Are the Royal Family Lizards?

Did you know the royal family in Great Britain are lizards?
Did you know that the sudden deaths of all those birds being found and all those fish suddenly dying is actually a sign that 'something' is going on?
What about those 'chem trails' we see in the sky all the time? Did you know that some trails left by aircraft are chemical or biological agents deliberately sprayed at high altitudes for a purpose undisclosed to the general public in clandestine programs directed by government officials?
There are people that think all of the above statements are true; I hope you don't.
They think the 9/11 bombings were fixed, that Princess Diana was killed by the Lizards (the royal family); that the Federal Reserve System is designed to transfer wealth from the poor and middle classes of the United States to the international bankers of the New World Order; that Barack Obama wasn't born in America (so is not qualified to be President) and radio talk show host David Emory claimed that the Nazi leader Martin Bormann never died and built a global empire involving, among many others, the Bush family.
And on and on they go – did the Royal Family find out that Princess Diana wasn't a lizard and so did away with her?
Look at this picture of the Royal Family. This is supposed to prove that The Duke of Edinburgh is a lizard because reptiles suffer from uncontrollable flatulence and there he is blowing off???
The picture at the top of the page is part of a portrait of Elizabeth I; on David Icke's web site they report that a mysterious snake has appeared in one of her portraits.

The serpent was depicted being clasped in the Tudor monarch's fingers in the original version of the work - but it was painted over at the last minute and replaced with a more decorative bunch of roses.

Deterioration over time has meant the snake has revealed itself once more, with its outline now visible on the surface.''
So why do people believe in all this stuff? Isn't it some kind of paranoia? Or even schizophrenia?
People who suffer from schizophrenia hear voices – well what voices is David Icke and all the other conspiracy theorists hearing before passing the news on to their acolytes?
I remember a few things about David Icke; I think he was a goalkeeper and was injured and then went on to be a football commentator and general football pundit; then he disappeared.
So believe what you want to believe folks and in the meantime you won't have to bother with the real problems of the world.

The Pilot Season

Here we are on another January morning in Hollywood; Los Angeles, really, but Hollywood when we talk of the film business as that is what the industry is here.

Januarys have usually been around the start of the pilot season when mothers bring their kids here to try and get a job in a TV series; try and get a job in a pilot which they hope would be a TV Series more like.

Most of the pilots the kids would be aiming for would be situation comedies – sitcoms – as there were very few children needed in the cops shows or hospital shows.

Between where I live and the Valley proper, there are apartment buildings which used to temporarily rent apartments to the mothers and their, usually, precocious little brats.

I've worked with few children in my time and most of the time they have been well behaved – not so much their mums – but we had to watch our language and watch when their little kids would do a tap dance on the set.

If the kids were well known they seemed to have a certain confidence – and maybe precociousness – and they would give opinions about things and people would listen to them; this would give me the cue to go to my dressing room. Don't get me wrong, I love kids – I used to go to school with them – but I always hated kids in the cast.

But back to the pilot season; well it doesn't seem to exist any more; they (the royal they whoever they are) make pilots all the year round. They make hundreds of them if not thousands. I have seen many; I saw one about a gay robot butler, one about cavemen and one with Tom Conti playing a drunken grandfather who pals up and takes his grandchildren to night clubs.

These pilots cost a fortune and George Clooney appeared in so many, before he made ER, that he became quite rich. They would pay – and I stand to be corrected – about $40,000 for the pilot not even knowing if the pilot would be picked up.

When you go for an audition for the pilot you get the sides (the pages they will want you to read for the audition) 24 hours before the audition. This is a great SAG (Screen Actors Guild) rule which doesn't happen in the UK which enable the producers to cast the best actors in their projects; they are after talent and not the best readers.

After the audition with the casting director, the casting director recommends a short(er) list to come in the for 'call back'. This may still be a 'pre-read' and if you get through that you will be asked to come and audition for the director or one of the producers.

This can happen numerous times till you get to meet the executive producers, their wives and other hangers on.

Before you meet the executive producers, their wives and other hangers on, and you may be down to half a dozen people for each role for the show, your agent will be called and they will do the deal – there and then before the final audition – and you will be told (maybe after negotiation but I doubt it) what the terms of the contract will be.

