Jolly Good Show

A handful of my cousins and I have, over the years, developed a small Christmas tradition out of heading off the the movies after the festivities have long died down - after the Christmas crackers have been popped, after too much food has been eaten, and after mounds of wrapping paper have been left to line the living room floor.

Last night, in true Christmas spirit, our small group headed off, through the rain, to watch the recently released 'Sherlock Holmes' starring Robert Downey Jnr and Jude Law (yumm!). About ten minutes into the film I thought to myself 'I need to write a blog entry about this movie.' I found the filming techniques to be really original and super effective. Ritchie moves between slow - mo and real time quite  a bit in the movie, but not the the extent that it became cumbersome or predictable. Basically, the movie is about Holmes (Downey Jnr) and his pseudo-side-sick Dr. Watson (Law), and their efforts to solve a case involving a bunch of creepy high-powered guys and their super-creepy-voldemort-esque ring leader who is engaging in black magic and killing a lot of people.

Can I just say here, that this film confirms my theory that any film featuring Downey Jnr is a film worth watching. His performance is first-class. As per usual (in my opinion). He is completely believable as this ingenious, meticulous, slightly insane detective. What makes him even more credible as an actor is that he does all his stunts himself, I love that. Downey Jnr and Law work off each other flawlessly, the two are a top comedic act, but the depth of the relationship the characters' share is palpable.

The only set back is that there is a LOT of fast talking and quick scenes, it is a little confusing in the beginning...I think I may need to watch this one a second time just to get a grasp on the scenes that slipped by me.

I totally recommend it though, it is a far cry from the two-dimensional, crass films that dominate the current film industry... and it has Jude Law in it, which is never a bad thing ;)

Wandering blind.

I haven't much to say today, just a giant knot of emotion that I need to unravel.

I've been thinking a lot about the universe, and luck, and fate...and how painful it is to find yourself thrown, face-first into some dark place.

It's irritating, and devastating, and damn scary, and all of this is weighing down on the pitt of my belly.

I have written, and then deleted about six different sentences here - trying to somehow articulate my thoughts.
But honestly, from here I don't even know where my thoughts go.

Frankie Speak's Xmas List

Well that time of year has come round once again, and as childish as it may seem, I always seem to find myself swept up in the jovial ambience of the festive season. When it comes to presents, I find them a little unnecessary but a small gesture goes a long way if they have a certain sentimental quality - I always try to give personal pressies, rather than big, extravagant ones.

So here are a few things I would like santa to drop under the chrissie tree:

1. Tea - I love a nice cuppa, and i've recently been trying a few different flavours of tea. T2 is one of my favourite shops at the moment. I can just get lost in there. If I could, I would take one of each of the teas in there home with me and line my walls with different flavoured tea - awesome!

2. Used books - I don't even care which books - thats not to say I'll be happy with crappy literature, I want good books, I just don't care which ones they are. I love that used books have a history. They've been loved, and hated and cried over, they've sat on the bellies of their sleeping owners...and if you're really lucky, you'll get one with a little affectionate note scrawled across its front page - now those, they are a rare and precious find.

3. Anything hand-made. Whether it's a photograph printed off the home computer with a letter written on the back and a love heart drawn on with red texter, or an elaborate scrapbook logging your entire relationship with a loved one...receiving a gift that have been made especially for me gives me a fuzzy feeling in my belly, it always makes me feel considered and cared for.

I'm most excited about what I'll get for other people this year, I've been planning it out for a while now; thinking of what to get to show a lil love to a few of my most loved. As much as it is criticised for being a commercialized holiday which does little more than fuel capitalist rule, I can't help but get a little consumed by that cheesy xmas cheer.

Summer Break

It feels as though I haven't written something just for the sake of writing in an age. Oh keyboard how i've missed you. With the arrival of Christmas Holidays, I now have an endless supply of commitment-free time, and have been musing over the range of possible pass-times I can now enjoy - which has got me all giddy with excitement.

I recently bought myself a Jamie Oliver cook book (Cook with Jamie: My Guide to Making You a Better Cook) and have been burying myself in it. I really love to cook, and I'm a major Jamie fan. This book is my new bible. Over the next few weeks I am going to take over my kitchen :). 

On the topic of books, I've got a list of about 5 books that I want to get through asap, starting with Scar-tissue - Anthony Keidis' autobiography. Ah holidays are just awesome...

But right now...I'm enjoying lying on my couch with a blanket, in my pj's with my laptop, watching Sex and the City.  It feels so great just to do nothing sometimes. 

