La Pizzeria Ristorante - Northern Quarter

Last Thursday, I attended an event like no other I'd ever been to.

My prior knowledge was limited. What I did know was the following. It was a restaurant opening. It was a pop-up. It was in the Northern Quarter, on High Street, in the space above The Market Restaurant, most recently occupied by the Kahlua Coffee House. There would be free drinks and free pizza.

Great, I thought. Who doesn't like free drinks and free pizza?

Once I ascended the steps to the pleasant leafy interior, I was offered a glass of prosecco and informed that the pizzas would be coming round shortly. The guests and I were also told, with a wry smile by our hosts, that there was a twist. We raised a polite eyebrow, trying to dredge up the requisite amount of curiosity, wondering what it could possibly be.

Turns out I didn't have to wait long. I accidentally happened upon a menu and a press release which had been carelessly left on the bar, spilling its secrets to all sundry. Oops. I now knew the grand surprise.

I was surprised, alright.

Armed with this new, terrible knowledge, I made my way back over to my friend and partner in pizza crime, but I couldn't bring myself to divulge the secret.

"So what do you think?" I asked, my face impassive.

She took a bite, tearing into a too-even square topped with pepperoni and salami.

"Yeah. It's ok. Kind of tastes like a supermarket pizza? Dunno, something about the base. It's very uniform."

I nearly spat out my prosecco. "Oh right!" I said, as my stifled snort swiftly turned into a choking cough.

I hadn't even said anything but the Great Mystery was already disintegrating. I looked around. I could see it in everyone's eyes. They were thinking the same thing.

And then, several more greasy pizza boards later, it was formally announced. La Ristorante Pizzeria is brought to you by ... Dr Oetker!

I chewed on another slice, agog. Spinace, I think. It wasn't half bad, to be honest. It pleased my palate with its garlickiness. But now that this unholy truth was out, it only seemed to gain more WTF momentum.

Here we were, Manchester's media elite (well... ish :P), bundled into a room, being fed squares of oven pizza.

What.

If this is the new model for the Northern Quarter pop-up, then I dread to think what will pop up next. Perhaps the next logical iteration is a cocktail bar called, ooh I dunno, "The Bar", decked out in red and white, where the "cocktails" consist of some fizzy brown liquid poured into a martini glass and served with a swizzle stick, at a fiver a pop. But guess what! There's a twist. It's actually just Coke, served in a fancy glass! Isn't that just swell? Go buy some Coke! At the supermarket! Where it's much cheaper!

Um.

La Ristorante's predecessor, Kahlua Coffee House, succeeded because it trod the delicate tightrope between old-fashioned, out-there brand peddling and doing something a little different. Its cocktails were both good value and high quality (best espresso martinis I've had in a while), with many concoctions on the menu unique, and the food similar.

Meanwhile the cocktail masterclasses, led by local booze experts/legends The Liquorists, and weekly movie nights (showcasing a good mixture of indie, arthouse and comedy with films like The Big Lebowski, Frida and Nacho Libre) not only lent an air of credibility to the bar as an events space, but also seemed to gel well with the laidback yet discerning NQ vibe. In short, it fit in, and it added value.

I don't know how the NQ crowd are going to react to this latest pop-up but I imagine the majority of responses will range from hilarity, to apathy, right through to ill-concealed disdain. I have this image of Largarita-fuelled punters flinging burrito javelins through the window across the road over at Luck Lust Liquor and Burn.

But what am I saying, that's madness and, quite frankly, a waste of a perfectly good burrito - which, incidentally, usually consists of under a tenner's worth of massive, dirty, oozing deliciousness I would struggle to replicate at home.

And that's exactly what I'm finding so hard to get my head round here. They want to raise brand awareness, that's fine, I get that. But why would anyone pay, to go out to a restaurant, to have cheap frozen oven pizza served to them, when they know that (a) that's what it is and (b) there's a Tesco's down the road selling the exact same ones 3 for £6? Unless it's 2am and the "restaurant" is actually a van outside a club. It just. It just MAKES NO SENSE.

