Dear Posterity

I will offer a a prize to anyone who can actually make me believe in Australiian politics. It seems that all that survives is an ALP who only believe in their need to get re-elected and a Liberal Party who believe in their right to bo re-elected, and neither speaks to any other issue.

The Labor Party of Ben Chifley and "Doc" Evatt has been replaced by the Labor.party of Graeme Richardson, and the Liberal Party of Bob Menzies, John Gorton and Mal Fraser has been replaced by theparty of Billy McMahon and John Howard.

I think Tony Abbott beliieves in some things, most of wwhich I disagree with, but I don't thinnk Julia Gilllard believes in anyththing except the need to be re-electe.

Dear Posterity

Tonight my thoughts turned to joinning the Occupy moemeny,which I stronoly support and have barracked for from the sidlines as long as I can.

There is a local division which, like all the others, hasn't got much media attention. (Nowasays to get mainstream media attention,your protest needs corporate sponsorshipor it's not "newsworthy"..

So there I was, ready to jump on a train into the city and then I thought about reality. I've got a sleeping bag, but thats it. I suddenly realised that if I was going to Occupy Melbourne,the very least I neeed was a yent and a primus stove to make my morning coffee on.

Yes I am a Melbournian and a decent cup of coffee is essential.


If I can get those two luxuries, then considrer me an Occupier.

Dear Posterity

This Tuesday marks the 75th anniversary of an extremely significant, but largely forgotten incident in British history, an incident which quite possibly altered the direction of the entire twentieth century. The incident was what history recalls as The Battle of Cable Street.

1936 was a year of great uncertainty. The world economy was in the tank, there was political unrest internationally and The Daily Mail was reporting that immigrants were taking English jobs and undermining the English way of life. (Alright, I haven't actually checked on that last point, but the Mail has always been fairly consistent in its editorial policy.) Sound familiar at all?

Enter, stage Far Right, Sir Oswald Mosley and his British Union of Fascists. Now history tends to regard Mosley as a slightly pathetic, almost comic figure, a sort of failed English Hitler-wannabe, but bear in mind Posterity, that but for some shrewd politics and a lot of back-street thuggery, Germans might today have considered Adolf Hitler in the same way, a pathetic, comedic German Mussolini wannabe.

In 1936 Mosley was on the ascendant. Wealthy, very well-connected in the establishment, (and at the time there were many in the upper-classes who would not have been dismayed by a Fascist government,) dashingly handsome and a charismatic demagogue, Mosley was a master of dog-whistle populism.. All he needed was to generate publicity for his movement through a show of strength and they'd be winning seats in Parliament at the next election.

There has always seemed to me to be a lot of passive-agression involved in Fascism and for the most part, Mosley's Blackshirts came from Fascist central-casting. Lower middle-class aspirational types with chips on their shoulders who think they can win favour from their betters by kicking their inferiors and Mosley, the toff baronet played them like Paganini playing a violin and he planned his big Leni Reifenstal event, a march through the East End to show the working class, the Irish and the Jews where England's real strength was. (And please note, posterity, that I am using the words English and British in very carefully thought out ways. The two terms are not interchangeable.)

And so, on Sunday, October 4th, 1936, Mosely and his British Union of Fascists set out in uniform, (yes, you got a free black shirt if you joined,) to march through the East-End carrying the red and black Fascist flag..

The British Council of Jewry advised people to avoid the march. The British Comunist Party went out and started buying 4"by 2's and the Irish community just continued the ongoing discussion about what to do on Sunday afternoon when all the pubs are shut.

The short story is, on that Sunday afternoon seventy-five years ago, the East End of London eloquently made the point that they were not at home to Mr Fascist.

The truth is that most of the violence took place between the protesters and the Old Bill who were assigned to protect the marchers, but the march was turned back and the images of bobbies taking the punches mostly instead of the Blackshirts pretty much ruined Mosley's show of strength and almost immediately afterwards, Westminster passed a bill banning the wearing of political uniforms, robbing Mosley of the vital theatricality he needed to gain momentum. The British Union of Fascists pretty much withered after that.

You might still consider this a minor footnote in history, and I do tend to think that Britain was never likely to elect a Fascist government, but think upon this: Suppose that march gone as planned, (I bet The Daily Mail would have splashed it across the front page as a triumphal English event.) Suppose that in September 1939, there were perhaps ten BUF MPs, would Chamberlain have declared war or would he have sought further negotiations?

Thanks to the East End of London, we'll never know and we can laugh at England's pathetic failed Hitler.

Okay The Men They Couldn't Hang, play us out.

Bonjour Tristesse

The Pelican Club's doors have been closed far too long of late, and what better excuse to throw them open again than to welcome home one of our favorite patrons, quatrefoil from what I can only describe as a European jaunt. In her report of her adventures, Dr. Q mentioned that she'd discovered that her understanding of spoken French had become a bit rusty, so what better excuse for the Club de Pélican to help her brush up.

And don't worry toasty_hampster, there'll be no Jaques Brel. (Belgians! Hawk! Spit! What have they ever given the world apart from a convenient venue to fight battles? Oh, and Tintin, but I digress.)

So let's see how Dr Q'S understanding of sung French is.

( Allons-y )

Dear Posterity

What a hoot! This is such a fun and pitch perfect piece of escapism.

