www.nemonymous.com
Des Lewis - GESTALT REAL-TIME BOOK REVIEWS
A FEARLESS FAITH IN FICTION — THE PASSION OF THE READING MOMENT CRYSTALLISED — Empirical literary critiques from 2008 as based on purchased books.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Who's Afraid of Jane Austen?
Nobody, I suppose, if you just mean her books as books. Words on paper. But if you mean the whole cult, the museum in Bath, the Georgian Crescent, the O and A Level exams, the films based on sense, sensibility as well as on one's pride, plus powers of persuasion and prejudice, I guess. And when I met a woman called Emma, distant descendant of Jayne (spelt with a Y) Mansfield, she stared at me with steel-embedded eyes, she being a cut-throat film agent from America who wanted me to finance her husband's directorship of a recently discovered long-lost Austen novel called TRADING LACE...
I wondered if she'd got herself - and thus her pet dog of a husband - embroiled with sniffing out modern gold in old English Literature because her name and heritage were the obvious hybrid of two well-seasoned Austen novels that had no doubt already been filmed to death. Assuming Emma was the director proper and her husband the director in name only, I knew I was talking to the organ grinder, not to the, ahem, male dog who sat atop the barrel-organ laughing at itself for not being a monkey. The 'face of the film', yapping terrier-like not roaring as the MGM Lion once did. The cockerel of Pathe News having been deader than a dead parrot since the death of Sir Winston Churchill himself. Never a fan of Jane Austen, I'm told.
The searchlight beacons of Twentieth Century Fox started twirling in Emma's widening eyes when I said I would be pleased to invest in her husband's directorship of a new Jane Austen cinema package should she be able to get her nephew to star in it and we all know who that is, don't we? Tom Mansfield. *The* Tom Mansfield ... of the Passion Peak TV series. Her face fell faster than the time it took me to add the following brief contractual stipulation: the title TRADING LACE would need to change to HONITON HOUSE. You see, she knew that I knew that she and her husband had fallen out big time with Tom Mansfield ever since .... Well, that's another story.
As to the title change, I once persuaded Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton to exercise their own art of persuasion with Edward Albee to switch Gertrude Stein to Virginia Woolf for the title of his play in which they were about to star. 'Who's afraid of Gertrude Stein?' didn't have the same ring. And nobody had heard of Gertrude Stein. A rose is a rose is a rose is .... There's always a better word for any word that nobody's yet thought of - that's my motto. Often a whim. But often right. And HONITON HOUSE rang right. Rang twice. Like the postman.
When I finally met the dog, the nephew Tom Mansfield was sewn up - how they persuaded him I shall never know - and HONITON HOUSE was agreed, with Jane Austen herself being exhumed, I was told, to rubber stamp it. TRADING LACE? Well, Jane Austen was never wedded to that title, she admitted, before being dug back into the churchyard where her fans often gather to hear the muffled voice, an imprecise sound that sometimes could be heard at unpredictable times.
The film? Like many films, it never even reached the cutting-room floor. But I still got my contractual kill-fee, of course. And some off-cuts of costume lace for my wife. She's always had great expectations, my wife. But these days she's easily consoled. If the first attempt fails, keep trying till the next one works.
The dog laughed. Despite having heard the 'There is Something Nasty in the Emma Woodshed' joke before.
Who's afraid of Stella Gibbons?
Friday, August 17, 2012
Preacher Creature
In the old days, there were songs about seeing an alligator later, about purple people-eaters. Johnny with his hurricanes. Charlie Gracie’s butterfly. Duane’s bass guitar. And a not so familiar name these days, Joe Dorati, who had a one-hit wonder: preacher creature. You could hear all those songs – even Joe Dorati’s – on mighty wurlitzers of the musical spirit called Juke Boxes each with a tentacular arm taking its pick from the shuttling whorl of black discs and slapping down ... the disc's middle missing: punched out – and, indeed, in those days, I don’t think I ever heard one single middle, but just the beginnings and ends. Like the whole of life, I guess, with things going blurred with strangeness in my twenties and thirties - and since I died in my fifties those fuzzy years became my lost middle. The middle that was punched out to make a bigger empty hole ... so that the brimming music could be threaded by the chunky central spindle, dropped upon a round rubber mat that all those Juke Boxes had at their heart. Where the spinning was. Where the grooving was. Where the friction was. Where the needle was. Where the needle sometimes got stuck, hanging from my pick-up like a huge foreign insect with a tubular torso. Yes, that was my lost middle. Once upon a time, though, I woke up to find myself fifty. I looked downhill in both directions of coming and going. Finally, I went to meet my maker, my own preacher creature. I’d forgotten my name when asked. But it came back to me briefly – Joe Dorati – before I forgot it again: this time forever.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Celebrity Big Brother - Summer 2012
This is what BB should all be about. And thanks for the aide memoire of names, Marion, and the report.
Actually, I at first cringed and was embarrassed by the task, in case it was a damp squib, but the two ladies did brilliantly.
Having said that, I only know three of the Housemates (Kemp, Goodyear and Clary) - so wonder why the others are called celebrities, but that will always be the case with an old fogey like me.
I lived most of my life -- from 1970ish until around 2004 when I gave up watching Corrie -- with Julie Goodyear (when did she leave the series?) ... actually I started watching Coronation Street when it started in 1960. Perhaps they'll bring in Ken Barlow as a surprise HM later?
------------------
Marion wrote: "Julian is sleeping in the bed next to Julie - this delights him. He is comforted by the thought of Bet Lynch only an arms length away from him - she;s earthy and understanding, the kind of person he admires."
Yes, just imagine that situation in the staggering paranormal foresight of this scene from yesteryear! All those pub fires seen through the prism of Madness TV, Alec Gilroy banterings, bar-top gossip with Rita Littlewopd, Ena Sharples' hairnets that caught the Bet Lynch soul in its trammels, Ken's ludicrous philandering...
Jasmine seemed to be the emerging prime-mover last night. Her legs are Sara's legs but now whittled down into slender willows by adolescent boys on an endless summer's riverbank with their awakening penknifes of growing-up.
Talking of Sara et al, this set of celebrity housemates seems a cut above the ordinary BB session just expired, in a different league of perception, articulate repartee and cute awareness. No wonder they are celebrities. I think that is the first time I've been able to say that with some conviction when comparing celebrity HMs with their 'ordinary' counterparts that preceded them. Very promising.
------------
(18 August) The Channel 5 signal vanished last night on my TV, but I managed to catch up on the internet this morning except for the nomination session, so thanks Marion for filling in any gaps.
I am amazed at all the gossip and goings-on in these people's backstories. Merely that. But some backstories are re-moulded I guess to match the 'truth' of the present moment...
The only people I seem to like are Julian and Julie. A good team by temperament and name and platonic bed-sharing.
-------------
The Mouldy Cock
Luckily (?) my Channel 5 signal has returned. I think it's the atmospherics of the hot weather.
I loved Julie's quote from Bette Davis ("Old age is not for cissies") when she got up, coughed and accidentally peed herself. And I haven't laughed out loud so much watching her cut up a banana... Later, her tending to Jasmine's trauma, like cradling a sick chick; it felt almost sexual. Julie was and always will be a STAR! Still calls everyone 'cock' as an endearment: as she did on Corrie, I note.
