Butch aka Travis

I haven’t written anything here for a while, and I blame MySpace for that, because overall interest in blogs, especially non specific ones like this, has apparently plunged.

That and I have nothing to say, because every time I do, I get in trouble with someone.

O Gentle Reader, (and there does seem to be a few, around 11 000 a week at its peak) I only ever seem to blog when I am either depressed or have a neck full of an indescenable conscious altering liquid. On the menu tonight is a drop of bourbon I have had since my birthday last year.

Depletion of funds, and the fact that it is my beloved monarchs birthday tomorrow have met so that I am able to consult my own form of a liquor cabinet, which in this case it three empty vodka bottles, an empty bottle of Mampoer (a South African drink) a few martini glasses, a few nicer red wine glasses, 3 champagne flutes a set of shot glasses and what was half a bottle of Bourbon stored in a cupboard above my fridge.

I have spent the day writing. One short story of mine looks like it may be published, which is nice, I have also spent the day dusting off some scripts, and found some very credible peices if I say so myself. My writing these days outstrips my earlier efforts, and I have to admit. Alot of these short scripts are very accessable, i.e, dont need a govt grant to shoot them, so to allievate the boredom, I may do just that. An old chestnut of mine, the infamous ‘J+J script’ has some startling moments, but some very poor moments as well, I shall set about fixing this.

I am in the process of de-chronologicallising some of these scripts, so that they dont depend on a certain time in order to be relelvant. Some of the script it is impossible to do so, but for the most part, if I can do it, I will try, such is my problem with J+J.

The Life of the Mind

“Your license has expired?! How dreadful!”
Rupert Owen

Oh what a night what a night.

First, I take an olde Afrikaaner Friend of mine out on the turps (a colloquial term for alcomohol) and watch him go beer for beer until the 7th pint when he fell very gracefully under the table.. but left me without a drinking partner.

Then to go to a second port and to sit with my olde friend Rupert The Great whilst he consumed a glass of the house’s finest and myself with a tube of Tasmania’s greatest export (bar Mssr Flynn) stuck firmly between my lips

And what a beautiful coup it was for me as some woman, whom I don’t know, rattled off her ‘favourite’ Nouvelle Vogue films, (French New Wave for us Lamens) and then to realise that this woman had NO IDEA WHAT SHE WAS TALKING ABOUT. Myself being a willing student of the FNW and being very much acquainted with 400 blows (her favourite movie by the way) and upon my insistent questioning finding nothing but textbook answers, and digging herself an ever steady grave i.e, realising that she had come up against a REAL new wave fan, and finding herself wanting. “Oh my favourite scene is him running along the beach at the end”….. what else happened? I asked in vain. “What was the turning point for you?” Of course she rattled off the usual PRETENTIOUS shit obvious of a typical film poseur (see Margaret Pomerantz
)
My favourite scene of the night was Rupert at his best. After many nights of alcohol abuse. A quick wink of the eye in my direction was all I needed to be informed of his devious plan. (Rupert and I have developed an elaborate set of codes, hand signals, and facial ticks which inform the other of an impending plan, which is about to executed)

I knew straight away he was about to dissapear. Oh, and what a fantastic figure he cut, in his black overcoat, running down a side street, swathed in black, one arm bent, oh so delicately holding a glass of Red wine, whilst running at the top speed he could afford in such a fashion. To hear the two bus boys arguing over who should chase him was shear joy, for I knew, there was no catching the elusive black ghost, many had tried….. all had failed

.

The infamous yet elegant silhouette of the ever elusive Rupert Owen aka “The Crimson Glass Tainted Thief”… does he actually exist? We may never know.

BBC NEWS | UK | Queen sees historic US settlement

The Monarchs cant seem to go anywhere without the natives complaining about their presence.

