Archive for the 'Featured' Category

Some of my favorite stuff here

So, you think?

Published
by
drew
on 27 June 2008
at 21:23
in Australia, Featured, Media and TV
.
6 Comments

First there was the Australian version of the American version of Idol. Then we had Ice Skating with People Who Have Been On TV, which nobody watched because we don’t really ice skate much in this harsh, hot land of ours. This was followed by Dancing with People You’ve Heard Of and So You Think You Can Dance Even Though You’re Not Famous, the rules of which were slightly broken by Rhys “Elf” Bobridge, who was already a professional performer, having appeared in a TV series and in sellout live shows all around the country. He got away with it though by being famous only to girls under the age of eight.

But I digress. TV networks are scraping the barrel of the performance/knockout genre, with Seven recently subjecting us to Battle of the Groups of Bad Singers (I mean if I wanted to see amateurs who can barely sing, doing bad numbers that were neither written nor arranged for ensemble performance, I’d go to an eisteddfod).

So, in an effort to play my part for the discerning viewer, I’d like to pitch some suggestions to TV execs. We can discuss terms later.

  • So You Think You Can Write A Novel, in which contestants must write a new chapter every week, to be read out in front of a screaming crowd and panel of judges. Of course, each chapter must be edited to fit into the 90 seconds of performance time given to each contenstant.
  • Gardening With The Stars: a bit like the celebrity segment of Burke’s Backyard, only competitive, with contestants having to produce a crop of veges, plant a native garden, and strike a fruit tree from a cutting
  • Australian Flirt in which the judges and presenters are probably more likely to win
  • Battle of the Abstract Impressionists. A group of painters must produce a work based on a subject of the judges’ choosing each week. Bonus, adults-only episode screens after 9.30 pm in week six. Yes, life drawing
  • Train Surfing with the Stars. I’m really excited about this one. Given the risky nature of the activity can I suggest we get Daryl Somers, Sam Newman, Will Anderson, the Australia-wide presenters of ACA and TT. Oh, and the cast of Home and Away
  • So You Think You Can Sleep. Surely it would be better than those late-night infomercials. Who wouldn’t want to see the semi-final, in which a travel agent from Queensland loses out to production assistant from Tassie after a Horlicks-related lactose-intolerance-causes-late-night-farting-and-insomnia incident
  • Chess with the Stars. Riveting viewing, this one. They’d have those special clocks. Sandra Sully would be an early casualty, finding it mentally taxing having to think more than one move ahead
  • So You Think You Can Whittle: these twelve rocking chairs on this porch… will eventually become one
  • Self-immolation With The Stars. There’s just not enough kerosene really, is there.

What have you got, people?

Tribute

Published
by
drew
on 26 June 2008
at 17:02
in Featured, Idea v. Reality and Media
.
0 Comments

I know I’m cynical about it, and I can’t believe that more people aren’t. I’m talking about whenever someone dies, the commercial news programs wheel out their slow-motion montages of the recently deceased, complete with inspirational wind-beneath-my-wings type power ballad as backup.

There was one recently for a famous cricketer’s wife. And be assured, I’m not in any way trying to malign the deceased or their significant others in this, just the news programs that seem to think the best way to pay tribute to someone is to create a slow-motion montage, complete with sucky wind-beneath-my-wings type power ballad as backup.

Yuck!

I can see its worth in something like Big Brother. When a housemate is evicted, before they leave in their new car, or whatever, they get to sit through a montage of slow-motion clips of themselves doing crazy, whacky and sometimes downright embarrassing things to a not-so-sucky pop tune or piece of backing music (because the demographic is entirely different, you understand. We’re talking Bette-Midler-free zone).

And I think to be in that situation and see yourself in that way must be great. In fact, wouldn’t it be great if all of us, every birthday or so, see the year that was in a slo-mo film clip of our favorite song from the previous year… hanging out at the pub, throwing the frisbee, doing the dishes, staying up late and working, watching TV with your loved one, getting scared by a spider/snake/mouse, running for the train, making a stupid face at someone, getting angry in traffic, reading the paper and sipping a piping hot cup of tea on a Saturday morning, snorting said tea through your nose after laughing at the Far Side comic.

Y’know, just nice, everyday moments, made special by virtue of the fact they’re in slow motion to the tune of a song you really like.

