Sunday, June 24, 2012

Big Brother - Summer 2012 (2)

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(24 June) Marion wrote: and Lauren , although willing, not particularly impressed by his efforts to massage.
She seemed to go the extra mile, though, in her willingness!
A great report, Marion. Nothing else to add or subtract.
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With all the excitement of England versus Italy last night, BB took a bit of a backseat. But I did note one birthday party versus another birthday party to become the Platonic Form of Birthday Party. The rude awakening regarding life's penalty shoot-off is that any Platonic Form is infiltrated by fallible humanity and Clockwork eye-decor. Even Fallibility itself is not what it was.
We go through life with eyes wide shut.
Thanks, again, Marion, for your infallible reports keeping me up to speed. (BTW I believe it's Conor not Connor)
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Marion wrote:  "gender insults abounded [...] We're right, Des - this is not a likeable house."
The only feasible likeables are Deana and Luke A, I feel. And perhaps Sara. Otherwise, not a good crowd, and mostly boring people, too (other than Lydia). So I don't know what BB is going to do to make this a likeable season in the weeks ahead. My spirit drops.
Agree that Conor is not only short of something vital in the intelligence stakes but also showed a very ugly side yesterday and BB should have evicted him. However did he pass the original audition?
Only glad that race doesn't seem to have come into it. On the surface anyway, with this factor having been drummed into all HMs, no doubt, following the Shilpa Shetty matter. But endemic 'genderism' has come into it and BB should deal appropriately with all such attitudes.
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Well, another big beast is liable to go on Friday: Lydia; Dislikeable yet interesting. A future politician on the centre right.
Caroline listed out the city venues for her Romantic 'Grand Tour' of Europe when she eventually meets the man who wants to care and service her. A highlight of the season so far. Luke A suggested St Petersburg would be better than Moscow in her list. I agree. 
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Marion wrote: "hashing"
A new technical term for applying internet social media methods to real life situations, situations like Reality TV, even Reality itself!
Lydia was hashing hard last night in the diary room in a ploy to stay in the house. See the sparkle in her eye, see the metaphorical moustache of mischief being preened and then tagged?
Caroline - no doubt my favourite housemate from day one (even before she said anything) - who nevertheless goes up and down in my estimation day by day - is today's H. Rider Haggard 'She' or Mrs Bennett in the making (even Lady Catherine de Burgh) or an EM Forster heroine who yearns interechangeably for a room with a view and a passage to India. Travel by sedan chair or rickshaw (who's he) if not by motorised hash tag.
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Marion wrote: "Oops! BB's nerve was struck and Caroline was summoned to the Diary Room and given a formal warning about what she had said. For a moment I thought BB was referring to her remark about his having no sanitation (her grammar is execrable) but no, he hinted tentatively about racism and then threatened her with removal from the house. Is she racist? I really don't know - there's no art to find the mind's construction in a word - but I find it odd that she can be threatened with removal for a single word while Conor can contemplate beating a woman and raping her with a hairbrush and only be gently chided."
Indeed, Marion.
And love Caroline or hate her, she certainly has a certain je-ne-sais-quoi about her. A talking point so much more credible than Benedict.
Deana to go tonight, I say.
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Marion wrote: "So. The game is all over bar th shouting, isn't it. Luke S's group outnumber the outsider group by a wide margin. Next week, either Deana, Scott, Adam or Lauren goes...and the others will soon follow."
I think you and I should go in there as wild cards: Marion of Diamonds and Des of Spades.
Lydia was supposed to have a famous boy friend but when she got out, I didn't recognise him. Who is he? Who is he?
I agree with what you say about Ashleigh's behaviour. Being an Essex boy through and through, I assure you she is not typical. But Essex is getting infamous... When I was young, it was simply another county.
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(1 July): Thanks for another excellent report, Marion.
Scott is actually quite shrewd, amid his posh accentuation of vowels and consonants, describing the 'presence' or lack of it with the then potential of Lydia or Deana going. He is pontifical, strangely with his hair (that Marion once described as his brain bursting through the top of his skull) now shaped into a kippah-like eruption of orange-knitted lava. Also his kamikaze belittling of the Conor-'purchased' table (almost its phenomenological conception as the essence of Table) was like watching the Martyrdom of St Sebastian...stuck all over with toy-footballers on spinning stakes.
Becky's internal thigh slapping - after Deana describing her as possessiing the Wonder of being comfortable in her own skin - was something that martyred us viewers...
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I agree Deana was the star in 'calling' the Luke S and Ashleigh fauxmance. But she, too, is perhaps operating her own moral sting... A fauxmance between two chancers (or one chancer and one gullible individual) and a crusade (such as Deana's) on an unprovable point are both game-ploys that have grown up with BB over the years.
I think I'd keep a cool ployless, plotless head ... like Caroline?
