That's Why They Call it Holidays

Tonight I wrote a song with Matt for Soul Survivor. Then I chatted to him and Beck for a while. That was nice.

I came home. Everyone was asleep. It was 11:30pm. I watched an episode of The Wire.

Then I was hungry and I had one episode of The Wire left, ever. So I went to McDonald's, came home, and watched the episode. I'll write about the show later. The food hit the spot. I spilt some tomato sauce on my jeans.

Now it's 2:50am. And I'm probably going to go to bed.

And I'm happy. I can stay up late, watch TV and eat McDonald's whenever I want, because I'm a grown up and I'm on holidays.

Life is good.

Nyyce

It's almost 3am. That's because I've been watching The Wire.

Oh yeah. That's what I'm talkin' about.

Hashtag: QandA

Prime Minister Gillard was on Q and A tonight, and it was a ripper of a show. Gillard was on fire. She did a really impressive performance. Political skills wise, it was kinda like watching John Howard at work, she was that good, plus, unlike with Howard, I didn't feel dirty afterwards.

I'm still not sure I'm a Gillard fan, but I think I have more respect for her. And I agreed with her on most stuff. I enjoyed her pragmatism and willingness to answer questions. I didn't ever really feel like she avoided the questions, even the tough ones. She didn't always seem like she was giving the most genuine answer, when have you ever felt that with pollie?

Even if you don't like Gillard, you can be impressed by some quality question handling, just like I'm impressed by Howard's skills. If you haven't seen the show, go watch it on iview. It was a cracker.

Just so you know, the image isn't from this Qanda, it's from last year, but tonight's one isn't around the web yet.

We're Back

For all those of you who were fans of Podcasting with Howie and Tom, we'll be back. But live on the computer screen. Streaming video right to your computer.

8pm AEST, 25th December 2010. Right here: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/howie-and-tom-live

It'll be better than all your crap presents, but not nearly as good as your good ones.

Sexy Married Time

So I've been thinking, after reading a question in some Christian youth publication, what movies can you think of where you see a married couple having sex? I'm not asking because I'm looking for raunchy sex scenes, only because almost all sex scenes are between couples who are not married.

But actually now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure that's not because Hollywood says married sex is not sexy, but that when sex is generally shown in a film is either because it's a significant moment in a characters journey or it's a bit of character exposition and within married sex isn't generally significant for either of these.

For instance, if there is a sex scene often it's the culmination of a relationship. When two characters have sex they have reached a particular high or low point in their relationship. From there things either plateau or bottom out, depending on whether the sex is seen as a good thing or a bad thing. I'd name some examples but it's in almost every movie. For a married couple this is going to be rare, because sex is going to be a given. The thing which gets commented on will be a couple's lack of sex, which of course cannot be shown through a sex scene (American Beauty may be an exception).

If on the other hand the sex is about character development it's almost always bad or neutral. It says "this character likes sleeping around" (eg the early hot tub scene in Charlie Wilson's War telling us the Mr Wilson has rather loose morals) or "this character has sex" (Havoc's early sex scene perhaps), or "this character has sex and is about to die" (any horror movie in the 80s which was perhaps Hollywood's sex-ed for teens regarding the AIDS crisis).

TV shows on the other hand tend to use sex a little differently. I think you're more likely to have implied sex (eg the pre-sex flirt) between a married couple, usually to show the resolution of whatever issue was between them in that particular story. But they still use sex in much the same way as movies both in plot points and character exposition/development.

From what I can tell in all this Hollywood isn't out to undermine married sex, they are out to tell a story, and show stories that we're interested in. Sex between a married couple just isn't vital enough to story or character in Hollywood to give it screen time. Sex outside of marriage is rarely frowned upon, unless it's adultery but even that is often glamourised. The sin of Hollywood, in my view, is not that it sets out to promote bad sexual behaviour, it just gives us what we want. And we, the public, want interesting sex and married sex just isn't good enough.

That said, some movies and TV shows that I can think of which have married sex as a plot point:

300 - Leonidas and his wife make love before he goes out to battle.
Mad Men - Don and Betty sometimes make love, although we're pretty much always aware that Don is cheating on Betty so it's never a really positive moment.
Friday Night Lights - Coach Taylor and Tami often talk about it and flirt with each other and it's always positive. On the flipside there is a whole episode in season one about their daughter Julie not losing her virginity. It's quite the morally conscious show.

That's all I can think of. But to tell you the truth, I generally try and avoid the films which have heaps of sex in them, and the ones I do see with sex in them, I tend to forget the sex, so I'm sure there are much better examples out there.

Can you think of others?

Qanda

I went to see Q&A getting filmed last night with Howie and Dingo in Studio 22 at the ABC.

On the show was Liberal Senator Corey Bernardi, Clare Bowditch, Miriam Lyons, Mitch Grady and Maxine McKew. They were a good group. Everyone spoke rather well. Bernadi and McKew just sounded like politicians who can never say anything much except for the party line. Bowditch spoke like an artist about "listening to your inner ear" and "speaking from the heart", but I generally agreed with her. However, the winner of the night, in my view, was Mitch Grady. He's an "aspiring Liberal" whatever that means, but he was smart, persuasive, and spoke very well. I hope he doesn't become a politician because he won't be allowed to speak well anymore.

It was a rather rowdy crowd. I had some young Liberals in front of me who would only listen to Bernardi and spent the rest of the night muttering that everyone else was an idiot and should shut up. I wanted to kick them in the back of the head. But I didn't because Jesus would not be pleased.

The largest applause of the night followed Corey Bernardi's explanation of why he wants to ban the burqa: "If we think that we’re not going to have a problem in 20 years as the burqa becomes more prevalent, I think we’ve got to think again and we’ve got to nip it in the bud now and say, “Enough is enough. We have a different culture, a different society here, one that is open where you can see people’s faces and you can communicate effectively with others."

He says his argument stems from people using the burqa as a disguise to commit a robbery in Sydney. It seems like a rather absurd reason to ban a burqa, it's not like there's a campaign out there to ban ski-masks and motorcycle helmets. This has to be about more than just public safety. Otherwise you can just ban the wearing of face coverings in banks, police stations and at airport security screening.

It worried me that there was such a depth of approving response in the crowd to the idea of banning the burqa. I'm disturbed by any attempts to limit religious freedom in our country. Just because I'm not a Muslim doesn't mean I want to stop them expressing their faith in the way they believe is right.

Mitch responded pretty well when he said: "I think there’s a very fine line between a country who, through a law, interferes with somebody’s choice by banning the burqa and a country who, through a law, interferes with somebody’s choice by forcing them to wear a burqa... When we’re having these debates, we need to go back to first principles. When do we ban something in a western liberal democracy? ...We have to accept that in a Western liberal democracy we all have rights and freedoms and choices and that those rights are not granted at the whim of the state but they’re granted to us on the basis that we have innate integrity as a human being and so what it essentially means is that rights in our society must apply axiomatically. You don’t need a reason to give somebody a right but you do need a damn good reason to take it away."

The issue of Rudd's back flip on using government funds to pay for political advertising in the mining taxes debate came up. Corey scored some easy points in that one, because poor Maxine is stuck trying to defend something which is clearly the result of Rudd's lack of integrity and by trying to make it out as being in the public interest.

Once again Mitch put it well: "What I find interesting about this debate is that the government seems to think that if somebody expresses a point of view that’s different to theirs, then that is misinformation. That’s not - it’s not misinformation, it’s an argument and as a government you need to be prepared that other people are going to have different points of view. Now, the government has no shortage of mechanisms available to get its message out there: political journalists and what not. If you want to air a political advertisement, then that should be paid for by political parties and nobody is stopping the Labor Party from submitting an ad defending that policy. But the government should not be - whether it was Howard and WorkChoices, whether it was Labor and the mining tax, the government should not be spending money to defend policy and it’s very different to swine flu, which had a clear public benefit. This is a benefit that only serves to try and keep Kevin Rudd in power."

To which the Liberal Senator responded "Hear, hear!" I think he may have only listened to the last line and missed the bit where Grady stuck the boot in Howard.

All up it was a fun night. Probably most fun was being part of live television, I love live TV. And I love politics. But live TV is 1000 times better.

I think I might go back.

