Curious compliments

Have you ever had one of those comments or compliments that you just don’t quite know what to do with?  When you think that the person who gives it to you probably means well (or may be on track for a sexual harassment claim!), but for whatever reason, it doesn’t quite sit so well with you, make much sense to you, or you wonder why they felt the need to say it?

I’ve had a few.  And as my picky brain tends to do, it’s these curious and odd “compliments” that stick with me long after I’ve forgotten a normal nice thing that somebody said.

I worked in the finance industry for a looong time.  Probably too long.  And the company I worked for was fond of a long and boozy lunch/dinner/evening/conference/party.  There was one guy who consistently drank way more than he should have.  You’d see him swaying on the dance floor, his eyes bloodshot, and if you knew what was good for you, you’d steer clear.  On one weekend conference, there had been the usual drinking.  Our boss had inexplicably disappeared and made it widely known that he was giving a female employee a foot rub.  “Oh, I dunno why he’s doing that”, Trevor slurred.  “Oh, why’s that?”I asked (stupid, stupid, stupid).  “Oh well if I got you up to the room, I wouldn’t be giving you a foot massage, I’d pork ya.” I had to ask.  Fortunately my friend was armed with one of those sharp, prong like hair clips and gave him a friendly stab in the chest to fend him off.  She drew blood.  She didn’t mean to.  Don’t worry, I don’t think he felt a thing.

I took my gorgeous baby boy out to the shopping centre.  You may think me biased, but damn he was cute.  Big, bright blue twinkling eyes, dimples, a ready smile and soft, sticky uppy, blonde hair.  “Oh look at him,” cooed the shop assistant.  “Look at those beautiful big beady eyes!!”.  The what what?  Is that what you really meant to say??

There was a boy.  A boy I’d always had a crush on.  He was really gorgeous, and funny, and artistic and as charismatic as hell.  He was prone to sweet gestures, sending funny postcards written in French, finding things that made me laugh, and delivering them to my work and then disappearing.  Gazing into my eyes one day, he said “Do you know what you remind me of with those big brown eyes?” “No, what’s that?” I asked (stupid, stupid, stupid) “You remind me of one of those cartoon cows with those big long eyelashes”.  Awesome.  He must have picked up on the awkward, crestfallen silence and quickly tried to backpedal.  “But in a good way – you know like one of those cute cartoon cows…… or a cute puppy dog with big sad eyes?” No.

I sure know how to pick them.  One guy I briefly dated, was sitting across the table from me.  “Do you know what I really love about your face?” “What?” I asked (stupid, stupid, stupid).  “Your eyebrows are really perfectly placed”.  WTF?  Above my eyes?  Where else would they be?  This comment was echoed by a guy who used to give me a lift to TAFE “You have really great eyebrows”.  Is that the facially related compliment equivalent to “you have a really nice personality”?  I didn’t even know that men considered eyebrows, unless they were so bushy they looked capable of growing legs and crawling off your face.

Hubby check: Me: “Wayne, what do you think of my eyebrows?”  Wayne: “They’re neat. Why?”  So thankfully, there’s at least one guy who hasn’t given my eyebrows a whole lot of thought, even though he’s been looking at them for over twenty years now.  Don’t think I want to be known as “that Banana Head with the great eyebrows”.            

                                                   

 

 

Breaking Point

Like 99.9% of the population, I was quite relieved to hear that Katie Holmes had filed for divorce against Tom Cruise. (Not an actual recorded statistic, but likely very true).  I don’t know her, but I don’t think there was a photo of her in existence post her marriage in 2006 where she didn’t look miserable.  And I don’t pretend to know Tom Cruise, but I don’t think there’s any evidence of him being a remotely reasonable or likeable human being since before he divorced Nicole Kidman.

And then, once I’d gotten over the surprise that Katie appears to have FINALLY grown a back bone and given Mr. Cruise “Control” his marching orders, I did get to wondering what exactly was her breaking point?  What was it that Tom Cruise finally did to make her realize what the rest of the world has long since known, that he is 100% certifiably crazy, Captain of the Barge material? (Refer previous blog entry titled A Barge of Mythical Proportions)http://wp.me/p2tfNm-G

I mean the warning signs were there early on.  Do we need to rehash the maniacal jumping on Oprah Winfrey’s furniture.  I mean WOOH!  I MEAN WOOOOHHHHOOOOOOHHH! When even Oprah Winfrey is squirming with embarrassment at the display of emotion, I think you need to know right there that you have gone too far.  And what was with him trying to wrestle Oprah?  I’m still confused about this clip.  And Katie looks really comfortable – not!  This clip is even funnier if when you watch it, your replace them saying “Katie” with “John Travolta”. 