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I'm glad you didn't divulge tonight's nominations here ahead of time, Marion. BB's Reality should not become real-time! I look forward to their gradual 'evolution' tonight.
Caroline's stony-faced assurance about who had not talked to her in the last three days begs the question of why she had not talked to them. Ever the mirror reflected back, that lady.
Although I think Deana is playing a game, I'm glad Luke S is rattled. Don't like him.
The Shievonne task was indeed brilliant and natuarlly flowed from her earlier Clownophobia (is there a more psychologically technical expression for that? Like the Stephen King Red Nose and Custard Pie Syndrome?)
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Coulrophobia, apparently!
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(4 July) Scott Gyrning
I continue to find Marion's reports invaluable for many reasons, e.g. because of the way the Housemates' gyrning and making Pinteresque absurdisms, rolling their eyes up into whites (particularly Caroline) and generally blocking sense with veils of misgotten telepathy-with-grunts-grins-and-gawps. But Marion miraculously seems to be able to transcend all this with her TTA Forum reports. The masque that rolls beneath the Geordie chanting of the Marcus over-voice that seems merely to achieve punctuating further diversions of sense.
An interesting foursome up for grabs this week. I hope Conor goes (he must have conned the auditioners for BB about his true nature). But I fear that Marion may be right about the fulsome current of the Beck flowing ineluctably back to source upon a wave of the TV audience's tactile voting.
Today is Higgs boson day - finding the dirty Diamond in the Cern Zoo. Seems somehow to be running parallel with BB.
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Marion wrote: "Is the world ready for yet another fauxmance?"
Or grosmance (pronounced growmance) where a fauxmance becomes real and/or gross with mass or dark matter -- or grows or morphs into something other than faux, if only in the self-deceived minds of the participants of whatever 'mance' it is.
Becky in trousers; I had to laugh at Big Brother saying he couldn't see her legs as they were in army camouflage trousers.
There is a lot of physical and mental gurning going on: even the furniture going green and blue with its own camouflage of 'genius loci'. (Sorry I mispelt gurning as gyrning yesterday: it was almost as if the word itself had started gurning: a vexed texture of text).
The world may have discovered the Higgs boson (or at least its lookalike) and Reality itself (as an extrapolation of Reality TV) has effectively started its gurning process: almost the opening of a Pandora's Box by the discovery of the 'God particle'; the next step will be Avian Flu passing human to human, I fear.
The Big Brother House: the ultimate CERN Zoo.
Meanwhile, I pray (not too strong a word) that Conor is gurnt off on Friday, the scorched earth of his designer stubble on his extended chin and all.
(From Wikipedia: "A typical gurn might involve projecting the lower jaw as far forward and up as possible, and covering the upper lip with the lower lip, though there are other possibilities.")
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Marion wrote: "It's coming to something when a man who has spent time in one of America's prisons can be shocked by the behaviour of Britain's youth."
Proof that BB isn't just silly games but a Morailty Tale, too.
But the HMs' heads acting as green or blue loo-brushes was a real 'Happening'! A bit too bitty last night, though. We all know who we hope is going tonight. Becky is shaping up better, so I hope it's not her at least.
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Marion wrote: "A lesson must surely have been learned here - you cannot make people see things your way; there is such a thing as objective reality. He tried to drown out their protests by talking over them (he's what my Gran used to refer to as a wee yap o' hell)..."
A lesson for us all, indeed, as this Morality Tale - with Classical Horror's Hubris and Nemesis - Shakesperean even - perspicaciously rolls on. During the live streaming on 5* between cup and interview's lip, it became Continental Art Cinema of the Sixties with close-ups dwelling on faces, almost in dreamy slow-motion as emotions flickered between expressions that escaped involuntarily or were poised deliberately before slipping away again: a true revelation, brilliant TV as only Reality TV of this nature can achieve.
Marion is spot on with her epithet about the interviewee: "prize prat". And about everything else she says above. It turned out perfectly for justice, leaving Conor marooned in his own Sophoclean Tragedy, with Marion and I -- and other members of the audience with whom I'm in touch osmotically -- the Greek Chorus.
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(8 July) Marion wrote: "On this board, we talk a great deal about how HMs true characters are revealed in the house but so, it must be said, are the characters of commentators."
We reflect back from the stagings of others in the march of life. And by watching Reality TV we can perhaps fathom even more our own motivations for better or worse.
"It is a dark and opaque side to ourselves, one that we leave untreated at our own peril, but it is also a source of endless humour and amazement, so that we can also enjoy the subject as we suffer it." Robert Trivers
And thus gratifying to see grizzled Conor blubbing in the arms of Luke S. But, meanwhile, we tell ourselves that we were born to love and be loved, even Conor...
The enduring image for me last night was the blue towelling of a mountainous Sultan from Sinbad's days attempting to mimick another religion in the shape of a Buddha with the disarming drawback of speaking from Caroline's face.
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Marion said: "She reminded me of that blue caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland!"


