Being someone else...
Jan. 12th, 2010 11:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
f4f3So, 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?
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?
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Date: 2010-01-13 04:35 pm (UTC)