The Big Love-In, Issue 5

Some July love!


Moves Like Jagger – Maroon 5 and Christina Aguilera

I heard this song for the first time last week and have had it on repeat pretty much ever since. It’s catchy as heck and totally awesome – and Adam Levine is one damn fine GQMF.

Listen!

My First Ever YNWA

A couple of weeks back, I was lucky enough to get to see the awesome Celtic FC play my hometown club, the Perth Glory, in an international friendly (we’re talking soccer, right now, for those playing at home =P).

For a Liverpool fan, like me, You’ll Never Walk Alone (YNWA) is a song that holds a huge amount of meaning, and that we share that song as an anthem with Celtic means there’s a bond between the two clubs. That detail hadn’t escaped me, but the thought that the Bhoys fans would deliver a stirring rendition of our legendary anthem at the match had. Standing at the Shed end on a cold night listening to that, I could almost pretend I’d made it to the Kop. One day..!

Go The Fuck To Sleep

I don’t have kids, but I’ve done my fair share of reading bedtime stories while baby-sitting  cousins, and this one takes the cake as by far the best I’ve ever seen! Gotta love a book with lines like "I know you're not thirsty. That's bullshit. Stop lying. Lie the fuck down, my darling, and sleep." And when you combine the epicness of the book with the legendary Noni Hazlehurst, a beloved host of Play School, an educational early-childhood program here in Australia, it just gets even funnier! If you haven't already seen this, check it out. Hilarious. 

  
Tumblr
  

I had been avoiding getting Tumblr for a long time, just as much for the fact that I hardly need another distraction as that I didn’t have a clue how to use it. But after days of (horribly unattractive) highly convincing picspam from some twitter friends, I signed up. It’s like a ready-made, constantly updating, giant gorgeous picspam feed! It is beautiful and Bomer-filled and awesome =)

I’m at evenwiththebestofintentions.tumblr.com =)

Guitars, Pinstripes and The Purple Shirt of Awesomeness

I need say no more.

Much love,

C   xoxo

The Big Love-In, Issue 4

Wow, it’s been two months since I posted something here – and it feels like hardly two weeks! I’ve been crazy busy between work, uni, and trying to have some kind of life outside of the two – but I finally have some time on my hands and thought it was time I shared some new love. Enjoy!

White Collar: Season Three

If you know me, you know I love White Collar. Season three kicked off this week, and to say things are different now between our favourite conman and his FBI handler would be an understatement! Without giving too much away, the premiere had everything we’ve come to love: Neal going undercover using an alias from his (perhaps not entirely abandoned) former life, Peter watching him like a hawk to make sure the case gets solved without Neal getting himself in any (more) trouble, and Mozzie dropping golden one liners; as well as something I think we are going to have to get used to: a new tension between Caffrey and Burke built on Peter’s ever-growing suspicion of Neal after the events of the season two finale.

In addition to this, we also had the awesomeness of Neal fencing:

And losing a beloved tie:

Pocketwatch chains (omgLOVE):

And the most awesome umbrella scene ever. 

If you haven’t checked it out yet – this episode, or this show in general – get on it quick!!

Fuck Yeah Darren Criss 

I don’t have a Tumblr, and I’m not planning on getting one (I hardly need another social networking profile to distract me!), but when I need my Darren fix, this is where I go. They have everything – and I mean everything. Updates on DC, Glee and Starkid, videos and .gifs, interviews and photoshoots – it’s seriously awesome. They also have a Facebook page… hit it up!!

Eddie Cahill

I always used to love the original Vegas CSI series, but once Laurence Fishburne took over, it lost me pretty quickly! Luckily, CSI: NY came to my rescue, complete with the awesome Eddie Cahill as Detective Don Flack. Over the last couple of months I have watched wayyy too many eps of this series, when I probably should have been doing other things… but can you blame me??

Hello Kitty Vans

Who wouldn’t want these??

And now, just because there can never be too much love for this man, some Matt Bomer picspam =)

Until next time,

xoxo

Hillsborough

If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve probably seen me tweet about it. If we’re Facebook friends, you might’ve caught my status updates. Many of my followers and my friends won’t know what ‘Justice for the 96’ means; they might have seen it and thought it is just a catch phrase, or ‘something to do with Liverpool Football Club’. In truth, it is so much more than that. It is something Liverpool FC has fought for ever since the day football as the world knew it was changed forever.

