At Post Office. Thinking of buying Spartacus DVD. Other DVDs begin speaking. "No, I am Spartacus.' in quiet digital voices.

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What’s with Bradley Whitford’s Hair?

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Okay, Zeitgeisters, that’s as shallow an attention-grabbing start as one could ever want, but I really want to know. And sure, I’m really talking about Josh Lyman’s hair. (I’m like one of those people who insist on calling an actor by their character’s name – only in reverse. e.g. “Go Knight Boat!”) Whitford plays Deputy Chief of Staff, Josh Lyman, in the Aaron Sorkin -created, NBC television series The West Wing . He plays this part to a tee and now he’s set to do great things in the new Sorkin drama, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip . I know this last bit because the Angriest Ex-Video Store Clerk in the world told me. Oh, and Whitford ’s married to the awesome Jane Kaczmarek who plays mom, Lois, in the series Malcolm in the Middle. So Mr Whitford’s your regular pop-cultural icon and yardstick for excellence. We’re here in this, frankly, puzzling cultural landscape, because I’ve just finished watching season four of The West Wing on DVD. And Josh Lyman’s hair has bothered me througho...
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What's with George Eads' Hair?

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DailyCeleb.com & David Edwards Hey Zeitgeisters, Bet you thought this blog would never top “ What’s with Bradley Whitford’s Hair? ” For those of you who weren’t part of that historical blog entry, it was the glittering moment where I wondered what’s with West Wing star Bradley Whitford’s hair. Good times. However, tonight, while watching the current series (in Australia) of CSI :Original Recipe , I was forced to witness the unpleasantness of George Eads’ new(ish) 'do and I felt compelled to blog on’t. George plays the part of Nick Stokes and has spent some 5 or 6 seasons with a haircut “you could set your watch to,” as Grandpa Simpson might say. It was always short; it always had that US Marine Corps vibe; it was always as dependable as the ebbing and flowing of the tides. Now in something of an El Nino effect, I note that someone in Jerry Bruckheimer’s organization has decided to mess with the length of George’s crowning glory. Although I chiefly watch CSI wa...
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Self-Paced

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When I was in Primary School back in the 1970s in Western Australia, I went to a school that taught reading comprehension in all the usual ways but also used an American teaching aid that we referred colloquially as SRA cards, but an hour or research on the ol’ internet has persuaded me that I was, in fact, one of millions of Gen X (and 2nd Wave Baby Boomers) who encountered the SRA Reading Laboratory Kit.  SRA was Scientific Research Associates a Chicago based publisher of Educational materials (thank you Wikipedia). But their tautologically named teaching aid was kick-ass for a word nerd like myself. I recall it as a box stuffed with cards. Each card had a short segment of writing on it and then some comprehension questions. You’d answer the questions on a separate sheet they provided and if you were correct you got to move on to the next card. This was self-paced learning at its best as far as I was concerned. Boring, si? NO! Because the genius part was this – the whole sy...
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Join The Far Queue

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We used to queue in Australia. So much so that the title for this blog entry is actually the punch-line for an Aussie joke. Its where the shop assistant tells you to go when it’s really busy and he or she can’t possibly help you. These days we’re American so we get in line, but indulge me for the duration of this blog (like you usually do). It will always be referred to as queuing on these pages. I went to the supermarket this afternoon to gather supplies for La Weekend. Just across the road we have a brand new and poorly designed shopping area, where the queues curl around the aisles and everyone gets in the way of everyone else. I waited patiently in the multi-checkout 10 Items or Fewer* queue. There were three possible checker-outerers; it was a spin of the roulette wheel. I had no control over who I would get. So, would it be Tess, the smart-aleck Emo chick with a tiny metallic skull on the choker around her neck; like a cat’s bell? She would process my groceries quickly. Or woul...
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Soup's Up!

