Adventures in the DJ Game, Part 2: That's Certainly Not Radio Friendly!

I was driving home listening to one of the crappy FM stations I have on preset (Nova FM, actually, because of the show that Shaun Micallef does in the mornings) and they were interviewing the lead singer of the Angels.

He was talking about how Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again? is actually about someone whose lover has died, leaving the person to wander the streets wondering if there's an afterlife. They then played a slow, acoustic version of the song, and for the first time ever, I actually liked it.

Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again? was a song you had to be careful about the times you chose to play it, as it's become engrained in Australian culture to respond to the chorus with a large chant of "No way! Get fucked! Fuck off!". I find it kind of depressing that such a poignant song has become such a crude punchline.

Of course, I didn't know about the tradition before starting the DJ job, and discovered it when I first played the song at a wedding reception. By that stage of the evening, the groom and all his groomsmen had had enough to drink that they had absolutely no qualms in screaming all the obscenities they could in front of all their oldest relatives. The night finished with all of them topless and rolling around on the floor grinding against one another.

And continuing the trend of communal homoeroticism, I also found out on the job that UQ students have a strange compulsion to drop their pants during Eagle Rock.

Apparently it started as a trend amongst UQ students in the '70s, where instead of "Eagle Rock" they'd sing "Eagle Drop", and spend the rest of the song - if not the rest of the night - with their pants around their ankles.

But I think the pinnacle of this strange manly behaviour came from one extremely blokey male at a uni ball, who after requesting AC/DC and 50 Cent, turned to his mates and said "If I don't get Beautiful Soul by Jesse McCartney played I'll just die!!!"

We didn't play it. He didn't live up to his promise.

Fuggedaboudit!

I always copped a bit of an attitude about The Sopranos. Whenever I saw it on TV, it seemed to involve reprehensible people doing reprehensible things and not much else. But stuck for something to watch the other weekend, I decided to take advantage of Ben’s recent purchase of almost the entire series on DVD …

And now I’m hooked.

The show’s much, much better than I initially gave it credit for; I finally see what everyone was raving about all this time. Tony is a truly three-dimensional character, as likeable as he is detestable. On one hand he’s a brutal and unforgiving crime lord, while on the other he’s a caring family man, with a great deal of conflict from trying to integrate the two personas.

I’m up to season 3 now, watching it on a daily basis. In fact, the whole exercise seems to be a repeat of my Entourage experience, where I was initially unimpressed only to completely turn around after giving it a chance.

If you’ve tried watching The Sopranos in the past and come away cold, I recommend sitting down and starting from the beginning. You may very well end up a convert!

Absolute Worst Bloke Joke Going Around at the Moment

“I know you’ve all been worried about me, but there’s no need. The equine flu only affects horses, not blokes hung like them!”, and variations thereof.

Ah ha. Ah ha ha. Ah ha ha ha ha ha.

*gag*

If I hear this joke one more time, I am going to kick the person in their allegedly large appendage.

(And with that, I now crack the more-posts-than-days-in-the-month barrier. Everybody, CELEBRATE!!!)

Sooo Close!

One more post after this one and not only do I break my record of most-posts-in-a-month, but I also have more posts than there are days in the month! And that's no mean feat in 31-days-has-August!

And yes, I know this post is kind of cheating. But look the other way and I'll slip you a G Note.

In Your Face!

Major thanks go to Sarah for discovering and then sending me the best, most futuristic, and possibly most useless sight on the Internet! Everyone's played the game where you try to decide what famous people your friends look like. Well, now you can get it done via the wonders of technology!!!

After you register and upload a photo, it gives you a breakdown of what public figures you most resemble on a percentage basis. Apparently, I closely resemble Steven Spielberg, Michael Douglas, Candice Bergen, Toney Leung and Matt Lauer !!! So all you bastards who called me ugly can now officially suck it !!!

... *ahem*. Sorry about that.

In any case, it's awesome. Go there now. Tell your friends. And if you don't like your first lot of results, bear in mind you get different outcomes if you try different photos. Maybe that invalidates the authority of the whole thing, but who cares about that??

EDIT: I tried it again with another photo and got 71% Jesse Bradford! (And 59% James Spader!). Screw relationships! I'm gonna date me!

The Doctor Is In

Things have been really quiet at work this week, and I've been meaning to go to the doctor for a long time now, so I decided to take the day off and bite the bullet.

I made an appointment for the health centre across the road, but I got a call back saying the doctor was leaving early and would have to cancel. I called up pretty much every other doctor's office in the local area, but they were all booked. Eventually I got on to one that didn't take appointments, but rather saw people on a first-come-first-serve basis.

