Grass is always greener

With my friends I have always been considered the smart one. Being good at maths and business studies was enough to get this tag. But I kinda always wanted to be the funny guy. It is hard though to be the funny one when three of your friends are the three funniest guys in school (officially). I guess it proves I’m smart for befriending the funniest guys in all of Pennant Hills, but it’s not always fun being expected to know everything. And it looks like so much fun making other people laugh.

Click on picture and it will make more sense

So when I entered into different environments I decided to downplay my booksmarts and went for the idiot angle. This payed off. I had learned plenty of comedy from my brothers, friends, and high quality TV shows, and at the workplace or while travelling or at uni (away from my much funnier friends) I was able to make people laugh pretty easy. But though I was always good for a laugh, people saw me as a bit of an idiot when it came to solving problems at work or making decisions on uni assignments. I guess I started suffering from what Lee and I coined as Sad Clown Syndrome. It wasn’t always fun to be thought an idiot.

***

Speaking of uni, when I finished school I went to uni and started a bachelor of business degree. Meanwhile, Luke went to acting school, Dean pursued a career in movies, Lee followed his musical aspirations as did Sahil. I started doubting my straight and narrow pursuit. I wanna be creative and make a living doing stuff I love…waaaah

"With no time to waste"

So after finishing uni and travelling I returned to join Lee’s band. A free and easy life as a musician! I’m gonna score all the babes and tour the world! But then again I am 23 (now 24) and I have very little planned for a career apart from hoping Lee and Jason can write good enough songs to crack the big time. It sure would be nice to earn 100K a year. Maybe I should check the Deloitte website again to see if they are taking applications…

***

Being a massive Roosters fan as a youth I loved watching them play and was very happy when they won. I loved seeing more and more fans come and support them and hated the bandwagon fans who only turned up when they won and didn’t care if they lost. But then when they did lose I took it hard and was unhappy and let it affect me too much. I cried when they lost Grand Finals, defended them rigorously on internet forums and stressed out when things went bad. But how come no one else gives as much of a shit?

Artist's impression of what Eden would have looked like if he continued to obsess about Easts

So then I took a step back and decided not to be so invested in the fortunes of my beloved Roosters. I even documented the process. It helped last year when they came last and I was able to deal with it (thank God they didn’t come last back in 2000-2004 or something). But now that they are winning again I don’t get the same rush, the same joy of seeing them succeed. I mean I love seeing them in the Grand Final this week but I feel like the bandwagon fan who I once despised.

***

After mentioning all this I have to say that I love hanging round and laughing with my much funnier friends; I will happily forsake a certain level of professional respect at work to make people laugh a little more; I love playing music and the freedoms it opens up in the other areas of my life; I love the Roosters and even though I won’t cry if they lose this weekend I will definitely be one of the loudest of the 82000 people cheering!

GO THE CHOOKS!!!

- Eden (while listening to The Suburbs by Arcade Fire)

Helly's Film Take- Easy A

I was lead to believe that this film was something akin to Mean Girls ie. A teen movie that is surprisingly well written and still manages to entertain however frivolous. I had liked Emma Stone in the previous two roles I had seen her in (Superbad and Zombieland) with her dry wit and unaffected charm, so I decided to give it a go. I left my cynicism at the door and went in willing to love this movie but was inevitably let down with the film that ensued.

The comedy is just far too broad and some of the characters are cliched and unoriginal. Amanda Bynes' character Marianne (the uptight Christian) is about as complicated as the recipe for mac and cheese. And a lot of her facial expressions would rival that of Jerry Lewis. There is a scene where she is sharpening pencils which is particularly excruciating. With this type of character, I've always thought that the Tracey Flick approach is more interesting. Which is to just play it straight, totally innocent and truly believe all the virtues which you are spouting. In other words for the character to be sweet on the outside but rotten at the core. If you want to see the subject of religion explored in a teen movie setting than I would suggest the film Saved, not a brilliant movie but is entertaining enough and doesn't try to ram the moral down your throat.
Rhiannon (played by Alyson Michalka) is also ridiculously over the top as the vacuous, big chested best friend of Olive. Consequently this does not make for a believable rapport between the two actresses.

