CLOVERFIELD: A Review

So I'm in New York as the Stealth Bomber flies over for the airstrike and the bombs fall like living poetry from the skies and

Cloverfield is . . .
a movie that

I had chills. I was sweating.
Goose bumps flowed through my body and tears streamed down my face. But they were glorious tears. There seemed to be a total media blackout with this movie as there was nothing written about it in the numerous New York street presses. I had to be content with a poster showing a burning New York.

A burning New York. The characters were great. Good looking burning New Yorker yuppie twenty something kids at a party. Which made the shots of the girl scrambling up the walls of a shattered skyscraper or running along subway tracks in the dark wearing a sexy dress and heels especially awesome. This is a 21st century apocalypse movie that is just as good as 28 Days Later and Children of Men. There were echoes of the Half Life computer games (which is my apocalyptic benchmark) - weathered signs in the background, ominous noises in the distance and fluorescent lights that don't work properly. The movie cleverly contrasts light and dark, loud and quiet. It was smart and disorientating. The dialogue was spontaneous and natural. There were no recognisable actors. There was no typical knowledgeable character explaining everything to an ignorant one. The billboards in the background become darkly ironic during the catastrophe (Nokia: Connecting People). The camera doesn't work all the time. It focuses in and out, it flips back to previous films of the owner with a girl on a holiday. Cloverfield gives you a chance to use your imagination. There are parts that take you back to your childhood on those nights when you woke up from a lucid nightmare and the monster was still in front of you.

Manhattanites are so marooned and I never realised this. Without the bridges and the Lincoln Tunnel you're stuck. It would be the perfect place to enforce a dictatorship because you could trap people on the island and control the amount of food that gets to it. I stepped out of the cinema and had to catch my breath. I stepped out and noticed the Manhattan sky was clear and the streets were cold and windy. There was a sign on the sidewalk advertising a tour - The ONLY way to see New York City.

I got chills again.

A Review of American Presidential Candidates

In Australia, the parties select their leaders, but in America the people get to chose. State by state. These elections are called the Primaries. There's a lot of voting in American democracy. You vote like a motherfucker in this country. I write this from New Hampshire, USA where the election is taking place right now. Politics hasn't been this exciting since a few months ago when the now former Australian Prime Minister John Howard lost the election. So today I saw a shitload of placards and I also met Bill Clinton. This was in Exeter, New Hampshire. He had a pasted on smile and his eyes were vacant and glazed like donuts. It was weird. I've seen this look before. It was in the eyes of David Beckham while he was dressed as a Roman warrior. He was standing in a pile of Pepsi cans at the time. I wanted to ask Clinton what World Domination feels like but the answer is obvious (pretty fucking good!). A Secret Service guy brushed past me and I noticed the bronze glint of a pistol butt within his opened jacket. These guys all looked so ordinary which is probably the point but I was thinking I could fucking take these wimps. Clinton tried very hard to appear ordinary but we all know that for a short time not long ago he was one of the most powerful people in the history of the world. I'm haunted by that experience. Clinton was creepy. But it's a great time to be in New Hampshire right now because everyone is talking politics. This is my assessment of the contenders:

THE REPUBLICANS (aka the fucking GOP)

The four major Republican candidates are four of the scariest guys EVER. They seem like the types to suffocate babies while nobody's looking. Maybe they are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?

Shitt Romney - Mormon Fascist.

Rudy Guiliani - Heartless Bastard. He looks like a mobster.

Mike Huckabee - I DON'T heart Huckabee.

John McCain - I like his anti torture stance but I don't like his stringent bomb Iran stance (which you can see on YouTube).

THE DEMOCRATS

Hilary - She is so fucking Establishment it's sickening. She acts like her presidency is inevitable and her 'vote for me because I'm a woman' platform is fucked up and very undemocratic. Does she really understand women or does she just understand rich women? Maybe Condi Rice will vote for her.

Obama - This guy seems to be the best. He seems to be the most likely one to change stuff for the better. When I hear him speak I don't get that horrible weighted feeling of dread I get with all the other candidates. I know people think he's inexperienced but people said the same shit about Kevin Rudd (Australia's PM) and it's worked out fine. Better than expected actually. So the inexperienced factor doesn't bother me.

John Edwards - Boring smarmy prick.

Mike Gravel - It seems like nobody has heard of this guy except my uncle and there's no way he'll get elected because he speaks the truth (and nobody has heard of him). He's 77 and talks about how military spending is obscene (437 billion per year last I heard, and that was before the surge), and how the healthcare system is messed up etc etc.

America is hurting for preferential voting. That way voters could give candidates like Gravel a voice. With preferential voting the politicians would get a better understanding of the electorate. The all or nothing system in place now is less democratic because it forces voters away from candidates they would vote for but for whom they don't think have a chance. People like Gravel could still get votes with a preferential voting system and it would give voters more power, and that is how democracy is meant to work.

The Cambrian Explosion officially endorses John McCain for the Republicans and Barack Obama for the Democrats.

Jesus and the Mary Chain

Things that have happened so far,

Finished thesis and University
Australian labour Party won the Federal election.

BTW this is the first incursion into Jack's blog by me, thanks Jack. Thanks Jack doubletime for the re-invite cos I missed the ship when it was sailing...to blog that is.

Being at uni for 5 years I have learnt to be a student, - ...if the whole system runs the distance, then I (sorry "we" inc. all the other p.grad newbs) will be bending over to be lubed in the bike tube by the skills shortage in Australia when it comes to professionals outside of the Arts.

Uni maybe typically cynical, that maybe a biased view coming from the Arts...or a generation Y thing, but after half-a decade of learning its only fucking now I realise that the golden gun isn't there at all, in fact satisfaction could actually be found joining the local YMCA, which I didn't do, and now with two pieces of paper, being qualified couldn't feel more insipid. So where to travel to next? Well fuckit. Time is perpetual, and you'll be doing something, even if it is staring at the ceiling with 10mg of Diazepam cursing through your veins whispering to yourself "god I feel benign...". But that latter scenario is rather specific, what about the Green Fields (tm), !!??? Well, yes green fields, no valium, no celing just a beautiful girl who you love, wheatfields sort of day, wine in your hand, gentle southerly with warm air to it...no fucking flies - is that cynical enough?, cause if it sounds that way I can lie using words well cuase I was being serious.
I think it was this French philosopher Montaigne who championed wisdom in life not necessarily in the education system. But then plural geography teaches me to be nuanced in my understanding of black and white scenarios (which is a good thing) so maybe tertiary education is wisdom giving, but Hey! fucked if I know!. So the only thing that is of any offer in this, the expedition into blog, is my own worth in telling someone out there some - thing - useful. So, everyone do ethics when you go to uni if you havnt already...

they'll be more poignant prose when I am boyed by my own wisdom...but now thats all I got...sorry Jack.

Thrillwana

Experiencing Bangkok

I almost got it right. Especially about the shithouse tattoos and cosmopolitan tourists. I think Thailand is the respository of the world's lamest tatts. Jack Cambrian needs to come here just to even it out a little bit. I was expecting a more visible homeless population, but it turns out Los Angeles appeared way worse than this. Maybe downtown Bangkok is heavily policed so all of the homeless people get shifted to other areas. I don't know. Travelling in Thailand is SO EASY! It's ridiculous. I was expecting a little bit of a struggle. I was also expecting a bit of hostility and the occasional feeling of not being safe. But I feel more in danger walking around Chapel street late at night on weekends when there's those roaming packs of young men in very nice clothes looking for an excuse (for example: eye contact) to bash someone.

I haven't yet found the glamorous side to Bangkok that I was expecting, but my description of Khao San wasn't far off from the reality. It's been weird how much of the shit I've read has stuck in my head. I was on Ko Chang the other day and I missed Jed. I actually MISSED him. A fictional character (from The Beach). I was hanging out by myself thinking, wouldn't it be great if Jed was here? Fuck.

