I could blame Tandy for going to losing Bushrangers' games. I could blame Cameron White's "Six or Bust" batting. I could blame my sister for not bringing me another free piece of food. But nothing will take away the fact that we blew yet another final at the G'. This has all the beginnings of a trend, one that I don't care for at all... I sure hope we don't become the Geelong of cricket finals.
My sister is now a sports journalist in training which in short means she gets to go to the press box and go to press conferences afterwards. That meant I had a fair but undefined amount of time to waste after the cursed innings so I went with Tandy to a HK style cafe restaurant in the city and got what I always got in HK... French toast!
I only now realise I have developed this strange habit of taking photos of my food whenever I eat out. But how else will I memorialise that egg and ham on instant noodle? I also realise I could easily make that at home for nothing, but you can't go wrong with HK style cuisine... unless the MSG and grease does something awful to you down the line.
In an entirely unrelated note, in my complete and utter boredom/supreme vanity the other day I set up a Twitter account, you can locate it here and via the widget on my front page sidebar. So far only two people I barely know use it, but if this thing takes off like everyone says it will then I might have a reason to use it 2000 times a day. Then you will all know when and what I'm eating...
Sometimes I feel it's my responsibility to tell the people about superior television programming. Most people have better things to do with their lives but there's no need to take that kind of tone with me, we're all friends here after all.
As part of my commitment to late night cult shows, I stumbled upon 30 Rock a couple of years ago and it has become what some refer to as appointment television. The following clip is one of the many reasons I love this show... Alec Baldwin is suburb in this scene.
The 3rd season has just started so catch it if you can. Until next time, don't order the largest meal on the menu at the Pancake Parlour and follow up with a Super Sundae, even if you are sharing with four other people.
Time to get this picture framed and hung on my wall, just like Lemon.
Note to future self: wake up on time, especially when people are waiting on you. I could give you advice on things like the importance of wearing sunscreen, but this is probably just as important if you don't wish to look and feel like an idiot.
I usually have two devices that help me wake up when I should: the usual trusty alarm clock and the timer function on my radio. The trouble with this set up is that I have subconsciously learnt to override them. On this occasion I managed to switch the alarm off along with the snooze, then proceeded to use the radio to send myself back to sleep. The solution would be to get another alarm clock and place it somewhere else so I actually have to get out of bed, but then I'm afraid I might develop a sleepwalking routine where I switch off each of my fail safes and go back to bed.
Normally this doesn't matter too much but I was meant to go to a PR a fair way away and I don't exactly have the ability to teleport or wind back time. I guess I could easily blame them for setting such an early time... who gets up at 7am to play cards in the midst of the most prolonged heat wave we've seen in who knows how long? I could also blame my mobile phone for running out of battery rendering me completely impervious to communications, but really it's mostly my fault for enjoying my weekend sleepins a bit more than I should.
Here ends this note. Oh, one more thing future self: stop eating those cheap cup noodles from Aldi's. They may taste great, but they're probably very bad for you.
This blog post is brought to you today by the Time Life "80s Music Explosion" compilation starring Belinda Carlisle and that other guy in a suit. If you missed it catch it late weeknights on Ten. Or if the new free to air alliance Freeview is to be believed, on every single one of the 15 channels available to us in the new year. Imagine that, 15 channels of wall to wall late night home shopping on the television. Perhaps I will buy that steam cleaner I've never wanted.
I only mention this because I found myself watching the promotional infomercial in question and for some odd perverse reason found myself enjoying those 80s hits cascading across my screen. I would chalk this one up to the time of day and my perhaps mentally incapacitated state at said time, but it can't be all that - there must be something horribly wrong with me... I'm not sure what the cure for taste in bad 80s music is, it might lead to Clockwork Orange style reprogramming sessions where I end up in spasms every time I hear "Like To Get To Know You Well" by Howard Jones. Oh hold on, I already do that. Curse this medication.
Perhaps the most disturbing part of becoming accustomed to a dodgy late night television advertorial is the fact that I visited the Time Life website as part of a follow up for this post. Frankly I shouldn't be surprised that such a site exists as this will give them the opportunity to bombard me with out of copyright material both online and on TV. Even more disturbingly there are six ratings for this product, meaning at least six people have no knowledge of the internet and how to acquire music from it.
