I Was Watching a Documentary on Food Manufacturing Recently…

Boy, some confectioners have a lot of problems with hygiene practices don’t they? I’ll leave that issue to people with more food preparation or sailing experience than me – but for the record – I reckon a Viking longboat, rowed by genetically fiddled identical midgets, is not as appetising in your hot chocolate, as a marshmallow.

I’m also not an expert on ‘little people’ hiring ethics, but Gurdeep Roy had better’ve been paid more than the Munchkins ‘cause those little fuckers were ripped off. 

In fact, by my in-depth calculations, Roy had better have been paid more than Johnny Depp. I say this having applied RCA to the film.

RCA - Relative Celluloid Acreage.

• Actor’s film acreage = amount of celluloid in one film, covered by an actor.
• Proportionally adjusted by the actual real-life size differences between the actors.
• (King Kong should always earn less than Fay Wray. Gurdeep Roy plays every Umpalumpa and he’s a midget.)
• Therefore, Deep should get more than Depp.

Something else occurred to me later in the evening - Wonka stops at a three-course-flavoured-chewing-gum. Think big, Wonka. Why stop there? Degustation chewing gum. Why not have a gum that finishes off with a cocktail at Trader Vick’s or getting pepper sprayed in the carpark? 

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.” 

It's Good to Get Out

We've got tickets to Giggle and Hoot and Friends, LIVE!

Now I just need to find a babysitter for Darth Baby and we can really make a night of it.

Any Shorter of Ideas I'd be the Dinklage of Ideas

There are times when a bloke just needs to set off in the car for an unspecified amount of time. He knows he just has to be at the helm for as long as it takes.

This is not the romantic wanderlust that will lead to a blog about me getting arrested on the border between Outer Mongolia and Tahiti under suspicion of transporting herring for nefarious means. No, the job is simply to keep the vehicle moving while Darth Baby spends some time in his hyperbaric chamber communicating with the Sith Lords or choking the missing green sheep with his mind… or having a God. Damn. Nap.

Recently, I had to start driving but didn’t have any destination or purpose other than the nap. The Imperial Star Destroyer just had to keep moving, without making the jump to hyperspace. (i.e. Puddle around the suburbs without getting too far from home.)

I can’t imagine the following idea is startlingly original - but I came up with a little game to achieve the above “puddling about” and now I need to iron out the kinks and make it competitive.

I call the game Left Right Out:

Objects of the game (Score weight to be agreed upon with consultation):

1.   Turn alternate left and right turns in your car until you leave the state (I did write earlier that puddling about in your corner of the world was the primary objective, but once you get into it…)

2.   Turn alternating left and rights until you create a repeating circle (to a New Yorker or anyone else living in a planned city, that would make no sense. To a Sydneysider – I accidentally did it in my first two hours.)

3.   Left and rights until you are in the ocean. Playing in Europe? You should be able to go for the open-lay-down-misere. Leave your state, do a circle and end up in the drink all at once. Extra points for committing and actually getting the water above the door sill

4.   Lefts and Rights until you drive by the place that you were born or other significant life event. Again, weights to be determined. If you enjoy and are good at taking your clothes off and cuddling other people with your naughty bits, “I had sex there” is not going to score too well. On the obverse side if you are shy, “I passed out from blushing there” is not that awesome either. Consider swapping. This is where we need to chew over the pooling of goals and then the betting on who can achieve what

5.   Group Goals - Witness Eddy McGuire going through a dumpster, Mark Latham paying a cab fare or Geraldine Doug beating up a nun

To play, you will need:

1 x Car (careful, they’re sharp, so get mummy or daddy to help)

1 x Baby - optional

Rules:

1.   Random generate a number between one and ten by your favourite method

2.   Random generate a direction. All you have to do is not set off in the same direction as last time

3.   Drive in that direction as best you can for the number of minutes or kilometres you generated in step one. Make sure that the next time you play, you stick to time or distance

4.   Once you arrive at point X, mins or km from home, the  Left Right Out begins

5.   Take the first legal and available left turn

6.   Then take the next legal and available right turn

7.   And so on

8.   Do not take “No through Roads” or obvious cul-de-sacs

9.   If you do find yourself in a dead end that was short but not clearly marked, drive back out and continue the journey as though that turn had not been taken

10. If it is a long dead-end and not reasonable labelled, treat it as part of the L/R sequence

11. Remember, only legal or possible –so if you drove back out of your dead-end and the sign at the end of the street says “Left Turn Only”, that is not a choice in the sequence of Left and Rights. Treat it as a straight road

12. Islands, large median strips, diversions such as private roads and any other mid-lane construction are not counted as a left or a right. The question you ask yourself is, “Does this constitute a change from going straight? If it doesn’t involve taking drugs and staying up late, then no.

