Musings on the byways of popular culture
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This is getting ridiculous. The shooter has previous from a 3-hour standoff with police in 2002 and convicted of possessing a weapon of mass destruction (a fully automatic machine gun).
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-16/donald-trump-assassination-bid-live-coverage/104354906
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One of the consequences of my recent exercise regime (I’ve lost 25kg in a year!) is that I churn through audiobooks. I tend to waft through genres, moving on when I get bored. A couple of months ago I stumbled into the Modern English Detective Story and have wince listened to ten or so books in the genre. It’s unusual for me, as my taste in detective fiction was previously confined to short stories from the Golden Age. I think I’m ready to move on to pastures fresh, so thought I would share my observations before doing so.
1/ There must always be a pantomime villain, and they are never the culprit. You are usually sympathetic towards them by the end of the book.
2/ When the penny drops and the protagonist finally figures out who the culprit is (usually many chapters after the reader), they must go and confront them alone in some remote location.
3/Regional English police forces are chock full of attractive, but jaded, young policewomen and rugged, bruised middle-aged men who live alone in dishevelled apartments.
4/ Senior Officers must speak in management jargon and care only about PR.
5/ Coffee must always be served in » Continue Reading.
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I’m listening to an audiobook series at the moment, and the lady who is narrating has an affectation that is really starting to annoy me. She has quite a posh English accent, and frequently says her ‘s’es as if through clenched teeth, so they come out as ‘sh’. So ‘sex’ becomes ‘sheksh’, ‘sparrow’ ‘shparrow’ etc. I realise that I’ve only ever heard women with this affectation, including my mother on occasion, and this narrator only does this when narrating or describing female characters.
What is it called? Where did it come from? Is it meant to indicate steely resolve? Is it because the posh classes try to talk without moving their jaws? This narrator also has a wheezy Keith Richardesque quality to her voice that makes all the characters sound like 75 year old chain smokers. For the first couple of books I kept getting startled whenever their was any physical activity (including the aforementioned ‘sheksh’) and would have to remind myself that the main character was meant to be in his 30s.
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So, there was animated discussion on here when the Doctor returned to our screens last year and I’m surprised there hasn’t been more since the latest season finished.
A quick recap about my stance from the last thread: my son is a big fan, I thought recent stories and acting were terrible, I thought the diversity/inclusivity content was ham-fisted to the point of being comical. No, I’m not racist, homophobic, transphobic etc.
So I’ve watched most of the episodes this season, and with a couple of exceptions things panned out exactly as I thought they would. Writing continues to be bad (mostly – some exceptions below) with most stories too bombastic and needing ‘The Big Insight’ from the Doctor to resolve. Ruby is a plucky cookie-cutter stage-school poppet indistinguishable from Clara, Rose, Amy etc. Ncuti Gatwa is never believable as the Doctor (and I’ve decided he’s simply not a very good actor) and, yes, diversity is the theme of the season, in case you couldn’t tell (There may have been yells of “Kill the dwarf!” coming from my end of the sofa during more animated parts of the finale).
Some thoughts on episodes:
73 Yards: The best epidote of » Continue Reading.
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I asked ChatGPT to rewrite the Gettysburg address in the style of a fictional character. Can you guess who it is?
Ah say, ah say, folks, gather ’round now, ya hear? We’re fixin’ to commemorate this here battlefield, where our fine nation done stood tall in the face of adversity. Now, listen up, ’cause I’m fixin’ to lay down some truth like a hen lays her eggs.
Well, ah declare, back in ’63, our great leader, Mr. Lincoln, he stood right here, and he said, “Folks, four score and seven years ago, our forefathers set forth on this great land a nation like no other, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all folks are created equal.”
Now, let me tell ya, we’re smack dab in the middle of a mighty big skirmish, a Civil War, if you will. And by Jove, we ain’t gonna let this nation split in two like a biscuit gone stale. No sir!
Now, we’re here to honor them brave souls who done laid down their lives so this nation could keep on truckin’. It’s like my ol’ grandpappy used to say, “You gotta stand tall even when the wind’s blowin’ fierce.” And » Continue Reading.