Oh and before I leave you with that nice thought, it has come to my attention that people have been pancaking without my presence. I imagine this is how it feels to be cheated on, so is this the time where I act like a jilted lover and play "(I Just) Died in your Arms" by Cutting Crew while sobbing over the onion soup I'm preparing? Hey, that's conveniently on that Time Life 80s compilation! I'd make an insensitive Brett Lee comment but I'm paranoid that he'll track me down in his giant bouncing ball and pound me to death on the pavement.
Ah, the opportunities provided by merely winning a gold medal or two. Underwear deals, TV appearances and a personally branded range of ICBMs. Eamon's really worse off for breaking up with her, going out with an international warmonger has its perks.
And now to offload my latest round of silly photos. Our first stop comes from the home of Japanese cuisine in Melbourne - Chinatown. That's right, even all Asian food tastes the same.
Ginza is a very odd kind of place. Sure, they serve food right in front of you on a giant metal griddle. Sure, there's a lot of showmanship and skill in the way they cook and serve food. I'm not sure if they had to throw it at us though. We all managed to catch it rather well, though this poor guy at the party next to us had a whole lot of rice on the floor around him. Maybe he really hates fried rice.
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| From Say Something... |
You generally notice big changes in a public space, especially those involving giant hot air balloons under the Melbourne Central cone. Typical drunken balloonist behaviour, never looking where they're headed.
While I sit here and do the opposite of homework and assignments, here is a video from one of my favourite sketch shows right now - 'That Mitchell and Webb Look', which finished its run on ABC1 tonight. The premise involves a pair of lazy screenwriters who can't be bothered researching their subject matter and decide to write a sports movie about cricket.
Quotes from this sketch compile just one of the many random catchphrases we use at uni right now. Mystifyingly the previous week has seen us chant the jingle from Wolter's "Steel and Mesh" radio advert, as well as the jingle from the Blind Factory. But of course, nothing really beats the joy of impersonating the stoners from the Pancake Parlour. Mmm... the rhubarb...
But seriously, any organisation that chooses to represent itself via drug addled personalities are alright with me. There's even a pair of Facebook groups dedicated to them. One group happens to love them and the other predictibly doesn't care too much for them. Unfortunately for us radio stoner fans, the hate group currently outnumbers the love group by about 40 or so members. So support a stoner today by joining a stoner appreciation society.
On that note, one more blind rant before I disappear into the night. Why would anyone think that a movie about Facebook would be a good idea? The story of how Mark Zuckerberg founded a new way to waste our waking hours with requests to buy and sell your best friends into slavery, divide us into warring factions of pirates and ninjas (seriously ninjas would win hands down, you would never see or hear them coming, plus pirates smell and don't all look like Johnny Depp. Just a heads up there, girls.) or bombard you with random conversations between people you don't care about on your wall. I can see where this market would lie.
Facebook: The Movie sounds as ridiculous as past rumours about some studio picking up the rights to option Hasbro's IP for potential projects such as Monopoly: The Movie... a high rolling story about one mustashioed man and his quest to rule The Boardwalk and all the "Get Out Of Jail Free" cards. They'd still have to explain how a rounding middle aged man in a top hat could win a beauty contest. Having said that, I wouldn't mind seeing the life and times of those Hungry Hungry Hippos. Is their insatiable appetite born out of an eating disorder derived from low self esteem and a means of escaping from reality? It would really suit Russell Crowe in his pursuit of another Oscar, that's for sure.
Or even worse, Hasbro currently owns Wizards of the Coast which can only mean one thing... Magic: The Gathering: The Movie?
Having said that, those ads certainly beat the alternative radio promos you sometimes hear. That one with the rapping really doesn't cut it for me... "Get some pancakes in your mouth! (In your mouth! In your mouth!)" rapped in a half arsed Vanilla Ice manner - so to speak it really gets my goat. I wonder what that really means.
Well onto the main event now, the reason for this post to exist. Currently I have extended family visiting from the family base in Hong Kong - five people in all. This has unfortunately had the effect of forcing me out of my room to accommodate them merely due to the fact I happen to have a one and a half sized bed (the bed frame we brought with us from HK didn't have a standard size over here, in fact we had to get one custom made). As a result I have been repatriated downstairs to the study where this 'fine' publication is put together, with some messy results as seen here:
Yeah sleeping in the middle of the study really does cramp things up somewhat. Things are still messy as per usual, but instead now I sleep in the midst of all of my own mess. Since they have hijacked my bedroom, I have had to move most of my regular clothes downstairs which results in several small piles of clothes forming on spare chairs. So this is what it's like to live like a hermit in a room full of crap. I'm not that far from being like that guy who hoarded everything he came across until that fateful day where he died in a collapsed tunnel of his own junk somewhere in his apartment.
