1. Started watching an episode of Home and Away.
2. Saw a sweet conversation on Home and Away between Marilyn (Emily Symons) and a teenage boy.
The teenager complains that Marilyn is acting like he's a little kid that needs to be taken care of.
Marilyn says we all need to be taken care of sometimes.
3. Started to re-watch the scene to make sure I didn't misunderstand anything.
It turns out it wasn't Marilyn. It's another women. I'm not sure of her name.
4. Found out her name. It's Irene Roberts (Lynne McGranger).
I also got the name of the teen. It's VJ, played by Matthew Little.
Okay. Now that I got all the straight.....
I agree with not-Marilyn. We all need to be parented sometimes, no matter what our age. Sometimes this comes from our biological mom and dad, or official adopted parents. Other times, it might come from a friend, neighbor, sibling, grandparent, partner, daughter, son, random stranger, etc.
5. Felt very bad for VJ. He's just learned his real mother is never going to wake up from her coma.
That's incredibly depressing.
I hope he gets a lot of love and support from the Summer Bay community.
6. Saw that Matthew Little was on Neighbours. It was in 2014, so I should have ran into him.
7. Remembered who he was...well, because IMDb has his character name. It suddenly clicked in my head.
He played Ethan, Paige's adoptive brother.
8. Started watching another episode of Home and Away.
9. Wondered if I've misjudged the prognosis of Leah, VJ's mother.
I thought it was a definite that she was never going to wake up—as in we'll need to pull the plug soon.
Then Irene talked about her needing Leah to get better, because she's Irene's best friend. I thought maybe Irene was having grief-induced delusions. But in a later scene, VJ talked about moving to the city so he could visit his mother everyday.
I suppose Leah's case COULD be completely hopeless and people aren't ready to accept that. Or maybe she's just almost hopeless, but there's still a small chance she could recover.
10. Hoped that Leah would recover.
11. Finished watching the episode.
I'm starting to feel somewhat emotionally invested in the show.
I think what helps is I'n beginning to know who the characters are. I even know some of their names.
I'm seeing how people are related to each other and understanding their various conflicts.
I'm lost with history, but that kind of confusion often remains.
With Coronation Street, I know all the current characters and their current connections, but I'm lost when it comes to most of their pasts.
Tim bought me a trivia game or Christmas, so that has given me some information. But still. There's so much I don't know.
I can look things up and I do sometimes. The risk with that is I often end up running into spoilers.
For example. With Home and Away, if I try to learn more about Leah and her history, it's likely I'll also learn whether she's died, woken up, or is still in a coma.
11. Felt bad for MTV Australia for being accused of racism. They Tweeted a joke about Eva Longoria and America Ferrera needing to be subtitled at the Golden Globes. It seems a lot of people didn't take it as a joke.
I believe they truly were joking, because it was in response to Longoria and Ferrera attempting to use humor in response to alleged Latino-stereotyping.
If they randomly asked for subtitles, that would be...maybe racist. It depends.
Those against the MTV Tweeter say that Longoria and Ferrera were born in the US and don't have foreign accents.
Well, first of all, born-Americans have a variety of accents, and to some people, some of these accents might be hard to understand....especially if you're not American yourself.
Most of the time, I do fine watching Coronation Street. Although I'm not British, I can understand what most of the people are saying. But there have been times where I can't understand certain characters.
12. Changed my mind. Now that I think of it.
If the MTV Australia Tweeter wasn't joking; then I think it would be racist.
It would be like me saying I can understand everyone on Coronation Street except for the black characters. If the black actors don't have any kind of unique accent, than it would likely be racist of me to say that.
But I do feel that MTV was trying to be funny rather than offensive—making fun of racism rather than truly being racist.
I think it's kind of what happened to Barry Humphries when he made fun of anti-Latino racism via Dame Edna.
13. Thought about the Golden Globes. Eva Longoria and America Ferrera made jibes against a Golden Globe Tweet that confused them with other Latino actresses.
I don't think what happened was necessarily racism.