I rocked up at the time the place opened up after lunch to find a couple of people already waiting outside. I have to admit, I was a little worried the place was more of a methadone clinic than a general practitioner's, and that maybe I'd be wasting everyone's time. But I stuck with it, and when the doors were opened I filled out the forms and took my seat in the waiting area.

Half-an-hour later everything was done and I'd purchased a great deal of peace of mind for myself. Things I've been meaning to get checked out for years - literally, years - have been seen to, and I feel quite positive about the whole thing.

So that was my Wednesday. Exciting, huh?

The Action Duo Versus the Mad Rooter

While I fully intend to relate some further stories of my time as an autonomous purveyor of partytastic fun (or, as the laymen put it, a “mobile DJ”), I figured I’d take a moment to tell you a story from the retail trade.

At the same time that I was DJing, I was also working a job at a DVD shop. Well, shop is probably too strong a term. It was technically a kiosk; a freestanding stall in the middle of the shopping centre’s walkway.

It was a pretty cushy job. We had almost no business, so there wasn’t very much to do. I have to admit, I spent a lot of time on Wikipedia.

As it turned out, the shopping centre was near an outpatient centre for a mental facility. Our regulars consisted of people who were … a little bit left of centre. There was one couple of guys who were quite unique.

The taller of the two was obsessed with action films, specifically of the ‘80s variety. He would ask question after question about what action films we had, often picking up cases and asking if they “any good” (by which he meant “does it have many explosions?”).

I think his happiest day was when he found Van Damme’s Bloodsport on our shelves at a discounted price. And although he never had the money to pay for it, I also made sure to keep a copy of the Rambo trilogy box set for him, as he liked turning it over in his hands and examining it in detail.

His friend, by comparison, was short, stout and almost completely silent. He reminded me a great deal of a male-version of Marilyn from Northern Exposure (pictured below); he had a quietly serene nature, coupled with a habit of staring intensely at you for long periods of time. I eventually become fascinated with his eyelashes – each of them looked like they were individually applied.

Separate to this pair – and I’m sure unrelated to the outpatient centre – was an elderly gentleman who’d come in on a weekly basis to troll through the discount films and ask if I’d seen them. He had terrible breath and body odour, and would often spend up to an hour quizzing me on classic movies, never getting beyond the question of whether or not I’d seen them. Certainly, he started off innocently enough, but it wasn’t long before he was coupling the questions about my knowledge of movies with tidbits about the sex lives of stars of yesteryear.

“She was a mad rooter!” He’d assert about Gloria Swanson or Ingrid Bergman. “She was gaggin’ for it! Loved to fuck!” He would then pick up a new movie and start all over again. “I’ve heard she was a sex maniac! Mad rooter! Always up for it!”

For the most part, the high-maintenance customers tended to drop in separately of one another, so you could deal with them easily. But I’ll always remember the day when the Action Duo met the Mad Rooter.

The kiosk was rectangular, with customers able to surround it at all sides if they so wished. The Mad Rooter was at the bargain bin on the far-left corner. The Action Duo were on the corner at the far right. I watched on in bemused curiosity and mild horror as the Action Duo made their way around the kiosk, making their way to the spot where the Mad Rooter was muttering to himself about so-and-so being “a right go-er”.

It was like watching hydrogen meet an open flame. Thankfully, the Mad Rooter kept his sexual proclivities to himself, but that didn’t keep him from asking his standard questions.

“Have you seen this? Have you seen this one?”

“Is it any good? Got much action? I like action.”

“What’ve you got there? Universal Soldier? No, mate, you don’t want that! You want a classic! You want Sunset Boulevard!”

“Is it any good? Got much action? I like action?”

“Have you seen it? Have you seen that one? Seen Sunset Boulevard?”

“I don’t know. Is it any good? Got much action? Many explosions?”

All the while, the serene sidekick of the Action Duo stared at me, a quizzical expression on his face, a half-smile playing at the corner of his mouth.

It was like time stood frozen. The continuum had kicked over into a loop and I was to be stuck here forevermore in a cycle of explosions and real go-ers.

But then, as if sensing my inner turmoil, Serenity took his friend by the hand and quietly, calmly spoke. “Gary, we have to go. Water Rats is on in half-an-hour.”

And with that, the flux was broken. The Action Duo made their way from the kiosk, and the Mad Rooter flipped through only a few more titles and asked me if I knew about the sex habits of their stars before he bid me farewell and vanished to places unknown.

I shook my head, amazed at how narrowly I had averted falling into some kind of sociological black hole.

I returned to my Pepsi and chicken nuggets, and looked up Sunset Boulevard on Wikipedia.