 

They were engaged in June of 2005, right around the time Katie was promoting Batman Begins (any coincidence that was her last film role of any note?) and Tom was promoting War of The Worlds.  He apparently proposed atop of the Eiffel Tower, and surprisingly she did not jump clear off the top as I would have, but accepted.  The two had daughter Suri in April of 2006, and were married later that year.

 In June of 2007, Tom took Katie and a young Suri to the wedding of his friends, James Packer and Erica Baxter.  This in itself isn’t unforgiveable, I’m sure it was a very swish do and there seemed to be a lot of swimming and swanning around on yachts, looking rich.  However, what he subjected her to whilst on this holiday was absolutely unforgiveable.

 

Nobody should have to see James Packer in Speedos.  Nobody.  (Apologies to anyone who has just eaten or may be planning on eating in the next few weeks).

I’m not able to definitively say when Tom Cruise really started getting heavily involved in Scientology, but I’ll hazard a guess and say it was about the time he started to act and speak in a completely bat shit crazy manner (that is the scientific term used to describe the religious rants of the truly deluded).  He had a go at ‘friend’ Brooke Shields, labeling her use of anti depressants during her post natal depression as “irresponsible”.  I wasn’t aware that Tom was an expert in post natal depression or the use of anti depressants, but apparently he studied it….in a Scientology brochure no doubt.  A quote taken from the now infamous Scientology video? “We are the authorities in getting people off drugs. We are the authorities on the mind. We are the authorities on improving conditions. Criminals, we can rehabilitate criminals. Way to happiness, we can bring peace and unite cultures…”  Who knew?  I thought those Scientologists were just a bunch of overpaid, undertalented actors who spend a lot of time on the Oprah Winfrey Show, either bouncing on her furniture (that’s you Tom), dressing up as a pilot and denying true drag fantasies (that’s you John Travolta) or spouting absolutely ridiculous ideas for raising exceptional children (that’s you Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith).  But apparently they can Save. The. World.

It’s interesting that Tom Cruise seems to be attracted to taller women.  Although, to be fair, he’s pretty teeny weeny, so it may be tricky to find anyone smaller than him.  But even if Katie could get past the height difference (I myself could never have married a man smaller than me, even Zac Efron, although thankfully, he’s a quarter of an inch taller than me, so if he decides he wants a thirty something mother of three to accompany him on the red carpet, we’re all good) how could she get past the hairdo he was sporting when filming “Valkyrie”.  You know, this one…

 

So Tom’s a batshit crazy devout practitioner of Scientology.  Katie Holmes was raised a Catholic.  Now while I will concede that it is no more ridiculous to believe that we were all populated by aliens as it is to believe Jesus was born unto the virgin Mary, Scientologists DO believe that children should be delivered during a silent birth.  I can’t believe this didn’t set the fire alarms ringing for Katie back in 2006.  The doctrine of a Scientology silent birth dictates that babies should be born in an environment of absolute quiet.  The mother is not to groan, scream or make any sounds to indicate pain.  Even hospital personnel are banned from making any noise, you know, speaking with each other about the progress of the birth.  Pain relieving drugs are also frowned upon.  Rumour has it that Katie filed for divorce because Suri has just turned six and is now expected to get heavily involved in Scientology.  Whilst this theory certainly is credible, I think Katie realized it may have been painful to silently birth a 7lb, 7 oz baby Suri, but that would be nothing compared to the agony of sitting through premiere after premiere of Tom Cruise as an ageing rock star in Rock of Ages. That in fact, the very thought of having to watch another Tom Cruise film pushed Katie to breaking point.

Put your manners back in

 

Easily Spooked

I truly envy those who fall into the category of “do not believe in ghosts or any other supernatural activity”.  I mean, I’m sure it’s much easier for them to sleep at night.  I’ll admit it, I spook easily.  Ever so easily actually.  And my mind will automatically conclude movement out of the corner of my eye to be a ghost rather than, well, movement out of the corner of my eye. 

Obviously, different things scare different people.  I don’t particularly like gory movies, but as I don’t really find them plausible, they gross me out rather than freak me out.  It’s those movies that seem entirely possible to me that freak me out the most.

