Daniel85

Wow, for once a current commercial I enjoy is actually on YouTube! (I know the blog is supposed to be on hiatus, but posting a random vid doesn’t really count, does it?)

Check out the funky top-loading VCR!

In addition to just being a plain cool commercial, it’s also of interest to me as it’s relevant to some research I was doing last semester about television in the 1950s, and the way Walt Disney (or his studio, I should say) presented a view of history and progress as inseparable from and propelled by consumer technology. Here’s one example.

In other news, I’m off to Seattle on Friday.

I’m thinking of finally buying an mp3 player, cos I’ve already listened to all the (good) albums Qantas has loaded on their entertainment console thing numerous times on previous trips. Gonna pack it with lots of They Might Be Giants and 80s film scores (Giorgio Moroder FTW!).

I just did a quick search of what movies they have playing this month. There’s not much on offer. They have a few movies that I was vaguely interested in seeing, but not beyond the actually-doing-it threshold, such as Cloverfield, 10,000 BC, or even The Mist (probably would never have considered seeing it, but Matt from X-Entertainment gave it a pretty good review, and his taste is always impeccable). I could always fall back on Casablanca, too. Or I could just hope that they’ve updated the same 3 episodes of The Office they always have, or even added some Flight of the Conchords… If only they offered Who’s The Boss, Family Ties, or ALF!

So… Laura and I are off for our weekend in Portland tomorrow, bright and early on a 7:45 train. AmTrak should be an interesting experience.

The hotel we’re staying at is pretty nice: http://www.hoteldeluxeportland.com. It has a classic Hollywood/Art Deco theme, so it’ll be a nice setting for our little getaway.

I managed to pack within a decent timeframe, which is a first for me. I’m usually still packing right up until the morning before a trip. Here’s all the stuff I crammed into my bag:

We’re only going for two days, so all that junk may seem a tad superfluous… but I love packing for trips. I love packing every possible thing I can. I pack more books and miscellaneous reading material than I usually read in a year, articles of clothing that I’d never wear in regular rotation anyway, an entire cupboard-full of snacks, and enough notebooks/pens for a Hemingway safari.

I don’t know why it is that I love trip packing so much. All the little gadgets and knick-knacks and essentials crammed into every pocket of your bag… it’s just so cool. I think maybe this worship of objects comes from being a boy of Generation X/Y/whatever we are… I just like having my accessories. I’m like a GI Joe or something. “New from Hasbro… Daniel Roberts, Australia’s favourite slacker! With realistic unshaven appearance! Comes complete with five empty notebooks, PEZ dispenser, copy of The Catcher In The Rye, and personal graphic novel library! Also available: Dreamgirl Laura.”

Some DVDs, for watching on the train ride. The chick flicks were Laura’s idea, I swear. Well, Love Actually isn’t bad at all… but The Holiday?! Sadly enough, I have actually seen it before. 

Laura found this awesome 80s toy/fad book last week. Okay, first of all… it’s designed to look like a Trapper Keeper. Second of all, it has chapters about freakin’ Choose Your Own Adventure and scratch-n-sniff stickers. Tell me that’s not awesome.

Plus, the interior design makes it look like a notebook, complete with lined pages. All the pictures are made to look like stickers, and the illustrations are all biro ink sketches, completing the notebook aesthetic. Rad.

So here’s my reading material, plus our Portland guidebooks. Laura actually set me a limit of 10 books, stating something to the effect of ‘You’re going away to a nice hotel. For a weekend. With me. You think you’re gonna need books?’ Still, I thought I should probably bring some X-Men.

And what trip would be complete without mindless glossy magazines and digest-sized comics?

I also picked up the latest copy of Ebony, because it has an extensive Michael Jackson interview and photo shoot. Laura of course gave me endless crap about wanting to buy a black women’s magazine. Fair play. And of course the ‘I’m only buying it cos it has Michael Jackson on the cover’ excuse just doesn’t fly, because she only barely tolerates my obsession with the King of Pop.

Alright, then. Bon voyage. Wait, I’m not supposed to say that. It might actually be bad luck if I ‘bon voyage’ myself. Oh well. Ta-ta!

Things have been pretty busy here, what with getting ready for Christmas and planning our weekend in Portland, so I haven’t been blogging as much as I’d like to. I have a bunch of random stuff from the last few weeks I want to blog about, so maybe at some point soon I’ll just do a random mish-mash entry. Regardless, I couldn’t let another day pass without blogging about the snow we got here last week.

Now, I’ve seen snow before (went up to the mountains a couple of times as a little kid), but I have little recollection of those trips, and I know I’ve never actually seen snow *fall*. I got to see it last Saturday, when we got some minor snowfall that lasted a couple of hours. We were about to head out with some of Laura’s friends when Laura spotted it and alerted me, to my giddy joy.

At first it was just a light flurry, not sticking on the ground at all, which is understandable because we live close to the water. As we drove up to the area where Laura’s best friend lives, though, it got heavier and was actually sticking. We went to get lunch and by the time we left the restaurant there was a shallow, yet beautiful, cover on the ground and trees.

I was pretty excited, and may even have performed an impromptu ’snow dance’, of which (thankfully) there is no photographic record. (Or at least none that Laura could ever possibly convince me to show anyone.)

