Does The Real Nathan Phillips Cop This Much Shit?

Unbelievable.

In October 2005 I reviewed this film.

Then in November 2005 I posted a request that people please stop commenting about the film.

Since then that very post has received more comments than any other post I've done.

The film is Wolf Creek, and the matter in question is whether or not the character of Ben Mitchell is based on a real person.

No. He's really, really not.

But the debate rages on - and I've had enough.

What do I have to do to stop this? I've posted a direct quote from director Greg McClean, and I've told people to go and do their own research - instead of debating it on my blog, spend ten seconds doing a google search to find any of the very easy to find proof that the events in Wolf Creek didn't actually happen.

You'd think that would be enough.

Now in May 2007 I receive this e-mail:

Hello Ben,I AM FROM ARGENTINA,BS AS,AND I SAW THE FILM"WOLF CREEK"I AM
CONSCIOUS THAT YOU ARE NOT THE REAL CHARACTER BUT I WOULD LIKE TO ASK
YOU IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT THE REAL FACTS. CONGRATULATIONS FOR THE
FILM!I LIKED IT VERY MUCH,SPECIALLY YOU!=) . I EXPECT YOUR ANSWER.
THANKS,BRENDA.

My dear, dear, dear Brenda - where do I begin?

Whilst I am flattered that you could mistake me for a superb young actor like Nathan Phillips - star of such blockbusters as Take Away, You And Your Stupid Mate and Snakes On A Plane - I am not infact he.

But it's an honest mistake - my name is Ben, the character's name is Ben, you put two and two together and that's honorable.

----

Wolf Creek is a shit film, and not a true story.

Ok?

OK???

Long Lost Twins?

Did you ever see the movie Space Jam?

Watching the Biggest Loser finale last night, my girlfriend turned to me and made this observation.

Uncanny don't you think?





Congratulations Chris, now gain some weight. Seriously.

Writing A Decent Blog - Attempt Two

Firstly, the reason why the writing in all of my Europe posts was so terrible:

Anyone who's been overseas knows that internet time can be quite scarce - and really, who can be fucked writing anything remotely solid when there's so much amazing shit to see. So rather than writing my usual hearty posts AND the obligatory group e-mails to family and friends, I just wrote the boring group e-mails and posted them here - slightly edited in a vain attempt to make them look like real posts.

I did all this while saying to myself that when I got home I'd return to my faithful blog and make it up to you all.

But.... being the fickle blogger I am, I instead opted to not write a single word for two months. In doing so I think I can safely say I have officially killed what was once a thriving and, dare I say, popular blog.

My loyal fans have abandoned me, and who can blame them? I broke promise after promise about when I'd post, it was only a matter of time before each reader moved on to better things.

So there's nothing more I can do but bite my lip, put my fingers on the keyboard and start typing.

Gentle reader, tell your friends - I am back.

Ben's Europe Trip Volume 11

Well if you look at today's date you'll notice that it's the 22nd of Feb - exactly 12 days since Jess and I got home from our whirlwind trip of Europe, and I'm only now doing this last post. A very poor effort indeed.

So just quickly, I'll fill you in on the last week of our trip. When I last left it we were in Salerno staying with Jess's relatives, we had a fantastic time there and were very sad to leave - especially as our next destination would be our last. But there was still a fair bit for us to see so we headed off on our last ever intercity train trip to Rome.

Here we were staying with my Mum's friend Ros, her husband and two daughters Ellie May and Daniella, all of whom I'd met several times before, so it was great to catch up with them again. We spend our last three days in Europe seeing all the very impressive sights Rome has to offer - it's a massive city with a billion things to do, far too many for our measly three day visit.

Still we managed to squeeze in a fair bit, including.

- A trip to Vatican city where we were lucky enough to see the Pope himself, delivering his weekly Sunday blessing.
- A climb to the top of St Peter's Basilica - a 400 step effort to the top, giving us a very cool 360 degree view of Rome
- Lots of last minute gelati, pizza, pasta and italian coffee
- A couple of mammoth walks around the city to check out such monuments as the tomb of the unknown soldier, circus maximum, the spanish steps and the pantheon.
- Last minute shopping to fill up those last little bits of space in our luggage
- Throwing coins in the famous Trevi fountain
- A waltz around the inside of the Collosseum
- An exploration of the Vatican Museum - in my opinion the best museum in Europe. Every room is amazing, and whilst everyone is there to see the Sistine Chapel, there's alot more around to drop your jaw at - the Mona Lisa is a joke.
- Some very fun times with Daniella and Ellie May, who showed us around and introduced me to the greatest cappucino I have ever had, and will ever have in my life.
- A viewing of Italian talent show Amici - best described as Big Brother, Australian Idol and So You Think You Can Dance all rolled into one. Quality television.

