Just a short one, impressive and delicious reader.
I was leafing idly through the sporting pages the other day when I came across the “profile” of an emerging young Australian Rules footballer. You know the sort of thing. They list his favourite colour, most influential role model, favourite Romantic Poet and 3 tips for averting climate change.
Immediately after “Favourite meal: spaghetti Bolognese” came “Favourite film: The Shawshank Redemption.” There was something in this that gave me cause for pause.
Not the spag bol. That is quite understandable. These young fellows are wrenched from mum’s cooking at a fairly early age and thrust into share households with other young men who spend hours every day working up an appetite. Spag bol is the only thing that they can cook that will fill that hole.
No, what struck me was the good old Shawshank Redemption.
I have read a few of these player profiles over the years and it occurs to me that ever since “The Shawshank Redemption” came out, any professional AFL footballer who has been asked has given it as his favourite film.
At first I doubted that this could be correct, but I checked it out by going through back issues of the newspaper on microfiche at the local library and I think I can say it is official. Not a single player has given any other film as his favourite. Not one.
In the interests of science I should have gone back further to see if there was another film that was favoured before the release of “Shawshank”, but the microfiche zooming all over the place had given me one of those headaches that older readers may remember, so I stopped.
What I would like to know is, what is it about this film that makes it appeal to professional AFL footballers? Some of them are nearly as old as the film itself, but that doesn’t seem to make any difference.
As always, I turned to reason and logical thinking for an answer, and was rewarded with 2 possible explanations.
The first is that there is something about being a skilled AFL player that makes you like the film.
The second possible explanation is that there is something about watching this film that makes you into a better AFL player.
I don’t know which of these is true, but the science is rock solid. I have a control.
In the best scientific tradition, I applied my theory to myself. This is what my researches revealed.
I don’t really like “The Shawshank Redemption” much.
I WAS A TERRIBLE FOOTBALLER.
Yes, the proof of this particular pudding is in the eating and I ate up nearly one hundred games of amateur football in which I amply demonstrated that I should have stayed home and learned how to knit or something.
This leaves the burning question, could I have helped myself by forcing myself to sit through “The Shawshank Redemption”?
Perhaps I could have. I should say that it is not likely as I stopped playing long before the film was released. But might this work for other inept and ill co-ordinated youngsters who long to carve out a career in sport? Imagine row upon row of them forced to watch it on a continuous loop until they could do a lace out stab pass on the run or whatever they are called.
Alternatively, they could be shown “The Shawshank Redemption” and if they don’t like it, could pursue a different career. Possibly in film criticism. Or advanced cookery.
Another thing that occurs to me is that AFL is a game with an unusual set of skills. Possibly professionals in other codes show a preference for other films. Perhaps Union footballers like “The Great Escape”, League footballers enjoy “The Magnificent Seven” and Association footballers relax in front of, for example, “Deliverance”.
There is also the question of other professional athletes and indeed other trades, callings and professions.
Do plumbers all like “To Kill a Mockingbird”. Do teachers relax in front of “Citizen Kane”? Is there something about watching “La Cage Au Folles” that enables you to make better shoes?
I don’t know. The research that I have conducted to this point have all but exhausted me and I pass the baton to my readerboat.
It seems to me that there is a rich vein to be tapped here. Again, without any thought of a Nobel Prize, allow me to offer myself as a control.
I like “Being John Malkovich” and “Cool Hand Luke”. If anyone knows what that says about me, I would be pleased to know.
October 4, 2007 at 7:06 pm |
No.1, for once. Captain, Skipper, the Big Cheese….
My favourite film back in the olden days was Star Virgin, this rather sad tale of a girl who was in pain because she could not orgasm; until Mentor, a robot, gave her a MASH-type plastic wand with instructions to “Put-this-in-your-fanny – It-will-ease-the-pain.” Which it did ~ how or why I do not know.
Perhaps, Big, you have seen this sad tale on SBS.
Because it was my favourite, I never reached the dizzy heights of AFL, and had to retire from the Under 13 B’s to watch my favourite film in private.
October 4, 2007 at 7:21 pm |
My favorite, shown annually on the Special Broadcasting Service, is La maschera del demonio (aka Black Sunday). This must have a connection to my skill in table tennis. I have yet to verify this is favored by other table tennissers, but offer for your readers to hit back over the net.
October 4, 2007 at 7:26 pm |
…oh, and the one about the island of vampire lesbians. But I can’t remember it’s title. Anyone?
October 4, 2007 at 7:32 pm |
I know nothing (or even less) of the rules of AFL. Does it require a player to carve a chess set, or fend off a gang of butch men in the showers? If so, Shawshank might be very instructional.
I like the film: should I be in touch with Geelong for a trial?
(Liking Being John Malkovich & Cool Hand Luke means that you have good taste. I like Bladerunner which means I am an aging nerd).
October 4, 2007 at 8:32 pm |
Bladerunner starred Harrison Ford, who was a poor AFL footballer, but a good all round athlete, as evidenced by his athlete-it-ism in the Indian Jones series.
Mind you, he revealed his dark side in ‘Apocka Lips Now’, and also ‘The Conversation’, which suggests that, rather than being a good table tennis player, as Stability suggests, maybe he’s a dab hand at ping pong.
And, before the protests start, let me remind Instability and the readeryacht that there is a world of difference….
October 5, 2007 at 1:48 am |
There is a movie called “Ping Pong” about when Satoh burst onto the scene with a sponge bat and revolutionised the game. But this puts a different angle on Olly’s treatise, what if the movie is about a sport? I leave this for more developed minds and cooler heads. (Is egg swallowing a sport?)
October 5, 2007 at 9:45 am |
OK, I thought this might be a bit controversial and am pleased to see that the readerpontoon has maintained the usual high standard of comment.
I may or may not be familiar with “Star Virgin”. I am unable to advise what special skills that movie might impart/reveal. I think it is up to some bloke to investigate. If we can’t find anyone else, Some Bloke should do it.
Boom boom.
I would be pleased to hear from other table tennissers or ping pongers in the interests of science. As pleased as I would be to offer of myself, I have neither seen the film nor played table tennis so I will just take stats if that is OK.
Harrison Ford was famously a carpenter before he became a fillum actor so it would be interesting to find out what his favourite film is. I can’t say why, but I would guess “The Wild One” or whatever that Brando film was called with all the motorbikes in it.
Petra, in my experience of Aussie Rules there was not much chess set carving but the showers were fraught. With all sorts of things. If it was not inappropriate touching (and, in my case, jeering) it was some humourist tossing a turd around like a monkey in the zoo. I elected to shower at home.
I don’t think that there is much point seeking a trial with Geelong, but I can give you Port Adelaide’s number. You would slot right in as ruck rover.
StabiloBOSS, your question is one which, I admit, caused me some disquiet. There is no end of films about sport which would mean that AFL players would like “The Club”, League players “This Sporting Life” ( a ripper for mine), Association Footballers “Ekscape to Victory With Pele”. As for Union players, I am not sure. Maybe “Brideshead Revisited” or something else a bit toffee.
On balance, however, I am not sure if a link can be made between depiction of a sport or other endeavour and proficiency in that activity. Again, the answer might be in looking outside of sport.
For example, is that film about Oscar Wilde with Stephen Fry in it a favourite amongst oakum pickers?
Love
Big Olly
PS: if egg swallowing isn’t a sport, I don’t know what is.
October 5, 2007 at 11:24 am |
Guten Wiedersehen, Ollie der Groβ,
The Kinematograf phenomenon to which StabilloBoβ refers is, of course, VAMPYROS LESBOS! An orgiastic rollercoaster of sapho-porphyric genius from the hand of Meisterdirektor Jesus Franco set to 1970’s musik and fashion.
I don’t think it has improved my sporting prowess but it has substantially aided my ability to watch the Netball.
October 5, 2007 at 11:34 am |
Ah, a welcome return Herr Quince-Jellie.
Thank you so much for that information. This gives rise to a further thought. While I would not describe the ability to watch netball as a skill in the traditional sense, it is a capacity not vouchsafed (vouchsafen?) unto everyone.
Frankly I am reluctant to conduct a poll of netball spectators to see if there is a link with this particular work. Volunteers?
Love
Big Olly
October 5, 2007 at 12:20 pm |
Ollie,
I have heard a rumour to the effect that a certain large American hi-tech corporation rather sneakily contrives to show “Westworld” to its rising young middle managers on team-building weekends (on a sixteen millimeter projector, in a tepee on the lee side of a little island in Puget Sound)to see their reaction to the scene where all the white-coated computer nerds in the underground building start to peg out after the air conditioning has died. Their future career direction is determined at that point……..
