Mission Intermission

A couple of years ago I brought a chinese friend of mine to film at Savoy Cinema in Dublin. The reason why we went there was because I hate queueing at the nearby 17-screen multiplex, there’s always huge queues there but at the Savoy with its mere six screens, there were are hardly ever any queues (which may have you wonder if the Savoy is making any money but let’s not worry about such things, not queueing is good!).

Like all stately dames, the Savoy has her quirks.  After the ads and the trailers, the curtains close and the lights come on, giving you that extra chance to go out and by popcorn or icecream to replace what you ate during the trailers. When this happened my Chinese friend (who had been in Dublin for years but at the Savoy for the first time) got a bit confused and asked me what was going on (this doesn’t happen in the multiplex). I explained about how may years ago movies were on film and the cinema only had one trailers reel which was shared between all the screens

After Saturday’s failed attempt to find something light and frothy, I decided to try again and try “The Proposal”.  I still needed something light and while it was risky going for something with Sandra Bullock in it, I was hoping that maybe Ryan Reynolds would save it and he did. It’s kinda cross between “Green Card” and “The Family Stone” and is even funny at times, just what the doctor ordered with one tiny problem…

Remember when you were really young, back when films were actual film and strange things used to happen like right in the middle of the most important parts of an exciting action movie the film would just stop and we’d be treated with “The Intermission”?

Well, come to the Netherlands and you too can relive those glory days of “Intermission”s, with films cut arbitrarily in half and having to wait 15-20 minutes to find out what happens next…

The worst bit is that when you’re in the middle of a dreadful film, there’s nothing to stop you walking out at the intermission and reclaiming some of that wasted time, wait, that’s not quite as much of a disadvantage as I first thought….

Wedding Tales

“Rachel Getting Married”

Sometimes it’s interesting to watch a film knowing nothing about it beforehand. You have no expectations and usually even with those lack of expectations, you still end up disappointed.

But then there’s those ones (and not too many of them unfortunately) that make you go “Wow”.

When I put on “Rachel Getting Married”, I expected something light and frothy, something easy after a busy day but what I got was a lot more. It took me a while to warm to its charms though, there was “modern” camera work, home camera-esque, euughhh….

Of course I could tell you all about it but then you wouldn’t have the same experience that I had, would you?

If you can, have a look, not your typical Wedding Movie…

Wish you were here?

A recruitment consultant wrote to me today:

“When are you planning on coming back to Ireland.”

(He obviously misses me, so much so that he forgot to use a question mark)

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I replied:

“I’ve no plans to come back at present.”

(That’s me, sailing on the winds of chance)

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To which I get the reply:

“I don’t blame.”

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Yes, not only is the economic situation so bad that recruitment consultants are depressed but they’ve lost the will to finish sentences and use proper punctuation, it’s a sad state of affairs…

Bouquet

Cake

hypothetical question

Let’s say you’re on facebook and you add upload a new photo (so that you can show everyone that despite your advancing years you’re still as sexy and gorgeous as you always were).

In this photo, there’s you in a finely tailored suit (and you look gooooood) with a woman in a  beautiful wedding dress and veil.

And then to celebrate the wedding of two good friends you set your Facebook status to:

“After a beautiful ceremony on Saturday, it’s finally happened!”

The question is, how long do you wait before telling all the people who congratulate you on your wedding that you didn’t quite get married?

Time for Spaghetti

When you go to Germany, the first thing you should always do is go into an Italian ice-cream parlour and have an ice-cream.

You could have something like this:

Or if you’re really adventurous you could have spaghetti ice-cream:

Too tired to lift a page

Over the last few months the one thing that has felt so uncharacteristically wrong about me has been my lack of reading and when I do read, the slowness. I used to zip through books by the week, life was good, the sun was shining, bird singing in the trees, flowers dancing merrily in the breeze, all that.

Recently, that’s just not been there and I’ve worried that there’s something wrong with me and while I have been a bit lethargic and in a state of seemingly endless tiredness, and while a lot of my reading time has been taken up writing and rehearsing speeches, I felt that there had to be something more.

It was only as I read three books over the last month or so that I realised what the problem was – I just wasn’t reading good enough books. Each month I have to devote myself to a bookgroup book and either I’ve read them already or else they  become a chore because they don’t excitement me. This month’s book is by the queen of happy upbeat books – Jodi Picoult and I have that to look forward to as I take my 6 hour train journey into the wilds of Germany’s borderlands….

I need to find and allow myself the time to read more good books but sometimes it’s so hard to find them, its more like pot-luck at times but I got lucky with the last three books:

The Kon-Tiki Expedition – Thor Heyerdahl

Shantaram – Gregory David Roberts

Mystery Man – Bateman

Note that Colin Bateman is no longer called Colin anymore, he has made it, he is only referred to by his surname on his book covers now, the book is probably better than some of his recent books but gets a bit tired towards the end, the whole joke of a paranoid, seemingly autistic hero can only be pushed so far though there are some great moments.

