More Charity Rambling, New Actors Taking Over, Breaker Morant, and Michael Dorman

1. Started watching an episode of The Secret Life of Us.

2. Thought about what I wrote yesterday—about people doing a lot of different charity work to keep themselves busy and feel needed rather than doing it because of true passionate caring. As I said, this kind of annoys me.

I thought of another exception, though. There are people who do a lot of charity but not because they want a long list on their do-gooder resume. They do it, because people ask them to do it, and they don't have the hearts and guts to say no. I have sympathy for those people. I can't fault them on it. It's really hard to say no sometimes.

My favorite charity people, though, are the ones who have one cause that they're very passionate about, and they put a lot of work into that. Like...Samuel Johnson and breast cancer. But it's not that I'm going to be hating on the Multiple Sclerosis campaigner if she attends a Cystic Fibrosis walk-a-thon.

What I'm hating on is the people who have their weeks (days?!) full of different charity events, and they don't feel that much passion about any of them.

3. Recognized an actor on The Secret Life of Us episode and wondered where I had seen him recently.

Then I realized it was on yesterday's episodes of The Secret Life of Us.

4. Saw Mark Priestly's name in the credits.

I THINK he might be an American-actor. If I have the right guy in mind, he was on Days of our Lives, and the modernized V.  I think also he married Anna Torv?

Or I could be totally wrong.

5. Saw that I'm horribly wrong.

I knew Mark Priestly's name, because he had a tragic ending.

He's the actor from All Saints that committed suicide.

So, who was I thinking about?

6. Saw that the actor I was thinking of is Mark VALLEY.

And he did marry Anna Torv. I got that right, at least.

7. Saw that I was wrong about V.

Oops.

8. Looked forward to seeing Mark Priestly on the show; though it will probably make me sad.

I wish he were still alive.

9. Saw that the season four newbies are dominating this episode so far.

What I'm starting to think is that creators of the show pretty much recast the whole thing. The show is no longer about the characters from season 1-3, but those characters are sticking around as supporting characters.

Hopefully, I'm wrong.

I think it's a stupid thing to do.

10. Saw that Kelly (Deborah Mailman) still has storylines. Hopefully, that will continue through the season.

How about Evan (Samuel Johnson) and Christian (Michael Dorman)? Will they have storylines, or will they be more like background characters?

11. Saw that Rhys Muldoon is very good at making a trying-not-to-cry face.

I love that guy.

12. Saw an actor, on the show, that looked familiar.

I looked at IMDb, and saw it's probably Angus Sampson. I say probably because I'm not sure of his character's name.

On the show, he works at a video store. There's no video-store-guy in the credits, but Angus Sampson is listed as playing a guy named Tyrone on The Secret Life of Us.  I'm pretty sure Sampson is the guy I'm recognizing.

I'm guessing the video-store guy is substantial enough to get a character name.

And he appears on a second episode.

13. Thought of the movie Fallen, because on The Secret Life of Us, two characters, at two different times, whistle the same song.

But instead of singing "Time is on My Side", they sing "Camptown Races"

14. Watched a scene from Fallen. I think it's one of the scariest movies.

15. Thought of another exception to my bitchy, anti-charitable-people feelings.

I'm okay with a person filling their days with charity work because they're very lonely and/or bored.  It could be a way for them to meet friends and fill up their empty days.  They can alleviate some depression and at the same time help those in need. How could I fault them on that?

So I guess my grief is only with already-busy and popular people who fill up their days with charity events, and then they brag about it a lot. Oh, I'd love to join you for lunch on Wednesday, but sorry. I'm the organizer for a bowl-a-thon to help the homeless. Thursday? Sorry, I can't do it. I have a board meeting for the Hearing Impaired Foundation. No, I can't do anything Saturday night. I'm attending a charity ball for the hospital. 

These are also the people who have overly long introductions when they're honored at award dinners, because the person introducing them has to ramble off the long list of charities.

16. Saw that one of the guest stars (Don Halbert) on this episode on The Secret Life of Us was on the second season of Underbelly.

I recognized him earlier but didn't have his character name until now.

17. Learned from Lord Wiki that Halbert played a corrupt Melbourne detective on Underbelly.

I vaguely remembered him but didn't remember what kind of character he played.

18. Finished watching the episode and got a better idea of who got storylines.

Two of the newbies Adam (Nicholas Coghlan) and Nikki (Anna Torv) had the main storyline. One of the oldies, Kelly (Deborah Mailman) also had a significant storyline.

