Month: March 2014

We’ve all done it. For me, it was about eight years ago when I decided to gift a copy of the Coen Brothers’ film, The Hudsucker Proxy to my father. Like any gift, it was unconditional and the DVD has sat in his collection ever since. But time changes things. You see, The Hudsucker Proxy is no longer available for purchase in this country. It used to be but not anymore. The Coen Brothers are hardly obscure filmmakers and it defies logic that one of their movies should be so hard to come by. So despite the fact that I gave it away freely, I now want it back.
Continue reading “Crimea River / Putin on the Ritz”

Woe is me. For, without really trying, I have angered the overlords of the Internet and they have determined that I must be punished. In fact, they I have decided to smote me. Truth is, I’ve not been smote by anyone for ages and I am out of practice. Clearly, they have decided to make an example of me. There’s little I can do other than rub ashes into my skin, start dressing in sackcloth and beg for forgiveness. Even then, I suspect it may be too late.
Continue reading “Damnation, Hellfire and the Internet”

Art-rock ensemble R.E.M. once opined, ‘That’s me in the corner.’ When it comes to attending live music events, not only am I invariably in the corner, but way up the back, wedged against a vending machine and stuck behind someone who’s much taller. Live music is a wonderful thing, but sometimes the idea of seeing a band live doesn’t quite match the actual experience. That’s because seeing a band is an exercise in faith. You go in the hope that it might be an exhilarating, life-changing experience. Mostly, though, it’s a really late night from which it takes you the rest of the week to recover.
Continue reading “Thanks for Everything, Matt Berninger”

When news broke that a giant, three-storey mango had gone missing, I’ll admit I feared the worst. Not since someone blew the backside off the Giant Pheasant outside Gumbuya Park had our nation faced so dark a day. Presumably when something of this magnitude occurs, the authorities activate some top-secret emergency plan and other national icons are immediately placed into high-security lockdown. For its own safety, Lang Lang’s Giant Earthworm would be cordoned off from the public. South Australia’s The Big Lobster would be ushered into its own underground reinforced concrete bunker. Adaminaby’s Big Trout would be placed into the witness protection program and forced to change its name to ‘Dennis’. Not that everything needs such high level security. Such measures are largely unnecessary for Tasmania’s The Big Potato. Nobody’s going to steal that thing. Nobody.
Continue reading “Monumental As Anything”

Clothes maketh the man. Or so claimed the inventor of the ‘Fido Dido’ t-shirt. (Believe me, they’re overdue for a comeback.) But what garments give they can just as easily take away, so the whole uneasy truth is that clothes can undo a person, regardless of gender, quicker than you can say ‘elasticized waist’. This, broadly, sums up my relationship with apparel. When I think of all the fashion statements I’ve made over the years, the vast majority of them are riddled with expletives. But it’s not my fault. You should have seen the things my father used to wear.
Continue reading “Trousers of Power”

It’s always been this way. Each generation declares their music to be better than the one that succeeds them. Growing up in the eighties, those of my parent’s era had a pretty powerful case to make – they had the Beatles, the Beach Boys and the Stones, whilst my teenage cohorts and I had to make do with Haircut 100 and the Thompson Twins. Granted, we had the Stones too, but it was during their far less successful pastel-suit wearing human-Muppet phase rather than, say, their living-in-the-south-of-France and jamming-with-Gram-Parsons stage. It hardly seemed fair.
Continue reading “The Indisputable Genius of Thomas Dolby”