The Running Ham

What is it about Hollywood and running?

Why do movie advertisers think that we will be more likely to go and see a film if the poster features a freeze framed shot of the leading actor / actress in mid sprint?

I get the theory. The promise of action and dynamism. The attraction of a lithe, well-honed human body pushed to full exertion, pitched against the elements, stripped away from all mechanic help and motorized aid to pit itself against [insert generic forces of darkness here]. See our leading lady’s muscles tauten and flex as she runs gun in hand down the blazing sidewalk. Marvel as our leading man’s 6-pack ripples impressively as he runs a 4 minute mile to hurl himself over the bonnet of his assailant’s car and artfully wound himself – just a little – above his right eye so that the blood runs down and even more delineates his finely chiselled features.

Even better if there’s wind and rain. Running through the raw elements is always a winner. Or a spray of bullets. We love it when they run through a peppershot storm of lead and come out the other side totally unscathed.

Man. Running. I’ve got to go and see a film with running in it right now!

Except, I don’t. Not really.

Because running on a movie poster always looks a little bit stupid. And a whole lot contrived.

Let’s be honest, when a human being runs they don’t, as a rule, look cool. I know anthropologists make the case that human beings are designed to run (it’s all about our buns apparently) and certain individuals like Usain Bolt certainly manage to look magnificent when they run… but, by and large, the rule for the rest of us is: when we run we look like we really don’t want to be doing it and medically we really, really shouldn’t even have attempted to do it.

And that’s when seen at actual normal running life speed.

If you take a freeze frame of the average Joe (or Joanne) taken at full pelt, well, we just look like we are in pain. Like we are a huge chain of human sausage meat linked by a bizarrely jointed chain of hernias. Like our flesh is attached to our skeletons with cheap chewing gum and one more heavy footfall is going to see the whole lot slide off our bones with a wet ripping noise and ooze off down the nearest drain.

Depending on how much excess weight you are carrying you may even find your nipples have individually swung to different sides of your body. I’m not talking left and right, here, I am talking front and back.

We do not look pretty when we run.

Which is why movie posters have to lie about it.

But there is an art to this lying. If it is done badly, for all our leading man and leading lady may still look buff and muscle perfect, they will inevitably look ridiculous.

Take the movie image for Breaking Dawn Part 2. It’s all over the place at the moment. It features Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner running heroically towards the camera.

At least, that was the brief.

They look like they are jogging desultorily. That kind of half-assed shambolic, scurry-run that people do when they half-heartedly run for a bus which is already pulling away and they know won’t stop. The run that is the start of a run but kind of runs out of momentum after the first stride. I’m going to run, I’m going to run, I’m going to… oh I can’t be bothered. They look like they were told to literally run exactly one step toward the photographer and then stop. Don’t move a muscle. Hold it right there. Make-up touch them up and sort out their hair. Hold it. Hold it. Pressing the shutter release button now. Click. And relax. Thanks guys that’s really nailed it. So much better than speedwalking.

Take a look at this image when you get the chance. They have created something quite unique. A “vacuous run”. A “non-committal sprint”. The kind of run you’d undertake when the person you hate most in the world is lying before you, being kicked by everyone they’ve ever hurt and betrayed and they’re calling you for help. Yeah. I’m coming. I’m getting there. I’m just going to take a very long time doing it.

This image doesn’t say dynamism. It doesn’t say action.

It says I refuse to look as sloppy and out of shape as every other human being on this planet does when they run anywhere very fast.

It says I can’t even act convincingly like I’m running despite moving my limbs like I am actually running and being paid a massive fortune to do it.

This, Hollywood movie poster makers, does not sell the movie to me. Not at all.

But it does make me want to run.

Just not to the cinema or the DVD vendor…

Before the starting pistol is even fired, somebody just lost the race.

White Bait

I've never eaten much red meat. There's no moral stance to that I just prefer chicken (no jokes about cock, please). I am suspicious of beef pies and stews - I invariably find that the one bit of gristle in the whole ensemble ends up on my plate - and the thought of steak just does nothing for me. Burgers I had a brief affair with when I was a teenager but as soon as I became socially conscious they went over to the dark side under the rippling banners of McDonald's, at least in my mind anyway, and thus my palate railed against them.

But I eat mince regularly. Homemade bolognese and chili. I do a lot of that kind of thing.

It seems a foregone conclusion then, the more that horse-gate unravels, that I have partaken of equine flesh at some time or other. Porbably enough that I ought to set up a direct debit to Redwings horse sanctuary to attone for my glutinous sins.

I can't help wondering though how long this cutting-beef-products-with-horse-products has been going on (at least they're not cutting it with talcum powder or Ajax). Probably years.

And I can't help wondering if it warrants the furore that has been grinding on and on about it.

