The Snow. by Adam
Posted Thu, 06 Sep 2007 20:17:13 EST
 I don't get the snow. It's cold, for one thing, and what is the one thing we are taught as proper Australian children? Cold is bad. If cold isn't bad, why does the rest of the county malign Melbourne for being damp and dreary? Cold is bad. My mother was frequently bemoaning the drafts creeping up her skirts and pantsuits. She paid almost evangelical attention to the arrangement of the draft extruder. Not that we called it a draft extruder. We were simple folk, and could not afford complicated turns of phrase that included triple-syllabled words like 'extruder'. Instead, we called it The Door Sausage. Classy, hey.
When I say simple folk, I should point out that we were what unkind people would call white trash. I like to think that toff and trash come in all the colours of the rainbow. Like Angelina Jolie's children. I distinctly remember a time when the gas was cut off, and my mother resorted to using a wood-burning stove in the kitchen that I had previously imagined to be decorative.
My mother's obsession with the perceived nastiness of The Cold is, most likely, why I am predisposed to hate the snow. Why would you want to go somewhere that it is so chilly that the water nestling in the clouds freezes, becomes too heavy for the clouds to hold up anymore, and falls to the earth? It's pretty, I'll give you that, but it is, well, cold. And wet. If you fall over, generally wet coldness gets into your clothes. No matter how well insulated you are, cold frozen things get inside your clothes, melt, and become wet coldness. Inside your clothes. The thought is so horrific, the only thing that comes close is the policeman in the that seventies horror film, “When A Stranger Calls,” saying ‘The calls are coming from inside the house!’
There is, of course, no such thing as the personal door sausage, protecting you from the cold at all times, so I would rather not subject myself to the risk of it getting at me. As well as that, there are the alleged leisure activities associated with the snow. As far as I can tell, these involve hurtling down the side of a mountain. Some people, it seems, are not impressed with gravity, and the speed with which she drags things from a great height down into her crushing bosom, so they help her out. By standing on sticks. For some reason, which I would know if I hadn’t decided that year 11 physics class was the one best spent shoplifting LEGO, standing on flat sticks helps you plunge toward oblivion so much faster than simply falling.
I have attempted both skiing and snowboarding, and neither of them hold any great interest for me. Perhaps I’m not an adrenaline junkie, like all the other people who go to all the extreme and sweaty effort of clambering up to the top of a mountain, only to hurl themselves off it again. Either that, or I get all the adrenaline I need standing in front of three hen’s nights, four buck’s parties and a pack of drunk bogans at a comedy club, talking about how I think Bindi Irwin looks like a botched animatronic. Also, I am not entirely comfortable with the idea that, when zipping downhill on a slippery stick, I am frequently forced into using my face as a braking mechanism.
 Having decided the snow is not for me, you can imagine how delighted I was to be invited to the top of a mountain this year, not once, but twice. Plus, before you can say “RSVP,” I was informed that, while nothing at my place of business is compulsory, I would be ‘letting the team down’ if I didn’t attend. Being the joyous team player that I am, I rolled my eyes and resigned myself to my fate. The first weekend wasn’t so bad. I discovered that there was Gluehwein* in abundance, and I discovered the delights of the Ice Bar. At Mt Buller last year, I was invited to the opening of the Ice Bar, where I slammed down a shot of something blue, before retreating to the indoors and Poon*. This year, however, having decided I would never again attempt to stand on slippery sticks, I took myself off to the Ice Bar and had a beer. It is amazing. You rug up in lots of protective clothing, plonk yourself on a bar stool, and drink beer. That never gets warm. It is a miracle of thermodynamics, which, again, I would understand better if I hadn’t decided to eschew my physics class in order to sneak around Barkly Square shopping centre, filling my pockets with Danish toys.
With the thought of all these gastronomic and alcoholic delights in mind, I was very much looking forward to the following weekend atop Mt Hotham. Oh dear. What a mistake. Hotham, it seems, is all about the skiing and the boarding and other hurties pursuits. The sitting and drinking and having a fun old time was not in evidence. It all started well. Work had organised a stretch Hummer to take us to Essendon airport, where we boarded a private plane and flew to Hotham. Much more civilised than driving for a trillion hours. Then we got to something that claimed to be a hotel. It was a hostel, at best. Hideous dorm rooms with three or four beds per room. The view was of snow. Not delightful snow capped mountains, and glorious clean mountain air. No, just snow. Close up. Piled against barred windows. I felt like I was in some kind of science-fiction comic-book prison, high atop a mountain, buried under twenty feet of ice, to prevent the dangerous super-powered criminals from escaping.
