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Thursday, February 21, 2013
Monday, February 4, 2013
Fast'n'Fabulous
Screw The Avengers. The true super-hero franchise of this century is the Fast'n'Furious franchise. If you watch these movies, don't go with your snorting trumpet on, ready to denigrate the poor acting, the dodgy physics, the shit-like-this-would-never-in-real-life stunts. Watch the movies as the slow awakening of a gang of real life superheroes, discovering their awesome, supernatural powers and using them on the world.
They aren't even aware.
Superhero movies have long had their day. Their plots and characters and histories were largely conceived over 50 years ago, during a time when science was just about putting chrome on things and then putting those things on the moon. Superman and Batman pre-date the modern understanding of DNA. It was sufficient to explain things happening in superhero worlds by just saying "Super! Hero! POWER!"
These days, the superhero universe of The Avengers movies come across as kind of like the church's scrambling to update the wife-beating, slave-swapping days of B.C. to account for the invention of the telephone. And the birth-control pill. When the Hulk turns hulky and Ironman flies in a world still populated by electric cars which still have trouble finding power points, it's difficult, even for a clear-eyed believer like myself to not purse my lips to one side and grumble 'Oh, come on. How? Exactly?'
Fast'n'Furious doesn't need that justification. It doesn't need the weighty back story hanging about the narrative like a tracking bracelet on a first date: 'So, you've been explaining why it's there for about an hour now - can we get on with the action at hand?'
No, the characters in Fast'n'Furious are superheroes. They jump through walls. They drive through walls. They lift people with one hand. They drive at 200km/h while making out and not even needing to look at the road. They fly. They just do. The things they do to and with cars aren't the product of engineering miracles, or shoddy script-writing; these people are superheroes! Of course they can drop it into 9th gear and speed up and win! Super! Hero! POWER!
Every single movie is about superheroes who can change the world and triumph over adversity and they don't even know it. The why isn't important. It's the how that makes Fast'n'Furious a modern fable of gods walking among humans. As bright and escapist as Lord of the Rings and subtle as Tree of Life.
And don't even get me started on the gay subtext.
And someone else has already won a Pulitzer by making the very salient point that the F'n'F movies are the most important movies about race in 21st Century America extant.
*I know that the point has been made in the past that the Fast'n'Furious movies are about superheroes, but I'll be damned if I can find the original article. Anyone want to find it for me?
They aren't even aware.
Superhero movies have long had their day. Their plots and characters and histories were largely conceived over 50 years ago, during a time when science was just about putting chrome on things and then putting those things on the moon. Superman and Batman pre-date the modern understanding of DNA. It was sufficient to explain things happening in superhero worlds by just saying "Super! Hero! POWER!"
These days, the superhero universe of The Avengers movies come across as kind of like the church's scrambling to update the wife-beating, slave-swapping days of B.C. to account for the invention of the telephone. And the birth-control pill. When the Hulk turns hulky and Ironman flies in a world still populated by electric cars which still have trouble finding power points, it's difficult, even for a clear-eyed believer like myself to not purse my lips to one side and grumble 'Oh, come on. How? Exactly?'
Fast'n'Furious doesn't need that justification. It doesn't need the weighty back story hanging about the narrative like a tracking bracelet on a first date: 'So, you've been explaining why it's there for about an hour now - can we get on with the action at hand?'
No, the characters in Fast'n'Furious are superheroes. They jump through walls. They drive through walls. They lift people with one hand. They drive at 200km/h while making out and not even needing to look at the road. They fly. They just do. The things they do to and with cars aren't the product of engineering miracles, or shoddy script-writing; these people are superheroes! Of course they can drop it into 9th gear and speed up and win! Super! Hero! POWER!
Every single movie is about superheroes who can change the world and triumph over adversity and they don't even know it. The why isn't important. It's the how that makes Fast'n'Furious a modern fable of gods walking among humans. As bright and escapist as Lord of the Rings and subtle as Tree of Life.
And don't even get me started on the gay subtext.
And someone else has already won a Pulitzer by making the very salient point that the F'n'F movies are the most important movies about race in 21st Century America extant.
