Hugh Jackman Hosts Oscars: Shares Spike in Smelling Salts Company

14.12.08

By SHELL SHERREE

It's official. Huge Hunkman is hosting the 2009 Academy Awards.

That's right. In the big format shakeup slated to bring viewers back to the Oscars fold, the decision was made to put comedians on the back burner and instead, choose the man best qualified to bring them back in droves: The Drover. Oh, who do they think they are kidding! They really chose the man most women want, a heck of a lot of men want and the rest of the men secretly want to be: Hugh Jackman.

Although it is touted as a break from tradition, I'm almost at the worship point of imagining him soft-shoe shuffling on water, so a sudden display of comedic timing would not surprise me in the slightest. And since he is said to be so short-sighted that he has difficulties reading teleprompters (but he will likely memorise his lines - beauty and brains, sigh), I wouldn't even put it past our Hugh to come up with his own impromptu material on the fly and go on to become the next big thing on Saturday Night Live. I do hope there's a bit of song and dance, too. Nothing says Awards Ceremony like an old fashioned choreography number and we know he won't put a foot wrong.

My only concern is that when it really boils down to it, we don't actually see that much of the host. Every category gives the excuse for another pair of glamorous celebs to amble out and steal precious minutes from quality time with our Hugh. I'm all for seeing celebs in their Sunday best, but not this year. We can check them out on the red carpet preview instead, thanks very much.

I might need to pick up some smelling salts, though. Hugh Jackman in a tux ... that's swooning material if ever I saw it! (Even my hubby agrees with me. Not that there's anything wrong with that ...)
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It's Beginning to Feel a Lot Like Christmas

8.12.08

By SHELL SHERREE

If I woke up with amnesia and needed to find our mailbox, I’d only have to follow the trail of rolled up Christmas sales catalogues tossed over our fence.

We have a No Junk Mail sticker on it. How thoughtful that they comply by throwing the junk mail into the garden instead. Clearly we need a sticker with more explicit instructions.

The other day, I pulled a Christmas Card from my hubby's elderly aunt out of said mailbox. We were visiting her that very night but she seems to enjoy mailing our card come rain, hail or shine and we've had plenty of all three, so it was no surprise to find it there.

Aunt Teensy's (name changed to protect me) festive bake-up is as reliable as her Christmas Card. Each year, we have our Santa celebrations with her early in December (she has a very busy dance card and slots us in before the perm relaxes). This year, as always, she fondly sent us home with fruit cake, shortbread, coconut macaroons, jars of mixed lollies and mixed milk choc-coated indiscernibles. I nearly slipped into a sugar coma in the car and that was just from cradling them on my knees. Ironically, she has diabetes. I have to wonder if she is trying to live out her sweet cravings through us.

I don't usually eat lollies and mixed milk choc-coated indiscernibles. (Technical note: Dark chocolate is an antioxidant, not a lolly.) But I make a polite exception this time each year and snort my way through them at a cracking pace on the pretext of getting rid of them so that I'll stop eating them. (Somewhat like tidying up for the cleaner.) This year, however, the thought that the lollies could have been made in China and filled with melamine flitted through my head. Not that Aunt Teensy would have bought such things had she known, but I'm not sure if she keeps a finger on the pulse of world news nowadays or merely checks periodically to make sure it's still alive.

I couldn't look at the lollies in the same way after that and threw them away. I'm rather fond of my kidneys and have no desire for them to produce me some new kitchen cupboard doors. I believe we have shops for that kind of thing.
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The Grass is Greener on the Other Side of the Zodiac

28.11.08

By SHELL SHERREE

I'm a Sagittarian. I'm not into reading my daily horoscope, or even the monthly one. But I'm generally a believer in the personality traits of the starsigns.

Generally. Sometimes they are a tad errant. Take me, for instance. (Really - take me. My hubby is over trying to find me a birthday present and he's almost at the point of deciding it's easier to give me away. I'm not really serious, of course. He'd like at least an Angora goat and a case of Tatachilla Foundation Shiraz in exchange.)

Two primary characteristics that are supposedly shared by all those under the sign of Sagittarius are athleticism and a love of travel.

To be fair, I am still open to the whole 'love of travel' thing. I haven't done much of it yet, mostly because I can tear off bikini wax far more easily than tearing myself away from our furry children. And I haven't yet met an international economy-class flight that anyone but its mother could love.