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Over the weekend there were numerous rallies in Australia against gendered violence, following a spate of murders in the first four months of the year (27 is the accepted number, although you will also see numbers in the 30s). I have a slight connection to one of these victims: she was the pre-school teacher of a close friend’s daughter.
I’m always slightly (i.e. highly) skeptical of media statistics on hot-button issues, so I decided to do a quick data analysis based on the information available (which is admittedly scant). I have the words Incident, Investigation and Learning in my job title, so I have some experience at looking for causal patterns across a range of events. I’m also VERY used to leaders/motivated individuals etc over-interpreting statistics and desperately trying to find causal commonality where none exists.
My data source included 27 murders of women so far in 2024. Of those:
– 7 were killed by partners/ex partners
– 9 or 10 were due to mentally-ill perpetrators (including the 5 female Bondi victims and 4 cases where mothers were killed by their children – three sons and one daughter. One was a patient at a hospital randomly killing another patient » Continue Reading.
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A belated review of the Darkness gig I saw in Brisbane last Wednesday.
The week was a busy one for me – I was organising and facilitating week-long training that included a bunch of interstate/international fly-ins, and I groaned when I realised that the concert tickets I had purchased six months before landed square in the middle of that week. I saw the Darkness back when Permission to Land was first released and they were just gaining traction, playing the midday slot at a festival to an entering crowd who they quickly won over. The Datsuns followed them and seemed like a high-school band having their second rehearsal in dad’s garage.
PTL is a genuinely fantastic album that is everything its fans and detractors say it is: AC/DC hooks, Queen vocals, bombastic production, lyrics that are both puerile and hilarious, and melodic hooks. It was released at a very stressful juncture in my life and the sheer fun of it gave me much comfort through that period. It and the Scissor Sisters debut that came out at a similar time were billed as greatest-hits first albums and I agreed heartily with those assessments.
So it was that last » Continue Reading.
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Prompted by the tragic death of Neil Kulkarni last week and then subsequently listening to Neil on the live Chart Music show recorded a week or so earlier, I’ve been mulling over the key components of a great podcast. Neil’s death really hit me, and I think it’s because I had mentally cast him as one of my close friends. It surprised me that a podcast could generate this level of emotion.
I must have sampled hundreds of podcasts over the last 15 years, but at any time there are usually only a half dozen I actively follow. Most of the rest are perfectly fine, but I seem to lose interest or forget about most of them.
So here are the common elements I can identify (and there are many exceptions):
1. It needs to have an ensemble cast. This is hugely important to me. I want to hear unscripted banter between people on topics I find interesting (pretty obviously replacing the banter I’m lacking in my own life). Some single host, scripted podcasts are great (Cautionary Tales, for example) but they are more like great radio documentaries or audiobooks, and most of the time I would rather just read » Continue Reading.
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…I have clambered up on the carcasses of morons (Sir Isaac Newton, obvs).
I have had two fucking brilliant ideas recently. Recognition of these in my household has been more muted than I would have liked, so I am sharing them here.
Idea 1: A new K9-like robotic Dr Who sidekick in the form of a bird/drone, called AVN. Genius, I know.
Idea 2: I am in constant battle with the land around my house which wants desperately to return to rainforest/lantana if left untended for more than a month or two. This requires walking around my steep property with a pair of long-handled cutters and a glyphosate-charged backpack and spray nozzle. You have to cut the plant and then spray the stem (spraying the leaves is a bit too hit and miss) which requires putting down the clippers, changing hands and spraying. Literally thousands of times. For years I have been dreaming of a set of clippers that paints the stem as you chop, so a couple of months ago I bought some cheap clippers and a weeding wand, cable-tied them together and went for it. The system worked beautifully to the point where I’m about to make a » Continue Reading.
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There are few things lovelier than being riverside in Brisbane at that moment on a hot summer day when the sun retreats behind the hills and a gentle breeze kicks in. So it was that Ms Podicle and I found ourselves on Saturday evening in the lovely city botanical gardens waiting to see Spoon and War on Drugs on the river stage. I would have happily paid the entry for either of these bands, so to have them both on the same ticket was a treat. The venue is a grassy amphitheater nestled between the river and the gardens, and it would be hard to find a more relaxed and pastoral setting in the middle of a major city.
