peteg's blog 2007-08-21-SBS-News.autumn

The Prose Works of Henry Lawson

North by Northwest

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Well, that about wraps it up for this trilogy, at least until they crank out The Hobbit. As a not-particularly-huge fan of the books, I will resist criticising it too much...

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

The second part of the long-winded Extended Edition. This one didn't drag as much as I remembered it; perhaps they substituted some character development of Frodo for those endless scenes of the rest of them running around New Zealand. Still, it suffers in the same way as every other middle movie, by being not much more than glue. The CGI looks horrendous; not so much the dynamic stuff (the Ents look fine) but the super-fake sets.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

The super-long three-and-a-bit hour Extended Edition. The pacing and editing of these movies really annoyed me when I first saw them, and that feeling remains undiminished. The CGI looks pretty fake to my eye, but fortunately New Zealand is beautiful enough to overcome all of this.

Salman Rushdie: October 2001: The Attacks on America

This is an old article that is probably redundantly reproduced here now that the New York Times has opened their archive. I find it strangely concordant with Bruce Schneier's expert opinion.

In January 2000's column I wrote that 'the defining struggle of the new age would be between Terrorism and Security', and fretted that to live by the security experts' worst-case scenarios might be to surrender too many of out liberties to the invisible shadow warriors of the secret world. Democracy requires visibility, I argued, and in the struggle between security and freedom we must always err on the side of freedom. On Tuesday September 11, however, the worst-case scenario came true.

They broke our city. I'm among the newest of New Yorkers, but even people who have never set foot in Manhattan have felt her wounds deeply, because New York in our time is the beating heart of the visible world, tough-talking, spirit-dazzling, Walt Whitman's 'city of orgies, walks and joys', his 'proud and passionate city - mettlesome, mad extravagent city!' To this bright capital of the visible, the forces of invisibility have dealt a dreadful blow. No need to say how dreadful; we all saw it, are all changed by it, and must now ensure that the wound is not mortal, that the world of what is seen triumphs over what is cloaked, what is perceptible only through the effects of its awful deeds.

In making free societies safe - safer - from terrorism, our civil liberties will inevitably be compromised.¹ But in return for freedom's partial erosion, we have a right to expect that our cities, water, planes and children really will be better protected than they have been. The West's response to the September 11 attacks will be judged in large measure by whether people begin to feel safe once again in their homes, their workplaces, their daily lives. This is the confidence we have lost, and must regain.

Next: the question of the counter-attack. Yes, we must send our shadow warriors against theirs, and hope that ours prevail. But this secret war alone cannot bring victory. We will also need a public, political and diplomatic offensive whose aim must be the early resolution of some of the world's thorniest problems: above all the battle between Israel and the Palestinian people for space, dignity recognition and survival. Better judgement will be required on all sides in the future. No more Sudanese aspirin factories to be bombed, please. And now that wise American heads appear to have understood that it would be wrong to bomb the impoverished, opressed Afghan people in retaliation for their tyrannous masters' misdeeds, they might apply that wisdom, retrospectively, to what was done to the impoverished, oppressed people of Iraq. It's time to stop making enemies and start making friends.

To say this is in no way to join in the savaging of America by sections of the left that has been among the most unpleasant consequences of the terrorists' attacks on the United States. 'The problem with Americans is...' - 'What America needs to understand...' There has been a lot of sanctimonious moral relativism around lately, usually prefaced by such phrases as these. A country which has just suffered the most devastating terrorist attack in history, a country in a state of deep mourning and horrible grief, is being told, heartlessly, that it is to blame for its own citizens' deaths. ('Did we deserve this, sir?' a bewildered worker at Ground Zero asked a visiting British journalist recently. I find the grave courtesy of that 'sir' quite astonishing.)

Let's be clear about why this bien-pensant anti-American onslaught is such appalling rubbish. Terrorism is the murder of the innocent; this time, it was mass murder. To excuse such an atrocity by blaming US-government policies is to deny the basic idea of all morality: that individuals are responsible for their actions. Furthermore, terrorism is not the pursuit of legitimate complaints by illegitimate means. The terrorist wraps himself in the world's grievances to cloak his true motives. Whatever the killers were trying to achieve, it seems improbable that building a better world was part of it.

The fundamentalist seeks to bring down a great deal more than buildings. Such people are against, to offer just a brief list, freedom of speech, a multi-party political system, universal adult suffrage, accountable government, Jews, homosexuals, women's rights, pluralism, secularism, short skirts, dancing, beardlessness, evolution theory, sex. These are tyrants, not Muslims. (Islam is tough on suicides, who are doomed to repeat their deaths through all eternity. However, there needs to be a thorough examination, by Muslims everywhere, of why it is that the faith they love breeds so many violent mutant strains. If the West needs to understand its Unabombers and McVeighs, Islam needs to face up to its bin Ladens.)

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said that we should now define ourselves not only by what we are for, but by what we are against. I would reverse that proposition, because in the present instance what we are against is a no-brainer. Suicidist assassins ram wide-bodied aircraft into the World Trade Centre and Pentagon and kill thousands of people: um, I'm against that. But what are we for? What will we risk our lives to defend? Can we unanimously concur that all the items in the above list - yes, even the short skirts and dancing - are worth dying for?

The fundamentalist believes that we believe in nothing. In his world-view, he has his absolute certainties, while we are sunk in sybaritic indulgences. To prove him wrong, we must first know that he is wrong. We must agree on what matters: kissing in public places, bacon sandwiches, disagreement, cutting-edge fashion, literature, generosity, water, a more equitable distribution of the world's resources, movies, music, freedom of thought, beauty, love. These will be our weapons. Not by making war, but by the unafraid way we choose to live shall we defeat him.

How to defeat terrorism? Don't be terrorized. Don't let fear rule your life. Even if you are scared.

1. When I wrote these words, I'd meant to say that we'd probably be subjected to more annoying, intrusive checks at airports. I failed to forsee the eagerness with which Messrs Ashcroft, Ridge, etc. would set about creating the apparatus of a more authoritarian state.

Reproduced here (partly to counteract the web's amnesia) without permission from the essay collection Step Across This Line, Copyright Salman Rushdie, 2002.

Naked

Yeah, this is as good as I remember it, better even.

Paths of Glory

Love and Human Remains

I first saw this strange and wonderful movie about ten years ago with Pete R.. It's a Canadian Naked, albeit not as dense.

The ALP has pulled out all the stops to win this election; Sydney gets a spray from Paul Keating, and Melbourne one from RJL Hawke.

The Dirty Three Doco.

