Bad-Press For Eugene

You can go years without hearing a bad word about Eugene. Then on the day you decide to change your name to Eugene, Eugene gets bad-press.

Guardian, 6^th April 2010

Blow it, if it doesn’t happen again following morning: another Eugene in another newspaper: same bad-press. The concept of ‘handing yourself in’ is odd. How do you do it? Sit on your hands? It’s the ‘yourself bit’ that bothers me. Where, if they (the police) appealed for you to ‘hand a bit of yourself in’ – the bit that’s committed the crime - the offending bit... rapists would look-like real wankers. 

Western Mail, Wednesday, 7^th April 2010

Opened the paper this morning: Malcolm McLaren’s dead. Tiger Woods is playing (well) in the ‘Open’, his first tournament appearance since being treated for sex-addiction. And a letter in the ‘Sexual healing’ column (more 'offending bits') starts off: “As a 40-year-old lesbian I’ve seen labia of many shapes and sizes, but have yet to see any as large as mine…” 

Guardian, 9^Th April 2010

On the opposite page there’s an advert for a Bolshoi Opera production of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Oengin.  But it’s the Bolshoi Ballet’s production of Spartacus – with Ivan Vasilev dancing in the air - that catches my eye. 

Lorne Hyman Greene & Rita Hands

I think I think I’m going to change my name, to Eugene Bridges. This’ll be, ‘Gene Bridges Connects’. Ironic: I’m doing it to disconnect my family. Childish. I know. And I know I should know better at my age

It was very nearly, Piers. But Piers Bridges is a contradiction of a name: all piers are wannabe bridges; piers are unfinished bridges; piers are bridges with arrested development; piers are bridges that never grew-up. Bridges and piers: arch enemies. Yet I’ve spent years underneath the arches, doing one-arm-pull-ups - OAPs - on bridges. OAPs leave DNA - genetic fingerprints - from cut fingers and calluses: a combination of gymnastics and genetics. Gene was born where genes were left - beneath a bridge: Eugene Bridges.

Talking of OAPs. I push a woman around, and she has to call me Eugene, even though she’s always known me as Greg. She’s ninety and not entirely comfortable with Eugene yet. If, when we’re out together, she reverts to calling me Greg: I stop pushing the wheelchair - abandon her in the busy street  - walk away - until I hear: “Eugene, come back”.

  A Butter Sculpture of Tiger Woods

Take Tiger Woods (and a lot of woman have): a Wood’s a type of golf club, and Tiger ‘gets-wood’ (fortunately, he’s been ‘treated’ for it: now, he’s ‘treated Wood'). And ever since he drove into that fire hydrant, the world, and his wife, knows, Tiger’s a tiger in bed. That reminds me: I once knew a bad Gene: ‘Golf Gene’ - a student – on, Golf Course Management. He once became so angry he punched a hole in a golf-green. There’s a thought. I could go for a colour. There must be somebody who went from Brown to Blue?

What about the actor, Lorne Greene? Greene was an aging actor (b.1915) when I used to watch him – playing a cowboy - in Bonanza. I wonder if he was a child-star, like Fay Wray: there’s a name? Fay Wray, ‘The Queen of Scream’. Be good if Lorne Green had have been a child-star. I could compile all the film-clips of him – make an art-film out of them - from his earliest appearances to his last - a Warholesque sequence - called, ‘Watching Lorne Greene Growing’: I can see it now - hours and hours of it - as interesting as ‘Empire State’. I wonder if it bored his parents: watching Lawn Greene grow? And was he by any chance an immaculate conception? I ask because Lorne Greene’s middle name was, Hyman! That reminds me: I need to go out and cover a golf hole with cling film

In 1938 Lorne Hyman Greene married a woman called Rita Hands.