mathilde’s Neighborhood

My first attempt. Was very tempted to gift this to a work colleague!

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That is, St Trinian's 2: The Legend of Fritton's Gold, Very Important Questions...

Q) What is the point of a St Trinian's sequel?

A) The first one made a shedload of money... thus, a sequel was inevitable. No matter how awful it was, or how much the killjoy critics complained about it pooping on the original series.

Q) What is the point of a St Trinian's sequel without Amara Karan?

A) None whatsoever, as far as I'm concerned... but then I'm not the target audience. I'd be curious to know whether she was offered a role though, and turned it down. I hesitate to even bring up the subject of diversity, now that their cast is even whiter and blonder than before...

Q) What the hell happened to Amara Karan's career?

A) Don't ask me! She clearly has the talent, beauty and charm to be a big star, but in two years she's gone from a lead role in Darjeeling to... er... short student film obscurity? Are we living in a counter-clock universe?

Q) Showbiz is constantly swallowing up and spitting out young actresses. Fame, like Life itself, is fleeting and illusory... so, why get het up about such things?

A) I don't know. Sorry.

What was your favorite class in high school? (And no, lunch doesn't count.)

Unlike everyone else who seems to be answering this with tales of drinking, smoking and shagging, I was dull, boring, well-behaved and ridiculously shy at school. I didn't have any girlfriends and there was no promiscuous consorting of any kind going on. I didn't drink at all until I was eighteen and only took up drunken smoking at the tender age of twenty two.

My favourite school classes, therefore, were actual classes. I loved A-Level German. I relished going into this class for several reasons. Firstly, I could "research". Doing a modern language means you can sit in the library for hours on the internet reading football results, movie reviews, articles about your favourite bands as long as they were all in your foreign language of choice. Secondly, there were only two of us in the class. The other girl was a holier than thou Brethren girl. I'm not entirely sure what the belief systems of the Brethren are but I imagine they float vicariously between the Mormons and the Amish. She wasn't allowed to wear trousers and most brilliantly had no television and "the devil's music" on the radio was outlawed. The "media" module in A-Level German was a breeze. The final piece of brilliance relating to A-Level German was my coursework. The theme was Berlin and every Tom, Dick and Harry in the UK and Ireland wrote some banal piece about the fall of the Berlin Wall or the Allied Forces airlift there during the war. All very clichéd and yawntastic in my opinion. History doesn't change if you only ever hear it from one side of the fence (or more accurately, the wall!) So in my wisdom I decided to write my piece from the point of view of an East German radical terrorist member of the Baader-Meinhof gang. It appealed to my warped sense of Northern Irishness I guess. It also picked me up a whopping 97% in my coursework mark. Score.

In other news. I was madly in unrequited love with a girl in the year above who also was part of the German A-Level department. I never told her that though. In fact I could probably count on one hand the number of times I actually spoke to her.

With all that in mind, you'd assume that German was me favourite class. But no, this is just a preamble by way of introducing my actual favourite lesson of the week. German class came immediately after the 11.05 break time on Wednesdays and was closely followed by double history. History has always fascinated me and the teacher was a fantastically intelligent man but this is neither here nor there when it comes to my love of this particular class. During the first period, midway through some tale of Tudor Dynasties or peasant's rebellion a piece of paper would be passed around the class onto which everyone scribbled down some items, these items would then be taken to the front of the class from where the teacher would read them down the phone to...

THE LOCAL CHINESE TAKEAWAY!

The second period of history was a fest of gluttony as boxes full of steaming sweet and sour, chow mein, fried rice, honey chilli chicken, chips and coke took up the deskspace and books were temporarily pushed aside while the teacher regaled us with stories of war, lust, and other such Tudor and Elizabethan past times. As the bell sounded at the end of that class to mark the beginning of official lunch time we rolled from the classroom into the corridors, stuffed full of spices and fizzy drinks with a whole hour to kill before the afternoon's lessons began. Ample time to nip up into town and pick up a CD from Woolworths.

Yitzhak

Recently Hedwig and the Angry Inch was inducted into the AV Club’s “New Cult Canon”, prompting me to revisit it. I first “discovered” the film on a video tape I picked up on impulse from a charity shop, a couple of years ago. I vaguely remembered the film getting good reviews when it came out, and seeing a big glossy book about it when I was in SF one summer, but other than that all I had to go on was the blurb on the back of the box. The film kicks straight in with a punky little number called “Tear Me Down”, sung by what appears to be a drag queen dressed as the Berlin Wall, in the cosy setting of a family-friendly chain restaurant. Needless to say, it was a bit of a “WTF!?” moment, and I was hooked immediately. I couldn’t help wishing that all rock bands had the wit and visual flair of the fictional band rocking out on the screen in front of me, and that all lead singers could share even a tenth of Hedwig’s showmanship.

