Uncanny Tales – (092) Rewriting History One Fact at A Time # 2

 

If there is one thing that irritates me more than any other, it has to be historical inaccuracies in film and TV scripts.

Now I’m not talking about things like Braveheart or The Battle of the Bulge or countless other attempts by the Americans to rewrite history.

No, the things that irritate me are the little things, the small easy to verify things, the things that they just can’t be bothered to do right.

 

For example, in the American hit TV series NCIS there is a character, Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo played by Michael Weatherly, who, apart from being a special agent also considers himself to be a bit of film buff.

DiNozzo is constantly either quoting from movies or is making endless film references to accompany any given situation he is in or indeed crime scene he is at.

In one episode he is drawing a parallel between his own situation and that of the characters in the 1938 classic “Angels with Dirty Faces” with James Cagney, Pat O'Brien and Humphrey Bogart.

And the afore mentioned parallel would have been quite apt, had he not made a serious faux pas, well I think it was serious.

He referenced to the fact that Rocky Sullivan and Jerry Connolly grew up as tough kids in Hell's Kitchen, the toughest part of New York, and their destinies were set when Rocky got sent to reform school and Jerry escaped the law and went on to becomes a priest.

So far so good, but where DiNozzo went wrong was to say that the Father Connolly character was played by Bogey (Humphrey Bogart), who was in the film, when he was in fact played by Pat O'Brien.

Quite unforgivable when DiNozzo is supposed to be an aficionado of film.

Uncanny Tales – (091) Rewriting History One Fact at A Time # 1

 

If there is one thing that irritates me more than any other, it has to be historical inaccuracies in film and TV scripts.

Now I’m not talking about things like Braveheart or The Battle of the Bulge or countless other attempts by the Americans to rewrite history.

No, the things that irritate me are the little things, the small easy to verify things, the things that they just can’t be bothered to do right.

 

For example, there was an American sci-fi series in the 90’s called “Babylon 5” which I much enjoyed, and if truth be told I liked it more than the Star Trek equivalent of “Deep Space 9”.

However, in one episode, “Comes the Inquisitor”, there was a character called Sebastian, who it transpired as the story unfolded was in reality Jack the Ripper.

When his true identity came to light during the story it was announced that in the late 1800’s Jack the Ripper plagued London’s West End.

No! No! No! Jack the Ripper did not stalk the theatre district he was too busy amusing himself killing prostitutes in the East End.

It was a simple mistake that just shouldn’t have happened, but it did and there really is no excuse for it this day and age when research is such a simple matter.

I find it difficult to comprehend that such a basic error made it to the airing.

Surely one of the writing team or production staff or even one of the cast, would have asked “Are you sure it was the West End?” but apparently not.

 

Last Christmas my wife bought me the boxed set and when we were watching the relevant episode, we both braced ourselves for the fateful moment and then laughed when we discovered it had been rather amateurishly dubbed.     

Uncanny Tales – (090) There’s More to Life Than Being Young and Fit

 

Now I’ve left middle age behind me in the distance I occasionally hark back to my youth when I really was as young as I felt, to the days before my six pack became victim to too many six packs, I suppose my current physique I have to confess is not so much a six pack but rather more a party seven.

(If you don’t know what a party seven is then this ramble probably doesn’t apply to you).

The thought of my girlfriends of the day with their firm buttocks, flat stomachs and gravity defying breasts stir my loins with more than a sense of nostalgia, and part of me wants to return to those carefree days of youth but I have grave reservations about being a teenager again or worse being myself amongst teenagers.

Having shared a train carriage with four teenage girls only a day ago and having endured the incessant and inane jabbering for two long soul-destroying hours, when they had exhausted their limited vocabulary within the first 10 minutes, the thought of repetitious teenage pillow talk fills me with dread.

How is it that with all the many means of communication at their disposal they still have nothing meaningful to say?

There is a lot to be said for being with a woman who is wrinkle free and supple and of limited sexual experience, carnal knowledge was so much fun to learn, and all this reminiscing leaves me with a certain longing.

But the price is too high to pay, it is so much better being with someone with life experience, someone you can have a proper conversation with in between the love making or indeed instead of it.

It doesn’t have to be deep and meaningful converse just a bit more than he said/she said init.

It can be as simple as a common history or shared knowledge, someone who knows the name of the dragon in Ivor the Engine, or someone who watched Brief Encounter and didn’t think it was funny.

Someone who remembers being able to play music at the wrong speed and who remembers having to wait for the black and white TV set to warm up.

Just someone who understands what you are saying and doesn’t stare vacantly at you when you mention an event that happened pre-1990.

Uncanny Tales – (089) Its Official, I’m An Old Man

 

I was sitting in my car, which was parked in a side road behind the church where I was waiting for my wife.

It was a “no through road” and its primary function was as an access road to the shops and its double yellow lines were designed to deter men from waiting for their wives but at six o’clock in the evening, we were there in numbers without fear of causing an obstruction.

It was a warm late afternoon/early evening in June and the bright sun beat down on the car and subsequently we were all sat with our windows down to benefit from the light breeze.

