More Stuff....

Craig Thomson (but not the politician)

Since I can't watch Home and Away anymore, I decided I'd keep the show in my heart by writing about more of the actors.

Oh...and also I dreamed about Martin Dibble last night. Or really the actor who plays him. Though I didn't know his name was Craig Thomson until this morning when I Googled.

I probably did know subconsciously, because I see his name in the credits every morning. Or I USED to see his name in the credits.

Lord Wiki has told me that there's an Australian politician named Craig Thomson. This Craig Thomson looks familiar to me, and now my memory has been jogged a bit. He's the guy who was in some big controversy. He was accused of theft and fraud. Did it have something to do with prostitution? I'm having vague memories here.

I'm skimming through Lord Wiki, probably missing important stuff. But I'm not seeing anything about prostitutes. What I do see is credit card fraud.

Is he the one that the Liberal Party accused Gillard of supporting? She wasn't hard enough on him?

Well...maybe.

I should get back to the other Craig Thomson.

Lord Wiki doesn't even want to talk about him, though he will talk about the character he played. Martin Dibble.

He was on the show from 1988-1990. Oh! So he would have been disappearing soon. I was watching 1990 episodes. I wonder what happened to Dibble.

Anyway...then he reappeared in 2000 and 2002.

I guess I'll read what Lord Wiki has to say about Martin Dibble. Though there might be spoilers.  I suppose that's okay since I might never get to see the show for myself.

Though this entry is about Martin Dibble, Lord Wiki does say a few things about Craig Thomson. He was asked to audition for the role when the producers saw him in a soft drink commercial.

I'm still reading the Lauren Graham book about acting. It's making me admit to myself that though I love actors and actresses, I also kind of despise them in a jealous-type way. However, I don't have these negative feelings towards people who are like the character in her book. These are the actors and actresses who really struggle. They go on auditions. They get rejected. They work as waiters and waitresses. They get offered embarrassing work, involving nudity, and have to decide if they want that on their IMDb filmography for the rest of their lives. I have a lot of empathy for these people.

But when I hear of people who were accidentally discovered— they went on an audition with their friend and the director decided this non-actor was perfect for the part. Well, that's just really annoying.

At first, I was thinking Craig Thomson would fit in the annoying camp. But I don't know. He was in a soft drink commercial. So it seems like he wanted to be an actor. It might have been he went on fifty auditions to get that one commercial.

Lord Wiki says that after Thomson got the role, he traveled to Western Australia to observe yobbos in action, so he could better understand his character.

Thomson has insightful opinions about the character. He says Dibble has a big ego and doesn't lose confidence when people reject him. It's like the opposite of people like me. I easily lose confidence when rejected. It would be nice to have more confidence and not rely on other people's opinion of me. But I can see how too much of a good thing can be bad. If you have complete confidence in yourself, and you don't care at all what people think, you might not try to grow as a person. If you have the delusion that you're perfect, why try to improve at all?

Thomson talks about Dibble's greed and selfishness. These traits make the character very annoying at times. At least I think so. Or maybe what's more annoying is that his best friend (Lance Smart) takes the abuse that comes from having a selfish and greedy friend.

No. I take that back. I think Dibble is more annoying. In any bad relationship, it's frustrating to see someone accepting the abuse. But the abuser is the worst one in the story.

Lord Wiki says that Thomson left the show in order to work on his band.

I'm tempted to read about Martin Dibble's storylines so I can see what happened to his character. But then I feel I'm giving up all hope of my return to 1990's Summer Bay.

 I'm not ready to give up hope yet.

Although I have seen spoilers about many other storylines.

You know, on the bright side....there's a certain upcoming storyline that look incredibly depressing to me. I think I'll be glad to miss it. It's a tiny bright side in a dark tunnel, because I'm really going to miss all the wonderful people in Summer Bay.

Here's Craig Thomson's website. There's a photo of him on the home page. He looks so different from Martin Dibble. But I can see a slight resemblance. I feel like I'm looking at Martin's more sophisticated older brother.

His website says he's done music, screen stuff besides Home and Away, and he worked with INXS.

He lived in Los Angeles for awhile, but is now back in Australia. I think the actor who played Lance Smart (Peter Vroom) lives in Los Angeles. He's a meditation guru of some type. I wonder if they lived there at the same time, and whether they hung out together at all.

I just looked at Vroom's site. It says he has meditation centers in Los Angeles, Sydney, and New York. I wonder if he travels back and forth a lot.

Thomson's website has a video he made. One of his songs. I'm going to watch it.  The song is called "Falling to Pieces". Now I can definitely see Martin Dibble.

I'm not sure how I feel about his voice.

You know what. He reminds me of someone. One of our ex-friends. I never thought this when seeing Martin Dibble. But here he has a goatee, and with the goatee there's definitely a resemblance.

I like the song and I love Thomson's spirit. I don't think he has a fabulous voice. At least not in this song. But that doesn't always matter. I have a fabulous voice, but since I can't write songs and I don't play an instrument....it's pretty worthless.

The biography page on Craig Thomson's site says his voice is like Mick Jagger. Really? That makes me feel kind of stupid. It's like I've insulted Mick Jagger's voice.

I'm not really a good judge of voices...which makes me have to question the fact that I think my singing is fabulous.

It says here that Thomson did a song called "I Want You To Want Me". I thought that was a Culture Club song.

Well, I'm seeing from Google that I'm wrong. It's not Culture Club. It's by a group called Cheap Trick.

