No Agenda - It Seems Not!

The "No Agenda" podcast labels itself as being..."A show about American politics with no agenda, by Adam Curry and John C. Dvorak.

I have been a subscriber to the podcasts of Adam Curry since the very early days of his Daily Source Code program. Since then I have lost a lot of interest in his shows as he moved from the very personal tech experience to being a corporate media player - clearly a role in which he is very successful.

I came to the joys of John C. Dvorak initially through Leo Laporte but came to enjoy the many manifestations of John (Cranky Geeks, TWIT) for their own sake.

I had heard of their No Agenda podcast and some 6 weeks or so ago thought I would add it to my subscription group.

Initially this was marginally interesting with lots of self indulgent talk of restaurants, wines etc. Self indulgence and self absorption are frequent travellers where Mr Curry is concerned.

But on show No 56 they lost me. During the recent US election, their tone became increasingly cynical with lots of populist assertions about the Obama campaign but little actual fact. Lots of insinuations about the Obama campaign being in the pocket of the media companies.

But now their cynicism has gone to the next level with often contradictory diatribes about the post election progress. They seemingly want the Obama team to include all new people (ie change) but ones who still have experience and can get the job done. Criticism is all ok but why not offer an alternative to action and/or decisions being taken. Don't just say what you don't like - say what you think should be done.

But am I expecting too much from (a) a successful, clearly bright but self absorbed DJ who is so fond of his beloved US that he lives in Europe, and (b) a good tech journo who clearly also knows something about food and wine?

Guys you have clearly strayed from the "no agenda" line.

MTC - The Hypocrite

I probably see 10-12 plays per year either at the Malthouse or the MTC. The problem is I actually remember very few - even when I enjoy the performance.

So I Saturday night I saw a modernized version of Moliere's play Tartuffe - this time renamed The Hypocrite. I had forgotten how long a Moliere play can be. This one ran just under three hours with a 20 minute interval.

So a bit long but entertainingly performed by a cast headed by Kim Gyngell as Tartuffe, Garry MacDonald as the feckless Orgon and the delicious Marina Prior as his wife. The text was still the rhyming style of Moliere but with updated language. The truth is I didn't notice the rhyming until the second half having struggled with the often overwhelming urge to sleep for most of the first half- a product of too many late nights.

A rating of 3.5. Saw Iris and Richard there again.

Melbourne Theatre Company's " Doubt"

This afternoon we had the unexpected pleasure of a performance of "Doubt" - the latest in the current MTC season.  My partner tells me this play is the first of a trilogy dealing with the issue of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in the United States.

Doubt takes place in the USA in 1964 and features a young parish priest and two nuns working in a school attached to the parish. The two nuns are a contrast - the older is the head of the nuns, worldly wise, having a previous married life before entering the convent - and the younger, idealistic, somewhat naive and hopeful.

The two nuns- especially the superior - become suspicious of a relationship the priest has with a young, negro alter boy.  But there is doubt all round.  Is there really a problem? is it all in the imagination of the older woman. There is enough to suggest not.

She challenges the priest and he tries every trick in the "male authority figure in the church" book to deflect her.

The mother of the young boy seems to accept that it might be happening but is more concerned that her son should graduate and get to a good high school and college.  In some wonderful tension filed scenes,  older nun confronts the priest and calls his bluff.  After seemingly backing down,  he phones his bishop. For what? To confess? To consult with a knowing superior?

But he is transferred to another parish and effectively given a promotion - one that puts him in direct control of children.

This play rings with the sad tale that has played out in real life in the Catholic Church in the US where abusing priests were protected and moved around.  Later the real horror of the  cover up was to cause great pain to the Church in the US and to the victims of these men.

I look forward to the next play in the trilogy but I think I know where it is headed.

Technorati Tags: Australia, Melbourne

Ray's Tempest at the MTC

The Melbourne Theatre Company have a real hit on their hands in the form, of Ray's Tempest. With William McInnes as Ray, this is the best contemporary, Australian play for some time. Supported by a rich and everpresent cast of six other actors, this is a warm and engaging, if quirky play.

McInnes is simply wonderful as Ray. This guy must be l loved by both men and women - good looking, easy going, real, identifiable, relaxed. He is Ray - weak, strong, warm funny, troubled.

You must see it.

MTC's "Dumb Show"

The opening play in the Melbourne Theatre Company's 2006 season is the "Dumb Show" that I am sorry to say doesn't rise much above its title.

