#Kids have much choice that their f**kin’ heads are fried

[lily-bluey]

Rock superstar Noel Gallagher says fatherhood has been one of the greatest joys of his life, despite having doubts about his ability to be a good dad.

His own childhood was marred by an abusive, alcoholic Irish father who beat him and was physically violent towards his mother, Peggy, before she left him.

Prior to the split, Noel and his older brother, Paul, were reportedly so scared of their Meath-born father, Tommy that they developed a stammer.

In an exclusive interview with the Sunday World, Noel, who turned 56 yesterday and is set to release a new album next Friday, says: 

“It [fatherhood] wasn’t one of the things in life I particularly thought I would be cut out for. To be a dad as a rock star is a lot easier than when you’re working on a building site and all that, but, yeah, watching the kids grow up has been one of the great pleasures of life."

So, despite keeping them out of the limelight, does he feel that growing up with a famous father is difficult for them?

“It’s not something they’ll ever be able to judge because that’s what they were born into,” Noel tells me. “But if they think it’s difficult having a rock star for a dad they might try and swap it and have my dad as a dad. And I can assure them that the way I was brought up they’d rather me as their father than my old fella as their dad, that’s for sure.”

However, Noel does have concerns for his children having to navigate a more complicated world today, compared to the simple times he grew up in.

“I really feel for my two teenage boys,” he reveals. “Life is very, very complicated for them. They’ve grown up with the internet and all the f**king nonsense that that brings.

“When I tell them tales about when we were growing up they think it’s boring. But I can assure them that they’d rather have boring than the complicated bullshit world they live in.

“I worry…I think it’s tough for young boys particularly these days. My only worry is that they won’t have an idea about what they want to do with their life. I think half the battle in life is to realise what it is you want to do. Then it’s just a case of going out and trying to get it.

“These days they have so much choice their f**kin’ heads are fried. At 16 they don’t know where they’re going, whereas when we were growing up it was very simple and regimented and there’s a lot to be said for that.”

Noel’s childhood involved trips to his mother Peggy’s family home in Charlestown, Co Mayo.

“We went to Mayo for every school holiday, so we went for Easter, summer and Christmas. Summer holidays were always the best… six weeks, that’s when summer was proper summer.”

Mayo is still close to his heart? “Yeah, of course,” he says. “I’ve got an Irish passport and it’s a big part of who we are. Outside of school growing up we didn’t really know that many English people. Because my mum was from such a big family and they pretty much all moved to Manchester there was a lot of cousins and aunties and uncles, so it was a very self-contained circle growing up.”

Noel was reared on a sprawling council estate in Manchester, which inspires his latest single and reflective album, Council Skies.

The Manchester council estate is light years away from rural Ireland?

“Yeah, but there were as many characters, although it was fairly grey and full of concrete,” Noel responds. “But there was as many characters on the council estate as you find in Charlestown in the pubs, for sure.”

His mother, Peggy, still lives in the same council house where she reared her three sons, having refused their offer to buy her a home in a more exclusive area.

“She’s got seven sisters, four of which live in Manchester, and they all live around the same housing estate, so they see each other every day,” Noel reveals. “She’s not interested in moving anywhere. She lives in this tiny little house where we were all brought up in and she’s f**kin’ happy as Larry.”

Has she been left alone? “Some of the guys that we knew when we were growing up, they kind of look out for her,” he says.

“They make sure she’s alright. She does get bothered from time to time, but on the whole she does pretty well.

“She gave birth to these two sons who went on and did what they did — that’s the story of her life as well as the story of mine and Liam’s life.”

Is she amazed by it? “She would never say one way or the other. This is her stock line: ‘Sure as long as you’re enjoyin’ yourself.’”

I tell Noel about meeting Peggy at Slane Castle in 2009 when Oasis were the headline act, and jokingly asking her: “Would you not sort out those two fellas?” referring to the on-going battle between her sons that continues to this day.

Peggy laughed that day, saying: “Oh sure they don’t listen to me.”

Noel laughs: “No, we didn’t listen to her then and we won’t be listening to her now, either.”

