Mannequin

Dear Daniel,

A co-incidence just happened. Co-incidences happen to me all the time. I love them: they're little moments of happiness, just for me. I don't believe that co-incidences can also happen to you all the time. That would be too much of a co-incidence.

So I'm moving songs off the laptop and listening to a random selection as I do it. I think to myself, "I should watch The Wire". (You may or may not know that The Wire is an offbeat American street drama which everybody but me has seen already. I waited for it to be on BBC2 so I'm just starting). At that moment, iTunes flicks to Wire's Mannequin. Wonderful! A pleasing co-incidence, like when you read an unusual word in a newspaper at exactly the same time somebody else in the room says it out loud.

(I'm assuming it's a co-incidence. I'm a bit scared to test the theory that I might have suddenly developed the ability to affect song selection with my thoughts. I work in a radio station: if my powers are real, every ten minutes the people of West Yorkshire will be hearing "I Don't Know Whether to Kill Myself or Go Bowling"...)

Apparently, co-incidences are not very rare. The chances of two players at a football match having the same birthday is fifty percent. Which means every second match has two players which have the same birthday. There must have been two players with the same birthday in one of the Arsenal or Man U Champions League matches last night.

Briefly: I never saw the 1987 movie Mannequin, but I don't know why. I certainly remember it very well...



That voiceover guy must have had to read some absolute nonsense for ten years... he did all the 1980s trailers.

'Jonathan Switcher loves to talk to his work. He never expected to hear it talk back!'

As if talking to our work is something we all love to do...

'To the rest of the world he's a disaster - and she's a dummy!'

Which leads us to the inevitable 1980s movie tie-in single, always performed by an act 20 years older than the target audience of the movie. In this case, the dad of one of The Strokes...



Or so I thought. I had hoped for years (without ever checking) that the Starship singer was Mr Hammond Snr. Or at least the dodgy Johnny Thunders-throwback guitarist at 1'48. But, sadly, no... AH Snr is the shadowy hit-machine responsible for the song.

To cheer us both up, though, here's the list of country music songs I stole the "Kill Myself/Bowling" one from.

Dear James,

I've never seen the Wire, though I read a good article about in the cinema magazine El Amante when they did a special edition on TV series, instead of their usual edition of starkly realist and humourless Argentinian documentaries you're never likely to watch. The Wire is now on a long list of many series and sitcoms I have to watch in their entirety as part of my work. I increasingly enjoy most the research side of my job. We finished editing episode one today. I increasingly dislike editing.

Somehow related to this, I have to tell you that I'm still enjoying Stephen Nachmanovitch's "Free PLay: Improvisation in Life and Art". I say still, as it's my official toilet book but I've been so busy with work most of my toilet activity has taken place away from my base. Interesting how we get a girl to blog with us and instantly start with the toilet talk. I was having a read just now, and chuckling at such lines as:

One practice I have found effective is to toss off (complete improvised pieces lasting sixty seconds or less), each with a distinct beginning, middle and end. This is an especially effective game in group improvisation with friends.

And then one paragraph later:

We are seldom taught to fit our output to the context and the bandwidth of the tool in our hands.

I fondly remember Mannequin as one of those films my big sister chose on a Saturday evening, up there with Adventures in Babysitting.

Speaking of coincidences (without the hypen, please, James, you're not George Orwell), in my early days in Buenos Aires I was on a bus reading something by Cortázar that mentioned the street Esmeralda. I looked up and saw a street sign that told me I was on Esmeralda.

Oh, and that list of Country Songs? Fake.

And we were going to do a pastiche of that voiceover guy for Episode One, until we realised everyone else and their dog had already done it. This is quite good though. Or it is if you watch it when you're supposed to be working: