So, Saturday was an awesome day. As you should all know, I received four tickets to see Hairspray in the West End, as my 18th birthday present from my parents. We had to wait until 29th March, admittedly, but the wait was well worth it; Charlotte, Kat, and my mummy were to see the musical with me, and Dad and Alec came down with us to London too. Of course, I got bunged into the boot of the car as we drove to the train station, as I'm the smallest >_<.
On the train, I learnt that you should NEVER eat love hearts whilst you have chewing gum in your mouth. You end up getting yellow ooze all over your face, and then your friends and random Chinese ladies laugh at you.
Well, in London, we went to HMV and then Charlotte, Kat and I went to the Disney Store next door, which I did not find pleasant. I haven't been in one of those stores for about ten years. There was an overwhelming amount of Hannah Montana and High School Musical merchandise, which stands for pretty much everything I detest.
Anyway, my dad then took us through Soho, which I was not expecting, so Kat and I saw all the Japanese places we had gone to two years ago, or whenever it was, when Rosie's dad took Rosie, Kat and I down to IMAF.
We also went into some cult memorabilia shop where Kat and Charlotte found a blowjob kit, and I marvelled at the Boba Fett stand-up cut-out (different priorities there, clearly). And Kat and I saw a mug with the same nun motif on it that is on my 'I feel a sin coming on' lipsyl that Rosie gave me, which makes me think that Rosie went in that shop too.
We visited Forbidden Planet while my parents went in some cook shop (my dad can't stand FP). In the shop window, somebody had put a V (for Vendetta) mask on a big Spiderman model. We then found loads more masks in the store, so while Kat and Alec were going downstairs, I took a photo of Charlotte wearing one of the masks. It's very scary. She also got very freaked out by the people in the store. For example, right behind us, a shop assistant came out of the the storeroom or whatever, with a Transformers gun replica or something (god knows exactly what it was) and a grown-up man said "yay! wait, before I buy it, can I hug it?" and then hugged it. The woman he was with laughed. Charlotte almost ran for it.
Downstairs, Kat found volume 10 of Ouran, and we all wandered round and round, with my parents eventually joining us too. Alec found a DVD for a film that has been banned in England and Italy for years; Killer Nun, with the tagline "at last the slut is uncut". Then Charlotte found some Nun porno DVDs.
It was a fairly nunny day.
Eventually, after various things were bought by various members of the party, we went to My Old Dutch, a pancake house that my mum thinks she went to her for her older brother's 21st or 18th birthday. I had apple and bacon in mine, then I had a small bowl of maple syrup to pour over it, which I cleaned out. I think Kat and Charlotte had curry in their pancakes, which is just odd. Then we waited for our food to go down a bit, so Alec and Mum had a big film fight. Eventually, we had our sweet pancakes, and Alec, Kat and I had sugar and lemon, but the pancakes (which were massive - you should have seen the size of the plates) were still really thick, so the sugar and lemon was barely noticeable. We didn't have much of those in the end.
Then there was the main attraction! We bought programmes and t-shirts (I wanted the black, but they'd sold out, so I got a pink fitted one like Charlotte's). The show was fantastic. Tracy was quite raunchy at times. And there was a great bit where Michael Ball and the guy who played Wilbur got the giggles during You're Timeless to Me and started ad-libbing lines:
"It's Jewish for 'kiss me again'."
"... I didn't know you were Jewish."
"You never can tell."
... ... "Actually, you can."
"Wilbur, I can feel the bells."
"You never complained before."
"I never noticed them before."
It took them a while to finish that song xD.
And Prudy Pingleton's "bad, bad hands" (she ended up groping Seaweed O___o) made me think of Hutchinson's magical hands, and Rosie's "hands! hands in bad places!".
There was a standing ovation at the end. Everyone in the stalls stood up, and we were in the Royal Circle and most people there stood up, except the grouchy people in the two rows in front of us, who clearly don't know a good time when they have it.
Kat got a headache, but Charlotte and I were fairly hyper on the train back. We sang along to the soundtrack on her MP3 player, a boy threw his phone at the door, and a man jumped awake when he heard us singing, and realised he had missed his stop, which was hilarious. Then I got bundled in the boot again :S. We got back to Audley End at about midnight, then dropped off Kat, so I got next to my mum in the car, then dropped off Charlotte, then got home. I craved some of my mum's tea, had a tiny bit, then went to bed.
Yesterday was alright. I finished chapter three of my fanfiction.
I have decided that I must accomplish something on every day of this holiday, which might start to get a bit difficult. I still don't know what to do for today.
Oooh, and I ordered some t-shirts, shorts and DVDs yesterday. My material urges came back, so I can't wait for all those things to arrive. And Kat, Charlotte and I are all gonna wear our Hairpsray t-shirts on the first day back at school. If Kat had got a pink one too, we'd be like the Pink Ladies from Grease. I baggsy Rizzo!
