1.
I finished reading In Search of Lost Time a few weeks ago, and now it’s over, there is a peculiar Proust-shaped hole in my life.
Continue readingIn Search of Lost Time
Posted in Reading, Real Men with tags Alain De Botton, How Proust Can Change Your Life, In Search of Lost Time, Leo Tolstoy, Marcel Proust, Rodney Hall, War and Peace on November 9, 2021 by Jarrod Boyle
‘What’s Your Favourite John Mayer Song?’
Posted in Pretensions toward cultural theory with tags Cormac McCarthy, guitar, Harrisen Hughes, John Mayer, Marty Friedman, Ophelia, Siamese fighting fish, Slayer, Slow Dancing in a Burning Room, The Crossing on October 23, 2021 by Jarrod Boyle
That’s a good question, my young friend, because enjoying John Mayer is not something a ‘real’ man is willing to broadcast.
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Mirror Mirror
Posted in Pretensions toward cultural theory, trauma with tags body building, body image, Charles Bukowski, diet, Exercise, Fitness First, gyms, Ham on Rye, Instagram, Mirror Mirror, plastic surgery, social media, Sylvia Plath, Todd Sampson, Training on September 19, 2021 by Jarrod Boyle
‘I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful‚
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.’
‘Mirror’
By Sylvia Plath.
Todd Sampson is full of shit.
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‘Simplicity is the Last Step in Art…’
Posted in Boxing, fighting with tags Boxing, Bruce Lee, kids, Training on August 30, 2021 by Jarrod Boyle
Training other people’s children is one of the most significant responsibilities I’ve undertaken.
It’s a huge moment of trust when a parent leaves you with their child, and I feel as if me and the kid are enveloped in a white-hot spotlight of attention. Everyone can see everything I do, and they’re watching in relation to the child.
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Ex Machina
Posted in Film, Pretensions toward cultural theory with tags Alex Garland, Bluebeard, Ex Machina, Jackson Pollock, Kyoko, Robert Oppenheimer, Simone De Beauvoir, The Second Sex on August 26, 2021 by Jarrod Boyle
2.
Bluebeard is the grisly tale of a powerful, wealthy nobleman who marries a young, innocent peasant girl. She discovers, while he is away, that her new husband has beheaded his previous wives once they have ceased to amuse him. In part, it is a cautionary tale about a rich, powerful man’s objectification of a young, naive woman.
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Ex Machina
Posted in Film, Pretensions toward cultural theory with tags Blade Runner, Netflix, Parasite, Stan, Turing Test on August 24, 2021 by Jarrod Boyle
I tend to peruse my Netflix and Stan accounts with dismay. Firstly, they clash with the portrait I paint of myself socially, as someone who ‘doesn’t watch television.’ Secondly, I find that I’ll open an account with a streaming service because I want to see something specific, like Parasite, for example, and then I’m confounded by the volume of crap I don’t want to see that comes with it.
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The Neon Demon
Posted in Film, Pretensions toward cultural theory with tags Aleister Crowley, Bret Easton Ellis, Drive, Los Angeles, Nicolas Winding Refn, Peter Bradshaw, Sergei Eisenstein, The Guardian, The Neon Demon on June 14, 2021 by Jarrod Boyle
“Evil floats, weightlessly across the landscape of Los Angeles in Nicolas Winding Refn’s new film, The Neon Demon, co-scripted with TV writer Mary Laws and British dramatist Polly Stenham. It is a reverie of such sheer satanic rapture that Refn could be on danger of taking Bret Easton Elis’ crown as the Aleister Crowley of the 21st century.”
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A Promising Young Woman
Posted in Film, Pretensions toward cultural theory, violence against women with tags A Promising Young Woman, Alex Garland, Carey Mulligan, Dredd, Genre cinema, I Spit on Your Grave, Judge Dredd, Rape, Rape/Revenge, Variety on May 18, 2021 by Jarrod Boyle
I was fairly horrified by the film ‘A Promising Young Woman’, especially the murder at the end.
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The Heavy Bag is a Koan
Posted in Boxing, Fitness, Muay Thai with tags 'Fortitude Fitness', Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Boxing, Fighting, Heavy bag, punching, The Little Prince, Training on April 28, 2021 by Jarrod Boyle
‘There must be rites,’ [the Fox said].
‘What’s a rite?’ asked the Little Prince.
‘It is a thing too often neglected…’
The Little Prince,
Antoine De Saint-Exupery
p.61
I have a young man coming to see me for boxing training. His older brother bought him a ten-session package for an eighteenth birthday present, because learning to ‘handle yourself’ is considered one of the quintessential rites of passage.
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The Dark Side of Unconditional Love
Posted in Observation with tags love, unconditional love on April 8, 2021 by Jarrod Boyle
Anyone who has been abused by a family member, or a partner, understands unconditional love.
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Theme Park at its Darkest 