Did you watch the new TV show ‘Smash’ at the weekend? This is a lavish and immaculate musical drama produced by Spielberg and costing more than Bloomberg. It is so coldly calculated that if it was an iceberg, Smash would greet the Titanic with a shout of “no, YOU give way”.
The show suggests it will give you and me an insight in to the catiness of New York musical theatre, and if Harry Warren had been alive to watch ‘Smash’ his lyrics may have changed. “Come on along and listen to the great big lie of Broadway” has a certain ring to it don’t you think?
Until this week I had never experienced the audition process, or ‘casting call’ as they term it on the stage. Dozens of hopefuls are invited to come along and do their thing for the director. They are brought on in groups, they then do a few dance steps or sing a few bars, and some seconds later a voice shouts “numbers two, five and thirty can stay, the rest of you thanks for nothing”. It’s so dispiriting it would sap the confidence of a good looking millionaire life coach fending off supermodels in heat.
So how did I come to experience the dreaded casting call when it’s well known I dance like a statue of Long John Silver and have the singing voice of his parrot? Well, this week I was asked to audition for a corporate video job in which I would be interviewing the CEO of one of the world’s largest insurance companies. Now I grant you it’s not up there in the glamour stakes with Hollywood or Broadway - or even Blackpool pier’s summer revue come to that - but we all have to pay our bills and, actually, I quite like this kind of stuff. Don’t tell anyone.
So off I go to a rather run down building in central London for the camera test. When I say “run down” I mean those words in the sense that water was, literally, running down the walls in the basement where the studio was situated. I carefully negotiated my way past these natural waterfalls, broken bricks and an abandoned, soiled, sofa thinking more and more that I was the victim of a practical joke or was about to stumble on a terrorist squat. I’m sure a zombie movie was shot here.
Certainly the building’s caretaker should have been.
Eventually I found Room 101 (it wasn’t actually called that but it will give you an idea of how George Orwell must have visited here at some point to get inspiration for 1984) and I was asked to fill in a form with my height, my waist, my chest and shoe size, etc. I guess if you do this regularly then you know the answers but, as I hadn’t a clue, I left the sheet blank and was then made to stand holding a piece of paper with my name on it while a photo was taken. Think of those mug shots of arrested suspects and you’ll get the picture – so to speak.
I then sat down beside one of the other guys who was also after the job. Now this was difficult because he was quite pleasant and I had to make polite conversation while really hoping he’d be carted off to A&E with a burst appendix or have an accident in his trousers and faint with embarrassment.
And then my turn came. A very nice guy called Matt told me he would pretend to be the CEO and I simply had to follow the instructions I’d received in an email. Problem was that I’d had no email and so didn’t have a clue what was supposed to happen.
We made a great team. I was dreadful, poor Matt was bad at pretending he understood financial stuff, and the camera operator, who had seen dozens of people like me do this all day, looked like he was praying for an earthquake. Four minutes later I was again out in the corridors, navigating past the discarded sofa and puddles, and back out on the street.
How did I feel? Well, I thought about it and just laughed out loud. They had all been very nice but it confirmed to me that what I do is just not a proper job. Nor is dancing on stage or appearing in a television show. We set ourselves up for humiliation so there’s no point in crying about it. Better to laugh and, when people ask what your job is, say something like “I don’t work, I inherited.” Seems to work for the Royals.
This week then I’m off to the job centre to find something slightly less humiliating. Perhaps a sanitary waste inspector, or maybe a circus clown. Or I could ask if they have any jobs working with Spielberg. I bet the waterfalls on his walls are meant to there.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Beautiful Girl
This week I find myself feeling sorry for someone I’ve never met, someone who has become a very reluctant internet sensation because of an article written simply to make ends meet.
Poor old Rachel Brick is a freelance writer who regularly gives newspaper editors ideas for articles which, if she’s lucky, will make her about five hundred pounds a time. She does this alongside hundreds of other women who have to pay mortgages, school fees and gym memberships and are in the same boat.
If they don’t get published, they don’t eat so, to stand out from the crowd, an idea has to be original or outrageous or likely to cause controversy. Better still it should be all three. Rachel submitted an idea for an article about how she has suffered in life because she’s pretty, her theory being that the sisterhood hate good looking women.
