DREAMING OF THE STARS

 DREAMING OF THE STARS

Level: Intermediate

Not everyone can remember their dreams, and considering their sometimes x-rated content we can be happy that our consciousness lets us forget more than we´d like to remember. But then not every dream is a nightmare, and sometimes happy dreams can introduce us to people we´re never likely to meet in the real world..

Have you ever dreamt of a famous person? Perhaps you have dreamt about shaking hands with me? Or seen me round a spiral staircase in a white ballroom dress, sparkling with diamonds? Perhaps I have even said a few words to you and then you spent the rest of your dream buzzing around like a big bumble bee?

According to the website Dreammoods.com (a guide to the meaning of dreams), dreaming about famous people can have several implications, not all of them positive. In fact, a star cameo usually means that your aspirations are higher than your potential and that you´re facing imminent disappointment, and if a friend becomes famous, you are insecure over that particular relationship. Mainly, though, a crush or obsession with a celebrity in your day to day life allows them to cross over into your dream life and the meaning therefore is that you are obsessed.

Our cultural dreamscape or collective unconscious is already saturated with the mugs and jugs of celebrities. Contemporary culture is built on their images and mythical statuses, and we are as likely to know more about our favourite film actor or rock singer than our next door neighbours. It is actually surprising that dreaming about famous people isn´t much more common. How often have you heard a friend tell you about the dream they had last night featuring an all-star cast?  Hardly ever, right.

But there are some stars who are forever cropping up in dreams. Some even have their own fanpages or forums for sharing dreams about them. We are going to read a fan´s dream about one such star…

 We will call the celebrity X.

JENNY´S DREAM: 

Jenny from El Paso, Texas: I know I'm not the only one out there haha so here's a place to share all of y'alls dreams about X! :] I've had plenty but here's my favorite one even though it did make me somewhat angry ;]

                          

 Ok so in my dream, I was on vacation with family in Florida and my mom and I just so happened to go to the grocery store.

 I was in another aisle when my mom started talking to some lady with an accent. I walked over to them and my mom introduced us and I couldn't help but think that the lady reminded me of someone. We said our goodbyes and later my mom told me that the lady had invited us to dinner at her house.

 I was a little weirded out but I didn't object.

Later when we were at the house, I saw that it was super huge! When we walked inside we were greeted by the lady and she led us to the living room. She sat me down and motioned for my mom to go in another room with her and left me by myself.

Being the nosy person I am (tee hee) I got up and started to look at all the pictures that were in the room and it wasn't until then that I realized that the lady was X´s sister! (not sure which one)

 I gasped and started shaking and when I turned around to call my mom, Mama X and the whole X clan (brothers and sisters only) were standing there smiling from ear to ear including my mom and X  herself.

I started laughing and crying all at once and everyone started cheering and applauding. X  then, opened her arms and motioned me into a hug while I cried in her arms and she just held me and told me not to cry.

I looked up at her and I said, "Ohmygosh X I love you so much! Are you real?! Is this really real?! Am I dreaming?!"

 Then X said ,"No this isn't a dream, this is real." And then low and behold, I wake up right after she says that.

I literally woke up saying Noooooooo!!!! I was so mad that my wonderful dream wasn't real at all, but I was happy to meet X in my dreams :]

Can you guess the celebrity? That´s right it was Celine Dion!

Glossary:

Dream - sonho

Nightmare - pesadelo

Shaking hands – apertando a mão de alguem

Spiral Staircase – escada

White ballroom dress – vestido de baile branco

Bumble Bee – abelha ( a big one!)

Crush – liking someone a lot because you´re attracted to them

Consciousness - consciencia

Unconscious - inconsciente

To crop up – a surgir

Vacation  - feriadas

Grocery Store - mercearia

Accent - sotaque

To be weirded out – to find something strange

Nosy - intrometido

Cheering - aplauso

Applauding – aplaudindo

Low and behold – an expression that emphasizes something surprising

TASK ONE : LISTENING

´I am your lady´by Celine Dion

If you do this, you will improve your English by 0.00000000375 per cent. Listen to this Song by the Freddie Kruger of Celebrity Dreaming and fill the gaps. The missing words are at the bottom of this post, but first try just by listening. When you´re ready, you can read the lyrics on the net or off this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbBCUbt_DO4

