Internet, you've ruined hunks (AM)

Recently, I asked the Internet what’s hot and Google showed me this:




Haha. Good one google.

Anyway, eventually I got to this thing on Buzzfeed about why Joseph Gordon Levitt may be hot.

 

And, as I well and truly already knew, there are several reasons. In simpler, pre-internet days there would actually be no question in my mind about the legitimacy of JGL's hotness. I like JGL, he's good in stuff and hot, therefore JGL = Hunk. But now I actually have to decide based on all this information whether or not a person is actually hot. With the Internet there is so much more to know. In the old days you just watched a few movies, read a few magazines, if you were lucky saw the odd interview on Letterman. A hunk was a hunk.

But now, there is so much exposure to people, sheesh, it's a wonder anyone is still a hunk. Let's, for example, examine Joey Gordon Levitt. First I just thought I loved him. Then, thanks to the Internet, I heard an interview with him on Fresh Air. I liked him well enough but I was primed to love him. Why didn't I love him? There, chink 1 in his hunk armour. Also, I read his twitter feed. It’s ok, sometimes amusing, sometimes annoying. Like everyone’s I guess. But still, I don't love him. Bam, another chink.

It's just that I know too much. In the old days a hunk was a hunk 'cause you just saw them in movies you could make them whoever you wanted. But now that’s harder. Look at our HotMC hunks: Casey Affleck, Gael Garcia Bernal, Jake Gylenhaal, even Jimmy Bartel, no Twitter feeds and pretty low level media exposure. Paul Newman, definitely no Twitter feed.

Internet, I guess you must be good for something other than providing pictures of cats that look like Hitler. I mean, Wikipedia seems ok, but sometimes I just wish we lived in simpler times. Times when you'd find a picture like this in Smash Hits and would have known without a doubt you were looking at a hunk.

Nothing gold can stay, I guess. 

Strange baking: Vanilla and coconut cake truffles (AM)

When I was little, my grandmother used to always make a little something she called snowballs but were in fact akin to something you might know as 'truffles'.

I realise that's not a very helpful distinction, because a truffle can be something like this:

this:

or like this:

What we're talking about here is the last kind of truffle. A treat made from crushed marie biscuits, butter, cocoa, condensed milk and coconut. She used to make those delicious bastards all the time, such that my school lunchbox pretty much always had little bits of coconut in the bottom. This is something I look back on very very fondly, and makes me wish I still got to eat them and that my handbag had little bits of coconut in the bottom, instead of tampons, information leaflets from tampon packets, and general bag detritus stuck to chewing gum stuck to loose change.

But I digress. The reason I tell you all of this is so you will understand why I sat up and took notice when I found this recipe the other day for Vanilla and coconut cake truffles.

I got excited thinking these truffles must be like a blonde version of the snowballs my grandma used to make, just as the blondie is the blonde version of the brownie and the white chocolate mud cake is the blonde version of the chocolate mud cake (Pickle made one once, it was delicious). But then I read the recipe and realised...what this is, is not a truffle. It is some kind of cake bite. This is basically crumbled up buttercake, mixed with vanilla buttercream icing, rolled in coconut.   

What the eff , people. What the eff??!!. Obviously I decided I had to make it immediately.  

It starts with making a whole cake. 

Then crumbling the whole thing up, and making vanilla buttermilk icing.

Then combining the two and making them in to little balls and, as you may have guessed, rolling them in coconut. 

All through this process I couldn't help thinking how idiotic it was. Making an intensely buttery cake only to destroy and then try to rebuild it with icing that really could have just gone on top with a sprinkling of coconut? Why would you do that? No really, why? I needed these blonde snowballs to be super delicious so the questions would stop.

Look, they were fine. But they are very very sweet. And they look so much like lemon slice that I found it disappointing that they didn't taste like lemon slice.

And they really needed to have some crushed marie biscuits involved somehow. They would have been so much better. I think I'm just going to make lemon slice next time. Or snowballs. 

How things work - blog writing (AM)

K and I used to know this guy, let's call him Jenga, he was funny, total drama crew, wanted to be an actor. I wonder what happened to him. Anyway if you were in a room with him and he was stoned he would do these quite hilarious monologues. He'd start talking about something and he'd go on about it for as long as he could maintain the attention and laughter of everyone and when the laughter waned he would move on to some other schtick. He'd try something out for a few lines to see if it got laughs and if not he would drop it, try something new and so on and so on until something he said got big laughs and then he'd go with that for as long as the laughter was sustained. Sometimes you'd just become hysterical because watching this journey of his search for laughter was really funny, but his monologues, they were really funny too.

