Jessica Bellamy

Would Jess Like American Ice Hockey.

 

 

 

Welcome to a slightly belated edition of Would Jess Like It, where I analyse a very interesting activity I participated in during my time in the United States of America.

 

It all began when my friend Miles told me to keep Saturday night free, because something was happening. This wasn’t difficult because I only had three friends in New York at that stage and Miles was easily the most dominant of all of them. (And still is).

 

So, after a day exploring the bagels of Park Slope, I followed Miles to the intentional living house where his wife Roz and her friend Katie were hanging out. This small glimpse into intentional living taught me that it involves many root vegetables and nice notes about things that are meaningful on the fridge. I liked it.

 

We then walked to a Zip Car pickup point where I learnt how car-sharing works in New York. You go in, and the dude working in a garage gets the car for you, and then it’s all yours for however many hours you book it. Pretty cool! Roz’s other friend Heather joined us, and it was GO GO GO. To Long Island!

 

It had snowed fairly recently and the roads were a bit unpleasant, but Roz got us there without any problems. “There” being a giant “coliseum” out in some part of Long Island. I knew Long Island only from The Great Gatsby, so I expected mainly billowing warm breezes, white linen, and rich jerks. Instead, it was a car park packed with excited people in jerseys who gave me much more of a Myrtle Wilson than Daisy Buchanan vibe.

 

So we get into the stadium and we’re bang on starting time. Except: there’s no freaking way I’m entering the stadium until I have purchased American Sport Food. Miles was all “don’t miss the American anthem, Jess” and I was all “DON’T MISS THE CHEESE SAUCE THAT COMES IN A VAT, MILES”.

 

I ended up with a $9 six-inch subway sandwich and a $5 bottle of water, and scurried upstairs for the match to take place.

 

The full name of the place was the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, and you know what that meant? This place had an agenda beyond just subway sandwiches and ice hockey: they were there to HONOUR THE TROOPS.

 

This meant that every now and then, the roving crowd camera would seek out an Army veteran in the crowd, show them on screen, and we would all have to stand up and honour them. The crowd took this in their stride: they were all very used to the process. Beer drinking and yelling would quickly abort, they would struggle to their feet, and the honouring would begin.

 

(The camera would also seek out other less venerated members of the crowd, such as kids having their birthdays, couples having anniversaries, and the cleavages of the Ice Babes whose job it was to shovel away ice between quarters wearing a tiny tiny outfit and grinning like it was the most fun they had ever had in their lives. This was the only part of ice hockey that made me feel moral discomfort).

 

But anyway: the game. Ice hockey is quite a frenetic, exciting game. There is heaps of sliding and smacking and whacking, but all in a fairly respectful matter. Everyone in our party was angling so damn hard for a fight to break out, but no dice. Sad face.

 

Instead, Miles tried to start a disturbance in our own neck of the woods, all proud home-team supporters, by appropriating the New York Islanders chant into one for the rival team, the Hurricanes, and bellowing it out every single chance he got. I guess Miles’ linguistic acuity allowed him to make the judgement call about how well the 3 syllables of the rival team names could work in the same chant. It worked DAMN well.

 

Imagine a full bleacher of Islander fans being serenaded by Miles’s booming voice bellowing “HU-RIC-ANES! HU-RIC-ANES!” Kids were staring, faces crumbled in confusion. Teenagers were mortified on his behalf. Parents didn’t know what to do. I had to pretend I was there chaperoning the 16 year olds wearing promise rings next to me, and no friend of this buffoon. No offence Miles.

 

Miles’s behaviour raised a few eyebrows, but no one took the bait and punched him in the face. I think this is a symbol of the way New York has changed into a safer and less violent place in the last few years, because, I know you should never say this, but Miles was SERIOUSLY ASKING FOR IT. If he hadn’t given me a free ticket, I probably would have punched him myself.

 

Anyway, I guess in any sport game there’s a winner and a loser (unlike Would Jess Like It where the only contest is “how much fun are you having” (“a little”)), so I just had to google who the winners were, and it turns out it was the visiting team. Therefore, a whole bunch of dejected Islanders hot-footed it out of the stadium like it was on fire, returned to their cars and steamed off home, and that was the end of ice hockey.

 

I had a great night. I tried a new type of processed cheese, I got to meet Roz’s friends, it was a nice chance to remember I shouldn’t miss Miles THAT much now that he lives in America, and I thought the entertaining brackets between quarters were just delightful, barring the need for gender equality in skimpily-clad ice-babes.

 

Ice Hockey gets a thumbs up from Would Jess Like It. Would go again.

 

 

YES.

 

 

Those of you who know me fairly well might know I have something of a musical inclination. I was in school band from Year 3 until Year 12. While at University, I played in a local brass band that would occasionally march around churches and play at ANZAC Days. It was a great way to hang out with a group of many sweet old men and maybe 2 very lovely women, and they were some good days.

 

This week I have been working in an outback Riverina town called Deniliquin. Deniliquin boasts many friendly locals, and a lot of sweet senior citizens. One of these was a poet called David, who I met at the Deniliquin Writer’s Group on Monday.

 

David thought I played the ukulele due to some deceptive publicity in the local paper, and I corrected him. I actually play the euphonium.

 

“The euphonium?” bellowed David. “Our euphonium player just died! Heart attack walking down the street! Just like that! Come and play the euphonium at our band practice tonight!”

 

I don’t know if any of you have seen the many-laughs-and-feels Jim Carrey vehicle Yes Man, but basically, this was an invitation I would be crazy to reject. So, at 7pm last night I set off to the Deniliquin Municipal Band practice.

 

(This band used to be a brass band, but due to dwindling numbers, has opened up to allow in saxophone, clarinet, flute and drums. It makes a big difference to the marches, and the couple of woodwind players add essential melodies to the Mozart medley in their practice folder. )

 

I walked in and met the conductor and my band neighbour, John. John is a sweet man who has patented his own tuba seat for band – it has a clever base on it to hold the tuba in place so it’s not too heavy on your legs. I won’t give you any more details in case you try to steal John’s idea. I would not be cool with that.

 

John is a bloke who loves music. He told me that he found it really easy to play the band’s version of “Climb Every Mountain” until the wife eventually sat him down to watch The Sound of Music. Now, he can’t play the song without choking up a little.

 

This became a glorious joke between John and I for the rest of practice. Any time he made an idle comment along the lines of “this is a beautiful song,” I’d turn to him sternly and say “keep it together, John!”

 

Oh it was great.

 

I also met my other neighbour Les, who had some useful wordplay to remember his name: “call me Hope-Less! Heh heh heh!”

 

I sat down awaiting the arrival of my Dead Man’s Eupho and received a rude shock. They didn’t have his eupho. Wherever it went, it wasn’t in the practice hall.

 

The only spare brass instrument available was the biggest effing tuba I’ve ever seen in my life.

 

Important facts:  I’ve never played the tuba. It requires an entirely different use of mouth muscles, and perhaps a lesson or two. And I read bass clef, while all the band’s music was treble clef.

 

You know what, though? It was ok. The conductor gave me an excellent strategy to “ADD THREE FLATS! FLATTEN THE ACCIDENTALS! YOU’LL BE RIGHT!”

 

He was an great conductor. He was okay with the saxophonist’s kids running around in their onesies and with the fact I spent most of rehearsal playing the wrong key signature.

 

 

At one stage of the rehearsal, he said something a little bit profound: “There’s a lot of different rhythms and sounds going on, but you know what? You’re all thinking the same thing.”

At the end of rehearsal, I spent a few minutes checking out historic photos of the band. It has been around since at least 1907. A trombonist named Ron (“SOLDIER ON!”) showed me a photo from 1957 and pointed himself out in the front row. He was 23.

 

Thank you, Deniliquin Municipal Band for a night I will treasure. If anyone’s interested, we have a gig in a fortnight.

 

 

“I come from a long line of Rotarians. We’ve always believed that service is the rent you pay on earth.”

And with this, Tertia Butcher, Journalist from the Riverina Grazier and descendent of Rotarians, welcomes us to Bishop’s Lodge, Hay, on a sunny Saturday.

There’s a roomful of people here for an enrichment program run by the volunteers who manage this heritage venue with an enthusiasm and energy that is inspiring to witness.

I think I might be the youngest person in the room – and am already loving the requisite entitlement to be as cheeky as possible – when some of my Year 7 students come in. They’ve volunteered to film some of the day. They beat me in age and in community spirit. I should be deflated, but I’m inspired.

