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| Destined for Fame | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Oct 29 2007, 08:38 PM (17 Views) | |
| Zack Riley | Oct 29 2007, 08:38 PM Post #1 |
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[size=1]<span style='font-size:11pt;line-height:100%'>Destined for Fame.[/size] ===================== During the week that two EWF susperstars are going to make history, Zack Riley, undefeated, and looking to stay that way, has been laughing his ass off thinking about his match this week. "Haha! You've gotta be freakin' kidding me! I'm supposed to go out there, and actually beat the holy hell out of a woman? I may not like it, but if I'm gettin' paid I guess I can. So this week, I'm going to wrestle circles around Monica Blaze. Not because I'm thr Urban Myth, not because I'm undefeated, but to prve to the world that women do NOT belong in the same ring as men. Bitch, if you think that you've got a shot this week, you'd best be in for a shocker, cuz' I'm not gonna break one of your damn nails, I'ma break your neck!" A Former International Champion in Zack Riley seems extremely confident heading into this weeks match-up. We'll have to wait and see the outcome.</span> ===================== [size=0][::Prolougue::] Earlier in his career, Zack Riley told us he was 'Destined for Fame' and the following story proves us just that...[/size] ===================== [size=1]I carried on working at Franny Lee’s for another six months but I had to leave after the management decided they wanted to change to “continental shifts” and I refused to wear a sombrero. Truth is I just couldn’t do the new shift hours because I’d just started at college and the hours of my course clashed. I’d enrolled on a BTEC in performing arts. It was the first of its kind to be set up in Glasgow and you can get any images you may have of ‘The kids from fame’ out of your head straight away. Don’t forget this was Scotland in the late eighties. It was more drug-taker than star-maker and the only time I ever saw someone on a car roof it was during the poll tax riots. I found enrolling on a performing arts course quite a difficult decision to make, because while most of my friends would be studying for their A levels, I’d be walking against a strong wind in a black leotard pretending to be a mime. It really didn’t feel like a sensible road to take, but then again sometimes the right road never does. I’d always enjoyed performing in front of others, but in school I was more of a class clown, a role that I reveled in. I even have a school report that reads: “Zach seems to be unable to resist trying to amuse the children around him” [/size] The teacher wrote that at the age of five. But at that age I still had no clue what I wanted to be, but I had that feeling I’d always perform. Television felt like a million miles away from Scotland. I’d no connections in TV. In fact I’d never met anyone involved with it, not unless you count a wax made model of that Asian bloke with the pointy ears in star trek. None of my family have ever been entertainers, my granddad used to play Europe’s “The final countdown” on a comb and tissue paper every now and again but we never had Simon Cowell knocking on our front door or anything. But I always loved to perform as a kid. I enjoyed the attention, well providing the attention was an actual audience not just my aunt and the hamster. When I was three or four my poor family had to sit and watch a a lip-synced a song from my Muppet show LP, the theme from Upstairs, Downstairs or performed impressions of Tommy Cooper. Every credit to them, they always clapped and cheered and the memory of their false smiles will stay with me forever. I was never allowed to entertain at school well, not legitimately anyway. We hardly had ever did any shows or play and I blame the nuns for this. Nuns featured very heavily in both my primary and secondary educations and I speak from bitter personal experience when I tell you that Nuns and cheekiness do not mix. In fact I always wondered why because Nuns were involved in possibly the most over-rated musical of all time, of course I’m talking about the sound of music. I’m still wondering to the day why we never performed it. We already had half the costumes and I’m not referring to Nazis either. No, a show like The Sound of Music would have been far too daring for the sisters of the Divine Virginity, so instead we just had to play it safe by doing the Nativity story every bloody year. I didn’t just have nuns teaching me, I had humans too, real people, and they’d do their best each year to try and freshen up the age-old story of the Nativity. They’d experiment with different ways of staging. One year the three wise men arrived on mountain bikes