• Alien2June 30, 2009

    Alien

    Alien is one of the scariest films ever made. It is also about pregnancy.
  • The Wrestler3June 22, 2009

    The Wrestler

    We’re men, we’re men in tights…
  • Star Trek3June 09, 2009

    Star Trek

    A review of the long-delayed reboot of the Star Trek franchise from JJ Abrams

Farewell dinner

By
Edo
Published: 01 July 2009 10:57 PM ESTPosted in: BlogTags: , ,

I’ve just about finished my three months in Sydney and I’ll be flying back to Brisbane on Friday.  I have learnt an awful lot since being here, but I’ve pretty much finished my project-work in Customer Marketing and now its time to go home to Brisbane.

I’ve made some awesome friends in the time I’ve been here.  They organised a farewell dinner for me tonight at a Mexican restaurant in Surrey Hills called Agabe.  The food was superb and we all appreciated the two-for-one margaritas.  It was a very nice send off for a terrific 3 months.

I am the only one who doesn't know how to hold a cocktail glass. Pinky out.

I am the only one who doesn't know how to hold a cocktail glass. Pinky out.

One month to go till the wedding.  First relatives start arriving next Monday!

‘On deadline’

By
Matt
Published: 01 July 2009 10:19 PM ESTPosted in: BlogTags: , ,

.. those are two words that I have thrown around for most of the week in an attempt to justify me being a bit touchy and on-edge.

Currently, and I use this word very fittingly, I am juggling two features and a project that need to be done by my editorial dealine on Friday.. Although it is very much an editorial deadline and not the print dealine (note: view the former as more of a guideline), I am not in the position to be missing it as Friday also coincides with my last day at the job. Therefore, the pressure is on.

As the end of my time here is nigh, I have found myself with the all-to-familiar feeling of loss and sadness that you get when leaving a job despite how much you don’t enjoy it. Don’t get me wrong, the last sentence was made hypothetically, I actually quite enjoyed the work and I have learnt an awful lot since being here, but I just feel as though I have hit my limit writing about biofuels.. Although I am now aware that you can make energy from poo, this is always a good fact to have a social doos.

As of next week I have two choices to help me kill the time between now and ‘the great Aussie wedding adventure’:

Option (i): I’m waiting back to hear if I have got a three-week copywriting internship at a toy company;
Option (ii): Sit on my arse, watch the first two Ashes tests, and maybe manage a cheeky trip over to Italy to see the parents.

Either way both suit me just fine, but I am still hoping the phone rings.
*sigh* Does this mean that I’ve finally grown up?

out.

Who trains the trainers?

By
Edo
Published: 30 June 2009 10:15 PM ESTPosted in: BlogTags: , ,

For some reason, about a month ago, I nominated myself to run an all-day workshop for an organisation that has a partnership with the company I work for.  I can’t quite recall why I thought this was a good idea.  I’ve never done anything like this before and now its a day away and I’m a little nervous about it.  Hopefully it’ll go off without a hitch.  I’ve designed many flow charts and plan to make diagrams on whiteboards.  Thrilling stuff.

On another note, I recently rewatched Alien for the first time in ages and thought it was awesome enough to write about.  I also took some nifty screenshots to accompany the text too.

Since we’re coming close to the end of the decade I thought it might be fun to start revisiting some of the best films to be released in the past ten years.  As with most things, I plan to start this ’some time after the wedding’.  When I began making a mental note of the films I’d like to rewatch, I came to realisation that the first Lord of the Rings film is nearly nine years old.  What the hell.  Where does time go?

New video camera, old video tapes

By
Edo
Published: 29 June 2009 11:49 PM ESTPosted in: BlogTags: , , , ,

Jen gave me an early birthday present this year:  an HD video camera.  She’s pretty awesome like that.

It must drive her nuts because I only bought a video camera three years ago and I barely used it.  All the videos I’ve taken over the last couple of years have been using the video recording function on my digital camera.  It’s taken me a few years to work out that I’m most likely to find interesting stuff to shoot on a spontaneous ad-hoc basis and so the most important feature in getting a new dedicated video camera was one that was compact so that I would be more likely to carry it around with me.  The old video camera was about the size of a brick so it wasn’t really all that practical.

Now I have this sweet baby, the JVC HD Everio, which is about the same height and length as my Sony Xperia phone plus it shoots in glorious high definition!  This makes me very happy.

