toilet/lid/wall combo. The only thing that fit that splatter pattern was this: upon making it to the toilet, now in a blind panic having started projectile vomiting over near the door, she was in too much of a hurry to notice the toilet lid was closed, puking anyway. The error would have been obvious immediately, though now deep into the heaving, she’d have been unlikely to stop the flow, open the lid, start again. She’d have kept spraying the whole time it took her to lift her head (hitting the cistern), turn slightly to the right to avoid being hit in the face on the lid’s way up (spraying the wall in the odd location), then finally aiming the flow back to the bowl itself (explaining the remaining splatter range).

From there, the rest was obvious : down on her knees, the foot and handprints indicated someone at the drunken end of their tether trying to pull themselves upright, clean themselves off a little under the sink at the basin, then stumble off back toward the bedroom.

I had plenty to mull over during the shower that followed this initial investigation. My headache had really kicked in by then, but at least I wasn’t feeling all that sick anymore. I took my time. A good, slow neck massage. Then, an attempt at some of the cleaning, before yet another shower after, to get that smell off me. Eventually I got into some fresh clothes and returned to the bedroom, to see what sort of terrible state Cat must be in. I mean, after all that, she must have been experiencing The Worst Hangover Ever herself.

Imagine my surprise.

Back in the bedroom, she wasn’t only awake, she was fine. Not sick at all. A little tired, perhaps. Slight headache. Not too worse for wear. Having taken that temperature, I decided it was time to address the mess she’d made of the bathroom:

“Are you okay? I mean, you made a pretty serious mess in there.”

A look of incredulity.

“Ummm… what do you mean, ‘the mess I made in there’?”

She was laughing. I wasn’t. That wasn’t my mess. My central argument had always been the white/champagne strategy, and that what I was just slipping around in back there was something like a bold, fruity Cab Sav. I said as much.

“Great theory, professor, except the part where you were running up and down the tables at the end.”

Huh?

“Remember? You and Nando, throwing back the leftovers in everyone’s discarded glasses? I tried to stop you.”

I was speechless. Shocked, even. Funny, because that one detail was nothing — NOTHING — compared to the story that then unfolded.

It seems my clever alcohol consumption strategy had failed. This business with Nando didn’t sound like something I would do, but at the same time, didn’t sound like something I wouldn’t do, inebriated beyond a certain level. Given I was already certain I’d lost a few hours of memory (something that had only happened to me on a handful of occasions, ever), I was going to have to give her the benefit of the doubt, and accept her tale on face value.

According to numerous accounts of that night which I have collected since, the following happened during the three hour period (I’m assured I remained awake/conscious for) from the point where my memory drops out :

I broke from the plan, and moved from white to red wine.
Later, I moved from red wine to scotch.
Later still, “water in between” was replaced by tequila shots.
Once everyone was up on the dance floor, yes, Nando and I did run up and down the vacated dinner tables, throwing back whatever liquid we found in discarded glasses. (The way Nando remembers this, it was some kind of race.)
I did not refrain from joining the others on the dance-floor. When the DJ put on the 80s classic, ‘What A Feeling’ (from Flashdance), I not only performed a passable rendition of the dance moves from the film-clip, but even finished it off with that iconic move with the chair. Worse, I didn’t skimp on the “pour ice water over myself” part either. The crowd had formed a circle around me.
As this was a family function — someone else’s family, mind you — there was a moment where the entire extended clan tried to take a group photo (about forty people). The intention was for a ‘family-only’ shot. Apparently, I wanted to be in it too. Like, I really wanted to. Every time they tried to take it, I (physically, literally) dived into frame at the last second, ruining things. Eventually, they gave up trying to keep me out of the photo, and took a couple of photos with me in it. Then, all pretending things were done, Cat lead me away with a wink, whereby the entire family reassembled and took the REAL family photo. Those other shots with me in them survive. The expression on my face is another man’s, someone I don’t know.
I allegedly caused a bit of trouble in the taxi as well, but Cat has never gone into great detail about it.
Once we got home, I ranted for an hour about how much I loved this Australian horror film I’d absolutely hated sober. Wouldn’t shut up about it. Pacing. Lecturing. Cat just wanted to sleep. Sensing my audience was fading, I simply left at some point, turned out the light, not to be heard from (verbally) until morning.
Cat did hear signs of liquid trouble from the other bathroom, but opted to leave bad enough alone. Wise.

Shameful. Absolutely shameful.

I was that guy at the party. You know? That guy. The one who’s funny for the first few minutes, but then after a while you just want him to go away, or pass out, or both. I’d never been that guy before. Or had I? I didn’t know anymore. There’s a lot about myself learned during that aftermath. I mean, who knew I’d memorised the entire choreography to the theme from Flashdance? Just who is that guy?

The questions of identity got even murkier several hours later, when another detail emerged. One that shook me to the core, and still does to this day.

Later that Sunday, Cat had finally convinced me to eat something, and do my best to keep it down. It was 1pm or something by then — I was in the Deep Deep Death stage of a brutal hangover. You know the one: the world was nothing more than a dark place that wanted to hurt me. My headache was terrible. My state of mind was so bad that I hadn’t even complained when she rented Sex & The City 2 on iTunes and made us both sit through it. (I take back what I said before about Cat being nice. Sneaking that film in front of my eyeballs was evil. So, so evil.)

After that was done, we’d gone out for a walk. Fresh air. I was whinging pretty hard about my headache, but overall, starting to feel a bit better. That is, until she hit me with a fresh, terrifying new detail from the night before:

“Oh, I nearly forgot. I have a message for you.”

“A message?”

