Rachel Getting Married

Rachel Getting Married is the latest movie directed by Jonathon Demme, whose resume includes a couple of small pics like Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia.

Starring Anne Hathaway, from more dubious movies such as The Princess Diaries and Bride Wars, this flick is a close up look at addiction, recovery and dysfunctional families.

I saw this movie this morning and I have to say, it was really good. It's done with a hand held camera, which I always find takes up to an hour to get used to but is ultimately rewarding in the end.
Let me just say from the outset - Hathaway is brilliant as Kim, a drug addict who has been in and out of prison and rehab for the last ten years, and returns home for her sister's wedding.
Without going too much into the plot, the movie is a great study on how addictions can affect a family unit.
If you get the chance, and you like a movie that makes you think, see it.

So many things

Hi all,
Sorry about my slack blogging efforts lately.
The truth is, I've found it hard to inspire myself to blog about anything. I think it's something to do with the fact that I had nearly four weeks holiday and got into the habit of being lazy during that time.
There have been many things over the past few weeks that I thought I would like to blog about. I wanted to blog about Obama. I wanted to blog about an amazing exhibition I saw at the WA Art Gallery by an artist called Gordon Bennett (anyone who lives in Perth and is interested in Aboriginal issues must see this exhibition before it closes). I wanted to blog about two albums that have inspired me over the summer months (Apocalypso by the Presets and the new Kings of Leon album - both are brilliant and come highly recommended). I wanted to blog about racism. I wanted to blog about returning to work after a long holiday. But in the end, what inspired me to blog again was a notepad getting destroyed all over my clothes (read below).

Anyway, the long and short of it is I'm back. I'm in a great mood today and, as ridiculous as it sounds, blogging about my load of washing has inspired me to stick with this blog.
If there's any readers left, thanks for coming back. I'll be better this time round. Promise.

Ever found a tissue in your load of washing - after the washing's been done?

Pretty annoying, huh?

Ever found an entire notepad in your load of washing - after the washing's been done?

If you're thinking it would be substantially more annoying than a single tissue - you'd be spot on.

Observations from a trip to the casino

• There are people out there who think that writing the numbers down as they come up on the roulette table will form some sort of pattern to help them win. These people are usually the ones that never win.
• The people in the poker rooms at the casino take the whole thing waaaay too seriously. I don't think too badly of myself as a poker player on a casual basis - but these people scare me.
• The bright lights and higher oxygen levels in the casino make me feel like I could stay up for days.
• Thank god we don't have pokies in pubs here in WA.

Tales from the north side

On Christmas Day, we had a few friends around for drinks.
My housemate Cookie, who currently works in the mines but has done pretty much everything - from rigging, to deep sea diving, to working on a fishing trawler - invited one of his mates from Karratha down.
Frosty was a fishing trawler captain and he proceeded to tell me one of the cooler stories I have ever heard in my life.

He was working on a trawler off Exmouth and had been out for three days of a four day fishing expedition. Frosty explained that guys (and girls) who work on fishing trawlers don't get paid a salary, they get paid a commission depending on how much fish they catch. He said two tonnes was a good catch in general terms. Anyway, they were on the second last day of their trip and they only had 100kgs so far.

Frosty had tried everything - he had gone to every secret fishing spot he had ever known, tried every old fisherman's trick in the book but still, there were no fish anywhere.
He studies the maps for hours, still coming up with nothing. Then, he looks up out the window and sees a rainbow on the horizon. So, on a whim, he programs where he calculates the end of the rainbow to be and sets course for it, thinking he's got nothing to lose.

Of course, his crewmates thought he'd gone mad, and proceeded to wind him up with jeers of "chasing the rainbow, are we Frosty?" all the way there.
When they were about three quarters of the way to the spot Frosty had estimated, he almost turned back. But he pushed on, because he had nothing to lose.

When he gets to the spot that he had put into the computer, a massive triangle of fish appears on the radar - right at the spot where he calculated the rainbow ended. He ended up filling the boat with high quality fish. But that's not the clincher - the bit that makes this story so awesome is the type of fish he found at the end of the rainbow - gold band snapper. They could have been any species of fish in the world, and they were gold band snapper.

I asked him what the moral of the story was. He told me there was a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow - you just had to look hard for it.