Don't get me wrong. I love horses. I really do. Though in this context I'd like to state that, by choice, I'd much rather not eat one.

I'd like to live in a world where food manufacturers were honest and open-handed and listed accurately the ingredients in their wares. I'd like to live in a world where the constituent ingredients in a beef pie were simply beef and pastry. Or the constituent ingredients of a pork sausage was simply pork. Because to slip other stuff in there and not declare it is fraud of the worst kind. It is lies and deceit and leaves the backdoor open to talcum powder and Ajax and perforated septums.

But then again, have we not long lived in a world where chicken is pumped with water and chemicals to make it look plumper on the supermarket shelves? Have our eyes not surveyed rank upon rank of pork sausages that strictly speaking do not contain pork at all but in fact contain breadcrumbs, pig lips, pig trotters, pig arseholes and the stuff the farmer has wiped off his boots? How many of us have bought fishfingers thinking it was cod when in fact we have been slathering our mushypeas over generic "white fish"?

Unless you go out, hunt it, kill it and gut it yourself you have no way of knowing if the food on your plate is actually the food the supermarket label says it is.

We, all of us, could as well have eaten camel, kangeroo or Great Dane over the last few years and merely commented that for once the beef was exquisitely tender.

But of course this fraud is not right.

But who to blame?

All to easy to blame the abbattoir owners and their ilk - they, after all, are literally at the sharp end of the food production chain. Sorry, I say "all to easy" like they're being blamed unfairly... they're not. The guilty ones have committed a criminal act and must be punished.

But ultimately I blame the supermarkets. I blame the competition of super food corporations that push and push for cheap meat and cheaper meat that, yes, is kind of great for the consumer, but inevitably squeezes the meat producers and the farmers to the point where it does not make economic sense for them to produce the meat that the supermarkets want to sell to us with their own labels stamped on top.

Cheap invariably means dodgy and adulterated.

You get what you pay for.

Now if the supermarket labels merely said "cheap meat" we'd probably all have a much better idea of what it was we were eating...

Goosey Goosey Slander

So The Defamation Bill is about to be debated in the Commons.

Ostensibly this gives social networking web site owners a little protection against libel suits that may result from complainants taking objection to something web users may write or publish about the complainant on such web sites. If the web site owners identify the “troll” they themselves won’t get sued.

On the face of it, it is a good idea. It makes the right people accountable for their words and actions. I’m sure the owners of Twitter and Facebook et al will breathe huge sighs of relief if the bill gets approved.

But what does it mean for the rest of us?

Libel is a strange beast. People – particularly minor celebs with major egos – like to sue for it at the merest provocation. Even big celebs have been known to pay off mortgages on second homes with a well won libel suit.

But it’s one thing to sue a multinational newspaper but what about an average-Joe Twitter user? What about suing a blogger? What about suing the likes of you or me?

I guess we all need to be careful about what we say or write from now on. We all need to be clear about what is mere opinion and what is untruth or unsupportable truth.

Because part of the deal with this bill is that the complainant has to show that they have suffered serious harm to their reputations, or are likely to do so before they can take their defamation case forward.

I feel rather ambivalent on this issue, I must admit. Lord knows I have no respect for someone who prints lies and untruths and says that so-and-so shagged so-and-so with a hastily bought legume from Tesco just because they wanted to enjoy the emotional fall-out and social trauma that ensued. But at the same time I reserve the right to say that so-and-so is an utter arse with the brain of a Eurovision songwriter and deserves to be knocked verbally into a cocked hat if that is my personal take on the matter. Lord knows I have given the likes of Russell Brand, Eamonn Holmes and, just recently, Gary Barlow a right Royal drubbing on this here blog and done it with hyperbolic gusto.

But what if these guys feel I have damaged their reputation?

I mean, God knows my opinion is the only one that matters and careers are made or broken on my most nonchalant say-so. I am the all-powerful uber-blogger, after all.

But what if Russell Brand blames me for the break-up of his marriage and the loss of his virility? What then, huh?

Whoa! Whoa! That last bit was just a joke, OK? I’m sure Russ is as permanently randy as an IT student at a Spearmint Rhino half price night but you see how easy it is to fall into this libel trap? I make a non-serious joke about Russell Brand’s completely un-alleged flagging bedroom prowess and suddenly I’m libel fodder. Even though it was plainly a jape and just a device to express my opinion and imagine how worse it could have been if I’d rung him up and left him a telephone message saying that his old man drooped worse than an end-of-season bungee rope? I don’t think a bunch of flowers and an apology would get my arse out of the flames quick enough. My goose would be well and truly cooked. And my bank account plundered and dumped quicker than one of Russell’s ex-girlfriends.

So what’s the answer?

Well, it’s simple.

We have all got to start being nice to each other. And more importantly than that: nice about each other.

I know. Terrible, isn’t it?

What the hell are we all going to write about?