catch28

It was two and a half hours of ear-splittingly wooden acting. My god, could there have been less character development? Yes, Jennifer Hudson rocked it in in the first half of the movie, but compared to the terrible performance of Jamie Foxx, and the bland blandness of Beyonce, of course she’d seem great. And yes, she totally nails "And I’m telling you," but there is so little development of her character’s relationship to Jamie Foxx’s Curtis that you’re left wondering why she’s so upset, and maybe she’s overreacting just a bit. You certainly don’t feel for her at all. But then in the second half, where the character is supposed to grow up and change (there’s even a song about it called "I’m changing"), she’s played exactly the same as the first half; loud and obnoxious.

And what about that other best supporting actor oscar nominee? Well, Eddie Murphy ain’t too bad, but he plays a self-destructing Jimmie Early like a rubber faced nutty professor. I was left wanting to see more of his character, not just camera shots panning away from objects that allude to his spiral downward into his own special drug nightmare. It relied way too much on cliched images of drug taking, and you know, I’m just a bit too sophisticated in my thinking to be satisfied with the "good person takes bad drugs and bad drugs make good person die" storyline. And he’s the only character to take drugs at all in the whole movie, which spans like 9 years of pop stardom. Give me a fucking break!

Maybe Deena was wacked out on quaaludes the whole time, which would explain why it takes her 9 freaking years to come to her senses. It would also explain the spaced-out way Beyonce played her. A knock out performance of "You’re not listening" was not enough to stop me hating her and wanting to reach into the movie screen to slap her and yell "wake up to yourself!"

The only character I liked at the end was Larell, who at least showed some progression over time in her character. It’s a pity that her story got so little screen time that I didn’t even bother to learn the actor’s name.  

But for christ’s sake, they all end up friends at the end, which makes me think they all deserve to wind-up in thier own special hell where they’re forced to the damn movie over and over again, then write long essays on why people should find any of this clap-trap believable. And then do it all again. With no toilet breaks, and the largest watered down cokes you can get from the candy bar.

The film did leave me wondering two things;

1. Did anyone tell Jennifer Hudson that the best supporting actress oscar is cursed and that the winner rarely has another hit film? Marrisa Tomei anyone? 

2. Did anyone else notice how much the dance hit "One Night Only" sounds like the Eurovision Song Contest winning entry "Diva" by Isreali transsexual Dana Internationale? I think its only a matter of minutes before Dan Murphy vomits up a mix of the two in the RHI at the next Mardi Gras party.

I’ve been thinking about queer a lot. About what I like about it, and why, and what makes it different from just gay. And the culturalness of it, which has gotten much more prevalent in everyday gay sydney in the last 6 or so years. And I think the thing I like about it is circus, and how closely queer culture draws on a history of circus, and burlesque, and the sideshow. I’m not able to fully articulate what I mean at this point, but you can see it in the way queers are performers, and our social ways of interacting are totally tied up in circus, and our politics is one of celebrating our freakness, and our difference.

So, as my thinking is becoming more in this direction, I’ve changed the catagories of my blog to reflect my thoughts. For things that reflect the aspects of my life that I treasure, in terms of events and happenings, we have the catagory of circus. For the stuff that ain’t so much what I want in my life, we have the opposite of that, which I find can most neatly be summed up in the word drudgery. For the difficult drama bits we still have running up that hill, and for random thoughts we have thinkingness. What do you all think?

On a side note I had been thinking of finishing this blog as well. I’ve been blogging consistantly for about two and a half years now, and was just getting a bit bogged down with it, needing something different and fresh. I suppose the way I had been blogging, the types of posts I’d been making, weren’t really  gelling with the ways of thinking I’m engaged in now in my life. Let’s just say that in my head, I’ve moved on a bit. But I was watching the ending of shortbus again, and it just kind of clarified that connection i was thinking of between queer and circu, which made me think maybe I didn’t have to end this blog. Maybe I just needed to tidy up my thinking a bit, change the way I interact with my writing to more accurately reflect the architecture in my head now. In the words of martha stewert’s head, it’s a good thing.

I love a good boat. Olive boat, gravy boat, ship boat. I don’t care what sort of boat, a good one will always impress me.

And with such thoughts in mind I journeyed into the Quay this evening after work to see the Queen Elizabeth 2 and the Queen Mary 2. It was fun, in an arduous kind of way. It was busy when I arrived, which was about 15 minutes before the QE2 docked at the quay, and just got more crowded as the sun went down. Anyway, I arrived in time to walk from wynyard train station down to the Opera house, where I could see the QE2 arriving. As I, and everyone else, was taking photos, arms lifted over the crowd to get a clear shot, I noticed a man near by me taking photos on his phone. And guess what, his phone was the same as mine! So I stalked up behind him, and as he lifted his phone to take photos of the boat, I lifted my phone to take photos of his phone taking photos of the boat! I include them for you now.

What I love about these pics is that you can see the image he’s taking on his phone, which shows how great my hpone really is, for the resolution of the pics and the clarity of the screen. I heart my new phone.

So, apart from that, what was pretty good is they reverse parked the damn boat into the dock! It was most impressive. It made me wish I had tug boats to guide me when I go shopping and have to reverse park into a space in the car park.

In this pic you can see a tug boat nudging the boat’s arse into line with the dock.

And here you get a feeling for just how big the damn thing is, and it’s way close to the harbour bridge in this shot, although the perspective is a bit mucked up, cuz the boat actually fits under the bridge, but in this shot look taller than the road deck.

So there were people eveywhere, and rather than hang around the quay as more people disgorged from the available public transport, I hike over to Mrs Macs Chair to have a look-see at the Queen Mary 2.

I was duly impressed.

