Barry Hall of fame

Carn swans.

Looking after number one

PROGRAM Australian Idol
EPISODE Final 10: Number Ones.
DATE 24 September
TIME 7.30pm
DESCRIPTION The 10 most talented singers in the country will take to the Australian Idol stage, and step up and sing for their once-in-a-lifetime chance at becoming a recording superstar. Hosted by Andrew G and James Mathison. Tonight's theme: Number One's.

Coupla things:
1) "10 most talented singers in the country"?

I don't need to come up with any jokes of my own if the Ten Network program listing writers keep coming up with this gold.

2) "Tonight's theme: Number One's"

Massive snigger!

Not too keen on the superfluous apostrophe, but willing to overlook it in anticipation of the laughs I'm gonna get on Sunday night when I hear "number ones" over and over again.

With this theme, the producers obviously think that they'll be able to force the idols to pick something popular/tasteful, but I don't think they've counted on the propensity for Australians to send absolute rubbish to the top of the charts.

Let's peruse a sample list of previous number ones (guffaw!):

Get outta my dreams and into my car - Billy Ocean

A groovy kind of love - Phil Collins

When will I be famous - Bros
Nice choice for the group performance, dontcha think?

All that she wants - Ace of Base

(Ooh Aah) Just a little bit - Gina G

Tucker's daughter - Ian Moss

Right here waiting - Richard Marx
Oh no, wait. Someone already sang that. And got booted!

I rest my case.

Insert Naked Gun joke here

So I'm curious to know, is there a proper way to handle one's gun when naked?

So many jokes to be made. So little time. So little maturity.

Mogblogging

In which Tobias decides to pounce on and kill the camera...

Rock, paper, scissors, assisted suicide.

I’m giving this live blogging thing a go for tonight’s Australian Idol.

Be nice, it’s my first go.

07.30 The show starts with a reminder of what happens when you bring Richard Marx into the homes of the country – YOU GET BOOTED, just like Joseph whatshisface. Who we’ve all already forgotten about.

07.31 This week’s theme is ‘rock’ – so will we see power ballads or powderfinger? I’m REALLY hoping for some Warrant (‘she’s my cherry pie…’) or some Van Halen. I think I might be disappointed…

If I were playing a drinking game, it would include a ‘take a chug’ for every time someone said ‘rock chick’ or ‘rock god’. And it looks like everyone think rock = 1970s rock or just not shaving for a week.

07.34 Oh God, Mark Holden just made his first ‘devil’ finger sign. It’s going to be a long 90 minutes.

07.36 So, if the stylists have spent ages ‘transforming’ the idols into ‘rock gods’, does that mean that each will get grilled by the judges for “not being true to themselves”, as they did last week? I expect consistency in my reality TV, so they better had.

And why are we seeing a montage of the stylist’s childhood? This has to be THE NEW LOW for Idol filler material.

Kicking off with Ricky “Jorge Bek killah” Muscat. And he’s going to murder some Franz Ferdinand. Choice.

Dear God, this is almost “Daniel Bell singing Robbie Williams” bad (please watch the linked video if you've not seen it before - gold).

I think the LovelyWife is going to bring up her dinner. I’m glad Tobias is currently asleep. I don’t want him learning the swears she is currently dishing out.

07.48 I’m starting to think Lisa Mitchell is a one-trick pony – can she do anymore than mumble along in her kooky accent? I doubt.

One minute into her performance and the LovelyWife asks, “is she singing yet”? I have to support her here (the wife, that is), Lisa’s being consistently out-sung by the back-up singers. Oh wait, sorry, she has black nail polish on. OMG so HARDCORE!

07.53 Do they script these piss-weak fights between the judges? If I could be bothered pressing the ‘7’ button on my phone that many times I’d text “zzzzzzzzzzzzzz” to 199-revenue raising Judge.

07.54 Has anyone noticed that the new upper level of the stage has a ‘hand painted’ sign for each performer which have so obviously been made by the props department?

They’ve obviously tried to make them look as though fans have brought them in, but they’re too neat and the letters spelling out the names (which are correctly spelled – a massive give away) are evenly spaced and don’t get all bunched up towards the edgewhenthespacerunsout…

07.56 Guy Mutton. All I’m going to say is that I’m never actually going to type or say the nick name they’ve given him.

Hang on a sec. He’s shadow boxing? To coldplay? I was eating some off strawberries before. Maybe I’m hallucinating. Whilst I know that ‘vomit’ is not ordinarily used as a noun, that was a real vomit of a performance.

