Quick thoughts

I tried the new double dipped Cherry Ripe last night. Not bad. Not bad at all.

If you like a) laughing and b) watching guys get shot, you'll probably enjoy "Pineapple Express". Not Seth Rogen's best work - in fact it's probably the worst film I've seen him in - but still at least twice as good as "Get Smart", which I saw a few weeks ago. Darryl from the US Office is a particular standout in it. No idea how it ended up with an MA rating though, apart from the fact that the protagonists smoke dope right through the movie, it's surprisingly violent.

I've watched a little bit of the Olympics and am pretty much over it. I lost interest in the opening ceremony about 15 minutes in (although that was before I found out it discovered lip-syncing and fake digitially created fireworks), and have only watched little bits since. The low point was watching women's judo. Remember when you were a kid and you'd grab someone and try and trip them over. Yep, that's an Olympic "sport" now. Can't wait till British Bulldogs makes it in.

Best comment I've read about the Olympics comes from Freakonomics author Stephen D Levitt . . . "I have to believe that when a country with as much at stake in these Olympics as China sets its mind on finding ways to beat the anti-doping rules, they will succeed."

On a positive Olympic note - Stephanie Rice. Wow.

We moved into brand new offices at work this week, and we now have a deluxe coffee machine. I had three lattes yesterday. I feel like Kramer when he won his case against Java World, hopped up on free coffee all the time.

I've been eating the same sandwich at work every day for the last few months. And in no way is that depressing. I start with a Turkish lepinja from the Markets, slice it in half, add Watsonia cheddar cheese, Beerenberg tomato sauce, a few slices of thinly sliced tomato, and a meat of my choice. Lately I've been using slices of smoky beef sausage. I then toast it in our sandwich press, and finally add a handful of wild rocket. I swear I have colleagues ask me almost daily "Did you buy that?" Amazingly, I'm still not even remotely sick of it.

Weekend viewing

Ever find yourself at the video store with nothing that you want to see, so you talk yourself into something that you know you're not going to love?

That was me on Saturday. I was hoping to get "Semi-Pro" but all copies were out, so I ended up talking myself into "Walk Hard - The Dewey Cox Story". My rationale being that it starred John C. Reilly, who's underrated as a comedy actor (Boogie Nights, Talladega Nights), and was co-written by Judd Apatow (40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up).


Unfortunately, the movie was not great. It's kind of a send up of musical bio-pics, and in particular, the Johnny Cash movie "Walk the Line". The style of comedy is rather different to what you'd expect from the guys involved, it's kind of like a "Scary Movie" type thing, with lots of slapstick and sight gags. I didn't enjoy it all that much, although it does improve at the end, and there are some good cameos, like Jonah Hill, Jack Black and Eddie Vedder.


Sunday I went back to the video store (exciting weekend!) and got the movie I originally wanted, Semi Pro. It wasn't too bad, but not especially hilarious. Basically it's the movie "Major League", but remade about a basketball team. Will Ferrell was OK, but I thought Woody Harrelson was kind of wasted. Unless you really love basketball I can't really recommend this.

More youtube fun

A guy dunking over a car . . .

Some guy on the internet . . .

Combines Radiohead and Chopin

NBA 2K8

About a week ago I tried to play NBA 2k8 online against Corey. For some reason, which I'm still to figure out, the process failed, and we couldn't see each other online.

It motivated me to pick up this game again though, and I decided to try a season. I don't know if I've ever finished a season (and I've been playing basketball games since "Bulls vs Blazers" on the Megadrive), but I'm really into this one.

I went with the Bulls as my team. I've never used them a lot in 2K8 before, but they have a pretty good team, especially since the Cavs trade last season. I'm starting Hinrich, Gordon, Deng, Nocioni (a really good three point shooter) and Noah (great cleaning up around the basket), which leaves a bench rotation of Drew Gooden, Ty Thomas, Larry Hughes, and Thabo Sefalosha. Not bad at all.

I lost the first game, then reeled of four wins in a row (two of them in overtime). All of the games have been close, except for when I played the Suns, who ran me off the floor. Right now I'm about 10% of the way through the season with a 5-3 record, and feel like I'm starting to get the hang of it.

