But you don't see me

While anybody who even glances at this blog must be sick of my Charles Bronson fangirldom, I can only advise you to suck it up or look away, because it’s the indirect subject of today’s post. You see, this is the first time in ages I’ve been a fangirl, and certainly it’s my first posthumous fangirldom since Alexander the Great got ruined for me by that piece of Oliver Stone shit, but most of all, it’s my first fangirldom since I had reliable access to da Internet, unless you count Stéphane Rousseau, which I don’t because he’s Francophone, which will be the subject of another post.

And what’s striking me as I spend my whole minutes of downtime at work geeking on Charles Bronson websites, topless photos, and Wikitrivia is that there are lots of celebrities who are still alive who probably have even more websites, topless photos, and Wikitrivia being geeked on, and who know it. Let's leave the geeking alone for awhile - being fangirls and fanboys is such a part of human nature I'm not even going to try to attack or defend it - and wonder how famous people deal these days.

At least there was an illusion of privacy back in the day, if you weren't a slavey to a studio who had to date other studio slaveys to stay in the gossip columns and out of gay talk, and who knows if that still happens today anyways. But now anybody who wants to can see Jude Law's smallish nob on holiday for free thanks to da Internet. Back in the day, to see Rudolph Valentino's smallish nob you had to pay backstreet money to shady characters for crummy pictures of his dead body naked in a morgue, if James Elroy is to be believed. Which he is, as with the CIA's publication of "The Family Jewels," we know now that at least half of American Tabloid is true.

I guess what I mean is the Anglo celebrity system has always been voyeuristic and kind of gross, but now the voyeurism and grossness is idiot proof, and something we can do during downtime at work, and open to everyone, all the time. So why do people want to be famous anymore? I mean - it's so obvious you're going to be exposed like that as an intrinsic part of the lifestyle, and I can't imagine even the most pathological attention seeker thinking that would be okay for themselves, that all the adoration would make up for the complete hijacking, it seems, of one's persona. So why?

Speaking of adoration and Charles Bronson wikitrivia, he decided to become an actor for the money. And he used to room with Jack Klugman, who said that he was really good at ironing. Isn't that adorable? Adorable.

Hollywood clockwork

Watched A Clockwork Orange last night, as I had read the book and wanted to see the film again to see what I thought of it now. And I thought that it was sort of shitty and that the book is way, way better. Thought that the film was a popular success, that people don't name it with The House of the Spirits and such like in the 'fuckin' atrocious films made out of good books' category, not because of any directorial genius from Stanley Kubrick, but because of Malcolm McDowell's fantastic portrayal of a flamboyantly evil prole kid.

I don't like Stanley Kubrick much - thought Barry Lyndon was a massive snore and liked Spartacus a lot, which he disowned. Maybe I would like him more if I knew more about cinema and ground-breaking cineaste techniques, but you know what? I don't. And I don't want to. I want to watch movies and not have them be big fucking snores. I want movies based on books to not change the themes of the book unless the themes of the book sucked, which the themes in A Clockwork Orange didn't.

I think this is where my hostility to the movie is coming from. Most of the reason I watched it again is that I couldn't remember how it ended, and it ends very differently from the book - with the idea that now Alex has been 'reformed' into a gleeful monster and is being let out into the world again. And this after the film has toned down his violence, depravity and animal prole-ishness (seriously) so that we have some sort of savage sympathy, the desire to cheer on that beast - in no small part thanks to Malcolm McDowell's performance, but mostly because of subtle changes to the narrative, like the age of some of his victims and an increased focus on consensual sex.

So besides playing down the class-y and violent, perverse elements of the book, the movie utterly changes the much more satisfying ending of the book which I feel all that ultraviolence was naturally leading to and nowhere else. The movie was just too fucking Hollywood in comparison; nothing but a normal heroic pattern except with an anti-hero instead.

Great escapism

Quite sulky about being alive to the world this morning, my head aches and my tummy is telling me I haven't shaken whatever was shaking me this weekend - but Wednesday is the do or die day at work so off I go. I have started to understand why journalists drink so heavily. There is something about the monotony of a weekly or daily deadline - a building effort of brain and nerves. Because right afterwards, there's a release, combined with the awareness that this is as far as you're getting from your next deadline, so you should hurry up and relax.