* * * * *

On frosty days, we would slide all the way along the wooden slats of the bridge.

 

If there’s one thing I like better than old people with stories, it’s interviewers who know just the right questions to ask these old people with stories so that we get the juiciest memories of time gone by.

Luckily, local historian and school teacher Lou Gardam was in charge of running an interview with John and Wal, two men in their 80s who had both lived at Bishop’s Lodge when it was a hostel for boys in the 1940s. They had amazing memories of the hierarchies in place: the Bishop was obviously highest up, made clear by his allocation of marmalade on his toast every day.

In order for rural boys to attend the local high school, the Bishop enclosed some of his veranda and made dorm rooms for boys to live in during school term. The dorms only barely insulated from harsh Hay winters, and the showers remained cold throughout the 1940s, but overall it seemed a pretty good life. On weekends, the boys would get free reign to fish in the nearby Murrumbidgee, and would only be harshly disciplined if they stole a noticeable amount of fruit from the neighbours’ trees.

The boys were of course required to attend church services at the in-house chapel, sometimes as altar boys. Luckily, Wal dealt with that unwanted responsibility by “knocking off some of the plonk” and getting caught. They also used to eat communion wafer, which I’m sure was delicious.

There’s something quite magical about trailing behind a couple of Old Boys in a quiet and subtle enough way that they don’t notice me doing so. I followed John and Wal into the Chapel, where one of the local volunteers, David, happened to be playing Danny Boy on the organ.

I’ve had many surreal moments in my life, but not much beats the following. Imagine a small room with very intense acoustics, a stained glass mural bathing the room in red and green light, two 80 year old men rifling through the pages of a 104 year old Bible, with Danny Boy piping through the air, and perhaps you’ve got an idea of what it was like.

Having just attended my 10 year high school reunion, I had already noticed how odd it feels to go to your old stomping ground and find that it has changed, and so have you. I remember feeling that parts of the grounds were recognisable, but the paths and the familiar ambling to get to those spots had changed. I’d feel little moments of familiarity, only to have that safety wrenched away. Imagine a 70 year reunion?

No wonder, when asked to re-enter the Chapel for our afternoon amble, Wal said bluntly, “I’m not going in there again.”

* * * * *

“Six months is such a pretty age”

 

As if we weren’t excited enough by the first hand memories of Wal and John, we were then allowed some one-on-one time with the extensive archive collection of Bishop’s Lodge.

I was particularly drawn to the story of a Bishop who had come out from Australia with his large family, only to have his six month old son die unexpectedly. His letters to his sister back home call the baby “it”. I might only be a wannabe psychologist, but if I can’t recognise “distancing to avoid the inevitable descent into traumatic shock, the sort that’s hard to extricate oneself from” then I’d better hand back my playwright cap.

This Bishop was a particularly artistic man. He would draw little sketches for his daughter Mary when he was called away from home to minister further outback. He’d sign letters “your silly old Daddy”. He seemed a sweet man, even to weathered old femo-atheists like myself.

Special credit goes to one line he wrote in a letter to Mary: “I hope you are not making yourself bilious with too many oranges.”

* * * * *

Rodents can’t live in a bulk material. It’s like a human in a silo.

At one stage, one of the volunteers from Bishop’s Lodge brought up something she had found in the roof of the place. She walked down the aisle between our seats, dangling quite loosely over our heads a heavy-looking wooden contraption.

The old boys had no idea what it was, but luckily a very nice and clearly very competent gentleman named Mr Tuckett had time to ruminate over morning tea, and gave us an extremely comprehensive rundown of the device.

It was a 19^th century insulation tool, used to smooth down sawdust into a dense mass and prevent insect life within the roof. Some of you might wonder how that works? Thanks to Mr Tuckett, I can tell you. Rodents can’t live in a bulk material. It’s like a human in a silo. You get in, and you get stuck. You think, “oh well, I’m stuck, it’s ok. I’ll wait for someone to rescue me.” Wrong. The dense material surrounds you. You start to disperse carbon dioxide amongst the dense material. YOU SUFFOCATE.

No possums for Bishop’s Lodge.

(Mr Tuckett also intervened a little later to explain to us the use of acid-free plastics for archiving, but by then I was in prime ‘it’s nearly time for my fifth cake serving of the morning, so I’d better stare forward and will it so’ mode, and so I didn’t get to write it down.)