The Lorenzo task was a bore and a cheat. Not a real BB task as everyone knew what was going on and no attempt at secrecy in all the women flirting with him and why.
Danica, Jasmine and Rhian are an interesting trio of characters: rinsing for me was what we did with the washing-up before drying. Now we have rinse-aid to add to the dish-washer. Well at least I do.
----------------
Yesterday the mouldy cock, today the reincarnated seagull -- dutifully squawking, that was indeed hilariously from-the-sky if not off-the-wall. One of those synchronised shards of random truth and fiction.
The Danica smile being switched on and off like a lighthouse: a nice smile, though, if seen beyond the context of its intentions. Her 'Thing' crabbing was good, too.
The talent show was a bit eclectic, a ragbag of dubious talents with very little indestructible gold. I would have given Rhian a tick for saying 20% of 100 was 5%. Just a slip of the tongue. The method was right and the answer correct without the superfluous second %.
Colleen wants to be matriarch and Sunset Boulevard star, I guess, impugning our Julie on the sly as she did. Beware the seagull.
--------------
Mouldy cock, reincarnated seagull now the white swallow...
I agree with Marion about Jasmine and the unhinged nature of her interactions. And Julie is making a mistake in becoming the lioness mother to this snappy foundling cub. As I said before, the relationship is almost sexual between the two women. And Julie has been a gay icon for many years, but not quite in that sense, I feel. But more in the sense of the combined birdbrained plan that she and Julian were hatching out for some sort of club...?
The complex emotions catalysed by Jasmine in the others, however, have at least made this interesting, if often uncomfortable, viewing. A very strange blend of people that could backfire at any moment...
-----------------
THE STORKER
The most remarkable thing I shall take away from this series is Julie's tale last night of the circumstances of getting married to a weird stalker who was seriously stalking her (an HGV driver 20 years younger), i.e. to stop him stalking her by marrying him I guess and because she felt sorry for him because he'd said he idolised her and no other woman would suffice and if she didn't marry him he would never get married at all and would be lonely for the rest of his life. Apparently they are now happily married! There's a moral there - somewhere.
Also whose legs do those legs alongside remind you of?
Lovely pics, Marion.
-------------
Well, Jasmine left last night. She seemed a bit tongue-tied in the interview, but she did call the other girls 'skanky'. There was also some hint that Jasmine had been given the impression at the supermarket food-grab that Julie was two-faced in 'controlling' her, in fact the only one who could control her behaviour (instructed to control Jasmine by BB?).
Colleen is also trying to give the impression that Julie is two-faced. Julie as star was due to win, of course. But now?
Jasmine says she wanted Sam to win. Is that becuase Sam writes for the Daily Mail?
------------------
Marion wrote: "So that's how it is done. Washed , rinsed, and hung out to dry."
Danica is a sexocet.
Julie is both wonderful and monstrous. Watching her dragging lingeringly on her long cigarette-holder emitting side gasps of "flying f***s" - counterbalanced by her Sunset Boulevard tragic humanity and her backstory as Bet Lynch, Bet Gilroy and a Stalker's wife... Who says sublimity is not housed within such human frailty?
I agree that Julian is detached.
Beginnning to like Coleen more. None of the men are particularly interesting, except perhaps Harvey.
-----------
I'd recommend anyone who wants to know what happened last night -- and exactly what acutely just perceptions can be drawn from these events -- to read Marion's report ... but please be apprised of the mixed delights of negotiating the slippery letters that make up many, if not most, of her words.
I'd only add that the cowboy-style hat that Julie was wearing made her look like Jimmy Carter as he is today.
And, oh yes, Marion is right -- the sexocet has a new target. A Shangri-La Principality nestling within the Lost Hills of Ancient Italy.
--------------
Marion wrote: "Ashley, Lorenzo and Mike. Not one of them is actually having a relationship with anyone in the house, but each of them is confabulating one as they know romance is a winner in BB..."
Yes, good to put those boy-cards in abeyance or flick them into the corner of the playground and, instead, play trumps with the Julie-Julian game of snappy quips elsewhere.
Did Lorenzo actually say to Danica last night that if she'd been playing, among 16 other girls, in 'The Bachelor', he'd've chosen her without hesitation? Could this be a real 'Romance' on his part? And on her part, too, because, in much Classic Literature, love was not always the main motive for 'Romance'? Fauxmance is as old as the hills. The Italian hills.
Quote: Did Lorenzo, in High School, eat lunch alone?
That was quite a good snappy quip by Mike the Situation.
-------------
(27 Aug 12) Marion wrote: "Julie also had a moment when she was listening to Danica explain her work. Julie doesn't see anything wrong with it -people send her things too - earrings, toilet seats, pubic hair, addressed to Bet Lynch, England."
Yes, that was the highlight of the evening. Best to draw a veil over the rest, but thanks Marion for putting it so justly for the record on how NOT to run a BB show. And Men Behaving Badly.
---------------
Marion wrote: "Valerie and Albert for the win!"
Albert Tatlock and Valerie Barlow, no doubt.
Julian was the star last night: with his brave public hatred of the Daily Mail and the perfect protectively maternal reading voice for children's bedtime (here less than hilariously geared to its adult audience tucked up with their teddies and toys but that does not take away from the perfection of the voice).
I have not really considered Samantha before. So far a bit of a non-entity for me. Despite her Daily Mail connections (£2 per word according to Julian), she is perhaps playing a long game, arguably more astute than Julie's misguided partisanship and Colleen's over-passionate reactions to her own eviction escape etc.
I dunno - Mike the Situtaion is effectively economical with the quips: whose backstory has a Prince Harry 'charm' about it. I reckon he might win. Playing to be 'played'. Julian as the other contender.
----------
Another brilliant summary, Marion.
A great Gods and Mortals task, but it is another idea they have pinched from this very discussion forum. (Cf the Jason and the Argonauts comments earlier).
'Candid' Danica was articulate in her attack upon The Situation, even though she wasn't quite articulate enough to know the meaning of the word 'articulate'. I found her frightening in her forensic diatribe, with cutting-edged forthrightness. She is certainly, as I said before, the ultimate sexocet.
There are two sides here, both essentially wrong and both essentially right. They are all playing a game or, like Ashley and Harvey, merely being swept along by things. Meanwhile, Julian is playing his own soft-toned, laid-back professional act of campness to a treat... It's as if he is another sort of Tommy Cooper who could never doff his Fez or cease his amusingly mis-performed magic tricks throughout all the waking hours of his life: in or out of the public gaze.
Julie's banana act was a classic equivalent in memory to a lionesque George Galloway's pussy.
----------------
Well, I watched the amazing large hadron collider on last night's extraordinary opening ceremony - but now caught up with happenings at the House.
Martin Kemp is making his move - warning the boys about Julie. If Danica is a sexocet, I'd bet Julie is a one person Lynch-mob. Gilroy was here!
Rhian was not surprising as the departure. A misunderstood lady, I feel. Thoughtful, with a refreshing inner clown that popped out now and again. What you saw was what you got, including her seamless assets.
Meanwhile, the collusive Danica Situation prevailed.