I used to get Hugo Weaving confused with Guy Pearce. Does that mean I'm racist against white Australian males?
14. Tried to think of other actors that I've mixed up.
I can't think of them now.
15. Thought of one.
The two actors on Home and Away. I totally had them confused the other day. Since they're both white, I doubt anyone would take offense. But what if it were two black guys, two Asian guys, or two Latino guys? Then I can imagine it likely that someone would accuse me of racism. Well, hardly anyone comments on my blog, so I probably wouldn't hear the accusation. But maybe they'd call me racist behind my back and stop reading my blog.
16. Wondered if I have it wrong. Maybe Eva Longoria and America Ferrera were just amused at the mistake and weren't taking it as racism.
It might have been like John Travolta messing up Idina Menzel's name—just a funny mistake bringing about many future jokes.
17. Saw I don't have it wrong. This article talks about how Hollywood needs to be reminded that Latina actresses aren't interchangeable.
So, I guess I need a reminder that Australian male actors aren't interchangeable.
18. Remembered that today I also confused two older female Aussie actresses on Home and Away.
19. Felt that racism is thinking a group of people is inferior or vastly different than your group—or seeing a certain group as having less value than other groups.
It's not about confusing names and faces.
20. Thought about how people in my family call each other the wrong names quite often. It doesn't mean we're racist against each other or that we think we're interchangeable. We just get confused. It's a brain fart, really.
21. Felt that racism against non-white people in the film and television industry definitely exists and is a problem. I feel, though, that labeling innocent mistakes as racism might hurt the cause rather than help it. Or at least it's going to hurt the person who made the mistake.
22. Went to the Tropfest website.
Today I'm going to watch a 2008 film called "Looped".
23. Thought that the woman in the film looks familar.
24. Thought that the man in the film looks familar too.
25. Saw that the film is about people with compulsions.
26. Learned that the confessions of the people in the film were real and spoken by the real people who have the compulsions. Then actors performed the scene and lip-synched the confessions.
That's pretty cool.
27. Thought about how some compulsions can be positive; some can be destructive; and others are rather neutral.
An example of a positive is a guy, in the film, who likes to cut and cook onions. He might be put to good use in a restaurant. I guess it could be a problem, though, during a time that onions are expensive and/or the guy has no one who wants to eat the onions.
As for the negative, there's a woman, in the film, who doesn't like seeing naked people in a book, so she creates underwear for them with a pen or marker. If she was doing that to books she personally owned, it wouldn't be bad. But she's doing it to books that aren't hers. She's destructing the property of others.
28. Thought that compulsions are okay if they don't cause harm to the self or others and if they don't take up an enormous amount of time.
If every time you turn on a light, you have to turn it on, turn it off, and then turn it on again—well, that's a little strange, but it's not going to take that much time out of your day. It's not going to hurt anyone.
If every time you want to turn a light, you have to turn every light, in your home, on and off again; THAT might get very time consuming.
29. Looked up the cast of "Looped" on IMDb to see if I knew the actors from somewhere.
Nope. It looks like I don't.
I guess they just reminded me of someone else.
30. Saw that Sarah Crowest, the director of "Looped" has only "Looped" on her filmography.
I wonder if she has personal experience with obsessions and compulsions.
31. Googled Sarah Crowest with Australia, and found a lot of links for a Sarah CrowEST. She's an artist, so I'm guessing Sarah Crowest and Sarah CrowEST are one and the same.
I wonder what the EST is all about. I've never seen that before.
Is it a cultural thing? A quirky thing? A way to stand out and be noticed?
32. Went to Sarah Crowest's website.
It looks like she does modern art type things.
33. Found a short bio of Sarah Crowest on this Australian video website.
She's British-Australian-born in London.
She does video and sculpture art.
34. Watched a CrowEST video that's supposed to represent cosmetic changes to the body.
It was...uh...interesting.
35. Continued to wonder why CrowEST spells her name that way.
But it's late and I'm tired, so I'm not going to try to figure it out right now.