“Yeah. From Drunk Demis.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, in the middle of that movie rant, Drunk Demis told me I had to give Hungover Demis a message from him later, at the point where Hungover Demis really started complaining about his headache.”

“Really? What was the message?”

“He said to say : ‘Whatever, fatty’.”

Now, at this point in time, Cat had never been part of that particular work-place in-joke. There was no way she could know the phrase, nor its relevance. I won’t bother going into to its meaning now, but basically, those two words proved that Drunk Demis himself had sent the message, and that she wasn’t lying. Also, the darker implication: it proved that I was no longer one person, but two. Worse still, it proved that Drunk Demis wasn’t merely a second, sentient, all-singing, all-dancing personality (with shitty taste in movies) lurking inside me, but he was also a something of a jerk.

(Well, not entirely. I noted later that Drunk Demis had the good sense to have taken off my expensive suit jacket before entering the vomitorium, folding it more perfectly than I normally manage at the best of times. Drunk Demis sounds like a bit of a kooky character on the whole, but at least the guy’s good at laundry.)

–

Every time I have gone out for more than one drink since, I’ve remembered Drunk Demis, the zombie movie, and the infamous Thirty-Sixty-Ninety party. I’ve had some pretty good benders in my time, but that one will always stand apart, not only for the severity of its psychological aftermath, but that a booze-only bender was capable of extracting from my depraved depths darker elements than any longer, crazier, druggier bender ever has.

The toughest part is that there’s no moral to this story. There’s no lesson to be learned from it, apart from the utterly stupid one that begins: “Step One : Quit Drinking” (…ha!). I was careful. I had a plan, and I thought I was sticking to it. The way I’ve tried to come to terms with it since is to think that yeah, sometimes, no matter how smart you think you are, how in control, shit sometimes happens, but even then, as a ‘lesson’, that’s a bit of a stretch.

If there was one thing to take away from the incident, perhaps it’s buried somewhere in that sentiment about keeping your eye on the quiet ones. I’ve never heard from Drunk Demis again. Not yet, in any case, but that’s not to say he’s not out there, lurking somewhere, practicing his jacket-folds, being oh-so-very quiet.

(Image credit : ‘Splat’ – Anthony Theobald, reproduced under a Creative Commons license.)

March 9, 2014

It’s A Fork-Off : Tasting The World’s Foulest Food

If one should ask me what use there was in climbing, or attempting to climb the world’s highest peak, I would be compelled to answer ‘none.’ — George Mallory

You know those awkward moments where you’re at a friend’s dinner party, or at a restaurant, and something is placed before you that you don’t like the look of? Where an internal battle rages – whether to offend your host and pass, or munch down on it anyway, come what may? That decision governed by the answer to one and only one question : “How bad could it be?”

I know how bad it could be. I’ve tasted it. Twice.

Several years ago, while I was still living in Australia, I heard about Hákarl. “The world’s most disgusting food-stuff that you can eat and still live” was how I remember it being described. Put in less-poetic terms, it’s putrefied shark meat, it’s from Iceland, and it’s absolutely awful. Growing up a very fussy eater, somehow in my adult life I have swung the other way – trying everything, just in case there was something amazing out there I hadn’t tasted, making that a personal mission. You name the body part, bizarre root vegetable, I’ve probably nommed it down, or at the very least, wanted to. But to suddenly be aware that the adventurous culinary path did indeed have a limit? I had to try it.

Of course, at the time (and probably still today) it was nearly impossible to get the putrefied (i.e. cured by shoving slabs of poisonous shark meat underground for several months) flesh of a Greenland or basking shark past Australian quarantine officials. Even if that were something easy to do, the noxious, rotting, urea-dripping, formerly poisonous carrion would need to be transported cold all the way from Iceland to Sydney – something which sounded a little out of my regular food-curiosity budget.

I look at this photo and feel pity for my past-self : that perky thumbs-up brimming so much optimism and naivety, with no way of comprehending the horrors that were about to befall its owner, or the trail it blazed for my future taste-depravity...

I look at this photo and feel pity for my past-self : that perky thumbs-up brimming so much optimism and naivety, no way of comprehending the horrors that were about to befall me, or the trail it blazed for the future taste-depravity…

Flash forward : late 2013…

Now based on London, I found myself sharing the office of a food industry startup in the midst of a promotion involving insect recipes. Naturally, during the course of the ‘crazy stuff we’ve eaten’ discussion that ensues when one is sharing a plate of ant tacos and cricket pad Thai with a couple of gents, the conversation turned to Hákarl.

A lightbulb suddenly tinked on – I was now living close enough to Iceland that maybe, just maybe, rotten shark was something one could procure without much drama.

Sure enough, I was right.

Within minutes, someone in Iceland was packing 100grams of the stuff into a box full of cold packs, my address plastered on the front. It arrived. It was eaten.

How did it taste? I’ll get to that in a moment…

Jump to last Friday…

Working in a different office on the opposite side of town, the Swedish gentleman sitting beside me posted a video of a bunch of non-Swedes failing dismally at eating Surströmming. I remembered seeing the Australian comedy duo, Hamish & Andy, doing a piece about it – the Swedish equivalent of Hákarl (if I may be so bold) except it’s rotten herrings, it comes in a can, and is a lot easier to get hold of. After my experience with Hákarl in November, I felt I had a story to tell, however with a proud Swede on my right, and an equally proud Norwegian on my left, the old rivalries (mixed with a dose of Australian bravado) meant suddenly Hákarl’s title of “world’s most disgusting food-stuff” was being brought into question.

A smarter man, second time around. Note: package was opened outside, not in the kitchen, and the opening of the can all took place inside the plastic bag to reduce spray. The safety bucket was a (fortunate) last-minute after-thought.

