a little distraction

FlickrGraph

I just love Flickr. I could spend all day trawling through the beautiful images that other bloggers and photographers have uploaded and now there's a cool new way to see your Flickr social network using FlickrGraph.

 

How cool is that?

Is anyone else out there using Flickr? Post a comment with your user name and I'll add you to my list of contacts. Flickr - it's the new Friendster except about ten times cooler. You heard me. Jump on the bandwagon now!

In which Channel 9 piss me off

Dear readers,

I’ve written a couple of rants before about Channel 9 SCREWING with all my favourite shows but decided not to post about them at the last minute because they make me sound kind of like one of those Ashlee Simpson fans who writes into HIT in The Hun telling a petulant reviewer ‘not 2 be sooo mean! She is talented, for real! She totally wrote 2 songs on her album BY HERSELF’. Heh.

The last time I wrote something about Channel 9’s scheduling I ranted on and on about how Channel 9 pulled The West Wing from the viewing schedule in the MIDDLE of a season. The middle of a season! The announcer even had the nerve to say “And that was the season finale of The West Wing….” and I was all “Bitch, I read TWOP! I know that ain’t right” and then I realised I was reaching Ashlee4Eva territory so I stopped shouting at the telly. Still!

The time before The West Wing incident that I lost my shit at Channel 9 was when I completed a search of the 2005 TV listings and realised that, once again, Gilmore Girls hadn’t been scheduled. Now, I love Gilmore Girls. I love its snarky, small town, hundred miles an hour dialogue. I love Scott Patterson. I used to so love when Adam Brody played Lane’s cute muso boyfriend before he was Seth (Ha, before he was Seth, oh I am just so ahead of myself in the cool stakes!). And, most of all, I loved that there were two women on TV who dressed really well, were scarily literate, totally obsessed with music, and not portrayed as geeks.

Anyway, what made me post all this pointless ranting was this exchange from the latest Gilmore Girls episode to air in the States which I found on Stereogum:

Alexis Bledel's character, Rory, is ripping CDs for her mom.

RORY: Hey, do you want Arcade Fire?

LORELAI: I don't know, do I?

RORY: Yes.

LORELAI: Then yes.

On what other prime time show do you get references to The Arcade Fire? Gah! Bring back my show!

Love,

Lorelai4Luke4Eva!

Ash Wednesday

Responses I got when enquiring what people were giving up for Lent during yesterday’s pancake dinner*:

• "Pirates!"
• "HAHAHAHA. Seriously?"
• "Mountaineering."
• "Are you insane?"
• "Chocolate." (said while eating a crepe with chocolate sauce)
• "Paris Hilton."
• "Wait, not pirates, buccaneers!"
• "Breathing."
• "Fuck. All."

I'm seriously going to try to give beer a miss from now until Easter and see if, as my lovely Mama assues me, it actually does make a difference to the size of my beer gut. If I actually last that long I intend on celebrating with a night out at the Belgian Beer Garden and undoing all my good work. Until then, no bottle of red wine will be safe in my presence.

Anyone else giving anything up for Lent?

* Yes, I know, ask a stupid question…..

X-cellent!

Last night, the Sunday Night Stragglers happily reconvened for the first Bad TV Sunday of the year. We settled in front of the television, breathless with anticipation, half cut on Hoegaarden, and stuffed stupid with Mojo's Weird Pizza.

My friend Dash insists on showing us his X-Factor move; crossing his forearms in front of his pelvic region to make an X and thrusting.

"Here's the X Factor, ladies!"

We agree the move will not take off.

The X Factor broadcast begins and we spend the first five minutes trying to remember the name of Daniel McPherson's character on Neighbours. After slapping my forehead to try and get the old grey matter moving I cry out "Joel!", and my friends nod sagely and then happily reminisce about the time that a girl we went to uni with pashed him at Frostbites.

As Nin and I start to ponder whether or not we should have entered as a vocal group despite our lack of singing talent, Dash erupts in outrage as Mark Holden stops talking gibberish for a second and crosses his forearms above his head to tell someone they have the X factor.

"That's my move!"

