China Tang, a Chinese chica + George Clooney
Some readers will be aware that every now and again my friends are lovely to me and they take me out for dinner at places like the China Tang restaurant in the Dorchester, where they make a great salt+pepper squid and steamed sea bass:
Most of the time, I cook at home and experiment with flavors, textures and different ingredients I’ve sourced from the markets. Nevertheless since some of my friends don’t cook (too busy to) they dine out and they occasionally invite me along, particularly if it’s a special occasion. Now, the whole of October is full of potential special occasions because it’s the month of my birthday; yes, I am…………….a Libran (a Libra-Scorpio cusp to be more exact).
Libra is the same sign as Mahatma Gandhi, Baroness Thatcher, Groucho Marx, John Lennon, William Faulkner, F.Scott Fitzgerald, Oscar Wilde, T.S. Eliot, Rupert Brooke, Arthur Miller, George Gershwin, Guiseppe Verdi, Sting, Luciano Pavarotti, Franz Liszt, Julie Andrews, Le Courbusier, Eleanor Roosevelt, Friedrich Nietzsche, Evil Knieval, Niels Bohr, Alfred Nobel, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Bob Geldof and two of France’s greatest cinema beauties (Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve) as well as Wales’s most notable recent export, Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Librans are said to be bright, bold, dynamic, charming, conversational, fairly nuanced with relationships and occasionally beautiful with a predisposition to improving the lot of Mankind and/or making wondrous art, music and literature as well as being capable of penetrating scientific discovery and philosophical reasoning. That or we’re just off-the-wall and razor-sharp wits like Marx and Wilde. Our negative traits are said to be vacillating indecision, trying to please others at the expense of self neglect, being critical (nothing we do is ever good enough) and also viewing life through rose-tinted spectacles, i.e. idealistic.
Hmmn, we’re certainly a complex sign!
That’s all before I factor in the Scorpio cusp aspects which are said to be a cool logic and precise reductivism, passion for causes and topics of substance and formidable drive. Plus the negatives which are cutting realism, compulsion towards perfectionism (which compounds the Libran tendency to self criticize) and overbearing presence.
Anyway, ordinarily, I would have either been in China Tang last night or tonight for an early birthday dinner with one of my best friends, GC. This year, though, I’m spending birthday time in Paris and Italy where I’ll be wandering markets and hanging out in my casuals and sneakers.
It’s just as well there’s no dinner at China Tang in the Dorchester this year because apparently……….that’s where George Clooney is staying whilst he’s in London to attend the 2009 London Film Festival:
I was once accidentally out in Chinatown, picking up weekly groceries, during a Clooney red carpet premiere. I had no idea that the block around Leicester Square would be sectioned off at a certain time because I entered Chinatown from a different direction, where there were no warning signs. I went into the store to pick up my usual noodles, seasonings, Oriental soft drinks, seaweed wrappers to make sushi and fried bean curd. Half an hour later and I found out that I couldn’t take my usual shortcut through Leicester Square because hundreds (thousands?) of screaming female fans were camped out in wait for Clooney.
That’s something which completely bypassed me, even as a teenager: no irrational fan adulation for any movie or pop star, no camping out, no hysterical screaming at concerts, no posters of them on my walls either. I had the Periodic Table pinned up, foreign languages grammar, poems, artworks, computer schematics and Star Wars stuff.
I also don’t think I’ve ever paid a full-price movie ticket to watch any film of Clooney, btw. Usually I wait until the film shows at a theater where tickets are at up to 75% discount. I will happily pay full-price to watch Robert Redford in ‘Barefoot in the Park’, Javier Bardem in ‘El Mar Adentro’ and Tony Leung Chiu Wai in ‘Infernal Affairs’, though!
Besides, when you’ve met the Princess Royal when you’re 5, worked directly with Masters of the Universe who control US$ billion portfolios (affecting US$ trillions more) and your genealogy stretches back to the founding members of the Han dynasty — renowned as a great Age of Enlightenment for the Chinese — you’re not likely to be irrationally impressed or phased by anything, are you?
You’re also not going to stand for hours (squashed by others who are twice your height and size, in the freezing cold and schizophrenic London rain for a glimpse of George Clooney’s back) when you already have a friend with those initials who’s a lot more interesting and intelligent, and who bestows on you the generosity of good conversations, hmmn?
Right, no Libra-Scorpio would: it’s illogical.
:*).
Tags: 2009 London Film Festival, China Tang, George Clooney, Javier Bardem, Libra-Scorpio cusp, Robert Redford, Tony Leung Chiu Wai
HUH?
What about Redford? Newman? Rick Astley?
I seem to recall a few incidents/comments that might be construed as fan-da-monium.
anyway, happy birthday fellow libran! have a great time.
Happy birthday to you too!
Yeah, ok, I will admit to liking Redford & Newman & young Brando circa ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ — mostly because they did and still do so much in their philanthropic work (Sundance Film Festival and Newman’s Own Sauces where the profit allocation to charitable causes is simply inspirational) and they’re intelligent, talented and articulate guys.
Nonetheless, I’ve never had any posters of them on my walls and never queued to catch a glimpse of them at premieres.
The whole Rickrollin’ phenomenon has been a hoot but, no, I’ve never bought or owned a Rick Astley album or single. I have paid for Abba, Nirvana, Duke Ellington, Swingbeat, Herbert von Karajan and Whitney Houston box sets, though.