Anyway, sometimes when I am thinking about what to write I feel like that. Yes, sometimes the gold you read here just trickles from my finger tips like hot, golden showers, but sometimes I'm just like Jenga, I think of a topic, I compose a few lines in my head, if it seems good I keep going, but usually after a couple of lines I ditch it. And sometimes I just think, 'Fuck it, let's just listen to Ice Cube instead!'

Winning combos (AM)

You know what I love? Things that are great and then get even better when paired with another great thing. You know what I mean. Winning combinations. I'm not talking about those things you always think of together, like Joel and Ethan Cohen or salt and vinegar, I mean those things you think of as awesome in their own right but then when paired with something else awesome you think SHAZAM! Winning combo!

Here are some of my favourites combos:

Grated carrot and grated cheese. Now both of these things I love on there own and in all sorts of combinations but when you put these babies together magic happens. I am not talking about carrot and cheese any old way, I am talking about grated carrot and grated cheese. In a sandwich, in a wrap, in a taco, I don't care how you have it but when you put these grated guys together and those long thin strips start to mingle and tangle, oh yeah baby, they get together in loving harmony and it is a goddamn taste and texture sensation. I'm talking juicy, crunchy, creamy, salty, sweet. It's fucking beautiful.

You know what else I love? Blue and red together. These are two of my favourite colours. Look, I pretty much love all the colours when they are done right, but blue and red are really up there for me. Blue especially, it speaks to me. And I think all shades look good with red. Navy, pale, bright. But bright blue and bright red I love above all the combos. It is so fresh on my eyes. I effing love it.

Once I started thinking about winning combos I started seeing them everywhere. Like, I love David Bowie. Heaps. Who doesn't right? And I am digging on Queen more and more. Sure maybe it's because of this documentary that was on TV recently but maybe it's because of all those killer tracks.

I also kind of love Freddie Mercury. When else but in the olden days could a man with such a massive overbite become a super star. And when are these two powerhouses of Bowie and Queen finer than in Under Pressure.* Winning combo. My ears thank you!



*Maybe they have finer moments, I mean how good is Bowie? How do you chose a best track? But this one is such a good one.

What I have loved this week (AM)

I have loved a few things this week.

Corn of course. But what else is new.

And this delicious tzatziki I made and ate on a tofu kebab but which was even better the next day when the garlic had infused the whole thing deliciously and I ate it on corn chips.

I loved some clothes I tried on but didn't buy because I like to pretend I am not a clothes junky even though I have been thinking about them all week.

I loved those things, but not as much as this awesome thing that Russeth sent me the link to. (Thank you Russeth.)

Remember when video clips were awesome? Like when people like Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry used to make them? The good old days.

Of course there are still some good clips around these days. But in the old days of the 90s and early 2000s great video clips were around all the time. They could be kind of fucked up, but somehow adorable. Messy and magical. Well that's what this is! It's a video clip for Duck Sauce. And, um, it's freakin' awesome.

Look, no-one loves a dick joke more than Russeth, and sure, maybe that's what attracted him to this video clip. But guys, do yourself a favour and watch this! The loveliest dick joke I have seen in my life!

Chin Chin

Last night I had dinner at Chin Chin with Blephanie. This place wants to be so hot right now so badly.


I had a nice night and the food was delicious. But, gee, I don't know...

Call me old fashioned but I don't believe in not being able to book. I mean I know it's a thing. I believe in its existence. I just don't like it.

Also, when I got there the girl in front of me was asking for a table for 4 even though she was just one girl. I don't know. I guess my feeling was that she was expecting 3 friends to show up any minute and could probably use that table of 4. I think that the guy should have just given her the table for 4. But she was denied. Told she had to wait at the bar till the rest of her party arrived. This is my number one hated policy. WTF? Do they think girlfriend is telling some story? Like she asks for that big table only so she can sit by herself order a soda and spring roll and laugh at the idiots who succumbed to her wishes. Ummm, I guess this may have got me off to a bad start.

And I think Blephanie didn't help. When she arrived she told the waiter that there may be a baby joining us and they were not very helpful. She was pretty put off by them and conveying this to me did not improve my feelings for the place. But I've seen steam almost come out of Blephanie's ears after waiting a little too long for a meal, so it is not best to take cues from her.


It definitely wasn't bad. Not by a long shot. Service was really fine. (But if I don't order a bottle of $7 mineral water don't fucking presume to pour that shit in my glass, please.) And the food really was yummy (though that $23 soft shell crab salad would have been just as tasty at $17 with any other fried thing because the crab could have been any fried thing.) The corn and coriander fritters were really very, VERY special and the eggplant and sweet potato penang curry was a total delight. I've had better roti for half the price though, likewise the bottle of wine.

So what am I meant to think about Chin Chin? Actually, I know I am meant to think it's cool, because it doesn't take bookings and doesn't give people tables when they ask, and because the wine guy wears an apron that says "wine guy" (ugh, I know), and it is in a lofty space. But um, I don't think it's cool actually. Chin Chin, I think you are trying way too hard. And not in that good way. Why don't you try that hard to give customers an awesome experience?! That is how you will be cool.

