Okay, so today I did it. I went to see 50 Shades Of Grey. Before I go on and all the fans of this unbelievable phenomenon attack me, no, I never read the books. Well, I did download a sample on my kindle and hated it so didn't go any further. So I knew what it was supposed to be about, and my fellow hilarious friend, Mandy Nolan and I donned some disguises (because we have both been mouthing off about it and couldn't be seen going) and used her free tickets to see what all the fuss is all about. I've heard people say it's bad, it's not sexy, it's boring, and also much more seriously, it portrays a seriously controlling, abusive relationship. I would agree with all of those things, and there were certainly very disturbing aspects of the relationship that you wouldn't want young women to think were normal or even flattering, and there have been some excellent pieces written on that subject. This isn't one of those excellent pieces. Now let's start with Christian Grey. Who thinks up a character like that and what women would actually find this dude sexy or attractive? He has some serious mummy issues which we learnt of in the scene where he opens up to Anastasia while she's asleep and talks of his crack addicted, prostitute mother. Oh, of course she was. And she burnt him with cigarettes. How original, but honestly movie makeup people - get the number of cigarette burns right when the dude takes off his top. Sometimes it was three, sometimes five and another time he looked like he had chicken pox! I found every other male in the movie more sexy and interesting than our Mr Grey, from his driver, to her friend the photographer and even the bloke she worked with in the hardware store. Now there's a fella who could dig a hole, and I love a bloke who can dig a decent hole. Mr Grey would pay someone sexier than himself to do it, and that's never cool. I was distracted from the ever so compelling/virtually non existent story line by a number of things that really ruined it for me. Firstly the lip biting. Oh come on Anastasia! We know it drove HIM crazy but after you've been chewing on that fleshy thing like it's a fucking lamb shank the whole movie, guess who else it drove crazy? I wanted to slap her for different reasons to Mr Grey! She is going to need some serious chap stick. Another distraction was the key to Mr Grey's playroom. Oh and what a playroom it was. All kinds of whips (he called them floggers but really he was the only flogger in that room), chains, ropes, harnesses, paddles and even the old peacock feather came out at one stage. Geez I haven't seen one of those since the good old days of seventies porn. It was such an important room that he had to change out of his Armani suits into torn jeans and no shirt every time he went in there. More like the WORK ROOM, am I right??? But I digress. The key. Oh my god. I was worried for the whole movie that that key was going to be lost. Who carries around a key, without a key ring, to a room so important that it needs to be locked in case someone mistakes it for the bathroom one time when you're having a dinner party, loose in their pocket? Just loose!! I was so worried he'd lose it and find the gorgeous driver strapped up in there with a My Little Pony Butt Plug that I found it hard to relax. My next distraction was about Anastasia. No it wasn't her big bush of pubes, but isn't it nice to see some these days? They really are a thing of the past. I suspect in the next movie there will come a time when they just have to go because Mr Grey doesn't trust them, but it wasn't her pubes. It was the fact that she doesn't seem to own one handbag. Not once was she carrying a handbag. Now every single woman in the western world carries a bag. Giant ones, small ones, fancy ones, ugly ones. Not this little deviant! And miraculously she would pull her keys and her flip phone, which I'm guessing they wanted her to have to show how really "innocent" she was by not even know that smart phones existed, from the pockets of her seriously skinny jeans. They were not in there. There was nothing in those pockets. It just made the movie unbelievable for me. So disappointing. Now to the sex. There was a bit of slapping, and a bit of whipping and a lot of having her hands tied up and him pleasuring her, which I say more power to her, but the sex itself was very ordinary. A lot of missionary position sex and a bit of doggy style. Nothing kinky there. I was expecting gimp masks, definitely a butt plug scene, and maybe even some pooing and weeing on each other. Nothing. Not even close. They'd have a bit of tie up slap and tickle, do the deed then he'd go and tinkle the ivories on his grand piano in his ugly, boring house. Mandy pointed out that "even with all that money he still had a fucken ugly camphor laurel slab coffee table". There