I was leant back in my seat, eyes closed against the sun, listening to the world cup chatter on the radio when I heard a car horn.

This was not an uncommon occurrence, there was always someone honking for something, I myself was no stranger to the use of the horn, so I didn’t open my eyes and continued to listen to the radio.

Then came a prolonged blast which did open my eyes and caused me to turn to see where it was coming from.

I had to crane my neck to see the source of the noise which was behind me and to the right.

A woman in a large salon car who was trying to exit a car park was waving her hand in an exaggerated gesture which I took to mean “can you move the car back”.

I arrived at this interpretation mainly because she shouted rather forcefully out of her open window.

“Move back, move back”.

Despite the fact I was not level with the entrance nor was I blocking it in anyway and had she got her positioning right she would have made the manoeuvre effortlessly,

I pointed out to her quite politely that she was only driving a saloon car and not a tank, but this fell on deaf ears, so she repeated her demand.

“Move back, move back”.

I acceded to her request and reversed back out of harm’s way but as she was making the turn she stopped and shouted to me through the passenger window.

I was expecting a thank you but instead she shouted in a voice somewhere between Caroline Langrishe and Margot Ledbetter.

“If I didn’t have my daughter in the car, I would have something to say to you, you silly old man”.

I was so taken aback by the superciliousness of her comment that I laughed.

This was not the response she was expecting which seemed to fluster her and she missed her gear.

“Are you not even a little bit embarrassed that you can’t manoeuvre yourself out of a car park”?

She eventually managed to find first gear and lurched forward but then found herself tight up behind the car that was parked in front of me before I moved.

I couldn’t resist the temptation and leant out of my window.

“Would you like me to ask him to move as well”?

She reversed back quickly then lurched forward again only to find she still couldn’t clear the parked car, so she threw it into reverse again and quickly shot forward.

To my shame the child in me applauded as did the driver of the car in front.

Then a jewelled hand appeared from the drivers’ window and extended a single digit and from the passenger side a smaller hand appeared and gave a thumbs up.

Then the brake lights came on as she violently braked sharply, at first, I thought she was going to engage us in some witty repartee or that she had noticed her daughters’ supportive gesture but no, it was just that she nearly ran down some poor unsuspecting pedestrian.

The driver of the other car and myself exchanged knowing looks and I chuckled to myself and was still chuckling when my wife arrived and got in the car.

Uncanny Tales – (088) On the Way to Maybury Hill

As a young man, H.G. Wells had spent an unhappy time living with an aunt in Horsell which was then close to Woking and is now part of the overall sprawl.

So, when he wrote his great science fiction novel, The War of the Worlds, he had the Martians land on Horsell common, in sight of where Wells had once lived.

This enabled him to have that area of Woking become the first to fall victim to the terrifying invaders weaponry.

In the novel the hero of the tale, having witnessed the first meteor fall to earth, was pursued by the merciless tripods from the common and along Maybury hill.

Were the invaders to land today they would have to negotiate a huge six-way roundabout, dissect a one-way system, a no left turn, a no right turn, two traffic light junctions, three pelican crossings and two quite appallingly designed mini roundabouts.

I think faced with the product of 21st century traffic management and in particular Woking Borough Councils ill-judged town planning, that the Martians would have given up and returned home long before they were exposed to the pathogenic bacteria that eventually saw them off.

The world saved by the ineptitude of local government, what Irony.

Uncanny Tales – (087) The Lady Mondergreen

 

Everything nowadays has a name every illness, every condition has a pigeonhole, every hobby or pastime, every job and occupation and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, after all that is one of the functions of language.

Names and definitions enable us to know what someone else is talking about as well as feeding the habit of those interested in trivia.

I like trivia myself all those interesting facts about just about anything, the origins of surnames, inventors, adventurers, sporting events, who did what to who and when.

In fact, my head is absolutely full of useless bits of trivia from irrelevant facts to complete rubbish I even know the origin of the word trivia.

All of which brings us neatly to the purpose of my rambling, namely that all of us at one time or another have listened to a song and got it wrong and completely misheard the lyric, sometimes just the first hearing and sometimes every time you hear it.

I’m sure that everyone has a list of their own that they can recite but one that always sticks in my mind is from the Queen classic “Bohemian Rhapsody” the correct line is “spare him his life from this monstrosity” but I always hear “spare him his life from his Walls sausages”, I know it makes no sense but that’s what I hear.

I once heard Billy Connolly telling one of his tales many years ago, which happened when he was working in America, it was about a little girl in church who instead of singing “Gladly the cross I bare” sang “Gladly the Cross-Eyed Bear”.

Now I’m sure that you all have far better examples than the two that I have mentioned.

All this leads me neatly to the point where I impart my little piece of boring trivia, a little gem of trivia which just happens to be the name to describe a misheard lyric, that word being ‘Mondergreen’.

The word “Mondergreen” is derived from an old folk song that was released on a record in the early 1950’s which contained the line “They laid him on the green” but this was misheard and was thus misinterpreted as “The Lady Mondergreen.”