[douxreviews]

American Gods - ‘The Beguiling Man’ Review

"Their whole life they’ve been hearing a story about who you are. And you’re the enemy in that story."

In episode two of its second season, American Gods finds a reason to tell us the tragic story of Shadow's past. And it's... basically one of the less interesting episodes of Daredevil.

That's disappointing.

To be more specific, it's disappointing that they felt the need to devote half an episode to telling us the tragic story of Shadow's teenage years, because the story they tell here is essentially the same 'outsider teen moves to a new town and encounters local bullies' story that we've seen a thousand times before. It's The Karate Kid, in which the role of Mr. Miyagi is played by maternal cancer.

The underlying problem here is that there is just no reason for them to be telling this story to us in the first place, either in the metanarrative or the narrative sense. Mr. Town, played by the always welcome Dean Winters, has Shadow rigged up to a big ominous machine, and mentions Shadow's mom once. That's it. That's all the narrative justification we get for why we're being told this story at this time. Somehow that one mention of his mother inspires him to remember how his mom brought him back from France to live in Brooklyn, and how he got beat up that one time, she started dying of cancer, he got so upset about that that he went right out and beat up the guys that attacked him earlier, then she died and that was that.

And I hate to say it, but just reading that last paragraph gives you pretty much the same experience as watching it play out over twenty odd minutes of this episode's runtime. Which is too bad, because it's not like there isn't a lot of good stuff just waiting to be explored here. Olunike Adeliyi, playing Shadow's Mom – and how telling is it that she never gets identified as more than that – is actually really good when her dialogue stops being a stream of character information and 'deep meditations on the human soul.'  Watch the moment when she breaks from doing that to tell Shadow that she's going to stop for drinks with somebody named Jerry, and you witness a revelation. In that moment, she goes from being a mouthpiece for things the scripts wants to have said out loud and becomes an actual, interesting person. And I want to know more about that person, because she honestly sparkled at that moment and you could see why Shadow loved her. But we don't get to see more than a moment or two of that, because the script wants to make sure that we know that she's read Siddhartha.

It feels like a case of a screen writer not trusting the audience to understand the subtext, and this show is above that sort of thing.

Similarly, Shadow is mugged, he gets his CD player back and runs for it. And the Brooklyn cops see a black kid running with a portable CD player and arrest him, either instead of or along with his attempted muggers, it's not entirely clear. That's a huge moment that is way, way too true about America still today, but it gets completely thrown away because Shadow's Mom just wants to talk more about how much light is in him. Honestly, I wish that they'd either explored the more interesting stuff that gets sidelined here, or just told us through dialogue that Shadow's Mom had died of cancer and left it at that, because the story that they chose to tell here just ultimately didn't feel like it had anything in particular to say. I feel like I should add though that Gabriel Darku did a good job with the material he was given, and was believable as a young Shadow Moon.

OK, enough about that, because there's a whole other half to this episode and that's where all the good stuff really was.

When we left our heroes, the restaurant had been shot to Hell, Zorya Vechernyaya was dead, and Shadow had been spirited off into the night via helicopter. Here the show seems to run into a bit of a problem with not knowing what to do with all of the characters currently in play. They deal with the situation by generally having them all disperse in pairs on separate missions, which more or less works. Ifrit the Jinn and Salim ride off to the corn palace to fetch Odin's spear, not to be seen again this week. One can only assume that we'll catch up with them later, and how absolutely adorable was Salim, sitting in the sidecar and beaming at being allowed to come along. You two drive safe, we'll see you, presumably, later in the season. Probably right at the end, I would guess.

Wednesday and Mr. Nancy head off to Cairo, Illinois, although they don't get there this week, and I honestly struggled to remember where they were going every time the action cut back to them. They were basically in a holding pattern while other events got into their proper placement for what's going to happen in Cairo. But damn if it wasn't an enjoyable holding pattern to watch. I would tune in weekly for the road trip adventures of Wednesday and Nancy, even if nothing ever happened besides the two of them bantering. The entire exchange about the bucket of fried chicken, which I will not spoil here if you haven't watched it, was better than 95% of broadcast television.

