Inactive Activity
I love sports. Watching, anyway, although most of what plays as sports on television is not terribly exciting: cars, motorcycles, cricket, golf. . . . Luckily, somehow, I've become quite a fan of Rugby League. I've tried to get into Union, too, but it just won't take. In fact, I can really only generate the necessary enthusiasm for League during the actual season. The special one-offs, like Test matches, do nothing for me. Odd, but there it is.

Anyway, while weekends are usually just doing chores, running, and petting the cats, I'd heard the Rabbitohs-Tigers away match in the Heritage round was being held nearby, at the Sydney Cricket Grounds, so I bought a ticket, something I wouldn't bother about normally, being a season pass holder. I'm very glad I did.

Sydney Cricket Ground is an odd place to hold a rectangular game, and my seat was terrible, staring into the setting sun nearly throughout, so I don't think I'll do it again. (It's not much better at night games at ANZ Stadium, of course, what with the lights and all. Rugby's a day game, but like all professional sports, t.v.'s been its ruin.) And while Souths specialize in games meant to keep fingernails well-clipped and teeth ground down past the enamel - and this one was no exception - a spectacular win engenders great joy amongst the fans. Kicking a field goal in the last 5 seconds of the match to win by one point nearly caused a massive group cerebral hemorrhage. I got home in time to catch the kicker, Nathan Merritt, proudly tell us all that he never practiced field goals and had never previously kicked one. The Tigers were devastated and their fans disconsolate, after spending so much time dominating us, but it was quite a show.

Cat Fight
Wolverine, the first in what I expect may turn out to be a spin-off franchise from the original X-Men movies (just like the comics, really), wasn't half bad. They managed to link back X-Men 2 - although Patrick Stewart looked so bad, I wondered if maybe they didn't use a stand-in (he's uncredited) - and to keep the various Weapon X characters and X villains I remember, but there's a fair bit of revisionism at work, too, which I sort of object to. It's not like I've been keeping up on the comics over the last eight years, and the whole X-franchise is so expanded, I don't think Marvel does, either. Anyway, the effects weren't bad, the acting is only such if you care to call it so, and in the end, it's just another comic book movie. Unlike the Bourne movies, you don't come out of the theatre with your whole body thrilling with superpowers. There're plenty of explosions, lots of yelling, grunting, groaning, and growling - it's kind of like watching rugby. You know it's just gotta hurt.

As we exited, it appears that my expectations of paralyzing cognitive dissonance hadn't kept the nerds and geeks at home - the line was out the door for entry to the new Star Trek, which will have to be my next movie.

Annals of Bright Ideas
Which genius thought a 747 chased by F16's would be a nice photo op for NY'ers?

Ghosts of Country Music Future
I've been listening - a lot - to Neko Case, a singer I came to know via New Pornographers, for whom she's done some vocals. But as a solo artist, she's got a considerable output, and my own starting point was Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, an album I spent considerable time listening to, over and over, much to the exclusion of many other recordings I otherwise regularly or even occasionally enjoy. Fox Confessor is a remarkable record, so I went out specifically to get some of her "& Her Boyfriens" output, to be amazed at just how country she was. Recently I bought the album immediately preceding Fox Confessor, The Tigers Have Spoken, and it was straight out of the "boyfriends" country-Case style manual - which isn't itself a negative, as she's doing things with the lyrics that would nearly make Lucinda Williams blush to claim equal standing. What's really remarkable, and so very much more so on Middle Cyclone, the latest release, than even on Fox Confessor, is that Neko Case has forged a sound that so far and so well transcends categorization. This is what I've heard in so many artists at the top of their genre, where the cross-over isn't even a cross-over, it's purely itself, the way the "American songbook" - that stuff Sinatra sang, and Tony Bennett, etc. - was beyond merely pop, even "merely" swing, jazz, big-band, whatever. And - ZOMG - you can get the lyrics.

