Two New Articles Online, Both Medical

I had two articles on national online publications in December. Both are about medical/disability issues. One's meant to be funny, one's serious. Enjoy, cud-chuckers!

The Funny One:

NDIS bill introduced, man buys a Mazda 6
http://www.abc.net.au/rampup/articles/2012/12/13/3653645.htm

The Serious One:

A horde of untrained doctors is no good for our health

http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/a-hoard-of-untrained-doctors-is-no-good-for-our-health/

Gavin Rossdale's Audio Blog: Day 366

How will the war between man, rat and mouse turn out? Will Gavin's training in the SAS help? Will we ever address the fact that his accent is horrendously off from his actual British? Find out in the thrilling conclusion to... Game of Thrones!

The orange play button has sent you an apology letter in the mail. It's really, very sorry. It wanted you to know that, then press it, for old time's sake.



You can listen to all the Gavin Rossdale Audio Blogs in a Soundcloud set:
http://soundcloud.com/simon-j-green/sets/gavin-rossdales-audio-blog

Gavin Rossdale's Audio Blog: Day 365

Holy hell! It's getting intense now. Learn about Gavin's military past. Prepare along side him by listening to his voice describe things, and use your imagination to picture those descriptions. Don't forget to send your three-word answer in to our competition, closing in just two days.

The orange play button pressed charges for abuse after you hit it. Hit it again!

Gavin Rossdale's Audio Blog: Day 209

Well friends, who'd have thought we'd make it this far? It's nice to know that none of the questions we've asked these past few weeks have been answered. So why pose them? Are they all rhetorical? Only Gavin can answer that, as he delves deeper into the world of the rats.

The orange button's still there, begging you to press it. Give it some love.

Gavin Rossdale's Audio Blog: Day 102

Gavin has found filler for the void in his soul, and it isn't the nice restaurants in the city. Now with shorter intro!

Click that orange play button for brief silliness, or check out the audio blogs on Soundcloud for 3% additional humour.

Gavin Rossdale's Audio Blog: Day 45

It's been a month, and Gavin Rossdale is shocked to discover one of the rat traps did its deed. How will he handle it? Emotionally? Spiritually? Vomitously?

Feel as connected to the lead singer of Bush as if you were reading an interview with him in Smash Hits! Just press that orange play button.

Gavin Rossdale's Audio Blog: Day 20

While his wife Gwen Stefani is away, Gavin notices a rat problem. Will he find the mystical pizza? And where did that rock come from? Wasn't it over behind the tree before?

Click the big orange play button to hear more thrilling Gavin Rossdale.

Gavin Rossdale's Audio Blog: Day 3

Gavin Rossdale is sad. His wife, Gwen Stefani has gone on tour, taking their kids Kingston and Zuma with her. Gavin's proud of his family, but has been left at loose ends. Mr Rossdale decides to start an audio blog to pass the time. This is that audio blog. These are those times. Listen to them pass.

You'll be glad you clicked play, because you like really stupid things, and this is stupid at its comedic finest.

Top 5 Things to do at Chadstone The Fashion Capital

Ladies and gentlebums, I spend a lot of time at classy joints. And shopping centres.

Please, check out my list Top 5 Cultural “Highlights” of Chadstone Shopping Centre at the splendid new website Melbology. Melbology fills a gap I felt has been sorely missing from the internet landscape, focussing purely on the multitude of things you can do in Melbourne, Australia. As is my wont, I am less than serious in my debut list, but I encourage you to check out the site and submit your own top 5, funny or serious.

http://www.melbology.com.au/top-5-cultural-highlights-of-chadstone-shopping-centre/

Here's the latest article of mine on The Punch. All's I'm saying is, if each generation really was worse than the last, we'd all be running around wildly raping each other, covered in infant blood right now.

http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/the-world-has-always-been-going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket/

UPDATE: Stuff I've Done

Here's some stuff that's been put up around the internets by Simmy G.

