When I was out riding my bike yesterday I came across this sight:
Not that I believe the old myth that says a pair of shoes flung over powerlines indicates the residence of drug dealers but there sure are a lot of shoes up there. Should someone call the Feds?
I’m fairly sure I’m not in denial about underwear shopping.
I walk casually past the K-Mart and stall when I see the 25% Off Underwear sign. I stop and rub my chin so as to give the impression that this is the first I have known of this sale. I check the time on my phone and shrug my shoulders as if to say ‘I suppose I have time for an impulse K-Mart visit’. I walk in.
I search through the isles of the Outdoor Furniture and am surprised to suddenly find myself on the edge of the Mens Underwear section. ‘While I’m here I might as well have a look,’ I say in the body language of my swagger towards the underwears.
As I pass the sale underwears I run my eyes over them all without actually stopping. There is not much time to peruse since I am impulse shopping. The only thing I am checking for is the top rim of elastic of the underwears – the part that the general public might see should I bend over one day or wear my pants slightly too low. I reach out and grab two underwears with waist elastics that I deem to be adequate in appearance and I hustle back to the Outdoor Furniture.
In the line for the checkout I check my shopping list which has ‘Groceries’ written at the top of it. Clearly, my K-Mart trip has been a slight detour to buy my brother some new underwears. I grab a small tin of mints from the candy stand and strategically place them on top of my pile of goods, concealing the underwears from the naked eye. The checkout girl processes my items and I give her a smile that says ‘My wife asked me to buy these to clean the shower with.’ She looks at my bare ring finger as I sign the receipt but to her credit she says nothing but ‘Have a nice day’. I shove my goods into my backpack and walk out like I am very disappointed that I didn’t find anything to buy at K-Mart.
I’m fairly sure I’m not in denial about underwear shopping.
I think the time has come for me to gush about Freaks and Geeks. Freaks and Geeks was a TV show made for NBC in 1999-2000 about the ‘freaks’ and ‘geeks’ at an American high school in 1980. The show was produced by Paul Feig and Judd Apatow (Knocked Up, Superbad and The 40 Year-Old Virgin) and much of it was based on Paul Feig’s own humiliating high school experiences. But Freaks and Geeks (despite it’s off-putting name) is a killer show. At a Freaks and Geeks reunion panel last year Patton Oswalt called it ‘the best 18-hour indie film ever made’. The concept isn’t new or even close to original but the writing and acting make it compulsory viewing.
The freaks – an older group of kids who would be regarded as ‘alternative’ these days – are headed up by a cool kid called Daniel (James Franco), but it’s mostly through the eyes of Lindsay (Linda Cardellini) that we view the world of freaks. Linda Cardellini plays Lindsay as the independent-minded girl balancing her recently-new world of boys, drugs and ‘freaks’ with her old world of school, home life and Mathlete friends. However I think it’s the ‘geeks’ that give the show its sparkle. Sam (John Francis Daley), Neal (Samm Levine) and Bill (Martin Starr) are the geeks in question and they were all so close to the ages they play when the show was made that you get the result that the British drama Skins harnesses so effectively: talented young actors playing young people, which leads to an amazingly acted, produced and believable television production.
Whilst the show is often very cute and funny (like when the geeks switch the freaks’ keg of beer with a non-alcoholic keg at a party and everyone still gets drunk on the placebo effect) there’s a lot more going on that. One episode features a plot that sees Bill hospitalised when some kids put peanuts in his sandwich to see if he really is allergic like he says. As he lies unconscious in hospital we get a short scene between Bill’s and Sam’s mothers where Bill’s mother wonders if her heavy drinking whilst pregnant with Bill is the reason that he is the way he is. Pretty intelligent stuff for a show that, on the surface, appears to be just another high school dramedy.
There is no DVD release of Freaks and Geeks in Australia but you know how to get it. And I highly recommend putting a couple of days aside to watch this stunning show. OK. Gush over.
