Wack

There was a funny thing in the paper today about Marcia Hines. She is a black singer (African/American black not Aussie black) and these days she is also a judge on Australian Idol. She does all those stupid you go girl moves, the side-to-side head movements, and putting one hand up palm outwards, like yo, testify. Ugh. You know how ridiculous all that looks. But the thing is, she thinks she is a real soul sister, really hip to all that black jazz. So it was very amusing to learn that on a recent show she complimented one singer's performance by calling it "wack".
Ha ha. Even I know that "wack" means "lame". Haw!

Wolf Creek

I left work at 3:30 today so I could catch the 4:00pm session of Wolf Creek. The line was very short and I got my ticket and headed in. I gave my ticket to the guy so he could rip the end off. It's the same guy who is always there ripping tickets and I've often wondered about him because he is an older fellow, unlike most who work at these big cinemas, who are teenagers. I've wondered about him but I've never spoken to him and he has never spoken to me, except for the usual automatic exchange which goes like this:

Ticket ripper: Cinema 17 upstairs to your right here's your ticket don't lose it.
Me: Thanks. I won't.

Anyway, there he was today as usual and I gave him my ticket to rip. He looked at it and said Ah! Wolf Creek, that's Cinema 3 around to your left, that is if you can handle it. Pretty tough stuff, is it? I said. He said that lots of people have been walking out on it. Then he mentioned some actor friends of his who watched it and they even found it hard going. Actor friends? He admitted that he used to be an actor. He also told me about one of the projectionists, a girl, who looked through the peephole (or something) at the movie and it repulsed her so much she did not look again. I told him I thought I could handle it. Yes, he said, you look like you have broad shoulders. You should be all right. I thanked him and went in and bought a vanilla choc-top (last week when I bought a coffee one the cone was all soggy and almost collapsed).
When I got around and through to Cinema 3, the door was closed. That was unusual. The door is never closed like that. I was about to push the door open but looked down at my ticket stub instead. It said Wolf Creek Cinema 3 4:45-6:44pm. 4:45? What the hell? I went back to the guy and asked him if it was right, that the newspaper said 4:00. He said yep, it's right. 4:45.
Oh well. How about that? That never happened before. Oh well. I didn't throw a fit. I felt pretty calm about the whole thing, actually. Cool as a cucumber I went over to a table sat down ate the choc-top and read my book.
Forty-five minutes later I got up and went back to Cinema 3.

