14: Generation divides, velcro human centipede, and self acceptance
After a loooooong hiatus, Jules is back (along with the imposter syndrome, but doing it anyway).
Highlights of this episode include her daughter making her feel stupid for refusing to take part in a hypothetical Human Centipede for financial gain.
Transcript:
Episode 14: Generational divides, Velcro human centipede, and self–acceptance
Jules O’Brian:Hello, this is Jules O’Brien with the Avoid Excessive Cleavage podcast. A podcast for anyone who wants to ignore unsolicited and unhelpful advice. Welcome back to my podcast. Now before I start getting into it, I just want to acknowledge the obvious, I’ve been
gone for a while, a long while, and I’d love to say that it’s because I was off doing something wildly exciting, but I’m afraid it’s not really. The truth is that, oh, here we go again, I just didn’t feel good enough to be making a podcast. I’d sort of sit down
and think, “Oh, you know, what’s the point?” There are already a million podcasts out there, and let’s be honest, a solid 80% of them are just people laughing at their own jokes and talking nonsense, aren't they? And the annoying thing is that people love those. And
meanwhile, I'm over here thinking, have I actually got anything worth saying? So, I’ve realised that imposter syndrome never goes away, never, ever, ever, no matter what stage you’re at. That little voice in your head is always there, isn’t it? Whispering, "You’re
not good enough.” And the only thing you can do is ignore it and do the thing anyway, because what I’ve realised recently is, I don’t know, is this a little epiphanic moment? I love that word. I say epiphanic, epiphanic, but an inspirational moment, let’s go with
that. The people who criticise you are never the ones actually out there taking risks themselves. So successful people are too busy doing things to waste their time tearing other people down. It’s always the ones sitting on the sidelines who are bitter and angry, complaining about
other people putting themselves out there. So, I just sort of think, well, I kind of decided you know, that instead of being worried about being judged, which I am all of the time, then just remember that people who judge you are probably, secretly, the ones who wish
they had the guts to try or the ones who wish that they had got elements of you about themselves. I don’t know, maybe that’s nonsense, but it’s helping me anyway. Oh God, so things that shouldn’t exist, like imposter syndrome, something else that shouldn’t exist. This
is been making me laugh a lot lately. My youngest daughter is 19. And apparently this is something that is reigniting across the younger generation. The game, would you rather, but it's much darker than it used to be. When I was younger, would you rather, was things like, you know,
would you rather have toes or fingers or fingers for toes? It was an innocence to it, like everything else that seems to have changed over the years. And now it’s gone quite dark. So, for example, then, her latest masterpiece for £10 million, would you take part in the
human centipede? So now, if you’re finding yourself thinking £10 million, but stop it immediately, no, no. So I responded the only acceptable answer, which is absolutely not. That’s disgusting, never in a million years, never mind £10 million. You know, when I think about, oh, it's just
so disgusting. I have watched that movie. I’m not proud, but I have watched that movie. As if who’s going to put themselves through that for anything, it’s the most disgusting surgery you can possibly think of. Her response to me saying that was, oh, well, obviously it’s
only for a week. So we just use Velcro, silly me, like she’s, like she’s pitching a practical solution. So I don’t know whether to be proud of that, you know, sort of outside the box thinking or deeply concerned for this generation exists now. That’s kind of making that in
their own heads. Oh, you know, there’s a way of making it. Okay, there’s not, there’s not, and it’s upsetting. Generational things in general have been quite, I don’t know, there’s stuff, there’s a lot of stuff to do, different generations that’s jumping out at me at the
moment. And this isn’t me about to launch into thinking about, oh, the younger generation, they don’t know how good they’ve got it, because I don’t think that for one second, if anything, it’s kind of the other way around, to be honest. But I don’t know if other people have noticed,
but every time there is a festival line of announcement or what struck me recently was when the Brits was on, I just happened to be sort of child hopping and started watching it. I mean, it means very, very little to me, you know, I’m in my fifties. I don’t know who these
people are or whatever, which is the way it should be because these shows aren’t for me. But if you look at social media and look at the comments online at what people are saying about this stuff, it’s generally speaking, embarrassingly, people around about my age,
some people, young girls, are sort of falling into the millennials group, some people my age, some people older, but essentially it’s Gen X millennials saying things like, oh, who are these people? I’ve never heard of any of them. They must be rubbish if I don’t know them.
