Thursday, May 26, 2005
Fine More romance novel cover 're-mixes', courtesy of Longmire. [via boing boing] # | Wednesday, May 11, 2005
The Brunettes - just what do the Americans make of them? Auckland popsters The Brunettes are currently touring the USA, supporting indie-darlings-of-the-moment The Shins.Anyway, in my efforts to dig out some reviews for adding to the NoiZyland archives, I found heaps of blog reviews and comments on the band. I thought I'd dump the links here, as a reminder to myself to do it properly later, and also as a way for everyone to get a quick feel of just what the 'average' american makes of the seven-piece, instrument-swapping, mask-wearing onstage extravaganza that is The Brunettes. UPDATE - 19 May. Added some more reviews, and here's some links to bass player James's tour diary over at the NZ Herald. James' Tour Diary 24 April 2005 - Playing in the Ivy League 01 May 2005 - Brazen advice from the locals in the city that never sleeps 07 May 2005 - Grease is the word 15 May 2005 - Hi, is Wayne home? 21 May 2005 - Strange how it feels like home # | Monday, May 09, 2005
It's The Muppet Show - yeaaaaaah!One of Henson's big plans was to try to reunite the Beatles through the show. Paul and Ringo were up for it, apparently, but John was killed - although, thankfully, not by Statler and Waldorf - before the scheme came to fruition.Wow, how cool would that have been? I was a big fan of the Muppets in my younger days - it was one of the few TV shows the whole family could sit around and enjoy together. So it is with much trepidation that I consider the forthcoming resurrection of the show by Disney, who have already undermined my love of Winnie the Pooh with any number of terrible TV shows and direct-to-video travesties. The Times is also worried, and has the full story here, as well as a lot of background on the original Muppets show, from which I learnt a few new things. I didn't know that it was shot in the UK, for example. Or that Jim Henson and his crew were such acid and pot-heads (although, in hindsight...). Or that Dr Bunsen Honeydew was created in the image of Lew Grade, the ATV boss who convinced Henson to move his production to the UK. # | Friday, May 06, 2005
Anon is full of bullThis is the best blog comment I've seen in ages (and is made better if seen in context)... If Tamihere left his canaryFrom Aaron Bhatnagar's post on the John Tamihere cat abandonment story. # |
Heaven forbid they should get hurt
"It's in our country's interests to find those who would do harm to us and get them out of harm's way." - George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., April 28, 2005.Thanks to David Slack over at PublicAddress for making me aware of Slate's excellent 'Bushisms' archive. As the Slate site states: 'Updated Frequently!' # | Tuesday, May 03, 2005
American IntelligenceAh, the dangerous world of online document publishing.The unwitting culprits this time are the Pentagon, whose report into the death of the Italian secret agent The report outlines the events surrounding the death of Carpani, who had just liberated Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena from her Iraqi kidnappers, but who was subsequently shot dead by American soldiers as their car approached a checkpoint on the way to Baghdad airport. A lot of the report has been 'blacked out' with a digital black marker. Unfortunately for the Pentagon, whoever actually published the document forgot to turn on some of the more simple document protection measures available with Adobe Acrobat, thus making it possible to render the hidden text visible via a simple cut and paste into something like Word or Notepad. Names, places and times - all revealed at the flick of a key-stroke. More details, and some debate over the rights and wrongs of actually publishing the 'confidential' details, can be found on German blogger Vowe's website. (The security oversight, incidentally, was initially discovered by an Italian blogger - his original post, in Italian, isn't showing up correctly on his archive page, but, at the time of writing, was still available on his homepage. If you can read Italian, of course). [via boing boing] # | Monday, May 02, 2005
The Straitjacket Fits @ Bodega, 30 April 2005 Damian over at Cracker nails it on the head when he observes that......to a greater or lesser extent, no-one knows at least half of the lyrics to your average Straitjacket Fits song.This truth was hammered home to me last week, shortly before I was to attend the long-awaited reunion gig by my Favourite NZ Band Ever down at Bodega. My wife asked me how 'She Speeds' goes, and myself and another friend, die-hard Fits fans it has to be said, launched into this rendition (with a nod to DC again, for his own inspired attempts at transliteration)... She Speeeeeds.In 'reality', it's actually this... She speedsGreat stuff, whether you can understand it or not. Funnily enough, at the Wellington gig I attended, the (supposed) object of desire who inspired this song was standing but three feet to my right - with her partner. She was beaming. He was, well, beaming actually. Shayne seems to bring out pure sexual desire in virtually everyone it seems. I think it's the lips, myself. Anyway, since I read and re-read the lyrics to the Melt album (from the cassette inlay! I owned it on cassette!) religiously during my early 20s, I was at least au fait when songs of that album were played (of which there were a few). I tried my best, in fact, to supply the Broughy harmony parts, only to be (thankfully) drowned out by the band itself and the more harmonically gifted members of the audience. The weird thing was, even when there were no harmony parts being sung (Mark Petersen, after some early mic problems, eventually managed to jump in and supply a good swag of them), I could still hear them, so hard-wired into my brain they must be. A great night. A big "Cheers bro" to all those involved. # | |
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