In NZ ole HRH Prince Charles had to pick up a brach
In Australia He had to walk through some smoke
In USA The Queen had to listen to someone complain about what Colonials did to their ancestors 400 YEARS AGO, get over it or we will stop giving you subsidised education, health care and dole money.

I am going to start complaining about what those pesky Norseman did to my Pictish ancestors soon, it happened more than 1 thousand years ago!! But obviously, time is not an issue.

If Cellar Door is the most beautiful combination in the English language, then the worst is Civil Union

Well its been a long time between blogging, to much work.

My situation has changed a lot of late. From having a live in relationship to living all on my lonesome, it is actually quite nice.

Watching David Koch this morning before work, we was criticizing blogging and bloggers. I mean, here is this man, who resembles a greasy scrotum, and who cant even pronounce his own surname correctly, blatantly saying he doesn’t agree with the idea of free speech. Of course, I am sure that Mr Packer was sitting with his finger on the button lamenting the impact that Blogs have on his newspaper sales.

I was watching George Gregan on TV as well, lancing the new Rugby Jersey, and i loved the last line “You know, it really helps us to win when we look into the crowd and see everybody wearing a Qantas Wallabies Jersey”. i.e. Go home and throw out your old Vodafone sponsored rugby jerseys, and go and buy a new one, with the QANTAS logo on it, hell, it only cost $185 a pop.

I have these bouts of depression of late. Its funny how when you are down, it is so very easy to reach for the bottle and medicate yourself. Last night I was with a friend of mine from work, we both had a few drinks at an all staff meeting, then we took a few of the unopened bottles and went to the upstairs business lounge. I sat quite comfortably and very easily drank my way to the bottom of two bottles of a 2001 Riesling.

There was a client there, an external editor, i.e he doesn’t work with me. He was saying that he enjoyed a nice glass of Riesling the other night from a 1969 vintage. I remarked that it must’ve been the most horrible shit he had ever tasted. He looked at me with a typically perplexed expression, he retorted “No, it was a 69!”

Anyone who knows anything about wine can pick up the indiscrepancy here. White white does not age in the same way as red. They don’t ferment, like a red (due to the absence of the skin). If he indeed did drink a bottle of 69 Riesling, it would have been akin to enjoying a nice refreshing glass of white vinegar.

Its the pretentiousness that gets to me. I don’t pretend to know everything about wine, but I do enjoy a nice glass with the appropriate meal, but I don’t act as if I am a connoisseur.

If you have missed it, you have missed my analogy for film and film makers, although most analygies are not based on true events, this one is.

Promise to keep writing, I am getting about 1000 hits a fortnight on this site.

Well Tarantino is back on the scene with Rodriguez, this time, trying to rehash the auld idea of the ‘Grindhouse’. A term I aint ever heard before, but as the voice over on the trailer explains, it is a term for the old school drive in’s that used to play double bill B movie’s that had violence and uncensored nudity (almost the trailer verbatim)

So Q and R set off to make two faux B- Grade style wankfests. The first is Rodrigues’ “Planet Terror”. Sure enough it has guns guns guns, and women, women, women… in actual fact, i do believe there is even a woman with a gun for a leg, Steve’s dream woman.

and then Tarantino takes over, his trade mark well thought out titles screen the name of his Faux B Movie “Planet Terror”, starring one of the worst actors in the world, Kurt Russel.

Dont get me wrong, I am not a massive fan or RR, but i respect his hard work, and QT I am a fan of, but i hate the instant hero worship that follows without any sort of scrutiny, The fact that his films are rated 10/10 on IMDB before they are even released is testament to that.

The other issue I have is, the B Movies that QT and RR are trying their hardest to replicate were more than just funny names and kitsch graphics and titles, they were cheaper motherfucking movies where guys like Roger Corman, Franis Ford Coppola and Peter Bogdanovich started out on low budgets, most of the time under $50 000, but Grindhouse budget is $150 million. Why didnt they set themselves a challenge, I s’pose that would have put them at the risk of not looking cooooool.