I’ve done that thing again where I’ve cleaned my teeth and then poured a glass of red wine, so, despite being entirely frazzled after my first week back in lectures, I’m going to stay up long enough to drink my wine without Colgate fumes making me screw my face up in a Stockport grimace.
I’m also quite pleased with myself for inadvertently honing some rather impressive DiCaprio-style Inception skills in the last few days, so that’s worth sharing. Kneehigh’s version of The Red Shoes has been playing at work this week, and I’ve been super-pumped about it ever since it went on sale. I came within an inch of seeing their version of Brief Encounter last year, and had heard so many amazing things about the, like, totally dark visuals man… that I’ve been walking around with this enormous theatre boner for months. Then, on Tuesday night I had a fucking IMMENSE dream where I was watching The Red Shoes in a theatre where the seats were made of rubber and I was in the front row of the circle but had to keep bouncing up and down to ping the seats low enough so I could see, and everyone else in the row was screaming because they thought they were going to either fall off of be catapulted into the flies and strangled or burnt or electrocuted on the lights or something. And then the seats de-rubberified and I was invited on stage to be in this magic trick with a drag queen in a glittery red coat, except the drag queen was actually Alan Rickman, and when he said I had to wait outside to make the magic work I had a massive paddy. “This is my one fucking chance to see Alan fucking Rickman on stage and I have to fucking WAIT OUTSIDE?!!!” and words to that effect.
In the morning I’d kinda assumed that the drag Alan Rickman had stemmed from this other show we have on at work at the moment, with a drag artist called Ceri Dupree playing the devil (hence the sequins), BUT (and get this) when I was watching The Red Shoes (the real Red Shoes, not the dream version anymore) there was a drag compère/narrator AND a bit where he introduced a ‘volunteer’ to do a levitation act. I was like “OH MY GOD I TOTALLY DREAMT THIS.”
But the best bit of all? I told my mate Pam about it, and then last night she dreamt about Alan Rickman, except this time he wasn’t in sequins; he’d shaved his head like the Kneehigh company. I totally incepted her with my inception.
Next up: give Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall visions of naked mushroom foraging with my nubile young form.
Oh yeah, and The Red Shoes was awesome, although not quite enough spurting blood for my tastes.
So, I saw Inception today (finally) and I was predictably enamoured with the whole experience. Cillian Murphy is fucking smoking hot, although I did prefer his hair in Sunshine. Can’t have everything I suppose. As for the film itself, the realism suffered for lack of unfulfilled shagging, public nakedness and that weird beachy island place that I keep visiting in the night. It’s like Vietnam, except also Scotland, and sometimes travels through the air on rollercoaster tracks. You know the one.
Also, I am very happy for Leonardo DiCaprio. There was a moment there when I thought he might never recover from Titanic. He’s a trouper, that one. I always believed.