October 5, 2007 at 12:31 pm |
Ah, Westworld, a sort of Mechanical Magnificent Seven as I recall.
Those pesky large American hi-tech corporations. Whatever will they get up to next?
I’m as mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it any more!
Love
Big Olly
October 5, 2007 at 12:39 pm |
I have it on good authority that Australian sprinter Matt Shirvington’s favourite film is ‘Chariots of Fire’, particularly the slow-mo scenes that he recreates in every race meet.
“Bling blingblingbling__bling
bling blingbling bling_bling et-bloody-cetera.”
And Olly, B. – “if egg swallowing isn’t a sport, I don’t know what is.”
Cutting the heads off car parking meters, that’s what. Becoming a rarer sport by the day…
October 5, 2007 at 12:58 pm |
Well, that news of Shirvington’s favourite film is perhaps proof that the depiction of a sport in one’s favourite film does not make one adept at that particular sport, otherwise that waddling turd would be vastly more fleet of foot.
Had Shirvington’s fave been Star Virgins, on the other hand, the theory may have been part way to being proven. But I digress and descend.
Allow me to return the discussion to the scientific plane by advising that it has just occurred to me that I am fairly good at throwing scrunched up balls of paper into the bin. Could that be Being John Malkovich or Cool Hand Luke?
Is anyone else in a position to tell? There must be someone who can find the bin from any part of the room. Come on, own up. And tell us what films may have influenced you.
Love
Big Olly
October 5, 2007 at 1:09 pm |
Big Olly
It might also be worth pointing out that fondness for particular movies is one of those things that may be transferred by organ transplant. The Shawshank redemption is an interesting case in point, as most people carry an innate immunity from affection for the film. This immunity resides largely in the cartilage of the knees, and as the cartilage wears or is removed surgically, so the propensity for affection for his movie increases. Hence, of course, its poularity amongst AFL players.
Another case crops up with the movies that are themselves about organ donation and transplant. There is a delicious irony here, that affection for such movies is linked directly to the body’s auto-immune responses. So recent organ recipients – who are of course on immunosuppressants – frequently sit unmoved through such tear-jerkers “No Marrow for Tony” and “A New Kidney for Sue” which generally reduce the regular populace to a sobbing mess.
October 5, 2007 at 1:25 pm |
Well thanks for that, Sigismund. You have thrown a possible spanner into my own theories, but best that I know now rather than embarass myself before the Nobel committee. Again.
Your interesting “take” on organ recipients leads me to wonder how such persons fare in the face of the greatest recipient of them all, Frankenstein’s Monster. Are they unmoved when he indulges in the dual pleasures of “smoke” and “drink”. Does not a not unmanly tear roll down their cheeks at the violin music scene.
Which leads me to wonder whether “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” has any effect on somnambulists? It is likely I am drawing too long a bow at this point, but I think of it as pushing the envelope.
Love
Big Olly
October 5, 2007 at 1:35 pm |
On the contrary Big Olly
My heart swelled with vicarious pride when I read your latest post. I know you do not claim to be a man of science, but let me say that I find your reasoning faultless and your logic impeccable. The organ donation issue is merely one the delightful ways in which the natural world challenges us to understand its intricacies. Recent organ recipients do not much care for the Frankenstein movie, but they are not unique in that.
Although it is not my usual way to speak of matters relating to myself, the only film for which I hold any real affection is “The Railway Children”
October 5, 2007 at 1:45 pm |
That does not surprise me Sigismund. I have long suspected that “The Railway Children” is fondly regarded by deep thinkers.
But does it engender deep thought? Who can say?
If there is a link between the subject matter and the attribute to which it is linked I would imagine that affection for The Railway Children would be associated with a fondness for model railways.
Tell me, Sigismund, how are you on Hornsby?
Love
Big Olly
October 5, 2007 at 1:52 pm |
Big Olly
To me, The Railway Children is not really about railways. It speaks more to youth, excitement, and rites of passage. It is also notable because of Jenny Agutter’s preternatural endowment. Now that certainly made me Hornsby.
October 5, 2007 at 1:54 pm |
Drawing the bow, and pushing the envelope. I thought about entering these at the Masters Games but I did not qualify. It is because two of my faourites are Robin Hood (1938) and Il Postino.
October 5, 2007 at 2:40 pm |
So on this basis then, pulling the envelope a bit, glam pair Tom and Nicoles favourite film (apart from the excellent ‘Days of Thunder’) would of been ‘Freaks’. Or have I completely missed the point here?
Mind you, ever since I saw the excellent Sly Stallone film ‘Cliffhanger’, Nicole has done nothing for me, no more than any other praying mantis or stick insect would.
October 5, 2007 at 2:43 pm |
It always seems to come back to Jenny Agutter, doesn’t it.
That is probably my favourite thing about this forum.
As for you, Johnny, perhaps your bow drawing would have been better if you had embraced the more recent Robin Hood subtitled, I think, “Prince of Thieves” with a theme song by Roger Whittaker or someone. As for your envelope pushing, there could be a problem with translation.
Love
Big Olly
October 5, 2007 at 2:54 pm |
Sorry, Some, you slipped in under my guard while I was crafting my widely acclaimed response to Sigismund and Johnny.
I can’t see why Tom and Nicole would not have enjoyed “Freaks” but according to each edition of about the last 3 years issues of “Famous” magazine suggest that “Kramer vs Kramer” is a more likely pick.
Love
Big Olly
October 5, 2007 at 3:46 pm |
“And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.”
Dashed if I know what that’s got to do with Olympian athletes running along beaches.
Dashed if I know what it’s got to do with anything really. As long as I live I swear I shall never understand why the Protestants troubled to translate theses wretched texts. Leave them in Latin and set the first line to Gregorian chant, I say. Works a treat down my way!
Still, the bling-bling music is rather memorable – ah, but Nosferatu! – now there’s a film to give you the runs!
October 5, 2007 at 7:07 pm |
I think the ‘Chariot(s) of Fire’ is referring to Blake (William, not 7: both are esteemed equally over here)
It’s supposed to be inspirational:
‘bring me my bow of burning gold’ I doubt watching Robin Hood back to back for a year would help Mr Twohats use such an implement accurately. (Asbestos gloves might).
The rest of it is pretty inaccurate as well:
‘And did those feet… walk upon England’s mountains green?’
Erm, well no actually, wasn’t it Israel? That’s why you titled it ‘Jerusalem’! (Must have been out of his tree)
(Coincidentally Big Olly, this is what Union types like to sing along to. Assuming you mean Rugby Union, not the Esteemed Guild of Saggermaker’s Bottomknockers)
October 6, 2007 at 8:20 pm |
Those Aussie boys don’t know what real spaghetti bolognese is like…here, learn something… you may have to feed fifty guys some day. You start with olive oil…fry some garlic, see. And then fry some sausage…or meat balls if you like…then you throw in the tomatoes, the tomato paste…some basil; and a little red wine…that’s my trick. Paulie, Paulie where are you Paulie.
October 8, 2007 at 12:26 pm |
It seems to me that in perhaps some strange subconscious way Sigismund has mixed up his quaint old English railway branch line films. He seems to be talking about “The railway children” but it sounds more like “The Titfield Thunderbolt” to me (in which the pivotal sequence involved a tank engine being manhandled by a drunken railwayman and going completely off the rails). Reminds me of an old buffer (sic) I knew who got “Oh Mr Porter” mixed up with “The Night Porter”. Neither of them had Bobby Helpmann in them although I believe he managed to get his gig in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang mainly from his sterling work as the sinister spy in “The Quiller Memorandum”. Incidently I can’t remember the name of the rather nice young girl in that film, but she had a certain passing resemblence to Jenny Agutter.
October 8, 2007 at 12:39 pm |
Hornby? It was Tri-ang for me. A great institution, gone the way of all things, now.
I still have the electric train that was handed down from my big brother, carefully packed away, awaiting my second childhood. It has a long, sleek, black, steam-locomotive that produces real smoke if you pour some drops of peculiar substance into the stack and there’s a box car and a refrigeration car and a goods van and a guard’s van and (oddly) a rolling platform that launches a helicopter triggerred by the passage of a certain switch on the track. Must have been a Cold War thing.
Ah, now, don’t get me started on the Cold War! Weren’t they just simpler, happier days for all of us!?
October 8, 2007 at 12:50 pm |
Wasn’t “Night Porter” was a song by David Sylvian.
Gentlemen take polaroids. They fall in love. They fall in lo-o-o-o-o-ove!
Or something.
