Peak Guardian, Teeth Will be Provided.

Oh, there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the Groan today. I am oddly reminded of the old Dave Allen joke about the old lady, fearful of the gnashing of teeth in Hell, as she didn’t have any teeth. “Teeth will be provided” thundered the pastor. Well, I reckon after recent events, there’s going to be a run on teeth. With such a rich mixture to mock, I have decided on this one – not least, because it isn’t directly about the Donald. It starts well…

Chances are, after yesterday’s events in DC, you’re feeling a little bruised. Traumatised, even.

Um…

Er…

Ah…

Nope. Did something bad happen, then?

Anyway Hadley goes on to talk about a film.

And sure, it is a gorgeous movie, as far from Trump as The Wizard Of Oz is from getting a root canal. But, actually, I didn’t love it, which is strange, because two of my favourite genres are movies about movies, and films in which the female lead is blatantly better at singing and dancing than the man, and La La Land cheerfully ticks both those boxes.

Eh, what? My twaddleometer is starting to twitch. I mean, a right-on leftist just has to get a Trump reference into something not remotely connected, just as we have been getting Brexit squeezed into places you’d never expect to find one.

So why does Hadley not like La La Land?

Ryan Gosling’s character is every bad date I have ever had. Gosling plays Sebastian, a jazz snob, the kind whose response to a woman saying she “hates jazz” is to tell her she’s wrong and take her to a jazz club on every date thereafter. He is also, as a sidenote, often an actual jerk, one who thinks it is acceptable to barge aggressively into a woman because he feels unappreciated by Da Man, and then not apologise to her until months later, and only because she orders him to do so.

But the movie paints all this as part of Sebastian’s old-fashioned passion, and if he’s rude sometimes, well, that’s because he is – as he proudly says – “a romantic”, too busy defending freestyle jazz against music that doesn’t sound like noises you’d hear in an animal rescue home to worry about manners. I realised this movie and I were not about to embark on a romance when Sebastian’s dickish behaviour gets him fired from his piano-playing job, meaning he then has to play keyboard in an 80s tribute band, knocking out songs like Take On Me – and the movie depicts this as his “humiliation”.

It’s a film. It is fiction. It is not real. As I don’t much like song and dance films, I will give it a miss, but, really…

Perhaps you should stick to wailing and gnashing of teeth over the Donald in the White House. And when you have ground them away, teeth will be provided. By God, I might even buy you a set.

Take On Me! One of the greatest songs ever written!

No, it isn’t. Seriously, it isn’t.

Every woman has dated the jazz snob.

Really? Mrs L hasn’t – unless there’s something she isn’t telling me. So, actually, that’s just bullshit on steroids, isn’t it? Go on, admit it, you made it up.

I use the male gender advisedly, because I have yet to meet a woman who insists on imposing her taste on everyone around her.

You don’t get out much, do you?