Infernal Affairs

So today, after being stood up for times for this fucking movie for about three weeks running, I finally got myself to the Nova to see The Departed.



Given the amount of rage experienced previously in regards to seeing/not seeing the movie, it's easy to understand how it would be nearly impossible for the film to be worth the wait once I actually got there. To be honest, although I felt I should see the film, for awhile every time I saw a billboard for it I would turn to my friend and say "Hey, want to go see Children of Men? Cos I hear that's a great film".

Having finally settled on a time with the reliable Spakattack & his gorgeous fairy for a viewing, I found myself walking out two and half hours later thinking "am I really going to be the wanker who is about to reference the original Hong Kong version of the film and imply that they did it better?" Luckily, just in time it dawned on me that, "oh no, wait, I'm not going to be that wanker - cos I was hell bored by the original version too! Whew. No black turtlenecks for me this summer!"

Points for The Departed:

• The gun spray when they shot people in the head was seriously awesome


• I got to spend a lot of time thinking "hey, they found a new Claire Forlani. And this version can actually act! Way to go!"


• It had Jed from The West Wing. Aw. The President packs a gun. Awesome.


• There were running jokes implying that Matt Damon's character had a lot in common with Pele


• The one sex scene was neither awkward nor as annoyingly chaste as the sex scene I had seen earlier that day involving (or rather, not) Jessica Biele and Edward Norton


• Marky Mark and his crazy hair got to crack the best "your mum" jokes this side of the Sunday Social Club. Plus, at the end, he wore a hair net and slipper booty things.

Points against The Departed

• The final shot was almost as intensely irritating and as utterly, underlying-a-point-and-then-taking-a-crap-on-it-just-to-emphasise-it-further, annoying as the ending of Hard Candy


• Leo DiCapro spent a lot of screen time making a sort of cats-arse face which was both distracting and annoying


• For every expletive spewing Marky Mark moment we had to endure entire uncomfortable scenes with The Joker Septagenarian Style exchanging Zing!-free "Zing!" moments with some red head chippy. Those two had about as much chemistry as a bowl of soggy Weet-bix.


• In the one sex scene of the film the underwear did not match. Why?? WHY? Not only that but the underwear seemed to have serious personality issues. The bottom half was all smoking Gualoise cigarettes and hanging on the Left Bank of the Sienne while the top half was jauntily asking if anyone fancied a game of tennis? Perhaps lacrosse? Anyone for a cup of tea?


• So many men in baseball caps. I can't deal with the aesthetic horror. At least when The Public imitated Sorcese's hoodlums of old they got to dress sharp. Now todays wannabes just have to don huge ugly rainjackets and caps, apparently. Perhaps socks and sandals will be on the rise soon also? "Fannypacks" anyone? (Not the band. I quite like the band.)

Where are our baseball caps? WTF is my/our motivation here?? Sure we've got the ugly jackets but how are we meant to nail this scene without the baseball caps?? Hello??


Oooh, no, you can't hit me! My foundation line is showing!

Just quietly

So.... as some of my friends would know, for awhile there I was all "merrmeow, no one ever comments, everyone hates me, meh meh meh" etc ad neuseum.

Having just listened to my parents take TWO HOURS to try to book a ticket to the Marriage of Figaro using the Power Of The Internet (note - my parents failed miserably in their attempt) I am beginning to suspect that a) this house = not so techonologically adept and also b) I am ungood with details.



Then there were some errors with the republishing of this blog and, frankly, it all became a little bit too hard. At the risk of sounding all Malibu "let's bake cookies so the boys will like us" Stacey, I ... am just not that interested in the "why" or "how" of Blogger. I just hope that now it works good and that. And that I can look forward to a glorious comment-free future where it will be so because I CHOSE it to be like that/I have not friends. Not because I am too retarded to work out the moderating status of this blog.


as an end note - I have no idea where those comments went. I saw them, I clicked republish and now... ? Damnit. Where are those cookies?

Here Comes The Mayo

Today, as we all know, was "cast a stone" day for Victorians. Waking up this morning to the smell of virgin sacrifices wafting over the city I knew that in a few hours I would be playing quoits chucking a stone into a poorly defined circle, yelling "howzat!?!" and walking away, proud to've done my part for democracy.



Standing in line hours later, fretting that my aversion to registering as living anywhere might've finally caught up with me, I looked around and realised I was missing out on The Most Awesome Date Ever. It was the couple of Revival Punksters in front of me that tipped me off. Clearly they did not know each other well. Clearly he wanted to ruffle up her undercut, slightly wilting mohawk. Clearly she wasn't sure if she wanted to 'hold hands' with him or just exploit his dvd collection. It was all so ... moving. So magnificent. The ugly, utilitarian lines of the school foyer. The $2 sausage sizzle outside where you could regroup later and talk about the moving experience of casting stones/filling in bits of paper. The awkward amount of time the two of you would have to stand in line together, making small talk. It was pretty much like going to the movies but instead of forking out for some shitty film that didn't have enough explosions you got to determine the political landscape for the next three years. What could possibly be hotter than that?