October 8, 2007 at 1:26 pm |
Ah, some cords, or possibly chords have been touched here. I must say, whenever I use that expression I think of the corduroy shorts that were my Sunday best as a child, but in retrospect that may not be what is meant.
Anyway, nice to hear from you, Monsignor. And you too, Petra.
I am broadly familiar with the words of “Jerusalem” and have been known to pass them lightly over the larynx while in the shower but cannot claim to have ever really understood what they meant.
For footballing purposes, we used to sing what we thought of as the “Maria Trilogy”. There were 2 Tony Christie songs, “I Did What I Did For Maria” and “(Is This the Way) to Amarillo” which we would round out with “Take a Letter, Maria.”
I am not sure why this theme was present in our post football singing. Possibly in forming the original thesis for this post I should have looked at song choices rather than films. I am now in blood so steeped, however, that it would be tedious of me to go back.
Clemenza, great to hear from you. Do you slice the garlic with a razor blade?
Anyway, I thought that one didn’t put garlic in Bolognese?
Dr. Hackenbacker, I remember the Titfield Thunderbolt. Might I say, you have shown remarkable restraint in not trying to make an association between that film and Jenny Agutter.
Jay, I have heard tell of such marvels but it goes without saying that they did not form part of my youth. One of my uncles had a working model steam engine (by which I don’t mean a railway engine, just a little motor on a stand) for which I would have given my eye teeth, but I didn’t get it. It seems that it was NOT A TOY. Ridiculous!
Love
Big Olly
October 8, 2007 at 3:00 pm |
Car’ Ollito,
Many times have I not written to the Acadamia di Bologna to dissolve for me the enigma whether the garlic is not put into the ragu alla bolognese. And at last have they not responded with an official answer to my query? Not! No, indeed!
Not, they say, that they would not were it not otherwise.
But would it were not so, eh?
Still, this is la moda del mondo, Ollito mio, is it not? When one asks a simple question one can rarely comprehend the answer.
October 8, 2007 at 3:13 pm |
Antonio, I think that this is your first comment and I am pleased to see that your famously generous passions have been aroused.
I’m afraid I have never had much luck in my correspondences with the Acadamia, but until now I suspected that the problem lay in my translation.
I see now that perhaps I was selling myself short.
Love
Big Olly
October 8, 2007 at 3:54 pm |
I am terribly disturbed to hear that W Blake is as revered as B7. Unless perhaps the former was a script writer for the latter, Petra? All now becomes clear.
October 8, 2007 at 7:44 pm |
Indeed he was. As was the other famous Blakey, although his catchphrase ‘I ‘ate yoo Orac!’ was mysteriously edited out.
October 8, 2007 at 9:04 pm |
Well Mrs Fide, who was the famous Blakey who used to say,
“You’re gonna get it this time, But-ler!”
But Butler never did get it.
Speaking od Buses, my career as a Bathurst racing driver died the day I saw ‘The Wages of Fear’, if not the greatest film ever, then certainly the greatest. It’s one thing for some well paid prima donna to get pedal to the medal, whatever that means, but Mario, Jojo et al are the true heroes. Jojo variously had a rock thrown at him, shat himself, deserted the cause, wasn’t allarda piss on the bomb hole and had Mario run over him in the oil pit, breaking every bone in his body, prior to dying as mission was accomplished.
My point being, Jojo wore his uniform just as proudly as Butler.
October 9, 2007 at 4:15 am |
Mrs Chemiclz please, if we’re using my married name.
You’ve rather lost me there M. Bloke, not least because The Wages of Fear isn’t about buses (but at least you didn’t mention Summer Holiday, or Speed or the Double Deckers, just because they are). I’m sure Big Olly will sort it all out.
Incidentally, ‘Blake’s 7′ was originally written as ‘7 Blakes’: Blake & his team consisting of the aforementioned Blakey & William, Edwards, Arthur, Bashoff & Carrington off of ‘Die-nasty’.
October 9, 2007 at 9:40 am |
Intriguing, Petra. Now one thing remains. Pray tell how were the 7 Blakes to be cast in Blake’s 7? Carrington was surely to play Jenna.
October 9, 2007 at 10:09 am |
Dear me! This is getting a bit challenging, but I will see what I can do.
This Bloke refers to buses but in fact is talking about racing in general. Buses are not raced at Bathurst. Only cars and, as of last weekend, kangaroos, are allowed onto the track.
“Wages” was not about buses but big trucks. I have never driven either a bus or a truck but have seen it done quite often and am sure that the “skillset” is similar. I suggest in passing that Yves Montand wanted to be in this gritty macho film to make up for having a girls name. Not so much written down, but when you say it it sounds like “Eve”. Well, that’s how I say it, anyway.
As for the discussion of Blake’s 7, what I can’t help wondering was who was going to play K9?
Love
Big Olly
October 9, 2007 at 10:32 am |
Servilan, you infernal creature, I won’t squeal to the federation!! (even though I always did envy you your wardrobe & the hypnotic hold you seemed to hold over Avon)
K9 was going to be played by Otis (or was it Milo?) but he/she/it came down with distemper.
October 9, 2007 at 11:21 am |
Yes, there was much in my wardrobe to be envied. Not so the special effects.
Otis was replaced by Daggit who, oddly enough, was not offered a contract in the remake of Galactica.
October 9, 2007 at 7:48 pm |
I used to feel sorry for the beleagured special effects person Matt Whatsit. He was never off Blue Peter showing kids how he made a spaceship by painting windows onto an old hairdryer. That wasn’t a toy version, that was the actual prop!
Daggit was the cause of many an unfortunate pet needing to be snipped from tin foil embelishments. When a dog wasn’t available, hamsters suffered instead (Although not as much as when ‘V’ came along).
This is obviously why I didn’t make the hockey team: too much DIY ‘transporter bracelet’ manufacture & not enough practice…
October 10, 2007 at 8:11 am |
I well recall a phase of my hot youth when I was both a Dr. Who fan and helping my father make a trailer.
One Saturday afternoon I spent tinkering around with the primitive electrics (you know, tail lights, brake lights and indicators which never quite work properly so that every time your dad needs the trailer you spend 20 minutes standing behind it shouting out whether the brake lights are working, which they aren’t, while he is either working the pedals or fiddling around with the plug and swearing). I came inside and settled down for the next instalment of the good Doctor’s latest adventure.
Imagine my surprise when, during a close up on one of the Daleks, I recognised a Hella stop/tail light as one of the protuberances on top. For some reason this added to rather than detracted from my enjoyment.
As for not making the hockey team, Petra, it is clear that Blake’s 7 is to blame. I am sure that, had you watched Dr Who instead, you would have bolted it in.
Not that I did.
Love
Big Olly
October 10, 2007 at 8:25 am |
Big Olly, I’m pretty relieved I was so bad at hockey. It’s probably why I still retain my own teeth. I admit to watching Dr Who as well. That’s why I missed the netball team too.
October 10, 2007 at 8:35 am |
Well I must be wrong about that then. And I will admit that I don’t know anyone who likes Dr. Who and excels at netball. Oh, hang on. There is India Ward (age 10). But she only seems to like the new series which, while greatly enjoyable, is hardly the same thing.
Love
Big Olly
October 10, 2007 at 8:58 am |
Yes David Tennant is far to hale & hearty to be an icon for we nerdy shut-ins. The monsters are also too realistic & therefore less frightening. That one with Tom Baker in a lighthouse & a man covered in moss terrified the bejaysus out of me. I still can’t look at a sphagnum without shuddering.
October 10, 2007 at 10:52 am |
I think Blakey used to say “I’ll get you Butler”. Thus continuing the great comedy tradition. What the butler saw, what the butler did, who’s minding the butler, and so on. Perhaps my volunteer work can be attributed to the film “Wages of Fear” or was it “Fear of Wages” in a Goon/ Goodies/ Benny Hill skit. As for garlic in bolognese sauce, I think you have been too long with the fishes Clemenza. Come over for a cup of coffee sometime testa de caccooz.
October 10, 2007 at 10:55 am |
…and how is it, that other knob in On The Buses used to score all the birds? He was as ugly as a hatfull of arseholes (face like a twisted sandshoe) and had the personality to match. I’ll never understand women, Bosie, Oscar you seem like men of the world. Maybe you have some advice.
