Momo Freaks Out

This morning I woke up bearing most of my body weight on the left-hand side of my face. And, SHEZAM!, longitudinally spanning my eyebrow to my chin, there was a great sleep crease (nay furrow) of trench-like proportions. So trench-like was this furrow, I was almost convinced it read "Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag and smile, smile, smile," in Braille.

Troubled, and without a kit-bag to pack up these troubles in, the furrow and I scampered downstairs, Quasimodo-like, to prepare ourselves a cup of tea.

By the kettle was my housemate.

"Oh my God, you like like a pirate!" she exclaimed, addressing the furrow, rather than myself.

While I had a fervent urge to sing "Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!", the furrow, incensed at any such showponying, got in first:

"Who you think you fuckin' with, man?! I'm Tony Montana!" it said, "You fuck with me, you fuckin' with the best!"


[Momo's face furrow stars as Scarface]

"Very well, then," said my housemate.

The furrow, now subdued, said nothing.

A whole hour later, the furrow miraculously melted away, and I was finally able to leave the flat, sans World War I ditties, sea shanties, and Scarface pretensions.

File under: old dog, new tricks.

Man alive, if there's anything I hate in this troubled world, it's a surprise, and, if there's anything I love, like more than anything, it's pretending to be surprised.


Macaulay Culkin: an inspiration

I concur, it's awfully bad form to put in a request for your workplace bon voyage (aka "See ya, wouldn't wanna be ya!") gift, but, not standing on ceremony, I went ahead and did. Mostly to avoid the surprise, and also because I wanted to ensure I got exactly what I wanted. Call me fussy, but I much prefer persnickety, thanks.

So, it's been confirmed, this two-headed furry albino bad boy is lurching his way over from the States this very minute.

And no, it's not a particularly hirsute and peroxided adult Macaulay involved in a Culkin cloning disaster, it's ...

FURILLA!



Yes, everyone in my team knows I've droned on about really badly wanting a Furilla for at least three months*, and, yes, I've sent around links with helpful hints like "Get me the two-headed albino one", but, dammit, I'll wow them with my hands-clamped-to-the-chin agogness once he's out the box.

Momo: stylin' "SURPRISED!" more Macaulay than Macaulay.

*It was this subtle tactic of hintingness that landed me with three bottles of Chloe Narcisse for my 18th birthday. In stomach churningly sickly-sweet nasal hindsight, I didn't have the advanced olfactory system I do today.

So, I was wandering around Canary Wharf on Friday, London's financial epicentre, and passed a rather opulent fountain whereupon a group of businessmen were lounging.

One of them shouted (at me):

"SNAKES ON A PLANE!"

And raised his fist, Fight the Power style.

I nodded at him in agreement. The kind of nod you give a quite obviously crazy person on a bus, just to be amiable when they try to embroil you in crazy conversation. I followed this up with a subtle (and, I thought, appropriate) "Woo!"

But, in spite of my cool demeanour, on the inside, I was a hubub of enthusiasm.

"SNAKES ON A PLANE! YEAH!" I thought to myself.

Befuddled, I later mentioned this to T-bone:

"T-bone," I said, "some random businessman shouted 'SNAKES ON A PLANE!' at me today, and raised his fist, Fight the Power style. Why so?"

T-bone replied with the thoughtful consideration of a man with a scientific and (oft times) reasonable mind:

"Hmmmn," he hmmmned, with thoughtful consideraton. "This businessman must have seen you at the cinema last week, watching the trailer. Never mind that it was on the other side of the city and in pitch black. It's the only scientific and reasonable explanation."

[Hazy memory sequence to two weekends earlier]:

Me (watching the Snakes on a Plane trailer, slapping my knees, T-bone's knees, and assorted unidentified fellow cinema-going knees, as we collectively flailed about in a maelstrom of salted popcorn, such was the hilarity of it all):

"SNAKES ... hooohooohaaa!

ON ... haaahaaahooooo!

A ... haahaaahaaa

PLANE! HEEHHOOHOHAHAHAOHOAAAAAA!"

We went.