There is, however, an inexplicable strand of Paris woven into my DNA. (I say inexplicable because I can't explain it.) So I live in hope that Gene Roddenberry left some blueprints before he went to the other great Star Trek Enterprise in the sky, and that one day my trip to Le Tour Eiffel will be as simple as standing under the heat lamp exhaust fan in the bathroom and saying, "Beam me up, Moet & Chandon-ny".

The 'athletic' thing, on the other hand, has me baffled. I used to tell our Deputy Principal at primary school every sports day that, "My mummy said I'm not allowed to run today." (A fib, I confess.) One year, an odd urge overcame me and I whirred my little white chicken legs through their strides for one race... and won. Perhaps it was that innate Saggi athleticism trying to make a run for it. Alas, this feat inspired our heat-stroked Phys-Ed teacher to put me into the interschool relay team. A couple of weeks later, my latent sporting aspirations bounced several lanes away in the wake of shoddy baton exchange and never returned.

So here we are at the root of my grizzle. It's nearly time for fashion magazines to print their fashion forecasts for next year based on star signs. And every year, I look enviously at the bold glamour of Leo or the luxurious seductiveness of Scorpio and heave a big, fat, heavy sigh when I see the prediction for sporty, travelling Sagittarius: a pair of running shoes and a very large canvas bag. If any fashion editors are reading, I beg of you: please take pity on a not-so-sporty she-Centaur and show me something pretty that doesn't look quite so at home in a men's locker room (and I don't mean a cheer leader's pom poms).
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Men in Tights

26.11.08

By SHELL SHERREE

My dear aunt Norma (87 years of age and extremely sparky) sent me a news clipping from her local Canberra Times. I'm sure she intended to enlighten me on the native Animalia that proliferates on her doorstep. It was a lovely article, proving to me that the Possums Private Club (of which I'm an honorary member, as you'd know if you read one of my earlier posts) has a reach that stretches furry, far and wide - something that should stand me in good stead when I travel.

Not that I'll ever tell her, but what really caught my eye was printed on the reverse side of the page, in the Odds and Ends. It mentioned a Japanese man who has started an online campaign to legalise marriage between humans and cartoon characters. I googled it and sure enough, here's what Taichi Takashita has to say.

“I am no longer interested in three dimensions. I would even like to become a resident of the two-dimensional world,” he wrote. “However, that seems impossible with present-day technology. Therefore, at the very least, would it be possible to legally authorise marriage with a two-dimensional character?”

It got me thinking. Who would I choose? Who would choose me back, assuming they or I could exercise some advanced form of extra-pixelatory perception?

Further contemplation led me to the realisation that all the comic book heroes who sprung to mind looked mighty fine in lycra. (It's a relative thing. Any daydream of the week, I'd choose a Bonds singlet, gluteus maximus-hugging jeans and a bit of imagination rather than spandex and a graphic outline of turkey giblets. But as with cycling, it appears that superheroes need a bit of aerodynamic assistance and denim simply doesn't cut it, let alone the potential problems of fading after repeated washing.)

So who would it be? Superman? Batman? Spiderman?

Then I realised how stupid the whole thing was. I'm already married!!
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Baz Luhrmann: Just Foxing

20.11.08

By SHELL SHERREE


Are we the lucky country or what? Think how Kath and Kim we'd have sounded if Mark Anthony Luhrmann had taken the nickname Bazza instead of Baz.

"Bazza Luhrmann's Austroilia. Now showing at a cinema near every bloke and his sheila."

Thank heavens for small mercies. Come February 22nd, 2009, does anyone really want to hear, "And the Ocker goes to..." (If that day ever comes, pickle me pink and keep me perpetually sozzled.)
As a matter of fact, Baz earned his affectionate nickname for his resemblance to the adorable British glove puppet fox, Basil Brush, created in the late 1960s. So to all those Hollywood naysayers who doubted whether Baz would get 'Australia' over the line in time, take that - he was probably just foxing! (I say 'as a matter of fact' loosely, by the way, because my research only extends as far as Wikipedia and since it can be edited by anyone, there's a modicum of chance I'm giving you a bum steer. I'll always wonder if Josh Groban really did play kazoo at school...)


