Friday, February 25, 2011

MON THE BIFFIN' BIFF!!!

Congrats to my kids' favourite band, the mighty Biffy Clyro, for their win for Best Live Band at the Shockwaves NME 2011 Awards, beating out Muse, whom they supported on their Aussie tour last year (despite the fact the Biff RAWK and Muse BUYTE).
Which reminds me - I recently found this clip of them playing live in front of a select audience from a great Youtube channel - SolidSnake00. Starts with the legendary song 9/15ths.
Get into it:




Just found out their pick for "Godlike Genius" is Bill Hicks, too.
Legends.
PS Where are my manners? This is their youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/biffyclyro.
PPS Might I suggest another live one, say "Living is a Problem because everything dies"? Enjoy:


Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Allow me to discrimonstrate

I wrote a little while ago that the Brumby Government had started to stink up the place quite a bit, and so it was not much of a surprise that they got booted out.
I also wrote that I didn't exactly have high hopes for Baillieu.
Well, he's only been in power for a few months, but things are already looking very dicey with this Victorian Government.
Exhibit B (this was Exhibit A): Rachel Ball, director of policy and campaigns at the Human Rights Law Resource Centre, recently wrote in "Baillieu promised a fairer Victoria, but it looks like the opposite" that the State Government has stated it will scrap measures in Victoria's Equal Opportunity Act that are designed to actively promote equality, including stripping powers from the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission, and also "expand the ''permanent exceptions'' that give religious groups and entities - including those that provide public services using public money - a free licence to discriminate against de facto couples, gays, lesbians and single mums, among others."
Why do they even need to go there? Aren't there more pressing concerns than allowing men in dresses to discriminate against single mothers on the basis of "a book of stories inscribed by an itinerant Middle Eastern shepherd many millennia ago" (with thanks to The Onion for that quote*).
I think the philosophy of this commenter ("Embe") had a simple eloquence: "I say, take away all tax payer funding from these organisations and then they can discriminate to their intolerant hearts content. If they take our secular money they should follow our secular inclusive rules."
Hear, hear, Mr Embe.
And boo, hiss, Mr Baillieu. My kickboot is getting itchy. I think it wants to connect with your behind region...
* Perhaps I'm being facetious, since the Bible "deals with all kinds of germane topics, from what meats one should not eat due to mankind's lack of refrigeration technology to the pre-Iron Age accounts of territorial disputes affecting a certain area of the Fertile Crescent."

Friday, February 11, 2011

I'd rather be watching TV

The rilestar does heart the teevs, and these are a few of his more public rantings lately.
First, in relation to The Age article "All just a little bit tasteless", which states the bleeding and punning obvious by saying: "Despite both being based around food, The Biggest Loser lacks taste and My Kitchen Rules has no flavour", rilestar said:
"I have never watched a single one of these games shows (calling them "Reality TV" I think is giving them more credibility than they deserve), including Big Brother, Survivor, et al, apart from a few episodes of The Amazing Race, which was actually very entertaining. But otherwise I generally stick to quality scripted dramas and comedies...and dramedies...stuff like Entourage, 30 Rock, Deadwood and Community.
I have no great desire to watch boring people being boring. Leave that to other boring people.
Plus I'm not fat."
Speaking of fat people, another contributor, Tara, said "To anyone overweight who is reading this, may you nourish yourself with love and the food that benefits your body." By which I assume she means "Hey fat people: eat a carrot." Harsh! (her words, not mine)
Another article, "Goodbye Daily Show, we hardly knew you", reports that ABC2 no longer has the rights to broadcast Rant faves The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. The rilestar had been wondering what had happened to them, as they were good back-ups in case the old iQ failed to record either or both for whatever reason, and so also contributed to the discussion (swimming against the tide of "Foxtel sucks, I download everything"):
"It seems I'm one of the few (or the only person?) who signed up to Foxtel just to watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report (about 5 or 6 years ago). Love 'em both - also flew to Washington last year for the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, so paying for Foxtel is not that big a leap. There's lots of good stuff on Foxtel though, like Louie and the latest episodes of Entourage (just a little late), so I'm happy with it (though was wavering a bit last year when TDS and TCR were on ABC2 and the other networks seemed to be getting their acts together on their alternative channels - not wavering any more). Now my bugbear is Channel Go! not showing Community any more - tempted to jump on Channel BitTorrent for the first time ever, just to get my fix of the funniest show not currently on TV..."
And speaking of Community, rilestar also waded into the debate regarding "Where did all the intelligent TV go?", in particular, the many comments along the lines of "All US shows are crap":
"To the US-haters, a lot of my current favourite TV shows are American: Community, 30 Rock, The Office, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Louie, Entourage, Modern Family, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, and that's just the comedies. Great dramas include Deadwood, Lost, The Sopranos, Mad Men and Breaking Bad (just to name a few). Not to mention Seinfeld!
Anyone who thinks all American TV is like Two and a Half Men really needs to get out more. By which, I mean, they should stay in more.
But to respond to the point being made by Mike (who also mentioned many of the above shows), I agree that the Australian commercial networks really do seem to think that Australians can't handle quality TV (though maybe their market researchers only interview ignorant people like the US-haters).
Personally, I rely on Foxtel's iQ taping all my faves and watching them at my leisure, supported by iView, etc. I like my TV.
But here's a message for GO!: Start broadcasting Community again! Funniest show not currently on TV."
Yeah. The rilestar's not afraid to re-use the same line, time and time (and time) again*.

