The Steamtug Blog

Just sitting here by the fire and contemplating the world around me. It’s a long weekend here, but with Riley’s commitments we were unable to get away even though I am on day work and have the weekend off all the way to Wednesday.

Footy

I went to the footy last night to see Geelong beat Essendon. It was supposed to be a boys weekend boat trip. 5 hours to Melbourne and tie up just outside the stadium, then cruise back today. The weather was perfect but there were only 4 takers. Hardly worth the cost of running the boat all that way for only 4 people, so we went by car. Not a bad game, but Geelong are just so good at the moment that they just put in enough to keep control of the game and win. They still finished 10 goals in front.

The need for speed

I did 2 hours of solid work doing the winter cut back in the garden before putting my feet up. So as I sip another home brewed grain beer beside the fire, I was reading in the newspaper about our racing car champion Mark Skaife. He recons that the speed limits for our roads should be raised to 140 kms/hr. Well I don’t quite agree, but I do think they Hume  Freeway should be 130kms, and the Geelong to Melbourne road should be 110 during peak times and 120 off peak.

Skaife talks about how our road safety strategy bangs on about speed, but it’s not the silver bullet, and he is right. There are far more things out there of concern, like drivers using mobile phones, and these new fangled GPS units mounted on the windscreen right in the driver’s field of view. They are just the right size to obscur a motorcycle approaching from the right! What chance has a lonely fox got? And they set up a booze bus for breathe testing occassionally and are always surprised how many people they catch! What we really need is a police presence on the road. We never saw a cop after  the speed cameras came into operation, but now they are back (see my post on speeding fox!) We also need to teach drivers to have a better attitude when on the road. (Just my opinion…)

And then there is the issue of driver fatigue on those long lonely Aussie roads. Piddling along at 100kms is enough to put anybody to sleep. And how do we police that? Driver’s log books for highway driving? Retina scanning by the rear view mirrors with a time out? But let’s be serious… you would not fall asleep at 130kms/hr and those hoon drivers would have somewhere to try out some high speed driving legally and in a safe place. It all makes sense to me.

The 10 best ever movies!

Also in the papers today, was a list of the top 10 movies of all time (did you ready it?) There were 10 different categories, so 100 movies in total, but most were crap movies! Can you believe that in the comedy section, number 5 was Ghostbusters. What were they thinking???? Not even mention of Monty Python’s Holy Grail. At least Avitar was not there. Now there is a movie rates just below “The African Queen” with Humphery Bogart and Kathryn Hepburn, and just above Alfred Hitchcock’s 49 steps. (Nowhere near Alfred’s Psycho!) And we haven’t even discussed Mr. Bean’s holiday or the Simpson’s movie. You can quote me on this, “Avitar is a flimsy excuse for a story designed to support 3 hours of fancy special effect”

So I came up with my list of 10 greatest movies of all time, and I recon they are better than all the crap movies listed in the paper. So here we go! (not necessarily in order)

1. The Shawshank Redemption (best prison movie ever)
2. Midnight Express (second best prison movie)
3. The Commitments (best ever musical movie)
4. Mad Max (The original and best, filmed all around Geelong, best ever bikie movie!)
5. The Blues Brothers (How could this not be in the top 10?)
6. National Lampoon’s “Animal House” (who could forget the horse being shot in the principle’s office?!!!)
7. Snatch (best action comedy, Brad Pit does a great job here even better than “fight club” which would be close to making the top ten)
8. Alien (Best sci-fi. A young Sigorny Weaver walking around in her undies only just surpasses the special effect of the alien popping out of the victim’s stomach… mmm)
9. The Caine Mutiny (The Pulitzer prize winning novel with Humphy Bogart as Captain Queeg. An oldie but oh, so good. Makes the story line of Avitar a joke!)
10. The Good, the bad and the ugly (best Western movie ever. It was a toss up between this and Clint Eastwood’s “Unforgiven” but this one is an old classic that I just can’t forget!)

I am no movie expert, but here are some examples that almost made the list

Dead Poet society (Robin Williams trying to be semi serious)

Guess who’s coming to dinner (Spencer Tracey’s last movie about the great taboo that almost seems normal these days)

Monty Python’s Life of Brian (He’s not the masiar, just a naughty boy)

The Great Escape (Steve McQueen jumps the world’s greatest motorcycle… a Triumph all the way to freedom!)

Fitzcaraldo (Director Werner Hertzog’s obsession with this movie about an obsessed opera lover who sails a little steam ferry over a mountain)

Whale Rider (New Zealand’s cultural diversity, displayed in this “different” but intriguing classic

Around the world in 80 days (David Niven as Philias Fog only makes it after burning all the ship’s furniture in the boiler, then throws in his brolly and bowler hat for good measure!)

Silence of the lambs (enough to put you off liver for life!)

Ruthless People (Bette Middler get’s thin while Danny Devito celebrates she’s been kidnapped, but they can’t kill her)

Amityville Horror (scared 7 colors of shit out of me as a teenager…)

So what is your favourite movie? Send some suggestions by adding a comment!

Seeya…