and gave baby Jesus a Mars Bar, a packet of M&Ms and a Cassette of Cliff Richard. Every year I’d be given some stupid role like a tree and every so often got to sing a solo in silent night or Little Donkey, as if trees can actually sing, I mean we were young, but we weren’t bloody stupid. Then luckily Jack Scott got suspended for solvent abuse and I was given his role as the Innkeeper. I had one line to learn and no time to waste. In full costume and make-up I sat nervously in class 3 waiting for my first big moment. Eventually I felt the cold hand of a nun touch me in the darkness. She led me towards the dimly lit stage. My chance had come. I knew what I was meant to do but for some reason I didn’t want to do it. I wanted to fight the power! With a packed dining hall out front I decided that instead of telling Mary and Joseph there was no room at the Inn, I would offer them an en suite with breakfast included. “WHAT DID HE SAY!?!” Those words could be heard at the back of the hall and of course the Nuns weren’t too impressed but the audience loved it. What a wonderful feeling it was to stand onstage and listen to that sound of laughter, I felt incredibly happy at that moment. After primary school I made a huge move of a hundred yards up the road to my big school called Mount St Joseph, apparently some of the less un-holy nuns actually did. I got off to a reassuring theatrical start by bagging a pivotal role in that year’s production “The times they are a-changing” Inspired by the Bob Dylan song, it was specially devised by the staff and pupils in order to celebrate fifty years of the Nun’s occupation of the convent (which is currently being converted into a Muslim girls’ school at time of going to print). It was really more of a revue than a show. There were songs from the Second World War for the pensioners, Simon Cundell stuck on a false beard and mimed to Bob Dylan and I had the privilege of walking on the moon. Well I say moon, it was a couple of white bed sheets, but it didn’t bother me, It was a magical experience for a boy aged eleven. With strobe lights flickering I had to walk across the stage in slow motion to the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey and plant a big flag in the middle of some cotton wool. It was brave of the Nuns to use strobe lighting. They were a revolutionary piece of equipment back then and still carry a medical warning today. I had to admire the nuns for showing such balls and everything would have gone to plan if Alyssa Jones hadn’t had an epileptic fit on the last night. Scene stealing b***h. Everybody missed my flag because they were too busy trying to watch the nuns hold her tongue down with a shatter proof ruler. Miss Glover, who was then head of drama, made a drama out the whole ‘strobe light’ fiasco and left. There wouldn’t be a school production for another four years, unless you count Toad of Toad Hall and I don’t because it was s**t! And I’m not just saying that because I didn’t get a part. Then came the winter of my discontent, a truly desolate time for performing. We got to read the occasional play in English but even then nobody would dare attempt a character voice or even do an accent. But I wouldn’t class that as drama and any kind of performing was never really encouraged by the nuns; the general consensus within the school seemed to be that if you liked acting you were either gay or very very posh. I was neither. But then miraculously, after much deliberation, the nuns decided they wanted to go over the rainbow. After calling the press conference in the convent they announced that the end-of-year production would be the Wizard of Oz, the only snag being I was now in fifth year and any rehearsals would clash with my all-important final exams but I couldn’t miss a chance to be in the wizard of oz. I heard that they were holding auditions after school so I decided I’d call in after my paper round. Co-incidentally my paper round circled the houses surrounding the school. In fact I used to deliver a paper to the convent, something that I dreaded after a few of the older more senile nuns tried to coax me inside to watch Jesus of Nazareth with them. The Nuns were obsessed with Jesus of Nazareth. We used to have to sit through nine hours of it every Easter the annual “Jesus of Nazarethathon” as Joe Hughes and I used to call it. Now don’t get me wrong, I think Jesus of Nazareth is a monumental piece of work. We had a Geordie teacher called Mister Macintosh, who quite honestly didn’t care about education, wasn’t religious at all and didn’t give to tosses about kids. The nuns always asked him to give speeches about grades and expectations however he always had some ridiculous Geordie involved story to tell. For example I remember one, where he claimed at the