Thursday, June 29, 2006

kiss kitsch koffee klutch

Yesterday the world's first KISS Coffee House was opened by Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley. You can get a Demon Dark Roast or a French Kiss Vanilla or a Rockuccino. The plans, building and menu.

The tongue tied Gene Simmons says: "Every army needs food and drink and the KISS Army is no exception! Even the non-enlisted will find our treats and java rockin' good!"

The KISS Coffee House, joins the KISS Kasket, a KISS themed coffin and KISS Kondoms (“Rock N' Rubbers” ) in the product line.


Even though I'm a rock snob, I'd go to KISS Coffee for a jolt of java, a pot of hot, a mug of mud. It looks like fun. Somehow a Kiss themed coffee shop seems a lot more authentic than a lame Hard Rock Cafe franchise. For a bit of chat on authenticity in rock you can go to Shaun's Rock'n'Roll Damnation where he notes and points back to Gary Sauer-Thompson's Junk For Code where Gary writes about the authenticity of Cobain and Nirvana

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

this is what is wrong with australia

I just made myself 15 minutes late for a meeting by waiting in the car listening to ABC radio because they said Les Murray would be on soon.

Turns out there's a soccer guy called Les Murray. Not the real one.

I hope Keith Windshuttle can sort those ABC wankers out.

Thursday, June 15, 2006

marvin gaye doco tonight

Living Famously Marvin Gaye
ABC TV 11:05pm Thursday, June 15, 2006
The life and career of one of soul music's true legends, Marvin Gaye, from his unhappy childhood in the ghettos of Washington to global fame as Motown's top solo star, to his drug-addled decline and death at the hands of his own father.

slippery slope

Saturday, June 10, 2006

e-commerce doesn't work

As noted in my previous post I had ordered a Bob Book and Scott Walker CD online from Amazon USA. I'm here to report that cross border e-commerce is a fraud, con, shonk and unworkable for honest people like myself.

I ordered online from Amazon using another computer and location from my usual spine killer. I ordered on Friday the other week. On the Tuesday I thought I'd log in and do a bit of supply chain observation and track my order. Nothing recorded. I refreshed and logged in again. Still nothing. I was about to pick up the phone and complain to Amazon. (How I don't know but that's what I was thinking) Checked again. Nothing. No record of order. Mmmh perhaps I should check the email address I used. Oh dear. Three or four emails requesting confirmation of order and one telling me order was lapsed due to non confirmation. Bugger.

Anyway I mooched down to JB in Motor Bike Elizabeth St. Strolled nonchalantly over to the W's under Alternative !! and picked up Scott Walker's The Drift for ~$23.
Hitching my frayed overcoat collar up against a sharp CBD alleyway wind I shuffled past the lunchtime civilians in Chinatown, dodged a Big Issue extravert, stumbled into a bookshop and fell upon Jared Henry's Head Shot, a mean streets crime novel set in Melbourne. Bingo.

Think Global. Act Local.

Review of CD coming. Sometime.

Friday, June 02, 2006

globalisation

As Ned Kelly said on the gallows "I guess it had to come to this". Despite my doing a CBD gig for the last little while I haven't been able to "........get what I want"

I have remembered intermittently to check my to do list. I wandered, lonely as a melbourne cloud, down the lanes and alleys of the city centre looking to buy a copy of Scott Walker's The Drift. No luck. Sold out or blank looks. Some had it on computer - "Computer says,.... yes" - but not to be found on shelves. "Should be in the pop section". I only muttered wtf silently.

I had also been, less determinedly, looking for Song & Dance Man 3: The Art of Bob Dylan, by Michael Gray. No luck.

At about 2:18 pm this Friday, whilst tanning in the blue light of a poor definition LCD screen searching for that sentence that wasn't too academic, too rhetoric filled, too poetic, too animated, too idiosyncratic, too dry to make it through the various spending departments' secretaries and ministers and to also satisfy the dry departmentals and their ministers by not being too wet and perchance have it survive almost recognisably intact to cabinet policy and even a news bite, thereby thrusting me into immortality, I decided it was a lost cause. Facing my addictions head on I pondered how to decide between the new collection of all (except The Biplane Houses)
Les Murray's poems, or Seamus Heaney's new hardback, or the Neil Young Nation book, or Neil's new CD or....

I logged on the Amazon USA. Scott Walker isn't released until June 6 in USA. The Bob book is available. Tipped them into my online shopping cart, entered Visa details and for $49.00 usa = $65.5203 AUD. I'll have them in my mailbox possibly in 6 - 10 days. Possibly also cheaper and quicker than I'd get them by mooching around Melbourne and hard acquiring them the old way.

Let's see how it pans out.