New JVC video camera is small, or Xperia is huge. Take your pick.

New JVC is nice and compact and about the same size as my phone

I should probably get ready for bed soon but I want to spend another couple of hours shooting footage of inanimate objects around the house with this thing.

On a standard-def video note, hopefully in the next few months I’ll get around to finishing a short video about growing up in Brunei that I shot way back in January 2004.  It’s taken me five years to get around to starting the damn thing but I guess better late than never.  Besides, these things are always more interesting to look back on after a few years have passed.  The footage includes Mike, Matt, Angela, Jen, Marlow, Rod, Jess Tsang and others.  Anyone remember recording this stuff?

Matt at Unitech

Matt at Unitech looking for a copy of Scary Movie 3

Mike at Bluestones: "Bendis Bendis Bendis"

Mike at Bluestones: "Bendis Bendis Bendis"

Angela: What was my first job? I've never had a job!

Angela: What was my first job? I've never had a job!

Weekend of Michael Jackson, 5 Second Reviews and Jen

By
Edo
Published: 28 June 2009 9:14 PM ESTPosted in: BlogTags: , , , ,

Jen came down to visit me in Sydney on Friday.  She just left to catch her flight a couple of hours ago :(

It was great to have some company on the weekend and we took the time together to wander around and eat at some of the city’s many cafes and restaurants.  After a weekend of seafood platters, Belgian chocolate cafes and Japanese cuisine, I’m now completely immobile, lying on the couch here, feeling sorry for myself.

I’ve got a week left in Sydney before I head back to Brisbane and then the countdown is really on for the wedding.  For the record, the cake lady still hasn’t got back to us and is now eight weeks late.  Also, I need to finish writing my wedding vows and I need to start preparing my wedding speech too.

On The FAT Website news front, I’ve added Angela and Matt’s Twitter feeds to the site and trimmed them down to showing the 5 latest entries.  I’m also going to start doing ‘5 Second Reviews’.  Basically, instead of writing a mini-essay for all my gaming and film reviews, where appropriate I’ll just write a bite-sized summary instead.  I’ve started out with a few games: Flight Control (Iphone), Rhythm Heaven (Nintendo DS) and Peggle (Xbox Live Arcade).

Aside from the hasty copy and paste job on Friday, I haven’t really had a chance to chime in with my two cents on Michael Jackson’s passing so I’ll do that now.

Personally
I was a big Michael Jackson fan as a kid.  The first CD I ever bought was Dangerous and, like Sam, I found that when I revisited it years later, its not nearly as good as Bad or Thriller.  Having said that, I can remember how much I loved that album as a kid and I think the younger you are the greater appreciation you’ll have for the saccharine overload and shameless optimism that is Heal The World.  Bonus points if you watch it with the Superbowl video at the same time.

I was very sad to hear of his death.  I wasn’t a lifelong fan but its the association he had with my childhood that made it so sad to hear.  Also, I was definitely in the camp that believed the child-molestion charges were rather obviously bullshit money-grabbing exercises from some of the parents of the Neverland visitors.

I’m curious what will happen to Blanket.

Michael Jackson: Considerate of elephants

Michael Jackson: Considerate of elephants

His Music
Like a lot of other people, his death lead to a weekend of revisiting some old favourites on iTunes and YouTube.  One observation I had when watching the videos was that Michael Jackson seemed to be the last of the music giants that had such an effect on his fans that many of them would actually pass out at the sight of him.  Its a phenomenon also commonly associated with The Beatles and Elvis but I can’t really think of an contemporary artists that have this effect.

When discussing it with some colleagues at work, a friend of mine observed that this is probably due to the level of exposures contemporary stars have with their audience, whether it is through Youtube clips, Twitter or Myspace.  When he first became popular in the Seventies, it also pre-dated Walkmans, VCRs and MTV.  Many of his younger fan base couldn’t necessarily even afford an outlet to listen or watch Jackson perform on demand.

In this environment, my friend reasoned, seeing the guy live was such a monumental event that probably caused you to stop pumping blood to your brain and thus, you’d pass out from excitement.

Its an after-effect of doing a media studies course at university that I find this so very interesting.