times when Romans ruled the world (which actually never happened but just to make it easier for the idiots in the school he told them that everyone before Churchill was a Roman) He said “One Geordie could kill Two Romans!” And he went up and up in fifties until he got to “One Geordie could kill Five-Hundred Romans” and the Roman emperor Hayden with a battalion of troops went out to kill this one Geordie and when they got to a clearing with hundreds of dead Romans, one barely breathing Roman lifted up his arm straining for every last breathe. He leant up and said “Don’t it’s a trick, there’s to of them” Well after this story had taken up twenty minutes of education the moral of the whole story was in fact and I re-call my best friend at the time, Tom Shelby said; “The morale of that story is Geordies are fuckin’ solid!” And almost everyone agreed. But as Mister Macintosh wasn’t an official teacher, naturally we took our revenge in Religious Studies when Sister Matic read from the bible. We’d take turns in interrupting her, gradually making her more infuriated until she decided to pick up a board duster and launch it in the general direction of the voice. The Bible reading never really made much sense. Even when we weren’t interrupting her, Sister Doyle, which was her real name, was Irish, with a bit of welsh, Scottish and hints of Russian thrown in there. She couldn’t even spell, nuns are supposed to be able to spell, but she couldn’t. It took her five minutes a time to make out Bethlehem. Anyway. Where was I? Ah yes, I was about to gatecrash the school auditions for the wizard of Oz. I’d come up with a plan. As I got to the end of my paper round the auditions would be coming to a close. The Whole plan hung on one of the teachers spotting me at the back of the hall and then persuading me into having an audition. In particular the lovely Miss Glover. She was back and raring to go after a couple of years in rehab. I arrived at the back of assembly hall in time to catch the last of the auditions. Pop Idol was no match for this as Jordan Elmsley stomped round the stage singing “If only I had a brain” with a hare-lip. My Plan thankfully worked like a charm. Miss Glover saw me lurking at the back of the hall and invited me over for a chat. Ten minutes layer I was reading the part of the cowardly lion and did I do it justice? Of course I did, I hadn’t been sat up watching the film on video all night for nothing! Not only did I get offered the part but I also got a round of applause. As the clapping subsided, Mr. Lawton (the deputy head) shouted to me from the back of the hall. “Bravo, very funny… but how funny will it be in twelve months when you can’t get a job because you’ve failed your exams” I could have swung for the miserable bastard. I wanted to reply with a witty comment, I wanted to tell him that in twelve months time I’d be working at Franny Lee’s factory packing cling film for £3.50 an hour but I couldn’t think of a witty comment or predict the future. So with a half hearted thumbs up, cheesy grin and all the other kids expecting a funny, possibly an insulting comment I said; “Oh, I’ll be alright” I hated Mr. Lawton. He wasn’t a nice man. In fact I thought he was a bit of a bully he’d strut around school all day pretending to be some sort of enforcer of the rules. The nuns though the sun shone out of his backside, but all I wanted to do was kick it. We’d sit around at dinner thinking of ways to destroy him. He used to hate pupils wearing their coats in school as it wasn’t part of the uniform. They had to be in your bag and out of sight otherwise he’d confiscate them and give you three consecutive detentions. So one night, after school, myself and a few of the other lads called into a jumble sale on the way home and bought a load of women’s coats, three sizes too small. It was worth it just to see the look of confusion on the pensioners’ faces as we handed them our money and left. Bright and early the next morning the seven of us turned the corner in our brand new old coats. It was like the opening scene from reservoir dogs as we strolled past the convent in slow motion. I was particularly fond of my pink waterproof with matching umbrella. And sure enough, as we approached the gates, Mr. Lawton swooped into position with a smug grin all over his fat face. He held out his hand without even arguing we took off our coats and handed them over, Lawton was loving it. “Don’t think you’ll be seeing these again until the end of term” He said it in a gloat trying to put himself over as a strong point of authority. We all looked at him, trying to hold in our laughter, the slightest whimper of hilarity would have spoiled the entire stunt. “I can only be pushed so far boys” Everyone around knew he hadn’t the slightest clue