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Friday, May 30, 2008

Another guy I dig / Wii Fit / Big Country

#9--James McAvoy


Continuing with the versatility trend, I present you with number nine on my list: James McAvoy. Before I started writing, I was thinking about how to describe him. Hard task. Handsome, yet cute. Foppish, yet manly. Earnest, yet rougish.

Where I first saw him: Bright Young Things

The film that made me stand up and take notice: The Last King of Scotland
(Sure, Forest Whitaker won all the awards, and deservedly so, but I felt McAvoy's performance was criminally underrated. (I call this the "Tim Bayliss effect" when a great actor is overshadowed by a showier one. Mind you, I am not suggesting that Andre Braugher was the better actor on Homicide, but Kyle Secor put in great work for several seasons and was inexplicably overlooked. I feel this oversight was due to the larger-than-life character of Frank Pembleton. Anyway...)

Where else I've seen him: Rory O'Shea was Here, that Narnia movie in which he played a faun (versatility, I tell ya!), Shameless, Atonement, Starter for Ten
All of those adjectives I used earlier are on display with his performance in Starter for Ten, one of those charming films that Brits do so well.

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The second part of this entry is about Wii Fit. Yes, I'm blogging about exercise. :)














My DH bought us Wii Fit last week, and I've been thoroughly surprised at how much I've enjoyed it. The game features different types of workouts, like yoga, aerobics, balance games, and strength exercises. As you might guess, I like the balance games. My favorite? This one called Lotus Focus? Advertised as "Zen," the object is to sit very still on the Wii balance board and not move. Sit on my ass and not move? That's the game for me! Sure enough, I got the highest possible score, and I'm darn proud of it!


Visual proof:
















Here's a pic of my Mii hula-hooping:















I'll close with a YouTube video. Since my #9 guy is Scottish, here's a YouTube gem, a live TV performance from Big Country. Years ago, at a party, in an attempt to be social, I told this guy that I owned Big Country's greatest hits. Jokingly, he said, "How many songs are on that CD? One?" Har har. Like most one-hit wonders, Big Country had a large body of work, much of which was better than that singular song for which they are best known. Sadly, lead man Stuart Adamson took his life a few years back. Adamson, in addition to fronting BC, was also a member of The Skids, a band I've mentioned here on my blog. Talented guy; sad end. RIP Stuart.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Foppish, yet manly. Earnest, yet rougish."

Well put. He's all of those things. :D

His cuteness level in Bright Young Things was off the charts.

Whenever I think of Tim Bayliss, the image of Kyle Secor walking down the street in his newly acquired leather jacket at the end of "A Many Splendored Thing" immediately springs to mind.

In a society rife with Attention Deficit Disorder, sitting absolutely still is actually quite difficult. So, congrats on your sitting score.

The Crossing was one the first albums I ever owned.

8:11 PM  

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