Another strange experience was the sensation of having been here already. Thailand felt so familiar. All of the stuff I'd heard about before I came here really had an influence on me and it couldn't be helped. But this feeling is probably also influenced by the overwhelming desire to find a reference point to FORCE myself to experience Thailand as familiar. I was walking around Bangkok and Ko Wai thinking yeah this is like Mozambique or that is like Madagascar and I had to stop myself. It's nothing like those places. Just because a place has a beach and coconut trees doesn't make it the same as fucking Madagascar! Or just because an apartment building is dilapidated doesn't make it the same as Mozambique. There are all these layers of difference that I stopped myself from experiencing and instead focussed on very basic elements of my visual experience. I'm not sure why I did this but it happened spontaneously. Possibly I was kind of scared being alone in a big foreign city and wanted to stop myself from feeling stressed. It worked.

I don't have a creeping sensation of danger walking around Bangkok (which I had in Maputo, Mozambique's capital and Antananarivo which is Madagascar's). Mozambique and Madagascar are much much poorer countries and this makes a big difference. The food is totally different. The architecture is way different too, (besides a few vaguely similar apartment buildings), and the buildings in Bangkok are in much better condition. Actually, almost everything in Bangkok is in much better condition. There's a very prominent tourist culture in Thailand which possibly makes the locals more used to our presence here, which means we receive a lot less attention (both negative and positive). Also, movement through the country is unbelievably easy here and comfortable, which changes the way a place is experienced.

I didn't expect Africa to be such a big influence on the way I experienced Thailand. Almost everything in my first few days in Bangkok I related to my time in Madagascar and Mozambique. It was something I had to force myself not to do, and now finally, after about ten days in the country, I am experiencing everything for the first time.

Imagining Bangkok

This is Part 1 of a two part blog I'm writing on Bangkok. I'm going to be in that city tomorrow so I want to detail all of my preconceived ideas of what I imagine Bangkok to be like. I am also going to do a list of all of the sources that have influenced my ideas of Bangkok, so when I get there I'll write another blog (Part 2) about the reality of the city and how it compares to my preconceptions. And Part 1 also allows YOU to share your thoughts and experiences on and of Bangkok, for the sake of kicks and more comparisons.

I imagine downtown Bangkok will have a real flashy side. Like Chapel street with a shitload of neon. There will be clubs blasting lots of horrible music like House except it will be ok because of the context. But fused with the flashy side will be a seedy side and a poverty side. I expect beggars and the homeless to be alongside the rich and glamorous. There'll be trashy strip joints and 'massage' parlours etc, and all of this will be mixed together but whenever you read about this area they will only mention the flashy parts.

There will be more tourists than what I thought possible. Tourists escaping their lives in the West. Tourists looking for the 'Real Thailand' (Vietnam). Sex tourists, shopping tourists, adventure tourists, 'sea, sun, sand' tourists, drug tourists, food tourists, drunk tourists, tourists with bad hairstyles and shithouse tattoos, sunburnt tourists, crazy looking tourists, hippy tourists, and also tourists who will be some of the coolest people I've ever met.

Khao San will have two to three storey buildings on either side and the whole street will have a claustrophobic vibe, because it'll be really packed. The buildings will have shit hanging off of them everywhere - lots of clothes, signs and flags. There will be lots of vendors selling awesome yummy food and fresh fruit, and also selling lots of tourist garbage. It will be very LOUD. The tourists in Khao San will be more of the backpacker style, and the mix of nationalities will be fairly cosmopolitan. Not just aussies, but lots of Europeans from all over that continent, plus heaps of Israelis relative to their population. The Americans there will be the cool types.

The downtown area will be surrounded by really poor areas. The city will be pretty safe most of the time. I'll get harassed a bit by dudes trying to sell shit but it won't be much of a problem. Public transport will be pretty good. The traffic will suck.

Ok, I could go on for longer but I'm writing this from the library in Darwin's Parliament House, so I don't have much time. Tell me what you imagined and tell me how right or wrong I am!

WHERE MY PRECONCEPTIONS HAVE COME FROM:

- word of mouth from friends and people at parties

- The Beach by Alex Garland (one of my favourite books)

- The Ends of the Earth by Robert Kaplan

- Lonely Planet guidebooks

- movies

- my imagination

- my experiences in Africa

- TV shows

- photos taken by friends in South East Asia

The following academic journal articles on backpacking:

- Erik Cohen's Thai Prostitutes and Farang Men: The Edge of Ambiguity

- Teo and Leong's A Postcolonial Analysis of Backpacking

(these two are from the journal Annals of Tourism Research)

The following academic books

- In the Cities of the South by Jeremy Seabrook

- Planet of Slums by Mike Davis

I think they're the major ones. Look out for Part 2!

