October 28, 2010 – 1:56 pm
Last night, Radio National recorded a captivating conversation on books and gardens, including two of Australia’s best-known gardeners — Stephen Ryan and Michael McCoy, and Terry Smyth — at the Wheelerbarrow Centre. (To be broadcast on the Book Show, Friday 29 October, or download the podcast, or watch the panel on the Wheeler video page [...]
October 27, 2010 – 10:21 am
Darko (the Wonder Poodle): Incorrigible Licker, Natural Beauty, Leaper on Laps in a Single Bound, Tap Dancer and Whirling Dervish, Stan‘s Best Friend.
October 26, 2010 – 10:30 am
That annoyed feeling you sometimes have when you have an issue with a book review — and there is no way to comment, damned dead-tree media. God forbid every review of a book you like is a cheersquad, but occasionally one smells that the reviewer has (i) overstepped the mark, (ii) is not telling us [...]
October 22, 2010 – 9:59 am
I mean, John Cale is 68(!) and he’s got fluoro pink dye in his hair; plus, he’s actually got hair. The concert (because Josh asked) My country friend Josh asked how I liked the John Cale concert. This was last Saturday as part of the Melbourne Festival. I’d been lured there by a fan in [...]
October 21, 2010 – 10:09 am
It’s a cool night and leaving the car you walk to St Carthage’s, a small church in leafy Parkville. A smallish group is converging, stamping their feet and turning their heads to the sky. You wait a few minutes until the usher beckons you forward. I hear a muffled thunder as if many people are [...]
October 19, 2010 – 10:12 am
Interviewer, posh rounded accent: ‘When you were starting out as a writer you were black, impoverished, homosexual. You must have said to yourself, Gee how disadvantaged can I get?’ (Watch his face animate) James Baldwin, replying: ‘No, I thought I hit the jackpot!’ (Audience laughter) ‘It’s so outrageous you could not go any further, you [...]
October 14, 2010 – 11:30 am
Embedded within the thriving arts community called Advertising (the denizens look super cool), a refurbished old warehouse in Melbourne’s Richmond is the brand new space of a newish gallery, Block Projects. Their very basic old website is also in need of renovation (a little clue to how they’ve made ends meet over the last — [...]
October 13, 2010 – 10:02 am
Joan Sutherland, opera singer, born 7 November 1926; died 10 October 2010 The Celebrity Demise effect Unfortunate old joke: ‘I heard he died last night.’…’But I didn’t even know he was sick.’ Tony Curtis. Walter Cronkite. Er, Don Lane. A great fame is like an immortality, making static the old and famous while the rest [...]
By W H Chong
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Posted in music, video clip
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Tagged Australia Council, Ben Eltham, Brian Wilson, Dame Joan Sutherland, Jennifer Maiden, Lucia di Lammermoor, Marcus Westbury, opera, Pavarotti, Philip Larkin, Wordsworth
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October 12, 2010 – 2:38 pm
I was lurking about Slog where I stumbled across this item from earlier today/yesterday: Someone Is Writing a Novel Right Now It started this (yesterday) morning in Seattle. As I watch Stacey Levine has typed out a bit of Chapter 6: Alexis waited for Linda, who had texted her as soon as Alexis had switched [...]
October 7, 2010 – 10:32 am
‘Shut up and look.’ — Hamlet’s sister ‘What shall we do, what shall we do with all this useless beauty?’ — Elvis Costello +++ +++