On The Nervous Breakdown, I look at the comedian Louis C.K.'s Live At The Beacon Theatre sales experiment, and what it means for the future of the industry. He made $1 million!
http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/sjgreen/2011/12/louis-c-k-s-great-experiment/

Mia Freedman copped it, and I defended her... sort of. On The Punch, I express a feeling many Australians share: that sport isn't everything, and maybe we should have a ticker tape parade for nobel prize winners too. This one got a lot of people (unnecessarily) angry.
http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/im-a-proud-aussie-and-i-dont-give-a-stuff-about-sport/

I was confused as hell when a woman who won an award for helping deaf children hear was attacked in the media by deafness advocates. Read my piece on ABC's Ramp Up, where I learn all about deafness as a culture, not just a malady.
http://www.abc.net.au/rampup/articles/2011/10/18/3342304.htm

First Article on The Punch Hits 300 Comments

http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/I-might-be-an-elite-tosser-but-at-least-I-can-spell/

Lots of people seem to think I'm an absolutely terrible writer, but there are also some out there who think this is pretty damn funny.

See what you think, then viciously assault me!

Two Posts on Cystic Fibrosis

Ahoy there! I've been busy as a hack.

Here's two articles on different elements of cystic fibrosis. Feel free to share these links with CF-ers, doctors or people with peculiar interest in disease. You know who you are...

The second relates the harder effect of the common cold on CF patients, and what to expect. Also good for parents of young CF-ers.http://www.helium.com/items/2086733-is-a-cold-worse-for-people-with-cystic-fibrosis

One discusses vitamin supplements and how I find they help CF.http://www.helium.com/items/2087730-do-vitamin-supplements-help-cystic-fibrosis

Also, please visit these suckers to bump the hits and help me earn a little from freelance writing.

The Adventures of Freddo and the Mystery of Slater Island

It's here! A few months back, I worked as a freelance writer at Public Mojo, an advertising agency. There, based on Mojo's story, I wrote the scripts for 10 episodes of an online animation starring the great Freddo the Frog, of Cadbury fame. The end result is a fun cartoon and game that gets released day by day. It was awesome fun and I got to be the script writer of this bad boy. It's one of my first big writing jobs and thus I hope you enjoy!

Go to the site freddo.com.au and sign up, then you can watch the episodes of series 2 - the one I wrote - or see the first series (I wasn't a part of that one). It's a great little adventure, and if you aren't convinced, here's the trailer (link):



And lastly, here is the media our little Freddo adventure's been getting:
coloribus
advertolog
tweetmeme
campaignbrief
BestAdsOnTV.com
industry.bnet.com
Cadbury Freddo Game  | Kids HYPE!
bannerblog

How to Try and Fix the Australian Film Industry, Part 1

"It is going to be a long and arduous process to convince Australians that we should want to see our own films, but it will be easier if we remember that cinema's tenacious grip on our imagination came about because of its extraordinary capacity to entertain and astonish us" - Louis Nowra, The Monthly Dec 09-Jan 10 edition

Louis Nowra, internationally renowned playwright responsible for Cosi and The Temple, has written a fantastic article in The Monthly. In it, he explains how he forced himself to watch every Australian film that came out this year and then proceeded to identify what's wrong with the industry in his opinion. What he says is EVERYTHING I've been yammering on about within Green Rabbit and that some but not enough of my peers echo.

The filmmakers of this country are the biggest problem with the industry. The very root and soul of the business is the fact that it is not treated like a business and, even worse, that the storytellers are completely ignoring their audience. Green Rabbit was created in some large part so that one day we could make films and TV series that were awesome. What does awesome mean? For us, it means that the majority of Australia and hopefully the Western world would watch our films and go, "Wow! Cool! Let's watch that again, get it on DVD and talk about it at work or school with our mates." Our aim is to make films that succeed commercially.

This approach to movie making, which is certainly based on the Hollywood and even Bollywood approach to filmmaking as an industry, a business that trades in stories, is so foreign in Australia that it is seen in some corners as downright evil. The idea that a film should actually make money and, God forbid, generate profit is blasphemous to so many of our young contemporaries. Making rash generalisations, I happily paint a huge swathe of fellow graduates now, before and in the future with the colour of apathy towards these goals of commercial success. So very many film students want to change the world with their craft, which is great except they all seem to want to do it by making the same bleak, art house films that were made every year for the last decade and that failed as dramatically as the plots therein. And by fail I do indeed mean commercially.