The Kon-Tiki Expedition is just brilliant, reading it reminded me so much of Roald Amundsen’s book about his trip to the South Pole, very much the “let’s give it a try and see what happens” attitude, six guys get together to prove that the Pacific Islands could have been populated by a tribe from South America. They build a balsa-wood raft and attempt to sail across the Pacific – fabulous story.

Shantaram was a surprise, it reads in a lot of ways like travel literature, very down to earth, insightful and what’s fascinating is that this book is based on the life story of the author. How he was jailed for armed robbery, broke out of jail, fled to India, set up a medical clinic in the slums, joined the mafia and went to fight against the Russians in Afghanistan and so reading the book is all the more fascinating because events in it are based on real life real people.

Now I need to find more good books, and quickly!

Men are better

Have a read of the below article:

Figures reveal pay inequality for teachers

New figures show that male primary school teachers earn on average €8,000 more than their female counterparts and are far more likely to become school principals.

The data was supplied to the primary teachers’ union, the INTO, by the Department of Education.

15% of primary school teachers are male – a figure that is widely acknowledged as too low.

However, male teachers are far more likely to hold senior posts than their female counterparts and they will earn a lot more.

A man has a greater than one-in-four chance of being a principal, while a woman has a one-in-13 chance.

According to the data, the average male teacher earns €64,000 per annum, while the average female earns €56,000.

The INTO took an historic step yesterday electing its first female general secretary.

It’s beautiful isn’t it? A perfect example of journalism at its best, factually correct yet completely wrong.

And what’s worse is that the figures were produced the Department of Education, the people responsible for ensuring that the children of Ireland have a good understanding of mathematics and statistics…

So what’s wrong with it?

Nothing and everything, men are quite likely to be earning more and have a better chance of becoming school principal, it’s an undeniable fact. It’s all true.

But how can 15% of the primary school teaching population have so much power and wealth? Why are men favoured?

They’re not. Instead male teachers are a dying species, every year there’s less and less of them. The vast majority of them have been there since the good old days when there were more male teachers than female teachers and so they’re older, and because they’re older, they earn more money and they are more likely to be school principals.

Of course my explanation isn’t fun and certainly doesn’t sell newpapers but you’d think they’d have used their brains a little before publishing it!

Shades of Grey

It’s been an interesting 24 hours, I discovered that I can do a mean Martin Luther King, maybe I should rephrase that, I do not and have never considered Martin Luther King to be a mean man, in fact he did seem quite generous with his time and his passion, and when I say passion I don’t intend to imply that he was involved with any women but his wife, oh, yeah, maybe I should start again…

Last night, I, the pasty white Irishman, possibly the whitest man in the world, so white that when I show people my tan they think that I look normal colour – in fact they have even been known to mock my tan, that is until I roll up my sleeve and blind them with my glaring whiteness! But that doesn’t shut them up, they usually start screaming “My eyes, my eyes!”. The effect is usually temporary, after night in hospital and several days in a dark room they generally regain 95% of their sight…

Where was I going with this?

Ah yes, last night, I, in all my apparent whiteness gave my interpretation of what is considered one of the best American speeches ever given. It was interesting, not my typical speech. I normally give nice quiet speeches which are educational, possibly interesting or even mildy amusing, all given in soft playful tones which is why I thought it would be a bit of challenge doing a speech that was given to 250,000 civil rights marchers – it’s just not me!

The idea was that I would give an interpretive reading of a great speech, it meant that instead of spending time working on constructing a speech, all I had to do was work out the best way to deliver a pre-written speech…

Easy! Or so you would think…

There is some work involved, first you need to choose a speech and I had a few in mind, nice quiet speeches that were ideal for me but then last week I was browsing the internet and I came across “I have a dream” and I was instantly captivated by it. It is an exercise in speechcraft, without even hearing the speech (and for some reason I have never heard the speech), I could see the beauty and impressiveness of the speech, the use of repetition, the use of familiar phrases and quotes and the use of powerful emotional language makes it a fabulous work of art.

I threw away the other possibilities and decided that this was the one.

It was a crazy decision, how could I, a novice public speaker do justice to such a great man’s word? It was probably the most difficult speech that I’ve done, it took me so far out of my comfort zone that I’m not sure if I’ll find my way back!

When he or his team were writing the speech I’m convinced that if they noticed they were using a word shorter than three syllables then out came the thesaurus and they found a larger, harder to pronouce word to use instead, it was hell! My nemesis was the word “unalienable”, I just couldn’t say it, my tongue would swell up and be uncoordinated and it ended up being “unblehblahable”, I discovered that the only way I could say it was to say it really really slowly syllable by syllable and then of course afterwards people came up and told me how much they liked the way I said “unalienable”!

The other challenge was bringing the power and volume to my voice, that was difficult, I felt really self-conscious, roaring out his message, even at home – I was worried I would disturb the neighbours so instead I was delivering the speech slightly louder, it wasn’t too convincing but somehow I felt that I’d be able to be loud on the night and strangely I was, it was fascinating to hear myself do it, to see that I could do it, it was intense.