The _________ in the morning
Of lovers sleeping tight
Are rolling like _________ now
As I look in your eyes

I hold on to your _____
And feel each move you make
Your voice is ____ and tender
A love that I could not forsake

'Cause I am your lady
And you are my man
Whenever you _______ me
I'll ________ that I can

Lost is how I'm feeling _____ in your arms
When the world outside's too
Much to take
That all _______ when I'm with you

Even _____ there may be times
It seems I'm far away
Never _____ where I am
'Cause I am always by your side

'Cause I am your lady
And you are my man
Whenever you ______ me
I'll ______ that I can

We're _______ for something
Somewhere I've never been
Sometimes I am _________
But I'm _____ to learn
Of the power of love

The sound of your heart ________
Made it clear
________ the feeling that I can't go on
Is light years away

'Cause I am your lady
etc.

TASK TWO: Keeping a DREAM DIARY in English

Why not keep a dream diary for the following weeks. Don´t worry if you usually have difficulty remembering your dreams, actually this becomes easier by keeping a diary. Perhaps you´ll find answers to your deepest questions, see the future, communicate more effectively in English or who knows but you might even receive a visitor in the form of a Canadian Diva.  

Task One – Missing Words (not in the correct order!)

SUDDENLY/ BODY/ WARM/ REACH FOR/ WHISPERS/HEADING/ ENDS/ LYING/ THOUGH/ THUNDER/ WONDER/ FRIGHTENED/ BEATING/ REACH FOR/ READY

So bad it´s good! The worst movie ever made...

So bad it´s good! The Worst Movie Ever Made
Level: Upper-Intermediate

Tommy Wiseau - Genius or Idiot?

There are bad movies and there are terrible movies. There are movies so unbelievably awful that you leave the cinema halfway through the film and thank god you haven´t an incendiary device at hand. While there are other movies so incomprehensibly rubbish that they´re actually quite good, sometimes great and on rare occasions masterpieces.

Derek Jarman´s Blue - Crap

Throughout our lives as cinemagoers we will be exposed to hundreds of half-assed screenplays, ham actors, cheesy plots and hackneyed cliches. Often we are so numbed by 3D, surround sound and billion dollar budgets that we can just about grunt a complaint before slipping into a popcorn induced coma. Worryingly, we are so used to bad films, the majority of us wouldn´t be able to tell a good film if it kung fu kicked us in the face. ´Uh, this film is too arty farty, pretentious, or subtitled for my tastes... where´s Michael Bay?´ This cultural malaise is so ingrained that even the Oscars are a celebration of anything but the best films of the year, rather a pageant of the mediocre: best historical epic depicting Bad Brits, best actor in a retarded role, best Meryl Streep in a Meryl Streep film. On the other hand, foreign and arthouse film makers do their best to steer storytelling from things that are fun by poking a camera into the deep recesses of their own navals. Take Derek Jarman´s Blue, perhaps the laziest arthouse film in the history of cinema since Andy Warhol left his camera running outside the Empire State Building for 8 hours. In Blue, we have a Blue Screen and some voices talking for 3 hours. This film is lauded as a masterpiece but it´s really just crap and not redemptive crap but crap crap.

Love Actually - like being slapped in the face with a fish

No one saw it!

Raspberries award films
that blow!

So bearing in mind the majority of films are average, what films are genuinely bad and then what films are so bad they´re good. Films that blew their budgets and sank their studios are technically some of the worst, e.g. Heaven´s Gate. But if we are to use a film´s box-office gross as an indication of how good a film is, then cult classics The Thing and Blade Runner would be lumped in with the dreadful Pluto Nash (officially the biggest box office disaster on record). Since 1981, the Golden Raspberries have been honouring the worst films of the year with awards for worst actors, screenplays, misuse of 3D. The 25th Anniversary of the Razzies, awarded Scientology sci-fi Battlefield Earth and J-Lo/ Affleck disaster romance Gigli as the worst movies of the last quarter century. 

Right Said Fred´s new music video?