-----------
(31 Aug 12) Two giant reports from Marion fascinatingly extrapolating upon her view of the truth behind the Games being played. Thanks. But only by watching the programme will you get your own truth. And every viewer will have their own truth. Every viewer's truth is true according to the ground rules you set. One cannot hide your own reception of truth - unless, of course, you're in the House itself rather than viewing it from outside like the Olympian gods themselves. As for me, I'm working for an individual Games for every category of ability, even for each grey area between categories.
Danica and Julie and Colleen - like all powerful women of their sort - use the art of weeping as part of their armoury or gestalt...
PS: Marion, did you choose that TUSK song by Fleetwood Mac because the woman on the photo is the spitting image of Danica?
------------
I agree about Mike's situational cheating.
Yes, I take 'Delphic' as a compliment - mosaic, allusive, elusive, illusional, fustian to the nth degree...
I was surprised and disappointed that Danica was evicted. A star BB housemate, whatever you think of her. And she sure has had an effect on me, both good and bad. You can visualise her growing old into Bette Davis rather than Bet Lynch! Lauren Bacall, too...
And as to 70 year old Julie/Bet Lynch/Bet Gilroy, she's still the monster, still the soap queen, with some really intrinisic fault-lines that must endear her to some and infuriate others. And I shall always prefer her to Colleeen.
Harvey is the best of the men. An ethnic Arthur English. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.
(Julian is a lovely man, but too laid-back.)
------------------
Marion wrote: "I think BB orchestrates thse booing sessions, you know. Why else would an entire mob catcall in unison for a housemate who isn't even up?"
I don't think they would dare as some of the orchestrated would blab. It's just that the braying mob don't really know who Julie is. Imagine coming across someone like Julie COLD!
Julian is the real 'gentle'man - I HOPE he wins.
Otherwise nothing much to add to Marion's excellent report. Just like to know who else is watching the programme and/or reading Marion's reports of it?
-----------------------
Marion wrote: "She has never sunk so low as Mike did tonight in the influencing nominations game - he offered that has- been Harvey a show with him once CBB is over - I susect that offer will disppear as soon as the series ends. But in the mean time, it will save Mike from Harvey and his gang's nominations."
Good spot, Marion.
Meanwhile just Julie, as you say, justice for Julie. Don't pretend to hold back, Colleen, just because you claim tactically that a 70 year old needs special treatment. Julie is scary as she wobbles and runkles in the bubbling juices of the jacuzzi. Indeed, let's hope the young voters see that she is the new azathothian incubation for a new myth of daleks.
Ashley coming up closer, though, with his sterling efforts beside the acid bath (as opposed to Julie's jacuzzi)
----------------------
Marion wrote: ":| :| :\ :| She is the most shameless old biddy in the world but she comes out slugging every time. Go, Julie - lay it on with a trowel and win through!"
Completely shameless. Like me if I'd resisted the nature of the review of 'Weirdtongue' simply because I am getting old (as I am) and then issuing a tearful prayer (to the God of self) to counter all genuinely bad or seeming mocking reviews and all adverse voting. Better than writing pseudonymous reviews of my own work myself, though, like some 'respected' authors have done apparently! But they are all things I'd never stoop to. Unless it be an up-front non-pseudonymous real-time review of my own stuff as an experiment in gestalt-seeking, of course!
Julie has shot her bolt but I hope there are more than just Marion (and me) who will continue supporting her: supporting her for, inter alia, her black-eyed pees and for her clownishly-foolhardy Sunset Boulevard nonsense (still nonsense, however well performed by this ancient stager) ..... and for old time's and old timers' sake.
------------------
(5 Sept) Marion said: "The greatest joy of the evening, however, was the final scene between Julie and Julian. Tucked up in bed together he advised her that she has to be a good girl tomorrow. She complained that Harvey called her a disgrace. 'But you are,' Julian said gently and tenderly. She reckoned Martin might be better than her in the final and that she would go tomorow night. He told her to stay for the fun of it. Didn't she want to grow old disgracefuly?
She nodded.
'Mission accomplished,' he said.
It was a lovely scene, real and poignant. It will be a travesty if Julie goes tomorrow. The only proper outcome of the series is Julie and Julian standing together right to the very end."
Fundamentally, I'm singing from the same hymn-sheet as Marion vis-a-vis the great Julie Goodyear.
But I fear that hymn-sheet is not available to most of the BB voters.
And it was all very well BB allowing Julie to have her hair washed by a hairdresser 'for medical reasons' but to allow that to go beyond niceties of conversation with the hairdresser, to the extent that Julie could vent her emotions to another person outside of the house... On the face of it, unfair. If it hadn't been for Harvey and Lorenzo next door in the gym talking about what they heard through the wall, we BB viewers may not even have known about that hairdressing safety-valve that has presumably been available to Julie from day one to splutter like a volcano. Lava as well as lather!
---------------
Sorry, Marion, that neither of us had our wishes about Julie winning.
'Nanna Julie' (gauchely describing herself as a "70 year old disabled pensioner") put a brave face on it after some loud music played by BB to deafen out the boos and she stone-walled Brian's basic, cruel question: WHY are you not upset about losing? I bet she is wondering today why she put herself through all that? A tragically flawed but still loveable figure of Shakespearean proportions.
We must now hope for a Julian win to recreate balance in the universe.
-------------------
Yes, I retract what I said earlier in this thread about Harvey. In hindsight, that was demeaning the memory of the great Arthur English. (Martin's explanation to Harvey of the difference between exposing the arse and the arse-whole was illuminating, by the way.)
I, too, hope for (and expect) a Julian win
-----------------
(7 Sep 12) Well, Julian won. He did develop naturally into the winner....and an overall satisfactory result. Thanks for your company again, Marion, and for your wonderful reports. See you in January if there is another CBB then.
Actually, I at first cringed and was embarrassed by the task, in case it was a damp squib, but the two ladies did brilliantly.
Having said that, I only know three of the Housemates (Kemp, Goodyear and Clary) - so wonder why the others are called celebrities, but that will always be the case with an old fogey like me.
I lived most of my life -- from 1970ish until around 2004 when I gave up watching Corrie -- with Julie Goodyear (when did she leave the series?) ... actually I started watching Coronation Street when it started in 1960. Perhaps they'll bring in Ken Barlow as a surprise HM later?
------------------
Marion wrote: "Julian is sleeping in the bed next to Julie - this delights him. He is comforted by the thought of Bet Lynch only an arms length away from him - she;s earthy and understanding, the kind of person he admires."
Yes, just imagine that situation in the staggering paranormal foresight of this scene from yesteryear! All those pub fires seen through the prism of Madness TV, Alec Gilroy banterings, bar-top gossip with Rita Littlewopd, Ena Sharples' hairnets that caught the Bet Lynch soul in its trammels, Ken's ludicrous philandering...
Jasmine seemed to be the emerging prime-mover last night. Her legs are Sara's legs but now whittled down into slender willows by adolescent boys on an endless summer's riverbank with their awakening penknifes of growing-up.
Talking of Sara et al, this set of celebrity housemates seems a cut above the ordinary BB session just expired, in a different league of perception, articulate repartee and cute awareness. No wonder they are celebrities. I think that is the first time I've been able to say that with some conviction when comparing celebrity HMs with their 'ordinary' counterparts that preceded them. Very promising.