The irony is, I honestly quite liked Dr Oetker pizzas before this event. But now, I'm so incensed by the nonsensical and ludicrous nature of this half-baked PR pizza disaster that I'm in half a mind to visit my nearest Asda and tear down the frozen pizza aisle shouting "NO! Just no!" at the top of my voice, all the while pelting the nearest unsuspecting customer in the face with boxes of Ristorante.

Perhaps I'm being too unkind. The venue is still lovely, and no malice is meant towards the lovely staff who served us, who proved apt at keeping our disbelief at bay with each successive glass of free prosecco and wine until a jolly haze made everything seem at once whimsical and amusing.

But sorry, Dr Oetker. Wine or no wine, my conclusion remains the same: No. Just no.

On silly atheists and a complete English Literature fail

Yes, it’s that time again. Rant time! Huzzah! What is it now, I hear you ask, what’s she gone and got her knickers in a twist over this time? No, it’s not all the slow people in the street getting in my way (though they still cause me spasms of rage, it’s true)…. Nor is it the man on the MTR the other day who, when the train arrived, decided to walk *around* me, as I was politely queuing and standing near the front of one of the four legitimate ‘channels’ on either side of the train doors, in some ill-advised attempt to get on the train first, during the peak of rush hour, onto a Tsuen Wan line train at Mong Kok, where the only victory he achieved was about a few pathetic centimetres of distance in front of me and the dubious honour of blocking the path of EVERY single one of the horde of about twenty people trying to get off the train so the rest of us – who were politely queuing to the side – could get on. OH no. It’s not about that. (But that was also very annoying.)

I want to rant about something which my good friend Tilda recently ranted about in a Facebook note. I read her note, and it annoyed me. I read it again and it annoyed me even more. In fact, in annoyed me so much that I even had a totally lame waking dream about it the next day, in which I was telling Tilda in person how much reading her note really annoyed me. (See? LAME.)

Here’s the original note for those who are interested:
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150424455985751

For those who can’t read the note or can’t be bothered, it’s about a teacher training workshop Tilda led at a HK secondary school which was about using drama and storytelling to teach English. As part of this session, Tilda gave the teachers an unseen poem, with no introduction or instruction, to discuss and analyse in groups in preparation for a drama exercise. The poem was “Blessing” by Imtiaz Dharker (http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/english/poemscult/blessingrev2.shtml) – those of who you did the AQA English Language GCSE and studied “Poems from Other Cultures” (or “Poems from Different Cultures”, as it is now titled) may be familiar with it.

The poem is a simple one, told in free verse and split into four stanzas, and in it, Dharker narrates an incident where, in the vast, sprawling slum of Dharavi in Mumbai, in the midst of a relentlessly hot and dry summer, a municipal water pipe bursts and brings great joy to the inhabitants.

Like Tilda, I like this poem. I find it moving in its simplicity, and the final image of the “naked children” – standing apart from the “frantic hands” of the others collecting the precious drops of water, and “screaming in the liquid sun, their highlights polished to perfection, flashing light, as the blessing sings over their small bones” – always stuck with me. It simultaneously inspires dual feelings of happiness and sadness – happiness at the unrestrained excitement and joy and innocence of the children, and sadness at the fragility hinted at in the mention of their malnourished, tiny bodies, their “small bones.”

Ultimately though, this is a poem of celebration. Water is portrayed as precious (“suddenly, the sudden rush of fortune” / “silver crashes to the ground”) and a gift. The latter meaning is mainly conveyed through a series of religious images and references – the title “Blessing” and the use of the same word as metaphor in the last stanza; the metaphor of the imagined drop of water as “the voice of a kindly god”; and the description of the crowd of people gathered around the pipe as a “congregation”. Tilda already mentions in her note the fact that no ‘God’ is mentioned – it is perhaps significant that the only appearance of the word ‘god’ has a lowercase ‘g’. This merely suggests that the water is so special that it can be compared to a god – and given its life-giving qualities, that’s hardly surprising.  As for the words “blessing” and “congregation”, which have both secular and religious meanings, these simply reinforce the twin ideas of worship and celebration. The water is a precious gift that brings joy and solace to the people who, previously, had to endure unspeakably harsh conditions where “the skin cracks like a pod”.

I realise I went off on a bit of an English Lit commentary and analysis tangent there, but there’s a reason for that, as you’ll soon see.