* * * * *

Oh, forget about the hyrid teas.

 

Do you know what a tea rose is? I sort of do. It’s a form of rose.

Did you know it’s controversial? Neither did I. Until I met Coleen.

Coleen is a rose expert. She even wears earrings with roses on them and a ring with roses on it and a hat that has an embroidered rose on it.

Coleen gave us the history of the very important rose varieties in the Bishop’s Lodge Garden. She mentioned that “there’s a bit of discussion over whether this is a heritage rose or not. Some people say that heritage roses were phased out in 1865 with the introduction of hybrid teas.”

Coleen’s friend Brendas stopped her abruptly with a firm outstretched hand and said “Oh, Colleen. Forget about the hybrid teas.”

So we did.

The garden at Bishop’s Lodge is spectacular. There is a ginormous range of roses, some of which are so incredibly perfumed that I forgot all modesty and ego and spent most of our garden tour with head down, bum up, nose inserted into every rose I could find.

Coleen mentioned that the rose garden is a special sanctuary for people who have lost those dear to them, or who are experiencing illness. There are benches throughout to sit and think. There is some wild asparagus too.

The ladies who run the garden have a phrase they like to say: “lives end, but plants go on and on.”

This spectacular garden is one way that a little bit of local history can live on. The plants that the Bishop brought over from England are still alive – still passing on moments of beauty, wonder and solace.

That’s pretty special, if you ask me.

Yes.

Welcome to an international edition of Would Jess Like It.

Jess is currently on holidays, which usually signals a bit of a respite from the normal breakneck pace at which she updates this blog. However, today something so wonderful happened that it was impossible to leave it unblogged.

Today, Jess witnessed Turtle Rehabilitation.

Here’s the deal: I’ve never really seen a Coast Guard doing anything impressive. Last month in New York, all I could ascertain that coast guards did was escort the Staten Island Ferry to and fro, brandishing a big-ass gun and waving at tourists.

Today I got to see a different sort of Coast Guard, performing a very different sort of responsibility.

Let me set the scene: it’s 5.45pm on a stunning beach vista in Mirissa, Sri Lanka.  The waves are rough, the leathery tourists are buff, and life was there for the living. I’m happy as a clam, sitting on the sand, reading my personally autographed Colm Toibin novel as the sun sets, when my sister sprints up to me with NEWS.

“There is a turtle rehabilitation centre around the corner. ARE YOU READY FOR THE BEST MOMENT OF YOUR LIFE?!”

I follow Roz, and I see something wonderful. Five tubs of different sorts of turtle, all recovering from various maladies, requiring official Sri Lankan governmental intervention.

And here’s where the Coast Guard enters the picture.

At 6.05, they stride up to the tubs looking ready for action. Their uniforms are very impressive: a classy olive green pant and shirt combo, topped with a snazzy beret. They carry a bucket of pilchards and a large silver knife.

One Coast Guard keeps watch while the other Coast Guard wets the knife for better cutting power in some of the turtle bathwater. He lifts pilchards out of the water and chops them firmly into little slices of dead fish – a tail slice, an abdomen slice, a head slice. Each knife slice makes a firm squelch as it slices through fish spine, and I don’t want to hurl even a little bit. Because something wonderful is about to happen.

We know it, and the turtles know it: these motherfuckers are getting EXCITED, splashing water through their nostrils and waggling their soft sweet flippers at our gawking mouths.

Each tub is given a feeding deposit; a little pile of fish pieces, and the Coast Guard gestures firmly at the fish. It isn’t clear at first what we are meant to do. It becomes clearer when he picks up a piece of fish, waves it above a turtle’s head, and then places it back down on the tub.

This is an interactive exercise.

And then it is on. Kids and adults, men and women, all nationalities coming together in their fervent desire to feed the shit out of these turtles.

In each tub, something unique and wonderful is happening. These include: little turtles snapping at each other over fish pieces and splashing us in the process; hand-feeding a large turtle who had lost one of his flippers; the bottom feeding that one particularly shrewd turtle is doing, once he realises that valuable pilchard heads had fallen to the bottom of his rehab tub.

I was flinging fish in there like it was going out of style, wiping errant scales off my fingers with gay abandon. I have never experienced anything quite like it, and perhaps never will again.

