During the Valencia F1 round, Mark Webber was involved in a big shunt with Lotus driver Heikki KOVALAINEN mid way into the race when he came onto the back of the Lotus too fast and flipped into the air taking out an ad sign above ending in the tyre barrier wall at 200+ kmh.

Webber was lucky to have his car flip back onto its wheels otherwise he would have gone straight into the barriers upside down seated in the cockpit. You can see the work FIA has put into safety in F1 today as Mark hopped out of his race car and stepped into the medical car without delay.

Later on he said “he was a bit bruised and whilst going up into mid air afraid if he had have hit a bridge that crosses over the track” as that would have made the accident a whole lot worse. Both drivers were out, and his lead in the world championship affected. McLaren pushed Webber’s team mate the best they could to finish second and third behind Red Bull.

Mark still has a chance to catch the leaders provided he wins or podiums from now on at most events, though I know he would prefer it to be at all remaining events.

Casey Stoner is in the middle of speculation he will leave Ducati for a Honda bike next season. It has been rumoured the engineers for Casey at Ducati were informed they would need to find new jobs in 2011. If this is true, it appears that we will see Valentino Rossi take a Ducati and try to win a world championship for them and himself. Doing that he would be the first rider ever to win Grand Prix Motorcycle World Championships on four different manufacturers across six categories from 125cc to MotoGP and all in between. Casey is having issues with the bike and other slower riders, a few mistakes this season has certainly hindered his title hopes.

And Will Power won his Indycar series race at Watkins Glen on Sunday with fellow Australian Ryan Briscoe second, with Power now leading the championship series in the USA.

Jump on board our Tour to the night race Singapore Formula One Grand Prix with me as your host and the Tour managed by Patrick Wedes who has 11 years in the Grand Prix travel business. For more info go to the web or call us, www.gpshop.net or 0418 356 789

The Silverstone race is on 11 July with the German MotoGP on 18 July.

I read today that Britney Spears ex security guard has dobbed her into the American version of DOCS for allegedly taking to her two small boys with a belt and feeding them food that caused them to react violently to their allergies.

Now if this is true, shame on you Brit, not cool.  But to be honest, I always had this idea in my head that the rich and famous kind of just well, you know, avoided all the hard stuff.
 
I mean doesn’t she have minions to get cross at her kids?  And cooks who just organise nutritional meals 24/7? After arsenic hour is complete, I’d like to think she just drifts on in ready with warm and loving hugs whilst accompanied by soft violins and candlelight.   Isn’t that what separates her life from mine? 
 
I guess I’m only wondering this because today I awoke to the sweet, sweet smell of faeces.  Well, actually no, scrap that, I firstly awoke to Maddie whispering loudly about 2 inches from my face “MUM!  Jack has done a poo on the toilet floor”.  My eyes flicked open quicker than Kevin Rudd called the removalists.

“What?”

Maddie, almost apologetically mumbled “Sam is running around out in the hallway saying he can’t POSSIBLY use the toilet”.  Newsflash Sam, we have two toilets; Dad installed the other one over a month ago.
 
Still, I had that sinking feeling.  Turns out that feeling was justified.  There on our poo brown tiles (note – white grout), was a slightly darker shade of poo.  And it was mushed like mashed potato.   I, as a fully grown adult have never, as far I as I can remember, crapped out something as large as my three year old managed to today.    Perhaps I should stop right now and tell you, lovely reader, I’m about to massively over share.  Actually maybe I should have done that about two paragraphs ago.
 
Imagine being in your pyjamas with copious amounts of sleep in your eyes, three children inexplicably hovering around the mountain of poo whilst simultaneously trying to keep the kitten from eating said mountain, all the while struggling to work out what in the fuck is going on.   Well, that was me. 
 
Now, for some reason, I don’t reckon the Britstar has found herself in this kind of situation.  I’m pretty sure that shit (literally) would have been cleaned up well and truly before she arose from her slumber.  Nor would there be a rude awakening to find the kitten pissing on the folded washing in the corner.   But maybe I’m making wild assumptions here.

Maybe Brit is a hands on “Mom” and gets up at sunrise when her children do.  Perhaps just like me, she wakes up hearing Lego men being dropped like bombs onto her timber floor.  Perhaps she gets up and makes them early morning Milo and gets quite cross when, for the fourth morning in a row, one child cannonballs themselves into the other whilst holding that Milo. 
 
Do we just imagine the rich and the famous live such different lives to us?  Surely no amount of money gets you out of childbirth of some description?  Surely no amount of cred means you don’t have to wipe your own bum?  And like any other mother, I imagine she loses her shit from time to time.  Actually I reckon we (the common people) are lucky to some degree.  We don’t have a third party stranger watching us 24/7 who sees us lose our patience, sometimes unfairly, with the little ones.  No one is generally there who keeps a keen eye on say, our meal choices and tut-tuts when we decide a pie & chips night is the best we can manage.  
 
