So true.

Next update on 2009 coming very soon. In the mean time, watch this clip: Charlie Brooker - How To Report The News.

2009 part 1: The heat is....on

Happy Birthday to Australia for yesterday, celebrating her 222nd birthday. My, we’ve come a long way since Captain Cook first founded the country.

1788

Today

Nice to see Captain James Cook fondly remembered on Google anyway:

The day after Australia Day seems an apt day to kick off our first recap of 2009, a post on the weather. You kids all psyched up to chat about the weather?

Excellent. Away we go.

As I’ve no doubt mentioned many times before, the biggest difference you notice between going from a Londoner back to an Adelaidean is the weather. 14 months later and I still marvel at the constant blue skies. I generally find the Adelaide climate to be the best I’ve come across, those who swear that tropical Asian countries have the best weather obviously don’t mind sweating from humidity. You can compliment the Thai islands all you want, but until you’ve been there during wet season there really isn’t any argument.

Yes, I do love my Adelaide weather. It’s just the heat waves that make me antsy.

I’ve was lucky enough to experience a few temperature records last year, and of course lucky being the operative word. From January 27th until February 2nd, the weather didn’t dip below 40 degrees including one Fuck-Blister day of 45.7.

I still recall that day and the all encompassing heat, and the next senior citizen to tell me how hard he had it when he was young is going to have 45.7C carved into his forehead with a knife, and then will be body slammed through a glass coffee table.

This was the was the worst heat wave the city had seen in a century, but as far as dopey headlines were concerned, it could be topped.

November 9th brought a 35 degree day and the start of a heatwave. I mentioned this quote by forecaster Hannah Marsh in an earlier post:

”if we only get to four days above 35 degrees, it will essentially be for the first time in more than a 100 years, but if we do get to five, it will be the greatest number ever recorded for November

As it turns out, we had eight days straight above 35 degrees. This was followed by a couple of cool days, then a day of 39 degrees. That day was followed by a what-is-this-a-fucking-volcano 43 degree day on the 19th of November. Forty friggin’ three degrees, and it was only Spring.

The problem with South Australia, though, is that your boasts of insufferable heat in the big city are eclipsed by those living in the country towns. Those smart asses living up in the dusty, shit-hole Mad Max mining towns always have to one up our achievements. These towns always have such stupid names as well. So when I’m strutting around town in my jocks and sunglasses, gasping about 43 degree heat to anybody that will listen, some bastard has to come up and tell me

”Well, just be grateful you don’t live up North. It got to 47 degrees in Moomba and Marree...”

What the fuck is Moomba and Maree anyway? Isn’t that the pig and the ferret thing from The Lion King?

Bah.

That’s the general problem with South Australian weather, 40+ degree days pop out of nowhere and bake you in the face. But due to our cool changes, these hot peaks are hidden well within our monthly averages. The average temperature for Adelaide in January is 29 degrees, a fact that is much publicised by our tourism industry. I wonder how many poor bastard tourists read this figure and thought ”I’m guessing it will be 28C on some days, and 30C on others” only to step off the plane smack bang in the middle of a 45C face melter?

Yes, those forty plus degrees can be pesky. Thankfully, the 2010 climate has been more forgiving than last year’s. That’s not to say the hot days don’t pop up. It was 42 degrees just the other day, and the heat infiltrated my feverish brain and made me start to hallucinate. I walked past the Norwood Cinema and saw a vision of pure evil hanging in their “Now Showing” window. I shrugged it off as an illusion brought on by heat stroke.

Imagine my pure terror when I logged onto the web to find that the film actually exists:

God help us all. That befuddled fuckwit Hugh grant and that Horse Faced Goblin Sarah Jessica Parker crammed into one horrific world ending romantic comedy.

The deeply, deeply original plot synopsis has our two stars playing big city lovers with a waning relationship, forced to live in a rural country town for protective custody.

Yeah and I bet the fish out of water laughs come thick and fast too. It will be like watching Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun drowning kittens for two hours straight. I would rather dip my dick in seal blood and wave it at a polar bear than watch this movie. My heart genuinely bleeds for every boyfriend, husband and first date forced to go watch this tripe.


