Posts by dyan campbell
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Kate Bush wrote a song about a spell for invisibility, which basically involved being female and middle aged.
Oooh what is it called?
I think it's called How To Be Invisible and it's off her latest album... a couple years ago or so. I always quite liked her music, but I don't think she ever toured, not to Canada anyway.
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<quote?I saw black eyed peas' fergy choke down 3 large slices of pav in the performers tent at BDO. I'm assuming there was some throat and finger action in the toilet soon after.
Why presume bullimia? She's admitted to a smack habit (pre-fame) so maybe she just can't give up the sugary treats? And all that jumping around on stage should keep her trim. Witness that chap from Shihad.
</quote>Jeez, no shit, at 50 I am absolutely at the zenith of my weight ever and I am about 52kg, or about 114bs. In my youth I weighed much less - about 48kg and have a truly legendary appetite. I just like to be active... still.
When we visited my brother and his wife in the Rockies last holiday we spent a typical day like this: 25 km bike ride, climb for 3 hours up a trail in the Rockies, swimming for a couple hours, then pick up haybales for a neighbour in a field... then go for a walk. You wouldn't believe what we were eating at the time. Two breakfasts and two dinners and a million snacks in between. Only one lunch though. But god, active people can pack it away. I remember seeing a documentary on the NZ Ballet company, Paddocks and Tutus or something, good doco, but the interviewer said to the male dancers "Oh, I suppose the ballerinas are always on diets and barely eat so much as a lettuce leaf, and the guys kind of fell over laughing, saying "more like, if you get between them and the food you're likely to lose and arm, and you'd better bloody hide any snacks you have..."
I come from a family of fearsome eaters (and excellent cooks, if I do say so myself) none of whom have ever weighed much more
than a cat. But as a neighbour of my brother's asked me "So, are you bizarrely energetic like your brother?" my sister in law and I both simultaneously said "Yes".But as for the appetite, it is what I am known for. Once, when my Chinese cousin Barbara was trying to describe me to an Italian lunch bar lady (who made the most incredible cannelloni and cibatta) had gone through the pantomime of "this high, this eye colour, so-and-so build" the woman could not place me until Barb finally said "She looks exactly like me only white and she eats an incredible amount for her size" and the woman exclaimed "Oh I know who you mean!".
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__Bryan may make awful music, but he's a good guy and incredibly bright,__
I liked him when I met him. Just hated his music.
But it must have been The Police at Western Springs ...
I hated his music too, but you know, in hindsight what I didn't like about his music was partly snobbery... it seemed unoriginal, borrowed from an earlier genre. Uncool. And I have always been the first to give arty posers a hard time, but if I'm honest what I really didn't like about his music was the crowd that went with it. This had been true of ice-skating and track-and-field in earlier phases of my life, two other things I also liked but didn't want to be seen doing, and really had nothing to do with the thing I was judging... just that I didn't want to be associated with the sort of people who liked that sort of thing.
When I hear his songs now I find them incredibly catchy, and I quite like them - back then they conjured up an embarrassing sea of the worst (in my opinon then) aspect of Canadians, the beer drinking, hockey following, IQ Slicer-wearing (what we used to call those sun-visors guys wore), uneducated rock and roll types. But I think of how I was to him and how I sound recounting this, and I sound like a horrible, shallow character in a Katherine Mansfield story. Gossip is not usually my thing. Please delete my contribution to the gossip pool from your collective memories.
Though he did volunteer the Princess Di thing himself in an interview, so I'm not violating a confidence or anything on that particular count.
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I'm a nobody indeed. Over 40, fat and female. Makes me invisible.
Heh, well I'm 50, and at that age a woman is so invisible that body type really doesn't matter. Kate Bush wrote a song about a spell for invisibility, which basically involved being female and middle aged.
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Thank you so much Dyan, that's a brilliant story! Did you ever comb through his lyrics to see if there were any references to you in there? And thanks also for confirming the Princess Di rumour I heard elsewhere.
