MOULD

I must have somehow insulted the God Cuisine this weekend. After my bollocks incident on Friday night, I was with my friend K at a cafe in Newtown hoing into what appeared to be quite a pleasant carrott cake.

K : It's a bit dry

Me: Yes it is....it tastes a bit old in fact

K: So do carrot cakes generally have green bits in them?

Me: Generally not...unless they've added some broccoli.

I analysed K's discovery of green particles in said carrot concoction and soon realised that the green was in fact not anything from a vegetable garden but the beginnings of penicillin. Yes the cake was mouldy. ....all the way through....like an old loaf of bread....and I of course being the guts that I am, had already eaten half of it.

Bon appetite!

C

A Year of Blogging

Well I actually thought I started my blog on the 18th of January last year and I've just realised that it was actually January 13th! Well I'm late for most things in my life so it doesn't come as a surprise that I would be late for my own blog.

Happy 1st Anniversery thOroughlymOderncOlin!

Almost 85 000 words, 11 and 1/2 thousand hits and 101 posts later, I still seem to be punching out some sort of hubbaballoo on tmc. My writing and enthusiasm for tmc has waned in the last few months mainly due to holidaying and not being able to sit down and write. Around the turn of the year, I was thinking perhaps of resting tmc to focus on other writing ideas I have but 09 is going to be a year of change for me and I think I may need tmc for my own sanity!

So much thanks to the few of you who read my little blurb to the world regularly; I've greatly appreciated your encouragement over the last 12 months.

C

BOLLOCKS

Just got back from dinner with girls I used to work with in my last job. We're a pretty close unit and the five of us have been through a few ups and downs in the time we've known each other. We catch up every coupla mths for a noice meal except this time it was different and just a little too unushual.We went to this new vietnamese restaurant near my place....usually it's just us ....no partners or potentials or anythings in between are invited; we usually sink a few cocktails, dance around our handbags and go home. This time it was a little different. For starters, none of us were drinking....we've all got Sat morning things planned so apart from a couple of beers at a nearby pub, we were on our diet cokes. Secondly one of the girls, T, brought this new bloke she's seeing who was to put it bluntly one shandy short of horrendous. Late 40s, face like a camel and thought it was fun to call the waiters "ching chong". And then there were the stories of him taking his kids out to his horse stud to see the stallions with the big "dongers". And that was before mains were served. Then there were stories of how he just shagged T before dinner and he hadn't wiped the cum off his hands......followed by jokes about "boongs" (Australian slang for Aboriginal people). If I had a bottle of gin or a hit of heroin nearby I could have handled him .....but unfortunately I didn't and am afraid Diet Coke just doesn't give a big enough hit of tolerance. I simply had 85 cigarette breaks instead......and looked forward to the food ...which lead to the next disaster.

I ordered pork. I love vietnamese pork. I love how it is caramelised with lemmongrass and butter and melts in your mouth. My dish arrived as did everyone else's. It was noice but not brilliant. There were also two other items in the bowl which I couldn't quite work out. They looked like brown boiled eggs. I shared my views with the table. Everyone agreed. I consumed half of one and realised pretty quickly that it was NOT an egg. It may have been yellow but it certainly did not come out of any chook. I start to munch on it and realised the texture was quite meaty but like mash. As I am doing this camel face starts poking at the remaining half.

" Mate that's definitely no egg"

"Mate you know what you're eating...." He starts to burst out laughing.

"Mate you're eating bloody pig's bollocks!"

" MATE YOU'RE EATING BOLLOCKS....THEY'VE GIVEN YOU BOLLOCKS!"

C

Life Matters....

Judy at the Beresford Sunday night on finding "the one".


Where is he? I'm tired.

C

OBAMARAMA

UK AND AWAY: PART 2

They say the friends you make in your youth are the ones that stay with you for life regardless of how long it has been since you've seen them. All my friends in London fall into this category and most of them I had not seen in at least five years….the last time I was in London. To be honest I was a little worried before I left whether I was going to be a little lonely; I had not heard from many people when I sent an email out in September saying that I was coming over for a month in November. Two days prior to leaving, suddenly everyone came out of the wood-work. I pretty much had a social commitment every night of the 11 nights I was in London. It was fantastic as it enabled me to go wandering during the day and kick up my heels with my mates at night.

