Stupidest commercial of the moment: that Fisher and Paykel washing machine advert with the woman continually bending down/standing up to empty washing out of a frontloading machine, and bemoaning “Surely there must be an easier way?” Pah, some adverts just make me want to throw a brick at the TV, and shout at the screen. ... [More]
Category: Culture
TV, movies, music, that kind of thing
Billy and Mick and Emily
At The Prince Of Wales, St Kilda, Wednesday night. Emily Ulman was okay. Support to the support. Polite clapping. Justine bemoaned that she rarely gets out to see live music, but twice recently she’d got Emily. It’s like rarely flying, then taking an overseas trip and getting the same movie twice. No matter how good ... [More]
(With apologies to Bargearse.)
I’m alone in the house, blasting Billy Bragg on the stereo while cleaning up. Part of preparation for the concert on January 30th. Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards… my God I love that song. Does it speak to everybody in community activism like this? For those who haven’t seen it (I hadn’t), here’s the ... [More]
Lunchtime bargain find of the week
Like most technology, DVDs rarely do anything other than drop in price. I just found The Late Show — Best Bits: Champagne Edition for $19.95 in Dymocks. According to the ABC Shop Online and that wondrous assistant to DVD shopping, DVD Plaza’s Pricecrawler, it’s widely available at that price. 6 hours of 90s-era hilarity for ... [More]
We’re knights of the round table
I’ve long been a Monty Python fan, but am a little too young to have seen the movies on their first runs in the cinemas. So when it was announced that Spamalot would have a run in Melbourne, I decided to see it. I went along with the kids and Marita yesterday. Warning: some spoilers. ... [More]
Will you be my Friend?
I have a profile on Facebook. I don’t spend a lot of time there; mostly playing the Scrabble clone Scrabulous, actually. (I’m winning one game thanks to “zit” on a triple word score; the other is heading for a photo-finish.) And seeing what my friends are up to. I’m not doing the free-for-all friends thing. ... [More]
When two worlds collide
Sometimes my brain doesn’t join the dots. Context in particular can throw me. I’ve had numerous emails over the years contributing to my Weird News page, most of them from a fairly small number of dedicated contributors. A few weeks ago at the Walk Against Warming, one of those contributors came up and said hello, ... [More]
I’ve seen Google and Yahoo put out reports on the top search terms of the year, and we’re only a week into December. (Happy Hannukah by the way.) Seems a bit odd to do that before the actual end of the year, but what the hell, I’ll jump on that bandwagon. Here are some stats ... [More]
Reference works
I’m in two minds about the kids using Wikipedia as a reference. On the one hand, it’s known to be a generally accurate source of information, with studies showing it can rival the big commercial encyclopaedias such as Britannica. And I love the idea of the information in it being free, helping to spread knowledge ... [More]
Snippety snippets
A few brief snippets: Okay, so it’s December now. And I’ve sent precisely zero Christmas cards. Really should get into action, shouldn’t I — I’ve already got some from overseas. Who Do You Think You Are with Stephen Fry on Sunday night was gripping, fascinating, poignant television. Looking forward to the rest of the episodes. ... [More]
Election notes
I got my sausage at the polling place sausage sizzle, so I was happy. There seemed to be a few wedding parties about during the afternoon. I guess they’d managed to find church halls that weren’t being used for polling. (One wedding party on the steps of St Paul’s in Bentleigh were memorably sipping from ... [More]