Frustrating!!

I find American teenage drama's very frustrating. When the characters leave school and grow up they go on to have the most insanely glamorous jobs ever. Its totally unrealistic. In the small town of One Tree Hill and in one small group of friends we had a fashion designer, a novelist, a music producer and label owner, a professional basketball player, a singer and a television sports anchor. Are you joking?? Those professions are so select and difficult to have success in that it is totally unrealistic that they would have these jobs, known each other, still be able to live in the same town and have such horrendously turbulent personal lives. None of their days involve long nights, travelling or stress. I went to quite a big school and I don't know one popstar, not one.

Its not just One Tree Hill, Gossip Girl also has a novelist, a blogger (genuinely) and before she was a 'blogger' she was a production assistant on a film set, a newspaper boss, a hotel owner and the future Queen of Monaco! I don't know how we as the viewing public stand it, these people are so far removed from anything that I have experienced in my life that I have nothing to connect me with them. 90210 is no better with an actress and DJ and these ones have only just started uni. They don't even struggle to get the jobs, it generally takes no longer than about 6 months for these people to reach the top of their proefession. Nobody sent out dozens of manuscripts to publishers only to get rejected. They didn't work part time in a bar and write in their spare time, they wrote it and everybody loved it, and of course it was a success. Everything is a success in these shows, nobody fails, and if they do fail its in a dramatic way, a character refuses to do something because it doesn't fit with their moral code or ethics and is fired, so not because they just aren't good enough, or there's someone better at the job, they fail in a heroic way, in a way that implies that they haven't failed it's just everyone around them that failed.

I think it would be interesting to see a person leave university and not be an instant success, they feel slightly lost and without direction not sure what career path they want to take. I could certainly relate to that.

Hope for Hollyoaks?

For as long as Hollyoaks has been running it has generally been considered to be the worst soap in England (with the exception of Family Affairs and Doctors), Hollyoaks is aimed at young people, its based in a town with a university so almost all the cast is young an extremely good looking. This was in essence what the show relied on, the acting was pretty average but they had pretty faces so it didn't really matter. The problem with that is a persons acting career was short lived, the general thinking that was once a person left Hollyoaks they were forgotten and never acted on TV again, though i'm sure you could see many an ex Hollyoaker appearing in a panto near you.

However I feel that things are on the up for Hollyoaks actors, in recent months there have been some noticable success stories for Hollyoaks, with actors going on and doing proper grown up stuff:

Warren Brown: he played horrible date rapist Andy Holt on Hollyoaks, and with him being a typical baddy you expected him to have a short lived time one the show and vanish from the public eye completely. Not Warren! After Hollyoaks he first starred in the awful BBC3 sitcom Grownups, and although it was terrible I was pleased to see he was still working. I genuinely considered this a success for him, and Grownups alone would have been enough, but then he only goes and gets himself a huge three part army drana called Occupation, that was really serious and critically acclaimed. Then he stars in Luther, which stars Idris Elba from The Wire in for crying out loud, and now he's in Inside men, alos super seious and edgy, not only is he working but he is clearly able to pick and choose what jobs he does! Success!

Nico Mirallegro: Newt from Hollyoaks, playing the loveable schizophrenic Nico enjoyed a successful run on Hollyoaks and was generally considered to be quite a heartthrob despite the fact that he had an incredibly specific look on the show. I didn't really rate him particularly as an actor and thought once he left Hollyoaks he would have no success whatsoever. What do i know? Nico is now starring in Upstairs Downstairs, which is the BBC's answer to Downton Abbey and as far as I am aware doing a very good job of it. He knows Keeley Hawes personally now so that alone I consider a win.

Emma Rigby: Emma's character Hannah in Hollyoaks was one of the best and most well rounded characters that the soap created. Emma won a British Soap Award for the role, which is a pretty big deal considering the only category that Hollyoaks normally does well in is Sexiest Male and Sexiest Female. Because of this I was expecting that she would be able to find work somewhere else, I was hoping she might be able to land a part in another soap, but she's done one better, she's in a ruddy film! A film that stars the most bizzare cast I have ever seen including, Robert Sheehan (from Misfits), Tulisa Contostavlos (from N Dubz and X Factor, she acts now I guess), Reggie Yates (What a man) and Hayley Williams (thats right from PARAMORE!! wtf!). Despite the strange cast its a film nonetheless and Emma is also staring in the BBC drama Prisoners Wives, which has also had lots of success and is very serious and important.

Roxanne Mckee: Roxanne played Louise Summers in Hollyoaks and was dramatically killed off on her wedding day. I thought Roxanne would be all right after leaving the show, she was popular and seemed to be taken seriously in the show and by general media people. But after leaving the show and making a brief cameo in Taio Cruz's music video Like A Star she vanished. I figured she just had no success and was working in panto or teaching drama to young people or something. She's not though, she's only gone to America! She is currenty starring in the HBO television show, Game of Thrones, that show is huge! Now i've only seen one episode so don't know how big her part was, but she was in the episode I saw and it was pretty raunchy so I bet she left an impression. When I think of success I think of your parents being able to talk of what you are doing with their friends and being proud, and Roxanne's parents can say she is in America filming for a show starring Sean Bean!

Whether Hollyoaks actors are getting better or the general standards of acting have lowered I don't know, but congratulations, there is hope after Hollyoaks!

Political Unrest!..........Maybe not.

Political Unrest was pretty much the news term of last year, it was amazing to see people taking action and control of situations, marching and protesting to make a change. Now the Egyptian protests were sparked my an unemployed desperate man so destroyed by the world and his situation that he felt he had no other option than to commit suicide. Not only that but to alert others to the desperateness of the countries situation he set himself on fire. From this, and the consequencial protests, they toppled the egyptian government.

This is an amazing story. But I feel some people in the town where I live think that they too can make a similar change. On a path near my house this peice of grafiti has been done,

 

This is ridiculous, I live in a suburban small town in rural Egland. The political unrest in the town I live in is slim to none. During our last town council elections the leaflets for hopeful candidates were mainly including how they will have a zero tolerence on dog fowling and will fight to have the street lamps on for longer. They're not really the demands of mad dictators. I'm not really sure what lies I am supposed to be having told to me,  in a place that legitimately had the fromt page headline of our local newspaper as 'tree grows two fruits' I highly doubt they are embroiled in a conspiracy to cover up a scandal or political crimes. More to the point these people will never be able to make effective change because they are quite stupid, don't grafiti a street full of retired elderly couples and young families, nobody cares they've all got better stuff to do. Well except for me obviously.

 I also saw these on the toilets in the food court of the retail park where I work,

the worst time to ask me to start questioning authority is when i'm having a piss.