Daniel85

Hey, forest friends.

I just wanted to quickly update people on my whereabouts. I’ll be heading to Seattle on the 27th of June, and returning sometime early August. (Julian- we definitely need to catch up when you get back into town. I’ll call you.)

There are rumours of a possible Dan Roberts appearance at the Geelong/Port Adelaide game this Sunday. Early reports are unsubstantiated, and experts dismiss them as unlikely, but we’ll see…

I’m looking forward to getting back to Seattle for a little while. Laura and I will probably be spending a lot of time in movie theatres and haunting thrift stores/garage sales/near-defunct video stores, so maybe I’ll have some fodder for a possible return to blogging in the very near future.

Speaking of the witty, attractive Ms. Laura, you should check out her blog (http://jemgirl.wordpress.com). It’s a sparkly, pink shrine to all things girly and 80s.

And lastly, if you would like a glimpse into the innermost workings of my soul, here it is: http://youtube.com/watch?v=mxHw-PuyIBA

Ta-ta!

Hard to believe that this blog’s been running two years and that’s the first Casper (1995) reference I’ve made. Come to think of it, have I even made a Mighty Ducks reference on this blog? These are formative texts, people.

I have decided to place this blog on hiatus, seeing as I really don’t do anything with it, and I don’t want to continue wasting everybody’s time by simply posting vaguely amusing YouTube clips.

I’m not going to delete it or anything (although that thought did occur to me), so if anyone has a burning desire to reread an old entry about the El Maco or the Cookie Dough Kit-Kat, they’re more than welcome to.

I may be back, so check in some time. I have a couple of ideas for actual blog projects that would give me more of a focus and a reason to blog, so if I start any of those I’ll be sure to let you know here. One would involve reviewing forgotten classics from dusty old video stores that still stock VHS tapes. For the other, we’d bring back some of those ice cubes and switch it over to a pitching wedge.

I’ll be heading back to the States for a short while at the end of June, so maybe I’ll pop back here to post some pics.

Thanks for reading, guys. It’s been real.

I leave you with this final piece of advice: “Don’t put Twinkies on your pizza.” Words to live by…

Hey.

I’m back in Australia now. Sorry for hardly ever updating the blog. I don’t know if I have the desire to continue it, but I guess I’ll keep it up just in case.

My flight was long and boring, and I got stuck in between two old ladies, which is always fun. One of them was really bitchy and constantly snapping at other passengers and the flight staff. The other one wouldn’t shut up about all the places she’s been. I felt like starting to sing ‘I’ve been everywhere, man’ right in her face.

One thing I noticed on the flight from LA to Melbourne is how ugly Australians are. I hadn’t been around a lot of Australians, obviously, so suddenly being on a plane full of them for 15 hours was an eye-opening experience. Why do all young Australian men (late teens to mid 20s) look like rapists? They all have that smashed-in-the-face-with-a-brick, forty yard stare look to them. Geez… spend a few months overseas and all of a sudden I’ve gone all Germaine Greer/Peter Carey.

Shut up, Mark Twain!

I’m not dead, obviously, because I’m writing this blog entry– although that would make for a hilarious, irreverent, Weekend At Bernie’s style comedy blog. No, you’ll find I’m quite alive. Unlike Andrew McCarthy’s career. Hah! Take that, Brat Packer!

Just thought I’d drop a note to explain my blog absence. Blabsence? Blogsence? Bah, portmanteau words suck anyway.

I’ve had way too much on my mind lately to be scrawling down nonsense blog entries that no-one really cares about. (And by “way too much” I mean “her name starts with L”.)

As the great Karl Pilkington once said, “Can’t be dealing with this.” I don’t know if I’m going to continue the blog this year. Maybe I’ll keep it just to throw up the occasional junk food review (okay, bad choice of words there) and other miscellany. It may even come in handy as a communications tool during the trip to the States I’m planning for the mid-year break. 

My main problem is that I never really decided what I wanted to do with the blog. Is it a comics blog? Is it a pop culture nostalgia blog? Should I write about everyday happenings? (Well, the almost total lack of ‘everyday happenings’ in my life took care of that question, at least.)

Maybe I’m just being an idiot, and the blog’ll go on as always, better than ever in OH SEVER. Seven. Whatever.

In any case, thanks for reading and commenting and all that in ‘06. Every little comment chipped a tiny flint from the blackened husk which entraps what remains of my heart. Just kidding!

I guess I should get rid of the Christmas theme, if I do continue. It is kind of a reflection of the state of my real world abode at the moment, though. I’ve been left in charge of the house while my family’s away on holiday, so of course all the Christmas shit is still up. It’s staying up till they get back, fuck it! Christmas every day!

If I decide to keep blogging, I’ll change the header to something less festive. A candle in the window, look for it and you will know.

P.S. Former GHS students (all three of you!), I just heard that Mr. Price committed suicide yesterday. I don’t know the circumstances, nor can I even confirm if it’s true, but damn…  sad if it is. The guy was never on my top teachers list, but he was an amiable enough fellow. His mannerisms provided some enjoyment in those incredibly boring, useless woodwork lessons.

Don’t really have anything major to blog about today, so this entry’s just a mixed bag of random things not worthy of their own entry that still fall under the prevailing Christmas theme.

Christmastime is always awesometime over at X-E, and Matt has found a truly wondrous snowglobe featuring Darth Vader building a snowy replica of the Death Star. It reminded me of this fantastic picture from the back of Hasbro’s Holiday Darth Vader action figure from last Christmas: 

Shouldn’t he have made a Snowtrooper?

My local Safeway has half-heartedly gotten into the Christmas spirit…

And doesn’t everyone look all the more joyful for it?

