Your Essential Guide to Surviving Baz Luhrmann's `Australia'

From Cinetopia, Jim Schembri, November 28, 2008

You've been hearing about it for over a year. You've read the stories, seen the ads, watched the interviews, downloaded the promos, heard the gossip - but now the moment of truth has arrived. It's finally time for you to join your fellow citizens and dutifully file into the nearest multiplex to bear witness to the epic cinematic masterpiece that is definitely not Baz Luhrmann's Australia.

To help you through the ordeal here is a quick checklist of items to take in with you:

A Handful of No Doz: That first hour can be really tough to get through. These should help perk you up.

Large Oriental Hand Fan: In the camp-fire scene where Hugh Jackman pulls off his shirt to reveal the kind of ripped torso you usually see only in high-end gay porn you're going to need some air circulation quick smart to keep you from swooning.

Small Plastic Beach Bucket: To catch any drool resulting from the same scene.

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Final Tally

The Commonwealth Games closing ceremony was yesterday, here's the final medal tally:

Three things to note:
1) Not unexpectedly, Australia creamed the rest of the world in terms of gold and overall medal count,
2) Just like they did previously
3) The rest of the medal tally looks pretty similar to previous games also.

Any thoughts on this Jojo?

Go Austrayyyaaaaa!!

As at March 19 (Australian time):

Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games on your marks

I love the Commonwealth Games. Love love love them! Admittedly that probably has a lot do with the fact I feel a sense of allegiance to three Commonwealth Countries, the top 3 medal winners in Manchester 2002:

I haven't noticed any growing excitement (or even a vague awareness) of the Games among Canadians, which is interesting when they came 3rd on the Manchester medal tally. Canada does better in the Commonwealth Games than they do in the Winter Olympics, but still it is the Winter Olympics that captures the attention of most people here. It must be the curling that gets 'em.

Anyway, there's only a few hours until the opening ceremony. Bring on the goldrush!

A new flag for Australia?

Recently the Sydney Morning Herald invited designs for a new Australian Flag

I was interested in this because I don't think the Union Jack part of the current flag holds much meaning for the majority of Australians. Not even for myself, who was born of the United Kingdom. Here's the current flag, for the unfamiliar:


So, what was suggested? Here's my favourite, designed by North Sullivan:

North Sullivan removed the Union Jack, but kept the "original stars and layout, balancing that with a larger Federation Star acknowledging our Green and Gold colours".

There were other very good (or at least interesting) designs. But here's a design that made my jaw drop, designed by Tony Eames:

Tony ironically suggests a more Americanised flag with the Southern Cross replacing the Union Jack but with the stripes of the US flag filling up the rest of the space. As he says: "Having loosened the colonial apron strings that bound us to mother England, John Howard's Australia is energetically forging a new destiny for itself as America's eager Deputy Sheriff in the region and beyond and our flag should be amended to reflect this new reality."

Something is wrong with this, very wrong!

Happy Belated Australia Day

Damn it!!! I forgot all about Australia Day. I had a T-shirt I was set to wear too - Australian flag on the front, National Anthem on the back. Well anyway, Australia day was 3 days ago on Jan 26th. Oh, now I know why I forgot - I didn't get the day off, with it not being celebrated in Canada n'all.

So as a retrospective tribute to Australia Day, I will post this image, kindly supplied by my brother-in-law, who like me, was also not in Australia on Australia Day, although that didn't appear to prevent him from remembering to celebrate.

So happy belated Australia Day everyone, and I hope your days are filled with girt by sea.

P.S. Listen to the National Anthem here.

Are you dating a gamer?

I saw this link on Carolyn's blog (no link to Carolyn provided at the request of Carolyn, for good reasons that we don't need to go into here), and nearly fell of my chair laughing with tears rolling down my face. As someone who dates a person who doesn't mind playing a computer game every now and then, this Google video clip of Tripod (a brilliant Aussie comedy trio) performing "Make you happy tonight", really hit home for me. I miss Australian stand-up comedy sooooo much!

P.R.

As of 3 days ago, I am a permanent resident of Canada. This marks the end of the worrying about work permits (and work), and deportation.

Hurrah!

Celebrating Vancouver's diversity

Bryan and I took in a little of the Pride week celebrations yesterday and watched the Pride Parade. I've watched the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras several times, but never the Vancouver Pride Parade. The major difference is that the Sydney Mardi Gras takes place at night, while the Vancouver Parade is on at lunch time.
Rather than stand on the street to watch we decided to go to Tanpopo sushi restaurant on Denman St, which overlooked the parade. Not only did we get a great vantage point next to the window of the restaurant, but we got all-you-can-eat Japanese food for $12.95 each.
I love things like this - people from all backgrounds out and about, being celebrated rather than tolerated, for who they are.
Oh I just realised the other difference between the Vancouver and Sydney parades. I did not see any instance of someone trying to interrup the parade or condemning the lifestyles of those who participated. In Sydney, the ever-homophobic Fred Nile and his cronies would have been out in force trying to put a dampener on things. All I saw in Vancouver yesterday was celebration. See the photos here.

Hey Sam, look who I ran into!

Blair, one of my favourite people in Australia, happened to be in Seattle this week. So he took a bus up to Vancouver to stay with us for a couple of days. Good to see you Blair!

N.B. I just noticed how patriotically Canadian I look in this photo, with my red and my white and my Roots bag. It is British Columbia Day long weekend after all.

Little things

Hooray for Canada! The world's third nation to legalise same-sex marriage. I love living in a progressive society.

I'm currently reading the Da Vinci Code (I know I'm the last person on Earth to read it, but I was waiting to steal a copy from my sister), and I seriously, seriously love it. I can't put it down. I can't wait for the movie. Audrey Tautou is playing Sophie Neveu!

My friend Rosei gave me a package of TimTams in Boston, one of Australia's finest chocolate products. I love TimTams and I love Rosei for bringing them!