Will I win the title? Or will I lose all interest in the coming week? Stay tuned to find out.

Melbourne

Wednesday night I left the cold, bitter, winter weather in Adelaide to travel somewhere even worse . . . Melbourne.

We flew in on Tiger, with some $10 fares that I had picked up a few months ago. We didn't get in until about 10pm though, so by the time we got to our accommodation it was around 11pm.

We stayed at Punt Hill Manhattan in Flinders Lane (pictured below). Wotif described it as industrial chic, which was reasonably accurate, although part of me felt like we'd stumled into a setpiece from Saw.


In the morning we checked out pretty early, and had breakfast at a lovely little restaurant/bar called Terra Rosa, a few doors down. Sitting in front of an open fireplace, I had their breaky sandwich, which was basically a fancier version of the Subway one I have every second day or so.


After breakfast we got the train out to Prahan, and did some shopping in Chapel Street.


I got a new jacket from Industrie, and these awesome sneakers from a sneaker store called Provider.


Michella also managed to get a few things, spending her birthday cash. After we'd finished up on Chapel Street, we caught the train back into town, returned to Terra Rosa for a beer, then back to the airport.

The Tiger terminal at Melbourne airport is really quite a sight. Michella said it looks like a bus terminal. I said a refugee camp. It doesn't resemble a regular airline terminal, that's for sure. For some reason they serve alcohol in there, so the place is full of guys walking around, swigging from bottles of beer. It just looks wrong. Still, they do have Krispy Kreme there so it's not all bad.

We got into Adelaide at about 8pm last night so just a short visit but a good one, would be good to get back later this year and take some time though, and catch up with friends.

Live Through This revisited

I brought Hole's "Live Through This" into work today for a colleague, and figured while I had the CD here, I may as well rip it to my itunes. I started listening to it and remembered just how great of an album it is.

I don't think it's necessarily underrated, as anyone who likes this kind of music seems to agree that the album is pretty good. From the ragged heaviness of Violet and Rock Star, to the cracked vunerability of Doll Parts, to the urgency of Plump and Gutless, there's a great range of music. It's surprisingly diverse for an album that doesn't differ a whole lot in terms of style, if that makes sense.

It's generally accepted that Kurt wrote most of the album, since it has almost nothing in common with the album that preceded it (the very dissonant "Pretty on the Inside") or the one that came next (the incredibly polished "Celebrity Skin", which was allegedly mainly written by Billy Corgan). I remember a great Dave Grohl quote, when an interviewer asked him which was his favourite Hole album, he replied "Pretty on the Inside, because I know Courtney wrote that one herself" in a not-so-subtle dig towards her. Even if Kurt did write most of the album, I actually think it's better and more consistent than anything Nirvana ever did.

Anyway, these days when we mostly remember Courtney as being certifiably-crazy, it's easy to forget how fantastic this album is.

For those of you who may have forgotten, a reminder . . . .

Violet



Doll Parts



Plump

Tuesday Top 5 - Songs I'm listening to this week

AFI - Prelude 12/21


The Gutter Twins - All Misery Flowers


Guns n Roses - Better


The Hold Steady - One for the Cutters


Coldplay - Violet Hill

The Dark Whopper

Yesterday I gave my tick of approval to "The Dark Knight". Today I'm endorsing the affiliated hamburger.

It's basically just a Whopper, except they've replaced the ketchup with smoky barbecue sauce, but it's a worthwhile addition to the Hungry Jacks menu. Come to think of it, pretty much any special burger Hungry Jacks ever bring out is just a regular Whopper, with one or more of the following - barbecue sauce, bacon, or pineapple.

If I was in charge of HJ's, I'd make it so you could have these options right throughout the year. Why can I only get a Western Whopper once every twelve months?


The other thing I would do is target some of the young go-getters that McDonlalds employees and get them to work for me. Without getting too mean, the standard of kids they have working at Hungry Jacks these days is not real high. I swear I stood there for a full minute last night as some short pimply faced kid tried to explain "Four double whoppers, three of them with cheese" to the other kids making burgers out back. Come on guys, it's not that hard.