I always marvel at Oprahs fluctuating weight.  I mean, I excuse my weight gain and lack of organic, healthy eating by blaming my innate lack of ability to plan and my complete busy-ness.  Surely, as the richest woman IN THE FREAKING WORLD, she could just employ someone to prepare really healthy yet tasty food and then just pay someone to whirl her round on an Ab-King Pro?

I digress.
 
The point is, we all lose our shit from time to time and hey, stand too close to my front door on some days and you may well hear what sounds like a screaming banshee with its arse on fire.  That would be me, telling off my kids for one reason or another.  Sure, not all of us shave our heads in front of millions and/or lose custody of our kids, and to be honest, if I see another photo of her having a ciggie above her kids head, I may very well go postal myself, but the point is, not one of us can say we are without fault. Can we?

One day, I am going to buy a recipe journal. And in that journal, I will keep all of my favourite recipes so I don't have go through the third drawer of shit every time I want to make something.

You know the drawer. The third drawer down in the kitchen. 
 
The first one of course is for your general cutlery.  Knives, spoons, forks, that kind of malarkey.  Although, you’d be hard pressed finding a spoon in ours due to our tragic teaspoon shortage.  I am still yet to determine who the spoon thief in the household is but I am heavily suspicious of Jack.  Where he is stashing these will no doubt present itself in the coming weeks.  Luckily, it’s hard to flush metal.
 
The second drawer down houses the big ticket items.  You know, the super dooper apple slicer, the peeler, bamboo skewers, salad servers with gigantic carrots on them, the can opener and the Teflon tube that apparently peels garlic, although no one has ever attempted this nor are they ever likely to. Why it hasn’t been turfed out is another Mystery Mum mystery.
 
That brings me to the third drawer. Now the actual drawer number may differ in your house, but I bet every single one of you have one – The third drawer down of shit.
 
In this drawer, all kinds of miscellaneous paraphernalia can be found.  In particular, nuts, bolts, batteries,  inappropriate wrapping paper, warranties and recipes scrawled on the back of empty envelopes.
 
I only write about this today because last night I was desperately trying to find a recipe for quiche that is unfuckerupable. It is idiot proof and I knew it was in that drawer SOMEWHERE.

On my way to (not finding it) I did encounter the following:

134 balloons and equal amount, candles:  Every day is a party at Chez Mystery Mum it seems.
 
Copious amounts of nuts and bolts:  Note, these will NEVER EVER be used for anything because whatever they belonged to has no doubt been chucked out in some sort of cleansing frenzy we go on from time to time.

Two, Twenty-first birthday cards: They will be very handy in about, oh, 11 years.

A ball of string:  I think this is just a mandatory third drawer of shit item. 

A set of unidentified keys:  I have a feeling these have followed us from house to house, but we are both too frightened to throw them out. Why I don’t know, because we’ve replaced every single door in this house and our cars have central locking.  I will approach Phil tonight about throwing them out.  I guarantee you he’ll say no.  It seems for every semi-new toy  he throws out behind my back, he scouts out a new key to add to this collection.

A mini shoe horn:  Can’t tell you much about this, other than the fact it’s mini and it’s not mine.  And no one ever uses it.

A double adaptor: I'm pretty sure this would blow up our house if it were to be plugged in.

A coke bottle label:  Apparently we still think we might be the lucky winner of a competition from 2006.  

Our bank book from January 2004.  For a bank account that no longer exists. Seriously??

3 Printer install disks: none of which we own any longer. 

Last but not least, our warranties:  We seem to have the enviable ability to keep warranties for each and every Fisher Price toy we’ve ever received (and probably no longer even own), yet bugger me if I can find the receipt for the camera I bought just over a week ago.  I only know this, because I was about to take a photo of the third (and fourth it appears) drawer of shit for the post and it won’t work. 
 
Anyway I couldn’t find my quiche recipe.   Fuck knows where it is, but it certainly doesn’t live in either of those two drawers.  This led to me moaning to anyone that would listen, that I need a journal.  A dedicated recipe journal and the feedback was mixed.
 
Some of you say you’ve got one and keep it well maintained.  Some say you have a blog where all the great recipes are kept for prosperity and sharing purposes.  Some, like me, say they shove them in a drawer and pull them out every 6 months or so and a few said they couldn’t understand why I was cooking when I have a perfectly good husband.    I liked the last person very much.
 
Actually, we share the cooking load and don’t get me wrong, we have our bog standard meals that get  cooked week in, week out, but sometimes, I want something exotic (not last night clearly, quiche is more Fountaingate than Barbados), but you know what I mean.  Hence I think it's time to grow up and get myself organised. 
 
