I'm just a cock-eyed pessimist

SOOOooo ... I was on my way home tonight, almost the last tube, leaving from Picadilly Circus after a long night of celebrating rosamicula's birthday (oh, we met so many nice people!).

And for some reason some guy starts introducing himself to people on the tube. "Smile, guys! C'mon, we ride this thing all the time, and it's really boring! Let's have some smiles, a few laughs, make it fun!" And he actually gets people to shake his hand and talk to him. "I admit I'm pretty drunk, but what I'm saying is still true!" And it's fun to watch people get involved. He sees me peeping over my papers and gets me to engage. Yeah, I'm listening to you, drunk boy.

Then he moves on to stage two. "Okay, who here can sing?" Well, of course, I can, but what does he want to sing? Turns out he can't sing at all, but he thinks someone else should sing. I tell him I'll sing with him if he can come up with a song we both know. "But I don't sing," he says.

He looks me right in the eye. "You sing."

Then the guy three seats down says, "Yeah, come on, sing us something!"

And I can see myself in the windows of the train, turning red to match my dress. I haven't really had that much to drink.

But. I have songs in my head, songs I know and I'm good at, and I'm feeling good from all of the compliments people gave me on my dress as I was heading out of the restaurant tonight. So I start to sing. "When I have a brand new hairdo/And my eyelashes all in curls/I float like the clouds on the air do/I enjoy being a girl."

It's a song I've had as a street preacher defense after reading about koaloha's infamous subway street preacher incident some years back. And I'm pretty good, even over the noise of the Picadilly line. In fact, I get a request for a second verse. And I sing. And I get applause. And then we're at Earl's Court, and I get off of the train.

Anyway, I know English people are supposed to be uptight, but I haven't been meeting any of those types.

Dominoes

When a $200m franchise based on the popular aged West Indian gentlemen's game of choice was announced, not many people predicted a four-and-a-half hour "probability space Western" directed by Darren Aronofsky, in which there are no characters or dialogue, merely a series of coloured dots appearing on the screen at greater and greater intervals until the screen is simply black for the last 45 minutes. "If you can understand the numerical and colour-based code of the film, then the narrative is a pretty classic boy-meets-girl story," claims Aronofsky. "And the scene when the Seann William Scott character wins the world dominoes championship is pure Hollywood."

"We respect Darren's vision of an alternate reality based on probability," replied MGM recently, "but we want our two hundred million bucks back."

(Full article here.)

Another Saturday and we're back at the Rake after decimating the market. Thatcher's Gold Somerset cider does meet with my approval . Now to finish my sammie!