celebrity lookeylikey of the day

One of the slightly irritating features of Twitter is the tweets that pop up in your timeline flagged (in small type below) as "Promoted", which basically means it's an advert someone has paid to thrust uninvited under my nose while I'm scrolling. One that popped up a number of times recently was a trailer for the new film Vice, which appears to be a satirical comedy-drama focusing on Dick Cheney's term as vice-president of the USA. Cheney, a fascinatingly reptilian character, is portrayed in fairly remarkable fashion by Christian Bale - remarkable for the amount of weight gain he had to do for the role, as well as needing to look older than he is (Bale is a fairly youthful 44, Cheney was 59 when he became vice-president, and a fairly prematurely-aged 59 at that having already had at least three heart attacks). It's sort of the opposite of the more disturbing transformation Bale underwent to portray the title character in weird psycho-thriller The Machinist.

I'm not planning on rushing out to see Vice, but Bale's transformation looks pretty startling and his resemblance to Cheney is pretty close. Sam Rockwell as his boss George W Bush does a pretty good job as well, certainly managing a closer physical resemblance than Josh Brolin in W, who was just a bit too square-jawed and rugged and not quite shifty enough.

All the pizza-guzzling and sitting around could have been avoided, though, if they'd just employed the bloke who played the other Lebowski in The Big Lebowski (one of my favourite films, I feel obliged to point out). The character was played by David Huddleston and I can only speculate that the reason they didn't employ him to play Cheney is that at the time of filming he'd been dead for two years.

Anyway, here are Cheney, Bale as Cheney and Huddleston as Lebowski.

Secondly, here's another island-based one after the roaring success of my earlier post featuring the Russian island of Sakhalin. Sakhalin at 23rd-largest island in the world is pretty piddling small beer compared to today's contender, though, as it's the 5th-largest. Not nearly enough is made, in my opinion, of the resemblance of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago to a small dog, maybe something like a West Highland White Terrier (just because they have stubby legs and are appropriately snow-coloured). Partly this is because, you know, who gives a fuck, but also because to really see it you have to rotate the standard north-upwards map view through about 135 degrees and clear away some of the clutter of smaller islands that get in the way. Luckily for you, I've done it for you, so voilà:

As it happens we have four Westies in our house. They are spliced together side-to-side (not, thankfully, end-to-end in some hideous Canine Centipede arrangement) and are holding the lounge door open when they're not being kicked around by the kids.

we have acquired a doorstop (H's gran has a thing for Westies). According to Nia their names are Joe, Bessie, Morgan and Fanny. #fnarr pic.twitter.com/dhSLhghQIM

— Dave Thomas (@electrichalibut) November 3, 2017