Now, I have a camera receipt to track down.  It could be on top of the fridge.  That is my second favourite place to horde really important stuff.

I’d love to hear what you do.  Do you have a journal or box?  What about a dedicated drawer of shit?  Or am I just totally alone in this one. 

OK, I am a bit late to the party on this, but hear me out.  This DVD presently sits on my Television stand, 3 nights overdue.  Not because I couldn’t bear to part with it, not even because I’ve been too lazy to return it.  No it sits there because I was too afraid to watch it. 

Everyone I spoke to told me to “have the tissues handy”, or to “not expect a happy ending” and even that “It’s so damn depressing, you’ll be quite unsocial able for a while”.  So, with that in mind, I found it increasingly hard over the weekend to put that disc into the DVD player and press play.

Fittingly though, yesterday I had one of those migraines that permeate your skull and if you don’t reach for the Panadol in time, you get knocked onto your back quicker than Australia can change Prime Ministers.  That being the case, I decided I was in just the right frame of mind to take on Precious.

Precious has been adapted for the big screen from the novel “Push” by Sapphire.  It has been Produced and Directed by Lee Daniels (Monsters Ball (P) and Shadowboxer).  Basically, this low budget film with only a handful of well-known actors, blew the audiences away at both the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.  Having the support and help of one Ms Oprah Winfrey certainly helped this film, originally named Push, to be recognised and succeed.

So what was behind this film bringing in over $62 million US dollars worldwide?  The only two well known actors in this movie are Mo’Nique and Mariah Carey.  And let’s face it; Mariah Carey and actor are two words you rarely hear uttered in the same sentence without a snigger.  I think the secret to its success, straight up, was that it was just a great story with powerful acting. Full stop.  No fireworks, no explosions and no multi-million dollar paycheques for big name actors.  That and the fact you physically want to put your hand through the screen and slap Mary, Precious' mother played by Mo'Nique.

The movie revolves around 16 year old Claireece "Precious" Jones, played by newcomer Gabourey Sidibe.  Gabourey admits herself that she nearly didn’t audition for the role of Claireece, and only due to the fact that a pesky movie was being filmed on the side of the road that would normally take her to college for the day, did she see it as a sign, and in turn, make the trek uptown to try out for the part.

Precious is an obese, illiterate, African-American 16 year old girl who lives with her mother in Harlem.  They are painfully poor and the sadness of the situation envelopes you the minute she steps back into her home after a day at school.

A series of events lead to Precious being expelled from school.  She’s not a bad kid; she’s just a victim of circumstance.  Her school principal organises an alternative school for her – Each One-Teach One. 

It is here, at this school, under the love and guidance of a very special teacher Blu Rain (Paula Patton) and a motley crew of classmates, that Precious starts to understand how wrong her life has been.  She realises how unfairly she has been treated and how the abuse she has been suffering through, is anything but OK. 

Remember Mariah?  I mentioned her earlier.  Now, straight up, I wasn’t even aware she was in this movie, so when I noticed a social worker named Miss Weiss; there was something familiar about her.  I wondered to myself if it was Mariah Carey, but then internally argued that this woman looked like such complete shit, it just couldn’t be her.   But it was.  Just sans makeup.  Director Lee Daniels made it abundantly clear to Mariah that she wasn’t to wear a skerrick of makeup.  In fact, to add insult to injury, extra dark circles were pencilled in under her eyes.   And can I say, she was amazing.  It’s like Glitter never happened.  OK, that’s taking it too far, but in all fairness, Mariah shone more in this movie than in all of her very shiny film clips combined.  Miss Weiss, as her social worker/welfare officer, also plays a big role in helping Precious find her way out of the mire.

The thing with Precious is that the minute you lay eyes on her, you start to make assumptions.  She is incredibly large, not attractive, very sulky and intermittently violent.  But I liken it to when you meet someone in real life.  Sometimes you wish you had stopped at just being acquaintances and others you stop forgetting who they are or what they look like and begin to love and admire them for what is on the inside.  That’s how I felt about Precious.  It’s sounds naff, but the more I learned about her life, got to know her personality and found out how brave she was, the more I liked her and found her incredibly beautiful.

The end of movie for Precious certainly doesn’t bring her or you, the viewer, closure.  She does however, at least remove herself from a situation so sad and so incredibly unbelievable, you will feel somehow better and at peace knowing her life is nowhere near as cruel as it was at the beginning of the film.

This film and its actors were nominated for almost every major award in 2009-2010 and rightly so.  I think everyone should see this movie.  However, choose your timing carefully and turn up the volume because at times it was hard to hear and decipher. 

Precious – out for hire and sale on DVD and Blu-Ray.