everyonebutsix.com

I’ve been told that the interweb is an excellent place from which information can be harvested and put to good use.

I’ve also been told that John Laws once released an album of his poems, read aloud, with a romantic string arrangement backing.

However, one of these things is a heinous lie and oh, it’s not the one you dearly want it to be.

Backstory: The taxman paid me a sexy and surprising visit this year that consisted of enough money for me to consider some reckless travel. So I’m going to make amends, by going back to the scene of my worst ever travel experience and trying to erase it with a positive one.

I’m going to New York!

I’m even going to stay in the same borough where I stayed last time, which may be tempting fate a little. But instead of Sheep’s Head Bay, Brooklyn - home to old, bitter men, unfriendly pets and post-apocalyptic street desolation, I’ll be trading it in for the over-hyped hipster capital of the world - Williamsburg.

But while I’m there, kicking back in my illegally-zoned hostel*, I’m going to need some info to make the most of it - where to buy my high-waisted jeans, where to go and rag on bands that over-enthusiastic people like and, most importantly, where to eat.

So, I logged myself onto freewilliamsburg.com - to take full-advantage of their detailed restaurant and bar guide. And while there, ran smack bang into one of the reasons why letting a whole lot of people contribute to a pool of knowledge isn’t necessarily a good thing.

I found a listing for a vegetarian-looking cafe that appears to be really close to where I’m staying. I figured this could work well, as I’ll need somewhere nice and close by that I can go to on my own for cups of tea and postcard-writing time. It had 8 awesome reviews from regulars, praising both the food and the friendly waitstaff.

Unfortunately it also had 8 terrible reviews, complaining about the bland food and the rude, haughty service.

So, which was it?

A lot of the places listed had a similar problems. When one guy would praise the great coffee and free wi-fi of one place, someone else would moan about the shitty brown water posing as espresso and the borderline-psychotic owner.

I learned exactly one thing in my hours of browsing - the people of Williamsburg, Brooklyn appear to have a whole bunch of opinions, none of them particularly helpful.

I have this same problem with a lot of other review-based sites. If you get enough people commenting, it becomes difficult to get a real sense of anything. It’s like mixing colours together and getting brown.

I mean, people are different. They like different things. They rarely agree on what is best. This makes for interesting times. But it also leads me to the conclusion of - “Well, I guess I’ll just have to go there and see for myself”.

Which renders the point of review sites completely null and void.

There has to be a better way to do it. Maybe more reviewers should have to give detailed information about themselves - going by the theory that if they like some of the things I already like, then maybe we’ll like similar sorts of other things. This is why I sometimes, guiltily, find those ‘people who bought this also bought’ functions on some website, terribly useful. There’s a part of me that finds it deeply offensive that a website would assume that just because I bought an album by The Knife, that I would be exactly like everyone else who bought it and also like Ladytron.

Then again, I do like Ladytron - so there’s that.

So, maybe it would be more helpful for me to know that Samantha, 24 - who likes somewhat-dated electroclash, picnics and men with beards that are naturally a different colour to their hair - thinks that La Vista Italian restaurant makes sweet gnocchi. And that Bruno, 47 - who likes murdering kittens, Sting and the Police and not sharing dishes when you go out for Chinese - he thinks that everything they make is awful and should be avoided at all costs.

In the meantime, I will venture forth, into the abyss… sans recommendation.

*Possibly more on this another time. But pray for me, because I don’t want the fire department to shut down my totally sweet accommodation until after I leave.

for the category of most evocative article title I came across whilst searching for references to complete an Endnote library is…

“Chemical load as a factor in skin sensitization risk assessment: rodent versus man”

I know in my heart of hearts that the experiment didn’t look exactly as I pictured it (thousands cheering wildly in a packed amphitheatre whilst a rodent and a man, clothed in togas and carrying a shield and and possibly a spray bottle of something containing metabisulphite, circle each other warily)

but still…

So, here’s another nighttime missive from my subconscious - see if you can puzzle this one out:

Last night, I got asked to host the Grammy Awards. Not quite sure why, but I was pretty sure they must have had a good reason, heard through word-of-mouth about how rad I am, something like that.

But yeah, clearly the people who run these awards nights aren’t very organised - as I had all of 15 minutes to get my hair and makeup done. Some hard-faced MAC lady puts some lipstick on me and blow-dries my hair a bit, talking all the time about her love life and I realise that I don’t even have a dress picked out or anything. I end up getting out of the chair with my hair all half-done and struggle into an old formal dress of mine that I find in my bag. But it doesn’t fit properly and it’s not very flattering, so I run backstage to this dusty old props room to find something else to wear.

So, I sort through all these old costumes - pirate stuff and pajamas and suits and other things totally unsuitable for my tv debut - and just as I find a yellow strapless dress that I think might work, Jamie appears next to me, saying that I might get in trouble because those clothes don’t belong to me and then he points toward the stage door and nudges me so I’m facing in the right direction.

Just then, a woman with a clipboard and an earpiece sticks her head out the door and mouths something to me, and I realise she’s saying that I have to get on stage right now because they’re announcing my name. At that exact same moment I realise with a kind of cold terror that they have told me nothing about what I’m supposed to do, that we’ve had no run-through or practice whatsoever and I’m about to go up on stage in front of a potential audience of millions and I have no fucking clue what I’m supposed to say or do.