Basically, Tilda (and later I) got annoyed at the response of one of the teachers to this poem – the only Native English Teacher at the school, a British man in his 30s from Norwich.

This is what Tilda overheard him say:

“Well it's got religious overtones and talks about 'god' and 'blessings' more than once. As an atheist, I don't think it's right. I don't agree.”

Apparently his tone when speaking these words was very negative and disgruntled.

Wow.

Seriously?

“As an atheist, I don’t think it’s right. I don’t agree.”?

…

What kind of lunacy is this? If somebody wrote that in their GCSE exam when asked to analyse and comment on religious imagery or the significance/portrayal of water in the poem “Blessing”, they would FAIL, I’m pretty sure of it.

I don’t know what annoys me more. Is it the idiotic hypersensitivity of a self-proclaimed atheist who rankles at the slightest mention of anything to do with religion, regardless- no, in spite of the context? What does he do when he overhears someone say “Oh my God!” on the street? Go over to them and say, “Oh, excuse me, your invocation of a superfluous, false deity and your consequent irrational belief in something which has no scientific basis in fact OFFENDS me. As an atheist, I don’t think it’s right. I don’t agree.”?

I bet you he’s not a pet person. Can you imagine? “Yeah I don’t like cats so much. The Egyptians used to worship them as gods, didn’t they? Oh, but I dislike dogs more, though. 'Cos, you know, dog is ‘god’ spelt backwards, and frankly, as an atheist, I don’t think it’s right. I don’t agree.”

I know that’s a bit ‘reductio ad absurdum’, but I am honestly baffled. It’s the sort of completely irrational knee-jerk reaction that I’m sure he, ironically, finds so offensive in so many religious people whom he no doubt looks down upon with sniffy, snooty disapproval and derision.

It also shows a complete failure to appreciate and understand the poem, and therefore, by extension, literature in general. All it does show is his own extremely petty and narrow prejudices – and if that is a reflection of his general attitude in life, I hate to think how that kind of negativity impacts on his English teaching and his students.

I am not religious. I would probably describe myself as an areligious agnostic – I don’t believe in or subscribe to any particular religion, but I also don’t believe that such a thing as God does not exist, because you cannot prove He/She/It does not exist any more conclusively than you can prove that He/She/It does exist. And we’re only human and we have small brains and there is, no doubt, much in this wonderful, magical universe of ours that we cannot even begin to comprehend.

Granted, I do have quite a bit of distrust of organised religion, mostly because of the myriad nincompoops who give religion a bad name by using it to assert control and their perceived superiority over others. And let’s face it, so many world religions just seem to be engaged in a hugely unattractive, thousand-year pissing contest with each other (MY God is the best. MY God is the One True God. YOURS is false and WRONG and pants. I’M going to heaven and YOU are not. BURN IN HELL, INFIDELS!! etc.).

BUT. And this is a big but. The main problem I have with religion is crazy religious people, and the problem I have with them is their craziness, not their religion. Crazy religious people bear all the hallmarks of stupid people. You know the ones I’m talking about. They’re the ones who are arrogant, judgemental, preachy, small-minded, irrational and annoying. The ones who think we should ‘burn the gays’. The ones who prevent or actively sabotage distribution of condoms in countries where AIDS is endemic and killing thousands of people, and where prevention really could be the cure. The so-called family friends who publically decided to boycott my sister’s wedding because they believed it was ‘not legal in the eyes of Allah’ and therefore not real or acceptable. (Oh, Bengali “community”, you do yourself no favours when it comes to making me respect you or listen to you in any way).

And I think this is the crux of why this teacher and his comments really got under my skin. He says he’s an atheist. But he’s also clearly a bit crazy and irrational. And the fact is, small-mindedness and ignorance are ugly wherever they are found. Especially in English teachers. (:P)

Shame on you, French Vogue

Time for another rant, and so soon after the last one! But it won't be as long. And it's not on the riots, either (still too depressed to rant about those).

Basically, has anyone seen this?

