My Thoughts On Bridesmaids

So I went to see Bridesmaids, last Wednesday. And although I laughed my ass off and loved every funny second of it, there was one moment in the film that for some unaccountable reason made me cry. Not tears of laughter crying - real crying, of the kind you usually only do when a shark eats a seal on Animal Planet or Ripley dies in Alien 3.*

It's the bit where Melissa McCarthy's character says to Kirsten Wiig's character that she has a best friend right here, in her. And it wasn't a fake, sappy moment, and it wasn't the point where Annie turned all of her life around. It was just this weird, plain-faced girl saying to some other girl - I'm your friend.

And I just found that so...I don't know. Overwhelming. Same thing when the pretty one said she had no female friends. In fact, the whole film had this undercurrent of how hard it is to actually make friends and have them stick by you no matter what and so and so forth, and for some reason that really affected me.

In fact, I'm not even going to say "for some reason" there. I'm just going to flat out state it: I can completely relate to that. It's not because I'm too weird, either, because although there's an element of that, I know it's mainly my fault. I'm annoying, I'm abrasive. I say all the wrong things and then only later am sensible of saying the wrong things but have absolutely no idea how to apologise about them because if I apologise, it will seem as though I knew I was saying something bad in the first place.

I try to give advice, but it just comes out like I'm being a know-it-all. All my life I've been a know-it-all, and the thing about being one is you can't stop yourself. You try, but there's just so much stupid stuff in your head that most of it keeps leaking out and then it's all fuck you, apple polisher.

I am a social dunderhead.

So I guess what I'm saying is: it was really nice to see a movie where someone as wonderful as Melissa McCarthy, someone actually stranger than myself, got to be onscreen in all of her plump, weird, mad clothes wearing no make-upped glory, and was not only held up as something fun and interesting but also as a decent person. Who then just flat out asked someone else to be BFFs with them.

I don't think anyone's ever asked me to be their BFF. I can't even imagine what I would do if Melissa McCarthy asked me to be hers. It would probably make my life, because not only is she an absolutely orsum human being in Bridesmaids - she takes nine puppies! She identifies an air marshal correctly and then sleeps with him! - she's pretty much the most brilliant best friend in everything she's in.

In Gilmore Girls, she put up with Lorelai even though Lorelai is pretty much an insufferable human being ninety percent of the time. I mean I love her, and she's funny and smart and cool to watch, but in reality she would have probably driven someone as sweet as Sookie nuts in about thirty seconds and then Lorelai would have had to go live in her Mother's basement with ninety cats, or summat.

Which is undoubtedly my fate. I mean, once the zombies invade my husband has absolutely no chance - he won't even practice barring all the doors! - and all of the friends I do have are either equally as zombie unsavvy or live miles away. And though I'd like to say that I'd be able to cross the apoclaypse ravaged landscape and get to the three other people who can stand me in all the world, I know the truth.

I'd hide in a basement somewhere, with ninety cats.

But you know, I don't think it was just the friendship thing that so affected me about Bridesmaids. There was something else about it - something like the heralding of a new dawn. There were women on screen, doing things I've never seen women doing before.

And no, I don't mean the shitting in the street thing. I mean stuff like...sleeping with some guy in a self-destructive way but totally knowing it and doing it anyway. I mean like hitting rock bottom and not having some dude drag you out. In reality, there rarely IS some dude. There's usually nothing and you really do end up living with your mum, without a job or a life or any friends.

Not every woman is Jennifer Lopez in the Back Up Plan, whose biggest problem is that ALEX O'LOUGHLIN IS KIND OF UNSURE ABOUT RAISING BABIES THAT ARE NOT HIS.

I mean, really? Really? I'd be happy just to smell Alex O'Loughlin's breath. After he put it in a jar and mailed it to me. That's right: I'd be happy with secondhand O'Loughlin breath, that's really probably just a fart his assistant trapped in there, for a laugh.

I don't like "chick flicks" because for the most part, they're not aimed at any chick I know. They don't represent me. I don't even particularly like them in an escapist, glossy sort of way because in order for me to buy things like "she has to choose between Armie Hammer and Jon Hamm to raise her quintuplets" I need to believe in her.

But I believe in Kristen Wiig. I believe in Melissa McCarthy. Dear God, I hope they do a sequel, quick.



*I accept that you might cry at different, normal things. Like accidentally cutting your finger off, for example.

Mancandy Friday: Kieran and Tommy

Vastly appropriate Mancandy, today, because Kieran and Tommy are actually the heroes of the book I've just had accepted by Ellora's Cave! Hooray!

So I feel they deserve to be thanked, in the form of my copious and almost disgusting levels of drool slopped over them both.

Behold!







And yes, that is a graphical representation of my saliva all over them. Of course, MS Paint has its limitations, so this saliva sort of looks a little less like spit and a little more like...um...some other sort of bodily secretion. But that's okay, because I do feel that if my mouth could ejaculate, it would definitely do so over both of these two gentlemen.