was one scene that really stands out in my mind, and I wish it was because I found it beautiful, or sexy, but no. I nearly fell off my chair laughing. He took her undies off and had a good long sniff of them. Really got his nose right in there like he was blowing out a nose full of snot. Did I not get the memo? Do women find men who want to sniff their undies sexy? None of my friends have ever told me they met a bloke and loved how he whiffed their knickers every time they got out of them. Between that and the loose key caper, I was gone. Give me seventies porno any day, where the blokes don't have issues and they keep their keys nice and safe by hanging them off their belts, which are around their jeans and not being used to whip women. I'm all for whatever floats your boat, and if this is it for you, then great but for me it is a sinker. I give 50 Shades of Grey one star and that's for the gorgeous sweeping shots of the Seattle skyline. Oh how I love a skyline. |
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I think I’m having a mid life crisis. At least that’s what I’m calling it. It’s not even a cool mid life crisis where I dye my hair and buy a Harley Davidson and have an affair with a much younger woman who will eventually tire of me and take all my money. It’s a boring mid life crisis where I’m facing all sorts of changes in my life that I have no control over. My Dad is dying. In fact he’s been dying now for about 3 years. My sisters and I have said goodbye to Dad so many times that we feel like call centre switchboard operators. I have sobbed on his bedside and told him what a fabulous Dad he’s been and thanked him for loving me and raising me the way he did, thinking that by morning he’ll be gone, only to come to the hospital the next morning to see him sitting up eating his cornflakes and saying in his broad Aussie accent “I feel real good today!”. It makes it awkward. He is the Phoenix. He keeps rising again. Until the day he doesn’t and then it will hit me like a ton of bricks and I’ll wish he was sitting up eating those awful cornflakes. I can’t even imagine how my Mum feels, after being with the same man for over 50 years, to now be faced with the reality of life without him. She refuses to imagine it which is another problem all together. Whilst my parents are in their twilight years, we have twin sons who are almost 13 years old. I recently saw a photo on twitter of a woman holding her premature twins in hospital and it looked so much like me (except of course I thought I looked more glamorous after giving birth) and our boys. I can honestly say that those memories are so vivid it really does feel like it was only yesterday. Now those gorgeous little babies are growing pubic hair. My adorable, giggly, chubby knuckled, sweet smelling little sweethearts are becoming teenagers and I feel like I have two strangers living in the house. I remember them curling their little fat arms around my neck and snuggling into me like they never wanted to leave, and now when I hug them it feels like they’re doing me a favour by putting their long, limp arms around me and I can almost feel them wishing it was over. When I ask them how their day at school was, I am lucky to get grunted at. They speak about Minecraft (an online computer game which they’re obsessed with) to each other and I feel so excluded because; a) I don’t have any idea what the purpose of that stupid bloody game is – it has NO ENDING; and b) I actually don’t give a shit what they’re saying. I feel like my purpose right now is just to feed two hairy, growing ball sacks. I look in the mirror these days and see something very different to what I imagine I look like. I notice that men don’t notice me anymore. A gorgeous comedian that I work with recently thought he was complementing me by saying “In your day you would have been quite the looker”. In my day I would have had the energy to throw a drink at him too! In my day, I could turn a man’s head and on a particularly good day, even conjure up a wolf whistle! Not long ago I walked past a building site and sneezed and a cute builder just said “Bless You”. There’s no wolf whistling anymore. Soon I’ll be wetting my pants when I sneeze as well. There’s nothing blessed about that. I have become one of the invisible women. A middle aged woman who wears sensible clothes and who doesn’t push the boundaries of fashion anymore. Hell, some days I don’t even shower until it’s time to go back to bed! I take selfies, thinking I’ll send one to my husband, only to delete every one of them because I never look good in them. Problem is, that is exactly how I look. I wish selfies were a thing when I looked the way I looked when I would have been proud to send a selfie to my fella! Where did the years go? I remember my Dad being a