It's Amazing What You Find When You Clear Out Your Files

Many years ago we still played with video cameras.

Here, the BA's friend, Smidge, interviews a famous Hollywood movie actress a la "Thank God You're Here!"

The BA is behind the camera.

I had forgotten all about this.

Yes! I am Your Average, Irate Consumer!!

I do not like this new blogger interface. (Except for how you can move the photos around after you've uploaded them!)

[ No, actually, after having tried to move the f*****s around, I also hate that. (I have now deleted them and will try again).]

And what is worse, this is the second time I have had to deal with this in three weeks.  You see, over at facebook, they introduced a new format called the 'timeline'.   
Have these people never heard of the old adage, 'if it ain't broke'?? ????                                                                                                                                              image credit

What piece of puerile market research suggested that your average, linearly thinking Joe needed their facebook profile page to be split up into a weird sideways alignment which forces you to jump, visually, from one side of the screen to another? I mean...my MOTHER reads facebook!!!! We have only just got her ON there! And now these bastards come along and make it completely confusing for her to look at!!!!!!

Grrrrrrrr *steam*..........

And what TOTALLY p****s me off about the whole thing is that you innocently press the button that says 'TRY' the new timeline and voila! You are STUCK with the b******!!!!!!!!!!
I think these d*** brains that sit about on their spotty behinds thinking about new ways to make themselves useful, might like to review the concept of CHOICE!!!!

And to make matters worse I have fallen for the same trick over here at blogger. 'Try the new interface' they spruiked! No mention of the fact that if you don't like it there is no button that says 'revert to previous'!!!!!

I gotta say, you f******* young leopards who hold our social networking life in your hands....you really need to take a good look at yourselves. I mean, I know flexibility is an asset, but come on, how many people really deal with change that well? Let's face it, the whole psyche of the human species cries out for consistency and security. What makes you think that your friggin 'area of expertise' is an exception??????????

Here's a 'heads up': give me more functionality, but leave the original functionality in the same effing place!!!!!!!!!!! I mean...what EXACTLY are you achieving by shuffling it all around?

*le puff le pant le phew*

So now, enough of that. I am afraid I will be struggling with this new interface for some time so please bear with me. To be honest, I don't even like the look of the new blog 'skin'. I'm sure that with the help of my talented husband I could probably edit the size of everything to make the proportions more aesthetic but really, when does he have that time??

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, cigar ash is still falling.



 Here is my beautiful new balcony setting, given to me by my beloved Sister on her recent visit to Aus. How pretty is that?









I asked for an independent setting as I did not want to share my morning coffee/bacon and eggs with Himself and his cigars. Indeed, after several years of cleaning up the mess, I have drawn a line across the balcony :-)








So imagine my confusion , and horror, as I espied this blemish on my 'beloved' last Sunday!!

WHAT IS THAT????? I toyed briefly with the idea of mud splatter or caulking compound.

Pah!! On closer inspection, the root of the evil was clear!! An ash burn!!!!!!!!

For those of you who know our balcony, you may wonder how Ash Man and his foul accoutrements got near enough to my beautiful chairs to complete this accursed desecration! I will tell you in six words. 'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo'.

My dear friend Blondie recently lent me the entire Swedish trilogy, assuring  me that it needed to be seen before we sullied our cinematic sensibilities with Daniel Craig et al. Now, Himself and I have few movie choices in common, his tastes tending toward explosions and gangsters and mine towards tap dancing, humour, romance, cinematography, plot and character development so the idea of a film we could both enjoy was panacea indeed. The scene was set: no children, a hot Adelaide night and the opportunity to enjoy something together.
Unfortunately Himself, being the nicotine addict that he is, cannot go more than 30 minutes without a hit so he retired to the balcony behind the lounge room, from whence he could watch the movie and smoke in peace. Except that it is the section of balcony which contains my chairs and table!

Not happy!!

So, incendiary graffiti aside, what did we think of the movie? Well, we both loved the first one. Indeed, Himself was keen to watch the second straight away! We deferred until the following night and then were royally disappointed by 'The Girl Who Played With fire'. I had loved the second book and  looked forward to the cinematic rendition but was quite disappointed by the lacklustre adaptation. With school on the horizon I retired, disappointed, while Himself went straight to the third film and watched it on his big screen computer until all hours, well away from my precious balcony furniture (just saying)!!!

Surprisingly he loved it and so I am looking forward to the third installment, once my frantic clawing for control over the  beginning of the school year is over.