You will see the increments over the next few years of the show – how much you will get per show, what the residuals are (which will be standard), how much you get if the show goes into syndication and a lot of other imponderables and terms.

The contract will blind you with figures and will be worth many hundreds of thousands of dollars and sometimes will go into millions. You may be offered maybe $40,000 per episode and projected to shoot 13 or 26 episodes per series and then get an increase in the second season and so on – and you haven't had the final audition yet!!!!

This final audition may go into another call back but eventually a pilot will be shot.

When the pilot is shot the producers will show it to the studio executives who will pick it apart and maybe re-cast some of the roles and they will re-shoot those roles and then when they are finished again they will take it to a market research company and focus groups will gather around Los Angeles and watch them; some if these people will be paid.

They will gather in theatres, offices and small screening rooms; sometimes the executives will watch the audiences through a one way mirror to see how they react and the audiences/focus groups will be made up of a sample of the population – some black, some white, some Latino, blue collar, white collar and all the other ethnic and sexual persuasion that it's a wonder anything comes out of it.

The one group of people that they never want in the group would be actors; in a company town it is very hard to throw a stick any day of the week without hitting an actor; I don't even have any idea how many actors live in this building so sometimes they go 'out of town.'

After this they may re-cast and re-shoot yet again because a character may be disliked or an actor may be disliked or even be the wrong colour or race.

So after all this they eventually have a show; then they show it to some critics and they let us all know which ones are going to be hits; the one they said would be a hit this last season was one called Lone Star.

Every critic loved it and it was going to be a big hit – the hit of the season and everybody who had anything to do with it was delighted and optimistic; it was cancelled after just two episodes.

Here's what Fox said about the cancellation:

While speaking at today’s Fox Winter TCA tour in Pasadena, CA, Fox Entertainment Chairman Peter Rice spoke about why he felt their Fall series LONE STAR failed after only two episodes.

“We made a show we really loved, and thought the creators were very talented and made an excellent show,” says Rice. “ [The critics] believed in the show and liked the show, but not enough people showed up to watch it. We were very disappointed in that. It’s the reality of the business we’re in. It’s intensely competitive and you make the best shows you can. The truth is, it failed to meet the expectations we had. That doesn’t mean we don’t like the show and respect the people who made it. I would much prefer to fail with a show we’re creatively proud of than fail with a show that we’re embarrassed by.”

What is not mentioned above is that it was put on opposite the American version of the BBC Show Dancing with the Stars produced by the BBC over here – now isn't that a dumb decision? It was buried and I have to confess I don't know why they buried it there; so the advertisers who bought space on the opening night were not satisfied with the amount of people who watched the show; by the time the second episode was shown the writing was on the wall and Fox pulled the show.

So after all that work, the auditions, the call backs, the contract talks, the rehearsals and the rest of it the show is history.

These people are professionals and they know what they are doing but there was no way an excellent show could be saved.

Let me put my oar in here and as usual I will say I am not an expert on anything – the advertisers are always looking for a specific age group to aim their advertising at; 18 to about 40 – maybe even younger – and I have to ask why?

People with the most money to spare are the senior members of society and they are usually over 40 and watch mature shows and things like Dancing with the Stars so why don't they aim more shows at them?

I only watch Jeopardy so I'm out of it!!

By the way Skins, the hit TV Show from the UK about teenagers, has just opened on MTV here and already some advertisers who bought time in the first episode have cancelled; one of them General Motors.

Austin 7, more adventures and irreverence!

I had quite a few e-mails about the last post – and a couple of comments too; first of all the car I used in the photo was not meant to be a picture of the actual car we used; that was just something to decorate the page.

The actual car was the same make as the one above which, as you can see, is in really good condition, and the state of the car itself would be more like this one but with wheels.

Those poor old cars and look how they end up – in a ditch. Someone's pride and joy full of chickens.

How did we get the grass into the tyres? Well have a look at the car above and look at the wheels. These were tubed tyres as I don't think tubeless tyres had been invented by then; so the puncture would be a puncture to the inner tube and Pete stuffed the grass in there.

Lots of kids of our age would buy these cars for a few pounds and drive them till they crashed; another time I went with another group of youths, I was a youth myself, into another car and they had put their money together to buy a similar car – maybe about five pounds – and we went for a drive.