First up was Indigo Spark, which I think was the name of the singer of the directionless trio on stage. Lots of two-chord drones with indie-chick vocals and paroxysmal changes in intensity. You know the type. Indigo told us a couple of times that she had just returned from several years in the States, and she seems to have brought some rhotic Rs back with her and left her actual songs behind. We spent the entire act trying to figure out » Continue Reading.
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Christ, I hope they have their ducks lined up on these charges, as an acquittal will energise the right and plunge the US further into chaos. I have a sneaking suspicion that prosecutors are overpaying their hand and hoping that someone will roll over and provide them with the evidence they perhaps don’t have. A risky game.
Trump was obviously trying to look defiant in his mug shot but looks instead like he should be outside shaking his fist at clouds and deflating errant beach balls with his rake.
https://livecenter-aus-hpc9audwdke2c0fm.z01.azurefd.net/lc-aus-images/lcimg-444157d2-ca79-46cd-a8a0-6999a6aff3e3.png
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Restringing a Rickenbacker 12-string is not for the fainthearted.
If you do a Google search on the topic, one of the first hits you’ll get is titled “Restringing a Rickenbacker 12-String: How to become an alcoholic”. I’ve owned my Rickenbacker 360/12 Fireglo for about 20 years and in that time I’ve sold it and re-bought it twice and listed it for sale another 3-4 times, each occasion following the ritual of restringing.
For a bit of context, restringing and doing a quick set-up on any of my other guitars is a 5-10 minute job. Yesterday I spent five hours accomplishing the same on my Rick. Like any tool developed during wartime (it was an invasion, in case you don’t know) the original Rick 12 design was rough and ready, thrown together to present to the Beatles during their first US tour. This first contact is actually captured on audio, as George was sick in bed conducting a radio interview (with his sister) when the presentation party arrived. Unlike most tools of war, however, the Rickenbacker 12 has been frozen in time since, apart from an early design change that actually made it less user-friendly. Restringing a guitar was only » Continue Reading.
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Hi all, Last week I purchased a pair of Sony WF-1000XM4 ear buds, Sony’s premium noise cancelling ear buds (I actually purchased two pairs as they were heavily discounted and my son needed a birthday present). I have a ridiculous number of headphones, probably 8-9 pairs, but was looking for a more svelte replacement for my trusty Sony WH-1000XM3 over-ear noise cancelling phones. I have owned a few pairs of NC over-ears, but this is my first pair of NC buds.
I set up the app, connected them and then turned on the noise cancelling. There was literally no difference whatsoever. I read up, made sure adaptive sound control was off etc (I am quite familiar with the app having used it for several years) but I genuinely could hear no difference sitting in a room with numerous sound sources of numerous volumes and frequencies. I tried the different bud sizes but again, no discernible difference. I ran the app that checked for adequate sealing, and unless I had the largest bud size and was physically pushing the phones into my ears to the point of pain, it said this was inadequate. When I did this, for the first time » Continue Reading.
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I had originally written the below as part of my response in the Rolf Harris post, but felt it was too much of a diversion (I know, I know!) so have carved it off into its own thread.
I slight diversion, but something I’ve been thinking about:
I have to say my trust in these sort of media-led trials has been severely shaken by the Brittany Higgins/Bruce Lehrmann bonfire that has played out over the past couple of years in Oz. If you aren’t familiar with this case, look it up and have a read. The fact that both were staffers for the then incumbent Liberal government and that the alleged events took place in Parliament House in the rooms of a cabinet minister gives it a certain fizz.
I can’t have been the only one shocked at the paucity of evidence during the initial trial (that was dismissed due to juror misbehaviour), and even the amount of Ms Higgins’ evidence that veered wildly from previous statements. Plans for a repeat trial were called off to protect the mental health of Ms Higgins, although there is a valid argument that the prosecution realised their case was half cooked and was » Continue Reading.
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Seems to be confirmed by some who have worked closely with him. Marquee Moon has been part of my life for 30 years, and I was just listening to it again last night. Nothing else sounds like it, including their previous and subsequent recordings: duelling lead guitars stripped of any hint of blues or swing, desperate yet melodic vocals and precise, spiralling compositions. Absolutely majestic. RIP
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I just saw the news that Adnan Syed has been cleared of all charges in the murder of his ex-girlfriend Hae-Min Lee, due to new DNA evidence. He had been released under home detention a few weeks ago pending these results. Syed was 17 when arrested and Lee was 18 when she was murdered in Baltimore in 1999.
