Author Archives: deepkickgirl

A Tale of Two Movies

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…like a Tale of Two Cities but with a lot less Charles Dickens.

So after not going to the movies for many months (thanks for nothing Woody Allen, “Blue Jasmine” put me off the art form almost permanently) I ended up going twice in one weekend.

On Saturday I ventured out to see “I, Frankenstein” with a very old flame who, after almost thirty years, has popped up in my life as a much needed friend. There’s not a lot out at the moment and I didn’t want something heavy like “12 Years A Slave” (though I hear it is a great film) or a romantic comedy of any kind.

So a bit of action fantasy it was. It’ll come as no surprise to anyone that this was a bit of nonsense built around some action and special effects. The storyline was barely coherent but a good cast gave it more credibility than it really deserved. How they got Bill Nighy on board is anyone’s guess.

Some of the effects were great, especially the gargoyles coming to life, but that’s the best I can say about it. Good Saturday afternoon light entertainment (and I cared more about these laughably drawn characters than I did about anyone in “Blue Jasmine”).

Sunday’s cinematic excursion was to see “Pompeii” which really should be entitled “A Lame Vehicle To Cash In On Kit Harington’s Current GoT-based Popularity” (which I will admit is a mouthful – which is probably not a word I should be using when writing about Kit Harington…).

This pile of schlock is rated M which would lead one (if one was a dirty, middle aged woman) to believe some sex scenes would be included. One would be sadly and greatly mistaken if one was to assume this. The M rating is obviously for the stylised violence which was not particularly violent, unless I am particularly jaded, but certainly unnecessarily extensive, drawn out and repetitive (enough already!).

The promised Kit Harington abs (which were possibly photoshopped) played a cruelly tiny role and seriously only made a cameo appearance at best (truth in advertising I say). There was a great deal of KH brooding sensously into the camera. There was only ONE. TINY. KISS. That’s it. If I was Emily Browning (the so-called love interest) I would be having stern words with my manager about getting her into that role under false pretences.

Basically there was lots of gladiator fighting, lots of Keifer Sutherland being nasty, lots of Kit Harington looking broody, lots of CGI of Pompeii and rumbling Vesuvius, lots of things exploding and fire and crumbling buildings and people running. But nowhere near enough Kit Harington nudity. Well basically none.

So I’m back to hanging out for Game of Thrones to return in just two short weeks where I a much more likely to see nudity, Kit Harington/Jon Snow and otherwise.

Sorry Bec

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I’ve been thinking about why I haven’t been writing these past few months. It’s not like I haven’t been doing or feeling or thinking anything. I have. But a lot of it is private and painful and weird and boring. I wish, like Eden, I could write easily (possibly/probably she doesn’t do it easily at all) about the private and painful but it gets stuck in my throat and won’t come out properly. At least not without the potential of hurting me and/or others.

So all this personal and private and painful stuff gets PM’d to my friend Bec late at night or early in the morning. Poor thing, how she copes with my stupid ranting is beyond me. She deserves a medal and one of these days I’ll get one minted for her.

This morning I was thinking maybe I can’t share (all of the) private and painful stuff but maybe I can share more of the weird and boring stuff. I like weird and boring on other people’s blogs so that’s the way to go.

You have been warned.

Blogs, what are they good for?

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I can’t answer that. My blog has been good for absolutely nothing for a very long period of time.

I think about it often. Sometimes I even have an idea which floats idly by the blank canvass of my mind. This usually happens in the car, in the shower or in the middle of the night. By the time I’m sitting in front of the computer I have absolutely no bloody idea of what that idea was.

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything. No point even apologising because I’m not actually sorry. It is what is, or isn’t.

However, other blogs are good for lots of things. Like making me laugh and think, mostly both things at the same time. Sometimes cry. Lately Edenland (google it, I can’t be bothered with the linky thingy) has been very important in helping me find and keep my perspective. She is an awesome blogger. I was going to list some others but frankly I just can’t be bothered and will do so one day soon. The Bloggers Who Inspire Me … or some such…

Recently I put on Facebook that I’ve learnt absolutely nothing so far in life. That may have been an exaggeration. Sometimes the lessons take a while to see through the fog. And sometimes I just mentally manufacture a whole pile of bitter and twisted which clouds my judgement.

