6 Lessons 2.0

HELLO! And welcome to the J.J Abrams-esque reboot of 6 Lessons, now with 32% more CAPITALS.

Now that I have your attention, any eagle-eyed readers may have noticed a distinct lack of posts for a good 2 or 3 months. This was largely because I started an article entitled “6 Lessons learned from 80s rock music”, but found that, in reality there were so few lessons to learn from 80s rock music (unless you count different ways of snorting cocaine off a groupie’s body) that it became something of a sticky wicket -an appropriate analogy, considering the fact that most lyrics from the 1980s seemed to be about Tommy Lee’s wicket and the manner in which he got it sticky.
Anyway the whole experience of researching (see what I do for you?) the exploits of Lee and company left me feeling somewhat disgusted with the capabilities of drummers of rock bands, and humanity as a whole. I committed myself to solitude, embarking on a mental detox made up of 18 hours a day looking at videos of kittens on youtube, and watching reruns of The Good Life. Also I couldn’t be arsed.
But it’s a new year, so I figured I’d end the silence and start writing the blog again, with some small changes- I’m going to keep the “6 Lessons” moniker, but drop the 6 Lessons formula. Except for when I feel like doing it. Hell, I may even do 5 Lessons when I feel like it. This isn’t a democracy.
Anyway, whilst away, I have done some little non-list based rants for a new London-based online magazine This Weekend (What was 2009 for?, page 22) I finally landed my dream job (or at least the dream job of my 16-year-old self) at HMV- seasonal temp. Which meant I got to deal personally with lots of the idiots who got Susan Boyle to number 1. In a fashion so cordial the 16-year-old me would be ashamed, but screw him, he’s an idiot.

I witnessed an interesting sight the other day. A gentleman standing in front of a group of thirty women, wearing nothing but a butler’s collar and a pair of boxers, wheeling about a tea trolley. The women then pressed a button decide whether they would like to date him or not. No, this wasn’t Virgin Atlantic’s new attempt at sexing up air travel (although kudos to them for trying to make terrorist targets sexy again with the new ad doing the rounds), this was prime time television- ITV’s “Take Me Out” (Saturday, 7:30pm on ITV1)- a new dating programme to fill the void left behind by Blind Date.
Yes, it’s ITV’s. The premise is simple, a man comes on, talks a bit about himself, does some needless bit of showboating, and women decide if they’d like to date him or not. It sounds like an empowering new front of the feminist movement. Hosted by that guy from Max and Paddy.
However it quickly turns into thirty women clamouring for the attention of one awful, attention-seeking prick, and then another. Over and over again.
Over the duration of a show you can really see characters evolving amongst the women. There’s desperate (one slightly overweight fairly short girl who stays in on two-thirds of blokes), quite desperate (one woman sporting a long list of daddy issues, who gives the impression she’d jump on with a trouser based bulge) and very desperate (one incredibly tall woman who it appears wouldn’t say no to anyone).
Ultimately the decision is left to the man, who, having learned nothing about the girls’ personalities, decides (presumably by looks alone) who he is going to take on a date from the women left wanting to date him. A clip of their date is shown the subsequent week, and from what I’ve seen, it typically reveals that the man is a self-obsessed narcissist and that the woman is desperate. They sit in a tastelessly lit restaurant (although it appears to be a studio, no doubt adjacent to the studio that the show is recorded in) and the woman shuffles uncomfortably for a bit, whilst the bloke talks about himself some more. These clips are cut with the happy couple talking about how passable the date was. No doubt before going their separate ways.
Who says romance is dead?