October 11, 2007 at 12:06 pm |
Ollie, Ollie, Ollie, I must say I am surprised and dismayed that you were surprised at seeing the Hella lights on a Dalek. Why? Because it should have been NO surprise at all. Why? Because Daleks are OBVIOUSLY German. Just as Dr Who is OBVIOUSLY all about boffins alternately slouching around high table at Cambridge and seeing off the Boche with lots of string, punched tape, a tube amplifier or two stolen from an Ecko radio…. the crap special effects are a meta-metaphor for the crap reality-need I go on? But I digress… In fact just about every British TV program ever made is either about Mentioning The War or alternately Not Mentioning The War which is just the same thing.
They’re obsessed!
October 11, 2007 at 12:09 pm |
That got me thinking about B7 and Servilan and Avon. When we were kids we thought their relationship had the unmistable imprimature of grown-upness in comparison to the rest of the cast. Ah youth!
October 11, 2007 at 12:44 pm |
I think Dr H is right about the Cambridge-toff aspect of Dr W – especially in the eighties when Tristan from All Creatures Great and Small was the good doctor with his college cricket sweater and his donnish frock-coat and his strange attachment to his cute but sinister public school-boy off-sider, Turlough – just like the treasonous Cantabridgian queers of the Cold War.
By contrast, “Father Dear Father” possessed no subversive, encoded, political message.
October 11, 2007 at 1:10 pm |
Yeah, but who’d of fought that the glamour from ‘Are You Being Served Sir?’ (not Mr Humphries, but the bird, Miss Brahms, was it?) would turn out to be the miserable old bag in Eastenders married to the Mr Roper from “Man about the House’ lookalike?
It just beggars belief, I tell you, and this from some bloke who has never watched a Dr W episode in my life, but did dance to the disco song of it that one regrettable time…..
October 12, 2007 at 5:24 am |
“By contrast, ‘Father Dear Father’ possessed no subversive, encoded, political message” It did! Viewers were kept in a state of blissful ignorance by the last-minute title change from ‘Fatherland Dear Fatherland’…
October 12, 2007 at 11:22 am |
Hi Gang, Christian Slater here!
“All Creatures Great ‘n’ Small” had a lot to concern us.
Set in the misleadingly idyllic English countryside, it told the story of two brothers who were veterinary surgeons, and a lacky vet brought in from Scotland, whose principal job seem to be putting his arm up to his shoulder in cow’s bottoms. Outside the Sydney Mardi Gras, it is difficult to think of a place where it would happen with such regularity.
The brothers would have been born during either the German hating period of World War I or World War II, yet their names were those of the Wagnerian heroes Sigfried and Tristran.
There is, God help us, an unscreened seventh series of “Creatures”, in which Simon Weisenthal tracks them down and unmasks them as the children of Lord Haw Haw, and the idyllic villagers shave their heads and hang them from the old Oak tree on the village green with signs around their neck saying “collaborator” and “Nazi sympathiser”.
Don’t get me started on the unscreened 17th series of “It Ain’t Half Hot Mum” in which the song and dance team do what they must to survive on the Burma railway.
October 12, 2007 at 9:57 pm |
German names have never had any sort of stigma attached over here. Actual Germans on the other hand have had to integrate & not desport lederhosen except under cover of darkness.
How very like the life of our own dear Queen…
October 15, 2007 at 11:40 am |
I was a footballer in the SANFL which then was the highest level in the State for that sport. I was, until my untimely death, widely regarded as a tough guy in the time when it meant something, I contrast to the sterile game that AFL is today.
Yet my favourite food was oysters au gratin and my favourite film was “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” starring Alan Arkin.
What does this say of your “so-called” theory?
October 15, 2007 at 11:45 am |
I wrote really dull books, over 70 in all which is pretty bad as only three are remebered (Storm Boy, Februaury Dragon and the other one where the car has it’s oil drained).
My favourite food was porride without sweetner nor seasoning, and my favourite film anything written by, directed by and starring Kevin Costner (except Field of Dreams).
I guess that proves your theory, whatever it is supposed to be.
I stole the story about the oil to, no point in continuing to deny it.
October 15, 2007 at 11:47 am |
ok, I meant “its” and “porridge”
So many critics. Let’s see you write a book that becomes a film.
Oh yeah, I forgot Blue Fin, the film that sunk a tuna boat as well as Greg Rowe and Hardy Krugger’s careers.
October 15, 2007 at 12:17 pm |
Big,
I happened across your weblog whilst checking the sea and all of my APRA and other royalty payments have been made. I should declare here at my favourite food is broccoli.
It is interesting that you refer to “Cool Hand Luke” as one of your favourite films because of the subliminal effect it clearly had on you.
In the scene where Luke visits his dying mother in the background one of the prisoners is singing “Just A Closer Walk With Thee” within which Our Lord Jesus Christ is referred to as “Sweet Redeemer”, the very title of this post! Spooky!
Those interested will also note “Just A Closer Walk With Thee (With New Second Line)” is also the funeral march in the opening scene of my favourite film from Cubby Brocolli’s James Bond series: “Live and let Die” starring Roger Moore, the footballer.
Spookier yet!
October 15, 2007 at 12:44 pm |
Howdy kids, sorry to have been “off the air” for a while but you all seem to have fared pretty well without me.
I note in passing that the lovely Jenny seems to have popped in and then out again. It is always great to see her and I wonder when next she will grace us. I hope she is a little better covered next time as I have concerns for her health.
I am pleased to see that we have weathered a reference to Dr Who without being swamped by a whole lot of unneccesary references to Sylvester McCoy. Until now.
In passing, I think that Colin’s book where the sump got drained was “Sun on the Stubble”. As I may or may not have mentioned, I was more of a fan of the work of Ivan Southall who wrote for aslightly older readership and spent much time dealing with the sort of issues that adolescents had to deal with. Back then it was mainly when one could start wearing long trousers and making sure one had a clean hankie.
I suspect that the Ivan Southalls of the new generation, should there be any, would have other issues with which to deal.
I am not sure whether Oscar is one of the Oscar Hammerteins who has already contributed or not, though from his tone it seems not. In any event, a considered and welcome contribution. I don’t think that there has been a “broccoli” theme here before.
Love
Big Olly
October 15, 2007 at 1:12 pm |
Jenny Agutter (what a dish)
appears and next doth vanish.
Why is it so? asked Dr Miller
Is she just a stocking filler?
October 15, 2007 at 2:35 pm |
How could I be other than myself, when my authoritive references to film music are concerned? A little more appreciation of my efforts, rather than dismissing them as an act of a nom d’plume would be appreciated.
OH the III
October 15, 2007 at 7:48 pm |
Hope your Pa doesn’t turn up again & kick off…
October 15, 2007 at 10:18 pm |
Big Olly
Love your work. Did Ivan Southall write the one about the truck carrying cyanide tipping over on a country road? I still have nightmares about that.
ps I once caught a bus with Jim Theil (RIP). He was wearing a t-shirt and had very big mussels.
October 16, 2007 at 7:58 am |
Jenny Agutter, née le 20 décembre 1952 à Taunton (Somerset), en Grande-Bretagne, est une actrice britannique.
Fille d’un millitaire de carrière, elle voyage beaucoup pendant son enfance. Depuis le début des années 1960 et jusqu’à nos jours, elle a joué dans de très nombreux films ou dans de nombreuses séries télévisées anglo-saxonnes.
À l’âge de 21 ans, elle déménage pour Los Angeles, où elle obtient le succès grâce à des films comme Equus (1977) ou Le Loup-garou de Londres (1981). Son rôle le plus célèbre est sans doute celui de Jessica 6 dans le film de science-fiction L’Âge de cristal (Logan’s run, 1977).
Elle a par ailleurs joué trois fois dans des adaptations du classique de la littérature pour enfants The Railway Children (Edith Nesbit), en 1967, 1970 et 2000.
October 16, 2007 at 8:40 am |
Vraiment. She’s also one of the bad guys (in the non-gender specific sense of course) in ‘Spooks’ if you’re a fan of her more recent work.
October 16, 2007 at 11:33 am |
Stop taunting me with the name of that evil seductress!
I swear my restless shade shall wander the blasted wastelands of this other world in search of her. On the wings of the airless winds, across the insubstantial seas of limbo, until I find that railway child and fix her little red guard’s-van!
October 16, 2007 at 11:51 am |
Olly dear heart
I am pleased that cher Marcel has deigned to post.
Since he slipped quietly into the spirit world he has not been much of a conversationalist; a bit stand-offish perhaps? I do admit that oftentimes souls find me rather intimidating, what with my sparkling wit and all, but still, I fancy cher Marcel is rather too preoccupied with walls, glass boxes and winds – none of which are there!
One of the compensations Olly dear, of belonging to the spirit world, is that one can walk with ease through walls that are real, whereas pouvre Marcel cannot seem to make it through ones which do not exist.