Band practice . . .

Was never quite this good with my old band. Perhaps it's because we had to practice in Tim's mum and dad's basement, rather than an abandoned warehouse.

The Dark Knight

Friday night I saw "The Dark Night", aka the new Batman movie. It was really good.

Pretty much anything you read about the film talks about Heath Ledger, and how amazing he is in it, and that's spot on, he really did make the film. I'm not really a big Heath Ledger fan, I think the only thing I've liked that he's done was Two Hands. He's tremendous in this, and walks the line between psychotic and hilarious. He's really unrecognizable though, with his altered voice and all the makeup, I never would have picked him unless I was told who it was.

The movie is, of course, over the top, in terms of its stunts and action. It never feels like you're just watching a superhero movie though, because the writing, directing and acting are all so good. With guys like Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, and the lovely Maggie Gyllenhaal in supporting roles, there's much more talent than you'd normally find in this genre.

It's funny, I've heard quite a few people say this movie is "better than the first one". Meaning "Batman Begins", which is at least the fifth Batman movie. It's almost as if, given how crap the movies became in the 90s, everyone has decided to agree that they never happened, and the series really began when Christopher Nolan became involved.

Highly recommended.

PS Also saw "Charlie Wilsons War" on Saturday night, and that was average. Not necessarily bad, just not good. Kind of bound to happen when you combine one actor who makes great movies (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) with two who make rather bad movies (Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts).

How hard is it to put the bread on the right side?

You don't read a lot of reviews of fancy restaurants on this blog. Part of it is because my budget doesn't allow, part of it's because my tastes aren't that particular. Last night though we had a family dinner for my mum and sister's birthdays at Graduates Restaurant at Regency Tafe.

For those of you not aware of the place, it's a training restaurant for hospitality students, who are required to do some practical work as part of their course. The waiting staff are all students, and most of the kitchen staff are, although there is a head chef, who is presumably the only actual graduate of the group.

Anyway, I didn't think that being a waiter was something you needed a lot of training for, although talking to some colleagues today I've been told otherwise. However, these people were, in a word, terrible. I'd give them credit considering perhaps it was their first time, but the head student-waiter gave a little speech halfway through the night saying this was their seventh night, which I found hard to believe.

For example, they put our bread on the wrong side of the plate. A small thing, but something even I knew better than to do, and I have almost no formal training as a waiter. Also, I had to ask twice for Michella and I to be brought bread, as everyone else got theirs on arrival, and we didn't. Then when they brought it they dropped it on the way from the bread basket to my plate. They disappeared between courses, meaning we had to signal them when we were ready to order the next one. And then they forgot to get Dad his coffee he ordered. One mistake you might write off, but they really managed to screw up way more than you should.

The food itself was passable. I definitely ordered the most palatable food on offer - a mushroom risotto with steak strips for entree, pork wrapped in proscuttio for my main, and lemon pudding for desert. As you'd expect, the servings were rather small, but I didn't end up stopping off at Hungry Jacks on the way home, so it obviously did the job. I fared better than poor Ange, who ordered what she thought was chicken, but got a pie-like dish seemingly filled with soup. And then made Ash swap with her.

Poker

Last night I played poker at the Palais with Ando and Murray. Against a field of around 50, I finished 11th. And I did it with the best cards of my life.


On the first hand I got dealt pocket Aces, doubling up my chips against another player with Ace-King. Over the next two hours or so I got pocket pairs another six times. At one point, the player to my right made a comment about how many pocket pairs I had picked up, and I joked that the next time I got them, I would let him know by holding one of my pockets, and he could keep his chips. I then looked down to find myself with pocket Kings (or Cowboys, for those into the poker lingo), and picked up another few thousand in chips (I did not, as promised, hold my pocket).

After starting with 1,000 in chips, I peaked with 37,000 chips, at which point Murray and Ando assured me I was the chip leader for the tournament. At this point I lost half my chips in a bad beat though, and then the quickly rising blinds kind of necessitated another all in around 15 minutes later which I also lost.