This time the driver was less respectful of the car – now don't attack me on this as I can't remember but we managed to get to the side of a railway embankment and drove along the side so we were driving along a 45 degree angle; it was okay for a while but the inevitable happened and we just turned over.

We would have rolled more but a wall stopped us. One of the kids had his arm out of the window so he had a slight injury but apart from that it was a wonderful thrill – a bit like a roller coaster.

We had to get out the one side then we upped and left the car there – on its side.

One of the kids moaned that he had paid money for some petrol but that was it – we didn't know what happened to the car and I don't remember a train coming but we were kids and we were going to live forever.

This was pre-Beatles Britain when the working classes were still touching their forelock to their so called betters; it was during the years of the 13 years of Tory misrule, as Harold Wilson called it, when politicians called their interviewers by their surname only as if they were squaddies in the army and the word 'bloody' was thought of as a shocking thing to say on television and if it was used at all on TV it was reported in the newspapers the next day and people would say what is the world coming to? and we all know that they were right.

People would leave school, in those days, at the age of 15 and were fodder for the factories, the shops or the farms, and the big wide world would swallow them up and keep them there till movies like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, with the wonderful opening lines, said in voice over, don't let the bastards grind you down; the rest is propaganda and people started to realise that they didn't need to take 'that shit.'

It's a great coincidence that the first generation after the call up produced The Beatles and the angry young men led by John Lennon, John Osborne and John Braine; the three Johns, and Alan Sillitoe.

The working classes really didn't get to see John Osborne's Look Back in Anger; we saw Albert Finney in Sillitoe's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and John Braine's Room at the Top and that's where we got our influences from whilst the clever sods got it from Osborne – but we all came together under The Beatles and it lasted till disco and it's audio-orgazmatron bass line dominated things till the punks ended it.

So in a matter of 20 years the UK went from the Victorian values to the sex pistols on the Bill Grundy show and then on to Thatcher's Britain . . . there we are again back with Thatcher's Britain; why does it always end up with her?

So I will close by saying – wasn't Ricky Gervaise good on the Golden Globes last night? He was doing to that show what the sex pistols did to Bill Grundy - and did it without the swearing because he would know that any naughty words would be bleeped out.

There was a rumour last night, by the way, that he had been fired half way through the show when he disappeared for a while – well it didn't happen last night but I'd be surprised to see him doing it next year!!

A Boys Adventure; It's a good job we got a navy!

Years ago – many years ago when I was a young pup I joined the Army Cadets; when the neighbours saw me in my army uniform they said “It's a good job we got a navy!”

Then I went into the house and what did my dad say? “It's a good job we got a navy!”

But I was 14 years old and when I left school at 15 I know I was 4'9” so you can imagine; I did shoot up to average height but I was never tall and the first thing I thought when I looked in the mirror that day was “It's a good job we got a navy!”

After a couple of years, when he was 14, my brother Pat joined the cadets too and we walked into the barracks at Thorpe Street, Birmingham a few nights a week and at weekends. This is where I learned to fire a rifle and got my marksman's badge and passed the certificate A parts one and two faster than any other cadet in our troop.

I was working at the post office at the time, before going on to the motor bike job, and told my mates at work that I'd passed my Cert A and they were so impressed they forgot about it immediately.

So when my brother joined I would be about 16 or so and we made many friends at the cadets; I eventually became a sergeant and I was the solo drummer in the band and Pat was the tenor drummer. On the big bass drum there was a big kid called Pete Rivers and my big competition on the side drum was my pal Lenny Ferris.

The biggest of us was Pete and he was also 17 years of age and had passed his driving test; in those days – the late 50s – you could buy small cars from the 1930s for a few dollars so Pete bought an old banger for very little money; ten of fifteen dollars and one Sunday we went for a ride.

He called around to our house and my pal Lenny was already there and off we went.

The weather was beautiful as we set off from the inner city conurbation where we lived to explore some of the greener parts of Birmingham.

We headed for the South West part of the city and went out to the suburbs to places like Northfield, The Lickey Hills and Harborne.

Green places for four green pals to explore.

After about an hour of driving and some ice cream at the Lickey Hills we had some kind of blow out in one of the tyres. We were strangers to cars as none of our parents had a vehicle at the time and the bang frightened the life out of us. There we were about 15 miles from home and we broke down – what to do?