Still, there was something about the back-up singer with the beard and bandana that was troubling me... I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was something slightly odd about him. As the film wound on, it became more obvious... he wasn’t a “he” at all, but a woman in drag... a woman named Miriam Shor, in fact. Apparently she’s been a part of Hedwig since it was a way-off-Broadway theatre piece, which explains why the three leads had such a tight act worked out. It’s just a joy to watch the performance scenes... scattered as they are through a tragicomic story that follows the rise of a young “girly boy” named Hedwig from the stark poverty of Communist East Germany to dime-store decadence and gossip-rag infamy in America. Serving as writer, director and lead actor, John Cameron Mitchell presents us with a profoundly sympathetic protagonist, especially for those on the margins of the mainstream, but it’s hard to stomach the way he bullies the benign, heartsick Yitzhak. I’m glad I upgraded from my old VHS copy to the DVD, because (among many other fascinating and illuminating extras) it features a deleted scene depicting the first meeting between their characters, and how within seconds of being introduced, Hedwig had humbled and housebroken his biggest fan. Shame, shame, shame.

It confused me a little to read the AV Club’s critic define Yitzhak’s ambition to join a cruise-ship production of Rent as a desire to escape into "comforting mediocrity". I’m not quite as avid a fan of Rent as I once was, but it’s hardly the toothless Disney cartoon that their writer makes it out to be. “Sodomy, it’s between God and me!” is not a line you’re likely to hear in the next Hannah Montana movie, is it? Or perhaps I’m just too easily shocked/impressed? No doubt if I’d been born and raised in a city with its own drag clubs and avant-garde art-punk scene, I’d be a little more jaded about such things. And I admit, if forced to choose between the two, I’d probably plump for Hedwig, because the grinding tragedy of Rent is a lot harder to take seriously post-Team America... but this small-town hick will still remember it as an exceptionally powerful piece of musical theatre. And you can take my signed programme when you pry it out of my cold, dead hand!

Huzzah! Even though Griffin's latest pilot, New Town, wasn't given a full series by the BBC, it did pick up a brace of nominations for the BAFTA Scotland awards, and last night took two of the shiny mask thingies home! One for "Best TV Drama", and one for "Best Female TV actor" (Daniela Nardini)... apparently one of its younger cast members, Rose Leslie, also picked up a New Talent Award for her role, earlier this year. So... yay!!!

Note: Awards only matter when they go to the right people. :)

So, I've been using my Typepad account instead of VOX, and whenever I come back over this way I have shit loads of spam comments to delete. Surely, VOX, if you delete a spam account, it should automatically delete all of the spam comments they've left as well?

Had a shocker at pole last night. Was really tired, struggling with the inverted sequence, and was pretty much over it and ready to go home. But then the teacher had a bright idea... "Hey, do you guys want to try a 4 star move?"

Of course I did. And I kind of did it.

I started in the left leg hang...

 into the pike (which was the new move)..

and was SUPPOSED to get back into a crucifix.

I suspect I was supposed to grab onto something with my hands... but i didn't, and fell straight onto my head (thankfully wasn't too far from the ground, but it still hurt like hell), and then promptly went tumbling (you know, to protect the back *rolls eyes at self*) and nearly slam into the pole and girl next to me.

I kind of wish someone had taken video of it... it would have won me something on funniest home video's for sure.

So... I had decided to take next year off. Do a massage course, prepare for a full on year doing my Dip Ed.

But, the more I've thought about it (and the more weekends I've spent doing the massage course) the more I've been thinking I'm just wasting another year. THEN when I found out the massage course was going to take longer than expected, I decided to re-look at my uni options.

So I've applied for post grad. I'll do it part time, in the first year of it I'll just have to negotiate a half day off during the week, maybe one full day. If my company won't do that, then it's probably time to find a new job anyway. The second year will be cutting back even more, but I'll worry about that if/when it happens.

So far I've only applied to one uni, may apply to another one as well, but not looking likely. Cut off is Friday, and I've got a massive essay to write in that time, so I think I'll just leave it at the one and see where it takes me. I feel kinda sick!!!!

So I don't know how many of y'all know this, but I've been taking thyroid medication for the past four years.  If I have my diagnosis correctly, I have thyroid nodules and am in danger of developing Hashimoto's Disease down the road. I have other family members who have thyroid problems, but out of the three of us, I take the smallest dosage.  

I'm sorry for the lack of interesting updates.  Let's see, what has happened since I last blogged?  There was the annual Halloween dance that I attended last Thursday.  That was fun...but not as fun as last year, because only the people who paid for a $45 4-week Thriller choreography course could perform the Thriller dance this year. I think that is pretty crappy, because besides the expense, the whole fun of the performance last year was learning it, half-forgetting the moves, and then having everything turn into a clusterfuck at the end. Oh well. I still had a good time though. I went as a mainstream punk princess.  I wore a Green Day shirt, tights, black boots, gloves with the fingertips cut off, and BLUE HAIR.  Looky:

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