Winter time, Part 2.

I decided to head into the city last week to take Big W up on their crazy offer of $20 iTunes vouchers for $10! Yes, I will have some free money, thank you! Always up for an adventure, especially when a trip on the train is involved, Winter said she'd like to come along too. Fine with me! Let's go.

Once we'd picked up the vouchers, we held hands and wandered the streets and lanes of the city. We moved among the masses of people and wondered where they were all heading. We explored all manner of shops and their colourful wares, from multilevel department stores to hole-in-the-wall boutiques. We travelled up and down the Funny Stairs (escalators) wherever they were found. And we travelled up and down the Funny Stairs. Wherever they were found. And up and down. Up, down, up, down, up, down. Alright, Winter, are you hungry? How about some food? Yes!

We bought some cheese and ham croissants and sat on a bench outside the State Library to eat them. We made up life stories for the statues around us and how they got to be there. We took photos of our shoes, the grass, and the crazy man getting lost in a flurry of pigeons and seagulls as he tried to feed them. We walked down alleyways and looking at the bright and colourful graffiti, trying to decide which design we'd most like to have on our bedroom walls. And then, when Winter's legs began to tire, we headed down to Melbourne Central Station and jumped on a train for home, mum and Harper.

As afternoons go, it was one of my finest.

When I Get All Steamed Up.

One of Winter's favourite songs is that old classic, I'm A Little Teapot. She's been singing it all the time of late, and will often stop and point out things that remind her of a teapot. Which is all fine, cute and wonderful when, for example, she's pointing at one of Kate's earrings...


...but not so good when it's at one of my Batman figures.


She even grabbed the Dark Knight and poured him like a teapot. Come on, Winter. A little respect, please. Teapot? Prrrrffbbb.

Although, to be honest, I have always found this pose a little awkward. I'm not saying he does look like a teapot, but he does look somewhat like he's in the middle of a posing routine. Can you believe how much he is in heaven? But heaven or not, he's always seemed like he was missing something, and it wasn't until I moved house recently that I realised what it was. Unpacking all my Batman figures from their moving box, I put this one up on the window sill next to my desk. Then, in a moment of serendipity, I noticed the dangling cord of the window's blind, and suddenly everything swung into place...


Simply couldn't imagine a more perfect spot for him.

Right. I think I fancy a cup of tea.

UPDATE
"Heaven" link above updated to actual video on YouTube. You'd think I would have learned to stop linking to static text-based pages of quotes when I did the same thing over two years ago.

Taking It Lion Down.

The 1950s were a time of great fear and uncertainty, as the Cold War played out across the globe and the ever-present threat of a nuclear apocalypse struck fear into the hearts of all.

Not Charles Hipp, though. He wasn't worried. Life for him was certain to the point of boredom. Sure, he got a little buzz from speeding around town in his Cadillac without a seatbelt on, or gargling mouthfuls of DDT with the kids on weekends, but it simply wasn't enough. And so, desperate for excitement, he one day decided to bring home a lion...


A stuffed one, yeah? That's a dead, stuffed lion he's hoisted his baby granddaughter onto, isn't it? Aah no, sadly Blondie (as the lion was named), was as real as Charles himself.


Look, see? Here's Charles endangering a small child again, parading a neighbour's offspring around on the Queen of the Jungle like a pony at the Fair. And when the child eventually tired of the novelty, Blondie was bundled into the family chariot and driven off to her next ordeal.


It's good that the kids listened when she called shotgun, hey? Not that you'd argue, I guess? I mean, Charles would; but then he's going to be up front anyway, so there wasn't any point. Anyway, after several hours in the car, they'd finally arrive at their destination.


The lake. How about that serenity? Looks like she's having a ball, yeah? Blondie just loves the water. Which is fortunate, because once she gets home...


...it's bathtime! A big day out and about can get a lion really dirty, and the ever fastidious Charles would leave no spot of this proud beast unscrubbed. How ever did lions out in the wild manage to stay clean without Charles around?

Blondie, bless her, finally tired of the humiliation and fought back.


