The Cordeaux River Chronicle

Hello folks

This weblog has ceased publication for the time being.  Thank you to the 2 or 3 people who actually wrote stuff about it.  Cheers.

Sincerely

John Daley

In honour of Kevin Rudd's victory as Prime Minister yesterday, I re-present hmatkin's homage to our new Prime Minister on YouTube.

I think this is item is very funny at an ironic level, given

• our new Prime Minister's fluency in Mandarin
• the neo-communist bogey which his political opponents kept dragging out in an attempt to discredit his side of things
• at an entirely different level, the "Chinglish" captions and their apparent discrepancy to the soundtrack (which a YouTube correspondent states is a commentary on the China-Vietnam war of the 1970s)

This film reminds me of every high school history lesson I had to sit through in the 1970s, when the late Brother Rupert of the Marist Brothers warmed us spotty and beardless lads of the red menace about to sweep down from the north.  (And Kevin Rudd is am ex-Marist boy too.)

This is very well done!  Enjoy.

 

Music-wise, what was the first 45, single or download you bought? 
Submitted by Paddy Melt Wagon.

Lily the Pink by The Scaffold.  45RPM, bought from a record shop in Sydney for $1 (Australian) = 1.5 weeks' pocket money.  How embarassing.

Usually I do not forward on email jokes.  This is a matter of policy - they clog up mailboxes, take up bandwidth, and usually are not really funny.

But this is an exception!

I trust my source as extremely trustworthy and having a sense of humour in tune with my own.

This appears to be an advertisement for the Berlitz language method.  

And by the way, does Germany have a coast?  I must check an atlas.

The Featured Ingredient on tonight's episode of Iron Chef (Ryōri no tetsujin - 料理の鉄人, "Ironmen of Cooking") on SBS Television is ...

Sole

Once again I am pleased to report that the Featured Ingredient was dead, so it did not try to run away.  Nor did we have to have a Reader Advisory at the start of the program warning viewers that scenes might be "distressing to some viewers".

I have also commented in previous posts on  Iron Chef (Ryōri no tetsujin - 料理の鉄人, "Ironmen of Cooking") that Chairman Kaga is no Bert Newton.  He might be a great actor but he is hopeless at improv.  A sample.

-----

Chairman Kaga (to Challenger): So you have heard about my show i n San Francisco? (where the Challenger works)

Challenger [waxes lyrical at great length about how the show is famous amongst all chefs great and small].

Chairman Kaga [after a pause, looks deep in thought]:  Really?

-----

Admittedly these are the sub-title renditions of the conversations.  But ... really?

Unfortunately, no sooner have I got back into the Iron Chef (Ryōri no tetsujin - 料理の鉄人, "Ironmen of Cooking") habit that SBS announce that it is going off for a few weeks.  Oh well.

• Earlier reviews of Iron Chef (Ryōri no tetsujin - 料理の鉄人, "Ironmen of Cooking") may be found on The Mount Kembla Chronicle.

Poor old Hugh Jackman.  This journal was last year lauding his performance in The Boy from Oz.  And now we have Viva Laughlan.

Good luck to actors who set up production companies.  They are obviously intent on diversifying their involvement in their vocation.  And good luck to such an obviously-talented bloke like Our Hugh for taking a gamble on this program.

Trouble was - it was awful! 

Maybe Hugh was being adventurous in casting the British actor Lloyd Owen.  Last time I saw him, he was settling into life as laird of Glenbogle.  Now he has half-gained a very frail American accent and an even dodgier singing voice.

Not that you'd know this from the advertising on Channel 9.  This advertising suggested that the program was wall-to-wall Hugh Jackman - who, apparently, was only going to be in every 3rd-or-so episode.

Well, as it turns out, he was in 100% of the episodes aired in Australia because it was axed yesterday after one (count them: 1) program - following the axing of the series by CBS after 2 programs.

What went wrong?  I subscribe to the Sydney Morning Herald writer's theory that "Viva Laughlin has the fingerprints of nervous network executives all over it."

 Maybe, given a chance, it would have developed into something.  (Certainly, I would have hoped that Lloyd Owen's outrageous accent would have gone to something beyond his unintentional vocal impersonation of Billy Crystal.)

This might have given the chance for the bastard-behaving casino owner (played by Owens) to redeem himself.  I mean, who cares about a casino owner's fortunes?

Anyway, its all over now.  This however does not hold the record for rapidity of dumping.  That belongs to Australia's Naughtiest Home Videos - axed in mid-broadcast, reportedly on the orders of late station owner proprietor Kerry Packer.

• The quotation in the headline of this post is from the New York Times of 18th October 2007.
• Article in the Sydney Morning Herald.

 

 

The Featured Ingredient on tonight's episode of Iron Chef (Ryōri no tetsujin - 料理の鉄人, "Ironmen of Cooking") on SBS Television is ...

1. Sardines
2. Ham

Ingredient # 1 was straightforward (and it was already dead, so it didn't try to run away). 

 

Ingredient # 2 refers to the bad acting of Iron Chef Michiba Rokusaburo.  Now I do not doubt that he was, at this stage of the series, ill.  Indeed, he did have to drop out soon after.  But the bad acting was so bad that it put me off the pendin gSardine Battle.

