Month: June 2013

The Internship Movie

The Internship Movie

By | | Comments 0 Comment
Director: Shawn Levy
Running time: 119 minutes
Screenplay: Vince Vaughn, Jared Stern

the internship

If you like silly comedy and don’t mind your movies a little (okay, a lot) formulaic, The Internship is the movie for you. It is a fun ride – the packed, extra-large cinema was filled with people roaring with laughter. Just the ticket on a cold winter’s night.

Responding to criticism that the movie is a two-hour advertisement for Google, Vaughn says, “yes, you get a peek behind the chocolate factory, but it’s really about wanting to start over, and I wanted to pick an industry that authentically felt like there was a future there.”

internship google

The movie has not done very well critically and I can’t say I’m surprised; it’s no Argo. It’s true, as one critic writes, that the comedy relies heavily on the actors’ easy interplay with each other. However, damn it’s funny!

The Internship tells the story of Billy McMahon (Vaughn) and Nick Campbell (Wilson) who are gung-ho watch salesmen, suddenly out of a job as the American economy swallows up another small business and the trade of door to door sales diminishes under the weight of the digital world. They wiggle their way into an internship at Google, surrounded by dozens of high-achieving young techies, all vying for a few coveted spots at the end of a series of team challenges. Along the way is the inevitable and – if like me you’re a fan – hilarious Will Ferrell cameo.

What happens next is entirely predictable, in that Vaughn/Wilson formula of sweet and light funny, with Rose Byrne providing a love interest and several new young actors getting some time in the sun, including Dylan O’Brien (Teen Wolf), Tiya Sircar, Josh Brener, and Tobit Raphael (fresh out of acting school). Keep an eye out for the guy in the nap pod who complains about the noise; he is the director of the film, Shawn Levy.

dylan o'brien
Dylan O’Brien

Mashable interviewed a real intern and reports that the Google office (the interior was recreated for the movie at Georgia Institute of Technology) is just like the real thing. It’s fascinating getting a good look inside. If this is the business model of our kids’ future work places, the future is looking bright. But then again, that’s exactly why the movie is getting so much Googly flack: it really is a big Google ad in that respect.

Yes this is a family movie for the over 13 year olds. Something for everyone.

If you’re a Generation Xer, this film will appeal as it brings the eighties crashing into the present with many Flashdance references. It works. The kids are also going to love it. Dylan O’Brien is being watched by the teenage girls right now (I asked my 17-year-old daughter) and the whole Google thing will fascinate those soon to be heading out onto the big wide and increasingly scary world of job hunting.

the internship bicycle google

Heal Thyself

Heal Thyself

By | | Comments 2 comments

This post is about cancer, so first let’s make some jokes about superfoods. That works, doesn’t it?

zucchini pasta

I read a very funny article by Maggie Kelly yesterday. Her view of the clean eating mega-trend that is sweeping the first world. Among the gems, this:

Zucchini pasta is nothing like the real thing. It is like how those people in Argentina were selling rats on steroids as toy poodles. Just not the same.

The photo above is some zucchini ‘pasta’ I once made and thought about blogging. True.

And this.

To some of the more hard-core Clean Eaters telling them that I eat bread is like admitting I masturbate to old Adam Sandler movies whilst listening to One Direction and eating Skittle sandwiches. For them it’s weird, confusing and disturbing.

Before you think I am poking fun at you, disclaimer: I am riding that bandwagon myself. I have a kitchen full of chia seeds and gogi berries. My kids drink the occasional green smoothie – hell, there’s a huge bunch of kale sitting on the bench right this minute – and coconut products are spilling out of the fridge and pantry. It’s a superfood mecca here. I draw the line at pressing my own turmeric capsules but I have friends who do.

What the fantastic and yet slightly annoying trend indicates is a desire for we, the fat, unfit, unhealthy Western World to take our health into our own hands and work on healing. Work on creating and maintaining wellness rather than just fixing sickness. It’s good.

Scientists have been working through this stuff for years. They humbly lean over petri dishes and microscopes occasionally popping their heads up to say “ahh you might want to have a look at this” and bang, there’s a cure for polio or measles or cholera. Now the big strides are being made in the field of cancer research. They are just the coolest people.

I will try to explain cancer and some new research; the idea itself isn’t new but the progress being made is and it’s pretty amazing. Bear with me as I was born without science genes; I am just a science junkie with no insider knowledge.