The only thing that wasn’t escaping, however, was the smell. Urine, to be precise. Well, my floor smelled of urine. One floor smelled like fish. Another, like toilet lollies – you know those little yellow blocks you see in men’s urinals? Yeah. That smell… There was one floor that smelled of steak, but only from 6pm-9pm, then it went back to being the piss floor.
The rest of the weekend was like a comedy of errors. Just when I thought the tide of horror was about to turn to good, something else would go unspeakably wrong. The midnight fire alarm, evacuating me into the snow in my pyjamas. The bain-maire buffet where vegetables were not an option, because they weren’t offered. The ten minute lunch queue which ended with the discovery that the only alternative to chips that was available, was chips. Chips that left very little change from a ten dollar note, mind you. The karaoke night that was supposed to run itself, but didn’t, and I was the only person in the room who’d run a karaoke night. This turn of events did, however, offer me the opportunity to sing alternative lyrics to New York, New York.
I wanna wake up in a hotel that doesn’t stink.
There is, I’m sure, a moral to this story, but I have no idea what it is. There are, however, recipes. Now the cold weather has abandoned us, there is probably no need for these winter warmers, but feel free to make them anyway.
mwah
ad/.
Gluehwein
1 bottle red wine (cheap but not nasty)
1 cup sugar
1 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
1 tbsp orange rind
1 cinnamon stick
handful of cloves
Brandy
Put everything in a pot and gently heat. Don’t boil. Simmer for about an hour. Strain out the lumpy bits and let it sit somewhere for a couple of days. Reheat and serve in mugs, over a dash of brandy.
Poon
This is the best food ever. Like stodgy nachos. With the added bonus revolting innuendo as you describe how you are eating the poon.
Frozen oven chips (those beer battered ones are good)
Bacon (chopped into bits)
Cheese
Gravy
Cook the chips until they’re ready. Cover with bacon and cheese. Grill until cheese melts. Pour gravy on top. Push your face into it and devour.
Green Guide Spotlight by Adam
Posted Tue, 17 Jul 2007 17:35:58 EST
Here is an article I wrote for the Green Guide in The Melbourne Age (Published Thursday, July 12, 2007)  Carrying a torch for the Doctor
Spotlight
Adam Richard
I used to think Doctor Who was gay. My people, the homosexual community, will frequently claim people to be gay for the most spurious of reasons, but I thought I had the Doctor pegged (so to speak). Despite the parade of scantily clad ladies traipsing around his Tardis, he never leaned in for a kiss. Also, I distinctly remember an episode in which the Brigadier got quite flustered watching a belly dancer, while the Doctor rolled his eyes in contempt. Proof enough, I thought, that Doctor Who was batting for my team. Well, until he went ga-ga over Billie Piper and pashed Madame de Pompadour last year. Next you'll be telling me Darth Vader isn't a transvestite. I was sure all that leather and cape-wearing meant his helmet was hiding eyelashes and lipstick.
When Doctor Who returned in 2005, Billie Piper eyelash fluttering aside, alternative sexuality managed to creep aboard the Tardis in the form of Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman), an omnisexual rogue time agent. Now Captain Jack's character has been spun-off into his own series, kind of like action-Frasier, and he reappears in the new sci-fi/horror/ fantasy series, Torchwood.
Torchwood begins by following plucky Welsh police constable Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) as she investigates the investigators of the paranormal and extraterrestrial. Through her, we meet the mysterious Torchwood team, who lay claim to being "outside the government, beyond the police". Headed by Captain Jack, who has developed a fetish for dressing in World War II army gear, the team consists of the sulky ugly/sexy Owen (Bleak House's Burn Gorman), the nerdy/sexy Toshiko (Ab Fab's Naoko Mori) and the blandly sexy lanto (Gareth David-Lloyd).
They are all, in some way, sexy. The show tries desperately to be sexy. It's populated with sexy aliens that suck the life out of you; a purple smoke alien that makes you have sex until you explode; a sexy woman from the past who wants to have sex; and a Cyberwoman who seems not to have finished getting dressed before going on a killing spree. On top of all this alien sex, all the main characters experience at least one same-sex encounter before the end of the first series. (Oh yeah, nerdy pants here has seen them all).
Having discovered Torchwood through my love of Doctor Who, I found the visceral depiction of gory, violent horror to be a shock at first because nobody bleeds in Doctor Who. Having said that, nothing on-screen is any more or less confronting than the splatter in Heroes. The graphic violence is not all that differentiates Torchwood from its progenitor, however; it's the sex. Nobody ever had sex in the Tardis, but everybody has sex in Torchwood, almost all the time. It's a wonder they ever get around to investigating anything paranormal or extraterrestrial. Even with all the sex and violence, Torchwood is a lot of fun, if only because it is borrowing from some very fun sources, and not just Doctor Who. The city of Cardiff in Wales, where Torchwood is set, sits on a rift in time and space, and all sorts of oogly-boogly business falls through the rift into the middle of town, which is not unlike the town of Sunnydale in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, built on top of something known as The Hellmouth. The investigation into matters unknown harks back to '90s zeitgeist series The X-Files, except they've taken the sexual tension between Scully and Mulder and consummated it five ways.
