Your dipstick's showing

Here's a little family secret. Not my family, specifically, but most families who I am familiar with tend to keep this one under the spare bed when polite company calls. If you're reading this, then this is probably your family secret too. It's a secret because we're all educated people (well - we can all at least read) and there's something a weeny bit trash about This Big Secret That I Keep Hinting At But Will Not Divulge Yet For Some Reason.
The clue was in the previous sentence: trash.
Got it yet?
Need more word association?
Tabloid. Celeb. Goss. The Stories. Brangelina. Bennifer. Perry. Brand. Nicole. Paris. Lipo. R-Patz. Kristen. Tailor. The twins.TMZ, Perez Hilton, Who Magazine and The Vine. I just typed all those out without even having to go a'googlin'. They were right there, front lobe, centre.

Celebrity gossip.
Without generalising too much, almost every woman I know would have hit the green buzzer at least twice during the above list. But no one talks about it. Not to me, anyway. And why would they? Oh high and mighty I, with my books, my extensive mental Wikipedia of factoids and Simpsons trivia and my snide indifference towards all tales of professional entertainers and the trust-fund elite.
"Jannisten is still single?" I scoff. "Are you aware that I've recently finished reading On The Road and Raymond Chandler is among my favourite authors? Did you know that Stanley Kubrick used a camera lens originally built for NASA in order to film interior scenes in Barry Lyndon?"

No. Celebrity gossip journalism is to mixed conversation what the bucket bong is to high tea; one simply does not bring it along in the first place. Nor does one mention it, nor admit any kind of knowledge other than that which can be gleaned from public news stand posters which are briefly glanced towards (never studied) en route to the library.

Behind closed doors, I'm assuming it is a different matter. Someone is keeping Perez Hilton in pink hair-dye, but I wouldn't know.

But I am not here to (further) point out the vapidity of following celebrity gossip, because this blog entry is about to become the site of a further secret unleashed, and I would hate to get any mud upon myself.
I shall illustrate this with a quick story. A few days ago, Mele found an article on the internet which she knew I would find interesting and stimulating. She immediately unplugged her laptop and skipped into the kitchen where I was preparing my famous poulet provençale. No, dear friends, it wasn't news of an upcoming Jackson Pollock exhibit. But it was accompanied by this picture:


"Look!" she said. "The world's most expensive car!"
"Oh yeah," I replied, before she could further furnish me with the factoids and details which she had earnestly and lovingly learned from the article. "The Bugatti Type 57SC Atlantic."
"It's ..."
"One of three ever made. Recently sold for between $30 and $40 million. Looks vaguely like a phallus."

For I too, am a gossip fiend. But I don't care about people gossip. I care about car gossip. There is such a thing. I know it because I've been in conversations with men (for some reason it's mostly men) who have recently watched a Top Gear episode. They'll start talking about it, because that show is a great font of what lad mags refer to as 'pub ammo'; factoids and stories with which to dazzle your fellow drinkers at the boozer.
"Saw the new Nissan on Top Gear," they'll say. "Looks pretty hot. Apparently they build 'em on a special pressure rig to get all the tensions and stuff right."
"Cool." That's about all I can offer, because I don't want to come out with the fact that I've watched that particular episode about 5 times since it originally aired in the UK two years ago and was made available for download over at finalgear.com. Nor do I want to start that conversation either, because car gossip isn't like celebrity gossip. Celebrity gossip is finite. Brangelina can only adopt so many handbagsshitfuckimeantosaybabies per week. Tayluh can only procure so many new mates while making a new album/movie. S/he is only human.

Car gossip is based on car facts and goes on forever. Especially if you throw Top Gear into the mix. Most people claim that Top Gear makes a boring topic (cars) not only interesting, but massively entertaining. This is true. Not for me. For me Top Gear takes a fascinating topic (cars) and turns it into pornography. I am riveted, but slightly ashamed of myself, yet I cannot, will not, turn away. My wife is comfortable with this lifestyle. She has even enabled it at times, going so far as to buy me magazines and toys. I haunt car-related internet sites and pore over delicious pictures and numbers. So help me, I've even been caught watching grainy videos at work.

