Hank’s plight

New York – Playing a solo castaway on a tropical island turned out to be hard work for Tom Hanks.

Hanks’ character in Cast Away is marooned for four years, so co-star Helen Hunt wasn’t around for the scenes filmed in Fiji.

"It makes you crazy," he told Time magazine of playing a character who is all by himself. "You’re not sharing the storytelling, living with someone you can react off of.

"It’s almost like making a silent movie. You have to tell every aspect of the story physically, being totally alone."

Hanks also had to drop 55 to 60 pounds for his role. – AP

1. A plight is a kind of situation or experience. From the story you can guess what kind of situation or experience it is. Is it pleasant or unpleasant.
2. Three words in the story are closely related. They are solo, castaway and marooned. They all involve being ________.
3. Use the above three words to fill in the blanks in the following sentence:
   
   In the movie Tom Hanks played a ______ __________ who was ___________ for four years on a tropical island after his ship was lost at sea.
4. Now try to guess what each of these words means.
   
   1. solo:
   2. castaway:
   3. marooned:
5. What were two difficulties that Mr Hanks had in playing his character?

Oops!

New York – Read Britney Spears’ lips about the rumours that she lipsynchs.

"There’s a delay in the screen above me, so if you listen to the music and watch the screen, they don’t synch up," Spears says about her live performances. "I think that confuses people. But I’m singing every song."

Once in a while, though, the 18-year old pop songstress, whose debut album Baby One More Time sold 9 million copies, gets a little help.

"There are times during the show, when I’m dancing so much, where I get out of breath, and we have a signal where I’m dying and they’ll help me out," she says in the latest Rolling Stone magazine.

Her follow-up album, Oops!… I Did It Again, has just been released. – AP

6. The word oops is used in the name of Britney Spears’ latest album, but it is also a common expression in daily life. In which of the following situations would you most likely use it?
   
   1. When you do something very exciting.
   2. When you do something that is a lot of fun.
   3. When you realise that you have made a mistake.
   4. When you want to get someone’s attention.
7. In this story, the expression "read Britney Spears’ lips" is used just for fun. But reading lips does have a meaning. In fact, some people work hard to learn the skill – especially people who
   
   1. are unable to hear
   2. often make speeches in public
   3. act in the movies
   4. do a lot of reading
8. What does "read Britney Spears’ lips" mean in the story above?
9. The above story is really about another use of the lips, however, and that is "lipsynching" Before you try to figure out what that means, here are some example sentences which contain closely related words and expressions.
   
   • The attack was planned for exactly 11:43 p.m. so all the commanders synchronised their watches.
   • The dancers were terribly out-of-synch. Some were too fast and others were too slow.
   • Synchronised swimming can be beautiful with all the swimmers moving in exactly the same way at exactly the same time.
   Now, read the story and decide what it means to lipsynch.
   
   
   

   Friends in need

   Los Angeles – The stars of the hit TV comedy Friends have been persuaded to stay with the show for another two seasons in a deal which will net each of the actors a very friendly 750,000 dollars per episode.

   That rate, arrived at after weeks of acrimonious negotiations, represents a whopping six-fold increase over the 125,000 dollars an episode each actor gets now.

   According to reports, each of the six stars – Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox Arquette, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer – will get about 40 million over two years. The deal was struck just hours before the deadline for announcing next year’s shows. – dpa

   10. Calculate in Thai baht how much each star of Friends will receive for each episode under the new contract and the old contract.
       • For clever mathematicians: use information from the story to determine approximately how many episodes of Friends will be produced each year.
   11. Here are some possible meanings for the adjective acrimonious. From the story, which one do you think is the correct one? a. friendly b. unfriendly c. decided quickly d. easy
   12. Suppose you were the executive in charge of the company producing the show Friends. Why were you willing to pay so much money to each of the stars? Which two factors do you think were the most important in making the decision.
       1. the acting abilities of the stars
       2. the number of people who watch the show each week
       3. the amount of money advertisers are willing to pay to sponsor the show
       4. the amount of work the stars much do each week to finish the show on time
   
   
   

   Goodbye The Bear

   Los Angeles – Hollywood’s star bear has passed on to the great cave in the sky after a 15-year acting career.

   Bart the Bear died earlier this month after a two-year battle with cancer.

   He had starred with Anthony Hopkins in The Edge and wrestled Brad Pitt in Legends of the Fall. He also appeared with John Candy and Dan Aykroyd in Great Outdoors, and Ethan Hawke in White Fang.

   Perhaps his best role was when he was the star in 1989’s The Bear.

   Bart was born in January 1977 in a Baltimore zoo and was adopted by the animal trainers Doug and Lynne Seus. Bart is survived by his bear brother, Tank. – dpa

   13. Where do bears go when they die? (Different cultures usually have different ideas of what heaven might be like. Some American Indians who depended on hunting for their livelihood supposedly thought of heaven as a "great hunting ground in the sky". If that is the case, what would a heaven for bears be like? You can see that the writer of the above story answers that question in a humorous way.)
   14. How old was Bart when he died?
   15. Was Bart originally a wild bear?

The second activity focuses on the "celebrity shorts" column in real.time. This is quite popular with young people and it is a good place to start with students.

The activity uses a question-and-answer format, but for the most part the questions are not typical of questions that you usually find in comprehension exercises. Instead, they are skill-building questions which will cause you students to do some thinking instead of just looking for "the answer" in the story. In fact, some of the questions can’t be answered from the story alone. In fact, some of your students may not be able to answer them at all despite the help given to lead them to the answer.

You will also notice that there is a wide variety of questions. Some are designed to help your students notice the humorous writing style favoured by the writers of this type of story. Others focus on building vocabulary skills and still others are intended to start your students thinking more deeply about the stories’ content. For the most part, they were fun to write and that usually means that they will be fun to answer as well.

Reading practice answers

1. unpleasant 2. alone 3. solo, castaway, marooned 4. solo: single castaway: a person who has escaped from a sinking ship marooned: left in a place from which you cannot escape 5. He had to play his character alone without other actors to work with. He had to lose a lot of weight. 6. c 7. a 8. Read what Britney says 9. It means to pretend to sing by moving your lips with a recorded song 10. Baht 29,250,000 at 39 baht per US dollar About 26 - 27 episodes per year (dividing 40 million by 750 thousand equals 53.3 over two years) 11. b 12. b and c (b influences c and together they determine how much money is available to pay the stars) 13. to the great cave in the sky 14. 23 15. No

Next week: Like almost everyone else in Thailand, post tips will focus next week on Euro 2000, the football competition that is robbing many Thai students of sleep and some students of their money as well.