Who'd've thunk it? I just hope it's not anouther I'm Your Man, where "luminaries" share their uninsightful "insights". Their music speaks for itself.

I voted in the Australian Federal Election at the Consulate just now. According to the lonely Kevin07 guy out the front, that 45 people lined up on Monday morning to vote signals a change of government.

Blade Runner

Peter Andren, R.I.P.

And here was I hoping to see how his Senate campaign unfolded...

That about wraps it up for Blake's 7.

What started as a promising politico-scifi Doctor Who-for-adults headed for the crapper somewhere around the beginning of Season 2. Actually, if I could be arsed I'm sure I could pin-point the exact moment when it ceased to be interesting. The final iconic episode is shamed by some of the most unbelievable tosh in the entire genre. What a wasted opportunity.

The Pervert's Guide to Cinema

What a strange little movie. Slavoj Žižek's stream of consciousness is not even internally consistent, let alone coherent. It's the decrepit vehicle of psychoanalysis smashing into the 21st century, with all the fascination of a staged car crash.

Revealingly, his wikipedia page says:

One of the problems in outlining Žižek's work and ideas is that for the layperson he seems to change his theoretical position (for instance, on the question of whether Lacan is a structuralist or poststructuralist) between books and sometimes even within the pages of one book. Because of this, some of his critics have accused him of inconsistency and lacking intellectual rigor. However, Ian Parker claims that there is no "Žižekian" system of philosophy because Žižek, with all his inconsistencies, is trying to make us think much harder about what we are willing to believe and accept from a single writer.

I reckon he's fallen off the narrow ridge of helping people to think critically and fallen into the chasm of intellectual stupor. Then again, his tradition is rife with the same, and the public demands its cranks.

The Third Man

I am perplexed that this is rated at 48 in IMDB's top 250. The acting, cinematography, sets, etc. etc. are fine, but the plot is threadbare. This is no Casablanca.

Việt Nam News: Golden Autumn

I bought this collection in the shadow of the doubts created by the short stories in the Sunday edition of Việt Nam News. Apparently:

Golden Autumn, a selection of short stories from our monthly Outlook magazine, talks about contemporary Viet Nam through authors who offer a variety of intelligent and colourful perspectives on our ever-changing country. Here, ordinary lives, struggles and successes are examined within the backdrop of the nation's emergence from war.

I found most stories to be stultifyingly conventional, and irritatingly politically correct: the women are rarely more than objects to be wronged or righted, and the men are continually evading the forces of the South. One could read this and believe that not much has changed since 1975.

The UNIX-HATERS Handbook

A classic, but somewhat dated now. The chapter on X11 was quite amusing when I was actually using X11, but now it just makes me glad I've slipped that particular noose, and most of the other ones. I wonder how they feel now that their shiny Macs are powered by UNIX.

Kingsley Amis: The Old Devils

What a crock. Still more proof that the Booker Prize (awarded to this book in 1986) is worthless; out of the books I've read, I think they got it right, just twice, with Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. According to the back of the book, the Guardian said:

Crackling with marvellous taff comedy ... this is probably Mr Amis's best book since Lucky Jim.

Setting the bar this low is hardly an endorsement of anything else he's written. Unlike Martin Amis he didn't seem to have the courage to just run with it.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day (Director's Cut?)

The full version, with the there's-not-gonna-be-a-T3 ending.

Old Sonys die, replaced by Shure e2c, news at 11.

Yep, fast times in Hồ Chí Minh City. After the right driver of my (model number lost to history) Sony earbuds died, with more urgency I went looking this afternoon for a pair of headphones that would do some kind of justice to the Dirty Three's Indian Love Song (there's some great dynamics at the start and towards the end) and fit into my pocket. Now, in Hồ Chí Minh City electronics comes in two kinds: authentic expensive stuff and cheap knock-offs. The range at the bottom is huge and uniformly crap, and if one wants something decent one has to fork out and moreover search damn hard.

So, after visiting twenty or more shops selling rubbish, including an abortive and attitude-souring trip out to the "electronics market" in District 10, I headed back to ezone on Tôn Thất Tùng in D1, an apparently unofficial Apple store. They sold me these Shures for , a remarkably modest markup on Amazon's price. They didn't take Visa, so I had to find an ATM and hand them a brick of cash.

If anyone believes that a fully free market is the solution to the world's ills, then I suggest they come here and try to buy something at a reasonable price in a reasonable time frame. Given the weak state of IP, consumer protection and related laws, the usual signals (brand names, trademarks, price, shop location, etc.) are highly unreliable.

As for the headphones themselves, well, they fit so snugly into my ears that they will surely cause me to have an accident while walking the streets of this town. Conversely eating, drinking or even talking with them on is mildly unpleasant, as one's skull becomes (even more of) an echo chamber.

Oh yes, the most pointless Dirty Three song ever: someone, somewhere, recorded them covering Leonard Cohen's Suzanne for a radio show. I have the evidence in the form of a WAV.

88 Minutes

At Galaxy Cinema on Nguyễn Du with Loan. Not bad, but the climax is a bit of a let down. Al Pacino is a bit too old for this kind of schtick.

War on Democracy

Perhaps better titled John Pilger's War on Democracy, in the tradition of The Chaser. While I wholeheartedly agree that the issues he highlights are worthy, I struggle with how weak his evidential requirements are. I don't doubt that one could make an almost-identical movie about John Howard's Australia, full of "national security is all" crackpots, and people whose aspirations are stymied. (Just ask any arty type.) His allusions to "secret documents" no longer cut it, if they ever did; put them on the internet, etc. etc.

Vaguely ironic to me is that Vietnam is undergoing massive poverty reduction (etc.) without political instability or a Western-style democracy.

Most interesting is the cult of personality that Chavez has cultivated. Little is made of his recent move to suspend the parliament, while much is made of the coup's move to do the same.

I don't think John Pilger is dishonest; I think the case is strong enough that he could focus on root causes and what's-to-be-done rather than drilling us about the American Empire. (Obviously it exists, and has done so since at least World War II; just look at the major international institutions, especially the economic ones.) It's too much like a Michael Moore movie without the humour.

Zwartboek (Black Book)

Dare I say this is Verhoeven's best since Total Recall... The plot is a little clunky at some points, but overall it's very well constructed.

Bright Concert, Hồ Chí Minh City Opera House.

Earlier in the week I stumped up 450kvnđ for a cheap seat at the Bright Concert, and this evening I waded through about half a metre of water on Lê Lợi to get to the Hồ Chí Minh City Opera House. The Darius Quartet were excellent, but I couldn't get into the arias.