So in a blink of an eye our time in Rome was gone, and after saying goodbye to our very hospitable friends we hopped on a plane and that was that.

Europe trip over.

We had a two day stop over in Kuala Lumpur on the way home which was nice. We had a pretty good hotel, opposite a massive shopping centre and around the corner from three other massive shopping centres - great news for Jess!

So we shopped, swam and sunbaked for three days before jumping on the plane to Melbourne.

Customs was a breeze - they didn't notice the sweating on my upper lip, or the darting of my eyes back and forth to the compartment of my bag where I'd hidden all my quite illegal Absinthe bottles.

So now I'm home, with a room full of souvenirs, a hard drive full of photos and a dreading feeling that another year of Uni is very, very close at hand.

Cheers, merci and grazie tanto,



Love Ben (Jess says whattup)

Ben's Europe Trip Volume 10

I wanted to make the big number 10 email a really big one, so I held off for a couple of weeks in writing anything. That and I was too lazy.

So the last you heard we were just about to leave Vienna to start our three week trek all over Italy, our last country in Europe before we start the voyage home. The first stop was Venice, one of the most beautiful and interesting cities in Italy. You can do absolutely nothing but walk around the tiny alleys and streets all entire day and have a blast.

The main square is amazing, the lonely planet guide I have describes the Duomo as looking like a giant ice-cream cake, colourful and magestic.... and surrounded by hundreds of filthy, filthy pigeons. We also checked out the Palazzo (Palace) Ducale and Prisons. The contrast as you move from the lavishly decorated rooms to the dank and dirty prison cells was pretty damn cool.

Other highlights were our romantic gondola ride (as if you can take your girlfriend to Venice without it) and the top restaurant we found which had no less that 90 different types of pizza.

Lowlights were Murano glass factory which decided to close the day we showed up at the doors, and a local alcoholic drink I'd read about in Lonely Planet called Sprizze - the most disgustingly bitter thing I have ever drunk in my life.

Our next destination was the equally beautiful Florence, home of the statue of David, Ponte Vecchio (famous bridge) and a whole lot of gelati. We'd managed to score a fantastic hotel right smack bang in the middle of the city - about a 5 minute walk from the centre square, we literally couldn't believe how lucky we were.

So we spent three days walking around the city, seeing the main attractions and getting some shopping done along the way. There was a great market just down the road where I picked up what I affectionately call an 'old italian man' hat.

We had to get an overnight train to our next stop, all the way to the south of Italy to Catania, which is one of the main cities in Sicily. We were staying with some relatives of my Mum, and we spent three fantastic days being chaperoned around some fantastic places. We also got to have plenty of fun playing with their 2 year old son Dario, who we very nearly threw in our bags and took with us. He liked me, but it was nothing compated to the massive crush he had on Jess - or as he calls her - Jettoa. I was Bende.

Sicily is amazing, it could be a contendor for my favourite place of the trip. The first day we went to a place called Taormina, a beautiful village that is literally perched on the side of mountain overlooking the sea... amazing. The place is apparently full to the brim with tourists during the Summer months - it was almost deserted when we were there, yet we were lucky enough to have a pretty sunny day which was great.

That afternoon we drove down to a very small town called Vizzini - which is where my grandparents are from. It was very very cool to get back to my roots and actually stand at the very door where my Mum was born. My Nanna will be extermely excited to her that I enjoyed it.

The next day we went to Siracusa, another sea side town, also very touristy in the summer months and almost as beautiful as Taormina.

Finally on our last day we were very very fortunate enough to take a trip to the summit of Mt Etna, Sicily's still active and very cool volacano.

Now we're in a second last stop, staying with some of Jess's relatives in Salerno, halfway between Sicily and Rome. Jess's family, like mine, are doing a fantastic job showing us around and for the past two days we've seen some great stuff.

Yesterday we went to the ruins of Pompei, the famous city that was destroyed when Mt Vesuvius erupted. The place is massive, and is still getting bigger as more and more of it gets excavated.

Today we took a nice drive along the Amalfi coast, and tomorrow we'll be visiting the village where Jess's grandfather is from. I'm anticipating alot of cheek kissing as we meet relative after relative.

Anyway I've been hogging the computer for long enough, Jess is itching to get on and write her own update.

Hope you're all well and I'll be seeing you pretty soon now. Will be home on the 10th of Feb. I'll try and get one last groupie done before then.


Love Ben (Jettoa says hi)

Ben's Europe Trip Volume 9

Hi all,

After leaving Munich we spent a week in the Czech Republic, with 6 nights in beautiful Prague. Out of all the cities we´re visiting in Europe, Prague was by far the most hyped up. Every person we´ve spoken to and every guidebook we´ve read has said Prague is the most beautiful city in Europe, so we had pretty damn high expectations. And I must say, Prague is pretty damn amazing - and had it not been for my high expectations I´d probably be calling it the best place we´ve been.

