More Power to Me

Emergency Contact and I recently moved into a new house. New to us, one-hundred-and-ten-years-old to Sydney. The change from living in a flat is quite stark. I wasn’t happy with what the guttering was doing in the rain last night and made a mental note to make it the strata management's problem… 

There are upsides to living in a free-standing house and I’ll let you know when I come across them. But, in the meantime, my house is determined not to let me finish reading my book.

After the chores are done and Darth Baby placed in his chamber, I like to climb into bed and read a book, or latterly, kill the zombies with the plants – but the house has other ideas. I read my books electronically and the house does not charge iPads or iPhones. Weird, huh? Let me explain.

The building inspection did warn us in fairly definite language that the wiring in the place was a little substandard. I think I remember seeing the words “dire”, “cataclysmic”, “abysmal”, “rudimentary”, “Neolithic”, “foolhardy” and “laughable”. Suffice to say, we knew the house needed a little money spent on the wiring.

I insured home and contents and moved in with Emergency Contact and a toddler, anyway. (To those that know EC, it’s hard to gauge who of the two is more dangerous in certain situations.) The plan was to gently ramp up the demands on the electrical wiring until we saw the upper load point and then I’d know what we were working with. It went the other way and we've found our low point.

As many people know but few are ready to admit, electricity is borderline dark magic and no-one really knows how it works. Sure, there are sparkies and electrical engineers who will make bold and baseless proclamations about harnessing it and charge you like any other high-priest of a forbidden sect for their “expertise” but deep down, I’m pretty sure they know it’s all just luck and insulation. Even the fact that they named positive and negative the wrong way round tells me how circumstantial the whole thing is. I’ve owned cars at which auto-electricians have thrown their hands in the air and said, “Don’t understand how this car is running, mate.”

So, our house can simultaneously run a washing machine, dishwasher, lights, hot water, fridge, stove, oven, central air, lamps, large flat-screen TV, DVD/Blu Ray player, home theatre, PlayStation, PC, curling iron, clothing iron, and sundry other bare necessities but it cannot charge an iPad. In fact, it sucks the electricity out of an iDevice. I left a pad plugged in overnight and it was so depleted the next morning it weighed less and it took three hours of charging at work before I could even turn it on.

The answer? I’ve put our iThings on the floor because everybody knows it’s easier for things to run downhill. That’s why lighthouses are constructed at sea-level.

Now, if I could only get Darth Baby to stop sucking them.

(Perfectly reasonable explanation to tell the coroner, too.)

It's A Medical Issue

I awoke to the news that there had been a streaker at the State of the Union football sports last night. That feller has got one of two things going on that need to be addressed.

One – he’s suicidal. Who runs, nude, onto a field populated by 30 fit thugs who professionally run after people and throw them onto their heads?

Two – he just needs a little love. Who else would run, nude, onto a field full of blokes who like to roll around in the mud, on top of each other?

Far from banning and fining and jailing and slapping and book throwing, this person should be helped.

With Friends Like These…

Giggle and Hoot (and Friends) Live is a bit like Sarah K. Silverman - short and loud. Also like SKS, it’s oddly watchable, but only for brief periods. The producers must know this, so they’ve kept the show to a merciful one-hour-length. More on that point later.

I should state my interests. I’m not unbiased. I have been a fan of the owl’s work for a while and was looking forward to the show for two reasons. It would be Darth Baby’s first live show and I was interested to see how that would go down, plus I suspected that Jimmy Giggle might be a genuine “triple-threat” and wanted to see if he could deliver outside the safety of the pre-recorded television studio.

He can. Jimmy Giggle delivers a subtle and nuanced performance, at 400 decibels. He sings well, dances confidently and plays the guitar with flair. His trumpet cadenza in the fourth act is a triumph and one has to keep reminding oneself that it is achieved on a cardboard, cut-out trumpet. His puppetry with Gigglasaurus, in a witty tip-of-the-hat to Fred and Ginger, was a master class in physical comedy and he also carries the show with a modest grace and aplomb when it is only he and Hootabelle on stage.

And this leads me to one of a few problems with the show. As usual, Hootabelle is not the strongest cast member and the slightly egotistical way she delivers her material is designed to pull focus to her but achieves the opposite by being slightly repellent. It’s as if you are watching someone act, but can’t get past the fact that you are certain you wouldn’t like them in real-life. She is a charmless pink owl that has plumbed the depth of her character and really reached the limits of her potential.

The eponymous “Friends” weren’t charming either and I couldn’t wait for them to get off the stage. Lazytown was exactly that. In fact, so lazy, the real actors in the show didn’t bother to make an appearance and second-stringers were sent on. The female lead playing Stephanie resembled her in the way that a truck resembles a car. Same principal, but you wouldn’t confuse them.

Bananas in Pyjamas were confusing. They need to clarify the plot points and I could see that my theatre companion, Darth Baby, was equally mystified. He punched his Hoot pillow in frustration. I hear the TV show is being axed in any event, so good riddance. Stupid, clumsy bananas.

The same wouldn’t be said of the magnificent Hoot. I think he may have put on weight recently (hard to judge between stage and screen) but that doesn’t stop the original, blue night owl from bringing the funny. At his age he can’t be expected to do quite the physical work that J. Giggle can, and let’s face it, having the limitation of not actually being alive and needing to be operated from behind objects, does limit the stage mobility. But, one doesn’t notice those limitations at the time of the performance. And his eyelids are particularly good.

Now to the length – as mentioned, it was short. Good, because it was exactly the right length for Darth Baby. He sat transfixed for 56 minutes and the show was an hour. But, I want to know who I have to "take to dinner" to get in on the racket. For the adults in the audience (which make up at least half) the show works out to a dollar a minute. The concert hall at the Opera House was packed, and they were doing three shows a day. To quote J. Giggle. “Aww ha ha ha. That’s awesome.”