I had heard Gloria Swanson was a mad rooter …

I Am No Longer an eBay Virgin

On a whim, I decided to check the Australian eBay site for an extremely rare Playstation game I’ve been wanting to get my hands on for the past decade. This isn’t the first time I’ve made such an endeavour, but it was the first time that I actually came across a listing for the prized item. Behold! Bushido Blade!


Bushido Blade is an incredibly awesome game made by Squaresoft (the people who do the Final Fantasy series). It’s essentially a fighting game, where you select one of six samurai and square off against either the computer or a fellow player.

What makes it so unique is its level of realism; if you cut an opponent’s arm or leg, they can no longer use the injured limb. If you strike them fatally, they die. Simple as that. No “life bar”, no timer, no nothing. That means, if you strike quickly enough, an entire match can last two seconds before you stab your enemy in the chest.

With its medieval backdrops and realistic gameplay, the whole thing feels like a Kurosawa film. And while it’s not very visually sophisticated by today’s standards (it is ten years old, after all!) it’s still a great deal of fun to explore the world by running with your fellow player through the cherry blossom groves and the beaches-at-sunset that make up the game’s battle arenas.

So when I found the game listed for the princely sum of $1 (yes, one Australian dollar!) I immediately turned around and signed up for both an eBay and PayPal account. Until now I’d never come across anything on the site I’d be willing to go to the hassle and cost of procuring.

But I have now officially placed my bid, and in four days time, I will know whether or not I own my very own copy of Bushido Blade. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Adventures in the DJ Game (Part 1)

For a long time now I’ve been meaning to write a little bit about my experiences slipping on a bowtie and pressing play at formal events. Yes, for about a year-and-a-half, I was a professional mobile disc jockey.

I did everything, from birthdays to weddings, to school dances and … well, that’s about it, really, give or take. Shows varied from having 5, 000 people to 15. It was certainly an interesting experience … although it was also a gruelling and badly paid one.

The company was run by a guy called … well, let’s call him Terry Dangerman (he strikes me very much as being the kind of guy to regularly Google himself, and this way I avoid popping up on one of his searches).

Terry was a … unique individual. In addition to the DJ company he’d been running for 30 years, he was also a professional pornographer, taking pictures of nude models to sell to online porn sites. He ran the entire business out of his house – including the modelling, with his bedroom doubling as a studio. It wouldn’t have been so bad if not for the fact that it was a scungy little brick veneer place that he’d lived in since he was born and appeared not to have been cleaned in all that time.

His house – and all the equipment – reeked of dust, grease and solidified sweat. My co-workers were unwashed stoners, hypocritical “Christians” and hyped-up madmen. The abysmally small amount of money and the incredibly hard working conditions meant that eventually all but three of Terry’s employees were whittled away, so much so that we were struggling to get enough people together to do the jobs we booked.

One of my co-workers was a truly baffling enigma. We eventually dubbed him “Dangerboy” because of his zealous devotion to Terry. Dangerboy had a crew cut, a terrible skin condition, sub-par intelligence and the assertion that he was always right. It didn’t matter what the subject was, he bleated on about it as if he was the world’s foremost authority.

Dangerboy was also under the mistaken impression that he could dance. With the way he pumped the air and slammed his foot – completely out of time with the music – he was a sideshow oddity, with audience members pointing, staring and laughing at this guy up on stage, looking so much like a baboon dry-humping the air in front of him.

Dangerboy eventually became an ironic sensation; girls would get up to dance with him, take pictures with him, and the rest of us would stand off to the side, wondering what the hell was going on. I cringe to think of the handful of shows he soloed on; given his general demeanour, he wasn’t really trusted to do his own gigs, but during the times we were stretched really thin, there was no choice but to send him out. It might just be me, but I kind of like the idea of a DJ knowing a little bit about music, instead of being someone who’s under the impression that Nirvana is “techno music”.

But back to Terry. With the slight benefit of being one of the few employees who wasn’t completely retarded, I was offered the chance to do some office work and earn a bit more money. Thanks to the incredibly idiosyncratic method that Terry ran his business, it took me forever to learn the systems for everything. It didn’t help that I would often turn up to work to find the middle-aged, obese Terry sunning himself out the back in nothing but a pair of Speedos, leaving me to fight back my sense of nausea for the rest of the day.

It’s at this stage I interject a Googled photo of some random guy just in case the mental image wasn’t enough.

Terry would eat and talk with his mouth open, pieces of Subway (his standard meal) spitting everywhere. He had a terrible sense of humour, and yet he felt he was one of the funniest men in existence (barely a week wouldn’t go by without him repeating an off-the-cuff remark he’d made to an employee several years earlier; “There’s always a case for a minidisk!” Don’t get it? There’s not much to get!).

