make-it-stop
Mood:  spacey
Now Playing: Boxcar Slim And The Plastic Bleach Jug Experience
Heh heh...looks like you're "still Sharp(e)", PFaz.

Good point about remembering to bring your gigantic T-shirt along when staying over with strangers who might try to seduce you. Richard looks more like an Extra Medium to me. :)

I've been watching the final Futurama series on DVD (which bills itself as "Hee Haw, with lasers!"). BEST.SHOW.EVER. I keep having to rewind because I'm laughing too hard to hear the dialogue. Fry, with his red coiff and gee-whiz earnestness, could easily pass for a teenage David. How can you not love a show where, instead of Half & Half, people put Third & Third & Third in their coffee? Fox should never have cancelled it.

Pfazzzz
Mood:  sharp
Now Playing: Dulcimer polka
We've learned so much from Richard and Co. What about:

1. Never daydream and iron at the same time.

2. Walk very slowly when accompanying the elderly.

3. Men should always tell the "fart" jokes.

4. When sleeping in a strange house, always wear your XXXXXXXL t-shirt.

5. Louis Jordan played some extremely cool music.

6. Chickens are wonderful...

make_it_stop
Mood:  loud
Now Playing: Zither Hits of 1978
What kind of a mood is "loud"?

As PFaz aptly points out below, "A Little Bit of Soul" contains many, many nuggets of life-altering wisdom. Rabbis could spend centuries debating the ethics of keeping chickens in cages, and performing Richard Shorkinghorn midrash (I think that's the word for it, when you sit around and argue scripture).

Here's some stuff I learned from "Little Bit Of Soul":

1. The urge to eat onion rings off your fingers in private is normal and universal.

2. Try to arrange for murders to take place in the bathroom. Cleanup is a little easier on tile.

3. Don't drink an entire bottle of cognac in one sitting. (Two sittings should do it.)

4. Stephen Hawking is hilarious.

5. Careful when rolling around in cow pastures.

6. When playing Charades, stand there and make a squinty face so your teammates will know exactly what you're acting out.

PFaz
Mood:  irritated
Now Playing: Waltzing Matilda the witch
How about...

Little Bit of Soul...

1. All you need to do to be the economy big wig for a country is to say that the sacrifices of the last 18 months have paid off. That and keep an index card with you at all times that has scribbles and little houses drawn on it.

2. Chickens can roam freely about your house and furniture without messing...(not true)

3. Nice guys dont always finish last.

4 Even as a nerdy geek with hornrim glasses and crooked teeth, David Wenham is incredibly sweet and adorable.

5. Love happens in the strangest places.

6. Tennis outfits are indeed proper for satanic rituals.

7. Kate with an Australian accent sounds like "Kite"

make...it....STOP
Mood:  rushed
Now Playing: Meatloaf and Caruso Sing The Cole Porter Songbook
I'm in a Robert Fulghum sorta mood today....

Things I've Learned From Watching David Wenham Movies

Better Than Sex

1. In Australia, all TV channels continuously broadcast footage of mating animals in primetime.

2. Lots of people fly halfway around the world for three days with no set plans, other than to attend a party and watch football on the telly.

3. Bedhead is a physical impossibility when your hair is already tousled and omni-directional. Use gel pre-emptively.

4. Wilted food may be recycled as art.

5. True love can survive an unpartitioned bathroom.

6. Love happens at messy and inconvenient times.

Lord Of The Rings

1. Show your quality.

2. If you've got an insane, verbally abusive pyromaniac dad, avoid being unconscious in his vicinity.

3. Always ask questions first before shooting.

4. Listen to the wizard. He is wise.

5. Love happens at messy and inconvenient times.

Van Helsing

1. Horse-drawn carriages spontaneously explode upon striking the bottom of a ravine.

2. If you're on the verge of taking Holy Orders, cram in as much swearing and womanizing as possible before it's too late.

3. Never be the first to stick your hand in a viscous material.

4. If it smells like wet dog, chances are it's a wet dog. Though it may not be the type of wet dog you envision.

The Bank

1. Never keep old school textbooks lying around, because someday you might have a one-night stand and she might find the textbook and use it to unlock the secret of your entire life.

2. Faxes should be sent face up so that the audience can read them. Even though this will result in blank pages at the other end. (thanks, Tezz!)

3. Serious number-crunching software always has enough spare front-end processing power to draw pretty fractals and graphs.

4. Linen tablecloths are like Post-It Notes. Restaurants provide them free of charge for that very purpose. Otherwise that white surface area just goes to waste. Scribble away!

5. You're probably better off keeping your money under the mattress.


I'll add on to this list as I think of more...

PFAz
Mood:  d'oh
Now Playing: God of Anger


Thats better...

PrincessFazzzz
Mood:  caffeinated
Now Playing: Piglets Big Adventure
Okay, it's raining. It's Saturday. It's raining. Did I say it was raining...AGAIN!??? Why does it have to rain every day? Why does it have to be wet and sticky??? (it's sticky!). I hate it!!! Only watching the STiff trailer repeatedly yesterday got me through, thanks to MIS> :D maybe a picture will cheer me up...

make_it_stop
Now Playing: Red Sox vs. White Sox (in the laundry, that is...)
PFaz, somehow you'll have to grin and bear it...People have lived through worse than Sharpe videos. Just close your eyes, and think of England.

Well, David's pizzas are completely safe from me. Everybody has one "horror food" that they'd die rather than eat, and olives are it for me. Yellow, green, brown, black...they're all highly toxic, fleshy death orbs. I realize that people do eat them, and they are considered food in some parts of the world, but no olive shall ever voluntarily cross my lips. I'd happily eat floor sweepings instead.

Strangely enough, I cook with olive oil constantly and use it in salads. It's the little spherical containers I have a problem with.

On a less gruesome topic, I donated blood this morning. The questionnaire is getting longer and longer. Now they're screening for SARS and West Nile virus, as well as AIDS, hepatitis, syphilis, Cruezfeldt-Jakob (aka Mad Cow), hemophilia, insulin use, drug use, prostitution, etc. They didn't ask me whether I'd eaten any olives recently, which they should have, IMO. Recipients should be tested for oliveglobulin compatibility. What if I'm in a car accident, they give me a tranfusion, and I get a terrible reaction from someone who ate an entire jar of tapenade before donating?

PrincessFAz
Mood:  party time!
Now Playing: the field...
Okay, I am preparing for a visit by my older sister, Boromira. She is going to drink wine and watch all the Sharpes. I love Sharpe, I do, and I love Bean, I really do, just not as much as David. And I must say, after watching hours of Sharpe and hearing the sighs, gasps, chuckles, etc over by my sister, it gets a little old. Give me just a few minutes of Richard Shorkinghorn or a quick viewing of the VH interview, please!!!! Guess I'll have one or ten drinks, extra olives on my pizza, and grit my teeth...



Faramir, give me the strength...

The ROTK Video Game
Hm, that was one odd morning. I still haven't figured out what to do about the car key. (See previous entry, below.)

In the meantime, let's talk about the Return of the King video game from Electronic Arts. Faramir is one of the secret characters that can be unlocked, along with Pippin and...uh...some guy....and some other guy...... *makes mental note to do better research next time* There's an interview with David Wenham that is accessible to players who reach the topmost level. I've seen transcripts around, and am trying to track one down so I can post it here.

I tried this game out on my sister's laptop at Christmas. It quickly became apparent that I had no chance of ever unlocking any secret characters, let alone seeing the interview. I was worse than hopeless at it. The sequence of button pushing needed to operate the swords was beyond me. I couldn't even get past level 1. Frodo kept getting carried off by Nazgul. Sam kept falling down, attacking the masonry, or trying to stab Frodo. The dozens of vaguely Faramir-ish Rangers running around the place were also distracting. After several hundred premature deaths, I finally grasped that staying out in the open, beneath the Nazgul, wasn't a good idea. It made the characters weaker and more susceptible to death blows.

Eventually, with only a few severed arteries, I succeeded in herding the characters into the sewers, only to find a metal grate blocking the way. As I hunted in vain for some kind of switch thingy, the screen went black. It was like one of those nightmares where something's chasing you and you can't open the door to get into your house. Or, you're trying to get out of your car and the key snaps in half.

So instead, I've had to rely on the kindness of others to find out what David says in the interview. The gist of it is that he believes Faramir is a good character to unlock because he has an ideal combination of fighting skills. Evidently David succeeds in killing a bad guy, because he holds the controls and yells "Yesss!" Or it could be good acting.

Having now played the game, and compared it to the movie, I have to give super props to David for 1) not stabbing his own men 2) not falling down and twitching when confronted with Orcs at Osgiliath 3) not leading Sam and Frodo into a dead-end grating. It ain't easy remembering to press shift-control-A-tab-left arrow-left arrow-blue-up-delete-tab-space bar-X when the cameras are rolling and the bad guys are in your face.