Murder at the Academy Awards! And Donald Duck…

Yesterday’s Getting Excited About Stuff was relatively straight forward = It’s Joan Rivers’ birthday. Get hold of a book by/about Joan Rivers and read it.

Well, there wasn’t one at the library and I thought about walking along to the book shop but I was a bit knackered after my long swim (my legs and arms ache a bit today, I kind of entered a trance and just kept going then realised I’d been in there for absolutely ages!). So I headed home and looked around on Kindle on my phone and found a book by Joan Rivers called Murder at the Academy Awards! (There was also one called Men Are Stupid… And They Like Big Boobs but I thought Murder at the Academy Awards looked better.) Can you imagine anything better than a few hours with your head in a potentially-trashy probably-rubbish book called Murder at the Academy Awards?! After the onslaught of Serious Facts and Textbooks that became my life recently, I have been revelling in the more frivolous side of life. I got stuck in.

It’s told from the point of view of a reporter on the red carpet trying to snatch interviews with A-listers arriving at the Oscars. It’s actually told quite well. I was surprised to read on Wikipedia that Joan has a degree in English Literature so what I was expecting – a loud-mouthed Hello! magazine but longer and with more insults – was not what I got. Of course it’s brash, of course the insults fly (Cameron Diaz is given the what-for for wearing a dress that ‘not even Winona Ryder would shoplift’) but it’s done quite well. Don’t get confused here, I’m not telling you all to run out and buy it because it is a work of literary genius. But it’s a fun read for an afternoon off work.

I’m only half way through so the mystery of how the star of the show dies, a young actress who spends her time in and out of rehab, is yet to be solved. The hilarity of the situation that the main character is now in is entertaining reading. She’s having herself admitted to a rehab clinic with a pretend addiction, so that she can dig around and find out some gossip about how the starlet may have died. And she just lost her dog when taking it to the vet. And her bodyguard loves pantsuits. And she loves plastic surgery. It’s all going on in Murder at the Academy Awards!

And so to today. 9th June. Would you believe it? In 1934, on 9th June, Donald Duck made his debut in The Wise Little Hen! So today, I shall spend some time getting excited about Donald Duck. I’ve read up on him. I know all about him and his rivalry with Mickey Mouse. He gets over it eventually and they are the best of friends. I know all about his career in films and his educational programmes for children. I know that he struggles with his temper. I even know what his sayings are. “What’s the big idea?” is his most used. I also know about his health issues, he’s quite lazy and all his friends think he needs to get some exercise. But one time he knocked a shark out with one punch so he’s still pretty strong, even if he is lazy….

I hope you enjoyed that little fact-onslaught about Donald Duck. I feel we would all benefit a little from knowing more about Donald.

So today I am going to dress as a sailor. Well, not really. I’m just going to wear white trousers and a blue jumper. And say “What’s the big idea?” to people. And maybe I’ll watch The Wise Little Hen if I can find it on Youtube.

The life I almost had

Over a cup of tea with friends last night, we got on to the subject of what we had wanted to be when we were younger. Predictably, most of the girls there had wanted to be pop stars.

One friend, we’ll call her Emma to preserve her anonymity (and dignity) was discovered, and filmed, in the front room, warbling away into one of those toy microphones which had an applause button on the base. For some unknown reason what she was singing was, “Lucy, Luuuucy, Lucyyyy, Lucy,” and then pressing the applause button and saying in earnest to the imaginary crowd of adoring fans, “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” The mystery of who “Lucy” is has never been solved.

Another friend made more solid steps towards stardom. Her and three friends made their own instruments and rehearsed songs they’d written. This friend, let’s call her Kate, had five empty glass bottles which she filled to different levels with water and tapped with a stick to make ‘music’. One of the other girls in her group had a cardboard box with elastic bands around it which she pinged. The song they sang went something along the lines of “if I wasn’t a pop star, I would be a…” And each of them would sing a verse in which they revealed what they would be if they weren’t otherwise engaged in their really successful pop careers.