Two of my friends S & A had originally planned to host an Obama party themselves the night of the US Election: 4 November 2008. Due to overwork commitments and general disorganisation, the party didn't happen. Instead S & A organised tickets to go to a US Election Party at a bar in Leicester Square. There were about twelve us who went along. It was supposed to be a general US Election Party but it was obvious which side everyone at the party was on.

A arrived a little later with her new boyfriend….well who I thought was her boyfriend. S & A are old friends of my brother's and consequently friends of mine. We all went to the same law school and we've known each other for about 12 years. As the night proceeded and we knocked back more and more Obarama's (some lethal sambuca concoction made in tribute for the Democrat nominee), I started to realise that A's 'new' boyfriend was flirting with me. I couldn't believe it. In all the time I've known A, she has had about five boyfriends who have all turned out to be gay; her track record is unfortunately dominated by rainbow flags. The flirting continued between the 'new' boyfriend and myself. It didn't help either that he and I were also the only smokers in the group requiring us to head out into the 2 degree weather every 15 minutes for a fag. He wasn't my type at all. Short, shaved head and completely hairless, but the more I talked to him, the more he laughed at my jokes and he at mine, the more sexy I found him. He was a lawyer (yes another one) and he was from Paris. I made the first of many Colin Blonde moments by stating that I didn't know there was a Paris in the UK; he said "no, the one in France." I ordered another Obamarama. He sounded so much like an extra off Brideshead Revisited that I didn't think for a minute that he could be a frog. But perhaps by that stage the sambuca had taken over all my listening devices.

By about 3 in the morning all our friends had left and we were the last mugs swaying around the bar. We talked and talked and talked about everything from art to politics to religion to children to life to how we'd both would have bedded John McCaine in his war time years but not Obama….too much earlobe. By 4 in the morning, we were well and truly sambucked; he had an 8am meeting, I had a city to devour....we exited the bar and walked out into Leicester Square. The mood had changed. The air was stunned with anticipation. People were gathering around mobiles and available plasmas. A bloke next to us was watching CNN on his iphone: "McCain's conceding. He's in! Obama's in!" That's right there was an election on. The news spread fast. People started yelling and hugging each other. Then the whole square erupted into a roar. People were dancing around. Carhorns were being blown and people were running out of buildings cheering. Was this history changing gears? We stopped to catch our breaths. I looked at Frenchi. This was definitely a "where were you?" moment. So I pulled him in close and made sure we remembered it.


C

ARSETRAYA

Well I finally went and saw it…..and it wasn't that bad. But it wasn't that great either. The most over-hyped film in recent times…..Baz Luhrmann's AUSTRALIA. Luhrmann has a very unique style of film-making which belongs more in vaudeville and cabaret than probably celluloid. It has worked to astounding success in his past three films Strictly Ballroom, Romeo & Juliet and Moulin Rouge. His version of Romeo and Juliet still remains one of my favourite films. Moulin Rouge was the weakest out of the three due to its poor script but because it was a musical, it got away with it. AUSTRALIA does not.

However all is not lost. I still enjoyed this film. It could have been a masterpiece; if only Baz had thought to hire a scriptwriter or at least completed Narrative 101.

The golden thread that keeps holding the film together is Brandon Walters as the narrator, the young "half-cast" aboriginal boy, Nullah. If it wasn't for this young boy, this film would be totally lost. He is a complete natural and has a beautiful presence on screen.

AUSTRALIA tells the story of Lady Sarah Ashley, played by Nicole Kidman, who comes to Darwin, Australia to confront her wayward husband who is running his large cattle station Faraway Downs. Drover played by Hugh Jackman is sent to meet Lady Ashley in Darwin. There is friction immediately between the two and they fight all the way to Faraway Downs where upon arrival Lady Ashley discovers her husband dead.