*I know that the point has been made in the past that the Fast'n'Furious movies are about superheroes, but I'll be damned if I can find the original article. Anyone want to find it for me?
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Singing requests considered
I'm currently in the process of backing up all of my precious precious millions of blurry personal photos. While going back through the pages of history, back to when I could be bothered scanning all of my non-digital prints, I found a picture of me when I used to be a clumsy Simon Le Bon:
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| This scar? That's a low doorway, ladies. |
Thursday, January 10, 2013
My friend Kath just posted a sad blog about beauty. This is my response.
Intelligence.
Strength.
Generosity.
Humour.
Passion.
Imagination.
Curiosity.
These are beautiful things.
Not the immeasurable, millimetric increments of perfection that gets blazed at women every second. Not these subjective lies that stack up like an endless library of reasons to hate yourself when someone you love tells you that they think you're beautiful.
Beauty is bullshit. Beauty for a woman is just gambling her spirit away in a casino that never pays out. No matter how much self-esteem you hang upon the right hair, the perfect make-up, the excellent nose job, that awesome photo, the great top, the rockin' skirt, the brilliant shoes, the wicked skin, it will always fade, blow up, rip, go away, leer at you in the mirror, squish the wrong way, hang limp, sag and leave you, strung out and empty.
This isn't a "should" blog. I'm not even pretending for a second that 'real beauty comes from within' is ever going to catch on.
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
It was a happy new year
Sometimes I just like the old style photos.
Funny focus. Square cropping.
Just a little moment.
Funny focus. Square cropping.
Just a little moment.
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| 1st January, 2013. Maslin Beach. |
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
The Xmas FRIGHTS of Lobethal
First time ever visiting the Lights of Lobethal. We arrived early and experienced ample parking, traffic-free roads and HORROR.
Mele dropped into an Opp Shop - Hosana's (which should have been a clue). Up on a shelf among the golliwogs and handmade shoe trees were a couple of paper mache cow heads.
'Check out the cow heads,' says Mele.
'Wow,' says Charlie and I, thinking about getting an ice cream on this summer evening in the Adelaide Hills.
'Oh yes, they're from the church play,' says the shop lady, popping up from behind a rack of flowery frocks.
'Huh,' says I, smilling and picturing a couple of the more homely kids wearing them and being quietly lead up the back of the barn to look on while the Baby Cheesus is set upon by three nine-year-olds in fake beards.
What followed was so bizarre that I regret that it will not be strictly verbatim, but I promise the gist remains.
'Yes!' beams shop lady, clearly encouraged by this toddler-toting young father and his dress-wearing wife (a fine blend of modern and traditional roles). 'It was the story of Ezra and Ezekiel in which the one true lord commanded of them to perform a blood sacrifice!'
'Oh my goodness!' I am clearly gasping at this point.
'The story goes that the lord god bade them to take their sons of slaughter them upon the altar of divinity and they took their only children to spill their blood in the name of the most divine lord.' [It must be noted that she has not even modified her tone from the one which told us about a church play. I am scrambling for the exit at this point, trying not to knock over tumblers and tea services while covering Charlie's ears.] 'And so Ezra took the cows as well and spilled their blood for the blood sacrifice, and that's where the cows heads are from because their heads were cut off for the blood sacrifice in worship of the one true saviour Jesus Christ our lord!'
So chatty.
So scary.
In my mind, I will probably remember her as being slowly enveloped in dark smoke, bathed in a seething crimson glow as her voice deepened and echoed across eons, reverberating with the ever-writhing flesh of a billion souls consumed like so many cups of Lipton's. But she was a very normal-looking woman. The quintessential opp-shop lady, right down to the cream-coloured cardy. And that's what made it all the more terrifying.
I wanted to ask her to stop repeating the phrases 'blood-sacrifice' and 'slaughter' to my son, but I preferred (as usual) a swift exit to confrontation.
'Don't worry, Charlie,' I said, as we trotted off towards the non-brimstone engulfed soft-serve van. 'She's just talking about people in a play.'
Mele dropped into an Opp Shop - Hosana's (which should have been a clue). Up on a shelf among the golliwogs and handmade shoe trees were a couple of paper mache cow heads.
'Check out the cow heads,' says Mele.