I mean, just look at them. And now imagine them doing stuff to the heroine. And maybe also to each other. The mind can barely take such hotness, right? I think I went temporarily insane, writing this book.

Note to self: must cast less handsome men as my heroes, in my imagination. Next time I swear to God I'm going to write about Michael York doing Clint Eastwood. Even though just thinking about that pairing makes me do the opposite of a mouth-ejaculation. It makes me mouth-withdraw. Literally, all of my face sucks back into my body, in abject horror.

Sort of like I've sucked on a crusty, weird bum-faced Michael York/Clint Eastwood shaped lemon.

But anyway, I digress. About something so insane I can't even sum it up in a few words.

Back to Kieran and Tommy, who I genuinely believe have brought me back to writing life. No, seriously. I know that a menage novella about discovering your husband's naughty habits might not seem like an earth-shattering, writing-changing sort of event. But it really has been, for me.

I thought I'd lost it. I thought I no longer loved writing. But the inspiration of Armie Hammer and Michael Fassbender, coupled with a lot of watching of nature documentaries, some computer poker playing and a bout of tonsilitis has literally given me back some of my zest for it.

Of course, it might all go away tomorrow. It might. But for right now, I'm happy.

I'm a writer.

Dear Any Readers I Am Lucky Enough To Have,

Thank you for buying my books. Thank you for buying them in ebook format, in print format, in some format I've never heard of because it's a thousand years from now and you're downloading it direct to your brain with the latest reading device that I'm now going to dub "MindSuck".

Thank you for buying my book on Wednesdays, on Saturdays, on any day you like. Thank you for buying them ten or twenty or even a billion weeks from release, when MindSuck has been replaced by The Brain Devourer and everyone is more than likely a slave on the planet Amazon.Com.

Just thank you.

All my love,

Charlotte Stein

Mancandy Monday: Erik Lehnsherr

If you follow my twitter, I'm sure this Mancandy will come as no surprise to you. But even if you're simply a foolhardy explorer of the murky world of my blog, I doubt it's going to really rock your world to find me lusting after Erik Lehnsherr.

I mean, let's look at the facts, shall we.

1. He's being played by Michael Fassbender in the new X-Men movie. Michael Fassbender looks like this:

Yes, that's right. He looks like a cross between a dancer for a brand new genre of dance called "Porn Bending", the Lord of a Perverted Manor from the kinky version of the 1800s, and a guy you desperately want to call the man version of the word slut.

In fact, for him I have invented this word. He is a humongous slatterdick.

2. Erik Lehnsherr, aka Magneto, most traditionally wears a large helmet while bending metal. I have no idea why this combination of words turns me on, but my vagina tells me I should just go with it.

3. During the course of the new X-Men movie, Erik Lehnsherr does one or more of the following:

• Cries in anguished horror over his tortured, holocaust surviving, mind-fooked life. In some cases, he commits this crying while hugging another man. Now, I realise that many people do not find a crying man sexy. Many people also do not find a man hugging another man sexy. However, I am not one of those people. I wanted to steal his tears and keep them inside my underpants, like the horrifying witch from some story about children who are stolen from their beds and kept in gingerbread cages.





• Wears a skintight wetsuit. Michael Fassbender is a skilled artiste at the dance form known as Porn Bending. You do the math, here.





• Wears sweatpants. I fully admit that there is no math you could do for this one. Even I'm not sure why a man in sweatpants just does it for me. I think it's about the way something might dangle within the forbidden recesses of such loose fitting and comfortable material. Sweatpants lure men into a false sense of security. They think nothing's showing and then BAM. Giant swinging cock for all to see.





• Hunts Nazis like a Boss. Surely no explanation is needed for this. All I wanted to do after the movie was finished was see it's sequel: "Here Are The Ten Nazis You Didn't See Him Kill, In Even More Inventive Ways Than The Ones Who've Just Been On". Of course I realise this title is completely impractical, but it's just a working one, okay? In reality, Fox can call it something like "Magnetic Vengeance" or "Fookin' Nazis" or "When I'm Mad I Become Irish" or summat.





• Makes googly love eyes at Charles Xavier. Now, if you had told me three years ago that pretty soon, I'd be wetting my panties over the thought of Magneto and Professor X falling madly in love, I'd have wondered if you were subscribed to Old Men Monthly. I mean, Patrick Stewart's pretty sexy. And Ian McKellan's not that bad. But you can't escape the fact that they are elderly. 72 is a little past the place I'm prepared to go to. Where as Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy are both in the prime of life. Even if Fassbender occasionally looks 64.

All of which I think adequately sums up why I'm spending my time trawling the internet for suspect pr0n featuring Erik doing stuff to the various members of the X-Men. Especially that one mutant. You know - that weird one in the corner, whose power is intense chocolate consumption and the ability to watch a load of terrible sitcoms all night long.

And maybe some other power that's going to lure him in, too, like...I dunno. Vagina Eyes? Yeah, my mutant power is Vagina Eyes. Take THAT, Erik Lehnsherr.