Tim McKew at Melbourne Dali opening

Here's a photy of cabaret artiste Tim Mckew, at the opening of the Melbourne Dali exhibition in 2009.
I'd have kept him anonymous but I think he'd be highly offended....

more

oh yeah, I titled previous post "unknown artists" because I was having coffee with an acquaintance this morning and I mentioned the film ... she responded with "who is salvador dali?". not a word of a lie. anyway, here's the trailer for you next spare 3 minutes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtW9Geh9tYM

unknown artists, potes, fascists, and gypsies

Last night I had the mixed viewing fortune of watching "little ashes". I picked this one up from the 'new to weekly' shelf on noting it was about the deliciously nutty salvador dali - actually it's more about federico garcia lorca, the poet, but still. upon bringing it within close inspection range I realised that, OMfknGOD, everyone's favourite sad-sack-femmy vamp, eddie cullen (aka, rob pattinson) starred as the eponymous nutter. I couldn't very well walk away from that concept .... not at that price. to see the droopy toff try to pull off some actual acting was too great a temptation. besides, the sheer thrilling mystery of just why he'd been cast in such a challenging role had to be better understood. on that I remain unenlightened, but I digress .... made by poms, with a mixed cast of poms & spaniards but in english, sadly, the film is set during dali's college years (the 20's, my favourite era), when he fell in with and consequently caused trouble with, a blokey gang of lefty revolutionaries of various academic inclinations. apparently the details of this period of his life were shrouded in secrecy until he was virtually on his deathbed, so there's a sense of revelation and insight which is quite satisfying. generally speaking though, it's a love story - and in this aspect if none others, the film excels. starts well enough, with a musically accented man (who it transpires, is garcia lorca) quoting one of his poems, but soon falls into a sort of badly put together but could have been wonderful, almost great film. there's an intrusive soundtrack - during one or two 'meaningful' moments, you can actually hear violins. laughable. and there are some rather thinly drawn peripheral but important characters, and a tendency to rush some scenes which really needed more time. biggest problem though, is language. it REALLY should have been in spanish. moving on to rob pattinson ... I'm torn on this one. in some scenes you'd swear black and blue it wasn't him, such is his inhabitation of the character, others you just see ed cullen. his accent was really inconsistent, and he sometimes seemed unsure of how to arrange his features. essentially, he was surprisingly good in some scenes, woeful in others. either way, it was quite fascinating to watch him emote and do grown up stuff ... after all that buttoned up mooning and swooning, vamp style. oh yeah, in the beginning of the film he has a prince valiant bob (being the eccentric artiste and all) ... hilarious. it's a good thing he's as tall as he is else he'd have looked like a wee girlie :D the best thing about the film was the dude who played garcia lorca. stunning man. made rob pattinson look decidedly plain! and a fine actor with it, quite convincing in this role. really carried off the infatuation, the deeper love, and the subsequent anguish well. a couple of fairly graphic sex scenes, though neither are standard fare. one in particular, is ... ah .... unyewshall, to say the least. definitely one for the romantics .... the very very slow build of the romance is done unusually well, and is satisfying and authentic in feel. beautiful and moving. all up, while it was deeply flawed on a couple of levels, I really enjoyed it and would watch it again for it's lyricism and poetic flow. also a noice look at the private lives of creative genius, and a fascinating and turbulent time in 20th century art and politics. actually in writing this it's dawned on me that it might be a haunter. at least, I'm still swimming in the phosphorescence .... might have to watch again tonight

Bogan Restaurant Review: Outback Jacks.

So let me iggsplain meself. I was looking for a restaurant for my birthday. Not for the meal of my dreams. I simply wanted to be able to go out somewhere with hubbabaloo and the two oompah loompahs, and sit and eat the entirety of my meal without having to get up to top up a cup of juice, or to scrape toddly's spag bol off the wall and floor when he got bored. In short, I wanted a family restaurant. Which catered for kids. Which distracted them. And Zagames was right out of the question (you have Zagames interstate? Pub with pokies and somewhere to put the kids meanwhile? Shudder). We have some gorgeous cafes up here in the hills with boxes of toys and tolerant staff, but they're lunch, not dinner places.

So it was with trepidation that we made our way to Outback Jacks, 6pm Friday night.......