Which brings me, or should I say us (you can see where I'm heading gentlemen), to the Bugatti Veyron. This is every car gossip's starting point. This thing may well exist, but even in the metal, its whole could never be as great or as real and supernatural as the sum of numbers and facts which exist in the minds of everyone who's ever watched a Top Gear episode in which it stars, read a magazine article about it, looked it up on Wikipedia, typed it into Uchoob or all of the above.
Like me.
Like YOU.
If you know the word 'Veyron', you know facts about it, mate. And don't deny it. This is your secret just as much as it is mine. We don't discuss it with our mothers, we don't dissect it over beers with our friends, we don't try to get our ladies enthusiastic about it. But we all have our dirty little stash of Veyron numbers somewhere in the back of our brains. Behind the '80s music trivia which only comes out at quiz nights; behind the fashion knowledge which you don't remember collecting and behind the stuff from old Cosmo's you hoovered up in some bone-headed teenage quest for learning about girls. Behind all that is the dark, greasy little cardboard box marked "Veyron facts".
I'm not about start spraying Veyron facts all over this blog like a boring uncle after too many homebrews, but to bring this little analogy to a close, I'd like to illustrate the difference between celebrity gossip and car gossip.
I will now relay two conversations held between imaginary people. The facts are real, the people are not.

Celebrity Gossip Fan #1: Oh my god, have you seen how skinny Angelina is?
Celebrity Gossip Fan #2: I know. Look at that, it's just not healthy. And how many kids does she have?
CGF#1: Like, twelve now? I don't know. How does she look after them all?
CGF#2: She has a nanny. She's got to.

This goes back and forth a few times until the latest topic wears thin and CGFs move onto to other topics and become normal people again.
Observe now the Car Gossip Fan ...

Car Gossip Fan#1 (I should have chosen a better acronym): Bugatti Veyron? That's the one with a 16-cylinder engine.
Car Gossip Fan#2: And 4 turbos. It puts out 1000 horsepower.
Car Fan #1: And ten radiators. Did you see on Top Gear how it's got an air-brake?
Car Fan #2: Yeah, it gives as much braking power as a Ford Fiesta.
Car Fan #1: 0 to 100 in 2.5 seconds.

[Let us move away for a moment, and imagine these two conversations were taking place at the same time and continuing to their logical conclusion. Now let us move back and listen in once more ...]

Celebrity Gossip Fan#1: I really don't like what Labour's done since the last election, but honestly if Tony Abbott gets in, I really will have to kill myself. And a Liberal voter.
Celebrity Gossip Fan#2: Yeah, I want to say 'Don't worry, no one would vote for that maniac', but the latest polls are so close. I mean, I can't believe there are actual women who are prepared to vote for a man who ...

[You get the picture. Celebrity gossip has long ago fulfilled its function as a conversational tidbit and the two people have moved on towards relevancy. Let's see what's happening at table number two ...]

Car Fan #1: ... and if the Veyron started as the McLaren went by, it would still catch it to 200 miles per hour.
Car Fan #2: But in that drag race over a mile, it was still so close because the Veyron's a heavy car, no matter how you look at it.

You'll notice our Car Fans haven't moved much beyond the Veyron in the ensuing half hour.

This is why celebrity gossip is a secret: it's private and fun to share.

But car gossip is still a taboo: it's embarrassing to bring out in the open, and once you do, there's no putting it back in the tube.


Broom broom!

