He Thinks He's A God

“I’m charming. See how charming I am.
Of course, I may drop dead at any minute.”

Impatience made the grim joker rise out of Kate. The line was uttered in a conference during her theatrical tour of Australia back in 1955 for As You Like It. Appropriate line for the appropriate title and material.

Kate would rather make statements than responses that way. Well they did ask her, "Are you temperamental?" Imagine being asked that after telling people about your legs!

The second-seeded Spaniard has won 29 consecutive matches and seven tournaments—including the French Open and Wimbledon—this year. This was his first win on hard court this season.

“I win on every surface, no? I win on grass, on hard, on indoor, and on clay, too,” Nadal said. “So if I am playing my best tennis I can win on every surface, no?”

Mr. Morrison began his professional career on the wrestling-themed reality show Tough Enough . Signed to World Wrestling Entertainment, Mr. Morrison took the name Johnny Nitro and, after garnering some success and popularity, John Morrison. Although a wrestling fan as a child (Mr. Morrison admits that the occasional schoolyard bout periodically landed him in trouble), Mr. Morrison originally thought he would pursue other interests, studying film and geology at the University of California Davis.

"I thought about filmmaking, about treasure hunting," he said during a recent telephone interview. ''But then I saw Tough Enough on MTV and thought that was something I could do. It was everything I wanted to do. It was physical. It was storytelling. It was all those things I was interested in."

Although clearly rooted in the physical, Mr. Morrison said he quickly learned that wrestling success was also an intellectual pursuit. He said the wrestlers who become truly successful are the ones that consider how they approach their career and work hard to maintain it.

"You need to always think," he said. "Wrestling is this uniquely American thing, the biggest and greatest show. It's a show that gives fans what they want to see. That takes work, because I'm not sure fans always know what that is. They just know it when they see it."

The core to Mr. Morrison's approach is to remember that in many ways, wrestling is nothing more than a big, loud and occasionally violent morality play. It's about action and consequence, with consequence sometimes being a folding chair to the skull.

"The root of sports entertainment is striking a chord, making people feel something," he said. "Wrestlers are essentially showing society the things we all want to do. They are standing up to their boss or living up to a dream."

Over the course of his career, Mr. Morrison has won championships, formed fruitful partnerships -- he's currently one half of the current WWE tag team champion pairing -- and developed a fan base. As his career has developed, so has his perception of success. Initially, his measures of success were fairly standard, matches won and money earned. Today, he takes what he considers a more Zen-like approach to success and satisfaction in the wrestling world.

"My thinking has evolved," he said. "When I perform in front of a crowd, when I perfect a move, that's what is interesting to me. It's sort of like self-actualization. Now, the secret of that success is you can't be happy with just anything. You have to find joy in improvement. That's what I'm trying to do, every day."

Tori Amos:

I’m in the trenches. I’m delivering act one to the British National Theater in July. I have the guys in the mix room at Martian Studios now mixing one of the many pieces that have to be submitted into act one. The playwright Samuel Adamson -- he adapted All About My Mother for the stage -- that’s who I’m working with.

The actress, along with celebrated director Joel Coen, has founded The Ballerina Ballroom Cinema of Dreams festival in her hometown of Nairn in north east Scotland.

The event will run between 15 and 23 August (08) and show three films a day. Entry to the festival costs $6 (GBP3) or a tray of homemade cakes, and guests will be seated on bean bags.

"films with highly coloured, dreamlike elements," according to the Guardian.

Part of the impetus behind the festival is Swinton and [co-organiser Mark] Cousins' idea that "Money dictates the festival circuit too much, and fogs the pure, romantic obsession with film." He added: "There are too many film festivals all trying to do the same kind of thing - what is there if you pare away all the frocks and the fuss? It amuses me that Tilda Swinton, who has been up all the red carpets, wants to do this - there's a degree of punk about it."

Personally, she should have called it “Films Tilda Would Put in Her Closet” or “Films Tilda Would Wear.”

I mean have you seen her outfits?

 

Oh wait, that's just her Academy Award!

"I want to be like Matt Damon and do a hugely successful thinking-man's action franchise like Bourne."

So James wants to be like this man:

Wasn’t there an edict circulated awhile back saying that Matt Damon was the only acceptable mancrush for a straight guy these days? What? The edict was only in my mind, you say? Oh, carry on then.

Must be better than wanting to be a Kennedy.