fit, handsome, knock about bloke with a Reschs Pilsner in his hand and a pair of stubbies on. I remember my boys sitting in their high-chairs going through their repertoire of animal noises for me. Now all they do is the pig. I remember when I would go into their rooms in the morning and their little faces would light up with giant smiles when they saw me. Now they groan when I open their curtains in their dark cave-like rooms that smell like sweat and Lynx Deodorant. I remember my husband and I sitting up until 2am or 3am playing Playstation Games! Now we’re flat out being able to turn the bloody thing on and anyway, we’re asleep by 9pm now. It’s a big time of change for me and I’m not ready for any of it. I don’t want it. I want my chubby little babies back, I want my active, funny, reliable Dad back and I don’t want these bullshit vertical wrinkles on my chest! What the hell are they anyway and when did they arrive?? The Harley Davidson is looking pretty good right now. If only I could get my leg over the seat.... George Clooney came to Australia recently and I saw women on television losing their minds over seeing him on the same continent as them. I mentioned this to a girlfriend and casually commented over our coffee that whilst George seems like a really good guy, he doesn't really do it for me. I may as well have said "I hate puppies" or "I punch old people", as was the reaction from her. All levels of shock registered in her face as her mouth gaped open and she stated "George Clooney doesn't DO IT FOR YOU? Is there something wrong with you?" Personally, I kind of like it if I fancy a famous person and my friends think he's not that good. Lets me think that I have more of a chance with him if we ever meet cause the competition isn't that great. It got me thinking about how amazed some people get when someone doesn't see or feel the same as someone else. I know folks whose minds would explode if they found out that I've never watched any of the Star Wars movies, or a Lord of The Rings one. I only read the first Harry Potter book, and that was only because everyone was raving about it. It didn't grab me, okay? I hated The Road by Cormac McCarthy, yet I had a girlfriend who said it changed the way she looked at life. Seriously. I thought it was a miserable piece of crap. I've never watched any CSI or NCIS or any other show with an acronym about violent crime and never will. I hate action movies. All of them. I can't watch an action movie without thinking (and often saying) "As IF that could happen", which evidently people who like those movies really, really hate. My favourite movie is Love Actually and I don't care if it's not particularly clever or thought provoking, I just loved it. When I tell people that, they almost spit their drinks out laughing like I'm some sort of imbecile who has a mental age of 14. I still get tears in my eyes every time I think of the scene where Emma Thompson's character finds out her husband is having an affair and she has to pull herself together for the sake of her kids. I love that scene and I love that movie. I love Hugh Grant as the Prime Minister of England, dancing like a tool to a Pointer Sisters song. That movie makes me laugh and cry the whole way through and that's why I love it. I don't care if things are daggy or not cool. I've always been a little bit daggy and not that cool. I love Christmas, yet I have very good friends who hate the commercialism of it, and question why I celebrate it when I'm not Christian. I tell them I celebrate it because it's fun and I like flashing lights, Christmas decorations, pulling open crackers, wearing a paper hat all day, playing backyard cricket with friends and family, and giving and getting presents. That's why. It goes no deeper than that. Some of my friends would die before watching The Housewives of (insert name here), yet I love them all...except for DC and I have my reasons for that. I like watching trashie reality TV, yet I also like watching hard hitting documentaries that make me despair at humanity. I love reading books that keep me awake at night, as well as the odd trashie magazine while I'm at the hairdresser. I also love all my friends who scoff at my movie choices, who laugh at my music taste, and who would never find a book on my book shelf that they might like to read. Even the one that thinks there's something wrong with me because George doesn't do it for me. |
Ellen BriggsWelcome to my blog! As if Twitter and Facebook weren't enough...here I am blogging now. I'm a stand-up comedian, a writer, a mother, a wife, dog & bird lover, lawn mower, trashie TV lover and cook - just to name a few! I have a lot to say, some of it you may find funny, some not. It's nice to have you along. Archives
February 2015
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