I wonder how much money actors make? I don’t mean the megastars, I mean just your average medium-sized stars.

Random example: Gareth Thomas. Played the title character in Blake’s 7, which must have occupied him for the three-and-a-bit years he was in it back in the late-70s, and made him famous. Since then IMDB lists a couple of things per year (most recently an episode of Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood — maybe ‘cos it’s set in Cardiff and he’s Welsh?). Even assuming he does other stuff such as radio or theatre (which he does, according to Wikipedia) and voiceovers and TV adverts, I wonder if he lives comfortably? I assume so, or he’d have found another job.

Do short acting jobs pay well enough that it pays the bills for the quiet times? I suppose many part-time actors end up having to take day jobs as well.

And when the big stars attend the openings of their movies, do they hang around and watch? If so they must get pretty bored with seeing it over and over again.

I assume Barry Humphries is pretty well off. Another full-page bit in The Sunday Age again yesterday, grumble…

Okay dream analysts, see what you can make of this one:

I was appearing on a Siegfried and Roy TV show. You know, those odd American/German guys with big cats (who stopped in 2003 when Roy was injured by a Tiger).

I was meant to lie down on my stomach, with my arms outstretched, and remain absolutely still while they put various substances on my hands, and then got the big cats to lick them off. I was scared stiff, but obeyed.

Apparently I survived, because later in the dream I was hunting through the Green Guide to find out when the show would be on — sometime on Channel 10 at about 3am, I think it was going to be.

“A lot of people died in Iraq today, most of them kids. This is a very minor matter.” — Chris Murphy, Matthew Newton’s solicitor, to reporters.

Is this going to be known as the Matthew Newton Defence: claiming what you did wasn’t so bad because there’s worse things going on, unchecked, elsewhere in the world? That accusations of assault are somehow excusable because Iraq is a warzone?

What a piss-weak excuse. I hope he didn’t try that one with the judge.

I’ve mentioned before my exploits with video, a set of productions made predominantly when we were teenagers, with zero budget, on equipment borrowed from school.

The very last production was an episode of the Professionals-inspired “STRIKE”, about a secret crime-fighting organisation. Made in 1993, by which point all of us were either at uni or in the workforce, it brought the era of homemade productions to a neat close, and served as a great post-school reunion for those of us involved.

Undoubtedly it was the least worst best of all the productions we’d done: the scripts were a little less cliched, the camera-work was better and the props more realistic. It included location shooting in Manchester Lane (boy has that changed; it was chosen for its grimyness — now it’s anything but), at Parliament House, at my flat-of-the-time in Hawthorn, and around South Caulfield and Ripponlea.

Now thanks to Raoul (producer/director) digging out his master tape, here it is online.

For all the work done on the script, it still only panned out to about 20 minutes long. (The first minute or so is the trailer, if you don’t think you have the patience for the full thing.)

I suspect it’s not as fun for the casual viewer as the Doctor Who video made some years earlier — I’ll work on getting that one online.

(Click here to see the video if it doesn’t appear in your RSS reader.)

Mathom sounds like something out of The Meaning Of Liff, but it’s not. Apparently it’s a word from Tolkien meaning something you have no immediate use for, but which you want to keep just in case. In the stories, the Hobbits sometimes had entire extra houses dedicated to mathoms.

This sounds just like my mother. There’s lots of stuff at her house, but even more at Peter’s block at Ferntree Gully, where Peter built a big shed just to store stuff they don’t yet want to throw out.

I think they might be closet hobbits.

I count myself lucky, given the power chaos yesterday. I got out of the city just before things really got pair pear-shaped (even if the train was an old non-aircon one, at least it was moving, and not too crowded, and we opened all the windows, which helped a bit). Marita was, I think, less fortunate: her train was packed to the rafters, though airconditioned.

And we didn’t lose power last night at home, unlike plenty of others.

Spent some of the evening sitting on the back porch, sipping cool drinks and watching out for invading cockroaches. Got three in about an hour. That Baygon spray stuff is marvellous.

A possum stopped past to say hello. Sat on the edge of the roof for a few minutes, watching, waiting, probably silently complaining about the heat. A bit rough when you have a fur coat, I suppose.

The past couple of weekends, Marita and I have got on our bikes for a ride. Nothing too fast-paced. Certainly not the hell ride. Not even the slightly-less intimidating heck ride. Probably not even up to the standards of the gosh darn ride.

No, we did a leisurely ride down the Nepean Highway service road to Cheltenham and back, about 12Km all up. The first time we went because I mis-read the NewsDirect web site and thought there was another prized magazine waiting for me there. The second time they actually had it.

On the second run, we also stopped at Freedom and I ordered a new sofa. Finally, the old tattered green sofa I’ve been meaning to replace for about the last four years is on the way out. Its replacement, which I have been covetting for some time, is a shiny new green (different green) more squarish sofa which should arrive in about 6 weeks. It’s called “Portland”, and given the time lag, could in fact be coming from Portland.

(Helena, if you’re reading, I know you told me not to buy a Freedom sofa because yours didn’t last. But this one has a ten year structural guarantee, and I’ve bought fabric protection and arm protectors. So I think it’ll keep me going for a few years, at least until I’m ready to buy something more elaborate and expensive.)

The intention is to keep riding at least once a week, to gain some fitness, though next time I’m hoping we’ll ride somewhere other than Cheltenham.

I figure it’s better to go for a ride with an actual goal in mind, all part of making exercise part of your regular lifestyle, rather than an optional activity. Gradually it’ll be longer distances and faster speeds, I hope.

Things I’ve noticed so far:

• It had been so long since I’d ridden the bike that it was not only dusty, spiders had settled on parts of it.
• Marita is on a borrowed bike, and has had to get used to the gears and lock. At one stage she confidently locked the bike to itself.
• I have a heightened sense of awareness, and am quite possibly driving more defensively, since during time on the bike you’re much more vulnerable and watching to make sure car drivers have seen you and are going to give way where appropriate.
• In fact, I think I want to get one of those high-visibility safety vests. I may have poked fun at them in the past, but I can see the use, and basic (non-super-styled cyclist ones) are pretty cheap.
• After the first ride, I was worn out, with muscles and bum aching. (Maybe I need a saddle upgrade?) After the second ride, I felt healthier. This is good.

PS Wednesday: Raymond Chen writes that as of now, a measurement of bicycle velocity is an Armstrong, equal to 22 kmh (13.5 mph), after the speed at which Lance Armstrong ascended l’Alpe D’Huez in the 2004 Tour de France. I suspect for myself, at present I only reach Armstrong speed going downhill with the wind behind me.

Have you seen the latest chain email, claiming that Woolworths/Safeway are going to donate all their profits on January 23rd to drought relief?

As someone who gets chain emails regularly, and has to almost always Reply All and tell people it’s crap (generally providing a snopes.com URL to prove it) I initially scoffed at it when I heard, but to my surprise it turns out to be true.

Shame they’ve chosen a Tuesday. I normally do my grocery shopping on Sunday. But that’s okay, I’ll move it for that week.