My first big movie freak out was watching the movie ‘Signs’ with Mel Gibson.  And this was prior to him revealing himself as a creepy racist loon, so it wasn’t him that frightened me.  As a brief summary if you’re unfamiliar with the film, it’s basically about crop circles appearing all over the world, which are then followed by an alien invasion.  There is a scene in the film that is presented as a news flash where an alien is caught on film for the first time.  It is supposedly at a child’s birthday party, and as the camera pans around, you see an alien walk past.  I know this sounds like nothing.  But this was absolutely shocking and horrifying to me!  I forgot it was a movie, and in my head, it was really happening. 

 

By the time the aliens had entered the family home of Mel Gibson, and that alien hand shot out under the pantry door, I had nearly stopped breathing and was shaking like crazy.  My husband thought it was hilarious.  I was still shaking on the way home in the car and when we got inside, I could not walk past the internal garage door for fear that I’d see one of these shooting out from under the door to grab me…

 

Given the rather severe physical response and almost asthma attack, I thought it wasn’t such a good idea to watch scary movies when I was pregnant with my son, and I really stayed away from them until after I had my daughter.  But then I saw some previews for ‘Paranormal Activity’ and thought it looked really interesting. BIG mistake!

I read somewhere that this film is the most profitable film in movie history, being made on a budget of around $15,000 and grossing almost $200,000,000 world wide.  It was made so cheaply, as it was filmed in the director’s house with barely any characters, predominantly on a hand held camera and much of it is viewed as security camera footage.  Which again suckered me in to believing it was real. 

I have a bit of a history with some freaky things happening to me (and that’s ANOTHER, much lengthier blog I’m working on) so this movie really felt like it could happen.

 

As soon as it finished, the lady behind me declared loudly “What a bunch of SH!T!” and huffed off out of the cinema, disgusted with it.  I was speechless.  Scared, and shaking even worse than when I saw ‘Signs’.  And this one took me a LONG time to get over.  It started a bunch of never ending nightmares, so bad that I was scared to go to sleep at night.  And it didn’t end until it was released on DVD and my hubby cheekily suggested that I should watch it again.  What an idiot!  So I did!  And seeing it a second time, in the comfort of my home made it seem less real and less scary and it was definitely less loud.  Finally the nightmares stopped, and I was actually able to sit through the sequels without too many issues, just a lot of curse words.  I was confident my terror was under control.

Until a good friend invited me along to see “The Woman In Black”.  I love a movie, and to be honest, I love the popcorn even more.  And don’t even get me started on kid free time and spending some time out with some of my favourite people.  I didn’t really know anything about the film, and as it was some time out, to be honest, I didn’t really care.  But it was SCARY.  And I don’t mean just a little bit jumpy kind of scary.  I mean me nearly gouging myself with my fingernails, hiding underneath my scarf and so scared I was giggling to the point of hysteria scary.  Holy crap – that movie is really scary.  It managed to combine all of the things I’m most scared of in the one film.  Ghosts, check.  Creepy dolls with glass eyes, check.  An eerie house in a misty isolated location, check.  Lots of things moving out of the corner of your eye, check.  My fingers are actually shaking as I type this – I’ve clearly not gotten over this film yet.

 

I’ve always subscribed to the theory that there are monsters lurking in the closet, and that urban legend about the girl who used to lie in bed with her arm hanging over the edge of the bed so her little dog lying underneath could lick her hand, until one night she heard dripping, went into the laundry and found her dog hanging up, dripping blood, and written on the window in blood was “Humans can lick too” sent me into such a frenzy that I would allow no part of my body to hang over the side of the bed, and used to jump on to my bed from quite a few feet away until I was TWENTY SEVEN and purchased a mattress and base.  Nobody can fit under there!!

But I’m still not cured.  I went to see Guy Sebastian’s ‘Armageddon’ tour on Saturday night.  Should be fairly vanilla you’d think.  I mean it’s GUY SEBASTIAN.  He’s cute and all, and he is looking particularly buff and pleasing to the eye, but I don’t think he could get any more wholesome if he tried.  Yet towards the end of the show, the theatre went all dark, and there was a creepy voice speaking, and the whole of the Palais was shaking (and don’t start me on how creepy the Palais is to begin with).  I looked over at my friend (let’s call her Cupcake shall we?) and she looked as equally alarmed as I felt.  “I think the roof is going to fall in”.  I whispered frantically. 