Now let’s put this in some perspective. The ever increasingly desperate Rachel, along with hundreds of other freelancers, has written articles in the past that have been completely ignored or have attracted huge yawns as readers skip to the sports pages. Who remembers when she wrote that she divorced her first husband because a psychic told her to, or that she was locked in a car by her partner because he thought her outfit was too revealing, or that her new husband says he’ll divorce her if she gets fat? The world of the freelancer is a world of silliness, embarrassment, exposition and, usually, exaggeration or downright fabrication. But that’s fine because we all skip over what’s written with a smile or grunt and move on. Rachel’s previous works of art may have paid her grocery bill but they’re now lying in landfill covered in grease from insulating fish and chips.
Knowing how these things work, this article will have been sent back and forward between the Daily Mail and Rachel several times with them constantly asking her to ramp up the misery, show more disdain for the sisterhood and exaggerate her claims.
And she has obliged. In spades.
But once the article about Rachel’s travails as a beauty was published, the newspaper’s tactics came apart. They had ramped this up so much that a blind man in a pitch black cave, wearing sunglasses and a plastic bucket over his head at night, could simply point out the flaw. Rachel just isn’t a looker.
The poor woman then had to face vitriol and nastiness from every country as the piece went viral. Most were from self appointed judges of beauty, with the nicer comments varying between “You are tall and blonde, but then so is Big Bird” and “Get some new mirrors” through to “Brick by name, thick as one by nature.”
The really nasty opinions, which ego filled internet trolls felt were fascinating, original and erudite opinions that the world was waiting to fall down and worship, included “She’s called Brick because she was hit with one”, “Sam, you are old and ugly” and, from one perfect gentleman, “If you and I were the last couple on earth the race would die out. I’d rather be gay.”
I don’t doubt Samantha will make a fortune out of her new media attention, but I also have no doubts that she’s hurting like hell, embarrassed for her family and friends, and wants to crawl away on holiday to Mars for a few years. She has had to defend herself on TV in front of interviewers who know how this all works but have to pretend they’re outraged so that they can earn their wage.
But now, to make matters worse for Rachel, her husband has got in on the act and sold an interview explaining his position on the matter, accompanied by photos of him carrying a rifle and wearing combat fatigues and an unlikely and unforgiveable moustache that the Village People would laugh at while looking for the poor walrus he’d shot to bag it.
But let me stress again. The way this works is that freelancers have to earn a living. With more newspapers laying off staff every week, we can expect this desperation to increase every day.
One person who will be spitting nails is Liz Jones, a vacuous woman who has instinctively embraced the freelance culture writing about her failures with men so often it’s beyond tedious and has earned her epithets such as negative, sneering, empty headed, hypocritical and idiotic, all adjectives she will show to her editors to prove the drivel she writes is working and they’d be silly not to commission more. But now Liz has a rival, and it’s one who’s had more publicity in one week than she has in a very long, anorexic, lifetime. I fully expect Rachel Brick’s next article to be “Why Liz Jones Is An Alien Who Fancies Me”.
People, let’s not take this all too seriously, eh? These women are just like extras in the chorus line of a bad musical. No one is expected to actually pay them any attention for God’s sake.
They’re making a living as best they know how, fully aware of the tat that’s paying their bills, whilst waiting nervously for the public to wise up and close them down.
Poor old Rachel Brick is a freelance writer who regularly gives newspaper editors ideas for articles which, if she’s lucky, will make her about five hundred pounds a time. She does this alongside hundreds of other women who have to pay mortgages, school fees and gym memberships and are in the same boat.
If they don’t get published, they don’t eat so, to stand out from the crowd, an idea has to be original or outrageous or likely to cause controversy. Better still it should be all three. Rachel submitted an idea for an article about how she has suffered in life because she’s pretty, her theory being that the sisterhood hate good looking women.
Now let’s put this in some perspective. The ever increasingly desperate Rachel, along with hundreds of other freelancers, has written articles in the past that have been completely ignored or have attracted huge yawns as readers skip to the sports pages. Who remembers when she wrote that she divorced her first husband because a psychic told her to, or that she was locked in a car by her partner because he thought her outfit was too revealing, or that her new husband says he’ll divorce her if she gets fat? The world of the freelancer is a world of silliness, embarrassment, exposition and, usually, exaggeration or downright fabrication. But that’s fine because we all skip over what’s written with a smile or grunt and move on. Rachel’s previous works of art may have paid her grocery bill but they’re now lying in landfill covered in grease from insulating fish and chips.
Knowing how these things work, this article will have been sent back and forward between the Daily Mail and Rachel several times with them constantly asking her to ramp up the misery, show more disdain for the sisterhood and exaggerate her claims.
And she has obliged. In spades.
But once the article about Rachel’s travails as a beauty was published, the newspaper’s tactics came apart. They had ramped this up so much that a blind man in a pitch black cave, wearing sunglasses and a plastic bucket over his head at night, could simply point out the flaw. Rachel just isn’t a looker.
