“Tiny Dancer” by Elton John starts playing on the stereo of the rickety tour coach…”Blue jean baby, L.A. lady. Seamstress for the band. Pretty eyed, pirate smile. You’ll marry a music man. Ballerina, you must have seen her dancing in the sand…”
On Thursday at work I moved over to work on a Sun Microsystems (i.e. non-Microsoft) workstation. I noticed that the keyboard layout was different to standard PCs and along the left side there were some keys laid out in series: Stop, Again, Undo, Front and Open. Oh, and my favourite: Props. I’m not sure what that key does but I could imagine a similar key could be found on androids and AIBO robot dogs. If they perform a trick or task worthy of an electronic cookie, you could hit that key to give them props so they’d know they were being appreciated. Wouldn’t it be convenient sometimes if humans could have a Props button too? A key you could press to let them know you admire what they do so without having to search for the right words.
Usually I leave for work in the mornings with not much more than a glass of juice or milk to fuel my journey. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, they say. I’d have to disagree. Personally, the most important meal of the day is brunch.
Sometimes I wake up and my motor skills protest against me so I leave the house without my lunch pack. We have several sandwich vendors who come flaunt their wares throughout the morning at work and there’s a clear favourite if you want filled baguettes. I bought one and made the mistake of eating it all during lunchtime, because it made me really really drowsy and the square opposite of the word “emaciated.” It was not a particularly big loaf either. It was quite average and many larger baguettes had succumbed to my hunger in the past. “These baguettes are like crack cocaine,” pointed out a work pal, even though to me it felt more like Night Nurse. I guess in his case it was like crack cocaine because he seemed to crave the same baguettes everyday from that one same travelling vendor. I got thinking what if sandwich vendors started placing small amounts of addictive substances into the food? It would explain why KFC sells so well. The Colonel’s secret recipe. Crack.
Speaking of KFC, it got me thinking about meat. One cow can provide many hamburgers, but one chicken can only provide a certain number of chicken pieces. I thought about the numbers of chicken pieces being consumed in the country, heck, the whole world. Now that’s a lot of dead chickens. Where do all these chickens come from? Are they all locked away in some sort of secret silo, stored till its time to lop their heads?
It certainly does raise suspicion to the validity of their “no genetically modified products” disclaimers. I remember having a discussion with Alex, who said that soon we would be technologically adept to grow up fillet steaks on meshes/gauzes in laboratories. It’s one of the goals of making artificial meat, which I do not entirely agree with, though the thought of a 300 ounce steak does excite my salivary glands. It’s definitely possible that chicken embryos could be injected with exogenous genes to speed up their growth or be modified to grow extra appendages (i.e. drumsticks). It would certainly be a plausible solution to falconine money-hungry tycoons who would see it as a cheap way of maximising poultry output. The chances are slim, but they’re there. It probably doesn’t happen, but it’s food for thought.
In my post-lunch soporific state I shunned operation of all heavy machinery and put my head down on my arms to sneak in a quick nap at my desk. I remember a quick dream of getting an early night later. Some dreams come true because of movies and some do not. The power of film took me over that night and shattered that lunchtime dream into pieces. Later, I sat down to eat my dinner and decided to watch Almost Famous whilst I was chowing down. I had seen this film only 2 times and each time, it stirred something deep inside of me, perhaps due to the veritable love I have for music. I should have known better, for I continued watching it after my pallet had been cleansed, all the way to the end credits.
There are some films you could watch again and again; so called desert island flicks. But Almost Famous falls into the category of “films that are there for you when you need them.” Like a good friend, it played out its story again to me and like a good friend I listened. The first time I watched it was on DVD probably a year and a half ago and the next time after that was in a hotel room in Los Angeles. The first time, I watched it voluntarily and with conviction, because I had heard of its power. The second time was the same story as Thursday night: I should have had an early night, but I got seduced again by celluloid. I just wanted to stay tuned so I could see the film’s coda section, from the point where the young rock journalist collapses on his own bed and Led Zeppelin’s poignant “The Rain Song” starts. All I can say is if you love rock music, especially rock and roll, you have to see Almost Famous. If you love melodramatic movies strewn with comedy, then you must also see it. Heck, if you grew up in an era ladden with vinyl rock music (i.e. 60s-80s) or you were into the whole Woodstock scene, the sex, drugs and rock n’ roll movement, I cannot recommend it enough.
People need movies as much as movies need people. We are drawn to certain ones because we are drawn to certain kinds of stories and certain types of people. Stories captivate the essence of our humanity, regardless of whether we are the storyteller or not. We like movies because they show different sides of the same transcendental coin. They educate us on matters we never previously thought about and provide insights into worlds and lives we yearn for, both openly and secretly. They remind us that we live for the good things, that life itself is duality; a double edged sword, with double standards, double entendres, etc. They remind us that we’re fortunate. They remind us that we’re lucky where we are and lucky where we’re going. Movies don’t just make me think, they also make me laugh. Some make me cry. Movies are always there for me when I need them. They don’t ask me for my opinion or conform around me to try to please me. They talk and I listen. They explain and I try to understand, like we have some sort of intimate relationship. I love stories. I love movies.
