No surprise here. And if you say there IS one, I’ll … go Dorothy Parker on your ass!
You Would Be a Witty Celebrity |
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And while you may branch out into other areas, your cutting insight and sarcasm would always be your trademark. As a celebrity, you would not be afraid of publicity stunts and working the press a little. You wouldn’t take any of it very seriously. You’d be a celebrity in the mold of Tina Fey, Sara Silverman, Seth Rogen, and Will Ferrell. |
Regular raincoaster fans (an irregular bunch, for sure) are well aware that around these parts (these ones right…here, to be specific) we recognize no gods; none but Cthulhu and Christopher Walken.
Mr Walken’s thespian skills are indisputed, but perhaps fans are less familiar with his amazingly powerful prose reading ability. Regular raincoaster readers will be familiar with his astonishing reading of The Three Little Pigs; new readers are welcome to click through and review before moving on to the new material.
Now, from the homeland of Alistair Cooke himself (via SeriouslyOMG), comes this stunning recording of Ronald Christopher Walken performing a dramatic reading of the poet Lady Gaga‘s masterpiece, Pokerface.
God knows, others have tried and failed to interpret this most elusive of musical geniuses:
But this, my friends?
They didn’t have playgrounds like THIS when I was little. Kuala Lumpur must be much friendlier than I’ve heard.
Yes, if ONLY it worked, the forbidding of stupid disease.
That’s nineteen. Not Ten Years Ago in Spy. Yes, it has been that long. Feels like it when you really think about it, don’t it? Especially if you’re reading Graydon Carter’s magazine now.
I’m stealing this because not only is it a precious jewel plucked from the greatest glossy setting of the last century, but also because it is a perfect demonstration of the Canadian character; not only the policy here elucidated, but also the urge to explain our passive-aggressive policies in a manner half apologetic, half ironic. In fact, every truly Canadian action is undertaken in a spirit half apologetic, half ironic, and that includes looting and burning the White House: we were, after all, only knowingly referencing the burning of York. Always following the lead of the bloody Yanks, that’s us.
Anyhoodle, here it is, a letter to Spy in the January, 1990 edition, from the benighted, but polite, dominion of Canuckistan.
Dear Editors,
As an ex-flight attendant for Air Canada, I can tell you that whenever the Grim Reaper made his way through one of our cabins, the procedure was a little different from Delta Air Lines’ [“Bound for Glory: What Happens When Your Last Stop Comes Before the End of the Line,” by Jay Blotcher, September]. We still notified the family and had the plane met by an ambulance, but we didn’t just leave the deceased for dead during the flight.
Maybe it is just the Canadian way, but we were basically told to lie and pretend that the passenger was not dead, only ill. It seems the airline though if we ran down the aisles screaming “Oh God, he’s dead, Gloria!” the passengers would become alarmed and subsequently be too afraid to visit the in-flight duty-free shop. So we were told to vacate the seat beside the deceased, put a fake oxygen mask [they HAVE those on planes? I am becoming alarmed] on him, turn his face toward the window and cover him with a blanket. (So he wouldn’t get cold?) The rest of the flight would be spent offering the dead man drinks and complimentary earphones [which Air Canada now no longer offers, even to living passengers] to continue the charade.
The thing I could never understand was that a flight attendant was expected to sit beside the body for landing. It’s not as if they expected you to date the guy afterward or anything, but really…how can a corpse have anything but a safe landing?
(I wasn’t with the company very long and never personally had a passenger die on one of my flights; however, there were quite a few I wanted to kill.)
Annie Game
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Truly, there is no justice in a world in which such a dynamite tale of romance hasn’t been made into a Bruce Willis movie (am I showing my age? okay, fine, Michael Bay movie, then. happy now?). I’ve stolen this tender, yet explosive vignette from a 12-year-old copy of the Tatler, and will here retell it in my own words, both because I like the sound of them and because who knows whether or not this Gerald Harper person may have a particularly aggressive intellectual property lawyer.
So, this Gerald Harper actor-sometime-magazine-writer-person tells a story he heard from a certain John Mills, artist-person. Who I also hope is unpossessed of an aggressive intellectual property lawyer, because these days you can’t even gossip about YOURSELF without somebody suing you for invading your own privacy and, well, you just can’t be too careful.
Not that I’ve ever tried.
In any case, howeversomeitbe, if it pleases the jury, this is what said John Mills told said Gerald Harper, and then Harper turned right around and got one pound sterling a word or thereabouts for it, which proves the pecking order of the arts world and the pen is mightier than the brush, or at least has a better agent, don’t it?
Mills was a navy officer whose job did not, surprisingly, involve a lot of time on boats. He was, you see, a demolition expert, and those people are not really so much in demand on the open ocean because, that famous whale notwithstanding (and it couldn’t even withstand a couple of hot days on the beach, and you can watch the video yourself if you doubt me which you should never do unless I say I’ll pay you by Thursday and then you get what you deserve) there are not a lot of explosive materials or substrates right handy once you get out at sea. There’s a lot of water, a fish or two, and far too many smug, retired couples who insist that you call their glorified dingies “yachts.” Which, however much you may want to blow them up, you couldn’t, because they probably play bridge with some retired relative of yours who’d be annoyed at losing a pair of easy marks.
So, despite being a naval officer, this Mills person spent most of his time on terra firma, rendering parts of it significantly less firm and, not infrequently, airborne. This has to be some kind of elaborate prank of the navy’s on the army, surely? In any case, it’s a heck of a job description and I can’t think of many pleasanter ways to spend your career if you’re the kind of man who grew up reading exciting Boy’s Only books and rigging snares and messing around in the basement trying to make your own guncotton and feeding seagulls fish stuffed with baking soda (not that I know any men like that, no indeed, and I would have turned them right over to the Society for the Preservation of Shithawks if I’d met any, of that you may be sure). Most particularly if you find yourself in the navy and you don’t really like, you know, boats and stuff.
So Mills was trundling across Europe, blowing up whatever the powers that be wanted blown, and speaking of which, he met a girl.
It so happened that he had a little time off, and he and his fair lady spent many a pleasant hour picnicking and partaking of other pleasures on a particular little hillock somewhere north of Rouen. Now, a note to those of a pedantic turn of mind: you might as well close that tab you opened on Google Earth. You won’t find it. And why not?
Because, on their last evening together, lying on the little hill, the lady leaned in and sighed, “Oh my darling Jean, I ‘ate to zink zat anybody will use our ‘ill.”
So the next day, he blew it up.
Who says chivalry is dead?
raincoaster 