P.S. A. C. Newman's got a solo career? Too many records to buy, now.

Happy Easter: the Blood Is the Life
Let the Right One in is not your typical vampire movie. No religious iconography, for one thing, and, apparently, cats have different issues with vampirism than you might expect, but let that pass. I read about this Swedish movie on the internet (of course) well in advance of it release here. The director has been quoted as saying that he wanted to be realistic - what would it be like to be 12 forever and to subsist on blood? Nasty, apparently, and difficult. So, while M. has found the themes of codependency and addition as the underlying content of the metaphor of vampirism, and I'd concur, I was less involved with the meta narrative than the more obvious social studies involved. It's Sweden, after all, which has long struggled with various social ills, including, so children having to cope with survival under conditions effectively ignored or misunderstood by the adults, inevitably rely on each other, reinforcing their separation, one way or another.

This is also unlike the usual horror movie in general. Yes, there's horror, but the violence is mostly done just out of sight, leaving you with the knowledge of it, which is all the more effectively horrifying. Mostly it's ghastly, as much in its secondary as its primary senses, i.e., the movie operates more on the level of ghost story than gore-fest.

The look of the film is terrific and quite unique, and the music, while I found it sometimes a little loud, very effective. It's the the kind of movie that wins prizes, but it should be.

Yes, it's an odd choice for an Easter movie, in a way, but what else was I going to go see? Monsters vs. Aliens?

Church, State, and Kmart
One of the oddities back in NY, state, but also city, was the “blue laws”, laws that precluded, for example, bars opening before noon on Sundays. What’s so special about Sundays? For non-church-going Christians, anyway? Many of these regulations were holdovers from mixing morality and legislation, but they never interfered much with commerce. (Well, what, in America, does?)

Here in NSW, the government intervenes directly, making Easter a mandatory no-shopping day, because it’s Easter. Yea for the churches! (N.b., for everybody else, your own sacred days are managed at your own discretion; but if any Muslims really want to shop at Myer on Sunday, it’ll be open in the CBD.) This 1950’s mentality is just silly. I’m all for controlling against the rise of rapacious capitalism as anyone, but shuttering businesses – who would, if open, have to pay their employees at penalty rates – because it’s Easter, or Good Friday, or Christmas – isn’t really about making sure everybody gets a day off, it’s enforcing observation of a Christian canonical day of observation. And I’m against laws that effectively join church and state. The exemptions just how hollow the whole thing is anyway.

And is it really no coincidence that Joe Tripodi’s both the Minister for Regulation and the MP for one of the exempt “zones”?

Playin’ Rock ‘n’ Roll
Monday night shows that don’t let out until after eleven are a bit beyond me at this point, but even though she’s down here annually for the Byron Bay Blues Fest, Lucinda Williams doesn’t tour Australia often, so this was a must-see concert, at the (largely) civilized Enmore Theatre, and I’m happy to have made the effort, if a bit jaded this morning.

Often enough, a musician with a new album out pretty much just runs through the new material, but this show covered off at least one or two numbers from each album in her catalog, not really getting to the new stuff until well into the two-plus hours she spent on stage. It is, however, unusual, to say the least, to see a singer-songwriter reading the lyrics, but there she was, a music stand to her left, with the printed lyrics to all her new songs, managed by an efficient roadie, who’d bring out a new batch as needed, as well as handling everybody’s various guitar-changes. (There was a moment when – and I’m guessing – Lucinda couldn’t hear her guitar on the pick-ups, and stopped a song just a minute or less into it, but it was actually all o.k., not the roadie’s error, and they started over.) Interestingly, for someone renowned as a song-writing craftsman, Lucinda Williams doesn’t play much. I don’t think I saw much in the way of any chord changes at any time she had a guitar in her hands, electric or otherwise, but her backing band, Buick 6, managed to drive their blues solos into near jazz improvisational levels without ever losing the melody, so why should she do more than strum anyway?