On the menu there is a promise: eat your meal in half an hour and you get the food half price...plus a t shirt!!! It's nice to feel that you have walked into an episode of the Simpsons. Doesnt happen to me often enough. Giant Croc suspended from the roof. Ostriches with bulging eyes gazing frantically from every wall. And Lots of Meat on the menu. You could order a 600 gram serve if you wanted. You could. The menu was decorated with piccys of grinning children covered in gravy, chewing on ribs. Some photographers get the best gigs...
Okey Dokey.
Pros:
1. There was a kids room. Of sorts. It distracted mine for about five minutes. The kids room had lots of cons, so I'll get to them shortly. But eventually the best thing about the kids room (right next to our table) was that two little boys turned up  with another family, and allowed Kid A to seat them on chairs in the kids room and boss them around. 'They're my students at my school' she announced.
2. You could choose your cut of meat from their refridged glass display case, it was all grain fed or free range, and was genuinely excellent. It would have been criminal to have stuffed it down in half an hour. I ordered fillet mignon. 180 grams, not 600g.  Hubbabaloo ordered crocodile. Not the one suspended from the roof.
3. Kids menu had all you could ask for. Fish and chips, chicken nuggets and spag bol for the staff to clean off the walls and floor
Cons:
1. The kids room contained a bucket of chalk, a chalkboard wall, some chairs and three playstation games involving scantily clad skateboarders. Toddly upended the chalk and then tried to eat it. Kid A wondered why the skateboard girl had no clothes on and why Mummy doesnt know how to make a playstation work. Thats not a kids room, in my book. They should have just advertised ' playstations available' and we would have gone elsewhere. But those two boys were an unexpected boon.
2. Cooking was about as complicated as a barbecue. A barbecue where the meat was possible the best I've ever eaten, and was extraordinarily well cooked, but a bbq nonetheless. All coleslaw and jacket potatoes. Coleslaw was no good. Nice, but nothing that couldnt be cooked at home, if you could source the quality meat.

In Conclusion:
Apparently Outback Jacks is a franchise and there may well be One Near You. If you want to have a bogan night out and eat a pound of flesh you might enjoy it; likewise if your kids are playstation addicts it may be for you. But ooooh, i dont think so.... At the same time, we had fun. As I said, it aint often I feel as if I'm living in an episode of the Simpsons...

You can buy tshirts about this guy.

More Instructional DAnce for the Weekend

music (it's on the 'for' list)

writing about jim caviezel's jesus character in The Thin Red Line got me thinking ... and toobing. found this compilation of music from the movie ... gorjus, spine tingling folk music ... with stills from the movie. happy friday :D http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j924qaMb0d8

extremely crap movies x 2

this week I had the misfortune to hone in, sort of spookily, on two maxtremely (thanks to TBL for that excellent bogue word) bad flicks. first was "the other man". on the face of it you might understand why I snaffled it. liam neeson, laura linney, and that barthelonian midget, antonio banderath, as - you guessed it - The Other Man. made by the dude who did "notes on a scandel", an excellent film. so, looks good right? wrong. started beautifully, middle-aged attractive wifey dreamily smiling at the object of her clear affection, in a boat, on lake como. we don't see who she's in love with, thus setting up the Big Twist. hubby, liam neeson in all his gruff and blokey irish bigness, is a sort of confused labrador puppy for the most part, with an edge of nutty. anyhoo, wife disappears (to the viewer), and husbot finds, on rifling through her belongings in search of answers, smoochy pics and emails from mystery man. heads off to italy, where emails originate. lots of nutty angst, meets The Other Man, befriends him purely to wreak revenge, then can't. all the while wifey nowhere to be seen, no explanation. turns out she's dead (gee, what a surprise), and all this Other Man hunting is posthumous. wifey had had the fling with antonionio 12 years previously. Twist is that while wifey is dying (from cancer - how cheery), husbot asks her to write down where in her life she was most happy. she writes "lake como", but he doesn't find the piece of paper til after she dies. she never went to lake como with husbot - it was The Other Man in the boat - which is revealed during credits. noice! anyway, godawful and depressing story, bad acting from antonionio, liam, and some other personnel. The other crap flick was so bad I actually enjoyed it! "The Long Weekend". containing claudia karavan and jim caviezel. australian made, set on wilsons prom of all places. normally I avoid oz movies like the plague, as some of you know, but this intrigued me on account of jim caviezel, who's astonishing performance as the messianic figure in "the thin red line" has never left my saggy memory banks. "he wouldn't do a crap oz film" I told myself. oh yes ... he would. warring couple leave vast mansion for weekend camping on the prom with friends at a 'secret surfing location'. now don't get me wrong, I'm all for low budget independents, but this took crapness to such a stinking low that I half believed it was a comedic gesture on the part of the man responsible (who produced, directed, edited AND wrote the score ... for our sins). the most dire of the lot was claudia karavan. underacting one minute, then shockingly overacting in the very next line. poor old jim, who actually performed in a polished and consistent way, was rendered cartoonishly colourful by his deadly colleague. anyway, enough of the technical, down to the story. couple gets lost on way to beach, can't find friends, end up at some place that may or may not be the right one. both hideous peeps, destructive, annoying, yada yada. mother nature takes revenge via wailing babies in the night (!?!) and other real or imagined horrors. both end up dead, one at the hands of the other, the other at the bullbar of a truck. really, it was so very very VERY bad that I watched agog for it's entirety, then watched all the extras in a quest to learn more about it's awfulness :D