Of course, nobody but myself had ever tried one of the two morsels in question — it seemed only right that I take the initiative to settle the discussion for once and for all. Getting hold of the Surströmming was even easier than I could ever have imagined it to be : there’s a Scandinavian deli only 100 metres from where we were arguing, and still a half an hour left before they closed for the day. You can probably figure out the rest.

So…

To cut a long story very short, I have now consumed both countries’ rotten seafood delicacies, and feel I’m now one of the few people out there who can speak with good authority as to which is indeed The Worst.

I took good notes during November’s Hákarl experience, and am still feeling very fresh from the recent Surströmming tasting, occurring mere hours ago (I can still smell it on my hands in a few places the soap ceased helping). Regardless of any question as to the clarity or errors that might creep into recalling two experiences now separated by a few months, there’s a clear winner. Of that there is no question. In the battle between Hákarl and Surströmming for the title of “World’s Foulest Food”, I can speak with complete confidence as to which is indeed the worst. Rather than any further long-winded narrative, I’m going to table it, side-by-side, blow-for-blow, gulp-for-gulp :

(Note – I did attempt to shoot video for both tastings, but both attempts were met with bitter failure. Once those packs were opened, there was no mental space left for worrying about camera operation – if there were to be a next time, I promise to rope in a nostril-blocked friend to shoot.)