------------
(18 August) The Channel 5 signal vanished last night on my TV, but I managed to catch up on the internet this morning except for the nomination session, so thanks Marion for filling in any gaps.
I am amazed at all the gossip and goings-on in these people's backstories. Merely that. But some backstories are re-moulded I guess to match the 'truth' of the present moment...
The only people I seem to like are Julian and Julie. A good team by temperament and name and platonic bed-sharing.
-------------
The Mouldy Cock
Luckily (?) my Channel 5 signal has returned. I think it's the atmospherics of the hot weather.
I loved Julie's quote from Bette Davis ("Old age is not for cissies") when she got up, coughed and accidentally peed herself. And I haven't laughed out loud so much watching her cut up a banana... Later, her tending to Jasmine's trauma, like cradling a sick chick; it felt almost sexual. Julie was and always will be a STAR! Still calls everyone 'cock' as an endearment: as she did on Corrie, I note.
The Lorenzo task was a bore and a cheat. Not a real BB task as everyone knew what was going on and no attempt at secrecy in all the women flirting with him and why.
Danica, Jasmine and Rhian are an interesting trio of characters: rinsing for me was what we did with the washing-up before drying. Now we have rinse-aid to add to the dish-washer. Well at least I do.
----------------
Yesterday the mouldy cock, today the reincarnated seagull -- dutifully squawking, that was indeed hilariously from-the-sky if not off-the-wall. One of those synchronised shards of random truth and fiction.
The Danica smile being switched on and off like a lighthouse: a nice smile, though, if seen beyond the context of its intentions. Her 'Thing' crabbing was good, too.
The talent show was a bit eclectic, a ragbag of dubious talents with very little indestructible gold. I would have given Rhian a tick for saying 20% of 100 was 5%. Just a slip of the tongue. The method was right and the answer correct without the superfluous second %.
Colleen wants to be matriarch and Sunset Boulevard star, I guess, impugning our Julie on the sly as she did. Beware the seagull.
--------------
Mouldy cock, reincarnated seagull now the white swallow...
The complex emotions catalysed by Jasmine in the others, however, have at least made this interesting, if often uncomfortable, viewing. A very strange blend of people that could backfire at any moment...
-----------------
The most remarkable thing I shall take away from this series is Julie's tale last night of the circumstances of getting married to a weird stalker who was seriously stalking her (an HGV driver 20 years younger), i.e. to stop him stalking her by marrying him I guess and because she felt sorry for him because he'd said he idolised her and no other woman would suffice and if she didn't marry him he would never get married at all and would be lonely for the rest of his life. Apparently they are now happily married! There's a moral there - somewhere.
Also whose legs do those legs alongside remind you of?
Lovely pics, Marion.
-------------
Well, Jasmine left last night. She seemed a bit tongue-tied in the interview, but she did call the other girls 'skanky'. There was also some hint that Jasmine had been given the impression at the supermarket food-grab that Julie was two-faced in 'controlling' her, in fact the only one who could control her behaviour (instructed to control Jasmine by BB?).
Colleen is also trying to give the impression that Julie is two-faced. Julie as star was due to win, of course. But now?
Jasmine says she wanted Sam to win. Is that becuase Sam writes for the Daily Mail?
------------------
Marion wrote: "So that's how it is done. Washed , rinsed, and hung out to dry."
Danica is a sexocet.
Julie is both wonderful and monstrous. Watching her dragging lingeringly on her long cigarette-holder emitting side gasps of "flying f***s" - counterbalanced by her Sunset Boulevard tragic humanity and her backstory as Bet Lynch, Bet Gilroy and a Stalker's wife... Who says sublimity is not housed within such human frailty?
I agree that Julian is detached.
Beginnning to like Coleen more. None of the men are particularly interesting, except perhaps Harvey.
-----------
I'd recommend anyone who wants to know what happened last night -- and exactly what acutely just perceptions can be drawn from these events -- to read Marion's report ... but please be apprised of the mixed delights of negotiating the slippery letters that make up many, if not most, of her words.
I'd only add that the cowboy-style hat that Julie was wearing made her look like Jimmy Carter as he is today.
And, oh yes, Marion is right -- the sexocet has a new target. A Shangri-La Principality nestling within the Lost Hills of Ancient Italy.
--------------
Marion wrote: "Ashley, Lorenzo and Mike. Not one of them is actually having a relationship with anyone in the house, but each of them is confabulating one as they know romance is a winner in BB..."
Yes, good to put those boy-cards in abeyance or flick them into the corner of the playground and, instead, play trumps with the Julie-Julian game of snappy quips elsewhere.
Did Lorenzo actually say to Danica last night that if she'd been playing, among 16 other girls, in 'The Bachelor', he'd've chosen her without hesitation? Could this be a real 'Romance' on his part? And on her part, too, because, in much Classic Literature, love was not always the main motive for 'Romance'? Fauxmance is as old as the hills. The Italian hills.
Quote: Did Lorenzo, in High School, eat lunch alone?
That was quite a good snappy quip by Mike the Situation.
-------------
(27 Aug 12) Marion wrote: "Julie also had a moment when she was listening to Danica explain her work. Julie doesn't see anything wrong with it -people send her things too - earrings, toilet seats, pubic hair, addressed to Bet Lynch, England."
Yes, that was the highlight of the evening. Best to draw a veil over the rest, but thanks Marion for putting it so justly for the record on how NOT to run a BB show. And Men Behaving Badly.
---------------
Marion wrote: "Valerie and Albert for the win!"
Albert Tatlock and Valerie Barlow, no doubt.
Julian was the star last night: with his brave public hatred of the Daily Mail and the perfect protectively maternal reading voice for children's bedtime (here less than hilariously geared to its adult audience tucked up with their teddies and toys but that does not take away from the perfection of the voice).
I have not really considered Samantha before. So far a bit of a non-entity for me. Despite her Daily Mail connections (£2 per word according to Julian), she is perhaps playing a long game, arguably more astute than Julie's misguided partisanship and Colleen's over-passionate reactions to her own eviction escape etc.
I dunno - Mike the Situtaion is effectively economical with the quips: whose backstory has a Prince Harry 'charm' about it. I reckon he might win. Playing to be 'played'. Julian as the other contender.
----------
Another brilliant summary, Marion.
A great Gods and Mortals task, but it is another idea they have pinched from this very discussion forum. (Cf the Jason and the Argonauts comments earlier).
'Candid' Danica was articulate in her attack upon The Situation, even though she wasn't quite articulate enough to know the meaning of the word 'articulate'. I found her frightening in her forensic diatribe, with cutting-edged forthrightness. She is certainly, as I said before, the ultimate sexocet.
There are two sides here, both essentially wrong and both essentially right. They are all playing a game or, like Ashley and Harvey, merely being swept along by things. Meanwhile, Julian is playing his own soft-toned, laid-back professional act of campness to a treat... It's as if he is another sort of Tommy Cooper who could never doff his Fez or cease his amusingly mis-performed magic tricks throughout all the waking hours of his life: in or out of the public gaze.