He’d drill us about treating the clients with respect, and then bitch and swear about them within earshot if they pissed him off during a performance. In fact, despite being a fairly amiable guy most of the time, if you had to assist him on a show, you had to prepare yourself to be screamed at and abused for a good ten or twelve hours.

He was homophobic, racist, hated young people and modern music, and was a total skinflint. He remains the only boss to have exposed me to porn (not that I had a major problem with it, but I remember the afternoon it happened walking out into the sunlight reflecting on the pure freaking absurdity of it).

For this man, I played well over seventy weddings, birthdays and assorted other celebrations. I wore a Dr Seuss style hat as I led conga lines at primary school dances. I worked the spotlight on the fighters and the topless ring girls at kickboxing tournaments. I hiked eighty-kilo equipment up and down cliff-faces, by myself, all so that a bunch of bogans could get pissed and fall unconscious to Dexys Midnight Runners at their wedding reception. I got beer bottles thrown at my head by yuppie UQ students and abused by middle-aged housewives on New Year’s Eve.

And yet … I kind of miss it. But then my back spasms and I thank God I don’t have to report for duty at DJ Dangerman’s Sound and Lighting ever again.

Secret Origins

Yes, I’ve crawled back out of my hole after only a few days to do what I do so well; bore you endlessly with geeky nonsense!

If you patrol movie news websites as tirelessly as I do, you’re no doubt aware of all the movement that’s happening on the Justice League movie.

The word is that Warner Brothers is keen to get a JL movie happening as soon as possible, with a strike looming on the horizon that looks likely to shut down all Hollywood productions for however long (I remember a few years back there was a similar situation with both the Screen Actors’ Guild and the Writer’s Guild, but nothing ever came from it except a bunch of unnecessary panic; sort of like the creatively-minded Y2K).

The rumour at the moment is that Warners wants Justice League on movie screens by 2009, sinking the Superman Returns sequel and possibly a third Nolan/Bale Batman film into this effort instead. The whole thing is feeling really rushed, with a screenplay written by a couple of untested writers (the couple who did last minute re-write work on Mr and Mrs Smith and … well, that’s about it). Both George Miller and McG have been rumoured to direct (Miller, a solid and interesting choice. McG a horrible, horrible idea).

Christian Bale’s more or less gone on record as being quite unenthusiastic about the idea of his Batman being shoehorned so roughly into a Justice League film this early in the Bat-franchise. Brandon Routh’s just desperate for more work. And Ryan Reynolds is still so keen on donning the Flash’s scarlet togs that he’s fielding people’s questions about his knowledge of the JL film.

I’m seriously wary about this whole thing. Both X-Men 3 and Catwoman are examples of comic book properties that were rushed into production to fit a studio’s timetable, rather than being given the time they needed to develop naturally, and we all know how they turned out.

Justice League should be the comic book movie to end all comic book movies. It should be the definitive word on the subject. It should be epic with a capital E (and perhaps a nice, saucy, Frenchy flourish of ending in ‘ique’). It should deliver a majesty and grandeur to the screen that audiences have never before seen in their blockbuster films. It shouldn’t be something rushed out in hopes of cashing some cheques before a strike. It shouldn’t be done in a way that steps on the toes of the talent behind and in-front-of the scenes.

The good news is it’s said the script incorporates 6 of the Big 7 (Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman, Flash, Aquaman and Green Lantern), with the plan to use this movie as a launching pad for those characters currently without film franchises.

But really, how demonstrably retarded is Warners that they have these characters – and dozens more! – in their stables, and yet they haven’t been able to deliver any movies of them! You have one of the world’s biggest movie studios with exclusive rights to most of the world’s biggest brand name comic characters and they haven’t done a damned thing with them!

We’re up to five Superman films and we’re going on to six Batman films, and yet the most they’ve been able to get out of the Green Lantern concept is an aborted pitch for a Jack Black comedy vehicle in the vein of The Mask. It seems Warners has a higher percentage of braindead development executives than the average studio.

I could rant about this all day long (I haven’t even touched on the disappointing exclusion of the Martian Manhunter from the JL film, or the ridiculousness of the Catwoman movie being in no way based on the DC character and instead being a continuation of the Batman Returns concept from over a decade previous, created entirely by a hack Hollywood screenwriter to fill a hole by the Batman film being pushed back).

I’ll leave it here for the time being, though, as I guess the only person who might actually read this would be Peter, and the rest of you are no doubt bored with my comic book / movie talk.

But it’s certainly an interesting time to be a Justice League fan, one way or the other.