	Hákarl	Surströmming
Ease of procurement	Tricky and expensive.	Easy and cheap, like heroin.
Feeling going in…	Nervous dread, akin to a dentist’s waiting-room.	Cocky. I was all: “Been there, done that – this won’t be worse… 80% of Hákarl at its baddest.”
Package Opening	An immediate increase in the feeling of dread as an intense ammonia smell filled the room, followed by deep regret I hadn’t done this outside.	Was very prepared this time, and thought I was really clever utilising the balcony. The fermentation pressure build-up in the can sprayed liquid out everywhere, but I’d done the reading, and did all of the opening inside a plastic bag. Still feeling cocky at this point – for about 0.5 seconds.
Initial Stench	Terrifying. Very, very strong ammonia smell, mixed in with a smell that’s like the worst thing you’d ever smell down at the docks where fishing boats come in, multiplied by around 100. Stomach was fine with it – I felt a deep dread that I was about to eat what was causing the smell, but my stomach was behaving itself – no gags.	Much, much worse than anticipated. Less ammonia, more of a shit smell at first, hints of sulfur, before hitting my nostrils with a overwealming assault of that ‘death’ smell. That, and a few hints of the same ‘where fishing boats come in’ smell – there were notes that were quite similar to that of Hákarl, but only a few. A very different beast. Involuntary gagging began within two seconds of the can opening.
Stench Growth	The ammonia smell definitely got worse the closer you put the food to your mouth, but it did not change much over time, in either intensity or flavour. Once you know what Hákarl smells like – it makes you wish you were dead – find small comfort in the knowledge that that’s all you’re going to be dealing with.	The smell only got worse over time, and changed its tone constantly. Just as you thought you were getting a handle on one aspect of it, something else would hit you. There were simply too many smells for my brain to cancel out or keep control of, all of them 10/10 horrible, all of them building over time.
Stench Linger-time	I mananaged to clean the kitchen out fine, the smell gone completely within 20 minutes with the help of the stove-top extractor fan and some lavender-scented bathroom air-freshener.	Unsure, though already the linger time has beaten Hákarl by a long shot. I can’t get the stuff off my hands. I made the mistake of trying to film the experience on my phone, and smudged some juice on the touch-screen at one point – my phone now smells too, even though I’ve wiped that spot down with several chemicals. I don’t think it’ll ever die from whatever it touched. How do you kill something that’s already dead? Oh god. Make it stop.
Appearance	Clean-looking white cubes. Not scary at all while they were in their vacuum pack. Deceptively safe-looking until the point you snip open the package and let the smell out.	Once the can was open, the contents looked exactly like what it was : a sludge of rotten fish. There was nothing appetizing about the presentation. Nothing. It looked as bad as it smelled. (Sorry, as it smells. SMELLS. Present tense. Make it stop…). At least it wasn’t pretending, not like Hákarl. Even if you can’t smell it, Surströmming looks like something you don’t want to eat.
Texture	Rubbery at first, but more powdery/melty as you chew. Interesting texture.	Exactly as you’d imagine sloppy, wet, rotten fish would be, complete with bones, skin, oily bits, sticky bits, gross bits, fins, lots of watery rotten-brine mixture…
First Bite	I did as the literature suggests – placed the first piece in my mouth and inhaled deeply through the nose, experienceing the icy – almost menthol? – burn of the ammonia up my nostrils. Wholly unpleasant based on how terrible the smell was at this point, but an unexpected novelty element with the burning. There was a sense of danger in this – nothing that does what that gas did to my nose should be going inside my body. I could still feel the burn of it hours later. Oddly, the flesh itself didn’t taste so bad – not if you forget the smell for a moment. Just… fishy. The smell was disproportionately terrible compared to the taste by a factor of at least 1000.	By the time I had the first piece in my mouth, trying to bite through the skin/bone/flesh, the juices splattering over my face and hands, my stomach had had enough. There was no time to savour or think about the experience. I knew I only had seconds left, as my chest was already hunched and heaving. The only strange thing I did notice was that the flesh itself felt almost fizzy on my tongue at one point, like bubbles in beer. This didn’t help anything. It was all wrong. All so very wrong. The smell. THE SMELL.
The Chew	I took my time. The fact that I wasn’t already puking, and had survived the nostril thing, gave me time to note the textural change from rubber to powder as I got through it. It’s not like I was smiling though – this wasn’t pleasant. It was horrible. I kept thinking of that line from Harry Potter describing the experience of encountering a ‘Dementor’ – such misery that I wasn’t certain I’d ever feel cheerful again.	My stomach was already fighting the experience very hard, way before the flesh even got to my mouth. I had to keep the chewing to a minimum. My time was up.
The Swallow	Nothing exciting: I swallowed. I stood there in that cloud of ammonia stench, bracing myself for something worse to happen, but nothing did. I felt truly horrible, staring blankly, trying to recover from the ordeal. I questioned why I’d done this in the first place. The smell filled my head and soul, and I couldn’t escape it – that ammonia death smell was inside me now. I was its bitch.	My time was long over by the time I got up to swallowing. As I began to swallow, the retching began. I continued to try, and believe at one point I managed to get the mouthful about half-way down my throat, but it wasn’t long before I was bent over the plastic bag puking Surströmming back into the can. Then, an extended period of dry-retching. It took about a minute before I had the presence of mind to force myself away from the source of the smell, which was doing most of the ongoing damage. As for the herring, I doubt I digested any more than a fraction of a gram of the stuff in the end. My body simply said “NO” to Surströmming.
Immediate Aftermath	I felt dirty and afraid. I wondered when the sickness would start. I wondered why I’d put myself through that. I wondered how far away the bin would need to be from my house so that I never had to smell that ammonia/fishy stench again once I threw it out. I thought about my own mortality, and how fragile life was.	There was no time for reflection. As soon as I’d finished puking, I ran inside, gathered five or six plastic bags, and set about wrapping up the source of the death-smell. That stench was just seemed to keep growing in volume and menace similar to the black-cloud monster thing from ‘Lost’, spreading out like a nuclear fallout that badly needed to be contained, and fast. There was a desperation and urgency to removing all trace of it from my house, from my life. I was down the street within 60 seconds, where I carefully placed the six-times-wrapped-but-still-opened can upright at the bottom of a bin that I wouldn’t smell when they emptied it. I feel sorry for those garbage men. I really do, but this had quickly become a self-preservation issue, consequences be damned.
Extended Aftermath	My skin felt greasy all afternoon, and I had a sort of ‘after-smell’ going on for the rest of the day. My nostrils felt like they were a little sunburned, and along with the slight burn feeling, a very slight ammonia smell lingered, though that could have been in my head. I still can’t bring myself to remember the precise smell of Hákarl even now – it was a scarring experience, and one I’d rather not repeat.	I’m mostly just hoping that I don’t end up in a discussion where somebody claims to have found something worse to eat than Surströmming. Surely this is the limit. It was for me at least. I don’t think I’m going to get over it for a while, though fortunately as I didn’t digest any of it, I don’t feel sick or anything now. With the Hákarl I felt a bit funny all afternoon, but with this, if I could get the last of the smell off my fingers/phone, I’d be feeling no adverse physical effects now, only mental ones.
Overall Feeling	There is no reason for people to feel they need to eat Hákarl for anything other than a dare, or to discover their persoal extremes as I have. It was wholly unpleasant. However, now that I have tasted Surströmming, I can at least appreciate that there was a certain degree of ‘crafting’ in Hákarl. The smell, as bad as it was, was an interesting one which felt ‘human made’, almost like it had been created in a lab. Regardless of how repulsive the smell is, looking back now I feel like there’s some intent behind it in a strang sort of way. Plus, for to keep the title of World’s Worst, it needs to actually taste bad. It didn’t taste that bad – it merely smelled bad. If you pinch your nose and eat Hákarl, it’s nowhere nearly as bad as pinching your nose and eating Surströmming.	There is no reason for people to feel they need to eat Surströmming at all, ever, for any reason. If I had to chose between eating Hákarl every day of my life or eating Surströmming one more time, I would still go with the daily shark. It was horrible in so many more ways that Hákarl wasn’t. I walked away from the shark dish in November feeling like I’d touched the edge of the Universe, but in reality, I hadn’t come even close. This is by far the worst thing a human can ever eat. I’ve accidentally eaten dog-shit before – this was worse. I’ve accidentally sipped some urine that had been congealing in a plastic drink bottle for several months – this was worse (but only just – in a remarkably similar ball-park). Don’t try this, thinking it’s going to be cool. It’s not going to be cool trying something so gross. It’s going to be horrible. You are going to vomit. You are going to wish you’d never gotten yourself into this in the first place. There’s no silver-lining to the experience, apart from the thought that perhaps, eating it with Swedish locals, already fully tanked on very, very strong clear spirits, you’re just drunk enough that you keep more of it down than I did. Horrible. Words can’t describe it.

The final result?

Surströmming is, by far, the world’s most foul thing designed to be eaten by human beings.

Congratulations, Sweden, and IN YOUR FACE, ICELAND!

The Swedes have this one completely sealed. There’s something truly horrendous about Hákarl that I don’t want to take away from our Icelandic friends – it *is* incredibly horrible, and I love the crazy way it’s prepared – but the fact that I walked into the Swedish sitting thinking it might be easier, only to be uncontrollably gagging within seconds of the can hissing its vile stench out into the world? No. Just, no.

Hákarl is definitely a 10-out-of-10 experience for people looking to expand their culinary horizons all the way down into the darkest depths of putrefied-shark depravity, and that’s fine. If you can get your hands on some, knock yourself out. Have a laugh with your friends. Brag about it, as I did, on Facebook. But know, deep in your heart of hearts, that while you just gulped down an ammonia-soaked 10-out-of-10, that just across the sea, there lurks an eleven…

Don’t do it, folks. Either of them.