The Terminator

Hard to get excited about this movie on a fourth or fifth viewing. If anything, Arnie has too many lines, and the special effects are ambitiously embarassing. The schmaltz is laid on way to thick, and Arnie has little opportunity to ham it up.

err... yes, I am watching too many movies again. I've still got to get to David Lynch's new one, and I saw Al Pacino's face on a billboard here, so I will probably venture back to the cinema some time soon.

Brick

I enjoyed this about as much as the first time, but followed the pow-wow much more closely with the help of the pause and rewind buttons.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

What a turkey. I last saw this at the cinema when it was released in 2003.

Mick Turner at Brightspace

The guitarist for the Dirty Three, Mick Turner, is exhibiting his paintings in Melbourne presently. I especially liked this one, titled Fifteen Year Argument.

I, Robot

Wow, this isn't anywhere near as bad as I feared. Will Smith is in Men in Black mode, the CGI is over-the-top, and the steady hand of Alex Proyas stops things from getting too out of control. Forget Asimov and don't think too hard. Thanks Rob.

I Want You

Struck me as a warm-up to his even-racier later movies. He does a better job when the themes are clearer in his mind. Rachel Weisz is luminous, as are the other (lesser-known) actors.

Apocalypse Now (Redux)

In several sittings, the damn thing is too long to watch in one go. The last time I saw it was in a cinema back in 2002 or so, when the "redux" version was released.

Wild at Heart

A David Lynch classic, wedged somewhat uncomfortably between his signature Blue Velvet and his later work on Twin Peaks. I reckon this just might be Nicolas Cage's best effort.

Oi, amigo. If ever somethin' don't feel right to you, remember what Pancho said to the Cisco Kid... 'Let's win, before we're dancing at the end of a rope, without music.'

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

At the Galaxy Cinema with Dũng, Loan and Mai. It was pretty much the same as an Australian cinema, roughly identical to one of the Academy Twin theatres but with worse sound. As the majority of patrons were reading subtitles, the noise levels were pretty high.

Until now I've remained as completely oblivious to the whole Harry Potter phenomenon as anyone can, and I don't think this movie was a good one to start with. Still, a pleasant bit of fluff.

Félix Lajkó: Remény

Once more Passion Discs comes to the rescue of we who could not make it to All Tomorrow's Parties. This one is apparently a collection of live tracks; on a cursory listen on the MacBook's speakers, some of them sound familiar. (I've misplaced my headphones and the local knock-off cheapies sound like shit.) The first track is incredibly intense, somewhat like a dense variant of the Dirty Three / Félix Lajkó Zither Player from Cinder. Fortunately it is only two minutes long.

I am glad to see the big man has taken some facial hair cues from Warren Ellis (pictured, shamelessly stolen from Flickr... err, make that an extensive ATP blog entry). I was also very glad to know that I can receive my post in Vietnam, so yeah, bring it on...

Photos of UNSW as it once was.

Finally someone — in this case Brad Hall — has put up some photos of the Kensington campus as it may once have been. So FaceBook has another purpose afterall, even if it is only as a poor man's Flickr.

1990
1991 (some photos of the upside-down tree.)
1992 (the tree and the old fountain that stood out the front of the Elec. Eng. building.)
1993

Last Train to Freo

It strikes me that this might have been really good on the stage, but it doesn't work as a movie. The acting is intermittently excellent, but the climax is too implausible for what we have seen up to that point.

Aliens

Don Marquis on thinking.

If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you.

Mary Kostakidis walks out on SBS.

This is just plain terrible. If they want more money, stick on something commercial straight after the news; surely Mary is worth more bums-on-seats as a lead-in than they get from running commercials during her show.

The Hidden

An ancient Kyle MacLachlan vehicle, somewhat worse than one might expect as a follow-up to Blue Velvet but nevertheless reasonably robust for a cop / car chase / soft sci-fi movie. I guess this segues into his Twin Peaks character...

Wasting time wholesale.

If you need to burn serious amounts of time, I suggest you try Desktop Tower Defence, a Flash game apparently similar to Command and Conquer, though I think it's better described as anti-Lemmings.

There's also a Scrabble application on FaceBook that is keeping many people endlessly amused.

Robert S. McNamara: In Retrospect

This is a distinctly repetitive, and rather depressing, memoir of Robert S. McNamara's time as U.S. Defence Secretary, a period that is not coextensive with U.S. operations in Vietnam. This was the first of many irritations, the lack of framing; we get a very limited presentation of the Eisenhower Administration's policies and almost no mention is made of McNamara's successors or the French colonisation.

The lasting impression I take away from this book is that the U.S. preferred to spend billions on a war rather than thousands on a few more people who would have given it better advice. I grant that it was a chaotic time, but why not hire more people?

Some further links:

A good review by a professor of political science at Boston College.
Another review and account of his attendence of a panel discussion of the book at the Kennedy School of Government.
The book somewhat complements the movie, Fog of War.

Full Metal Jacket

Peodair on Temptation.

Yes, he's been at it again. For those of you who missed it:

Transformers

At The Ritz with Jen. Product placement runs deep in this movie; I laughed a lot at the references to eBay seller ladiesman217, but was disappointed (You've got) The Touch didn't make an appearance.

Julian Barnes: Letters from London

Aptly reviewed on Amazon as being "a bit like reading yesterday's newspaper", this book collects Julian Barnes's New Yorker essays from 1991 to 1994. His take on Thatcher's dying days, and the rise of Tony Blair (whose era coincidentally came to an end recently) entertained me, as did some of his coverage of the Chess World Championship match between Englishman Nigel Short and Gary Kasparov. Perhaps the most intriguing story is about Lloyd's, though it suffers from a lack of framing; the repetition could have been expunged in favour of a potted history, I feel.

East of Eden

Waitress

At Greater Union on George St, as part of the Sydney Film Festival. I came to this movie with an appreciation of Adrienne Shelly's acting for Hal Hartley, especially in Trust opposite Martin Donovan, and was wondering what she would make of the role of auteur.

This movie is a a bit trite, with a fairly stodgy plot somewhat saved by some decent acting and Hal Hartley-ish moments of direction and dialogue. The opening is quite fun though things go to pot as the serious issues supplant the comedic. The ending is quite sudden and brutal; it is not clear how anything really got resolved. Her male characters are flimsy and creepily unlikeable, though perhaps I missed the erotic subtext. A piece of mostly agreeable fluff.

Life is Sweet

Another Mike Leigh film. Better than All or Nothing.

The Thaw at MGTVLE

With mrak. A longer set this time, second on the bill after some fairly atrocious noise-metal.

All or Nothing

Another Mike Leigh. This isn't as good as the earlier stuff.

