Hypatia Avenue

"Bad Photo, Great Haircut"

Still loving my new haircut. I've avoided having a fringe for years as the idea of it reminded me of the pudding bowl haircut I had throughout my childhood. But, just the other night, I was getting ready for bed and caught sight of myself in the mirror and thought, "Damn! That's a great haircut! You rock that fringe as much as Louise Brooks and Pulp Fiction-era Uma Thurman ever did!" So I stood and took pictures of myself until I felt a bit silly and went to bed.

Meanwhile, I'm still digesting the extremely detailed scene-by-scene account of Babel as given to me by my mother last Friday. She mentioned she had watched it with Chinese subtitles and I casually asked, half-interested, what she thought of it and what happened in the film. 45 minutes later, she was at full volume, full speed, and had only described to me the first third of the film. She kept mixing up Morroccans with Mexicans so I got very confused, and has re-christened Brad Pitt as Blad Pettar which I love dearly. For some moments, I thought she was talking about Blue Peter which was even more confusing than mixing up Morroccans and Mexicans in the context of this film.

I don't think I'll watch it after all. It just wouldn't be the same without automatic shouted-out Cantonese audio-description with simultaneous running commentary about who in our family is getting married next, what my dad thinks of my proposed career change from employed to unemployed and why did I want to cut my hair to look like Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra? She got really fat later in life, and she's friends with that creepy Michael Jackson. He's a paedophile. He killed his monkey because he thought he was going to prison and he didn't want anyone to look after it but then it turned he had could sell his theme park and move to Dubai to become a Muslim and repent...

And so on. No film is really complete without it.