'Wow,' says Charlie and I, thinking about getting an ice cream on this summer evening in the Adelaide Hills.
'Oh yes, they're from the church play,' says the shop lady, popping up from behind a rack of flowery frocks.
'Huh,' says I, smilling and picturing a couple of the more homely kids wearing them and being quietly lead up the back of the barn to look on while the Baby Cheesus is set upon by three nine-year-olds in fake beards.
What followed was so bizarre that I regret that it will not be strictly verbatim, but I promise the gist remains.
'Yes!' beams shop lady, clearly encouraged by this toddler-toting young father and his dress-wearing wife (a fine blend of modern and traditional roles). 'It was the story of Ezra and Ezekiel in which the one true lord commanded of them to perform a blood sacrifice!'
'Oh my goodness!' I am clearly gasping at this point.
'The story goes that the lord god bade them to take their sons of slaughter them upon the altar of divinity and they took their only children to spill their blood in the name of the most divine lord.' [It must be noted that she has not even modified her tone from the one which told us about a church play. I am scrambling for the exit at this point, trying not to knock over tumblers and tea services while covering Charlie's ears.] 'And so Ezra took the cows as well and spilled their blood for the blood sacrifice, and that's where the cows heads are from because their heads were cut off for the blood sacrifice in worship of the one true saviour Jesus Christ our lord!'
So chatty.
So scary.
In my mind, I will probably remember her as being slowly enveloped in dark smoke, bathed in a seething crimson glow as her voice deepened and echoed across eons, reverberating with the ever-writhing flesh of a billion souls consumed like so many cups of Lipton's. But she was a very normal-looking woman. The quintessential opp-shop lady, right down to the cream-coloured cardy. And that's what made it all the more terrifying.
I wanted to ask her to stop repeating the phrases 'blood-sacrifice' and 'slaughter' to my son, but I preferred (as usual) a swift exit to confrontation.
'Don't worry, Charlie,' I said, as we trotted off towards the non-brimstone engulfed soft-serve van. 'She's just talking about people in a play.'
Monday, December 3, 2012
View from the back
I'm a proud father, so obviously I think everything my son does is great. I even let him have a go on the camera so he can take a billion pictures of the same food label. But every now and then, he comes up with something that I really admire. Maybe the good feelings are purely paternal, but who cares. I genuinely like unusual portraits that suggest things, rather than show them. He's already teaching me.
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An explanation of The Joy Division Litmus Test
Although it may now be lost in the mysts of thyme, the poll below is still relevant to this blog. In the winter of 2008, Mele and I went to live in Queensland. In order to survive, I bluffed my way into a job at a Coffee Club.
It was quite a reasonable place to work: the hours were regular, the staff were quite nice, it wasn't particularly taxing on my brain.
There were a few downsides: In the six weeks or so that I worked there, there was about a 90% staff turnover (contributed to by my leaving). This wasn't seen as a result of the low pay, the laughability of staff prices or the practice of not distributing tips to staff, rather it was blamed on the lack of work ethic among Bribie Island's youth.
However, one of the stranger aspects of the cultural isolation that touched our lives during our time "up there" was the fact that nobody at my work had heard of the band Joy Division.
The full explanation is available here.
But please, interact a little further and vote in my ongoing poll. The results are slowly mounting up, proving one thing: people read this blog are more well-informed about Joy Division than anyone who works at the Coffee Club on Bribie Island.
It was quite a reasonable place to work: the hours were regular, the staff were quite nice, it wasn't particularly taxing on my brain.
There were a few downsides: In the six weeks or so that I worked there, there was about a 90% staff turnover (contributed to by my leaving). This wasn't seen as a result of the low pay, the laughability of staff prices or the practice of not distributing tips to staff, rather it was blamed on the lack of work ethic among Bribie Island's youth.
However, one of the stranger aspects of the cultural isolation that touched our lives during our time "up there" was the fact that nobody at my work had heard of the band Joy Division.
The full explanation is available here.
But please, interact a little further and vote in my ongoing poll. The results are slowly mounting up, proving one thing: people read this blog are more well-informed about Joy Division than anyone who works at the Coffee Club on Bribie Island.