 The worst films I´ve seen are ones I paid to go to the cinema to see and was bored to tears. I fell asleep during Twilight the sequel (one of them) and The Spirit, so they´re on my list. Ones I managed to stay awake watching like The Wolfman, Armageddon, Cowboys and Aliens, Pirates of the Carribean and Prometheus, still keep me awake at night even now. Thus we have a remake, a comic book adaptation, a fun fair ride adaptation and a prequel. Of all these films, only Armageddon is an original work though it follows the template of all disaster movies. Apart from the cliches and american propaganda, I didn´t enjoy Armageddon because the pyrtotechnics and shaky camera movements made me feel like a pet puppy in a washing machine on bonfire night. 

What a shame this wasn´t the only
frame in this film!

 Prometheus is close to being so bad it´s good, and is the worst movie by far in this list. It had a once-revered director at it´s helm (Ridley Scott), is part of one of the most exciting franchises and fictional movie universes (Aliens) and had a good cast, but it was utter bullshit. The story if you haven´t seen it is thus: a group of scientists head to an alien planet to examine a giant donut that may explain the origin of the human species. There they are attacked by a soya sauce virus created by giant alien gimps,and one by one escape the terrible movie. I´ve read better pop-up books.

Plans 1 to 8 were even worse!

Historically, the title of worst movie ever made belonged to Plan 9 From Outer Space. The film was ridiculed for it´s camp and absurd storyline, rickety sets, paper plate UFOS on strings and z-grade performances. The plot is thus: aliens that want to stop mankind from destroying the planet initiate Plan 9: the turning of half the population into zombies. In spite of its shortcomings or indeed thanks to them, Plan 9 is a cult classic with fans including Tim Burton who made a biopic of its director Ed Wood, once dubbed the worst director ever. A truly great bad film is one you can laugh at. Like a bad audition on X-Factor,we can enjoy in seeing delusions of grandeur undermined by stupidity or ineptitude. Perhaps we even feel better about ourselves. ´I could have made a better flying saucer´ we think. But much more than this, there´s the charm of the gormless and clueless, which is no more evident than in the film The Room - the best and worst film ever made.

THE ROOM - the San Francisco Skyline has been blue screened

In the Prince Charles Cinema, just off Leicester Square in the heart of London, there is a monthly showing of the most ´´ unique´´ film of all time, The Room. To me it is a masterclass in comedy film-making, a masterpiece that had every scene, gesture, line delivery been purposefully rubbish then it would be the astounding work of genius of our time, and had it not been so intended then it is proof of Darwin´s evolutionary theory and an infinite universe where monkeys can screenwrite and humans can evolve from amoebas and art can come of nothing. Written, Directed, Produced by and Starring Tommy Wiseau, it´s the story of a love triangle between a successful banker, his manipulative girlfriend and his best friend. Most of the action takes place in rooms or on the rooftop where against a bluescreened San Francisco skyline, drug deals go down, psychologists get pushed about and truths come out . Much of the joy comes from Tommy Wiseau himself, the most unlikely banker you´ve ever seen with his weird unplaceable accent, his haggard, gormless face and his bohemian long hair, you can´t tell if he´s stoned or stupid or a genius but even his fellow actors appear a little on edge when he´s in the scene. There are several overlong sex scenes, several overlong establishing shots, restablishing several times the same scene, several forgotten subplots; there are thousands of ´oh hi´s and dozens of quotable lines like ´leave your stupid comments in your pocket´. It has as many classic scenes as, say, The Godfather and it is quite rightly the Citizen Kane of bad movies. Trust me, you´ll want to watch this film again and again. 

I´m fed up with this world!

Bollshit

Tommy Wiseau is the idiot sauvant of bad movies and I doubt any film will ever eclipse his achievements in the Room, but there is another contender for worst director currently at large today. Uwe Boll, director and dreamweaver, has been using loopholes in German tax law as a way to finance video game adaptations and straight to video rubbish. Despite his low budgets, big names like Ray Liotta and Jason Statham have stained their reputations in Bollshit. In 1996, a bunch of critics tried to convince Boll to stop making movies, he challenged them to a series of boxing matches, the idea was if any of them beat him he would never sit in a director´s chair again! Unfortunately, Uwe Boll who had trained as a boxer, beat them all and so he continues to commit celluloid atrocities, his latest being Auschwitz. 

