Etran Finatawa

Listening to Etran Finatawa...feeling tremendous

How to dance to dubstep

Jean Claude has got the moves

Australian of the Year

I was reading through the list of nominees for Australian of the Year awards and I came across the biography of Adelaide-based radio presenter Peter Goers. Wanting to find a little more information on Mr. Goers I, naturally, headed off to Wikipedia.
I was amazed to see that almost the whole introduction for Goers in Wikipedia had been lifted and inserted into the Australian of the Year biography:

Australian of the Year website:

"Peter Goers is an actor, director, reviewer, former academic and host of the ABC Local Radio program, The Evening Show, which broadcasts throughout South Australia and into New South Wales. His career has spanned over 35 years in the entertainment industry, across a range of different mediums including television and theatre."

Wikipedia entry:

"Peter Goers is an actor, director, reviewer, former academic and current host of the radio program The Evening Show on 891 ABC Adelaide, which broadcasts throughout South Australia and to the city of Broken Hill. His career has spanned over 35 years in the entertainment industry across a range of different mediums and formats including television, print, radio and theatre, and he is frequently engaged as a guest speaker."

Come on, is it that hard to put it in your own words? If you're going to be lazy then at least put it in quotation marks!

Australia Day

HAPPY COLONISATION DAY!

Extinct Animal of the Week X

Aurochs

"The aurochs or urus (Bos primigenius), the ancestor of domestic cattle, was a type of huge wild cattle which inhabited Europe, Asia and North Africa, but is now extinct; it survived in Europe until 1627."


This will probably be the last 'Extinct Animal of the Week' post for a while. To finish things off here's footage of the last known Tasmanian Tiger (Thylacine) to have existed:

'Riot' photo shoot

The gringos from Vice magazine headed out to the student protests in London recently to take photographs for a fashion shoot. What a tremendous idea.

'RIOT GIRLS, LITERALLY'

The high lonesome sound

When I get weary of jazz or sick of classical or just plain tired of indie, I sometimes find myself turning to bluegrass and American folk. That's what I've been doing for the last several days anyway, humming 'Blue Moon of Kentucky', considering a second-hand purchase of a guitar and seeking out videos of The Stanley Brothers. Heck, I'm even watching a documentary about the Appalachian mountains. Here's a little taste for you:

I came across this splendid voice while I was still in high school I think. Roscoe Holcomb knows what real music is; it's got nothing to do with record sales or pleasing anyone, it's about sitting on your Kentucky porch, plucking the banjo and washing it down with a jar of moonshine. This is my favourite Holcomb number:




Speaking of moonshine, here's a Stanley Brothers piece. The vocals are so pure and clean - the 'high lonesome sound' which Holcomb possessed - and I've been listen to this song on repeat for a while now. 'I'll hush up my mug if you fill up my jug with that good ole mountain dew!'

Extinct Animal of the Week IX

Caribbean Monk Seal

"The Caribbean Monk Seal or West Indian Monk Seal (Monachus tropicalis) is an extinct species of seal. It is the only seal ever known to be native to the Caribbean sea and the Gulf of Mexico."

Planes, Trains, Automobiles and Ray Charles

Last night I watched the 1987 film 'Planes, Trains & Automobiles'. When I was growing up we had a VHS copy of this at home and I watched it numerous times, enamoured with John Candy's character and getting a strange sense of 1980's roadhouse Americana. Anyway, whenever I think of this film I'm immediately reminded of this tremendous scene:

Line-o

'Handball Nation'

dunce, jack, queen, king, line-o, grubber, grass-cutter, serve, bitumen, re-starts, body-lobs (grrrrrrrrrrr).....sweet sweet handball, probably the best game ever invented for the schoolyard.

oh oh ohhh...remember when you were late out to lunch and didn't get squares and handball-on-the-wall had to suffice??

Milo and Otis

I watched The Adventures of Milo and Otis last night for the first time since I was quite young. You know sometimes when you have wonderful memories of a childhood film and then when you re-watch it in adulthood those memories are shattered? Well....they were just reinforced with this film :)

"Just let your heart lead and your feet will follow, and we'll bound and leap like a gentle breeze. Bound and leap like a zephyr set free. Bound, and, of course, leap." - Deer

Extinct Animal of the Week VIII

Bulldog Rat

"The Bulldog Rat (Rattus nativitatis) was a species of rat endemic to the Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. The rats lived on the higher hills and denser forests of the island."

Marina Oswald Porter

During my morning perusing of the internet I was reading about Lee Harvey Oswald (as you do). I hadn't realised he had travelled to the USSR for a while, and married this lovely young pharmacy student...Marina Nikolayevna Prusakova (Марина Николаевна Прусакова).

I wonder what she's up to these days...I doubt she's a pharmacist.

out out out

I need to get rid of some energy

wow indeed...

this hasn't happened to my roof yet, but i do have icicles of monumental proportions hanging above my doorway (i mean BIG)