Shadow, we see, has been hooked up to the previously mentioned big ominous machine, which doesn't actually appear to do anything except hold Ricky Whittle up in a sexy and dramatic way, but I suppose that's a noble enough goal. It would be nice if we ever got any clear indication of what exactly Mr. Town wanted out of the situation. Sometimes it seemed like he was trying to convince Shadow to switch sides and join the new gods, sometimes it seemed like he was trying to get information, and sometimes it seemed like he was simply torturing him for no particular reason. Unfortunately, we're not likely to ever get an explanation, since he appears to be dead either just before or immediately after the end of the episode. Ah, well.

But the real MVP, and the only real reason to ever watch this episode again, is the continuing adventures and burgeoning friendship of Laura Moon and Mad Sweeney. Pablo Schreiber and Emily Browning have great chemistry together, and both excel at playing broken, friendless assholes who make a connection with one another despite both of them trying as hard as they can not to do so. When Sweeney says, 'Is that how you ask for a favor,' you can tell by the look on his face that he'd pretty much die to help Laura and this point, and he'd definitely die before he'd ever admit it. Everything they do together is wonderful and complicated and they're by far the best thing the show has going on that didn't come from the book.

Quotes:

Wednesday: "Mama-Ji, you hear the battle cries. May I count on your blades?" Mama-Ji: "You brought the fight to my doorstep. I have no choice but to resume the lopping of heads, drinking of blood, and liberating of souls. That is, if I can swap my weekend shift with Arjun."

Sweeney: "…And God didn’t f**k up your life. You did a great job of that all by yourself." Laura: "Well, it was my life to f**k up." Sweeney: "Indeed it was. And you f**ked the shit out of it, didn’t ya?"

Bulquis: "Love and war may sit on opposite sides of a coin, but only so they may never meet."

Sweeney: "Last week you could have lifted an entire f**kin’ elephant. Two f**kin' elephants if my nuts are the judge."

Laura: "What do you usually drive, horse and buggy?" Sweeney: "Says the corpse who flipped an ice cream truck."

Bits and Pieces:

-- Apparently Bilquis was supposed to talk the old gods out of joining Wednesday, but didn't try that hard.

-- They showed us that Shadow was on a train early on, then wasted a lot of time having us watch Laura work that exact same information out. That's sloppy plotting.

-- I can only assume that Ricky Whittle was excruciatingly uncomfortable filming this week.

-- What is up with the restaurant owners and staff? They just got shot up and people died, and yet there are no cops on the scene, and the restaurant is somehow still serving pancakes for Sweeney.

-- Technical Boy's search for Media got a little further this week. Going to Times Square was a clever idea to find her what with all the screens. The show is still playing coy on revealing Gillian Anderson's replacement as New Media, though. All in all, that changeover has been very well handled. Looks like we get the reveal of New Media next week. Let's see if they stick the landing.

-- There's no way they could have known this in advance, but it was so very nice to have a respectful and peaceful representation of Islam this week.

-- What does Ifrit think of Salim's prayers and faith? I'd be interested to know.

-- Ricky Whittle is 37, and Young Shadow appeared to be about 17 or thereabouts. That would imply that the Brooklyn segments were taking place around 1999. I really dislike using the World Trade Center as a visual signifier for 'in the past,' by the way. It's a personal thing.

-- We were clumsily shown this week that Shadow doesn't know who his father is and his mother won't tell him. We pretty much all know where that's going, even if they had been remotely subtle about it. Which they were not.

-- Wednesday's eulogy for Betty the car, as he waits for Shadow's train to plow into her on the railroad tracks, is a thing of strange beauty and inexplicable dignity.

-- Seriously though, you need to stand a lot further away than that if a train is about to hit a car. I know this from experience.

-- Sweeney takes Laura through something he refers to as 'The Hoard' to get catch up with Shadow.  I'm assuming that that's 'hoard' as in a big collection of treasure.  They don't appear to have passed through James McAvoy.

I really hate to say this sort of thing, but the show just hasn't felt the same without Fuller and Green. The strange ambient noise and slow motion shots of fluid in motion are pretty much all gone, the storytelling is significantly more linear, and I really think the show is weaker for the change. But, of course, we're only two episodes in. I really shouldn't judge too much yet.