In the Name of the King by Boll

TASK 1: VIDEO LESSON - TRASH GETS DEEP ABOUT LIFE

Help! Quicksand!

There are many cult films that are disownable by the majority because they´re shoddy productions with non-actors and full of taboo-busting scenes. Usually genre films, these are prized by their afficianados in a way that only the best bad films can be. One such film is The Bronx Warriors, a rip-off of Escape from New York and The Warriors. You are going to watch one hilariously funny scene in which the dopey hero Trash finds his life´s meaning. Copy and paste the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbKyvxTxWvA and answer the following questions. Answers on ANSWERS page (at top of blog)
1. Why did Anne want to leave Trash?
2. What does Death do with us?
3. How many reasons does she have to leave Trash?
4. How old is Anne?
5. What does the Manhattan corporation control?
6. What adjective does she use to describe the Manhattan corporation?
7. What would give Trash´s life meaning?

TASK 2: WRITING 100 words

Write the synopsis (summary) of a terrible movie you have seen or invent your own worst movie ever!

Battlefield Earth - Tom Cruise´s favourite movie after The Birdcage

GLOSSARY: 

hackneyed   banal
budget  orcamento 
pretentious  pretensioso
subtitled legendado
malaise  mal-estar
pageant espetaculo publico
recesses  recessos
belly button umbigo
box-office gross  bilheteria bruta
campy extovertido
shortcomings deficiencias 
manipulative manipuladora
gormless  ingenuo
ham  a bad actor
to be on edge estar na borda
dreamweaver  tecelão de sonhos
loopholes  brechas
shoddy de qualidade inferiore 
dopey drogado 
trash  lixo, brega

Business English Lesson 2: The Hard Sell

Lesson 2 - THE HARD SELL

Level: Upper-Int to Advanced

Wake up and smell the coffee you fucking bum! Yes, I´m talking to you. You´ve been studying English since school and you still can´t speak enough of it to make some fucking money? What do you think this is? Kindergarten? Now, don´t start bitching to me, ´oh but I don´t feel confident enough to turn my English skills into profit´. That doesn´t wash with me pal. I only want students who are going to sell, sell, sell. Starting now. Because now is the time and time is money and to paraphrase Scarface the world is a big chocolate just waiting to be eaten and if not by you then by your competitors who have no mercy.

Real life success story, and this is true, my Turkish student Mehmet Mehmet, started studying English 2 weeks ago, he´s already sold 3 fezes and an abacus on e-bay. He isn´t in a fucking coma, waiting for a windfall, he´s out there selling. 

Real life success story 2, my former Korean student Minji Kim spent 3 months in my class of 2006, during that time her English improved by a profit margin of 60% after tax. She is now a multi-million dollar international conglomerate, importing pork belly, exporting panda pop. I faxed her about this lesson last week and asked her if she´d interrupt her busy schedule to give some advice to my new students, you know what she said? ´Fuck you!´ is what she said. That´s how much she thinks of you. You´re not worth more than 2 words and one of them is fuck. As in I don´t give a fuck unless you sell.

´But I don´t have anything to sell?´ you gibber. We´re living in a material world, you bums. Look around you, what do you see? You see a big tree, you see a plastic bag in its branches, you see a squirrel chasing its own tail. Fuck you. Is that what you see? Then get the fuck out of my office ´cos you´re fucking fired. I´ll tell you what I see. I see commodities. I see hard cash. I see raw materials waiting to be exploited. I see wood, plastic, Chinese food – I see their net dollar worth. The only thing I can see not worth anything right now is you. So get mad, get out there and close some deals.

Real life success story 3… possibly you?!

Glossary:

Bum – vagabundo

Bitching - reclamando

Kindergarten – jardim de infancia

Profit – lucro

To not wash with someone – inacetavel

Mercy - misericordia

Competitor - concorrente

Fez – tipo de chapeu ottoman

Abacus - ábaco

Windfall – herança inesperada

Pork Belly – barriga de porco

Panda Pop - refri

Schedule – horário

Raw Materials –  materias primas

Exploit - explorar

Net worth – patrimonio liquido

To close a deal – fechar um negocio

TASK A: VIDEO ´GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS´

You´re going to watch a classic scene from David Mamet´s Glengarry Glen Ross, a film about real estate salesmen, but before you do let´s look at some of the new vocabulary you will need.

