Old dogs, not enough tricks

Hot pancakes and jam. Fantastic. Mum has always been an expert.

Sitting on the couch in Chapelton on Sunday afternoon eating baguettes filled with tuna and cheese, followed by pancakes and various biscuits, helped down with a good few large mugs of tea. The perfect way to spend your Sunday afternoon. Mum’s pancakes are always great, especially when served hot with jam and ice cream. Brilliant.
There was no ice cream on Sunday though.
Too early for ice cream. Ice cream’s for pudding on a Sunday, not lunch. Unless you’re on the beach or you're watching a movie.
There can't be much call for ice cream in this weather although that doesn’t stop the ice cream van from coming down our street belting out his tunes or blowing his whistle twice every night (I presume he blows his whistle whenever it’s too late for the blaring music. A massively shrill whistle is much quieter and not disturbing or unexpected at all when your lying in bed, just about to nod off to sleep having an early night at half past ten when your suddenly jolted awake thinking the National express is pulling up in the echoy street outside).
Ice cream would have been better the night before. Although food, in any form, was not exactly what I had needed on Sunday. My stomach was still suffering from the night before after being out for a curry with Chaz.
Why is it curries always do that to you? What are in curries that fill you up so much, making you feel like you’ve just eaten a giant rubber tyre (to the tune of The flight of the Bumble Bee). Curries are a bit like like alcohol in that way. You know what you’re in for when you’re eating it, but, for some some reason, you just eat. Or I do anyway.
Upon entering the restaurant we thought we had no chance. Every table was taken. We walked into Chaz's favourite, Giffnock’s Turban Tandoori, to find it packed with curry eaters. After a cheerful hello and a few nods and a couple of winks from Chaz the restaurant's staff scurried around and managed to produce a small table to accomodate us, a few of the waiters nodding and greeting Chaz like an old friend, bowing and curtsying.
Chaz was looking forward to an audition for another small acting part in an SNP commercial on Monday and his much talked about appearance in this weeks ‘River City’, that gawd awful Scottish soap, shown on Tuesday nights. As I don’t finish work until later on a Tuesday it’s a great shame I miss the programme but I arrived home on Tuesday night to, surprisingly enough, find Ka watching. Apparently a familiar looking black leather jacket had appeared at the café shop front at some point early in the episode, the same black jacket that had been running away from zombies in George Square a few months ago, and the same which was sitting in a car alongside Scarlett Johansson in a van for over twelve hours, so, unfortunately, it looked like I may have missed Chaz’s ‘River City’ appearance although I’m sure he’ll be back. Chaz may have been infected with the acting bug now. Apparently he makes an appearance in a cell at some point alongside one of the main characters who has been arrested for murder, so look out for him if your watching. He’ll be the cellmate in the black leather jacket. Next stop, Hollywood or maybe Holyrood.
On Saturday afternoon Ka and myself seen 'The Artist'. A nice, charming, pleasant, fun watch. In my book, certainly not as fabulously fantastic as some are making out but a good, entertaining watch all the same, nicely done with it's imitation of the silent movies of old. Another movie with familiar themes of recent movies, the harking back to the birth of Hollywood and the days of old cinema long gone, just as ‘Hugo’ did a few months back.
'The Artist' centres around the character of a silent movie filmstar at the top of his game, George Valentin. Valentin is a wildly popular, charismatic (cheesy) star enjoying the limelight who inadvertently falls in love with a pretty woman, accidentally flung from the crowds outside the theatre, who kisses him before the cameras. So before the flash of the camera bulbs has even left the eyes of the lucky lady, Peppy Miller, she heads off to Hollywood to seek her fortune where she quickly hooks up with Valentin again, who, unknown to him, is on the verge of career suicide.

At a meeting with his producers Valentin rejects calls to become part of the new, revolutionary, 'talkie' movement in cinema and soon finds himself spiralling into career oblivion whilst Peppy's career rockets with popularity after she embraces her own opportunities in the new 'talkie' productions. The film then follows the two characters' intertwining lives whilst a small dog jumps around performing tricks.
I have to say the dog was the most disappointing aspect of the movie for me. What was all the fuss about? After all the build up surrounding the movie and its wonderful canine star, the mutt only really performs two tricks throughout the movie's entirety.
The tricks included being shot by a pointed finger, falling over on to it's side and pretending to be dead along with a burying of it's head down in between it's two front paws. For some reason these two tricks have suddenly made this dog the most adorable canine to have ever graced the silver screen. Martin Scorsese even made a joke about Uggie, the name of the acting dog in question, getting an Oscar nomination, something which, unsurprisingly, members of various online communities, presumably with nothing better to do, have started up campaigns around. In his defence, he did do an entertaining impression of lassie. Hardly Oscar material though. He can't even play the piano.

Unlike Rowlf the dog.
At the moment I'm trying to convince Ka to go and see the new Muppet movie with me. Insisting how much Claudia Winkleman and her pal on the couches of Film 2012 loved it isn't quite clinching the deal though...