"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way –"
My highlight was Scott reciting that in his articulate poshese from beneath his kippah of orange brain-hair.
Yes, the Shievonne jape is to turn seeeerious... Adam, watch out.
That is brilliant, Marion, your blue caterpillar Caroline.
My original conceit above was a merging of these two:


And this is the current Diary Room chair:


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Marion wrote: "Conor is a man of few words - so he just keeps repeating them."
Indeed. And when a love-circle was proposed he probably first thought of something else.
Seriously, I think BB stepped over the mark with the entrapment of Adam. Made it more into a voyeuristic hothouse psychological investigation into human behaviour when taken to extremes of personal interaction rather than a Reality TV game which often borders on that 'hothouse', true, but hopefully doesn't cross the line into deliberate manipulative cruelty.
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Marion wrote re Shievonne: "She flapped them at BB, threw them up in the air, then from side to side, even circled her own head with them - a magician making magic passes. She said she'll be carried out of the house on a stretcher and duly crossed her arms over her chest to symbolise a corpse."
In all the years I've been watching and commenting piecemeal on BB seasons, I don't think I've ever thought to compare the DR to a religious Confessional, with a priest (here BB) on the other side of the grille. With Scott's lengthy meticulous pickings out at his thoughts. Shievonne's eschatology described above. [I coined the word eschairtology recenty, as it happens (HERE in connection with a Reggie Oliver story)!] And I could go on with this analogy!
Like Marion, I have no idea re the unseen backstory of Sara and Luke A.
I think Caroline at one point said that Scott would win this BB season. I'm beginning to think she's right.
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Yes, I forgot Sara is an ultra-Royalist. Ashleigh looks like a frail flower of an innocent abroad, as you imply, Marion, but in nobody else has there been an innocence so subsumed by an inner archetypal Essexisation...and, meanwhile, even I knew that the Queen's dogs are corgis.
I still depend on your reports to set me straight, Marion. Until I read it this morning, I thought last night's show was confusing, mostly inaudible and boring, and I see I was right on the first two but not, retrocausally, on the third!
Conor to go tomorrow night!

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