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Zeitgeisters, Its winter in the Southern Hemisphere or SoHem as we like to call it down here. Which means its soup-making time. I like to get a ham shank and a leek and some magic beans and boil it up for a couple of hours and then freeze the result in a number of containers. Not quite the way granny would’ve done it, but its as close as I get. Last winter I was doing this very thing on a particularly cold night and managed to mist up my small flat. The windows, the computer and the front of the microwave all had a fine layer of moisture on it. I opened all the doors and windows thinking that equalising the temperature outside and would be in some way effective. You know that way you seize upon half-remembered scientific principles learnt years ago in school? I went about with a towel and dried light switches, the desk lamp and the telly etc. Then I sat on the sofa in a my thickest jacket while a chilly wind blew through the flat. I managed to catch a pretty good documentary on SBS a...
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Vending Machine Win

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I had only planned on getting the above items.However, the vending machines in the place I work are programmed to take your money and give you nothing in return. I required a bag of Sour Squirms. They were in the bottom right hand corner compartment - E8. I put a fiver into the note-snatcher, heard $1.50 clatter into the coin return. The large black coil holding The Squirms, rotated one turn and released the bag, it shuffled forward two centimetres, then stood teetering on the ledge, just above the pit you grab your goodies from. I willed it to fall. It trembled on the brink like a plump diver waiting for the referee's whistle. After about five seconds it became clear that my paid-for bag of Squirms was content to stay where it was - like a portly Greg Louganis, frozen in time on a sprinboard to nowhere. There was no way I was going to allow this to happen, but because I too can be described as portly there was also no way I was going to be seen sh...
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Institutional Memory

By Gerald Fie
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Note: If you’re here, you were connected with Perth’s Film and Television Institute at some point. The FTI in the form that we know it, is being wound up and some of its functions are being taken over by ScreenWest. This is my idiosyncratic tribute to the FTI as it was formerly. I’m not someone who plans things. Depending on how well you know me, you might be saying “Amen to that” right about now. There was no plan to have anything to do with filmmaking when my friends and I entered our first efforts in the WA Film and Video Festival almost 35 years ago (forerunner of the WASAs). We made experimental films on Super 8 movie film; in-camera editing, falling down sand dunes, raw meat and tomato sauce representing the terrible effects of our filmic violence.   Super-8 was the cheapest type of movie film. 8 millimetres in width. You could shoot two-and a-half to three-and-a-half minutes depending on your frames-per-second. We had no money, so shot “longer” at 18 fps. Our ti...
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Embrace Your Inner Muppet

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Zeitgeisters, Bert (below right) and Ernie of Sesame Street. You gotta love them. For many of us this was the first comedy duo we ever saw perform. When I was six years old these two were my Martin and Lewis, Abbott and Costello, Morecambe and Wise. Ernie was my favourite, naturally. I couldn’t understand why Bert was always trying to spoil Ernie’s fun. Ernie had energy, liked a laugh and knew how to enjoy life. Bert was a good guy, but he had an authoritarian bent. I was tidying up around the house yesterday and I turned up a miniature Ernie Plushie that I bought a couple of years back. He’s something like the one pictured, but mine looks a little sadder and in need of some help from a charitable organization. I picked up charity case Ernie and was working out where to place him (on top of the fridge? Computer?) when I had an epiphany. I realised that I had shifted from identifying with Ernie in my youth to being someone who embodies more of the qualities of Bert in my adulthood. I am...
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Losing Face

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Zeitgeisters, time for the confession. I watch CSI once a week. Any of the CSI 's. It doesn't matter which one. I don't really care if it's Miami, New York or Original Recipe. Although I know the Original Recipe crew by name. And I am even prepared to diss their hair when necessary. I watch CSI Miami because I love things shot in an orangey palette. I also love the way that Horatio Kane (David Caruso) does that dog-with-head-tilted look. Unfortunately this look stands in for a number of emotions, "I'm trying to work out if you're telling the truth"; "I know you're not telling the truth and this head-tilt is intended to psych you out" and "If I weren't in such deep emotional pain maybe you and I could have a shot at the big brass ring". Like Roger Moore's eyebrow and Bruce Willis's smirk, the gesture doesn't multi-task as well as the actor imagines. I watch CSI New York because Gary Sinise's character (Ma...
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Fly Me To The Moon

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Aldrin, Armstrong and Collins pose in business suits following a press conference at the Manned Spacecraft Center (January 10 1969) Zeitgeisters, Can this really be on the money? A report from Reuters claims the original video tapes of the moon landing are lost: The U.S. government has misplaced the original recording of the first moon landing, including astronaut Neil Armstrong's famous "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," a NASA spokesman said on Monday. Armstrong's famous space walk, seen by millions of viewers on July 20, 1969, is among transmissions that NASA has failed to turn up in a year of searching, spokesman Grey Hautaloma said. The tapes also contain data about the health of the astronauts and the condition of the spacecraft. In all,some 700 boxes of transmissions from the Apollo lunar missions are missing, he said. "I wouldn't say we're worried -- we've got all the data. Everythin...
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