I am not sure how to repair the offensive cigar burn in my cushion. The sad truth is that if I do nothing, some bastard spider will probably decide to nest in there, so, short of turning the thing over, I am faced with the inevitable cushion reconstruction project.

Excellent :-(

Can You Enjoy The Harry Potter Movie If You've Never Read The Books (or seen the other movies)??

Well, Himself would say a resounding NO!

As with anything involving our family there is a story involved in this.

The day had gone relatively well with a few minor hiccups to my well planned schedule.
The Doctor's surgery was closed due to power cuts (which were over by the time I got there so I was well irritated); the BA flew back in on the first leg of an international rather than a normal domestic flight which meant a few anxious moments in Sydney as she didn't have a passport and was initially not allowed to board! Once she arrived here she had to go through customs and immigration so it was 45 minutes before she came through the doors.
Nevertheless we were on-time for her netball match where she once again performed well; her team victorious: 48-30.

After a nice visit with Kindergarten Friend's mum who is the most remarkable, sprightly 85 year old I know, we arrived back home minutes before Himself and Small Boy returned from the football, all within the prescribed time frame in order to get to the 6.10pm session of Harry. There was only one small fly in the ointment whom I shall call 'Two Doors' (as in; Two Doors Down), Small Boy's bosom buddy from down the road. He'd been to the football with 'the boys' as he frequently does and bounced back in to plonk himself down in front of the X-Box immediately.

"Two Doors," I called from the kitchen,"You have to go home now because we're going out."
His eyes never left the screen. "Ummm, I don't think my mum's home."
"What do you mean your mum's not home?" my head shot around the corner, looking somewhat accusingly at Himself who was all wide eyed and innocent. Hadn't he checked this out before he took the lad with him?????
"Well, the house was all dark when we came past," Two Doors continued, still playing X-Box for all he was worth.
"Well Two Doors," I shrilled,"Hadn't you better go down and check because we're going out in about 10 minutes??!!!"

As ever, he was unperturbed and cheerfully agreed to go and see where she was. Well, she wasn't. There, I mean. Nope. House locked up and in darkness as it was now nearly 6 o'clock.
"Don't worry," he chirruped, "I'll ring her."

No reply on her mobile.

At this point I was starting to steam. Obviously Himself had not communicated to her that we were going out because no-one goes out while their kid is out and doesn't come home and doesn't let him know where she is, right? He called Grandma. Grandma didn't know where Mum was either but she agreed to come over and pick him up.

"I'll just wait outside our house for you Grandma," Two Doors announced to her and hung up. He is nothing if not stoic.

Well of course, there was no way I was leaving the kid waiting outside his house in the dark for his Grandma who might take 15-20minutes to arrive. We all drove down and sat outside his house in the car with the engine running and the clock ticking on the session commencement time. Eventually I said to Himself, "You take the kids down and get popcorn etc and I'll wait with him and catch up in my car when his Grandma gets here."

I thought this was a perfectly reasonable compromise. Had I been driving and Himself in the passenger seat, I may have suggested Himself wait whilst I drove but that was not the situation and so I suggested what I thought to be the best option. For some reason this did not meet with Himself's approval; he was insistent that we should all wait whilst I felt that it was a shame if the kids missed out on the first part of the movie. When I asked why he wasn't keen on my suggestion he rolled his eyes and said that it was 'all too hard'. I'm not very good at seeing the other side of a situation if it hasn't been explained to me so I became quite frustrated by this recalcitrant attitude. As the minutes ticked by and the session time clicked over I announced that they should get going, emphasising the point by getting out of the car with Two Doors. Himself wouldn't take the tickets so I gave them to the BA and proceeded up the darkened drive as Himself, realising that I meant it, took off in a less than pleasant temper.

So here is the scenario: Himself, who had not wanted to attend a Harry Potter movie (he's more of a Jean-Claude Van Damme man) is now alone with the kids, a situation with which he is never comfortable, on his way to Marion, a venue he loathes. Hmmmmm. This was not going well. I had intended, until the mix-up with Two Doors, to 'fill him in' on the Harry Potter plot on the way to the cinema but naturally, this didn't happen. As a result, by the time I had delivered Two Doors to his apologetic grandmother (less than 10 minutes later fortunately) and caught up with the family, Himself was seated in the theatre with Small Boy, a face like thunder and absolutely no idea what the story of Harry Potter was all about. The previews were just about over and there was no time to redress the plot deficit so the BA and I sat back to make the best of it.