I feel dirty.

December 17, 2013

Top 10 Reasons Why ‘Die Hard’ Is A Better Christmas Movie Than ‘Love Actually’

There comes a point during every Christmas holiday where an inevitable war for the remote is fought – a battleground nobody wants to speak about at any other time of the year, one which divides families, ruins relationships, and regularly results in bloodshed. You know what I’m talking about: The Die Hard vs Love Actually Christmas Movie Stand-Off. Naturally, I have my own feelings on the matter, and despite you likely having yours, I’ve decided it’s time we all put this matter to bed for once and for all, proving (most decisively) that Die Hard is by far a more superior Christmas film than Love Actually:

Case in point : the two very different Rickmans…

1. The Rickman Factor

Both films are blessed by the inclusion of Alan Rickman, but he’s WAY cooler as Hans Gruber than as weak, womanising Harry. Also, Hans is far more Christmasy – he even performs a memorable Santa impersonation at one point.

Ho. Ho. Ho.

I can’t even… I just can’t…

2. You (Mostly) Get A Break From Ridiculously Insipid Child-Actors

Christmas entertainment is vicious time where practically everything on television is packed full of horrible child-actors. There are only a few insignificant seconds of terrible child-acting in Die Hard, as opposed to Love Actually, with entire sub-plots, musical numbers, and several minutes packed full of children dressed up as cute animals. Eww.

3. Die Hard Embraces Multiculturalism

In McTiernan’s opus, characters with English as their second language went to a lot more effort to ensure they could directly communicate with people of other cultures (even if it happened to be down the barrel of a gun). In the Kurtis film, the same rely on shrugs, sheepish grins, and don’t seem to care about blatant mistranslation and the significant cultural offence this may or may not cause those around them. I’d call that “naughty” not “nice”, as opposed to Die Hard’s foreigners who took the time and came prepared.

4. “The Quarterback Is Toast”

The only toast you ever get in Love Actually involves cheap, miserly-poured sparkling, often accompanied by depressing moaning or attempts at infidelity.

5. Die Hard Has Better Retro Value

While Love Actually may have Bill Nighy, it does not contain any actors from legendary 80’s classics including The Breakfast Club, Ghostbusters and Magnum PI. It doesn’t even try. That’s just not in the spirit of the season.

6. Love Actually Isn’t Actually A Christmas Movie

The complete chronology of events in Die Hard take place during the one, long Christmas Eve. Love Actually is spread all over the calendar, some of the earlier scenes quite possibly taking place closer to Halloween than late December, the final airport montage obviously taking place the following Easter*

( I can’t back this last point up, though I swear there’s someone holding a toy rabbit in one shot.)*

7. Die Hard = Less-Questionable Casting

The producers of Die Hard managed to cast actors far more believable at playing authority figures and Americans. Also, the new associations between Hobbits and pornography invoked by Love Actually doesn’t sit right with me at all – Christmas gets enough midget action as it is.

8. More Explosions

There are no explosions in Love Actually. Not one. There isn’t even a helicopter crash.
Seriously. It’s like they’ve completely forgotten the true meaning of Christmas.

9. Stronger Female Role-Models

Love Actually is brimming with old-school 1950s female stereotypes, whereas 100% of Die Hard’s major female characters represent a much more modern approach to gender roles (eg. Holly and her high-powered executive position within Nakatomi, versus Natalie who doesn’t fight back at all after being sexually harassed and unfairly dismissed from her job).

Okay, okay… to be fair, while there is only one major female character in Die Hard, she still kicks more ass than half the Love Actually women. Further, I’ll put $50 on the table right now that says Bonnie Bedelia would beat Keira Knightly in a straight-up fist-fight. Think about it.

10. Die Hard Has A Better Ending

In its closing minutes, Love Actually (disrespectfully) brandishes a Denise Richards cameo, a terrible non-Chrismas Beach Boys song and truly horrendous and tacky heart-shaped graphic montage. A travesty, as opposed to Die Hard – a classy ‘Let It Snow’ Christmas play-off as the camera pulls out over the mist, mere seconds after this shot :

In Conclusion…

I think that’s all settled then, don’t you?

###

February 6, 2013

Five Fast & Furious Films

There’s an unspoken procedure I run through at the start of every new film project. I’ve noticed that many of the visual effects brood seem to do the same, each in their own ways. Something of a gee-up, a celebratory burst of enthusiasm toward the project, whereby we psych ourselves into the vibe of the thing by consuming some part of what may have come before. For instance, when starting work on The Great Gatsby last year I smashed through the book. Soon as I heard I was starting on Captain America: The First Avenger, I downloaded a few of the original comics to get some of the back-story of a character I was unfamiliar with. Same goes for Thor. Even when starting on Daybreakers, way back when, I rewatched the Spierig Brothers’ first feature Undead for kicks. It doesn’t help the shots go through any more smooth, it doesn’t stop any of us from getting anally-violated at the crunch-time end of the project, and doesn’t have any real bearing on anything. What I think it does do is make a personal connection with this thing that we know is about to soak up a lot of our life and our thoughts and our relationships and our sleep patterns for the next god-knows-how-long.

So, cut to 2013, and I’m working on Fast & Furious 6. What to do? A series I’d snubbed completely when the first instalment appeared back in 2001, back when my self-righteous film-snobbery was at its outspoken peak. Then the sequel. Then the apparently-unrelated sequel to the sequel. Then the reboot/revival. Then the sequel to the reboot/revival. Starting the gig, I had a couple of choices. On the one hand, I could just abandon the regular vibe-up routine, and when I inevitably watch Fast & Furious 6 just to see our work, I’d see the film completely cold, no back-story, no nothing. Stand-alone. But that just didn’t sit right with me. The other option : watching perhaps the first to get the basic gist then the fifth – the one everyone says is good – started seeming quite appealing. But even that wasn’t sitting right. I knew what had to be done. There could only be one way to do this : properly, thoroughly and without shame.