what he was holding, he was too busy towering over us trying to look like he had power. We then went round the corner, took our real coats out of our bags then put them on. Lawton was so jubilant in his victory that he failed to notice our fashion sense was some-what odd. I mean, how often do you see seven fifteen year old boys walking to school wearing an assortment of ladies’ coats three sizes too small for them? “Well they must belong to somebody” he repeatedly said to passing pupils whilst attempting to hand them a pink PVC rain Mac. They just walked off mystified. Apparently he ended up giving the coats back to the local jumble sale. I found the rehearsals to The Wizard of Oz easy enough – every Sunday afternoon and a couple of evenings a week after school. The hard part was revising for my exams. I’ve never been good at any kind of revision or dissertation. I start off with every good intention but within five minutes I find myself I find myself distracted, watering plants or putting my CDs in alphabetical order. I’m not good at exams either. In fact, I even tried to cheat in an exam in third year. I’d just seen a film called Spies Like Us with Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase. It was Okay, a few funny bits, but there was this one scene where they tried to cheat during an exams and that’s what gave me the idea. I was in the middle of revising for my dreaded chemistry exam. I decided to put my plan to the test. On the day of the exam, I got a scrap of paper and delicately wrote down some answers in the smallest handwriting I could muster. I scrunched up the paper into a tiny ball and then pondered where I could hide it. It had to be somewhere I could whip it out with east if I was stuck for an answer in the exam. My trouser pocket was too obvious, so was my shirt sleeve. For some reason and I still can’t figure out why to this day, I decided to stick the ball of paper in my ear... Delicately, I balanced the paper on the edge of my ear, then I sneezed violently and it shot down into my ear and it got stuck. I immediately started to panic which is the worst thing you can do in the exam. I grabbed a sharpened pencil and attempted to fish it out but I only managed to push it further into my head. By this time the other pupils were becoming distracted by the commotion. I looked over to sister Zar doin-it in a desperate effort to catch her attention. Eventually she glanced up from her copy of true detective to see me now out of my chair, slapping the side of my head like a maniac. With tears in my eyes and the answers in my ear she sent me to see the nurse. Our resident school nurse was a she-male, a dude, in drag, who only made an appearance a couple of times a year, to check six hundred kids’ heads for lice and to dish out the annual tuberculosis injection. By now hyperventilating for fear of going deaf, I knocked on his/her door. Sticking of nicotine, ‘it’ opened the door. “What’d you want?” It snapped. Sobbing, I concocted a pathetic story about how I’d been a slave to earache the last few weeks and had only placed paper in my ear because I’d run out of tissues. I don’t think it believed a word I was saying for one second. It mumbled something in Latin, looked into my ear its reusable lighter and advised me to go to hospital. Bloody hell, not the hospital. Bloody hell not the hospital. They had to get my aunt out of work what a complete balls-up. At the hospital, my aunt and a nurse had to pin me to the floor while a doctor ferreted around in my ear with the biggest pair of tweezers I’d ever seen in my life. I felt like on of the borrowers. Finally, after what seemed like an hour, the doctor started to drag the paper out of my ear. The noise was deafening. Then suddenly there was a pop, like a cork coming out of a bottle as he removed it from my head. I just prayed to god he didn’t open it up and try to read it. Things didn’t work out too bad in the end because I missed my chemistry exam by going to the hospital and I managed to get my left ear syringed into the bargain I’ve been able to hear perfectly out of my left ear since. The wizard of Oz was approaching fast and the nuns weren’t happy when I told them I was going on holiday to Ireland for a fortnight with my mum. This meant I’d end up missing some important rehearsals. But what could I do? We’d had it booked for months. I promised them I’d be back in time for the dress rehearsal. I’d been going over to Ireland most of my life. Normally we’d fly over but because of the cost we could only go every couple of years. Flying used to be expensive. It’s hard to imagine that today with all these budget airlines popping up everywhere. These days you can fly half way around the world for the same price as a packet of gum. This particular