Monday, February 20, 2006
A monkey stole my face / took me down to another place / now I am leader of their race
I don't know about you, but I glossed over the 'face transplant' story from a few weeks ago.
This is not to say that I ignored it, I just didn't take it all in. I read the headlines, looked at the diagrams, and thought 'Great, a feel-good-about-medical-science-story' and continued with the important staring I have been doing recently.
The thing is I already feel damned good about medical science, (it is fantastic!). So, I reasoned, I was only going to get so much mileage out of any news article on the face transplant.
It is only now that I learn why the transplant was needed in the first place. Did everyone else know the event that led to it? Am I in a minority of one? The only person who didn't know that, Isabelle Dinoire took some sleeping pills, fell asleep on her sofa and woke up to find her pet dog had eaten her face off. Yes. Her dog ate her face right off. Can someone explain how this element of the story was not a red-top news extravaganza in itself? Man Alive! what's happening with the world? Do the laws of nature still apply? Man's best friend has turned against us, will life ever be the same again? It is in times like this that I am reminded of the Simpsons' episode where Aunt Selma marries Sideshow Bob. Asked where she got her money from, Selma explains, 'I bought shares in Mace just before society collapsed'. Mrs Dinoire lost her nose, both lips and her chin after she was mauled by
her pet Labrador while she slept in June last year. The dog was later put down,
against the family's wishes.
Friday, February 17, 2006
The movies save on conversation / And the TV saves on sight
Like many, I found the whole controversy surrounding those Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad rather depressing. However, For me personally, there were some silver linings to this particular cloud.
I was secretly delighted that my close friends -usally so quick to point out any feeble resemblance - missed a trick.
That suicide-bomber impersonator / Bedford-based drug dealer, Omar Khayam (22), looked like an Asian me. Look!
Thus Mr. Khayam joins that exclusive club of people who I have looked a bit like.
For reference, other members include,
Me at age 10: Woody Allen, (though this was largely an attack from my big brother, who made the accusation when I had to quickly get a replacement pair os specs from Specsavers at short notice when I broke my normal pair before a family holiday. My emergency pair of glasses had thick brown plastic frames)
me at age 11-12 : Cliff Richard, apparently.
me at age 13: Skelator
me between the ages of 14-16: Mark Lamarr
me at the ages of 17-20: New Zealand cricketer Daniel Vettori and / or the lead singer from Semisonic. (Looking back on it, this was probably my prime, I won't see those kind of days again).
Age 22/3:Trevor Horn.
Brilliant.
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Put the book back on the shelf / I know the company you keep
I am working like a fiend at the moment.
Today, I travelled back from Sunny Norwich on a train. At Ipswich, a posse of six thesps got on. Noisy and ostentatious conversation flooded the carriage. It transpired that it was some sort of outing to the West End by a delegation from a stage School. The two elders were drama teachers, retired treaders-of-the-boards, both. Their wards were upper middle class sixth form drama students - the boys all neatly moussed hair, short scarves and studiously dropped 'g's.
I am not usually good at eavesdropping on the conversations of strangers, but today I couldn't avoid it. I was caught in the crossfire.
I warmed to the two camp pedagogues immediately. The first one began proffering one of the students some unnecessarily loud insights on how to get an agent, 'You know Freddie, what you need to do is get 'Contacts', Y'know, that one that lists all the agents, and just fire off letters to them all, offering them your show reel - you might get a nibble'. Priceless.
As the journey progressed, they tired of their set pieces, the gentle ribbing of their students, and got down to the brass tacks: bitching about professional actors. I offer their judgements up for public consumption.
Apparently, lots of professional actors arn't actually very good.
Daniel Day-Lewis is an "An extraordinarily mixed-up kettle of fish....Those Hamlet stories are very worrying, no?"
Anton Lesser too was condemned by my carriage-buddies. The older drama tutor had once appeared in a TV production in which the character Lesser played had a hump. Though according to these guys, he cut up rough in make-up and argued that he could just bend his back a bit for the role. His case was sealed by the other tutor,
"I once described Lesser to someone as a short David Essex".