I'm guessing Thomson's song was a cover, though it doesn't say that on his website. It kind of sounds like it's an original song. If it's not a different song, I think the website is a little misleading.

I was trying to hear him sing the song, but all the websites with the song aren't working. Well, the websites are working, but the song isn't.

In a way, Craig Thomson reminds me of Martin Dibble. It's just I get the sense that he's a not-very-successful musician. But he's trying to look like he's doing very well.

That doesn't mean he doesn't deserve to be successful or that he won't be very successful one day. It's just right now I think he's a bit of a loser. Like me! I don't work hard to hide my lack of success. Maybe I'd be more successful if I did. I could pretend to be some huge novelist and blogger even though hardly anyone buys my novel and I don't have a huge number of people coming to my blog.

But his song on YouTube has gotten only 418 views. A lot of people get much more than that. Not me, though!

I was just trying to find my own videos to see how I compare to Craig Thomson. I get so lost on YouTube, and I ended up seeing that Jack uploaded a video yesterday! I didn't know about it. He didn't tell me. Though he did tell me he was planning to make a video. But he says that a lot, and it often doesn't end up happening. I guess he expected me to see it since I subscribe to his videos. But I didn't because as I said before, I'm lost when it comes to YouTube. I mean not lost in general. I'm lost when it comes to my own channel and the whole subscribing thing. I try to get there and end up on my stupid Google+ page.

Okay. I found my videos. The most popular video on my channel is actually a video made by Jack (before he made his own channel). It's a time lapse movie of him building a Lego Hero Factory thing. He has 1627 views. He's more popular than me and Craig Thomson.

I have two videos (not made by Jack) that are slightly more popular than Thomson's. One's a montage video of our trip to NYC (557 views). The other is of Jack talking when he was three-years-old (550 views).

Since I'm sitting here comparing myself to Thomson like we're siblings, I'll have to admit he wins in the YouTube rivalry. My videos have more views than his, but they've been up since 2008.  That's six years ago. Thompson's music video has been up only since February of this year.

Who knows what will happen by 2015. He might have thousands of views.

I just noticed he has other songs on his website. I'm listening to a song called "Goin' Down" It's pretty nice.

I like it.

I'm looking at Thompson's other screen work on IMDb. In 2003, he was in an American TV movie with Naveen Andrews.

Someone on the IMDb message board says it's difficult to find.

I followed some links and ended up on Thompson's Twitter page. That's good, because I was hoping he had one.

His last Tweet was on July 4. He did a solo gig at the Macquarie Arms Hotel in Windsor. That's cool. I hope it went well.

But again, I see his popularity on the Internet is not much higher than mine. No one favorited or Retweeted his announcement. No one replied. That's what usually happens to my posts.

I don't know why I'm sitting here pointing out Craig Thomson's lack of popularity. Maybe it makes me feel less alone. And it's a reminder that popularity isn't a constant. At one time he was an actor on a hit TV show. One day a miracle might happen and my writing may become famous. Then a few years later, I could be forgotten.

He has an Instagram photo of his son. Or grandson?  He says in the caption: Man I'm so proud of my boy. He has been awesome this week and he lifts his Granddad everyday....

Is Thomson the mentioned grandfather? Is he talking about himself in third person? Or is he talking about his father or father-in-law?

The kid is adorable, though. I'll say that.

I just started following him on Instagram. I have this fantasy he'll follow me back; or at least check out my pictures. And my latest picture is my boo-hoo story about not being able to see Home and Away anymore. He'll look at it and say Oh, you poor American girl. It turns out I have DVD's of all the classic Home and Away episodes. I'll send them to you.

Oh! This is so cool. One of his Instagram photos is of a Mad Magazine parody of Home and Away. I didn't know this, but there was an Aussie version of the magazine. So cool. Now I'm having another Craig Thomson fantasy. It turns out he used to collect these magazines and he takes a photo of each of the covers and puts it on Instagram.

Here's an adorable selfie with Thomson and the mystery boy. Son or grandson. Thomson seems young to be a grandfather, but it could happen. I mean I'm 41 and I could be a grandmother. If I had a child when I was 19, the kid would now be 22 and it's very possible for a 22 year-old to have a child. Right?

Thompson is older than me, so there's even more of a chance he could be a grandfather.

That reminds me. I forgot to try to find his age.

IMDb doesn't have it.  On Home and Away, he played a young adult—probably in his early 20's?  So let's say when he was on that show, he was somewhere between the ages of 20 and 25. That means now he'd be about...I'd say maybe 44-49?

Okay. Here Thomson is showing recognition of the fact that his career isn't exactly blossoming at this point. It's a photo of a UK award he got for good music sales. He says, Unpacking the other day thought i would share this. I have a feeling I may not get another one for a while.

He's hopeful, though. That's good. It's not like he says he has a feeling he'll never get one again.

Who knows what the future holds for any of us. By next year, he could be a huge music star. Or maybe he'll pursue another talent. Maybe photography? Painting? Go back to acting?

Or he could still be not-so-popular, but be incredibly happy because he has a wonderful adorable family.

I'm not popular and I'm very happy most of the time.

I might be happier if I was more popular. I'd definitely be happier if I could still hang out with Martin Dibble and Lance Smart in Summer Bay. And I'd be super happy if someone said there was a huge mistake. Robin Williams is alive and it was all a crazy publicity stunt.

But as the song says....You can't always get what you want.











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