For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, the murder of Lee and the conviction of Syed were the subject of the first season of Serial, the 2014 series that was the patient zero for public acceptance of podcasts. Since the podcast, there have been various legal manoeuvrings to get Syed’s conviction re-examined for various reasons (lack of competent counsel, technical issues with the mobile phone data used), but I don’t think anyone would have predicted this outcome even a few years ago, and I am keen to learn more about the details.
My take on Serial: I was completely absorbed back in 2014, and thought it was an intriguing case. While presenter Sarah Koenig made an effort to come across as impartial, it was obvious that she had serious doubts about the case against Syed. My doubts about his » Continue Reading.
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So, while you’ve all been bothered by events in Italy and elsewhere, the chess world has been lit up by a cheating (pending) scandal that is the most exciting thing to happen since Italy accepted the en passant as a legal move in 1880.
Here is the situation: A fortnight or so ago, Magnus Carlsen, widely considered the greatest chess player to have ever lived, withdrew from a major over-the-table tournament after losing an early game to Hans Niemann, a young American player (playing Black, no less). Niemann ended Carlsen’s 50+ game winning streak.
Carlsen almost certainly would have won the tournament, and its US$500,000 prize purse, if he had remained. At the time, he posted a vague tweet wishing the remaining participants well and alluding to there being more he couldn’t discuss. This is an extraordinary happening at this level of chess.
The chess world, fuelled by a couple of the more popular ‘Tubers (as the kids call them) immediately interpreted Carlsen’s actions as an accusation of cheating, and Carlsen’s silence over the following week did little to quell the hysteria. Accusations weren’t helped by Niemann’s rather odd interviews and behaviour over the subsequent days, although it » Continue Reading.
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*** Note, the full 5 hour+ concert seems to have been pulled from YouTube just in the last hour.
I stumbled across this on YouTube this morning, the concert having taken place at Wembley in the last day or so. I don’t know much about Taylor Hawkins, but from the calibre of acts they could pull for this event, he was obviously a musical omnivore and well loved. It featured some pretty intriguing combinations (Josh Homme and Nile Rogers doing Let’s Dance, for example).
My initial thoughts: – Supergrass absolutely killed it. The best band at the event. – Justin Hawkins from the Darkness absolutely killed it. He was stunt vocalist for a few of the combinations and he was fantastic. People seem to be raving abut Sam Ryder singing Somebody to Love, but he wasn’t a patch on Hawkins. The Darkness in about 2004 was one of the greatest gigs I’ve seen. – Drummers begat drummers, as we know from the Starkey and Bonham lineages, and as Taylor’s kids reinforced. Wolfgang Van Halen is also no slouch on guitar. – While it was lovely to have Paul McCartney there, his voice seems to have devolved into a hoarse whisper. » Continue Reading.
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For those who read my other post about the flooding in Brisbane, here is an appendix, not particularly related to events of the past few days.
I grew up in a street in Brisbane called Glenwood St, and my mother still lives in my childhood home. It’s a quite short street, a few hundred meters long with maybe 70 houses. If you look at it on Google Maps you’ll see it runs next to the river (thus the three floods in 50 years), and has a lovely park on the riverbank at the end of the street (currently underwater!). This is a beautiful area of old homes and tree-lined streets and I was very lucky to grow up there.
It’s quite rare these days that I walk through the neighbourhood, as I’m usually driving in to visit my mother. Bits of the street are relatively unchanged, yet slowly the old houses are being ripped out and replaced with modern monstrosities. This street was built just a little too late (WW2) to have the grand old Queenslander houses that fill the rest of the suburb, so it isn’t considered to have the same heritage value and blocks here are sought » Continue Reading.
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I know it pales in comparison to other world events and probably isn’t making news outside Australia, but South-East Queensland is in the middle of a weather event of biblical proportions. On Thursday an intense weather system sat off the coast just north of Brisbane, and there it has stayed, moving south at less than walking pace. It was meant to clear Friday lunch, then Saturday morning then last night, and now they are saying it is here until tomorrow at least. We have had at least one meter of rain since then, probably well over. At least six people have died in the floodwaters.
