"Gone Girl, movie

 Hi there

Have any of you noticed that many of the actresses from Hollywood nowadays look sort of ... the same?  The face structures look sharp, angular.  Their lips look huge.  The noses are perfect.  Their foreheads are flat and wrinkle-free.  Their bodies terribly thin.

Ozempic and other such drugs reduce weight.  These drugs are just hitting NZ now, but they've been overseas for a few years.   Hollywood people (men and women) are into it.  There's even a thing called "Ozempic face" - look at Sharon Osborne and Kelly Osborne.  Kathy Bates ("Matlock"), Ariana Grande ("Wicked"), and Oprah have lost a heck of a lot of weight in a very short time.

A few years back, I saw the movie "Gone Girl".  I am so embarrassed to admit it, but it wasn't until nearly the end of the movie that I had a sudden realisation ...

... the woman who I thought was playing a lead role was really two different actresses playing two different characters. Every time I saw this blonde woman on screen I had completely thought of her as just the one actress playing one character.

Humiliation much?

So, do I blame the movie's editor, the writer, the cinematographer, the producer, my brain?   Was it because both actresses had that generic Hollywood look?  They were both blonde and thin, so that hadn't helped...

*****

Today, Monday 27 July.  I woke up to the freezing cold.  The tv announced that, around New Zealand, it was the coldest day so far this winter.  

I have a very warm house, today has been the only day this winter I put on a heater.

I rang up my friend. "I am sooooooooo cold."  I whimpered.  I was cuddled under my flannelette sheets, with my electric blanket full on. I was wearing fingerless gloves to hold up my Kindle.

But at noon the sky got blue and I decided I would go to the beach for a swim.  The young lady who swims most early mornings and writes the sea temperature on a board at Hataitai Beach, had scrawled up "7c".

!!!!!!!!!***??????

oh, well ....  I had a swim.  The water was extremely cold.

Photographers

 Hi there

I want you to imagine the conversation between photographers, paparazzi or whoever is waiting outside The Old Bailey, or the High Court, or where someone has just been sentenced for some really heinous crime - 

"Oi, Bert, when's the van comin' out with the prisoner in it?  I want a photo through a window."

"Yeah, me too.  It'll be worth thousands from The Sun or The Mirror.  Cross fingers, Lord Heathshire gives us a snarl..."

"A naughty gesture..."

"He moons us..."

And why is it, my four dear readers, that even though we always see photographers chasing police vans after a court appearance, and those photographers are frantically snapping their cameras against windows ... we never ever see a photo of the prisoner encased in the vehicle.

The windows are obviously darkened.  Surely, the photographers have realised after years of running alongside the vans, that no photo can be obtainable.  All they will have to show for it, after all that running, puffing, and perfectly imitating the most vehicle-chasing pet labrador, will be half-a-dozen black smudgy photos?

And yet, they still make an attempt for that photo, the one that will bring in millions -

The second the doors from the Court car yard start to swing open, and there's a glimpse of a police van -

"Bert-bert-BERT! There's the van-   Get in there-"

Bert and the other photographers leap into the fray, frantically snapping their cameras.  These guys know they'll never get a good photo but it's a Pavlovian response;  they've been doing this action for so many years that, by now, they don't understand to do anything else...

Bliss their little celebrity-chasing hearts

Sir Sam Neill

Rest in Peace, Sam.  A great kiwi.  A great actor.  A great person.

Matariki Public Holiday in New Zealand

 Hi there

HAPPY MATARIKI!!!  

Wish upon a star (thanks Disney).

Horror!

 Hi there

When I was about sixteen years, I loved going to those Hammer Horror movies, the ones that usually starred Vincent Price.  Then I saw "The Fall of the House of Usher" and I was so scared I ducked down to the floor. I vowed after that movie to never see another horror film as long as I lived.

And I haven't.

So ... I moved over to horror books.  Wow, all those early Stephen King horror books were great. 

Until ....  He wrote "Gerald's Game".

The woman was handcuffed to the bed and couldn't get out of the situation.  Her husband was dead beside her.  And the dog was shut in the house with her....

I vowed never to read another Stephen King book.

And I haven't.

I'm such a wimp...

"Shotgun!"

 Hi there

When I was a kid I loved cowboy movies.  The more intellectual folk called them 'westerns'.  I always wanted to ride 'shotgun' on a stagecoach.  You know, that's the guy sitting beside the man with the reins?  The guy on the lookout for robbers? With a shotgun?

Or woman?  I mustn't forget Calamity Jane in that musical with the same name.  Doris Day as Calamity rode shotgun on a stagecoach.  Goodness, while she was doing it, she even sang about being on "The Deadwood Stage'; talk about versatility?

I rode shotgun on a western stagecoach.  It was years ago.   I was on a guided tour in the USA and we stopped at a replica of a western town.  A stagecoach ride was on offer and I bagged the position up there with the driver.

I didn't have a rifle but that didn't matter. This clattering, bouncy, uncomfortable ride was heaven to me.  I was Audie Murphy, Roy Rogers, Lash LaRue, John Wayne...

In my early teens my father used to drive my friend Shirley and myself to the movies in town.  Every Saturday afternoon. I always held open the car's back door for Shirley to get in first.  I followed her.

After a while Shirley asked me, "Why do you always sit with me in the back seat?  You leave the front seat empty?"

"Because it's polite," I said.  "I can talk to you easier in the back seat."

Shirley shrugged.  I didn't think about that front seat for many years.

Not until a little while back when I was watching TV, and modern characters starting yelling at each other that they wanted to ride 'shotgun'.

Oh ... the phrase meant that you wanted to sit in the front passenger seat of the family car, and because you yelled "shotgun' in advance of your siblings, you got it?

Duh?  It was a modern equivalent of that western stagecoach rider.

Being an only child, I hadn't known that "I bags 'Shotgun'" meant "Get out of my way, Sis, That front seat is mine."  It was a plum prize.

My mother always had that seat, no fighting involved.  And, in that seat, it was easier for her to back-seat drive....

Mid-Winter Swim 2026, Hataitai Beach, Wellington

 Hi there

... and a great time was had by all.

The rain stopped just before the swim started, hooray!

I couldn't attend.  About 40 did.

Our lovely Angelina pulled it off.