And I kind of, I want to get hold of these people and sit them down and go, it’s not for you. Do you remember when we were 16 and we did find the Brits exciting and engaging because it was aimed at us. It featured our artists, but things have moved on. The world has moved on. It belongs to the 16 year
olds of today. And that’s fine. That’s brilliant. That’s the way it should be. And the irony of that is that we’ve never had, so my generation especially has never had more choices for nostalgia, more opportunities to indulge that part of ourselves. We’ve got festivals like Be a Did Theory in Staffordshire,
which I can’t believe I’m lucky enough to get to play at that again for the third year in a row this year. I mean, Iggy Pop’s headlining this year. Iggy Pop: absolute legend. So, you know, there’s our nostalgia, but instead people are angrily commenting on, you know, I don’t know, the lineup for a
Reading Festival or whatever. It’s not for you if you’re over, I don’t know, 25. And if you do still love it and you still do want to go and you’re my age or whatever, fantastic. I’m not criticising people who do that. That’s great. If you go along and just enjoy the atmosphere, enjoy the music,
enjoy the whole situation. Brilliant. Fill your boots. Go for it. But I just can’t be doing with the criticism of, you know, Sabrina Carpenter or whatever because I look at Sabrina Carpenter and I go, wow, she looks amazing. She’s talented. She’s stunning. She is making the most of everything that she is doing.
But I don’t expect to be her target audience, you know, people need to understand that if something isn’t for you, that’s okay. Just go and find your thing and enjoy that. I don’t understand this constant stream of negativity, but it just worked the other way around as well. Not in such a
non–pleasant way, I don’t think, but it’s quite kind of a sad thing, I guess. Last week, this is, again, it's another generational thing. But last week, all the week before, Gene Hackman died. So again, legendary actor and it was in horrible circumstances and it really got to me. You know, when somebody from
your childhood sort of passes and it does make you have that feeling of, oh, you know, because it makes you remember being young again. And I know, you know, obviously he was in his 90s, so it wasn’t exactly a shock. He’d had a fantastic life. But I think it was because of the horrible circumstances in which he went.
And obviously he was, you know, this fantastic iconic actor. And I, I should probably be embarrassed to say this because he, you know, he made some absolutely amazing movies, didn’t he? You know, Oscar winning and all the rest of it. But the main one that I remember before is The Poseidon Adventure. I loved the disaster
movies when I was a kid. And he sort of played that tough, dad–like character. Well, that’s how I saw him anywhere, you know, in control, looking after everyone, taking care of the situation. And I, so I mentioned it to my kids, you know, sort of assuming some level of recognition, at least, you know,
talking about Gene Hackman, the famous actor has died and it’s really quite sad. And the way that he’s gone is particularly upsetting. And I was just met with blank stares. They looked at me just sort of, you know, who? And that was a kind of a weird generational sadness. But then I, again, I had to remind
myself, well, I suppose, why would they know him? I guess that’s how time works, isn’t it? You know, just like I don’t know some of the people that they talk about when they’re talking about TikTok or YouTube or whatever. And I’ll think no idea who that is. And it turns out it’s somebody that’s
incredibly famous, that’s got millions and millions of followers, you know, they’re not going to know about my cinematic icons, you know, I guess that’s fine. Maybe. Anyway, so next week, (changing the subject)… Next Sunday, I fly out to Austria to take part in Altitude Comedy Festival in Mayrhofen.
I can’t believe I’m doing this. It seems ridiculous. And let me say, I am absolutely terrified because it feels like all the proper comedians are going. And I somehow snuck in. I’m genuinely expecting a last minute email going, “Oh! We didn’t mean that Jules O’Brian.”
So, um, and to make it worse, Altitude is a skiing festival. So I thought, well, I’d better learn to ski then. So I went to Tamworth Snowdome. I lived two minutes up the road from it. Oh my god. Oh, my god, absolute disaster. The lesson was supposed to last for three hours. Well, this is so embarrassing.