say

how do we stick those "about us" type doohickies up the top? you know, those tedious intros so many bloggers seem to adore. anyone know?

friday boosh - because the artic is no respecter of fashion

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IjGNJPNyzU

gettin' ready for the weekend

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HiuCaaQhxg&feature=player_detailpage

Rebecca Black - Friday (OFFICIAL VIDEO). OMG.

Emerson - Mommy's Nose is Scary! (Original)

more on bogans. moron bogans.

I thought this one worth copying and pasting from the WBL website, it was so well written and so fkn troooo.

It took Matt Taibbi, a thirty-something writer for Rolling Stone magazine, to succinctly articulate the role played by Goldman Sachs, one of the corporate arch-villains behind the Global Financial Crisis. He commenced his 10,000 word missive in 2009 by proclaiming that the investment bank was “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money”. The article reverberated around the world, triggering widespread debate about the manner in which Goldman Sachs abused its market power to engineer asset bubbles and bend laws. It may come as some surprise to discover that the Australian bogan has its very own vampire squid problem, in the form of a 71 year old former door-to-door salesman of vacuum cleaners.

The first store co-owned by Gerry Harvey opened in 1961, and, after various co-owners and buyouts, Harvey Norman emerged in 1982. Today, Harvey Norman operates over 160 franchised stores in six countries, and is one of Australia’s most powerful retailers. Gerry Harvey, Australia’s hungriest mouth and squeakiest wheel, can thank the bogan for his current 1.2 billion dollar station in life. So what has he done to transform this disorganised drove of self-interested donkeys into an obedient sleigh-pulling collective?

Firstly, he has told the impulsive and greedy bogan that it doesn’t have to be patient. One of the pioneers of interest-free consumer finance in Australia, Harvey Norman has partnered with Flexirent and GE Money so that Gerry can insert his blood funnel into bogan bucks that don’t even exist yet. This time travelling funnel extends up to 48 months into the future. Despite Gerry being on the record as saying that Flexirent is a bad idea for the average Australian, his company will promote this type of finance to all of its customers. As for GE Money, 1.5 million Australians have taken out $5 billion of interest-free GE finance via Harvey Norman since 2004 (an average of $3,300 per person), which currently reverts to interest rates of up to 29.49%, four times the mortgage rate about which bogans squeal so tremulously.

While the bogan’s attention span and values system limit it to only participating in one-off acts of charity that involve celebrities, Gerry Harvey has taken boganic benevolence to an entirely new, subterranean level. Asked in 2008 about the role that he and Harvey Norman played in the community, Gerry offered the following insight: “You could go out and give a million dollars to a charity tomorrow to help the homeless. You could argue that it is just wasted. They are not putting anything back into the community. It might be a callous way of putting it but what are they doing? You are helping a whole heap of no-hopers to survive for no good reason. They are just a drag on the whole community.” Indeed, it can be concluded that Gerry Harvey only values human life if it passes the credit checks to obtain 48 months interest-free finance.

But somehow, the bogan still loves Gerry Harvey. He has developed his pro-bogan image via regular appearances on bogan information-sources Today Tonight and A Current Affair, where he portrays himself as the heroic defender of the decent underdog. This is a triumph in public relations, with very few bogans realising that Gerry is shamelessly using television appearances to campaign for the maintenance and expansion of his own extortionate empire. One highly amusing example of this has been Gerry’s ongoing flame war with online electronics entrepreneur Ruslan Kogan, 43 years his junior. Gerry, who himself does not use a computer, spent years stubbornly refusing to participate in the Australian retailing landscape’s shift towards online, and routinely engages in angry scaremongering via the media to remind the bogan that P!nk will never tour again if bogans desert his highly profitable superstore retailing method.

More recently, he has been the most vocal opponent of the prevailing tax-free status of overseas online purchases of less than $1,000, which has seemingly progressed from indifference to “urgent” on Gerry’s lips in the space of a month. For decades, Harvey Norman enjoyed buying its stock on the cheap from Asia, but Gerry has concluded that it Costs Australian Jobs when anyone other than Gerry does it. The power of the interwebs threatened to enable bogans nationwide to bypass Gerry’s supply chain blood funnel, so he fired up his bogan-wrangling media machine in the hope of Gerrymandering Australia’s rules.