"But slightly less obscene, Dash. Would you like to see Mark Holden thrusting?"

Everyone almost loses their pizza at that particular thought. I apologise and promise never to use the phrase again. Except on the internet, of course. I think I have just guaranteed myself some revolting Google search results.

We decide that the new "Touchdown" is going to be Mark Holden circling his arms in a windmill manoeuvre before crossing them above his head and yelling "X-cellent!". We practice the new touchdown for a while, laugh ourselves stupid, and then agree that move will probably not take off either.

We are then all mesmerised at the sweet couple that perform a duet of "A Whole New World" from Aladdin. It's reminiscent of a uni ball when a friend of ours performed an interpretive dance to "A Whole New World" which involved her drifting around the room dreamily and waving an empty silver wine cask bladder. The couple's rendition is equally dreadful in a very touching way.

The show itself is overall pretty damn average although definitely better than the early episodes of Idol as they didn't show as many nails on blackboard horrific auditions. And Kate Ceberano is SO MUCH BETTER than Marcia Hines. Not a single instance of home-girl speak erupted from her lips so I am all about the Kate.

We'll keep watching. Although more for the delicious snarky commentary, beer, pizza, and time spent together than the actual show. Although, that was our intention at the start of the first series of Idol and that ended up with a gang war as everyone was either on Shannon's side or Guy's side and there was NO ROOM for pesky fence sitters, dammit. But right now we all love each other, regret the dessert pizza of marshmallowy doom, and viciously regret that Dicko is no longer on Channel 10.

Bill + Andrew = true love 4eva

I watched Outfoxed on the ABC last night and my end reaction, after spending an hour being hurled from disbelief into hysterical laughter into outrage and then back into disbelief again, was a sense of relief that we don’t have to deal with that type of “fair and balanced” journalism much in Australia. I mean, I have stopped reading The Hun because it never covers the news I’m interested in reading in enough depth (that’s what The Age, BBC, NME, and Gawker are for) but I don’t think any News Limited journalists wilfully misinform and manipulate to the same extent that a lot of the Fox News journalists have been accused of.

That was until I read Old Rice and Monkey Nuts’ latest column which I was directed to by Jess and MrLefty, that has me spitting. His technique of speaking for the people of Iraq who are so totally thrilled about all this FREEDOM is eerily similar to the technique Bill O’Reilly uses when talking about people who lost friends and family on September 11. Bolt and O'Reilly both talk for victims in the most sentimental, flowery language in an attempt to give more sentimental weight to their points. Well, O’Reilly did until Jeremy Glick, whose father was killed in the September 11 attacks, came on his show. Jeremy had signed the Not In Our Name anti-war advert and O’Reilly wanted to know why Glick had performed such an un-American act. That was why O'Reilly had Glick on his show on the Fox network, The O'Reilly Factor, although, from what they show in Outfoxed, from the amount of times he told Glick to “Shut up” he can’t have been all that interested in hearing what Glick had to say.  Take for example, this little excerpt:

Glick: Let me finish. You evoke 9/11 to rationalize everything from domestic plunder to imperialistic aggression worldwide.
O'Reilly: OK. That's a bunch...
Glick: You evoke sympathy with the 9/11 families.
O'Reilly: That's a bunch of crap. I've done more for the 9/11 families by their own admission -- I've done more for them than you will ever hope to do.
Glick: OK.
O'Reilly: So you keep your mouth shut when you sit here exploiting those people.
Glick: Well, you're not representing me. You're not representing me.
O'Reilly: And I'd never represent you. You know why?
Glick: Why?
O'Reilly: Because you have a warped view of this world and a warped view of this country.

As I read a few more of Bolt’s old columns I became more and more convinced that if Bill O’Reilly and Andrew Bolt ever met they would be best friends forever. They could talk for hours about the loony “fat bottomed” “journalists” and lefties they despise, about how jealous French people are of all this FREEDOM we are bestowing on other nations, how stupid intellectuals are, and how much they totally love Dubya. But not in a gay way or anything because that would be wrong, wrong, wrong.

Sigh. I just sincerely hope we're not going to get set upon with "The Bolt Factor" anytime soon...