Unicum

Another mad weekend, having spent a week at me Mum's, writing me one man show.

Me and the missus spent Friday night at guanabara, the most amazing brazilian club (not some kind of fetish gathering for those with a dislike for pubic hair, but a club that plays brazilian music). Really friendly atmosphere, a simple but satisfying brazilian menu, and the best Mojitos this side of Rio (well Reading maybe), of which we gulped down about 5, before dancing til 2 in the morning. There was also a display of capoeira. Best night out in London.

The following evening we went to the party of a lovely friend, Eluned (for pictures of Eluned asleep with things piled on top of her, click here), and stayed up til 6 dancing again, fuelled this time by unicum, which is the most disgusting substance known to man. It tastes so horrible, you think it must contain class A drugs. It doesn't, but it does make you feel ill. Or in my case, it makes you feel like arranging fifty fridge magnets into chromatological order.

Wild.

Never Mind

Last night me and the Missus were treated to a screening of Gus Van Sant's latest, Last Days: a fictional chronicle of the last 48 hours in the life of a drug-addled young rock star, inspired by the events of Kurt Cobain's last days.

I can honestly say it was the most boring 97 minutes of my waking life. There is no plot. The camera simply follows the central character, Blake, around, in endless tracking shots, as he mumbles to himself, eats a bowl of coco pops while chainsmoking, urinates, sleeps, watches TV etc. It makes Big Brother Live look like the Dukes of Hazzard.

At one point, the camera lingers on a patch of weeds in the garden for a full minute, as though something were about to emerge from them, or as though they would turn out to be significant later.

Nothing.

Just weeds.

I'm guessing this was Van Sant playing with the conventions of cinema, pushing the boundaries. Trying my patience more like. There's a good reason that films have conventions about what you show, and what you don't show. And that reason is that if you show everything a character does, it makes for a VERY DULL FILM.

Having said that, I thought Kurt Cobain was a very dull musician, but that's a whole nother argument.

Rant over.

Me and my Big Mouth

While waiting for a voiceover job just now, I read a newspaper story about an Australian girl who, realising she was going to miss her flight from Stanstead to Sydney, texted her mate asking her to alert the authorities that there was a bomb on board her flight, thereby delaying the flight and enabling her to catch it.

This made me exclaim loudly and read the story out to anyone nearby (something that only dull uncles are supposed to do). A short discussion followed as to how selfish this was and what kind of punishment the girl would receive. I voiced my opinion that she should get a custodial sentence, or better still, "...f*ck off back to Australia where they don't have terrorist attacks".

An unsympathetic standpoint, and one that I don't really endorse, but was proposing merely for effect. Only then did I realise that the lovely lady on the reception desk was of antipodean extraction herself.

I'm forever yelling half-held beliefs like this in front of exactly the wrong people. Does anyone else do this?