Finally, from the ’harried dad frantically Googling’ department comes the funniest search engine hit I’ve had this Christmas season:

HOW TO MOUNT PLASTIC SANTA TO CHIMNEY

I love how it’s all in capitals, as if the searcher is ’shouting’ at his computer (remember all those news reports and magazine articles about ‘Netiquette’ in like 1996?) for handy hints on how to get the FUCKING SANTA TO MOUNT WHILE IT MOCKS ME WITH ITS FUCKING HO HO HO LAUGHTER!!!!!!11111seveneleven

To all the people who’ve come across my old post on Kit Kat Cookie Dough through search queries such as ‘kit kat cookie dough poster’ and ‘kit kat cookie dough girl’: I’m sorry I haven’t been able to provide fap-photos for you, but take heart!

It has come to my attention that the chick from the Kit Kat Cookie Dough and Honeycomb campaign has done a photo shoot for the latest issue of Zoo Weekly. If you can bring yourselves to go out in public for a few minutes, you’ll find the mag down at your local newsagency.  

No more wanking in bus shelters by torchlight at 3AM for you guys!

Thought I’d decorate the place for All Hallow’s Eve, just for the fun of it.

I might even do some Halloween-themed blog entries, if I can be bothered. There’s some Halloween action in a couple of department store catalogues worthy of mockery.

Also, I have another article showing on Retro Junk:

These comic book advertising articles are almost writing themselves now. I’m keen to do something different ‘for my next trick’, cos I’m getting kinda sick of the repetition. I really only started doing these ‘CBA’ bits as a way of getting back into the habit of writing articles, which is the reason I joined Retro Junk in the first place.

It’s Friday the 13th in 24 seconds.

I’ve been with the default Kubrick theme ever since I started the blog, and since that’s kinda like the 2006 equivalent of a Geocities page done in Times New Roman, I decided it was time to play around a bit.

This theme (”Neat!”) is probably the least lame of the themes with custom header support, so I’ll stick with it for now. If I weren’t such a tightass I’d spring for the custom CSS package so that I could change the colour scheme to jive with my header image.

As Mike Sterling says, “blogging about blogging is a sin”, so I’ll bring this to a close now.

*Yes, I know I didn’t come up with it, but it’s so funny.

Currently drinking: Carlton Draught.
Currently listening to: New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle.

Just thought I’d do the drinking/listening thing as an homage to Crommo, who has now entered the blogosphere (here’s hoping he doesn’t burn up on entry!).

Anyway, I went along and saw Snakes On A Plane yesterday.

Naturally, I grabbed a bag of Allen’s snakes as my confection for the event. I would’ve preferred a King Python, but the Safeway next door to the cinema didn’t have those.

I really enjoyed SoaP. It was just a fun, unpretentious action flick in the tradition of the 80s and 90s summer blockbusters. Equal parts action, disaster, comedy, horror, thriller, star vehicle, creature feature all wrapped up into one awesome high-concept package. You look up postmodern in the dictionary, and there’s a picture of a snake wrapped around a fuckin’ 747.

One of my favourite aspects was the lampooning of current cultural arche-/stereotypes. The Paris Hilton type chick with the chihuahua (I thought it was Alicia Silverstone, but it was actually the chick who took over her role of Cher Horowitz for the Clueless TV series), the rapper with delusions of royalty (Three Gees/3Gs), and the ‘extreme’ kid hopped up on Red Bull, just to name a few of the more obvious ones.

Speaking of the chihuahua chick- I hated that pompous old dude until he threw the dog to the boa constrictor. If I ever wrote a book called “Fuck Yeah Moments In Cinema”, that’d be in it, along with the Knuckle Puck from D2: The Mighty Ducks, and the President’s speech in Independence Day. 

And, oh God, the product placement! This movie is like the E.T. of the 2000s with regard to product placement. PSP, Nintendo DS, eBay, Red Bull, Playstation 2, XBOX… and whatever else I missed. If kids from this generation ever get nostalgic for the 2000s (and I don’t see why they would, cos the 2000s got nothin’ on the 90s and 80s) they’ll just have to track down a vintage DVD of Snakes On A Plane to get a sense of the zeitgeist of the decade.

Probably my least favourite thing in the movie (and this goes for pretty much all Hollywood cinema these days) was the overuse of CGI. Before the snakes were unleashed, when they were just slithering around in those mood-establishing sequences, they looked really, really fake. I’m talking 1930s King Kong fake. It wasn’t so noticeable in the ’fight’ sequences in the coach cabin, when they were latching onto tits and dicks and eyeballs and stuff, but it was really bad in those earlier scenes. I wish they’d just used real snakes or even animatronics for those bits, and left the CGI for the action scenes. It’s just another exhibit in the case of Craftsmen vs Computer Nerds in special effects, Judge Me presiding.

I should probably wrap this up. I’m not saying Snakes On A Plane is the new Citizen Kane or anything, but it is an entertaining, original (yet very much rooted in what has come before- postmodernism rules, bitch) film, which is more than I can say for most contemporary Hollywood cinema. 

Just started getting search term info through WordPress's backpages, and I'm gonna have to take a leaf out of Sammy D's blog and post some of them. 

This one obviously came through on the pyjama post I did last week:  

children naked photoalbums

There's also like ten variants of "nestle fifa cereal", so it's good to know that I've been able to provide the people with the promotional cereal information they crave.

Now here's a man who knows what he wants: 

cool soccer ball pictures

This blog will return to normal programming soon, as I've turned in all my final essays and got my big French exam outta the way, with just my Cinema Studies exam on June 21st to go. I turned up a couple of minutes after the French exam had started, scant seconds before they closed the doors. Lucky. 

Coming up this week: a new Limited Edition NesQuik flavour, as well as a review of a crazy Spider-Man toy from the whackos at Toy Biz.