Easter the airline prices had got so expensive that we decided to go on the boat from Liverpool instead. Never again. It takes an hour to fly to Belfast on a plane from Manchester. It took eleven hours on the boat. I didn’t realize that they traveled so slowly until I ventured up on deck after we’d been sailing for four hours and I found I could still see the liver building, It was an overnight crossing and we had doyed with the idea of getting a cabin and our heads down for the night, but my aunt’s cousin, Rose, had made the same trip a few weeks previously and said that the non-smoking lounge had long leather seats that were comfortable enough to sleep on. I don’t know what Rose’s idea of comfort was, but we didn’t get a wink of sleep all night. The sea was very choppy and we spent most of our crossing sliding up and down the leather upholstery in a storm. We looked like a couple of extras from the Poseidon adventure. It was awful, so awful in fact that when last night, when I last spoke to my aunt. The minute I mentioned Belfast she said. “Oh god not that again…” As well as enduring the discomfort of the leather seats, the howling wind and the freezing temperature, we also had to listen to the worst compilation tape in the world…ever. It was on a continual loop for the entire journey. In the middle of the night I resorted to trying to smash the speaker above my head with my shoe, I still get nauseous when I hear any of those songs. Thankfully my time in Ireland was great, but then again, it always is. The way of life is much slower over there and it usually takes me a couple of days to unwind, but once I’ve adjusted to it, peace and relaxation are the order of the day. I can honestly say that I’m rarely happier anywhere else in the world. It does amaze me, though, how ladi-back everybody is. You’ve just got to go with the flow or the lack of it as the case may be. We used to stop at my granny’s and some days we wouldn’t even get round to leaving the house. We’d have every intention of going out but family would call and after copious amounts of tea and cake we’d always end up falling asleep in front of my grandma’s big open fire. Next think you knew you’d wake up to the theme from Prisoner: Cell Block H and the day would be over. When I did manage to leave the house and get out into the fresh air I’d usually find myself walking down the hill into the local town, Coalisland in county Tyrone. I don’t with to sound patronizing but it always seemed to me as if time had stood still – the bus, shops, even the public transport, on the rare occasions it appeared. In fact, apart from the barracks with its sixty foot-high corrugated-iron fence that looked as though a spaceship has landed in the middle of the tonw, nothing had chanced since 1947. One day I paid a visit to the lirary and hired out a tape with my aunt’s library card. It was an audio cassette if the comedy series Porridge starring Ronnie Baker I’d seen porridge a few times growing up – it was usually on Thursday nights after top of the pops. My parents would laugh at it a lot but I didn’t understand it. As I got older I became more familiar with the movie version of porridge that they made in the late seventies. It held specials memories for me as it was one of the few times we all went to the cinema together as a family. My dad took us to the Odeon cinema one night after to school. Porridge was on a double bill with rising damp – the movie. I remember my dad falling down in between the seat he was laughing that much. Maybe that’s why I like it so much. I think it’s inevitable we inherit some of our parents’ taste. That day I hired Porridge, took it back to my Aunt’s house and listened to it. I laughed as hard as my dad had at the Odeon all those years before. What impressed me the most was the sharp and witty dialogue, delivered with such impassable timing. Our holiday drew to a close and It dawned on us that we’d have to endure that bloody awful boat trip back to Liverpool again. Throwing caution to the wind we decided to book a sleeping cabin for the return journey. We also plied ourselves with a cocktail of anti-sickness tablets and sleeping pills before we left my granny’s. Drugged up to the eyeballs, we said our emotional goodbyes and headed for the boat. Little tip for you here, always check the date and time on your ticket before you leave. I sarcastically mentioned this to my aunt as we stood on the docks watching ‘our’ boat sail off into the distance. That’s the last thing I remember before I well, passed out. The rest is just a hazy memory. I do have a vague recollection of my Grandpa Rory giving me a fireman’s carry up my granny’s path but the rest is a blue. After sleeping for seventeen hours we woke around five PM the next day, said our now not