Not that Charles minded, though. Getting mauled by a lion was fat city, ya dig? What a blast! I mean, what's the point of taunting a lion if they're just going to take it all in fun? A good old-fashioned "fang-in-the-fanny hold" was exactly what Charles had been chasing, and he was now finally livin' the dream.

But Blondie just couldn't maintain the rage, and eventually retreated inside herself, broken and defeated. Even when Charles went to work on her with his cattle-prod, she just lay there and took it, barely able to raise even a whimper. Increasingly disappointed with this ungrateful beast he'd saved from the wild, Charles finally lost patience, and led Blondie behind the backyard shed, where he bludgeoned her to death with an axe. He rolled the body up in a tarpaulin, and on the next family visit to the lake, he bundled the noble lion over the side to a watery grave.

It really is a jungle out there.

(Follow the links above to the full set, if you want more. Yes, there are more. Sigh.)

UPDATE
What was it about the mid-Twentieth century and cruelty to animals and small children? I say, here's fun? Let's give little baby Mikey a big ol' bag o' lemons, and watch what happens...

Yep, nothing good. And if it wasn't bad enough already, you then discover it was some sort of amateur science experiment where Mikey was initially offered the choice between a delicious ice cream cone and an open, weeping lemon. The good Lord himself is likely unsure as to why, and indeed, what these loving parents learned as a result. Good grief.

LIFE everlasting.

Google have knocked me onto the floor again. I'd barely picked myself up after the wonders of Google Street View, and now they've gone and hosted the entirety of LIFE magazine's photo archive online.

The collection can be accessed directly from Google by adding "source:life" to an image search. And you'll find almost anything you can think of to look for: from unforgettable world events to humble scenes of domestic life, the variety is fascinating and the depth astounding, as Related image leads to Related image leads to...

Glory, my workplace productivity hasn't taken this big a hit since the big black pit of Facebook opened up.

And I've only just dipped my toe in, but favourites so far include:

The irrepressible George S. Patton.


The Melbourne Cricket Ground and surrounding area at the time of the 1956 Olympic Games.


And a team at work on some neon Olympic signage at the same time.


A cinematic, and somewhat unsettling, image of a truck driver pulling out of a petrol station.


An open stretch of highway on Route 66 before Pixar made it popular again.


And a beautiful, iconic shot of Manhattan shrouded in fog. Or smog. Maybe it's smog? Still beautiful, either way. Love the foreground-midground-background gradations.


So much, so much, so much there. Jump in, and let me know which images appeal to you.

Eulogy.

O, classic Chuck Taylors in cherry red leather,
I thought we'd be together forever.
But one million miles down and you started to weather,
Now your sole's all adrift and your stitching's atether.
I should have bought two pair, I should have been clever,
I fear I'll find your kind again never.


Rest in peace, you precious cherry-coloured beauties. Your arch-support may have been somewhat less than existent, and your insole cushioning somewhat south of bountiful, but still, there never has and nor will there ever be a finer pair of shoes than you.

You'd think that in this world of unlimited consumer choice, a man would be able to get a pair of cherry red leather Chucks. Especially when Converse even offer a Design Your Own service on their website that supposedly empowers you to "Create your own definition of the perfect pair." But no; fickle fashion has decreed my preference to be so last whenever, and here I am, a vicim of my own contentment. If it's leather I'm insisting on, then my "Perfect Pair" can be any colour, so long as it's black, white, cactus, chocolate or sable.


The closest I've been able to get is the above Red Ochre pair in suede, but it just ain't the same thing. (And even then they don't offer the option of a red racing stripe; just black, white, parchment or, um... athletic navy (hello?), so, thanks for playing.)

UPDATE
Not content with simply moaning into the wind, I decided to email Converse directly and demand to know why cherry red wasn't on their list of colours. This was the unsatisfying pro forma reply.

Hello,

Thank you for your email. We unfortunately do not have any other options for colors or styles at this time. We do change these options every few months however so please come back and see us in the next few weeks to see if the style of shoes or the color option that you want becomes available.

Thank you for shopping with us!