"IT REALLY IS A FILM ABOUT SNAKES ON A PLANE!" we reiterated with incredulous wonder, in case any of our fellow cinema-goers had missed this crucial and salient point.

Months ago, some friend of mine sent me this jpeg. I thought it was merely some clever person's side-splittingly amusing attempt to lampoon the blockbuster action genre with a stupid-looking faux movie poster. Little did I realise (see previous blog entry of living in a Snork-filled vortex for the past year) it was an internet phenomenon.



Unbelievably (if you claim as such), two weeks ago (back when I was hoohooohaaaing! at the Snakes on a Plane trailer) was the first time I realised it was for real.

Samuel L. Jackson IS Snakes on a Plane.



Not since Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, I marvelled to myself, has Hollywood made a film befitting the little red notebook, which T-bone and I once kept and dubbed:

Script Ideas We Came Up With When We Were, Like, Totally Wasted, Man.

In the halcyon years of 1995-97, T-bone and I could oft be found scribing in this tome of genius (also dubbed Hot Ideas To Rock a Generation), bookmarking our better concepts with Pizza Hut family meal deal coupons, should Jerry Bruckheimer ever come a-knockin' with two pizzas, a garlic bread, 2 Lt of Coke, and a Sara Lee cheesecake.

In summary:

Snakes on a Plane.

Undoubtedly my favourite movie ever.

Even if I haven't seen it yet.

Yesterday marked exactly one year since I landed in London. Such was the haste, it was as though I’d slipped on a banana peel whilst ambling along Flinders Lane, skinny latte and Portuguese custard tart in hand, and woke up 16,913 km (10,509 miles) later, face down in the fountain at Trafalgar Square, wondering where the hell the Benny Hill music was coming from.

Good thing I was packing a snorkel.

The year in review – good, bad or indifferent? Professionally, it was very very good. I’m proud of the work I have done here. Personally, it was a big ol’ mess. Of course this had something to do with the circumstances that got me here by myself, viz, my relationship breaking down after 12 years, which was, in a word or few, quite entirely and completely devastating. Well, that sounds a bit embarrassingly melodramatic. Agreed: the Earth didn't quake, the sky didn't fall, I didn't spontaneously combust.

Quite.

[Cue: violins. Or at least a fiddle.]

Yet, deciding to move across the other side of the world with no mates, family, job, or money (save for about $1000 dollars I had to streeeetch) wasn’t exactly the most sensible way of dealing with my life in upheaval, either. Possibly, it was the most completely spazoid hasty decision I have ever made. Still, in spite of feeling lost (sometimes literally, save for my A-Z street directory) and like a complete and utter loon lacking in good cheer while slapping a smile on my face (for the most part), I managed to make a handful of really awesome friends, and do some really awesome things, in what is a really awesome city.

Do I like London?

Yes.

Is it swingin' like a monkey in a tree/batter up to plate/seedy middle-aged car-key party out in the 'burbs?

Yes.

In spite of London's certified swingin'-ness, do I wish I came here in a better circumstances?

Yes.

Was the year, like, totally off the hook, paradoxically really good and really bad?

Yes.


[Off the hook on a good day in October last year. Image courtesy of rock photograher extraordinaire, the Boudist.]

Yet, with T-bone as Richard Burton to my Elizabeth Taylor; or Kid Rock to my Pammy Anderson; or - let's face it - Dumb to my Dumberer, as two wistful kids living the Disney Parent Trap dream, after about four months of being separated, we decided we were together again (figuratively), but separated by continents, work contracts, ambitions, and (above everything else) funds. This was the hardest thing of all. Actually realising that you want to be with someone more than anything in the world, but not being able to find a way that you feasibly could, apart from impromptu visits.

I am happy now with the way things are going, and look forward to moving to Singapore next month, and look even more forward(er) to being back in Melbourne in the new year. I look forward to feeling normal again, basically.

So yes, an incredibly difficult year for me, but, above all, I’ve come to the wonderful realisation that, when everything turns to shit, rock bottom – be it face down in the fountain at Trafalgar Square or in a puddle of cheap roset wine-induced spew – feels a lot better with a snorkel.