Tongue numbing

Published
by
drew
on 16 June 2008
at 16:34
in Adelaide, Featured, Idea v. Reality, Language and Media
.
1 Comment

For any readers outside South Australia, there’s been a recent crisis in this state’s hospital industry, with doctors and other specialists arguing over wage increases. Related story here.

The issue has come to a head and many emergency doctors and staff have not just gone on strike but resigned their positions altogether.

Take that!

I’d like to put out a message to directors of TV and radio outlets now, as it’s timely. I’m mostly a humble guy and don’t like to blow my own trumpet, as it were. I don’t think I’m arrogant or self-righteous and I don’t often judge or condemn people. However, there are times when I believe a base level of competence should go along with certain jobs. So my message is this.

If you’re running a Radio or TV newsroom, please get in touch with me and offer me a job. Why? Well, for starters, I can correctly pronounce the word anaesthetist.

Seriously, I should put this on my résumé.

It’s been an interesting week of watching and listening to various media, hearing them say that word and completely fuck it up in about 90 % of cases.

Another word a lot of journos have trouble with is vulnerable. People, the first l is NOT SILENT.

If you hear a newsreader or reporter this week saying “South Australia’s health industry is in a vulnerable position following the recent mass-resignation of emergency doctors and hospital anaesthetists,” listen for the gurgling sounds that follow as their throats go into spasm and they invariably choke on their tongues.

I once met a med student studying to become an anaesthetist and she couldn’t pronounce it. While I hope she, and other anaesthetists, can successfully pronounce the drugs they’re administering, I’m not going to judge, as long as the right drug goes in the right patient and everyone who’s supposed to be alive, stays alive at the end of the day.

But journalists? They’re supposed to be guardians of the language. They’re the one group of people who are supposed to get this right.  Still, when most people on TV news are either ex-footballers (read: trained monkeys (and even then, I’m not that sure how well trained)) and sexy young uni grads with zero life experience, what hope is there?

Sunbus

Published
by
drew
on 8 May 2008
at 20:40
in Australia, Featured and Travels
.
0 Comments

It’s not often I feel compelled to devote a post to a bus journey but the trip from Avalon airport into the city was an absolute doozie.

I’ve long had some kind of weird fascination for bus drivers, specifically coach drivers. On every school trip we went on, we’d call our bus driver Barry. The name just seemed to fit. I think we actually surprised a few of them by getting it right. But growing up in the 80s, when plane travel was still very much the domain of the elite, and living in a town that had its only rail service suspended, coach travel was in its heyday, with reclining seats, curtains and, on very special coaches, a VCR on which you may have been lucky enough to see such gems as Splash, Mr Mom or something equally as sanitised starring Robin Williams or Michael Douglas (of course, you’d see them on a television which was invariably attached with some kind of RF lead to said VCR; I can’t imagine a load of coach travellers being excited by watching the heads of a top-loading VCR spin around through that little translucent window. “Oooh, Tom Hanks is in there!”).

Back then, coach drivers had that air of professionalism; they were, after all, ‘Captains’ of their roadcraft (as opposed to aircraft or seacraft). They had the tanned skin, the winning smile, the carefully blow-dried hair, the neatly pressed and over-starched shirt, and yet, like their truckie cousins, they still wore shorts to work.

I think our driver from Avalon to Melbourne must have been one of those shiny Coach Captains of the 80s as he was eager to point out some of the places of interest between the airport and the city, along the lines of:

“Out here at Avalon, some of the scenes from Mad Max were shot.

“We’re currently travelling on Highway 1, which circumnavigates Austraya. Out to the right is Point Wilson, where they test all the ammunition.

“We’re now passing by the town of Little River, pop-y’lation of about 6000. This is where the famous Little River Band originated.

“We’re now passing the Werribee sewerage farm: 10,000 hectares that services the water treatment of Melbourne and the western suburbs. The farm is made up of 10 ponds, one to two hectares each. The first pond is covered and that supplies all the methane that is needed to power the plant.”
[I'll leave that quote there, partly because he went on so long about it and partly because I'm having trouble reading my shorthand]

“We’ll shortly be passing under Point Cook Road. At the end of Point Cook Road is Point Cook Airforce Base, which is now turned into a museum. If you ever get down to have a loogedit, it’s free admission to get in.”

