The world adores matt hayward

This week I am stoked as the new Falcon’s finally out and the trepidation over how it looks is over. Ford’s BA-BF series cars were brilliant. Sure the rear door access was rubbish and the drivers’ seating position a bit off, but delivered great refinement, power and above all bang for buck.

When you make a car that good, there’s always a risk that the successor can fall from a great height down to car mediocrity. Having seen a bunch of Photoshop hypotheticals over the past few months, it looked more than likely. Now the speculation is over. The new Ford Falcon FG series has broken cover.

For the first time they’re are two models the G series and the XR. This is an absolute coup de etat. Now you can get it in a Fairmont Ghia type vehicle, the G6E Turbo. Because with the BF, the only way you could get a turbo was with the XR. It was a handsome enough brute on the outside, but who wants the rear spoiler and the flouro tyre pattern interior? Not me. It was too, middle aged bloke trying to act fifteen again.

I’ve owned both a BA XT Falcon and an XR6 Turbo. And I can honestly say that I much preferred the simple sophistication of the XT’s interior and lamented the lairy XR at first. So Ford’s product department should take a bow for extending the turbo out across the range. Well done!

Now you can get all the grunt (270 kilowatts of it) you want in luxo spec car. One that even has a whiff of Aston Martin or Jaguar about it. As opposed to the bouffant, shoulder padded VE Commodore, the Ford is a far more refined sophisticated look, without loosing all the cool aesthetics of the BF. This is of course if you’re like me and think that the old Falcon was never a bad looking car, it was just getting old.

The XR spec cars are a clear improvement, however the front doesn’t look anywhere near as good as the G series IMHO. Perhaps seeing one in the flesh will resolve that. Though sadly, that’s not going to be until May, when the rubber really hits the road.

On the flip side though, Ford’s new web site for the Falcon sucks arse! It’s all Flash based and too difficult to navigate. For example, just stupid stuff like an image loads with a G series and an XR and you have to choose between them. So you move the cursor and the link moves further away! That was cool in 1999 but today it’s just plain irritating.

Plenty of ambiguous menus abound too and it looks like they spent all their money on a few movies probably intended for television that tell you nothing about the car. It’s Web 1.0 all over again and definitely form over function.

In the media though, apparently Ford CEO is sent a G6E Turbo back to the states. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if the Falcon ended up being made in North America, given Falcons have been tested there. However it’s crystal clear it wont be made in Oz. It would slot in perfectly in the states and wipe the tepid Five Hundred and Crown Victoria off the deck! I genuinely hope there’s substance to the rumours.

Anyways, I can’t wait for the motoring mags to come out with full specs on the cars. Which makes you wonder WHY they launched the Falcon on a Sunday in the middle of the magazine runs?! It’s just stupid. Oh well, I guess we’ll have to wait. In the meantime here are some new Falcon photos.

Long live the Ford!

Well at least you’d be saying this if you were Karl Rove. Whose apparently Norwegian, pierced penis, queer pioneer adopted father is meant to be according to this article. Some bloke who claims that Louis Rove used to go to piercing parties with him in the seventies, where they’d pierce each other on coffee tables, claims to own Mr Rove’s favorite golden cock ring.

If you’re really game, read the source article here. The alledged Louis Rove has so many piercings, he’s like an inverted colander or a gold plated, purple headed Darlek. Well at least he can follow in his son’s footsteps and join the Conservative Party in the UK…

Aah when the truth comes out about neo-cons. Oh dear god I hope that this is true. This is funnier than the refugees that snuck into England in Tony Blair’s customised BMW limo… Pure gold! Ironically I found this because I was searching for the apparent new You Am I album title “I’m Proud Of My Gay Son”. This find was almost as good as a new You Am I album. But please Timmy, top this one!

A friend at work showed me this the other day. In the fine tradition of learning through parody and mockery comes the series You Suck At Photoshop. Call it a Web 2.0 version of Web Pages that Suck, a site that rocked my world about 10 years ago as a budding young web producer. But don’t call it average, because the bloke doing this series is a class act!

Basically this is Photoshop techniques taught through sarcasm, scorn and maximum bitterness. In the first episode, layering techniques are demonstrated. So Donny Photoshops his marriage certificate on the inside window of ‘the van his wife and high school friend are in every Friday night’. Basically every episode is punctuated by his married life coming to a sudden end. Like the episode that covers the Photoshopping the wedding ring off of the finger in episode 3.

Anyway, if you type ‘You Suck At Photoshop’ into Youtube, there’s five episodes at the time of writing. All pant wettingly funny and laden with irony. With what little I know about Photoshop , they actually are pretty good tutorials too (e.g. his alternatives to the clone tool). So if you’re copping it at work and need a quick sarcastic fix to pull you through, give it a crack.

Brilliantly honest, suburban and quirky, Juno is the next arthouse flick from the middle of nowhere. Juno is a sixteen year old high school girl that falls pregnant to her best friend, a dorky athletics champ played by Michael Cera from the great Arrested Development. Having too much heart to deal with abortion, she decides adoption is the best option.

Far from the some uber conservative right wing reaction TV would have you expect, Juno’s parents take her pregnancy in their stride and support her in the adoption. Juno in the mean time looks for the perfect middle class family who can give her baby the support structure she can’t. While reading home maker magazines, she finds a classified ad seeking a baby, placed the perfect bourgeois yuppie couple. Here’s another highlight for Arrested Development fan, because the candidate dad is played by Jason Bateman.

Suddenly it’s all too idyllic. The wanting adoptive couple and the troubled teen seem a perfect match. But Juno quickly develops a friendship with the Bateman’s character Garner. This is when things get a bit pear shaped. Alison Janney, the prospective mother becomes enamored with childbirth, Bateman longs for his adolescence. Suddenly Juno is forced to reassess everything and take stock of what matters in her life.

Saying much more than that would wreck the whole thing. But if you liked Napoleon Dynamite or are a die hard Arrested Development fan like myself, Juno’s worth a crack. Michael Cera is brilliant in his role as the gawky boyfriend of Juno. Although you can’t help but feel he’s been a bit typecast as the indecisive dork. Equally brilliant is the girl who plays Juno, as a total ‘dude’ teenager that’s equally full of chutzpah as she is vulnerable.

Juno is a genuinely good movie which can’t be faulted. Whether it’s brilliant though I’m not so sure. I reckon it’s three and a bit stars out of five, but if quirky middle American comedy is your thing, give it a crack.