Allow me to share a story I've just told a friend in the Tex-Mex restraunt that fills the shell where the London Embassy of the Lone Star state once stood.
I have a new hero.
Julie Strain.
Until a week ago, I knew virtually nothing about Julie Strain. Oh sure - I knew about her. B-Movies. Penthouse Pet of the year. Kevin "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turles" Eastman's missus. Not because I experienced any - just because she was the basis for the character in Ritual's FAKK 2, the videogame of the second Heavy Metal film, and were embarassed by having PR materials with her image plastered all over sent to the office.
Yeah, I know. It's just that serious videogames journalists tend towards a puritanical stance towards anything that touches on titilation, as an over-reaction against the puerility of everyone else. It's a tad dumb, but no-one's perfect.
If memory serves, we were even offered an interview circa the game, which we turned our nose at up. It is not for us.
This changes entirely, in a heartbeat, after reading a paragraph buried towards the end of a feature on B-Movie actresses in the Saturday Guardian's TV bits. Seems that I didn't know the interesting bits of the Strain story. In fact, since I'm basing it purely off a single paragraph, this is more a reflection of me than anything else. But - y'know - so fucking what?
Basically, it said that Julie spent most of her twenties as a happy, contented house-person. She'd probably have continued in a similar pathway if it wasn't for a freak horse-riding accident which resulted in her with amnesia so serious that she had to spend the next two years learning to read and write again, and essentially rebuilding herself from the ground-up.
And, when it came down to it, why not be a ludicrous playboy pet, B-movie actress and giant dominatrix figure? Seems as good as any.
Every second of your life, you decide who you want to be.
You can always change your mind.
This one's for the friend I told this story to and the other old friend who he's shagging.
They've decided to be adventurers.
