Wednesday 26 September 2012

The Culture Section

Today I've been really cultural, having gone to the cinema AND the theatre, as well as having a yoghurt drink. While the yoghurt drink was disappointing - basically just yoghurt with a bit of water in it, my other cultural excursions were fabulous, darling! (Now that I'm cultured, I have to say things like "excursion" and "darling". It is the law and while I may be a bad ass, I will not let Lady Justice down.)

Firstly, I saw ParaNorman at the movie cinema picture screen house. If you haven't seen it, DO. It starts off with me desperately trying to find the toilets in the underground caverns of the cinema. I then battle with the hand dryer for a good 3 minutes because it keeps switching itself off and I MUST have dry hands before I can leave the toilet. 

When I get back to my seat, I find out Norman has been sat watching a zombie movie with his nanna but it turns out NANNA IS DEAD. Now I'm comfortable, I see Norman's dad chastising Norman for pretending to talk to dead people. But the twist is, he really CAN talk to the deads among us!  

Obviously a storyline follows from this initial set up, but after a series of complaints and letters of fiery hatred pertaining to my lack of spoiler alerts when discussing films I've seen, I won't go into it. What I will say is, Bruce Willis is a ghost. But that's all I'm going to say. 

The film is really well shot, a super mixture of stop motion (which EVERYONE should love because it's AWESOME) and CGI. The good thing is that the CGI doesn't look *too* CGI, because that would detract from the roughness of the stop motion. So for this I say, well done Gavin Bumhorner (<< A genuine name I spotted in the credits*) and the rest of the team! I give this film 7 corpses out of 11 graves.

Then I drank my yoghurt. 

My final bit of culture today came in the form of The Phantom of the Opera. Because I'm a major blogebrity**, I got free tickets. Anyone who knows me knows musical theatre is  my one true love****, so getting free tickets to see the Phantom is definitely up there with my wedding day and the birth of my children*****. 

The sets were fabulous, darling and the performances were, for the most part, excellent. However, I came to the conclusion after many years of research, if I were Christine, I would NOT have chosen Raoul. He's pushy and possessive and has an -extremely- nasal singing voice. Songs that he doesn't even write for himself. The Phantom is all kidnap and romance. I mean, isn't it every girl's dream to be abducted by a deformed, obsessive stalker who lives in the sewers where he writes very sexually charged music and sits clapping along with a monkey music box?****** I know it's mine!

High points included: 

Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again - the girl playing Christine (let's call her Lucy Bumhorner) belted that mother out and brought the glimmer of a tear to my stone cold eye.

The Phantom's weep-sing voice. It was very emotional for us all.

Low points included:

The idiot bitches sat behind us, talking the ENTIRE way through the first half. But don't worry, I sorted them out.

(Insert one of my classic photographs that I can't quite be bothered to draw I mean take at this hour of night. It depicts me shooting the bitches in the tits.)

WOW, I've really gone on here! Well...I guess you should stop reading about six paragraphs ago if you're bored by now.

Peace out.

x


*This is not a real name, though very similar to one I genuinely did spot in the credits, a name in which the word BUM strongly featured.

**Celebrity blogger.***

***I'm not a blogebrity in any way. I just made that word up. And no one reads my blog.

****For any lovers reading this, firstly, thanks for tuning in. Secondly, I'm not going to apologise for this statement, you knew the situation when you signed up for this.

*****I've had neither a wedding nor a childen. Until those things happen I'm totally allowed to claim that any minor but lovely event in my life is on a par of excellence with them.

******BTW, spoiler alert!

Wednesday 19 September 2012

Islands in the Stream

Oh Aunty M G! Hasn't it been a long time since last my words crept across your eyeballs like the death that creeps across us all? Yes. Yes it has. And do you know why? Well I'll tell you.

A few months ago I went to the doctor.


“It would seem your personality is in remission. I genuinely hate having to tell you that,” the doctor said, smiling.                  



“I see,” I said. “Is there anything to be done?”

“Negative. If I bleed you, it would finish you. Best to make what little time count and all that.”

I left the surgery feeling like wool unravelling. At home I lay on the sofa. The sun licked its way across the carpet, enveloping the extension of my foot with a scar of honey. Before too long, my legs were entirely ablaze. I thought about how fast I'd be able to run if my legs were on fire. Probably really fast.

Sleep ate me.

I found myself standing in a maze of pavements holding an artisan roll shaped like my face (yes, it was really massive). The baker who had made it was standing in front of me. I took a bite.

“Your chewing sounds like an alien invasion, dear, but that doesn't mean I love you any less than I did this morning. Far from it,” the baker said.

“How far?” I asked.

“Walk with me and I’ll show you.” We set off down the street, the houses leering like rowdy workmen. The doors wolf whistled as they opened and closed.

“You could wear this day, dear,” said the baker. “It’s just your colour.”

I wasn't sure whether he was speaking in flattery or foolery, but I tittered like a lady in waiting nonetheless.

We crossed a golf course. The place had been abandoned for years. The ghosts of golf balls winged over our heads. Children sat in the bunkers building sand châteaux.

“If a chateau is not old, it must be grand,” he said impatiently. “Children can be so juvenile sometimes.”

We walked to the pier. The baker slotted a clean 50p into the mouth of the binocular viewer and invited me to take a look.

As was to be expected, an island loomed. It was made out of Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers.
They relied entirely on one another to stay afloat.

Distracted as I was, I didn't notice the baker pushing me into the water. I woke up, drowning.

There’s nothing quite like a near death experience to cure all ills. After that I was fine, but then I had to do my dissertation and a Fringe show, so I've been really quite busy. I did have another thing I wanted to talk to you about, but I'll save that for next time since my true life story has already taken up so much of your precious time << LOLJKS! You clearly don't count time as a worthy commodity if you're browsing the internet at this time of night...loser.


LOTS of Real Love!