How's my beret looking?

4 nights - 4 black & white, decades-old, subtitled art movies*. How does M put up with me? Next up, Police Academy 7 or something – cinematic sorbet for the soul.

Plans for April are hotting up. We’re trying to do right by everyone which, as always, means that we won’t have enough time to see anyone as much time as we’d want to. We’ll do our best, honest.

We’ve a fairly quiet weekend coming up. Tonight I’m off out pretending to be a dwarf, and we are going as a family for a barbie tomorrow afternoon at Ness and Jem’s. Otherwise, blissful peace, and a football match at 2 in the morning. That’s the life.

Still going all floaty every time I think about Thierry Henry - I love him SO MUCH!

“The public love me.”
“The public are alone.” - Orphee

*If you’re interested, they were L’Avventura (slow and haunting), The Cranes Are Flying (beautiful and sad), Orphee (poetic and unsatisfying) and Loving Couples (depressing and Swedish)

Boys done good

Today, a football team played a football match and beat another football team. This has made me very happy. Very, very happy.

When a football player scored a goal I was jumping up and shouting so much that Beth looks scared and almost burst into tears. She then saw my mile-wide smile and everything was okay again. She’s a wee star at the moment; incredibly good-natured and inquisitive, and she looks to be very close to standing unaided. That would be ahead of schedule, I think, which probably means she will be deficient in another area of her development. Maybe she’ll grow up to be a Rugby Union fan? Urgh.

We had a good weekend too, also involving a football match. M&I went with Nick and Lou to watch Sydney FC win a big semi-final against Adelaide. The quality of the match was poor – even Nick thought so, and he’s a Spurs fan – but a raucous 30,000 crowd made the event very entertaining. Afterwards, we headed to the Moonlight Cinema to get bitten by mossies and eat soggy crackers. Oh, there was a movie too – Good Night and Good Luck, which was very good.

Seen a few videos too, but I can’t remember what they were now. Neeed sleeeep.

This sound familiar? -

We trained hard, but it seemed every time we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganised. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation.
From Petronii Arbitri Satyricon AD 66 (Attributed to Gaius Petronus, a Roman General who later committed suicide)

Woebegone days

I’m feeling a bit woebegone at the moment because Beth has a cold necessitating an early night, so I haven’t seen her for a couple of days. Its rubbish, I tell you, although I suppose it’ll be OK once bubba works through her sniffles, bless her.

What I have managed is to watch a few more films so, if you’re interested:

- All Quiet on the Western Front
Made in 1930 but is still incredibly powerful in the battle scenes and in its anti-war sentiment. The sound affects (whistling bombs etc) must have been terrifying to contemporary audiences used to silents.

- Through the Olive Trees
A sweet-natured Iranian film about someone trying to make a film but hamstrung by the unreciprocated love of his leading boy for his leading girl. The ending is just lovely.

- Mildred Pierce
This has a delightfully perverse and twisted noir plot and some great performances. It also confirms 2 of the great movie laws:
a) No matter how poor you become, you can still afford to have Butterfly McQueen as your maid
b) If you develop a mild cough, you’ll be dead within a reel

Loving the new (for Australia) Futureheads song, “Area”. “Tell me how bored to you have to be?”

Meanwhile, in proper news:

“The temptation, to which too many are succumbing, is to see this as a showdown between Islam and Europe or the west (although, for once, the US has been somewhat out of the firing line). That is how extremists want to frame the argument, as in the poster waved outside the Danish embassy in London: "Europe is the cancer, Islam is the answer". But the real dividing line is between moderates and extremists on both sides, between men and women of reason and dialogue, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, and men and women of hatred, such as Abu Hamza or Nick Griffin. Not for the first time in recent history, the means are more important than the ends. In fact, the means you choose determine where you'll end up.”
The Guardian – Hear hear!

Round the Horne - the harem scene

"We are guarded by a eunuch who misses nothing"
"Ooh, he must do"

Enter eunuch

"I positively refuse to play this part Ken. After all I have my principles."

Not Slim

Feeling a bit dusty* today thanks to a barbie at the in-laws yesterday. Very pleasant it was too. Cheers!

* (Slang, Aust.) Mildly hung over

You don' need no Mexicano for your tumbler identification

Uurgh. I haven’t posted for a while, but I’m sure you’ll forgive me. Here’s why:

1) Franz Ferdinand 2 nights running at the Enmore Theatre, then the Big Day Out Festival. The band were fantastic of course – see them if you get the chance – especially the jaw-droppingly splendid version of Outsiders involving three drummers using one set of drums.

Thanks to the ever so lovely Mike Parker I got into all these for free, though in the end I didn’t get to speak to him really cos he was busy. He blew me out once because he had a better offer; bowling with the White Stripes. I can’t really argue that one, can I?

Me and my mate Andrew did see him a bit backstage after the first gig which led to the strangest moment of the week; me and Andrew self-consciously perched on the end of a table as Alex Kapranos and Jack White chatted about something or other. Jack was surrounded by lackeys – I’m still not sure about him as a person – but the Franz boys are lovely, as we all know. Especially the sound engineer.

Also at the Big Day Out, Edan and the Magic Numbers were both great but none of the secondary bands really shone. Sleater Kinney, the White Stripes, Kings of Leon, the Go! Team, they ranged from mediocre to competent but none really exceeded expectations, which was a shame

2) Computer wrong. The computer fell over on its bum the other day and is currently oozing puss from the capacitors on the motherboard. I’m fairly sure this isn’t right. Brother-in-law Steve is getting new bits for us and putting it back together - $650 of new gear but needs must. More pics of the baby once it’s back up and running.

3) Head wrong. I’ve been doing really stupid things all week, not least managing to lock myself out of the car with the engine still running and the radio playing. One of those real “Doh!” moments. Luckily the NRMA (local equivalent of the AA) were with me within 15 minutes. What a plum, eh?

4) Arts busy. I actually finished 3 books on Sunday. I was pretty close to finishing A Study In Scarlet and To The Lighthouse, and the Bridge of San Luis Rey is a short novel, but still. I’ve also watched maybe a dozen movies, the standouts being Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible, Bunuel’s L’Age D’Or and McKay’s Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.

But what do you care about any of that? You just want to know about Beth, right? Well, she’s gorgeous, thanks. She is now racing about the house with great abandon, meaning we have to keep grabbing her before she eats some wire or drags of glass of coke off a table.

M&B are up at Avoca this weekend, so I’m having some nerd time pretending to be a dwarf. Cool.