Gold… all of it.

Thanks, Baz.

You go to the toilet, I’m trying to edit.

Published
by
drew
on 17 April 2008
at 16:03
in Featured, Idea v. Reality, Work and Writing
.
4 Comments

I’m working on a really big project right now. It’s a bastard. Lots of text, lots of pages, lots of people who need to be sure that a lot of the text on a lot of the pages says what they want it to say. I’m in the middle, trying to make sure it says everything it’s supposed to say in a consistent and uniform tone. I’m trying to bring the body of work together, to make it harmonious and lovely. It’s like I’m growing a tree.

Occasionally, other people need to see parts of the text, to make sure it says the right thing (which I just explained). For the most part, I think it says the right thing. All the facts are pretty much there. Very little of it is actually wrong. Very little of it really needs to be changed.

But people are curious. Put a piece of copy in front of them and they try to change things so it says the right things in the particular way that want the right things to be said. Them, that is, and 25 other people. It’s not wrong, you understand, the bits they try to change. Some words, you can spell different ways. I’ve chosen to spell this word this way and I’ve done it the same way every time I’ve written it. If they spell it the other way, it’s out of place. It becomes more wrong than they thought it was when it wasn’t spelled their way.

If what I’m doing is growing a tree, I want each branch to look the same as the other branches; each leaf to look the same as the other leaves.

If what I’m doing is growing a tree, these people are dogs, who see the tree, sniff around the tree and have the uncontrollable urge to piss on the tree in an attempt to make it their own.

But this does nothing at all for the tree; it just makes the tree smell like piss.

But they don’t mind. They just want to come back to the tree when it has been chopped down, pulped, and had the information I’ve been gathering printed on it, smell it, and say ‘Yep, that’s my piss!’

Walk like a man

Published
by
drew
on 15 April 2008
at 16:58
in Featured and Idea v. Reality
.
1 Comment

I think that sometimes you just have to resign yourself to the fact that you’ll never understand some people, and that that’s OK.

I was walking through the city today and saw a person with long hair, wearing a dress and makeup, who clearly was a male. Usually you can tell by the jawline or the brow. But nearly every time it’s the walk that gives them away. I’ve spent a lot of my time growing up watching the way women walk, very, very carefully. So I can usually pick it from the walk.

Now, I don’t think I’m an insensitive person. I like to think I’m pretty tolerant of any kind of need that people might have. I guess if I knew someone who felt the need to dress up as a lady, I’d be a bit more understanding, or open to understanding, or willing to make the effort to understand. My laziness probably isn’t an excuse for my attitude but, geez, there are a lot of people with different needs these days; taking the effort to understand all of them could be exhausting. Mind you, I’m not anti-crossdresser, I wouldn’t go out of my way to be abusive towards them or make fun of them (notwithstanding anything I may be about to write here but haven’t thought of yet) and if a person feels they need to dress up as a member of the opposite sex, or put on a gorilla suit for that matter, I have no problem with it.

I have to say though, that Little Britain hasn’t done much to advance understanding in that respect. And I think the point of this post was to say that I can’t walk past someone like that now without thinking of Matt & David dressed in Victorian-era dresses, curtseying and proclaiming their ladiness. It does make me snigger. I know it shouldn’t but it does.

And I think cross-dressers probably got a bad deal from Little Britain because they were the ‘victims’ of the parody in the sketch(es). My take is that Little Britain were making fun of anyone who puts on airs and graces. The exaggerated speech was as much a part of the humour as the dresses.

But they weren’t supposed to be convincing. And what I don’t know is whether cross-dressers think they look like real ladies or whether they know they look like men dressed up as ladies. Because they do look like men dressed as ladies. The makeup sometimes hides the facial hair and the shoes are too big for dainty lady-feet. And the walk…

Of course, it’s entirely possible that there may be some men dressed as ladies that do look like ladies and I can’t tell the difference. I may know a cross-dresser and not know it. I could buy my coffee/train ticket/lunch/small electrical appliances from them. And if they’ve practised their walking very, very carefully… yep, I may even have admired their gait. (Which kind of contaminates my sample group doesn’t it, so that could throw out the whole study… I may have to start again from scratch, admiring walking styles I know to be of ladies. I guess I’d just have to have confirmation that they are really ladies before I analyse their walking style… I dunno, I’d probably have to see them all naked or something.)

