Cherchez la femme

Tomorrow night I'm going along to Cherchez la femme. It's the first of a monthly series my excellent friend Karen has organised as a soiree to discuss feminist issues, and I am very proud of her for having the chutzpah to get something like this started.

I'm not quite sure what to expect. So many of my attempts to participate in a feminist dialogue end in disillusionment and frustration, and yes anger, at the dogma that can often dominate these discourses. But here's what I'm hoping for tomorrow:

• I'm hoping to meet assertive intelligent women. 
• I'm hoping there'll be lots of men there. I know so many men that I would call progressive, and would call themselves progressive, but I honestly don't know how many would be likely to opt to spend their Tuesday nights participating in the issues directly in this kind of forum. I'm guessing not many.
• I'm hoping that there'll be genuine heterogeny, a vast difference of experience and opinion, and that the only thing people are agreeing on is the fundamental drive for equality of opportunity for women, with all the nuances that can entail. 
• I'm hoping to laugh and have a few beers.
• I'm hoping for acceptance without conformity.

I'll report back tomorrow.

Fuck yeah Autumn!

How good has the sky been lately? ALERT: RHETORICAL; IT'S BEEN AMAZING.

Admittedly this freaking heat wave has got me all bejiggedy, and so far I've managed to refrain from running around with my hands flailing above my head, screaming "We're all gonna die! We're all gonna die!". But only just.

But I can forgive the world for a late April that has me dripping with sweat as I ride to work, because of the ridiculous Renaissance skies. They're all fierce blues and shards of glaring sunlight and clouds! Clouds like we haven't seen in 13 years of drought. Big, voluptous, bucolic clouds. Clouds in every single kind of grey, piled and heaped and teetering on top of one another. Clouds that streak across the sky like they have somewhere else to be. Clouds that pouffe about and mosey along as though they been blown from the hookah of Lewis Carroll's caterpillar.

And deep charcoal clouds, laden with rain and bombastic with lightening. My only sadness is that too few of the storms have unleashed themselves over central Melbourne. But it is wonderful to wake every day to these glorious, ever-changing, magnificent skies. Nice one, Autumn.

Things I am becoming increasingly obsessed with, despite having mostly had indifference to them in my youth

Hehem.

1. Cooking. Notably, cooking for friends and loved ones.
2. The weather. Particularly wind patterns, cloud movements and storm fronts.
3. Caramel. Different ways of making it. Opportunities to consume it.
4. Small cute things. Including children. *frets that life is following an all too stereotypical trajectory* *eats some caramel*

As a counterpoint, here are some things I am indifferent to, despite having obsessed over them in my youth.

1. My nose.
2. The size of my bum.
3. Being a person of enormous significance in the world. Fame. Glory. etc

Throughout the course of my life thus far, my consistent obsession remains: Potatoes. Scrumptious potatoes. They never let you down.

The Lobby Romance

About a month ago I moved in with Leith to an apartment in Parkville. There have been lots of good things about this move, and some adjustments to living in such close proximity to others, but one aspect I'm particularly enjoying is The Lobby Romance.

The Lobby Romance is between a young Asian woman and a young Asian man. They might be late teens or about 20 or so. Young Asian woman (let's call her YAW) clearly lives in the building, but I'm not sure where. I suspect she lives with her parents. YAM is her gentleman caller, and is pretty clearly not allowed upstairs or into her apartment.


To the casual observer they are incredibly sweet.

Before I moved in here I would sometimes arrive at around 10pm-ish and pass The Lobby Romance on my way up. It wouldn't happen often but it would usually consist of one of two scenes:

Scene 1 - YAW and YAM are sitting on the ground at the edge of the path leading to the door to the building, having one of those quiet, intense, couple-y conversations. 

Scene 2 - YAM is outside the building up leaning against the glass and YAW is seated inside leaning against the lobby wall, and they are having a quiet, intense, couple-y conversation over their mobiles.

Once I came in and they were both seated on the ground inside the lobby, side by side, talking and I had to skirt around them to get to the stairs. But they are never slobbery and gropey, they just talk long into the night.

They are oblivious to the world around them and I try to be as unobtrusive as possible. Leith tells me that The Lobby Romance has been going on some two years now, and has its share of ups and downs.

Since I've moved in I've only seen them once or twice, but in the last few days there has definitely been drama afoot. 

On Tuesday we got home from the gym, sweaty and sore, and came up to witness The Lobby Romance in a moment of crisis. YAW and YAM were in scenario 2, she inside and he out, talking on their phones. Only she had tears streaming down her face and he was literally pressed up to the glass, looking shattered. Despite it being quite awkward for Leith and I to barge into this in our sweaty shorts , I felt terribly rude just being there in the midst of this scene, since it's perfectly obvious they have nowhere else to go.