When I went to see an unorganised Janeane Garofalo at the Melbourne Comedy Festival tonight – and sat in a crowded room full of people – I realised one of my greatest skills in life is folding my legs away to let people walk to/from their seat. It doesn’t matter if I’m sitting in the Melbourne Town Hall, a university lecture theatre or the tightly-rowed Docklands Stadium (or Etihad Stadium as my lawyer tells me to call it) I am a pleasure to pass on your way to the toilets.
The fact that my legs make up the same amount of my body that water does (a lot) means that to fold them away underneath my chair is no mean feat. Whilst people around me perform mean feats and don’t even strive to fold their legs away (can I use ’strive’ as a metaphor if we’re talking about legs?) I want nothing more than the person-in-transit to pass me with absolute ease.
In fact, watching me fold away my legs would be like seeing a large piece of butcher’s paper being made into a beautiful, tiny origami swan. Which actually sounds much more impressive than bending your legs back. Maybe I should try to learn that skill and get a job in a fish ‘n’ chip shop. Just imagine the look on your Dad’s face when he comes into the shop on a Friday night and I serve him his seafood pack on the back of a paper crane.
As the title of my upcoming book is The Greatest Blogger in the World I have started to be asked questions like, ‘Do you think you’re the greatest blogger in the world?’ and ‘What’s it like having a blog and talking online?’ Firstly, I am not, will never be, don’t want to be, can’t think of anything worse than being known as the greatest blogger in the world. So, no. And secondly, at the risk of talking about talking and never saying anything new or real I’d like to talk about talking. They say that there are five levels of conversation:
1. The Weather.
“It’s starting to look like rain”.
2. A topic.
“I catch rain in my water tank.”
“Water tanks are cool.”
“Yeah, way cool.”
3. Energetic conversations.
“I can’t believe our fathers both sold water tanks back in the 60s!”
“Life was pretty strange with a water tank salesman for a dad!”
“Tell about it.”
“Hahaha.”
4. Meaningful
“So I just don’t know anymore if my father loved me then or loves me now.”
“All because of the tanks?”
5. Meaning of life-ful
“Yeah, all because of the tanks. Is this how life is supposed to be? I feel like I’m doing it all wrong. Or maybe Dad did it all wrong.”
“I think it all depends on how you look at it. Is the water tank of your life half-full or half-empty?”
As more and more online social networking sites are used (and more and more articles called ‘So What Is This Twitter Thing Anyway?’ get published in weekend newspapers) etiquettes and ‘appropriate behaviours’ for these sites become more evident. For example, it’s not really cool to post something like ‘Andrew just got dumped and is very sad. I hate you Rebecca!’ on Facebook or Twitter. These sites are for flippancy, photos and general news and info. However this is not to say that all types of conversations cannot happen online (I lose 2 writing points here for my double negative). Which brings me to my Five Avenues of Online Conversations:
1. The weather
The weather and related small talk can happen pretty much anywhere online. Although boring conversations may raise ires if you’re IM-ing.
2. A topic
Perfect for bookmarking – Digg, delicious, etc as well as the Twitterbook.
3. Energetic conversations.
You could do these on Facebook or Twitter but people are going to get annoyed at seeing a conversation going back and forth between you and your friend. You’ll call it energetic, they’ll call it inane. Email or Direct Message it the way to do Level 3. Also, blogging.
4. Meaningful
Email or Direct Message, but really IM is the best course for this. And any insightful blogging.
5. Meaning of life-ful
IM. It’s the only way to ‘talk deep’ online.
My lists and rantings are, in themselves, flippant and not to be taken too seriously. The only real important thing to say is that any type of conversation can take place online. Talking online is not a sixth, different level of conversing. Unless you think that sharing links to silly things is a superior level of communication that can ONLY take place online and is therefore a sixth (and quite beautiful) level of communication in itself.