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/w_MindBodyResource/10-year-models-grown-high-fashion-high-risk/story?id=14221160

Does it make me a wishy-washy, hand-wringing liberal to express my dismay and borderline disgust at this photo shoot, which appeared in the Tom Ford-edited January issue of French Vogue? I hope not. I have to agree with Chloe Angyal - this isn't 'art' it's just plain creepy. And even if they were just trying to make some sort of edgy, provocative, 'subversive', thought-provoking statement about the sexualisation and fetishization of young girls in the fashion industry, I really don't think sexualising and fetishizing a 10 year old girl is the way to go, no matter how up for it she and her mother seem to be (and by the way, said mother has since defended the shoot, saying, "The only thing that shocks me about the photo is the necklace that she's wearing, which is worth 3 million Euros." Fantastic.). 

Look at the photos. Look at them. Tell me you don't want to pour bleach into your eyes, especially if, like me, your first reaction was something along the lines of "Wow, she's hot! Oh wait, she's TEN?! Shit. Can I just mention that I am not a paedophile?"

Aaaarrrrrgh!

Why can't we have pictures of young girls reading Enid Blyton books and climbing trees and playing badminton in the garden and drinking lemonade in magazines, instead of sultry come-hither stares, parted lips and high heels?? It pains me to think that a photoshoot of this nature might now actually be a shocking, ground-breaking, game-changer. In my opinion, the only vaguely come-hither look a 10 year old should be giving, if any, is to a 99 Flake draped seductively in raspberry sauce on a hot summer day. I feel like how the hobbits must've felt as they traipsed through Middle-Earth through the clouds of smoke and the senseless killings. Is there no GOOD and INNOCENCE left in the world, Mr Frodo?? Must... look at... pictures of Hobbiton.

Ahh, that's better. When Sam was stuck on a rock with Frodo as the world was collapsing into ash and flames all around them, he wasn't thinking of 10 year old Thylane Lena-Rose Blondeau draped seductively on a tiger skin in 6 inch leopard print stilettos, he was thinking of (a significantly older) Rosie Cotton dancing, with ribbons in her hair.

Sometimes I wish I were a Hobbit.

A rant about 'rape'

Earlier today I posted a status update on the Book of Face which was a mini rant about being shoved on the train during my commute to work. It was quite amusing really. This small, Chinese lady dressed all in pink battery-rammed me out of the way with her stupidly large pink handbag, and all because the girls in front of me didn’t move into the carriage fast enough. (Dawdlers are a common source of rage to me in this city, but it’s fun ‘cos I get to mine the comic potential from the rage that festers deep within my soul.) Anyway, a friend then replied saying that being at Admiralty station during rush hour is how they ‘imagine it feels to be gang-raped’.

My response was something along the lines of: o.0

We then exchanged a couple of additional comments where he apologised for going too far and I apologised for my sense of humour fail. No hard feelings, and all was well again. But it got me thinking. This isn’t the first time I’ve felt uncomfortable or even disapproved of a male (and I've found it usually is a male, not a female) using the word ‘rape’ in an unexpected context. You know, like, “I got totally ass-raped at work today”. Mostly though, I’ve noticed, it comes up in relation to gaming. A synonym could perhaps be ‘owned’, or ‘pwned’, or ‘destroyed’.

I guess the main point of this post is to help me unpick just why this bothers me so much. Firstly, ‘rape’ is one of those words which kinda gives me the heebie jeebies. The connotations for me (arising from its actual, primary meaning) are fear, horror, pity, revulsion. So first, what is rape? Without looking up a formal definition, I would probably say that rape is primarily a form of sexualised violence. It happens to both men and women but I don’t think I need to look up any statistics to back up the assumption that it happens mostly to women. It is not only a sexual act but an act of power, of dominance, of subjugation, of humiliation. Besides murder and child abuse, it is also theft of the most invasive, psychologically damaging kind. The rapist takes what he or she wants from their victim, and then leaves. If someone breaks into your house and steals your shit, you might feel sad, angry, shaken up, scared. But eventually you move on. You install some new locks. You grieve the old shit. You possibly buy new shit to replace the old shit. But rape? God forbid, but if it were ever to happen to me, then it might take me a lifetime re-learning how to ever trust another human being again.