The poor woman then had to face vitriol and nastiness from every country as the piece went viral. Most were from self appointed judges of beauty, with the nicer comments varying between “You are tall and blonde, but then so is Big Bird” and “Get some new mirrors” through to “Brick by name, thick as one by nature.”
The really nasty opinions, which ego filled internet trolls felt were fascinating, original and erudite opinions that the world was waiting to fall down and worship, included “She’s called Brick because she was hit with one”, “Sam, you are old and ugly” and, from one perfect gentleman, “If you and I were the last couple on earth the race would die out. I’d rather be gay.”
I don’t doubt Samantha will make a fortune out of her new media attention, but I also have no doubts that she’s hurting like hell, embarrassed for her family and friends, and wants to crawl away on holiday to Mars for a few years. She has had to defend herself on TV in front of interviewers who know how this all works but have to pretend they’re outraged so that they can earn their wage.
But now, to make matters worse for Rachel, her husband has got in on the act and sold an interview explaining his position on the matter, accompanied by photos of him carrying a rifle and wearing combat fatigues and an unlikely and unforgiveable moustache that the Village People would laugh at while looking for the poor walrus he’d shot to bag it.
But let me stress again. The way this works is that freelancers have to earn a living. With more newspapers laying off staff every week, we can expect this desperation to increase every day.
One person who will be spitting nails is Liz Jones, a vacuous woman who has instinctively embraced the freelance culture writing about her failures with men so often it’s beyond tedious and has earned her epithets such as negative, sneering, empty headed, hypocritical and idiotic, all adjectives she will show to her editors to prove the drivel she writes is working and they’d be silly not to commission more. But now Liz has a rival, and it’s one who’s had more publicity in one week than she has in a very long, anorexic, lifetime. I fully expect Rachel Brick’s next article to be “Why Liz Jones Is An Alien Who Fancies Me”.
People, let’s not take this all too seriously, eh? These women are just like extras in the chorus line of a bad musical. No one is expected to actually pay them any attention for God’s sake.
They’re making a living as best they know how, fully aware of the tat that’s paying their bills, whilst waiting nervously for the public to wise up and close them down.
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Fight For The Right To Party
I wanted to express my outrage, my horror, my sense of disappointment at something so outrageous it makes me almost physically sick. An event occurred last week which I think illustrates quite graphically the stupidness and backward nature of the
British people, and I feel like venting my spleen.
By the way, have you seen my spleen? With the warm weather back again my neighbours have been treated to it as I potter round the garden, topless, to shouts of “for God’s sake put it away. It’s big but it’s not smart”. My diet starts again tomorrow.
Anyway, back to the serious bit. What’s got me so angry? George Galloway was elected as a new MP this week and within twenty four hours someone had pelted him with eggs. In a civilised society this is simply outrageous and beyond the pale. What a waste of a perfectly good egg. Couldn’t they have thrown a bad one? A really, really smelly old one? Maybe an ostrich egg the size of Cornwall with cat litter inside it and superglue on the outside? Perhaps an egg omelette while still in the pan?
Surely no one could tire of pelting any politician, although I do think Galloway is a special case. There’s something about this Scottish, self regarding, hobbit that makes me forget I’m a lovely, soft centred peacenick, and makes me want to morph in to Darth Vader. His posters proclaimed his organisation as the Respect party, presumably an attempt to be down with the kids, but how can anyone respect a politician? Especially one with a moustache for goodness sake.
Anyone in politics now is fair game, of course, and I don’t think any of them can complain. They seem to think Trust and Respect are a sister company of Abercrombie and Fitch, great as a slogan on a T Shirt but mythical creatures who don’t actually exist.
Our current government is a laughing stock because of the petrol debacle, granny taxes, and plans to charge more for pastry. Can you believe it? We have troops dying almost daily, lending in crisis, the Eurozone dragging us down, and we will all be saved by pastry. Of course the Labour party, while refusing to ask their union bosses to call off any hint of petrol delivery shortages, think they can solve the problems of the world by having their photos taken in a bakery eating pasties. I wouldn’t take one of these people off you at a car boot sale if they were free and you threw in a Rolex and a signed original script of Citizen Kane.
So what are we supposed to do? I began asking some friends and was told to stand for parliament and become an MP. I would rather lick rotten egg off Galloway’s bald head.
I accept that we’re better off than countries with dictators, civil wars, famine, despots or Nicolas Sarkozy, but I really, really want someone I can trust and respect. Where are they?