Smallest Winner

I watched The Biggest Loser finale tonight. It inspired me to lose weight. But first I need to put some weight on so I have some to lose. So tomorrow I'm going on a trans-fat diet with sugar for snacks.

(I think there's a Soul Survivor/KYCK blog in me, popping out soon.)

Telly

I have two TV shows that I am much in love with at the moment:

Friday Night Lights



I was talking to some people from my old Church about this show the other night. I felt all original because I've "discovered" a TV show that no-one knows about. And then one of them said "Is that the show about teenagers and quarter-backs?" I was so disappointed, because it's been advertised all over Foxtel, I'm totally unoriginal.

Still, I can't let unoriginality stop me.

I also found out that it's a show for women.

I can't let that stop me either.

It's a good show. Well acted, well shot, good story, well written, rather believable. It's show about a Texan high school football team. The town is obsessed with football. The politics that surround it, and the pressure that is put on the players and coaches to win every game is phenomenal.

The football coach is kinda like a Jed Bartlett for teenagers. He keeps being inspiring and kind hearted, though he acts all tough. I want to be like the coach. I think he should be model for youth ministers every where. Plus he has a really good relationship with his wife.

I've been eating the show up, even though it's for women.

The Wire



I had been hanging out to watch this show for a while. Ryan had convinced me that it was meant to be excellent. I had been resisting him because when he said The Wire I thought of The Shield and that guy with the bald head doesn't look like someone I'd want to watch a TV show about. He looks too much like B-Grade School Principal. But, funnily enough The Shield is not The Wire so the small eyed, bald guy isn't in it.

What is in the show is excellent. The show is about a police task force investigating a drug dealing operation in Baltimore. The whole show is just focusing on this one case. I love that, while most shows deal with one case per episode, this one takes a whole season for one case and doesn't even wrap things up in that. It's like real police work, I'm guessing. But I'm not real police.

The show is rather depressing in it's depiction of the cops. Everyone is corrupt. Even the heroes are liable to break the rules to get the job done. People just want to clear cases and look good rather than actually do real police work.

The drug dealers on the other hand often have friendlier characters, until they shoot their cousin in the head or something.

It's the script, characters, acting, plot are all amazing. Plus it's about cops and robbers. I think this show could be the best television show ever made.

You really should watch it.

Skins

I watched the first four episodes of Skins last night. I'd been thinking about watching the show for over a year, since some of the crew in my small group told me to watch it. They loved it.

I wasn't feeling overly excited about the show, I thought it might just be a depressing show about sex, drugs and teenagers, designed to shock and titillate rather than say anything worthwhile. I was prepared to not watch much.

But the show isn't half-bad. It's kinda like a naughties, TV series of Trainspotting but less depressing. Each episode focuses on one of the characters in the group. It's teenagers dealing with eating disorders, falling in love, dysfunctional families, making dumb decisions. Pretty typical teenage stuff, if not a bit heightened in frequency and density for television.

And while there is a lot of talk in the show about sex and drugs, they seem to be just aspects of the character's lives, rather than the focus of the stories, or just devices to get people to watch. The show doesn't feel exploitative or deliberately provocative at all.

What's really cool is that the show's writers have an average age of 21. So it's written by people who know what it's like to live the reality of these characters. The age of the writers does explain some of the humour and surreal characters that pop up through out the show. Every now and again it's gets a little HSC Drama. But it's never too much to be anything more than a mild distraction.

So I'm a fan. I'm not sure how quickly I'll work my way through the show but I reckon I'll at least get through the first season.

Mad

I've been watching Mad Men lately. It's a very good show. I'm only 8 episodes into Season 1, but I'm loving it. It's so idyllic looking with so much messiness and horrid behaviour just beneath the surface. It's kinda like watching Revolutionary Road in slow motion. While Kate and Leo screamed and threw stuff at each other, the characters in this just eat away at each other with passive-aggressiveness. The acting is classy and the art direction is amazing. I'm very impressed.

It's not my replacement West Wing. It may even be better made than West Wing but it's totally lacking the optimism of the West Wing. What it's not lacking is Zoe Bartlett (Elisabeth Moss) who plays Peggy, and does a bang up job at it.

I reckon this show's a keeper.

Now I just have to get my hands on The Wire.