There are other forms of horrendous violence and violent acts committed by those with power against those who have little, or none. But we don’t hear those appropriated for the sake of jokey lad banter. People don’t go around saying, “Aw man, did you see that? I got totally gas-chambered.” Or, “Dude, that was the worst exam I’ve ever done, it molested the child out of me.” Or, “Shit man, you fucking KKK’d my black ass.”

And maybe that’s why it pisses me off so much. Because for a guy to use the word ‘rape’ in a stupid, jokey, gaming context, whether that’s in reference to football or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 or whatever (which is a GAME and therefore in the realm of FANTASY and therefore NOT REAL) is like me wandering into Bangladesh during the middle of a famine complaining about how I was totally FOIE-GRAS’ED in First Class on the plane journey on the way there. “Oh God, yeah, the food just kept coming, it was MENTAL. How many courses was it? 4? No, it was 5, or 8 if you include all the littleamuse bouches… and the champagne! There were positively rivers of it, seriously. Oh my GOD I think I need to undo my trousers, I’m not sure I can ever eat again. If someone were to put a gun to my head right now and tell me that if I didn’t eat a plate of steak or roast dinner or my mum’s lamb biriyani or whatever I think I’d just ask them to shoot me.”

What a wanker! :P But yeah, it’s that kind of nonsensical, ridiculous, insensitive, knobby ignorance of privilege – the boys who talk flippantly about ‘being raped’ probably don’t spend a lot of time thinking or worrying about being actually raped in real life, just as both the fictional, obnoxious version, and the real version of me don’t spend a lot of time thinking or worrying about how famine would affect me in real life. I’m privileged enough not to have to worry about it, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t. Real people do suffer from famine. And real people get raped.

These jokey-lad-banter-boys probably don’t wonder whether they should pop that rape alarm their dad gave them in their pocket before they go on a night out in case they need it on the way home, or worry about what randoms might try to approach them or follow them or harass them as they try to walk down the street, wishing that they could disappear into themselves or somehow become invisible. I feel my heart rate rise every time I see an Indian man in the street, or in a shop, or in a bar, because I don’t want to have to deal with their unwanted stares, or whistles, or leery hellos, or feeble attempts to make conversation, or thinly-veiled attempts to connect with ‘another fellow Asian’. Mostly because I can’t be arsed with the annoyance, but a lot because I’ve had so many bad experiences before that it just becomes utterly disheartening and demoralising to have these encounters, however brief, with these men who give you every signal imaginable to indicate that you are merely there, that you exist, purely for their diversion/enjoyment/pleasure, and that whether you actually want their attention or not is completely irrelevant, because you are a woman, and your job is to look pretty and make them happy and do what they want you to do, and you could not possibly have thoughts or feelings or opinions of your own that do not align with that narrow, pathetic world-view. Or if you do, they just don’t give a fuck. You say no, you say you’re not interested, you say you already have a boyfriend, you even say ‘Look, you are making me feel very uncomfortable,’ but the advances still keep coming. Because secretly the answer is yes, they just have to be patient enough for you to say it. Newsflash, morons: the answer is always, and will always be, no. But every time you keep asking you demean me and belittle me and ruin my day/evening/night. So thanks for that.

And for anyone who is thinking at this point (and I genuinely hope no-one reading this does) that I ought to ‘loosen up’ and ‘get a sense of humour’ I’d kindly request you punch yourself in the face so I don’t have to. Go join those Indian men in the corner, I’m sure you’ll get on handsomely (or greasily, rather).

Wow, that became a completely different rant! Or did it…?

Oh dear. I did not intend this to be a man-hating rant. Nor am I pointing fingers at those jokey-bantery-boys… well, I am a bit, but not in a jabby eye-stabby sort of way. I’m sure many of my male friends, who I love and respect, are guilty of questionable rape similes just as much as I and some of my girl friends are guilty of questionable gay similes (e.g. “Twilight is so gay” i.e. lame). I do that. But I guess the point is I/we should know better.

Sex and the City 2: a rant

Mark Kermode recently named Sex and the City 2 as the number 1 worst film he's seen so far this year. Whilst I struggle to understand how Twilight: Eclipse features as number 5 on his top 5 best films of the year (he's seen it 3 times...?!), I find it difficult to disagree with him on this one.