Get your groom on!

OK mate, you can totally make this happen and I think you should.

I hear you about the challenge of overcoming laziness though. You're talking to a girl who sometimes just washes and blow-dries her fringe rather than the whole head of hair, because I just can't be bothered and the overall effect is the same (more or less). So lord knows I understand how difficult it is to overcome laziness.


But don't you reckon it's possible that if we had the necessary knowledge and skills, grooming ourselves better would probs require less energy than every day worrying about how to groom ourselves and sometimes really ballsing it up? I mean, people who look good all the time, such as well dressed old ladies, don't look good because each morning they try on half their shit, do their hair a bunch of different ways to find out what looks best, then just end up wearing it in some sort of up do because it's easiest, then slap some make up on because they are running out of time, then rush to the tram stop at a pace that makes their hair go weird and and their faces go extremely red. No way jose. It's because they just do the same good looking thing over and over and over again, and I am assume they've done it so many times it's totally a piece of cake for them now and they can make it to the tram with time to spare.

So the way I see it, we need to overcome laziness in the short term, in order to be able to embrace our true natures in the long term. And in order to do that we need to learn some skillz and practice them. Either that or make a lot of money and maintain a domestic staff because it would totally be straight up easy to look good all the time if you had domestic staff. But that's not going to happen so lets focus on learning skills.

First of all, hair. Mate, I love your hair and I think it looks good all the time. But I'm hearing that you want to know how to do it in other ways so you have more awesomeness options available to you. I think you should totally make an appointment with a hairdresser and get them to teach you how to do some thing with it. I don't understand why more hairdressers don't offer this as a service in fact. Anyway, I think you should do this and I think I should come along with a camera and I can document it for the Miss Soft Crab community.
What do you say? I think you should totally do it!

In defense of our times

Straight up, let me say that I totally hear what you are saying about the greatness of Paul and Roy and the lameness of both Party Rock Anthem and the general calibre of contemporary heart trobs. No one is more sickened by Bradley Cooper's rise to leading man status than I am. And no one is more baffled by Sparkleface's heart throb status than I am. I know a grown woman who pretty much loses her shit at the mere mention of Sparkleface's name (of course I am talking about Chambo), and honestly, space travel makes more sense to me than that. So in these ways, I have to agree that things may well have been better back in the day.

I know we've been saying this a lot lately, but it's funny that you should bring this up because it is basically the central theme of the film Midnight in Paris that KJ and I saw in NYC . It's all about how we romanticise times gone by, especially their intellectual and cultural offerings, and dismiss our own times because we are insecure about ourselves and incapable of carpe-ing our diems. Obviously, that's not a cool thing to do. But as noted, sometimes stuff was actually better before, like the work of Woody Allen (though I did like Midnight in Paris quite a lot), the work of Snoop Dogg, the work of David Bowie and the fact that if you put those foil chip wrappers in the oven, they would shrink! All these things were better before. Fact.


But I think it's important to appreciate our current times, because they have produced some of seriously awesomest stuff! Such as:

The Internet! People, don't we all love the Internet? It's so fun! And educational! It used to not exist at all and now it does! We're so lucky!

Antibiotics! Who's had a urinary tract infection before? Now tell me, who wants to live in a time before antibiotics? None of you guys, I hope, are you guys crazy?! (Obviously I know that there were antibiotics in the sixties, but you get where I am going with this.

And of course, this guy:

I'm pretty sure that Ewan could say anything the old timey movie stars said, and it would sound just fine.

They don't make them like they used to

I'm not making a judgement call on whether anything was better in the olden days than now, but last night I was watching At the Movies and they were talking about their classic film. This week it was Hud. A Paul Newman film where he plays this kind of a-hole. But he is real smooth and looks real pretty in it.

In the scene this picture is taken from he asks the female lead "Have you still got that itch?" But it's not gross. It's kind of hot. It's hard to imagine that working now.

In 1963, when Hud was made, number one hits included Roy Orbison's awesome 'In Dreams'.


And the adorable 'Sukiyaki'. (I believe 'Hello Mudda, Hello Fuddah' was also a number one that year, but only for one week so my nostalgia for a time I wasn't around for is making me overlook this fact.)

Apparently at the moment the number is a song called 'Party Rock Anthem'. Believe me when I say, this is no Roy Orbison.

Granted Snoop Dogg was also number one this year, but even Snoop Dogg isn't what he used to be. His latest number one, 'Sweat' is full of vocoder and not nearly as awesome as such classic hits as 'Gin and Juice', 'What's My Name' or even 'Drop it Like it's Hot'.

So actually I guess I am totally making a judgement on whether things were better then or now.