Down for the Count

I was looking to break my record of posts in a month - my aim was to get more posts than there are days in August - but I'm really not in the mood for blogging at the moment, so you'll all have to entertain yourselves for a little while.

I've still got a healthy buffer built up, so I might break that record yet. But I wouldn't count on it.

To the parentals; all's well and good down here in Melbourne, and I promise to call soon!

What Little Rascals!

Ben bought the Little Rascals DVD a few weeks ago, and insisted on watching it as we played Monopoly the other night. The Monopoly kinda fizzled but the Little Rascals was a hit.

Of course, the inevitable questions of "Where are they now?" arose. In times past, we'd be left to simply wonder, but thanks to the miracle of the Internet, we need wonder no more.

Brittany Ashton Holmes played Darla, the film's love interest / actor-who-most-looked-at-the-camera. No doubt you remember her;


Sweet little thing, isn't she?

Well, what if I told you she now looks like this???

Oh, the gang signs she's flashing! The cold, dead look in her eyes! The general Avril Lavigne-ness!

Li-Kim found pictures of her posing "seductively" on a bed, but they were just too disturbing for me to post. But if you're interested, they're out there.

... you pervert!

Of course you'd also remember Darla's paramour Alfalfa, the dorky, earnest leader of the gang;

An adorable geek, wouldn't you agree? The actor's real name was / is Bug Hall. Yes, Bug. Who names their kid Bug??

Anyway, with a look like that and a name like Bug, you wouldn't expect much hawtness, would you?

You'd be mistaken.

POW!

Apologies for how tiny the picture is, but IMDb won't let you save their pictures, so this was the best I could get off Google. But nevertheless, you can appreciate Bug in all his vaguely twink-ness!

Bug continues to act, popping up in guest roles on CSI and Law & Order. Best of luck, Bug! With those ears, you're going to need it!

I could keep going, but this has taken way longer than I expected it to ... so you'll just have to content yourselves with your own Google findings.

Good hunting!

I Have Such a Freakin' Headache

Maybe it has something to do with staring at a computer screen all day long then going home and breaking it up with a bit of staring at a computer screen.

The lack of sleep due to obsessively watching episode after episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip might also have something to do with it.

Insulting Your Readership Seems to Increase Your Number of Reply Comments ...

... wouldn't you all agree, you bunch of filthy maggots?

World's Best Name. Ever.

There's someone who works in event management whose name is, get this ... Crusader.

Crusader!!!

Would all of you support me if I changed my name to Crusader?

Crusader Lochran. Has a nice ring to it.

A nice, AWESOME ring.

RIP Mike Wieringo

I know this won’t mean much to most of you, but I just found out Mike Wieringo died the other day. Mike was a comic book artist; he was only 44-years old, exercised regularly, was a vegetarian, and yet he died of a heart attack. To say it’s a shock is quite an understatement.

I first came to know Mike’s work when he was the artist on Sensational Spider-Man, back when I actually bought comic books instead of just talking about them. I was never really a big fan of his stuff – it was a little too cartoony for my tastes at the time. But I developed a true appreciation for not just his work, but for him as a person, when I stumbled across his website a year or two ago.

He came across as having such a genuine enthusiasm for what he did, and as being a warm, friendly person with a good sense of humour and a great imagination. He’ll be missed.

The E-Mail Man Always Rings Twice

Moving email addresses is like moving houses; far more preparation is needed than you’d naturally assume!

I’m working on a spreadsheet at the moment with all my old email contacts so that I can upload it into my new server, but I figured a nice shortcut to doing that would just be to put up a post saying my new email address is stevenlochran@gmail.com

Please adjust all memoranda and propaganda accordingly.

It’s actually quite a sad event for me. I’ve had my email address for just over ten years now. How ever will the people I knew in year 9 be able to randomly spam me now??

Porn and Guns

It turns out that – in addition to manning checkouts at surf shops and topping up drinks on Virgin domestic flights – there are people I went to high school with who are serving as soldiers in Afghanistan and working as porn stars on the Gold Coast. I think this increases interest in the high school reunion by about 180%!

Okay, being perfectly honest, the porn star wasn’t in my year level, so I doubt she’ll be making an appearance at my reunion … but she was in one Mr Steve Pree’s graduating class. Pree, I want pictures, do you hear me?? Pictures!!!

Actually, I don’t need pictures. There are plenty to be found on the Internet, all of them equally disturbing. We stumbled across Ms. X’s MySpace page on Saturday night while enjoying a quiet (very quiet) game of Monopoly.

