Have you ever seen Big Love on SBS? It's a fantastic show, and quite eye-opening. However, weird americans and their ways always make for a good giggle. Here's a clip from the US Project Runway - the images ae actually from a rather nasty case where authorities raided a polygamist ranch in Texas (where else) and took children and mothers into custody, but putting all that aside, the PrarieCouture is rather amusing, as is Tim Gunn's suggestions for makeovers.....ballet flats and patent belts might not go down too well with these ferocious looking ladies, methinks.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Celebrity Baby Names
Nicole Richie called her little girl Harlow, which is also cool and a bit glam, but sounds like "harlot". It's lucky little Suri Cruise is so famous already, so she won't have to explain herself ,or her father, all the time. Shiloh? Cute kid (as you'd imagine)...but Silo? Matthew McConaughey and partner welcomed Levi Alves into the world this week. New name for a jean style. Tori Spelling and hubby named their second child, a baby girl, Stella Doreen. Doreen. It's not even retro cool. Seriously, don't parents think of these things before naming their offspring? And shouldn't nurses or whoever writes the names on the birth cards perhaps take responsibility and say, "Are you sure?" Britney's sister Jamie Lynn called her daughter Maddie Briann, which is cute, but you can just see legions of Centrelink queue-workers dropping Eppinee-Rae for Briann. Briann Shania Dakota Doreen, perhaps.
According to http://celebritybabynamesblog.com/ Jagger is a poopular new baby name, after great lips Mick himself. What if the kids decides he likes J-Lo instead? I'm not saying the world should be full of Sarahs and James' and Emilys and Michaels. Variety is the spice of life. Celeb baby names, however, are more like the fruit loops.
Pic from Celebrity Gossip .
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Tasmania: Explore the Possibilities
I got thinking about this island I actualy don't mind calling home, after seeing other parts of the world and appreciating the sometimes clear air and ble skies and the fact it only takes 10 mins from the most outer suburbs to get to the CBD. I also read a hilarious article in Frankie (YES a review is coming, I'm just taking my sweet time reading the actual mag first) by Justin Hazelwood, who grew up in Burnie ("a cross between Summer Bay and Chernobyl") where he talk about the unifying effect of isolation. It's a corker of an article. Yes Tasmanians are the butt of all jokes, but in a weird way it sort of brings us together with a type of "ruffian pride". He writes: "In the high school of Australia, Tasmania lurks down by the bins, watching beautiful Melbourne and Sydney laugh and frolic, hoping even weird kid Adelaide will sit next to it at lunchtime". And to be honest, on the world stage Australia gets similar jibes thrown at it: "the cool kids hanging behind the gym - London, New York, Berlin. And where's Australia? With New Zealand, playing Squatter in the library...again". A favourite joke among Poms (who by the way generally don't realise we call them that, so to really confuse sunburnt backpackers please call them by this moniker) when going through customs to get into Aus, is: "Do you have a criminal record?" "No, I didn't realise I still needed one". So essentially, Tasmania is a microcosm of our fair country. Stand up and be proud of it (as long as no-one is watching). Hazelwood's article concludes: "You can take the man out of Tasmania, but then it's just 'Tasia', which sounds like a small Asian electronics company." He's also written a bewdy of a state anthem:
Australians please let us rejoin/For it is one degree/With oldies loyal and health in turmoil/Our shops are shut by three/Our land is ground into nature's chips/Forestry's stripped us bare/It's a mystery gays were allowed to stay/Advance Tasmania where?
It should be our new tourism slogan - this is what we are, it sucks a bit but it's not too bad. Is it better then where you're from, hmmm? Actualities, not possibilities.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Home-style cooking is not just for Nannas
Thus, here is a yummy winter casserole-thingy, tried and tested this very evening (with success, especially with my 2 year old). I did have to make a few alterations because Coles were inexplicably out of both garlic and zucchini, but it's a relatively healthy veggie and protein intake:
Mediterranean Chicken Bake*
Preparation Time: 15 minutes
Cooking Time: 60 minutes
Ingredients** (serves 6)
1 tbs olive oil
6 small (about 600g) chicken drumsticks
6 (about 1.5kg) chicken thigh cutlets
1kg chat (small coliban) potatoes, halved
2 ripe tomatoes, finely chopped
95g (1/2 cup) kalamata olives
2 garlic cloves, peeled, thinly sliced
2 sprigs fresh rosemary, leaves picked
125ml (1/2 cup) dry white wine
Sea salt flakes
Freshly ground black pepper
Method
Preheat oven to 200°C. Heat the oil in a 3L (12-cup capacity) flameproof, ovenproof baking dish over medium heat. Add the chicken drumsticks and cook, turning occasionally, for 5 minutes or until browned all over. Transfer to a plate and cover with foil to keep warm. Repeat with the chicken thigh cutlets.