1) Match the words in columns A and B:

         A                                                    B                                                              

To shine                                                line

To be man                                            shoes                   

A tough                                                 the bricks    

Hit                                                         balls 

Brass                                                     enough 

Dotted                                                   racket

2) Complete these sentences with the phrases above:

1. His boss told him to ______________ because he was a terrible loser.
2. Always check the small print before you sign on the _____________
3. He wasn´t ______________ for her so she started screwing around.
4. Working in real estate is _______________ , it´s really hard work.
5. You need ____________ to be a stunt man.
6. Everyday I use polish _______ my _______

Answers and translations at the bottom of this page!

3) Background: Glengarry Glen Ross(1992) was originally a play written by David Mamet and stars Al Pacino and Kevin Spacey. In this scene, Alec Baldwin has been sent by the bosses of the real estate agency to give a motivational speech to their salesmen who are underperforming. They have been given leads which in marketing terms mean potential buyers for property.

Watch the scene and answer the following questions: ANSWERS on the ANSWER PAGE!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-AXTx4PcKI

1. What is the law of the land?
2. The coffee is only for who?
3. Where has Alec Baldwin come from and who sent him?
4. What´s the good news and the bad news?
5. What are the three prizes in the sales contest?
6. Lavine complains that the leads are what?
7. What is Alec Baldwin´s character´s name?
8. How long has he been selling real estate?
9. How much did he make last year?
10. What car does he drive and how much did it cost?
11. What is the one thing that counts in this life?
12. What does it take to sell real estate?
13. What does ABC stand for?
14. What does AIDA stand for?
15. What is printed on pink paper and tied together with a gold bow?
16. What did Alec Baldwin suggest would be a better favour to his employers?

TASK B:  LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION - (PAIRWORK or WRITING)

So you losers, you have a week to regain your jobs. You have your leads and now you have to close. You will be given 2 property fact sheets to sell to your leads. Both properties are practically unsellable so you have to use your cunning to translate the negative aspects of the location into positive aspects.

For instance, this morning I sold the following property. My fact sheet had the following information:

EXAMPLE: FACT SHEET  

Property:             The Titty Twister

Location:             In the middle of nowhere, Mexico

Description:         A termite-infested brothel/ strip-club in the middle of nowhere. The entrance has a giant neon pair of breasts over the door and at night you can see bats flitting from nipple to nipple. Inside the bar area is labyrinthine and dimly lit with some furnishings dating back to an Aztecian demon worshipping cult but mostly furniture of the cheap gaudy variety, including tables covered in obscene graffiti, a broken blood red juke box and a chandelier made of human skulls. There are 50 hanky-panky rooms upstairs, the standard model being 4 by 6 metres, with one broken sweat-stained mattress and bed sheets that glisten with snail trails, a shit-blocked bidet and air-conditioning provided by the bullet holes in the walls. There is a dungeon in the basement. The back door opens out onto a canyon filled with refuse and scrap metal.

Previous Owners:  A brood of vampires who used the brothel as a front for their bloodletting, luring in unsuspecting truckers with the promise of white pussy, black pussy, Spanish pussy and  yellow pussy. These claims were well-founded, they had a wide selection of pussy, except they were all vampires too.

Neighbours:            The infamous drug cartel Los Palomos Del Diabolo will quite often pop by to execute and bury informers, rivals and DEA agents in the desert. Vultures, Scorpions and Bats are abundant.

Local Amenities:     There are several cacti in a 50km radius from the location, from which water may be drawn.

In the ´sit´(meeting) what I told my customer was:

EXAMPLE: THE SALES PITCH :

``All train compartments smell vaguely of shit, but after a while you get used to it. When you die, you´re going to regret all the things you didn´t do. Did you ever take a dump that made you feel like you´ve just slept for 12 hours? The great fucks you´ve ever had, what do you remember about them? I don´t know but for me, it´s probably not the orgasm. I remember things like the girl bringing me breakfast in bread afterwards, a warm croissant, butter in those little foil wrappers. My balls felt like concrete. What am I saying? I´m saying our life is looking forward or it´s looking back. That´s why I´m offering you the opportunity to look forward, the chance to one day look back and say I shot my load and what´s more I remember the breakfast.

