f4f3: (Tom Waits)
f4f3 ([personal profile] f4f3) wrote2010-01-12 11:46 pm

Being someone else...

So, as variously reported, I grew a beard over the Christmas holidays. And then, a week or so into the New Year, I trimmed it into a goatee. This weekend I picked up my new glasses (the first pair I've bought in 5 or 6 years. But I broke that pair, so I've been wearing the 8 year-old ones for the last year or so).

The net effect of both, apparently, is to make me look like a French intellectual. This is the view of other people - I think I look like a disaffected Russian Comintern functionary of the 1930s. Either way, it's not my usual look (which is "baby-faced Scotsman", as one comment on my Plinth stint had it last year).

I'm finding it quite a strange experience. For one thing, my usual mode of social interaction is a wisecrack, a smile, and a call for protection against the common forces of entropy which seek in vain to grind us down. Combined with the baby-faced look, this usually gets me a returned smile and a quick sense of conspiracy against the fates. The New Look, however, seems quite out of tune with a quip and a wink. It's set up for surliness. For a shrug, perhaps, and a slight rolling of the eyes about the ridiculousness of a world which I must share  with those less gifted than myself. I want to go and buy a black poloneck, and some Gauloises.

I'm wondering if I should change my social hangouts. Tonight we went for a burger in Ketchup, in Ashton Lane. As usual, the music was too loud, but the burgers were great. Even so, I caught myself looking around at the bright, cheery Americana of it all, and casting wistful glances at Cafe Brel across the lane, where I'm quite sure morose hipsters were sharing sullen silences over their moules. There might even have been jazz.

Afterwards we took in the new Sherlock Holmes. Yes, part of me was saying, a slap bang action pic, slightly overdone on the CGI front (in exactly the same way as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was - I wonder if they shared designers, or if it's an attempt at a steampunk look?) while new, beardy-Jasper Conran-speccy me was pining for something Czech from the 1930s, exploring the injury to eye motif through stop-motion animation. In French. With sub-titles. Croatian sub-titles. And a hurdy-gurdy soundtrack.

Dear readers, can it go on?

[identity profile] psychochicken.livejournal.com 2010-01-13 07:53 am (UTC)(link)
Oddly when I saw the trailer for SH, I immediately thought "that looks like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", which made me never want to see it. Ever.

[identity profile] f4f3.livejournal.com 2010-01-13 04:09 pm (UTC)(link)
I think we're all too cruel to LoEG - I mean, true it was a complete mess, the plot didn't work, the special fx sucked, Sean Connery snoozed his way through it... Where was I going with this again?

[identity profile] kapusta-volante.livejournal.com 2010-01-13 08:25 am (UTC)(link)
oh noes! you're turning into me!

[identity profile] f4f3.livejournal.com 2010-01-13 04:09 pm (UTC)(link)
There's a surefire Sundance winning film in there, you know...

[identity profile] rparvaaz.livejournal.com 2010-01-13 09:21 am (UTC)(link)
Depends on the strength of your alter ego, doesn't it? :)

I'd pound it into submission if I were you...

[identity profile] f4f3.livejournal.com 2010-01-13 04:10 pm (UTC)(link)
If I spend all day pounding myself, I'd never get any work done.
Ahem.

[identity profile] rparvaaz.livejournal.com 2010-01-13 04:25 pm (UTC)(link)
LOL

I submit that Flashy will always outweigh the French intellectual...

[identity profile] f4f3.livejournal.com 2010-01-13 04:35 pm (UTC)(link)
Where do you think the moustaches come in?

[identity profile] nicnac.livejournal.com 2010-01-13 10:29 am (UTC)(link)
I think you need to explore the world of twirling waxed handlebar moustaches with a devilish glint in your eye. Think of the havoc you'd cause!

[identity profile] unblinkered.livejournal.com 2010-01-13 01:44 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh gods, please don't go putting ideas in his head...one maniacally 'tache twirling person in the family is enough!

[identity profile] f4f3.livejournal.com 2010-01-13 04:10 pm (UTC)(link)
I do that already. In my head.

[identity profile] zenicurean.livejournal.com 2010-01-13 12:54 pm (UTC)(link)
Why settle for looking like any old specimen of Komintern интеллигенция, when you can go all the way? Ditch that progressive, soft intellectual Left Bank Bohemian look, rise up to the challenge, and grow a stolid, traditional Feliks Dzierżyński beard and moustache! Think of the existential terror you could inflict on friends and acquaintaces alike!

(Mauser pistol sold separately.)

[identity profile] f4f3.livejournal.com 2010-01-13 04:11 pm (UTC)(link)
I did think of The Man of Iron look, but I do want to keep what little hair I have left.