Don't judge the drunken journalists. There but for the grace of God go we all.

Anyways, to distract me from my impending work, I'd just like to say a word about the hottest movie ever, full of the hottest men ever, because it cheers me up. That's The Great Escape, featuring the hottermost of the toppermost Steve McQueen, James Garner (oh yes he was, bear in mind this was1963), and the king of my fangirl heart Charles Bronson. Steve McQueen always looking at the Nazi guards with that blonde, blue-eyed smart-ass "throw me in solitary all you want because I'm already INSANE" look that was borne out by that deservedly iconic motorcycle ride towards the end, which I've heard he insisted get thrown into the movie - just 'cause.

But nothing compares with Charles Bronson, young and cleanshaven in this movie, talking with an adorable Polish accent, dealing with his claustrophobia and vulnerability, and hanging around in a wifebeater constantly, dwarfing all the other men with his tremendous termendousness. Arms like whole prosciuttos. Jeebus. Actors aren't hot anymore.

If we could take a holiday

I think I'm finally sick of South Park, which is a mercy. I also think I'm getting into some sort of rhythm with my job - maybe because I've been getting bits and bobs of positive feedback and I'm a vain, vain person; maybe because I have to go to a conference for it in the Iberian peninsula at the tail end of the summer over a Thursday and Friday, so I can take some personal time on the Saturday and Sunday to lie on the beach, smoke hash and listen to fado. This fantasy has already become my happy place, or rather my bittersweet, moany place, fado being fado and Iberian hash being what it, also, is.

By way of vacation, that looks like all I get until the end of October when the F-word has his first school holidays and we head to Calabria and Sicily. There's the Pariyorker's wedding in Carcassone which I'm taking four days for in a couple of weeks, but that doesn't count as vacation because it's a wedding so I'll have to think logistically about it and spend at least one day brutally hungover.

I was talking to a co-worker last night from da land of England who was complaining about the paucity of vacations at our company - she's in her first year too and pissed that we only get 10 paid days off in that time, 20 in our second or something like that. I explained to her that in Canada two weeks off is the norm even for people who have been working in our types of job for years, and that we also didn't usually get to choose when we took our paid bank holidays (although I think that might be something special about our job, being all journalistic and shit, and news happening every day).

She looked at me and listened to the words, but you could tell she just wasn't taking them in. Finally she said that at least our company lets you take unpaid time off whenever you want it, and carried on talking about this and that, obviously as relieved conversationally to have gotten away from the realm of labour nonsense that is North America as I was professionally.

The Red Dragon has a rapacious appetite for whist players

Learnt how to play whist last night at the tail end of a pleasurable/painful visit from the Pariyorkers. The pain had little enough to do with them - that was mostly me being relieved and exhausted by work on Saturday to the point of illness, and then more mishaps Sunday, et cetera. Stress, hard work; that all makes me stupid and sick. Oh well. Oooooooh well. Man was born to get and eat his bread in sorrow and in the sweat of his brow, and women were born to work full time for awhile, save a nest egg, invest it and switch to part time work before they lose their minds. Or so the Bible has selectively taught me.

Anyways, whist was great and it reminded me of Mrs. Bennett from Pride and Prejudice, which is a great book to be reminded of.

The Pariyorkers are slow movers and lovers of fat mornings, so I had time to dip my foot into the two Bloomsbury books - Madeleines in Manhattan and Mediated. Of course I meant to just read one and then the other, but Mediated, from the first 30 pages or so, looks really, really shitty. I mean, really shitty. A big shitty mess. So I switched to Madeleines in Manhattan and it looks incomparably better - less ambitious in terms of critiquing Modern Living, but charming, atmospheric, coherent and not fucking whiny at least, which is good because I'd prefer to start my relationship with this book provider with a review that isn't foaming over with annoyed bile because I've been forced to read through a whole shitty book that I wouldn't have chosen if I'd been in a bookshop and looked at the wankerish introduction.