Ballyhoo and Yank speak
Fans of Mao Kelly, the Irish-born outcast of Chinese parentage and hero of "Think or Swim", an episodic fiction set in a near-future Europe, can now follow his adventures at Ballyhoo, a blog dedicated to his doings. Mao's regular appearances at Rainy Day have come to a close, but we'll be mentioning the Ballyhoo updates, when his creator manages to churn them out.
Rainy Day, meanwhile, will be concentrating on the usual ephemera: sport, film, life, death, weather, technology and politics. Oh, and a bit of culture, now and then. Talking of which, "How Not to do an American Accent" is very entertaining indeed. Brits think it's dead easy to imitate Yanks, but it ain't so. BBC correspondent Stephen Robb took a course with Hollywood's top accent coach and still came out sounding like a "slightly camp game show host with an occasional lisp." This just serves to emphasize the amazing accent achievements of the English actors Dominic West and Idris Elba and Irish luvvie Aidan Gillen in what's being called the best television series ever made because the three of them learned to speak excellent American for the show. Looks easy, but you try it. "Ain't nothin' goin' on", as these masters of stateside negative construction could attest.