Man, heat rants bring out the worst in me. By my count, this is the third time I’ve blustered about heat waves on the blog – but this recap rant seems to have polished off my final thoughts on the subject, so my first resolution for 2010 is to not mention the Adelaide weather for the rest of the year.

Okay, one more:



Next Post....PANDAS!

Side Note: For those who do not use the metric system, 40 degrees is equal to one hectowidget plus one sixteenth of a yardmuffin.

Side Note 2: The web seems pretty divided on whether SJP looks like a Horse, or whether she looks like a foot (a claim first made by Peter Griffin). A third party is tagging her trans-gender. I’m sticking with horse.

zero nine

Starting Wednesday, I will post a series of articles recapping various newsworthy events of 2009. These posts will run until the end of January, and part of the way into February too. I should have posted these at the end of December, but didn’t, because I spent the entirety of that month staring at this picture:

Stop by in a couple of days.

Kind acts of Randomness

You kids have stepped up to Akinator’s challenge and punched him in the genie face with your fists of pure randomness. Here are 11 characters that fooled the so called web genius:

Sam from Lost Boys

I was quite surprised to find Akinator had dropped the ball on a Corey Haim character. That’s pretty inexcusable.

Random Lost Boys fact: “Kiefer Sutherland was only meant to wear the black gloves he wears as David when riding the motorbike. However, while messing around on the bike behind-the-scenes, he fell off, breaking his arm so he had to wear the gloves through the whole movie to cover his cast.”

Mathew Cuthbert from Anne of Green gables

Random Anne of green Gables fact: Megan Follows beat out 3,000 girls for the role of Anne Shirley. That's a hell of a casting call.

Tom, Bridget Jones’ gay friend

Random Bridget Jones fact: ”To prepare for the role, Renée Zellweger gained 25 pounds, and then actually worked at a British publishing company for a month in preparation for the role. She adopted an alias as well as her posh accent and was apparently not recognized.” But that’s limeys for you. They’d recognise the runner up of Series 3 of Big Brother from across the street, but could work with an A list Hollywood actress for an entire month and not even realise.

Betty, the idiot secretary from Hey Dad

Random Hey Dad fact: Foreigners who are scratching their head and wondering ”What the fuck is that show?”; Hey Dad was an Australian sitcom that soiled our airwaves from 1987 to 1994. It ran for 12 fucking seasons for a grand total of 291 episodes without raising a single laugh. If you’re counting (and fuck it why not, let’s count) that’s ten more seasons than Flight of the Conchords, and over 14 times more episodes than the run of The Mighty Boosh. There is no justice with TV.

Even more random: ”In the series finale, the entire family is confined to the house with a fugitive bank robber holding the characters hostage. The robber places a bomb in the family's VCR, as leverage with the police. The bomb presumably detonates, at which point the cast break the fourth wall to thank the studio audience.” What. The. Fuck.

Bonus fact: Mr Kelly looks like a middle aged Jimmy, my old flatmate.

Keith from Voltron

Random Voltron fact: ”There were a total of three "Voltrons": Voltron I of the Near Universe was the "Vehicle Force", and the "Lion Force" of the Far Universe was Voltron III. Voltron II, from the Middle Universe, featured three humanoid robots that combined into one multi-armed fighter; this version was never shown in the US.” Study this quote well, who knows when it might pop up in a pub quiz.

Brett Mathews, aka Turbo Teen

Random Turbo Teen fact: ”the show broadcast during the growing popularity of the Knight Rider television series and mirrors much of it, even down to very similar sounding theme music. The car that Brett turns into looks like an amalgam of a Chevrolet Camaro and its sister car the Pontiac Trans Am that Knight Rider's KITT is modeled after.”

Ned Ryerson from Groundhog Day

Random Groundhog Day facts: Why the fuck did Bill Murray keep experiencing the same day over and over? Because a disaffected ex-lover called Stephanie cast a spell on him to teach him a lesson. That scene was removed from the final draft of the script.

