Fangs For The Memories

Daybreakers is a semi-Australian film featuring vampires. It’s semi-Australian in the way that The Matrix was. You recognise streets and suburbs and there are Aussies littering the set, but not too up front in the lead roles. It seems they still don’t trust us not to screw it up. To be fair, if you’ve put good money into a film, you want to help it along with some star pulling power and the name Vince Colosimo is probably not going to do it. Also, in a largely Hollywood film, he stands out like dogs balls and not in a good way. Don’t believe me? Watch Body of Lies and tell me I’m wrong. He’s awful.

So, the name they went to was Ethan Hawke, or as I call him in my head, the weirdo who left Uma Thurman. Ethan appears to be the go-to-guy for the role of disappointed man bucking the system in a dystopian future. But don‘t let my initially negative tone put you off, it’s not a bad film. I’m one of the rare people who is not charmed by Claudia Karvan, but I was able sort of look around that and still enjoy the movie. It looks good and it’s a solid idea.

But, what I’m really here to tell you about, is the side offering. If you’re like me, you don’t often bother with the special features on a DVD. They are too often inane advertisements for thing you‘ve just watched, or actors talking about how special, thoughtful and brave they are. There are a few exceptions. Ross Noble does a commentary on one of his stand up acts, that is like another stand up act… and then backs this up with another commentary on the commentary. The commentary from Tony Martin on Bad Eggs will teach you more about film making than a year at NIDA, and it's funny. The short film that comes with Ratatouille is better than the main feature and that brings me nicely to short film that comes with Daybreakers. It’s called The Big Picture and you must not miss it. The end.

A Short Poem On The Nature Of Ceilings

NSW Governor - Woman
NSW Premier - Woman
Governor General - Woman
Prime Minister - Woman
Anakin Skywalker (AKA Darth Vader) - Big Girl

Pay A Penny For My Thoughts And Get Change

I was thinking about currency, overnight. I had just watched QI, where Rich Hall had talked about the currency used on the island of Gap. He was saying that it was eight foot diameter stones with a hole cut in the middle. You had to park the ‘coin’ on your lawn and therefore everybody knew exactly how much money you had. It takes 20 islanders to move one coin. The coke machines are 80 foot high.

Sure, that sound like fun, but consider this: In WWII, both sides used to do air drops of counterfeit currency into enemy territory, to destabilise the economy. Imagine how dangerous that would be on Gap Island.

And then thinking about these counterfeits, I was half remembering a story of how the Nazis used skilled Jewish counterfeiters in the concentration camps to get the best possible quality fake notes for their air-drops. The prisoners would quietly rebel by building in subtle flaws that were easily picked by the British, but would pass the inspection of the Nazi captors.

They couldn’t have been that smart, though, those Nazis. I mean, even I know that Queen Victoria didn’t have a Zapata moustache.

Quitting Time: The Mother Of Invention

An Australian might call this, “Bodgying something together”. An American might call it a “kludge”. Whatever its name, I always imagine the self-satisfied handyman standing back, surveying his work, and muttering the phrase uttered since time immemorial; “There. Better than a bought one.”

I took this photo when I was in Texas a couple of years back and I came across it recently while I was cleaning out a drive. (Water restrictions don’t let you hose down your drive anymore.)

This piece of genius was in the computer room of a middling quality hotel I was staying in. In fact, what alerted me to it was the lamp attached on the other side of the wall. It was sitting in a hallway on an unadorned side-table, with an electric power cord that just dived into the wall like David Campbell at a Turkish bathhouse.

I had to know where the lead went, so ambled around the corner into the computer room to investigate.

The guy who was using the computer room was a little non-plussed. What he saw was a large, giggling bloke come lurching into the room, kick a chair out of the way and start taking photos of what looked like the empty corner of a room. I pointed at the power cord by way of explanation, but he didn’t seem to find it as amusing.