There were a lot of moments in this film which didn't quite hit the mark. There is a key scene in the movie where Olive (Emma Stone) is faking a sex scene with the ashamedly gay Brandon, which is supposed to be uproariously funny but I've seen this done in other films before (of the top of my head I can think of a scene almost exactly like this in Romy and Michelle's Highschool Reunion), so I was left unamused by the scene. The film constantly cuts back to Olive delivering a monologue down a web cam, most of these moments are clunky as they just seem over written and unnatural. In one of these scenes Olive is talking about how she wants an 'awesome 80's movie moment' and we are shown a montage of clips from fun 80's movies including Say Anything..., Ferris Bueller's Day Off, The Breakfast  Club,etc. Note to the director- Just showing clips from awesome films does not automatically make your movie cool by association.  Then instead of creating their own original 'awesome movie moment' (which they had the perfect set up to do) they just recreated the scene from Say Anything... where John Cusack is holding up the ghetto blaster on Diane Court's lawn. Olive also states that she would like 'to have a musical number..for no apparent reason' which is a reference to the twist and shout parade scene in Ferris Bueller... But for me the point in that scene is to illustrate the sheer absurdity and grandness of the day (it's every teen's fantasy.) Whereas the musical number that she gets towards the end of this film actually IS pointless.

The one saving grace of the film are the parents who are played by Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson and provide some of the only genuinely funny moments in the film. They have an unusual family unit but they somehow manage to make it believable. Emma Stone seems to also retain her charm in spite of the inconsistent character she was given to portray.

This film was a weird mix of verbose, pseudo-intellectual dialogue and screw ball comedy which turned out to be not a very good pairing.

Steven's Last Night In Town

There used to be a time in my life where I would relish a few drinks after work on a Friday; nothing like a cool beer or 10 to wash away the worries of the week. After my diagnosis with cancer in June this year, I haven't been working and therefore haven't had the pleasure of enjoying some bourbon and cokes with my fellow colleagues, a pleasure that I don't really miss... let me tell you why.

It's got nothing to do with the people I worked with, it's not the people that I don't like, it's consuming excessive amounts of alcohol that made me feel like crap every Saturday morning and pretty much ruined the two days of the week that were "free". But this wasn't something that started in Feb 2009 when I started work, it's roots were much earlier. The earliest drunken memory I have is when I was around 15, at Janis Dunnicliff's house in Cherrybrook. Janis' house was a key part of my teenage-hood - at his awesome parties I was introduced to alcohol, the beginning of a love/hate relationship that would continue for many years to come. It must have been late 2001/early 2002 (year 9/10 in school) when one Saturday night Lee, Pedram and myself were invited over to stay the night at Janis'. Being the young rebels we were we 'borrowed' a few beers from our fridges at home and brought them along with us. We walked over to the park next to Edward Bennett Drive and drunk them, and it was awesome!

I think that was the earliest memory I have of being drunk. I just remember feeling happy, being with my friends and being happy. I also remember falling asleep that night to 2 sounds - number 1 being the song 'Tribute' by Tenacious D on the TV, and the other being Lee crying (a sound that I would hear many more times over my drunken years with him).

Then there was the time at Luke Brecht's house, late 2002 when I was 16. We had been at Jess Muirhead's party in Glenhaven, and I had brought along a 375ml bottle of whisky that I smuggled from my cupboard at home. Jess had a fridge full of those small VB bottles (throw downs), so I started in on those. When those ran out I moved on to the whisky and cokes. I think I went through half or 3/4 of the bottle of whisky, so it's fair to say I was drunk. We were picked up by Luke's mum, Julie at around 10:30 or something (I can't remember much from this point on). Back at the casa de Brecht, his brother Matt (3 years older than us) had a few mates around, and there eyes lit up when they saw two 16 year olds stumble through the door. Shots were the next drink of choice. Tequila, Chartreuse, you name it we did it. Rumour has it, that they poured me a shot with Vegemite in it and I drank it... After shots were the Corona's (always on hand at the casa de Brecht) in Luke's spa. After the spa we took our beers upstairs to warm up in the shower and then down to Luke's study to watch some porn. The absolute last thing I remember of that night was watching porn from pinkworld and rocking back and forth on Luke's chair and then yyuuuuooohaofhdifjdosoadkfojaaaaaaaaahhhh - I threw up all over the carpet, all over the curtain and all over the powerboard...