so emotional goodbyes once again and made a second attempt to catch the boat. This time, we actually made it. But because of the previous day’s cock-up I got back a day late for the dress rehearsal. I was in the nuns’ bad books and Miss Shambo the school choreographer was furious. She’d spent the weekend teaching the rest of the cast some important dance moves and I’d missed them. I’ve no idea how familiar you are with the wizard of Oz but while on their way to the emerald city, Dorothy and co. are attacked in a forest by some creatures known as the jitterbugs. They’re insects of some kind, or in our case year three girls in tank tops and ra-ra skirts with their faces painted in green. The jitterbugs are supposedly possess your body and make you dance until you drop, or in my case just drop. Because miss Shambo said it was too late for me to learn the dance routine and that I’d just have to sit on the stage like a good little lion while everybody else cavorted around me to “Wake me up before you go-go” by wham. “Don’t you think It’ll look stupid with everybody else dancing except me?” I said to Miss Shambo in her office. “Yes I do but everybody else has rehearsed the steps” Well as far as I was concerned I might as well sit on the stage holding up a sign reading; “Sorry folks but I was on holiday when we rehearsed this.” In fact I actually started making one in art but ran out glitter. Opening night, I nervously sat backstage having some last minute fur stapled to my helmet and listening through the air vent to the audience filing into the assembly hall. It was my first big performance since…The moon landings of 84. Before I knew it I could hear the orchestral strains of “Ding dong the witch is dead” and then, once again felt the familiar cold hand of a nun as she touched my tail and she led me towards the darkened stage. “We’ll have to stop meeting like this sister” I whispered into her veil, but she gave me no response.. I leapt out from behind a cardboard bush and roared “PUT EM UP!” In my very best American accent. It got a few laughs, so far so good then. Then came the Jitterbugs. Wham! Instantly started playing right on cue and I immediately dropped to the floor as miss Shambo has ordered but I sat watching the cast jitterbugging around me, I thought, hold on this isn’t right, and I could feel the adrenalin rushing through me. There was only one thing to do so I leapt to my furry feet and like a lion possessed I began to dance, I hadn’t a clue if what I was doing was good or bad, but what I did know was that it was getting big laughs from the audience. With laughter ringing in my ears, I jumped off the stage and danced out into the audience. I had no idea why, or where I was going I just knew that I was on to something good. By this time place was rocking and the audience were in hysterics. They knew this wasn’t in the script. I danced passed the mayor and the governors, all the while avoiding eye contact with miss Shambo who was sat in the corner furiously scribbling my notes. I made my way back on to the stage and noticed a couple of trees representing the forst. I had an idea forming. I knew it was quite naughty but if I pulled it off It would bring down the house. I danced to the back of the stage, straight up to a tree and cocked my leg up. The room exploded. I held my leg in the air for a few seconds pretending to urinate. “Aww you’re dead, Miss Shambo is going to kill you!” Said a voice inside the tree, but I couldn’t have cared less. The sound of the belly laughs and screaming voices was deafening by now and with that kind of a reaction what I was doing couldn’t be all that bad. But sister sledge gave me a right bollucking during the interval, She collared me backstage and said; “Is that what you’re going to be when you’re older a comedian?” I wanted to reply, but it was hard for me to talk with her hands round my windpipe. Ten years later, I bumped into that same tree, she said hello. I as you do, said hello back. “You don’t remember me do you?” She said. I had to confess I didn’t “You pissed on me in the wizard of oz” She replied a little bit too loudly for my liking. Anyway, Wham! Reached the climax and I returned to my original position at the front of the stage and sat back down. The whole room shook with applause. It felt good. Being in the show seemed like academic suicide at the time. In fact, that’s exactly what it turned out to be. I got one GCSE in art and Dorothy went back to Kansas. But I’ve never regretted it for a second. Performing in the show was one of my lifes highlights, I’d always been able to make people laugh but that was just ridiculous. Not only that, but I got to keep the lion costume too! [[::THE END::]] |
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7:53 PM Jul 10