Anyway, the thing that really keeps me chuckling about this, is the implicit workmanship. The ‘handyman’ has drilled a nice small hole but he’s obviously then had to do one of two things to get the power cord through it. Either remove the power cord from the base of the lamp, or the plug from the end of the power cord. So, he’s had to do some re-wiring. If you’re going to the bother of rewiring, why don’t you just do the wiring job properly the first place? Put a power point in the hall.

Hearing The Jungle Drums In the Suburbs

The other night I was woken by the sounds of the next-door-neighbour-lady being murdered.

When I’d reinserted myself correctly into this reality, I came to the conclusion that New Zealand must have done something good in the World Cup. She’s a New Zealander and she was screaming at an odd time of night.

I don’t watch soccer/football when the World Cup isn’t on, so I’m not getting on that bandwagon and starting to watch it now. But, I am very well informed about who’s doing how well – and in real time.

I live in a part of town that is not adequately summed up by the term “multi-cultural”. As a third generation, English speaking, white guy, I stand out like Snow White at an ANC conference… for dwarves.

If Italy does well, my neighbours (two over) go mental. If any South American team, but particularly Brazil, are on the make, the reaction from my neighbours across the landing can be measured on the Richter scale. Downstairs - I haven’t worked them out, but the don’t seem to like middle Euro teams. Spain, one over on the other side will party till their bums fall off. But my favourite reaction comes from the Portuguese.

I don’t have any Portuguese neighbours within eye-shot, but within ear-shot, there’s a big community. During the last World Cup, the Portuguese were doing alright (for a bit) and every time they played, the entire suburb would drop its bundle. They’d block the streets, play music, and, in my favourite move, burn their own houses down with the number of fireworks they were letting off. It only makes it better though, burning your house down to celebrate a soccer victory. It makes it all the sweeter for some reason.

Puttin' The Pieces Together: Part 2

With the continued degradation of their natural habitat, the elusive orang-utan will eventually be entirely driven from their homes and we will find them inhabiting the dashboards of late 1970s cars.

It's just science, people.

Puttin' The Pieces Together

So, as you probably know, that's KD Lang over there... no, on the left.

And that's Wayne Newton from when he looked like a human. (Seriously, in looking for this photo, I saw some scary stuff.)

Also, please consider how high Wayne sings and how deep KD sings. Huh? Huh? Am I right? Danke ever so schoen.

The Human Stain

I feel the need to share an interesting discovery that arises from the whole sorry mattress episode, documented in the previous blog.

If you watch enough telly, you will have been horrified by close-ups and descriptions of what lives in your pillow and your mattress. You will have been told that, by the time a mattress is thrown away, it is 50% heavier than when it was new because of all the sweat and human skin that it has soaked up during its time underneath you. You will have seen magnifications of horrific dust mites, marauding around your bed linen like herds of miniature, albino Godzillas on the rampage.

I find most of those worries a bit abstract. It doesn’t seem that real so I’m not going to get in a tizz about it. And, I think that’s a perfectly normal response to the number of things I could get in a flap about if I let the current affairs programs lead me around by the nose and stuff poisons up it.

But, I’ve had the contents of a mattress shown to me in the most unpleasant way. As you will know, I recently performed an unintended experiment by forcing vast amounts of water through a mattress for a week, and had it sitting on a metal lock-up box. Sort of like a nice laboratory table.

What was left on the box was a bit of an eye opener. And then a bit of an eye waterer. It was a layer of, and I’m going to use the scientific term here, human sludge goo. It was sort of a grey, goopy, semi tacky slurry, made from… well, what the hell is it made from?

We are told that we are mostly water and that we slough off a huge number of dead skin cells a day. That’s apparently what most of the dust in your house is. But this stuff? It can’t be just water or skin.

So kids, when the teachers at school start telling you what you’re composed of and they start carrying on about oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorous and so on, stop them in their tracks, look them dead in the eye and say,

“I’m sorry, but you’re wrong. I have it on good authority that the human body is largely made up of grey porridge.”

(And before a certain regular visitor starts; no, I won’t mop it off. For the record, I don’t really like my new mops. I think they’re a bit crap. What a surprise. Anyone wanna buy a ute? I’ll throw in a free mop.)