Life Takes Funny Turns, as Does Mel Gibson

Posted by zeno on July 20, 2010

Mel Gibson, ladies and gentlemen. A phenomenally successful actor and director, with a seriously acute sense of humour, immense charm, loads of money, yet is a complete and absolute nutter. He’s almost exactly four years older than I am, which accounts for the fact that he is old and wrinkly while I retain my youthful good looks and general lack of baldness.

Lovely Mel who, in our younger days, was often compared to me in the looks department (shut up at the back, I now who you are, bitch) and who for the longest time I wanted to be. The picture to the left is him in his mid thirties. Take a look at him now and you see the toll that the drinking, smoking and general screwed up living has taken on him. He isn’t ageing well.

Remember “Gallipoli”? Fabulous movie. I never saw the Mad Max flicks but the Lethal Weapons and his gig as William Wallace, though as historically inaccurate as it’s possible to be, is a flamin’ ‘tour de force’ at getting the blood up after a couple of beers. Or in my case, a claret or two!

But what the fyck is going on with the plonker now? Married to the same woman for, how long, 28 years or something? 7 or 8 kids? Up to now a fairly private man, with a particularly strange brand of catholicism which is clearly anti-semitic and, anti gay. Now, as an aside,  the bible has fairly clear  guidelines about people who don’t conform to the “norm”, for example the gay community. Strong views are held on both sides, if there are only two sides, but unless a firm theological point is being made then a person should keep their gob shut. Telling a magazine that one’s arse is only for shitting didn’t do him any favours. Personally, I think the whole God/gay/ Christian thing is between God and the people involved. The important part of active Christianity, for me, is loving people, no matter who the fyck they are. Unless they they are wilfully ignorant and have big nostrils. That’s not totally biblical but we all have our faults.

A few years ago Mel admitted to suffering from manic depression (now known as bi-polar, which sounds far more adventurous). That fact has been missed in his whole recent character assassination, in which, to be fair, he played a major part. He is also clearly mental when he has a drink in him, then it’s all “Jews are bastards” and “what are you looking at sugar tits?” to a POLICEWOMAN? I think he’s admitted his battle with the booze quite openly now.

Here’s what I think, and I say this as a man who appreciates a mid-life crisis. Mel began to see in the mirror that his absolute gorgeousness was going. He is an arrogant prick (caused by years of success and adulation) and he wanted to be reminded what it was like to be young and handsome and be able to snap his fingers to pick up someone young and beautiful. Along came Oksana, young, beautiful, talented (in a limited way), and she turned his drink addled head. Mel dumps Robyn and has another child with Oksana (because birth control isn’t his thing). After a few months it becomes clear that she has, all along been calculatedly planning to produce another Gibson so that she will be set up for life. What she didn’t account for was Mel’s temper and his determination not to be taken to the cleaners.

OK, he went over the line in some of the shit he came out with. Most even. But as a man with a tempe,r I know only too well how easy it is to say all sorts of bollocks you don’t mean, in the heat of the moment. Which of us hasn’t said something out of order in a fight, who hasn’t called names or huffed and puffed like an idiot? OK, maybe it is only me, but I can honestly see what is going on and I can understand the upset (not about the BJ before the jacuzzi though, that’s went too far, as Greg Hemphill would say).

Certainly he is culpable for what has gone on, but I think his “mail order” Russian girlfriend knows ec=xactly what she is doing and why she is doing it.

Gibson’s crazy. He’s an alcoholic, religious nut-job with a God complex and a huge fear of getting old and ugly. Oksana appears to be a gold digging tart with fake lips, tits, teeth and who knows what else. Maybe they desevre each other, but I don’t think Mel deserves the shit he’s getting for having anger issues (which his family agree with).

If we looked into the private lives of all our Hollywood heroes I suspect we’d find much worse stuff going on. Read the biographies of the actors of the 40s and 50s for goodness sakes, they certainly won’t be any calmer or less crazy these days.

Feel free to hate on me, I’m just in the mood for a fight!

Then there’s the

There, and Back Again

Posted by zeno on June 2, 2010

I’m on a plane.

Actually, by the time you read this I will no longer be on a plane, I will be in an office, at a desk, under fluorescent light and looking at a computer screen. However, let’s not allow reality to intrude. I’m on a plane and I am enjoying the ride, for a change.

Perhaps it was the weather as we took off but, something in the way the sky looked this morning, gave me the wonderful takeoff thrill that I used to get, all those years ago, when I started throwing myself about the planet.

There’s a definite chance that this could be my last trip for a while and I’m not completely  sure how I feel. Obviously it will be nice to be home more, to be able to help with the things Amber has had to manage on her own for the last few years. It will be great to be able to say goodnight to my children every night and it will be nice to be able to schedule a weekly class of some sort during the week. But what about my itchy feet? After all, I’ve been traveling, doing the rounds, in one way or another, since I was 16. That’s almost 20 years, people.

It isn’t so much that I don’t like being in the one place as that I feel a sort of hunger for change.

When I was growing up we only moved house once, but in those two houses my mother would change the furniture around, have us swap rooms, change the decor all the flamin’ time. It became almost a family ritual, my mum would decide a change was needed and the three of us (she, my sister and I) would set to for the day and see how we could lay out what we had in different, creative and exciting ways. Maybe that is where this hunger came from.

Or maybe it’s that, before I was born, my parents lived in East Africa. Moshi in Tanganyika, to be precise. I spent a large part of my gestation there and my mother only moved home when my father died. My uncle lived in East Africa too, he had farms in Tanganyika and Kenya and he lived there till he passed away, just a few years ago. I had relatives all over the world and a cousin who traveled to, and lived, in various exotic locations, Mauritius, Khartoum, Oman, all (to me) exciting sounding places, but the only person in my family who had never been anywhere was me (I was also the only person in my entire family who had never met my father, bat that’s a whoooole ‘nother set of issues).

I also wonder how my perpetual presence will affect Amber and the kids. Will they get fed up with me and wish I was off somewhere else, doing something else, with someone else? Will the dogs start to feel that I am a tiresome owner if they don’t get to greet me enthusiastically once a week, to practice their leaping and smiling?

There’s always the chance that this won’t be my last ever trip. We’ll see.

I’m not on a plane any more and I’ll soon be back in Kansas.