Self-Help For Cynics #38: Mr. McGee, Don't Make Me Angry...

I believe I've passed the age of consciousness
And righteous rage
I found that just surviving was a noble fight
I once believed in causes too
I had my pointless point of view
And life went on no matter who was wrong or right

Billy Joel - Angry Young Man

OK, it’s time to grasp the nettle.

So far in this feature, I’ve looked in detail at all manner of negative emotions, including sadness, anxiety, low self-esteem and paranoia. But there’s one emotion I’ve danced around confronting face on, possibly because it’s the one that scares me the most – in other people and in myself.

Anger.

Anger, can make you old 
Yes it can 
I said anger 
Will make you sick children, 
Anger - destroy your soul 

Marvin Gaye - Anger

I knew this was going to be a big one, and I knew it was going to take some serious investigation to understand and… well, we’ll have to see whether management is possible. That’ll come further down the line, I guess. Let’s start with an attempt at understanding. And who better to help me get to grips with this most unpleasant and destructive of emotions than our old friend, sweary Dr. Faith? Her book Unfuck Your Brain certainly made my grey matter less opaque, so I figured she might be able to offer similar insight with one of the follow-ups…

fiREHOSE - Anger

Almost straight away, Dr. Faith pointed me in another direction, towards the work of Dr. R. Douglas Fields, a neuroscientist who sought to find an answer to the anger inside him after he beat up a pickpocket who tried to steal his wallet while he was on holiday in Barcelona. When I read about his research, I couldn’t help but be reminded of this guy…

Since his creation in 1962, the Incredible Hulk has remained one of the most consistently popular comic book characters because he appeals to our most primal emotion: the desire to have a big tantrum and smash the shit out of everything when life isn’t going our way. Unlike most other superheroes, the Hulk doesn’t want to save the world, avenge the death of a loved one or help those less powerful than he is. All he really wants is to be left alone.

Spearmint - Leave Me Alone

And when he doesn’t get what he wants?

Talk about comic books as wish-fulfillment fantasies! You don’t get any more rudimentary than that.

Bill Callahan - The Ballad Of The Hulk

But… Dr. Faith say: “Hulk Smash: BAD!”

As I tell my clients, “you are allowed to be crazy, but you aren’t allowed to act crazy. Being irritated as fuck because someone jacked the parking spot you were waiting for? Totally legit. Going postal over it? Not so helpful. Not so helpful to everyone around you, not so helpful to greater society, and – for purely selfish reasons – not so helpful to you.

Editors - When Anger Shows 

As we've discussed in previous installments of this series, emotions are just the brain's way of sending us information designed to make us take action. However, our brains were designed for the primitive world - a world where everyone thought and spoke like Hulk, and fighting or fleeing were pretty much the only responses available if we were faced with saber-toothed tiger or another neanderthal from the tribe down the track who carried a bigger club. Sadly, we don't live in those times anymore, much as our brains might like to think we do...

Technology has evolved faster than humans, so we have bodies adapted for simpler times. Instead of hunting, gathering, cuddling, and napping, we are crossing more terrain on a daily basis, interacting with more people, and taking in far more information than we are built to manage. It’s a continuous overload.

Gina Birch - I Am Rage

How do we deal with that overload and stop Hulking out at every little thing that doesn't go our way? That's what I'm going to try to figure out over the next few weeks (though it could actually take months - there's a lot to digest). Because I don't want to be angry all the time, for the reason Bill Bixby explained in the simplest terms possible, back when I was a kid. "You won't like me when I'm angry." And we all want to be liked, right?

Celebrity Jukebox #17: John Mills

Sir John Mills was that certain kind of classy British gent you just don't get in movies anymore. Maybe you don't get them in real life anymore. And maybe if you scratched below the surface of that stereotype, you'd find all kind of unpleasantness that wouldn't be fitting with contemporary mores. But I like to think John Mills was above that kind of stuff. 

Seven decades on screen is quite a career, from Ryan's Daughter to Quatermass, he certainly got around. He seems to have made less of an impression on the world of popular music though, beyond his famous grandson who famously divides opinion, even among those of us who felt Britpop was our salad days.

In fact, I could only find one lyric that mentions Sir John, and I'm not 100% certain that 80s alt-rockers fIREHOSE (whose CAPS LOCK button is obviously stuck on) are even referring to him, and not some other John Mills when they sing...

Facing with the racing and the mason and the dude

Sideways seeing John Mills on the sidelines talking rude

The temporal and the corporal set sights above the moon

Tweaking down the police sound by singing them a tune

I did wonder who The Mason and The Dude might be (especially as this is pre-Lebowski). I did discover that James Mason teamed up with Sir John on the movie Tiara Tahiti in 1962, and it looks like an absolute blast... and just the kind of movie where you might find John Mills talking rude.

Anyway, the fIREHOSE track is pretty cool, and I hope they've fixed their keyboard since this was released in 1987.

Those of you who understand the way my mind works will probably be able to guess who features in the next edition of Celebrity Jukebox. And she has a few more songs to her name than her dad does...