This property that I have for you is that opportunity. A place with a strong sense of character and history. It used to be a successful and cosmopolitan bar and now it´s got the potential to be  the biggest and best hotel for 50s of kilometers. It´s somewhere you can raise a family or write that first novel. There´s acres of space. You like nature? There´s rare birds to be seen and exotic plant life. Nature not your thing? You only have  to adjust your binoculars by a degree and there´s not a speck of life to be seen.

I can tell you´re a man´s man. You have a tool belt, right? What man hasn´t, right? This property is a real fixer-upper, I mean you can spend a life time fixing this place up and there´ll still be things to fix, for you and for your children and for your children´s children. And that´s what I´m offering here. The future. Just sign here.``

As soon as I closed the deal with that sucker I bought myself a brand new Ferrari.

NOW, IT´S YOUR TURN: 

(If you´re working in pairs, take turns being the salesman and the customer. Alternatively this can be done as a written exercise.) 

FACT SHEET 1: 

Property: The Old Witch´s  House

Location: Built on an Indian burial ground in an ancient dark and haunted forest, Pennsylvania, USA

Description: Deep within the woods of Strangleton, Pennsylvannia, situated in close proximity to one of the seven gates to hell, is this gloomy and evil ranch. Over a hundred years old and in complete disrepair, the only thing holding together its rotting structure is a malevolent supernatural force. Inside, this force becomes oppressively worse, owing much to the macabre decor: bones strewn across the floor, sooty hand prints on the walls. Not a bird or a mouse stirs in the forest outside, but the house is never quiet, it´s pipes groan and leak blood, it´s doors open and slam unprompted and something whispers under the heavily shackled trap door.

Previous Owners: The Blair Witch lived here a century ago, snatching the local children and boiling them in soup, until she was captured and executed by a mob of angry peasants. Her spirit lives on, however. Quite literally. 

Neighbours: In nearby Strangleton, the local rednecks have been driven mad by terror. They are a devoutly religious bunch and detest outsiders. Apart from church meetings and KKK rallies they rarely leave their homes save for the annual lottery in which a villager is chosen to be sacrificed to the old gods. There´s the odd wolf that wanders through the woods but you´ll want to stay away from those. 

Local Amenities: Stangleton convenience store offers a wide variety of tinned fruit, vegetables, meat and milk. There are 2 competing family-owned gunstores within shooting distance of each other. 

FACT SHEET 2: 

Property: Apartment 127, The People´s Tower Block 7 

Location: Chernobyl, Ukraine

Description: This charming little penthouse flat comes with all mod cons, including the latest technologies: the telephone, the radio and the microwave. The wallpaper is an ultra-modern and stylish shade of orange, and the previous tenants have left all their picture frames, furniture and belongings for you to enjoy. There´s still food in the fridge and money on the electric meter. Maybe you´d like to entertain a guest? There´s room for one or maybe more in here. You can see a spectacular view of the city´s park and the party headquarters out the window. 

Previous Owners: The previous owners were a quiet and obedient couple of elderly party members, who left the flat in impeccable condition. 

Neighbours: There is a family of 3-eyed mule people living in the block´s car park. They´re a friendly bunch and will often play the banjo for a tin of spam or a jar of clean air. In the city center, people are rougher and more ill, so be advised. Scavengers come up from the sewers to steal whatever they can lay their tentacles on. 

Local Amenities: A vast almost empty metropolis is your playground here. A seafood restaurant sells the prodigiously enormous catch of the day from the local pond. A geiger counter and a pair of lead trousers and you can explore the local park and it´s excitingly new flora and fauna. 

Answers to TASK A 1 and 2: 

1. shine  shoes, be man enough, tough racket, hit the bricks, brass balls, dotted line. 

2. 

1. His boss told him to hit the bricks because he was a terrible loser.
2. Always check the small print before you sign on the dotted line
3. He wasn´t man enough for her so she started screwing around.
4. Working in real estate is a tough racket, it´s really hard work.
5. You need brass balls to be a stunt man.
6. Everyday I use polish to shine my shoes