Lucinda Williams new album, Little Honey, finishes with the AC/DC classic, “It’s a Long Way to the Top (if You Want to Rock ‘n’ Roll),” and I seriously wondered if she would be so bold as to perform it in front of an Australian audience, even if they were, from my observation, very much partisans in her favor. She did, of course, leading, in her encore, from Son House through to Faces’ “Every Picture Tells a Story” (n.b. that’s her accreditation of the song, better known as a Rod Stewart when-he-was-still-good number, although everybody knows he kept it off the last Faces record for his own solo effort) and straight through to a rousing rendition of Oz-rock favourite.

Yee-hah!
So the capitalism meltdown is all the fault of financial market cowboys, and making boards responsible for calculating executive pay is going to fix it? Nonsense. Boards are renowned throughout the Wall Street Journal for making inane appointment decisions, including Byzantine remuneration strategies, seemingly designed to ensure CEO non-performance, and all well hidden from the public until the massive pay-out at the premature end of the idiot-king’s tenure. Even when savvy shareholders see these things and understand them, their self-interest leads them to overlook rather than object. Boards and shareholders alike are driven by share price. Some may want to look at price-earnings ratios, others are more interested in pure activity. While day traders may churn through stocks in a way only somewhat detrimental to markets, hedge fund dealers are far more destructive, as are executives themselves. And all those ponzi-schemers aren’t helping, either. Who brought down Bearings? And how many other multi-billion dollar schemers have you been hearing about for the last ten years? The free hand of the market is a hand at our necks, and only effective, comprehensive regulation can make it a helping hand instead. The system doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked for twenty years, at least.

The “If” Non-Apology
So the PM the kosher meal and took it out on the stewardess – what a swell guy; at least he apologized. Except he didn’t. The “if” circumlocution reduces any apology to none at all. So, yeah, Kev, I’m offended, and you should apologize properly, you posturing little jackass.

No Surfing
There's been a big storm over the last day and a half, closing the beaches to surfers due to waves too close to shore for safety - and leading some die-hards to hit the harbour instead - and putting enough rain down across the state to leave parts of northern NSW in a state of emergency due to flooding and to make my cats very unhappy with the results of going out the catflap. Me, too, for that matter, as walking into the office from the bus this morning had me saturated above the knee, without so much as having been splashed by a car. Quite impressive, really, all this global warming. And the cachements? Warragamba got a sixth of its April rainfall just today, no joke. The video's pretty good, if you're one of those weather-chaser types.

Killing Joke
There was a Monty Python skit about a joke that was so funny, whoever heard it, or even read it, would keel over dead. Similarly, David Foster Wallace’s epic novel, Infinite Jest, had an eponymous macguffin film that did the same.

There’s an amateur short film contest here in Sydney, called “Tropfest”, and back around the time of all those Japanese ghost story movies and Hollywood remakes, I suggested to someone trying to think of an entry that she should spoof The Ring, but instead of a videotape, it would be a cellphone call – “The Ringtone.”

It seems, however, that real life trumps art. It's a science fiction aphorism that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, although we may tend to lose sight of just how far apart our various societies are from one another in the latest stages of globalisation.

Stage Door
It's been a busy weekend already, with the Rabbitohs last night and then today, only enough time to get the laundry out, before going to a matinee of The Removalists, a play by David Williamson, playing at the Sydney Theatre Company, down in the Rocks. For a 1970's play, it's surprisingly undated, although there is a tone there yet, both in its focus and in its language, but as it's set in Melbourne, maybe there's enough regionalism that I oughtn't to be too hasty. (Still, for all the wide distances that separate the major cities of the country, unlike America, there's little difference in accent, tone, or culture, Queensland under Joh not withstanding.)

This is a brutal work, and for the life of me, I can't see how the actors overcome the difficulties of the play or the production. I guess that's just what they do. The stage is no larger than my lounge room, and surrounded on three sides by tiered seating. It was not a sold-out crowd, maybe just 85-90%, but still, with the lighting, this is not a case of the actors unable to see the audience. Nevertheless, the operated without undue acknowledgment.