On the upside, we got them to buy us a new DSLR camera over there. Things are generally cheaper over there and vary in legality from 'off the back of a truck' to Nintendo Vii style knockoffs. Either way you can't really complain unless it completely falls apart upon exposure to something like say, Oreos. A fairly obscure curse to be sure, but I am feeling a bit hungry right now.
Anywho, here's a shot taken by me while in the car. The thing with having nine people under the same roof is that feeding them becomes a bit of a problem. Jesus isn't here to provide us with pancakes or bacon (The Gospel according to Bacon - coming to a store near you!) so we often end up going out for dinner. And each time we end up going to a Chinese restaurant. Personally I don't really see the point... you jump on a plane and fly eight hours just to head to Chinatown. It reminds me of the Americatown thing on The Simpsons, though you could counter that argument by claiming there's not really that much local cuisine to try out besides fish & chips and shrimp on the barbie... curse you, Paul Hogan!
Once I figure out how all the settings work I'm sure I won't need to hide my incompetence behind fancy lighting effects and motion blurs. Join me next time when I fight the seven signs of aging with the help of my own homebrew face cream.
In other news, at the risk of sounding incredibly out of character or indeed gender, the last few days have been extraordinarily bad for my health. No, I haven't taken up crystal meth (too expensive) or joined a parachute optional skydiving club (it messes with my hair), I've simply been eating more junky foods. (It's that easy?! How do I sign up?)
On the Thursday past I went to the Game On exhibition at Fed Square with Darren, Marcus and Ken. It's kind of like the history of console gaming, from the earliest version of Pong to Pokemon. A lot of the early games were really cool to see and play, including the text game version of Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy and this strangely addictive Dreamcast game involving a girl on a broomstick trying to dodge little rocks in her way. Street Fighter and six player Bomberman on a giant screen were great fun, but I failed to see the point of including Guitar Hero and Halo 3 since half the people attending will have played them before elsewhere. Unfortunately I wasn't allowed to take pictures, otherwise I would have found you an image of a promotional poster for that awful Super Mario Brothers movie.
Before that, we went to Nando's for lunch where my eating odyssey began. I suppose a light wrap was the best choice for me in the context of things, but things became interesting when we decided to mix the remainder of Marcus' Coke with some peri-peri powder. Darren, the master brewer took a taste and surprisingly didn't explode ala Mentos and Diet Coke. I take that to be a good sign.
Our next meal came after six when we made a dinner stop at Hungry Jack's (I know, at least Nando's pretends to be good for you). There I had some sort of bagette looking thing and it was there I remembered why I don't order those things: they're as thick as a brick wall and probably twice as solid. In fact I don't see why we don't send those things to developing nations as a food source and building material. Everybody wins! Here we also got into the topic of new reality game shows. My memory of this conversation is kinda hazy but at some point I suggested something along the lines of "Australia's Next Top Bogan" or "Australia's Got Hobos". The list really does go on.
The next fast food serving came the next day when my sister brought back Macca's for lunch. I would've ordered the McAfrica burger if not for the irony implied in such a meal. To add to the dangerously high irony levels, the McAmerica bagel that came the week before is a lot smaller and probably not suited to the North American palate. I mean, that hot dog eating champion would leave that joint one very dissatisfied customer. To be fair I haven't had the chance to try either one but I'm guessing the Africa would be somewhat larger even though I'm sure they hire dwarves to hold the burgers in those glamour shots to make the most out of the visual scale difference.
Then when you thought the foodening was all over, the next day we went over to Darren's place to play cards and ended up having pizza for dinner. We also had fried rice for lunch but that doesn't count as junk. No, you could never put fried rice into that category. Saying that must count as some sort of sacrilege I imagine. I'd attempt to resist more junk at home if not for the sack of 'deformed Boost bars' my sister brought back from a friend's place. Mutant chocolate should not be shunned people, they like all other chocolate should be allowed to fulfil its destiny, the purpose for which it was created. Who am I to argue?