Except when I return today at 9am.

Yes.

 

As you would know, a major mandate of Would Jess Like It is the need to introduce my readers to new experiences, and some of those experiences are GLOBAL.

What I mean by that is that I’m overseas at the moment and so this blog won’t be focused on the same old boring topics you’ve grown accustomed like “dog parks” and “snacking”. Instead, today’s post is about INTERNATIONAL CINEMATHEQUES, specifically Singaporean ones, and specifically to see a movie called Make Your Move.

 

This is a movie that is so clearly up my alley that I don’t know why I didn’t see it YESTERDAY. It ticks every box known to me:

 

Dance film?

Yes.

Romeo and Juliet-style doomed romance?

Yes.

But still a happy ending because dance film?

Yes.

Saccharin hip hop anthems?

Yes.

BUT INFUSED WITH K-POP????

Oh yes sirree bob.

As you can see, this is going to be a wild ride, so you’d best put on your seatbelt.

Make Your Move, the movie.

 

Do you know who Derek Hough is?

Of course you don’t; that’s a stupid question.

 

Derek Hough is a dancer on Dancing With the Stars and his sister is Juliette Hough, who is also a dancer, who dated Ryan Seacrest, and I think we’re good on the basics now.

Do you know who Bo A is?

 

Well you should. I didn’t know who she was before this but now I know that she is a TALENTED LADY, who is also a TRIPLE THREAT, or more like OCTUPLE THREAT because she knows about 5 different dance genres really really well.

BoA is a massive star in Korea and Japan, and therefore it was time to introduce her to  an American audience, and what better meal ticket to drag her in on than DEREK FUCKIN’ HOUGH?

 

 

Oh. Many other meal tickets. Ah well.

This film is well produced. There’s a shitload of Korean backers making it an indie film on a respectable budget, and the writer is a little known guy called WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE but I’m happy to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Oh alright, I guess it’s BASED on Shakespeare; the real writer is just as good though – he wrote Save the Last Dance and Step Up 35 so I know I am going to feel things in the next 2 hours.

First though, a little introduction to Singaporean cinemas. I visited Golden Village Tiong Bahru, which stocks candy bar items including popcorn, nachos and pasta. I bought none: I had notes to write.

Another thing about cinemas here is that they don’t let you waltz in any old time; there is a schedule that Lee Kuan Yew himself would be proud of. It goes like this:

• Before the show: buy the ticket and book your seat on a laminated seating map.

 

• Ten minutes before the show AND NOT EARLIER: the cinema is open for admission, and you know this because in the scrolling header above the entry it tells you which cinemas are open for admission. If your cinema is not on that list, then don’t try and enter it yet, you fool, or a teenager will laugh at you!

 

• Five minutes before the show: other audience members filter in after you, so you’re no longer the only person in the cinema. They look at your notebook and they wonder if you’re a famous choreographer here on a “research trip” and you don’t let them know otherwise.

 

• The previews start, and they are very loud, and the cinema is very cold, but I am in this for the long haul, so I deal with it. The warning to turn off our mobile phones is in the form of a Walking With Dinosaurs promo where a ringing phone pisses off a T-Rex so severely that it punches its nose through some glass and roars threateningly into the cinema. This T-Rex will now be my internal image of Singapore’s  many draconian punishments and rules. Don’t eat on the MRT or a T-Rex will kill you! Is that a durian? Do you want a stegosaurus to rape you? And so on.

So the movie starts and all we see is a buff dude with swagger wearing boots. Or wait a minute – are those TAP SHOES?

YES THEY ARE.

This man is a dancer with a capital DANCER,  and he shows us just how DANCER over the next 3 minutes where he taps the hell out of his shoes before getting interrupted by Office Buzzkill, his Parole Officer.

This guy has a Parole Officer? Meaning he went to jail? But he seems so nice! This movie already has depth. The Parole Officer warns Blonde Donny that he can’t dance out the front of that bar. His parole conditions don’t let him near no bar. But New Orleans has a bar every corner, pleads Donny! It falls on deaf ears. Justice sucks balls sometimes.

Donny hates the parole officer and I hate the parole officer. As the buzzkill skulks off, Donny says “if that PO keeps busting my chops I’m gonna swing him one day” and I don’t blame you Donny.