As the Snorks would tend to agree:



*Snorkel references are some sort of muddled euphemism I've just invented about getting by when drowning, a muddled euphemism I am now coining as "The Snork within".

When I got off the bus this morning, I started thinking about important things, viz, leggings and just how many years I've embraced this 80s revival.

"How Long is Too Long?", I wondered, just like the Smiths song. Particularly when it comes to embracing an 80s revival, like leggings.

Except, the song I was thinking of was: "How Soon is Now?"

In either case, the answer is: "How Long is a Piece of String?"

"Leggings, eh?" I thought to myself. "Just how long have I been wearing them and when will the novelty of leggings - essentially being tights with the feet cut out of them, as some of my very own DIY versions are - ever, ever wear off?"

And I thought back to 1983 when, as a seven-year-old, I took my first dip into the world of the footless and fancy free. Then, I partook in jazz ballet classes. Re-enacting the best moments of Cabaret, 80s style, my first-ever pair of leggings were the same green as the inside bit of a mint Aero bar, paired with a baby pink leotard that was cross-sectioned at five-centimetre intervals with horizontal jade-green pinstripes.

So, they were my first leggings. And, already, at the tender age of seven, I was subscribing diligently to the old misquoted saying "Green and green should never be seen, unless there's something in between."

What's more, there was something in between the green and green of my ensemble.

The baby pink of the leotard.

Snap!

I truly gave a new depth to the word wunderkind there, didn't I?

And yes, my dalliance with jazz ballet lasted a good four lessons or so, until I couldn't be arsed with any of this dancing guff and grandly dropped out of my Wednesday night classes to watch a great new TV sitcom from America called Who's the Boss? Or perhaps it was Charles In Charge.

To be honest, I don't remember which program it was, but surely, considering it was 1983, it was a TV sitcom that had something to do with challenging "traditional" male domestic roles, resplendent with wha-a-acky canned-laughter at the pure hilarity of a man working as a live-in housemaid. Or babysitter.

Heeehoohaaaaa!

I guess no one but me has ever made this discursive study into Scott "Chachi/Charles" Baio and Tony "Tony" Danza being to gender-bendering in the world of early-mid 80s TV sitcoms what Boy George and Marilyn and ... and ... Divine were to gender bendering in the world of early-mid 80s pop songs.

Rambling discursive studies aside, this morning I incisively calculated in my head that I recommenced wearing leggings "Oh, about five years ago, back in spring of 2001". Which, if you incisively calculate, is actually five years ago. Otherwise thought of as half the length of the 1980s. Like far longer than leggings were ever originally in fashion.

And, there it was, like a harbinger over the head. Me, aged 40, 50, 60, still in leggings. Like Dad and his Status Quo vests, spanning three to four decades of vestdom.

I shuddered.

Later:

At work, a colleague suggested loudly to all and sundry in the department that we all dress up as Madonna next week, to celebrate her pending tour of the UK.

"HEY! I'LL DRESS UP AS MADONNA!" I quipped chirpily.

"Isn't that what you do most days?" she responded.

And, my friends, I think I inhaled half of the open-plan office space in aghast.

SCHLIIIIIIPPPPPPP!

Then (considering my pondering earlier in the morning) I could hardly believe it when my workmates started verbally cataloguing my leggings collection, arcing the colour spectrum from my green "Christmas elf" leggings, through to my yellow "Big Bird" leggings.

Perturbed at such descriptions, and, I concur, truly scraping the bottom of the barrel of natty retorts, I retorted:

"Yeah? Well, leggings are the thinking-woman's jeans, alright?"

Some switched-on soul hooted:

"And what's THAT supposed to mean?!"

While I defensively muttered something about "shut up" and "I'm leaving the country in five weeks, me and my leggings, which are of course not only a wonderful fashion adventure, but great for preventing deep-vein thrombosis on aeroplanes, so bite my colourfully lycra-hugged be-legginged arse*."

*I do wear skirts over the leggings, mind you.