Julie's banana act was a classic equivalent in memory to a lionesque George Galloway's pussy.
----------------
Well, I watched the amazing large hadron collider on last night's extraordinary opening ceremony - but now caught up with happenings at the House.
Martin Kemp is making his move - warning the boys about Julie. If Danica is a sexocet, I'd bet Julie is a one person Lynch-mob. Gilroy was here!
Rhian was not surprising as the departure. A misunderstood lady, I feel. Thoughtful, with a refreshing inner clown that popped out now and again. What you saw was what you got, including her seamless assets.
Meanwhile, the collusive Danica Situation prevailed.
-----------
(31 Aug 12) Two giant reports from Marion fascinatingly extrapolating upon her view of the truth behind the Games being played. Thanks. But only by watching the programme will you get your own truth. And every viewer will have their own truth. Every viewer's truth is true according to the ground rules you set. One cannot hide your own reception of truth - unless, of course, you're in the House itself rather than viewing it from outside like the Olympian gods themselves. As for me, I'm working for an individual Games for every category of ability, even for each grey area between categories.
Danica and Julie and Colleen - like all powerful women of their sort - use the art of weeping as part of their armoury or gestalt...
PS: Marion, did you choose that TUSK song by Fleetwood Mac because the woman on the photo is the spitting image of Danica?
------------
I agree about Mike's situational cheating.
Yes, I take 'Delphic' as a compliment - mosaic, allusive, elusive, illusional, fustian to the nth degree...
I was surprised and disappointed that Danica was evicted. A star BB housemate, whatever you think of her. And she sure has had an effect on me, both good and bad. You can visualise her growing old into Bette Davis rather than Bet Lynch! Lauren Bacall, too...
And as to 70 year old Julie/Bet Lynch/Bet Gilroy, she's still the monster, still the soap queen, with some really intrinisic fault-lines that must endear her to some and infuriate others. And I shall always prefer her to Colleeen.
Harvey is the best of the men. An ethnic Arthur English. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.
------------------
Marion wrote: "I think BB orchestrates thse booing sessions, you know. Why else would an entire mob catcall in unison for a housemate who isn't even up?"
I don't think they would dare as some of the orchestrated would blab. It's just that the braying mob don't really know who Julie is. Imagine coming across someone like Julie COLD!
Julian is the real 'gentle'man - I HOPE he wins.
Otherwise nothing much to add to Marion's excellent report. Just like to know who else is watching the programme and/or reading Marion's reports of it?
-----------------------
Marion wrote: "She has never sunk so low as Mike did tonight in the influencing nominations game - he offered that has- been Harvey a show with him once CBB is over - I susect that offer will disppear as soon as the series ends. But in the mean time, it will save Mike from Harvey and his gang's nominations."
Good spot, Marion.
Meanwhile just Julie, as you say, justice for Julie. Don't pretend to hold back, Colleen, just because you claim tactically that a 70 year old needs special treatment. Julie is scary as she wobbles and runkles in the bubbling juices of the jacuzzi. Indeed, let's hope the young voters see that she is the new azathothian incubation for a new myth of daleks.
Ashley coming up closer, though, with his sterling efforts beside the acid bath (as opposed to Julie's jacuzzi)
----------------------
Marion wrote: ":| :| :\ :| She is the most shameless old biddy in the world but she comes out slugging every time. Go, Julie - lay it on with a trowel and win through!"
Completely shameless. Like me if I'd resisted the nature of the review of 'Weirdtongue' simply because I am getting old (as I am) and then issuing a tearful prayer (to the God of self) to counter all genuinely bad or seeming mocking reviews and all adverse voting. Better than writing pseudonymous reviews of my own work myself, though, like some 'respected' authors have done apparently! But they are all things I'd never stoop to. Unless it be an up-front non-pseudonymous real-time review of my own stuff as an experiment in gestalt-seeking, of course!
Julie has shot her bolt but I hope there are more than just Marion (and me) who will continue supporting her: supporting her for, inter alia, her black-eyed pees and for her clownishly-foolhardy Sunset Boulevard nonsense (still nonsense, however well performed by this ancient stager) ..... and for old time's and old timers' sake.
------------------
(5 Sept) Marion said: "The greatest joy of the evening, however, was the final scene between Julie and Julian. Tucked up in bed together he advised her that she has to be a good girl tomorrow. She complained that Harvey called her a disgrace. 'But you are,' Julian said gently and tenderly. She reckoned Martin might be better than her in the final and that she would go tomorow night. He told her to stay for the fun of it. Didn't she want to grow old disgracefuly?
She nodded.
'Mission accomplished,' he said.
It was a lovely scene, real and poignant. It will be a travesty if Julie goes tomorrow. The only proper outcome of the series is Julie and Julian standing together right to the very end."
Fundamentally, I'm singing from the same hymn-sheet as Marion vis-a-vis the great Julie Goodyear.
But I fear that hymn-sheet is not available to most of the BB voters.
And it was all very well BB allowing Julie to have her hair washed by a hairdresser 'for medical reasons' but to allow that to go beyond niceties of conversation with the hairdresser, to the extent that Julie could vent her emotions to another person outside of the house... On the face of it, unfair. If it hadn't been for Harvey and Lorenzo next door in the gym talking about what they heard through the wall, we BB viewers may not even have known about that hairdressing safety-valve that has presumably been available to Julie from day one to splutter like a volcano. Lava as well as lather!
---------------
Sorry, Marion, that neither of us had our wishes about Julie winning.
'Nanna Julie' (gauchely describing herself as a "70 year old disabled pensioner") put a brave face on it after some loud music played by BB to deafen out the boos and she stone-walled Brian's basic, cruel question: WHY are you not upset about losing? I bet she is wondering today why she put herself through all that? A tragically flawed but still loveable figure of Shakespearean proportions.
We must now hope for a Julian win to recreate balance in the universe.
-------------------
Yes, I retract what I said earlier in this thread about Harvey. In hindsight, that was demeaning the memory of the great Arthur English. (Martin's explanation to Harvey of the difference between exposing the arse and the arse-whole was illuminating, by the way.)
I, too, hope for (and expect) a Julian win
-----------------
(7 Sep 12) Well, Julian won. He did develop naturally into the winner....and an overall satisfactory result. Thanks for your company again, Marion, and for your wonderful reports. See you in January if there is another CBB then.
Wednesday, August 01, 2012
Big Brother - Summer 2012 (4)
CONTINUED FROM HERE
Marion wrote: "Asheligh's mouthhas erupted with herpes sores -"
Lessons and Lesions.
Oh what a report you've just given, Marion! So incisive, with such straight-eyed ironing-out of the unironic without abandoning a sense of irony for us to chuckle at. You should be employed by the national tabloids and by literary essay vehicles to portray this lesson in modern life as presented by BB, a vital lesson in social lesions, a lesson so often derided by the programme's detractors.
As to Ashleigh's cold sores, these are possibly the stigmata from the recent Confessional. I only say she has the best chance to win as she exemplifies best what I said above about life's lesions and what I predict will be the voting of people-not-like-us, Marion.
-------------
(2 August): Marion wrote: "I think the White Room may turn out to be an epic bore."