Christian had a comic relief type story involving the video store.

Evan was pretty much a background/supporting character.

19. Wondered who will have the main storylines in the next episode.

20. Started watching Breaker Morant.

The beginning of the movie takes place in South Africa, during the Boer War.

I'm not sure about the rest of the film.

I have a feeling most of this is going to go way over my head.

21. Saw a young Ray Meagher.

He's the first actor, in the movie, I've been able to recognize.

22. Recognized Bryan Brown, though not until I saw him a few times.

23. Started to get less bored with the movie when the characters talked about loyalty to the British empire.

From what I remember, Australians in those days saw themselves as British rather than Australian.

24. Learned that Rob Mullinar, who plays Major Bolton in the movie, was Sonny on Reef Doctors. I'm guessing Sonny was the elderly man who owned the karaoke dance place and had diabetes.

25. Wanted to say that, while watching this movie, most of my concentration is dedicated to listening out for character names so I can look the actor up on IMDb.

26. Realized that Lewis Fitz-Gerald, one of the actors in the movie, reminds me of that actor from House Husbands and Underbelly: Razor.

I have to find out his name....

27. Found the actor. It's Rick Donald.

Here's a photo of Fitz-Gerald in the movie.

And here are some images of Rick Donald.

28. Learned that Terence Donovan plays Captain Hunt in the movie, and Captain Hunt is already dead.

I guess I'll see him in flashbacks.

29. Figured out this movie is about unfair trials and punishment.

Breaker Morant and his men are in trouble, and getting a pretty unfair trial. For example, the prosecution had weeks to prepare for the trial. The defense had about a day and never did this kind of law work before.

Then there are flashbacks where we see Morant and the other men blaming a Boer person for Captain Hunt's death. Yet they don't have any real proof. Their only evidence is that the Boer person is wearing Hunt's jacket. But couldn't he have gotten the jacket from someone else?

30. Got idea that I was wrong about Bryan Brown.

I thought he was the guy without the mustache, but now I've learned he's the one with the mustache.

31. Saw Terence Donovan, and maybe John Waters.

I could be wrong about the John Waters. He looks vaguely like the guy I know from Offspring. It's hard, though, because this guy is much younger, has dark hair rather than grey, and he has a mustache.

32. Got confirmation about John Waters, thanks to the solicitor referring to his character by name.

33. Stopped watching Breaker Morant for the day. I plan to watch the rest tomorrow.

I'm liking it much more than I expected. That's not saying I love it. It's just I expected to be very bored, and I'm actually finding it somewhat interesting.

34. Went to palg1305's Flickr account.

Today I'm going to look at his photos of the Glass House Mountains.

From what I remember learning, those are near The Australia Zoo.

35. Looked on Google Maps.

The mountains are about eight minutes away from the zoo.

36. Liked the clouds in this photo.

37. Liked the stars in this photo.

38. Returned to my quest of looking for The Secret Life of Us actors on Twitter and Instagram.

Next on the list is Michael Dorman.

39. Saw that Dorman has a lot of Retweets of something called PatriotAmazon.

I'm getting the idea that this is a TV show that Dorman is now on.

Oh...okay. It's on AmazonPrime.

Is it American?

40. Felt that Dorman does a bit too much Retweeting on Twitter, and he doesn't really talk about other things besides his own project.

I'm not a big fan of that type of account.

41. Saw that I can watch, at least, the first episode of Patriot.

I thought of adding it to my list but then remembered it's American.

I'd feel bad adding that, but not adding stuff like Blindspot with Sullivan Stapleton.

42. Wanted to say that I'm not against American television.

We're watching The Mindy Project lately, and I love that. And we've watched many other American things.

It's just that for my to-watch list, I put only Australian things...and one British (Doctor Who)

43. Saw that before November, Dorman used to Tweet about things besides Patriot.

For example, in May he wrote a Tweet recommending the Mad Max movie.

And that month he also wrote a nice Tweet to a guy who was having some type of lung problem.  He said, @wiliams_297 Sorry to hear of your situation mate. Them lung things are pretty important. Be smart. Safe recovery. MD

I wonder what happened with the lungs, and I wonder how Dorman heard about it. The Tweet doesn't link to any conversation; and the link to @wiliams_297 doesn't work.

I'm overly nosy about medical issues.

44. Could not find an Instagram account for Michael Dorman.

45. Looked at Dorman's Twitter some more.

He's actually quite conversational in his pre-November Tweets.

I like conversational people on Twitter.