I think another small piece of Ben’s innocence died that night, as he commented that it was like The Girl Next Door without the happiness or romance. He then sighed a little mouse-like sigh as he peered up at the full moon and sang a mournful solo about life never turning out like your favourite pornstar-makes-good romantic Hollywood comedies. It was like Handful of Stars all over again.

I won’t be posting any names as to who’s doing what on here; after all, I wouldn’t want to besmirch anyone’s reputation … or let it be known they’re a porn star, either! (Ba doomp boomp TING!). But I might be persuaded to give up the goods privately, and so long as you promise to act with discretion.

... in other words, don’t tell anyone I told you!

Battle of the Bens

In the interest of uploading things onto the blog that I've been meaning to for a while, I now submit to you the case of one Mr Ben Chuah who, about a month ago, Simpsonized himself as looking like this;


Both Li-Kim and I took issue with how much this looked nothing like the young Mr Chuah, and more like a fridge that had been decorated to look like him. Li-Kim then had a go at creating a version herself, but it pretty much ended up being the exact same thing only with a different nose and some colour variations. The similarity to this model is such that I won't bother to post it (sorry, Li-Kim!).

Now I've gone to the effort (and it was a lot of effort, given that Internet Explorer kept crashing on me) to bring you my own version of the non-calendar BC. To express it onomatopoeically;

BAM!!!




To be perfectly honest, it wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. Ben was right when he said they didn't really have a body type that suited him. In fact, it's not until you're cartoonizing him that you realise what a compact little unit he is! .... why do I always end up sounding gross? ...

In any case, you now have your pick of Bens. Make of them what you will!

Finally, I shall also submit this - our very own Sarah K got in on the Simpsons fun as well, and given that she doesn't have a blog herself, I figured I'd load it up here.
We're like the original digital-age family!

Giving Me the Shits!

The original plan for Thursday night was to barbeque up some chicken and watch the newly installed cable with a group of friends and well-wishers. When the cable fell through, however, so too did the barbeque. But then, to top things off, the toilet decided to explode.


Now, it wasn't as bad as this image from Google implies it to be; it wasn't the toilet itself, rather it was the pipe feeding water into the cistern (so it was fresh water, not poo water, as much as Ben and Li-Kim might disgustedly affirm it was). It was spraying violently all over the place, flooding the back patio and generally wreaking havoc (one more reason to be greatful we have an outhouse!).

I tried closing off the pipe in the toilet while Ben and Carol switched the water off at the mains and Ashley hunted for the emergency rental contact sheet. Eventually she found it, and called the number for the plumber, only for him to tell her she had to call the real estate agent who would in turn call him.

About an hour later we had a very large and very friendly gentleman arrive to ... ahem ... take a look at our pipes. He switched the line to the toilet off and arranged for someone at his office to drop by the next morning and fix it up properly for us.

Everything's fine and dandy now; we have a shiney new pipe connecting the water flow to our toilet and - one of the few positives of renting - we didn't have to pay for it!

But just goes to show you how (almot literally) crappy Thursday night was!

Mea Culpa

Sarah reminded me recently that, long before Carol showed up on the scene, I had agreed to refer to one Mr Charles K as "CK", and that he had been a little miffed when he'd read about my calling Carol by that very same nickname - with all the secretly superheroic grandeur it implies - after I'd posted about it on my blog.

So Charlie, if you're reading this, you'll always be the Number One CK. I've had a chat with Carol, and she's fine with being delegated as 'CK II' ... which I'm still not sure whether or not is a Calvin Klein cologne.

How is it that I know not one but two people who have superhero initials, and yet I can't think of a single 'SL' superhero to save my life??

Drunken Ramblings

Been meaning to put this up for a while now. I'd ask who did it ... if you hadn't signed it, Steph!!

The following was left on my computer desktop, written in a word document, the night of the party we had here a couple of months ago.

Ashley came home at 123am. She stephannie is goijg go to slewep at 19 she ddoes lik e aart and shi yyt

Then, at the bottom of the page, almost as a sign-off:

Y I hatw3 ree eve4 ry

The question now becomes, do I keep this? Or should I hit the delete?

I leave this answer up to you, the viewers.

The Dearly Departed

I just finished rewatching The Departed on DVD, which Ben very graciously got for me from his work (well, actually he went next door to his work to EzyDVD, where they were selling it cheaper).

It really is a great movie, and there's so many more details I picked up watching it this time, thanks mainly to the use of sub-titles. But what it reminded me of was when I was working at the cinema, when two elderly women came in - a mother and her daughter. The daughter was old enough to be a grandmother herself. The mother was getting around with a cane. They sat down in the waiting area as they'd arrived early for their screening, as most older folks do.

