Sunday 6 March 2016

Last night


We've been watching a show called Grace and Frankie on Netflix. It's enjoyable, largely because the central performances by Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda are so extraordinary.

The premise of the show is simple. It's about two women of a certain age whose husbands walk out on them because they're gay. I would personally have left the gay characters in the sidelines but for some reason the show's creators feel the need to feature them every week. They're played by Sam Waterston and Martin Sheen (both straight men) which is the show's first mistake because nothing about the performances rings true in any way. It's almost as though they want viewers to know that they're not really gay. They seem to care a great deal more about their ex wives than they do each other!

The other issue seems to be with female writers writing their dialogue. In last night's episode everything was wrong, particularly the description of the men's first kissed. For the rest of the episode they bickered like old women, and got paranoid in a way that gay men simply don't. It was bordering on offensive, if honest.

I watched American Idol on the telly this morning. I haven't seen that show for years and it was utterly unrecognisable. I was struck by how unattractive LA men are when they have Botox and eye surgery. Their eyes seem to go all tiny and their foreheads stop moving properly which gives them a slightly alien vibe. I'm talking largely about Ryan Seacrest, who looks like he's made of wax these days, but also pretty much every wealthy man of a certain age I saw in LA when I was over there last year. I find wrinkles incredibly attractive. I think they show knowledge and a life lived.

I got very drunk earlier tonight but think I'm okay now. I'd like some chips. Maybe I'm still a bit pissed.

I'm in a terrible bar. It's incredibly noisy and I'm hiding because it's too noisy and I'm too old to be here.

The bar is Freedom. It used to be strictly gay. These days it's full of straight actors, all of whom are about five years old and utterly full of themselves.

The shows today were marvellous. The matinee had a particularly wonderful audience, who spontaneously stood - en masse - at the end of the show. Lisa, Mark, Sally and Kate were in the audience, along with the hugely influential critic, Mark Shenton, who described the show as "better than I ever expected." He took my hand at the end of the show and said, "it works." Tick.

More Greenham women came to both performances, and, before the evening show, a massive group of us went to Pizza Express, including Raily, Iain and my two god children.

The cast went to the Ivy club afterwards where a cocktail pianist was playing show tunes. We sat on lovely sofas and drank gin and tonics and told each other how fabulous we all were. It was wonderful...

But then the Ivy closed, and we went on to the dreadful non-gay bar... And now I want to go home.

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