Well Pete was a big lad so he set about changing the tyre as he had a spare wheel in the back – but no jack.

For some reason, there seemed to be loads of bricks lying about so the plan was to collect some bricks and put them under the car for Pete to change the wheel; so that's what we did; we looked around for bricks. Pat went one way, I went another and Lenny went another – the mission to bring back as many bricks as we could!

Pete stayed with the car and started to loosen the wheel nuts.

Eventually we came back with bricks – the next thing was to pile the bricks underneath the car till it almost reached high enough so if the car fell it would land on the bricks and that was easy; the trouble was the next move would probably take all of us to lift the car – but Pete was a big lad.

Anyway we all got around the bit where the bricks were piled up and there was a brick put there ready to move into place as soon as we got the car high enough; heave ho and away we go we all shouted but Lenny was messing about and pretended he had his foot under the bricks – then he ran off just as we were about to lift the car up.

When he eventually came back we all lifted and would you believe up it came – but not high enough so I couldn't quite get the brick on to the top of the pile before the car came back down again.

We tried again with more shouts this time and just when we got it to its full height I managed to slip the sucker on to the top of the pile. So the car was there securely on bricks.

Pete did the rest of the unscrewing of the wheel nuts, got the spare wheel ready but we couldn't get it on; the other wheel was flat and the new wheel had air in it which meant we had to lift it again.

We were worn out after lifting the first time and we lay down wondering how we would do it then we realised we had no choice – we had to lift it or walk 15 miles home.

So that's what we did! Pete changed the wheel and we were on our way again.

This time we went to a couple of the parks looking for girls - we had a car why wouldn't they fall for us?

There was a very modern hospital called The Queen Elizabeth Hospital not far which was a long way from anywhere and had its own drive called Queen Elizabeth Drive.

We drove along Queen Elizabeth Drive's leafy highway and then it happened again – Bang!!

Another puncture but this time when Pete looked the tyre was ripped to shreds – now how were we going to get home?

We scratched our heads and had a smoke; we used to love to smoke and maybe that was the reason we joined the Army Cadets in the first place. Our parents didn't know we smoked so we lay in the grass smoking whilst Pete worried about his car.

Then one of us came out with a stupid idea; why don't we fill the tyres with grass?

We laughed and sat back and smoked; then someone said 'well what else can we do?'

And that's what we did; we had the bricks with us and hoisted the car up on them again but with more confidence this time and took the burst tyre off. Then we got the other tyre, the one with the mere puncture and gave as much grass to Pete as we could; Lenny said he wouldn't take part as it would be dangerous so he lit up another cigarette whilst me and Pat collected the grass.

As we collected the grass we noticed we had stopped near some apple trees so we picked an apple – it tasted terrible! It was a green granny Smith cooking apple so we picked loads of apples to take them home to our mums to make cook apple pie.

Eventually Pete had a pile of grass and we stuffed the grass between the wheel and the edge of the tyre – although I can't think how – and when we thought we had enough Pete put the wheel back on.

These were old tyres with inner tubes and that's where we had stuffed the grass.

There the car stood in all its glory and you wouldn't be able to tell which wheel had the grass filled tyre on if you didn't know – well maybe the bits of green grass on the wheel might have given you a clue.

We got in we took off and I sat in the back and to this day I can still see the car going up and down as we travelled with all the apples in the back seat flying all over the place - like apples in a barrel - as we travelled the streets of Birmingham and eventually home.

Gabrielle Giffords, Sarah Palin and Christina Taylor-Green.

The world knows what has happened here in the USA, in the good old boy state of Arizona, with the attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords, and the murder of six others, including a nine year old girl who was actually born on September 11^th 2001.

What a tragic little life that little girl lived, her life framing two horrific events in American history which she had no control of but by all accounts she lived a very happy one.

She had just been elected to a student council and wanted to meet Gabrielle Giffords.

Her name was Christina Taylor-Green and she was the granddaughter of an ex-manager of the Phillies Baseball team and the daughter of one of the Dodgers Baseball team's scouts; she was featured in the book Faces of Hope which was about babies born on nine eleven; who would have thought that someone from that book would die in such circumstances but on the other hand who would have thought otherwise with the way the world is going?

There is a lot of talk about Sarah Palin since the shooting and the cross hairs of a gun sight she put on one of her web sights which included the district Gabrielle Giffords looked after.