On April 15^th, 1989, Liverpool travelled to Hillsborough stadium in Sheffield to play Nottingham Forest in an FA Cup semi-final. Thousands of fans made the trip on what should have been a day of pride and victory, and what instead turned out to be the darkest day in the club’s history. 96 of those fans never came home, and to this day their families, the incredible Hillsborough Family Support Group, and the Hillsborough Justice Campaign continue the fight for justice for their lost loved ones.

Despite Liverpool having more travelling fans than Forest, the LFC supporters were allocated the Leppings Lane End of the stadium. In the final minutes prior to kick-off, as thousands of fans who had been delayed on their way to the stadium rushed to the two turnstile-gates in an attempt to not miss the start of the match, police lost control of the crowds. They opened extra gates, which did not have turnstiles, in an attempt to ease the pressure that had built outside, but what resulted was an influx of fans into the stadium – in numbers far greater than the capacity of the steel-fenced pens.

As fans rushed through the gates at the rear and sides of the pen, unbeknownst to them, others at the front were being crushed against the fences by the weight of the crowd. As the game began, more and more fans entered, and the police failed to stop the flow of people, creating chaos. Fans started climbing the fences to escape the crush; some were lifted out by those on the terraces above. After six minutes, the referee was advised to stop the match, as fans escaping the pens flooded the pitch. It was only after the match was stopped, and the pitch filled with people fortunate enough to escape alive, and the bodies of those who were not so lucky, that the full scale of the disaster became apparent. Shockingly, though 44 ambulances arrived at the stadium to treat and transport the injured and dying, police prevented all but one of them from entering the stadium.

In the days following, disgusting and deceitful reports of how events had unfolded were published in a high profile newspaper, to the horror of the people of Liverpool and many employees of the paper. Under the headline, “The Truth”, The Sun and its reporter Kelvin MacKenzie claimed that Liverpool fans had stolen from the dead, and attacked police officers who were trying to help the injured, despite the whole disaster having been captured on video and broadcast live on television, and no such actions having been witnessed. To this day, many Liverpool supporters refuse to buy The Sun on a matter of principle, despite the paper having issued an apology stating that they were wrong for their initial headline. In 2005, the newspaper’s managing director admitted that their appalling coverage of Hillsborough was “the worst mistake in our history’, and that “what we did was a terrible mistake. It was a terrible, insensitive, horrible article, with a dreadful headline…” However, MacKenzie himself remains unremorseful, having offered an apology in 1993, only to retract it in 2006, claiming he was forced to apologise by the paper’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, and stating, “I was not sorry then and I’m not sorry now.”

The disaster, and the inquiry that followed, changed football forever. The Taylor Report declared that the official cause was not the behaviour of the fans, or even the design of the stadium, but the failure of police control. Since then, all new stadia built by Premier League clubs are all-seated, as are most in the Football League (The Championship, League One and League Two). Fences are no longer placed in front of fans, and most existing stadia with standing areas were converted to all-seated.

Every year on the 15^th of April a memorial is held at Anfield, the home of Liverpool Football Club, and outside the stadium stands the Hillsborough Memorial with its eternal flame. As bright as the future of Liverpool FC may be, the Club’s darkest day will never be forgotten, and neither will the 96 fans who never came home that day.

Justice for the 96, may they rest in peace. You'll Never Walk Alone.

For more information, visit Liverpool Football Club's Official Hillsborough Page

The Big Love-In, Issue 3

Some April love... =)

Vices & Virtues – Panic! at the Disco 

When Panic’s first album came out a few years back, I loved all over I Write Sins, Not Tragedies and the rest of the singles that followed from their first release, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out. When they toured for the follow-up, Pretty. Odd. I went along, but for me it didn’t have the same appeal as the first album – plus their name was lacking its token exclamation mark! So when I heard the lead single from Vices & Virtues, The Ballad of Mona Lisa, I was stoked to hear that despite being two members lighter, the band had left the folk behind and were back to their baroque-pop best. I’ve got Mona Lisa, Hurricane and Let’s Kill Tonight on high rotation…

Darren Criss for Out Magazine

Even though this magazine came out a while ago now, I’ve recently come into a copy (cheers to @kerbiegirl, my fellow DC fangirl) and it’s got me drooling all over these pictures…

Fun times at the Airport

My brother Chris (aka Tina) looking after our lack-of-seating-on-the-viewing-deck problem…

The perfect skyline patella

This is the part where I let out my inner nerd. There are a few little joys that come from being a rad tech – many of them come from this list, of Top 13 Reasons to Date a Rad Tech, and the rest come from taking the perfect x-ray. To quote the awesome (and oh-so-reliable) WikiRadiography, ‘there is nothing quite like nailing a perfect skyline knee projection’. Considering I’ve been practically living at the hospital this past month, I can vouch for this statement… :P

Seriously. It’s awesome.