13.   National Parks, Royal showgrounds and lunatic asylums are quite ok to include in the trip. I spent an hour or so in Callan Park and it was totally worth it.

14. Other semi-public roadways are ok but if the limited and confined nature of the interior-circuit means that you keep being redirected back into the institutions grounds, politely describe your predicament to the guard who has now seen you three times for no good reason and skip a turn in your sequence. Ignore the look on his face. (In fact, print these rules out and hand them to him. Mention my name.)

15. Track your progress. I wanna map this somehow. Go-pro cams on  high speed, geo-stat tracking through your sat-nav and any other fab means to be able illustrate each trip, overlaying each other trip on a map

Sell it as art.

This is a particularly rewarding game to play in a V8 Grand Tourer, where you can also watch your fuel tank level drop at the same rate as the child’s eyelids.

You Have to Starve For Your Art

Having battled Darth Baby to a standstill over lunch I felt that he had, while not actually claiming outright victory in the food fight, definitely made me look silly. I can't undo the preportion of food that ended up on the floor rather than in his tummy but I can still win a moral victory.

I am not cleaning it up.

I am redifining the house as a modern-art museum. Maybe I'll call it the Googooheim or the Poopeedo Centre, I don't know. What I can let you in on is some of the content for our first season's exhibition.

Fame: Abstract in baked beans that shows a witty tip-of-the-hat and flip-of-the-finger to Warhol

Apple and Yoghurt avec Keyboard: A disturbing and possibly expensive commentary on the alienation caused by the increased PC mediation of our lives

Still Life with Mixed Fruit and Stuffed Bear: A timeless piece for a disposable age

The museum will also host Happenings and Installations. Some to watch out for:

Eyebrow, what Eyebrow? A whimsical yet dark journey into the human psyche that challenges the moral bounds between premeditated and unpremeditated violence. The second piece in the trilogy, Gentle Bubba, Just Be Gentle is currently receiving rave reviews off Broadway and off potty.

An Evening of Interpretive Whinging (Monday - Friday. Matinees and late night performances 7/11)

The Best Boy in the World*

*Conditions may apply, check website for details

Our Culture Just Lost 'The Culture'

Iain Banks died today. For many of us it will feel like we’ve lost a complex, visionary and hilarious friend. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to be his new widow, as he was notoriously good company in real-life as well as on the page. Banks has been my favourite author for nearly 30 years. He’s the only author I have bothered to collect and re-collect in entirety, several times. 

(When you really love an author, you always end up “re-collecting” because at dinner parties you recommend and loan to guests. The guests might return, but the books rarely do. I don’t mind. Books are fair that way. You’ll do the same at someone else’s dinner party.)

Banks is such a favourite for so many of the right type (i.e. people who think like me) that he is a touchstone for a couple of my best friendships;

“Hey man, good to see you. Have you read your latest Banks Statement?”

“Yeah. Better than the last one, not as good as the one before that. How about that bit where…”

And we’re off.

He wrote under two tags, Iain M. Banks for his Sci-Fi and plain Iain Banks when he was doing literature. When he announced he was “poorly” a few months ago, I started reading more things about him. Here’s something I found amazing:

It was assumed in a lot of places, including my own, that his Sci-Fi books were his dirty, great cash-cow that supported the more highfalutin literature.

Wrong - and by orders of magnitude. Mr B. himself reported that his literature outsold his Sci-Fi, four-to-one. I find that astonishing. I think good Sci-Fi is as important as any other writing, so I’m not going to say that it’s heartening to hear that, but I do find it mighty interesting. He also said that he enjoyed writing his literature - but always looked forward to getting back to the main character in his Sci-Fi universe, The Culture.

I read him in order simply because I read as his publishers released. I suggest, if you haven’t read any and are interested, that you start out of order:

Iain Banks - Espedair Street

Iain Banks – Complicity

Iain M. Banks – Consider Phlebas

Iain M. Banks – Use of Weapons

If you’re a Sci-Fi bod, do Phlebas and Weapons first. (Maybe Player of Games. That’s also a cracking place to start.)

After that, you’re on your own and I’m jealous that I don’t get to go there with you, for the first time, again.

I will doubtlessly need to rebuild my collection of Banks books in the future, and they will move inexorably into the digital realm, rather than being in the physical. It’s deeply unfair that he won’t get the chance to be uploaded and go digital like some of his characters and give us more, but he lived in and wrote about a deeply unfair and uncaring universe.

Bloggers Note: This blog is called “A Grey Area” first and foremost for one of Banks' characters, the GCU A Grey Area.