Year: 2012

Categories
UK

Well That Was A Bit Embarrassing, Wasn’t It…

I got up early this morning before work to watch the Olympics Closing Ceremony. I have to say, having seen the lineup, I didn’t exactly have high hopes, but after the delight that was Danny Boyle’s Opening Ceremony I thought that they might just pull it out of the bag once again.

It didn’t quite turn out like that.

There was something rather poetic, though, about the shabbiness of the way things drew to a close. It had seemed, from this distance at least, that throughout the games, from the moment that Opening Ceremony began right up until 5 minutes to 9 on the Sunday evening, Londoners–heck maybe even the whole of the UK–had shrugged off the default British cynic mode and embraced the wonder of it all. No more was there talk of security lapses, of G4S, of LOCOG and the brand police. Now we just focused on all those great performances. On those Six Super Saturday Gold Medals. Mo. Jessica. Bradley…

Now suddenly it was all coming to a close and as it did so it seemed as if the organisers were saying to Brits everywhere: it’s ok. Things will be back to normal tomorrow. Here is something you can be sarcastic about again.

It was what we had all feared the opening ceremony might have been. Essentially those embarrassing twenty minutes from Beijing with David Beckham and the London bus, only padded out to three hours. Not so much a Symphony of British Music as just whoever happened to be available and said yes, with some shocking sound production to boot.

Where the Opening Ceremony was a socialist indie kid fantasy with a subversive hint and a sense of humour, this was a return to a world of MOR mediocrity and the cult of vacuous celebrity (I mean, come on, Kate Moss and Russell Brand? These are your role models to #inspireageneration?)

The Opening Ceremony had the suffragettes.
The Closing Ceremony had the Spice Girls.

That is about about all you need to know.

Categories
Melbourne Music

I’m Not Doing Requests

Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, The Palais, St Kilda

This is a bit weird, innit? You all sitting down like that…

So says Mr Gallagher, three songs into his set, to his hitherto entirely seated audience at St Kilda’s The Palais theatre.

Do you have to sit down? I mean, have they told you that you have to sit down?

<pause>

Well stand up then…

<audience rises en masse…>

Thanks Noel. Someone had to say it. Thus began an entertaining hour and a half of old Oasis songs, stuff off his new album, and the occasional spot of banter. I was pretty happy with the mix of songs — including as it did, acoustic versions of Whatever and Supersonic, as well as a smattering of those great early B-Sides (Talk Tonight, Half The World Away, It’s Good To Be Free…), although it apparently wasn’t good enough for some of my fellow audience members, who started yelling out song titles at random in between tracks.

I’m not doing requests, says Noel. I didn’t spend 20 minutes last June working on this setlist for you lot to shout out random shit.

…Especially if you’re not wearing any merchandise, you cheap bastards…

One person who was wearing the merchandise was the kid sitting a couple of rows in front of me with his mum and dad, wearing his brand new Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds T-Shirt. He must have been about 14, and therefore wouldn’t even have been alive the first time I saw Oasis live (back in December 1994 at the Liverpool Royal Court…) Sheesh. That makes me feel old. Where did all that time go?

Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, The Palais, St Kilda

Categories
Blogging Media Shoddy Journalism teh internets Twitter

Old Media

I’m a little behind on this one, but I found this recent message from the old media rather amusing:

Rupert Murdoch Tweets

Bloggers terrorizing politicians? Well that will never do. That’s your job, isn’t it Rupert?

Also, while I’m at it Rupe, do try to remember that if you’re going to make claims about what results a particular Google search returns, you might not want to do that on the internet, where such claims are laughably easily verified.

Rupert Murdoch Tweets 2

Categories
Australia Blogging

You Don’t Bring Me Flowers

So. No posts since September would appear to suggest that I have become a person who does not blog.

I’m not entirely sure how this happened. Maybe it’s Twitter’s fault. I used to look at the world for things that made me think “I should blog that”. But that’s so very 2004. Now if I see an amusing typo or a funny sign I just think “I should tweet that”.

Sure, it’s more immediate, but is it as satisying?

I always thought that moving to Australia would be the catalyst for some sustained blogging–oh look at those cultural differences, how amusingly different is Aussie life–but I don’t think my cultural observations got much past laughing at the fact that they use the word Manchester to mean bed sheets. And maybe it’s too late now that I’ve been here for three years. Have I assimilated too much to notice how odd the Aussies are?

Well, we’ll see.

I think I wrote down “write more blogs” as a new year’s resolution about 12 months ago. So obviously that worked well. If I’m claiming it’s for 2012 then I’m already three weeks late. But hey it’s a start. And isn’t admitting you have a problem the first step?

This has been a post about nothing. But a public post about nothing, which is the important bit. Let us see how we go.