Clone

Published
by
drew
on 11 January 2008
at 12:58
in Adelaide, Featured, Film and Idea v. Reality
.
2 Comments

I saw an ad for that new Will Smith movie, where he’s literally the last man left on earth. At least, he is in the ads; he probably meets someone else about halfway through so the movie has some kind of plot. It’d be pretty dull otherwise: get up, eat canned food for breakfast, go to video store, take anything you want, go home, canned food for lunch; watch DVDs (entire collection of 007 movies/Woody Allen catalogue/Þ0rn), read, do a supermarket run (more canned food), pick up some new clothes at department store, home, read some more, eat more canned food, go to bed listening to any CD you like, taken from the local CD store.

I’m not sure if he has electricity though - he’d have to raid the supermarkets for batteries also.

In fact, it would get harder and harder to eat as you’d have to go further and further for food. He’d have to find a semi-trailer and make a round trip to whatever supermarket is closest, take all the canned food, soap, batteries, can openers (obv) and bottled water he could carry, then head home again. In fact, I’d advocate a more nomadic existence under the circs, just taking a car and heading to the next town till I’d eaten out their supermarkets, finding another car and hitting the road again. I think I’d find a nice camera too and take lots of pictures. (I was going to say steal but there’s be nobody else to steal from, so it’s not really stealing at all.)

I got to thinking though, what if you, or Will Smith, or me, being the last person on earth, met someone of the opposite sex and decided to attempt to restart the human race. How would you go about it? Well, after shagging like bunnies and popping out one or two or ten (picking up supplies at whatever baby store you could find), how would you have them recreate? It goes into rather unsavoury territory, what with the whole incest thing, but how would you do it? Brothers and sisters would have to procreate, then cousins, and then there’d only be 2 or 3 generations that are doing what we regard as a little off.

My mind then went off on a tangent about what could happen in such a shallow gene pool. If you were, for example, a man, and if you weren’t limited by age, if you could mate with a female, then have a female offspring with 50% of your genes. If you mated with her, having another female offspring, that child would have 75% of your genes. Go again, and the next child would have 87.5% of your genes. Then 93.75%, 96.875%, and within a couple of generations, the child would have more than 99% of your genes.

So then, if you had a boy, he’d basically be a clone of you. Someone with a better grasp of genetics should feel free to correct me if I’m forgetting some kind of dominant/recessive factor.

The other thing about that movie is how NYC looked with nobody in it. Smith said it was disconcerting to have an empty New York street, devoid of any human life. It would feel eerie, no doubt.

That kind of thing happens in Adelaide all the time, especially around Easter. The only people you see is the odd tourist wandering around, dazed and confused, looking for signs of life in the shops and dodging the tumbleweed.

Christmas: what you make it

Published
by
drew
on 27 December 2007
at 09:57
in Consumer goods, Events, Featured and Idea v. Reality
.
2 Comments

You can’t have Christmas—not a real Christmas—without those self-righteous types who say it’s all just one big money-grabbing fiesta by the retail sector. There was a letter in the paper the other day; something along the lines of “Oh, they didn’t move xmas to coincide with the pagan winter festival, they moved it to coincide with the Christmas sales”.

They’re essentially saying that if you go out and spend money at Christmas, you’re somehow diminishing it by turning it into something commercial.

And I think that’s a load of merry shit.

I hate the conceit of this attitude; this stuck-up pretension that says “I celebrate this holiday in a more pure sense than you”, or “you may think you have Christmas but I really have Christmas”.

Does anyone think it’s really possible to have a holiday based on the tradition of gift-giving without getting the retail sector involved? I actually enjoy buying gifts for my family. It’s fun in itself coming up with ideas, conferring and colluding with other siblings to make sure we’re not doubling up (something that failed miserably this year but that’s another story), then the happyfest that takes place when we all open them (after the obligatory family portrait in front of the tree).

Do the anti-retail-xmas fanatics expect me to develop an interest in basket weaving come December 1? I tend to think my brother will actually be happier with Season 6 of Cheers than he would have been with a small wicker basket to keep all his spare buttons, paper clips, used batteries and 5-cent pieces in.