A daydreaming pearl diver from the Northern Territory, torn in two by the expectations of his family profession and the love he feels for a young indigenous girl. A disaffected young man suddenly aswirl in the heady rush of inner city drug gangs tries to escape but is inevitably dragged down to a bloody death by his own needled up hand. A family ripped apart by the incest that has fed on their energies like a parasite all their life. These are the sorts of stories our filmmakers want to tell, are telling right now in cinemas across the country. And that's fine. I would never begrudge a creative person the chance to tell the types of stories they want to tell. My problem is that none of us seem to look around at the world outside of our heads and our tight little group of friends and see that these stories are NOT what our industry needs. Every member of the media, the faculty and the student body has a rant about why the industry sucks, but none of them seem to realise what industry means and how business plays a crucial role.

Industry requires money to be fed into equipment, infrastructure and manpower so as to stimulate production of profitable goods, the revenue of which can be fed back into the whole cycle. It's capitalism and like it or not, Australia is a part of that system. How on earth can an industry sustain itself when, as Mr. Nowra puts it, in 2009 only one film (Samson and Delilah) made its budget back out of the entire local crop, bringing in $3 million all up. According to Wikipedia, 34 Australian films were released this year. Screen Australia's website claims that in the 08/09 financial year, they budgeted $102 million for Screen Australia alone. As a whole, expenditure by federal agencies annually average $93.4 million per year on production and $3.59 million per year on project development. State agencies' expenditure annually average $14.02 million per year on production and $4.82 million per year on project development. Screen Australia's stats for Australian films' share of box office in 2008 states that Aussie films pulled in $35.5 million or 3.8% of the total box office for that year. While these figures don't come together as the perfect puzzle, it casts light on the very, very poor profitability of the Australian film as a business model.

How can an industry function like this? Quite simply, it can't. When a product doesn't make money then the only stream of income comes from government agencies and the odd independent financers, who, if they saw these statistics, would suddenly reschedule your meeting and never call you back. What results, if nothing changes, is an industry that limps along, feeding filmmakers who make movies nobody seems to watch. It's fair to say that Screen Australia and the rest of the funding bodies don't help matters by funding and encouraging films that dont become revenue stream, and though Screen Australia has started investing more heavily into the marketing of films, there needs to be a change that adjusts for the failure of our filmmakers to connect to audiences. But the gatekeepers of government money are not the biggest problem.

My greatest frustration is that a nasty and self-defeating attitude seems to prevail among filmmakers and critics: that the audience is stupid, that we're making excellent films and, as Margaret Pomeranz said, "if Australian audiences don't want to go and see them, stuff them." I put this very simple question to those who say our films are fine and that it's the audience that is the problem: if you're the only one who thinks your film is any good, is it? Is it really? If you're not making a film for a specific audience, then who are you making it for? Yourself? Your best mate? If so, fine, but do you really expect that anyone else will like the film? Do you really expect your industry to benefit from a film you and a handful of critics like but a large audience doesn't? Since when should we expect people to  purchase tickets for a product they don't like, just becasue of some vague sense of forced patriotism? Business, capitalism, industry - they just don't work like that.

This is the problem - movies are made for audiences. We're taught that in film school, but so many of us think that it's bullshit, that we're above that, that we're smarter than our audience, our teachers and every other filmmaker, especially those damn Yanks. And then every film we produce, year after year after year, tanks spectacularly while Titanic rakes in over $900 million in worldwide rentals and grosses $600 million in the USA alone under a year after release. Titanic cost $200 million to create and then made astronomical profits. Of course it's an extreme example, but if an Australian filmmaker made a movie that could achieve even one-fifth of the financial success of this extravagant, whimsical, melodramatic blockbuster, just think of all the arthouse films about pearl divers, street gangs and incestuous fathers that filmmaker could fund afterwards?