Anyway, suddenly Donny skips town. He’s got 6 months left on parole but he tells his friend to tell Officer Buzzkill he’s “working the pipeline” somewhere, and he’s off to Brooklyn to meet his brother Nick who runs THE BEST CLUB IN TOWN in Brooklyn.

Cue New York montage with excellent K-Pop song to accompany it. Donny arrives and gets picked up by Nick, who is actually African American!

YA-WHAAAAAA says every script writer in the room who worked on this movie? Better explain this freak occurrence at least 3 more times over the course of this film! Turns out Donny got fostered by Nick’s parents when his own folks skipped town. They’re just like brothers though. How sweet.

But here’s something Donny sure didn’t bet on: entering Brooklyn in the midst of a FIERY BOUT OF WARFARE between two previous friends who are now sworn enemies.

These two households are both alike in dignity, in that both patriarchs of both households just wanted to run successful watering holes where people can watch hotties breakdance. Something went really wrong a little while ago though, and now Kaz Capulet and Nick Montague hate each other, hard.

What went wrong is that a wormy businessman who is meant to be the “Paris” character here got between them, formed wedges between two BFFs and now he runs Kaz’s new club. We get a few insights into how to run a successful club. They include courting the bloggers, as I learn when Nick hugs a bespectacled lady and says “HEY, how’s my favourite blogger?” and then leaves her by herself again.

A bunch of boring things happen that lead to us meeting Kaz’s sister, Aya, played by superstar Bo A. Her and Donny meet at a club and it is just as powerful as the Baz Luhrman fishtank meeting scene, but imagine tap-dancing courtship thrown in as well, and Juliet in jewel-encrusted streetwear.

 

 

TEARS.

The tap dance battle is commentated for us so we know what’s going on. And what’s going on is that “she’s met her match, ladies and gentlemen!”

It’s so beautiful.

Things start to escalate in this turf war – both families yell at each other at some empty crossroads in Brooklyn – this is not a Lena Dunham sort of Brooklyn – and there are shootings of each club’s turf so that the shooting can be filmed and uploaded onto YouTube later with a flashing red caption underneath going “DON’T GO TO THIS CLUB, THERE’S SHOOTING THERE, COME TO NICK’S CLUB INSTEAD!”

In fact, social media plays a much bigger role here than it did it ancient Verona. Whenever something important happens, we hear that it exploded on YouTube, Facebook, FourSquare and Yelp.

Talk about uncanny valley: as if anyone would believe that anyone uses Yelp.

The gang war continues despite the fact that it’s all just a very easily untangled misunderstanding, but it does allow for lines like “I know you’ve gained a lot…but how much of yourself have you given up?” and I love that line SO MUCH and I want to know if anyone has ever actually said that line in real life. If so, please let me know, so I can start doing whatever you’re doing right.

Meanwhile, Donny and Aya are falling for each other, hard. They’ve shared a few dance numbers, some powerful lyrical contemporary choreographed by Tabitha and Napoleon, so you know it’s real.

 

Donny’s so pissed at his brother’s war with Kaz that he’s sleeping on the floor of a huge and beautiful abandoned church and doesn’t have any of his things with him, not even a mobile charger, and yet he can still text Aya all the time, and am I the only one who finds this irksome? If this was MY film, he’d be going “soz babes, I’m on 5%, if you’re that serious about this thing we got going, buy me a charger.”

 

They finally have sex; or at least I think so. It’s very symbolical. What I mean by this is they do a dance with some very suggestive moves, and then each move starts to entail peeling pieces of clothes off each other, and this career-specific seduction made me laugh, which the other 2 people in the audience did not like.

 

The next morning Donny’s brother Nick learns that Donny and Aya are getting jiggy with it, and he says crudely to Donny, “now I know why you danced like you had a hard-on” and I bellow one big hearty foghorn laugh and the others do not join me.

This is a complicated film and a lot more things happen, and some are good and some are bad, but finally Donny organises a gig for Aya’s taiko-drumming-cum-dance troupe to get the exposure they so desperately need, and they get an agent, and she gets a Visa, and he returns to New Orleans to finish his parole, but you know that these guys are going to stay together forever, distance don’t mean a thing, you don’t doubt it for a minute.  