It totally dwarfs the finger wharf at Wooloomooloo. I had to actually walk away from the boat to fit it all in the shot, which I didn’t have to do for the QE2, even though I was much the same distance away. The QM2 is much bigger.

It’s a much prettier boat, although that’s mainly cuz it’s newer than the QE2. And its too big to hide the fact it looks a lot like a giant floating lego block. It makes you kinda which you had more to stack on top, but of course that would probably make it sink.

After that I made it back into the botanical gardens at 7.56pm, which was lucky cuz the park rangers were going to try and close the gates at 8pm. I don’t know if they were successful, but I’m glad I didn’t get caught in the crush of people that would have resulted from them trying.

As I walked about the quay I overheard snippets of conversation. My favourites were; "This is what it’s like at new years," followed by "It’s going to be worse at Mardi Gras." And an old woman complaining that "you’d think they’d park them next to each other so we could compare the size." Ha!

Vamlumtimes Day!

It’s a new teen girl squad!!!!

Good Charlotte has never been my favourite band. In fact, they’re pretty high up on my list of bands I actively dislike. Having said that however, I really like their new song "Keep your hands off my girl", no matter how much I wish I didn’t. I fear this is going to end up much like my Blur situation of the late 90s. I hated blur. hated hated hated. with a passion. til they released Tender, and Music is my Radar, two awesome songs. These songs forced me to reconsider my opinions of blur, and admit that Daniel Alban is actually quite talented. I still hate their early stuff, but I do love Tender, being one of my "fav songs eva", and they must be commended on for the direction taken in the music and film clip to Music is my Radar, which has amazing choreography and costuming. In fact, the choreographer for the film clip went on to be kylie’s choreographer for the Fever album and tour, expanding and developing the style and helping make Fever and Kylie so successful, but it started on Music is my Radar. And the stuff Daniel Alban has done with Gorillaz is damn creative too.

So are Good Charlotte my new Blur? Maybe, if they have another good song. Although I hold them responsible for much of emo, so there’s still a lot to forgive.

*On a side note, the band Silverchair holds much the same space in my head as Blur does, and Daniel Johns I find is a similar character to Daniel Alban, especially with the direction he’s gone in with the Dissociatives (excellent excellent music). However, I’ve managed to avoid most of Silverchair’s later work, so I don’t have to like them yet. Unfortunately their new song sounds quite interesting, so I mayn’t be able to hold them in disdain for much longer.  

Don’t you hate it when you’re a bit drunk and halfway getting changed for bed when a mosquito buzzes by your ear and you start doing that weird hand-flappy-feet-caught-in-underwear-bits-hanging-out-trying-not-to-fall-over-but-trying-to-kill-the-mosquito-before-it-bites-you dance, and you don’t kill the mosquito but you don’t know where it went so you can’t kill it? Well that happened to me tonight.

Good thing I killed the fucker when it flew in front of my a few minutes ago. 

so this is my thimble collection. from left to right, top row than bottom row, the come from the following places; Dorrigo, Japan,Czech Republic, Munich, Poland, Ireland, Cape Byron, Northern Territory, Sydney, Melbourne, Baltimore, The Big Prawn in Ballina, Perth, and Fremantle. I also have one from Byron Bay (the town rather than the cape), which a friend sent me through the mail, but it was broken when it arrived. The one from Japan is hand painted and comes in its own presentation box. My favourite is the one from Dorrigo.

The Good stuff.

Being back at uni and studying is really really good. I’m enjoying it immensely, and am actually finding myself a smidge excited at the prospect of being a teacher at the end of all this. We had a lecture today on Cross-Curriculum Perspectives in HSIE, which turned out to basically be a sociology of education lecture, which was so fantastic I almost cried. I’ve decided to make t-shirts that say "I ♥ Sociology" because I ♥ sociology. The campus is also quite lovely, kind of like maquarie, but larger and less obnoxious (although the food barely rates above crap, and there’s only one place to get actual coffee on campus at the moment, because the main food bit is being renovated. Still, at least I can get coffee). Anyway, the course is really quite good, although not as academically rigorous as the MTeach, which shows in the way it lacks depth and breadth in places, and in the fact that a few of the students don’t quite get what "critical analysis" means, which is kind of crucial in HSIE, especially at HSC level. So on the whole this course is a really good revision for me, consolidating what I’ve already learnt, and definately improving my confidence in being able to teach HSIE well. And I think the block format is really great and productive, if only I didn’t have to come to armidale to do it.

The Bad Stuff.

OMIGOD!!! I can’t remember the last time I was so bored out of my brain. Yesterday I worked myself up into a panic attack because there is nothing to do here and the prospect of endless hours of being stuck in armidale is so horrible. I’ve decided to drive back to sydney as soon as class finishes tomorrow because I can’t stand to be stuck in this god-awful town for another night. Class is great, and I’d happily stay in class for hours longer if I could, because armidale is a hole and I can’t stand it. There is nothing to do, no where to go and nothing to see. It’s not like Lismore which has much stuff within a 40 minute driving radius. The closest place worth going to here is Tamworth, an hour away, and Tamworth sucks (that big golden guiter is more like that big yellow guiter, as in buttercup yellow, not a shade of orange to be found anywhere). It’s two and a half hours to Coffs Harbour, and an hour and a half to Dorrigo, two hours to Grafton. Yesterday I went and stood on a hill for 40 minutes because anything worthwhile is too far away, and there was nothing else to do. I hate Armidale. I’m not even going to buy a thimble from here to add to my collection. The earth can open up and swallow Armidale for all I care. In fact, I hope it does, cuz at least that would be something interesting. And I can’t get internet in my room, and I can’t use dial-up internet because the phone system is stupid, and I can’t access the computer labs because I don’t have a student card, and there are no internet cafe’s in town, and I have to friggin’ come back to this dank, pee-pee soaked heck-hole again in April!!!