Paul Reubens

Here's a Paul Reubens interview. Great to hear the Pee-wee stuff is going to be re-released on DVD!

SS

Less football and more synchronised swimming please.

Hard Candy

I had a halfday today and went to the movies. I saw a film called Hard Candy.
It starts with two people chatting online, all you see is the computer screen and the conversation. We quickly realise it's between a man and a young girl. It turns out that the man is in his thirties and the girl is fourteen. They have been chatting this way for three weeks and now they are flirting back and forth until it makes you wanna puke. The girl suggests that the man meet him at a local diner. What! Are they idiots?! Is she an idiot? She's fourteen, she's allowed to be an idiot, but this guy is thirty-something, he's not allowed to be that much of an idiot.
Oh well, naturally nothing good is gonna come of this misguided tryst...
They meet up and he (Jeff) is impressed by how smart she (Hayley) is. She's really smart for a fourteen-year-old! That makes it OK, right? They get along well, and before you know it she wants to go back to his place. Sure, why not?
We learn that Jeff is a successful fashion photographer. He has a new Mini and Hayley thinks it's really cool. Haw! These young chicks are easily impressed eh?
Back at Jeff's trendy mountainside pad (looks like the Hollywood hills) they get stuck into the vodka but when Jeff offers Hayley one she says 'Wait a minute! I was warned not to take drinks that I didn't see mixed!' 'Smart girl!' he says. 'We'll pour this one out and you can come and watch me make another.' See! He's a good guy really. Plus he's too young and handsome-looking to be a baddie. He doesn't have a pot belly and a big greasy combover like those real nasty men.
I should probably quit with the plot revelations about here since I don't want to fart out any spoilers, so I'll just make some spoiler-free comments and observations:
Hayley looks like Australian popsinger Missy Higgins.
Jeff looks like Kevin Bacon. (The casting agent probably tried to get Kevin Bacon but he probably said 'Look dude, I already played a nasty kiddie-goosing man in The Woodsman. Count me out.')
The movie is based on reports of Japanese schoolgirls luring pedophiles into traps where they attack them.
...
Maybe it's just because I'm a guy and a 'potential rapist' (hello Andrea Dworkin!) but for the entire movie I was convinced that Jeff wasn't such a bad guy at all, that it was Hayley who was the monster. For any thirty-something guy considering messing around with teen girls, this movie is the perfect antidote to such folly.
The movie is intense, and there's no way you will walk out and go "ho-hum", or "whatever". You will talk your head off to your friends about it, and if you walk out of the cinema alone you will collar people in the street and begin tormenting them with your theories. Hard Candy will probably end up being the most talked-about movie of the year. ("Woah! What a bold statement! He sounds like a real movie reviewer!") It's an uncomfortable movie to sit through too, especially for men with testicles.
I would say don't miss this one. It's no walk in the park, that's for sure. It's no picnic, to continue the analogy. It's not a Farrelly brothers movie, there's no doubt about it. But I watched Anatomy For Beginners Pt 2. last night, with Gunther von Hagens chopping up a real human body, so after that it was like Play School. Ugh!
One final word! There's a big revelation right near the end so pay attention.

Hoshi

I do still have some photos from when my computer cooperated in my quest to download pictures from my phone, and here's some of them...
Who is this delightful young woman? Why, it's Ensign Hoshi from Star Trek: Enterprise!

Sunshine: 1 Technology: 0

I went on a big adventure today walking around the place - it was a big adventure for me because usually on the weekends I never leave my room (anxiety, and all that jazz) and only go outside on very short missions for essential supplies, then hurry back. But today it was sunny and I read in the newspaper recently that sunshine is good for seasonal affective disorder (which I don't think I have because I can feel the same way in the middle of summer, ha ha!) and since I usually stay in this small dark room all weekend I thought I would try it. (I! I! I! Oh my God am I using too many I's again?! You see I will never escape fear of that criticism!) Anyway it did me a lot of good, I think. I think. I do, I am the one who thinks that. I. Me, that is. Anyway, it did work and I actually felt pretty good. I took lots of photos too, and sat near the duckpond in the park outside Fox Studios and watched a man come and feed the ducks. I took a photo of him and wanted to post it here, but guess what? My stupid phone won't download into the computer, it just makes the computer restart itself. It did that in the beginning, then my brother reinstalled the software and it worked, but now it's up to its old tricks again. (If you are in the market for a mobile phone, beware of the Nokia 6280 because it's a piece of buggy shit, from my experience.) Foiled by technology yet again! So I have all these photos but I can't show them to you because of cruel technology. Foiled by tiny communication robots! Oh well. I could try to reinstall the software, but I'm too depressed to try it now. It's very complicated. My digital camera is not that complicated - why does phone software have to be so complicated?

Forthcoming Horror Movie

Today I read about a horror movie that's gonna be released here next month, it's called Stay Alive and is about a group of teenagers who play a video game based on the story of a 17th Century noblewoman called the Blood Countess. When their characters die in the game, they end up dying the same way in real life. "This might be a good movie!", I thought. I checked it out on Metacritic. It doesn't look like it's a very good movie. Here's my favourite quote:

"Here's a movie that tries to be a video game but is less entertaining than a vending machine." - Jason Anderson - Globe and Mail (Toronto).

Haw!

I'll probably still go and see the movie anyway.

Extreme Attack!

I had a halfday yesterday. Did I go to the movies? Do you remember when I used to go to the movies and then write about it? Do you remember when I used to write in here? Anyway, no I did not go to the movies, I went straight home and continued playing Baten Kaitos. Last year I stoppped at the 25-hour point and I can't remember why. Why did I stop that time? Was it because of the terrible voice acting? No, I grew to love that, especially at times like when Lyude uses a healing item on himself and says 'This is for you!', and when Xelha warns the monsters: "Watch out! I'm not so innocent!'
The picture above is Lyude doing his special Concerto attack. As he says when he does this: "Extreme attack! Concerto!"

Playing Baten Kaitos Again

Almost exactly the same time last year i was playing this game, but I never finished it for some reason. I started playing it again...

Aliens Next Door

Two or three months ago I saw a documentary on street art and wrote about it here. I said I would look for that kind of stuff when I walked around Sydney and take photos and put them up here. It took a while, but here's the first ones. I didn't have to go far - these appeared recently on the smash repair joint next to my apartment building.