Thank you,
Meagan
www.converse.com

Thaaaat's it, that's the way; string me along to eternity with hopes and dreams of that one day yet to come. And as my enquiry only concerned unavailable colours, could you please edit out references to styles from your cut 'n' paste response to at least give the impression that you've read what I've written? Sigh.

Oh well, everything old is always new again, so I guess I'll just bide my time, and then buy up big when that cherry red-letter day finally arrives.

UPDATE 2
I suppose I could always buy a white pair and paint my own...

UPDATE 3
Well, ask and you shall (sort of) receive faster than Chuck Taylor drivin' through the paint. I decided to take my new friend Meagan from Converse at her word, and headed back to their website to see if any additional colours were available yet.

Turns out, there are! In addition to the previous five colour options for leather, there are now pink, gold, royal purple, royal blue, athletic navy, green and yes... red!


Not cherry red, sadly, but balls-out firetruck red instead, which, while a little garish for my particular tastes, is still a step in the right direction.

But wait, there's sort of more! Suede's been given a bunch of new colour options as well. Again, still no cherry red but, at least, you now have the option to colour the racing stripe red.


Which, yeah, is great, but, without wanting to sound like a whiner you just can't please, I kind of like the colour of the stripe to match that of the shoe... so a firetruckin' stripe would be great if the shoe was firetruckin' as well, but on a red ochre shoe my "definition of the perfect pair" would have a stripe of red ochre too.

So, I don't know, the parts are nearly all there; I just can't assemble them into the arrangement I'd like. But thanks for trying to meet me half-way, Converse. I guess I'll be back to check again soon.

UPDATE 4
Poladroid is a nifty little application for converting your digital photos into Polaroids, complete with textured paper frame. You just drag and drop, and then wait for the image to "develop". Here's one I made of my Cons. Love that magenta saturation.

Happy Star Wars (tm) Day 2008.

Happy Star Wars (tm) Day everyone. May the Fourth be with you, and may your day be filled with many pleasant thoughts of classic trilogies, of expanded universes, and of future screenplays featuring minimal input from Uncle George.

I'm completely out of touch with the latest news on the upcoming TV shows, other than reading somewhere that Rick Fantastic knows they'll be fantastic, and they'll totally blow my mind because George is such a fantastic storyteller blah, blah, blah, but that's it. As with the new Indy, I'm so fearful they'll suck so hard that I'd prefer just not to know. At least then I can still pretend that Boba will be redeemed from the soulless, derivative joke he's become.

But let's not dwell on the dark, let's turn towards the light and enjoy the serendipity of discovering a new range of Star Wars key chain thingos at the local servo as I was paying for my petrol this morning. They even had a Boba...


...and most pleasing of all, no Jango. :)

UPDATE: Nicely timed: John Gruber visits Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination and flickrs his photos for us.

Happy Star Wars (tm) Day 2007.

Happy Star Wars (tm) Day everyone. May the Fourth be with you, and may all your wishes for an intelligent, well-written, character-driven TV series come true. And also, may your dreams of seeing an in-prime Boba Fett kickin' booty in a swirling vortex of intense action (not just sitting around, standing around and falling into holes) be fulfilled. Amen.

UPDATE: And in other Star Wars news, this just in: a recent survey conducted by the UK's Sky Movies has revealed that Star Wars is the film most loved to be watched over and over again. Well, for men, at least. Women apparently prefer to re-watch Dirty Dancing.

Star Wars: A New Hope is certainly the film I’ve re-watched the most times. Although as over the years Empire grew to become my favourite, it’s by now surely close to catching up. I can’t think what others would even come close to those two? Heathers, certainly. And The Blues Brothers. Oh, and Ferris Bueller’s as well, of course. Year in, year out, every time’s just like the first.

If you’d been doing the survey, what would you have put down?

UPDATE 2: And in further Star Wars news, well 'olds' more than news, but then everything olds is news again, I guess, so there you go... um, oh yeah, so I just enjoyed revisiting the soundstages of my childhood via this series of slides on Swapatorium of a magnificently staged production of The Empire Strikes Back. So good. :)