The Wivenhoe dam, Brisbane’s water supply and a huge catchment probably the size of an English county, was at under 50% capacity on Monday and sits at 165% now. The Brisbane river has broken it’s banks due to the water inrush and dam releases and a significant flood is on the cards. There was a major flood in 2011, so it’s a bit soon for comfort.
The gentle, picturesque rainforest creek in front of our house has been a raging torrent now for three days, rolling boulders the weight of small cars down in » Continue Reading.
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The following are TV or movie sound effects as described in trademarks or scripts. See if you can recognise them:
1. “Annoyed grunt”.
2. “A series of approximately ten sounds, alternating between the chest and falsetto registers of the voice, as follows – 1) a semi-long sound in the chest register, 2) a short sound up an interval of one octave plus a fifth from the preceding sound, 3) a short sound down a Major 3rd from the preceding sound, 4) a short sound up a Major 3rd from the preceding sound, 5) a long sound down one octave plus a Major 3rd from the preceding sound, 6) a short sound up one octave from the preceding sound, 7) a short sound up a Major 3rd from the preceding sound, 8) a short sound down a Major 3rd from the preceding sound, 9) a short sound up a Major 3rd from the preceding sound, 10) a long sound down an octave plus a fifth from the preceding sound.”
3. The “sound of rhythmic mechanical human breathing created by breathing through a scuba tank regulator”
4. “An oscillating humming buzz created by combining feedback from a microphone with a projector motor » Continue Reading.
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I picked up a cheap copy of Hawkwind’s Space Ritual from a 2nd hand CD shop yesterday. I’m listening to it now for the first time as I’m working. My thoughts, in chronological order:
Shit. The cats have pissed on my speakers again. Or maybe my tweeters have blown. Let me guess. Lemmy mixed this. Were they performing in a missile silo? Were the recording microphones even in the same room? Is this live? There is no hint of an audience. These aren’t really ‘songs’ are they? Are all these songs just Silver Machine? (Checks cover: none of the songs are Silver Machine) Fuck yeah!! (Puts CD on repeat)
I could perhaps do without the camp sub-Dr Who spoken interludes, and I’d ask the bloke on the widdly space noise machine to maybe give it a rest every now and then, but this is an intoxicating listen and I’m sorry I didn’t pick it up earlier.
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I’m no art expert, but it’s pretty shit isn’t it? It looks like Game of Thrones fan art done by a 15 year old.
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Last year many of you were kind enough to participate in a quiz I created where I quoted reviews from the red 1st edition of the Rolling Stone Record Guide. Well, you can stop your angsty fretting and letter writing because now it’s time for the sequel!
I’ve recently picked up a copy of the Blue 2nd edition that extended the range from 1978 to 1982 or so. I explained in the previous post the impact that the red edition had on my music collecting and taste right up until its influence was finally eroded by the internet and print magazines in the mid 90s.
For much or the 80s and early 90s, this blue edition was a near-mythical beast amongst my record-collecting buddies, and one that I never actually saw in the flesh at the time. My mind ran wild with possibilities of the new ratings, and rumours of some previous critical darlings being lopped off at the knees.
Now I have it in my hands it doesn’t really seem that different. The few extra years offers only a small increase in girth, and most of the ratings and comments are the same as in the previous » Continue Reading.
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For the last few weeks I’ve been wearing a lovely watch: a Tudor Oyster Prince from 1961 with the coveted large rose on the dial. I haven’t worn a watch since my veterinary days ended 15 or so years ago. Back then a watch was a required implement for measuring beats, drips, breaths and most importantly when I could bolt the door, run to my car and escape the circus for the day. When I shed that career, I also shed the watch, maybe symbolically but more likely because I just took it off one day and realised I had no need to put it on again.
My father bought this watch in 1961 as a young man in his hometown of Rockhampton, Queensland. He wore it through his courtship and marriage of the local ABC newsreader the next year, their move to Brisbane, birth of two sons and matriculation as adult students into Queensland University (where he won the University Medal). He wore it at the start of his career in the early 70s as one of the founding lecturers at Griffith University and through his numerous field trips into North Queensland where he conducted his seminal anthropological » Continue Reading.
