Five little lifts of last week

Rex was not happy with the prices in the gift shop.

Sunny delight

Don’t look now, but a certain big, bright, shiny thing has returned to our skies from its winter holidays. Expect lots of half-naked pasty people spread around the parks and beaches of England, making the most of the sixteen degree heat wave. In the mean time, I will be sporting a pair of giant, pink sixties-style sunglasses which look ridiculous but make me feel like I’m in Mad Men. Roll on summer.

Mmm, donut pyjamas

While pyjamas for donuts would be adorable, if a little tricky to pull off, I am referring to blue pyjama trousers in a donut print you could just devour. While they’re perfect for ‘vegging out,’ carrot-print pyjamas are just not as relaxing as those covered in desserts, even if it does make you feel a bit peckish. There's something cosy about donuts, which explains why they're called comfort food.

Digging up the Jurassic Park DVD

Not only did these films teach us valuable life lessons, such as how to make dinosaurs, don’t go in the long grass, and T-rex can’t see you if you don’t move, but they were fantastic entertainment. Suddenly the terrible lizards in picture books were not just vague myths akin to unicorns and clowns, but living and breathing monsters capable of destroying cities. My interest in palaeontology may have ultimately proved short-lived, but the tenseness and magic of this classic trilogy remains preserved throughout the years.

Hot mess

As I’ve mentioned on this blog before, I have a deep and abiding love of making, baking and especially eating brownies. Even when they go wrong, they taste fantastic, and my latest batch went horribly, oozily, beautifully wrong. In Year 5, I wrote a story about a woman who caused an explosion when she put too much baking powder in her Christmas pudding. I can now confirm that baking powder doesn’t do this (for anyone left wondering), but putting three times the amount in does have some interesting effects. They weren’t brownies so much as a massive mess of gooey chocolate. With peanut M&Ms. And marshmallows. And white chocolate chunks. Best mistake ever.

Reading Rehab

Once upon a time, I could curl up with a book and be satisfied for hours. Jump to the end of my literature degree, and even looking at a book that doesn’t require long hours of making notes, reading critical work and crafting essays makes me feel guilty. This week, I entered book rehab, and while it’s been slow progress, when I reached the end of  Junot Diaz’s This is How You Lose Her, I was greeted with the familiar warm glow that comes with learning the twists and turns of a new story. Although I am now an abhorrent book snob, my degree has made me better able to appreciate the nuances of a well-written book. You could say that this is a new chapter in my reading experience. But that would be corny.

The World According to American TV

'Pizza is a vegetable, right guys?'

While there is no doubt that Britain has some stand out shows, at some point we have all succumbed to the tantalising glamour of American TV. Whether you're crazy for Mad Men, addicted to House or loyal to Friends, everyone has a favourite show that evokes the land of stars, stripes and Hershey's. However, despite the vast range of topics and genres covered by these shows, there are some weird and wonderful tropes that pop up time and again, leading us to wonder just what American TV is telling us about the world. 

Everyone looks perfect all the time

Whether you’re relaxing with a sit-com or delving into a tense drama, there are no spots, split ends or unruly teeth on show. Whether these characters are, like, hanging out at the mall, tackling a supernatural force of doom or investigating a crime scene, expect nothing less than glossy hair, perfect make-up, and flawless skin. Given the amount of time they must spend on their appearance, it’s perhaps not surprising that they seem to be able to apply make-up and rollers in their sleep, allowing them to roll of bed looking like a Max Factor advert. That or there's an army of kindly pixies flitting around these characters fixing them up in their sleep and performing touch ups during the day. Either way, there's something unnerving about a world where even bed hair and dark circles are expertly applied.

Living off junk food will have no adverse effects

There is only one food group on American TV: junk. We’ve all drooled while watching these characters tuck into mountains of M&Ms, piles of peanut butter and 'jelly' sandwiches, pizza, takeaway noodles, tubs of ice cream with a higher gravitational pull than the Sun, and countless glazed donuts, and that’s just breakfast. While this kind of diet would leave even the most genetically blessed among us an obese and malnourished mess, none of these characters will put on so much as a pound. Aside from this, and despite the potential drama a case or two of scurvy could provide to an ailing plotline, there’s no mention of gruesome vitmain deficiencies either. However, there might be a simple explanation for these oversights: no matter how loudly they insist that they are starving, or how much they order, none of these characters eat the food. It gets prodded, poked and pulled, all the better to taunt us as we nibble on our solid British fare, but never eaten. Sometimes they leave as soon as the food arrives. All in all, American TV should only be faced on a full stomach or with an oversized bag of popcorn and gallon of Ben & Jerry’s.

Anyone of any age can drive

The thought of teenagers wielding any sort of power is alarming enough, but the sight of them behind the wheel of a car is terrifying. And these aren’t just any cars: apparently the makers of lean, mean, environment-exterminating machines have a monopoly in the world of American TV. A quick look at all these rides also reveals why every desperate fundraising attempt ever portrayed on film involves a charity car wash. Aside from the extras who populate the background of scenes in leafy suburbs, no one ever seems to wash their car, yet there is not a speck of dirt on any of them. Then again, if there is, it’s a type that is only found in one square metre in Carson City, proving beyond all doubt that the murderer was the guy with limp.

No one wears clothes more than once

Another day, another on-trend, perfectly-fitted, never-before-seen outfit. When these people go to work, they have a new outfit. When they’re on a date, they have a new outfit. When they’re standing in their huge apartments moaning about how they have no money, they are doing so in an expensive, flattering, brand new outfit. Oh yes, they may live in some of the most expensive cities in the world, but even characters with no job or a job that wouldn’t buy you a salad let alone cover rent have somehow found palatial flats. Furthermore, no male character will admit to shopping, yet there they are, nonchalantly strolling around in this season’s jeans and next season's jacket. Then there's the matter of clothing care. While laundry is the perfect way to display a female character’s oh-so-quirky inability to fulfil her domestic role, or for characters to exchange numbers and seduction techniques over pairs of dirty pants, these clothes will never be seen again. That red sock just keeps getting in with the whites, resulting in daily trips to Calvin Klein and a fresh new fancy wardrobe every day. Cue envy, shock or giggling, depending on your decade of choice: yes nineties shows, we're still judging you.

Brits are evil

The moment that dry, clipped accent trips off a character’s tongue, you can be certain they’re trouble. Initially, hearts will flutter and melt in the face of this sophisticated Old World charm, but in the end, Brits on American TV tend to be adulterers, murderers and/or demons. While Giles, of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame, is a notable exception, he serves to demonstrate another British stereotype: if we can’t be charming and evil, we are knitwear-clad, spectacle-sporting bookworms, bumbling our way through these wild American ways while slurping tea and apologising to everything with a pulse. Or, we’re royalty. Here’s hoping that one day we'll get a weird and wonderful combination of all three.

Of course, these points are all ridiculous. No one wants to watch regular-looking people put on the same clothes, wash dirty ones, cook, clean, get bored at work and return to a cupboard-sized flat to eat fruit. That’s what real life is for. We want to see sexy people flick glossy hair, drive impossibly shiny cars, solve crimes, fight demons, suffer through high school, produce genius ad campaigns and eat lethal amounts of ice cream. This is not The Jungle, this is escapism, so leave reality eating carrots on the sofa in yesterday’s jeans, and get on board with this American dream.