Sunday 29 July 2007

A City in Need of Cruz Control

I am sick of seeing Penelope Cruz's face, but not in the same way that I'm sick of seeing Jeremy Clarkson's face (I'm afraid he is popular in Australia too). No, there's a difference between my annoyance at her luminous good looks and my distaste at his denim-chaffed mug, which resembles a battered old dustbin overflowing with discarded pubic hair. Hating Clarkson's face is almost enjoyable.

There's something a bit like being at the pantomime when watching him decide which cars are cool and uncool (has he looked at himself in the mirror lately? Clarkson labeling something 'uncool' is a little like Adolf Eichmann calling something 'immoral') or moaning about how he's being persecuted by speed cameras when his only crime was to deliberately break a law designed to save lives. Poor old Jez, even Adolf Eichmann would think speed cameras were going too far surely? Clarkson plays the pathetic, declining middle aged prick with such unapologising aplomb it's quite amusing. With Penelope my anger is much more unsatisfying.

What riles me up is that her profile seems to have emerged all over Melbourne in the past few weeks unannounced, on various bus stops and bill boards and it is now almost impossible to go five minutes in town without having her cast a seductive, eyelash-heavy pout at you. The problem with this? Everything else is dismal by comparison. Ordinary people are ugly at the best of times, but now I feel as though I am walking amongst some troglodyte race of nuclear survivors. And it's not just other people I apply my rule to. A glance at the bathroom mirror reveals only a hideous mutant; and once he moves out of of the way I can see myself, which is almost as bad.

Please, oh gods of Melbourne remove lady Penelope and her impossibly high ubermensch standards and let us be human again! Nothing could please me more. Nothing, apart from Jeremy Clarkson being knocked down by a speeding car and the driver escaping because all the speed cameras have been vandalised. Even Adolf Eichmann would have to laugh at that.