A Truant officers “catch” of the very near future!

I guess you know you are really getting old and (I’d say grumpy..but its probably
copyrighted or something) … when the marauding hoards of school holidaying little
people begin to annoy you.  Of course if you are a parent its a wonderful time for
really bonding with the youngsters screaming or playing loud music throughout the
normally calm house!

Its only us confirmed old bachelor’s who are just plain driven insane by mega-packed
buses, long queues and what seems to just be noise, noise, noise in the normally
comfortably moderately less stressful world around us. Then there’s the sheer volume
of these Lilliputians –  their everywhere en masse swearing and spitting at us older
people (or is it the other way around..) chewing gum and generally worshipping
Satan etc.

Now of course if I was twenty years younger I’d be telling myself to “get … you old
fart”, but as their is little other benefit to getting older I think its only fair that I make
use of the make-life-miserable-for-young-people right afforded to me and bring some
sanity back to our shopping centres and every other public area.

What I am proposing is not unreasonable: a couple of days off for the kiddies just
before Christmas day, then straight back to school a few days after. We could
gradually move school attendance up to just the day off for Xmas and if we really
wanted the world to ourselves, parental units could just drop the pressies off at
school during play lunch Xmas day. Truant Officers could be given powers of
immediate arrest and real hand cuffs.

Of course it would be hard to convince the young that this curbing of the School Hols
was a great idea, so we could trick them into attending 365 days of school with clever
incentives: yes you will get a new iPhone..but you have to read every single book first!

Yes Xmas is all very commercial. I think a nice well thought out card with a few lines says more…just as long as everyone else buys me wildly expensive presents of course.

True to form the Xmas Bunny just in time for fathers day is once again upon us
plugging the festive season in October. Of course Xmas day itself is approximately
two whole months away yet we get this tinsel and happiness right on cue earlier and
earlier in the year.

Now I have no real problem with Xmas (call it “coping with Family Day” myself) and
I’m not getting all “Bah Humbuggy”, but Mid October is hardly the start of the “Festive
Season”. It may be the start of the “please buy more and put it on Your credit cards, its
ok ‘cos its for Xmas” season, but that’s about it.

Now I have a solution to this dilemma, we could just agree every day is Xmas 365 days
a year (here at Radio Sydney we have a channel like that!). Everyone would of course
need plastic trees that could weather the year and we’d all have to scale down the
presents we give as on a per day basis it would get very expensive. However despite
these few minor problems with a few Prozac’s in everyone’s morning coffee every day
could be Xmas morning.

Santa would lose the weight with all the extra lugging and put on more staff so it would
create more jobs, all in all a  win win. The only downside of course would be, with every
day Xmas day, and Xmas day a national holiday, not a lot of work would actually get
done. Still as its Xmas the mountains of rat-infested Xmas wrapping and spoiled food
That could feed an Ethiopian family for a year etc. would not matter with sanitation
engineers enjoying Xmas at home with their families. After all its the season of
happiness and the decline of Western civilization is a minor thing to be worrying about
when your opening presents and singing Xmas carols. When the power goes off we
could just use candles..

Unfortunately NOT an iHouse (just a plain old motorised Suitcase) but the iHouse COULD look funky like this..

One of our presenters recently moved house and it reminded me of the fun and joy that
moving is…they say that moving is  stressful second only to getting a divorce. Having
moved house about 20 odd times in my life, to be honest I’d rather have the divorce!

Lets face it unless you’re a particular glutton for punishment a divorce happens only
once in your life and after all the  tears, screams, bitterness and destroying of each
others most cherished possessions the thing is done with once and for all. Ok you
might have kids to worry about..but they will grow into teenagers one day and want
to kill you anyway.

With the uncertainty of housing being the way it is these days (even buying a house
does not guarantee absolutely you will not have to up-stumps again in the near future )
its something technology developers need to be investigating. Forget about the iPhone 5
with an extra button and 0.000383 more battery life per hundred years; why not start
developing the means to fit a whole house into a suitcase. “Oh Dear its time to move
again” press a button on the suitcase and all your worldly goods furniture and all
compress themselves inside into a nice easily carried piece of luggage.

Ok there would be some teething problems (I’m sure you would need a crane to lift
the first couple of models!) but after the bugs were ironed out and we got the iHouse 4S
they’d have it worked out into something that made a real difference to moving.