I say "undue acknowledgment" because the play itself is one that very much seeks to engage the audience in a knowing, if passive participation. In many ways, like the professional removalist brought it during the action, and, even, like the other major participants in the action onstage, one way or another, we are complicit in what occurs. This is a play of witnessing, much in the Christian sense.

It's terrible, fierce, brutal, and very challenging, and the humor throughout only makes those elements that much more difficult to address, walking out into the harbour ambiance.

The Brooklyn Academy's "Next Wave" festival was always my way of ensuring I got enough dance and drama and music experientially, as opposed to my more "passive" intake of books and CD's and movies, and I haven't found anything really comparable here in Sydney (although Nick Cave's "All Tommorrow's Parties" would have been an excellent equivalence if I hadn't been in Melbourne at the time), so it took the fact that my upstairs neighbor is a lead actor in this play for me to get out to it, even though the mere fact that Cate Blanchett and her husband, Andrew Upton, are running the Sydney Theatre Company ought to have been reason enough to go. Ash was terrific and took a horrific beating (yeah, stage-y, but it's on-stage, isn't it, not like the movies). The performances weren't all around great - I didn't think the women were notably good - but the Sergeant and Ash, as Kenny Carter, stood out.

Blackout
There’s censorship everywhere. I remember a documentary film about censoring “adult” movies in Canada, where a small group of people would gather to screen blue movies and decide whether they could be released to the public. From my recollection, there was little that didn’t pass.

Since coming to Australia, I’ve seen a couple of cases, involving movies, that have become celebrity events, and they’ve highlighted this country’s rather strict regulatory approach.

One of the present Labor government’s promises has been a nationwide internet filter, which approaches implementation. So I’m rather thankful to Wikileaks, a site devoted to exposing the kind of national censorship proposed, for posting the ACMA’s list of banned sites. I disagree with imposing national firewalls, outside of protecting national security – this isn’t China, for goodness’ sake; we’re supposed to be a free country, even if we don’t have a bill of rights or anything like it. While I can fully support policing websites that violate the law, but I don’t support this kind of totalitarian nonsense. Look – some Queensland dentist is on the list (not to mention Wikileaks.org itself (oh, I’m in trouble now, aren’t I?) It’s like the no-fly terrorist list in the States. What else don’t we know about?

Pets Peeve
Oh, the cats hate me now. I'm working back so often, they're unfed for many hours beyond their expectations. Here it's 7:30 already, and no way I'm done here before 8:00, with another forty minutes or more to get home, assuming there's a bus still running at that point. I don't like them being out after dark, not least for the one who sits patiently and invisibly outside the door until I get home, which isn't a deliberate act of ambush, but might yet come out that way some night. Sometimes I think it was a mistake to leave my last job, which always finished up by five.

Cushy
Hamilton Island is supposed to be one of the most beautiful places on the planet, and the task of living there for free and writing a blog to promote it to the tune of an six-monthly salary of AU$150,000 has to be the best job in the world, even discounting Sol Trujillo’s now-concluded stint as CEO of Telstra. They’re down to 200 candidates and expect to announce the final 50 next week. My God, it’s just like [insert country name] Idol, except without the recording contract.

Friends & Relations
I'm prompted to write this as a result of reading a recent post by a Smith-y I know, a transfer struggling with uprooted-ness.

The company I'm working at does a survey of its employees every year to find out if they like working there, more or less, and we're doing a new one, with just 12 questions, the key to which is: do you have a best friend at work? For about the first time since I started working full-time after university, I can answer yes, even though it's probably not entirely reciprocal. So what? I regard this person as an excellent friend, and it's certainly a good thing. But all those other jobs? I liked them, too, most of them. I guess it's selfish, but the job is about me in the end, do I like what I do, am I doing more and new and learning. Now, it should be mentioned that, for the first time ever, the project I'm working on is focused on the return-on-investment, whereas most of my past jobs were start-ups, the massive expenditure stage, and often they then proceeded to stagnate horribly. So I suppose that's a factor, too.

