WHY ROCKY IV IS THE GREATEST EVER ROCKY FILM AND THEREFORE BY EXTENSION THE GREATEST FILM IN HISTORY: AN IMAGINARY TED TALK
* To clarify: this is an unpublished TED talk. The panel at TED have never approached me to give this TED talk and I very much doubt they ever will. It is far too long and it is exclusively about every movie in the Rocky franchise. This is not a real TED talk. But imagine … imagine if this was a real TED talk. Think about that.
† Assume that this is the first panel of a really slickly-produced .ppt that is being projected huge behind me.
* You should know that in this imaginary TED talk I came out and did this bit in a wireless microphone (nude-coloured microphone windscreen w/ wraparound apparatus) and I am wearing the uniform of every TED talk host which is white shirt, grey satin waistcoat for some reason, a load of bangles and bracelets? And ideally also a soul patch.
* [Two silver glitter cannons explode either side of the stage and a load of dry ice smoke comes out]
† At this point the lights go down and every single Rocky movie is played, back-to-back, for more than eight hours. If you are reading this at home it would be really helpful if you could do that, now. Or at least go watch the trailers.
* At this point I would have walked to the side of the stage to deliver this sotto voce, the way Shakespeare would have wanted me to talk about Rocky movies.
* You may erroneously be thinking that Apollo Creed acts as a sort of surrogate father to Rocky during this film, and you would be wrong. What they are actually engaged in is: the world’s horniest bromance.
* As and when HBO approach me to pitch to them a miniseries, I am going to hit them with Rocky: Origins, my idea for a prequel bro-trip series where Yung Rocky and Yung Paulie meet, become firm friends, and explore the state of Pennsylvania in a beat-up Pontiac. I figure Rocky and Paulie met in a bar, where Rocky – passing by, thinking about turtles – sprinted in to break up a fight where Paulie was about to get his head kicked in, and they both became friends from there. R:O explores why the fuck they stayed friends, and crucially, each episode pivots on Rocky learning a new non-boxing skill through the medium of montage. So okay: Rocky’s car breaks down, and there’s like an eight-minute montage of him reading books and ordering a new fan belt from a phone catalogue. Or: Paulie gets a pool cue broken over his head, and Rocky (through montage) learns basic wound dressing. Rocky, his large clumsy hands learning advanced sushi knife techniques through a montage. Rocky learns to dance, &c. There will be an entire season-long arc about that little black rubber ball Rocky bounces in the first film and then never again until Creed. Where are Rocky’s parents? How did Rocky get involved in the low-level Philadelphia mafia? How did Rocky first piss Mickey off so he stopped working with him? Every question you have ever had about Rocky will be answered by me, over the course of like, 120 episodes. I really feel like I can win an Emmy for this.
* Two oiled Rocky and Apollo lookalikes come onto the stage in trunks and lift me on their shoulders; crowd erupts into applause; president of TED gives me an over-sized cheque for one million pounds; somehow my face is covered in a mush of blood and bruises?; I scream ‘ADRIAN!’ until every light in the auditorium blows out; exeunt.
EYEMASK: A REVIEW
* If you do not recognise this sentence to be the kind that you should react to with a sharp inhale then you are not a grooming person, I am sorry. The scrub I was using was essentially a handful of grit dumped into a child’s yoghurt, and if you do use it (which is a bad idea!), as per the pack’s instructions you should do that once a week, at most. The thing with a physical scrub (versus for example an acid scrub) is that it cleans and invigorates the skin with tough, odd-shaped exfoliant pieces which are often hard and sharp enough to cause microtears in the skin. Facewash, as a rule, should not emulate a BMX graze. To reiterate: twice a day.
* It’s for toning, I think. If you still don’t know what that means (and, logistically, I actually don’t, but I know when I stop doing it my skin suffers): Paula’s Choice 2% BPA, try it once and never look back, thankings and blessings to you Paula, whoever you are, amen