Hi all,
Sorry I haven't been a reliable blogger of late. I've been good, it's just been a busy time of year as I'm no doubt you're all aware :)
I had a lovely festive season and new year, some of which has inspired me to blog.
I love the new year. New Year's Eve provides people with the opportunity to start afresh. I know it sounds like wank but think about it. The clock ticks over and then the calendar starts again from the beginning. People make resolutions to try and better themselves in certain ways. The festive season even provides people who have fallen out with others the opportunity to resolve their differences "because it's Christmas" or "because it's new years."
I enjoyed my festive season and, I think because of the events leading up to it, I appreciated a few of the things I usually take for granted.

Anyway I'm back blogging now and I promise I will be more of an active writer in the new year. That's my resolution :)
Dave

PS Oh, and I just wanted to add that this whole Israel/Palestine situation is the scariest situation we've faced in world politics for some time. What makes it scarier is stories like this and the US response to it all.

PPS In 16 days' time, George Bush will no longer be the president of the US. How awesome.

Musings

Did you know that in Queensland, the sun rises at 4.15am during the summer?
I’m sitting here at about 7.30am and the sun is as high in the sky as it normally is at about 10am in Perth.
I’m here because my grandma passed away on the weekend.
My parents offered to pay to fly me over for the funeral, and since then, I’ve found out I will be delivering a eulogy and will also be a pallbearer.

I’ve never really had to deal with death in my family before. I’ve been pretty lucky in that respect. As you guy know, grandma’s death was expected. That doesn’t really make it any easier. I was okay when I was in Perth, but once I got on the plane and started to get closer to Brisbane, it started to hit home. This would be the first trip I had made to Brisbane without seeing grandma.

I guess the thing that has hit home for me is that death is so… permanent.
Meeting up with family I haven’t seen in ages has been great, but reminiscing about grandma just makes me sad. No longer will I be enveloped in those big, warm grandmotherly hugs. No longer will I be able to walk up the back steps of the house on Long Street, through the sleepout and into the kitchen that always smelled fantastic.
No longer will I be able to have thick slabs of bread with lemon butter, surrounded by Tupperware containers that are older than I am.
But she’s in a better place now.
And I’m here to celebrate her life, for want of a better cliché, with my family. That’s the important part.

Seasons Bleatings

It's that time of year again!

Every year, I fail to get swept up in the pre-Christmas hysteria. Usually it's not until a couple of weeks before Christmas that I actually click and think "it's Christmas!"

Usually it's one event that sets me off.

Today, I was standing out the front of my house waiting to be picked up and a bus went past that was driven by Father Christmas.

He turned, looked at me standing over the other side of the road and we waved at each other.

This set me off like a giddy little child.

I'm not embarrassed to say I get excited at these times of the year. Christmas, Big Day Out and, to a lesser extent, Easter make me feel like a little kid again.

I love it. Get excited people :)

Bad bad bad

Now that I'm living in a house with cable television, I find myself searching for the best movies to record and watch at my convenience.
My search for the best movies, however, has seen me neglect my other favourite movie pasttime - watching really bad movies.
So it was purely by chance I happened upon a movie the other night called Renegade Justice. It was made in 2007. It stars Steven Seagal.

Now, I'm having trouble conveying just how bad this movie really was. I'm talking uber bad. I'm talking so bad I was genuinely laughing at the cheesiness and predictability of it all.

Here's the plot - Steven Seagal plays some sort of martial arts expert (of course) whose son, a policeman, is killed in an apprently random gang-related killing. So he goes into the heart of gangland, wherever that is, and kills everyone in his way.
My favourite scene, however, was when he was telling the token love interest about how much his son meant to him. All of a sudden, this a capella voice starts singing over the top of Seagal (think the final scene where Russell Crowe dies in Gladiator). The viewer is then subjected to a montage of black and white mocked up photographs of Steven Seagal with his son as a kid, a teenager then finally, as a young man.

It was soooo bad. So bad I loved it.

End of Year Report Card for the Liberal Party

Ability to perform as an effective opposition FAIL

• Able to give constructive criticism D-
• Able to offer good alternative government E
• Able to make ground in polls F
• Able to unite party behind leader D
• Able to make PM and Wayne Swan look bad F