There are exactly 38 days depicted in this film either partially or in full. The original idea was to have Murray’s character live February 2nd repeatedly for 10,000 years (fucking hell). The final storyline is closer to a decade, though somebody has sat down and actually calculated it to be 8.7 years.

Teddy Daniels from the book, and soon to be released film Shutter Island

Random Shutter Island fact: When Paramount Pictures first developed this as a project for the director/star team of David Fincher and Brad Pitt, Mark Wahlberg was wanted for the opposite leading role of Chuck Aule. However, Fincher and Pitt moved on to other commitments, and Martin Scorsese and Leonardo Dicaprio took up the reigns. Scorses and Dicaprio initially wanted Robert Downey Jr to play Aule, and had they secured him would have doubled the chances of me watching the film. They finally went with mark Ruffalo.

Mick Molloy, Australian Comedian

Random Mick Molloy fact: ”In the 2006 Australian feature film Macbeth, Molloy played Brown; it was the second time he has appeared in a production of Macbeth.” Just look at his picture, he's got Shakespeare written all over him.

Roger Rogerson, dodgy NSW cop

Random Roger Rogerson Fact: Rogerson was a big name cop in the 70s, by 1978 his reputation was sufficient to gain convictions based on unsigned records of interviews (ie verbals), and he was brought onto cases that weren’t even within his level of expertise (such as the Sydney Hilton bombing).

He was also a dodgy bastard.

He was acquitted of the wrongful shooting of a Heroin Dealer in 1981, and found not guilty of shooting a fellow officer (twice) in 1984. Rogerson was also convicted for involvement with drug dealing, but had this overturned by appeal. Rogerson was dismissed by the NSW police force in 1986. He spent nine months in jail in 1990 for perverting the course of justice (regarding a mysterious deposit of $110,000 under a false name), lost the appeal, and served a further three years. Just for good measure, he served another year in prison in 2005 for lying to a 1999 police commission.

Roger Rogerson is my second favourite Akinator fooling name. First still stands as Mitchell Goosen.

Siti Nurhaliza, Malaysian singer

Random Siti Nurhaliza Fact: She is currently the most successful Malaysian singer, having garnered more than 200 local awards

Thanks to Lala (1,2,3), Billsy (4), Dowling (5,6), Richo (7,8,9,10) and Ozi (11) for your submissions. You kids have stumped the web genie with your awesome skills. Here is my latest attempt at fooling Akinator:

The Dead Squirrel that was put on Bruce Willis, while he slept in his car at the start of the Last Boyscout.

(Akinator incorrectly guessed Hello Kitty, the gopher from Caddyshack and the goat from Jurassic Park).

It’s been educational. Let’s do this again some time. While we’re on the topic of random characters though, here is round 13 of Ozi and my Photoshop Tennis project. Click to enlarge:

Check the Jingezz site for the latest updates.


(All quotes taken from imdb, except for Hey Dad and Turbo Teen which was wikipedia).

PS Tennis begins (Updated)

(UPDATE: For the second round, check Ozi's site - click here)

I’ve started a game of Photoshop tennis with Ozi. Basically I took a picture, added something random with Photoshop, then sent it to the Malaysian. He then adds something else to the picture, then sends it back. Then I add something else, and so on, and so forth. You might have seen the game played on a message board in your travels, either way it follows the age old philosophy of the interwebs: if you’re going to waste time, you might as well do it creatively.

This is what we have so far after round One (click to enlarge):

The Happy Holidays Post

Well kids, looks like a new year is upon us and it’s time to get back into the swing of things. But first, a few festive updates.

I spent Christmas in the picturesque town of Bermagui on the New South Wales Coast, where my Uncle lives. It was my first interstate family Christmas since 1994, which was also the last time I saw my Uncle and Aunt. He had a nice house situated near a lake with copious amounts of wildlife inhabiting the area, it was just unfortunate it’s such a bitch to get to. It took us two days to drive there, with the ironic added bonus of a 43 degree day on the drive there, a 41 degree drive home a week later, yet non stop rain in between. Just one of those situations when the weather gods decided not to be nice, and chose to pick pussy scabs off their knees and stuff them in our mouths instead.