A cast of Aaron Blabey, Anita Hegh and Richard Piper - 3 good and appealing actors - work very hard to make this piece work. But I found myself being irritated by a lack of pace (or content or purpose) very early on. English accents don't help either. Overheard lots of comments at the interval that suggested others were having the same problem. Things got marginally better in the second half - as they so often seem to - but in the end the play seem to be a commentary on the nihilism of "modern" tabloid journalism.

Technorati Tags: Melbourne

HAVE YOURSELF A PODSAFE CHRISTMAS: First carol of its kind brings together 32 singers from around the world to benefit UNICEF

I strongly encourage all of you who appreciate the value of podcasting, podsafe music, and Christmas to go and buy a copy of the wonderful collaborative Christmas song involving some 32 podsafe musicians from 9 different countries around the globe.
Go pay your $0.99US, buy the song and support UNICEF at Podsafe for Peace

Technorati Tags: Music

Malthouse Theatre's Love - Is not about.......

The latest production in the current season for the Malthouse Theatre is LOVE by Patricia Cornelius.

Run in the Tower Theatre at the Malthouse, this play almost had the distinction of having more actors than audience - and there only three actors. But the 15 or so people who attended the show I saw must have felt as I did - these three young actors deserved more.

Love is not a soft, gentle piece about romantic love. Lesbian relationships, drugs, prostitution, abuse, lies are what we have here as we are exposed to the hard reality of life for some young people. This play has a lot in common with the underlying thread of the play (End of the Rainbow) being run down the road at the MTC about Judy Garland. Some people are used, mistreated and abused by others with such obvious self interest dressed up as "love".

While the abuse of Judy is wrapped and made bearable by the music, the characters of Love have no such softeners.

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Currently playing on our iTunes : Mahangoma from the album "Malagasy" by Jaojoby Rating: 4 Play Count: 1

Technorati Tags: Malthouse_Theatre, Melbourne, puppy

What is important?

This has been a very strange week. A week ago last Thursday, a friend died leaving me with the role of executor. For the week he was in hospital up to his death, I had for the first time to focus on what having medical power of attorney actually meant. I hardly had time to think about his progress towards death - a death that he had longed for to end his pain and reunite him with his wife and parents.

I watched a life slip so easily away. And began to reflect on what was important at the end.

I have no answers - just questions.

MTC's Cheech

What a surprise!. When going to MTC plays can be such a mixed experience, finding a play like Cheech is a real joy. Turns out this is a Canadian play from Montreal - hence the French rap music with American accents. As the blurb from the company says:

The Chrysler convention is in town and Ron runs an escort service, so could there be a better day for making an easy buck? All he's got to do is show the Chrysler guys a portfolio of his girls and just wait for the calls. But everything goes wrong, everything gets way out of order, and there's only one guy to blame: Cheech!

This is a very fast paced play that used a device of seeing the events that lead to the conclusion mostly going backwards. The 4 men and 2 women characters have stories that weave together in a wonderfully engaging way. Young Australian cast showing real talent lead by Aaron Blabey as the manic Ron struggling to run his callgirl business while trying badly to work through the workbook exercises designed to address his depression. And Cheech - we never see him but hear just references to this competitor of Ron.

Very entertaining.. and loud.

A Very Personal Page 8

The final play in the current winter season for the Malthouse Theatre is Page 8 written (with Louis Nowra) and performed by David Page.

In what the Age describes as "another knockout one person play at the Malthouse", Page takes us on a very personal journey through his life - as a child in an aboriginal family in Brisbane, as a successful adolescent pop star, as a concretor and as a dancer.

Why Page 8? Simple - David was the eighth child in a family of 12 children.

This is a very easy story to like. There is real talent here from an artist who is a lover of the strength of a family and the values that bind and one who doesn't take himself too seriously.

But I have to confess I found myself asking whether this very real exposure of the person telling a real story was "good theatre" or just a bit too self indulgent.

In the end it is just a good story , well told by a very talented man. Perhaps it is me who is taking himself too seriously?
Technorati: Melbourne, Malthouse, theatre

What is happening to The Age?

Since the arrival of Andrew Jaspan as Editor of The Age, the paper has undergone a series of changes that make me wonder just where Mr Jaspan thinks he is taking the paper.

Now I admit that grumpy old men of my age dislike anything that upsets their world view.

I liked the Age that had a different supplement each day of the week. It gave me comfort, appealed to my biases and confirmed my view of things.

Jaspan decided that had to go.

But being the accommodating person I am, I grew to like the Metro supplement that replaced the daily themed supplements. My family likes to read the Age and each of them have particular favourite sections. The separate sections of the paper allowed for it to be broken up for parallel reading. But Mr Jaspan didn't like that either.

