Grease is the word

Gotta give it to those guys who came up with the concept of Sing-A-Long in theatres. After all, they've not only been able to sucker audience into theatres to watch old movies at 3 times the price of an ordinary cinema ticket but have also managed to make a ‘genre’ out of it and have sold many a show, in many cities over many years! Kudos!

I mean, seriously, would you under ordinary circumstance, go to a cinema, leave alone a theatre to watch a movie that is 30 years old? No.  Right?  But Guess what? I did! Last Friday. It was sold to me as a ‘Sing-A-Long’. I was totally the Eskimo bought some more ice if all that white stuff that surrounded me wasn't enough!

Get this peeps. I went to a house-full show last Friday, where the audience dressed up as characters from the movie, got judged for those dresses and given a prize and had no qualms making a fool out of themselves by following, to the letter, all that the ‘host’ had instructed them to do! It’s amazing how grown-up adults thoroughly got a kick out of receiving a brown bag of ‘goodies’ and listened to the host who told us what to take out of the brown bag for which song and what dance moves should be made etc.  It was almost like the Brits said to themselves 'Ok.. We know that there is something called 'public place decorum'.  So if you want us to gather in a theatre, dress up crazy, pay stupid amount of money to watch a movie with loads of songs, sing along to all those songs and still be classified under 'socially acceptable' behaviour, then we'll be happy to comply'. 
See waht I mean?

Now, can you see how the 2 business guys who came up with the idea would have discussed this?

Scene: 2 guys during a (defintely) Sunday Brunch after a drunken movie night out!
 'Omg Bob!  You were so outta control at the cinema yesterday, singing like that! Every song that too! What are you like?' (Note that ridiculous British phrase?!).

'Oh, shut up, Scott!  Admit it!  You loved it.  And so did that old woman. And those kids.  Look at all the support we got when the stupid cinema guys threw us out.  No sense of humour those guys have got! Balmy buggers!' 

'Cept for that red-faced Scunner! He totally, wanted to skelp me, didn't he? You know what (a commnly used British phrase when someone is agitated) Scott!. There's a market out there for this.  Do you see it.  I mean.. people like us need to go crazy without upsetting other people.  See? so here's what  we do..'

And thus was born the concept of Sing-A-Long.

Nevertheless, can’ t say I didn’t altogether enjoy myself! Did sing at the top my lungs with the rest of the crowd and hooted with delight whenever Rizzo arrived on the scene.

Still.... guess what? They can sucker me only once!

We the Kings

Legend:

Long, long ago there was a time in Britain, when if you were not born into Royalty, or Aristocracy or didn’t have money to build stately mansions, you could still get your kicks out of being in fancy-ass places as long as you can work yourself into a high placed government job.  Like becoming a Provost (Scots for Mayor).  You just go down to the King and go ‘Uh… boss, we need a new office to work from.  Here’s the plan.  We gotta build it from marble, make it as ornamental as possible and for good measure, include an elaborate style fit for a mini-palace.  Let’s make it a wannabe palace. Howzzat?!

And the king said, ‘Sure!  We got plenty of dough coming from the colonies anyway.. no place in the treasury to put it all in.  Besides, who wants to be called Unca Scrooge, anyway? Go on. You can have your money to splurge on the Parliament House’.  And thus was built the Glasgow City Chambers.

Ok.. I totally made that up and there might be a few brickbats flying in my direction.  But seriously, while the architecture itself is commendable, which the Council has no doubt gone about gloating in a 10-page brochure, the purpose and reason for such expenditure is absolutely ridiculous!  Especially when so much money must go into its maintenance these days too! 

Whether its the Marble Lion at the foot of the elaborate marble staircase,  or the councillor's chamber, or the fit-for-a-king Lord Provost's office, or the defintely, unnecessarily super ornamental alabaster fireplace in the Satinwood Salon, the banqueting Hall with Cuban wall panels or the Upper Gallery, it all speaks of an extragavance on the scale of 'No bread to eat? Feed them cake' sort of abusdity!  But the prize for the extravagance actually goes to The Banqueting Hall. A mammoth of a hall during the desciption of which, the tourist guide's chest was puffing so much with pride that I was almost afraid he would either burst or would float off into the ceiling and get stuck like a helium balloon!

And when he gloated about all the effort and the money that went into cleaning of the 3 massive chandeliers (or Electroliers as he called it) in the ‘Golden Room’, I was like ‘Aha.. let one more person mention the word ‘recession’ in this country and I’ll know just what to say’!

Well.. atleast Glasgow will have the Gold-plated silver mace to pawn if UK recessess a-la Greece.

All said and done, there is one thing though.  Will admit that I was impressed with the Council Chamber.  At the end of the day, this was the primary purpose for which the building was proposed.  It was suitably impressive without being stupidly extravagant!

One word for the Glasgow City Chambers!  Meh!