I diisagree. Well, I would. In 2002 I published the world's first blank story in 'Nemonymous' - and produced another edition with blank covers, and many of the horror stories in Nemonymous were about blanks or nothingness or gaps.
Sara is becoming more interesting. Saying on her audition something that is evidently non-characteristic of her (i.e. doing striptease) and building up the tension and sensory deprivation / mental asylum angle of the White Room by acting out antipathy towards it. Constructing anxieties for the viewers that 'enhance' such a scenario. This is 'pure' Theatre of the 20th century (not 21st century) - something we had grown out of, until now. A happening. Even Conor benefited from the surrounding whiteness.
Deana claims she was 'excluded' from four schools not 'expelled'. Indeed, intriguing. She has a deeper backstory, like Sara's.
------------------
Marion wrote: "I think the White Room may turn out to be an epic bore."
I disagree. Well, I would. In 2002 I published the world's first blank story in 'Nemonymous' - and produced another edition with blank covers, and many of the horror stories in Nemonymous were about blanks or nothingness or gaps.
Sara is becoming more interesting. Saying on her audition something that is evidently non-characteristic of her (i.e. doing striptease) and building up the tension and sensory deprivation / mental asylum angle of the White Room by acting out antipathy towards it. Constructing anxieties for the viewers that 'enhance' such a scenario. This is 'pure' Theatre of the 20th century (not 21st century) - something we had grown out of, until now. A happening. Even Conor benefited from the surrounding whiteness.
Deana claims she was 'excluded' from four schools not 'expelled'. Indeed, intriguing. She has a deeper backstory, like Sara's.
Although I agree with Marion on certain aspects of Ashleigh, she is the most natural person in the House. There is no side to her. The only one that comes close to her in that respect is Luke A. imo. {A series of reprises: here is a quote from one of my TTA forum entries in 2004 about that year's BB: "From my 56 year old perspective, last night's Big Brother was probably a bad influence on those involved and on those watching them - but the argument/fight was so well 'dramatised', 'stage-lit', 'acted', 'scripted', it was probably one of the greatest contemporary 'dramas' (full of accidental imagination, believeable grotesque characterisation, Shakespearean tragedy etc.) that TV has ever allowed to be broadcast."}
-----------------
Marion, a good White Room project would be on the constructively tedious end of things, I'd say -- a bit like a Robbe-Grillet anti-novel? With fleeting, barely caught expressions and moues in your avatar's gossamer wings or my numinous butterfly-net.
--------------
Marion wrote: "She complained of no windows in the room, no freedom, no darkness, no sunshine and then burst into tears."
Sara is becoming quite a star, with natural idiosyncracies emerging from the pressure cooker that is the BB House and its inner White Room (we all have an inner White Room) rather than faux idiosyncracies. Also without makeup we see she has spots to match the ashen-lipped stigmata or lesions elsewehere in the house...
Her political non-rant of a rant was as off-kilter as her blind Royalism (it's OK being a Royalist in my book but Sara seems obsessive and she probably believes the Queen is a benevolent alien or an angel, to which state of being Sara herself aspires). As to voting Tory last time she voted, well, she probably lost a lot of votes and gained a few others as a result of making this admission (which she failed to make in the earlier Confessional).
Yes, shake-it-all-about Becky to go on Friday!
And thanks, Marion, for posting that wonderful Robbe-Grillet story. I had not read it before.
--------------
Some very interesting points there, Marion. The chocolate on Becky's face "for the judges" passed me by because of inevitable temporary inattentions during TV watching. What on earth!
I did however think about Conor disrupting some Godgiven rule regarding the verities of the BB game with the usually default good sense of the audience having been by-passed by this event. Lessons / lesions indeed beoynd moral lip-synch.
Meanwhile, I agree that the 'white' quiz was probably the most hilarious thing ever on BB! Possibly ever in or out of BB.
I, too, was rather perturbed by the facial expressions of Becky during the interview: grotesque gurning with bulbous red lips and mad eyes that have fed on monstrous gossipings and bitchings incarnate and incarnadine.
A night stained with bad-blood, as well as chocolate. But a night also thankfully to rid ourselves of that bad-blood.
----------------
Marion's Kipling quotes and Deana's 'soldiers' and last night's Team GB medals on a 'last balcony' before the world's financial, moral and, possibly, physical, state implodes towards an unpredicatble core of destiny ... I am left in an ambivalent mood. Conor was another medal winner, but a shameful, shameless one, with his case of money (symbolic of ill-gotten Libor gains) held aloft like a conscience-less version of a soldier going over the top of his own balcony towards an unknown destiny of recrimination in hiding beyond the public acclaim as winner that he once said he wanted. Both winner and loser. Luke S martyred.
Deana was also in an ambivalent mood. But what lies behind her lispy pragmaticism? Four exclusions or expulsions from school in her past? For what? This is probably her own version of paying off any of her own debts following the less serious form of Confessional that BB earlier provided: i.e. to emerge as the Winner: the ultimate act of not being excluded or expelled.
----------------
(6 August): I don't think Scott can nominate Luke S any more, Marion. Luke S now only needs to think of the public vote in the final. He needs to dress up the buzzer push as a reflex action and, as you say, get the gay icon vote. He needs to be both mansion and cottage. He's not clever enough to pull this off, though. But clever enough, however, to have these goals in mind and to have worked out a strategy.
Deana went off-the-wall, both tipsy and lispy, with her mockingly seeking the ontology as well as teleology of the buzzer push. A drama worthy of the Wednesday Play when watching Luke S's reaction.The ins and outs of that White Room climax will be spoken of darkly forever within arcane BB discussion groups. Perhaps a good ploy, after all, by BB, having that stunt?
Meanwhile, the smoking mimesis-potion 'task' was SILLY. Housemates and BB in collusion - but nobody was fooled. It was just a mindless way to fill a day.
--------------------
Marion wrote: "Float Like A Butterfly, Sting Like A Bee"
....like Marion's avatar on the TTA Forum, if not Marion herself!
Meawhile Sara storks like a daddy-long-legs.
I haven't got anything to add to Marion's exhaustive and helpful and unarguable report on last night's proceedings.
-----------------
I thought Scott's task was interesting, making one wonder if there is a difference between (a) a genuine 'mole' or double-agent and (b) someone just doing various things he wouldn't otherwise have done but without changing his character, his me-ness...
The Charlie and the Chocolate Factory theme echoed earlier chocolate finger task, and Becky's chocolately face and Caroline actually making the House tantamount into a Chocolate House... Deana certainly gives off the aura of Valkyrie and She who must be obeyed whatever ostensibly nonsensical incantations she recites as spells to dig deep into others' souls.
Just for House 'interest' interests of character-mix rather than for intrinsic goodness or otherwise as a human being, I hope Adam goes on Friday.
-----------------
Yes, it was an amusing task. A living museum of human-filled inanimate objects from the past ancient and near modern. Another effective semi-theatrical happening. Reminded me of the 'panoply' in my 'Yesterfang' and other incidents in the overall 'Last Balcony' (and 'Weirdtongue') if I may be self-referential regarding my published work for a moment, the comparisons seeming to be relevant - at least to me! :|
I don't *think* Ashleigh actually started the food fight proper but the Proximate Cause was something being put down her back after a previous minor infringement of throwing?
