In the spirit of the admittedly adolescent WJWYD thought exercise PJ got me on a while back, an omnipresent magazine cover got me ruminating on the topic of Fergie. By which I could be referring to any number of things, such as:
1. Sir Alex Ferguson
The Manchester United boss is always spoken of by his proteges with great respect for his leadership and coaching skills, but also with a mixture of fear and amusement at his personality, because he's a total screaming lunatic. Seriously, he's one of those people whose knighthood single-handedly makes the case that KBE's, OBE's, MBE's and the like have become like winning a Hello magazine outstanding celebrity of the year award. It's not exactly like winning a Fields Medal when you give it out to somebody as classless as Ferguson because somebody blew their marking assignment on a corner kicks. Obviously a great football coach, whose career is symbolized by two things: winning the treble in '99, which is a unique sporting achievement, and kicking a spiked cleat at David Beckham's head during a locker room tirade, which he apparently did on a regular basis. (He kicked things at everybody, but Becks was the only one to play it up to the press for a purple heart.) Well, that and stuff like when Arsenal went the whole year without losing a game with Fergie proclaiming the whole time that Arsenal were still not in the same class as 3rd place finishers Man U.
2. Sarah Ferguson
The original tabloid era Fergie, or at least the first one I remember, but really better known as the redhead from the Weight Watchers ads. She married a shithead with a big house on the rebound when he couldn't work up the nerve to bring his former softcore porn actress girlfriend home to mother, (making it more amusing that his mommy was just portrayed onscreen by one of the stars of Caligula), and when she divorced him, she had to lose a lot of weight to get back into the market... this appears to be her entire claim to credibility when sharing her nutritional insights. Fergie also introduced Diana Spencer to her husband, which worked out great for her. By the way, I refer to her ex as a shithead because he was famous for his racist rants regarding what had to be done about his brother's ex-wife's boyfriend, combining hysteria over protecting the virtue of white women with a view that married women are the property of their male relatives.
3. Fergus from The Crying Game
Okay, while never referred to as Fergie, he was a fascinating character in a great movie, an inspired twist on Cal, which exposed me to the understated presence of Stephen Rea (as Fergus). Like a number of Rea's characters, Fergus has this sensitive and unassuming demeanor that makes him seem like a reserved, simple man adrift in the big city, but obscures this double life as a terrorist with an incredible aptitude for killing people. Fergus has the wit and the will to completely subsume himself into Jimmy the shy, sensitive construction worker, but within seconds he can plan and execute a shocking act of violence against somebody who'll never see it coming, even when they're talking directly to him. There are shades of this quiet man with kind, tired eyes hiding a streak of ruthless determination in Michael Collins and V for Vendetta as well. I'm just saying, even for the 90 minutes he appeared as Fergus, Stephen Rea he merits a little more study than the Dutchess of Pork.
4. Fergus Falls, MN
Sadly, when it comes to alliterative Minnesota towns, Fergus Falls falls rather short of the fictional Frostbite Falls in notoriety, and can't even claim to be the inspiration (Frostbite Falls is based on International Falls, MN). Without the lingering spirit of KGB agents and the antics of Moose and Squirrel hanging over the place, I couldn't really be bothered to do too much research on Fergus Falls. Especially when I could be watching such fine films as the Sci-Fi channel's homage to Hitchcock and Du Maurier featuring marauding killer crows, titled simply, Kaw. Seriously, they managed to come up with a title that promised even less quality film-making than their previous opus, Mansquito.
5. Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas
I first became aware of this Fergie when she was on some embarrassing moments show for having (allegedly) wet herself on-stage, and that may make her seem a little silly to me. The Black Eyed Peas strike me as kind of an overproduced version of Outkast, partly because of their overplayed endorsement deals with BBY, and also because of that song where they took that Dick Dale surf guitar song popularized by Quentin Tarantino, and updated it by adding a drum machine and shouting"Louder!" over it. The last time I saw them anywhere, they had four rotating singers trying to stamp their own mark on the song, with all of them but Fergie really overdoing it (one looked like he was having a seizure). It was like an American Idol montage where everybody dresses up like a cowboy, grins like a Stepford wife, and tries to be memorable singing one line of a song, only in this case were already signed and getting paid. Andre 3000 turned out to be surprisingly entertaining in his forays into acting (Dabu!), so I may warm up to Fergie depending on how she is in Grindhouse.
Which I suppose brings me to what my question should be... which Fergie was the right one to appear in Grindhouse? A question that may inspire me to getting around to seeing it soon.
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