Comaplain all you want about capitalism's yoke but take note of how industry works. Blockbuster is not a dirty word and we need to scrub that mentality out of every single filmmaker and film student that populates this great nation of ours. Movies that appeal to the masses make money, and that money can then be pumped back into smaller films that meet more personal aims. In Hollywood, for every Requiem for a Dream there are fifty My Big Fat Greek Weddings. I'd like to see more graduates idolising Harvey Weinstein instead of Lars Von Trier, because while Von Trier makes powerful movies, they are of a certain type that right now, right here, would not help our industry grow and strengthen. The Weinsteins on the other hand constantly espouse the strategy of making large, profitable, blockbuster studio films to finance smaller, more modest, perhaps deeper projects. Hell, Kevin Smith says throughout both My Boring Ass Life and Silent Bob Speaks that you can make whatever movie you want so long as you don't lose the studio money. This finance-conscious attitude shouldn't be seen as a bad thing by filmmakers, because the naturally combative, anti-authoritarian attitude of the Australian in this respect does not work. Instead, see this as camaraderie, as all of us working together to better our circumstances by bringing money and renown to an ailing business. It's our job to stay in touch with our audience and know what they want, and then use our creative skills to meet those expectations as artfully and uniquely as our voices and visions will allow. We need to dispel the tired notion that we should be telling Australian stories and look at what exactly certain demographics of Australian - no, human audiences want to see. That is the charge of the communal activity known as storytelling. If the bearded elder sitting around a fire after a day on the hunt started recounting the existential crisis he experienced while trying to light the fire, instead of the bloody, titanic struggle of the day's kill, we may never have evolved the ability to talk. If we can make movies that people want to pay money to see, we'll be on the right track.

(Stay tuned for the second instalment on this topic)

References: 
My Boring Ass Life and Silent Bob Speaks, by Kevin Smith 
Get the Picture - Release of Australian productions - Cinema box office - Australian share
Get the Picture - Government funding: Summary of key data
Get the Picture - Release of Australian productions - Overview of cinema release
Australian films of 2009 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 
Titanic (1997) - Box office / business
Nowhere Near Hollywood, by Louis Nowra, published in Dec 09-Jan 10 edition of The Monthly

CFV Newsletter: A Little Catch Up

Australian Racism

There's a prevailing attitude among the everyday people of Australia that the Hey Hey Jackson Jive skit was not in fact racist, and that it's a storm in a tea cup. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is displaying emotions that range from curious amusement, disappointment, right up to outrage that this skit appeared on live TV. The host Daryl Somers, Channel 9 and the lead performer himself, Dr Anand Deva have all apologised. All three have taken up the shield of ignorance, stating it was never their intention to offend.

There can be no denial the performers were in blackface, but maybe a lot of Australians don't truly understand what blackface is? Here's a definition from Wikipedia:

Blackface ... is a style of theatrical makeup that originated in the United States, used to take on the appearance of certain archetypes of American racism, especially those of the "happy-go-lucky darkyplantation" or the "dandified coon ".^[1] Blackface in the broader sense includes similarly stereotyped performances even when they do not involve blackface makeup. White blackface performers in the past used ... shoe polish to blacken their skin and exaggerate their lips, often wearing woolly wigs, gloves, tailcoats, or ragged clothes to complete the transformation. Stereotypes embodied in the stock characters of blackface minstrelsy played a significant role in cementing and proliferating racist images, attitudes and perceptions worldwide. In some quarters, the caricatures that were the legacy of blackface persist to the present day and are a cause of ongoing controversy. By the mid-20th century, changing attitudes about race and racism effectively ended the prominence of blackface makeup used in performance in the U.S. and elsewhere.

The Jackson Jive was a blackface performance. It was originally performed 2 decades ago, during the 1980s - a time, clearly, when racism was more present. Today, Australia lives in a globalised world with the United States one of its most dominant economic and military powers. In this world, our leaders are or should be trying to puch us further towards the centre of stage. Ours is a lucky country with potential and intelligence. But how can we be a part of the world and ignore our strongest ally's own advancements in civil rights? The nation now has a Nobel winning black President, in a land where blackface originated and where black people were lynched.