October 16, 2007 at 12:36 pm |
Oh, that’s right. Yep. Great…
No, No – please, please, carry on. Don’t mind me. You just go right ahead and have your repartee. Don’t mind the elephant in the room!
Some folk can look through a man just as easily as put a bullet through him.
I’m off to find that railway yard scrubber and slap her.
October 16, 2007 at 1:12 pm |
D’you know , Olly mon chou, that I feel I might have been just the teensiest bit harsh on cher Marcel?
I understand now that he is what they call a mime – and rather impressive at that. The most curious of birds, our friend the mime; I find him to be an excellent listener, and he has quite the sense of humour. An added advantage is that when he laughs heartily at my bons mots, he does so noiselessly, so I can deliver the unexpected twist without it being drowned out.
I tell you what Olly – it’s rather refreshing to have a dinner companion who does not swill Bollinger like it was barley water. No, our Marcel is able to sip from an imaginary glass with great decorum. Inexpensive, too; I’ve known some people who can behave like truculent schoolboys when refused a third magnum at the Savoy Grill. The mime, au contraire, is more apt to take one imaginary glass then hold up one gloved hand and rub his tummy with the other to indicate satiation.
October 16, 2007 at 1:43 pm |
I expect M. M. Marceau would be good a stiching things up as well, if a little too flamboyant for a sweat shop.
October 16, 2007 at 4:33 pm |
Hello, my wordy friends, it is I, Mbutu, formerly known as King Sock I of Botswana. Alas, my empire (sorry, should be kingdom) has crumbled due to a fatal outbreak of athlete’s bum. Back to the thorn bushes, and the death each morning of a thousand cuts, to my brothers.
But I really want to share my experience of a google search of our Miss Jenny. It came up with stills from her Walkabout film. Should a man look? what would that make him – one of them peedo flies?
I am vexed.
October 16, 2007 at 4:53 pm |
Excuse me, folks??? Like, have I left yet? …
Hello??? Over here!!!
Fine!
That’s it. I am really going this time.
I’m am so outta here.
Truculent?
E’ha! E’ha!
October 16, 2007 at 5:01 pm |
Speedo flies?
Jeez, that’d be loik pretty handy, a’reckon.
Y’know, for easy access in the warta… ‘n stuff.
October 17, 2007 at 9:48 am |
The best bit of Walkabout is John Mellion topping himself early on so we don’t have to put up with him for the rest of the film (although the little boy is a bit annoying).
October 17, 2007 at 10:38 am |
Big Olly
I came across a scrap of paper in my ghostly valise on which was some adolescent scrawl (originating whence I care not), but as an exercise I have, with a few strokes of the pen, transformed it from doggerel to art. I now make you the gift of sharing it with you.
I fell a-weeping, and I cried, ‘Sweet mime,
Tell me why, in boisterous headwinds thou dost rove
These pleasant realms? I pray thee speak thy mind
What is thy name?’ And he said, – well he said nothing actually.
Then straight the first did turn himself to me
but nay could approach – t’was as if a wall had come betwixt,
but a wall seen not by me!
But I am Love, and I was wont to be
Alone in this fair garden, till he came
Unasked by night; I am true Love, I fill
The hearts of man and mine with mutual flame.’
Then sighing, I said unto the other, ‘Have thy will,
Thou art the love that need not speak its name.
(For thy name is communicated unto me very effectively by non-verbal means, Gesture, body language, movement, – that sort of thing)’
October 17, 2007 at 12:08 pm |
Dear God, do you see this?
Is this madness or is it exquisite cruelty?
Olly, my friend, tell me he’s mad. Surely, it is madness for the greatest wit and coversationalist of all time to cavort with a mute, and one, moreover, who paints himself up like a demented Jezebel with his boutonnière on his hat!
Look how he lampoons my finest work and makes a mockery of my feelings. I do have some, you know. I told you he was a bastard. And yet he cast his spell on me. And I thought myself an emperor that he should spare one careless thought for me. And now there’s nothing for it. I’m lost. I shall slink back into void.
O momentary grace of mortal men,
Which we more hunt for than the grace of God!
Who builds his hopes in air of your good looks
Lives like a drunken sailor on a mast,
Ready with every nod to tumble down
Into the fatal bowels of the deep.
That is neither me nor you, Oscar, but Shakespeare, a real poet.
Oh, and I guess I’ll not have need of this cigarette case, Olly.
Funny, it meant the world to me once!
Now, it would take more courage than my feeble hearts possesses to open it.
October 17, 2007 at 8:16 pm |
And maybe a ghost, trying to hear your words,
Peered from the broken mullions
And was stilled. Or was suddenly aflame
With the scorch of doubled envy. Only
Gradually quenched in understanding.
October 18, 2007 at 7:46 am |
Monsieur Wilde,
Je pense que vous êtes un grand poof.
Séjour loin de mon fils! M’entendez-vous?
Un poof que je dis, un poof!
Marceau.
October 18, 2007 at 7:56 am |
What, Sir?
An outrage! I will not have this said of me!
Let me make myself perfectly clear sir,
I will have satisfaction in court.
Wilde
October 18, 2007 at 10:07 am |
Monsieur Marceau
“Poof” is not a French word!
Stop polluting our magnificent tongue with Anglo-Saxon importations!
You have been warned!
Gabriel Gâté de Pommes-Frites
Président du Conseil de Purité Linguistique
October 18, 2007 at 10:18 am |
PS Et ne soyez pas si homphobique!
C’est vous, enfin, qui laisse votre fils s’habiller en grand “whoopsy”!
Alons, maintenant, vous m’avez fait briser mes propres règles! Bugger! Ah, non! Je l’ai bloody fait encore!
GG de PF
October 18, 2007 at 11:10 am |
Ha !
Allez-vous -en et lambinez-vous, personne de l’académie.
Vos règles idiotes sont la raison que mon fils est devenue un pantomime en premier lieu.
Le pauvre garçon avait peur pour parler!
D’abord un pantomime, et maintenant un poof. (Oui, Poof!)
Il brisera le coeur d’un père.
October 18, 2007 at 11:27 am |
Bosie – darling?
Can you help me? Please?
I was wrong. I care nothing for the mime. His father is a madman – makes your Pa the Marquis seem a Saint by comparison.
The court case was horrible. Marcel’s father was a brute. A brute I tell you Bosie…
Nothing left but to sing the blues and hope you can forgive me
“I hear the train a comin’
it’s rolling round the bend
and I ain’t seen the sunshine since I don’t know when,
I’m stuck in Folsom prison, and time keeps draggin’ on
but that train keeps a rollin’ on down to San Anton..
When I was just a baby my mama told me fine,
always be a good boy, don’t ever play with mimes.
But I shot my wad in Marcel, just to watch him smile
now every time I hear that whistle I hang my head and cry..”
Oh Bosie – do come and visit, and bring champagne.. If we bribe the warders we might be allowed a moment together..
October 18, 2007 at 2:53 pm |
I am sorry, Sir, but His Lordship instructs me to present to you His Lordship’s compliments and to beg to inform you that there is no-one by the name of Bosie residing in his father’s household. Any more. I am accordingly instructed to return your verses with due regret as to any portion thereof that may have become tear-stained whist in His Lordship’s possession.
I have the honour to trust that I may beg that you will believe me to be,
Sir,
Your humble and obedient servant,
&c., &c.,
J. D. Ponsinby-Molyneux Villliers-Smythe
For:
O. F. O’F. W. Wilde, Esq.
October 18, 2007 at 3:07 pm |
M. Marceau le vieux.
Vous n’êtes pas simplement homophobe, mais franglophile aussi et un trés bloody rude one at ça!
J’espère que votre étrange fils transvestitif sait bien parler la language of love avec M. Wilde sinon par sa big mouth alors par son other end!
So there!
October 18, 2007 at 3:13 pm |
. . . Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return. With us time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to circle round one centre of pain. The paralysing immobility of a life every circumstance of which is regulated after an unchangeable pattern, so that we eat and drink and lie down and pray, or kneel at least for prayer, according to the inflexible laws of an iron formula: this immobile quality, that makes each dreadful day in the very minutest detail like its brother, seems to communicate itself to those external forces the very essence of whose existence is ceaseless change.
I must say to myself that I ruined myself, and that nobody great or small can be ruined except by his own hand. I am quite ready to say so. I am trying to say so, though they may not think it at the present moment. This pitiless indictment I bring without pity against myself. Terrible as was what the world did to me, what I did to myself was far more terrible still.