And he didn't look like he was in hospital, unless Japanese hospitals are particularly homely.

This man is one of the Ryōri no tetsujin - 料理の鉄人, "Ironmen of Cooking" !!!! He shouldn't be showing weakness like this (and in such an unconvincing manner).  His opponents will rub his nose in their sashimi.

By the way, the propaganda-style poster of Michiba san comes from Dashiell Dunn's website www.maestrosync.com.  His posters and his website are well worth reading.

 Previous reviews of Iron Chef may be found at The Mount Kembla Chronicle.

I'm desparately trying to avoid any reference to the current federal election campaign in Australia.  But this is too good to pass up.

 

Politicians are very good at spin, but The Honourable Malcolm Turnbull MP got a little bit out of hand with this yesterday when he flipped 2 children over at Fox Studios in Sydney. 

Now Mr Turnbull is a big bloke.  I actually met him once, and i suspect that he has similar weight battles to me because he is of strikingly similar build.

But blokes of our dimensions usually (or at least should) know how to harness and control The Awesome Power At Their Command.  Not so Malcolm.

The ensuing photo op of weeping children, paramedics tending broken limbs (no!  Just joking here) must be every politician's public relations nightmare.

• "Turnbull's powerful spin leaves toddlers in tears" by Bonny Symons-Brown, News.com.au, 19th October 2007.  (Includes a link to a great gallery of a photo sequence of the event.)
• Australian Electoral Commission's 2007 election website
• Google website for Australian federal election 2007
• ABC[Australia]: election 2007 website
• FederalElection.com.au

Sometimes the universe works in a strangely symmetrical fashion.

Yesterday's newspapers report the passing of 2 men who were at opposite ends of the vocal spectrum - Marcel Marceau and Frank Hyde.

A letter-writer to a British newspaper (I lost the citation - sorry!) suggests that we all observe one minute's noise to mark the passing of Marcel Marceau.

Seeing Marceau live was extraordinary.  I was lucky enough to see him twice - i nSydney in 1977 and in Wollongong (of all places) in the early 1990s).  For the length of each item. those invisible walls, flowers and strong men became real.

And as for Frank Hyde ... well, when radio in its truest form is described as "theatre of the mind", Frank must have been a 5-star director in that theatre.

His famous call - "It's long enough - it's high enough - and it's STRAIGHT between the posts" was the inspiration of a rather short-lived goal-kicking career for me as I had the misfortune to play rugby league at school in the 1970s.

More importantly, he was one of the few influences on me tha tsaid it was good to use your imagination.  radio in its truest form makes you use your imagination because of the lack of pictures - hence the "theatre of the mind" label above.

I think that Mr Hyde must have understood this at some level, die to the way he described rugby league on radio.

So I here publicly record my debt to these 2 gentlemen, for showing me that there is more to life and imagination than what you see on TV.

Isn't it interesting?  Once upon a time, when great leaders descended upon our shores, we were encouraged to flock into the streets and cheer them.

I recall seeing H M Queen Elizabeth II, By The Grace Of God, Queen of Australia And Her Other Realms And Territories, drive through Parramatta in 1970.  The crowds were 8 or so deep, and I had to shimmy up a tree to but see her passing by.  (I was a skinny and fit kid then, and downtown Parramatta had trees then.)

Now we are told to bugger off.  Stay away!  is the message.  We're not even allowed to look at the fireworks, in a city with a culture of harbour fireworks.

An article by Andrew Herd in Znet sums up this new and very uncomfortable aspect of Australian democracy:

Sydney is a public space. It is not a space for world’s powerful to use as they wish, when they wish. The arrest of the Chaser group personified the removal of rights that all Australians should have: to walk or drive down the main street of Sydney, or any other city or town.

As for The Chaser people gatecrashing the security system - well, good luck to them, I say.  (The radio shock jocks and the Sydney Daily Telegraph seem to disapprove, so all the more reason to support The Chaser people.)

The only funnier thing than this is the vision of the politicians and senior policemen working themselves up into a lather of Righteous Indignation about the gag.

One of the reasons that dictators like Stalin and Hitler and Kim Il Sung succeed is that no one is allowed to publicly laugh at them.  For this reason alone, The Chaser people perform a valuable community service.  (And indeed, the Chaser people might all be looking at Community Service or worse after their day in court.)

The last word on this subject should go to the listener to radio station 2BL, who suggested an event just after the leaders were presented with their Drizabone jackets (this odd custom where they all pose for a photo op in "national dress").

The suggestion was that following the presentation, they should have the waterproof qualities of these coats tested by having their wearers hosed down with that evil-looking water cannon that the New South Wales Police Force got in for this event.

By the way, in a desparate attempt to prove to you that I'm not a leftie ratbag, I invite you to send a greeting to H M Queen Elizabeth II, By The Grace Of God, Queen of Australia And Her Other Realms And Territories, and HRH The Duke of Edinburgh on the occasion of their 60th wedding anniversary.  You'll even get your name on a microsite. (This makes me wonder - will the Queen send herself a telegram for this occasion?)