Dear Top Gear Australia,

Well done on a first season. You were better than we all thought you'd be.
But, lads, you missed the mark.
The filming was brilliant. The look of the thing was bright, exciting and Australian. But you still missed the mark. In trying not to be UK Top Gear, you missed out the things that make UK Top Gear worth watching.
I've written about this before, but I wasn't clear enough. I understand now where I went wrong, and I apologise. It's not just that we all want to drive the cars with you, we want to understand them. Pretend they're ours. We want to be able to quote the stats at our mates and also potificate about how the air-conditioning comes from a Mondeo.
When you take out our Lambourghinis for a spin, we don't just want you to read out the sales brochure. We want you to interpret it. Don't tell us about the torque, tell us it would actually twist tarmac to ribbons if the tyres were any stickier. Don't tell us the thing is fast, tell us it's already next Tuesday. Exaggeration, hyperbole, superfluities, lies. How much power does the W427 have? Four Million kilowatts! That's how much! Yeah! Broom Broom!
The problem is that you have writers, but not motoring journalists. The staged-gags and wordplays are good, but not the car-related ones. The car talk is all written down verbatim from the nervous nellies handing over the Emotional Control Units to the hosts. There's no opinion, no criticism. I understand that car manufacturers are loathe to put their product images in the hands of so powerful a medium as Top Gear, but when you "do" a car, don't just tell us that you love it. Tell us it handles like a caffeinated chiuhaha. Tell us the interior reminds you of your accountant's tearoom (practical, sparse, boring and with little teabag expense accounts ticking away in the ether).

I never saw you dislike a car. Not even slightly. Praise is boring. The only reason you're still reading this is because I'm not blowing spun sugar into your dacks. Our eyes tell us that black GT is brilliant. Only you can keep us watching with the audacity to suggest that it's an ugly, over-powered brute with switches from a 1980s cassette recorder. Do some hotlaps in the R8 and then have a good old bitch about how it looks like the guy at your formal who didn't understand that cummerbunds were meant to go inside the suit.

The final show's Holden vs Ford showdown. You came out and tested the entry-level variations. The family cars. I was thrilled. I was excited.
'Aha!' I said aloud to the empty loungeroom. 'Here comes the tomfoolery, the japes, the mucking about and the falling over.'
You did doughnuts. Again. We've seen the doughnuts. We've seen the breaking test and the drag race.
Did the words 'family car' not ring any bells? No? I'll try another question: at the risk of borrowing too much from UK Top Gear, have you noticed that when your English cousins do comparative road tests on less-than-thrilling cars the tests themselves are always mockeries of normal usability tests, the testing is a slapstick routine minus the pies and the results are ridiculously skewed and unimportant? Have you noticed how entertaining that is?
I'll give you a clue: how about a family car test that involves, oh I don't know, a family? Why weren't the hosts dressed up in floral dresses and skateboarding shorts and told to fetch as many groceries as possible for their respective vehicles? Why weren't a gaggle of school kids raced around the track in the back seat on their way to footy practices with points for whoever's surrogate children kicked the most goals? I just thought of those then, and I'm doing it for free.

The major clue to the mark-missing that's gone on all season was during the final montage.
'What a great season,' one of the presenters grinned. 'Check out what fun we had!'
Play montage. About thirty seconds in came a long series of clips of the presenters behind the wheels of very different cars all exclaiming 'How good is this?'
Yes, I know it's a classic example of Aussie rhetoric. What am I, an idiot? But taken out of that context, I can't help but notice that they never answered the question. We see the Porsche. We hear it. We watch our mates up there on-screen driving it and grinning like Luna Park winning a lottery ticket. Then they all turn to camera and ask "How good is this?"
'I don't know!' we all shout. 'Why don't you tell us?'

Come back next year boys. Review some cars. Don't be afraid to fall over and complain. And watch a bit of UK Top Gear. Take notes.

***
GTH - Points to the long-absent Moify for his usual brand of stalktacular guessing, and a point to Kath for offering to buy me a beer. Kath, you will receive TWO points upon receipt of said beer. THREE if you bring it to me before I have to go onstage and brave my famously acidic nervous farts.

Australian Top Gear: Revving High in Third!

I am a great fan of Top Gear. I get the British Shows well before they air here and also have a growing collection of the older British shows. I buy car magazines and read them cover to cover, Holden to Ford. I could explain to you in layman's terms how an internal combustion engine works and the various methods improving its output. I have my own opinions about cars and the automotive industry, but I appreciate British Top Gear for the extremely high level of production that goes into an iconic piece of entertainment.

I was apprehensive and even doubtful about the first franchised version of Top Gear. It could have been low-rent, stupid, colonial and natural as a peddle-powered Commodore.
It wasn't.
It was like a seventeen-year-old all dressed and ready for their first school formal. Amateur, awkward and slightly embarrassed to be there in the first place, but at the same time, excited, cocky and beautiful with hope, youth and vitality. This kid is going to break some hearts. Not a lot of them. Not too many outside its peer group, but it'll definitely do what it set out to, in the end.