So now the separate Metro has been absorbed into the main part of the paper. How can someone do the Sudoko now without tearing out a page? Does Jaspan understand how people read and share the paper? Seemingly not.

Jaspan wake up. The things that differentiate a newspaper are not the wire service news items at the front. They are the things that reflect the community it serves.

Straying for Good Coffee

In the 22 years I have been in Melbourne, like many inner suburban inhabitants I have developed a taste for a "good coffee". Over that time there have been a small number of coffee shops that qualified as regulars. But the clear favourite over all those years has been Pellegrinis at the top end of Bourke Street. Why? I was introduced soon after I arrived and was at first intimidated by the gruff, almost unfriendly service from those on the other side of the counter.

But you went for the coffee. And over time those gruff characters behind the counter became familiar. Eventually after something like 10 years, Cisto (one the the co-owners) actually called me by my first name. Surely I had arrived.

And while the coffee makers changed over time - and some were terrible - you could usually rely on a consistently "good coffee". Some were fantastic. But you came to learn that these people had lives beyond Pellegrinis - and sometimes those lives had very rough periods. Sometimes they left altogether to regain that order and balance.

Currently Pellegrinis is going through what would have to be called a crisis. During the week the good coffee makers are just not there any more. The coffee is most often so-so and sometimes worthy of missing altogether. So we have strayed in pursuit of the "good lunch time coffee".

For now the regular haunt at lunch time has become the European in Spring Street that not only serves good coffee and reasonable meals, but it also has the allure of wine as well.

Monday Night " Oyster Farmer" at the Nova

With no expectations and some reluctance, I chose to go and see a movie at the Nova on "Cheap Monday" when admission is half price.

The movie is "The Oyster Farmer" set on the Hawkesbury River north of Sydney. It tells the story of young twenty-something Jack Flange (Alex O’Lachlan), a pensive man who moves from Sydney to work in a small oyster farming community on the Hawkesbury River, north of Sydney. He moves there to be close to his sister, who is in a local hospital recovering from a serious car accident.

The film has been well received and given praise for its quality of story and character development. Some go so far as to put it in the league of Lantana. These are real people struggling (there is no apparent wealth) to make a living with hard and hot work on a humid river.

It is an easy film to watch but it does not have Lantana's depth and you do not walk away tingling. A great cast including Kerry Armstrong who looks as good as ever and Jack Thompson in a role as the leader of a small band of Vietnam vets living on the river and managing their oyster farm.

Highly recommended.

Worldcon 2005 UK - Hugo Nominee Links: "

The list of nominees for the Hugo Award in Science Fiction Writing makes for a great list to add to my " To be Read " list:

Best Novel (424 nominating ballots)

The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks (Orbit)
Iron Council by China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan)
Iron Sunrise by Charles Stross (Ace)
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (Bloomsbury)
River of Gods by Ian McDonald (Simon & Schuster)

Is Small Theatre Going to Work?

The latest production in the current Winter season of the Malthouse Theatre is The Black Swan of Trespass . The play is being performed in the new theatre (The Tower) within the Malthouse complex that seems to respresent some sort of throwback to the La Mama style of theatre. ie small, uncomfortable, and ernest.

Unlike other productions within this current season - all of which are one actor shows - this production has four actors playing on a very small stage in front of an audience of perhaps 100.

The play which revisits the topic of the Ern Malley Affair has been well reviewed in the Age - perhaps even a little too well. Amusingly the created Ern Malley and his fictional sister Ethel are given lives that go beyond the limitations imposed by their creators. But it is a limited joke and the suggestion by the Age reviewer that this is an insightful comment on Australian culture seems to be stretching it just a tad.

Not the best of the season - that remains Alias Grace.

Recognizing Frustration

Robyn Williams is what is often casually described as an icon of the Australian national radio broadcaster - the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He has hosted the Science program on the ABC's Radio National for some 30 years. An erudite man who clearly loves his subject and feels the pain of the difficulties of Australian science.

In addition to the Science Show, Williams conducts a weekly short interview program entitled In Conversation. In the most recent of these programs, he interviews the current Chair of the CSIRO, Catherine Livingstone. Livingstone is another example of a group of Australian "managerialists" who are essentially accountants who view the world and all its complexities through the narrow eyes of accounting, business and the market.

Their language is dominated by the jargon of modern managerialism:

The central doctrine of managerialism is that the differences between such organisations as, for example, a university and a motor-vehicle company, are less important than the similarities, and that the performance of all organisations can be optimised by the application of generic management skills and theory. It follows that the crucial element of institutional reform is the removal of obstacles to ‘the right to manage’.