Eventually they got up to come over and get their tickets ripped. At this stage I realised it was only the elderly mother going to see a movie; her daughter was just there to wait with her until she went in. I also realised she was there to see The Departed. I tore her ticket and let her through, saying it was alright for her daughter to go into the cinema with her to help her into her seat.

I envisioned the woman coming to complain to me after the movie about all the excessive swearing and violence (if you've seen the movie, you know what I'm talking about). But as the end credits rolled and I went into the theatre to clean it for the next session, I struck up a conversation with the old woman and asked her what she thought.

"Oh, it was wonderful! The performances! The cinematography! The script! Just amazing! What a masterful director!"

... and then she said something that really struck me ...

"The magnificent symbolism of that final shot!"

Well damn, old lady, you know how to subvert somebody's stereotypical expectations and prove what a rockin' granny you really are!

I always liked working floor day shifts after that, because I noticed this woman came in on a weekly basis, sometimes with her daughter, sometimes not, and I always made sure to ask her what she thought of whatever she'd seen.

In fact, it seemed to become a bit of a senior citizen's movie club at my work, where a couple old guys had bought tickets to Ninja Turtles not knowing what it was (given it was shortened to TMNT, how would they?) and asked me if they should see it. I said they probably wouldn't enjoy it, and recommended Hot Fuzz instead, which they saw and loved. They, too, were regulars, offering their opinions on everything from Sunshine to Children of Men.

It's a shame the old lady never came at the same time as them. I could have played match maker!

You Bloody Muppet

Interest rates?? It takes interest rates for him to finally apologise for something??

Prime Minister John Howard says he is sorry about the interest rate rise. Official interest rates rose to their highest level in 10 years yesterday to 6.5 per cent. Mr Howard has told Macquarie Radio he has taken a hammering about the Reserve Bank decision this morning.

"Sure, we've had an interest rate rise and I'm sorry about that - I regret it," he said. "I didn't want an interest rate rise. But one has come about because the Reserve Bank, in its independent judgement, has made the call that the economy is so strong the best thing in the long-term interest of the economy is to adjust interest rates."

I can’t really say I’m surprised. After all, it was pretty much the only issue the Liberals ran on during the last election.

Now, my understanding of international finance is laughable at best, but I get the feeling that there’s only so much you can do to make sure interest rates stay low. It seems like making a promise to keep the flood waters at bay. You can do it for a while, but if that water wants to come crashing down on you, it’s going to do it.

So all the noise the Coalition has made about interest rates and their ability to master them is now finally coming back to bite them on the arse, and at the worst possible time for it to do so. There’s a certain degree of grim satisfaction in that, I think.

But still, finance is the one thing he’ll make apologies for. How pathetically characteristic.

I Can Smell the Sweetly Putrid Scent of Cash As We Speak

A link to this image was left in the comments field of my Alexander Downer post. I presume it was submitted by Li-Kim, due to the signature Hello Kitty! nature of it.

What Li-Kim may or may not know is that this comes from a series of like images, created by posters at Somethingawful.com a few months ago.

While a Sewing Machine Transformer may be a stroke of genius in and of itself, it in no way compares to the following.

I present to you now an idea so brilliant, it's difficult to believe it never actually happened. Perhaps it was for our own safety that it never came to fruition. After all, what human being could stand in the way of the explosive marketing power of the MY LITTLE PONY TRANSFORMER??!!

Boys would want it! Girls would want it! Parents would want to be it!

Chaos in the streets! Cats and dogs, living together, mass hysteria!!!

I'll leave you now, reeling in the clutches of the aftershocks.

I did this for your own good.

In Belated Celebration of Everything Harry Potter

I bring you ... joy!!!

Cable? Not So Able

In accordance with Murphy’s Law, the installation of cable has become a non-event. With our living room being more of a bunker than a generally accessible domain for comfortable existence, it seems not one but TWO walls will need drilling to install the cable. They would need to run the wire through my room into the living room, potentially causing damage to the brick work. Of course, in a rental abode, they can’t proceed without landlord’s consent. So now the question has to be put to the real estate agent, who tends to be a slack arse in every regard except reprimands for late rent.

I could simply run the cable into my room and have it all to myself – and it’s a tempting proposition because of how much easier it would make everything – but that seems inherently selfish to me, and causes me to break out into worry warts. Besides, I want to share in the glory of the paid-for television! I want to convert cohorts to cartoons, I want to wallow in wastrels wearing waistcoats, I want to agitate with aggravated alliteration! And mostly, I want to do it in the living room – nee sheltered bunker – where we can enjoy the whole thing as a communal experience.