We executed a very quick change upstairs and headed back out in search of food. I had commented to Leith that it looked like they were breaking up, but he assured me that they just went through these phases from time to time. It was funny, because we'd never acknowledged The Lobby Romance to one another before, although we were both abreast of the latest details.  At a glance it appeared that she was calling the whole situation off.

Anyway, we headed back downstairs and passed through the lobby as quickly as we could. The scene was basically the same but maybe a little bit worse and more heart-rending even than before.

And then tonight we came home at about 11:30 and YAW and YAM were embracing on the stairs, in one of those 'home from the war' embraces. Not bent over or tonguing or anything, just holding each other very close and stroking hair and nuzzling into necks and so on. And there was a few tears and a palpable air of relief. We just edged past them on the stairs as silently as we could. 

And internally I did a little high five to the world, because I didn't want them to break up. These two people who I've never even made direct eye contact with, let alone spoken to - I really really want them to be happy! They are putting in the hard yards, let me tell you.

So it would appear that The Lobby Romance will continue, same time tomorrow (I hope)...

An idea so crazy it just might work - Part 2

As promised, I am reporting back. 

So I remained completely sober through Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and most of Thursday (until about 7pm). And let's not forget that I didn't drink on the previous Saturday or Sunday either. 

There were both positives and negatives, as follows:

Positives
Slept well
Exercised more
Saved some money

Negatives
Had a shocking headache all week that felt like dehydration despite guzzling water
Skin went berserko

On Thursday I had a couple of beers with dinner, and yesterday I had some decent Chianti with lunch, and beer and wine with dinner plus a post-comedy show whiskey. Didn't feel any different to the other days. I think I got a bit high on sichuan peppers, but that's another issue.

The only other comments I'd make are that not drinking didn't affect my enjoyment of being out at night with friends at all. No difference. I could note that I didn't stay out late so this wasn't really tested, but in fairness, I don't really stay out past midnight anyway these days. Now where did I put that blanket? My legs are getting a chill.

On a seperate note...
I've been getting some, er, interesting commenters in recent weeks, and so have decided to begin moderating the comments for purely pragmatic reasons. I don't intend to censor anything that is actually relating to the content of the posts, just the links to the porn sites. Sorry about that folks.

An idea so crazy it just might work?

Here is the idea: I drink less. But wait, let me elaborate...

So I drink pretty regularly. This is not a news flash. It's just true. I like booze, especially wine. 

Early last year my love of wine induced me to buy Leith a position in a beginner's wine appreciation course, and to go along with him myself (super generous of me, huh). I found the course incredibly stimulating, and not just because I was drinking six wines a night, although that was an obvious perk. I found I not only liked wine, but was interested in it too, and the more I was understood it, the better it tasted. Older wine is gooder wine and so on. Partly I think the intrigue I have developed is due to the fact that wine, and particularly the range of factors that deliver the attributes of a given wine, is complex. So knowing why a certain wine tastes the way it does feels a bit like solving a puzzle. Only more delicious. Yes, I am basically one of those wankers from Sideways. Sorry folks.


So anyway, wouldn't you just know it, this course gave me a taste for a lot of relatively expensive wines. I'm not talking Grange Hermitage or anything. But $30 bottles, and including styles that are only ever imported. I can get more pleasure from 'browsing' in a decent wine cellar (at this point I would like to give a shoutout to Rathdowne Cellars, which is bloody brilliant) than I do in a shoe store. Just this afternoon I impulse bought a Petit Chablis with no intention of drinking it today or at any anticipated occassion, simply because it was good value and I like Chablis. I buy wine. As I bought it, I considered what else I might have bought if I'd splurged that money on some other thing, and the wine seemed like a pretty sound purchase.


And yet at the same time as this, I still participate in my typical weekly shindigs involving events (dinners, bands, theatre, comedy, birthdays, movies etc etc) most nights of the week, when I'm not working like a demon. This week was just such a routine, with me having slightly more festive (read: late (read: midnight *gasp*)) nights out than usual, and having them daily. And drinking at all of them. Not guzzling it down then walking into a lamp-post drinking. Just festive, social drinking with dinner and maybe one or two after, and then failing to get up for a run AGAIN the following morning and devouring cheesymite scrolls at my desk the next day a little more than I should.


And so, by Saturday morning, following yet another night that didn't go later than midnight but still involved beer and wine and tequila and beer, I felt a little crappy. Not blistering hangover crappy. More a feeling that all my internal organs were a bit grey and shrivelled, and the spot on my back where I imagine my liver to be was actually a bit tender. A bit gross you say? Agreed.