Climate change skeptics. Are they skeptical about anything else?

Catholic Archbishop George Pell is a cretin. This week, he reaffirmed his view that climate change is not a big deal and that the church doesn't need to do anything about it because "radical environmentalists are more than up to the task of moralising their own agenda and imposing it on people through fear." He is a climate change 'skeptic' - an epithet so embarrassing that it has even been discarded by our time-travelling dwarf-minister John Howard. George Pell personally believes that The Virgin Mary bodily ascended up to heaven, that communion wine literally turns into Jesus' blood as you drink it and that all sin in the world originated from a talking snake that offered fruit to the world's first woman. Presumably, the idea of anthropogenic climate change is just too far fetched. At what point does Cardinal Pell's world-view become evidence based? He has said that church leaders should be 'allergic to nonsense'. The entire basis of his employment is the propagation of bronze-age mythology! If people really did become 'allergic to nonsense' then George Pell would be out of a job.

The Kingdom

I really wanna see that movie The Kingdom but nobody wants to see it. Typical discussions go like this:

Me: Hey you wanna see The Kingdom?
Deadbeat Friend: Errrrrr, do you think it'll be good?
Me: OF COURSE it will be good. It's an ACTION MOVIE!
Deadbeat Friend: Errrrr, it's gonna be terrible. It'll be racist and it'll be shit because Hollywood doesn't understand terrorism and Islam and Saudi Arabia and blah fucking blah.

But who does? Of course the message is going to be confusing and jumbled and insensitive. It's HOLLYWOOD! Hollywood doesn't even know shit about Hollywood. I'm not expecting intelligent and thoughtful insights into globalisation and terrorism in a post - 9\11 world because when I want that I go to a fucking library. Action movies like The Kingdom are about entertainment, not learning, and it seems like all my deadbeat friends are missing the point about this and it frustrates the shit out of me.

Malcolm Turnbull and the Third World

Malcolm Turnbull don't give me that shit about Tasmania's new pulp mill 'operating under the most stringent environmental conditions in the world' because I know that you know that deforestation is happening most rapidly in the following countries: Brazil, Bolivia, the fucking Congo, Indonesia and Australia. We are up there with some of the most fucked places on earth - those countries don't regulate their timber industries! Tassie's pulp mill will have the most stringent environmental standards by default, because any environmental standards are more stringent than no environmental standards. I don't buy your bullshit!

Five songs written by once successful bands who are now washed up in which they lyrically incorporate the title of one of their past hits in an attempt to remind you that they used to be good:

1. 17 Again - Eurythmics. The Eurythmics were great. They were responsible for some of the most memorable hits of the 80s whilst being both a commercial and critical success. Their latest greatest hits release Eurythmics Ultimate Collection contains hit after hit - but which song did they select for track #1? I've Got A Life, a new song which is not nearly on par with their former glories and which you have to sit through (or skip past) to get to their superb single Sweet Dreams. As if to further illustrate that Annie & Dave aren't above melding their classic back catalogue with their lacklustre current efforts the pair conspicuously incorporate the line 'Sweet dreams are made of anything' into one of their new tracks, 17 again. I guess they were hoping to induce a psychosomatic response in the listener that would cause them to involuntarily think 'Hey, these guys used to be really good'.

2.Welcome To The World - 10cc. 10cc were one of the coolest British pop bands ever, until 1977 when half of the quartet left to do inventive, experimental pop records*. The remaining two members of the band continued under the 10cc name, released a couple of decent albums and descended into a valley of maudlin, M.O.R. pop blandness. The biggest single for this incarnation of 10cc was 1978's Dreadlock Holiday ('I don't like reggae, oh nooo' pretty much sums up my reaction to the song) so it's unsurprising that they artlessly name-drop the title into the lyrics of Welcome To The World from their forgettable album of 1980, Look Hear (2 stars - allmusicguide.com).