Neal Fletcher, played deliciously by David Wenham is the resident station manager who wants "to take care" of everything for Lady Ashley. He suggests that it is best to sell the property. There are ten thousand head of cattle that need to be taken to Darwin for export and it is best that Lady Ashley cleans her hands of it. Lady Ashley is suspicious. She is befriended by Nullah who tells her how her husband really died. She realises then that Mr Fletcher's motives are ulterior and is equally appalled by his maltreatment of Nullah and his family. So she sacks him and he walks out with all the men who were going to drove the cattle to Darwin. And this is where Drover comes in. He has to help her get the cattle to Darwin so as to save Faraway Downs and her fortune.

If the film had been purely about their journey to Darwin, it would have been perfect. It had all the hallmarks of a true epic western. The scenes are well developed. There is a narrative arch….the massive task of getting ten thousand head of cattle to Darwin through the most remote desolate exotic country in the world while being chased by nasty cattle barons has the audience gunning for the cast; not to mention the scenery of the Pilbara is breathtaking. I spent the entire first half of the film thinking "what has everyone been complaining about? I love this film!". Until the second half commences…..

It is obvious then that Baz Luhrmann had only written half the script before he started filming. The film goes from being an epic western to Home and Away Goes to War with a $150 million budget. The cattle are delivered to the stockyards in Darwin and then the story loses complete focus. At one moment it is a story about the stolen generations then it is happy families back on the farm on Faraway Downs and then it is back to Darwin for a war story. Lady Ashley seems to drive back and forth between Darwin and Faraway Downs as if she's popping out for a bottle of milk. At one moment she's staging a revolution to have Nullah to be returned from children's home at Mission Island then the next scene she's off to join the war effort manning the radios at the army headquarters chatting to other characters as if they've known each other for years. It becomes a farce. …entertaining but for all the wrong reasons.

Nicole Kidman has been hardly darn by critics reviewing this film. She's thoroughly enjoyable as Lady Ashley. It is her leading man and director who have let her down. Hugh Jackman comes from the Paul Hogan School of Acting and is simply woeful in the role as Drover. He seemed to have only three expressions: crikey, struth and crying seal. Whereas Baz Luhrmann simply needed a good script editor to keep his story focussed instead of making it up as he went along.

AUSTRALIA is a flawed epic. It's still worth the watch on the big screen purely for the amazing cinematography and Brandon Walters' performance. It does seem a great pity that such a huge amount of not only Hollywood funding but Australian taxpayer's money (to the tune of $40 million) have been waisted on special effects, set design and costumes when the basics such as story had been ignored. We see this time and time again in Hollywood, but it's rare that Australians get to tell their own stories on such a grand scale. AUSTRALIA was an opportunity to tell an Australian story and for all the funding provided (nearly $AUD200 million), to tell it well. This opportunity has been missed and it will be a very long time before Hollywood will be confident to throw such a huge amount of money behind an Australian story again. And that is a great shame.

C

Ho ho ho ho......

Just a quick post to wish everyone a Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year! I apologise for my slack blogging these last two months. Obviously I was away in November and December has been silly season where I've barely had time to put finger to keyboard. I'm hoping to have more time to write in January.....mainly because I intend not to eat or drink and thus will have much more time on my hands. I take off tomorrow afternoon for ten glorious days in the South Pacific to spend a very cOlin christmas with my brother and parents. Yes ten days with my family on Norfolk Island...one of the most remote islands in the Pacific. I'm still trying to work out whether that's a good thing or not....I will know by tomorrow night! Norfolk only received mobile phone coverage and the internet two months ago; scarey! Thank god though... I won't be completely on my own then! So hopefully I will get to do some blogging from there.

Merry Xmas everyone and here comes 2009 whether we like it or not!

Cxxxx

PS: I am also finding it absolutely intriging that I am taking more luggage on a ten day trip than I did on my five week holiday to the UK. Why?