Thursday 30 April 2009

You know what's ridiculous?

What's ridiculous is that I haven't seen the following films. Adding them to my to-watch list...

~ Casablanca
~ Gone With the Wind
~ When Harry Met Sally
~ The Ninth Gate
~ Before Night Falls
~ Cry-Baby

Monday 27 April 2009

Promised Pics of Panic......

... At The Disco. Not panic in general. No pics of fleeing villagers or burning buildings, I promise.

Here are Spencer Smith and Ryan Ross. They were best friends since forever (aged 4 or 5).

spence and ryan lollipop

They started the band when they were around, I dunno, 15? Spence is the drummer:

spencer white shirt

Ryan the guitarist and lyricist (and orginally lead singer):

Ryan guitar. belt.

and their friend Brent was the bass player. Then Brent brought his friend Brendon Urie....

Brendon rock star

to play guitar as well. They discovered that Brendon has an awesome voice, so he became lead singer.

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They were signed by Pete Wentz (of Fall Out Boy) to his record label. After they recorded their first album, A Fever You Can't Sweat Out (this was in 2005/06 I think) Brent lost interest in the band and was replaced with Jon Walker on bass...

Jon noodling no shoes

... who toured with them and even allowed himself to be dressed up in the crazy garb in which they liked to perform and be photgraphed:

Panic young dressed up

For their first few tours they did fabulous things like take a circus dance troupe with them.

Brendon NRWC dancing

Ryan, especially, who is half playful child and half eccentric old man, wore amazing make up and vintage clothes. He and Brendon seem to love all things theatrical (one of the big reasons I love them).

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In 2008 the 2nd album, Pretty. Odd., was released. It was less punky and outrageous, more lyrical and hippy-esque. Still the same thoughtful-but-self-indulgent lyrics, original beats and eclectic tunes, but more, well......

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Let's just say you can really see their love for the Beatles.

I'm kinda kicking myself that I only discovered them recently, too late for their latest tour to Australia (despite the best intentions of a darling friend of mine who, obviously, did get through to me eventually). However I will definitely be snaffling up some tickets next time they're here. And I will have to keep it a big secret from my 4-yr-old Beryl, who is completely and utterly in love with these guys.

Can't blame her, really.

Word on the grapevine (uh... the twitter-vine?) is that new songs are on their way, so hopefully that means a new album sometime soon...

Okay, enough fangirling from me. I was going to try to link to some more Panic music, but really this was just a good excuse to post pictures of pretty boys, so.... go search YouTube, if you like.

Sunday 26 April 2009

Talk about depressing!

Noel and I watched Uwe Boll's Tunnel Rats last night.

It was the most depressing Vietnam War film I've ever seen. And that is saying a lot, yes? Because depression is a pretty vital requirement of a Vietnam War movie.

Unfortunately not much of the acting was very good (the only female cast member, Jane Le, being one exception), and some of the effects were very ordinary, which let down a fairly compelling story. There was a complete and utter lack of progress, story-wise, but I guess the point of it was to show a moment in time. Less than 24 hours in the Vietnam Jungle.

If you know anything about the Cu Chi tunnels in Vietnam, you'll know what went on in those suffocating underground hell holes. Noel's been there himself, crawled through one tunnel - so he wasn't as shocked as I was at some of the horrible violence.

Scary, sad, shocking, ultimately thought-provoking. All of the terrifying things that happened to those characters actually happened to real soldiers. That makes it so much more wrenching than it would be otherwise.

Friday 24 April 2009

Despite all evidence to the contrary...

I actually do want to blog. So here's a bunch of stuff I've been into lately.....

Johnny is currently in San Juan, Puerto Rico, filming The Rum Diary, a film based on the book of the same name by Hunter S Thompson. Here he is on set.

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photo by Ramon Zayas. Thanks to Emma from johnnydepp-zone.com

Looking forward to that! Although before we get excited about Rum Diary, there's Public Enemies to be released in (I think) July. Which looks amazing and I can't wait. (Except that, obviously, I can.)

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A bit of crazy stress here lately with Noel losing his job about a month ago. All is well now, though - he got a job this morning and will be back terrorising the highways in no time (he is a very good truck driver, I promise!)