It’s probably worth mentioning that I’d had a bad back for at least three months leading up to the trip, and sitting for longer than an hour caused me grief. Riding in a car for two days straight left my spine feeling as battered as a porn star’s tonsils, and I limped out of the vehicle when we arrived at my Uncle’s house late Christmas Eve. After a series of hugs and cheek kisses (I used to have a couple elderly Aunts who insisted on kissing family members on the mouth, thankfully they are both dead now) we made our way to my Uncle’s recently finished outdoor entertainment area, whereby he revealed a pleasing amount of beers and fine wines, and a Seafood spread that made me weep with joy. Come midnight we were shuffled off to our accommodation, whereby I learnt the house was at maximum capacity of sleeping relatives, and I had to spend the week sleeping in a tent in the backyard. This fact should amuse most of you guys, as you all know I’m about as outdoorsy as Anne Frank.

Christmas Day was the usual fanfare of present opening and feasting, with the traditional crappy crackers getting pulled. I was looking forward to getting a miniature compass or toy from my cracker, only to be rewarded with a plastic whistle. In fact, all of the crackers had plastic whistles in them. We all blew the whistles in a piercing fanfare at the table, until the novelty wore off roughly four seconds later. After lunch my Uncle suggested we drink a couple of bottles of red and watch Bad Santa, and in one deft swoop elevated himself from mere Uncle, to most favourite relative ever. It set the mood for the rest of the week, seven days of drinking, sightseeing, poker playing, and getting to know the neighbourhood fauna.

The house was surrounded by native vegetation, which meant all kinds of local animals would come through the front and backyards for a visit. On one day we woke up to find nine kangaroos sitting round the yard chewing on grass, including joeys sticking out of pouches and everything. I took a heap of photos on my old lady’s camera, and I might upload some photos and post them on the blog if I can be fucked making the effort (spoiler: I can’t).

Besides the kangaroos, there were possums and all kinds of colourful birds hanging about. There was even a pair of Kookaburras that would stop by every day, and sit in a gum tree and laugh their insane cackle. Yes, it was a good old Aussie Christmas complete with local fauna, which made for great viewing during the day as we sipped beers and ate from the barbie. Of course, it was a different story at night, as the various beasts crawled and slithered past my tent while I lay there shaking in the darkness. On more than one occasion I awoke to hear marsupials mating less than a foot from my head. It was a little unnerving to say the least. The overcast nights made for pitch black darkness in the tent, and I would wake to that five second “holy shit, where am I!?” zone humans experience when we are in that limbo between sleeping and waking, only to hear a growling, gurgling sound not completely dissimilar to the one Predator makes. I’d pull the covers tight, with my heart beating like a jackhammer and the only thought that could penetrate my sweaty skull was a recurring ”What would Bear Grylls do?”

Seriously, fuck camping. Next person who asks me to go on a camping weekend will get punched in the throat.

The Excursion eventually came to a close, and we departed early on the morning of the 30th. Before we departed, the wildlife had one last act of torment in store for me. We had decided to do the drive home in one hit, which involved us leaving at 4:30am. I was chatting on the front lawn with my Uncle at about 4:25am, saying my goodbyes in a hazy sleep deprived state, when two bats flew between us out of nowhere, one of the bats clipping me in the face with its wing. I was so tired it didn’t either register until at least an hour later that, holy shit, I had just been hit in the face by a fucking bat.

Driving from Bermagui to Adelaide in one day involves sitting in a car for 17 fucking hours straight. The first fifth of the trip isn’t too bad, as the Snowy Mountains are quite scenic. But then you hit the long stretch, where you experience the “true Australia”: scrubland and yellowing acres of rural fields. Miles and miles of endless nothing, it’s so agonisingly boring that local farmers have been known to light bush fires, just so they have something to fucking look at. I relented to the lure of texting to relieve the boredom somewhere out on the hay plain, and found that no less than three groups of mates were descending on the coastal town of Victor Harbour for New year’s Eve (only an hour from Adelaide, so a doddle compared to the odyssey I had just been on). Several texts later, and I had a lift, accommodation, and for the first time in almost a decade, something to actually do on New Year’s Eve sorted.

