My review is about Greg
Shapiro’s performance at our school. He was this evening at our school, Johan
de Witt-Gymnasium in Dordrecht, for the FCE/CAE Diploma Ceremony.
He is a stand up comedian from
America, but he lives in Holland for over a long time now.
In his show, named "How To Be Orange", he compared
Dutch habits, names and even the Dutch Anthem! I never thought that there was
anything funny about our Anthem, but Shapiro’s show proved the opposite.
It was really comic to hear
a foreigner’s opinion about some ordinary Dutch things.
He presented in a easy an
comfortable way; no difficult words or expressions and his jokes weren’t rude. He had an infectious way of laughing and
in a few moment the audience was wrapped around his finger. Brilliant!
So when his show was over,
you noticed that everyone enjoyed his performance.
Me and my friend repeated his
jokes over and over again, we couldn’t get enough of it!
It was a great evening, I
really enjoyed the performance of Greg Shapiro!
‘Norma Jean Mortenson’. You
probably don’t know who this is. But if you hear or read the name ‘Marilyn
Monroe’, you know exactly who she is. She is one of the most famous women ever
and a model for women all over the world.
Marilyn Monroe was born on
the first of August in 1926. She hadn’t an easy childhood.
Her mother, Gladys Baker (originally
named as Gladys Pearl Monroe), had relationships with several men. She was also
a drug addict and left the nurture of her daughter to her friends Ida and
Albert Bolender.
When, after a couple of
years, Gladys took Marilyn back and settled in a old hovel, she got a mental
breakdown. Because of the mental conditions of her drug using mother, Marilyn
was placed in the family of Grace McKee.
She would never had a good
band with her mother. Later, in an interview, she said: “To me, she was just
that red-haired woman.”
But when the McKee family
had to move to the West Coast of America, Marilyn had two choices. The first
one was to go to an orphanage, the second was to get married.
She choose the second. So
when she was sixteen years old, she married in 1942 her neighbour of twenty-one,
called James Dougherty. But after complications, they divorced four years
later.
Meanwhile, Marilyn Monroe
was asked by a photographer to pose for a couple of photo shoots. She said yes because she was looking for a job
in Hollywood.
Under the name ‘Marilyn
Monroe’, she got a contract by a movie company but, apart from one small
supporting role which didn’t make the movie, she wasn’t succesfull.
The only thing she was
allowed to do was to dine with business partners of the film bosses.
At the end the fifties,
Marilyn set up her own movie company and moved to New York. She took professional
actor and singing lessons. She also dyed her hair blond.
In New York, she and had
some big successes.
Her first big role was in
the movie “How to Marry a Millionair”. Her biggest successes were “Gentleman Prefer
Blondes” with Jane Russell and “The Seven Year Itch”. This is the movie with
the famous white, blowing dress.
While she gained more successes,
her mental conditions changed. She used a lot medicines and alcohol. During the
filming of her last movie, called “Something’s Got to Give”, she was almost
never on the set.
Her mental problems, which
she presumably inherited from her mother, got worse.
An finally, on the fifth of
August in 1962, she was found dead by her housekeeper. She’d taken an overdose and
probably committed suicide.
Marilyn Monroe is buried on
the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.
If I would arrange a
holiday, with no conditions and if money wouldn't matter, the trip would go to
The United States of America. My dream is to make a road trip across the
country.
I've been in the United
States before; me and my family visited the State of Florida.
I was eight years old and
we had en fantastic summer holiday. We stayed for three weeks in several
cities.
We started in Orlando and
after eight day's we went on to Miami. After two days in Miami we visited Key
Largo for a few days.
Our trip continued and the
next stop was Fort Myers. Unfortunately we had only one day in Fort Myers,
because it was a stopover for the long way to Saint Petersburg. We spent the
last ten days in St. Pete Beach. At the end of our holiday, we went back to
Orlando to catch our flight back to Europe.
So I've seen Florida now,
but there is still al lot of the United States I would love to see.
I want to make this trip
with a group of friend when I’m a young adult, around the age of nineteen. This
is when you’ve finished high school and, maybe, you’re going to college.
I think if you want to make
a road trip like this, you have to do it then. Because when you’re done with
college or your study, you’re quickly going to apply for a job. Then you have
no time or you’re too old.
I would first buy a plane
ticket of a flight to the JFK Airport at New York City. From there, I rent a
car (I would prefer a convertible!) and head west. The main side of this journey
is that there are no obligations. If we like a place or city, we stay as long
as we want to.
There are a few cities I
really like to visit.
For example Chicago in the Lake
District, located in the State of Illinois, Phoenix in the State of Arizona,
the fabulous Las Vegas in the State Nevada and of course San Francisco and Los
Angeles in the State of California.
All the other destinations
won’t be planed, the will decided at the moment we want.
During this trip, I would
make an awful lot of pictures!
When we’re back in Holland,
I would make a scrapbook for everyone with the amazing moments we had in America
, so when we’re old and grey, we would
open this scrapbook once again and think back to the road trip across United
States.