But if I’m contracted to have cable one way or another, and I can’t have it installed in my living room, I guess it’ll be a case of sticking it in my room and – gasp – having to keep the damn thing clean, so I can invite everyone in to watch the latest episode of whatever mind-numbing glory I get hopelessly addicted to.

Let’s just hope I can bring it about sooner rather than later. I was really looking forward to writing this weekend off on hours upon hours of TV. Now it’ll just have to be hours upon hours of Internet.

*siiiiiiiigh*

Shoot Me. Shoot Me Now. Or Not.

Taking a spare moment before lunch to mention that work continues to be murderous. Yesterday involved being abused over the phone by a somewhat insane and unreasonable bookshop owner, before screwing up a marketing department task (not in a major way, but in an embarrassing way). The line from Arrested Development – “You just made a fool of yourself in front of T-Bone” – kept repeating through my head, having messed up in front of the marketing head.

I mentioned this to the marketing head this morning (a huge pop culture geek) but at first he thought the Arrested Development moment that kept occurring to me was the Charlie Brown / George Michael walk of overwhelming depression. He then replicated the walk in my cubicle, while I hummed the tune to it. So things aren’t all bad. God bless bonding-through-television.

Cable should be getting installed tomorrow (fingers crossed). An impromptu barbeque will be taking place in celebration of the joyous event. That said, I think the house will be full of mostly girls, so I expect viewing will be limited to Arena and W (the Lady Stations, for those of you unaware). I’m imagining the Lifestyle Channel will probably be thrown in there, too, which I don’t mind too much because I quite like What Not To Wear.

I Really Want This On a T-Shirt

Everything new is old again.

Fan Film Bonanza!

I've struck a vein of rich silver on YouTube! Fan films! Oh, geek senses on overload! Check these babies out!

First up, a Green Lantern teaser that - despite a few flubs here and there - is so authentic-looking I wouldn't be surprised to see it at the movies;


This one's a Spanish Batman trailer where the visuals are so jaw-dropping, you're left with no idea how they did it. I mean, did Guillermo Del Toro have a spare five minutes or something??


This one's a bit of a tangent; it's not a fan film, rather a fan edit, using pre-existing footage to cut together a Justice League trailer. Pretty cool;


And finally - on a real tangent - Marvel Comics vs DC Comics, in the style of the Mac and PC ads.

What a Downer

"What do you expect them to do, fall on the ground and grovel - eat dirt - I mean, get real."

Even if Haneef turns out to be a terrorist who escaped prosecution simply through the inept bumbling of law enforcement agencies, this quote from Alexander Downer really seems to encapsulate everything that's wrong with the Howard government.

There's this mentality amongst all those working in the Liberals that apologising is the ultimate act of shaming; that it's a sign of weakness, and to be asked to apologise is akin to having someone spit in your face.

Of course, that said, you'll not find many politicians who are all that willing to offer an apology - they'll really have to have messed up majorly to get them to do that. But there's this almost frenzied reaction the Liberals have every time they're prompted by journalists as to whether or not an apology is in order. You see it time and time again; the evasiveness, the arrogance, and the dogmatic belief that every single thing they do is absolutely right.

Given the amount this soundbite of Downer's is being played and re-played, I wouldn't be surprised if - should the Liberals lose the upcoming election - this is offered as one of the reasons they didn't regain power.

And if this post isn't enough to bring Pree out of Internet exile, I don't know what is; maybe I should photoshop up a picture of him in a dress.

World's Finest

Last night I cracked, and skipped ahead in my Superman viewing to the three-part Batman crossover. How was it, you may ask (though I know you won't). Amazing!

I said in an earlier post that I hoped the Superman series picked up as it went along, and if World's Finest is anything to judge by, it most assuredly does! Everything from plot, to dialogue, to animation and action is top-notch, and demonstrates the continued evolution of Bruce Timm and his team's abilities.

I read the script for the proposed Batman Vs Superman film written a few years ago (a review of which you can find here), and I have to say, this animated team-up blows that script out of the water. Batman and Superman are a couple of characters everyone feels they know inside and out, and yet so few screenwriters manage to actually capture the essence of these two icons. It's a shame Timm's team never got a crack at doing a live-action version, because judging by this, they'd be able to produce a Superman/Batman movie to be proud of.

I'll now skulk back off to my nerdly hole.

... that sounded gross.

Powderfingered

The main riff in the new Powderfinger single sounds so freakin’ much like the theme song to the ‘80s BBC adaptation of Hitcherhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which brings us once again to the age old question; Bernard Fanning, twat or wanker?

Good Grief, Charlie Brown

I remember Charlie Brown cartoons having their down moments, but I didn't remember them being as heartbreaking as this ...



Is it a bad sign that I relate to Charlie Brown as much as I do?