There are many reasons to believe that Australian Top Gear will succeed. They are:

Charlie Cox: He is the least embarrassed and the most natural in front of the studio audience and also in the trademark sparring with his co-presenters.

The production looks nice and slick: Top Gear is basically a series of ultra-flashy music/porn videos featuring cars in place of synchronised dancing and whatever they show in porn videos. Quick pans, high definition video tricks, Bruckheimeresque soundtracks, lingering gazes at metallic hides and freeze-frame action shots of power-sliding engineering. The Australian film crews and editors have been paying very good attention to what works and why.

The cars are promising: The metal shown in the advertising campaign (Ford vs Holden battle, a nightmarishly black Ford GT, the intriguing mining truck vs ute race) are right into the eye-candy flash and dash that Top Gear audiences expect. All these are unique ideas in a field already well-plowed by Messrs Clarkson, May and Hammond.

They will get better: Yes, they were nervous. It showed. They were inexperienced. It also showed. The lack of bricks sliding down the presenters' trouser legs and onto the studio floor was thus commendable. BUT none of it seemed ingrained. These aren't nervous guys trying to appear enigmatic for the camera, these are obviously enigmatic guys trying to shake their nerves for the camera and doing a very commendable job. They will get better. Then the reasons they were chosen above 4000 other applicants and then from a short-list for their in-person chemistry and camaraderie will begin to shine through.

However, are there, of course, inherent problems with exporting the format to Australia with the straight copy-and-paste option taken by Freehand.

Fun And Interesting Cars Are Really Really Expensive: There is no way around it. The starring cars of most of the British Top Gears are almost all beyond the reach of most of Top Gear's viewing demographic in Australia. When old British motoring journo Jeremy Clarkson tells you that he simply loves Mercedes' new CLK 63 AMG Black then that's quite fine because you know that he could probably buy one because he's an international mega-star who changes exotic supercars about once a year.
He probably writes them off on tax.
That's the fun bit about the show. You sort of get to buy it with him, in your mind. He's driving it, you're sitting next to him, he's telling you what fun it is and you believe him. You do it together.
But when Charlie Cox whips the cover off the new Lambourghini LP-560 and tells you that it's $550,000, your first reaction as an Australian brought up under tall poppy syndrome with the housing bubble bursting all over your face is to heave a besser block through its carefully raked windscreen.

On the British show, the quoted prices are in meaningless pounds (this also has the illusory effect felt by every Australian backpacker ever to visit London: "Everything is so cheap! But wait a minute ... times by three ... add tax ... bugger. We have to leave") and the cars are often so rare that the cost flashes by in a cloud of tyre-smoke and carbon fibre.
On the Australian show, the price they quote you is the price that you immediately understand in your head as being a number which cuffs this piece of escapism firmly within the television set with only bread, water and a Hyundai broschure. You're not sitting next to Jeremy Clarkson spinning the wheels in his new Lambo, nor are you reclining on the vintage leather of Richard Hammond's Charger. You're sitting in the pub with three complete strangers who you are quite willing to let be your mates because you are going to drive cars together, if only they wouldn't keep dropping prices into the conversation which you only hear mentioned in terms soapy, floating houses and the entire yearly salaries of striking surgeons.

Top Gear is a review show that turned into an action movie: Australian Top Gear has to pick up where the action movie left off, sliding gingerly into the back seat of the flaming Ferrari as it leaps over the Grand Canyon to escape the Taliban. And, like the passenger in the flaming Ferrari, there's not really a lot to add. Unless they are really really creative. Maybe some gun fire and a call to the Prime Minister?
Top Gear has the luxury of the review platform to base its pieces upon - its presenters are seasoned motoring journalists and are given ample opportunity (by a well-funded research department) to display this knowledge. Australian Top Gear's presenters all have media backgrounds and experience and it is claimed that they all have their motoring chops, but there has been (so far) little chance to show those off.