Don't go into Torchwood expecting "grown-up Doctor Who". In some respects it is, but not grown-up enough. Torchwood is only on the cusp of adulthood. Like a 17-year-old, it's capable of inflicting pain and eliciting pleasure; it's just not exactly sure how.
As the series trundled along, the characters annoyed me, confused me and then began to charm me. By the end of 13 episodes, I was dreading their departure. I started the show in lust with the cheesy Captain Jack, but within weeks my attention turned to the brooding Owen. (How I became infatuated with the grotesque Mr Guppy from Bleak House, I'll never know.)
Torchwood is a bit of spooky sexy sci-fi fun. Like all British drama, it still has a bit of tongue lodged in its cheek, so it's not as overwrought as Supernatural or Lost Plus it features scads of girlon-girl action for the boys, boyon-boy action for the girls and boy-on-girl-on-purple-smokecreature action for the exhaust fans that might be watching.
• While Adam Richard is an employee of Channel Ten, he in no way feels compelled to be nice about it. He will tell you, until your eyes bleed, no doubt, how much he is loathing this year's ham-fisted attempt at Big Brother, and that no matter how pretty the boys on Supernatural are, he just can't bring himself to care about their allegedly scary plight.
Torchwood screens on Mondays at 9.4Opm on Ten. Doctor Who screens on Saturdays at 7.30pm on the ABC.
Harry Potter and the Odour of the Feetstink by Adam
Posted Thu, 12 Jul 2007 15:54:40 EST
It's like I work at Mad Magazine with that crazy title. No, here is my review of the latest Harry Potter for those of you who may have missed it on Mix 94.5's The Big Couch (Fridays 4-7pm) in Perth or B105's Labrat, Camilla & Stav (Thursdays 6-9am) in Brisbane. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Rated M
It’s hard for me to be objective about Harry, because I absolutely love the books. To be honest, the first two movies were a bit dull, in fact I’ve never made it through The Chamber of Secrets without nodding off. Even when I watched it as an inhouse movie in a hotel room once at midday. Something about that giant snake always puts me to sleep. The last two, however, Prisoner of Azkaban and Goblet of Fire, were corkers. Fun rides that beautifully captured the spirit of the books.
Order of the Phoenix was the longest of the Harry Potter books, and it shows in this movie. They have tried to cram so much in, none of the scenes or characters get much room to breathe. If you are going to the movie just to see the book on the screen, you’ll be quite satisfied, but if you are expecting something of the calibre of what has gone before, you’ll be a bit disappointed.
So many of the great actors and characters from the series are given very short shrift – especially the delightful Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley, who has been such a centrepiece of the series. I was also disappointed that not much was done with the sublime Ralph Feinnes as the evil Voldemort. Perhaps his busy schedule in the Qantas toilet entertaining Hostitutes prevented him from being available for filming. Even the much publicised addition to the cast of Helena Bonham-Carter, barely gets more than six or seven minutes on screen. Other casualties of the rushed screenplay include Gary Oldman’s Sirius Black, Emma Thompson’s Professor Trelawney, Alan Rickman’s sinister Snape, and the superb Michael Gambon as Dumbledore.
What really caused me concern was director David Yates not having any room to maneuver. The skilled director of high quality BBC dramas State of Play and The Girl in the Café, had his hand forced by the needs of a 20 minute closing scene filmed in the IMAX 3D process, and the “tick all the boxes” script. What starts as a bleak and frightening film early on, ends up confusing and rushed. The ending, while spectacular in 3D on that gigantic IMAX screen, is so dark and murky, it's hard to tell what is happening much of the time. The only shining light is Academy Award Nominee Imelda Staunton as the hateful Dolores Umbridge. All sweetness and light in her pink twin-sets, her girly giggle hides a heart of hatred and intolerance, and when the time comes for her inevitable come-uppance, you will cheer heartily. What might not make you cheer, however, is the level of scares. The opening scenes with the terrifying Dementors will scare adults, and little kids will almost definitely be horrified. It's rated M for a reason. Then there is the kiss. It has been talked about frequently since it appeared in the book, and the chance to put it on the screen was always going to be an important moment. Amidst all the other frenetic moments in this edition of Potter, it just becomes another thing that happens. For all intents and purposes, this is a two hour trailer for a book. Afterward, I felt like I’d been reading a Cliff’s Notes primer for a book I needed to read before my exams.
Mix 3½/5 - B105 6½/10
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