Just Beautiful

As an end note, the song with which I have titled this post came on my ipod as I walked home, basking in the odour of punk love/democracy. I was moved to reference it since it is the dirtiest thing I've listened to since... [insert time/thing here]. Fabulous!

Eurgh

I saluted the new day and the endless possibilities held within by sending a text to JZ that read "number of times fell down:3. Number of phone calls:0. Number of bacon and egg mcmuffins consumed at stupid o'clock in the morning:1". Saturday nights are hard sometimes.

I did get to experience the glory of being the dealer for a group of randoms who had to constantly remind me of the rules of blackjack. Amazingly the dealer (that is to say, me) won almost every time. Even when I had 23. Well that's higher than anyone else on the table now, isn't it?

Despite that flush of glory, it is still hard to walk out into the dawn with a not-empty bottle of johnny walker in one hand and Nologic in the other and know that the pain is, as with the wide open road, streatching ahead of you. And what the hell is it with dawn anyway? I feel persecuted by it. I find myself longing for the end of evenings past, where dawn was a distant and theoretical construct instead of the encroaching reality that it has become. Shoo, dawn, shoo...

Thank god, then, for the Sunday Afternoon Social Club



There is something beautiful about Sunday afternoons with friends who feel as second-hand as yourself and who are ready to celebrate the small things. Like table tennis, white wine and that show about dancing.

Normalcy

Recently The Cat and I have been experiencing a bit of our own Neighbour(s)hood Gothic.



That's right, I had no reason to leave the castle during daylight hours and The Cat is fully equipped for Horror Show Freak Out 24/7 (she doesn't like abbreviations, that's why I use them). Given three days of Gothic it was something of a relief to shed the skin of the last person I'd lured back here and convinced to rub lotion on themselves and instead don normal attire and step into the light. I even returned my videos on time, yay me.

So I went and saw Al Gore preach to the converted.



The man is no stand up comedian but he knows his way around the ol' power point. What can I say that any small "l" liberal, Labor/Greens voting person has not said before? I knew what he was saying before he said it but for the most part he said it well and said it convincingly. I did find myself wondering as he mentioned yet one more flight he'd taken why my friend was so ready to lick Al Gore but so suddenly bolshie when it came to flights herself?

The night took a turn from the confrontingly real and doom-ness "we are all about to die and boil alive like a frog in a boiling pot of boiling water"ness into the dreadful when I bumped into my distant-but-dear friend at the exit. In the space of a minute I managed to inadvertently accuse of her of being fat (I didn't say she was pregnant, I didn't! I just asked her about the hypothetical children. I understand now that that was wrong) and asked about her partner. The same partner with whom she had separated with on the weekend. What am I, Hugh Grant now?

Traumatised from these events, I eventually stumbled into PB's celebrations and all was well. Years ago, PB and I celebrated the fact that we were shallow aesthetes - and how lucky were we that all our friends were really totally hot? Luckily for us all, PB held firm to our original mandate so his birthday was well attended by all those who were purdy. Also well travelled. There is something fantastic about drifting between groups of people and realising that the thing that we all have in common is that we can't stay still. Not just in a "rool need to go to the toilet" way but in a whole "is that all there is?" nomad way. Aw. To travelling...

Sprung, Riz, Etc.

I was shocked, shocked, to discover the other day that my good name is being used as a synonym for behaving like a car-trashing, early 90's Shannen Doherty. For shame people, when did it become bitchy to merely say the truth? To tell it As It Is? Is anyone telling Fox News that they are bitches? No indeed.

However since people have seen fit to label me, so I see fit to say:



If this spring, sap*- rising rootathon that is happening around me does not stop soon I will take up a gun. Possibly in manner of Annie/I Spit On Your Grave/that song about the homecoming queen. Possibly in manner of Natural Born Killers. It depends if I find someone who can drive or not. Never before have the vicissitudes of the seasons so wholeheartedly been embraced by my friends. We've had the emotional spring clean. We've had the emotional (or not) infanglement. We've had the sleepless nights due the overwhelming Springness. Some of us have had it all and some of us, not so much. Either way I am scandalised to watch weather dictate temprement to such an extent. Where is our ironic distance? Where is our city-dwelling unconcern with nature? Surrounded as we are by hectare after hectare of cement how are we so easily turned into frisky animals? We are meant to be turning into machines, friends, and not machines of rooting.