Also in home news, we're in the first couple of weeks of a preservative-free, low salicylate diet here. It's also dairy-free for Talitha, who seems to be affected in her emotions, behaviour and sleep patterns, by dairy and food chemicals. We're hoping it will help both girls with all those things. I was trying to stick to dairy-free also, in the hope that it would help Charlie (who's still breastfeeding) with his sleep, too... but... I kinda fail at avoiding dairy. It's just so good.

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I've been meaning to rave at you about Panic at the Disco. Because I love them. Here's their myspace where you can hear some of their songs, or you can watch a couple of performances here and here.

(Sorry, I'm really hopeless at finding good links. The really fabulous things are their video clips, which have recently been taken down from YouTube because of copyright claims. Ugh. GO AWAY evil corporations!)

Basically, they are four pretty young guys (22 ish now, and made their first album at 16/17) and their music is somehow a lot of crazy fun and very mature at the same time. For one tour they took circus dancers as part of the show. Their first album was a kinda caberet-esque punk-rock-pop type thing, their 2nd was very Beatles-ish. A lot of people seem to criticise them for being "self-indulgent", but that doesn't even bother me. It's music. It's art. To me, self-indulgence is almost one of the main reasons for art.

I'll be back with some lovely pics of the Panic boys when I can be bothered resizing some.

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Have been doing a bit of sewing lately. I made four little drawstring bags for my darling friend Lusi 's children. Sweet baby Z was born last week so they all NEEDED homemade pretties. I also made a little cloth doll for the bubba-girl. It was looking rather scary at first but turned out pretty well. I should have taken some photos but eh, sometimes life can just go on without photos, huh?

After I'd done four bags, I experimented with another, and refined the best way to get it done. I was quite impressed with the last couple and it got me thinking... might be a bit of a plan in there, involving crafty goodness AND handy income, all in one great idea. We'll see.

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Ah, okay, that's enough of a rambly winding blog post for one day!

Wednesday 22 April 2009

A meme

The fabulous Maggie at http://bootstrap-productions.blogspot.com/ (don't know why I can't make links atm, it just won't let me do html...) tagged ME for this meme... so, in the interests of reviving my slack-arse blogging career...

1. Are you a male or female: If you don't know that already, then I just don't know what to do with you....

2. Describe yourself: Layered. Like an onion.

3. How do you feel about yourself: Increasingly comfortable with my own body and my own personality. Enjoying figuring myself out.

4. Describe your parents: Gosh. That's actually quite hard. My dad's one of those men with a very successful and respected work life but a topsy-turvy personal life. H's always been the one to suuport me 110% no matter what. My mum, scarily, enough, is a lot like me, and I'm aiming to not turn out like her (isn't that what most young women aim for? How many succeed?). She also always supports me, but the support comes with an air of just-doing-my-duty a lot of the time.

5. Describe your ex boyfriend/girlfriends: Gosh. I keep answering this and deleting because it's too much detail, or not enough detail, or just weird.
Um. Adam in year 7 was a ery good looking, genuine guy with cool-group peer pressure issues. Chris in year 12 was an amazingly caring young guy who, as far as I know, just suddenly stopped loving me but we actually stayed great friends. Different Chris was a snobby North Shore boy who I think was really just a rebound guy and I dumped him on New Year's Day. MEAN.

6. Describe your current boy/girl situation: Married. It's good. It's life. It's up and down.

7. Describe your current location: Next to my back window, in western Sydney. Inside my coolish townhouse under a fresh blue cloudy sky. The ugly blocks of flats next door spoil it.

8. Describe where you want to be: Oh, any place will do, if it's near my family and there are lots of opportunities around.

9. Your best friend(s) is/are: wise, loving, searching for something.

10. Your favorite color is: sky blue (gazes out the window...)

11. You know that: mostly, people are good.

12. If your life was a television show what would it be called: How Did We Get Here?

13. What is life to you: My children, and my dreams.

14. What is the best advice you have to give: Be brave. Be honest. Be yourself.

Be Tagged, if you wish!