The hot cars have to be thrashed: The new Porsche 911 was driven sedately, the Maybach had its headphones shown off and the Lambo went nowhere at all. One suspects that those holding the keys to the comparably-tiny fleet of super expensive cars in Australia are not thrilled by the prospect of smart-arsed TV presenters tearing up their tyres and defecating on their insurance ratings.
(*To see what I mean either watch the entire video until the end, or just pause and let it load until 6:15 and then start watching. To see what I mean about price, click here and scroll to the very bottom ...)

My other criticisms are mostly niggly, fan-boy things that have either been satisfied by British Top Gear or may just yet appear on the show (GT-R in a passing hotlap? No Holden or Ford on the track? Ahh ... next time, Gadget, next time).

Australian Top Gear has started well with the mold it was provided with. Now it needs to smash that mold and set about adding a few modifications of its own.

Film School. Lesson One.

Triton and myself have been toying with making films for a couple of years now. I believe our first effort was a stunt piece with Triton filming me attempting to consume a hamburger in a single bite while driving a rented car at 100km/h. In New Zealand.
Our second attempt was a Lego animation piece called The Crazy Count, which contained no animation. Here it is below.



Late last year you all enjoyed the single shot masterpiece that was my birthday invitation.
The basic flaw with all of our film-making efforts has been lack of planning. Having both been involved in the creative arts since we were old enough to remember, we often take process a little easy, relying on basic skill and spontaneous talent honed from years of falling over for the benefit of small children.
The creative process on the birthday invitation was me thinking about it for a few minutes each night before I went to bed and then luring Triton over with a promise of beer and perhaps, like, you know, making a little movie or something. We were lucky with that one because we planned it on the run and it was a simple concept. We were unlucky because it turned out just as good as we hoped it would, teaching us no lessons about actually working out what the hell it is you're going to do before you run out the door and start filming everything.

Our latest effort, an audition tape for the Australian version of Top Gear, was just such a learning experience. After talking about it for weeks and regularly promising "To go out and film a few cool things" it came down to a boozy Saturday night at Triton's new house on the final weekend before auditions were due.

'Right. Tomorrow. Definitely. We gotta go film this Top Gear thing.'
'Yeah. YEAH. How about ten thirty? Let's give ourselves time. Be here and pick me up at ten thirty.'

At one thirty in the afternoon I opened my crusty eyes, popped a few panadeines and felt a great deal of relief that Triton had not followed through on his offer of a ten thirty wake-up call. However, it only left us with around three hours to conceive, script, location scout, rehearse and film a ten minute audition tape with enough panache and quality to actually make it worth doing in the first place. So we went to Vili's - a well-known 24 hour pie factory - to work out what to do. Fortunately, since Vili's is located in an industrial area, it also turned out to be A Brilliant Idea In The First Place. Filming was another matter. We recorded about half an hour of me standing knocked-kneed in front of my car saying 'Um' and occasionally breaking out into dance and then we called it a day.
What we produced was a rag-tag bunch of shots that bore also no resemblance to one another, so I spent every night that week editing the piece together and recording dodgy voice-overs in an attempt to thread the thing together. It was like getting all the lumpy bits from the bottom of the biscuit barrel and attempting to assemble a complete biscuit.
On the Thursday before the tapes were due, I spent eight hours straight in front of the computer editing and looking at the clock. It's fascinating the brilliant ideas you come up with and jettison when time is running short. The good news is that I did actually finish, render, burn the thing to DVD, fill out the application form (with fuck knows what) and make it to the post office in time for an Express Post delivery to Sydney. The bad news is that I went home and discovered that I had included a doubled-up sequence in the video, one without voice over, of an inexplicably silent pan over my car's dusty dash, followed by the same shot with me saying the car's dash isn't so pretty to look at. And I did that twice.
That isn't the version you see below. Pride made me edit at least that bit out, but I didn't go back and add in any music or extraneous clips. All you see below is me reasonably hung-over and attempting to sound scripted and knowledgeable off the top of my head. A complete biscuit.



***
GTH - Goes to Murphmeister for his speed, his creativity, his connections ... and his recent engagement to a lovely young lass in Florence.