08.01 He just did the “phone me” mime into his microphone. DIE DIE DIE.

08.06 Klancie with a K – not sure yet how I feel about her. She did sing the Dixie Chicks, which gains points. Chances are she’s a National Party voter and has been to a B&S Ball, so minus a million points for her.

She’s singing something from 1986. Wikipedia defines 1986 as a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. On January 21 the first National Hugging Day was observed and on October 11 Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev met in Reykjavík, Iceland, in an effort to continue discussions about scaling back their intermediate missile arsenals in Europe (the talks break down in failure).

Woops! I totally got easily distracted and missed out on Klancie’s performance! Damn it!

08.16 Bobby Flynn. The stylist describes him as “an individual” and says that there’s “nobody like him in the competition” and says this with the desperation of someone trying awfully hard not to say “he has a square head and a big, 1980’s woman’s hair cut”.

Wow. Bobby sings a bit like he’s having a seizure. Lots of closed eyes, jolted movements and high-pitched squealy noises. Maybe dogs will vote for him, as I think only they can hear some of his notes.

08.23 Reigan Derry. Reeeeeeeeeeigan Derry. Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeigan Derry. Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeigan Derry. Oh, sorry. Just trying to keep myself entertained while she’s singing.

Oh no. That’s a shame. Reigan is acting out the lyrics with hand movements (pointing to her eyes when she sings “so glad you see” and pointing to the ground when she sings “bring me down”). Going to have to hack off her arms with a rusty hacksaw for that.

08.33 Damien Leith looks like he’s going to a fancy dress party dressed as a ‘rocker’. Ten out of ten, ‘style’ department. He’s about as ‘rock’ as a christian air guitar contest.

Damien sings track 3 from “rock songs by men who sing like girls” – Radiohead’s Creep. More like ‘cretin’, if you ask the LovelyWife. He’s wearing a t-shirt that says “Buddhist” and is wearing a crucifix. Rock on!

I have to say, I don’t really like any of this year’s contestants. I don’t even really hate any of them either. Makes it really hard to blog about them. This might end up being a one-off exercise.

08.44 Up next is Whitney Houston Jessica Mauboy. Oh wait, tonight she’s being Kelly Clarkson. Cute. But she still manages to slip in a couple of Whitney-style glory notes and random, gratuitous “wooo” noises throughout the verses.

Oooo! Kyle just called her fat! Reowr! Scripted controversy! I like.

08.50 Ahhh, Courtney Murphy’s brother. I really like to loathe this guy. He only has one move on stage – crouch slightly whilst closing eyes and holding up his non-microphone hand. You watch next week. You’ll see.

Tonight he has also brought his air guitar. Tonight he is wearing denim. Tonight, he’s about as close as it gets to getting David Brent out on stage to sing.

Mercy.

There’s a slow hand clap starting up in our house for the end of this show.

One of the recurring ads this evening is for the Monster Trucks at the Canberra Greyhound club . Wow! You’re all so jealous you don’t live here, huh!

09.00 Okay, the show should be over now, but we still have 2 performers to go. The first of which is DRUG MUFFINS Lavina Williams. Now, long time CSH afficianados may remember I had a bit a thing for Emily Williams last year.

Let me tell you the feeling doesn’t appear to run in the family.

The LovelyWife says she reminds her of Jennifer Coolidge.



Maybe not.

Dang! I missed another whole performance! I think it was just a 2-minute long glory note anyway.

So this is like, my longest post evah!

09.10 Dean picks another song from the LovelyWife’s list of “songs she wishes never to hear again” – something called ‘Shimmer’, that I think was the only song on the radio in 1998.

9.15 So that’s all the singers done now. I can’t believe I blogged the whole thing! As Kim Beazley once said after a commanding performance in Question Time: NEVER AGAIN!

Series-ly

Part one in a new series I like to call Signs I Have Enjoyed:


This one was spotted in Melbourne over the weekend. Looks like I'm not the only one who is flabbergasted at the willingness of pedestrians to lemming themselves onto busy roads without warning or a zebra crossing.

Keep an eye out for my other new series, Parking I Have Not Enjoyed:



For fark's sake!