And here are five Australian men, an Australian TV network and a television show known as a national institution doing blackface. What. Were. They. Thinking? Whether they meant to offend or not, it was racist. What were the producers and the network executives thinking? Or, in what era were they thinking from? One of my biggest complaints has always been that the gatekeepers of Aussie arts and entertainment are old men with outdated, foolish attitudes to the world. No more clearly is this represented than when a TV exec or producer, someone who should be fully aware that YouTube, viral videos and the Internet means that what you put on a national screen has every possibility of being seen by the world for weeks to come, and who have chosen an American actor and singer to appear on the show, would then put blackface in front of the cameras.

It reminds me of your old uncle, in his late fifties, making all sorts of racist jokes at the Christmas dinner table. And you know he's (probably) not being malicious, he just honestly doesn't know any better. He's the product of his time. You might smile thinly or leave the room, but you find solace in the notion that maybe he says these things, but he'd never turn his back on a lynching or shoot an Aboriginal in a carpark if no-one was looking and he knew he'd get away with it. Growing up, this example was everywhere, with all the people I met in my outer suburb childhood. The attitude towards people of different skin was also hostile, negative, but thinly veiled and only ever in the privacy of homes, during family dinners or in front of the TV. But it was there, and I got the feeling it was in the majority of homes in Australia. I worried, most certainly justifiably, that it was something in me, from my own upbringing. And it made me sad.

Sad that as a nation, we stunt our own growth. I hope that this country can be a shining beacon, a nation who became strong without wars to liberate, but who used education and social responsibility to export both goodwill and knowledge along with traditional trade, to become recognised as a peaceful, happy, friendly, strong country of advancement and civility.

But let's look at the buffoons who stand in the way of that hope.

From the various articles I read online, the most infuriating parts came from the comments section, where these everyday Australians cemented the current world view of our nation (all quotes are sic):

K from Mackay 

Well, the fun police strike again Harry needs a uniform,baton and a whistle! i thought it was hilariously funny and i'm a black fella!

Luke from Melbourne 

Harry is not suited to Hey hey, hes too uptight, he needs a dose of reality and clearly has the typical USA mentality.

Scott from Adelaide

Where was the racism? The comment prior to the Jackson Jive coming on was "a tribute to the Jackson Five". So that, for all the people claiming it was racist, should have told them otherwise prior. Get over your arrogance. They respected Michael and his family, but you don't.

Certain Australian news sites also had user polls, asking variously if the sketch was racist, tasteless, funny. The results were either divided down the middle or skewed in favour of the notion that the skit was not racist or offensive. Some might say, "Well, see, the poll says no." I say, why do you even need to poll on that!? Of course it was racist, and the very fact that our nation can be divided on that in the first place is both sickening and sad.

Yes, the sketch was based on one that won Red Faces 20 years ago. That's the point! Shouldn't we be watching this from 20 years ago and thinking, "Oh god, that's embarrassing, we used to think that was OK." That sort of racism used to be acceptable, but now it's not. All that argument does is show that the arguer is stuck in some bizarre time warp where the rest of the world didn't realise they were being horrible to black slaves and started trying to repair the damage done. If thinking like an American means I find racism offensive, then someone give me a greencard! Do you really want to revel in that sort of thing? Do you really want to shrug off the evil connotations and horrid history of blackface by saying, "Nah, it was just a joke!" What sort of person does that make you?

Harry Connick Jr. was on the show and he did not like it. He stood up and demanded satisfaction. He did what thousands of his countrymen for hundreds of years did not do: he stood up for civil rights and against mocking and patronising and other instruments used to demean and keep down an entire race.

I think this whole debacle exposes that inherent racism in the Australian character. A racism born from isolation and cultivated by ignorance - a special sort of ignorance. For while we educate ourselves in science and medicine and technology, the education in social responsibility and global understanding is lackluster. Being clever in other areas lets us keep the racism hidden. Australians live in a multicultural country, but yet I say we're racists? It's a strange sort of racism, an amorphous blob that only takes shape when events like these pop up. It's racism by stealth. It's a bottom-up racism. Our leaders, our public people, they wear the badges of moral and social responsibility so that we don't have to. A politician openly encourages multiculturalism. An Australian citizen tolerates it, buts mocks it ruthlessly behind closed doors.