Heh, well I'm pretty sure the songs were about women he actually dated, and I never went out with him, though I must admit I did listen to the record (__You Want It You Got It__) he sent me with particular interest. There are some references to someone who is sleep deprived and kind of pissed off, so I thought, gee that does sound like me.
But I knew everyone he knew and everyone he dated, and mostly they were about a girl named Eve Coleman (who dumped him for another guy) and that's who Cuts Like a Knife is about. And Anne Hopper, who also dumped him for another guy. Once in an interview in a Canadian magazine the interviewer asked him how he was enjoying success and Bryan said "Well, it's better than any girlfriend I ever had".
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Oh, and Bryan Adams stalked me for a couple years, but I'm not sure if it counts as a brush with fame if you're the stalkeree.
Now there's a story I'd like to hear. Although the thought of it makes me feel a little nauseous. Especially because I'm now envisioning that he called up Rod and Sting and the three of them followed you around on segueways singing to you the whole time.
Poor Bryan, he's really quite a nice guy. He just wasn't my type - at least he didn't have the required effect on me, namely my heart didn't turn over at the sight of him. Jimmy Newton (who later became the singer in the band the Sons of Freedom) did have that effect on me, so I didn't even look twice at Adams.
Jimmy was a waiter and a math student when I was dating him, but he was way cuter than Bryan. Plus he was English, which seemed exotic at the time.
I was living in a student house in North Vancouver - our friend Michael bought it when he was 21, as he had been the heir to a massive fortune (Canadian Pacific) but his Dad, Bruce Yorke turned Communiist (and for a time was literally the only democratically elected Communist in North America... ever) and in turning Communist, repudiated the entire fortune. Michael didn't get his share of the millions, as his Dad had repudiated the inheritance, but each of his children got a $40T token share from their grandfather, which despite being only a fracton of the family fortune, it was stll a lot of money in those days. So we had the run of this huge North Van house (now worth over a million, but that's not that much in Vancouver). We were all fabulous cooks, we were serious students so we kept tv well away from the place, but we'd have great great parties.
The house was always packed with students, and Bryan Adams was one of the kids who'd grown up in the neighbourhood. He'd had a band called Baby Strange and Michael let them practice there, but by the time I met him he was already just Bryan Adams and getting famous. Actually (this is about 1979 or 1980) he was touring with the Police, but I was spared the experience of them singing at me.
Bryan, and his friend The Beanbag (whom he thanks on all his records) were regular fixtures, and he and Chris (The Beanbag) were always just there . Bryan sent me: candy, flowers, my favourite Chinese pastries, his record, tried to take me skiing, turned up when I was skiing, turned up at classes where I taught gymnastics and watched (to be fair this was open to the public) and generally lurked in a lovesick way but finally he gave up. I was a full time student and had 3 jobs, so I was pretty tired and cranky most of the time, I wasn't very nice to him, I 'm afraid.
I nearly went out with him, because he made me laugh (in reference to Michael's dreadful stereo at a party, he said "shall we put another record on the lathe?" and once, in reference to seeing Michael - who does have weird body language - in a grocery store, said "I saw Michael mincing and flapping in Produce City..." But as I say, Jimmy was the guy for me back then.
Bryan may make awful music, but he's a good guy and incredibly bright, and quite the art collector even back then. He'd grown up all over Europe (his Dad was a foreign attache or diplomat or something) and he'd developed quite an eye for art. Actually, once when I was wandering a party carrying a friend's cute little 2 year old as an accessory to my blue dress, he told me I looked like Raphael's Madonna... but funny, cultured or full of flattery, he didn't make my heart turn over.
I haven't seen Bryan for... 25 years I think, but he sang at The Beanbag's wedding only a year or two ago, but I didn't attend as I was here (NZ). Bryan took the photograph of the Queen on the Canadian stamps. He got into photography (as a way to meet models, I suspect), but is quite talented and has published a couple of books of photographs... and is now great friends with Shalom Harlow, Linda Evangelista and other Canadian models. The books werefundraising work for breast cancer and also he does work for Oxfam (with a particular interest in rural India). I hear news from mutual friends, but haven't seen him for ages. He was not my biggest fan by the time he gave up chasing me. Mostly he lives in London, and he - now here's a brush with fame - once slept with Diana, Princess of Wales, round about the time of Live Aid.
