Secondhand Stories

Remakes are all the rage in the film industry at the minute. I went to see Batman: The Dark Knight yesterday and it was quality. Some remakes are just brilliant, better than the original, better than the remake of the original! This was one of them. There is good room for another one or two Christopher Nolan takes on the Batman, I'm hoping for two, with plenty of characters still to draw on. Robin, Batgirl, and Bane being the obvious options. Heath Ledger's performance is just about as good as it's cracked up to be and between the psycho acting and the dying thing he's probably got the Oscar locked up.
"Why is he running?" "Because we have to chase him."
On the subject of remakes, I've been wondering what happens when we run out of stuff to remake..? Solomon said there is nothing new under the sun. No new idea's, no new thought's (yes those are the same thing, shuttup) no new movies? The classics, the greats, the fiction that is accounted the top of its class nowadays is mostly old. It's Tolkein, it's C.S. Lewis, it's cartoons that started in the fifties, it's Peter Pan and Robin Hood. The new stuff doesn't seem to seem to cut it. But what I want to know, is what is the stuff that is being written now that will be the gold of the next generation, slash my generation all growed up. Where is the brilliance? There is good stuff out there, and at some point the film industry will work it out and stop with the remakes and start with the new stuff, but in the mean time I'm looking for the next Tolkein (Robert Jordan?), the next C.S. Lewis (Pullman?) and the next Batman (Bourne?). Personally I want Lewis' spot.
Also, I watched a great film called Secondhand Lions. It has Michael Caine as a crazy old American who shoots at travelling salesmen with his brother. They end up looking after their nephew and buying a lion and flying a plane upside down into a barn.
"Ok. We'll see what he's selling. Then we shoot him!"
Speaking of crazy Americans and shooting things... Back home I copped some flack over a couple of the things I did with the youth, mostly from stuffy anal types for things like sock wrestling at the boys night (which wasn't actually my idea, I just took umbrage to the criticism and took up the argument) but I got nothing on these guys. I wouldn't mind pinching their budget though!

Sleep Is For The Dead

My long running battle with sleep looked to be going my way last night. I was in bed by one, lights out by two (this may sound late but the last three weeks I haven't got to sleep before four) a couple of hours in the gym and then a couple of beers in me to ease the process. Not to be outdone, sleep sent me a headache and a restless night from which I awoke at six thirty in desperate need of a shower and morphine. I had to settle for neurofen, a shower, and back to bed. I woke up at midday with that beautiful feeling of a proper deep sleep and no headache, but sleep had still won as it had robbed me of half my day, again. Try again tonight eh.
NB: for anyone thinking of moving to Busselton for the Saturday shopping and cruisy weekend lifestyle, I can recommend not. In town this afternoon all but the bars and Hilzeez were shut by three pm, and the only thing Hilzeez had going for it was my new Zoo York tshirt and the pretty girl who served me.

This, I Like

Send a JibJab Sendables® eCard Today!

Everest

ABC showed a documentary on Lincoln Hall's climbing of mount Everest. He froze to death at twenty-eight thousand feet. But then he woke up again, at which point he was convinced he was on a boat and he had to get off. A group of climbers found him on their way to the summit, only it wasn't a boat he was trying to get off, it was a thousand foot cliff. So they get him down and fix up his frost bite, which apparently is something of a side effect of freezing to death. And a little bit later they make a documentary of the whole thing.
Here's the random link that ties together in my head the thing that I am writing about now and the thing that I want to write about next; there's a quote by Bono about Everest. Only it's not so much about Everest as it is about third world debt. Bono and someone else, possibly someone who is actually very well known but whose fame I am not aware of, were talking to Tony Blair about getting the G8 to lead the charge and forgive third world debt and Blair said something along the lines of that he was on side but that it was like staring up at Everest. Bono responded "When you see Everest, Tony, you don't look at it, you f***ing climb it"
The other person, I have discovered while checking the quote, was Bob Geldof. Who I still don't really know who is.

Sia

A Proposition

We got hammered in the cafe last night. Like fifty people, ten room service runs, and twelve cocktails at once til eleven o'clock at night hammered. Then tonight; nothing. Not a single table. We closed the restaurant at seven thirty but not before I'd called all the occupied rooms in the resort and asked them if they'd like anything before we shut. Nobody did.
So last night we had this table of eleven women. Without fail the rowdiest, loudest tables you will ever get in a restaurant are composed of women between the age of twenty-eight and forty-three. This was one of them tables. They ate and, more to the point, drank their way through relative small and large quantities of food and alcohol before leaving a very large mess behind them. Twenty minutes later, as we were just getting to the last of their mess, two of them walked back in and started talking to Ravi. He started laughing and shaking his head and then nodded towards me. The women came over to me grinning and it suddenly clicked what they were looking for.
"What time do you get off work?" they asked.
"No time soon." I replied.
"You wouldn't wanna come and..." they mimed taking off their clothes, obviously meaning my clothes, not theirs.
"No, but this guy over here (I nod at Ravi) does it all the time. And if he's not up for it there's this guy on security called Andy."
Only turns out it was Andy who sent them after us in the first place so sending them back after him was not really going to work. So a few minutes later we finish convincing the women that we were not going to be stopping by their villa to put on a strip show and they leave again.

