Penisly? Oh Portia De Rossi, is there anything you can't say?

From old sitcoms to new (and apparently cancelled but never mind) - just started watching a new(ish)y called Better Off Ted.

Taking laser guided aim at corporate culture but with a strong cast of likable characters and some sparkling writing, this show is quickly growing on me. So far each ep has also made beautiful fun of corporate videos and even, in the last ep I watched, foretold a recent problem where a company's webcams (I think) didn't recognise black people.

Portia De Rossi absolutely pwns with immaculate delivery of lines like these:

I bought you some new boxers - they didn't highlight your assets. Penisly.

And

Walk away tall. Walk away - tall.

Whoever knew that the dad on Growing Pains was cool?

So it turns out that not only did Alan Thicke write the theme songs for Diff'rent Strokes and The Facts of Life, but he also worked with Richard Pryor in his 70s heyday.

And to think that I just thought he was a funny looking twat in a pisspoor 80's sitcom.

This interview in The Onion'sAV Club tells all.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/alan-thicke,36751/

Loving: Stuff white people like - the Melbourne version

I seem to have been in something of a Melbourne frame of mind lately - enjoying a few weeks down there, catching up with best friends and family, going to Meredith - complaining about the country-ness of the music scene there and then promptly stocking up on "good" alterna-country as soon as I got back to Canberra, and reading (and loving) Christos Tsiolkas' The Slap.

So I guess I got a few extra lols when my housemate pointed me towards this blog post - Stuff White people like - the Melbourne Version.

A couple of the highlights:

Not Liking Football
Sport is popular with the wrong type of white Melburnian, and the most popular sport amongst these people is Australian football. It is no accident that Melbourne is considered Australia’s sporting capital AND its art capital because art is the best way to hide your love of football. In the white Melburnian brain, art and football are mutually exclusive. If you profess an interest in one, everybody will assume you hate the other. Melburnian white people do this to hide their shame, because all of them carry around little shards of pain in their hearts caused by North Melbourne’s shock loss to Adelaide in the 1998 Grand Final, or the 1996 merger of the Fitzroy Lions with the Brisbane Bears, or Essendon’s agonising one point loss to Carlton at the ‘G in 1999.

This one resonated particularly with me as a North Melbourne supporter, remembering only too well an increasingly drunken pub crawl around Richmond on Grand Final Day in 1998 with some close friends and realising in almost slow motion that North was done for.

I got nailed by a few other items but mostly recognised people or at least types that I've known over the year: most of it fortunately relates to the hippy trendies I've known but never entirely bought into the bullshit of.
This comment in particular though got me:

Talking about how Meredith isn't as good as it used to be (despite the fact that most people who go these days only started going a few years ago)

(At least I was there in 99 - and still have the tshirt to prove it)

I've never been to Confest but love this description:

Confest
Filled with oppressively friendly men who ‘just want to give you a massage,’ Confest is sort of what you imagined the seventies to be like, except with a lot more AIDS and variants of hepatitis. White Melburnians like Confest because they get to experiment with creating a perfect society, which for them means being able to fuck anyone they want. Don’t sit down in the sauna because it’s the equivalent of touching a thousand naked and sweaty assholes.

The Wire - 100 greatest quotes

If you haven't converted to The Wire-ism yet, why don't you take a moment to hear the truth and feel it.



(There aren't any major spoilers in this one but if you haven't seen the whole thing, I'd stay away from the second 100 greatest quotes vid as there are some major ones)

Getting it done - 2009 style

Last year was a pretty good year for me - all things considered.

Maybe it is the looming 4-0 but after years of pfaffing about, I decided that it was time to start taking action and I decided to make 2009 my year of determination. Both in terms of helping me to determine who I really am as well as being determined to make some progress on a number of life things that I've been dissatisfied with.

No more would I see, think or hear about something and say to myself - I really must do that sometime - my new resolution was to actually do it. No more excuses, laziness or procrastination (which I must say I'm bloody brilliant at - it can sometimes take me days or weeks before I even realise that I'm procrastinating about doing something) - just doing. As Yoda says, there is no try, there is just do or do not. Even failing is still doing on many levels.

So Mr bloody Wonderful - what did you do then?

Well, the short highlights list (and I'm pretty sure that I'm going to miss a few things here):

• Took a tandem hang glider flight
• Travelled to Tasmania and more extensively around Darwin and Kakadu
• Started learning piano
• Became a dual AUS/UK citizen
  
• Presented at a (reasonably large) education conference
• Took up mountain biking (strained back aside I'm calling this a win)
• Put a towbar and bike rack on the car (not huge but had been on the list for years)
• Rode some very pretty rail trails, including a ride longer than any I've done before in a day (100km)
• Made some real progress on the second draft of my loooong neglected script
• Lost 8kg
• Put some solid work into improving my posture
• Bought some Aboriginal paintings
• Went away for a cycling weekend with a group of complete strangers 
• Developed some useful work skills
  

Mostly the achievement for me came in gradually shifting my mindset to be more focussed and determined.

