Redhead bias

Those who know me also know that there are too many examples of this… and at the drop of a hat, or the drop of another glass of wine, I will tell you about many of them.

The hypothesis is simple:

Redheaded males only get cast in roles as either

a) mentally unhinged – either evil or misguided or geek-freak-beyond-belief or

b) the lovable dispensable friendly sidekick might as well go around with a sign on their head saying “going to die, or going to get kidnapped and saved by the <brown/blond/black haired> hero”

So, today saw two examples:

1. Proper Clever at Liverpool’s Playhouse. Adam Gillen did a marvellous job as Matthew – the geek freak, probably gay, definitely a bit odd. I wonder, is there a reason why casting pictures are always in black and white? is there? hmm?

2. Julian Rhind-Tutt in Merlin today.  A nice performance, as one would expect from the mop-headed one (one of the best current proponents of the ginger magic on our screens). Green Wing was masterful and he did a lot for the cause. But in this case his magician was, yes, you guessed, a psychotic revenge-seeking madman. Nice.

Mop-head magician

while I’m about it

3. The Wii. You cannot make your wii mii have red hair? Trust me, I have tried.

More anon, no doubt.

Notice, no red

Advertisement

Round the World: Decision

So, the plan is:

Peru – Guatemala – Belize – New Zealand – Hong Kong – Syria – Jordan – Blighty…

Now all I have to do is book flights, find hotels, find trips, plan to leave the house for 3 months… easy, eh?

Is Google making us stupid?

Interesting piece here found by Ant at MLP. Yeah, Google’s great, but what is it doing to our minds?….
(LINK)

Extract: “For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they’ve been widely described and duly applauded. “The perfect recall of silicon memory,” Wired’s Clive Thompson has written, “can be an enormous boon to thinking.” But that boon comes at a price…”

Not liking “Like”

For the love of, like, God, could we please stop saying, like, “like” every second word.

My friend Gary Krimershmoys mentioned it to me first some months ago when he noticed it in his own language – but then he’s a new yorker so I was mildly impressed at his approach to linguistic discipline. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the flexibility and the creativity of our wonderful language, but the word is being used in such a random space-filler kind of way that basically I actually don’t literally have time for it. hrmph.

37. When I became a man, I put away childish things…

It’s going to be one of my best years, I think.

Yesterday decided that 3 months travelling should start in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam and end in the Middle East.

How do you know you’ve grown up?

When you get unreasonable and inexplicable pleasure from the things which resonate with your manliness. I already had the number 1 man-asset, a globe. But this morning I received a gift which underlined my mature nature. I cannot explain the sense of satisfaction and masculine contentment I got from opening a gift to find a pair of binoculars. Decent binoculars.

I’m not a twitcher, I’m not a peeping-tom, but for some reason it felt right.

And all was well with the world.