I had a great time, since I got to play about 40-50% of the hands, and do some really agressive betting, but it made me wonder, if I couldn't win with the cards I had, would I ever? I think in those types of situations there really is the element of luck - the rising blinds mean you have to make moves, and even when you're the favourite pre-flop, you need everything to go your way on the all ins to get to a strong point on the final table. I went all-in on my final hand with King-Three for about 13,000 chips, which sounds like a dumb move, except next up I was going to be the big blind, and have to post a blind of 10,000 chips, which would have pretty much put me all in on whatever random hand I got dealt anyway . . .

Brokeback Mountain

Nope, this isn't a metaphor for describing something gay that happened in my life. Last night I actually sat down and watched Brokeback Mountain.


It's one of those movies I'd been curious about for a while, and so when Michella told me she was going to hire it, I figured it couldn't hurt to pop round to her place and see what all the fuss was about. (My favourite part of this was that she asked for it at her video store, and was directed to the "Gay and Lesbian Section". What? They have their own section now?)

We sit down to watch it, and Michella remarked that she had heard that regardless of gender, it was just a great love story. So I'm thinking, I can appreciate that. I may be a little less of a romantic than some (eg Pretty Woman, to me, was just about some rich jerk and a hooker), but I'm not made of stone.

We start the movie, and Jake and Heath are cowboys of sorts, working together alone on Brokeback Mountain for the summer. Jake is a reasonably animated fella, whereas Heath plays the part of the brooding loner, who just mumbles incoherently every now and then. Obviously Jake was a bit of a fan of this, as one night in their tent, he makes his move. All prejudices aside, what happens next isnt particularly romantic or tender, but hey, each to their own.

After a few weeks of being gay together the summer ends and they go their separate ways. Heath marries Jen from Dawsons Creek and has two children, and Jake marries Agent 99 from Get Smart and has a kid too. Except they can't forget their wonderful summer together on Brokeback Mountain, and so four years on, Jake tracks down Heath and visits him.

Upon arrival, they hug, and then make out for a while, which is unfortunately witnessed by Heath's wife, who is somewhat disturbed. And so, for the next few years, they get together a couple of times a year to go away fishing ie have sex. Unfortunately for Heath, Jen leaves him messages in his fishing tackle box that he never gets because he's all over Jake, which confirms her fears that there's more than angling going on, so she divorces him.

Now that Heath is back on the market, Jake suggests they make things permanent, offering to leave his wife, but Heath isn't interested. He's too scared of repercussions, so he continues to live a double life, dating women, while spending a few weeks a year away in the woods with Jake. Jake, for his part, stays with his wife, but sometimes visits Mexico to employ the services of male prostitutes. It's quite a sweet story really.

Finally after 20 years or so, when one of Heath's letters is returned, he finds that Jake has died. Agent 99 tells Heath he died in an accident, but it's revealed some local kids beat him to death (presumably on account of his being gay).

Now, the movie wasn't particularly boring, so I can't say I hated it. What I can't understand is how people think this is a great love story. To start with, we don't get an insight into any type of meaningful relationship between the two of them, there's just a lot of Heath mumbling (so much so we had to turn the subtitles on). Secondly, with Jake consorting with hookers and all, it didn't seem like there was a lot of committment. Finally, there's all this talk about how they were really meant to be together, but they couldn't because of the era. Which was crap, because they could have, it's just they were too scared and/or lazy to leave their lives as cowboys in redneck central, and be together. I have no idea why this rubs me the wrong way, I couldn't have cared less if they ended up together, I just hated the pathetic excuses they made, and these are the type of things you hear when people discuss the film.

Anyway, I've spent way too much time analyzing this film - in conclusion, if you're a big fan of cowboys or homosexuality check this out, otherwise, perhaps give it a miss.

What I discovered on the weekend

Nature

Or more specifically, the BBC series "Planet Earth". I borrowed it off of Ribar, and we knocked out six episodes over the weekend. I've never been particularly interested in our planet's untouched areas, but after watching some of the spectacular footage of mountain ranges, waterfalls, deserts, and undewater landscapes, I had the travelling bug pretty bad.

Not only was I entertained, I also managed to learn a few things. Like there are more ugly animals than you think there are. And there are more deadbeat dads in nature than in Salisbury, Elizabeth and Murray Bridge combined.

