Taffy #01

By Gerald Fie

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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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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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Slap Happy

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Some quick thoughts on the Slap Chop.  NOTE: If you don’t know what that is or how it works spend some time watching the famous infomercial. You won’t even need to watch the whole thing.  You’ll get it before the first minute is over. The Slap Chop seems okay. I don’t like it quite as much as Vince does. But Vince also likes the Sham Wow so his judgement is in question as well as up for sale.  I wanted a Slap Chop because I don’t like chopping vegetables. I do it six days out of seven and find somewhat dull. I first learnt to chop vegetables as a kid working in my parents’ various restaurants, so I’ve have sliced a myriad of onions, a plethora of cabbage and a several tonnes of carrot in my time.  It’s boring and a tiny bit dangerous. Not sky diving dangerous, but certainly ‘get me to the emergency room, stat!’ levels of threat. But my main objection to the Slap Chop is the size of the appliance. The celery, potato etc that go into it, are all sliced at least o...
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Celebrating AFHVS

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And Zeitgeisters, if you don’t know what AFHVS stands for, you’ll be stunned to discover it means Australia’s Funniest Home Video Show (Nine Network). And yes. AFHVS is mediocre, mainstream, middle-of-the-road and vanilla. Or is it? (I learnt that little technique in high school debating.) No, it’s actually bold, ground-breaking and revolutionary. “And why the hell is that. Mr Trivia?” I hear you ask. Let us rewind to a recent Saturday. Witness the following: video-tape of a middle-aged couple sitting on a porch swing. Naturally, they swing back and forth. And like everyone else, I was thinking, yep, them chains is gonna bust and them two is gonna end up on th’floor! (Sorry , I’ve been watching the The Andy Griffith Show on Access 31). However, totally against all expectations, a dog leapt up and one of the couple fell out of the swing! That chain was supposed to break! After fifteen years of AFHVS there was nothing else that the chain could do, but break. It was a certa...
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Institutional Memory

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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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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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Celebrating Perfect Strangers

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Hi Zeitgeisters, From 1986 to 1993 the whole planet rocked with laughter as it enjoyed the mirth-filled antics of Balki Bartokomous (Bronson Pinchot) and Cozzin (Cousin) Larry in 150 derivative, yet formulaic episodes of the sitcom Perfect Strangers . Balki, a “sheepherder” travels all the way from the Mediterranean island of Mipos, in order to live with his Cousin Larry, a would-be writer in Chicago. It soon transpires that Balki is a screw-up in his native Mipos and basically has no where else to go! Cousin Larry (Mark Linn-Baker) is fussy, stitched-up and an order freak. Balki (Bronson Pinchot) is a crazy, out-of-control, good-hearted, funny foreigner. Yes, indeed, it’s The Odd Couple meets Mork and Mindy . And only about one-quarter as funny. Series creator Dale McRaven was actually one of the creators of Mork and Mindy and had writing credits on television’s The Odd Couple , so clearly it wasn't a stretch to bring together these elements and twist them slightly in...
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The Wheels of Perth City

By Gerald Fie
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I am confident that the good folk over at The Worst of Perth will have looked into this, but I couldn't find a mention of this over there. Not that I searched for more than a couple of minutes; their site is dense with Perthcentric gold. Have a look some time. Anyhow, when I was a kid, Transperth–then the Metropolitan Transport Trust–ran a campaign encouraging Perthites to take the bus. There was a jaunty tune which sadly I cannot reproduce here and a sprightly lyric which went something like this: We are the wheels of Perth City Leave the driving to us We are the Wheels of Perth (Take it easy) Come on and take the bus! There was even a mascot for all of this, an actual MTT bus driver nicknamed "Jimmy". This is something like thirty years ago, but my memory has him as John Denver looking fellow. And if you don't know who the late John Denver was - ask your grandfather. I believe Jimmy's brief was to be friendly; being a child at this time, I found t...
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The Weekend Starts Here #4

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"I'm going to burgle the heck out of this place," Leon said. Zeitgeisters, I have been listening to a burglar alarm ringing for the last two hours. I’d say it was one building across, two max. It makes a swirling howl for five minutes, stops for one minute then starts again. Clearly its doing a bang-up job. Worth every cent the owner paid. And now, the guy in the flat, two floors up, has his stereo on loud, possibly to drown out the burglar alarm. Right, I can hear the bassline ‘doofing’ through the ceiling. Good. I’ll meditate through it. * * * * * Oh Good Grief. There is a fireworks show by the river. Doof Dooof. Screeeeeeeeeeee. Pop. Pop. Crump. Crump. Crakka-keracker-cracker. Crump. Doof. Doof. Doof. When they prise me out of this flat, white and shivering, I will utter a wordless doof, by way of farewell. * * * * * Couldn’t meditate through it. So I turned up my muted telly. The PRINCESS DIARIES directed by Gary Mar...
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Flight Risk

By Gerald Fie
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I’m not a good flier.  Although not aerodynamic, I am referring to my psychological attitude to powered flight; the fad that started at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina with the Wright brothers and will, any day now, disappear from society like the hula hoop and efficient customer service. I embark on any aeroplane with trepidation. I think of it as a potential fiery tube of death.  A winged cylinder filled in a split second with a vicious orange fireball, the heinous result of a tiny spark, from an ill-maintained circuit, igniting tons of aviation fuel. People try to help by saying things like, “it’s more dangerous driving on the roads.” I know they have statistics on their side, however, if the engine stops on my Toyota Townace, then I am not 30,000 feet above ground in a machine that the Internet informs me weighs approximately the same as 56 African elephants when fully fuelled. (Yes, the Boeing 747, not the elephants.) There are no engines, so we glide. We travel pretty f...
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