Box Office Bogan

It's quite obvious that my life should be made into a movie. In fact, I can't believe that nobody has ever approached me with a movie deal already. I mean, the story of my life has everything: triumph, tragedy, comedy, pathos, bogans AND cakies. Clearly all the ingredients for box office smash.

The only remaining question is: who should play the coveted part of yours truly? Just because Angelina Jolie is my doppelganger that doesn't mean she should automatically get the part. That wouldn't be fair. I'd have to give other actresses a fair chance too.

What do you mean you don't see the resemblance? You need to get your glasses adjusted! Or I do. As well as my medication. Oh alright, I suppose Nicole Kidman may be much more suited to the role being Australian and a tall, elegant, beautiful red head. Having two out of five of those things in common would certainly count as a resemblance, I'm sure. No? God, you people are hard to please.

Then again, you could have a point. After all, Cate Blanchett is the newest Oscar winner. Therefore she may well be keen to take on yet another stellar part which will be guaranteed to get another Oscar nod. She still has to catch up to Meryl, after all. This could be her most challenging role to date. A character who rarely talks. There will be no pages of witty dialogue to learn, instead she will have to use subtle nuances and blank expressions to convey the complexity of this bogan. Plus, there is the fact that she will have to shrink in height while quadrupling her width. I smell another Oscar right there, Cate.

Oh! I know! People were always telling me that I looked like Gillian Anderson when that Scummy and Mouldy show was all the rage. Well - at least one person did. They were being scathingly sarcastic but DETAILS. I'm sure that with some coaching from the brilliant Meryl she could pull of an Australian accent. Instead of "The dingo took my baby!" which became Meryl's oft repeated classic line from Evil Angels, the classic line from the movie of my life would be:

"The kids took my cakie!"

Riveting viewing right there.

However, after pondering on this important question for a while, I've realised that the perfect casting as me would be the wonderful Toni Colette. Not only is she Australian but she's also originally a Boganville girl herself. Apparently she grew up around these parts. I probably walked past her at the shops as a teenager in the 1980's, sporting a tragic perm, so I can practically claim to know her. The fact that she is jet-setting around the World starring in movies and my most exciting outing is STILL to those same shops every week, means nothing. My life is still worthy of a movie, dammit!

 From such humble beginnings Toni reinvented herself and went on to become famous and successful. And rich. And a great actress. And I think I hate her. What does she have that I don't? Talent? Yeah, you got me there.

Anyway, she's my ultimate choice to play me. I'm imagining her as a sort of middle aged Muriel (meaning me) which she could pull off with weight gain or a fat suit. It would almost be like a kind of sequel of sorts to Muriel's Wedding except it could be called Ness's Marriage or The Secret Dream World Of A Cakeaholic. The soundtrack would be peppered with Carpenters songs bringing back a wave of Carpenters nostalgia the way Muriel did for Abba.

"I want my life to be as good as a Carpenters song!" my character, played by Toni, would declare as Top Of The World trills cheerily in the background.

Then, in typical Hollywood fashion, there would be the obligatory, albeit completely fictional, happy ending when we finally leave Boganville forever having obtained that McMansion in Boganville Heights.

Micky Blue Eyes, the boys and I bundle into the car and drive off beaming at each other euphorically  as we shout:

"GOODBYE BOGANVILLE!" 

This time Please Mr Postman beats jauntily along as the credits roll. This song has absolutely nothing to do with the plot or ending. There just aren't that many upbeat Carpenters songs to be honest.

Alternatively, I could use my adult diagnosis with Asperger's Syndrome as the central theme. The film would then turn into a heartfelt and gripping drama about the complexities of living with High Functioning Autism equivalent to Rain Man or that movie about Temple Grandin starring Claire Danes. This would show how I have triumphed in life despite the diagnosis becoming a brilliant bogan blogger and enviable Yummy Mummy and MILF. I do have children and I find cakies and chocolate quite yummy so I eat them a lot. That is what being a Yummy Mummy is I think. And the boys tell me quite frequently that I'm a 'Mum I Love Forever'. That's the meaning of MILF, right?

So many options. Right. Time to place a call to Toni's agent seeing as though she is not responding to my emails. Can't imagine why.....

Linking up with Tegan from Musings Of The Misguided for I Must Confess.

                                                    
                                                 Who would play you in the movie of your life?

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(It's Just Not) Working Girl

Today I am linking this old post with Kirsty from My Home Truths for I Must Confess: My First Job.


Recently I happened to watch the retro movie Working Girl starring Melanie Griffith on TV.  The one where everyone was suffering from serious Tragic Eighties Syndrome.