Also, when browsing Wikipedia, I raised an eyebrow at how many copies of Thriller he sold.  It is estimated to be around 109,000,000 copies.  Christ!  I don’t see that record of Best Selling Album being broken any time soon.

since I last blogged…

By
Sam
Published: 27 June 2009 4:12 AM ESTPosted in: BlogTags: , , , , ,

Wow. The good old Fat Website. I must admit I didn’t imagine I would still be blogging here after all this time. A lot has changed in my life since then. Some of which would be news to even those of you reading that would consider me a good friend. I’ll give you an overview and then I promise I’ll embellish on some of the stories below.

Its been a while for sure, the last time I blogged Pluto was still a planet.

After trying unsucessfully to get my band signed for about 2 years I quit the band and moved from Santa Barbara, California to Portland, Oregon. I financed the move on the royalties I got for co-writing a song with a band called Versus The World. The song ended up on the soundtrack to a wrestling video game and was the first time I had ever made money of music I had written.
After failing to get my music going again in Portland, I fell into a pretty deep depression. I almost became a rock and roll casualty. After pawning all my music gear (and I mean all of it) to pay for a drug problem that was spiraling out of control, a friend posed an intervention and I agreed to get clean and attend Narcotics Anonymous.
I completed two months of NA got clean. During my time in NA my mind seemed clearer than it ever had before and I decided to start my own clothing line of one-of-a-kind shirts. I started in my garage, playing around with bleach, spray paint, screen printing and distressing. I named the line (nsfw) which seemed appropriate.
I shopped it to a few stores but it never got picked up. I relapsed shortly after.

After getting clean a second time, this time on my own, I met a girl named April. We decided to get out of Portland and move to the Caribbean where my Mom was living. We packed up our stuff and moved to St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands.
I got a job working for Gucci as a sales supervisor (from my previous work at Saks 5th Ave in California) and we still live here now.

I think that pretty much brings everything up to speed. These days I enjoy having a steady paycheck and sitting on the beach sipping on rum and cokes.

I have also developed a slightly embarrassing love for 80s hair metal but I have made peace with it. Some people like the new Kings of Leon record, I like Dr Feelgood.

It would be entirely self absorbed of me to not mention the tragic death of Michael Jackson yesterday. One of the first cds I ever bought with my own pocket money was Michael Jackson’s “Dangerous.” I’m pretty sure the only reason I did was because there was a cool kid in my class called Mark who said it was awesome and the girls liked him. So I bought it in the hopes that would make girls like me too. It didn’t. And the only song on the album I really enjoyed was “Black Or White.” Although in retrospect “Jam” was pretty sweet too. But as I got older (and girls started liking me without a good cd collection) I bought Bad and Thriller and played them obsessively.
I just hope that through all his later weird years, that he is remembered for those first early albums and being a one of kind performer. There has never been anyone who can dance like Mike (No, not even you Usher) and there never will be.

R.I.P. Michael Jackson.

Michael Jackson has died

By
Edo
Published: 26 June 2009 8:44 AM ESTPosted in: BlogTags:

MICHAEL Jackson, 50, has suffered a heart attack and died, gossip website TMZ reports.

Paramedics were unable to revive him.

TMZ were told: “when paramedics arrived, Jackson had no pulse and they never got a pulse back.”

Michael is survived by three children: Michael Joseph Jackson, Jr., Paris Michael Katherine Jackson and Prince “Blanket” Michael Jackson II.

Transformers II: Transformers abroad!

By
Matt
Published: 24 June 2009 10:56 PM ESTPosted in: BlogTags: ,

Here is how I imagine the conversation between Michael Bay and the studio-executive who greenlighted the ‘eagerly awaited’ sequel to the transformers movie went:

Studio Exec: Michael, Transformers was a financial collosus, congratulations.. What other projects do you have in the pipeline?

Bay: Well I have been thinking long and hard about this, what if we make another transformers movie?

SE: Another one?

Bay: Thats right, but this time it wont be in the US.. but in Egypt!

SE: woah woah hold your horses there Mike, you’re talking crazy!

Bay: The story can centre around the Decepticons coming back to earth to find a life source that can help them destroy the universe.

SE: um.. i dont know Mike, wasn’t that the same storyline as the first one?

Bay: …. NO! This time its a completely different life source..

SE: But what are the chances that there are two lifeforces in the entire universe, and they are both situated on Earth?