And then, and THEN we almost had our very own Armageddon last night in Melbourne.  You can bet that it was a lucky thing I didn’t notice the earthquake, as that would have been a freak out of EPIC proportions.  I was obliviously sitting on the couch when all of a sudden, the only shaking I felt was the constant vibrating of my mobile phone with Facebook updates – “WTF was that?”, “Did anyone else feel the earthquake?” and so on.  I initially felt reasonably calm, after all, I didn’t feel it, so how bad could it be?  Then I started worrying about how it may have been a massive quake overseas that was sending a colossal tsunami headed straight for…..Beveridge.  Seriously, forget adding Vitamin D to our milk and cereals. or flouride to our water, they seriously need to consider lacing mine with full strength Valium…..

A barge of mythical proportions

In this age, where ‘celebrity’ is a title bestowed upon even the most mediocre of reality television personalities (yes Snooki, I’m looking right at you) it is understandable that some of them can really start to get on your nerves.  Now you can go postal and create lengthy blogs about how much you HATE Gwyneth Paltrow, and how she irrevocably destroyed the joy you had for Glee (and don’t worry, I’m sure that blog is being workshopped in the dark corners of my mind).  Or, you can get creative and come up with another way to deal with the numpty celebrities that inexplicably irk you.  Legally.

I came up with the barge.  It’s basically a big, imaginary, flat boat type of thing that in my mind, I banish annoying celebrities to.  And the most annoying celebrity of all (Tom Cruise, der) is the Captain of the barge.  And when I think the barge is at capacity, I send it out into the middle of the ocean, and with some fireworks and an extraordinary explosives display timed to the Mission Impossible theme song, the barge explodes and sinks, taking a full passenger list of annoying celebs down with it.

So in no particular order, here’s my current passenger list;

• Tom Cruise – no explanation necessary, but all has not been right with the couch jumping jockey since Scientology got involved.
• Gwyneth Paltrow – for the patronizing blog, for the weepy Oscars acceptance speech in the naff pink dress, for attempting to sing and making Glee jump the shark, for her one constipated expression, for the organic cookbook – really, kale chips? And for just being smug.
• Katy Perry – for crimes against fashion, hair, musicality and for complete lack of good taste all around.
• Russell Brand – for marrying above mentioned taste vacuum and for thinking making smutty jokes and saying “fart”a lot constitutes good comedy.
• Kanye West – firstly, don’t be interrupting Taylor Swift, secondly, look, I’ll just post one of his Tweets to back up his selection for the barge. “You have to balance ignorance with intellect! Can’t have school with out recess! #Greatesttweetofalltime”
• Courtney Love – where to start?  I’d just like you to remember that KURT was in Nirvana, not you.  And if you insult Dave Grohl, I tend to take it personally.
• Seal – for the red boots, the nail polish and for the tendency to inappropriately pass pelvic thrusting towards young women off as a form of dance.
• Nick Reiwoldt – stop crying about losing football games, it’s not even funny anymore.
• Lara Bingle – I’m quite sure she’s a blog topic on her own, but seriously sweets, if even your own Nanna is leaving you phone messages, tearing you a new one and telling you you’re never going to amount to anything, well……..

So Captain, fire up those engines and head straight for those icebergs!

 

 

The Indelible Image

It’s not often that you wish you’d had more to drink the night before.  That what you saw could become unseen and your retinas would no longer burn with the indelible horror.

 

It was a work conference.  Inexplicably, my bosses thought it a smashing idea to take the entire company away for a weekend of team building and wanky self awareness exercises.  The payoff, of course, for this off the clock, compulsory 48 hours of nothing but work mates was alcohol.  Copious amounts of it.

 

Alas, I apparently did not indulge enough in the fruits of the open bar. I recall karaoke – bad karaoke.  I recall the business man shuffle on the dance floor, us girls dancing around our handbags (as you do), our IT guy jamming with the pub band, and I recall, as usual, our office stalwart (let’s call him Trevor) trying to hit on any female with a pulse.

 

I recall getting on the bus to go back to our accommodation.  But for reasons I can’t recall, our boss, who looks uncannilly like the love child of Hugh Grant and Eddie McGuire decided to drop his pants.  There, on the bus, after not enough cocktails, I was confronted with the horror of Hugh McGuire’s bright acqua jockey briefs.  Burningly bright, that image is forever seared into my brain.

 

 

 

It’s taken some time, and some more drinking.  But that image was so deeply buried that I’d almost forgotten it.  Almost.  All it took was my dear hubby to saunter ever so innocently into the bedroom, wearing a spanking brand new pair of bright acqua jockey briefs.  I recoiled in horror, and like a bad 80’s slow motion movie montage, the image of Hugh McGuire superimposed himself over my better half. 

Post traumatic flash syndrome. 