But not quite.

So what did we do there... The first couple of days we did our own thing, exploring the different parts of the city and getting an overall feel or the place, usually we only spend half a day like this but seeing as Prague is a big place and we had a whole week to kill there. We kept seeing signs for something called the Black Light Theatre show, so on the second night we bit the bullet and saw something called the ´Dr Frankenstein Crazy Horror Show!´´

It was awful.

The concept of black light theatre is pretty cool, using blue lights, dark costumes and 3D effects to create a very cool stage effect - the problem was the humor in it was so unelievably lame Jess and I actually considered eating our own faces. But we didn´t.

So having enough of doing our own thing, the next day we bought tickets for a full day tour of the city - including a boat ride, tram ride, tour of all the major sights and a 3 course traditional Czech meal. It was a great little tour, we saw alot of stuff we never would´ve seen or known about had we not have been with a guide. Also included in the ticket price was admission for a ghost tour that night, which we summoned up the bravery to attend. It was pretty lame, but still alot of fun. We were taken around different famous spots and told a ghost story, then every now and then someone in a mask would jump out and scare us. You know me though, I don´t scare easily....... Moving on.

Also while in the Czech Republic we took a day trip to a place called Ceckz Budjovice, which was a very cool little town famous for brewing Budweiser beer - not the American one, the cool one. So after a very cool, very cheap week (a 3 course meal for both Jess and I works out to about 20 aussie dollars) we were off to Austria where we´ve spent the last 2 nights in Vienna.

Vienna is an amazing city - so many beautiful buildings, museums, churches, it´s a really cool place. We spend two days walking around the city and exploring all the great sights, taking plenty of photos and then trying to work out which building was which when looking back on them each night. Also we managed to score a hotel right near a bowling alley, so Jess and I had some fun there last night.

Today we took a day trip out to Salzburg to see where the Sound Of Music was filmed, Jess still can´t believe I´ve never seen it, will have to rent it when we get home now just so I can annoy my parents by yelling out ´I´VE BEEN THERE!!´ every ten seconds.

So tomorrow we head off again to Venice, Italy being the last country in Europe we´ll be going through. Really looking forward to walking along the canals and taking a romantic gondola ride.

Will post again when I get a chance. Hope you´re all well,


Love Ben (Jess says hi)

Ben's Europe Trip Volume 8

Gutentag,

If you see me type a z where a y should be just let it slide, the keys are round the wrong way on this ridiculous European kezboard.

We've been through two countries since my last post, so there's quite a bit to fill you all in on. After leaving our very comfortable house in Como we ventured North to Interlaken, smack back in the middle of the snowy Swiss mountains. It wasn´t snowing in Interlaken itself, but we only had to travel 20 minutes into the mountains before the ground was covered in powder, so you can imagine how great the view was from our hotel window.

On New Years eve we went to a place called Grindelwald for the day, which is one of Switzerland´s trendier ski resorts. It was great to see Jess so excited about touching some snow, and not so great when she used it to pelt me in the arse with a snowball. I made my first ever snowman, a fact you could easily tell from how horrible it turned out. That night we brought in the new year at a local pub near our hotel. It was a bit awkward at first as the place was almost exlusively frequented by 16 year locals who kept staring at the old couple who had invaded their pub. Luckily we met a couple of friendly Americans to drink and play some darts with.

Before we left Switzerland we were told we had to go to a place called Jungfrauloch (I´ve almost certainly spelt that wrong), which is famous for being the very top point of Europe, the highest town anyway. But unfortunately we left it to the last day, and as it was such a crappy day and it was a 200dollar train trip, we decided to go to a little known place called Gimmelwald instead. I was really glad we did. Gimmelwald was amazing - it´s a tiny little town perched on the side of a mountain which we could only reach by taking a spectacular cable car ride. It was snowing heavily and the views were breathtaking.

We left Switzerland the next day and have spent the last four nights in Munich. Munich is a pretty cool city, and over the last few days we´ve managed to tick of all the must do German things. I downed a 1 litre stein of beer at the Hofbrahaus, checked out the impressive Residenz and local churches, eaten plenty of hearty Bratwurst and the occasional Pretzel, and purchased my verz own Bavarian stein.

Today we took a train trip to Schloss Neuschwanstein, aka Disney Castle. It was a two hour train trip to get there, but worth ever moment. We took a guided tour around the ridiculously over decorated rooms of King Ludwig and took some great photos of the castle with Germany´s own snowy mountains as a backdrop.

Tomorrow we move on again, this time to beautiful Prague. The Czech Republic is renowned for having the best beer in the world and some pretty amazing castles, so we´ll be there for 6 fantastic nights.

I´ll try and fire off another post in the next few days, depending on internet access and laziness. Hope you´re all still enjoying your Summer.

Tschüs,


Love Ben (Jess says hi)