We hit home base at about 10:30pm, and I’d been shaking for the last hour from Cabin Fever. I got out of the car to find that somehow, mysteriously, the 17 straight hours of sitting had fixed my bad back. Seriously, it hasn’t hurt since. Irony working in my favour is a completely alien sensation, I have to tell you.

I crashed that night in my much missed bed, enjoying the serenity of sleeping without possums fucking in my ear hole. The following morning I awoke to the last day of 2009, packed a bag, and jumped into a car with Aspin and Mule to head to Victor.

We stopped off at a winery to have lunch with Yatesy, Wal and others, whereby we ate expensive platters of fine foods, drank a few bottles of wine, and drank the only two beers they had in the whole winery (!). The rest of the day was spent driving around and catching up with various felons around the greater area of Victor Harbour, or trying to catch up and failing due to lousy directions. We finally settled at a holiday home rented by Dowling and Lachie, and spent the night drinking piss and playing card games. At the stroke of midnight we watched the Sydney Harbour Bridge fire works on TV, which was followed by (what definitely was a strange choice of broadcasting considering the prime programming slot) the 1980 musical Can’t Stop the Music.

Which, as far as I could tell, involved a young music writer putting together a band to sing his collection of songs. The musician was a 21 year old Steve Guttenberg, putting in the most spastically hyperactive performance I’ve ever seen put to film. The singers he “randomly” came across on his musical journey were the Village People. He happens to cross paths with the various singers (except for the Indian, who was already Guttenberg’s flatmate), and all of their characters based on their costumed alter egos. So the Cop is actually a cop, the Construction worker, a construction worker.

We watched the entire film sitting on the couch sipping Coronas, with the volume off. The laptop with the night’s music choices was dominating the soundtrack of the house, so we listened to that while watching Can’t Stop the Music on mute. My first film experience of 2010 was a surreal one, and more than a little foreboding.

gumtree.com: Room for rent. Three bedroom house.
Current occupants Steve Guttenberg and a gay Apache.

I managed to get to bed before 3am in a reasonable state, which left me hangover free for our beach adventure at noon the next day. Our beach of choice was Boomer’s, a local stretch of coast infested with bratty teenagers (like most of Victor Harbour), but with the odd chance of having some decent waves. There was also the odd chance that the beach would have constant choppy waves to smash at your bruised bodies relentlessly, which was what Boomer’s was providing on that sunny day of January 1st. Of course.

I’m not much of a beach person, so I was more than a little out of practice when I hit the surf. I managed to hold my own for a decent amount of time, diving under the waves that were hitting, swimming up and over the ones yet to break. But I knew I was in trouble when Dowling warned me with a stern “We need to go LOW for this next wave”, and suddenly the water that had been up to my chest was pulled out to around my knees, and in front of me was a giant fuck you wave. I dived down as far as I could, but it wasn’t far enough and the liquid leviathan grabbed me and tossed and turned me around like a penis in a vacuum cleaner. I finally managed to get my bearings and stand up, gasping for air, only to find another wave beating down on me and sending me through the exact same motions. This time I didn’t have the luxury of air in my lungs, as the wave pile drove me into the sand under a tonne of sea water. I tumbled and squirmed as the current kept me under, fighting to get back above sea level as the current held me down. At one point, everything went all black, and I swear Davy Jones himself tried to finger me. I eventually came bursting back out of the water like an angry Poseidon, gasping to get air back into my aching lungs. I stumbled back onto the safe shore with sea weed in my hair and crabs hanging off my nipples, I would have muttered “fuck this” if the three gallons of salt water I had swallowed hadn’t impeded my ability to speak. I had ocean up my nose and in my ears. I had sand in places only a Scout Master would venture. I rubbed my red raw eyes to spot several locals staring at me like I was some kind of retarded sea monster (did I mention all of the above had happened in about four feet of water?), there was only one thing I really knew for sure:

Next person who asks me to go to the beach will get punched in the throat.