Two out of four buckets of chicken. Almost entirely due to Laura and Sweeney. Just fastforward to their parts, and assume everything else works out all right.

Mikey Heinrich is, among other things, a freelance writer, volunteer firefighter, and roughly 78% water.

[weightlossfitnesssinfo]

You Can’t Solve the Obesity Epidemic If You Can’t Discuss it

Comedian Bill Maher lately used his “New Rules” section to name consideration to American well being, stating, “New Rule: at next Thursday’s debate, one of the candidates has to say the problem with our healthcare system is Americans eat (crap) and too much of it.” He went on to display simply how pervasive the well being epidemic has gotten in America whereas inviting the ardor of tens of millions together with his blunt snark. The seven-minute section was humorous and well-argued, however an excessive amount of criticism adopted one assertion particularly: 

  “In August, 53 Americans died from mass shootings. Terrible, right? You know how many died from obesity? 40,000. Fat-shaming doesn’t need to end. It needs to make a comeback.” 

    His level is evident—we wouldn’t make statements about shooter-shaming, however we appear to have an issue figuring out simply how harmful fashionable consuming norms have turn into. These numbers are staggering and demand public concern, however the focus revolved across the final a part of Maher’s assertion. As you would possibly count on, the web exploded with outrage because the pundits weighed in. The most notable response got here from CBS’s James Corden on his personal late-night present. Corden, who has struggled together with his weight for years, made the case that fat-shaming has been confirmed to make issues worse, not higher. He then argued that obese persons are nicely conscious of their weight they usually want to change it, so that they don’t want any extra social reminders. 

  It appeared that there was a line within the sand and other people had been left to select their sides. But, what struck me was how usually Maher and Corden appeared to genuinely agree. They are comedians, vulnerable to exaggerate and use hyperbolic language, so it's straightforward to deal with soundbites, however what got here from each of them was that:

  More folks than ever are scuffling with their weight. 

Public well being has by no means been worse and it's killing folks.

You mustn't bully or name folks fats. (Maher truly makes this level a couple of occasions.)

  Maher was talking actually concerning the insane norms characterizing American consuming habits. Corden responded together with his personal sincere comedy, mainly saying, “You think I haven’t tried to lose weight!?! This is hard! I keep trying and my efforts aren’t working for me and millions like me.”

  And these are two crucial views to maneuver the dialogue ahead. The great thing about comedy is that it's a mouthpiece for folks to talk actually (despite the fact that usually in very exaggerated tones). We can all agree that folks would favor to not be obese and unhealthy. I don’t care how “body-positive” you're. If given the selection between being a pre-diabetic who's 30 kilos obese or wholesome, you’d select wholesome each time. Self-consciousness received’t be eradicated by body-positive campaigns. Outside of brainwashing by a totalitarian regime, most individuals are going to want they weren’t obese. That is actuality.

  So the apparent subsequent query is what will we do to truly enhance public well being? Our consuming norms are killing folks and setting our kids up for restricted lives of weight struggles, well being issues, sluggishness, and self-consciousness. The most irritating a part of the change got here from James Corden when he expresses an all too frequent sentiment: “I know I will struggle with this for the rest of my life.” That mentality and its pervasive normality is simply the issue.

  How Do We Change This Toxic Ocean?

What Corden by no means concedes is that the fashionable atmosphere is totally loopy. What we’ve been indoctrinated to see as a traditional weight loss program is past insane. I can’t go to the financial institution, the barber, or the physician with out my child being supplied sweet. Every daycare possibility I checked out serves breakfast and lunch every day and it was all the time sugar-covered fried waffle sticks after which pizza and chocolate milk for lunch. Every occasion of their lives from their youth sports activities video games to utilizing the potty facilities round normalizing rubbish meals. Treats are great, however solely when they're deviations from the traditional. Today, we normalize processed sugar-infused meals at each meal and we will hardly conceive of breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack gadgets that don’t come from a bundle.  