And I hate that attitude that somehow says you can’t do the retail thing while also having a very meaningful holiday, whether that meaning is based around family, religion, or whatever. Giving gifts bought from a store does not diminish whatever you want to make of a holiday (unless it’s buy-nothing day) and it’s nice to be given something you wouldn’t normally have bought for yourself. We all work hard these days. It’s nice to have someone say ‘here, have this, spoil yourself a bit, you deserve it’ and it’s nice to give a gift to someone that implies the same.

I know it’s a bit late so I won’t wish everyone a merry christmas but I would like to wish a happy new year everyone (to all four of my regular readers) and I hope you all got lots of cool stuff and spent the day in a way that was meaningful to you.

Deck the halls

Published
by
drew
on 23 November 2007
at 12:01
in Consumer goods, Events and Featured
.
0 Comments

Here in .au, Halloween isn’t really that big, we don’t have thanksgiving and Guy Fawke’s night smouldered and eventually went out in the early 80s when you ceased to be allowed to buy fireworks over the counter. (Not sure if other .aulians celebrated that one much or if it was just my family on account of the English/English background.)

There’s no real pre-Xmas holiday that has to be finished off before the tinsel can come out and miniature pine plantations start to thin out. This means that Xmas decorations can go up sometime around mid-August. Okay, that’s maybe a tad early but I noticed the greenery was hanging in Adelaide Railway Station well before the end of October.

I noticed a local news website had a poll recently, which asked the question: are Xmas decorations put up too early?

I would argue that no, they aren’t. If they went up at, say, the start of December, it would deprive people of the opportunity to complain that they’re going up too early and people in general, I’ve noticed, like to complain about such trivialities.

I’m all for them going up early. I’ve adopted this general position based on one specific instance of intheshopsearlyness. While I do like mince pies, the sooner they get them off the shelves and replace them with hot cross buns, the better. I think bakers should be making an effort to have them in stores, first thing boxing day. Especially this year, as Easter is almost as early as it can possibly be (Easter Sunday on March 23rd!) so by all means put up the tannenbaum as early as possible, as long as it means you do the same with the best damn savoury/sweet breakfast buns ever.

As an aside, there’s a Christian bookstore near where I work. They sell a lot of bibles, a lot of Christian music and I probably won’t be buying the Richard Dawkins Box Set there. The thing I noticed though is that they had a Christmas tree in the window, adorned with tinsel and silver baubles. I know most churches prefer to have the more Christian symbol of the nativity play, obv and I would have thought this would be the case in a Christian bookshop. Isnt’ a Christmas tree a little, I don’t know, pagan?

Just say No to Bindeez

Published
by
drew
on 6 November 2007
at 15:06
in Adelaide, Bairn, Consumer goods and Featured
.
0 Comments

Little Miss L just had a birthday. She turned five. We bought her (and when I say ‘we’, I mean my wife and her mum went into Big W four months ago and put about $1ooo worth of stuff on lay-by) some of those ridiculous things called Bindeez.

For a start, they wouldn’t have been my choice. Having experienced the fallout of buying her presents with as many as 20 or 30 small parts, you learn pretty quickly that small parts don’t stay together for very long. Pretty soon you’re finding small dolls’ shoes, mini plastic bananas, dolls’ house plates, cups and bottles, toy money, flash cards, tic-tac-toe pieces, My Little Pony combs and assorted bits of train track all over the house. Last week she got into the trivial pursuit box, so we’re still finding bits of yellow pie under the couch.

Why then, oh why would we want to go out and buy her a toy that openly boasts on the box that it contains 800 small, fiddly, and yes… round pieces, 600 of which would invariably end up under the fridge. I somehow knew from the outset that it was a bad idea. This was a week ago.

Today, this (from which I will hereunder quote):

The New South Wales and ACT governments have banned a popular toy called Bindeez - because the colourful beads release a compound closely resembling the illegal drug GHB when they are swallowed.
…

NSW Fair Trading Minister Linda Burney has announced an immediate product recall pending further testing.

“We will advise parents as more information comes along but if you have Bindeez in your home, please remove them from anywhere where children can actually get to them, play with them and use them,” she said.

Miss L had a party on the weekend. She scored two smaller boxes of the things.

With any luck we’ll get a refund. Though I’m thinking I could make more by selling them to the crackheads down West Terrace this Saturday night.

Actually, do you think I could get my mother-in-law arrested for being a pusher?