As someone who doesn't normally like this type of thing, I really recommend it. Especially if you can get it on Bluray, the images are spectacular, so much so that if you're annoyed by the pompous tones of narrator David Attenborough you can tune him out and just enjoy it on an aesthetic level.

I'm not as good at Mortal Kombat as I thought I was

I downloaded Mortal Kombat II on the Playstation store Friday night, and jumped right in with my old favourite Scorpion. Despite the fact that I had his patented harpoon attack in my arsenal, it took me three attempts to get past my first opponent. I never managed to defeat the second. I'm not sure if these little digital men got better at fighting in the last 15 years or I got worse, but I really suck at this game now.

The Hold Steady

I read a review of the band's new album "Stay Positive" and decided to try them out. I spent a good bit of the weekend listening to the album as I drove around and it's growing on me. They kind of sound like a more punk-ish Bruce Springsteen, and also a little like R.E.M. at their most electric. I'm not exactly sure what I like about this - the singer kind of talk-sings, and the band play reasobably straight forward rock and roll, it's not the type of music I'd think I'd be drawn to. Do I think this will be making my top 5 list for 2008? Of course not. Do I plan on keeping it in my immediate rotation though? Absolutely.

Zach de la Rocha has a solo album out. Finally.

I'd been waiting for Zach's solo album for years, so was more than a little pumped to find out that he'd finally put something out. The project is called "One Day as a Lion", and is a collaboration between him and the old drummer for The Mars Volta. Their debut, self titled EP is out later this week, although it's already on the net, and consequently, my ipod.

I think this is one of those pairings that sounds better on paper. The music is basically live drums and distorted bass with Zach rapping over the top, it's not a huge departure from Rage Against the Machine. If anything, it sounds like a sped-up version of "Mic Check" (so Murray should like it, at least).

The thing is, I've waited for this for so long that I think it's passed me by. There was a time when I would have been really pumped to hear this music, but I don't really care that much anymore. And I wonder if I'm the only one?

An idea

I have to admit, I'm a bit of a fan of lists. In this month's Esquire magazine, there's a good one - 75 things every man should do. It's a list of things they suggest every man should try once, ranging from the general (start something that scares you) to the specific (drink mescal in Mexico). Some of them I've already done (build a fence, learn three or four chords and a song on the guitar), others I probably never will (have a threesome).

There were some good ideas in there though, and I think I'm going to come up with my own list at some point.

One of the things on their list (and probably mine) is live abroad. Which is quite timely because, given the strong Australian dollar, a colleague and I were browsing New York properties on the internet today, and found that it's not as expensive as you'd think. An (admittedly small) apartment in Greenwich Village was going for about $300k, bigger ones out in Brooklyn for less than $200k.

Of course, neither of us have $300k, or even $200k. We realised though that if we only wanted the place for a month a year, we could organise a coop with people from work and buy-in for about $20k each. Plus, the way the Australian dollar is going, in a few months it will be even cheaper . . .

Tuesday Top 5 - Old School Video Games

1. NBA Hangtime (Nintendo 64) - Based on the old NBA Jam arcade game, this still holds up today. Didn't really reach its peak till we discovered how to give the characters giant animal heads. I was always the psychotic looking clown. Ando used to be awesome at this, so much so that we once hacked into his character and downgraded all his attributes without his knowledge just to make it more of a level playing field. In recent years, Murray and his giant chicken "Cornelius" have become feared by other players.

2. Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 (Playstation One) - The first skating game I ever spent a lot of time playing, especially the Hangar Level. You could do ridculous things in this game that defied the laws of physics. One of the first times I can remember have really good music in a game, with music from bands like Rage Against the Machine and Public Enemy.

3. Goldeneye (Nintendo 64) - Based on the James Bond movie, I reckon this was one of the first really good 3D shooters. The single player game wasn't all that great, but multiplayer was always fun, especially when you had four people playing at once. Sometimes people would choose to make their character a midget, meaning it was a smaller target, which I kind of thought was cheating.