Luckily (or not, depending on how you look at it), living in Canberra means this could be a potentially endless series.

Stingray Shot through the heart! And you're to blame...

One thing I've noticed over the past couple of days, what with all the "aussie icons" carking it "doing what they loved", is that tributes only ever "pour in".

Seriously, it's always "tributes are pouring in for Steve Brock Irwin who died today, triggering a bajillion Australians to email the story to all their friends, with the subject line: 'Crikey!'".

You never hear "tributes are trickling in for insert cadaver's name here" or "a modest number of tributes have come in for former human".

And if tributes "pour in", where or what are they pouring into? The bottomless pit of sensationalist tabloid news? The gaping void of my yawning mouth?

I've really started to get the irrates with the way people have been getting so distraught about the deaths of celebrities who they've never even met, let alone formed a meaningful, two way relationship with.

You just wait until the tacky-renaming-of-things-in-honour-of-Steve-Irwin begins.

The Steve Irwin Maternity Ward anyone?

I promise you, these things are already being proposed with government, and my suggestion is not too far off.

Think about it

There's been some knickers knotting over the inclusion of Osama Bin Laden in the list of people Jack Thomas is forbidden to contact.

The way I see it, leave Bin Laden off the list.

The CIA, FBI and US Army have scoured the planet trying to find him, only to come up with a big fat zero.

But it seems the Australian Government thinks that Jack Thomas knows where he is.

So why not permit Thomas to contact Bin Laden, and just follow him there?

It'd be a bit of a coup, really.

Australian Idol's live interview with Anthony Callea

In which Anthony Callea comes out to the nation by wearing THE GAYEST SHIRT IN THE HISTORY OF GAY:



So gay!

Down on the pharm

I had occasion to go to the chemist earlier today and noticed a sign for "pseudo-watch":



Does that mean they're not really watching?

Sorry, sorry. I am sick. Give me a go.

Park your eyes here

One of the first things you notice when you move to StinkTown Canberra is that you have to pay for parking. Everywhere.

If, like me, you've come from Sydney where pay-parking is normally charged at a rate of about $15.00 per hour, this is likely to give you a mild heart attack at first.

And, if you're also like me in that you're remarkably stingey good with money, you'll also spend your first month in Canberra parking in the street, 5 blocks from where you're going, to avoid what you think will be a $50 parking bill.

Then you discover that the most you're likely to pay is about $1.00 per hour.

Ah Canberra, so like the 1980s in so many ways.

Anyway, this of course means we Canberra residents have the joy of collecting a wee ticket upon entry to each car park and revelling in the delights of temperamental ticket machines and booths.

A machine once swallowed my money and refused to validate and return my parking ticket. I pressed the 'help' button and the responding technician asked me if I had used "dirty money".

?

At the same car park I spotted this sign the other day:



So, you want me NOT to insert it correctly?

And you're telling me I should stop dipping my ticket in my cup of coffee, as is my normal routine these days?

Picky!

Just like a prayer

I've been praying a lot lately, about Australian Idol.

Well, does shouting "F*cking christ you suck Mark Holden!" and "oh dear GOD, will anything decent come of this year's series?!" at the telly count as praying?

Yeah, well, that's just your opinion.

ANYWAY, it seems my 'prayers' have been answered.

Just got into work? Want to extend that "just a little pre-work interwebs surf" just that bit longer?

God has delivered unto the earth the p*ss-funniest idol recap I've read since I proof-read mine the other day.

Do you feel the same, or am I only dreaming?

So when did Idol become a simulcast with Mix FM?

It’s not?

Then why did all the contestants sing 'the best from the 70s, 80s and 90s'?

Seriously, Eurythmics? Whitney Houston? Queen?

WHY!?!?!?

I mean, if you heard that on the radio, you’d switch over, right? (Except, I guess, on those drunken trips home in the back of a taxi, in which case you’d sing along…) So why choose those songs for teh idol?

And also, any contestant that makes the little telephone hand-sign thingo (you know, the “call me” hand-sign – thumb to the ear, pinky to the mouth) when Andrew G is reading out their vote-line number is GUARANTEED not to get my vote.

Not that I would vote. But those that do the hand-sign, double-guaranteed never to get my vote.