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Now playing: Ultravox - Vienna
via FoxyTunes
No. 8, My Life, Planet Earth
Showing posts with label hairspray. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hairspray. Show all posts
Monday, 31 March 2008
Monday, 21 January 2008
My article for the Christmas issue of Brown Paper ('Wrapping Paper')
HAIRSPRAY
By The Duke
I've never been a fan of hairsprays, to be honest. They never seem to work in the fashion that is detailed on the bottle label; you end up getting disgusting white sticky things in your hair, and then you're simply left with no choice but to wash it again. This hairspray, however, is awesome. I figure that most people's main reason for going to see the film is that they want to see John Travolta in drag. This is fairly understandable; Travolta has played a multitude of roles - some great, some probably rather crap - but never before has he played a woman. A fat woman. Perhaps everyone is just as disappointed by this sad little fact as I am, and so decided it was utterly vital for them to run along to the cinema and give the film a watch. As for me, I don’t think I’ll ever regret going; I foot-tapped my way through the entire film and – it sounds cheesy, but it’s true – I really did laugh at every joke made. The cinema itself actually had a great audience that night, although there was a woman in front of us who had the loudest laugh ever, and also the somewhat annoying tendency to turn to her young son every five minutes and inform him that the large, jovial woman on screen was in fact a man (can you imagine if the poor young boy became terribly confused by this, and then was falsely led to believe that all people who appear to be women are in fact men, and perhaps even vice versa? How tragic that would be.)
Hairspray is simply there to enjoy. It’s bright and colourful, with wonderful recreations of 1960s hairstyles and clothing, but it’s also not afraid to hit the more serious notes, such as racial integration; Tracy (newcomer Nikki Blonsky), our heroine, becomes friends with some ‘afro-tastic’ coloured kids in her high school, who she later joins in a protest march, in an attempt to put a much-needed end to segregation. There is a lull in the jokes here, as Queen Latifah sings the heartfelt “I Know Where I’ve Been”, but then Tracy bashes a police officer with her protest sign, and it’s all back to good ol’ blown-way-out-of-proportion humour, but without making the audience feel awkward about the fact that they’re laughing right after a very poignant scene.
You don’t have to like musicals to like Hairspray. You just need to like music. Let’s face it: it’s not often you get an awesome film which encourages its viewers to not be afraid of being ‘different’ by playing them music (what a way to convince us all). The songs have fantastic lyrics full of the most ridiculous sexual allusions, and James Marsden, the guy who you may recognise as the X-Man who can shoot laser beams of death out of his eyes suddenly appears on-screen as a guy called ‘Corny’ who thinks he is an aeroplane, and keeps grinning cheesily at everyone (he’s great, though).
The DVD and soundtrack are both out now, so if you’re fed up of the Christmas tunes blasting out the radio and want something different to listen to, go out and get your hands on Hairspray and then jig around the living room (or cha-cha, if you’re listening to Michelle Pfeiffer’s rather spiffing “(Legend Of) Miss Baltimore Crabs”) and wile away your Christmas holidays in a fun way.
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Now playing: Weezer - American Gigolo
via FoxyTunes
By The Duke
I've never been a fan of hairsprays, to be honest. They never seem to work in the fashion that is detailed on the bottle label; you end up getting disgusting white sticky things in your hair, and then you're simply left with no choice but to wash it again. This hairspray, however, is awesome. I figure that most people's main reason for going to see the film is that they want to see John Travolta in drag. This is fairly understandable; Travolta has played a multitude of roles - some great, some probably rather crap - but never before has he played a woman. A fat woman. Perhaps everyone is just as disappointed by this sad little fact as I am, and so decided it was utterly vital for them to run along to the cinema and give the film a watch. As for me, I don’t think I’ll ever regret going; I foot-tapped my way through the entire film and – it sounds cheesy, but it’s true – I really did laugh at every joke made. The cinema itself actually had a great audience that night, although there was a woman in front of us who had the loudest laugh ever, and also the somewhat annoying tendency to turn to her young son every five minutes and inform him that the large, jovial woman on screen was in fact a man (can you imagine if the poor young boy became terribly confused by this, and then was falsely led to believe that all people who appear to be women are in fact men, and perhaps even vice versa? How tragic that would be.)
Hairspray is simply there to enjoy. It’s bright and colourful, with wonderful recreations of 1960s hairstyles and clothing, but it’s also not afraid to hit the more serious notes, such as racial integration; Tracy (newcomer Nikki Blonsky), our heroine, becomes friends with some ‘afro-tastic’ coloured kids in her high school, who she later joins in a protest march, in an attempt to put a much-needed end to segregation. There is a lull in the jokes here, as Queen Latifah sings the heartfelt “I Know Where I’ve Been”, but then Tracy bashes a police officer with her protest sign, and it’s all back to good ol’ blown-way-out-of-proportion humour, but without making the audience feel awkward about the fact that they’re laughing right after a very poignant scene.
You don’t have to like musicals to like Hairspray. You just need to like music. Let’s face it: it’s not often you get an awesome film which encourages its viewers to not be afraid of being ‘different’ by playing them music (what a way to convince us all). The songs have fantastic lyrics full of the most ridiculous sexual allusions, and James Marsden, the guy who you may recognise as the X-Man who can shoot laser beams of death out of his eyes suddenly appears on-screen as a guy called ‘Corny’ who thinks he is an aeroplane, and keeps grinning cheesily at everyone (he’s great, though).
The DVD and soundtrack are both out now, so if you’re fed up of the Christmas tunes blasting out the radio and want something different to listen to, go out and get your hands on Hairspray and then jig around the living room (or cha-cha, if you’re listening to Michelle Pfeiffer’s rather spiffing “(Legend Of) Miss Baltimore Crabs”) and wile away your Christmas holidays in a fun way.
----------------
Now playing: Weezer - American Gigolo
via FoxyTunes
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