And I suppose there's some measure of increased engagement at work because of this whole friend situation because I'm also displaced from my family, the few friends I ever had previously, and even from my country & culture, to one degree or another (hey, we get all the best crap shows from America on our t.v.'s every night), without having made any notable new friendships post-antipodean relocation. But I'm like that, always have been. A one-man dog, as it were. One at a time, anyway.

Sure, I suppose being "the American" in many situations is going to be a disadvantage, going to mark me out as opposed to distinguishing me from the pack. And while 8 years of Bush have certainly had an effect, pretty much all the other years before that weren't doing us any favors either. In World War 2, for example, when our soldiers were the first broad exposure Australians had to Americans, the boys were picking up the local women and generally getting up everybody's nose Down Under. So as much as there was gratitude for the U.S. picking up where the Brits had dropped the ball (Let Japan take Australia; we'll get it back later), there was resentment and distrust, which latter sentiments tend to linger. Out here on the periphery of the world, and generally-speaking, anywhere outside the U.S., American boosterism doesn't get very far. So there's that.

Anyway, crowds of friends or not, I'm doing what I can, and it'll all work out or it won't. Whatever happens, so far I'm happy with my choices.

Return to Redfern
The renovation of the Redfern oval is complete, or nearly, if the lack of a scoreboard or even a clock within view of the grandstand is any indication (and it may not be; I'm not privy to the specifications), and today the Mighty Rabbitohs hosted Wests Tigers in a "friendly." The grounds are very nice, even if the conditions were a little too Australian-Open to suit a rubgy match, although the services on offer were meager. Well, you go for the football, don't you, not the hot dogs and meat pies.

Anyway, they staged a "legends" match, a face-off between squads from the two teams of long-retired players, which was entertaining and played in high-spirited good nature. Unfortunately, for Souths, that was about the end of anything positive, as the Bunnies staged one of their fairly typical almost-come-from-behind defeats. Leading late in the game, they gave up two tries to see the match end in the Tigers' favor, 30-26. Even a couple of minutes extended play didn't save them.

Welcome home, boys. See you out in Homebush in a month or two, and maybe it'll get better.

It's all True
Everything you've heard about The Wrestler, all the good stuff, anyway, is absolutely true. This is a gem of a movie, leaving absolution aside just as much as it does resolution, thereby adhering to a principle of modern story-telling: no one's story is ever over until it's all over with. Mickey Rourke I never had much time for, not surprising given most of his roles and his choice to abandon acting for boxing for so long, but I cannot think of anyone better suited to this part, physically, notably, but that shouldn't be taken as a dis to his acting chops, which are splendid. Marisa Tomei hasn't had a role like this in a long time, either, and takes hold of it with real vigor. The insight into these lives is entirely worthwhile and illuminating of so much more. Somebody better get an Oscar out of this.

DVD Late Fee
How good is Taken? I can't believe I missed this in a cinema. I'd heard it was good, but skipped it, never even really considered it, and then I had to wait for the video, paying the cost of my neglect in the small-screen experience of what is an entirely enjoyable movie, on a par, nearly, with the Bourne movies. Sure, it's a divorced dad and spoiled child action-adventure movie, but from the moment Liam Neeson speaks to his about-to-be-abducted daughter, the movie plain rocks. My only quibble: what ever happened to the also-kidnapped girlfriend? I guess that was her all doped-up and roped-down, but did she get rescued? Loose ends like that niggle.

Pics
I'm working (slowly) on uploading pictures to a new web page. A link will be available once I'm done. I'll do a separate page for the Adelaide-Kangaroo Island-Melbourne trip, too.

Update: Travel pics so far; more to come.