Bay: Well you see Mr. executive the underlying meaning of the film is that everyone has a destiny and it is the god-given destiny of that ‘le beef’ kid to save the universe from eternal destruction, whilst at the same time trying to score with a girl that is way to hot for him, thus making him the hero of everyman..

SE: hmmm.. barely seems plausable.

Bay: Did i mention that we wont have to pay the actors much because there are only about 10 characters in the movie (including robots), for which most of the movie is running against a bluescreen without any meaningful dialog?

SE: hmmm *sounds interested* tell me more

Bay: If i’m gonna be honest with you Mr. jew-money man, people are so desensitised by computer graphics and explosions these days that we can probably film the movie in about 2 months, on a dangerously similar storyline to the first one, located it in a more sandier location to appease the people who have HD blueray, throw in some shots of Megan’s ass for people who will never get laid, blow loads of stuff up and write some macho-esque bullshit lines like ‘Transform this!’, or ‘it seems that humans are more than meets the eye’, and still gross around $700 million box office with hardly any thought.

SE: *wipes a tear from his eye* .. thats the american dream

Bay: God bless us.. everyone.

And you thought Megatron was a badass

And you thought Megatron was a badass

 

out.

Fat Stats: June 2009

By
Edo
Published: 24 June 2009 8:21 PM ESTPosted in: BlogTags:

I think we’re all enjoying the benefits of introducing Word Press to The FAT Website.  The site looks like a million bucks and its a lot easier to use.

Something else we’ve also added to TFW is Google Analytics so we can see who visits our site and how they found us.  I’ll do a monthly blog entry going over some of the vital statistics.

Hit Count

Hit Count – a modest start for The FAT Website after its month-long downtime.  We are currently tracking at around 40 unique visitors a day.

060902

Top Ten Cities – The top cities in the world contributing to TFW visitors.  I’m not sure why Dubai is spelt like the phonetic spelling of The Fonz pronouncing it. Also…Nottingham?

060903

Global Overview – Africans and South Americans don’t care about The FAT Website.

060904

Top Ten Search Results – Search engines drive a lot of traffic to The FAT Website and now that we tag keywords to the blog entries, we can see what people are looking for when they discover TFW.

Australian Politics: Utegate

By
Edo
Published: 23 June 2009 8:00 PM ESTPosted in: BlogTags: , , , ,

Australia is currently embroiled in a political scandal that is referred to as Utegate.  Its the biggest scandal to hit the country since Flamingmongrel-gate and ShrimpsOntheBarbie-gate.

I take back all the criticism I wrote about the frivolous nature of British politics.  The last couple of weeks in Australian politics have been a spectacular waste of time and  the whole thing has now devolved into petty name-calling and childish oneupsmanship.

For the uninitiated, I present a timeline of the events as they unfolded:

Utegateutegate

June 19th 2009 - Malcolm Turnbull, leader of the Opposition, accuses Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of abusing his power in office.  He claims to have knowledge of an email that shows that Rudd gave preferential treatment to a friend John Grant who owns a car dealership and applied for financial assistance from the government.  So monumental is this abuse of power that Turnbull believes Kevin Rudd should resign and stand down as Prime Minister.  The media christen this political  scandal “Utegate” because Grant lent Rudders his ute during the Kevin 07 election campaign.

June 20th 2009 – Rudd:  “So, can we see this email?”

June 20th 2009 - Turnbull:  “Actually, truth be told I never claimed to have the incriminating email.  I just thought it’d be awesome to ask you to resign on a hunch.”

June 21st 2009 - Rudders:  “You know what?  I think you should resign!”

June 21st 2009 – Turnbull:  “If you’re going to be like that, I think you and the treasurer Wayne Swann should both resign!”

June 22nd 2009 - The federal police:  “Bro, there’s no evidence.  Email was faked.”

June 22nd 2009 - Rudders:  “I want an apology goddamit”

June 23rd 2009 - Turnbull:  “I’ll apologise when you apologise.  Also, now that I have admitted that I don’t have a shred of evidence to back up my claims, I have made the decision to  continue pursuing this pointless waste of time and extraordinary butchering of my once promising political career anyway”

So we just spent a whole week on a claim that some guy may have seen an email that he doesn’t really recall and that no one has a copy of, and if they did, the police think it was probably fake.

Good job guys.

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