All the President's Men

The movie is fairly gripping, but, like the book except worse, it severely curtails the treatment of the interesting and consequential events between their dogged newspaper reportage and the Watergate tapes fiasco that ultimately forced Nixon's resignation.

TAP Gallery: Friday Night Drinks

With Sarah, on their everyone-gets-in-for-fifteen-bucks night. As the blurb says, this is a set of "three one-act plays about Sydney on the best night of the week", focusing on "the quarter life crisis, beer and a lot of sexual tension..." Given that the protagonists are twenty-five year olds, it is not clear the writer has come to terms with his mortality as yet.

The production is almost setless, using just a few pub familiars — a barrel, a mirrorball, a fancier table — to evoke various drinking ambiences (the beer garden of an urban pub, a gay nightclub, an inner-city bar). Thus the play is largely carried by the actors, who do a solid job with some occasionally dodgy material. All the situations are somewhat stereotypical, which is hardly surprising given what people are looking for in an end-of-the-working-week boozing session, and the humour is a tad forced, more cringe-inducing than clever.

There's a review at Sydney Stage.

Late morning snorkel with Rob. After the recent heavy storms the water was way too turbid to see anything, but my spring suit made it pleasant enough. Some fairly large waves.

Secrets & Lies

Another Mike Leigh masterpiece. More measured than its truly excellent predecessor Naked, about the same pace as Vera Drake.

Has this man made a crap movie?

The Good German

New Theatre: Oh What a Lovely War, Mate!

Like clockwork, a first Sunday of the month and another production from New Theatre. This is song-and-dance, and as it was billed as such I got pretty much what I expected, viz something not to my taste. The cast put in a solid effort and the political message — the horrors of war, the perfidious propaganda that sells it — comes across loud and clear.

Quarterly Essay #26, David Marr: His Master's Voice: The Corruption of Public Debate under Howard

To think of this unfocussed essay as essentially another, better written, chapter of Silencing Dissent would be both apt and to miss the point. As the pull quote on the website says:

More than any law, any failure of the Opposition or individual act of bastardry over the last decade, what's done most to gag democracy in this country is the sense that debating John Howard gets us nowhere.

The Smage review abbreviates the quote and swiftly rebuts it:

The frustration is palpable as David Marr writes, "What's done most to gag democracy in this country is a sense that debating John Howard is futile".
It's not, as the polls are showing on a weekly basis. But for much of the past decade this is how it has felt to those who do not share the Prime Minister's political and social agenda. Marr describes how the terms of engagement in public discussion have evolved - deteriorated - during the long years of the Howard Government.

I almost choked on my Weetbix; since when has an opinion poll been a debate? Perhaps, like electricity and frogs' legs, they indicate that some force is at work, but what? Let not informed debate inform that, lest the Government lose control of the agenda! Elsewhere, at The Australian, the faceless editorialist similarly opines:

This last thesis [that Australia is becoming an increasingly authoritarian state where dissidents are silenced], expounded at length in Silencing Dissent published earlier this year, would seem difficult to sustain at a time when the marketplace of ideas has never been so crowded. In newspaper opinion sections and magazines and on radio and televisions and increasingly online, Australians are engaged in intelligent conversation about the issues of the day great and small. Blogs and internet chat rooms have given everyone a seat at the debating table. Technology has lowered the barriers to publishing. A host of new periodicals online and in print including The Monthly, New Matilda and The Australian's own Australian Literary Review are providing new platforms for discussion while established journals such as Quadrant and the Griffith Review are reaching new readers and providing a home for new writers. The queues outside venues at this year's Sydney Writers Festival, record attendances at similar writers festivals around the country and new events such as next month's Adelaide Festival of Ideas are public expressions of a confident, mature democracy in which informed debate flourishes.

Ah yes, if people are talking, they must be debating! How could they not be contributing to Australia's democratic future if they are sitting around in cafés, lecture halls, cubicle farms talking about John Howard? Clearly there is discourse in the public sphere, and these polemics are not complaining so much about the amount of it, but how it is informed and almost entirely summarily ignored along petty partisan lines. For the Government to be blown around by the winds of focus groups and opinion polls, as apparently advocated by the Smage, is to reveal how small an agenda it has now that most of its narrow ideological goals are in train.

It is the restriction of the foundational acquisition and dissemination of hard information that is troubling; this is an expensive business (look at how much your average university professor is paid and how much knowledge they produce) that the media is loathe to do a decent job of in these times of economic rationalism. If whisteblowers are persecuted, public servants valued only in their capacity as executors of Government policy, Freedom of Information requests evaded, and so forth, are we not well on the way to thinking of citizens purely as voters, entities of limited memory and interest whose coarsely aggregated opinions only matter once every three years or so?

It makes more sense to consider Marr's piece a response to Judith Brett's Quarterly Essay 19: Relaxed and Comfortable: The Liberal Party's Australia, where the intelligentsia is entreated not to abandon the field to Howard, but to join him out in the middle, the mainstream, arguing for the future of this country. Marr finds this futile, as the pull quote makes abundantly clear. The above-quoted editorial from The Australian goes on to insist that the "left" is completely dysfunctional and has dealt itself out of the debate, though the "argument" left me cold; take, for example:

Closely related to their hatred of the US is their contempt for capitalism. The impact of the modern share-owning democracy has yet to dawn on them. Corporations no longer answer to the bourgeoisie, they answer to shareholders -- ordinary people who are now stakeholders, either directly or through the <$1 /> trillion in superannuation. Karl Marx's dream has been fulfilled now that the workers truly do control the means of production.

Any given worker may now own 0.000001% of some very large means of production, but even that much control is diluted by the fund managers and the machinations of the big boys. One only has to look at Rupert Murdoch's poison pill to see what kind of stakeholding The Australian has in mind; "privatise the profits, socialise the losses" springs to mind, albeit from the broader perspective of influence rather than just money.

Andrew Norton's review (and the ensuing commentary) is much more thoughtful than those of the mainstream press, though I mildly disagree with his closing (unargued for) claim that "Public debate [...] is not under any threat". Andrew Bartlett's comment there almost makes me mourn the passing of the Australian Democrats. Also Andrew Elder treads similar (good) ground.

Garden State

The Manchurian Candidate

The original one, with Frank Sinatra in it.

Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End

I did not understand this movie.

The Good Shepherd

Woodward and Bernstein: The Final Days

A sort-of-sequel to All the President's Men, recounting the events up to Nixon's resignation. As before, it ends rather abruptly and one has to scour Wikipedia for a few hours to figure out what the longer-term implications of Watergate were. In short, those with fingers in the operational pies seem to have been fed to the tigers, and the political and Cabinet associates (such as Kissinger, Haig and Cheney) either continued or were resuscitated in later Republican administrations.