Rant.

I'm feeling frustrated.

There are always a lot of people in my house.
Always. 
And a lot of people create a lot of noise.

Conveniently, my desk and laptop lie between the two loudest rooms in my house; the living and dining rooms. So while I am punching away at the keypad, trying to get fifteen hundred words up onto my screen, I am hearing my mother in the kitchen talking on the phone, my sister at the dining table telling me every detail of her day, my cousin from a few streets away abusing the doorbell, my brother throwing a football against the wall, and my dad's phone ringing, all with the Simpsons running in the background.

I need a new workspace.

Love Story

We spread out a pink blanket - not the picnic type, just one from a bed that I had found in the boot of my car. I lay on my front and you on your back, by the red, blue and yellow of the playground. Running fingers through your hair, it felt as if the only two in the world were we. And I wondered how it could ever be any other way. 

Photo sourced from J. Colub

Quotes by the Master

Blunt. Uncompromising. Gutsy. Sharp. Difficult. Extraordinary.

Oriana Fallaci

'On every professional experience, I leave shreds of my heart and soul.'

When covering the Vietnam War, she was asked where she would like her body sent if killed in action. She answered, 'The White House.'

'I am sick and tired of wars. Wars are always the same.'

'Writing is a despicable thing to do. It's an unbearable thing. I hate writing. It's such a masochism that I become a masochist.

'They're gone [my family], so who is going to hold my hand? It's okay, it's okay. I'm ready. I'm going to hold my own hand.'

'Happiness is a lady I never really met.'

'I never gave a damn about a successful life, I wanted an adventurous life, an interesting life, a life in which I would write...success is something that deprives you from freedom and the most important thing for me is freedom. If you deprive me of freedom I'm dead.

'I sat at the typewriter for the first time and fell in love with the words that emerged like drops, one by one, and remained on the white sheet of paper... every drop became something that if spoken would have flown away, but on the sheets as words, became solidified, whether they were good or bad...'

Flashes in Time

On the weekend, a friend asked me 'If I can't remember things that I experience, what's the point of them even happening? If I just forget these things, do they even really happen?' I thought this to be a...well, profound question. It took me a minute to process. Eventually i told her if a moment evokes a certain emotion, does that not give it significance? If this forgotten moment has at one point created happiness, agnst or anger (etc.) it has to mean something.

...Days later i'm sitting at my computer, still thinking of this question. Thinking of the weight of memory and time. The memory is hardly infallible; things are lost through the holes of consciousness all the time - I mean, i'll often walk into a room, look around and think 'now why am I in here again?' But to question the purpose of those many forgotten instances - that is unsettling. All the kisses, the touches, the tears, the moments of laughter, the moments of agony that have been left in the past, they cannot be completely worthless...can they?

A Little Birdie.

I have a little birdie friend, he is small, and black, with a face the colour of summer skies.

I watch from my desk as he taps on my window, flirting with his reflection. He momentarily flits about my mandarin tree, before taking off for wherever he so chooses.

He is a pretty little birdie, of a breed I am unsure. I wish to take his picture, but his visits are short and spontaneous.

I like that my birdie friend always keeps me guessing; our relationship shall never be a monotonous one. He comes and goes as he so decides - days are brightened by his sporadic visits.

One day I know he won't return, and a sad day that will be - but remember him I always will, my small, black and blue birdie.

Fishing tales.

As a child , nothing excited me more than our family fishing trips - I'd grab my red rod and set out, determined to catch myself a new pet, or something equally as exciting. My sister and I would spend hours, bruising backsides against rocks, and screaming out over the slightest tug on the ends of our fishing lines. I always secretly wished someone would bring up a boot – just to see the cliché’ realised I guess… All I ever caught on my hook was the skin of my fingertips.



My sister once caught a crab and managed to smuggle it back home with us. We were determined to keep Sebastian as our pet. We fed him bread and made him a home in a sand-bucket filled with tap water and collected shells. My cousin thought it fitting to add table salt to Sebastian’s home. He didn’t last the night. Our mothers tried to tell us he ran back to the beach, but I knew better.

Le Femme.

In only catching a glimpse of the show Dexter this evening, I was shown enough to anger the fiery feminist in me. The scene I speak of included Dexter and his female partner/hot sidekick. Little miss was weeping over her tormented soul - she felt badly about some action of hers blah blah. Dexter pats the fragile woman on the shoulder, as his 'voice of god' comentary narrates the situation at hand. It is a sad convention of these cop shows that the female cop (always singular) puts up a tough-no b/s-professional front, only to break down every so often like the meek little girl she really is.