At last, the movie review! Here it is, after all!:
Yes the movie was called Wolf Creek and it was an Australian movie. I had heard nothing about this one, only that it was a horror movie, some kind of slasher movie, based on actual events.
There's a guy (Ben) and two girls (Liz and Kristy) travelling around Australia by car. The guy is Aussie, the two girls are English. When the movie begins they are at Broome in Western Australia, having fun at the beach. They go to a pub that night and have a wild time out in the beer garden, getting drunk and doing bombs into the pool. The next day they set off inland. On the way they tell jokes and sing songs on Ben's acoustic guitar, quite silly retarded songs. They are having a very fun time. Then they get to some tiny town called Emu Creek. Liz (or Kristy) walks into the pub where a group of filthy-looking men start cracking lewd jokes about her to each other. Then Kristy (or Liz) walks in and they make some unchivalrous remarks about her. Then Ben comes in and they take a crack at him too. One of these witty chaps gets up calls Ben over and says hey me and the fellas were thinking about having a gang bang, but we thought we had better get your permission. Big laughs around the table. Ben looks scared and uncomfortable but angry too and can you blame him? He is a young fellow, quite happy-go-lucky so it seems. But he turns back to the bar muttering go to hell you fuckhead. This makes the standing guy angry and he says what the hell did you say? Ben backs down and says oh I only said you have a nice smile. Pretty funny because the guy has a big hole where a couple of front teeth oughtta be.
Ben and Liz and Kristy get back out to the car safely but shaken, drive off then soon appear to forget about that unpleasantness. But we don't, do we? We know it's a bad sign and for sure worse things are in store for our young adventurers.
They get to an enormous crater (actually the Wolfe Creek Crater) that was made by a meteor. This was something on their list of things to see obviously, and they are pretty excited to be there. They jump out of the car and run up to the rim to check it out. It really is spectacular. When they come back to the car, they find that their watches have stopped, all at the same time. Pretty spooky. Then the damn car won't start, which is a drag, but they resign themselves to having to stay the night, in the car. But in the middle of the night they see some lights. After speculating that it may be a UFO (Ben had earlier told the girls about a UFO visit in the area) it turns out to be an old guy who offers to help. He's not so old actually, maybe in his late 50s, and he's kind of a big loud joking guy, a real Aussie outback character. Sure, he's all right. He's gonna help them out. He asks them where they are from, the girls say England, Ben says Sydney. Mick, the *rescuer* says Ha! Sydney! The poofter capital of Australia!
Anyway, Mick tows them back to his place so he can fix their car. They are driving for hours it seems and they get worried, but decide it will be OK, sure. She'll be right, mate. That's the Aussie way. They get to Mick's place, an old abandoned mining camp, and sit around a fire while Mick regales them all about his former career as a shooter. His job was to shoot kangaroos and wild boar. He goes into detail like how the pigs are trickier because you have to get in close for the kill, and have to watch out for the tusks. He describes how one of his dogs was decapitated by one of these wild boars. Liz and Kristy look like they are gonna throw up. To lighten things up a little, Ben says to Mick that it must be great to live and work out here in the outback, with the FREEDOM and all that jazz. Mick looks at him like he's insane (or a poofter). He gives him a long, very unsettling look. Woah. It's here that we realise that Mick is probably not a nice Crocodile Dundee type character. In fact he looks like he could be a MANIAC.
Well, then the three adventurers go to sleep. A bad idea. Liz (or Kristy, I can't remember which was which but it doesn't matter) wakes up in a shed, bound and gagged. She is terrified, naturally, but that's nothing yet. She finds a piece of glass and manages to free herself and jumps out the window. That's when she hears the screaming. She goes up to a window and looks in to see Kristy tied to a pole, bloody, screaming, with Mick pointing a rifle at her, taunting her and cracking jokes.
This is where it gets REALLY nasty. The rest of the movie is almost constant screaming and sadistic brutality. It's really quite nasty and sustained. Here we have an Australian version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And don't forgot it's based on actual events (the Peter Falconio case and the Ivan Milat backpacker murders). I can only think of a handful of movies that have achieved this level of pure nastiness: Tobe Hooper's aforementioned chainsaw extravaganza; the Austrian movie Funny Games; Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses. Oh yeah, and Gaspar Noe's Irreversible.
This one really got to the audience, I could tell. There were not even any nervous giggles. I don't know if anybody walked out because I was close to the front with only two people in front of me. One of them was a man who got up twice and went out and came back again for some reason. The other was a woman who kept going tsk tsk tsk tsk. It really got to her, you could tell. It was not a nice movie.

World of Fantasy

I don't know what to write. I have nothing to write. I have nothing. I don't feel so good either. You know how Freddie Mercury said it's a kind of magic? Well, this is a kind of sickness.
Maybe I'll come up with something. It seems unlikely. The radio is on and a man is talking. I have a cigarette and a beer. I'm swivelling in my chair, bumping my toes. I can't see any insects in the room. There are no moths. There were moths everywhere yesterday. Where have they gone? Where have all the insects gone?
I can't hear anything. Why is it so quiet outside? What are the other people doing? I can't hear them. Only the computer is buzzing, the man on the radio talking. The people are locked in their rooms making no sound.
Pictures on the TV make me feel sick. The people. They are all smiling. What have they to smile about? What am I missing out on? Where has my smile gone? Maybe I will come up with something, then I will smile. Yet it seems unlikely.
Well, I guess I'll keep going. What else is there? Nothing. I can't read my book, have to write, even about nothing. Always a remote chance of coming up with something. Maybe it is on the horizon! I look up but the horizon is as flat as before.
Pretty funny to entertain thoughts that I can write, after all. Really got myself fooled, that's for sure. What a world of fantasy I have created for myself!

The Sun Also Rises

Today I finished another book, The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. It was very good. It was about a group of friends who are hanging out in Paris, then they all go to Pamplona in Spain to watch the bullfights. They seem to drink all the time. On just about every page they are drinking, drinking. Drinking and talking. They really drink a hell of a lot, and they talk, then have another drink. I have never read a book with so much boozing going on. (Well, not since I last read a Charles Bukowski book that is.)
Anyway, it was an excellent book, and contained some of the funniest dialogue I have ever read.