These are a great pair of books, though you'll need (to acquire) a working knowledge of (some) U.S. constitutional law if you want to follow the legal narrative, which is what it's mostly about, of course. I'm not aware of similar books about the Dismissal; I've read Gough Whitlam's The Truth of the Matter, but that's it.

Snorkeling with Rob at Little Bay, the old Prince Henry Hospital site now being turned into apartments. (We'd been to "Little Bay" before, but that was in fact Long Bay.) Very clear, not too cold (in a springsuit), some fish to see and loads of interesting rock formations. Lunch at Paris Seafood at La Parouse in what turned out to be a pleasant autumn afternoon.

Zodiac

With Rob at The Ritz.

Road to Perdition

Midday snorkelling attempt at Gordons Bay. A bit too rough and turbid to make out much, though the water was pleasant enough once in (at least in a spring suit).

NUTS: Chamber Music

Couldn't pass up on the last NUTS gig of the session, however much the pitch lacked specifity. This is an absurdist play set in an asylum, and while the production was great I didn't get much of a handle on it.

Fay Grim

Ah, at long last, another film from Hal Hartley. I first heard about this, his sequel to Henry Fool back in 2005 or so.

The plot is pretty much spaghetti, and while it demands a lot of suspension of disbelief it is easier to follow than The Girl From Monday. Most of the old characters return, though the old familiar settings of the neighbourhood, the garbage processing facility and the deli are replaced by some fairly generic European ones, as one might expect from Hal Hartley's assertion that making movies in New York is too expensive these days.

Give it a go, it's a lot of fun.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me

One might view this as the culmination of a thirty-hour David Lynch movie (the Twin Peaks TV series), and as such it is pretty pointless, just making explicit what we already knew or guessed from the show. I think he should've ridden the ambiguity a bit more.

Anyway, from the TV show: "Denise" is David Duchovny's cross-dressing DEA agent character. Apropos schoolgirl Audrey, who has just kissed FBI Special Agent Cooper full on the mouth:

Denise: I may be wearing a dress, but I still pull my panties on one leg at a time, if you know what I mean.
Cooper: Not really.

Hmm, perhaps you just have to watch it for yourself.

Darlinghurst Theatre: This is a Play and Never Swim Alone

Apparently these Daniel MacIvor efforts date from the mid-to-late 90s. The first, This is a Play, is a short piece where the actors articulate their inner monologues and stage directions for the most part... a meta-activity that I found funnier than I would have expected, perhaps due to the (as usual) excellent acting.

The meat of the evening was definitely the longer Never Swim Alone, where a woman in a blue swimsuit (Lotte St Clair, also in the first play) referees two suited men in a mostly-verbal contest of masculinity. The recycling of cliché and drifting in and out of sync of the two actors' schtick (Tim Major, Michael Howlett) is fantastic, and clearly requires immense concentration from them. It's difficult to say much beyond what's in the blurb without saying too much.

The Smage review is a bit cooler than I would've expected.

Early afternoon paddle at Gordons Bay. Quite warm out of the water today too, at 24 degrees.

The Penguin Henry Lawson Short Stories

Edited by John Barnes. There's not much point to this collection, given that you can get most/all of Lawson's work online, for free, or, if you prefer, his complete prose works in book form. (In my defence it cost me two bucks at the UNSW book fair, one of the more expensive acquisitions of the day.)

Having said that I did quite enjoy the Joe Wilson and his Mates yarns. These serve as a sort-of autobiography of the man, purportedly written while he was in London. His prose is mostly prosaic, with the occasional flinty observation tossed in, just to check you're paying attention.

Bastard Boys

The Weather Underground

With Sarah and flatmates at the Black Rose Anarchist Bookshop on Enmore Road.

Fiascos at UNSW.

This is so strange; somehow in these past few weeks UNSW has garnered a lot of press for what look like pretty shitty reasons:

The Arts faculty can't afford teaching support staff (tutors). While I sympathise with this predicament and fully expect the students' experiences to slide even further down the crapper, I'm not sure Senior Associate Dean of Arts and Social Sciences Dr Sarah Maddison is completely right to sheet the blame home to the Feds:

"The Federal Government has abandoned the humanities in higher education funding and we are bearing the brunt. It has consistently underinvested in this area over the past decade and we are now at a structural disadvantage when compared with other disciplines."

My understanding (and I'd like to be corrected if wrong) is that the funding decisions at the Faculty level are handled by the Chancellery, within the uni. Sure, the Feds may well have decided that a NICTA-like entity for the social sciences would be tantamount to offering an arse-cheek to a tiger, but that is about research, not teaching. Let them blame Professor Fred Hilmer, I reckon, then sack the lot of them.
In the same Smage article, the uni has announced that it will reduce the academic session to twelve weeks from the current fourteen. Justification?

The staff cuts follow the announcement of a number of streamlining measures at the university, including the reduction of the teaching semester from 14 to 12 weeks and a review of the bachelor of arts degree. Under the review, the number of courses in which students can major will fall from 45 to 37 in 2009.
The university administration claims the changes are designed to "streamline teaching and learning".
In a message sent to students on Monday, the pro-vice chancellor, Professor Joan Cooper, said the reduced semester would bring "UNSW in line with other Australian universities" and "facilitate new pedagogic practices".

Yep, I regret that my education was not streamlined. According to JAS the main operational implication is that all courses need to be adjusted (mangled) into this new format, and apparently the Chancellery is yet to propose how this will be funded. Blame Professor Fred Hilmer I reckon. You'll note the reasoning is similar to his world class policy on general staff numbers. Still, I'm sure the clown will be all cashed up for another year of hijinks. "I came to UNSW for the morale of the student body," I can hear it now.
Strangest of all is the closing of the Singapore campus (UNSW Asia) after less than a session:

The university has already spent <$17 />.5 million on the project, but it had guaranteed a further <$140 /> million for the construction of a permanent campus in South Changi.
Professor Fred Hilmer said the university had lost <$15 /> million in not reaching its anticipated enrolment numbers, and as a result it was unable to borrow the money it needed. "I don't want to play a blame game [but] I inherited a situation," he said.

Those enrolment numbers, from an email he sent to staff:

The UNSW Asia campus currently has 148 enrolled students, with some 100 of these being Singapore residents. The anticipated enrolment for the initial intake in 2007 was 300 students. Second semester enrolments were anticipated at 480 students but it is clear that this target would not be met.