After lunch we were hanging out at Laura’s friend Lena’s place for a while, and she let us borrow some ski gear so we could go frolic in the wintry wonderland.

The snow cover was just a light dusting, really, but I was overjoyed to see it, partly because I haven’t seen snow since I was around 4, and partly because it’s so incredibly cool to have snow around this time of year. (Excuse the rather fem pose and expression. It was cold!)

So that was cool, if short-lived. That was the only snow we’ve had so far, but it’ll definitely snow again, and I’m hoping we’ll get some close to Christmas. If I have to endure this frickin’ Northwest winter, I better be getting some Christmas snow in the deal, is all I’m sayin’.

What’s up with you guys? Anything going down Down Under? (Shit, I’ve only been here a couple of months and I’m already making lame ‘Down Under’ jokes.) I’m missing the homeland a little. Strangely enough, though, there’s an ‘Aussie Meat Pie Bakery’ about ten minutes away from here. It’s kind of a weird place to have such an establishment. Yesterday we picked up some Arnott’s Shapes, Chicken Twisties, and a Wagon Wheel there. Ah, the tastes of home! I just need a strawberry Big M, maybe 50 cents worth of chocolate Mates, and I’ll be set.

Yeah, yeah… I promised to post more frequent entries, but you all know I’m the world’s biggest procrastinator. I want to get back on track with updates though, especially with the Christmas season in full swing now (I heard Happy Xmas (War Is Over) on the radio a couple of days ago, and that’s my personal barometer to the Christmas season’s advent).

We’ve been sorta busy over the last month. This is really the business end of the year over here. Three major holidays all within a 2 month span. It’s pretty hectic. Thanksgiving was an interesting experience. I’ll post an entry about that later.

Halloween was pretty damn fun, I must say. I’ve always loved the celebration of all things ghastly, but never really got a chance to participate due to being born Australian. And even when I’d covertly try to do something vaguely Halloweenish on October 31, like watch Ghostbusters and eat some Snickers, I felt like kind of a dick. So, needless to say, I was incredibly chuffed to be in the States for a good ol’ fashioned All Hallow’s Eve.

That’s me at Party City with a huge mountain of candy (and a pirate Yellow M&M, although the moustache kinda makes him look like Peter Lorre).

Seeing as it was my first real Halloween, there was no way I wasn’t carving a Jack O’Lantern. I love that term. Jack O’Lantern. Jack O’Lantern. Say it out loud multiple times. It’s beautiful.

There were pumpkins everywhere in the week leading up to Halloween, so Laura and I were really pissed when we went to go buy one on Halloween morning only to find the local pumpkin patch completely stripped bare. So we went to Safeway- no pumpkins. Went to QFC (another supermarket), which had literally hundreds of the orange bastards stacked out front just a few days before- nothing. It was highly frustrating, and Laura declared that we’d make it our mission to track down a pumpkin, even if that’s all we did for Halloween.

Eventually we found a few unwanted pumpkins at a different QFC, and I brandished our pick aloft victoriously:  

Something else we managed to pick up at QFC was this Candy Corn flavoured soda, from the Jones Soda Company.

I’ve long admired the Jones people from afar for their whacky holiday flavours (reviewed every year at X-Entertainment), so it was awesome to finally be able to try some of their product. And it’s a local company, so yay Seattle.

The soda had this awful fluorescent yellowish green colour, like the liquid inside a glow stick, or something you’d pour in your radiator.

It kind of tasted like honey, molasses, and maple syrup all mixed into one ultra-sweet concoction. I think about three of my teeth actually dissolved, just dissolved, on the first sip. There were four cans in the pack, and the other 3 have sat in the fridge untouched for the last four weeks.

After careful consideration, Laura actually didn’t mind it so much. She’s weird.

Carving the pumpkin wasn’t too hard. I had no idea what I was doing, but Laura has carved many a pumpkin in her day.

That gunk she scooped out really stank.

I was kind of considering roasting the pumpkin seeds, but I was too grossed out by the smelly gourd innards to pick through them for seeds.

I find the look of intense concentration on my face kind of amusing. It’s just a couple of triangles and a crescent mouth, but I look like some kind of German master artisan, carving an intricate plaything for the Kaiser’s children.

I was kind of upset with how the mouth turned out, but hey- it was a first try.

It looked pretty sweet all lit up, I must admit.

We decided to a ‘couple costume’, cos we’re dorks like that. We originally planned to go as Roger and Jessica Rabbit, but ended up going as a 50s couple. We were going to head to Johnny Rockets that night for the 50s atmosphere (oh yeah, they still have those over here– remember the awesome one on Malop St?), but they were closed. We just ended up going somewhere else to eat, where we were asked by a fellow patron “Is that supposed to be like Grease times?” Come on… ‘Grease times’…? it’s the 50s, dude, not the Elizabethan era.

Anyway, Halloween was fun. More entries to come, with photos from the Billy Joel concert we went to a few weeks ago, the Christmas tree lighting downtown a few nights ago, and other random stuff.

P.S. Finally, rid of Howard! The Cats winning the GF and a win for federal Labor in the same year. Awesome.