Now wasn’t that an interesting bit of rubbish.

 

I would be interested to hear your own examples of Mondergreens.

Uncanny Tales – (086) I Don’t Like Mondays

 

Journal week ending 23rd May 2008

 

In the words of the Boomtown Rats classic song title, I don’t like Mondays.

Now I know I’m not alone in that dislike and I hate Mondays on several levels, and I know I’m probably not alone in that either.

There are some Mondays I like more than others such as any Monday that falls during my holiday leave, providing I’m not at home, and Bank Holiday Mondays for example are on the whole quite painless and in a week which boasts a Bank Holiday Monday I don’t like Tuesdays, but I don’t think there is a song about that.

 

The reason that I dislike Mondays so much, apart from the obvious one’s, is that Mondays are our designated refuse collection day in other words it’s when the bins are emptied.

Now I am well aware that the collection of household waste is an essential part of life, and I certainly wouldn’t want the practise to stop after all I do pay handsomely for the privilege.

 

I should point out that I do have an issue with the manner and means of collections that have been imposed on us.

Which is this, although we do have bins emptied weekly, we do have to suffer fortnightly collection, so general rubbish is collected one week and recycling the next and so on.

If you have the same arrangement in your area, then you know what I mean and if you don’t then you will have firsthand experience soon enough.

 

However, my chief gripe about collection day stems from a need to get from A to B without hindrance.

In other words, being able to get about without having to wait an indeterminate period of time for the dust cart to reach a point whereby the immeasurable queue of cars can continue their short journey.

You may think me petty or prone to exaggeration or both, but this is a reoccurring problem.

It’s bad enough when it happens on a main thoroughfare but at least they only block on side of the road under those circumstances and the traffic can still flow albeit in a restricted form.

But when it happens on the access roads to a housing estate, they block the whole road and make no attempt to find a spot where cars might be able to pass.

 

Take this Monday for example I was on my way home having been to the shops in town and turned onto my estate to find a dust cart blocking the road.

The road had cars parked down one side with hardly any spaces to pull in so fearing a protracted wait on this particular stretch of road I did a u turn back out onto the main road and drove another mile to enter the estate from the opposite end.

As I did so my heart sank as I could see 100 yards ahead another dust cart blocking the only other access road to my destination.

I glanced in my rear-view mirror and saw two other cars that had made the same discovery as I had.

I drove on as far as I could, about thirty yards from the obstruction, and tucked into a gap between two parked cars and waited.

I looked down the road at the driverless vehicle with its busy orange flashing lights which are supposed to warn of some kind of activity apparently not in this case.

I turned on the radio and amused myself by listening to Ken Bruce’s “Pop Master” quiz on  Radio 2, shouting out the answers and berating the contestant when they got it wrong.

Five minutes passed and nothing changed apart from the additional cars taking positions in the available gaps behind me.

The second combatant took her turn on the quiz and just as they were about to choose their bonus subject, I saw activity ahead.

A man in protective clothing moved towards the truck and opened the door.

The protective clothing consisted of safety footwear so they can kick your bins without hurting themselves, a Hi-visibility yellow coat so we can see them not moving very fast and Gloves to stop them getting chapped hands in the winter,

He climbed into the cabin after a few moments the truck started to move slowly in my direction.

As it did so the driver started making exaggerated hand and arm movement for which I could give no explanation.

As he got closer to me, he became even more animated and then he leant out of his window.

Still unaware of what the problem was but realising he was looking at me I wound down my window,

“You’re in the way” he shouted and pointed beyond my car “I need to get to those bins”.

Now although I find collection day to be a huge inconvenience, I put up with it, I don’t really have a choice but for him to start having a go at me rather pissed me off.

“What do want me to do about?” I responded.

“Where exactly do you expect me to go?”

“You should have hung back further up the road” He shouted again.

I didn’t point out to him that if I had stopped further up the road one of the cars behind me would be parked in the space now occupied by me instead, I said.

“So, I should have to park half a mile up the road because you’re inconsiderate”.

“Inconsiderate” He bellowed “Inconsiderate you’re the inconsiderate one mate”.

I took a deep breath before saying “One of us is blocking the road and it isn’t me, should I draw you a picture or do you get it now”?

“You’re the one blocking the bloody bins” he retorted his face a rather unattractive purple which did not go well with his yellow coat. 

“God forbid you actually have to wheel the bins an extra six feet” I replied “Mate”.

At this point a woman stepped off the curb and walked over to truck and looking up at the funny purple man made some enquiry about collection times for the coming holiday weekend.

“For god’s sake don’t distract the dustman now we’ll be here all day” I shouted to her.

The driver bristled visibly at the mention of the word “dustman” and ignoring the woman he drove slowly off followed by seven cars and there disgruntled drivers.

Only then could I continue my journey and although I had missed the end of “Pop Master” I felt I had acquitted myself well and struck a blow for the common man, figuratively speaking of course as he was younger and fitter than me and more purple.