I arrived back in Adelaide at Five in the afternoon, sporting an impressive sun burn, bar the white hand prints of my juvenile attempts at applying suntan lotion. I showered for about 30 minutes, trying to get all of the sand out of my body, and all of the Guttenberg out of my mind. I failed on both counts.

And that, my dear friends, was how I spent the final week of 2009, a year that Time Magazine described as (and I’m paraphrasing here) ”kinda shit”. For me, 2009 was a year I concentrated on paying off debts and working my way through the “Rock n Roll Hangover”, that first 12 months of London detox every returning ex-patriot must go through. As a whole, 2009 wasn’t bad. A transitional year for me, marking the end of an era.

Although technically the decade isn’t over until the end of this year, it is the end of that patch of time we called “the Noughties”. Anybody have any idea what the next decade is called? I’ve heard it referred to as the “tens” , the “twenty tens” and the “teens” , though “teens” doesn’t really fit for 2010, 2011 or 2012. One guy on Google Answers suggested that if the years are in their teens, let’s call this next ten years “the Pubies” . One thing is for sure, the topic has warranted countless hours of aggressively retarded conversation.

Welcome to 2010 anyway, kids. Did you all have a boozy New year’s Eve? What about Christmas? Get any awesome gifts? My best present came from a cousin currently living in Tokyo, and I gotta tell ya, it’s pretty damn sweet:

I wear this every night, so that I don’t get cold when I go sleepwalking. A few of the neighbourhood kids have seen me walking around my backyard after dark wearing it, and think that I am some kind of crime fighter. God bless their fertile imaginations.

That wasn’t the only interesting present I received, I also got this from the Secret Santa at work:

I need a new job.

Filler

Currently working on “My Happy Holidays post” which should be finished in a few days. In the mean time if you’re looking to kill a few lazy minutes, go and try to stump Akinator the web genius.

He’ll ask you to think of a character (ie a real person or a character from film, television, literature etc doesn’t have to be human), then he will attempt to guess it by asking a series of yes or no questions. He’ll take a guess after the 20th question, and if he doesn’t get it he’ll take another guess after the 30th. If you can make it to the 40th question without him guessing correctly, then you win.

It’s actually trickier than it sounds: he has an extensive knowledge (he guessed Jubei from Ninja Scroll correctly), and even when he fails he is usually on the right track (I was thinking of Emil, the dude who got melted by toxic waste in Robocop, Akinator guessed Clarence Boddiker). Also, if you pick somebody (or something) too random, you’re not going to know the correct answers to his questions, so can’t claim a successful victory through that route.

I’ve managed to stump him with a few characters, including Marlene McFly (Marty’s future daughter), and Rupert 'Stiles' Stilinski from Teen Wolf. Dowling topped my acts of randomness by winning with Mitchell Goosen from the 1993 Rollerblading movie Airborne.

Are you as cool as this guy? Didn’t think so.

But for every time he failed to guess correctly, there was more than a few times when Akinator freaked out my delicate brain with spot on answers. Just a few of the characters he managed to guess correctly:

Yes, that is the Chinese Wildman from Big Trouble in Little China. As for Master Shake, Akinator guessed him in only 12 questions. Freaky.

Give it a go anyway, click here. If you beat him*, email me and let me know the character you stumped him with (beefabeef@yahoo.com), because if there’s anything I love more than movie and TV characters, it’s random-ass third tier supporting movie and TV characters.

I mean, what else have you got to do online anyway? Work? Solitaire? Jealously stare at your friends’ extravagant holiday photos on facebook, with growing bitterness and resentment? Bah.

Go visit Akinator, and if you see Stiles, tell him I say ‘hi”.

* But don’t be too spastically esoteric about it, I doubt Aki will know ”That kinda cute tractor repairman from two episodes of series four of McCleod’s Daughters”.