That’s right: film-snobbery be damned, I went all the way; sank a few beers, busted my Fast & The Furious cherry, then proceeded to slam my way through the entire series.

The verdict?

Sadly, for those hoping for a one-liner that might sum up the 554 minutes of furiousness, there’s no short answer. That having been said, I found that because my expectations were generally quite low, and I did not at all attempt to intellectualise any of the stories, characters, sub-plots or physical impossibilities, nor be holding my breath for Oscar-worthy performances, mostly I enjoyed the hell out of them. Mostly…

Fortunately, for those who have skipped them, I can sum up the collective plots quite quickly :

Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) knows how to drive cars fast, and is physically incapable of losing an illegal street race (unless on purpose). He and his merry band of similarly-extraordinary-driver friends, lovers and hot siblings, use their driving skills to occasionally take part in oddly-elaborate, vehicularly-colour-coordinated heists from time to time. The format of these is almost always the same : the team surrounding an unobservant (yet eventually heavily armed) truck (or train) driver and stealing shit off his rig, and occasionally the rig itself. Often there’s a rival gang involved in the story somehow, and they end up either losing the loot to them and getting shot at, then ultimately needing to race their cars again approximately 95 minutes later, gaining their precious comeuppance. To add to the mix, in the first film we’re introduced to Dom’s secret gay crush, FBI agent Brian O’Connor (played to perfection by Best-Actor-Oscar-award-winner* Paul Walker) (*Note: extreme sarcasm). He tries to capture Dom in the first movie, but in the end Dom ends up capturing his heart. In the second film (with Dom having fled the entire film) he’s now one of the criminals. In the fourth, he’s an agent again. In the fifth, a criminal. Honestly, I don’t even know what’s going on with that guy deep down, but what I do know is that apart from eventually knocking up Dom’s hot little sister, I’m still going to claim that the entire series is about Dom and Brian’s secret love-affair (a secret I’m hoping will finally be revealed accompanied by bright, spangled rainbows in FF6).

That’s pretty much it, apart from the third film, The Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift, which, being set in Japan, doesn’t have any real relation to the other films at all, except it’s about driving cars fast again, there’s an evil gang, and Vin Diesel makes a cameo in the last two minutes. It does, however seriously mess up the time continuum of the series, largely due to the untimely death of one of its major (guru) characters, Han (Sung Kang)…. but more on that later.

Overall, the Fast & Furious films can be quickly organised into the good and bad in exactly the same way as nerds have quickly classified the original Star Trek films, but in reverse. Meaning, for this series: first movie = good, second movie = terrible, third movie = good, fourth movie terrible. The fifth is by far the best film of the series. Even Rotten Tomatoes agrees, combined critical opinion reaching a whopping 78% approval rate. Putting that into perspective, the recently-released Les Misérables only did 70% on the same scale; sure, expectations may have been lower for Fast Five (especially after the dismal fourth film) but it’s still an impressive number and a genuinely enjoyable heist film. I’m hoping, for the sake of the work I’m currently doing being part of something eventually-awesome, that Fast & Furious 6 will buck the trend and be as good as the fifth. (Contractually speaking, I probably should stop right there and hold off giving any opinion whatsoever, flick you a non-committal, cheesy, double-thumbs up, and directing you to your nearest advance-ticket outlet.)

The big question is whether or not I felt like this entire endeavour was 554 minutes of my life well-spent. Short answer : yes…ish. I feel now that I judged the first film too harshly when it came out, but that’s the kinda guy I was. It’s cheese. Total, unadulterated cheese, but as it isn’t pretending to be anything other than what it is, I feel I should retroactively give it a free pass and call it fairly solid-yet-mindless entertainment. The racing scenes are pretty cool. The story is predictable, but the characters are (mostly) likeable, and it’s all just shitty enough that you can laugh at the utter dumbness of it all without finding that same dumbness offensive. Except, say, the second film. Even the title is offensively dumb : “2 Fast 2 Furious”. A terrible use of numerals. I’m still glad I saw the film – it sets up a couple of characters who come back later on, but overall it was terrible. Where the first film was about a solid 60% for me, the second was in the low 20s.

The third? Back up there in the 60s again. It didn’t matter that there weren’t any characters we knew in there. The racing scenes were genuinely tense, and made much more interesting by the Japanese setting, the different driving style featured (more about drifting aka. skidding cars around inside a car-park tower) instead of the same old street-races, and as quality “formula” it was spot-on.

Except the character of Han, and the fore-mentioned disruption to the time continuum. See, that’s where things started getting strange. I get what probably happened. They made the third film a completely fresh start – new characters, new country – after what was probably a terrible box office to 2 Fast. They killed Han off (sorry, spoiler… oops) in the third act, even punctuating his death with the appearance of Dom/Vin himself in the final scene, there to pay his respects to his old friend. Whom we’d never met in the earlier films. There was some history there, but we never saw it. Perhaps they thought “oh well, the second film was terrible, we’ll just pump out any old shit for the third, and none of that needs to make any sense”. But then, suddenly, BAM, the third film does well enough that they decide to make a fourth. What do they decide to do? Bring most of the characters back from the other films, even setting it (apparently) earlier so that Han can make an appearance in the first scene.