Bottom line? I’m happy. I’m moving, somewhere unknown, but moving. I’m reading quite a lot and thinking. I’m writing (a whole, actual kids book which is most likely a load of crappola but it was a very interesting experience producing it, longhand, lying on my bed in the course of one afternoon). I hope to write more here but won’t make any promises.

My First… Blogging Challenge #3

Posted in Leif Garrett, Music, Thoughts by

This week’s topic is My First Obsession. You can find Kerri’s post here.

I had the usual pre-pubescent obsessions with horses but living in a flat in Bondi meant I never owned my own horse and after a few school holiday horse riding camps my equine obsession faded and was replaced with possibly my life obsession: boys.

Representing the beginning of this journey is Leif Garrett.

Leif 1

Then

Leif 2

Now

Surfin’ USA came out in 1977 when I was 9 years old so more than likely I simultaneously loved horses and boys.

Just like today when young girls fall madly (and totally inexplicably) in love with Justin Bieber, One Direction and their annoying ilk, I fell madly (and totally inexplicably) in love with young Leif and his cohorts Shaun Cassidy, his (more mature) brother David Cassidy, The Bay City Rollers, the embarrasing list goes on and on.

I listened to their awful “original” songs and their slightly less awful covers (which at the time I did not know were covers because young girls are idiots) on constant rotation. The cassette tapes played and rewound and played and rewound.

I thought they were the most wonderful humans on the planet: beautiful, talented, smart (!!) and just a gift to all us mere mortals. What I wouldn’t have done to somehow fall into their orbit… goodness only knows what I would have done should I have been granted my pathetic wish.

So this early obsession has led to a lifelong obsession with boys and music… I’m a lot older now but quite obviously not a lot wiser.

My First… Blogging Challenge #2

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Continuing with Kerri’s “My First…” Blogging Challenge here is her post about her first moment of terror.

Here is mine…

This is the moment that sprang to mind immediately when I read this challenge and while it is probably not genuinely my “first” moment of terror it is the one that clearly stands out. It is probably my first moment of real life terror rather than movie induced terror (for example the many nights my friend A and I would lock ourselves away in her rumpus room basement while her parents were out, turn out all the lights and watch the Evil Dead over and over until we were so scared we couldn’t even go down the hall to the toilet until her parents returned).

Anyway, I’m thinking of a night (and I could be wrong because my memories of those times are mixed up, people and events jumbled together, often randomly to form inaccurate pictures… perhaps my friend KG who has remarkable memories of this time in our lives can chime in) in early December 1983. I’m reasonably sure it was the last day of Year 10 and my friends and I had gone into the city to celebrate. I am fiften and I am about to start my first full time job the following Monday. I feel incredibly grown up, immortal, invicible.

Our main hang out at the time was the Central Markets Hotel which stood where the Pumphouse (if that still exists) stands near the Entertainment Centre. This was pre Darling Harbour and that part of the city was dark and rat infested and pretty bloody awful. Just perfect for a bunch of suburban teenage girls hanging around the outskirts of the Sydney skinhead scene.

So there we were at the Central Markets Hotel. We’d ordered schooners of beer and for some reason (was it a hot night? probably) we found ourselves outside, in the lane. My memory is of standing in that lane, or possibly sitting on milk crates and looking over at a group of the “senior” skinheads (Stretch, Spider, their underlings) standing nearby. These were the scary boys; probably they were only a few years older than us but they were big and mean and capable of real violence. We knew their reputations but we were not really in their orbit.

The moment that I remember and that still fills me with some sort of fear was when they turned around and looked at us. We had floated around these people for a couple of years but I had never felt them notice us. They were our dubious celebrities; we knew them but they didn’t know, or could possibly care less about, us. Suddenly they noticed us. But it was not a good moment. So clearly I remember being filled with dread because I suddenly and for the first time saw the situation for what it was. Big, violent grown men looking at a group of ridiculous teenage girls.

It had never occurred to me before that we were in danger but suddenly the possibility of that danger hit me very hard. It was almost like having a panic attack. I realised how vulnerable we were and how reptilian they were, looking upon as sport.

It’s funny that I don’t remember how that evening ended. I have a feeling we got out of there. Even thinking about it now I want to run out of that scene; did we run? I can’t remember. Did we stay away from the skinhead scene? No we did not. I know we stopped going to the Central Markets Hotel around that time but possibly that was because it was about to get knocked down.

