Well as you may have noticed, the site was down for a few days. Too much bandwidth. Therefore my site is becoming too popular for its own good. Or i’ve started reading what I write too often.

It’s surprising, it’s never happened before. In fact, I’m a bit in the dark about it, because I’m hosted by Houston Davis (very kindly, in fact), and I have no idea what kind of plan he’s on. Or if he forgot to pay the bill. Or if he was reaching for something on the top shelf and the whole thing collapsed on him and he’s been nibbling his left arm to survive for the past 2 and a half weeks.

I actually didn’t notice until I went to post a blog entry last night when I was extremely disappointed that today’s op-shopping venture was called off. In fact, it’s probably a nice coincidence, because I was going to get abusive towards Phillip who sold him the car. Don’t visit that link.

So instead i’ve spent the last few days catching up on some movies i’ve wanted to watch. Since Thoroughly Modern Millie the other day, I continued my Julie Andrews streak and watched the last Julie Andrews DVD in my collection, Torn Curtain. What a fantastic thriller (from Hitchcock, who would expect any less), I actually noticed I had been barely breathing for the whole section on the bus. Although I’m a fan of Bernard Herrman, the score by John Addison had a very fun melody (this was the film when Hitchcock rejected a Herrman score and they never worked together again). On the DVD they present some scenes with the music Bernard Herrman scored, and they sound abysmal. It’s no fault of the composer, however; I’m familiar with his score for this film, but the orchestra playing the music on the DVD sounds like a high school concert band. In fact, Herrman’s score for Torn Curtain is one of my favourites, based on only a few tracks i’ve heard (there is a full CD of the score available on the Varese Sarabande label).

Yesterday saw me watching The Birds, and then working on some music transpositions I said I’d do for Ben, which I finished, did the CD for and had ready for mailing only a few hours ago.

I feel so shamed. Somehow I let myself get drawn into the Australian Idol website. I headed to the forum to discover that even John Foreman has a group, and naturally, plenty of groupies.

Those who know me outside of the browser window may recall how vocal I was (am (was)) about John’s departure from Bert and GMA (I can’t bring myself to watch it anymore; there’s no one for Bert to pick on). Slowly, since his GMA defection, he has been regaining some sense of respect. Although you must understand my disgust is purely fictional.

If you train your eyes to skim the majority of the posts, it can occassionally be an interesting read over there. John is responding to the odd post to keep the fans happy, but then leaving the majority of them, mostly the ones that involve declarations of love, well alone. He has also been reflecting the conversation onto other topics. Very responsible groupie managment. (Where are my groupies??) The way he writes actually reminds me a whole lot of Adam Vujic. Frighteningly similar, actually.

I wonder when/if John will move on to focus on projects. He is obviously quite talented; is he destined to remain this head that has 3.5 second closeups on TV as he turns and nods? If that is his path, should he not grow a beard, ala Geoff Harvey (his usurping of the carols suggests this may be his fate)? Many have also noticed his ever lengthening hair. Is he like me, simply too busy to get to a hairdresser? Or is it to shroud his face during these cut tos?

Perhaps the most interesting thing about John is that everyone fills in the blanks from what we don’t see. I wouldn’t say he’s an enigma, but those 3.5 seconds don’t tell us a lot. (I also came across http://www.johnforeman.com.au/)

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I’m really excited about Wednesday; Greg and I are having a one day op-shop marathon. He said Thirroul to Oak Flats in one day. Who will be the first to drop? I doubt it will be Greg.

Oh! And check out the galleries… I’ve finally added shots from the orchestra pit of Gang Show. I’ll work on the video of the band playing and try to get it up soon.

(And thanks to Phillip [beware: lewd content] who will be bringing my orchestration book up to Wollongong from Melbourne in October. If he can track down the second hand book store.)

Its one of those freakish days where the air is very hot, but the sun isn’t pounding. When I breath in I can smell the heat of the air. There is also a faint breeze of only slightly cooler air. It’s actually very nice, i’ve opened up the house to get some air flow happening. What a nice day to be at home.

For the first evening of my one week break I settled down to a film that has been awaiting me on the shelf for a while, ‘Thoroughly Modern Millie’, starring Julie Andrews, Mary Tyler Moore and Carol Channing.

Set in the flapper 1920’s, it has a crazy plot involving ‘orientals’ (before it was politically incorrect) who are running a white slavery / kidnapping set up from the guise of a hotel for ’single young ladies’. This is entirely seperate to the plans Millie, played by Andrews, has for her future, which involve getting a job with an unmarried boss, and then removing the ‘un’. Afterall, this is what Moderns do. However, she meets the carefree Jimmy, and has to decide which plan to follow. Enter Mazzy (Channing), not from stage left or right, but rather from a canon (this is one of many wacky stunts she is involved in; her dance on the xylophone is a favourite of mine) who says even when you are a Modern, love has everything to do with marriage. Of course, after the intermission, (complete with intermission music), the plots combine. It’s a long film, almost 2 and a half hours, but so frivilous fun, its hard to believe someone didn’t adapt this movie musical to the stage earlier than 2002.

As always, Julie Andrews was just beautiful to watch, i’m sure everyone of her amazing dresses has been doubled by drag queens all over the world. What a wonderful start to my week break.

As a leisurely 150+ people and I sat on the duckpond lawn today at uni, we listened to speeches from local representitives for the upcoming election. However, there was to be another duck there today, a much larger duck, who died (at least socially). Died in front of over 150 people who will be casting their vote against him.

His name is Jeff Daker, local candidate for the Christian party, whatever they call themselves today. Where as the other candidates spent their 5 - 10 minutes to tell us what was important to their party, which was also why we should vote for them. Mr. Daker, the late Mr. Daker, took the microphone into the audience.

“I want to hear what is important to you guys”.

One guy raised his hand he said something like, “Why is it with spending of $XXX on defense, they cannot spend the substantially smaller amount on abolishing HECS fees for Uni, as well as TAFE fees?”.

“Right, so HECS fees. Okay. Any one else?”

A woman in front put up her hand. “What is your party’s stance on gay and lesbian marriage?”.

“Okay. Who here supports that?” Almost everyone put up their hand. “Who doesn’t?” Maybe three raise their hand. “Err, right, so we are talking about HECS fees…” He told us of how his daughter completed a double degree at our Uni, and now has two jobs to pay her HECS. Then he suddenly switched, “But you can’t expect anything for free. Who else is going to pay for it?”. This was, as you can imagine, very coldly received. Oh gee, I don’t know, how about US through our taxes. Shouldn’t the government be supporting students who wish to further study and thus make Australia a more intelligent, innovative and contemporary country? HECS fees didn’t always exist. Did you pay for your degree, Mr. Daker?

Another hand up the front. “My question is why don’t YOU know what the important issues are?”

“But i’m here to listen to you guys.”

Maybe if you picked up a paper, turned on the TV he would know what is important. Isn’t it a little late now, anyway? And quite clearly he wasn’t there to listen. In fact, I fail to see what he hoped to achieve. Did he expect students to be willing to vote for a homophobic party who wishes to take our money? Perhaps what bugs me most is he didn’t even argue his point. His snobbish attitude was filthy, and he really came across as he was right, and if we didn’t agree, that was our problem. I think he’ll find, come October 9, that its actually his problem.