 Mick pointed out to me that I too once sported a mop of Tragic Eighties style hair just like Ms Griffith in the film. See above left.  Okay, mine was far worse than Melanie's. Or 'Tess' as she was in the film. See below.  Sadly, my Tragic Eighties hair was the only potential similarity I had to the character of Tess.

It was becoming increasingly clear to me from an early age that I could never hope to be a career woman. The grand finale of the film where Tess is given her own office while Carly Simon belts out an inspiring chorus of "Let The River Run" in the background, was never going to be a scene that would play out in my life. 

It all started the first time I attempted to get a part time job in high school.  I wasn't really sure if I wanted one, but it seemed like the thing everyone did.    The obvious choice was a job at Macca's ie. McDonald's.  I dutifully filled out the application form.  I needed a reference. I asked a teacher who worked wonders at finding tactful, polite things to say about me when in reality if he'd written the truth it would have read something like "Vanessa never utters a single word, or makes eye contact.  Ever. Hire someone else."

After only two weeks of the preliminary training I was fired.  This did not bode well for a future career.  Let's face it, if you can't even manage Macca's, future CEO (or anything) is looking pretty unlikely. 

A year or two later I stumbled out of high school, with absolutely no idea of what to do.  So I signed up for a two year TAFE course in Library Practice.  Seemingly the perfect choice for the quiet, shy nerd-girl who loved reading.  To my dismay I discovered there was a lot more to working as a Library Technician than just reading books.  You actually had to talk to people.  Starting with the obvious.  A job interview.  EEEEEEEEEEEK!  Just the thought of them fills me with terror. 

I know nobody likes them. Everyone gets nervous of course. But it was completely off the scale for me.  I honestly could not fathom what to say.  It didn't matter that I was the most honest, trustworthy reliable individual on the planet, that wasn't going to get me a job. 

I needed the gift of the gab, the ability to sprout verbal diarrhoea and tell potential employers how completely wonderful I was.  I just simply cannot, to this day, do this.  I don't know how much of it is shyness and how much of it is my Aspergers, which I didn't know about at the time.  Perhaps I might have been able to get the help I needed for employment if I had known, something I desperately needed.

Since childhood, whenever I was asked an on the spot question I would freeze and literally not be able to think of  a single thing to say.  This happened at every interview.  Fortunately I was able to get a temporary position at the State Library of NSW through somebody I knew from TAFE.  But a permanent job elluded me.  For a period of time I diligently kept on applying for jobs.  I wasn't so bad at the written application part, so almost always I was contacted for an interview.  It was the talking I couldn't do.  Still can't. 

Some of the other librarians attempted to help me out by telling me what type of questions to expect to be asked so that I could prepare.  All the preparation in the world, still didn't help and the nightmare continued.  The more I tried, the more effort I put in to attempt to sound and speak confidently the more pointless it seemed.

One time I remember walking into a building for an interview and thinking: Right, I am going to walk up confidently to the front desk, speak up loudly and make eye contact.  Determined, I proceeded to do so only to receive the immediate reply "Boy, you're really shy aren't you?" I must have literally reeled as if he'd slapped me.  Even when I made a supreme effort to try to be confident, it seemed I just wasn't convincing. This was one of the many times the interview ended with me running out in tears.

Meanwhile I was also struggling with the temporary job, trying to fit in to the 'team' environment we were expected to work in.  As well as with being a dreamy, space cadet. An unhelpful trait in the work place.

Eventually I gave up on the library jobs and took a job in an NRMA call centre, principally because I was able to arrive 20 minutes late for the interview, after getting lost, where I mumbled a few incoherent words and they still employed me on a trial basis.  I soon found out why. It was hell on Earth.  NRMA are a great company, it's just that I wasn't cut out to talk to (mostly abusive) people all day.  Even over the phone. Somehow I worked there for three nightmarish years, before finally resigning. 

By this point I was married and we wanted start a family. It wasn't happening and we began fertility treatments.  This involved multiple trips to the hospital at random times, which would have made trying to keep a job at the same time difficult. So in it went into the too hard basket right along with driving.

Years later I had a few more casual library jobs.  (The whole fertility thing is another saga!).  The closest I got to a 'Tess' moment was when I was employed by law firm to look after their small specialist library.  I told them I wasn't in fact, officially a librarian, and they went oh well, doesn't matter and let me pretend to be one for a while.

Yes, I am definitely no Working Girl.  Maybe I'll just have to live vicariously through the film instead. After all daydreaming is something I'm good at.  Sing with me..."Leeeeeeeeet the River Ruuuun, Let all the dreamers wake the nation......"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv-0mmVnxPA

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