 

What’s the statue of limitations for a sexual harrassment claim to fund the alcohol it’s going to take to erase that visual once and for all?

Sanity Touchstones

Motherhood makes you question your sanity, no doubt.  And with a newborn who wasn’t so fond of daytime sleeps until recently, my sanity has been somewhat tenuous at best.

 

But in my most batshit crazy moments, curled up in the fetal position on the cold bathroom floor, sobbing hysterically because I have run out of milo, I can take comfort in the fact that somewhere, across the other side of the world, Courtney Love is likely confirming again via yet another of her Twitter tirades that she is way more unhinged than me.

 

 What you see when you look at this inkblot test can apparently indicate your current state of mind.  For example, I look at this and see yet another blob of baby vomit that needs to be cleaned up.  But I have it on fairly good authority that Courtney Love looks at this and sees Dave Grohl dressed up as the shiny demon in the Tenacious D filmclip to “Tribute”.

 

 

 Which kind of got me thinking some more about Courtney Love.  If she’s my measure, the absolute top of the truly insane scale, if she is who I compare myself against to make sure that I am in fact ok, who in the hell is she using as her sanity touchstone?  She goes on Twitter rampages against the Muppets, so I had to do some investigating.  As you do, I googled “Who is the craziest person in history” to see what sort of company she should be keeping.  Hitler seemed like a fairly popular choice, but aside from his heinous crimes against humanity, he was also of the pre Twitter era, so the crazy was not quite so confined to 140 characters.  I can’t go back in time to find her a friend – it has to be someone current.  And quite probably someone with a Twitter account. 

 

Kanye West was the next obvious option.  After all, he infamously interrupted Taylor Swift’s awards acceptance speech, dementedly insisting that Beyonce really had the video of the year.  And there is a web page dedicated to a five year old child illustrating his tweets.  Insightful ones such as…..

 

“5:18am in London…. my dreams kept me woke”

 

He is, after all, the poet of his generation.  Which may mean Courtney warms to him, because Kurt was the poet of his generation, and we all know how Courtney thinks that means she is too, by association.  But he doesn’t have that wild eyed, soaked through to the bone, smudged red lippy kind of crazy that Courtney does.

 

 So it must be pretty lonely to be Courtney Love.  Because I don’t think she could possibly come up with anybody to compare herself to.  As she slashes a wedding dress and paints it with “Not my see you next Tuesday on my dime mister” (yes really, see picture below)

 

she must feel pretty isolated in her insanity.  Unless she’s befriended the voices inside her head.   “I’m so happy coz today I found my friends. They’re in my head.  I’m so ugly, that’s ok, so are you”……

That was sweet of Kurt to leave her a sanity touchstone.

The Pretty One

There was a time, not so very long ago, that a bit of Zac gazing felt a tad wrong.  He was always ever so pretty, but there was something just a little bit dirty about looking at those eyes and thinking how hot he was.  Kind of like you should be parked in a car outside his school with a big bag of boiled lollies.  You get the picture.

 

I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but at some point, and without a lot of fuss or fanfare, young Zac became just that teeny bit older and BAM!  With it he got a whole lot more chiseled, a whole lot more abtastic, and if it’s possible, those blue eyes got a whole lot bluer and sexier.

 

I specifically recall seeing the 2009 movie “17 Again” with my husband.  There was nothing else on, and we had some kid free time and I wanted to eat popcorn.  But I have to admit, I really enjoyed it, and I had the niggling suspicion that it was because I was finding that young kid from High School Musical so damn attractive.  I surreptitiously did a Google search on him, how bad was it?  How YOUNG was he?  All good, call off the federal police, he was twenty-two-ish.

 

By the time Charlie St Cloud was released, I was willing to admit to my girlfriends that I kind of had a thing for Zac, and we all went to see it.  I nearly choked on my popcorn, and there were gasps heard cinema wide when he took that t-shirt off. And then “The Lucky One” came out, and with it, his transition to bona fide hubba hottie is complete. Yes, ovaries the world over are quivering – he is after all, quite the specimen.  I mean, I don’t think I’d sit through most of his movies if he weren’t in them, preferably shirtless.  He really has quite the appeal, to make grown women sit through movies like that just for a glimpse of those abs. And those blue eyes.  Did I mention the blue eyes? I’m pretty sure if they put Zac in at the negotiation stage, he could achieve world peace with one flash of those baby blues. 

 

Weapons of mass seduction.

 

Sigh.  You know, I really only did a blog entry on Zac because it validates a google search or ten looking for pretty photos of him.  You’re welcome.