4. Double Dragon - When we were kids Ash and I used to love this game, I have fond memories of playing it in the kids games room at the holiday resort we used to go to. I remember there were bad guys who looked like Mr T, and women with whips. The solution for dealing with all foes was almost always waiting for them with your back turned, then delivering a well timed backwards elbow. You would do this again, and again, and again, and never get bored.



5. Mortal Kombat (Sega Megadrive) - I was a big Scorpion fan. Loved that harpoon thing he had, although it took so long to recover after sending it that if you didn't hit your target, you left yourself wide open to a counter attack. You can now download this through the Playstation store to play on your PS3, despite the fact that the game is a good 15 years old I'm seriously considering it.

Bruce Springsteen and Tom Morello

Found this video of the Boss and Morello doing Bruce's "The Ghost of Tom Joad" together.

I love the second solo Morello does, at about the 5.45 mark, when he starts making all of his crazy spaceship noises, and Bruce has a kind of "Hey, that's actually pretty cool" smile on his face.

Best of the weekend

Friday night we went to see Get Smart. I really liked the show when I was a kid, and I'm a pretty big Steve Carrell fan, so went along even though I knew it wasn't going to be brilliant. It was about as good as I thought it would be - a few bright spots, but not something you'd want to watch again.

Saturday morning I went to my new gym with my Dad. I signed up about a week or so ago, and it has two advantages from my old gym - my Dad and my mate from work are both members, so I have someone to go with; and it costs $285 a year (instead of about $800 for Zest).

After the gym I went to Marion with Michella to get her sister a birthday present. I was mad hungry at this point, so had Indian food in the food court (despite the fact that we were having dinner at an Indian restaurant that night). I finished this off with a delightful little vanilla slice from Gloria Jeanes, then went home for a nap. Actually I didn't have a a nap, I just started channeling Paul for a minute there.

For dinner we went to a delightful little place called Urban India. I went there with Mirjana about a year ago, and the waiter talked me into ordering something different to what had planned.

This time I was able to order what I wanted (the butter chicken of course), and I quite enjoyed it, although Michella not so much.

After dinner we went to the Hilton Hotel at Hilton for Rhianna's birthday. We sat in the bar for about two hours, until my head hurt and my throat was raw from screaming. Obviously I'm probably 10 years older than the target market of a place like this, but still, it baffled the mind - the "DJ" kept trying to keep people from sitting around the "dance floor" because "any minute now it's going to fill up." The whole time we were there, we saw two people dancing - a scary looking mother and daugher combo (you had to catch them in the right light to tell which was which). Despite the fact that there was NOBODY DANCING, this guy kept playing horrible, loud dance music, bobbing away in his little DJ-ing booth like he was working at a rave or something. We left at around 10pm to go home and watch the final episode of Underbelly (they all die or go to jail).

Sunday I decided to tackle a little home renovation project - knocking out the built in robe in my TV room. I smashed at it for a while with a crowbar until it collapsed around me, somewhat amazingly, I wasn't hurt. In the afternoon, I went round Peter and Karen's and saw most of the final Pirates of the Carribean movie on Foxtel. It made almost no sense to me, and I think i'm a somewhat educated, film-literate adult. I skipped dinner and just had an awesome apple crumble that Chella made. I think it was the right decision.

Partying like it's 1999

So on Saturday we went to Hog's Breath Cafe at Glenelg for lunch with Alen and Jess and Paul and Tara. Over for a weekend visit, Paul had picked the venue, which led Alen to remark "What is this, the 1990's?". As it turns out, at Hog's Breath, it always is.

We quicky noticed that their playlist was almost entirely comprised of hits from that decade - Jeremy, November Rain, Loser, You Outta Know, Plush - it was like someone found one of my mixtapes from 1995. The lone exception was Kanye West's "Gold Digger" - I have no idea how that one made the cut. Everything else was alternative rock from the last millenium.

I presume it was intentional, and it was actually kind of cool - it was kind of like a themed 50's nostalgia diner, but updated for the 90's. Especially for a catchup lunch between three guys who became friends in the 90s, it brought back all kinds of memories of shared experiences.

After lunch we went across the road for hot chocolate at Bracegirdles. It was pretty amazing stuff, I'm definitely a convert.