New Scientist magazine reports that we are finally getting a leg up on finding a way to beat cancer, in this case melanoma, common here in Australia. This new approach has not only made the cells retreat, in some people they have disappeared altogether, within days and weeks in some cases. All thanks to the scientists teaching the good healing cells how to do their stuff.

In order to explain how the new treatment (still in the testing stages) works I have to first semi-plagiarise NS in order to explain how this cancer operates.

Cancer cells are good at hiding. What makes them so scary is they hide in plain sight. You can sometimes see a tumour growing right there on a body and that body’s own immune system simply can’t detect it.

The T cell is the antibody whose job it is to locate and destroy bad cells. The cancer cell grows a surface molecule called a ligand, like a little tentacle that can stick on to stuff. The ligand then binds on to the T cell (the good guy).

Once it has attached to the T cell, it instantly activates a receptor in the T cell called PD-1. You can guess the rest: Once PD-1 is activated, the ligand, along with its sneaky cancer cell becomes invisible to the good guys, the T cells. Tumours are now seen by the body as normal tissue.

cancer cell

Traditionally, cancer treatments have involved trying to kill off cancer cells, however this means killing a lot of good cells too, which is why some cancer patients become even sicker during treatment.

Scientists have worked out how to wake up these T cells. There are three antibodies that are being trialled. Two, Lambrolizumab and Nivolumab work on the PD-1 receptor and the third works on the cancer cell ligand. In each of the therapies, cancer disappeared altogether in nine of those on the trials (135 in one trial and 53 in another) and halved or more in another 75.

“Many effects happened very quickly, sometimes within three weeks,” says Jedd Wolchok of the Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, who led the trial.

Jedd Wolchok

Wolchok says that what makes the antibody therapies so exciting is that unlike conventional cancer treatments, such as radio and chemotherapy, they work by reviving the power of the patient’s own immune system – something that has evolved to efficiently dispose of infectious, foreign or abnormal tissue. “They treat the patient, not the tumour,” he says. – New Scientist

All three drugs are now the subject of larger trials involving people with skin, kidney, lung and brain cancers. The third antibody trialled has already shown promising results with early trials of kidney and lung cancer.

So in a nutshell, scientists are working out how to get the body to heal itself from cancer, simply by being able to see the cancerous cells and then just do what it is already really good at. Healing itself. It’s exciting stuff.

Easy Peasy 1970s Silverside

Easy Peasy 1970s Silverside

By | | Comments 9 comments

Another one that surprised me with its simplicity recommended by former country lass and fellow child of the seventies, Sara: Corned Beef, or Silverside as we knew it.

No wonder my mother made this for us regularly when we were young and she was living the feminist dream of raising three kids, putting food on the table, reading us stories, working and studying at uni all at the same time.

Corned Silverside

(recipe from taste.com.au and adapted for the slow cooker)

This is for the meat part only – for the white sauce use your thermomix if you have one and add in some chopped parsley and grainy mustard if your kids will bear it or use your favourite white sauce recipe.

  • 1 pack of corned beef/silverside – mine was $8.40 for 1.4 kilo piece)
  • 1 onion (stud with cloves; I had none so threw in a quarter tsp ground cloves)
  • 1 carrot big chunks
  • 1 celery stick big chunks
  • 5 garlic cloves smashed a bit (don’t bother peeling)
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 10 peppercorns
  1. Put silverside in a pot on stove and bring to boil.
  2. meanwhile chop other ingredients and put in slow cooker on low.
  3. Once beef is boiled drain and add to cooker and cover with water.
  4. Once done make a white sauce and serve with veggies – my favourite at the moment is mashed cauliflower.

msf corned beef silverside 5

msf corned beef silverside 1

Unfortunately I don’t have a photo of the finished product as it was devoured so fast, however I did find one online I have posted below which is an honest-looking shot. It’s a shame as it’s a tres ugly dish before serving and once cut a lovely silvery pink. I reserved the stock it was cooked in to make some soups.

silverside

TMI

TMI

By | | Comments 0 Comment

My corner of Australia is rife with head colds at the moment. I tried to dodge the one after me but have succumbed gracelessly. Winter is officially upon us and while is sunny and crisp, bugs abound, so I’ve had time to lie around reading the paper and surf the world-wide web.