This is where things get confusing. There’s a really clumsy scene at the start of the (DREADFUL) fourth film, where the team has to go their separate ways – to “lose the heat” after a big heist. Han drops some line about wanting to go back to Tokyo, where “they’re doing all sorts of crazy shit”, or something. It’s a clean-cut out-point for the character – he could happily leave at that point, disappear to Tokyo, where we assume the events of the third film would then play out. No harm, no foul. But NO. What do they do? Bring Han back in the fifth film with yet another clumsy line about needing to get back to Tokyo thrown in. Really? REALLY?!? Then to add insult to injury, Han is clearly seen quite alive and well in the trailer for Fast & Furious 6, still not dead. What the hell? When is Tokyo drift actually going to take place? How many more films will Han keep making his appearance in before he finally goes back to Japan to face his fate?

What those of you who have seen the films are probably thinking at this point is that I should just drop the whole issue of Han and the time continuum and just accept it with the same degree of belief-suspension as I did with everything else dumb in the series. When that petrol tanker bounced over our heroes at the start of FF4, or when Dom and Brian were able to survive that high-velocity fall into the lake at the start of FF5 from a height much greater than the minimum required to commit suicide off a bridge. Or when the super-Marine character played by The Rock in the same film decides – despite being the person most committed to upholding the law in all the world, unlike Brian – to put his badge down for a few minutes, commit a robbery with the crime-team, and murder a man in cold blood for the LOL of it. Or even when I was expected to understand that Brian had actually had enough sex with Dom’s hot little sister so as to get her pregnant, as opposed to Dom himself. (Seriously, there’s far too much pouting and mincing between those two. It’s like Sam and Frodo all over again, only with bigger pecks and slightly less-furry feet.) I should just drop the whole Han-time-issue and just go with it. I should, but I just can’t.

I’m sorta hoping we find out he came back from the dead. Oh, which is another thing this series seems to like to do. I haven’t even mentioned Michelle Rodriguez’ character of “Letty” yet, Dom’s girlfriend in the first film who dies (off-screen) in the fourth film, only to turn up in a stupid cameo-moment in the credits of the fifth. Yeah, so apparently she’s back in FF6… and she’s not happy!

The Fast & Furious movies are a sprawling mess. There are stupid moments in them that are so stupid that afterward you can’t believe you’re still watching. Then, in the next film, they get even more stupid. Your intelligence will be assaulted. Any feminist bone in your body will be slapped around by how brazenly women are positioned as nothing more than extremely toned-thighed car accessories (or, in the case of the hot little sister, guarded over like a meek, unthinking possession). The laws of physics are regularly disregarded, and things explode far easily than they should. But there’s some part of me that loved that just bought it all, hook, line and sinker. I can’t put my finger on it. It’s not like you feel all that much toward the characters – Vin Diesel constantly drawling on about “…cause we’re family…” is about as deep as the emotions tend to run. But where it wins is in the high-octane moments: the ridiculous race-or-chase scenes very snappy and full of genuine tension, and there’s an infectious playful feeling in the action moments that you can’t help get sucked into. Each movie pretty much runs as action scenes split up by plucky comic relief, only spoiled by the occasional attempt at drama, and largely, the combination of action and humour keeps all five films afloat for the greater part.

Would I recommend the series to others?

Maybe. Not as a complete, marathon-worthy set. But a selection? Yes. If you’d never watched one, you could watch just Fast Five and figure out the rest. Or, if you’re feeling adventurous, watch the first and the fifth, or the first, third and fifth. There really is no excuse for watching number two or four. None. They aren’t as bad as Pearl Harbor, but they are both genuinely terrible films, the second so bland I can hardly remember it, and the fourth so boring (and cheap-looking, and, more to the point, for trying to be clever or “a real film” and failing so badly) that there is no other reason to watch them other than “Well, I wanted to watch them all, just like YOU did, buddy”.

We’ve only got a few weeks of work left on Fast & Furious 6 now, and I’ve had a pretty fun time working on a pretty fun bit of the movie. I’ll be seeing it on the big-screen for sure; something I know my 2001 self would be cringing at. I mean, come on... it’s bad enough that I’ve written this many words about the series at all, but to openly, unashamedly say I’m happy to go see any movie with the number “6” after it? Statistically speaking, that’s asking for trouble, whatever universe you live in.

Even if I hadn’t worked on it, I’d have to now anyway – I’ve come so far. And besides: how will I ever be able to watch Fast & Furious 7 if I haven’t seen number six?

December 23, 2012

The Day After The Night Before

Hangovers are glorious poetry; the ultimate display of causality if ever anyone needed a lesson on the topic. You drink hard : you suffer.

The
end of the year is always the best time for observing this wondrous
beast. Emotions running high. Departures. Reflection on the year that
was and the one to come. Plenty of chances too – every Friday and
Saturday and often at least two or three of the others booked out for
something end-of-yearsie for all of December.

Example: my Friday night. After eleven months working on The Great Gatsby at Animal Logic, I not only had my final day at work, but it also coincided with the last working day before the holidays: people were thirsty,
myself very much included. I won’t bore you with the blow-by-blow
account of what followed – we’ve all been there – but suffice to say the
night ended shortly after I stumbled quietly out of a crashed party, at
least five different alcohols in my system (“Don’t mix”, they say…)
having just completed a stirring karaoke rendition of George Michael’s “Careless Whisper“.
Others were less fortunate to have finished up at such dizzying
heights. Reports are only still just coming in on the three guys who
legged it back to work to pick up their cycles, foolishly riding home
drunk at 1am, deciding to do a few jumps off one of the granite-lumped
cliffs in Centennial Park. Naturally, this ended up pretty much as
expected, provided you expected one of them to end up being rushed to
hospital, unconscious, where he’s been receiving cosmetic surgery on his
face ever since (having tried to eat a mouthful of face, dirt and
handle-bar during the inevitable it’s-all-fun-and-games-until moment).