Sex and the City 2 is, unfortunately, a steaming turd of a movie. I say 'unfortunately' because I am a big fan of the series. I also did not hate the first film. In fact, having rewatched it fairly recently I quite enjoyed it. But this one... jeez Louise.

For a start, it's proof, if ever any more proof is needed, that simply throwing shitloads of money at a film and hoping for the best is not a recipe for success. It falls foul to sequelitis, an endemic problem in Hollywood, whereby 'bigger' does not translate into better, just ... dumber.

It's also overlong and pointless. The running time surpasses the 2 hour mark, and yet nothing really happens. If this was Beckett I might not mind, but it's not. The plot is paper-thin, if not non-existent, and the entire film consists mainly of the following: a ridiculously OTT gay wedding, complete with swans and Liza Minnelli gyrating through an ill-advised rendition of Beyoncé's "Single Ladies", a whole lot of interior porn, and a bit of a jolly in Abu Dhabi (actually a dressed up Marrakech). The film was marketed as the fun, light-hearted romp in contrast to its more serious and emotionally heavy predecessor, but laughs are few and far between, and you get the distinct impression that the cast and crew probably had a lot more fun making it than we do watching it.

For me, given that I have such fondness for the series, this is bad enough - better make no film at all than sully the original by making something dull and mediocre - but there are two particular scenes in the film where my mild boredom and disappointment turned into distaste. Both appear towards the end.

So, to the first. Disgraced by Samantha's sexual indiscretions on the beach (though she insists they were 'only kissing'), the girls race through the souk, at risk of missing their flight. Samantha, struggling with menopausal hot flashes, strips down to a strappy top and short skirt. Miranda implores her to cover up, as they start to attract unwanted attention; men nearby become incensed at this show of public indecency. A kerfuffle ensues. Samantha falls down, and her bag falls open, spewing its contents out onto the floor. Shock horror, amongst the make-up and other lady accoutrements is... a string of condoms. Of course, this being Samantha, it's not just one or two; closer to twelve maybe. The fervour of the mob increases. Samantha, in defiance, holds the condoms aloft, like a cockerel puffing out its chest feathers, shouting, "YES. I HAVE SEX. SEX!" and with every utterance of the 's' word, waggles them boorishly in the faces of the nearest male bystander.

Samantha in New York is all about pushing the bounds of propriety, and I am all for that. Her antics are frequently outrageous and hilarious. She has balls. She does whatever the hell she likes, and she doesn't give a fuck what anyone else thinks. Most of all, she gets away with it. We love her because she says and does things many of us would never even dream of. But this Samantha, in Abu Dhabi? It's not funny, it's just sad! It's positively tragic. Though it sounds like a bit of an oxymoron, even when pushing the bounds of propriety, there's a time and a place and this clearly isn't it. And so in under a minute, one of my favourite characters crosses the line of good taste and transforms into a loud, brash American, inappropriate, insensitive and in-your-face. In short, a bit of a dick. A little part of me died of embarrassment.

Things swiftly go from bad to worse. With Samantha's outburst, the girls find themselves in a real pickle, but they are rescued by the furtive glances and gestures of a handful of mysterious figures, bedecked in burkhas. These women take pity on the four hapless Westerners, sympathising with their plight from patriarchal censure and oppression. The next five minutes are even more excruciating than the last, as these Abu Dhabi women, excited to hear that their newfound friends hail from New York City, doff their burkhas to reveal flashy outfits underneath, from a wide variety of famous Western designers. Female solidarity. Yay. Prompted by this impromptu fashion show, Carrie reflects on how, though she and her friends are a thousand miles away in a strange and foreign land, these women are really, underneath, Just Like Us. *vomits* WHYYYYY. WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT. It felt like being patted on the head. With a hammer. Incredibly patronising, incredibly annoying, and also quite painful. Cookie-cutter feminism at its most offensive.

So there we have it. This film is about as subtle and as funny as my dad. I.e. not very. It's also about as respectful to the memory of the series as turning up to its funeral in a bikini and pissing on the casket. I think the worst thing about it though is that, for any newcomers to the series, naysayers or skeptics, it will probably confirm their worst suspicions about why they shouldn't bother. Which is a real shame.