Two For The Road (1967). First got to see this..ooh, must be ten years ago now, on a night off in Tokyo. We rented it from some exotic avant garde movie place in Ebisu. Hard to imagine, even just ten years ago, the lengths one had to go to to find stuff like this. Nowadays… well, I just checked, and Amazon can guarantee delivery of the DVD to my door by noon tomorrow for the princely sum of £4.97. Not quite the same somehow..
Anyway, here’s a little taste of that wonderful Stanley Donen movie, featuring my current favourite Mancini score, and starring the inspired but, at the time, unlikely pairing of Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney. Funny, every time I watch it I’m reminded of another unlikely pair..
… like the rest of the herd, I’ve started the new year with a review of recent times and a resolution to change the things I can blah blah blah. Anyway, I’m dispensing with things that are harmful to me, and I’ve determined that this blogging business is not particularly life-threatening, so here’s a picture of how things are going right now..
I like to win. Of course I do, who doesn’t? But I’m also more than happy to lose. The one thing I absolutely will not be seen to do is to compete. If an outright win is not an option, I’ll take an outright defeat. Yeah, I know – binary opposites, polarity, good and evil, man utd – man city… anyway, just a thought…
The inventor of the Hula Hoop passed away this week. Richard Knerr, who also came up with the frisbee, died on Monday at the age of 82. As the Guardian reports.. “Knerr founded the Wham-O toy company with his childhood friend Arthur “Spud” Melin in 1948. The pair made sporting goods such as catapults, boomerangs and crossbows, before branching out into less harmful territory with products such as the Superball, the Slip ‘n’ Slide water slide, and Silly String.”
“Their break came in 1958 when they heard about a large ring that was being used for exercise in Australia. Wham-O used plastic to create their own version of the ring, which they called the Hula Hoop. Their promotion of their product in the playgrounds of southern California paid off; according to the company, they sold 25m Hula Hoops in four months.”
As a tribute I’m revistiing a young lady who certainly knows the business end of a hula hoop, and somebody who does things which I doubt Mr. Knerr ever envisaged being attempted with his product. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you once again the remarkable Elena Lev. Honestly, it’s enough to make a demon dwarf jump around on his bed..