Those enrolment numbers, from the advertising agency:

Singapore - The University of New South Wales Asia (UNSW Asia) has awarded its regional creative and media accounts to AGI Communications - the agency won the business without a pitch.
The new tertiary institution made the retainer appointment - understood to be valued at around <$1 />.5 million - on the back of its launch in Singapore, in an effort to achieve its first year admission target of 1200 students through attracting students from across Asia.

Still, I'm glad he can exercise the wagging figure this time, for otherwise one might get the impression there's something rotten in the administration of this world-class institution.

Now, if they were in any way serious about bringing "UNSW in line with other Australian universities" or being even more world-class they'd be looking at the University of Melbourne's "Melbourne Model" and wondering if they couldn't interest the Sydney market in something similar, or perhaps even better.

Morning snorkel at the north side of Gordons Bay with Sarah. I, wimpishly, broke out the wetsuit for the first time this season (in Sydney). It wasn't that necessary in the water but it did help immensely with the scoot in the windy shade back to the car. Once again, loads of fish and the weather was beautiful. It seems the blue gropers assemble just east of the ramp, out in the mouth of the bay.

Very brief snorkel off the north-eastern rocks at Gordons Bay in the early afternoon. The wind made the scamper up to the car pretty uncomfortable; the wetsuit would block it much better than a dripping wifebeater. Loads of fish again today, perhaps the most variation I've seen there yet.

Breach

At The Ritz. An interesting subject (an FBI agent, devout Catholic, etc. selling U.S. secrets to the Russians), a boring portrayal. Reality is too tedious for these Hollywood monkeys, so we get a sexed up thriller that omits such things of general interest as motive (why continue to pass information to the K.B.G. for ten years after the cold war came to an end?) and the nature of the secrets that were passed (OK, don't speculate, just tell us that remains classified). But hey, bright shiny thing, we've all got ADD now.

The last time I looked at Laura Linney and had any other reaction than "oh, that's Laura Linney" was when she played the wife in The Squid and the Whale. I thought she was wonderful in that role. The lead young bloke struck me as a proto-Matt Damon (shudder).

Shaun of the Dead

After putting my parents on the plane to London-via-Singapore, I went for a swim at Gordons Bay. Beautiful autumn weather presently, though I feel the need to wear a wifebeater in the water now, it makes just enough of a difference.

The Shawshank Redemption

The Fountain

Mr Cranky says it all:

Frankly, I think getting off in public over the fact you married a hot, famous woman is kind of rude. Why couldn't Aronofsky and Weisz celebrate their love by doing what everyone else does and film themselves having sex?

Mid-afternoon snorkel at Gordons Bay. Loads of fish, including a solitary blue groper, thousands of the usual stripey little fellers, a school of thin, long-nosed silver ones (swordfish?) swimming just under the surface. The water was quite pleasant once in, though staying in is getting harder. Time to get out the wetsuit, methinks.

The Book of Revelation

Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward: All the President's Men

The book which, while preceding the movie, was apparently written because of it. Again, the irritation is that it focuses on the authors' part of the story, and suddenly stops when things get really weird (p331, five pages to go):

On Saturday the 14th, Woodward received a phone call at home from a senior memeber of the [Senate] committee's investigative staff. "Congratulations," he said. "We interviewed Butterfield. He told the whole story."
What whole story?
"Nixon bugged himself."

I would have preferred the narrative to be situated in history a bit better, such as by clueing us into other events in the U.S. by providing some correlative newspaper headlines.

True Romance

Darlinghurst Theatre: City for Sale

With Sarah. A flash-in-the-pan script, saved by some great actors. The plot ambled along in a somewhat predictable fashion, with the requisite double, triple twist and a half-pike. The NSW State Government has been replaced by a mortgage board and the citizenry is stratified according to their real estate interests in a semi-articulated spaghetti of health insurance and voting rights. Marrickville is now part of Balmain, just "several stone throws" from the harbour. Melbourne has, of course, managed to retain its social democracy and is otherwise the usual cliché of itself.

Sydney has supposedly gone bonkers over this play, and while it is a sharper comedy than Sold, it comes at the cost of being blandly impersonal. The characters, while amusing and well played, are all scumsucking bottom feeders.

Mid-afternoon swim at a flat-as-I've-ever-seen-it Coogee. It was quite cool on the promenade while I was waiting for Lev.

Noise

At the Verona in the early evening. There seem to be a gazillion movies with this name.

Early afternoon paddle at Gordons Bay. The beautiful weather continues.

The Thaw at the The Pitz.

With mrak. Here's the flyer. I somehow enjoyed their set more than last time, though the other bands left me cold.

Pymble Players: Travelling North.

Trekked up to Gordon/Pymble, mrak territory, who had the good sense to be in Newtown. The second-hand bookshop there is a real trove of Australiana, and Gordon Thai is not terrible for a non-inner-city Thai, albeit not somewhere one can rock up and expect to get a table without a booking.

What drug me up here was a production of David Williamson's venerable Travelling North, purportedly one of his best. I still haven't seen the movie, featuring Graham Kennedy, much to my chagrin.

This production, being community theatre, was a bit uneven but of high standard. The dialogue was quite amusing, and great use was made of the large fixed set. The play itself has mildly dated, with some cultural referents likely to be missed by people born around that time, who aren't politics junkies.

Mid-afternoon dip at Gordons Bay. Quite warm in and out of the water, very sunny and clear.

Early afternoon snorkel with mrak and Deb at Balmoral. Absolutely perfect day for it, apart from some fairly cloudy harbour water.

NUTS: The Festival of Light and Dark.

Specifically, Brecht's How Much is Your Iron? and Woody Allen's God: A Play. The Brecht play left me a bit cold, which was perhaps the intention. It smacked of the classically unsettling First they came... poem.

The night definitely belonged to Allen's raucously irreverent play, with the first third being so chaotic that one can barely draw breath between such gags as:

ACTOR: You idiot, you're fictional, she's Jewish - you know what the children will be like?

By the time the chorus issue the instruction:

CHORUS: Let's go, Phidipides, the play is bogging down.

the play has indeed bogged down and become quite difficult to follow, which was probably intentional. Heck, it was all intentional; hassling the audience, that's a bit cheap... until you realise they're all plants, every last one of them.

Again, it's a shame NUTS doesn't run this one for longer to larger audiences.

Total Recall

Clive Hamilton and Sarah Maddison: Silencing Dissent: How the Australian government is controlling public opinion and stifling debate.

