Rory Dale » Diary

Vegas can wait…

Rory — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:55:22 +0000

Six years ago today I came to Memphis for the first time. It was warm and humid in contrast to the stark cold of British March, and immediately upon landing, collecting my bags, and barely assembling myself after the flight, I was gathered up in a battered early 90s Toyota Camry, handed a swiftly opened Corona, and driven into the sunset heading west into Arkansas. A vast bleeding melting sunset toward which every road appeared to lead, and for which the bridge crossing the Mississippi River seemed designed solely to make a spectacle of. There was no stereo in the car, it had been stolen at some earlier misadventure, but if there was to have been, it would no doubt have been playing Thin Lizzy, or REO Speedwagon, something of that nature.

Tiredness and mild delirium from the flight’s sensorial deprivation was settling in, as was the effect of a second beer. The re-absorption into the real world was hazy, this was a world I was completely unfamiliar with, but happy to be feeling very alive in. Delighting privately in this for a moment I remember smiling a wide and comfortable smile, adjusting my aviators, sitting back deeply into my seat, breathing deeply and exhaling slowly as I gazed out of the window across the burning golden landscape, quietly pondering the distance I had travelled, and how two worlds could coexist thousands of miles apart, blissfully independent, and then converge so lucidly upon a whim, at my behest. I felt powerful. I felt completely safe. I can even believe that I might have known I would write about it one day. I can still feel the heat from the sun, the condensation from the beer bottle running between my fingers, and I can almost conjure the smell from the car as we lurched on across the river, the Camry noisily and awkwardly shifting its automatic gears, and whining at every modest turn of the wheel.

Not much of the journey after this stands out in memory. Perhaps I was just weary and overwhelmed. Perhaps I stopped caring to make notes of my experiences, and instead immersed myself in them and started to live them. Perhaps I got my second wind. Perhaps I got drunk. In any case, I’m still here six years later.

I was meant to go to Vegas for a week, but I was convinced to come to Memphis instead. I still haven’t been to Vegas. Vegas can wait!

Rory

My new website is live, and this is it!

Rory — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 23:29:15 +0000

Hello! After years and years and years of putting it off, here is the new rorydale.com. It’s very basic for now, and I will put more stuff on it, so if you care, keep an eye on it.

Be seeing you,

Rory

Now I know what you’re thinking!

Rory — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 15:19:16 +0000

That’s a bold statement to make isn’t it? Well let me explain. No, I don’t know what you’re thinking, that would suggest I had the sort of powers Nicolas Cage often appears to have in some of his terrible, predictable, and yet unfortunately unmissable movies. Their appeal is like movie-crack. The trailers tantalise you and promise a pleasure that is near-impossible to resist, and for such a small amount of money. Go on, one hit won’t hurt you. Add to that the ability to witness these films in a cinema with digital projection and exceptional surround sound, and there I already am, eating popcorn that I don’t really want and finding myself watching another terrible film.

Yes I have seen Bangkok Dangerous. And yes, sadly, I have seen Knowing. Both movies are really bad. Knowing “could” be ok if only they’d stop baffing on about aliens and solar flares, and stop positioning Nicolas Cage to be the only man on the planet capable of saving the world, which he failed to do. Sorry if I’ve spoiled it for you. I don’t think I have, I think I have in fact saved it for you. You’re welcome.

I imagine as Knowing was being written, about a third of the way into the script the writer died, and writing duties were taken over by someone with a boner for sci-fi, or perhaps it was Nicolas Cage. I quite liked the numbers-telling-the-future-time-capsule aspect of the film. I can suspend my disbelief enough to watch a film like that, but then the golden rule (my golden rule) of films that want to include aliens (of which I watch very few by choice) was broken. Twice. Firstly, they showed the aliens. Secondly, they showed the spaceship. X-Files cocked this up too, many years ago. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

So, all this neatly brings me on to explaining the design of this site. “I know what you’re thinking:” It looks a little like post apocalyptica as seen in films of the like I have just been criticising. Well, if you were thinking that, and you probably weren’t, I suppose it does. But unarguably I think it looks cool, and perhaps that is the very reason I can often find myself in a cinema regretting the decision to watch a Nicolas Cage movie.

What shall I watch today I wonder?

Rory

Good evening. I am dead…

Rory — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 03:20:31 +0000

Greetings. I’m writing from the men’s dressing room backstage at Playhouse on the Square, and I am dead. Not physically, or emotionally, but theatrically. Alas, as the Prince of Cats I manage, every Thursday to Sunday until April 19th, to massively redirect the lives of history’s most famous young lovers. Nasty piece of work me, and for that, I get to be dead for, what is in our production, all of Act 2.

I spend this time in a number of different ways. Today I read several pages of Slash’s “autobiography.” The first 51 pages have been monstrously boring. Slash’s ghost writer embellishing rather uninteresting stories of his childhood and his early-age epiphanies that turned him into the Slash that we all know. Boring. Get to the tours and whores. I don’t care that you rode a BMX and stole a lot of shit.

The second thing I attempted was to watch Toy Soldiers. I love this movie, but I don’t have time to watch all of it, so I stopped.

The third thing I did today was create this blog. And now I must put on my pants and go and bow a dead man’s bow.

Be seeing you,

Rory