So I made it home today. Better late than never, eh? Of all things, another day at my parents' place gave me the chance to string Xmas lights with my dad, of all people. Even my Xmas-hatred wasn't up for hating that.
A good Thanksgiving. My cousin didn't get drunk on Thanksgiving this year, but my brother did. Much interesting conversation with everybody about the changing of the guard in this country, including with my cousin's husband -- the CEO of a logging company and a long time Republican -- who readily agreed that universal health care was an economic necessity at this point. ("I don't mind Obama," he said. "It's Pelosi and Reid I can't stand." "You're in for a painful era," I said somewhat gleefully.)
The football game was pure sugar. The Ducks scored 65 points, the most ever given up by the Beavers in any game, not just the Civil War. It was pretty much a perfect performance by the Duckies; one of the best I've ever seen. Like sugar, however, it ended up being a downer, because my brother was so disappointed that the Beavers wouldn't be going to the Rose Bowl, which he had been planning to take his family to. Dinner after the game was pretty quiet, and my dad and I couldn't really do sports porn until today, when nobody was around to resent it.
Australia was a lot of fun, although I liked the first part better than the second. The drover's soliloquy about living with nothing but what you could carry with you reminded me of a certain gypsy friend Down Under. The clash and copulation of English and Australian and aboriginal cultures was fascinating, and the Outback scenery was fantastic. In the second half, the bombing of Darwin seemed a strange climax, because I'm unclear what part this episode plays in the national epic, and this film is most certainly an attempt at national epic. It seems to me, as an ignorant foreigner, that Gallipoli is a more defining military moment than the bombing of Darwin in the national consciousness. Is that true? In any event, I'll want to see it again on the big screen just because it is so beautiful and luscious visually, whatever its narrative and nationalist flaws. As a big Wizard of Oz fan, I was delighted by the aborgine boy's interpretation of "Over the Rainbow" as a song about dreamtime and the rainbow serpent.
I think that's it for now. Thanksgiving is always such a powerful blast of primal family interaction that I'm left a bit stunned with all the news and implications. If I were an actual writer, maybe I'd try to capture some of it. As it is, it's good to be home. There's no place like it, as Hugh Jackman says in Australia.
Oh, and some of you should have the sekrit Torchwood West projekt by now.
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