Look at the culprit, one Dr Anand Deva. I truly don't believe he fully understands what racism is when he says:

I am an Indian, and five of the six of us are from multicultural backgrounds and to be called a racist ... I don't think I have ever been called that ever in my life before. Anyone who knows us as a group, we are intelligent people, we are all from different racial backgrounds so I am really truly surprised.

When asked whether he would have performed the act in the US, he replied:

Absolutley not!

He just doesn't get it. He seems to think that just because he's Indian and his cohorts were from different backgrounds, then they are exempt from being racist - the idea of which is in itself racist! My point is, he doesn't seem to understand. A lot of Australians don't, and I think they need to be educated. Better, they have the internal drive to learn and educate themselves. Racism isn't something restricted to the borders of the USA. It isn't something that exists only between white Westerners and African descended black Americans. It's a worldwide plague that is very simple in its thinking, but lethal in application: to discriminate or negatively affect in any way one person or group of people based on the colour of their skin or cultural background, because it is different from your own. That is racism. That sort of thinking caused blackface to become popular, as white Americans slapped their knees during minstrel shows and remarked boorishly, "Oh ho! Look at that stupid nigger!" The Americans realised, finally, in the 1960-70s with civil rights movements and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr right up to now, with the first black President, that that sort of thinking was wrong at the most fundamental level of humanity.

And now, here in 2009, Australia shows a bunch of ignorant fools doing blackface.

I'm not saying we should surgically remove our sense of humour; that we should batten down the hatches and become a police state. I just think there are parts of our national character that need work, just as the most stable and respectable person is constantly striving to better him or herself. We are a great country, but to ever be as great as our potential, we need to be able to look at ourselves and make changes. We need to think more, to intellectualise, to drag ourselves out of the slow, sometimes backwards crawl of our social advancement. We need to look to those that have shown the way, and we need to be open to the idea that we can and have failed, but that we can learn from those mistakes and rectify our future.  Australia is a country of greatness, but it could be greater still. Isn't that something you want to be proud of? Isn't that something we can acheive?

Oldskool.TV - I got a new writing gig

I got a new gig writing for Oldskool.TV, a group of peeps who put on parties for uni students. They have a bunch of comedy blogs that I am now a contributing writer to. Check out my first two below, you sexy beasts. Beware, though, it's a little on the crude side!

Indian Witchdoctor

http://www.oldskool.tv/blogs.php?blogid=14&postid=11759

Michael Cera and Charlyne Yi

http://www.oldskool.tv/blogs.php?blogid=14&postid=11760

Gay Rights

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Why does our Prime Minister not speak on such issues? When was the last progressive leader of our nation? When was progression considered more than only the slow rise in interest rates and the ever more likely chance for a white couple to buy a house? Medicine, technology and the already established safe life of our already established safe white straight people dominate the agenda. This country, Australia, is subsisting on the status quo. This country's leaders and the media that so actively sets the passive audience's agenda worry and fuss about issues that bother us, but they miss one that should bother us the most.

The way a gay person is treated and spoken about under the breath of the majority demonstrates that issue. Gay discrimination is what we need to get rid of. Gay rights is the civil rights movement of our time and space. While America pushes towards new levels of racial harmony, why don't we make our mark on the world by being the first to legislate that people can love whoever they want and not be treated differently because of it? This is a serious issue our country can take seriously. This is a serious issue that can make our country be taken seriously. This is something that will happen one day, maybe long in the future, hopefully soon in the present. Gay civil rights will break as a massive issue that will see us eventually, finally understand that who a person loves does not and should not put them outside of financial systems; should not put them outside of the the law; should not put them outside of our hearts.

Australia could be the country to start this movement. To stand up with our bigger brothers and sisters and yell loudest the speech of fairness. To spark alight the smouldering hope in our nation and cause a fire that could race across the face of the west.  The hope that because a person is gay, their rights in this world are not less than those of a straight person. Australia, our agenda is empty. With what more noble and greater thing could we fill it?

Review: Howling III: The Marsupials

My first review for DVDBits.com! Unfortunately, it's a crappy movie,
but they always make for the most fun reviews.

http://www.dvdbits.com/reviews.asp?id=3541