Random Conversation

HE:     So what did you think of Duplicity?
SHE:  OK, I guess. You know Clive Owen’s on my guilt free three list. I was just happy to be in the same room as his two dimensional self.
HE:     There’s only one Clive Owen film I like. (Rubs fingers against forehead) What’s it caaaaalllled???
SHE:   …
HE:     You know the one?
SHE:   …
HE:     The one with the …. the… the…
SHE:   Croupier?
HE:      Yeah, nah, nah, nah, nah….the one with the chick and the guns…and he’s in the black jacket…and it’s just full on action….
SHE:    Closer?
HE:       You’re being silly now…you KNOW it! You know you do! The one with the hot chick…what’s her name?
SHE:    I surely don’t know.
HE:      You DO. YOU do. You LOVE the chick as much as HIM. It’s full on violence. Full on. You know, shoot ‘em up style. What’s it called???
SHE:    …
HE:       …
SHE:     Shoot ‘Em Up?
HE:       (Shoots pistol fingers at her) BINGO! I told you you knew. How could I forget??? 
SHE:    (Amazed she mingled her DNA with his)

Buck Fuddy

I was tearing up Melbourne town with a girlfriend on Sunday night. It was so damn cold I am now stuck in bed with a recurrence of flu. Bugger…

So I was a shoulder to cry on for said girlfriend with a man dilemma. These things aren’t really my forte. Chicks don’t like it when the only advice you have to offer is “Dump the loser! Check out the dude at 3 o’clock. You’re stunning. Go and tell him your name and ask for his number.”

Actually, I’ve been the shoulder for the past year, but it all came to a head on the weekend when the dilemma escalated. It all started when she told me she had fallen in love with her buck fuddy. This was about a year ago.

Now, I’ve been out of the dating scene for 7-8 years, so I really dunno what the lay of the land is these days from recent personal experience. But when she told me they had been “buddies” for 5 years I squirt my drink out my nose.

If there’s open disclosure about past sexual partners, he stays over/she stays over including weekends, birthdays/xmas gift exchange happens, anniversary celebrations, introductions to family and friends, he buys her tampons and prepares her a hot water bottle and strokes her hair watching tv during her period  and most insane of all they don’t use condoms – well, call me old fashioned but that sounds like a good old fashioned fucking relationship, no?

I said this to her a year ago and she insisted they were just buddies. Not really understanding the most up-to-date rules of the buddy system I did ask “Who the hell has a buddy for more than a year tops? Surely?” In myyyyyyy day – I’d have been bored after a month.

BUT 5 YEARS????!!!!!!

Nobody’s that good.

So she was a little stunned when during a telephone conversation with him on Friday night he said “Yep, we’ll do a movie tomorrow. And I needed to tell you, I’m getting married…ok if I stay over tomorrow?”

Flip ya for real.

A short while ago the dude took off to his homeland for a couple of months and seems he’s decided to bring back a bride saying he’s “tired of waiting for the right woman to come along and maybe it’ll be good for me and it’s really just visa thing…”

Chopped liver was speechless on the other end of the line which I guess is appropriate. I’ve never had a plate of chopped liver speak to me…

She’s over him and moving on apparently. I joked that she could always be Maid of Honour given the woman knows no-one in the country and offered to be a spare bridesmaid if need be. I mean what are friends for?

We’re currently organising her hen’s night.

What this demonstrates for me is the lengths commitmentphobes will go to to avoid a relationship and that is, having a relationship without actually acknowledging its status. It also demonstrates the extraordinary lengths women (with serious self esteem issues) desperate for commitment will go to to have a relationship, and that is, any old relationship, that isn’t actually a relationship, will do.

Each enables the other with their delusions.

Maybe they’re made for each other?

Kids these days…

What actually IS the current statute of limitations on buddies?

No-One Puts Baby in the Corner

Driving on my big Friday night out alone I was listening to the radio and they were playing songs from 1987.

Terrence Trent D’Arby’s “Wishing Well”. Jody Watley’s “Looking for  a New Love”. “Midnight Blue” by Lou Gramm.  “Running in the Family” by Level 42. And most surprisingly Wax doing “Building a Bridge to Your Heart.”

Now I don’t think I’ve actually heard that song since 1987, but I felt 13 again. Acid wash. Poison and LouLou perfume. Mullets. Converse sneakers. Swimming during school lunch break across the road at the pool and peeling skin from my mates backs. Boys suddenly giving up punching me and amazingly becoming even more daft than I ever thought possible cos I was growing boobies.

And the year my mum said to me one day, “You’re not going to school today” and instead took me to see “Dirty Dancing.”

Just me and her.

