howie’s halfpipe

two days in a row i have absolutely nothing to blog about

My eye twitch is back in my left eye and i blame computers

Bowen rules the west side, Peace out my doggs!

The above statement may or may not be true but i got paid to write so who gives a damn!

Paul Hester is dead.

He’s the drummer from Split Enz and Crowded house.
Crowded house is my favourite band of all time, Paul Hester is my favourite drummer of all time. He just seemed like such a nice guy.

Its really sad, looks like he took his own life.

I would like to celebrate the great drummer that he was in all the bads he played in, and oh how much I liked his tv show “Hessies shed” .
Now he’s gone.

Sad day for Australian music.

“hey now, hey now, dont dream it’s over”

Today was “Clean my room” day.

Jane and I spent the last 5 hours in there.
Its clean now.
As a result of the cleaning we filled an entire otto bin with paper.
About 2 otto bins worth of rubbish.
3 big garbage bags of clothes.
And I chipped my tooth.

I found my old braces or retainers or whatever you call them. The thing you wear on your teeth after braces. I last wore my plates in 2000. I pushed them on and wore them for a while. Then in the removal process a bit of one of my tooth got removed too.

But a good day all round.

What a nice clean room.

Today for work I had to go into the city and film the Easter march from town Hall to Hyde Park, and then a bit of the festival afterwards.

I got there early and did some establishing shots, got a few landmarks in so you can tell its in Sydney.
Then just before the march began I got some shots of the crowd gathering and some long shots of the crowd from a distance.
Then the media rocked up!
Now normally this would excite me cause it would mean you can hang out with them and get similar shots to them and just latch on to the group of TV channels. In the past this has been a great experience for me, like at the No War march’s and even last years Easter march. But this year it didn’t excite me, and its not because of my recent divorce from the world of making videos. Its all about Pride, Self Esteem and Aesthetics.
You see in my head I think of myself as a bit of a professional standard cameraman, Now I’m probably not but in my head I am.
And us professionals only like to work with the best of equipment, because we are striving for the best quality picture we can possibly muster. In past marchs I have at least had a pro-sumer camera (prosumer is a cross between a professional and just your average consumer). Like my Panasonic 3CCD camera. It’s a decent camera and sure its no TV station camera but its at bare minimum community television , and with my camera the media guys would not look down on you too much because obviously you know what you are doing a bit. Last years easter march I had Steve Bevis’s camera which again is a nice 3CCD camera the canon XM1. So I fitted in with the media.
But now we get to this year, where I had one of works cameras which was no bigger than my clenched fist. Its lens is about the same size as a 20 cent coin and the tripod may as well have been made out of paddle pop sticks.

It was embarrising standing in the middle of park street filming the march approaching and knowing that either side of me where media guys with massive DVCAM over the shoulder cameras on their chunky miller tripods. I felt like a piece of road kill with eagles swarming around me. Me and my little hanycam just didn’t cut it. Sure my shots might have been all right but the media guys wont have seen that, all they will have picked up on is that there is some punk with a handycam making a home movie on their turf.

It was like I was at a set of traffic lights in my little blue barina and then up beside me pulls a big HSV Commodore with its V8 engine rumbling. It was like that, I could hear the TV dudes revving the engines of their big cameras and there I was siting in the lane beside them in my little beep beep barina.

In fact at one stage I was taking this good shot from the middle of the march with the crowds filing past me, recoding away, and then BOOM. This big miller tripod lands in front of my lens and a giant DVCAM camera locks onto the top of it. There he was a media man stealing my shot as if I didn’t exist.

Never again shall I take a handycam to anything where I will be seen and will harm my self image.

Last nights dinner consisted of:
Blue Ribbon icecream
Chocolate pudding
Streets Vienetta
Chocolate Bavarian
and a packet of chips.

daylight savings is a good invention

Tonight i went a watched “Miss Congeniality 2″ with a whole bunch of fun peoples.
To begin with at the candy bar i couldnt bring myself to ask for a ticket to this film. I have standards. Anyway jenny asked for me. So as you can see from the outset i didnt have high expectationns for the film.
It didnt prove me wrong it was absolute rubbish. It would have been more enjoyable to spend the time running through a field of dog poo with bare feet. It would have been more entertaining watching “Sleepless in Seatle” 45 times in a row.
It was that bad. I have to confess in a moment of weakness i did snicker 4 times during the course of the film.

I give it the big 1/7 and it only gets 1 because it was better than a tom hanks / meg ryan film.

I reccomend it to deaf and blind people

sign up here to join the lachie bandwagon

I dont understand why.

But thanks mate, I love you

Jenny and i where just walking through westfield. We passed a lady with her two daughters, then we heard this “Molly get your fingers out of her bum now!”

who wants to see a film with me tomorrow night (thursday night) i dont know what film and i dont know what time.

location. Greater Union Hornsby

Thats right folks “Passage of Discovery” has gone into pre production with the first production meeting booked in for Tuesday the 5th of April.

We can start counting down the days until i find myself laying on a table with a mam exploring my bowels through the exit only chamber of my body.

I discovered whilst jumping on the trampoline with hannah just before, that jumping on a trampoline doesnt do wonders for a dodgy back.

oh well heat packs are kind of fun.

Today i felt i needed to buy a CD. Only once i was in Borders i couldnt really see anything i wanted, but i knew i needed a CD. So i just picked a random CD and bought it.

Damien Rice

not bad, never heard of him. But not a bad CD, a good late night CD to fall asleep too.

Debbie thinks i’m PHAT
And jenny thinks my bum is cute

The Wave Aid dvd is coming April 3.

You can watch most of it at this site.

The blogging world seems to be dominated by these little surveys lately. So here is mine.

I think it would be interesting to see who all you people are who read this.

So here is the Questions.

Name:
Age:
Where are you:
Colour of underpants you are wearing right now:
How long have you been visiting this site:
Why do you read it:
Pepsi or Coke:

The end.