Sara's new rant-in-the-cups was not something I enjoyed. But she has actually become a *personality* in the House while for the early weeks she was just eye-candy.
I now know who Scott reminds me of most: the late Kenneth Williams.
------------------
Yes, 'metrosexual' is a new word for me. A combination of being streetwise and engendering a wide spectrum of sexual orientation geared to opportunism?
I can't think who I want to go tonight. Perhaps there will be two evictions before the final. I feel very little loyalty to any of them.
But I think Ashleigh deserves to win for being herself (with all the faults of that self) and not having cuppish right-wing rants like Sara. I am suspicious of Luke A's claims regarding his backstory. And Deana is too artful for her own good, lispy, tispy, incantatory, wayward, sleek and slithy. Adam too laid back. Scott just a cipher acting a 'Carry On' cameo role. Luke S is a metrosexual ready to push any buttons that work for that self-image. Have I missed anyone out?
-----------------
Marion wrote: "She really is funny in a light waspish way."
If about Marion, I can only agree. I'd add 'perceptive' and 'astute', with a constructively stubborn touch of never forgetting why she likes or dislikes an HM - till beyond the very end of each season's audit trail of events and emotions.
And I was wrong about Ashleigh's potential popularity as a salt-of-the-earth character from within a poor bunch of wispy HMs. Perhaps because I live in Essex. But she is a far better woman than she gives herself credit for.
I was surprised, too, that Scott went before the final.
And I am shocked that Celebrity Big Brother starts on Wednesday!!
-----------
Yes, I have to admit the three musketeers or 'soldiers' in their little demob ceremony were both touchingly ironic and BB-iconic.
Mr Snuggles was the best evil clown I've ever seen. A wonderful Horror genre scenario. Coincidentally, I had real-time reviewed 'Hangfire Bubbler' by Rhys Hughes earlier in the day, a story *about* coulrophobia!
--------------
Sara's treatise upon Meatloaf and the Queen was probably the most bizarre of conceits ever straddled across by one brain. She could win, I suppose. And, marginally, I hope she does win.
Adam and Deana and Luke A are all OK-ish - and the memory-monologues about their experiences in the show were dressed up well by the BB production team. Gave them good grounds for winning. I won't be too upset about one of them winning. Especially for their communal demob speeches and mimes the other night.
The only one I definitely don't want to win is Luke S.
Mr Snuggles with Conor inside (not Brian D) awaits us all, one day, at the end of our own life's BB ramp of booing and cheering...
Watching CBB this Wednesday everyone?
--------------
In many ways a disappointing finale to an often disappointing series, with its odd highlights along the way since the beginning of June. Without the White Room stunt it would have lost a lot of interesting friction and motivational debate etc., for example.
Luke A is likeable enough - but a winner? Reminds me of that likeable but nondescript lady who once won - Rachel Rice.
For me, Deana was crafty and her 'soldiers' and prayers won the day, so all credit to her. She strongly implied in her interview that some people took a dislike to her for no obvious reason even before getting to know her - in fact she said it many times in different words - and one can only infer that she is referring to racism. She may be right.
Thanks again, Marion, for your wonderful reports.
----
CELEBRITY BIG BROTHER: SUMMER 2012 HERE
Marion wrote: "Asheligh's mouthhas erupted with herpes sores -"
Lessons and Lesions.
Oh what a report you've just given, Marion! So incisive, with such straight-eyed ironing-out of the unironic without abandoning a sense of irony for us to chuckle at. You should be employed by the national tabloids and by literary essay vehicles to portray this lesson in modern life as presented by BB, a vital lesson in social lesions, a lesson so often derided by the programme's detractors.
As to Ashleigh's cold sores, these are possibly the stigmata from the recent Confessional. I only say she has the best chance to win as she exemplifies best what I said above about life's lesions and what I predict will be the voting of people-not-like-us, Marion.
-------------
(2 August): Marion wrote: "I think the White Room may turn out to be an epic bore."
I diisagree. Well, I would. In 2002 I published the world's first blank story in 'Nemonymous' - and produced another edition with blank covers, and many of the horror stories in Nemonymous were about blanks or nothingness or gaps.
Sara is becoming more interesting. Saying on her audition something that is evidently non-characteristic of her (i.e. doing striptease) and building up the tension and sensory deprivation / mental asylum angle of the White Room by acting out antipathy towards it. Constructing anxieties for the viewers that 'enhance' such a scenario. This is 'pure' Theatre of the 20th century (not 21st century) - something we had grown out of, until now. A happening. Even Conor benefited from the surrounding whiteness.
Deana claims she was 'excluded' from four schools not 'expelled'. Indeed, intriguing. She has a deeper backstory, like Sara's.
------------------
Marion wrote: "I think the White Room may turn out to be an epic bore."
I disagree. Well, I would. In 2002 I published the world's first blank story in 'Nemonymous' - and produced another edition with blank covers, and many of the horror stories in Nemonymous were about blanks or nothingness or gaps.
Sara is becoming more interesting. Saying on her audition something that is evidently non-characteristic of her (i.e. doing striptease) and building up the tension and sensory deprivation / mental asylum angle of the White Room by acting out antipathy towards it. Constructing anxieties for the viewers that 'enhance' such a scenario. This is 'pure' Theatre of the 20th century (not 21st century) - something we had grown out of, until now. A happening. Even Conor benefited from the surrounding whiteness.
Deana claims she was 'excluded' from four schools not 'expelled'. Indeed, intriguing. She has a deeper backstory, like Sara's.
Although I agree with Marion on certain aspects of Ashleigh, she is the most natural person in the House. There is no side to her. The only one that comes close to her in that respect is Luke A. imo. {A series of reprises: here is a quote from one of my TTA forum entries in 2004 about that year's BB: "From my 56 year old perspective, last night's Big Brother was probably a bad influence on those involved and on those watching them - but the argument/fight was so well 'dramatised', 'stage-lit', 'acted', 'scripted', it was probably one of the greatest contemporary 'dramas' (full of accidental imagination, believeable grotesque characterisation, Shakespearean tragedy etc.) that TV has ever allowed to be broadcast."}
-----------------
Marion, a good White Room project would be on the constructively tedious end of things, I'd say -- a bit like a Robbe-Grillet anti-novel? With fleeting, barely caught expressions and moues in your avatar's gossamer wings or my numinous butterfly-net.
--------------
Marion wrote: "She complained of no windows in the room, no freedom, no darkness, no sunshine and then burst into tears."
Sara is becoming quite a star, with natural idiosyncracies emerging from the pressure cooker that is the BB House and its inner White Room (we all have an inner White Room) rather than faux idiosyncracies. Also without makeup we see she has spots to match the ashen-lipped stigmata or lesions elsewehere in the house...
Her political non-rant of a rant was as off-kilter as her blind Royalism (it's OK being a Royalist in my book but Sara seems obsessive and she probably believes the Queen is a benevolent alien or an angel, to which state of being Sara herself aspires). As to voting Tory last time she voted, well, she probably lost a lot of votes and gained a few others as a result of making this admission (which she failed to make in the earlier Confessional).
Yes, shake-it-all-about Becky to go on Friday!