I was so humiliated. Within 45 minutes, I’d fallen over so many times that the instructor was having to physically lift me back up because I couldn’t get myself up. And eventually I said, “Oh, can I just take a minute?” And of course, he said, “Yeah, of course you can.” So he had to take the skis off
for me because I couldn’t do it myself. And I walked off the slope and I just kept walking until I was out of the building because I just couldn’t bear to do it any longer. It was so bad. So my plan for Mayrhofen is, do the comedy, hit the spa rather than the slopes, and the bars,
and enjoy the views. Absolutely no skiing. That is absolutely not for me. Just not built for it. I don't think, you know, maybe I'll get there and something miraculous will happen and I will do it and life will change. But oh my god, I can't believe how bad I was. I keep watching
Chelsea Handler who I adore and she’s kind of on the slopes in her bikini, smoking. She’s got dogs with her. She’s got a drink in her hand and she’s just amazing. How come I just don’t… It’s not in my wheelhouse is it? Let’s just accept that. And
that whole idea of sort of self–acceptance and looking at, like I said, Chelsea would be, is on the slopes in a bikini and just looking fantastic. So I thought, okay, well, if I’m not going to be doing the skiing, if I’m going to be going to the spas, I’m going to need swimwear. So that was my next
barrier to overcome because I am the heaviest I’ve ever been at the moment, including when I’ve been pregnant, I’ve been pregnant three times and I’ve never been as heavy as I am now. So I thought, okay, this isn’t going to be fun bikini shopping when I feel like this. But
in a shock twist, I can, I look okay. They even asked my brutally honest younger daughter, youngest daughter, as in human centipede daughter. That sounds wrong. And, you know, expecting the cold, hard truth because she does not mince her words, but she just looks at me and shrugged and went,
“You look cute.” I mean, what the hell? So I celebrated that by eating a bag of chips. So, will I still feel bikini–confident in a week? Let’s see, let’s see how that goes. So I have been this past week or so, driving my best mate to work, which is, it’s been a weirdly healing process
because she works at my old job. Her car has packed up, so she’s struggling to get from A to B at the moment. So I’m picking her up in the mornings and dropping her at work. And she’s still a teacher, I used to be a teacher. And it’s really sad because by the time I came to the end of my teaching
career, I utterly despised it, everything about the profession, which was really sad because for a long time, I’d loved it. But, I was kind of dreading dropping her off because I thought, “Okay, is it going to bring back all those feelings of negativity?” But you know what? Instead of that, it reminded me
of how lucky I am, because I’m driving around now in the mornings to drop her off. And I see everybody else going about their business, driving to their different jobs, they’re in the cars or they’re walking down the road or they’re waiting for a bus. People look so fucking miserable.
“Oh my god,” I think, “Do you know what? I used to look like that, but weirdly, I don’t feel like that anymore.” I never have that feeling. And it’s made me kind of feel proud of the fact that I’ve made that change. You know, I’ll be the worst that ever happens to me is that sometimes I’ll be sitting in
M6 traffic on a Friday, late afternoon, trying to get to a gig somewhere farflung. And I’ll think, “Oh my god, what am I doing with my life?” But actually, then I think, well, you know what? Would I rather be stuck here, heading to a gig where I know that, well, touch wood, as I say this,
I’m going to have a good time. I’m going to meet different people. It’s going to be fun. And, you know, the worst thing that’s happening to me right now in this moment is that I’m either listening to a podcast, or listening to some music I enjoy, or listening to radio, or whatever, or would I
rather be back in a classroom forcing Shakespeare onto kids who could not care less. That was soul destroying. And do you know what? There’s no contest. So that’s my first podcast back. So a bit more imposter syndrome. I don’t think I’m ever going to stop talking about imposter syndrome.
Generational divides, Velcro, human centipede. And some actual self–acceptance, I guess. So that’s a bit of yeah, there’s a lot going on there, isn’t there? In that first podcast back. So I hope you enjoyed listening. Thank you so much if you have listened. My name is Jules O’Brien. This was my
Avoid Excessive Cleavage return. Thanks for listening.