So this weekend I had one of those bleary-eyed couple of days where I didn't do much at all. I didn't sleep in, but I did read the papers whilst in bed, I drank tea, read books, watched movies. Went for a long walk, cooked quite a bit of food, drank craploads of water and exercised rather vigorously both days. Not out of piousness, just because it was genuinely what I felt like doing. And, I had my idea.


Now before I tell you what it is, let me just say that I'm not signing up to it right now or anything. I'm not a convert. I'm just twirling it around in my brain, letting the 'light' (ie sluggish mental reflection) catch it from various angles, seeing how it looks. Right now it doesn't look stupid, but then I've been sober for two days.


Ok. So. I'm thinking that I should conserve the value of my overall investment in alcohol, let's say on a weekly basis, BUT convert quantity for quality. So no drinking pots from unclean taps in shitty pubs. No drinking the house red (unless I'm in a genuinely decent bar). And in fact, to help with all this, limited weekday drinking in general (I'd settle for 3 AFDs a week). And the other times, crack open a really nice Cotes du Rhone with dinner. Just because. Buy aged reisling and drink it in the sun on Sunday afternoon whilst reading my book. On my own if necessary. And so on. 


At the moment, after a dry weekend, and still feeling more run down than I should, I think it sounds alright. I plan to road test it this weekend, and will report back on the state of my wallet, my sanity and my liver in due course.

Rating the films of Will Ferrell

On Saturday night Mel and I had a Will Ferrell movie night slash sleepover. Leith joined us for movies number 2 and 3, and Marcus rocked up after work for the second half of proceedings too. 

Mel and I were both hella excited. While it's awesome that we have a spare room and so Mel was able to actually stay on a mattress in a room to herself, a part of me wished she and I were lying on the living room floor in sleeping bags like sleepovers of yore. We would eat sherberty lollies and cake-decorating sugar flowers stolen from the cupboard, in order to stay up all night giggling and doing arithmetic games to determine who we would one day marry. 

We watched Old School, Blades of Glory and Talladega Nights. We were going to watch Anchorman but we all got too sleepy. Leith really wanted to see Stranger Than Fiction, but we agreed that it was too different a kind of movie (though also awesome) to fit within the marathon we'd planned.  I also have a hankering to see Step Brothers, and it remains high on the list.

Prior to Saturday I would have ranked these movies thus (favourite to least favourite):

Anchorman
Talladega Nights
Blades of Glory
Old School

After Saturday my rankings have shifted somewhat, to this:

Anchorman
Blades of Glory
Talladega Nights
Old School

Anchorman is the undisputed Gold Standard. Leith and Marcus both felt that Old School is one of the best of the bunch, and I have to agree that it remains hilarious over repeated viewings. However, I feel it falls down compared to Anchorman for two reasons. 

Reason one is that Old School has no strong, or even particularly interesting female protagonist. Christina Applegate in Anchorman provides some of the biggest laughs, and I enjoyed her character's powerlust and exquisite breasts enormously. Reason two is that while Anchorman sports an impressive ensemble cast who ensure that every line is a doozy, Old School is really carried, in my opinion, by Ferrell. Vince Vaughan plays Vince Vaughan extremely well, and Luke Wilson does his adorable self proud as well, but it's Ferrell who is non-stop hilarious from start to finish.

Talladega Nights really slipped in my opinion. I hadn't seen it in years, and while the moments of sheer ridiculous were still there (cougar in the car, the endless shake and bake, the obligitary Ferrell nudie streaking scene) I felt that the shape of the movie wasn't as good as it could have been. Specifically, the first 20 to 30 minutes of exposition feels drawn out and too long. Additionally, the initially very funny 'poke fun at rednecks' theme actually waned for me on this viewing. I'm not sure, but I suspect that greater exposure to what my mother might refer to as The Great Unwashed made me recoil more and laugh less at these characters. Also telling is that the best five minutes of Talladega Nights is the closing credits where Ferrell and John C. Reilly are simply riffing to camera. It's tea-comes-out-of-your-nose funny.


On the other hand, Blades of Glory improved in my estimation on this viewing. Originally I'd found it very funny but had felt that Jon Heder's character wasn't strong enough against Ferrell. I also found the film a bit (I can't believe I'm writing this) two-dimensional. However, in the wake of the recent Winter Olympics and some of the delightful skating personalities it exposed us to, I found it utterly enthralling and silly and ten kinds of wonderful. So I moved it up the charts.


Before my chart can really be completed, I feel I have to see Step Brothers, and this is a viewing burden I am most happy to bear.


UPDATE:

So I watched Step Brothers. It was pretty bad. It goes to the bottom of the list.