With the boss of Myer also currently sharing Gerry’s bluff about setting up an online retail function based in China as a protest to the tax laws, Gerry is hopeful that he can blackmail the ATO into legislating against the Australian consumer, and for Gerry Harvey. This is the Harvey modus operandi – whenever something is not to his personal liking, he bleats to the media and government until it changes, all the while reserving the right to change his once-vociferous position when it becomes convenient in the immediate term. In short, he’s the ultra-bogan.

More often than not, though, Gerry does not want change. As the kingpin of one of Australia’s most boganic businesses, he wants things to stay just as they are. This requires the bogan being forever ensnared in his franchised web of superstores, signing up for an interest free deal on a maxtreme 3D LCD LED HD HDMI WTF TV for a mere 30% more bogan bucks than it’s really worth. However, the bogan’s enwebment is not entirely to its displeasure, because the relationship between it and Gerry can be seen as symbiotic. In it, the bogan gets “free” consumer electronics and formal living area furniture, while Gerry the vampire squid gets the bogan’s soul. Forever.

bear grylls is on the bogan list :) so are snowboards :(

bogans

say betty, you remember you were telling me about those 'family' stickers the bogeys put on the back of the ford territory? indicating the headcount and general leanings of the occupants? well of course I'm up to speed on them NOW, but it came to my attention recently that in these parts you see a smattering of family stickerage with say ... 2 x daddies, 2 x cats and 1 x dog. or 2 x mummies, kiddies and doggies, etc. yesterday I saw a double daddy and 2 x kids stickered subaru. ahhh ... gotta love the hills.

say ... I like this new wallpaper! it's retro, it's rustic, it's .... good. though I take it no one liked the picture of betty and smokey dancing?

The Ken Lee Girl...an oldy but a goody..

graffiti du jour

and ... website du jour

http://thingsboganslike.com/

yootoob du jour

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw6d54gjuvA

Julia Gillard...

Thought for the Day:

Apparently Julia Gillard believes gay marriage is against her upbringing, see here, but if you are like me and cannot be bothered clicking links, here is the story;

"Ms Gillard said she was "on the conservative side" of the gay marriage issue "because of the way our society is and how we got here".

"I think that there are some important things from our past that need to continue to be part of our present and part of our future," she said. "If I was in a different walk of life, if I'd continued in the law and was partner of a law firm now, I would express the same view, that I think for our culture, for our heritage, the Marriage Act and marriage being between a man and a woman has a special status.

"Now, I know people might look at me and think that's something that they wouldn't necessarily expect me to say, but that is what I believe.

"I'm on the record as saying things like I think it's important for people to understand their Bible stories, not because I'm an advocate of religion - clearly, I'm not - but once again, what comes from the Bible has formed such an important part of our culture."

Ms Gillard said she had a "pro-union, pro-Labor upbringing in a quite conservative family, in the sense of personal values"."

I miss BIQ and Coldy :(

I've pm'ed em both via channel 10 but who knows if they'll ever look there.
Anyone have any other ideas for tracing them?
Bth of them posted links at different times to other sites they posted on. BIQ had a photography blog and Coldy had some cartoons on a site somewhere, but I cant remember any details of either. The links were on the old Unofficial site.
Any ideas?

madrigals

I like 'em. been listening to a variety of elderly ditties on my rounds this am. can't do while kiddies in car as they scoff and mock at anything remotely resembling a warble or a falsetto - as kiddies are wont. ditto the hoprey. kids become apoplectic. up goes the volume at 9.05am every monday. "have you seen but a white lily grow?" la la la la laaaaaaaaaaaaaa

hey, looove the poll.
Can we send the results to Buckingham Palace or something?
Wowed by whoever worked out how to do that...


Ok. Tonight's moral dilemma...