If you fancy going for it, I’ve done some research and it’s not difficult to stand as an independent candidiate. You need to be over 18, a British citizen, and have ten signatures from people who live in the area you wish to represent. Obviously no one wants anyone dodgy and undesirable to try and enter parliament so it is illegal to stand as an MP if you are a convicted criminal, bankrupt, a member of the police force or civil service, or if you are a judge.
If you form a new political party you have to think of a name that’s no longer than six words and, sadly, they expressly forbid you registering the name “None Of The Above” which I think is a brilliant name for a party.
In Britain we’ve had the The Monster Raving Loony Party, The Teddy Bear Alliance, The Death Dungeons and Taxes Party and, my own favourite, The Mongolian Barbecue Great Place To Party, but other countries do even better. Organisations that you instinctively just know will be full of ridiculous, silly people with no brains include, in Australia, ‘The Sun Ripened Warm Tomato Party’, Hungary enjoys the ‘Double Tailed Dog Party’, Sweden has welcomed the ‘Donald Duck Party’, and America has the Republicans.
So, if you’ve ever thought of becoming a politician, please stand up and be counted now. Go for it. Your country needs you like never before. And if you get elected please let me know. I’ll be out buying the ostrich eggs and superglue.
British people, and I feel like venting my spleen.
By the way, have you seen my spleen? With the warm weather back again my neighbours have been treated to it as I potter round the garden, topless, to shouts of “for God’s sake put it away. It’s big but it’s not smart”. My diet starts again tomorrow.
Anyway, back to the serious bit. What’s got me so angry? George Galloway was elected as a new MP this week and within twenty four hours someone had pelted him with eggs. In a civilised society this is simply outrageous and beyond the pale. What a waste of a perfectly good egg. Couldn’t they have thrown a bad one? A really, really smelly old one? Maybe an ostrich egg the size of Cornwall with cat litter inside it and superglue on the outside? Perhaps an egg omelette while still in the pan?
Surely no one could tire of pelting any politician, although I do think Galloway is a special case. There’s something about this Scottish, self regarding, hobbit that makes me forget I’m a lovely, soft centred peacenick, and makes me want to morph in to Darth Vader. His posters proclaimed his organisation as the Respect party, presumably an attempt to be down with the kids, but how can anyone respect a politician? Especially one with a moustache for goodness sake.
Anyone in politics now is fair game, of course, and I don’t think any of them can complain. They seem to think Trust and Respect are a sister company of Abercrombie and Fitch, great as a slogan on a T Shirt but mythical creatures who don’t actually exist.
Our current government is a laughing stock because of the petrol debacle, granny taxes, and plans to charge more for pastry. Can you believe it? We have troops dying almost daily, lending in crisis, the Eurozone dragging us down, and we will all be saved by pastry. Of course the Labour party, while refusing to ask their union bosses to call off any hint of petrol delivery shortages, think they can solve the problems of the world by having their photos taken in a bakery eating pasties. I wouldn’t take one of these people off you at a car boot sale if they were free and you threw in a Rolex and a signed original script of Citizen Kane.
So what are we supposed to do? I began asking some friends and was told to stand for parliament and become an MP. I would rather lick rotten egg off Galloway’s bald head.
I accept that we’re better off than countries with dictators, civil wars, famine, despots or Nicolas Sarkozy, but I really, really want someone I can trust and respect. Where are they?
If you fancy going for it, I’ve done some research and it’s not difficult to stand as an independent candidiate. You need to be over 18, a British citizen, and have ten signatures from people who live in the area you wish to represent. Obviously no one wants anyone dodgy and undesirable to try and enter parliament so it is illegal to stand as an MP if you are a convicted criminal, bankrupt, a member of the police force or civil service, or if you are a judge.
If you form a new political party you have to think of a name that’s no longer than six words and, sadly, they expressly forbid you registering the name “None Of The Above” which I think is a brilliant name for a party.
In Britain we’ve had the The Monster Raving Loony Party, The Teddy Bear Alliance, The Death Dungeons and Taxes Party and, my own favourite, The Mongolian Barbecue Great Place To Party, but other countries do even better. Organisations that you instinctively just know will be full of ridiculous, silly people with no brains include, in Australia, ‘The Sun Ripened Warm Tomato Party’, Hungary enjoys the ‘Double Tailed Dog Party’, Sweden has welcomed the ‘Donald Duck Party’, and America has the Republicans.
So, if you’ve ever thought of becoming a politician, please stand up and be counted now. Go for it. Your country needs you like never before. And if you get elected please let me know. I’ll be out buying the ostrich eggs and superglue.
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