Further, looks like we haven’t learnt anything from previous seasons of Idol (ie, those who dictate history education through poxy ‘history summits’ ignore history are doomed to repeat it):

Marty Worrell 2:


Courtney Murphy 2:


Shannon Noll 2 (ok, with a Guinness chaser):

Looks a bit like he’s been hit in the back of the head with a 2x4…

Tarni Stephens 2:

Note to Tarni 2: wearing a sleeveless, strapless top for a head and shoulders photo shoot makes you look nude.

And yes, I intend to continue watching.

Baby bonus

So Dr Charlotte Beaumont on All Saints is blubbering about how no one respects her medical opinion since she became pregnant and that she is clearly on the outer as regards career opportunities at the All Saints emergency department.

Well BOO HOO! Should have stayed a lonely, barren, stereotypical television lesbian, Charlotte.

Anyone remember when Charlotte was a lesbian? I do, although the transition to noice, normal, baby-having straight doctor has been done almost without a mention you'd be forgiven for forgetting.

Pfff.

At least as a stereotypical television lesbian all Charlotte would have had to worry about was either dying lonely and unfulfilled, or descending into psychosis and murdering her partner. Yes, as a television lesbian, the possibilities are twofold endless.

And yes, I am aware that staying a lesbian wouldn't have precluded pregnancy for Charlotte. But as a pregnant television lesbian I'm afraid to say she and her baby would have been dead certs for some kind of horrific life-ending tragedy.

end rant .... for now

So what would you do?

You walk into the tea-room at work (and by 'tea-room' I mean converted broom cupboard with a sink and a microwave in it) to find a colleague busy washing up his mug and happily letting rip a massively trumpet-y fart (and by 'trumpet-y fart' I mean a very high-pitched 'brrrrrrrrrrrrrrt').

Said colleague then turns and sees you, pauses for a second, and then turns back to continue mug-washing without batting an eye-lid.

No one should be able to cope with office-based embarassment that easily!

I wanted him to wither and stutter out some lame excuse ('er, it was the pipes', or similar).

But he just walked off, leaving me there to decide whether or not to walk into the fart-laden air of the tea-room (smelling other people's farts makes me feel dirty).

I decided to put off having my coffee for a little while.


I'm sure this colleague would be happy that I now think of him as 'fart-man'.

Here's to my new chum

No, that's not it.


No, not quite.


Here he is!

Cheers little fellah!

PS - I am aware this is the blogging equivalent of an 'in-joke'. Cope.

This frustration is compulsory for all tax-payers

I hate inconsistency.

Short tax return instructions 2006

STEP 4
1(b) if you were single without a dependent child for part of 2005-06, and your Medicare Levy Surcharge income was less than $100,000 (plus $1500 for each dependent child)...

??!!

Next year I think I'll just take the Homer approach to taxes:

Homer: Marge! How many kids do we have? Oh, no time to count, I'll just estimate! Uh... nine!

Marge: Homer, you know we don't h--

Homer: Shut up, shut up! If I don't hear you it's not illegal! OK, I need some deductions, deductions... ah!! Business gifts!

[Homer grabs the boat painting from above the couch and hands it to
Marge.]

Here you go, keep using nuclear power!

Marge: Homer! I painted that for you!

Homer: OK, Marge, if anyone asks, you require twenty four hour nursing care, Lisa's a clergyman, Maggie is seven people, and Bart was wounded in Vietnam!

Bart: Cool!

[Homer shoves in some quick gifts and tapes the envelope up in a ball.]

-- Homer does his taxes on the last minute, "The Trouble With Trillions"

Mediocrity - Australia says "sure, why not?"

Why does it have to be 'Australia' says no?

Why can't it be 'human beings' say no?

It's as though we can only influence the behaviour of people in this country through jingoistic references.

"Better not beat up your wife - it's not very patriotic."

Guh.

Tobias mix-tapepost

Can't blog for long, Australian Idol just started

So I'm about 5 hours into Munich. I guess I could take the rest of the week off to finish watching this movie but is it worth it?

I've already lost half my weekend to it... and it's probably still got 12 hours to go...

A list of 11 assassination targets, 45 minutes dedicated to each assassination. I don't have the attention span for this. Who has the attention span for this?

Speaking of which, this post is way too long. I just read it back to myself and had to stop for a Coke Zero and a game of playstation half way through.

Exhausting.


Caption: Eric Bana and Geoffrey Rush on the set of Munich during the 3rd year of the 12-year shoot.