And I remembered how much I loved her sudden acts of rebellion and bucking the system and going her own way and  making me feel special and totally loved.

She sure was pretty cool.

 

Ciao

Struck down with the flu and bored of the confines of my bed, I dragged my sorry arse over to the big shopping complex for some retail therapy, whereupon 3 septuagenarians elbowed each other, made hand gestures, exclaimed “Ciao bella!” and “Mama mia!”, wolf whistled, blew kisses and said god knows what to me in Italian as I walked by. 

It’s 30 degrees Celsius outside. I was wearing a tightish low cut singlet and I was glistening from fever. But seriously, flu makes anyone look like death.

I smiled at the crazy thought “There you go Mel. Finally – your shot at a mmmf with some hot blooded Italians… Who needs foreplay with those hearing aids, walking canes and hip replacements? I wonder how slow I’d have to dawdle for them to catch up with me?”

At the Movies – Duplicity

 

I saw Duplicity with a girlfriend and my overall impression was unfortunately largely coloured by her continual pleads of “What the fuck is going ON?” and the vocal kerfuffle of  “This is SHIT!” from the droves of people leaving the cinema with their gargantuan sized popcorns and cokes.

It’s probably a compliment to any film to say “It just doesn’t work in a multiplex – in the western suburbs of Melbourne – where people think ’2 Fast 2 Furious’ is ‘kouta‘ and the very definition of high art.”  People at Highpoint like their movies simple; action packed with lotsa tits, sex, guns and violence.

‘Duplicity’ possessed none of these attributes.

The film centres around a not so chance encounter between a CIA agent and an MI5 agent who subsequently each turn to corporate espionage. The plot  meanders through a convoluted, non-linear structure that is difficult to follow but is engaging if you’re prepared to take the ride. Repetitive scenes have you wondering what the hell is going on but works largely due to the chemistry and sharp and witty banter between the two leads of Clive Owen and Julia Roberts and supporting actors including Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson.

A particularly entertaining scene for me was the moment of introduction between Julia Roberts and Paul Giamatti in a bowling alley, with flashbacks of their first encounter in My Best Friend’s Wedding springing back to me.

Recommended for escapism and a celebration of movies devoid of tits, arse and guns but packed with humour, clever dialogue and Clive Owen.

Just don’t go to Highpoint to see it.

Always a Bit of Foreplay Before the First Bounce

Just a gratuitous photograph of the AFL footballer Brad Ottens for your viewing pleasure.

A name I did not know until last night, spending a quality evening with my partner watching his team get beaten. And for no other reason than I like looking at him. He just brings joy to my visual world. As do many footballers whose names I can’t quite recall, but it doesn’t matter.

Also not bothered by the fact that partner says “You know he impaled himself on a wrought iron gate when he was doing home renovations? And he was also hospitalised for some ‘bathroom accident’?”

How he explains such accidents to hospital staff is not my concern. He is still fine.

What doesn’t bring joy to my aural world is hearing footballers talk after the game. Or, let’s say, it does, but just not in the same way.

Mr Ottens wasn’t the guy being interviewed last night. I think it may have been the captain, Cameron Ling, who said something like…”Yeah, nah, yeah, we were lucky we had our legs out there in the final quarter…”

Yep, pretty lucky. Otherwise it would have just been a bunch of legless dudes cruising around on skateboards handballing to each other and scoring nothing but behinds all the way.

Why do footy players rehash and trot out the same tired old mottos ad infinitum? Like “Yeah, nah, yeah – they were just the better team on the day…”

Friggin’ der!!!!

An exception to the rule of course is the commentator Denis Cometti (right) with his opening line “Always a bit of foreplay before the first bounce.” Prolly completely lost on your average male punter…

Maybe, footy wise, the maxim of “Easy on the eyes, hard on the ears and easy on the ears, hard on the eyes” is one to live by? Cept Cameron Ling aint easy any which way you look at him.

Shoot Me While I Kiss This Guy

As I jog I have a regular set of songs that get my heart pumping and spur me on in the ridiculous and utterly futile pursuit of actually running on the road to nowhere.

Every time I hear Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born to Run’ I keep expecting him to sing “Just wrap your legs round these velvet rims and strap your hands ‘cross my anus.”

Each and every time I’m so surprised to hear him sing “engines”.

Am I the only one?  And why am I obsessed with Bruce singing “anus”????

Likewise Heart’s “Barracuda”.

I was sure it’s “You’re flyin’ solo in the wind. I bet you’re gonna hit me for speed” in addition to “sweat without lookin’ bad” when it’s “You’re lying so low in the weeds. I bet you’re gonna ambush me” and “swam without looking back.”