Of course you could argue that some people do indeed move with a suitcase quite
regularly, in fact they live out of one..but what I am talking about is a proper house full
of furniture and all those dust gathering nick knacks that make up a persons  living
environment (you know the type of thing..op shops are full of them from deceased
estates). I’m throwing down the gauntlet to these high tech Asian countries that come
out with amazing things we never realized we needed until we had them and can’t now
live without them. Lets have the iHouse by Christmas.

Pirelli More than just..um cough

I watched an SBS show about the  Pirelli Calendar the other night and apart from the
obvious oggling and “lets make one of these for Radio Sydney” it was fascinating how
something originally put out cheaply for car mechanics’ grease-pit walls became this
amazing arty farty thing with women represented photographically as works of art. You
would think with the target market in mind that it would never have progressed beyond
the standard ‘T and ‘A  (as they say..if you don’t know what that means your too young
to know..) and there’s still plenty of that – but very tastefully done.

In fact most of it will pass the Google safe search Moderate bar and is really very good.
Being a bit of a purist where art is concerned (lets face it if you read too heavily into
things you could make a fairly convincing argument that the collected works of Hugh
Hefner are art too) it surprised me that I found a lot of it very good. Well composed and
very thought provoking. Once you get past the immediate hormonal reaction of seeing
the world’s most beautiful women strutting about ex-clothes and get to the “oh another
naked woman” stage you begin to see  a lot more.

I would guess a lot of feminists would tend to disagree with me as the calendar revolves
very much around Woman as object, not even really just the Woman herself as an
object, but often less than a human; composed into a landscape or structure like  a
building beam or sea shell. Of course Pirelli’s marketing department argue that the
calendar is all about the various ways Women can be beautiful and that Beauty is
somewhat dependant on other relationships.

Like all bodies of art of course you had the “shock artists” who really said nothing
from their work other than “look at me I am so different to everyone”; I suppose really
saying “I am an emotional vacuum with no life experience” without exactly meaning
too. I think in incestuous art cliques they call that “testing the boundaries” or
something…

I noted with amusement that Pirelli did actually appear to put its foot down one year
and demand that tires actually be shown with the models as they bankroll the calendar
to the tune of millions. Apparently tires have always been in there, just usually so
obscurely that it takes a forensic scientist with a magnifying glass to find them in the
wild and amazing pictorials. As I am not much of a car nut, unless they had told me I
would not have known Berelli or Pirelli even made tires! Not based on the calendar
stills I saw anyway. Maybe they make rubbish tires, who knows (maybe they make you
go just that bit faster), but I do know they make amazing calendars.

Fashion TV we miss all those hours staring at what we can never have..although note to models..no speaking please!

I got a letter from Foxtel the other day (hang on do they advertise with us….) telling me
heir download service has been Kuthlumped. No explanation, just we’re closing it. This
I found rather curious as I disconnected Foxtel a year or two ago!

It wasn’t their fault really, I wasn’t really chuffed about paying for a service with
advertising, but I had it connected in the full knowledge it was there. The young
beautiful and very reasonable girl that came to my door through the mists of
Bachelorhood showed me that it was for me.

To my thinking Pay TV should be about much much less advertising than free to air TV.
Maybe sneak an ad in their now and then but wherever possible put the brakes on
intrusive advertising. But in balance I liked the content they had  available  (the young
beautiful girl told me I did) and it seemed like a good deal.

I have read the “we did  a survey and 200% of people said they missed the advertising
and please could they have it back” put out by the Pay TV industry too, do they really
think Australian’s believe that?

The actual reason I ground my teeth and had Foxtel switched off was that after paying
for every movie package I could find I discovered they are required to censor movies
just like Free to air TV stations. I say “required” because I don’t blame Foxtel for this
policy, its something that was imposed on them from the dark days of the Family
First-Howard government. I don’t necessarily always want to watch the type of movie’s
that might be subjected to the censors scissors, but as a coughing, hairy, obese middle
age adult male I expect the right to choose what I do and don’t see without some
do-gooder deciding for me on the basis of the religious or social values they consider
to be the norm, usually held by a minority.

The argument of the “control everything we see and hear” brigade was always “God
won’t someone protect the children”. Hmm ok. I agree, I am very outspoken about
children and teenagers being closely supervised when accessing the Internet because
of the amount of really awful (and plain sexually misleading) stuff on there.  However
we have a morass of  parental locks and pin codes on Foxtel to just precisely “protect
the children” from harmful images. The Federal government also made it a requirement
of all new Digital set top boxes sold in Australia, that they have a parental locking
mechanism.