This is the memory which makes me understand how and why young girls (and boys) get themselves into serious trouble. There is just no risk assessment mechanism in a teenage brain (at least there wasn’t in mine). I look back at this moment and many others which were to follow and realise how lucky I am to have made it to adulthood. It was certainly much more to do with luck than with any sensible behaviour on my part.

My First… Blogging Challenge #1

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Kerri over at Life & Other Crises has started a blogging challenge which I think will be quite interesting and I certainly need some motivation to get blogging again.

Here is her post about the challenge and her first act of rebellion.

Here is mine…My First Act of Rebellion:

I was such a goody goody in primary school I’m fairly sure there were no open acts of rebellion until high school but something happened in Year 7… I like to call it hormones… which turned me from the aforementioned goody goody into a full on, snarling, manic rebel.

Apart from the hormones I think just annoying my parents would have been a major motivation for my oppositional behaviour. I probably didn’t think about it like that at the time but I certainly see it pretty clearly with the benefit of hindsight.

1980: Year 7, Term 3 I moved from St Catherine’s (a private C of E Girls’ School in the Eastern Suburbs, where I attended for two terms due to a scholarship) to Malvina High School in Ryde (a very much public school known affectionately as Molevina). This was the start of the what I now know to be the best years of my life.

I met my soon to be best friends A and F and we plunged head first into the world of subcultures. This is probably what I consider my first act of rebellion.

Our first forray into pissing off our parents by dressing “differently” was what I call the Rocky Horror phase. It wasn’t a true subculture but it had all the makings of one. Specific clothes, a group of people who identified with each other, music, “style”.

My memory of this time was dressing in a black tutu with leggings (one leg black, one leg red), a stripey red and white t-shirt, very vintage very pointy shoes and a giant bow in my extra frizzy hair (arrived at by braiding wet hair overnight into a 100 tiny plaits). We hung out at the newly opened Hoyts Cinema in George Street with the older Rocky Horror crowd – we loved the movie though we had never been to the midnight screenings ourselves, being only 12-13 at the time.

Our crowd was gay boys and slightly creepy (in hindsight) older men – I clearly remember a 30 year old sailor. (I now ask myself, why the fuck were these people hanging out with barely teenage girls.)

I felt at my most rebelious during this time sitting in the cafe at Hoyts, smoking a cigarette (how I hated smoking but how I loved the idea of how cool it made me look – ha ha) and sipping a cappucino… waiting for whoever would drop by to hang out on any particular Saturday afternoon.

If our parents were confused and upset by this phase it was just the entree… soon enough the Konaraki boys came to our school and introduced us to the world of punk and it became much worse very quickly on the rebellion front.

Free falling

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I’ve been a bad little blogger and I’m sorry… it’s not that I haven’t had things to write about it, it’s just that I’ve been busy putting my emotional energy into other things like immersing myself in Game of Thrones (late to the party as always) and hatching this weird little relationship I’m embroiled in.

For those deeply interested in my love life (shame on you, haven’t you got something more compelling to focus on… like the fluff in your bellybutton) you may remember that my last post talked about the ending of what was potentially a very promising relationship.

I may have been a little premature in writing it off because here I am, we are, back into it.

I’ve called this post “free falling” because that’s how it feels trying to establish a new relationship after being in a very long term one. I don’t have a good frame of reference any more for how to behave with a new person I’m romantically interested in; I guess I’ve become lazy over the years. Especially when the new person has issues I don’t fully understand, yet. (Because God knows I don’t have any issues myself, being perfect and all.)

I literally feel like I’m floating through darkness and I keep hitting things. At first I used my usual problem solving approach when I hit an issue I couldn’t control: the battering ram. But I’m learning that there are other ways. It’s not always easy but it’s turning out to be more fun than I first thought.

It’s worth bending a little, adapting a little for someone special. Don’t worry, I’m still the giant pain in the arse I always have been and always will be. Some things will never change.

Yes there are allegedly a lot of frogs in the pond but some frogs really are princes, even if they don’t know it. For now I’ll just stick to kissing this one particular frog and we’ll see how things work out.

Kissing Frogs (part 1 – of many?)