So, I walk out and smile nicely as though I understand perfectly and stand next to an actress I have never seen before, but somehow know that she’s been in a few Disney Channel movies of average popularity. She has this kind of forced politeness about her, like she knows that I have no idea what I’m doing, but she hopes I’m not going to screw it all up for us. I remember that when people host things, they usually read off an auto-cue, so I squint ahead and sure enough, there’s a monitor with the lines I’m supposed to read slowly scrolling down.

I read my lines, make a couple of lame jokes to introduce the first award and start to think that it might be okay. Then the Disney actress leans over and whispers in my ear, “Hey - do you think you can take it from here? I’ve got a class to go to tonight, and I don’t really want to be here.”I look at her in mild horror and I want to grab her shiny dress and tell her not to go, but then she says, “Remember, it’s $400,000 if you make it last 3 hours and more if you can get it to go longer than that.” And stunned by the thought at what I could do with that much money - if I just bullshit my way through this for a few hours, I could be set up for life- I no longer mind if the Disney actress leaves. Before she goes, she points to an actress in the front row. “Ask Kathy Griffin about her opinion on something”, she says. “If she thinks you care about what she has to say, you’ll have her eating out of the palm of your hand.”

So, I keep going for a little while - I make more jokes and try to play plenty of attention to Kathy Griffin - but I notice the studio is getting smaller and smaller. Soon, it’s just the size of a community theatre and I notice there’s only a handful of people left. During a commercial break, I realise I’ve knocked a machine and it’s taken the whole television program off-air for the last few minutes, but I figure that since a commercial is on, people won’t care and they’ll keep watching anyway.I fiddle around with some cords and try switching some dials back and forth but nothing happens. Just as I’m starting to worry, the Disney actress comes back, and rolling her eyes at my sheer incompetence, she plugs in a cord and presses a button. A blue screen flickers on and I know that it’s all okay, that it’s going to come back on air and I can finish the show and earn my money.

But just as I start to tell the Disney actress how great the rest of my show is going to be, I notice she’s walking out the door, taking the rest of the people in the studio with her. I try to stop her, to tell her that it’s been going so well, but then I look at the clock and realise what I thought was hours has only been ten minutes. So, I yell out to her that she can’t go, that she has to stay with everyone else so I can finish the show and earn my money. But she shakes her head in mild disgust and mouthes at me, It’s too late.

Then she leaves again and the show is over.

So, what is this?? Perhaps a warning that I should not host a major awards ceremony - even if I’m asked to, because I’m just not very good at it? Let this be a warning to you all - hire a reputable firm for all your events management needs.

Yes, I’m sure that must be it.

During a routine viewing of America’s Next Top Model the other night, spurred on by the delightful runway antics of Miss Jay Alexander, I began to ruminate on something I have always held to be true yet have had difficulty explaining to others. In fact, it may be the single most important reason why I will never become America’s Next Top Model.

Gay men don’t appear to like me very much.

I remember being quite puzzled about this in college. Shows like Sex and the City and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy had shown me that the number one must-have fashion item, more important even than a Birkin bag or some Charles Louboutin heels, was an impeccably-dressed flamboyantly gay man with whom to shop, gossip and cry with, should your girlfriends be otherwise busy shagging a restaurateur or buying overpriced vibrators. This gay man did not have to be attractive (in fact, it was probably better to err on the side of ugly, to avoid the risk of stolen boyfriends), but he had to have excellent taste in home decorating, fashion and haute cuisine, a good stock of witty repartee and be able to constantly affirm your fabulous choices of hairstyle and ensemble whilst skewering your enemies with acerbic insults. He could fix up your house/hair/makeup/wardrobe/relationship, tell you how to hold a knife and fork, teach you how to walk on the runway AND do it all while being way more fun than a straight guy.

Since I made very little money then (but strangely, more than I make now. Ha!), designer clothes were out of the question - but as a drama major, I had easy access to a large number of gay men. However, my gay classmates seemed uninterested in widening their circle of friends and chose not to interact with me at all, aside from the occasional snide remark about my developing(and still somewhat experimental) hair and makeup routine. Perhaps they could sense my subconscious stereotyping and disliked it. But even if they took to the role of friendly shopping slave that t.v had prescribed for them (and very few did), they seemed to have filled their fag hag quota and were not accepting further applications. What was wrong with me?

Over the next few years, reactions to me from gay men have ranged the gamut from slight indifference to bored indifference. Even my Bollywood teacher looks slightly confused when I speak to him, as though he’s not quite sure what to make of me (though we did have one decent conversation when we discussed the gay quotient of the step class instructor that used the hall before our class). Gay men frequently forget my name, gesture vaguely toward me when offering any instruction or request and never, ever tell me how fabulous my handbag is. They do, however, frequently hit on my boyfriend.

I have a poorly-thought out theory as to why gay men might not enjoy my company. I choose to ignore the fact that they might just be like everyone else, some of whom like me, some of whom do not, and others are just strangers who choose to reserve their judgement.

No, I choose to believe it’s because I am not enough of anything to appeal to them. I don’t drink Cosmopolitans, gossip excessively, shop at Kitson, summer in the Hamptons or have a recently adopted foreign child. I also don’t slavishly admire people who have these things (but don’t get me wrong, I do appreciate foreign children in a suitable context), making me unsuitable either as a companion or an admirer of a stereotypical gay man. Then again, I’m not enough of a hopeless case to inspire a Queer Eye/Clueless/Mean Girls/any movie by John Hughes - style makeover. I don’t really require social instruction, or to be taken under the wing of a fashion mentor.

In other words - I’m okay - which I assume just isn’t interesting enough for the gay men of the world. Also, I sometimes use big words - and I’m sure that can get really annoying sometimes.