The day that I find myself swapping ideas for sex in public places with friends (the library as apposed to doing it in toilets of a bar for example) is the day that I start to suspect the party train might be pulling out too far** into spring fever madness.

This is totally not the future that was promised by The Matrix etc. Definately not what The Children of Men had in mind.



*n.b. possible metaphor

**seriously, I have no idea either.

Le Talkie Walkie

Sitting at the bar yesterday afternoon, slightly sozzled, slightly bored by the singing of the man in the red shirt and offensive black vest and bolero tie, I found myself imagining the phone conversation being conducted on the other side of the closed door.



"dude, where are you? You were meant to be here 15 minutes ago"

"No way, I'm just going to buy her one more beer, I swear I saw her hands twitch just a second ago. One more beer bro!"

"Wtf are you talking about?"

"Maybe she'll take her hands off the bench from where I can see them if I buy just one more beer! Maybe she'll put them somewhere I can't see them, if you know what I mean..."

"What did you just say? Look, are you coming to dinner or not. We're about to order - pork or beef?"

"Huh? Oh, I mean, twitchers are such nerds don't you think?"

"seriously, get on your fucking bike and get here already"

And ... fin

Round Up Number Billionty Seven

So bearing in mind the grumpiness of the below post and the fact that I now have The Cat begging for me to put it out of its misery by seeing if it can fly, here's a quick round up of things Herbert lately:

• In an interesting development on a previous post I recently found myself riding not just into the dawn but out the other side of it and into 8am Friday morning traffic whilst on my ride from.... brunswick to airport west and back again via essendon/suburbs misc.


• Celebrating "employment" with JZ at Rue Bebs on a Tuesday afternoon after going to see Children of Men. Our uni selves would be so proud of where we are now


• Comparing the work at Kick and Someday while glaring at the drug addled freaks at Alia after bustling ourselves in for free and then despising all around us from our vantage point at the end of the bar


• Cooking an awesome repast even by my standards for my friend Park on Saturday night (with a little bit of extra appreciation from S which was cool) and then being delighted by Taya's mother cooking the recipe from the GoodWeekend for her while my parents were at home doing exactly the same thing (although my pez broke it down over two days. Still. The amazing power of the GW, no?) - I thought the chicken was weirdly flavourless but the eggs were great


• Attending the grammatically suspect but morally virtuous Walk Against Warming and getting to stand on a bench and see all the families etc assembled


• Being fearfully impressed by my friend, BigFriendlyGiant's, music-personness but being even more impressed by his pretty ringlet-y hair the secret of which his beloved, Roo, was only too happy to reveal (thankfully, with the new crop I no longer have to remember the shampoo/conditioner combo she showed me repeatedly)


• Bumping into S's little brother at social events: various as he starts out on what I can only believe will be an illustrious social-gategrashing lifestyle perhaps as glorious at the one I've constructed (well... maybe not). It is a funny thing to be confronted by younger siblings though. With the exception of the Z-clan, I had some vague idea that everyone's siblings existed somewhere else. Like "berwick" or "adelaide" or something. Apparently siblings exist in the ghetto too. Amazing.


• Discovering that soccer in the park can cure hangovers but will not necessarily stop one from standing still at key moments in the game and pondering if one is really standing in the park and, if so, why wont the angles line up, can I lie down now, please?

And that will have to do until the next time, I believe.

Queasy

I've been feeling vaguely guilty for not writing anything here for awhile.

On the other hand, having had some of this writing quoted back to me by my friend recently I may also be suffering from "writers block" or "bloggers remorse". I think probably the latter since, although I write, do I Write? Insert Mike Moore style thoughtful pause and "mmm" here. Indeed.



Also I am hungover and tired from my excellence yesterday which involved me catching one train to Flemington only to be brutally rebuffed by an attendent there (you want me to pay $50 to go and hang out by the drainage point at the back of the carpark?! For Realz?!) and hopping back on that train and going all the way back to Flinders St and trying again with a different train. I also spent a fair portion of that journey staring out the window and thinking "is it really worth it?" (but not in a satre type of way, natch).

In terms of returns for bets, well, no it wasn't. In terms of hilarity and chances to tell my friend how dreadful his prostate-supporting facial hair was, then yes definately.

The day concluded with a moderately-well behaved dinner with Spakattak, Gynger and Tone Loc (yes, the one and only TL) until TL started waving the knickers of gossip around and then snatching them back like some sort of demure little virgin all, 'nooo, I can't tell you that, you're a sieve!'



This irritated me greatly since how is one meant to assert that one is actually a Vault about certain things without confirming to the worst stereotypes of the accusers? Bah!!