Posted in Disappointment, Holidays, Internet Dating, life, Optimism, Saddness, Zombies by

So I’ve been back from NYC for almost a whole week. I Facebooked the NYC experience so not sure if I’ll ever get back here to update in any more detail.

The title of this post relates to me deciding to dip my toe into the Internet Dating scene before leaving for NYC. Some could have argued it was too early but I thought it would be an interesting way of distracting myself from mundane life and, at worst, something to blog about. One thing I know about myself is I like having a man in my life. It’s not necessarily a good thing and I have at times wished it wasn’t so… but it is what is. Probably some psychoanalysis required to figure that one out.

So I joined RSVP and after a very short time made a connection with someone who was amazing from the very first email we exchanged. I couldn’t quite believe it. By the end of that first evening I had let down my guard completely and put aside all the rules of internet dating to set up an all-day first date for the following weekend.

I was apprehensive but excited. That Sunday with M was wonderful. We just felt right together, relaxed, natural, happy. It was a superb day. I was reeling that night and the first two weeks as we flirted via text and FB; it was hard to believe and very exciting.

Leaving for NYC was a bag of mixed emotions as I was extremely excited to be going on this much longed for girls’ trip but also a little sad and apprehensive at leaving this newly found “love affair”.

Things went weird pretty early on (an innappropriate FB message from me after a few drinks: a rookie error I was told) and our communications soured somewhat. Nothing irrecoverable I thought.

Upon coming home I was extremely tired, jet lagged and overly emotional. A more sensible person might have decided to keep some distance until a more rational frame of mind returned. I am not that sensible person.

To cut a long story short it’s all over Red Rover. Worst part is that it ended via a few cranky text messages, not even a phone conversation or a face to face. I am sad because this felt so special and because it really didn’t get a fair go. But I’m not into flogging dead horses.

So as I dust myself off and eye that saddle again does anyone have any internet dating tips or possibly a brother/neighbour/co-worker who likes short women with big boobs and a penchant for Dr Martens boots and zombies?

Movie Review: The Place Beyond The Pines

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I hadn’t bothered to read up about this film because I figured it had Ryan Gosling with no shirt and tattoos, what more did I need to know. So I started watching with no expectations.

How rare to find a fully formed, beautifully crafted film; a film someone has loved and nurtured into reality. Not just a bunch of random words thrown onto a page, said by a bunch of “actors” with little interest in what they are saying and pulled together by a production team who appear to not at all be interested in the end result.

This film is long and usually I find this a point of contention. If you can’t say it in ninety minutes, don’t bother. But this is an investment in time worth making.

The turns in the story are not at all what I expected and each shocked me yet made the film so much richer.

All the performances were excellent.
Ryan Gosling’s early scene with the baby hurt my heart. Bradley Cooper can act, who knew. Lots of great supporting cast…obvioisly helped by an excellent script and sublime production values.

(Mr Gosling’s shirtlessness was merely a small cherry on top of what is an utterly delicious cake of a film…not the highlight I was expecting it to be. I’m not knocking it in case you think I’ve gone all high brow.)

An added bonus is the strong soundtrack by Mike Patton (of the magnificent voice from Faith No More). I’d been wondering what he’d been up to all these years.

Overall you could say it’s an essay on fatherhood. It’s also about destiny and the strange tricks of connection life likes to play with us all.

Brilliant.

Prelude: NYC

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In 24 hours I’ll be on my way to the airport for the much anticipated trip to New York with my besties. I can’t believe it’s taken this long to be here and I can’t believe it’s actually here.

It’s amazing how life can change in a short period of time. A few months ago when McNulty dropped a missile onto my life I didn’t see how I’d be able to go on this trip and enjoy it. It just didn’t seem possible.

Then the dust settled and the future started to seem not only possible but bright. I knew this trip would be just what I had imagined and what I needed.

But life wasn’t finished playing little games with me. Two weeks ago I met someone who really shook me up, made me feel things I hadn’t felt for a long time, made me laugh, made me purely happy. I couldn’t be more surprised (I might get that put on a t-shirt, life has been constantly throwing surprises at me lately).

It’s obviously too early to tell where it’s all going and what it all means. And I’m trying hard not to do my usual thing of over thinking everything. But right now, as I finish packing for New York, I feel like I’ll be leaving a tiny bit of my heart in Sydney with a man with a sad predilection for tracky daks.