Sansky

Darren's Story      Wilfred's Story    Molly's Story    Cindy's Story

Sansky sat at the front of the bus on his way home; the school kids behind him were making a ruckus as usual. Each morning and afternoon that he rode the bus he was met with the same sensation – Shame. It was the worst possible way to start and end his workday. He passed the time inside his head, cursing and taunting himself. You’re pathetic Sansky. Why don’t you just kill yourself already. Nobody will give a shit.

All his life he had believed in the mystical power of logic and reason – in numbers. You can’t argue with a number. You could write a thousand books and a million poems on why second place is better than first, but in the end first place is the winner. Número uno. Case closed.

“Oi Sansky!” a voice shouted from behind him. He turned and saw a busload of blank and half snickering faces. Nobody stood out. It was a male student he deduced silently as he turned around. The children resumed their pointless chatter, except now they had something fresh and new to laugh about.

Sansky had never been number 1. As a teacher he had always struggled. He was to be a scientist but decided to start his career in teaching because he thought the holidays would suit him better. But after years of dealing with shithead children and counter-evolutionary bureaucracy he had suffered an internal nervous breakdown. He was hanging on only by the fact that he thought insanity to be illogical. He wasn’t crazy; he was just a pussy.

Helly's Video View- Singles

Even though my reaction to Elizabethtown was luke warm, I'm willing to put those feelings aside as there is still something effortlessly watchable about Cameron Crowe films which will always have me wanting to go back for more. Never too heavy and often very sweet, for me it's the film equivalent of the perfect dessert!

I hereby dub Cameron Crowe as the 'master of moments' as he has proven it once again with this film. He is so skilled at writing scenarios that tickle your heart and epitomise escapism, leaving you with that sense of 'movie magic'. The idea of unlocking the car door button might seem a bit archaic to us now, but it's still a great moment which symbolises how it's often the littlest things which make you fall for someone. Like wise with Bridget Fonda's character just wanting a man to say gazuntite when she sneezes 'Or bless you...that's nicer'. Though the line which will probably stay with me the longest is 'I was just nowhere near your neighbourhood', taking a classic line and turning it on its head to create the perfect balance of sweetness and awkwardness.

One of the things I like most about the film is how relatable the characters are. You could (or maybe you do) know these people, incarnations of them at least anyway. This may be largely to do with the fact that I am in exactly the same phase of my life as the characters, making the viewing of this movie perfectly timed. The character which I identify with most is Bridget Fonda's character Janet, especially when she is giving her opening monologue. Here is an excerpt-

'Here I am twenty three. I think time's running out to do something bizarre. Somewhere around twenty five bizarre becomes...immature.'

It's almost impossible to make lines delivered straight to the camera work and I've seen it done badly many times (lots of tv shows often try this method for the protagonist in the first season and then end up dropping the idea.) But the monologues to camera are actually very effective and are done in such a naturalistic way that it really adds an extra element to the film.

One aspect which didn't totally work for me was the central relationship between the characters of Linda and Steve. I felt like we never got a full understanding of the nature of their relationship, which is probably due to it unfolding in fragmented scenes across an unspecified amount of time. Because of this the gravity of the predicament they find themselves in doesn't hit the audience like it should. One argument for this could be that it is a comedy after all, so maybe they didn't want it to get too dramatic. They do share some incredibly touching moments but I appreciate these scenes more on a technical level of being expertly crafted, rather than being emotionally invested in the story at that point.

The film is slightly lacking in story but it is definitely an accurate portrayal of that limbo feeling you experience when you hit your twenties. In a way, that's probably why not a whole lot happens in the film, as you spend part of your twenties feeling stuck and waiting for something to happen.

A bit of nineties nostalgia, great music (like all Cam Crowe films) and sharp dialogue amalgamate into a very enjoyable film indeed.