Paul Schiernecker

Tag: Mancrush

Mancrush Friday – Ryan Gosling.

I have such a thing for Gosling that I’m amazed I haven’t written about him before and if I have then he deserves two. I made the foolish mistake of thinking of him as just a romantic lead, incapable of what is humans call emotions but oh no, he is much more. I make this mistake often, I remember thinking the same of diCaprio early on. Oh hindsight you temptress.

I think what won me over was seeing footage on YouTube of Ryan Gosling breaking up a fight on the streets of New York. He was just out being sexy in a vest or something and came across these two guys duking it out in the middle of the street so broke it up to the applause of a growing audience. What a guy.

He’s also a pretty solid actor and that’s the point when that’s his profession. His performances in Fracture, The Ides Of March and Crazy Stupid Love are enjoyable but Drive is where you really see the dark side and that’s where the magic is.
I’m reading 50 Shades at the moment (for research before you ask) and the thought of Gosling existing in this world does more for me than that book.

Gosling is also an avid guitarist and musician, which I’d like to see some output from aside from the occasional YouTube live video. He can literally do anything and make it effortlessly cool, sort of a Clooney in that respect.

All I ask is that you don’t overlook him just because every girl in the office has a picture of him pinned to her desk, there’s more to him than that and it’s worthwhile.

August 31, 2012
Mancrush Friday – Marc Bolan.

I think it’s only fair following on from last weeks mancrush that I give this week over to Mr Bolan, responsible for a generation of 70’s teenyboppers naming their children Marc, yes I know a few.

I think it’s easy to disregard what Bolan was doing, as at the time it wasn’t particularly ‘cool’ to like T-Rex who were seen as a Top of the Pops type group. In a similar vein to how The Beatles were for girls and The Rolling Stones were for boys (as my dear old dad puts it). What is now recognised is that Bolan wrote some of the best guitar-based pop songs of his generation, leading many onto ‘heavier’ rock bands. He was a total innovator.

What people didn’t realise was that behind the bulging catsuits and glitter was a deep rooted bohemian rock star, friends with Bowie, Jagger and Stewart, Bolan wasn’t seen by his contemporaries as being pop, and he certainly had the habits of a rock star.

With his highset cheekbones and (self-proclaimed) corkscrew hair Bolan will always be an image, I just hope people can go deeper than that to treasure the music he created.

August 24, 2012
Mancrush Friday – David Bowie.

David Robert Jones. Such an ordinary name for a man who has smashed the holy fuck out of music in the last fifty years and obviously I don’t use those words lightly. David Bowie’s music is amongst the first I can vividly remember hearing (alongside Zeppelin, Thin Lizzy and The Sweet (thanks Dad)) so I’ve been a fan for at least twenty years. His way with words has inspired two generations of writers, bands and musicians and his style (adopted from the punk and glitter thing rising in New York) opened oppressed teens up to a world of shaved eyebrows and skyrocketing makeup. I’m honestly struggling to write this because there’s so much to say, and I’m trying to hold some of it back so I don’t just explode.

The wonder of Bowie’s music is that you know every word but you rarely have any idea of what it could possibly mean. In the seventies this just added to his alien-like mystique, something that today wankers would call ‘clever marketing, the androgynous wanderer angle’. From my own understanding his style of writing was borrowed from the Beats and William Burroughs who popularised the ‘cut-up technique’ where you take a completed text, cut it into phrases or lines and then rearrange it in its entirety.
That’s how you get lines like ‘tigers on Vaseline’ or ‘Time, flexes like a whore, falls wanking to the floor’.
I’ve experimented with it myself and it’s an extremely difficult thing to pull off with any confidence.

The treat of David Bowie isn’t just that he’s an excellent songwriter, musician and (seemingly) nice guy but it’s also down to his legacy. Bowie hasn’t performed publicly in two years, owing to a health scare, and the world is waiting for him. He isn’t a musician who will make a quick buck on a farewell tour, he believes in what he is doing and has commented that he doesn’t want to be performing Space Oddity forever. While everyone of the same era seems happy to croon up onstage a couple more times (and I don’t begrudge them that because I loved The Who at the closing ceremony and was genuinely surprised at their prowess and Daltrey’s voice) Bowie is resting up in Switzerland and promising us something called Object in December.

Watching the recent BBC Bowie season I was amazed at his presence, to this day when Bowie appears there is a hushed revelry, he is honoured and long may it continue.

August 17, 2012
Mancrush Friday – James Dean.

Today is a classic. A man who managed to change so much in his twenty-four years than a lot of people do in three times that. A lot of the enigma around James Dean is in death. What could he have become? What heights could he have reached? Was he gay like revelations after his death suggested.

The fact of the matter is that Dean just oozed cool. With his shifty eyes (down to refusing to wear his glasses when acting) down to his affection for engines and speed he set a precedent for how to be a man.

I think James Dean was one of the first actors I ever looked at and thought ‘I would love to be as cool as you’. It went as far as slicking my hair up a bit, and having bad eyesight but after a while I realised that wasn’t what was special about Dean. It was how dark he could go. Sometimes when you watch him act you can see a lost little boy crying out, he can take it all back to the tragedies he knew and express that. This must have truly blown people’s minds in the 50’s when performing on film was a direct point from acting on stage.

What I will always love about James Dean is the mystery swept up in it all. He’s one of those massive what ifs, one of the first, and he made us all try to be cool.

August 10, 2012