Now, let me just say here that I was so proud of my girl. She was duly upset by Himself's bad humour but calmly organised him and took the responsibility for queuing for popcorn while the boys found their seats. She was prepared to miss out herself to ensure Small Boy had his dad with him and saw the beginning of the movie. As it turned out we all saw the beginning of the movie so all was well but I was just really impressed by the mature way she dealt with things. On the other hand I was a little annoyed that she had to deal with them. A little case of 'who's the adult here...?' :-(

Because we arrived later, I was about as far away from Himself as you can be in a group of four seats and so I did not even have the opportunity to fill him in as the film progressed. Consequently, as the lights went up at the end, his first words to all of us were that it was 'the worst movie he'd ever seen, it made no sense at all, had no plot, no recognisable good and bad guys and was basically a lot of pretty pictures!'

Unfortunately he would not let it go at that and was incensed that he'd had to sit for nearly 3 hours trying to make sense of something so ridiculous! I suggested that it was 'just nice for us all to be out together' with the type of eyebrow raising and eye rolling that was meant to communicate: 'keep your opinions to yourself and let the kids enjoy the experience' but it was clear he didn't really 'get' what I was on about.

Back at home I managed to get him alone on the balcony and explain how his reactions impacted on those around him.
"When you get angry like that the kids feel uncomfortable."
"But they know I'm not angry with them!" he protested.
"No, that's the point, they don't! They feel responsible and it spoils their night."
He was taken aback by this and, to his credit, later apologised to them for being 'grumpy' but we did not come to any agreement on the quality of the Harry Potter film.

I thoroughly enjoyed it although I could see why he didn't. I do maintain however that you could make more sense of it than he chose to. I mean, Draco was obviously a bad guy, as were the dudes who kept turning into black smoke and who torched The Warren (that wasn't in the book was it?). But it was full of riddles and I can understand why that would be frustrating if you were just coming into the story.

Himself's point was that in the first films which he had seen, there was a discernible 'plot' which went 'over' the back story. Even if you didn't know all the history, the spider plot, the Azkabhan escapee or the hidden Philosopher's Stone had enough to keep you entertained whereas this did not. To some degree I think he is right but I think that it's the nature of the beast. The closer we get to the all out battle between Voldemort and the powers of good, the more the plot centres on the mystery of Harry himself.

So what did I think of the film? Well I liked Slughorn (Jim Broadbent is always terrific) and the emerging relationships between the main characters. I always love Snape, and knowing what I now know about his motivation adds a whole new dimension to his role. In a way I felt this film condensed things a lot more than some of the previous ones did but I will need to go back and read the book again to confirm that. Obviously the main points were all there.

So what do you think? Do you think the film assumed to much prior knowledge? If so, is it inevitable or should they have been trying to make a 'stand-alone' film? And finally, do you think I should ever bother getting Himself to accompany us to the pictures again?

I am open to all points of view here. Don't be shy! Tell me what you think!

What Happened Next.

Thank you for all your sympathetic comments regarding the Harry Potter debacle.

Here's the update:

After trying to flog the tickets to you people :-) and on facebook, I offered them to the kids at rehearsals yesterday. I had two 'nibbles' but nothing came of it so as I left school at 5pm I decided to go down to Marion, pick up the tickets and try and sell them on to someone in the queue. I had already bought the replacement tickets for the correct night (tonight: oh boy oh boy) so it was looking like it was going to be a reeeeeeeally expensive birthday present for the Small Boy!!!!

Down at Marion I queued in the 'collect tickets here' line and then, I became that person that you really hate when you are running late for a film and all you have to do is collect two tickets which you've already bought and paid for online and the person in front of you asks for a refund!

Yes, that was me. I figured since I was there I might as well explain about the whole 'thought I was booking Saturday and forgot to check before I pressed the button' thing. I showed them that I had rebooked the tickets for the next night and explained that I had spent sometime on the phone during the day trying to get through to someone to talk about the error but had been unable to get an answer. Surprisingly, incredibly, they made a quick call and agreed to give me a refund!!!!!!!!

Of course, that's where it got messy and everyone behind me was wishing they had joined a different queue. For some reason they couldn't find one of my bookings and then they told me I'd actually booked two tickets for Gold Class (what???? I'm dumb but I'm not that dumb...they don't let kids in to Gold Class) and then I had to wait to one side while they found the manager and then I saw 2 of the BA's friends in the queue and they were with boys........

Talk about stressful. I actually tried to hide from the BA's friends but they spotted me and called out to me across the queue, wondering when she was coming back from Sydney. Then I realised that one of the boys was a lad from their class at school and the other, although I didn't know him, was cheerful, polite, articulate and charming. Hmph. As if that was going to win me over.