Bomer being a GQMF

Because there’s never a bad time for a random Matt Bomer pic. Or three.

Until next time...

C xoxo

Some Love for Japan

Only a few weeks ago, I was writing about the devastation we were witnessing in Christchurch after their 6.3 rated earthquake, which claimed 166 lives. It came on the back of Australia's own series of natural disasters, and was yet another incident that made us wonder if just maybe 2012 was coming early. But even the horror of Christchurch could not compare to the events that unfolded in Japan on March 11, and the days that followed. Like thousands of others around the world, I first heard of the earthquake through Twitter, and as I watched my timeline transform from news reports of ‘a large earthquake’ to ‘a massive quake and potential 10 metre tsunami’, I realised that yet again Mother Nature was letting loose on one of our Asian-Pacific neighbours.

As it turned out, the quake itself, which struck around 70 kilometres off the coast of the Tōhoku region and approximately 370kms from the capital Tokyo, was to become one of the least of their worries. Tsunamis struck the coast, water rushing up to 10 kilometres inland, and reactors at several of the country’s nuclear power plants were shut down but were unable to be cooled efficiently without their back-up power supply, leading to the ongoing nuclear emergency in the nation. More than six hundred aftershocks rated above 4.5 on the Richter scale have occurred since the initial quake, now officially declared as being of magnitude 9.0 – the most powerful earthquake to have hit Japan, and one of the five most powerful in the world since 1900, when record-keeping began. Amazingly, the quake moved Japan’s largest island, Honshu, almost 2.5 metres east, and actually shifted the Earth almost ten centimetres on its axis. To date, there have been 11,004 deaths, with 2,778 people injured, and 17,339 people missing.

Watching the news reports brought back memories of my own high school tour of Japan, in April 2005. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life, and they were two weeks I will never forget. I was especially interested when reading reports talking about effects experienced at the Disney resort in Chiba, and at Odaiba, a man-made island off Tokyo, both of which I visited on my own trip. It made me get out my photo albums and remember what a great time I had, and also made me hope that even in this difficult time, people will continue to show their support for our Japanese friends by donating to relief funds, and by continuing to visit the nation to support its now fragile economy.

These were a few of my favourite photos from my trip – if you have been fortunate enough to have visited Japan, you might recognise some of these places, and if not, you should definitely try to get there someday!

Shopping in Asakusa, Tokyo

There was an unusually long cherry blossom season that year, meaning we were lucky enough to see these beautiful trees in full bloom.

A picture of the Daikanransha ferris wheel, taken from the train on our way to Odaiba. At this point, everyone was super-keen to go on it…

And then we saw it up close, and changed our minds!

The Tokyo Disney Castle! I had never been to Disneyland before, and then the day we were going, there was an earthquake in the morning, and it poured with rain all day! Unfortunately that meant some of the rides were closed, but we still had a great time acting like little kids all day =)

The statue of Sadako in Hiroshima. We spent the months leading up to the trip folding cranes, and we hung our thousand in one of the booths, along with our message of hope and peace for the people of the city.

Kinkaku-ji Temple in Kyoto. The upper two stories are covered entirely in real gold leaf...

A maiko, or apprentice geisha, in Kyoto

Himeji Castle in Hyogo Prefecture, a sister-state of Western Australia. We had a great time here, despite many of us hitting our heads on the low cross-braces above many of the staircases! It was a long climb to the top, but was worth it for the views from the top. However, it was very disappointing to realise – once we had already come all the way back down again – that we could have got souvenirs proving we had made it to the top while we were up there! Next time…

When the (elderly) husband of my Japanese teacher offered to take a picture of me ‘with the castle’ I didn’t realise he was going to lie on the ground to make sure he got the whole thing in!

Our host mothers at our second sister school in Oya were kind enough to lend us their own kimonos for a traditional tea ceremony. Getting dressed took so long, but it was an incredible thing to have the opportunity to experience.

After the ceremony (and after we regained feeling in our legs, after kneeling for almost an hour), we had photos outside the school. These are two of my closest friends from the trip.

If you can, please give generously to the Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami relief fund.

The following organisations are all accepting donations:

Australian Red Cross: http://www.redcross.org.au/japan2011.htm

Global Giving: http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/japan-earthquake-tsunami-relief/

World Vision Australia: https://trans.worldvision.com.au/appeals/japandisaster/donate.aspx

Until next time,

Claire xoxo

The Big Love-In, Issue 2

Time for some new love! 

