australian rozie

One of my (many) favourite tv shows, Australian Idol, has finished for another year. I am happy that Wes won the “crown”, the recording contract, the money and the car. Any guy who unashamedly impersonates Michael Jackson in front of a Jackson (Jermaine) and has no shame about idolising the “King of Pop” deserves to win this musical cheese-fest! Hello, cousin Peter - owner of Michael Jackson Live in Bucharest DVD.
This year, the final was held entirely outside of the Sydney Opera House… was it double booked? This usually is an ideal location for such special events except for the fact that it rained all night. I was worried someone might slip over while singing and dancing. Summer? Anyone… anyone…?
Anyway, I enjoyed seeing all the top 12 singing together again, there was lots of back slapping and hugging.
• The female finalists sang I’m Every Woman (getting a bit bored of this song).
• I hated what Roshani Priddis wore on stage (sorry can’t find a pic at the moment), but it was a hidaecious black & white strapless dress with long gloves ensemble, very similar to what she wore on one of her finals performance that Kyle said was a bad look.
• I still think that Madam Parker has got something going for her - hope she gets some work out of this.
• Jess Mauboy (Idol runner up in 2006) performed her new single and she looks and sounds pretty hot, I think they are trying to make her the Australian RiRi.
• Casey Chambers performed her special country music with the two finalists - Wes & Luke, she looked pretty bad, the poor thing.
• It was interesting to see how the tally room works and finding out that every second, two hundred and something votes were being recorded (ka-ching). What the hell was going on with Tim Bailey’s hair!!! It was not a good look on him.
• Must give an honourable mention to the hosts Andrew G and James Mathison. I think they do a really good job of hosting a live tv show where anything can go wrong (and it often does throughout the season). They manage to fill dead air or make a quick joke to cover someone else’s lame comment. It was gold when they made fun of Jermaine Jackson saying “Touchdown”. I hope they came up with that themselves… I don’t know, maybe someone writes their jokes for them…
So, a fairly enjoyable season of Idol in 2008, but not the greatest. I think that Season One was the best.

Book of Longing

Originally uploaded by Australian Rozie

Dave and I went to this quite a while ago. I’m catching up on things that I wanted to blog about now that I’ve handed in my Cert IV TAA work in.
I wanted to see Philip Glass before he died. When I saw that he was performing the Book of Longing at the Sydney Opera House, I decided that tickets to this show would make a great present for Dave’s birthday. The show consisted of the poems of Leonard Cohen - he is not my man but I thought it would be interesting anyway.
After birthday drinks at the “perfect Sydney” Opera Bar, we headed over to the concert hall. We had great seats - in the third row from the front! Melody tagged along too in the last minute seats, but she’d seen him before (I think). We all received a little copy of The Book of Longing which was a nice touch, it was s bit like a wedding program, where you could follow along and see where we were up to in the performance.
Philip Glass came out and the crowd went wild. Then, the ensemble of musicians and vocalists came out and did their thing. It was - different, unusual. Dave even mentions, “daggy”. I think that I just wanted to see Glass perform The Hours soundtrack, instead I got nutty songs about love, loss and some rude words. Philip Glass sat on the stage, tinkled a few bars and would then wander off stage letting the other musicians do their thing, then he’d come back, tinkle a bit more, then wander off again. It wasn’t really what I imagined it was going to be. Oh well, I know how brilliant he is, if you haven’t seen Glass: a Portrait of Philip Glass in Twelve Parts, you definitely should check it out. And I got to see him before he… you know what.
Here are some other reviews:
http://www.australianstage.com.au/reviews/miaf/book-of-longing–philip-glass-1974.html
http://www.artshub.com.au/au/news.asp?sc=&sId=174548&sType=review

Last Saturday, Dave and I did 3 really random things!
First thing (like 6:30am) Dave competed in a 10km race in Lane Cove National Park with Sydney Striders. After that, it was my turn to make my partner go somewhere they didn’t want to be… the Paper Crafts Festival at Canterbury Racecourse. Dave sat down and read Good Weekend while I browsed stall upon stall of fancy scrapbooking things, stickers, stamps and papers of the world! I managed to spend under $50 there. On our way home, Dave spotted the Toys, Books, Collectables shop and he had to pull over. It was a shop completely full of second hand stuff, so much random stuff!!! Though everything had a price tag on it. I ended up buying a cute wall hanging for $5.

I don’t like to talk politics… but today I will say..
YAH!
I said to Dave last night, if Obama didn’t win, I was going to cry. Then I was at work watching his speech and I cried a little anyway.

That’s all for now, I have so much to blog about but I’m trying to make myself study first.