Result? I GOT THE REFUND!!!!!!!!!! I had to forgo the $4.00 booking fee but did I look worried about that???? :-D

So all's well that ends well. We're off to see Harry tonight with both kids and Himself!(I had to do some fast talking along the 'guilt guilt, Small Boy's birthday, guilt guilt, nice family outing, guilt guilt etc) but he eventually agreed to leave his work station and come with us :-D

Only two days of holidays left but the good news is that we start the term with a two day conference so NO KIDS and I still have 'til Thursday to mark those pesky exams. Today I pick up the BA from the airport, visit our dear friend Nellie, take BA to netball and then home for a few quick loads of washing before HARRY POTTER!

Life's pretty good really.

Theme Thursday: Silly

You see this?

This is silly.

This is booking a ticket ONLINE to see Harry Potter AND PAYING .......for the wrong night. The BA will not even be back from Sydney tomorrow and The Small Boy (whose birthday it is) will be celebrating with his Mum!!!!!! >:-(

****(insert expletive of your choice)

I hit that 'Purchase Now' button a nano second before my brain suggested I check my booking details.

Too late.

Have you read their exchange and refund policy?????

HOW COULD I BE SO SILLY???????

And of course the booking office is closed now so I can't call til the morning. :-(

Anyone wanna buy 4 tickets to Harry Potter for Friday night in Adelaide? I'll let you have 'em for $15.00 each ;-D

Check out Theme Thursday over at Cheese Party. Hopefully noone has been quite THIS silly!!!

A Glimpse of Something Good....

Well, well, here we are at Wednesday (strike that) Thursday (strike that)Friday already and finally I am getting around to blogging.

I shouldn't be of course. I have many other, more important, more financially productive things to do.

I've had plenty to blog about though. Firstly, I'm off to Sydney on holiday on Friday night! I haven't been to Sydney for a visit since 2003 when we came back from the UK. I am so excited, although I think I will spend a lot of time on trains.

I'm staying with the Baby Angel's Dad and his lovely wife on Friday night, then 'training' out to Parramatta to see The Good Witch and her Cuddlebun for Saturday and Sunday. Sunday night I'll train back into Sydney to stay with Miss Perisher 1992, then back out west again on Monday and down to Picton to see the Valkyrie. An overnight stay there and then another train trip back to Parramatta to stay the final night with the Good Witch and her lovely hubby*. Finally, I fly out back to Adelaide on Wednesday morning! Phew!!!!

So why the picture up there I hear you ask? Well, that goes to a story about school this week.

We have been studying the Second World War in History which has meant we have been able to watch a few terrific films. We saw 'The Battle of Britain' and numerous documentaries on D-Day; but this week we have been watching 'Schindler's List'.

I first saw this movie many years ago and remembered it as being powerful but very difficult to watch. When I knew I had to teach The Holocaust I was sure there were many other films out there on the subject, 'The Music Box', 'Playing For Time', oh......there were hundreds, surely.

Well, there may be many documentaries, there may be many made for TV mini series, but there was no other feature length film which showed the breadth of events over the years of Nazi dehumanisation with such grace and power. If you know of one, please enlighten me.

The picture at the top shows Oskar Schindler with some of his Schindlerjuden after the war. For those unfamiliar with the story, Schindler was a charismatic war profiteer whose basic humanity was challenged by what he saw unfolding around him. A complex character, he was a drinker, a womaniser and a shameless black marketeer. His enamelware factory in Krakow, Poland made him phenomonal amounts of money as an employer of slave labour and he acted as an intermediary in the illegal sale of confiscated Jewish art works and antiques. He was a member of the NAZI party and fraternised regularly with the sadistic Kommandant of Plaszow, the local forced labour camp.

Oskar Schindler was no angel.

But what he did was to shelter Jews by employing them in his factory as 'skilled workers'. Even the aging, 68 year old parents of a worker became 'skilled workers', essential to the Reisch. When the tide of war turned and the Nazis sped up their program of extermination, the population of the camp at Plaszow was scheduled for transportation to Auschwitz and certain death. At this point Schindler made a remarkable and ultimately life changing decision; if not for himself then certainly for the workers in his factory. He began to use his wealth to buy because of what you have done people to work in a new armaments factory he was setting up in Czechoslovakia. He bought 1100 Jews. By this act he was responsible for saving the equivalent of a quarter of the Jews left in Poland after the war. As one of the characters says to him at the end of the film, "There will be generations".

Phenomenal stuff.