Herzog & Ramadan

Last night I tried to write TWO things but neither of them worked out. Why did they not work out? I don't know, but I spent over two hours writing these things and when I read back over them they were awful, so I killed them both.
The first one was about a book I finished yesterday. The book was Herzog by a guy called Saul Bellow. I had never read anything by him and only chose this book because the title reminded me of that great documentary Grizzly Man that I saw recently, that was made by Werner Herzog. Well, this book was not about Werner Herzog but a man called Moses Herzog whose wife has left him for his best friend. Because of that, he goes a bit wacky and starts writing letters to all kinds of people, people he knows and people he doesn't know. But he doesn't send any of these letters, only writes them all in a big notebook he carries around.
The book was very good. Herzog was a likeable guy. Imagine your wife going off with your best friend! I also learned an excellent word: Trepverter, which is Yiddish for "retorts that came too late, like when you are already going down the stairs." I like that word because that seems to happen to me all the time. I am slow that way. Probably why I like writing - you have all the time in the world to come up with a line, ha ha.
The second thing I tried to write last night was about Ramadan. Every year for a whole month the Muslims don't eat or smoke cigarettes during the day, only after the sun goes down. (I wonder if they are also forbidden to blow themselves up in crowded places?) Anyway, I knew about that, but what I didn't know (heard this on the radio) was that during Ramadan they are also forbidden to say anything bad about somebody else. A real challenge! Then I thought about it in terms of bloggers, a great many of whom it is their bread and butter, to put it one way, to say (that is, to write) bad things about people. What would these bloggers have if for a month they could only write nice things about other people? A month of silence, probably. Ha ha. But what about me? Well, I wouldn't be allowed to do a Survey of Some Recent Blogs for that month, because that is IMPOSSIBLE to do without saying bad things about people. I'd also have to neglect my audience reports when I wrote about a movie I saw.
Anyway, today I was at the Turkish pizza place and was talking to the lady there. She is Muslim and she made some comment about Ramadan. I said you must be pretty hungry by the time the sun goes down and she grimaced, nodding her head. Then I told her what I heard on the radio, that it was also forbidden to say bad things about people. She hesitated for a second before admitting that it was impossible. She still said bad things about people during Ramadan. Who could stop doing that for a whole month?

Stratu Comics?

Dare I even believe it for a minute? Dare I believe that some young talented prolific comics artist wants to make some of my bloggy ramblings into comics? I dare not! But he wrote to me and said how much he likes my stuff and wants to make comics out of it, yet it could be some trick! Did I read it right? Yes there it is, but could it ever happen? I have my doubts. And if I talk about it or write about it before it happens surely it will never happen and I will later find out it was all a cruel trick! So, now I've done it. How cruel to get some poor devil's hopes up that way! Monster! I only ever wanted to go about my simple life and obsess on these women craftily hiding the front cover of their books from my bloodshot eyes, and write about it, nothing more! I never imagined it could go beyond that, but somebody comes along and says he wants to make comics out of that stuff and gets my hopes up! Why did you have to do that! Will you even do that? It seems too good to be true, but yes there it is, in that letter! But why not, anyway? Why not my stuff? Do I not think my stuff has some merit that is not so easy to find in this vast mostly depressing bland and robotic blogosphere? Of course! Otherwise I would not continue with it. And why not my obsession with these mysterious women readers on public transport? Who else admits that kind of mad yearning obsession? Who has them? If they have them do they have the courage or lack of shame to write about them? Well, I don't mind humiliating myself, God knows I've spent enough years doing it. I don't care. It's true that I am at least half mad and an obsessive type, deeply flawed and don't mind if other people know all about it. So why not! Why the hell not anyway? Really, is it so surprising that somebody might want to make a comic out of that? No, not so surprising at all, when you think about it. Yet it is best not to let your hopes get too high, that's for sure, really is best to have a grim outlook that everything will fail in the end; good will turn to bad, sunshine will turn to stormclouds and hailstones that make big dents in your skull. It's the way things can go and often enough do, you really have to be ready for it, and steel yourself for the worst, the way I see it.

Python Vs Gator

What happens when a big Burmese python's eyes get too big for its stomach? This is what happens.