His
Saturday hangover was definitely worse than mine, I’d bet, but I still
took my punishment in the form of a killer headache from late-morning
through til when I started on the wine again before dinner. (Fair enough
– mixing drinks was bad enough, but butchering a George Michael classic
in public is unacceptable.) Of course, I ate through the tail end of it
without any further whining.

If only everything was as
simple as that: mix your drinks, take the punishment, eat an egg and
move on. It’s much murkier waters when you start looking at the other
stuff. Like how to move on from the post-gig hangover. You work on a
creative project for that length of time and no matter how you felt
about it at the time, once you’re suddenly on the outside there’s that
momentum of habit that still has you waking up thinking you’re heading
back to your desk tomorrow to open up that shot with the curtain issues
in it again. Or how you escape the lingering dark emotions that come of
deciding to cut a lot of ties and move cities: no matter how fun the
adventure, you’ve still got the fee of the guilt or the sense of loss or
the revoltingly poor timing (as you discover you’ve only just made a
couple of the greatest friends ever right at the point that you’re
putting an ocean between the lot of you). A bacon-and-egg roll can cure a
lot of ills, but not those.

And I like a hangover because
there’s punishment where it’s due. Fair’s fair. Not like someone in
their mid-thirties contemplating perhaps never meeting Mr-or-Mrs Right.
Or six-year-old kids gunned down in a classroom. Or my three unrelated
friends who’ve parents have died of cancer in the last few months, with
two others’ currently on the staying-strong-but-counting-down
waiting list. Cancer is swift justice for what, exactly? It’s
depressing, because it’s unfair, and unfair because it seems to be an
effect without a cause.

That’s why you really have to respect a
good, pounding hangover. At least – eight hours down from shooting
straight tequila after a few rounds of beers, wine and a neat Glenlivet – you know where you stand.

And you’re (mostly) cool with that. Especially if there’s bacon.

December 12, 2012

On Hating Christmas…

A few days ago I casually mentioned to a friend that I did, quite passionately, dislike the festive season. I hadn’t set out to shock, just throwing it in there to add a bit of context to the additional stress it’ll no doubt bring to these next few busy weeks, mostly spent preparing for an impending move overseas. But the depth of the horror displayed on her face – mouth hung open like I’d taken a swipe at the core of her very being – reminded me again that perhaps I shouldn’t let that tidbit slip so freely. The conversation stopped, I was forced to explain.

I think the annual loathing boils down to a few basic points of personal history

1. It’s somebody else’s holy day – why am I celebrating it?

My family isn’t religious. We don’t even pretend to call ourselves religious but then not practice. Religion wasn’t actively discouraged during my childhood; it just never came up. Once Santa was out of the way, and once we’d all grown to an age where we’d essentially agreed not to give each other presents anymore (mostly borne of the lack of teenage finances) then suddenly all that was left for December 25th was an opportunity to bicker. Add alcohol, bickering turns to open warfare. No thanks.

2. The pressure to get the day right far outweighs the payoff.

Every Christmas-celebrating family has it’s own traditions, rules and regulations as to how the day (or days) must proceed. We must be awake by 6am (no matter how much we drank last night). We must eat a hot roast for lunch (no matter how much we ate yesterday, or no matter how hot the Australian summer is for such a summer-inappropriate menu). We must be happy and nobody must spoil the day (no matter how many big personalities are shoved under the same roof, or their brattish children). There’s too much expectation. Some years it’s met, sure, but I find myself sitting there each year feeling imposed upon by Christmas like it’s some freaking-out Bridezilla making unrealistic demands on the wedding planner at the last minute and having a full-blown hissy fit.

3. I have major baggage about those bloody carols.

This is by far the worst offender for me. In a former career as a professional piano player, some of my fragmented income required rehearsing local choirs several nights per week. It came as no surprise to me that these groups wanted to get in early and learn a few decent choral arrangements of the popular carols in the weeks leading up to Christmas. That would be fine, but in reality it wasn’t weeks. Months. Seriously. One year, the Christmas repertoire rehearsals started – and I kid you not – on August 10th. The other choirs followed one by one, and by mid-September, I was rehearsing Christmas material on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday nights, three hours at a time. Insanity. Then of course, the other corporate/commercial work kicked in around late November as you’d expect, filling up all the rest of the days with various other Christmas functions, parties, televised performances (live AND pre-taped), so that by Christmas Eve itself, I’d quite easily heard and played the same twenty regular carols several hundred times each. At least. (And I’m not even going to start tallying all the other times and places you hear carols – shops, television, films, door-to-door, people whistling in cars…) And that’s only one year. Next year, the same twenty songs. Over, and over. I wouldn’t mind so much if they rotated the carols the way the Chinese rotate their Year Of The animal each year. But that’s not how it works, and now, years later, no matter how many years there are between me and professional piano playing, I’m scarred.

I don’t mean to go all Bah! Humbug! on people. Mostly, I keep it to myself, except for the rare moments where I meet a kindred spirit intent on sharing. To so many people – my wife included – the day itself holds so much magic, religious or not, and I certainly don’t want to be the one to crush that in them.

But what about us: the Christmas-hating minority? What are we supposed to do? Destined to block our ears to all the rampant fa-la-la-la-la-ing, chomping down on a hot, fatty roast in 32-degrees-Celcius, and plaster on those smiles each year wishing people Merry Christmas like you’re actually feeling merry?

There’s an island that I’m sure many will want to round us all up and dump us on; so long as it’s got a pool, a bar, and somewhere to read a secular book, sign me up!