What do you think of meganshead’s new look? Feedback please. And muchos gracias to the main man Big Friendly for sexiness, stylishness, updatedness etc!
Tag: meganshead (Page 2 of 3)
Make Over!
Safe wings for Natalie and Shirley
My friend Shirley and her daughter Natalie leave today for Boston. After two grueling days of travel they will fall into the amazing arms of the USA Circle of Love that has sprung up to hold, help and care for them. The team at Boston’s Mass. Gen will get to know Natalie and they will design special Proton Beam Therapy (PBT) for her before the two operations that she will have. Post operations she will have some recovery time before another dose of PBT to zap the last bits of Chordoma. Shirley and Natalie will be gone for some time, but they take with them the unbelievably powerful love, support, wishes, drives, and complete commitment of their family, friends, colleagues, schools; everyone who has been amazing on hearing the hard news of Natalie’s illness.
You can follow their story on Natalie’s Circle of Love blog or leave a message for them. I’ll also do my best to give you the latest. We are still fund raising (you can imagine how expensive all of this is) and people are thinking of amazing ways to help raise money and awareness. I want to make a special thank you to my meganshead readers for kickstarting the whole drive.
First glimpse of 2011
I can’t help myself. I am barely awake, lying in bed, with Bayla the dog who hates both fireworks and thunder, and it’s raining, hard and thunderously. I could think of no better way to start a new year’s day. Ok, it would be great if Bayla loved the rain, after her ten minutes of hell last night, on the stroke of midnight. But seriously, all our neighbourhood could manage were a few weak vuvuzela toots and a couple of whizz bangs. Really not too bad at all.
I am in a relatively good mood for a few reasons. Last night’s final show of Good Will Acting was delicious and hilarious and well received and almost full! I got home safely, before midnight and said Happy Happy to a sleepy Big Friendly. New Years Day is on a Saturday which feels like we don’t lose a day to the silliness, I do not have a hangover (although a few more hours of shut-eye  would have been nice) and the week long howling South Easter is gone (to be replaced by rain, I know, but I like rain).
So, bring it on, gently, without fireworks, without excuses and terms and conditions. Just, bring it on. Also, how cool is this? This January is the fourth anniversary of meganshead. I am a little bit proud. Thanks Big Friendly.
Super Talented friends
It goes with working in the industry; I have amazing and talented friends. Trevor du Buisson happens to be one of them. He is a superb musician who I have had the privilege of working and playing with for over 15 years. He is a brilliant composer, fabulous performer, amazing accompanist, backing track maker, in fact, he can do most things musical. Most recently he made a brilliant and hilarious backing track for my latest industrial theatre show.
He has also entered a submission into a competition on indaba music where he remixed a track. I have listened to it and voted, because I think he has done a great job. And now, here is my experiment. I want meganshead readers to check it out and vote for him. It isn’t complicated. Go to the link.  Vote for Trev. Make me happy.
Sheesh, and now, a cold!
Hard drive crash, cell phone in washing machine, and now a river of snot and a sore throat. Which would be fine if I wasn’t working this weekend, but, I am. Loverly.
In amongst all this woe though there are some seriously good things. My industrial theatre show is looking totally cool and I love my cast, who have delivered their usual excellence and more. I have scored a new job which is taking me to Dubai at the end of March, and I’ve never been before. Big Friendly and I ran what I thought was a delightful chat/workshop about blogging, at PANSA yesterday. Although only four people attended, it was really fun, for me. It was great talking about meganshead and why and how I blog. It also totally helped that Big Friendly was on hand to explain the technical how of it too. On that side I am super privileged to have him; I know nothing.
Now, if only my nose and eyes would stop running. I am off to rehearsals.
Consumer disobedience
I was in my final year of ‘varsity in 1986 (I know, by all calculations I should be dead!) and this was the height of political turmoil. South Africa was in a ‘state of emergency’, things were burning, people were in detention without trial, Adrian Vlok was in charge of education and ‘the quota system’ for universities, the ANC was a banned “communist” organisation, and we students were angry and active. But, being drama students at UCT’s Michaelis, and sharing the space with art students, resulted in us coming up with some interesting and effective (or at least we thought so at the time) civil disobedience campaigns. My favourite one, which I remember so clearly, was dragging red tape over all the toilet seats at CAPAB (now Artscape), with posters on the back walls explaining why people were being prevented from sitting down.
I was remembering this yesterday while I was trying to control myself from launching my body as a missile through the plate glass windows of MTN SP (SP stands for service provider. What a joke.) at Century City. I was there to fetch my piece of junk phone that I was coerced into taking as an upgrade when I had to blah blah blah a new contract in March this year. My phone broke, and although it had been fixed and was ready to collect on Monday, I was still ‘in the queue’ to be contacted, since they had such a ‘high volume’ of customers to get hold of. This is after me phoning about six times to find out if my phone was actually there. I didn’t want to make the unnecessary trip because you can wait for half a day in their ‘waiting’ section, after getting your damn number ticket at the door.
Needless to say, I had all the time in the world to think up a million, totally ineffective, things to say and do to somebody at MTN. But you never get to say and do it to the right person. They just don’t give you access to anyone. They stonewall you. They block you out. I hate MTN. Really. I do.
I resent the money they spend on advertising and branding and sponsorship while ripping us all off. I hate the fact that they are able to get away with the worst service, the most useless call centres, total inefficiency, false promises, and fake ‘deals’. I hate that it would cost me a preventative amount of money to cancel my renewed contract, and so they don’t even have to treat me like a human being. They have me by the short and curlies.
Now, I don’t want to break the law, I really am too old for that, but I would like to indulge in a consumer disobedience campaign against MTN. It will start here, on meganshead, and I am looking for ideas. I will continue slagging them off, writing to Hello Peter (I don’t even get a response any more) and complaining bitterly all over the show, but if any of you have any good ideas, please let me know.