For me, one of the most powerful moments in the film was Schindler leaving his workers on the night of the German surrender. As they thanked him for what he'd done, he looked around and began to question himself. He wondered how many more he could have saved. He looked at his car and his gold NAZI party pin and he wondered how many more people they could have bought. In the sight of the 1100 people whose lives he had snatched from the teeth of the beast, Auschwitz, he cried for the thousands he did not save, for the one he did not save.

Year 10 were mesmerised.

Now my Year 10 History class is my only mainstream group and much as I appreciate them, their enthusiasm and their general interest in history, I am aware that they are all incredibly boisterous, cynical, 15 year old boys (indeed there are only 8 girls in the class of 22) whose hormones and razor sharp wit run at fever pitch.

Just how much of the film they could cope with before descending into sniggering and snide comments was a worrying unknown; and of course the film is rated M and I hadn't had time to send home permission notes to all the parents before we watched it so..........

I did a lot of pre-screening and censoring based on what might challenge their adolescent comfort zones; however, in the end, there was only one or two scenes that drew the censors 'skip' button! :-) One was the moment where Goeth (sadistic Kommandant) feels up a Jewish girl's breast. I knew that would challenge their testosterone levels. There was also a particularly gruelling scene where inmates were stripped and sorted for transportation in the camp yard. There was quite a bit of nudity, particularly of older, rather grotesque figures, picked no doubt to highlight the ravages of starvation and also to emphasise the dehumanisation of the victims; so while I thought we could cope with the long shots, some of the close ups later in the scene were probably skating on thin ice.

I did choose however, to leave 'in' the scene where the women stripped and were herded into the 'showers'. I actually stopped the film first and explained to the kids why I wanted them to see it. I pointed out that there was nudity but that I trusted them to look at this maturely and to think instead about what would have been going through the minds of the women as they waited in the shower room; huddled, shivering, virtually paralysed with fear; all dignity stripped from them as they waited to see what would spew forth from the malevolent, mushroom shower heads poised over them.

Not a single comment or wisecrack was heard. The kids were enthralled. We're talking 'pin drop' here !!!!!!!!

But even more amazing, and certainly illuminating, was the conversation which followed the film.
As it finished, one of them commented

"He wasn't really a very good man was he Mrs A.?"

Before I had a chance to comment another pupil chimed in,

"Of course he was good, what about all the Jews he saved?!"

Then another,

"But he was an adulterer. Look at all the women he slept with."

"Yea miss, he won't go to heaven will he?"

"Of course he will, saving all the Jews would make all the difference."

Woah!

What amuses me is that these are all kids from 'church' families who go to Youth Group and have presumably attended Sunday School all their lives and yet still the myth that you are saved or damned by your 'works' persists. In particular, the young man who objected to Mr Schindler's morals was very difficult to 'shift'.

"No one's perfect Andrew, " I said to him, "everyone has weaknesses and makes mistakes."

"Yes, but how hard could it be? I mean all he has to say is 'I'm married'. Hello?! "

"Ah, I'd like to ask him about that again in 10 years time :-)

So there was much discussion and the idea of an imperfect hero was tossed around. The fact that Schindler had claimed that 'war brings out the worst in people' and yet, in his case it seemed to have brought out the best, was aired and we speculated about how we, as people, would have faired had we been in the shoes of either Schindler or his Jews.

Unfortunately the bell went way too soon as I felt there were so many more ideas and themes to examine. Of course on the following day, all sign of the mature, thoughtful Year 10s of the previous lesson had vanished and instead, I found my class once more full of jabbering, slobbering, ferromone ridden 15 yearolds.

Still, it was nice to see the kind of people they may eventually turn out to be :-)

Post Script: After this encounter with The Holocaust, I clicked over to Maggie's site to find an amazingly beautiful piece written on just this subject. Do yourself a favour and check it out.

* I hope they like their pseudonyms :-)

Answers To The Quiz Question

There are 3 movies who have tied for the greatest number of Academy Awards, namely 11.
They are: Titanic, Lord of the Rings :The Return of the King, and Ben Hur!

Ben Hur was the one which stumped us too!!

Thanksgiving: Share a Bit with Us.

OK. It seems like lately all the talk in the Blogosphere is about Thanksgiving and its accompanying traditions. Now we don't know very much about it here, except for what we see in the movies and it occurred to me that, like Christmas, Thanksgiving has had its share of movies with the holiday as the central motif.

So......I ask you........what is YOUR favourite Thanksgiving based movie?

The one that sticks in my mind is a bit bizarre but it made such an impression on me at the end that I wished we had the Thanksgiving holiday to celebrate. It's 'Planes, Trains and Automobiles'.

How about you?