History of the typewriter recited by Michael Winslow from SansGil—Gil Cocker on Vimeo.
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| MOON SOAP. For late-night showers. |
(the following are all from AA. I tried to remove the numbers but they wouldn't go away in "compose" view and Html is only good when I don't have to fix it)
2. ... a masochist in bed with a sadist
3. ... a virgin on her wedding night
4. ... a paedophile in a kindergarten class
5. ... an agoraphobic in a stranded elevator
6. ... a urolagnic in a pathology lab
7. ... a nymphomaniac in a gang-bang
8. ... a teddy bear with its little boy
9. ... the thumb in a baby’s mouth
10.... George Bush in a B-2 over Baghdad, with his finger on the button
(all of the following are by AA -- who is definitely winning this blog's Most Varied Definitions of Happiness Prize)(so far)
... honey-bee in a field of thyme!
... baby who’s just had its first taste of chocolate!
... aomeone whose biopsy result says ‘Negative’!
... shopaholic with a stolen credit card!
... an anorexic in Ramadhan!
... a monk in a massage parlour!
... a suicide bomber with his foot on the accelerator!
... an author who’s writing the last paragraph of his novel!
... Charlie Brown after a kiss from the little red-haired girl!
... a fly in a puddle of shit!
… an olive in a martini!
… a pig with a truffle!
…. A rabbi with a pork-chop! (Uh-oh ...)
… a kid who’s just learned to cycle (30 seconds ago)!
… a pilot whose parachute has finally opened at 200 feet!
… a constipated lady who’s just had her first shit after 10 days!
… a tranvestite with a new pair of Pradas!
… Christina Hendricks’s bra!
… a guy who quit smoking and just lit up his first cigarette after 6 months!
… someone coming out of Bukhara (burp!)
[Mumbai, circa 1981. Interior]
In a room the size of a sweaty handkerchief, I and some seventy other members of the Alliance Française film club are watching François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows. The film is about to end. On screen, we see the right side of a young boy’s head and shoulders.
I wonder whether to risk a yawn.
The boy is walking towards the sea with no clear purpose in mind.
I know I am not worthy of my membership. Even though the film is one of the central pillars of modern French cinema I cannot focus on it because the auditorium is too uncomfortable. The folding metal seats have been designed by an evil orthopaedist looking for customers. The floor is uniformly flat and viewers are forced to strain their Kurosawas and Renoirs through a sieve of other viewers’ hair. In summer, the lack of air-conditioning guarantees death by B.O. And of course the majority of the movies are wrist-slittingly sad.
This one, for instance, is centred on a troubled fourteen- year-old boy living in Paris. The story moves at the pace of an arthritic sloth while packing the punch of a land- mine in the gut.
I want to inform my companion of the evening that I simply do not have the mental energy for films like this. Yes, yes, they’re beautiful, haunting, memorable, and all the rest of it, but what about the emotional wreckage they leave in their wake? I am, after all, a Hollywood junkie. I admit it without shame, like an addict who wears her needle-tracks with pride. I thrill to my Technicolor sunsets, my MetroGoldwynMayer lions and my air- brushed, peroxided heroines. Assisted Reality is what I call these films, and I love them all the more for knowing they will never kick me in the Jiminy Cricket or leave me bleeding in the Mekong.
Meanwhile my companion, whom I shall call B–, is even then, thirty years ago, so steeped in his knowledge of films and his passion for them that he seems to my eyes practically incontinent with world-weariness. We are both in our twenties, me late, he early. I enjoy his intensity and his seriousness even though I know he does not consider me girlfriend material. I often wonder what he sees in me. Nothing, probably. When a young man has watched enough art cinema, he knows that romantic love will never make it past the editing table.
Onscreen, our boy is still walking. The scenery continues to move away to the left, behind him, which is how we know he’s in motion. It’s a pleasant summer’s day and the French countryside looks suitably tranquil and inviting, even in black and white.
I begin to wonder why we’ve been watching the same damn scene for so long.
I turn towards B–.
He is sitting at the very edge of his seat, like a gundog on point.
He’s muttering to himself, ‘Come on, come on.’ That’s all he says. He’s fidgeting, he’s leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, he’s sweeping back the comma of hair that falls over his forehead and giving his fingernails a quick chew. In a word, he’s doing the adult equivalent of a child jumping up and down, screaming encouragement to Luke Skywalker taking on the Empire single-handed.
Yet before us on the screen is nothing more than a boy, walking.
[END OF EXCERPT]