*The departing duo Godley & Creme actually incorporate the chorus of 10cc's first single Donna into Group Life from their dark, satirical album L, however it's a device cleverly used in a song satirising life in successful band. You can get away with these things if you do them well.

3. Welcome To The Room... Sara - Fleetwood Mac. My love for Fleetwood Mac is like a passionate love affair. However I've never been able to reconcile this love with one Stevie Nicks. Sure, some of my favourite Fleetwood songs are by Ms. Nicks but I can't seem to shake the feeling that she is simply an average artist who had a few flashes of inspired genius and then just spent the rest of her career hanging around musicians with real talent like a blonde, coked-up leech. On Fleetwood Mac's 1987 album Tango In The Night (containing the huge radio hits Everywhere and Sweet Little Lies both written by the infinitely more talented Christine McVie) Nicks contributed the song Welcome To The Room... Sara - a reference to the hit single Sara from Fleetwood's 1979 masterpiece Tusk. Why not just release a single called Hey, Do You Guys Remember Rhiannon?

4. Tonight - New Kids On The Block (Remember them?). Check out this excerpt from NKOTB's song Tonight: Remember when we said, girl, please don't go, and how I'd be loving you forever, taught you 'bout hangin' tough as long as you got the right stuff, didn't we, girls, ooh, didn't we, girls, aah? Leaving aside for a moment that those lyrics are utter shite, let's do a count on how many of their appalling songs are mentioned in one single verse:

1. Please Don't Go Girl
2. I'll Be Loving You (Forever)
3. Hangin' Tough
4. You Got It (The Right Stuff)

That's every single from their previous album except for one. These guys should be ashamed (of themselves).

5. Glass Onion - The Beatles. Oh, Come on! I told you about Strawberry Fields - I told you about the walrus and me - I told you about the fool on the hill - Lady Madonna trying to make ends meet etc. This John Lennon character seems positively desperate to convince us that his little band, The Beatles has written a few memorable songs! This shameless plug appears on their barely noticed self-titled release of 1968 (often dismissively referred to as 'The White Album'). The band was so desperate at this point, they even resorted to allowing the drummer to sing on a couple of tracks. Enough said.

More stupid advertising

I have to catch public transport everyday. As a result I am exposed to a hell of a lot of advertising - at the stations, on trams, in trams, on buses and even on metcards. Lately, Flinders St. Station has been covered with ads for commercial radio broadcaster Triple M and their AFL Football commentary team. You know the drill; a picture of 5 blokey looking men accompanied by 'witty' slogans. The problem is that these ads don't make any sense at all, as I shall endeavour to illustrate. There are 3 different slogans used on these advertisements:

1. "Sorry, we couldn't afford a stylist." You know what? I'll bet they did employ a stylist for the making of these ads. I realise that they're going for a blokey image but no one does anything in the media today without a stylist on hand. I'll bet they employed someone to make sure their subjects looked blokey in the exact blokey style the station wanted. Are we seriously expected to believe that they were willing to do the photo shoot with whatever outfits these guys happened to throw on that morning? They're spending thousands of dollars on their ad campaign and plastering them on billboards all over Melbourne. When you're faced with the prospect of having to rely on the dress-sense of AFL football commentators, you'd be a fool not to hire a stylist.

2. "Who said boy bands were dead?" Criticism #1. They're not boys. Criticism #2. They're not a band. The 'joke' doesn't work on any level. Does anyone even proof-read this drivel before it gets approval? People that work in commercial radio are so funny! All they have to do is mindlessly drop a daggy or retro pop culture reference and they'll have me in stitches! Not.

3. "Where moustaches are still cool" It's quite striking to notice that only 1 guy out of the 5 guys in the picture has a moustache. If moustaches are so cool, how come only 1/5 of the people featured in the ad actually has one? It's like looking at a group of people, 4 of whom have moustaches, 1 of whom doesn't and remarking 'That must be where not having moustaches is still cool". I think I understand what they're going for here (see 'daggy or retro pop culture reference' above) but it hardly seems worth mentioning a feature possessed by a tiny minority of their commentary team.

So what point am I making (if any)? These ads are demonstrably inane and are presumably indicative of the audience Triple M wants to attract. Ask yourself if you want to be part of that audience.