My same source says that Basil Brush's "persona, speech and gap-toothed look", in turn, was inspired by Terry-Thomas, a stirling English comedian, renowned for portraying disreputable cads of the upper classes and uttering "Good show!" By my calculations, this makes Baz a second cousin to Terry-Thomas or at worst, only two degrees of separation away, which is considerably less than the distance between Terry-Thomas's teeth. (I, on the other hand, have a veritable mosh pit of pearly whites jamming in my front row, proving that you can have too much of a good thing.)

Little wonder that Baz turned to show biz with such associations in his life. (Oh, and his father ran a petrol station and movie theatre, both of which would influence his film making career, according to my source. Not sure about the petrol station. He wanted to set the world on fire? He learned the importance of being able to pump up his own tyres? He saw the look in a woman's eyes when offered a grease and oil change and realised the power of a great romance?)

From the early critic reviews, it looks like Baz Luhrmann's love of the theatrical and a love story as mushy as the best pie and peas are evident in 'Australia'. I haven't seen the movie yet, but I will and I'll love it, damn it all, because I'm already fed up with people sharpening their secateurs for some Tall Poppy pruning.

For those who say the love scenes are Harlequin or Mills & Boon-esque as if it's a bad thing, let's guess how many millions of women have had their fancies tickled and blood pressure elevated by such entertainment over the years. I'd say A Lot.

And to the angst-riddled types who think giving people what they want is a sign of artistic weakness, perish the thought that Baz knows the fairer sex far too well to hide Hugh Jackman's melting smile and tanned six pack under the shade of a sensible Akubra for long. I have to admit, though: I think I'm a little in love with Deborra-Lee Furness. What a woman! She has the guts not to embrace camping even though her hunk of hubby was filming in the Never Never (we comfort-lovers instinctively know there's a reason why it's called that). And she has the fortitude to not pass out with delirium every time he looks at her the way he does ... no wonder Hugh is so smitten!

There are accusations of schmaltz in 'Australia' but let's remember that Baz wanted to bump off The Drover. After a pushy test audience and possibly a beer or two, he acquiesced to peer pressure and went for one of his alternative endings, so it wasn't really his fault. (He was also seen hanging around the back of the cinema on opening night having a few surreptitious puffs with the tough kids.) I'm looking forward to seeing it and finding out for myself. Fortunately my blood pressure is on the low side so I can take a few hours of The Drover without missing a beat.
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Beware the Volatile Organic Compounds

11.11.08

By SHELL SHERREE

It is done.

With steely resolve to complete what I'd started, I blocked off nearly two full days to finish my painting project.

After making excellent headway on Day 1, I arose on Day 2 and did some quick calculations, figuring that if I started straight after my nutritious, oaty breakfast of champions and horses, I'd be done by lunch time. With water conservation still at the forefront of our community minds, I decided to postpone my morning shower until after I'd finished the job, when I would cleanse the tiresome experience from my body and soul with as much Baptisimal fervour as I could manage in less than 4 minutes.

Sadly, my calculations were influenced by a large dose of wishful thinking and by midday, I was still hard at it and hours away from the finish line (marked with a blue cross of Painters' Masking Tape as my silently removable cheer squad).

Not only that, but the day had become unbearably hot and steamy and I had the unfortunate realisation that I was starting to smell like a possum.

I progressed through the humid afternoon with an increasing rating on the Honk scale. I wished desperately that I would become (to borrow from a memorable line in Oceans 13) nose deaf. Then I wished I hadn't bought the Low Odour paint. Oh, for some Volatile Organic Compounds to mask the smell of my own.

In spite of the vapours, my spirits began to rise as the rooms transformed from long-suffering inhabitants of my To Do List into something quite ethereal and lovely. As I put down the roller for the last time and surveyed my handiwork, not even my hubby recoiling from me in horror after he arrived home and approached me for a kiss could take the edge off my pleasure at a job well done. Then I threw everything away, including my painting clothes (they kindly walked into the garbage bag of their own accord) and had one of the best and most fragrant showers an egg timer has ever offered me.

I note that several days have passed and the family of possums living around our house is still keeping me under 24 hour surveillance. It seems I now have Honorary Lifetime Membership to their club. Add that to the list of things they don't tell you about DIY.
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