My first date was at the cinema. We’d agreed to meet after slow dancing to Whigfield’s ‘The Summer is Magic’ a week earlier and I felt good. It’s hard to remember where I got the confidence from. I had taken my mom’s advice and gone for a chino, blue denim shirt and tartan waistcoat combination that made me look like a 43-year-old midget. My hair was cut short and brushed in a middle parting, which made my ears stick out.

The venue was Blue Route Shopping Mall on the outskirts of everything. I arrived an hour early. I walked around the mall with my hands in my pockets, my leather shoes squeaking on the tiled floor, trying to act nonchalant but coming across shifty. I checked my watch far too often and reading the Spur menu three times. I think Dr. Alban was playing on the mall PA. “It’s my life,” he sang.

She arrived. With nine of her friends. I counted them as they approached, giggling and pointing and whispering into cupped hands. They walked in goose-formation; my date at the front. We shook hands. They giggled. I went for a hug. They giggled louder. I offered to buy her ticket; one of the girls burst out laughing.

The critically acclaimed You Don’t Mess With The Zohan, in which Adam Sandler plays an Israeli soldier turned hairdresser, is out this month. Here, the film’s star and co-writer talks about getting intimate with geriatrics, bad hair and working out his rear end.

Face Off
Maybe you’re someone who likes dressing like Elton John, holding a copy of Yellow Brick Road in front of your face and asking your friend to take a photo of you. Or maybe you’re normal. Either way, the former entertain the latter on www.sleeveface.com; a site that explains how doing something inane and irrelevant can also be strangely entertaining.

The G-Spot

The first time Ryan Cannell went to the Grahamstown National Arts Festival, he was in the throes of puberty and subject to the dull whims of his parents. Not this time.

Survival on Planet Celluloid

Celluloid has changed the world of storytelling. And it’s shifted the way audiences engage with the storyteller. Leonie Joubert sulks a bit as she considers a world where the entertainer is king and wonders how Brangelina’s twins might help to save the earth.

Life in black and white
You’d be forgiven for thinking that doing up your home in two colours would give the impression of being an obsessive compulsive neat freak. Not if you’re clever about it, says Janice Anderssen.

Inflation is on the rampage in South Africa and it’s going to get worse before it gets better, says David Mayfield.

While food and fuel costs have been soaring, the prices of other consumable goods - in categories like household operation costs, furniture and clothing - are also rising faster than had been expected.