 

What makes it an even happier ending is that when they’re all joy-dancing in the final number, Donny goes to his brother Nick, all “hey man, bring out the saxophone” and Nick’s like “aw man, not the saxophone” and I’m all like “YES the SAXOPHONE!” and the next thing we see is Nick ROCKING THE SAX like he’s the reincarnation of Coltrane, and everybody DANCES.

 

Anyway the music wraps up and yay happy ending, and the credits roll for 20 seconds and then BAM, the floodlights roar on in the cinema and everyone hightails it the fuck out of there, until it’s just me and the teenager who has already once laughed at me today, and he’s cleaning the aisles and prepping the cinema for the next show, so even though I want to know how many Assistants Derek Hough required for the shoot, I leave.

 

This was a wonderful experience that I would not repeat in a hurry. Both thumbs up.

Obviously, yes.

Hey loyal readers; you know how you’ve just had to listen to my voice over and over again for all these years? Well, today you don’t. Today I have a Guest Blogger for you, and she is Guest Blogging about a subject very dear to my heart!

You guys may have noticed that I quite like dogs. But I don’t just like dogs. I like all animals, and I was therefore delighted to find out that my friend Emma Salkild co-writes a blog dedicated to celebrating animal friendly cosmetics: My Fair Lipstick.

 

Emma has written a post for us about the childhood pet that ignited her love for animals. Enjoy, and check out her website for some gorgeous and ethical beauty inspiration.

 

HOW EMMA LEARNED TO LOVE RATS:

 

 

My porn star name is Basil Regent. I wonder how far I could have gone in the porn industry with that one? My brother’s is Kinky Cook. He may beat me in the fake porn star category but I win hands down in the superior first pet category.

 

Kinky was a mouse with a bend in its tail. Like most mice he spent all his free time pooing, weeing, licking himself and hiding from humans.

 

I bought my pet rat Basil in 1994 for $6 from a pet shop on Cleveland Street. He was named after Manuel’s pet rat Basil in Fawlty Towers who was named after Basil Fawlty – it was my Dad’s idea. If I had called my rat honey after the colour of his fur I would have had a much better porn name. So please people, think about the children when suggesting pet names – it seriously impacts on their future fake porn names.

 

Rats are actually really smart and social. Basil in particular liked company. I had him out of his cage all the time so he could roam free. In winter he would nestle in the arm of my jumper. In summer he would curl up under my hair. He would sit on my shoulder as I walked up to Oxford Street to get videos or go window shopping in overpriced shops.  

 

He bit me once. I had just painted my nails bright pink (even at 14 I was a nail polish addict) and was lying on my side reading in my bed. My arm was bent and my hand was in a fist behind my head. My thumb was sticking out and moving side to side – I’ve always been a terrible fidget. Suddenly I felt a sharp sting. Basil had bitten a small chunk out of the middle of my nail leaving behind a circular dent.

 

‘Fuck Basil,’ I screamed, not understanding what had happened. Who was this creature? Had he gone mad? Was he somehow rabid? He grabbed my thumb with his tiny paws and began wildly licking. His body language was full of remorse – don’t laugh – I knew my rat well. I guess when he had seen that bright pink nail moving from side to side he thought it was some kind of bug that he was going to kill. My sister said she once saw him annihilate a cockroach.

 

What became of Basil? I should’ve known something was up by the size of his balls. Those testicles could have put Dirk Diggler to shame. My rat had the biggest nads you ever saw. You couldn’t not notice them. But I must have been in some kind of denial and just put it down to one of his “quirks”.

 

I don’t know what made me finally take him to the vet. But it turned out that Basil had a tumour – in his nuts. The vet said a lot of pet rats got tumours and that it might have something to do with being the offspring of lab rats.

 

My parents forked out $100 for an operation. That week was pretty rough at school. By this stage I was 15 and in a phase of full-blown adolescent angst. My best friend was appalled that we coughed up 100 bucks for a “stupid rat”. My mates also laughed when I told them he had a tumour in his nuts. To be honest, sometimes I even laugh at it. Those balls were hilarious.

 

Basil survived the operation but died a few weeks later. I don’t buy cruelty-free cosmetics, because, isn’t life cruel enough? RIP Basil you kindhearted big-balled freak you.

 

– – –

Emma Salkild blogs about cruelty-free beauty over at www.myfairlipstick.com

Follow on twitter at www.twitter.com/myfairlipstick or www.facebook.com/myfairlipstick