It was Geoff Knight's "Alice in Wonderland" moment - mere seconds when he watched his booze and drug-addled gang life spin through the air and skid to a halt in the middle of a state highway. In that fantastical moment he understood his life had to change. Tattooed, bearded, leathered and patched, the Highway 61 motorcycle gang member they called Trawler had clipped a timber truck with the handlebars of his Harley Davidson on the road at Puhoi, north of Auckland. In a flash of bravado, Knight had throttled to the front of the pack of seven gang bikers, trying to prove he was still The Man. He was, in fact, an emotional mess. His stripper girlfriend had left him while he was working at sea, he was facing a prison sentence and he'd just bought $28,000 worth of gleaming grunt machine to ease his pain. The bike somersaulted. "I was spinning around on my bum, feeling like Alice in Wonderland; spinning in slow motion and total silence," Knight recalls. Bloodied and grazed, he looked to the sky and said: "I get the message."
"I walked into a farmhouse and the farmer's wife cleaned the gravel out of my legs with hot water and Dettol. I'm standing there with my long hair and patches, with my pants around my ankles, feeling like a little boy. "I said to her 'Don't tell those guys, but this is the last time I'm riding with them. I want to live a good life. I want to be a good man. I want to see the world.' And she said to me 'Good on you son, you go for it'." Three weeks later he left the gang. "When I put my patches in a bag and handed them back, I realised the last five years of my life fitted into a brown paper bag." Fifteen years on, if Knight, now 38, was to pack up his life, it would be overflowing from Louis Vuitton luggage - his transformation almost as bizarre as Alice's adventures, or the bones of an opera. The toddler scarred by a dog mauling; the dyslexic, obese and bullied teenager who dropped out of school; the hard-working deep sea fisherman who joined a gang but changed his life to become an actor and proud father of five; and now the strapping, handsome, opera tenor, poised to burst on to the world stage. Knight is just as astonished by where he's ended up. For the past seven years he has been studying opera and, under the guidance of renowned bass Grant Dickson, he's building a repertoire of the most popular tenor roles so he can step into the shoes of a leading man anywhere. He's already performing internationally, most recently a four-month stint with Rockdale Opera in Sydney, singing the lead tenor role of Captain Fitzbattleaxe in Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta Utopia Limited; and earning comparisons to the great Italian tenors.
Wednesday, 9 July 2008
Britney Spears Might Perform At VMAs
Britney Spears could be performing at the MTV Video Music Awards this year (the VMA's), say organisers.
Spears played live at the ceremony last September, singing her track 'Gimme More' from her album 'Blackout', but the performance didn't go down well with critics.
Now MTV Networks Music Group president Van Toffler has hinted Britney could be in the running to play the awards again:
"Everyone deserves a second or third chance, right?" Toffler told AP. He was then asked if he was joking, but didn't give too much away: "Sorta. Who knows?"
See Also
Ustad Sultan Khan&Ustad Zakir Hussein
Artist: Ustad Sultan Khan&Ustad Zakir Hussein
Genre(s):
Ethnic
Discography:
Sur Taal
Year:
Tracks: 5
Kitt Kittredge knows her audience
Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
Dir: Patricia Rozema
Stars: Abigail Breslin, Joan Cusack, Stanley Tucci
***
It�s hard to find fault with the line of dolls that inspired � and underwrote, to some degree � Patricia Rozema�s Kit Kittredge. The American Girl dolls have colonized a nice stretch of girlhood -- roughly coinciding with grade school -- with a gratefully non-sexualized world that aims to teach a generation of daughters about history, friendship, self-reliance and respect. A cohort of 18-inch tall figures holding the bulwark against hordes of Bratz.
Abigail Breslin plays Kit, a sassy but essentially sweet-tempered young girl whose life in 1934 has gone from middle class to mid-Depression as her father loses his job and her mother is forced to take in boarders while he leaves Cleveland (ably played here by Toronto) for Chicago seeking work. Chris O�Donnell seems a bit young for his role as Kit�s dad, but he�s AWOL from the story for its vast middle stretch, so it isn�t a real problem.
In any case, at least one parent needs to go missing if the protagonist of a children�s story is going to get their shot at adventure, and adventure arrives in the form of a house full of eccentric boarders (played by Joan Cusack, Stanley Tucci and Jane Krakowski), a pair of young hobos (Willow Smith and Max Thieriot) and a string of robberies that authorities blame on the homeless and jobless filling the hobo jungles on the edge of town.
It takes too long for the story to really kick in, and as a result it never gets up a good head of steam. However, that might not be a minus for the movie�s intended audiences � the little girls between 5 and 12 who are grateful for the chance to see a world that they�ve only imagined in hours of play and in the bestselling AG books, come alive. The scene-setting, not the thriller, is the heart of the experience for them, and because of this all critical caveats are qualified into meaninglessness.
See Also
M. Giuliani - P. Romero
Artist: M. Giuliani - P. Romero
Genre(s):
Classical
Discography:
Philips 454 263-2
Year: 1974
Tracks: 3
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