8 Things Meme

This is a long response to the meme. But it made me think. And post. Thanks to Eleanor Bloom, who tagged me.

Eight Things I'm Passionate About:

1) TLOML:
I think about her often. How to chat her up, make her laugh, win her, make her love me. We’ve been married for 18 years. It’s fun. I think it might even be fun for her too.
2) Moe; Larry; & Curly:
My three sons, but I'm not exactly Fred McMurray. They'd cack themselves if they knew they were my sporting heroes.
3) Cricket:
This is a good thing that was formerly a bad thing. It’s now okay for me to be involved up to my eyeballs with the local cricket club because we have three young players in the household.
4) Music:
I’m a reformed rock snob. These days, I even appreciate good pop music outside the narrow confines of my taste. So there’s a lot more tolerance about. But not for you, Johnny Farnham. Get the fuck off my radio with your overproduced cabaret mock-rock for complete morons. Maybe not totally reformed.
5) Movies:
I used to be able to watch anything just for the experience. Now it has to be good.
6) Mates:
Lucky to have them. Enjoy spending easy, relaxed time with them.
7) Dope:
Enjoy this too. Still of the view that things go better with...
8) Football:
Essendon: how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. We shall rise again and wreak a terrible vengeance on all those who have scorned us over the past few years. Which means just about everyone.

Eight Things I Want To Do Before I Die:
1) Play In Another Cricket Premiership:
I was 18, batted last, didn’t bowl and fielded behind the tree when I played in my only flag. The only other Grand Final appearance came seven years later but we lost. We might even do it this year with a late charge at the finals.
2) See The Bombers Win Another Flag:
I’ve seen four of them but want more. Nothing quite like seeing your own mob win one instead of watching a whole heap of nobodies bask in glory.
3) Write A Film Script:
I have an idea that I think is a pretty good one. So does everyone I’ve pitched it to. Just at the outline stage so far. An Australian science-fiction film. Not too many of those about. Should be able to paper at least one wall of the study with rejection letters.
4) Get My Band Back Together:

I’d like to play at my 50th, just two years away. Get the ol’ 60s covers thing happening again. I reckon the blokes would be in it. Might be a bit harder to convince them we’ll need to rehearse! And more than just 12 songs like at my 40th.

5) The Other Four Things:

Can wait until after I die.

Eight Things I Say Often:
1) Alright:
The complete all-purpose word. It’s alright.
2) Dichotomy:
Describes a split without apportioning blame. Handy when you’re trying not to inflame a situation.
3) Running around like a headless chook:
Aptly describes confusion or incompetence and usually gets a laugh so you’re not immediately into a confrontation.
4) Carrying on like a two-bob watch:
Similar to above.
5) You beauty:
Use of this has passed in and out of ironic so many times I forget which is which.
6) Can you NOT do that?
When hints fail.
7) Sorry about that, Chief:
A useful catch-phrase from the Get Smart TV show that doesn’t mean much to post baby boomers.
8) I’ve got the hots for you, big time:
Only to TLOML.

Eight Books I've Read Recently:

1) Caesar’s Legacy: Josiah Osgood

Describes from primary sources the fifteen years of terror that followed Julius Caesar’s assassination in 43BC while Octavian and Antony struggled to seize total power.
2) The First of the Few: Denis Winter
This book about WWI fighter pilots is absolutely brilliant, and I’m not given to superlatives. Accurately describes the open cockpit conditions they experienced, making use of letters, diaries and manuals.
3) Stone Alone: Bill Wyman
He only got invited to join the Rolling Stones because he owned two good amps. His point of view on the band is unique and incisive. Especially about the Jagger-Richard monopoly on song-writing credits.
4) History of Australian Cricket: Jack Pollard
Okay, he got Essex left-armer John Lever mixed up with Lancashire’s right-arm fast bowler Peter Lever but it’s still a good read. All four volumes.
5) Miller’s Luck: Roland Perry
Comprehensive, well-written biography of Keith Miller. A great cricketer who is revealed as not quite the great bloke his eulogists would have had us believe.
6) Slaughterhouse Five: Kurt Vonnegut
A funny book that really resonated with so many. Vonnegut was still turning away pilgrims to his genius even just before his death earlier this year.
7) Players: Tony Wilson
Opens a window into the footy media industry. You’ll have no trouble spotting who’s who. And plenty of laughs.
8) Porno: Irvine Welsh
A sequel of sorts to Trainspotting. I just love the shifting first-person narrative and the way Welsh speaks the Leith idiom making no allowances for the uninitiated. You have to work out what a schemie is for yourselves. Go on. Work it out. Brave and bold writing.