Giffords herself had previously raised concerns about Palin's map: "The way that she has it depicted has the cross hairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they have got to realize there are consequences to that action."

Not long after that a shot was fired – a pellet gun I think – into Giffords' offices.

The cross hairs were placed over Democratic Congress members who had voted for Obama's healthcare reform; read it yourself above.

Even though I wrote a post, Sarah Palin, The most dangerous women in the world, I'm not saying that Sarah Palin is directly responsible for the shooting but what do you think hateful rhetoric does? It stirs up hatred.

The person who shot her – or should I say allegedly shot her – was a conspiracy theorist; he had crazy ideas about what the government does and how if you have your name written on your birth certificate in block capital letters the government would be after you and . . . do I need to even repeat this verbage?

His favourite books are Mein Kafmpf, The Communist Manifesto and one of the Alice books - through the looking glass or in Wonderland.

He had met Gabrielle Giffords a couple of years ago and had taken a dislike to her; now I wonder why a conspiracy theorist would have anything against a Jewish Congresswoman?

So I'm asking the question again – what do you think hateful rhetoric does and what does it cause people slightly mad and confused to do?

And where do these slightly mad people get their information from?

The answer is the mass media – TV and radio.

I hate to compare one country with another but in Britain it is the law for television and radio companies to be non-partial – if you put one view of anything you have to put the other point of view. It may seem strange but it works.

Of course the law doesn't include the printed word and newspapers there are committed to one of the parties; the Murdoch papers have dictated to their readers who to vote for and the sheep have voted for them each time. He followed Thatcher, Major; then changed parties to follow Tony Blair and last year he changed parties again and went back to his usual Conservative Party with David Cameron.

In America we have cable channels such as Fox News and MSNBC – the first one Republican the latter Democratic; there are others of course but those are the main ones.

Up to 1987 you wouldn't be able to do that in America; there was something called The Fairness Doctrine which was abolished by Ronald Regan in 1987.

There's Gabrielle below - or Gabby as her friends call her; let's wish her well.

a very short French story.

Happy New Year to you on this the date when the rest of the world write it the way America does – 1/1/11.

There have been many many hits and people are looking at this blog all over the world – there is a map of recent hits above.

I say looking at it and I hope most of them have read it but thanks in any case.

After the Christmas break and holiday with all the turkey, mince pies, sausage rolls and Christmas pud we ventured out to one of our check point Charlies – The Farmer's Market of course – and went to the French Restaurant Marcel's for lunch.

We couldn't quite make up our minds about the special or anything else on the menu so we both settled for Coq au van; we've had it a few times before and, I have to say, it's usually very good and a good stand by.

I have never been let down at Marcel's and have eaten loads of things on their menu. It usually has quite a pleasant ambiance with an accordion player wearing a striped shirt and beret (I kid you not) adding to the atmosphere; especially in the evenings as the tables, as with every other place there, are in the open with a canopy over the top.

So the French music, the hub bub of the market with the occasional chiming of The Farmer's Market Clock adds to a very pleasant experience.

As I sat there looking at the menu it reminded me of one of the times I was at Cannes trying to sell my film; I was with an old, dearly departed friend David Capey; he was a fine editor and general film maker.

During various festivals in Cannes the restaurants and bars increase their prices many fold but we knew of a place at the base of the Palais where the workers would go for their food. The menu there, as in Marcel's, was on a chalk board and on one of the days it said frits and something as the special so we settled for that. We hardly spoke any French but we knew that frits meant chips – French fries.

So we settled down at our table with a couple of glasses of red wine.

We would drink complimentary pink Champagne all day and red wine at meals.

The food in front of us looked very strange; I recognised the chips, of course, but what was that with them? It didn't look too good and from what I can remember didn't smell too good either.

It was piled up with onions and when I looked closer at it it reminded me of a body part; not a pretty body part in fact a naughty bit; not too naughty but a naughty bit shared by men and women and not the cheeks in fact the bit in between.

Was I going to eat this thing on my plate; this thing that looked like somebody's arse? I looked at David and he tried a fork full; “not bad” he said.

I tried some and it tasted awful; the worst taste I have ever experienced ever ever ever!!

“We're eating tripe, matey” he said.

Not long after that I took a course in French.