All trials are trials for one’s life, just as all sentences are sentences of death; and three times have I been tried. The first time I left the box to be arrested, the second time to be led back to the house of detention, the third time to pass into a prison for two years. Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.
October 18, 2007 at 3:30 pm |
I once had the strangest dream!
A handsome young fop in old-fashioned cricket creams and cravatte, his face red with rage of tears, appeared very suddenly in my room as if blown by the wind, but there was no wind. He looked at me half in wonder, half in contempt, then raised his hand as if to slap my face but then all of a sudden, he froze as of he couldn’t do it and just said: “Olly! Olly! Let go of me!”
Then he started to be dragged back from whence he came, crying out as he disappeared into the wainscoting: “But it’s all her fault that the French Clown has my Oscar.”
I thought it was a premonition or something. I think I’m going to get an Academy Award! I keep looking and looking for filmscripts title “The French Clown”.
So far – nothing! Odd I think.
“Olly” must be Lord Olivier.
October 19, 2007 at 4:11 pm |
Dear Diary
Another week with no further intelligence as to Mr. Wilde’s condition. My master sits most afternoons in the Chinese drawing-room where he and his friends shared so many delightful hours in the old days. He is grown very listless of late and can scarce pick up a book for a more than two minutes at a time before looking up and rolling his eyes and sighing as he puts it by.
Then he might call for a cigarette, swearing that he’d be dashed if he could remember where he last put down his silver case; and sometimes he would stop dead, as if he remembered, and on those occasions, especially, I’ll wager you had never a sadder or more wistful look glance the eye of any man.
The footmen report that he receives no-one and often just seems to stand and stare from the windows overlooking the Deer Park (and such a deer park it is) until the lengthening shadows on the terrace dissolve into evening.
Although, curiously, the upstairs maid reports that the day before last she happened to come suddenly into the room, thinking no-one to be there, as all was so quiet and still, only to find my master all frozen of aspect as if posing for his painting and with one hand raised aloft as if to deal a backhanded blow against some unseen assailant. And she promptly made her excuses and retired from the room but could not fail to notice, so she says, that, although he was oblivious to her and all around, yet in his eyes were tears – which brought to mind, in her fond fancy, nothing so like the weeping statute of some melancholy saint as one might read of in childish tales of olden days.
These things are untoward and point I feel to no good end.
October 19, 2007 at 8:09 pm |
‘When I was alive and had a human heart, I did not know what tears were…’
October 20, 2007 at 3:02 am |
Qu’est-ce que c’est ce bruit? Je n’suis pas mort! Je vive! …dans ma petite chambre de bois…
…. je suis si fatigue …je déteste souris aux morceaux. Soyez monsieur Jinks!
October 20, 2007 at 8:37 am |
Move along there lads, make a bit of elbow room.
October 22, 2007 at 12:08 pm |
The Happy Prince!
Why, my dear Olly, that’s what we used to call Prince Shelailee al Marktoum. And here’s why.
I was first lieutenant on the good old Intemperate in those days. We were cruising the Gulf a league or so off the Trucial Coast when young Princess Alix of Denmark married Prince Eddy. They say we received the news on board by wireless telegraphy from the overland cable station at Aden, who had signalled it to us on our brand new magneto-pulse-transponder – and a ridiculous contraption, that was, I tell you!
It sent out a sort of electric pulse – from some voltaic pile or a galvanic chamber or whatever – and this pulse sort of spread out in the air in an increasing circular field – like a wave, really, until it could be detected by some receiving device at the other end – in fact it was these “radial waves” that suggested to us a nickname for the thing! We called it the “circular field pulser” or “circulo” for short. Very soon we had a specialist circulo operator in the signalsroom!
Such a lot of nonsense! “It’ll never last”, I told them. “A fairground novelty! Might just as well string a bloody pennant from the mizzen-mast!”, I said, ’cept dreadnoughts didn’t have mizzen masts, of course – more’s the pity.
Circulo, indeed! Well, I not a braggart, Olly, but I am pleased to report that these damn fool machines never did catch on. After the Intemperate, I never heard of circulos or circulo-operators again. And whenever I found one on board a ship under my command, I promptly had the thing cast overboard in the presence of all the officers, and, d’you know, it never occurred without some protest, or grumbling in the ranks, and, yes, even the odd stifled curse.
Boys and their toys, Olly old chap! What’s to be done with ‘em?
October 22, 2007 at 8:09 pm |
Dear Miss Agutter
I noticed at once on Thursday last that you had graced this blog with your presence, but it has taken me until now to summon the courage to write that which I knew at once I must.
I imagine that you are far too busy to read blogs much, but in case you have read something of this one, or if one of your assistants has scanned it for you, you might have noticed that in one of my posts I cited The Railway Children as the only film for which I had any real affection. This is untrue, and I am embarrassed now to have written it.
In fact I hold all your films in the very highest regard; it is just that I adore “TRC” even more than the others. I don’t know why I did not simply say that in the first instance.
But more important to me than correcting this error is to point out that an imposter posted in my name shortly thereafter.
I’m not sure how familiar with the Internet you are, Miss Agutter, but it is a strange place, and it is possible there for people to assume names and identities that are not their own.
Such was the case when “Sigismund” (an imposter, Miss Agutter, I assure you) said that he (or it may have been she – such are the depths these curmudgeons plumb) had noticed your “preternatural endowment” and then compounded the crime by saying that you made him “Hornsby”.
Well, it should be obvious that I would never use a phrase as ugly or indelicate as that mentioned above, and I hope you forgive me for repeating it here, but I do so, Miss Agutter, lest you think I might have.
Sincerely
Sigismund
October 23, 2007 at 7:03 am |
Oh, and Jenny;
I loved Walkabout. You really went “bush” in that one, eh? – whacked myself senseless.
Sig.
October 23, 2007 at 8:59 am |
Precisely the audience response I intended. Fnarr fnarr.
Videogram sales have kept me quids in I can tell you. Art be damned.
Shame Big Audio Dynamite didn’t see fit to expound upon it further in their video…
See you in the bar! Oh & it’s your shout!
PS: I doubt you’ll get a response from Ms A; nor from Big Olly neither if the 7th correspondent above has his facts straight (Not many other things straight around here. Apart from me & Sig of course)
October 23, 2007 at 1:03 pm |
Herr Roeg
I am ze seventh Korrespondent. My facts are as straight as the seems in my home-sewn, damask, lederhosen. And if I am not mistaken, which I am not, you have a Film in 1960 direkted called: the Man with the Green Carnation!
And about whom think you was it?
None other than Oskar Wilde!
Spooky! I think.
October 23, 2007 at 1:34 pm |
I have forgotten what this blog was about, but I am disappointed no-one has mentioned anything about song lyrics other than a brief post about Jerusalem. Is this site being moderated by Mel Gibson?
October 23, 2007 at 1:50 pm |
Sorry for going all “Chaser” on you like that, I’m in need of my evening coffee. Speaking of which what’s going on with the election debate, how come there were three worms on the TV coverage? Oh lord, those boys are hilarious.
October 23, 2007 at 3:32 pm |
Dear Sigismund, Sig. or pseudo-Sig or whoever or whatever you are.
Like, look, OK, I’m really flattered and everything that your, like, so much a fan of my work, but the self-abuse aspect of your viewing pleasure is like too much information, OK?
Y’know, like creeperama!
Except like not with YOU, Nic? OK. I mean you’re like a mega-genius and everything and- hey maybe you could help me. I found this manuscript, right.
Like, do you know if Pagliacci is, like, a French Clown?
October 23, 2007 at 5:49 pm |
As French as the spaghetti named after him toots.
Bike me over a copy, put it on my tab & we’ll do lunch.
October 23, 2007 at 5:50 pm |
ARrlo! Is dere any real peoples on ‘ere, or are they all suedough… suddor… using aliarses? I know I’s real, I got a signed photo of meself in my pocket.
October 23, 2007 at 5:52 pm |
“Speaks with superior sneer! Eccles, that’s not you in that photograph, that’s Ethel Mermon!’
October 23, 2007 at 5:53 pm |
‘Oh no! I thought dat this dress was bit sequiny for a slip of a lad like what I are. Can anyone tell me der lyrics for dere’s no business like show business?’
October 23, 2007 at 6:01 pm |
By the way, I meant that J. D. Ponsinby-Molyneux Villliers-Smythe (7th correspondent in an upwards direction. Unusual perhaps, but I am a bloody genius so shove off if you don’t like it).
October 23, 2007 at 11:37 pm |
Remember when we used to get excited about posting the 100th comment. Now it passes without mention. A week has gone since we last heard from him. Has anyone checked his room? You monsters, for God’s sake hold a mirror to his face. And then take a good look at it yourselves, apart from the ghosty one’s who won’t see anything.
October 24, 2007 at 6:38 am |
I can’t see anything either. I’m either more poorly than I thought, or I should perhaps put my glasses on.
My theory re Olly’s absence: he has stayed on his astral travels, & after doing the decent thing by Ms Agutter, is now trying to do the indecent thing…
October 24, 2007 at 10:58 am |
Maintaining circulo-silence! That’s what our Olly’s playing at. At any rate, that was always the excuse those signalroom nancies used to give when either they or their stupid machine refused to work.
October 24, 2007 at 11:08 am |
Dear Mr Roeg
How dare you read my personal diary!
I am
&c.,
Sir, &c., &c.
J. D. Ponsinby-Molyneux Villliers-Smythe
PS Do you think it would make the transition to film?
October 24, 2007 at 11:12 am |
How the @#$% do we get out of this wainscoting…?
Well that’s another fine mess you’ve got us into, Olly!
October 24, 2007 at 12:34 pm |
…and he would have pounced on my misplaced apostrophe. I tell you, things don’t look good.
October 24, 2007 at 8:59 pm |
Big,
I was to this party last Saturday night and mentioned your blog, which was met with stony silence, so to recover I shelled about 15 beers and sang out loud to songs I know, mainly Paul McCartney, the brilliant lyricallist who once penned the golden lines:
“If there’s rock show
At the concertgebow
They’ve got long hair
At the madison square
You got rock and roll
At the hollywood bowl,
We’ll be there … Oo yeah …”
My point being: Big, have you ever been to a concertgebow and are you much of a singer?
PS Oh, I could of written this in French, but…..
October 25, 2007 at 9:44 am |
Yes you poncey old-fashioned Brit & you Australian, beggar off out of me!
October 25, 2007 at 9:50 am |
Oooh, me aching head, friends. No sooner had I overcome my crippling gouty problem than I was struck down with some form of consumption or dropsy. The physician was unable to advise with certainty, but assiduous application of MacPherson’s Granulated Coal Tar to my puny chest seems to have had the desired effect. The catarh remains but I am confident that a good bleeding will remove the humours and fix that up in no time.
Even were I not much recovered I imagine I would still have dragged myself from my sickbed to wonder at the appearance of a few of the forum contributors on the good old masthead there with me.
Jenny seems to be combining the most troublesome portion of her role in “Walkabout” with her more recent work in “Spooks”.
As for them two fellows, I just hope they don’t do anything that might scare the horses.
In any event, I welcome them aboard and invite any others who wish to do so to manifest spectrally thereabouts.
Again, I am unable to respond to the comments individually as I would like. I actually started out a lot better this time until ill health intervened.
To touch on a couple of random points, Ivan Southall did write the one with all cyanide on the hill. Also “Let the Balloon Go”. And others.
Academie Francaise, I think that “pouf” is a French word. Certainly there is a difference in spelling but I don’t think you can complain about a lack of francaiseness. Of course, it means some sort of women’s headress ( or is that “headdress”?) so I can’t make sense of what was actually said, but I think you need to calm down.
An Basil, get that bloody mirror away from my nose and mouth. Mercury poisoning is the last thing I need.
Love
Big Olly
October 26, 2007 at 8:24 am |
Relieved you’re ok Big Olly. Over here, a pouf is a well-upholstered, floridly decorated thing that you sit on. Those Frenchies have some strange customs, n’est pas??
October 26, 2007 at 1:58 pm |
When I was lad, we used to call it a pouffé.
Was that usage widespread or is it some peculiar, sublimated, twisted affectation of my childhood?
October 27, 2007 at 4:32 am |
I think you’re right. No wonder the bloke at Furniture Village hasn’t sold many!
October 27, 2007 at 9:41 am |
Only 120 hours or so till Big’s next monthly blog.
Apparently if there’s (*should that be there’re) 100 responses or more, Bill Gates gives Big $10,000 and Ericcson gives him a free mobile phone. Olly’s got more numbers than a Chinese telephone book – mind you, that’s only 10 numbers all up.
And that’s a fact. ~ I proved it with Vice-Admiral Sir Lamington “Fruity” Stokes-Sodbury, KCVO, DSC* (Ret)’s “circular field pulser”.
October 28, 2007 at 8:07 am |
…Is that 120 hours with or without the extra daylight savings??
October 29, 2007 at 10:32 am |
We can not rush the creativeness of the genius. His brush is at the ready, the colours are ready, but what topic will inspire him. The waiting is almost as fun as the reading. I’ll bet it has something to do with the journey of his youth. Penny farthings or Dragsters are not to be ruled out.
October 29, 2007 at 10:59 am |
But I am waited for in Egypt. My friends are flying up and down the Nile, and talking to the large lotus-flowers. Soon they will go to sleep in the tomb of the great King. The King is there himself in his painted coffin. He is wrapped in yellow linen, and embalmed with spices. Round his neck is a chain of pale green jade, and his hands are like withered leaves.
October 29, 2007 at 11:15 am |
Here’s fun to while away the time. It’s a cryptic guessing game thing.
My name is not new
But the first that is sad
Does the name to the thing
That the thing itself had
When it uttered the words
In the last quote I clad.
What am I and what is the thing?
October 29, 2007 at 3:11 pm |
Don’t scratch your head,
Look, here’s a clue
He that’s angry sees red
He that’s sad will feel….
October 29, 2007 at 3:30 pm |
Far away across the city I see a young man in a garret. He is leaning over a desk covered with papers, and in a tumbler by his side there is a bunch of withered violets. His hair is brown and crisp, and his lips are red as a pomegranate, and he has large and dreamy eyes. He is trying to finish a blog for his adoring readerboat, but he is too cold to write any more. There is no fire in the grate, and hunger has made him faint.
Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow – why must you taunt me with memories of happier times?
October 29, 2007 at 3:41 pm |
The Little Swallow
Quite right. Gold star for you clever dick. That’s the “thing” in my little conundrum. Elephant stamp for whoever can guess who the “I” is and why?
October 29, 2007 at 7:57 pm |
‘…There is no Mystery so great as Misery…’
Do I get a prize?? ‘…the living always think that gold can make them happy’
October 30, 2007 at 7:13 am |
…assuming I was right of course. Which I doubt.
October 30, 2007 at 9:14 am |
Very clever but off the track.
Dear oh dear!
The clue of course was “blue”. So substitute “blue” for “sad” in the first verse, thus – My name is not new but the first that is blue.
Now – does the name to the thing that the thing itself had – well, we now know, thanks to Mr Wilde, that the name of the thing is a swallow; therefore, the first name that is blue “swallows” the swallow.
Now, boys and girls, what the do you suppose that means? Who does the swallowing and how is it done?
Who gulped the swallow?
Turn ev’ry stone and log!
Follow the mouse
In the cyberhouse
All around the blog!
F#%k me!, Oscar, were parlour-games this tortuous in your day?
October 30, 2007 at 7:40 pm |
No, but they had a room full of wits, wags & assorted intelligentsia, not (apparently) just one dozy insominac with no life…
My answer is: nahrwal. I think they’re blue. As are bluebells, blueberries & that hotel Chris Isaak kept going on about. They seem unlikely swallow-swallowers.
October 31, 2007 at 4:19 am |
…& of course they had parlours in which to play them. That must’ve helped.
October 31, 2007 at 9:24 am |
I give up!
The answer is I. My name is not new on this blog but appears for the first time in blue ten posts above. If you use your mouse to run the cursor of your computer (follow the mouse in the cyberhouse etc.) over the blue name: Jay Dedewth, it will open up a window with the words; the little swallow.
In other words my name contains, and thus has swallowed, the little swallow.
And of course the quote from the previous post is a quote from the little swallow in the tale of the Happy Prince. Tweezy!
We used to call that lateral thinking.
PS Where the #$% did narwhal come from? I’d get some sleep if I were you, Petra.
PPS Still, at least she tried. Which is more than can be said for the rest of your slack-arses. See if I care anyway. I’m gonna go home. Gimme my bat.
October 31, 2007 at 10:00 am |
Crivens! This website thingy has technicolour & I hadn’t noticed. I was scouring the story itself. How prehistoric of me. I must try harder, please ask us (me) another!
PS
The narhwal?
It was uninvited,
I tried eviction,
but he bited
PPS Whilst on matters zoological, is your bat pipistrell, fruit or vampire? Does it twinkle like a tea tray?