The rise of managerialism has gone hand in hand with that of the radical program of market-oriented reforms variously referred to as Thatcherism, economic rationalism and neoliberalism. (Despite very different histories, all these terms are now generally used in a pejorative sense). Managerialism may appear inconsistent with traditional free-market thinking in which the ideal form of organisation is that of competitive markets supplied by small firms, in which the manager is also the owner. However, managerialism is entirely consistent with the dominant strand in the neoliberal approach to public policy, which takes the corporation, rather than the small owner-managed firm, as the model for all forms of economic and social organisation.

So here is Robyn Williams attempting to ask this woman about what is currently happening within the CSIRO where the language, behaviour and effects of managerialism is now having its destructive effect.

But Robyn's frustration about the application of this psuedo-science of managerialism to the CSIRO and its proud history of the achievements and application of Australian science was all too obvious. This was not one of his better performances.

People like Livingstone answer questions about managerialism by referring to its necessity. Her responses, like so many of her contemporaries, suggest that there can only be one way foward - and guess what that is.

We need effective leadership in all Australian organisations. The mistake being made is that leadership can only come through the mantra of the market. We need leaders to emerge from somewhere else other than the Macquarie Bank.

Melbourne
CSIRO
ABC
science
MelbourneMeanderings

ABC Podcasts to expand - Fantastic!

This extension by the ABC is just a terrific idea

Departing Friends

Today some friends of our family left Australia to spend two years working and living in New Delhi, India. We hope to visit them in January 2007.

Safe journey to Amanda, Graham, Caitlin and Grace.

Influence - An MTC Production

I subscribe to two theatres in Melbourne. One the Malthouse has renewed itself and these days gives a reason to go to the theatre. The other, the Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC), is the oldest professional company in Melbourne - and sometimes it age shows

Going to MTC productions generally depresses me. The audience is mostly made up of people over 50 (or 70), looking well off and victims of "affluenza". Am I one of these people?

The productions are generally populist, mainstream - but to be fair - usually of high quality.

So yesterday along I went to see Influence the latest play by David Williamson - the acute observer of Australian culture. But I arrived feeling less than positive. Looking around, the audience looks the same - I feel depression deepening - and the question lingers for me as to whether Williamson has passed his "use by date".

This play - unusual for these days in that it has a cast of seven - deals with a Sydney shockjock called Ziggy Blasco who:

... likes to push buttons. Right-wing and self-righteous, the top-rating talk-back announcer gets the switchboard lighting up with his 'common sense' declarations on everything from dole bludgers to refugees. The trouble with Ziggy is that he actually believes the simplistic rubbish he spouts on air, which puts him at enormous disadvantage in the real world.

Well? Overall I think the play works. Sure there are lots of predictable, polemical arguments - brother and sister, father and daughter, father and son, husband and wife, step-mother and daughter, etc - and realistically there is no saccharine ending. The world is much more complex than the Ziggys of the world would have us believe.

But Williamson leaves us with that uncomfortable awareness that the "button pushing" by the Ziggys ( or Hitler, or Bush, or Howard) works.

And in the end - isn't that the purpose of theatre.

Technorati Tags: Melbourne, MTC, theatre

Recital

The 2nd in the Malthouse Theatre's winter season - a joint production with Chamber Made Opera - is Recital featuring Helen Noonan in what is described in the publicity as an "other-worldly experience".

As an opener I have to say that the new Artistic Director Michael Cantor has resuscitated this theatre that was slowly "fading to grey" under Aubrey Mellor. Now productions hold interest and as a subscriber I look forward to seeing what he has on offer this time. Under Mellor it became all too predictable and lacking any real excitement.

Now Recital.

Channeling all those great women who have gone before her, Helen Noonan plays the Ghost of Opera, the very Diva of Divas. Serving an eternal sentence in the purgatory of her own imagination, this Diva is the quintessence of the world's greatest opera singers'; or perhaps a lost and demented soul who simply thinks she is.

Her extraordinary story is told through a combination of original soundscape, well known arias, witty text, and almost balletic Callas-thenic gesture. Distinctions between art and life, fantasy and reality, tragedy and comedy become one as the Diva possesses the stage.

Arias featured in Recital include the most loved of the classical repertoire, including Mi Chiano Mimi from LA BOHEME by Puccini, Habanera from CARMEN by Bizet and Queen of the Night aria from THE MAGIC FLUTE by Mozart.

I didn't like it a lot. This is an almost entirely sung piece and much of what is being said(sung) was lost to me. There was apparently humour in this piece but it was mostly lost on me. Quality singing, great lighting and costume - but not a work that did a lot for me.

Technorati Tags:Melbourne, theatre, Malthouse