Taking the time to understand how I work and particularly how to get past the equally determined procrastinator in me has also been really useful. Something I worked out very early on was that I've long used relationships and the attendant lack of independence while in one (or the quest for a new one when out of them) as my do-nothing excuse numero uno. Which has clearly been unfair to the girlfriends I've had (and loved) - in terms of using them as the excuse for my own lack of will and perhaps even trying to blame them, knowing all the while that it was probably actually my fault.

So to be sure of this, item number one was that the year had to be a solo mission - remove the excuse/scapegoat and take complete responsibility. So now I know that there are times when I can be completely slack (I had hoped to finish the second draft of the script entirely rather than the 10 - 15% I currently have done - though I'm pretty happy with the quality so far at least) and times when I can push myself to get things done. On reflection, I probably haven't actually answered the question of whether relationships have slowed me down or just been an excuse (and I am very sorry for any confusion I may have caused on this front as well - a man's not a camel, as the poets say and my head has been turned a couple of times this year before I got back to the project.

As for this year - probably still leaning towards keeping things going as they are at present - I'm really enjoying the sense of taking control of my destiny and the lack of complications that singledom brings. Honestly though, who knows what might happen - at least now I think I have enough self-awareness to know what's an excuse and what's an obstacle.

So for this year - the plan is more of a sketch at this stage but so far:

• Finish 2nd draft of Boonsville script.
• Try Fencing
• Piano – continue lessons and practice
• Present or co-present at an International educonference
• Organise 2011 NZ cycle tour
• Under 90 kg
• Have at least $12,000 in savings by setting a solid budget and sticking to it
• Resume Couch Media blog
• Resume Gamer/Learner blog
• Become a Moodle/Equella/Wimba guru
• Focus

There's probably still more - but the wheels are slowing turning and I've come back here.

So what about you - how are you going with your goals/dreams/etc and what do you want/need to do?

Can't stop listening to Monsters of Folk

It was only a few weeks ago that I was sitting at the Meredith Music Festival, Melbourne's alterna-music mecca, wondering to myself if the current trend in music toward the folky/country-edged had run its course.

Band after band seemed to be churning out very competent and polished performances that just left me thinking meh. They seemed to be drawing directly from the old school sounds of 50s and 60s country and I really just found myself longing for some good solid dirty rock or even just something with some edge. Scene faves Wagons and Kitty, Daisy & Lewis  seemed to fit particularly into this mire but there were a number of other less memorable bands that were much the same.

The one artist who really seemed able to work this style was the great Paul Kelly - even Jon Spencer's Heavy Trash had me wandering off for a bite to eat half way through the set. (All of this might well be more a reflection of my non-addled state of mind, an overreaction to drinking/etc too much last time I hit Meredith and trying to balance the scales by swinging to far the other way this time around or maybe I'm just old and/or jaded)

Anyway, track forward to a small end of the year cd binge at JB (2010 plan is to budget much more effectively but any pre-2010 purchases don't count, right) - where I pick up new stuff from Calexico, Roland S Howard (vale), The Dead Weather (new Jack White supergroup), Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Monsters of Folk. All of them solid gold selections based on buzz read or heard from reputable sources.

It's Monsters of Folk though that has utterly dominated the cd player since I bought it on Thursday. This made all the more impressive by the fact that there's actually a small crack in the cd that renders the first 3 tracks pretty well unlistenable. I couldn't tell you exactly what it is about this album that has me so enthralled - one or two of the tracks veer dangerously close to the wrong side of the country line for me but taken as a whole, it just seems perfectly balanced and flawless. It's definitely got twang and all the other country touches that I heard at Meredith, there's just something extra in there that takes it to a whole new level.

Of course, it's not really fair comparing some well-liked and highly skilled Melbourne acts with a super group composing M Ward, Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis from Bright Eyes and Jim James from My Morning Jacket, all hugely regarded artists in their own right. For me the issue just seems to be that the Americans do it better and just get it more. Having been out of Melbourne for coming on to a decade now, I can't help but wonder (slightly tongue in cheek) whether the RRR mafia that guides the Melbourne sound has lost it's touch.

Or maybe it's a Melbourne thing. (though I have made the same criticisms of the Canberra music scene)

Anyway, if you haven't heard much of Monsters of Folk, here's a few samples