Pubrock Good news from the real estate front: The Annandale Hotel has been bought, purportedly by someone who will keep it as a pub, and hopefully keep the live music going. The Annandale is a storied Sydney music venue, from back in the day, although fallen on hard times and afoul of newly nearby residents who don’t appreciate the noise. (Why move next door to a rock ‘n’ roll venue if you’re just going to complain?) But nobody’s contacted me about my piece of it: I bought a brick so shouldn’t I, as a part-owner, get a cut? Maybe it’s because my name doesn’t appear on the “honour roll” – maybe I didn’t buy enough bricks. But since I’ve got the shirt, I should show up at the closing, right?

Impending Fun Last year I managed to get together a team from the office to run the City Dash, but alas, this year I am a team of one for the Cancer Council NSW's annual mile run fundraiser. It's not Fifth Avenue (and there's no Donald Trump, thank all the powers), but it's still a heritage thing for me, and I don't mind the fund-raising aspect. In fact, if any Australians ever still see this, feel free to chip in. I promise to run as fast as I can. That's as much as I can promise, and it ain't much, but oh, well.

Fun, Fun, Fun Every year I go to Vivid. There is always something worth going to. Last year, maybe I made the wrong choices, but not this year. Kraftwerk reprising their 8 iconic albums was not to be missed. The Sydney Opera House, however, should be ashamed. Look at the view from our seats: For this I had to go into a lottery, because the Opera House knew demand would be huge - and it was. Sold out on the floor immediately, and a secondary lottery set up for the balconies, including those so far off to the side that the tickets came marked: "No view; listening only." It was a little better than that, but only just. Lucky for us the people in the pair of seats in the very front row didn't show up. We moved up and got this much better: Still shameless, but we could use the 3D glasses for the animation on the screen behind them, and leaning forward could see them at work. Hilarious, really. I mean these are serious musicians, but aside from sometimes adding a bit of a live chant and twiddling dials and so forth they could have beamed it in over the internet. But I wouldn't have missed this for the world. They invented this stuff, and it's technically and artistically important, even for pop music. I think they had fun, too, but it was a little hard to tell. But on Sunday, the view we got from our walk across from Palm Beach was from the best seats in the house, even if it was a 60 degree slog to get there for the first kilometer or so. Nice weekend, all up.

Not Enough Honestly, if I was in charge of the IRS, I'd focus on TEA Party groups, too. These are [semi-]organized groups of people dedicated to tax avoidance. They don't want to pay taxes. Why wouldn't they cheat? Go ahead, audit every last one of these anti-social creeps.

Heart of Glass I understand why that review I read of Iron Man 3 was so . . . angry. I don't remember if it was the NY Times or the New Yorker, I think the Times, but they were really upset with the whole terrorism thing. I get it: it was very effective, at least for me. It was triggering. I've been angry, too, all this time. I was, of course, able to enjoy the usual moments of humor in the movie, the lessons to be drawn from the little kid, and the political polemics about war and the environment and the overreach of government and so on, blah, blah, blah. No different, really, from any of the other comic book movies. It was exciting, fast-paced, a thrill ride. And also hit me in a way that no other movie I've seen since 2001 has done in regard to the events of September 11. And it didn't even take place in New York or, except peripherally, Washington DC, let alone some lonely field in Pennsylvania. Although there was that bit in the rural midwest. That was pretty spooky. But the Avengers trashed NYC and I didn't experience it the way I did this film. Space aliens aren't the monsters that scare anyone much anymore, maybe. Mostly it was the performance and presentation of Ben Kingsley, which is, I suppose a tribute to the actor and to the screenwriters who crafted the part and the plot around him. It was a very effective presentation of what we've come to know of as terrorism, specifically of the al Qaeda variety. Even if it was, in the end, more a caricature of Osama bin Laden, it still worked. What it was was exploitative. That's what terrorism does: it exploits fear. That's what art does, including mere comic book movies, it exploits our emotions. But this was an exploitation that hit home where other instances have not. I suppose I have changed in ways that I have tried to channel more than to fathom since 2001, so I was a little caught by surprise to find myself so affected. It was just a movie. As good as any of the others of its genre. But I'm still angry. Anyway, Guy Pearce was very good, the pace was managed well enough, Robert Downey, Jr., may be looking for something else to do after the second or third Avengers movie is in the can, probably he is already, and Ben Kingsley, well, even his big reveal didn't change how I felt walking out at the end. Glad it was over, that I didn't have to see any more of that - was it a Mcguffin? no, I don't think it was, quite. Maybe I'm done with the super heroes, the "real cool cats with a heart of steel." Well, until the Wolverine movie comes out, anyway. Meanwhile, I can be angry at Obama, for not closing Guantanamo, and I can be angry at the Republicans for not letting him, and I can be angry at the crazy extremists who still think blowing things up is a path to a solution for their problems. I can be angry at Big Oil for working every angle to avoid responsibility for killing the environment, at the NRA for exploiting whatever convoluted rationalisation then can to prevent simple gun control measures to keep people safe, and at every otherwise decent person who makes up stupid excuses for the bad decisions of the GOP, the NRA, the terrorists, Obama, or anyone else. But I'm not mad at the movies, or at art. They do their jobs, usually, even though they are sometimes exploitative, like Iron Man. At least in that case the conflict is built into the story from the start.