And thanks, Marion, for posting that wonderful Robbe-Grillet story. I had not read it before.
--------------
Some very interesting points there, Marion. The chocolate on Becky's face "for the judges" passed me by because of inevitable temporary inattentions during TV watching. What on earth!
I did however think about Conor disrupting some Godgiven rule regarding the verities of the BB game with the usually default good sense of the audience having been by-passed by this event. Lessons / lesions indeed beoynd moral lip-synch.
Meanwhile, I agree that the 'white' quiz was probably the most hilarious thing ever on BB! Possibly ever in or out of BB.
I, too, was rather perturbed by the facial expressions of Becky during the interview: grotesque gurning with bulbous red lips and mad eyes that have fed on monstrous gossipings and bitchings incarnate and incarnadine.
A night stained with bad-blood, as well as chocolate. But a night also thankfully to rid ourselves of that bad-blood.
----------------
Marion's Kipling quotes and Deana's 'soldiers' and last night's Team GB medals on a 'last balcony' before the world's financial, moral and, possibly, physical, state implodes towards an unpredicatble core of destiny ... I am left in an ambivalent mood. Conor was another medal winner, but a shameful, shameless one, with his case of money (symbolic of ill-gotten Libor gains) held aloft like a conscience-less version of a soldier going over the top of his own balcony towards an unknown destiny of recrimination in hiding beyond the public acclaim as winner that he once said he wanted. Both winner and loser. Luke S martyred.
Deana was also in an ambivalent mood. But what lies behind her lispy pragmaticism? Four exclusions or expulsions from school in her past? For what? This is probably her own version of paying off any of her own debts following the less serious form of Confessional that BB earlier provided: i.e. to emerge as the Winner: the ultimate act of not being excluded or expelled.
----------------
(6 August): I don't think Scott can nominate Luke S any more, Marion. Luke S now only needs to think of the public vote in the final. He needs to dress up the buzzer push as a reflex action and, as you say, get the gay icon vote. He needs to be both mansion and cottage. He's not clever enough to pull this off, though. But clever enough, however, to have these goals in mind and to have worked out a strategy.
Deana went off-the-wall, both tipsy and lispy, with her mockingly seeking the ontology as well as teleology of the buzzer push. A drama worthy of the Wednesday Play when watching Luke S's reaction.The ins and outs of that White Room climax will be spoken of darkly forever within arcane BB discussion groups. Perhaps a good ploy, after all, by BB, having that stunt?
Meanwhile, the smoking mimesis-potion 'task' was SILLY. Housemates and BB in collusion - but nobody was fooled. It was just a mindless way to fill a day.
--------------------
Marion wrote: "Float Like A Butterfly, Sting Like A Bee"
....like Marion's avatar on the TTA Forum, if not Marion herself!
Meawhile Sara storks like a daddy-long-legs.
I haven't got anything to add to Marion's exhaustive and helpful and unarguable report on last night's proceedings.
-----------------
I thought Scott's task was interesting, making one wonder if there is a difference between (a) a genuine 'mole' or double-agent and (b) someone just doing various things he wouldn't otherwise have done but without changing his character, his me-ness...
The Charlie and the Chocolate Factory theme echoed earlier chocolate finger task, and Becky's chocolately face and Caroline actually making the House tantamount into a Chocolate House... Deana certainly gives off the aura of Valkyrie and She who must be obeyed whatever ostensibly nonsensical incantations she recites as spells to dig deep into others' souls.
Just for House 'interest' interests of character-mix rather than for intrinsic goodness or otherwise as a human being, I hope Adam goes on Friday.
-----------------
Yes, it was an amusing task. A living museum of human-filled inanimate objects from the past ancient and near modern. Another effective semi-theatrical happening. Reminded me of the 'panoply' in my 'Yesterfang' and other incidents in the overall 'Last Balcony' (and 'Weirdtongue') if I may be self-referential regarding my published work for a moment, the comparisons seeming to be relevant - at least to me! :|
I don't *think* Ashleigh actually started the food fight proper but the Proximate Cause was something being put down her back after a previous minor infringement of throwing?
Sara's new rant-in-the-cups was not something I enjoyed. But she has actually become a *personality* in the House while for the early weeks she was just eye-candy.
I now know who Scott reminds me of most: the late Kenneth Williams.
------------------
Yes, 'metrosexual' is a new word for me. A combination of being streetwise and engendering a wide spectrum of sexual orientation geared to opportunism?
I can't think who I want to go tonight. Perhaps there will be two evictions before the final. I feel very little loyalty to any of them.
But I think Ashleigh deserves to win for being herself (with all the faults of that self) and not having cuppish right-wing rants like Sara. I am suspicious of Luke A's claims regarding his backstory. And Deana is too artful for her own good, lispy, tispy, incantatory, wayward, sleek and slithy. Adam too laid back. Scott just a cipher acting a 'Carry On' cameo role. Luke S is a metrosexual ready to push any buttons that work for that self-image. Have I missed anyone out?
-----------------
Marion wrote: "She really is funny in a light waspish way."
If about Marion, I can only agree. I'd add 'perceptive' and 'astute', with a constructively stubborn touch of never forgetting why she likes or dislikes an HM - till beyond the very end of each season's audit trail of events and emotions.
And I was wrong about Ashleigh's potential popularity as a salt-of-the-earth character from within a poor bunch of wispy HMs. Perhaps because I live in Essex. But she is a far better woman than she gives herself credit for.
I was surprised, too, that Scott went before the final.
And I am shocked that Celebrity Big Brother starts on Wednesday!!
-----------
Yes, I have to admit the three musketeers or 'soldiers' in their little demob ceremony were both touchingly ironic and BB-iconic.
Mr Snuggles was the best evil clown I've ever seen. A wonderful Horror genre scenario. Coincidentally, I had real-time reviewed 'Hangfire Bubbler' by Rhys Hughes earlier in the day, a story *about* coulrophobia!
--------------
Sara's treatise upon Meatloaf and the Queen was probably the most bizarre of conceits ever straddled across by one brain. She could win, I suppose. And, marginally, I hope she does win.
Adam and Deana and Luke A are all OK-ish - and the memory-monologues about their experiences in the show were dressed up well by the BB production team. Gave them good grounds for winning. I won't be too upset about one of them winning. Especially for their communal demob speeches and mimes the other night.
The only one I definitely don't want to win is Luke S.
Mr Snuggles with Conor inside (not Brian D) awaits us all, one day, at the end of our own life's BB ramp of booing and cheering...
Watching CBB this Wednesday everyone?
--------------
In many ways a disappointing finale to an often disappointing series, with its odd highlights along the way since the beginning of June. Without the White Room stunt it would have lost a lot of interesting friction and motivational debate etc., for example.
Luke A is likeable enough - but a winner? Reminds me of that likeable but nondescript lady who once won - Rachel Rice.
For me, Deana was crafty and her 'soldiers' and prayers won the day, so all credit to her. She strongly implied in her interview that some people took a dislike to her for no obvious reason even before getting to know her - in fact she said it many times in different words - and one can only infer that she is referring to racism. She may be right.
Thanks again, Marion, for your wonderful reports.
----
CELEBRITY BIG BROTHER: SUMMER 2012 HERE
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)