Sunday, August 19, 2007

rudd gropes stripper

I'm sick of these politicians.

Outflanked by Howard on the pork barrelling and throwing money at any project dreamt up by a rural town of less than 10,000 people Rudd and his spin doctors have cynically either constructed an "incident" out of two pots of light beer and a walk past a lap dancing venue or they have resurrected one of the total of three known occasions of Kev's actual and real nights on the turps and refashioned it, in a less than springsteenesque narrative of a subsequent stagger around the late openers and fleece joints around New Jersey.

The timing is suspicious - just when the average voter is getting truly jack of Kristian Kev and his Hillsong Happy Clappers- here we have, oh so conveniently, a concocted misdemeanour, which will turn out not to be a downer (nb: pun) but will turn out to be a fillip to Rudd’s poll rating. Watch the Opposition other mob led by Howard and Downer look pathetic while trying to land a blow, below the belt, so to speak and not succeeding. Watch the woman in the cul-de-sac at Caroline Springs shrug with a yes-it’s-a-bit-sleazy-but-so-what, into the “current affairs” camera and watch her eyes say “Perhaps he’d make an ok PM after all.”

Saturday, August 18, 2007

bob melbourne reviews

bob melbourne reviews

dylan melbourne set list 17 august 2007

Rod Laver Arena  Melbourne August 17, 2007

1. Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 (Bob on electric guitar)
2. It Ain't Me, Babe (Bob on electric guitar)
3. Watching The River Flow (Bob on electric guitar)
4. Tangled Up In Blue (Bob on electric keyboard and harp)
5. John Brown (Bob on electric keyboard, Donnie on banjo, Tony on standup bass)
6. The Levee's Gonna Break (Bob on electric keyboard, Donnie on electric mandollin, Tony on standup bass)
7. When The Deal Goes Down (Bob on electric keyboard, Tony on standup bass)
8. Things Have Changed (Bob on electric keyboard and harp, Donnie on violin)
9. Desolation Row (Bob on electric keyboard, Donnie on electric mandolin, Tony on standup bass)
10. Honest With Me (Bob on electric keyboard)
11. Spirit On The Water (Bob on electric keyboard and harp, Tony on standup bass)
12. Highway 61 Revisited (Bob on electric keyboard)
13. Nettie Moore (Bob on electric keyboard)
14. Summer Days (Bob on electric keyboard, Tony on standup bass)
15. Ballad Of A Thin Man (Bob on electric keyboard and harp)

(encore)

16. Thunder On The Mountain (Bob on electric keyboard)
17. Like A Rolling Stone (Bob on electric keyboard)

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

in the electric mist with confederate dead


Above: Buddy Guy as Hogman Patin in the film.
Further signs that things are generally on the up and up.  In addition to James Lee Burke having a new Robicheaux book out in USA [see post below] the second Robicheaux film based on In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead is in post production.

The first, and so far only film, is Heaven’s Prisoners a goldmine of bayou scenery and well cast
minor characters, but a huge flop in terms of Alex Baldwin miscast as Robicheaux and Kelly Lynch not quite as bad, as Dave’s wife.

This time around it already smells good. Tommy Lee Jones as Dave and Levon Helm and
Buddy Guy as minor characters. Sadly for us tragics no Clete. The director is Bertrand Tavernier so the Hollywood clichés that marred Heavens Prisoners are likely to be few.

The music, only nodded to in Heaven’s Prisoners, looks to be upfront and funky in this film. Buddy Guy, Louisiana born, plays Hogman Patin, the zydeco/bluesman who has info on two murders that Dave is investigating. The film uses Nathan Williams & The Zydeco Cha Chas to round out Hogman's Band.

Reports are of Buddy Guy digging the accordion and doing a zydeco version of "Stone Crazy"
and "Damn Right, I Got the Blues," as well as an original "Birthday Song" that Buddy wrote for the film. Word is that the obligatory extras that accompany all DVD releases will contain 3 or 4 live full songs that aren't in the film.


Below: Nathan Williams as himself with the Zydeco Cha-Chas

Friday, August 03, 2007

guess what i've got

Clues:
1 - I hope it rains over the weekend for about 4 hours
2 - I'll light a fire
3 - I'll crack a good red
4 - I have all the other works
5 - It's the first hardback of this cat I've owned
6 - It landed on my doorstep today
7 - Cost au$26 landed
8 - Took only a week to get here
9 - No release date yet for Australia
10 - I'm smug

Last paragraph of the first chapter:

" But that was before Katrina. That was before a storm with greater impact than the bomb blast that struck Hiroshima peeled the face off southern Louisiana. That was before one of the most beautiful cities in the Western Hemisphere was killed three times, and not just by the forces of nature."