PS Continuing the bad news, The White Stripes also announced they were breaking up. The writer in this article talked about the first time he saw them in 2001, and the rilestar responded with an anti-rant:
"I was also blown away by their cover of Jolene the first time I saw them - on the second stage at the Corner Hotel supporting Six Ft Hick (probably 9 or 10 years ago, as well). Much as I like the Hicks, I couldn't believe that this band was supporting them. And obviously the rest of the world (at least, the part that rocks out) went on to love them, too. Vale, White Stripes. Long live the Dead Weather."
Were you at that gig, too**? Let me know!

* A Strangelove song, I think...
* Saying this makes this seem like a professional blog. I realise that the chances of someone both being at that gig AND reading this are infinitesimally small. Actually, just the chances of someone reading this are infinitesimally small...

Thursday, February 10, 2011

All Liars are Liars

I hate to say "I hate to say I told you so", but: 'Madden attended meeting over Hotel Windsor sham'
I told you I hate to say I hate to say I told you so.

Monday, February 7, 2011

Better than The Phantom Menace

I don't know if it's because I watched this at least 10 times in a row with my kids on the weekend, or if I'm just playing too much of The Force Unleashed, but this is frickin' golden:

Apparently it's now been played during an event known as the "SuperBowl"*, but I credit @DamonLindelof with giving us the heads-up last week. Thanks, DL**!
* Of course, I know what the SuperBowl is, even if I don't understand it. Is "Third and Down" a thing?
** Based purely on initials, Damon Lindelof is clearly the Bizarro Larry David.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Battlefield Essendon

I read an article yesterday about my old friend Madden the Clown and Roddie Doyle attending the opening of a new Church of Scientology building in Essendon. Apparently, Madden is quoted as saying: ''You have set the standard for the community with your restoration of this building and with your social programs - an example for others to follow''.
He's such a character!
But I loved this quote further down:
"The church was founded by science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, who declared that the galactic dictator Xenu dumped millions of corpses in volcanoes on Earth 75 million years ago and blew them up with 17 hydrogen bombs. The souls, or ''thetans'', of the dead were contaminated and in turn contaminated humans, who can be cleansed only by Scientology."
It reminded me of a ranty book review I'd started a while ago after reading the hilarious-for-all-wrong-reasons Battlefield Earth a while ago. I actually read it for scientific purposes - to see whether this Lafayette Ronald Hubbard guy was for real, or more like a misunderstood Sacha Baron Cohen creation, like Borat. Y'know - just saying lots of crazy shit and seeing if anyone picked up that he was joking.
I'd always seen his books around (I had even accepted free entry to the "L. Ron Hubbard Life Exhibition" in Hollywood once when backpacking and thus very poor), and so when the opportunity arose to borrow Battlefield Earth
from the library, I took it.
For those of you who don't know it (a) good on you, and (b) it's about an alien race that enslaves humanity in year 3000, and the fight against them (particularly by the "hero" - Jonnie Goodboy Tyler. Yes, that's the name he went with).
I was predictably shocked and stunned by what I read.
At the sheer badness of it.
For one thing, the language he uses is laughable. The bad guys, called "Psychlos",
eat “goo-food”, breathe “breathe-gas”, and drink “kerbango”.
Points for imagination: zero.
Another example of extraordinary writing can be found right at the beginning, on
page 4, when one of the Psychlos insults another saying ”You’re as crazy as a nebula of crap.”
Can I remind everyone that this was written AFTER Star Wars had come out?
The following paragraph from
page 414 was so terrible, I just had to write it down - it's word for word, no typos:
“Chrissie had been spotted by the Scots, and the news earlier rumored to that effect was now confirmed as she went about helping the parson collect wounded Scots on a flatbed that had been gotten running.”
And of course, it contains the propaganda. The following describes a doctor operating on a Psychlo brain:
“MacKendrick saw their reaction. “Nothing new in this. Just electrical impulses approximating brain commands. Some man-scientist did this maybe thirteen hundred years ago and thought he’d found the secret of all thought and made up a cult about it called ‘psychology’. Forgotten now. It wasn’t the secret of thought; it was just the mechanics of bodies. They started with frogs. I’m cataloging this body’s communication channels, that’s all.””
Relevance? Zero.
It even gets some shameless self-congratulatory delusion in there, stating towards the end that after the humans won, one of the characters “wrote a book: The Jonnie Goodboy Tyler I knew, or The Conqueror of Psychlo, Pride of the Scottish Nation. It was not as good as this book, for it was intended for semiliterate people” (page 1049 - yes, that's one THOUSAND and forty nine pages of this!)
In fact, it appears El Ronnie was particularly adept at the self-congratulation. According to his bio (in the book, though I should point out there's a possibility it's not factually correct...or worse) he was "in addition to a writer (with a career spanning more than half a century of intense literary achievement and creative influence), an explorer, ethnologist, mariner and pilot, filmmaker and photographer, philosopher and educator, composer and musician. He broke his first bronc and became the blood brother of a Blackfeet Indian medicine man by age six. In 1927, when he was 16, he traveled to a still remote Asia…"
Ahhhh! I can't do this any more, so I'll just let him finish off, with his preface to the so-called "book":
“To show that science fiction is not science fiction because of a particular kind of plot, this novel contains practically every type of story there is – detective, spy, adventure, western, love, air war, you name it. All except fantasy; there is none of that. The term “science” also includes economics and sociology and medicine where these are related to material things. So they’re in here, too.
“In writing for magazines, the editors (because of magazine format) force one to write to exact lengths. I was always able to do that – it is kind of a knack. But this time I decided not to cut everything out and to just roll her as she rolled, so long as the pace kept up. So I may have wound up writing the biggest sf novel ever in terms of length. The experts – and there are lots of them to do so – can verify whether this is so…
“And as an old pro I assure that it is pure science fiction. No fantasy. Right on the rails of the genre. Science is for people. And so is science fiction.”
“Ready?
“Stand by.
“Blast off!”
And now you want to read it.