Because of all this downtime, I made it all the way to the technology pages of the newspaper and discovered a couple of interesting blogs:

STFU Parents is hitting the news at the moment as the blog author, Blair Koenig has just released a book of her posts. People send in snips from social network sites like Facebook and tumblr with parents’ status updates that are the very definition of TMI (too much information).

There are entire categories for different over-sharers, such as Sanctimommy (my personal favourite), Onesies, WTF of the Day, Woe is Mom and MommyJacking, where someone may post a note that they got a job promotion and in comes mommyjacker with a comment about how that’s “nothing compared with raising kids!”.

stfu parents stfu momyjacker 1

Then there is the Gross Out Factor section, not to be viewed while eating.

stfu parents gross

Most of we Generation X-ers who are on Facebook, the last of the adults to reach adulthood without the Internet, know that there is a line not to be crossed when it comes to over-sharing – so far I haven’t had any look-my-toddler-pooed-all-over-the-room shots show up in my news feed. Then again I have very few friends whose kids are still toddlers these days.

But is there a place for mummy-sharing online that isn’t going to get you a featured spot on STFU Parents? It’s a question Koenig gets asked often. Can I share my ultrasound photo or is it going to end up here?

As she says “We’re entering a new phase where placentapics may occasionally inspire more organ appreciation than nausea.”

Good thing or bad thing? It’s up to you. I agree that we are becoming more desensitised to the over-share than we used to be however for some this is the forum for which mums and dads share baby news with their distant family.

If the snippets of parents who should probably not own a computer or smart phone (or be parents) fills you with dread for the future of civilisation at this point, perhaps don’t read on.

The Bun in the Oven section of STFU, Parents is just plain gruesome. Here we have the pleasure of mu-to-be Stormie’s update regarding the approaching birth of baby Memphis by C-Section:

stfu parents c-section

You don’t really get the whole picture just by reading these snaps. What makes the blog un-put-downable are the comments by Koenig that accompany each morsel. Her writing is clever and funny and while cutting she isn’t cruel. More incredulous.

The other blog is Reasons My Son Is Crying by Greg Pembroke, a 32-year-old New York father. If it wasn’t so funny it would almost qualify for a spot on STFU Parents, but as you look at each photo and the caption it gets funnier and funnier. Pembroke has two little boys and has started a blog in which he captures a photo of one of the kids in tears along with a single sentence caption describing why.

This one is titled “his sock wouldn’t come off”:

why my son is crying sock

Others have captions such as “A fly landed near him”, “He saw a beetle”, and “I wouldn’t let him get a tattoo.” The blog has only been around for a month or so and has already gone viral and earned him a spot on Conan O’Brien. It’s raised some interesting discussion about bringing parenting to the online world. Is Pembroke damaging his little fellas in some way by publishing their every tear? There are plenty of mommy bloggers up in arms about how despicable this is, and others who see it as harmless fun:

At GeekMom in the comments section of a blog post entitled 3 Reasons To Detest “Why My Son Is Crying” Suburban Snapshots writes:

“Let’s not assume that the rest of these kids’ days aside from the 4 seconds it takes to take and post a photo of their tears is not spent full of love, reassurance, giggles, discipline, play, and everything else that nurtures kids. I’d guess that they spend a LOT of time laughing, because their parents clearly have excellent senses of humor. I’d rather my child be raised knowing how to laugh at herself than raised to write blog posts critiquing the parenting of strangers.”

While Lisa Quimby counters with:

“What a despicable thing to do to a child! Toddlers face each day being shorter, slower, weaker and less coordinated than most everyone around them. They are trying to figure out the rules of a world that seems so unpredictable. Of course there will be meltdowns when expectations (a favorite cup, for example) aren’t met. As parents, it’s up to us to recognize the struggles that seems so small to us and help our children learn to handle their emotions. If we don’t treat them with respect, how will they learn to respect others? And what about when this kid grows up and finds his crying toddler face all over the internet?!”

My vote goes to Pembroke who told Today.com

“Kids have meltdowns 20, 30 times a day. You can drive yourself crazy or you can laugh and just accept it.”

He is now taking submissions if anyone reading this happens to have a camera and a crying toddler on hand…

As for frowning at Pembroke or laughing with him, I’ll take laughing. He sounds like a genuinely nice guy having a bit of fun with sweet, normal little boys.

%d bloggers like this: