Like a rabbit in the headlights

Just filmed my first video for CHOICE recently..it was a lot of fun but bloody hell I have a lot of respect for those tv journos now (yes even the ones on ACA and Today Tonight) I thought delivering a piece of script down the barrel of the camera lens would be a piece of cake compared to slaving over a long in depth print article but boy was I wrong.

Despite having a good memory I couldn't seem to remember more than one line at a time and needed my version of an autocue...the budget version, a piece of paper printed up in enormous font stuck under the camera lens. This I learned, you can look at and even though it looks like you are looking into the camera you aren't. Spooky - what it meant is that I had to emote to a piece of printed paper all while making sure I didn't flick my eyes up into the actual lens (a giveaway that you're not really looking into the lens you see). While doing this I had to make sure that I didn't drop my eyes too low - gives you a kind of zombie eyes night of the dead look.

SO once I got the eyes sorted then there was the rest. At the age of 38  thought I was pretty competent at walking and talking yet when I was asked to do it on camera I discovered I could only do one or the other...but not at the same time. We decided that I would stand still.

It's a similar story with my hands. I don't usually spend much time thinking about them yet when I was on camera I simply didn't know where to put them. They either hung by my sides like useless tubes or waved about so much that I on camera I looked like I was mentally deficient. There were points where I was reading my 'autocue' and thinking shit SHIT use your hands and my hand would rise up and then it would hang in the air waiting for further instructions - eventually it settled on my hip when no further instructions were forthcoming which kind of made me look like I was scolding the viewer - and left our video producer in stitches.

Add to these problems hair getting blown around, lipstick smudging, a microphone pack that won't transmit, a small audience of a homeless man, a few office workers having a ciggie and some nosey shoppers and of course traffic and jackhammering filming al fresco isn't as easy as it looks.

Finally I deliver a perfect take - in the middle of it a truck rumbles past. From the camera comes a hesitant voice...'ummm could you do it like that, again?"

To view the carnage head here to CHOICE

Cupcakes Cupcakes Cupcakes

The world, or perhaps it’s just Australia, has gone completely mental for cupcakes. Formerly know as patty cakes in Aus, thanks to Sex and the City and Carrie’s predilection for sweet little cakes, cupcakes they are and popular they be.

I don’t really have anything against them per se, I just don’t get why they are deserving of the fuss. While I’m not averse to a nice chocolate or cheesecake cupcakes tend to be bland little things, covered in an entirely flavourless greasy and sweet topping of some unnatural colour. They are hardly a taste sensation yet people go crazy for them.

Someone having a baby? Bring cupcakes. It’s the day before easter in the office? Cupcakes. At a wedding? Oh look they’ve got cupcakes instead of wedding cake how cuuuute. Going to a work meeting? Cupcakes. Visit a friend. Cupcakes.

Even in my neck of the woods there is now a massive installation in the local shopping centre selling, you guessed it, cupcakes. Hundreds of the bloody things in different sizes and colours yet all tasting strangely sweet, greasy and unremarkable. And a constant queue of suckers all lined up waiting to hand over their cash.

Now the ultimate blow. Last week I was asked to host a kind of round table discussion with some members of the media and the blogging world about an article I have written. I was excited, I don’t get out of the office much these days and the idea of being somewhere glam like a nice inner city restaurant or bistro was very appealing.

This morning I got an email from the agency organizing the event. Someone in their office has had a brilliant idea – we’re not doing lunch anymore….we’re doing…errrr...'Cupcakes'. In a place that actually refers to itself as a ‘cupcakery’.

Great – my dreams of 2 hatted gourmet savory delights have been shattered. Instead I will be in mild sugar and champagne shock before lunchtime as I endevour to make some kind of sense in front of my esteemed media world peers as we devour those cutsey little coloured bit of confectionary. Glad I'm not a diabetic. Wonder if they will mind if I bring my own vegemite sandwiches to offset the sugar?

OUCH

the running hasn't been going well - I think I'm permanently crippled. Seems that it's not a good idea to try running in flat as a tack converse sneakers on concrete. I mentioned this fact to two friends last weekend who indulge in fitness activities (well one of them does really, the other much prefers smoking and drinking but likes to pretend that she's out running the streets a few times a week) 

either way when I said I was running in converse they shouted me down and it seems my legs and knees have joined in with the shouting. So my choices are: spend 100 bucks on ugly white runners  that look more like small ufo's or go back to the couch.

I know which one I prefer the idea of.