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Is this a Brush With Fame conversation?
I once saw the actor Anthony Perkins (Psycho, On The Beach, etc) browsing in one of those obscenely expensive clothing shops on South Granville in my hometown Vancouver. He was wearing ratty shorts and a T shirt, flip-flops ("jandals") sunglasses and a Breitling watch. If it hadn't been for the Breitling I wouldn't have thought it was him as he looked so scruffy, but I reasoned only an actor would shop on South Granville dressed like that. I kept glancing up at him and trying to decide if it was really Anthony Perkins when he sidled up besided me, lifted his sunglasses, grinned, nodded knowingly, then winked at me. I kind of squeaked and scurried behind a rack of cashmere coats. He just smiled and looked amused.
And my friend Georgina, who was obsessed with David Bowie got a tip from her sister who worked at the Hotel Vancouver that Bowie and entourage had just checked in, so she went down there with a huge bouquet of roses and hung around the elevator waiting for someone to appear. After waiting for ages and ready to give up, she said to a bell-hop "could you please give these to David Bowie" when someone said "I'll see that he gets them" and she turned around to see Bowie standing there. He turned out to be really nice, talked to George for an hour, put her on the door list for his concert, thanked her graciously for the flowers and kissed her. George ever quite recovered from the shock.
Oh, and Bryan Adams stalked me for a couple years, but I'm not sure if it counts as a brush with fame if you're the stalkeree.
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Where do people get the idea that Christians have always been opposed to slavery?
OK, perhaps I was inspecific. They were originally against it, then for it, then against it again. Whereas some religions have never been against it.
Why do you think Christians were originaly against slavery?
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Christian values. I, for instance, am bitter on slavery just like Christians have always been (with individual aberrations of
Where do people get the idea that Christians have always been opposed to slavery? Or that the USA is in any way more culpable than any other country? England, Belgium, Spain, France, Portugal... there are many countries whose fortunes were built on slavery.
In Hugh Thomas's massive historical book The Slave Trade he writes:
__There is no record in the 17th century of any preacher who, in any sermon, whether in the Cathedral of Saint-Andre in Bordeaux or in a Presbyterian meeting house in Liverpool, condemnded the trade in black slaves. La Rochelle and Nantes were far apart in the matters of religion, but they were as one on the benefits of trade in slaves__
And: (in reference to isolated condemnations of slavery from Fray Francisco de la Cruz, a Domincan friar, Frei Miguel Garcia, a Jesuit that fell on the very deaf ears of their superiors) Thomas writes:
__These isolated denunciations enable the Catholic Church to present itself as a prefigurement of the abolitionist movement.__
In Alexander Von Humboldt's book Travels and Research he estimates the value of gold and siver mined from the Americas by slaves between 1499 and 1802 at 1,248,340,625.00 pounds sterling. This refers to the value of the gold and silver on the early 19thC market - of course the figure would be many times that amount in today's markets.
There is no estimate of the number of slaves that it took to mine this gold, but he does describe, with horror, the mining projects would descend on a village, enslave all the men and boys in the mine, the women and children would die from hunger, the entire tribe would be wiped out and they would move to a new village to repeat the process. Humboldt wrote that he could not begin to estimate how many tribes or how many individuals perished this way, but he does observe that most of the gold and silver to be found in any church has been found at massive human cost and involved the deaths of many slaves.
I can't help thinking those who reject the idea of inherited guilt should also reject the idea of inherited wealth.
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Couldn't Bret be missing an "n"?
Unlikely. Name me a star of either stage or screen who is called Brent.
Well, duh, that's obviously why he changed it when he got to the States. Ha, not so observant now are we mes amis?