Add the potato to the dish and cook, turning occasionally, for 5 minutes or until golden. Remove from heat. Add the chicken to the potato in the dish and top with tomato, olives and garlic. Sprinkle with rosemary. Pour over the wine. Season with salt and pepper.
Bake in oven for 45 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through and potato is tender. Serve immediately.
**I'm a bit of a chicken-racist in that I only eat the white breastmeat, but you can slice up some fillets instead of the thighs/cutlets and it works very nicely. Plus, use less normal potato and subsitute with a bit of sweet potato/carrot/zucchini, and chuck in some bacon and onion before the potato for a bit more flavour, and 1/2 cup chicken stock works instead of white wine if you live in Tassie and can't get grog at the supermarket. Oh, and if you use a much as this recipe suggests you'd be feeding 6 very fat people. I made less than 1/3 and we have leftovers for tommorow.
I have a post coming up about the always delicious Frankie magazine, but this month they published a very simple scone recipe that Charlotte and I tried on the last stuck-indoors rainy afternoon. If you don't mind little floury footprints, handpronts and streaks all over your kitchen, baking is what all the cool kids do after playgroup. Frankie picked the brain of Victoria's CWA president for this recipe, so you know it's hearty:
Ingredients
2 cups self-raising flour
1/2 cup cream
1/2 cup milk, more as needed
A pinch of salt
Sift flour and salt together - if you dont have a sifter, just stir it around a bit. Admire the little holes that salt makes in flour. Make a well in the middle of the flour, and mix in the milk and cream with a knife (get a grownup to do it if you're prone to stabbing). Stir it til it's all mixed in. Turn the dough onto a floured board or benchtop and knead it gently - don't let it get too sticky. Pat it out to about 2cm thick and cut out squares or diamonds with a scone cutter or knife (I alwasy thought scones were round, so being the true rebel that I am made neat circles with a glass. Hmph.) Bake in a fairly hot overn for 10-15mins, then leave to cool.
Serve with jam and whipped cream, or butter, or Nutella, or whatever you please....add caster sugar, dates or sulatnas for a sweet scone, or cheese, herbs, mustard or curry powder for savoury. Savoury not too crash hot with jam.
For obvious reasons cooking might not catch on with the model set backstage, but that doesn't make it uncool. It's therapeutic and last night Gordon Ramsay was on telly swearing at some butchers as usual, but he inspired me to google for some recipes. **Which admittedly is where I found the Chicken Bake. Cooking: F*** Yeah!
Monday, July 7, 2008
Newspaper Hats at Chanel
Pic coutrtesy of Fashion-ation.net
Do Americans understand Foxy Morons?
I'm not completely convinced that ye olde muffin top will be making an appearance in this series. And, gosh Kath looks SO wacko, man. Gumnut earrings? I think not. Ok, in all fairness most Americans probably wouldn't wear gumnut earrings, but series (serieses? series'?) like Kath & Kim work in societies that, in the mainstream, can laugh at themselves. Unlike, for example, Americans, who generally project an image of being so self conscious about being "perfect" that regardless of how poor/deranged/in the shit a character in movies/tv shows are meant to be, they still have new outfits each scene, they're above-average looking at least, and everything turns out ok in the end. The US version of The Office is, at best, horrific. Britons have enough self-deprecating irony and dry sense of humour to make it work. Americans, apparently, do not. At least the stars are prepared for the inevitable onslaught. Says Blair: "Some people are really protective and horrified that we're doing it in the United States. It's a case of, 'How could you? Oh my god, you might ruin it'. But what's to ruin? You're still going to have your great show in Australia - we're just paying homage to it. Nothing takes away from the original." Fair call, but I guess the general question in Oz is: why? Why do they want to adapt something so Osstralian and try and mould it to fit their own culture? I guess it was over in the States where Ugg boots first became fashionable, rather than simply comfy slippers as originally intended.
The writers of the US Office needed to rework the show so the jokes were obvious. Perhaps they considered some hilarious pie throwing incidents. It's so far from the UK Office that you have to wonder why they bothered anyway. And can you imagine an American Sharon? Nope. And thus it is clear: if Americans can't appreciate the humour of the original, then why develop another?
Friday, July 4, 2008
Things That Piss Me Off Volume 3
1). Katie Holmes pisses me off, well not so much her personally, but her "brand", or "image", if you will. I do feel sorry for her because she always looks so...careful. You can't really fault her style, except for the fact it doesn't look like it's hers and she always looks very choreographed. It pisses me off that I even think about these things, because really,who cares and why does it matter, but I guess if you look into it it's a mildly interesting study on the effects of fame. Dawson's Creek used to piss me off too but I can't help thinking I'd rather hang out with pre-Tom K-Ho - wouldn't you? Of course, when it is suitable PR, Katie is BFF with Posh, and anyone in their right mind would rather hang out with the Beckhams, because they quite simply rock, despite the fact they can't sing, act or play soccer (apparently). Posh is awesomeness on a stick (or more accurately, a stick of awesomeness) and Katie should perhaps ask Tom if she can please be allowed to go visit the Spice household more often, and thus alleviate the chronically miserable look she sports every time she's Papped:
(pic: JustJared)
2). Tracksuits. Are. Evil. Soaked. In. Polar. Fleece. I know they're comfy and I know they are mildly practical if you are working out or taking some light exercise, but there are an awful lot of people who stop at Coles/the bank/school activities/go shopping/go out for dinner wearing them. TOO MANY people. I shall have to ask K-Rudd to start taxing them. Especially fat people who wear them and are obviously not on their way to or from the gym. It raises the bar in my personal pissoff-ometer because it just screams "I don't care" or worse, "I think I look good because I matched my lippy to my tracksuit". If you're going to bother with makeup then please bother with a nice pair of jeans and a top. At least. It also screams "I have to do much important stuff like the washing and unload the dishwasher and make lunches that I don't have time to dress up". Without meaning to sound completely lazy/snobby, it's not that important (are you reading this Mum?). Leave the bed unmade and dress yourself up a little, just see if it makes you feel better about yourself and makes your husband/partner look at you a bit differently. I wish that going out was a bit more of a special event, like in Europe, and everyone wore hats. A baseball cap to match your tracksuit doesn't count. Nor does wearing jeans with actual running shoes - you don't run in jeans so why pair them with buggery ugly Nikes? (this has been a celeb trend of late and very disturbing, so when I finish writing letters to Trinny and Susannah there'll be more on this).
3). The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger's last film, is being released soon and "by all reports his performance is amazing". Maybe it is, but I bet your bollocks it's just the press circuit cashing in on his untimely death. If he was still alive would it be lauded? Will he be given a post-carking it Oscar just so they can really stir up some cash? It makes me mildly ill because it's such blatant exploitation. I KNOW I should be less naive but really...blergh. See the movie if you would've seen it anyway and be your own judge, please.
4). This has been lightly touched upon before, but I cannot tell you how annoying/rude/violence-inducing it is when somebody WHO IS STILL IN THEIR CAR parks over 2 parking spots and then just sits there twiddling their thumbs. Particularly when there are no other parking spots within a hundred mile radius and your car isn't a Hummer and therefore will fit nicely into a regular park. This doesn't mean that people with Hummers thus have permission to park in 2 spots, it just means that if they have a Hummer they probably also have a gun, a rug made out of a real bear and a sister-wife and thus do not respond positively to polite yet firm notes under their windscreen wipers.
5). I send and receive hundreds of emails every day. I thus have alot of practice in e-etiquette (ie not typing your whole email in caps lock, using punctuation, including the odd ! or :) to add some tone) but apparently there are may poor sods out there who find emailing as scary as your Nanna finds the answering machine. You know, she rings and hears the machine, hangs up, practices or jots down what she needs to say, and then rings back to leave a concise yet slightly bewildered message. Countless people have sent what are very blunt emails, with minimal punctuation, and upon speaking to them in person I find they are in fact very lovely and friendly. Their conversations are littered with ! and :) so why can't they include one or two in their emails? Note for customers: if you use the words "please", "thankyou" and try to make you email as friendly as possible, you will get better service (I'm not talking exclusively about FrockYou here, trust me). Rude people generate curt responses - if you type that way presumably you read that way so precious :) shall not be sent your way. Of course there is the other end of the scale where people send a thousand cyber hugs and kisses and so many smiley's they have probably breached the yellow Happy Face copyright, but at least you get the point that they are happy people who probably brush their teeth regularly and don't think they and their issue is THE most important thing on the planet. Or in cyber-space. Smiley faces make your inbox prettier!
I hope it rains this weekend because I want to go stomping in mud puddles, have a hot shower and then curl up with a hot chocolate. Now that I've vented my week's anger, I feel calm, settled and ready to give money to those people who stand on street corners with collection cans and rolls of stickers. Well, if I can find a park nearby and they're not wearing tracksuits, that is.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Independence Day is not just for Yankees
With Independence Day in the United States fast approaching, I would like to share an event with you that commemorates an independence of a different kind for all Australians. Independence Day in the US is a commemoration of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, in which they declared independence from Great Britain. Phew. That’s a lot of declarations and independences in one paragraph, but how else do you say it? On July 21, 1942, several thousand Japanese forces under General Tomitaro Horii landed at Gona, on the north coast of Papua New Guinea. Over the next four months they were to fight a brutal war against the Aussies and Papua New Guineans for what, they hoped, would give them free access to the capital, Port Moresby, and ultimately, this wide brown land of ours. Of course, they didn’t bank on the strength, courage and endurance of our troops and of course, they were out fought while trying to take Port Moresby. Their eventual withdrawal, completed on the 16th of November, 1942, helped to ensure that Australia would be free from the scourge of invasion from the East, and able to develop as the country that we know it today.
A couple of months ago I had the privilege of walking the Kokoda Track in Papua New Guinea. Stretching 96 kilometres over the spine of the Owen Stanley Ranges, it was the scene of much of the fighting that took place in the grab for Port Moresby. It holds a special place in the hearts of many Australians, who these days have relatives who fought and died in PNG, but also because of what it represents to us. In 1942, we were still finding our feet on the world’s stage, and trying to cement our place within its context. We had fought, for Great Britain, in Gallipoli, now here we were again, fighting an enemy that was much closer to our shores and who represented a very, very real danger not only to our borders but also our national identity.
Kokoda was tough. Words cannot describe how difficult it was. But to put it into perspective, those of us walking it were not fighting an often unseen enemy, hiding in that thick jungle and waiting to take us out. We battled heat, altitude, head colds, constant rain, sore feet, muscles and shoulders, and engaged in a never ending battle of wills with ourselves. We did not carry up to and over 50 kilos of weaponry and supplies. We slept at night, ate 3 times a day, applied our insect repellant, swallowed our malaria tablets and did not even consider taking a drink of water that wasn’t treated with purifiers. Our troops had none of those things. Poorly trained, supplied, equipped and dressed in the ridiculous khaki army uniform, a hangover from the Middle East where there, they blended in but stuck out like sore thumbs in the jungles of PNG, they overcame an enormous and viciously cruel Japanese force with a tenacity that is beyond me.
Memorials are dotted all along the track in remembrance of those soldiers and of course, the remarkable Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels, without whose help the Australian forces would probably have floundered. But by far the most extraordinary is the memorial at Isurava, situated within a day of Kokoda Village. For four days here, the undermanned but incredibly proud and brave 39th Battalion, under Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Honner, stood resolute against 6000 crack Japanese combat troops, inflicting large losses and throwing the Japanese timetable for crossing Kokoda off track, giving time for Australian reinforcements to be brought up. Today, four large marble pillars at Isurava represent the characteristics most reminiscent of the Australian soldiers on Kokoda – Courage, Endurance, Mateship and Sacrifice.
And so I saw in Anzac day at Bomana War Cemetery in Port Moresby, a mere hour and a half from our shores, and paid a silent tribute to those young Aussie boys and men who gave so much for the freedom we are able to enjoy today. In quiet contemplation, I leave you with the ode –
They shall not grow old, as we who are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Sneaky Peaky Summer Preview: Part 1
First up, the eternally cool One Teaspoon. Remisicient of chilled out Glastonbury styles minus the mud, piss and beer, this range is actually really wearable and a good mix of trend-based pieces and fabulously unique pieces. And the swimwear willl blow your socks off, which is handy, because swimming in socks isn't really recommended.
Obviously a bit too much geek chic-ery going on, and don't stare too long at the bikini model's rib cage or you'll get freaked out, but this range will be stellar and I reckon one of their best yet!
For those of you who haven't fallen for French Kitty's feminine, youthful and vintage-inspired pieces, check out their summer range of togs for serious woooah factor:


Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Shopping is Shite
My shite plate is a vintage find from the back of Nanna's cupboard and hand-painted with "food-safe" ceramic paint. I can't wait to serve up a delicious steaming plate of something, to have the lucky recipient clean their plate and then see those bold black letters staring back at them. It may bias them against what they've just eaten, but it will be funny.
Shite bunny is made in the USA from soft felt and lovingly hand-stitched together. He has a brother, who lives with my brother, the "go F**K yourself" bunny (the toy, not my sibling). They get along great (the toys, not my sibling and the toy).
Get your bollocky plates from Trixiedelicious and Bunnies wot swear from spidercamp . Feck! Arse! Drink!





