What about you? I hear you asking. Didn’t you have any pop star plans?
Well, my road to fame is different because obviously theirs are pipe dreams, whereas mine had real potential. I was in a group called Delana. It was an amalgamation of our stage names. That’s right, we had stage names. We were pretty serious about it.

My main contribution was as ‘songwriter.’ Obviously. As a big fan of PJ and Duncan, I was well versed in the world of the ‘mid-song rap’. And I spent long hours at home, practising my lyrics in a deep voice. I got pretty good at the deep voiced rap, I must say.

I was obviously coveted by many record companies, who had heard about me through reputation. They were clambering to get at me. But I had to tell them, you know? I had to say, listen, I need to finish my schooling first. Becoming a worldwide sensation will affect my education and that’s what comes first.

And that’s the story of why my pop star dreams didn’t happen. Honest.

What are you singing about?!

Now I don’t mean to be disrespectful toward whoever sang this song but something has been puzzling me for years. It is the lyrics “Silence is golden, but my eyes still see.” I feel it is finally time to give it some proper examination.
“Hello, songwriters,” I say, in my imagination, “What is this nonsense about still seeing?”
“Hi Laura.” (They love it when I pop over for a chat.) “Well, you know, it’s from that saying, speech is silver, silence is golden.”
“Ok, so it means sometimes silence is better. I’m on board with that. That’s alright. And then the bit about your eyes still seeing?”
“Well, yeh, obviously it’s because even if people aren’t saying something, it can still be seen.”
“Right, so are we presuming that where there is no silence, people are blind? How are the two linked? It seems like you’re saying, ‘when I don’t speak I see, but when I’m speaking my vision is impaired.’ That’s not how senses work, you know,” I tell them, “It’s not one or the other. You usually have access to all of them at once.”
“Alright, Laura, no need to pick holes in everything,” they say, grumpily herding me towards the door.
“Just saying,” I tell them, huffily, like a teenager, before slamming the door behind me.

A more recent song now. Cheryl Cole. Good old Cheryl. Fight For This Love. I won’t mention the part where she says ‘love ain’t no walk in the paaAAaark,’ as it’s too silly for words. No. I want to skip to later when she says, “We just need to slow down, And just rooOOOOoooolll.”
She needs to what? Roll? She needs to roll? I fail to see how a relationship in crisis could benefit from ‘rolling’. In my mind, there are two people, having an argument, they’re getting really frustrated as the other person won’t listen, they don’t know whether they should be together anymore, and then one of them says, “Wait, darling! Let’s stop all this arguing. Don’t you remember what Cheryl told us to do in moments like this?” “Yes, I do,” says the man, we’ll call him Bob. “Quick, Sue, help me move the furniture!” Puffing and panting, they push all the furniture to the outer edges of the room and clear a large space on the floor. They look at each other, eyes gleaming, they have figured out a solution, they love each other, it will all be ok. They get down on the floor, lying in a straight line, holding hands and they roll the full length of the room. And back again. There is a quiet moment, where they look into each other’s eyes and realise that love is all you need. “Thanks Chezza,” they whisper under their breaths. “You’ve saved us.”

And now, for some lyrical comedy gold from a group of schoolgirls. Either playground ditties have got a bit mental since I was a kid, or they’ve always been mental and I didn’t realise it cause I was a kid myself, but yesterday, to the tune of We Will Rock You, I heard some girls singing “I’m a! Li-ttle! TEAPOT!!” and clapping their hands in time. Then something like, Coca Cola went to town, Pepsi shot him down, Dr Pepper fixed him up, now we’re all drinking 7up. And back to I’m a! Li-ttle! TEAPOT! I didn’t stop laughing for about half an hour. Another adapted tune was ‘O Tom the Toad, O Tom the Toad! Why are you lying in the road?’ to the tune of O Christmas Tree! (As the song progresses, it turns out that Tom is lying in the road because he got hit by a car and is dead.)