October 31, 2007 at 11:59 am |
Mr Dedewth,
Without wishing to appear churlish, I don’t think one can ascribe much wit to Mr Wilde’s answer of “Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow” as it is a phrase he was wont to utter excitedly when in the company of young men, which, as we know, was rather too often.
As for your own proposed answer, it seems to me less like an example of “lateral thinking” and more closely aligned to paranoid delusion, where causes and connections that simply do not exist can seem very real in the mind of the sufferer.
Having said that – I do enjoy a good brain-teaser as much as the next man, so here is a more sensible answer to your question.
The little Swallow was very brave to think he could fly all the way to Egypt; i.e. he had a lot of bottle. Bottles contain many swallows; ergo I am Bluebottle.
Yours truly,
Sigismund.
October 31, 2007 at 2:10 pm |
Mr Olly, it is time for you to step in and break up this unpleasantness. I’m feeling uncomfortable.
October 31, 2007 at 2:49 pm |
Paranoid delusion, eh!
Well you would say that, wouldn’t you!
In fact that’s exactly what I’d always thought you would say when push finally came to shove. And don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to. You’re one of them aren’t you? And don’t play coy with me, cos if you deny it, that’s all the proof in the world I need to know that you are. Ha! Convicted by your own mouth. And you thought you could fool me. Well, you go right back to that gang of so-called friends of mine and when they’ve stopped laughing and plotting behind my back just for one moment – you tell them from me that I’m on to the lot of them and it won’t be long now before they’re all for it!
Just as soon as Zador brings me the Stone of Destiny! Ha! Ha! Prepare to beg mercy, children of doom…
And, where’s my bat?
October 31, 2007 at 3:06 pm |
OK, sorry guys! My bad! Things have gone a bit haywire here and I seem to have dropped the ball.
Now, don’t shoot the messenger, but I might be “off the air” for a bit. I will try to run something up the flagpole to see if you salute and if not, pour it out on the stoop and see if the cat licks it up, but at the moment I am giving 110% to another project, and can see a “win-win” in it for us if I can pull it off.
Love
Big Olly
October 31, 2007 at 3:51 pm |
Too late!
Tread softly she is near.
I have heard the mermaids singing each to each
I walk along the avenue
Aurora Borealis comes in view.
It’s over!
October 31, 2007 at 9:59 pm |
Was it Stabiloboss?
The eyeless labourer in the night – Stevie Wonder
This selfless, shapeless seed I hold – a suicidal farmer
= Stabiloboss.
Remember the salad days when there was a bit of output from Big. Criminy, if there was a better all-round Achilles cup contestant – and I mean someone good for gold in the shot put, javelin, discuss, low jump and short jump – if there was someone better than Big, I’ll go he!
1,2,3,4,5,………99, 100: Ready or not, here I come!
November 1, 2007 at 8:12 am |
Not a clue. I’ll try sleeping on it (for once)
November 1, 2007 at 11:07 am |
Achilles Cup?
Young captain at the Dardanelles, Brooke was his name – yes, gangly chap, bit of a scribbler – used to talk about Achilles.
How did it go?
They say Achilles in the darkness stirred
And Priam and his fifty sons
Wake all amazed and hear the guns
And shake for Troy again….
Quite evocative really, especially if you were there to hear those blasted guns. Oh poets! we had any number of ‘em. Likeable fellows if you could get ‘em to shoot straight.
Shaw-Stewart was another one. Melancholy blighter. I remember him standing at the rail of the foredeck the last morning we fetched him back from leave to rejoin his regiment at Suvla Bay. Well he looked a bit moody, so I wandered up and clapped his shoulder and asked him what he was thinking. And he turned to me and said “Oh, nothing, Fruity; Nothing at all. Just a scrap of verse in my head.”
“Very well, Shorty; let’s have it!”, I say, and he begs off that it wasn’t finished; but I persisted and I’m glad I did because he said something I’ve never forgotten:
Was it so hard, Achilles,
So very hard to die?
Thou knowest and I know not;
So much the happier I.
I will go back this morning
From Imbros over the sea,
Stand in the trench, Achilles,
Flame-capped, and fight for me.
And he had such a look of fear in his eye – not the wild terror of a coward; no, it was the calm fear of a doomed man. It’s a terrible thing to see, Olly. And think they all felt it but, ye gods, no-one would say anything out loud.
Except the poets, you see. The useless bloody poets, God bless ‘em. They said it for all of us.
I don’t go in much for fairy tales, Olly and I don’t imagine Achilles shade did stand in that trench with poor Shorty – but I tell you, if he did, then there were two heros there that day!
Anyway, carry on, Olly – whatever it is you’re actually doing!
November 1, 2007 at 4:58 pm |
Olly,
Friend of my youth, if you bought some lollies and ate some of them, right, but then you couldn’t finish them, if you took them to the shop and gave them back to the man who paid you an amount of money for them, would he be a sweet redeemer? Like in the song “Closer Walk With Thee” what another of your correspondents referred to although you didn’t take the theme up?
Well?
November 1, 2007 at 5:04 pm |
Well, A (and might I welcome you aboard), that would make him a lolly redeemer, which is not exactly the same thing.
In any event, it is a nice theory, but who ever heard of not being able to finish your lollies?
Preposterous!
Love
Big Olly
PS: sorry about failing to take up the “Just a Closer Walk With Thee” theme again. All I can say is “Whose funeral is it”
November 1, 2007 at 6:18 pm |
What if they’re Maltesers, you thinning lug?
Boy oh boy, that time we skelled a 15 to the doz pack of WE Draught while playing Crazy 8 while watching the Sydney Swans circa 1985 and drunkenly sent our young slave of a brother to get the lollies, bananas and ripe raspberries if you dont mind, but he threw in the disgusting packet of Mall Teasers, the worst lolly ever invented, and certainly there was a half a pack of them swilling around in the bowl when the day was done.
But I mean, if you pick the ‘carpentry’ showbag then you really have no idea about anything…..
November 2, 2007 at 12:31 pm |
First and last comments for this particular blog ~ where do I collect my $20 from?
November 2, 2007 at 2:54 pm |
Not quite mon ami!
I forgot to mention that ze corduroy trousers so dear to ze ‘art of Oliie were named for King Charles X of France (youngest brother to the ill-fated martyr of the filthy, godless, proletarian, pigdog-sucker, sewer-sweper revolutionaries) – who on ‘is country estatts like to wear durable cord-cloth trousers of a particular type now known as the “cord of the king” or cord-du-roy!
November 2, 2007 at 3:12 pm |
That Other, I disagree about Maltesers, though I am not fond of bananas so it is a swings and roundabouts sort of deal.
It is always challenging to find a lolly that goes with beer. I tried mint leaves once for some reason and it is a source of enduring chagrin.
I don’t know if anyone has ever drunk orange juice just after cleaning their teeths, but the effect was similar.
As for the carpentry showbag, you taunt me with the gift that is my greatness. My great misfortune and my downfall. As well you know, meanie.
Bad luck Some. Next time maybe.
M. de Pommes-Frites, I did not know that. I understand that somehow “Etoffe de Nimes” was corrupted into “dungarees” although I confess to being stumped as to how that might have happened. Possibly it was not “dungarees” but “dunghampers”, though that is way less polite.
Love
Big Olly
November 2, 2007 at 7:00 pm |
Maltesers are palatable only if served at room temperature (-5C or thereabouts).
On matters sartorial, which was invented first the trouser or shorts? Was it a question of requiring more insulation for the legs, or just the typical oversizing zeal of someone’s mother (‘you’ll grow into them, stop complaining’?)
November 4, 2007 at 12:21 pm |
Well well, another thought provoking contribution from Petra.
I don’t want to go off on a Malteser tangent, though I am powerless to resist. I like ‘em at any temperature. They are not as good for throwing as Jaffas, but I never saw the point of throwing lollies around.
In answer to your other question, it was shorts.
Love
Big Olly
November 5, 2007 at 6:11 am |
Big Olly, thank you! I’m sure I won’t be able to keep up the good work in future (as this proves).
November 9, 2007 at 9:25 am |
I did. & I didn’t solve Jay’s riddle either.
January 10, 2008 at 10:03 am |
“Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous–”
(I’m not that slow a reader… Robson Green reminded me I hadn’t looked at this)
January 14, 2008 at 8:50 pm |
Why is it people don’t eat until they go to films? What is it about them? Have they had a transplant of a stomach from a person who died of starvation or something?
Yay! I’m 150
June 27, 2008 at 2:37 pm |
bill riddle cutting horses…
Sorry, don’t agree 100% with you on this!…
June 28, 2008 at 6:16 am |
Forget it Bill! Nobody here but us chickens!