We have 7 chestnut trees scattered around our place.
We can only reach about 4 of them come chestnut harvest time. The rest end up decomposing into mulch or getting eaten by our fat happy wombats.
We've just had a hillside terraced courtesy of a little earthmover thingy (dont watch enough Bob the Builder to know what its real name was..), to use as playground, chookpen and vegie patch (its all hill...).
There's a huuuge chestnut tree at the bottom of the terraced bit. Probably about 80 years old. Never been able to reach it to collect its chestnuts before but without them we're still eating chestnuts and giving them away for weeks on end till we're glad the season's over...
 It's blocking light from the entire half acre. We're on the south side of the hill & sunlight is a precious commodity.
SO DO WE CHOP THE OLD SUNBLOCKER?
I was such an earnest conservationist before i moved here, I would have wept at the idea of murdering a magnificent fruiting 80 year old tree. Now all I can think about is a bit more sunlight and oh, stuff it, we have several more...
Am I going to hell?
Nup, dont think I can do it. We'll just have to plant veggies in the shade. Dont think I can justify murdering a tree for a few lettuce leaves.

houses to put on prp/shs's commune

a commune contender with a HOUSE. for prp.

http://www.realestate.com.au/property-house-tas-claremont-106947090

commune contender?

http://www.realestate.com.au/property-house-tas-claude+road-107132447#

hornbag du jour

I used this to scrub away the residual images of 'inception'. it worked rool well.

'INCEPTION' review. better late than never. or not.

a run-of-the-mill, big-budget, hollywood sci-fi blockbuster. And I was left bored. so bored, in fact, that I fell asleep. gun-toting, bad physics, good guys/bad guys, utterly dull dreamscapes, unsurprising surprise ending. what a disappointment. could have been SO interesting without all that drearily prosaic (and formulaic ... I'm a poet and I do know it) gunplay and beat the clock 'suspense'. jeebers christos on a bike .... ski racing? where was bond, james bond?

Labor Day Musings

Hmmmm.

It was a long weekend this weekend just gone here in Vic. As we were on our way to a very pleasant bbq, I said to hubble 'what's this long weekend about again?'
'Labor Day,' he said. 'Celebrating the instigation of the 8 hour day'
And we looked at each other...

He works 3 days a week, many nights and frequent weekends.
I work 4 mornings.
Almost everyone I know is on bizzarro contracts even tho we all voted Workchoices out.
The only people I know who did/do the 8 hour day were my parents.
You know, I'll welcome any public holiday,but:
Does ANYONE work 8 hour days anymore? Or do I just associate with weirdos who are caught in contracts because we've been trying to buck the system?
Thoughts?

print "hello world"

hello world

booyah!

god help me but I love a healthy man with a beard.

good morrow, commons (insert waving emoti here) and I do have a big ass - just in case you were wondering. Wondering also - how long will it take someone to work out how to edit the writings of others? DONE!xxx meanwhile, here's a noice piccy of motorbike dude with his girlfriend:

Jane Austen at her desk

Good morning, ladies!
I hope PRP decides to join us in some guise or another, or this blog will look a little like this.....
I've emailed him, but if darthy wants to lobby, she may have more luck.
Some basic housekeeping:
We're all administrators (meaning the old ten forwardites). You may have found this but if not: when you go to post or edit you'll get a pile of tabs: Comments, Settings, Monetise, Stats.
Here's my basic opine of each:
1. Comments: as DaisyBetty mentioned, its handy that we get to comment on posts under the posts, hey? If we ever get other members we can keep an eye on comments
2. Settings: have a look. I think this is about choosing who gets to see this. If we all want to go Asio, thats cool, but I think others might enjoy chancing upon us...
3. Design: have a play around. I chose the swirly background we have at the mo. It can be changed  as often as anyone wishes to change it.
4: Monetise:  people actually make money off these things. But I dont think we're selling anything at the mo....

interesting what you say about privatization, wilms. and like, good question! my instincts are to draw the curtains and turn off all the lights, but perhaps we should give the world the benefit of our riveting dribble?. besides, you wonder how the old bat and her ilk would find us .. what with our new monikers and so forth. and the possibility of new (sentient) blood is noice. and yes, I WAS looking for you :p btw ... I chuckled at your boy being soothed by the dulcet tones of man-snoring. maybe males are programed to accept snoring as part of the fabric of the night ... preparing them for their own rumblings down the track.

hola, loverlies! this is a nice shiny new cubby innit :D now, if only we could find those emotis ....

testing...

We begin

Hello hello? Betty? Darthy? PRP? BIQ?
I'm looking around frantically for emoticons...cant see emoticons... there are a pile of optional gadgets for this thing so maybe someone (ahem...join me...) can work it out or add something funky.
Well, this will be making fascinating reading for anyone chancing upon this blog...BTW, we can privatise this so only members can read it, or we can be readable by ferny and anyone else if we wish. What say ye?
I'm sitting here at 5.30am, having been driven out of bed by Kid B. He wakes, he wont settle. Stick him in bed with hubble and he settles down to Daddy's snoring. I get the couch.It's worth it
Anyways. Hope you join me. I'm back to the couchxxx