So there is now precisely no excuse for this arcane television censorship regime with
watershed’s and AO Modified  versions . Ok one in a hundred parents will still not
protect their children from harmful content even with this technology in place, but the
same parents will probably also for example take drugs in front of their children, feed
them dog food or takeaways for breakfast, Lunch and Dinner and generally give them
the poor care no amount of laws can stop.

That this type of control continues unabated, makes it pretty clear to me that it was
just the minority imposing their  narrow views on everyone in the first place, they care
little “for the children” or anything else. I can see a conspiracy theory developing here,
I need a coffee and a lay down…

I liked Foxtel and if they ever get the Movie censorship sorted out I will probably
subscribe again, why if a fabulously beautiful Foxtel girl came to my door tomorrow
and said those magic words “uncensored movies” everything would be wonderful and
Land of Oz. Note to Foxtel Reps: Sorry “Sports Package” is as good as trying to sell me
static on the screen…why is their this assumption that we all love “the footy” because
we’re male. “We’re bringing back Fashion TV” is probably better if you are looking for
a “dead cert” multipurpose sales pitch for the average male at the door..

“Charlie Parr is one of the greatest musicians and human beings I know. So many country-blues artists are crippled with retro-ism and purism, but he has brought wonder and excitement to this music. Even Charlie’s foot coming down on the floor boards screams with more soul and life than most anything – past or future”Alan Sparhawk (Low)

Many people play roots music, but few modern musicians live those roots like Minnesota’s Charlie Parr. Parr’s heartfelt and plaintive original folk blues and traditional spirituals don’t strive for authenticity: They are authentic.

Described in 2008 by The Sunday Mail as “the hottest new folk and country blues artist of the year” Parr was introduced to Australian audiences that year via his track ‘1922 Blues’ which was used in the much played Vodafone ad (you know the one where the guy folds up his whole apartment, and the lyric… “I worked all summer couldn’t save a cent, I gave all my money to the government”). Add to that a coveted national tour supporting Paul Kelly, dates with You Am I and spots on festivals such as Falls Festival, Sunset Sounds, Southbound, Wave Rock and it comes as no surprise that Charlie’s developed a genuine fondness for Australia.

Returning to our shores for the first time in several years the Duluth, MN based performer will be showcasing songs from his latest studio album ‘Barnswallow’. The album, named for a banjo instrumental Parr once recorded with the Black Twig Pickers, has that same distinctive timeless feel, steeped in traditional folk and blues, one has come to expect from Charlie’s albums. ‘Barnswallow’ is the follow up to 2011’s critically acclaimed ‘Keep Your Hands On The Plow’.

Inspired by greats such as Charley Patton, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly Charlie Parr is one of the most authentic American blues artists produced in recent times. With sparks flying off his National resonator, 12-string guitar and banjo Parr’s spellbinding finger picking & slide techniques place him among the world’s foremost string-benders. His lovingly executed East Coast Blues style comes across as authentic, organic and honed from a deep-rooted love of the music, which has invited collaborations from the likes of Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk from indie darlings Low and progressive bluegrass outfit Trampled By Turtles.

Special guest for several dates on the tour will be Andrew Morris* (of 2 x ARIA Award Nominees The Wilson Pickers, and guitarist for fellow Brissie lad Bernard Fanning) who will be launching his new single ‘Flicker’ from the album ‘The Situationist’.

“Parr may not know it, or he may not believe it, but when it comes to real folk music, he sweeps the category. ‘Barnswallow’ might be Parr’s strongest record yet, and it’s certainly his most triumphant.” City Pages (USA)

Sound engineer Ray Dolby has died at his home aged 80. In a statement Dolby’s son said:

“Though he was an engineer at heart, my father’s achievements in technology grew out of a love of music and the arts, He brought his appreciation of the artistic process to all of his work in film and audio recording.”

The President of Dolby Laboratories said:

“Today we lost a friend, mentor and true visionary, Ray Dolby founded the company based on a commitment to creating value through innovation and an impassioned belief that if you invested in people and gave them the tools for success they would create great things.
Ray’s ideals will continue to be a source of inspiration and motivation for us all.”