Thursday

Barrack Obama may have to beware of castration by senior African American politicians. So, you're not allowed to point out faults particular to a racial group if you're not of that racial group, that's racism, and you're not allowed to if you do belong to that racial group, that's betrayal. Unless of course the group you want to criticise is caucasion, in which case go for broke.
Bill Henson lashes out at "a world of moralism, and opinionation and clap-trap". Coz morality is one of those undesirable parts of our society that should be killed off immediately. Well, he's entitled to his opinion.
Apparently alcohol, a folding couch, and an angry russian wife are a bad combination. Couldn't quite decide whether the Lord was going to punish me for laughing, a little reminiscent of the Darwin Awards.
The Spainiards step up the crazy in Pamplona. Kind of impressive.

Funny coz it's True

Big Deal. By the time Bart's 18 we're gonna control the world. We're China, right?

Clearly Not Giving Him Enough To Do

Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister of Australia, is on Facebook. Commonly accepted as the worlds foremost procrastination tool. He has 4462 friends, of which two are mutual friends of mine (for anyone unfamiliar with facebook, the PM has added two of the same people as I have), he is [unsurprisingly] a Rudd and Labour supporter (see the fans and supporters application/groups on facebook) along with a few posted items and notes (more facebook jargon). He does not, however, have a wall, superwall, funwall or any other kind of wall for people to write upon. Probably a wise move. I am able to send him a free gift (small picture of a gift that I might possibly like to give to someone, though generally not the sort of thing people actually give as gifts ie. a llama) and after careful consideration I have settled on a magic eight ball and a note that reads: to help with those important decisions.
The Bush administration continue to demonstrate their incredible ability to appear incompetent. This being A LOT of the reason the GOP is going to have so much trouble getting John McCain elected in November. In fairness to the republicans the American people chose to elect Bush for a second term and so really have not a whole lot of right to be indignant about him, they knew what they were getting.

Two Minutes Turkish

I just watched Lock Stock, for the second time apparently. I thought I hadn't seen it yet but on watching it I discovered that I had seen it and it must have been Snatch that I had not seen. Which means that I still need to see Snatch but I have Lock Stock on automatic loop, apparently.
"Too late, too late will be the cry, of the man with the bargains as he passes you by." Jason Statham does some shite films for some reason but then he makes his way into genius stuff like this and Snatch. Brilliant black comedy, a web of awesome twists, and one heck of a sound track. This kind of class is why British film has such a good reputation. The closest things to it I've seen are Inside Man and Big Nothing.
Going to see Hancock at the cinema tonight. There was some debate amongst my friends as to whether it was a Marvel film or based on a comic book or just fresh stuff. There's a whole heap of really great indie comics and unknown graphic novels out there and in face of hollywood's phobia of new material and a rapidly shrinking list of things to re-make they may just turn some indie and cult material into some mainstream teen-fad films.
I also just killed the sexy lady. Not good. Mums favourite mug has a picture of a sexy lady on it and I just broke it. Luck likes me so she's in Perth at the minute giving me a day or two to replace it before she gets home!

Of Holidays, Weekends, And Other Things I No Longer Get To Enjoy

School holidays kicked off this weekend, marked by late bed times and extended absences from the boys, and the imminent departure of Father for the footy trip. O, and by the standard Saturday and Sunday evening shifts at work which, combined with a single shift on Wednesday, make for a really irritating roster. The double slap on the face means you can't go out on the weekend, nor can you take off to Perth for a week coz you have to be around on Wednesday, lets make it a triple slap, you also earn bugger all money for your irritation.
On the upside I have three job offers to stroke my ego. One of them is in England and pretty darn tempting but not going to happen. One is in Perth and looks a safe bet for next year. And the other may just be the answer to my roster problems while I'm still down south.
Geelong kept up their form with a great win over the Crows. I missed the game as I was using one of my rare Friday nights off work to socialise and spend money at Smiths Beach, but I'm told it was fun to watch.
The Wallabies thumped the French last night, that I did get to see. They look good. The forwards seem to have found some form at last after getting schooled by the English pack at the world cup last year and Matt Giteau was magnificent. George Smith was impressive which bodes well but to be honest, we've only played Ireland and France. The real test will be whether we keep our form against the Springboks and the All Blacks.
I nearly forgot to mention..! So you have some perspective on the thrilling, busy, and challenging job that is currently my employ: last night we had two tables in the restaurant, drank about six cups of coffee, and counted how many individual sprinkles you get in one gram of hundreds and thousands. 1150. So in a 1.5 kilo catering pack of the stuff there is roughly 1,725,000 sprinkles meaning you would need about 580 1.5 kilo packets to make up one trillion sprinkles. We need to verify the data with a few more tests but our hypothesis that anoyone trying to tell you that they ought to be called "millions and trillions" is a moron is looking pretty good.