I finally finished reading this book, so long after the book launch. In many ways I found it unsurprising and somewhat pointless; it catalogues and sometimes adds to the vast piles of evidence that the current government is a mendacious, insecure mob of control freaks. I can't imagine anyone who doesn't already suspect that will read this text, and so I have to wonder what the target audience was imagined to be. The only things I found novel were the instances of modern-day heroism in the public service, and even those couldn't keep me awake. (I mostly read it after midnight.)

One thing that struck me as less than helpful was the stridently bare ideology in this potted take on public choice (p32, Dissent in Australia, Clive Hamilton and Sarah Maddison):

At a deeper level, the revisionist view of democracy advanced by the Howard Government rests upon a particular belief about human nature. This view considers that it is normal and natural for people to be the self-interested 'rational maximisers' known as homo economicus in the economics textbooks. In this view human beings are understood to be 'fundamentally acquisitive creatures' for whom 'consumption and acquisition are the means to happiness'. The purpose of society, then, is 'to provide the secure space in which these naturally self-interested individuals are left free to discover and pursue their own (basically material) happiness'. This is hardly a modern view; the idea of government as being structured around the self-interested individual dates back to Hobbes and Locke. In the modern variation — known as rational choice theory, and its offspring, public choice theory — citizens are regarded as having little concern with democratic participation unless it is in their own material interests. In turn the model of government designed to support the activities of the 'instrumentally rational egoist' is a 'minimal democracy' that can at best provide 'few safeguards against tyranny'.

Offered up to support the quotes are Australian Politics (Emy and Hughes) and Deliberative Democracy and Beyond (Dryzek, what a great name). Me, all I've got is Wikipedia and a smattering of Amartya Sen's work. While I agree that taking any of these theories to be normative might lead one to think their conclusions are profoundly distasteful, the mostly negative mathematical results are enough to convince me that they're still working on the foundations. Rationality here is just the set of extra assumptions needed to make the model tractable, and it clearly is a poor approximation of human behaviour. No surprise that the hot new trend has a strongly psychological flavour.

Still, this paragraph does make a good point (by example) in conflating the limitations of the models with their supposed support for a highly artificial set of desiderata, something I'm sure the political public choice theorists encourage. Take, for example, Jane S. Shaw's overview of this discipline for The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics:

One of the chief underpinnings of public choice theory is the lack of incentives for voters to monitor government effectively. Anthony Downs, in one of the earliest public choice books, An Economic Theory of Democracy, pointed out that the voter is largely ignorant of political issues and that this ignorance is rational. Even though the result of an election may be very important, an individual's vote rarely decides an election. Thus, the direct impact of casting a well-informed vote is almost nil; the voter has virtually no chance to determine the outcome of the election. So spending time following the issues is not personally worthwhile for the voter. Evidence for this claim is found in the fact that public opinion polls consistently find that less than half of all voting-age Americans can name their own congressional representative.
Public choice economists point out that this incentive to be ignorant is rare in the private sector. Someone who buys a car typically wants to be well informed about the car he or she selects. That is because the car buyer's choice is decisive — he or she pays only for the one chosen. If the choice is wise, the buyer will benefit; if it is unwise, the buyer will suffer directly. Voting lacks that kind of direct result. Therefore, most voters are largely ignorant about the positions of the people for whom they vote. Except for a few highly publicized issues, they do not pay a lot of attention to what legislative bodies do, and even when they do pay attention, they have little incentive to gain the background knowledge and analytic skill needed to understand the issues.
Public choice economists also examine the actions of legislators. Although legislators are expected to pursue the "public interest," they make decisions on how to use other people's resources, not their own. Furthermore, these resources must be provided by taxpayers and by those hurt by regulations whether they want to provide them or not. Politicians may intend to spend taxpayer money wisely. Efficient decisions, however, will neither save their own money nor give them any proportion of the wealth they save for citizens. There is no direct reward for fighting powerful interest groups in order to confer benefits on a public that is not even aware of the benefits or of who conferred them. Thus, the incentives for good management in the public interest are weak. In contrast, interest groups are organized by people with very strong gains to be made from governmental action. They provide politicians with campaign funds and campaign workers. In return they receive at least the "ear" of the politician and often gain support for their goals.

I guess you can see where that is going. I find the use of rationality here persausive, even if the portrayal of private enterprise is overly narrow and rose-tinted; my experience of corporate Australia is that the meat is not lean, and most are awestruck by the Enron fiasco. And yet there is an alternative to the right-wing minimalist (or absent) government: a more participatory democracy, a path that the Swiss have taken without apparent catastrophe. As Australia's infrastructure crumbles (specifically universities and urban transport, at least in Sydney), the populace will have no choice but to turn away from the high-def plasma for long enough to make their opinions felt.

None of this is to say the book shouldn't be read, indignation raised, action taken, but when the revolution comes I doubt anyone will say this is what got them off their arse. David Marr wrote an upbeat review for the Smage, though his closing observations are similar to mine:

The trouble is, the nation seems to care little about the successes or the failures in Canberra's long war against information. "While Australia has been transformed," Manne writes, "large parts of the nation have seemed to be asleep."

I have to say, bleakly, that these days this is only rational.

Late afternoon swim at Coogee. The days are getting quite short. Quite a few people there, pleasant water and cold sand, classic dumpers.

New Theatre: Life After George.

Once again I headed over to New Theatre for their free-for-the-unwaged-and-students showing of their latest production, this time being Life After George. Apparently this play dates from the late 90s, and partakes in a lot of the "we're rooned" yelping that surrounded the universities at that time. (Now I think most are (or have) resigned to just waiting for a change of government.) The playwright, Hannie Rayson, is more recently famous for biting the hand that starves in Two Brothers.

The play itself is stridently Eurocentric, with a backdrop of the modern and post-modern intellectual political fashions from Oxford, to 1968 Paris, to ... Melbourne, pre Dame Edna. The ambit is to flashback through Professor George's life, using the four women central to it to represent each of the eras in which he operated. Melbourne (Uni) is a hothouse of sex and dissent, with Sydney mentioned only as somewhere to dispose of one's children (by adoption, in this case).

As far as production goes, the set is of the minimalist unvarying type symptomatic of independent theatre. As a lot of the play is speechifying, the audience is often looking back over their shoulders wondering who's being talked to.

Little Children

The Maladies, Hopetoun Hotel.

Just like old times, now that mrak's back in town, with Jen, Jon, Mad, Deb. They've still got a mailing list but there's no CD in sight. Spencer P. Jones headlined, but we mostly absented ourselves during his set. Half-watched the Swans dismantle Melbourne at the SCG on the tube.

The Italian

At the Orpheum in the early afternoon, another grey-power meeting. I've been watching a lot of Russian culture recently, though this reminded me more of Lilja 4-ever.

Belvoir Downstairs: Anna in the Tropics.

Cheapie Tuesday with Jen. Apparently there was no upstairs gig, and so the place felt a bit empty. Zoe Carides was as gorgeous as ever.

The Namesake

At the Verona. As Jacob once observed, I wish I'd read Gogol's The Overcoat before watching this movie, and it, of course, requires me to read it now. The lead actress is fantastic and I would have liked to know more about the father, who comes across as abstracted yet human, but is incompletely drawn.

Swim at Gordons Bay. Very pleasant weather for late April.

Wall Street

Rife with cliché, the editing of this movie was a mite strange, and the dialogue transiently clunky. Gordon Gekko is pure stereotype, the plot too weirdly redemptive. I was a bit perplexed by his assertion:

That's the thing about WASPs, they love animals, can't stand people.

Mid-afternoon swim at Coogee.

Awareness creeps into drug politics.

Today:

Police Commissioner Ken Moroney says more responsibility needs to be taken for the problems caused by binge drinking.
"I've made no secret of my feelings of the role of alcohol in anti-social behaviour, hooliganism and crime in all of its manifestations," he said.
"I believe it is a greater scourge than the illicit drug problem."

Seven years ago:

"It was quite amazing," a senior Bondi police officer told the Herald after Sydney's millennium celebrations in 2000, one of the most trouble-free New Year's Eves in years. "The big topic of conversation among the officers on the night was how the widespread use of ecstasy has really calmed things down. It has changed the whole scene."

(There was an incredible backlash to this observation at the time.)

The 40 Year Old Virgin

Early-afternoon swim at Gordons Bay.

Martin Amis: The Information

Another airport novel from Martin Amis. This review in the New York Times, when not summarising the plot, made me wonder if we had read the same book. I didn't think it was particularly successful apart from the as-usual excellent characterisation and turn-of-phrase that has gotten the bums on the seats in the past. The narrative moved incredibly slowly, and it appears that this dawned on the author as he flurries his way through the final section, beginning to (somewhat) tidy up the loose ends somewhere past the 400 page mark.

Stranger than Fiction

The Ice Storm

Quick morning dip with mrak at Coogee, featuring some classic shorebreaking dumpers.

Félix Lajkó: Félix Lajkó, Hetedik, Vox Naturalis.

Passion Discs, the only purveyor of Félix Lajkó CDs on the web accessible to a monolingual English speaker, was selling these three and so it was these three I bought. I can highly recommend their service, with only six days elapsing between placing the order and the arrival of it in Randwick, half a world away. Perhaps this has something to do with the much-maligned Royal Mail providing a self-stamping service.

The music itself is very interesting, leading me away from the grottiness of the Dirty Three towards the classical folk of the Balkan region. I envy those in London who'll get to see him play at All Tomorrow's Parties, along with Grinderman, Nick Cave, the Dirty Three, etc. etc. etc.

I note, for the benefit of those lucky enough to be here for it, that the Dirty Three are touring Australia in August.

Swim at a quite flat Bondi with mrak in the mid-afternoon.

The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith

Reign Over Me

At the brand-spanking Dendy in Civic with Dave.

Priceless

With Dave and Luke in an intermission to moving house.

The Spook

The first NUTS production I've seen in ages, at Studio 1. Some excellent acting by Tom Petty and Lara Kerestes as Greek migrants, and good work from the leads as well. The set was the usual NUTS-minimalist effort.

The play itself was written by Melissa Reeves and appears to have been performed in Melbourne and at Belvoir a few years ago. It's a shame NUTS has such short runs on its productions.

Love's Triumph at the Darlinghurst Theatre.

With Jen. In the style of a Shakespearean farce, a plethora of storylines tidily resolved in the overlong climax-denouement. The dialogue was good, the acting mostly excellent, and the sets quite effective.

The Smage review is on the money.

Quick dip at an incredibly flat Coogee. The tsunami warning was a bit of a furphy.

The Lives of Others

Mid-afternoon at the Academy Twin, at what appeared to be a grey-power meeting. I was riveted for almost all of it, modulo the Lolita plot device near the two-thirds mark. The acting is top-notch, the direction classical.

Early-afternoon paddle at Gordons Bay. Some people were trying to sun bathe in a fairly strong and not too warm easterly.

The V Festival: Jarvis Cocker, Beck, The Pixies.

A well-after-the-fact pseudo-review:

mrak was back from overseas, and I had no trouble meeting up with him, Mad and her brother Richard out the front of the Coopers bandwidth-limited boozer. He looked about the same, so either the scars have healed or the Qatari know where the soft flesh is. Ralf showed up a bit later on, but I had less (actually no) success getting organised with Peodair.

It was Paris Hilton clone city, and I was forced to acknowledge the pernicious effect she has had on sunglass fashion. Apart from outsized sunnies, loads of teenage girls sported the full get up. In the words of mrak: "come sundown, they'll be wishing they'd brought more than their underwear."

Of the three or so bands I came to see, Jarvis Cocker was the first, on the main stage. I was a bit surprised he had an hour's worth of his own material, but then he did play most of his solo album and a new (?) track. As he spent too long crapping on in the first half of his set he had to gun through the last half playing songs back-to-back. For mine it was much the same as listening to his CD in the car with a Jumpin'-Jarvis swinging from the mirror while inching forward in Sydney traffic. Whatever Pulp brought to the story was missing here.

We missed the Rapture (?) as the schedule had slipped too far for them to set up by the time we wanted to be elsewhere. Though Beck opened brilliantly with his classic Devil's Haircut and the Team America marionettes sure were cute, his set soon went to shit as his vocals died. The flu, he claimed. I was saddened by the much-abbreviated Loser and could only just make out his tributary Wave of Mutilation from the beer tent.

After forty minutes in a generally amiable mosh, ten rows from the speaker stack, the main act, The Pixies: Throughout Black Francis was wearing his "I never expected to be playing Wave of Mutilation at age 41" expression, though he was gracious in accepting the crowd's adulation. In contrast the bass player and drummer wore ecstatic grins, as if they hadn't had a meal ticket during the ten-year hiatus. (More generously it was clear they were getting off on the crowd getting off on their signature rhythms, which is just as it should be.)

The mosh was quite peaceful apart from a couple of blokes trying to get a rise out of someone, anyone. mrak had been hanging out for Gigantic, with which they closed their encore. I was happy to hear Debaser, though it seemed somehow quietened, perhaps a lack of dynamics or not enough bass. I may have been deaf by then. There were two versions of Wave of Mutilation, slow and album-speed.

As Peodair said, it was pure necrophilia.