A Very Potter Musical & A Very Potter Sequel

If you follow me on Twitter or know me personally, you probably know that I’ve become a bit of a fan of the amazing Darren Criss over the last few weeks. Ever since I saw him as Blaine on Glee, I’ve been loving all over him, and that meant I had to see the Harry Potter musical parodies he starred in with Team Starkid. He’s great as Harry, but the whole rest of the cast are awesome too! I especially love Ron and Draco. I’m currently watching the sequel and loving every minute, it’s hilarious! Check it out if you’ve a few spare hours and want to be entertained =D

  

Two Door Cinema Club

I hadn’t heard of these guys until very recently, but every time I hear one of their songs, I can’t help but crank it up – and then have it stuck in my head the rest of the day! My favourites so far are I Can Talk and What You Know. Give them a listen!

Ross McCall

Playing the super-slick badass Keller on White Collar, Ross McCall is one talented and properly gorgeous Scotsman. He also played Corporal Joseph Liebgott in Band of Brothers and dirty cop Kenny Battaglia in Crash – gotta love a man in uniform! Send him something on twitter - @maccageezer – and he just might tweet you back like he has me. After the open ending of the latest episode of White Collar, Payback, fingers crossed we’ll see more of Keller in season 3!

Neal and Peter’s engagement

We already knew they had the best bromance on television, but on last week’s episode of White Collar, Neal and Peter finally made it official. After Neal helped save Peter’s life, they shared their first on-screen hug, something us fangirls have wanted for a long time, and Peter kept Neal’s engagement ring to seal the deal. Awww!!

Men in Suits

You have to love a man in a suit. I don’t really have anything to say about these pictures. Just look. 

Thank me later.

Until next time..!

C xoxo

It Hurts to Look

I’m going to have to stop watching the news.

It’s not that I don’t want to be informed of what's going on in the world; it’s just too damn depressing these days. We’ve watched our country take a right beating over the last several weeks, with the massive flooding in Queensland, the bushfires in Western Australia and the cyclones bearing down on both our north-east and north-west coasts. And now, as we slowly start to rebuild after the damage done here, we are forced to watch our brothers and sisters in New Zealand deal with their own terrible natural disaster.

New Zealand is known for being earthquake prone, one of the problems of being a country essentially formed by fault lines, but the 6.3 rated earthquake that struck the south-eastern city of Christchurch on the 22^nd of February hit them harder than probably any quake has done before. It wasn’t as strong as the one they suffered in September of last year, but was closer to the surface and to the city, as well as striking in the middle of a weekday, as opposed to before dawn on a weekend.

As I write this, there are 98 people confirmed dead and 226 still missing. Television stations here in Australia have had rolling coverage, adding special news bulletins or simply transmitting New Zealand national news directly to air here. It’s painful to watch, even more so if you’ve been to that beautiful city and seen it in all its glory. I travelled around New Zealand in December 2007/January 2008 and absolutely loved it. I had been there once before that, but the second trip was the first time I visited Christchurch. We were tired from the flight from Perth and still adjusting to the time difference, but even so, we loved the city and all it had to offer. Some parts actually reminded me of Perth - it was a much more calm, friendly and relaxed place than some of Australia’s bigger cities.

My Dad by the Avon River in Christchurch, and the Canterbury Museum

The people were all so kind and helpful, the place we stayed in was gorgeous, and we all agreed when we left that it would have been nice to have spent more time there. Something tells me sadly it will be some time before we head back there now… 

Statue of James Cook, and what my brother named at the time "the giant waffle cone"

I was looking for a quote earlier to try to sum up the relationship of sorts between Australia and New Zealand, which has formed such a fundamental part of both nations’ histories. There were more serious quotes, and funnier ones too, but it was ones about brotherhood that seemed to fit best, because even though we mock their accents, and make jokes at their expense which may involve references to inappropriate behaviour with sheep, we love those Kiwis like family. They are enough like us that we’ll say “New Zealand is practically part of Australia!” but different enough that we still very proudly maintain two very distinct national identities.

Right now, our Kiwi siblings need our help.

Please, if you are able, give it to them.

To donate to the New Zealand Red Cross… http://www.redcross.org.nz/donate

or to the New Zealand Salvation Army… http://www.salvationarmy.org.nz/giving-back/donate-online/disaster-appeals/canterbury-earthquake-appeal/

or if you are in Australia, via our Red Cross: https://www.redcross.org.au/Donations/onlineDonations.asp