Weak Knees

I felt my body rock from side-to-side. A voice was coming from some far away place; I couldn’t understand the words being spoken. I opened my eyes and lifted my head, meeting the gaze of a petite face. The white room felt small. I was smacked by a wave of vertigo and my head fell against something cold and hard. I became aware that I was damn uncomfortable.
Shit. I’m on the floor.

- I never did handle blood tests very well.

Cream

No, I am not referring to the indiscretely sexual Prince song.

Cream (fully titled Cream on King) is the name of a vintage clothing store on King st, Newtown. The store stocks a range of vintage clothes and shoes, but is most recognised for its awesome, custom-made leather jackets - which is what drew me into its doors this very afternoon. Cream on King has taken pre-loved leather jackets and breathed new life, and style into the 'seasoned' numbers. There's heaps to choose from and prices are impressive. I picked up a jacket today for only $130 which I LUURRVE.

Check it out if you can :)

....Cream, Sh-boogie bop

Two decades ago...

I have just had my 20th birthday. I have now lived for two decades, one fifth of a century, quite possibly one quarter of my life. The realization that my childhood is now behind me has left me feeling a little nostalgic sooo I have here attempted to sum up the first quarter of my life - listing the top twenty 'things' that made up my childhood (in no particular order).

1. Blue denim overalls
2. Rugrats
3. Coco Pops
4. Red flavoured Push-Pops
5. Powerangers
6. My chunky, purple rollerblades
7. Matching BFFL necklaces
8. Kinder Surprise chocolate eggs
9. Jonothan-Taylor Thomas
10. My pink bicycle with a white wicker basket
11. Teenage mutant ninja turtles - Michaelangelo was my favourite
12. Tyre swings
13. Lip smackers
14. The Backstreet Boys
15. The Little Rascals (movie)
16. Tweety Bird
17. Secret diaries
18. Captain Planet
19. Leonardo Dicaprio
20. My i-Zone camera

Spring

It felt a lot like spring time yesterday morning, although it is still only August. It gave me a kind of buzz, the air was fresh and the sun out. As a walked out onto my front steps a butterfly flew in and about my ankles - it was positively lovely. Then I had to go to work.

Leura

Recently, a group of friends and I spent a week away at Leura which, for those who don't already know, is a small town in the Blue Mountains, Sydney. The most common reaction I got when telling people of my plans to holiday there was:

What the hell are you going to do in Leura for a week? 

This was understandable, as it is not exactly the liveliest of towns - not the type of destination choice expected of a group of young girls. But for me, the town holds a kind of romantic charm. Now, I don't mean romantic in the sense of rose petals on the bed, champange bottles, and bubble baths. I'm speaking of sitting by the fireplace with a cup of tea, drawing pictures with fingertips onto frosted windows, visiting quaint cafe's and book stores romantic. There's a relaxed ambience there that you can't help but get caught up in - and the handmade chocolate boutiques are awesome.

What did I do in Leura for a week? Nothing much. And I loved it.

When I grow up I wanna be an acrobat.

My eyes are heavy from a lack of sleep, my nose is dripping, and my hair is being flung about by the wind - I don't care enough to move it from in front of my eyes. Looking through my wallet, I find a few used train tickets from the week before. I organise them into a neat pile, tear them in half, then into quarters, and slot the pieces into a gap in the blue bench beneath me. There is no place I hate more than the train station on a Monday morning. Everything appears to be so much worse of a Monday morning.

I should be doing readings for uni - but i'm writing this instead.

The train station can be a depressing place. Coming off the train of a weekday evening, Joe would always say "How sad is this? The drones on their way home after another day. What's most depressing is that tomorrow they'll have to do it all again. Five days on, two days off."
After hearing this I'd always feel the urge to run away and join a circus, or a colony of nomads or something - anything to avoid becoming another drone.

Nevertheless, Monday morning has come again, and an acrobat I am not - I'm sitting on a blue bench at the train station, tearing old train tickets into little pieces.

One.

I've always had a busy mind - full of questions and observations. So after an age of scrawling random musings onto concert tickets, coles reciepts, and the 'notes' pages of my diary, I've decided to free up some space in this busy head of mine and join the blogging realm. Do I have a clear idea of what I'm here to write about? No. I have no fervent political views, or all-emcompassing passions - although I do share a very real love with red gummi bears. But I love to read and I love to write, and I'd like to think a have a few interesting anecdotes/thoughts to share. I'm Frankie, and this is my blog.