Near Death Cowboy #01

By Gerald Fie

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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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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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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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Brand Struck

By Gerald Fie
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Reading Variety.com, I discovered that there is to be an Angry Birds movie , to be made by Sony and based on Rovio's popular game Angry Birds because that's what you wanted. Apparently the cast includes Jason Sudeikis he is playing as “Red,” head of the Flock . Also Josh Gad as speedy Chuck, Danny McBride as the volatile Bomb, Bill Hader as a pig, Maya Rudolph as Matilda, and Peter Dinklage as the Mighty Eagle. Other voice cast members include other comic actors including Kate McKinnon, Keegan-Michael Key, Tony Hale and Ike Barinholtz. Also them YouTube guys Smosh (Ian Andrew Hecox and Anthony Padilla). Why are we even talking about this? Because Sony first announced the cast to users of the Angry Birds app. Whoa! Yes, I know. The momentosity of this very special announcement was certainly not lost on Sony itself:  “With two and a half billion gamers around the world, Angry Birds is one of those brands that can drive massive fan engagement,” said Dwight Caines, p...
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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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Shank's Pony

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The South Perth Foreshore Zeitgeisters, I'm walking these days. Apparently it's healthy or something. Because I live in South Perth, I mostly walk along the Swan River foreshore. I'm enjoying it now. At first it was slightly humiliating being overtaken by octagenarian Chinese men who fought alongside Chiang Kai-Shek. But it's not about pride, is it? I saw this sign as I tore through Sir James Mitchell Park at 2 ks per hour. I'm not a big fan of graffiti, but this entertained me. Polemical? Satirical? It says a lot more than a mere tag - and I appreciate anyone who can get my brain ticking over. If you can't quite read it: " Once you've been with woman there is no going back !"
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Guided By Voices

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Zeitgeisters, it’s a given that I can’t do voices. At no point in my life has someone ever said to me, “Dude that is a spot-on impersonation of Terry Wogan (or Paulie Walnuts or Spongebob Squarepants). “ Because I have never got close to the timbre and nuance of a vocal impression. I am much like Kevin Costner in ROBIN HOOD PRINCE OF THIEVES (1991), in that neither of us has the slightest idea of how to maintain a convincing accent for even five minutes. (The similarities don’t stop there, both of us were international sex symbols from approximately 1983 to 1994. His career tanked there with the Wyatt Earp movie. Mine went down hill when I couldn’t raise the scratch to buy a Norgen-Vaaz franchise.) Impersonations are a skill. It’s a technical thing, possibly akin to having a musical ear. Weirdly, impersonators are often lumped in with comedians, but only some of them are funny. Getting the voice and some of the mannerisms right takes great observation and practise. And yet, its so...
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The Science of Silkening Our Language

By Gerald Fie
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If you're a Generation X-er like myself, you may remember the above headline as a parody of the slogan of a shampoo called Silkience.  The Science of Silkening Your Hair  was the promise with every bottle. I guess the name itself was a portmanteau word that shoved  silk  together with  science  in an unholy humentipeding of the two commonly used dictionary terms. The sharp-eyed amongst you will recognise humentipede  as a portmanteau neologism recently invented by me in the previous sentence. And yes, I have sewn together the word  human  and  centipede  and thus blatantly ripped off the rather repellent concept invented by Dutch filmmaker Tom Six for his series of  Human Centipede  movies. I come neither to praise Tom Six nor mention his work any further, I am here to discuss words and the writing of same.  The science of silkening one's hair sounds good. It is supposed to bring on though...
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