  These norms occurred fairly actually. Just like right this moment’s expertise designers, the Food Giants spent enormously to hack our minds and normalize harmful consuming patterns. Before we knew it everybody had bowls of M&M’s round the home, pantries stuffed with chips and Pop-Tarts, and fridges stuffed with Coke and “healthy options” like orange juice, “fruit infused” Capri-Sun, and sugar-filled Go-Gurt. 

  This is the supply of our points and excess of his tongue in cheek comment about fat-shaming needing to make a comeback, that is the purpose Maher was harping on. The resolution lies in altering our environmental norms and which means we've got to speak about why most individuals are obese and learn how to repair it. How else will we steer ourselves away from the Wall-E dystopia we appear to be headed in direction of?

    "We seldom realize, for example, that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society." 

-Alan Watts

  Nothing influences our habits just like the atmosphere we're saturated with. In a distinct atmosphere, James Corden would possibly dig coal, drink bourbon, and use the phrase “kin.” Had he grown up within the Ancient Spartan world, he can be in peak bodily situation holding a defend in entrance of his comrade's physique with one hand and a hoplite spear within the different. My level is, the contexts we stay in drastically change the way in which suppose and act. Therefore we needs to be going to nice lengths to create an atmosphere the place social norms pull folks towards extra fruitful behaviors. 

  There are fashionable environments the place far fewer folks stay their lives continuously scuffling with their weight. They embrace completely different norms and reply very otherwise to the ploys of the processed Food Giants. Vending machines are much less frequent and children usually tend to see their buddies consuming fruits, greens, and different entire meals. This, in flip, makes it far simpler for folks to naturally undertake wholesome consuming patterns. We needs to be asking ourselves how do we modify our public values so folks like James Corden don’t really feel resigned to battle with their weight for the remainder of their lives? How will we nudge folks in direction of more healthy selections and create friction in our present unhealthy norms?

  You might level out that the explanation Corden believes it is going to be a lifelong battle is as a result of he has an habit. We don’t wish to name it that, however what James Corden and most Americans are coping with is an habit as actual and highly effective as some other. His expertise dwelling on this sweets-saturated atmosphere has created a robust habit that makes it very arduous for him to manage what he eats. 

  So, how will we make folks much less more likely to develop this habit? Since when is it commonplace observe to normalize habit and demonize anybody who would attempt to open folks’s eyes about how a lot habit has grown? Excessive sugar might kill extra folks than smoking, however we give youngsters sweet for each mundane second of their lives whereas educating them to “shame” Uncle Sterling about how smoking will kill him. We don't have any drawback mentioning that ingesting alone or early within the morning just isn't a really wholesome behavior. Yet, we’d be aghast if somebody talked about that consuming sweets alone or early within the morning was equally indicative of an issue. This incapability to speak is the best barrier to serving to the following technology keep away from a lifetime of meals habit. And if present tendencies proceed, projections point out that over 57% of right this moment’s youth might be overweight by the point they're 35. 

  The Uncomfortable Conversation

We should have this dialog whether or not it's uncomfortable or not. And that’s why the opposite half of IHD, Justin Lind, and I sat down to debate the general public well being points and the function disgrace performs in habits modification. There is a distinction between disgrace and shaming that needs to be made. Shame is an innate feeling that may be very helpful in our maturation. Society has all the time used social norms and expectations to change habits for the higher. This doesn't imply bullying or meanspirited verbal assaults. Yet, we should have the ability to discuss our challenges and talk about how the atmosphere could be improved. 

  The most essential takeaway is that this is a matter that calls for everybody’s consideration. Parents have to start out seeing the madness for what it's and demanding higher from faculties. Schools have to start out turning down Coca-Cola contracts and start cleansing up their cafeteria choices. Society must convey this subject to the forefront of its public issues.

  After all, while you aren’t wholesome, every little thing else suffers. As John F. Kennedy stated, "Intelligence and skill can only function at the peak of their capacity when the body is healthy and strong."

  Public well being is a nationwide concern that we've got to have the ability to talk about with a purpose to enhance.

  You Can’t Solve the Obesity Epidemic If You Can’t Discuss it Read more on: Weight Loss Fitness

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