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We haven’t dumped the kids on their grandparents for a while, but in an attempt to properly recuperate, we shipped them off to their Nana and Papa’s for the weekend, but only after I’d made breakfast with them - Ernie making pancakes and Phoebe doing eggy bread. It was sloppy, messy fun.
But then it was wall to wall rancho relaxo for me. Apart from when I got a text saying that I’d given them the wrong charger for the iPads, so I had to drive over with that. But I needed to fill the big car with petrol and I got us some snacks so the trip was worthwhile,
Apart from THAT though I just watched telly, played video games, thought about reading but didn’t and instead watched pretty much all of “I Think You Should Leave†for at least the third time (it is, if anything, funnier each time) and chilled the fuck out.
And then had a date night (without going out) where we got a takeaway curry and watched a film. And we did’t have to wait til we’d put the kids to bed and were knackered out. We watched the Banshees of Inisherin, which I’d been looking forward to and quite enjoyed, though it was a bit less funny than I thought it was going to be and had some elements that were gruesome which put me off a bit. But still really great to be watching an intelligent film that isn’t worried about taking its time and has no superheroes in it. Set against the background of the Irish Civil War, two friends engage in a pointless and self-defeating battle. I might have liked it more had it not escalated. It’s an interesting topic - two men who were friends stopping being friends for no real reason.
Ireland looked both bleak and beautiful. I am married to an Irishwoman (she has the passport at least) and I have the stockiness of the Hannan side of my family, who originated in Ireland (though it goes back too far to get me a passport and my great-great grandad Hannah was born in Ashton under Lyme, so it’s a tenuous connection). Still like an American I will keep up the pretence of being Irish so the film can speak to me even more.
We also watched some of the Cosby documentary, which wasn’t really date night material, but is nonetheless jaw dropping, astonishing and upsetting. Whilst there are parallels with Jimmy Savile, the Cosby story is even more unsettling, but maybe only because Cosby wasn’t so obviously a creep (to look at). It’s hard to understand why he would do what he did when there must have been so many people willing to give him what he wanted, but that’s because it was about power, rather than sex. Another showbiz documentary that makes you question the whole institution of show business and the people who want to be in it. Is he worse because he projected an image of being the moralistic family man? I suppose that’s what jars, though clearly he cultivated that image for exactly that reason.
On top of the Paula Yates documentary it made me question why anyone would seek out fame. Nearly everyone who was even briefly mentioned in this documentary has either died before their time or been the centre of some disgrace or both. Only Oprah remains squeaky clean. I don’t want to find out what she’s up to her behind the scenes.
Does fame turn people into entitled monsters or are they that way to start with and fame just allows them to be themselves (whilst usually carefully hiding their real self)? I fear that many people would become monsters if given this much power, but not all people given this much power become quite as massive monsters as Cosby.
It certainly made it seem likely that most people working on the Cosby show would have been aware of at least some of what was going on. One staff member (a writer I think) rather weakly when asked if he’d seen anything. “Not really†was his odd response to what was surely a yes or no question. He wasn’t pressed any more on this. But he did look shifty and uncomfortable at least.
I don’t think there was any realistic way of an individual stopping it. The problem with these situations is that too much money is being made by the stars, too many jobs and too much profit relies on it. The beast had to be fed.