Thursday, August 02, 2007

next dot con bubble

Often someone else says it better. From John C. Dvorak of PC Magazine:

" Every single person working in the media today who experienced the dot-com bubble in 1999 to 2000 believes that we are going through the exact same process and can expect the exact same results—a bust. It's déjà vu all over again. And since this moment in time is only the beginning of the cycle, the best nuttiness has yet to emerge. Nevertheless, this is not to say that a lot of nuttiness hasn't already happened.

If we look closely, the 1999 dot-com bubble was nothing new. We saw all sorts of bubbles before the dot-com one. For instance, there was the CD-ROM bubble. Remember all the CD-ROM companies? Bill Gates's "Information at Your Fingertips" was the watchword. Microsoft itself started a unique division called Microsoft Home. The whole scene collapsed almost overnight.

Each succeeding bubble has been worse than its predecessor. Thus nobody is actually able to spot the cycle, since it just looks like a continuum. I can assure you that after this next collapse, nobody will think of the dot-com bubble as anything other than a prelude.

Before the CD-ROM bubble, pad-based computing was all the rage. Every company and a lot of start-ups were going to make this kind of computer. It was a total bust. Before that we had the software wars, when you could choose from dozens and dozens of word processors and spreadsheets. And don't forget the IBM PC clone wars in there somewhere. These all resulted in one sort of collapse or another.

I think you get the idea.

Each of these bubbles had a distinctive theme. For the dot-com bubble, it was e-commerce—it really should have been called the e-commerce bubble. Everything was focused on how the Internet was going to destroy all existing brick-and-mortar operations. We were told that you'd be buying sandwiches over the Internet and having them delivered the next day by FedEx. Everything was about "eyeballs" and finding ways to attract customers, whether they bought anything or not. Every article in every newspaper in the country parroted the litany as to how you'd be out of business in a year or two if you were not present on the Web in a big way. Of course, this was all crap.

The current bubble, already called Bubble 2.0 to mock the Web 2.0 moniker, is harder to pin down insofar as a primary destructive theme is concerned. A number of unique initiatives, however, are in play here. Let's look at a few of the top ideas floating the new bubble.

Neo-social networking. Today everything from YouTube to the local church has a social-networking angle. And this doesn't even consider the actual social-networking sites, from MySpace to LinkedIn to Facebook to even Second Life. This scene is totally out of control and will contribute to the collapse for sure.

Video mania. With dozens and dozens of YouTube clones cropping up to get on the "throw money away" bandwagon, you must sense that the eventual shakeout in this space will have a negative impact.

User-generated content. This idea has been around since Usenet and just keeps improving. It will make no contribution to the overall collapse except for users reporting the collapse.

Mobile everything. Here is another concept that has been in play since the mid-1990s. It cannot trigger a collapse since it will never fully get off the ground, although the iPhone mania may be a bad sign of something.
Ad-leveraged search. Most search engines will fail as a matter of course. This segment of the industry is mundane. It would be affected by a crash but not trigger one.

Widgets and toolbars. I cannot see the widget scene going crazy, and the jury is still out on toolbars. But there is the potential for nuttiness, I think. The problem here is that these things tend to be dependent on the stability of operating systems and browsers. One bad operating-system patch and suddenly nothing works.

You can come up with your own theories about the next collapse. Your guess as to the cause will be as good as mine. All I can tell you is that it's a sure thing.
"

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

yesterday upon the stair


I'm on a bit of a J.P Donleavy kick. Everyone knows that the Shane McGowan/Pogues Fairytale of New York, beside being possibly the best song written in the last 50 years, was named after J.P's novel of the same name.

He's just turned 80, J.P. not Shane, and he was on BBC Desert Island Discs back in March.

Here's his Desert Island list:
1. The Water of Tyne: Farnham Youth Choir
2. Oh Susannah: The Mormon Tabernacle Choir
3. Annie Laurie: The Red Army Ensemble
4. Second movement of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major: Helen Grimaud
5. Land of My Fathers: Fron Male Voice Choir
6. Parce Mihi Domine: The Hilliard Ensemble with Jan Garbarek
7. The Humming Chorus: Puccini
8. Part of the 2nd movement of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto: Maurizio Pollini w. Berlin Phil