It's a bit late in the telling, but last Sunday evening I went and saw Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl. It was supreme quality baby. Totally excellent. He mixed up his personas nicely, alternating between the all crazy preacher-man, the Elaine-dancer and the heartfelt mournful pianist. Cool. The support acts were Neko Case and Calexico and I would urge you to give them some serious consideration.

In other stuff, I watched Terminator 3 the other day. I liked it. I was expecting to totally hate the distinct lack of Edward Furlong, but Nick Stahl was nice and understated which made me wincingly remember that Eddie's T2 perfomance was way overwrought, man. He still rules in Detroit Rock City though. I saw Nick Stahl in Bully where he played the jerk, and he was good, and is also good in this, the little runt. Claire Danes is also excellent. I also liked it that random truck drivers didn't get summarliy slaughtered by the bad terminator [I think I'm supposed to say 'terminatrix'] just for stopping at the site of an accident, which irked me in the second one. It might seem weird given that 3 billion people die in a nuclear holocaust and all, but I found this 'lighter' than the other Terminators, and more bearable for it. I like the first Terminator a lot, but I've grown to hate the second one [particularly the director's extended edition of it. Blurgh]. It annoys me how pumped they all get, you know? Yeah yeah, the end of the world is coming and only you can stop it, but did they have to be all annoying and earnest all the time? So, I think I like this latest one the best. Instead of being all grappling with the news that he is destined to be the saviour of the remnant of humanity in the aftermath of a nuclear war, this time John Connor is like, a little embarrassed to have to explain to an old school chum that, he's like, destined to be the saviour of the remnant of humanity in the aftermath of a nuclear war. I like it. Oh, and I just remembered something piss funny that's on the DVD. Try the commentary, if only to hear Arnold talk about how he thought it was a great idea to make the new bad terminator a girl, because it is "interesting" and a brilliant concept that keeps the formula fresh and how excited he was about casting a "beautiful face and physique" and stuff. And later, when there's a bit where the terminatrix inflates her boobs, Arnie really likes that. He thinks that all the women in the audience will be saying to themselves, "Wow. I really want my breasts to do that, because some men like them big, some like them small. If I could just change them whenever I needed to like that, wow, that would be great". I was laughing a lot. He has a quite lovely and indecipherable way of expressing himself [and no, I'm not talking about his accent. Jeez, it's just an accent. What's the big deal? I'm actually talking about it being really quite difficult to figure out what he intends when he says the ludicrous stuff. Is he 'naughty playful' or just straight-up arrogant? When he's talking about women, it's really hard to tell]. His DVD commentary was recorded before the whole gubernatorial brou-ha-ha and the groping and stuff, but's it's funnier for it. I can just add it to the growing bunch of hilarious Arnie scenes I am collecting which I am fond of, even if I'm not sure what to make of him through them. There was his appearance on Oprah when he was trying to explain that he was a different man when he was promoting body-building and he would say things like "Pumping iron is better than coming". But, you see, to explain that point he had to say "pumping iron is better than coming" [and hold his fist up from his lap], and so he said it, and shocked laughter gusted up around him for some reason. I thought it was a beautifully crass statement, and anyway, it's in the past, right? And there's all the Letterman clips of him groping exotic dancers and smoking weed and 'teaching English to a young lady' by holding a carrot to her mouth and getting her to bite it and saying "This is Bi-ting", and then just pushing and pulling the carrot in and out of her mouth and saying "and what is this?" or something. I'm really beginning to like the guy. He's a buffoon.

P.S. None of the above should be taken to mean that I think Arnold is a good actor or that his election campaign merited his election or anything. I am just glad that he has allowed so much of his general conversation to be recorded.