Eight Songs I Could Listen To Over And Over:

1) Jumpin’ Jack Flash: Rolling Stones
Still sends a chill up my spine, so good is this song. Everything the Rolling Stones stood for: blues-based, open-tuned guitars, muddy sound. Many have covered it but never captured it.
2) Midnight Man: The James Gang
Brilliant electric country-rock. What else would you expect from Joe Walsh? Original recording features session singer Mary Sterpka sounding a lot like Linda Ronstadt.
3) For Your Love: The Yardbirds
Graham Gouldman, later of 10cc, wrote this 1965 hit for the London blues tyros. A great song. Eric Clapton left the band right after because it wasn’t bluesy enough.
4) Eight Miles High: The Byrds
Ushered in the psychedelic era and was then banned due to it’s drug-influenced lyrics. It was about a fucking aeroplane flight to England, you Christian fundamentalist fuckwits.
5) While My Guitar Gently Weeps: The Beatles
Harrison wrote and sang, Clapton played the solo and fill-ins. Atmospheric and poignant. Can you believe it was the B-side to O-Bla-Di O-Bla-Da?
6) Hey Joe: The Jimi Hendrix Experience
Their first single and a Joe South cover that took the original and made it something else. He would later do a similar job on Dylan’s All Along The Watchtower.
7) Tequila Sunrise: The Eagles
I don’t care how contrived it might have been, Glenn Frey really knew how to croon a sad she-done-me-wrong song. Despite being a misogynistic arsehole in real life. This one’s just beautiful.
8) High Flyin’ Bird: Jefferson Airplane
This performance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival showcased an emerging band with three tremendous singers: Marty Balin; Grace Slick; and Paul Kantner.

Eight Albums That Trigger Memories:

1) After The Goldrush: Neil Young

I found this wide-ranging album with its mournful country-folk-rock ballads and stinging rockers uplifting during a summer of adolescent angst. The songs seemed so much more than just contrivances to make teenaged girls feel depressed, as I suspected The Eagles of doing.
2) Hotel California: The Eagles
Well, it was omnipresent, wasn’t it? The soundtrack to the summer of 1976-77. The whole album was just so chocka with great songs, you couldn’t not appreciate their artistry, even through any reservations you might have had about them. The first single to get airplay in Australia was New Kid In Town. What a song. Supposedly their reaction to a Bruce Springsteen gig.
3) John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan
First Bob Dylan album I ever heard, and only because my sister’s boyfriend left his record collection at our place. I was fourteen and I felt great about “getting” Bob Dylan. I had no idea it was a controversial Dylan album due to its country flavour. I just thought it was good.
4) Let It Bleed: Rolling Stones
Another boyfriend legacy, This was the first Rolling Stones LP I’d listened to and it completely knocked me out. Right from the first notes of Jagger’s harmonica on Midnight Rambler. This album sounded cool. I thought I was cool for liking it. Around when I started to become a rock snob.
5) Every Picture Tells A Story: Rod Stewart
One of five albums purchased for just $5.95 the lot when my other sister joined the World Record Club in 1973. This was his third solo album and it’s great. Terrific production with loads of moving instrumentation, including violin and mandolin. He was only any good before 1976’s Atlantic Crossing saw him more successful, but less interesting.
6) Flight Log: Jefferson Airplane
I was eighteen when I first heard this compilation and they just knocked me out. A patchy band whose best was sensational.
7) Front Page News: Wishbone Ash
English guitar-oriented rock. My out-of-touch purist mind regarded their stuff as rock reaching its zenith in the late 70s. Everyone else my age was listening to punk, which I thought was rock’s nadir.
8) Mud Slide Slim and The Blue Horizon: James Taylor
Now described as easy-listening, Taylor was your lonesome troubadour and this album was his high point. First time I realised I liked country-influenced music.

Eight Movies I've Watched Close to Eight Times:

1) Out of the Past: (1947)
Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas tussle over the ultimate femme noir, Jane Greer: “I didn't, Jeff. Don't you believe me?” “Baby, I don’t care.”
2) The Wizard of Oz: (1939)
How many people love this film unashamedly? The reason why so many people were so sad about the way poor Judy Garland’s life turned out.
3) The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: (1962)
One of the greatest of all tributes to the genre, but not too self-consciously so. James Stewart is the hero, Lee Marvin the villain. John Wayne starts in the middle.
4) Murder My Sweet: (1944)
Best Raymond Chandler adaptation. Features terrific hallucinogenic dream sequence.
5) Shane: (1953)
The quintessential western. If I had to show someone what westerns were all about, I’d be starting with this. Pretty violent for a movie that looks like family viewing the rest of the time. Remade as Pale Rider (1983) with Clint Eastwood.
6) Citizen Kane: (1941)
Surely it can’t be THAT good? But it is.
7) Blade Runner: (1982)
At last, science-fiction met film noir! My two favourite genres in one! But I don’t like the Director’s Cut. Why the fuck would you take a voice-over out of a film noir? Also made filmmakers run to Philip K Dick novels and short stories for material. Shame he was to die soon after its release.
8) Psycho: (1960)
Alfred Hitchcock, the Master of Suspense became the master of shock with this one. Transformed the horror genre by making people scarier than monsters.

Eight Bloggers Who Should Do This Meme:
If you’ve read this far, take it on.