The insomniac, bottom-licking cat and I stayed up the other night to watch a late-night screening of the 1998 movie Sliding Doors, starring my all-time favourite human conundrum, Gwyneth Paltrow.
At the time, the prospect of viewing skinny Gwynnie missing the Tube and thereby altering the course of the universe seemed like a better option than going to bed and lying awake listening to the fading moggie give birth to another furball. Well, guess what?
You have to admire Gwyneth Paltrow, for her apparent ability to take herself, her awfully good bone structure, her somewhat fragile talent and her endless recipes for self-improvement and conscious living so terribly seriously.
For those of you who have been spared the pleasure, Sliding Doors is a pre-millennium exploration of love, loss and godlessness from a decade that bequeathed us My Little Pony, the Tamagotchi and the phrase "I did not have sexual relations with that woman". Oh no, sorry, hang on, it's not. Sliding Doors is a comedy about a girl who manages to critically injure herself by both falling down the stairs and getting run over, all in the course of one sloppy script sequence. In other words, it's the story of a woman who has nearly as many lives as the aforementioned tongue-firmly-lodged-in-posterior pussycat.
John Lynch and John Hannah also star in this truly dreadful romcom, Lynch failing to be quirky, funny or romantic and Hannah looking like he’d rather scrape his own spleen off the windscreen than hang around the set trying to appear a little less pale and a little more interesting underneath his shoulder pads.
Fragile talent
You have to admire Gwyneth Paltrow, for her apparent ability to take herself, her awfully good bone structure, her somewhat fragile talent and her endless recipes for self-improvement and conscious living so terribly seriously.
As I’ve previously pointed out in this column, Ms Paltrow’s credo can be accessed through her online publication Goop. Subscribers to Goop can find invaluable advice on everything from insidious yeast infections to buying those “must-have investment pieces”. (Sweetheart, you ain’t even at the races without a Cartier watch and a pair of Gucci loafers.) It also provides information on where to find gluten-free vodka stockists and on how to unblock your crown chakra, revamp your personal orbit and recognise your inherent sexual narcissism. And nope, I’ve absolutely no idea what that means either, mate – nor, quite frankly, do I give a fiddler’s.
My fascination with GP is that I cannot find a hint of irony in her whatsoever; she’s about as mordant as a spring chicken. Seriously, so sincere is this woman, so pure of diet, so irrigated of colon, I’d hazard a bet that you could safely eat your dinner off the woman’s pelvic floor.
I poured myself a glass of non-organic supermarket wine, put my Gucci-less feet up, shoved a lump of heavily processed muck in my gob, and settled down to read a bit of "this & that".
And yes, she is very lovely, and she owns more white cotton shirts than a brass band, and she’s endlessly pictured gazing out of the window in baggy organic knitwear, juggling quinoa cookies and prickly pears while contemplating her squeaky-clean colon. But would you go on the lash with this woman? Would you willingly get out of the scratcher to share a pot of green tea with her?
‘This & that’
I opened my junk mail the other day to find that she’d sent all of her followers worldwide, myself included, an impersonal missive, her third edition of “this & that”, described as “a cursory cataloging of recent discoveries, future landings, and just some stuff I like”, with the sign-off “love, gp”.
I poured myself a glass of non-organic supermarket wine, put my Gucci-less feet up, shoved a lump of heavily processed muck in my gob, and settled down to read a bit of “this & that”.
Yep, truly, Gwyneth is a gift that keeps on giving.
Featured in the less-than-weighty tome was some fascinating analysis of hand-rolled pasta and new ways to restore the body’s natural equilibrium. There was also cool news about her perfume revolution, involving sophisticated and beautiful fragrances that entrance, heal, transform, and are really pretty kooky too. Like, there’s this fragrance whose tagline claims it will “Fend Off Old Lovers” – oh, what larks, Pip, what larks, and, hey, a steal at $165.
Mucoid count
Is it bad to feel too old to care? Am I missing something here, some essential Californian-esque gene that predisposes one to give a toss about the “nuts and bolts of colonics” or what the mucoid count is in one’s godforsaken intestines? Do I really have to care what coconuts are doing for my libido?
Leave me alone, Gwyneth. Take your long, smooth thighs, your clavicles and body cornices, your medicinal facials and fecal medicines back to your ranch in the foothills of heaven, and leave me alone.
I’m tired, Gwynnie, I’m tired.