PC, Gone Flower Mad


daffodil bulbsUgh, I just got back from a weekend-long conference on ‘cultural appropriation’. Everyone in the studio had to attend. And I know it’s pretty important, because we can cause offence if we
film a music video and just steal from another culture to make it more colourful, whatever. That’s been more or less our protocol ever since that band asked us to make them a music video and they pretty much just wanted themselves being filmed around the streets of Albajeria, picking out the parts of the culture that they wanted. Sixty million views, a lot of dislikes.

Now, call me crazy, but I don’t think ‘garden enthusiasts’ count as a culture. We got a list of all the stuff we can’t ever show in a music video ever again, and it included daffodils. Oh, and daffodil bulbs, just to cover all the bases. Sorry, what?

I asked about it and the boss said it was something about them being sacred in some country, somewhere. But not in Australia, which is what’s really getting me right now. There were all these random flowers on the list, most of them completely harmless and nice looking and nobody is going to get offended if we want to film a girl running through a field full of daffodils, seriously. It’s not like I’m trying to overturn the establishment, but I just want the freedom to do what I like when I’m directing without being bound by these stupid rules.

I don’t even have any plans to use most of this stuff. Like, a set of bongos? We can use them in the background but not in the video? See, none of it really makes a sense, especially the part where it mentions tulip bulbs but not actual tulips. See, tulip bulbs were used in an ancient celtic ceremony 700 years ago, so we can’t use them. Uh-huh, and this totally isn’t political correctness gone mad.

-Ernie

The Lone Flower Shop

assorted bulb flowersThat’s it: this town centre is dead. Nothing here but cheap shops and a couple of really bad supermarkets. What do you have to do to get a good coffee around here? I’ll tell you: you don’t. You go to the supermarket, where you sit in the corner of the café they have, on their corporate chairs, and you sip your lattes from a machine. It makes it right in front of you and everything. That’s how low this place is.

And yet…there’s the flower shop. It sits in between the nail bar and the $2 shop, and it’s just really, REALLY nice. You know how some flower shops just feel like places that are set up for the big occasions- Mother’s Day, all that- and they just don’t feel friendly? Well, this one is. I went in looking for some tulip bulbs, because my sister makes weird birthday lists, but Gia greeted me at the door and helped me find exactly what I was looking for. And then at the end she gave me a free tulip so my sister could see exactly what the bulbs would look like. She has the shop laid out perfectly, all flower coordinated and looking just perfect, like she stayed up for nights just plotting how she wants her place to look. There’s nothing cheap about it, except the prices are pretty low because of what area of town we’re in. But Gia’s is pretty popular, probably because she’s got no competition and people just like to hang out in there.

Still, I’ve asked her why she chose to set up in a place like this. She just said it needed a burst of colour that only bunches of hyacinths and daffodils could bring. That, and the lack of other flower places in the area, and the rent was cheap…but still, her place sticks out. That’s what happens when you line your windows with bright yellow and white daffodils in a tessellated pattern, I guess. Maybe Gia is a mathematician. If you’d seen the layout, you might agree.

-Harrison