Think my lyrics are better…

Finally, in a moment of clarity delivered courtesy of a friend not known for clarity, I only just learned the obvious lyric in Smashing Pumpkins “Bullet With Butterfly Wings.” I was stunned when the hipster dufus passionately sang ”Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage” accompanied by air guitar when he heard the song on the radio.

I actually said “I was sure it was saying ‘In spite of my age, I am still just a beggin’ for change’?”  and he screwed his face up and dropped the air guitar like a hot air potato exasperatedly asking “Huh?”

It suddenly dawned on me and I said “I know, I know. That song might have spoken to me as a young twentysomething if I had known what the hell they were singing about!”

What have you misheard lately? And do you think your lyrics are better?

Do My Legs Look Hairy In This?

I shudder to think about all the  pressure my 3 year old daughter will be experiencing at the whim of her peers when she gets older.

So it was with great amusement that she said to me in the car yesterday ”I wanna have a big, big, big, big, fat belly jus’ like a old lady! Wiv a big, big belly I can eat lots and lotsa foods. I don’t wanna be skinny!”

However, five minutes later, as I was getting her out of her carseat, she pulled up her trackie dacks saying “I got too manys hairs. Too manys. I take dem off Mummy?” “What do you mean you’ve got too many hairs?” I enquired. “Katie said I dot hairy legs. Da boys and girls at school don’t got no hairs on dare legs. I taked dem off like you?”

I assured her she had no hair on her legs, but it guts me that 3 year olds are practically calling her Chewbucca and telling her to shave her legs. Had to bite my tongue and stop myself from telling her to tell Katie  to “Fuck off! At least I can shave my legs but you’ll still be a dumb fucking cow!”

To clarify she has the faintest sign of blonde down on her legs, but I did wonder if and when this would happen given her father’s a bear…

Jailbird

I’m very late to this party, but I just can’t stop watching this video.

I’d be hard pressed to find another music video that weaved such a perfect marriage of imagery and music. Apparently the scenes are from a  Spanish movie called the Spirit of the Beehive made in 1973 and it looks absolutely stunning.

Spitting chips that the gods have conspired against me and I wont be seeing Jim White tomorrow, but I guess ya can’t always get what ya want.

Intensity

So yeah, I’ve been pretty slack finishing that thar book over yonder.

Sorry Markus Zuzak. Your style just aint grabbing me. I’m vaguely reading a number of other books that also aren’t grabbing me much either.

In fact, my personality has changed somewhat over the past couple of months. Seems I’ve turned into a jock, spending every spare second I get running on the treadmill, thrashing it out to the beats of Springsteen’s “Born to Run” and the Beastie Boys “Sabotage” and AC/DC’s “Hells Bells”. Running til I’m drowning in a lathering sweat.  Running til I get stomach cramps. Running til I can’t breathe. Running til…well, running til Britney starts on “Toxic”, cos I know that’s my cue to give up the ghost and remove my testosterone fuelled aggression from the lavender scented ladies gym I go to where the motto is “Thou shalt exercise moderately. A lady never sweats; she glistens.”

But with much exercise comes nagging injuries (fucking useless hip, what do we need em for?) and being back to square one, ie. sitting reading a goddamn book.

A fatal flaw in my personality – and something I’d like to change – is my tendency to pigeonhole people based on their musical and literary preferences.

It’s not even a conscious thing.

But anyone who says “Sting is sooooooo talented” nearly causes my brain to haemorrhage.

Likewise I tend to avoid authors based on the type of people who read them on the train.

All the women who read Paulina Simmons, Marian Keyes, Helen Fielding and Katie Fforde project a pathetic treadmill running, cottage cheese consuming, Days of Our Lives watching, Mr Big syndrome suffering kinda existence for me that holds no attraction whatsoever. I wanna shake em and scream “Get thee some Margaret fucking Atwood!!”

Ditto with guys on trains who read Clive Cussler, Jeffrey Archer and Dean Koontz. They project a very boring, analytical, almost obsessive personality that only has the ability to form deep and meaningful relationships with women called Ljuba. Via webcam. From Latvia. I would shake em and scream at them but I think the dandruff would kill me.

These people may all be wonderful authors, but I’m a highly opinionated, totally judgemental and utterly prejudiced mofo and believe it would be hard to change my mind.

Much to my dismay, shock and horror, last week I agreed to read a book called “Intensity” by Dean Koontz when the owner of the book said after I went on this diatribe “Go on. Shut up. And read that. I dare ya.”  I can’t believe I said with a straight face “Yeah, I’ll read it.”

And I have to say at page 296, I am getting it.

Must be all that jogging.

And slamming down cans of solo. Fast.

And standing up to pee.

Dean Koontz aint soooooo bad, is he???

I used to think people just liked saying his name.