I had grave fears about this movie, because in the wrong hands this character could be disastrously one-dimensional and jingoistic. (And indeed it has been done so, go here to read my good friend Bully, the Little Stuffed Bull's re-examination of the official comic-book adaptation of the Captain America movie of the early 90s.) Such fears were somewhat allayed when I was reminded that Joe Johnson, the director, had also directed one of my favorite underrated fillums of the early nineties, The Rocketeer, but I still wasn't expecting to enjoy this one quite so much.

This is a fillum which does exactly what it needs to in the larger Marvel Comics movie franchise. Unlike some of the other Marvel movies, (yes, I am looking at you Ken Brannagh,) this is plotted with magnificent economy and scripted with occasionally magnificent insouciance. There is not a moment of wasted screen-time. It is a fillum that knows what it needs to do and just does it.

So no lingering scenes set to moody music of our hero staring at his own navel and brooding about his inner demons. Steve Rogers wears his heart on his sleeve and his self-doubt, guilt and anger can be shown in a couple of lines of dialogue at the start of a scene and then we move on to telling the story and again, the fillum knows what it has to do, which is simply tell the audience who Captain America is.

One of the things I liked was that the writers, when faced with the task of taking a character called "Captain America" who is pretty much literally wrapped in the American flag, found a way to turn the concept on its head and make the character's motivations the exact opposite of shallow jingoistic nationalism, and manage to cast scorn on such sentiments as personified by Michael Brandon's avuncular yet slimy Senator Brandt.

The character's real motivations are elegantly established in the first twenty minutes of the fillum, in what I saw as one of many little Easter Eggs for comic book fans that this movie sneaks in. He's the little guy in the Charles Atlas adverts who's had bullies kicking sand in his face all his life, but in Steve's case it is literally a case of him being beaten up rather than beaten down. He doesn't dream of being bigger and tougher than the bullies, he just won't be bullied and won't stand by while others are being bullied, which is why he wants to go and fight nazis.

When his personal Charles Atlas comes along, played with incredible gentleness and warmth by Stanley Tucci, this is articulated ii the advice Tucci's Dr Erskine gives him. "Whatever happens, it doesn't matter if you become a Super Soldier, it matters that you remain a good man."

Meanwhile, in various places in Europe Hugo "Mr Giraffe-Face" Weaving is single-mindedly refusing to chew the scenery as a meglomaniac so hardcore that he finds the Nazis a bit too milquetoast to serve his ambitions. You never doubt his insanity, but what chills you about his performance is that you find yourself thinking "Thank God they had an emotially unstable, irrational Austrian man-toddler like Hitler as their absolute leader rather than an utterly focussed, Prussianly meticulous omniopath like this." There are no tantrums or Erich von Strohiem stile histrionics. He is just a very, very frightening man. (And he also had the first inter-textual gag line in the fillum. You'll have to think fast to spot it, but it does pay out really nicely in the end.)

Again though, the brakes are never put on the plot to give his character a defining scene. What this fillum does is define the characters by their involvement with the plot.

Well, apart from Colonel Phillips, but since he's played by Tommy Lee Jones, he doesn't need any character establishment. He just is.

And the battle scene direction in this is really refreshing too. Finally a modern director who doesn't think that the way to make fight scenes more exciting is to put in as many cuts as you can without having to put the film out with a health warning that some scenes may induce epileptic seizures. (I'm not picking on anyone in particular here Michael Bay.) Johnson seems to know how to position and move a camera for a sustained shot, which makes a set-piece battle-scene far more dynamic and coherent. The fact that this is a period piece set during World War II does give some license for this approach, but I have to say that I found it worked. I was waiting for Lee Marvin, Richard Jaeckel, John Cassavetes and Tele Savalas to make uncredited cameos, and the CGI in this film is so well done and so minimally used that the could have.

But the fact that they didn't appear doesn't matter, because one of the little Easter Eggs in there for comics fans is the appearance of their Marvel Comics predecessors, although their sargeant is missing for some inexplicable reason. There are lots of other nice little gifts for those who know comics, but will in no way detract from the fillum for those who aren't quite so familiar with comics.

Best of all, this fillum knows exactly when to end. Some directors, (Ang Lee, face the front when I'm speaking,) could have dragged this fillum on for another forty minutes with the character agonising over what has happened to him. All Joe Johnson needs to demonstrate all that emotional turmoil in his character is the single line: "I had a date."

As with all recent Marvel Comics movies, if you stay until the end of the credits you get a little bonus.

ETA: I saw this in normal format rather than 3-D and I strongly urge anyone else to do the same. There is nothing in this film apart from the beginning of the end-credits that would look better in 3-D and the fillum has a distinctive colour-palette, specifically, a contrast between the muted autumnals of the US bases, the wintry greys and blacks of the Hydra bases and the gaudy over-bright hues of the publicity tour scenes and watching through 3-D glasses will rob the viewer of that subtlety and be a disservice to the cinematographer.

Dear Posterity

I never really caught up with Amy Winehouse's music, but I did pay enough attention to recognise her as an awesomely talented person who could go on to do anything. Sadly, her demons got her first.

She's not the first and I think this song is as valid for Amy as it was for Janis.

Dear Posterity

I thought montjoye might find this mini-rant amusing given what we were chatting about on Sunday.

Dear Posterity

I'm not a big gin drinker, but I think I now have a favorite brand, based just on their promotional vehicle. The Oscar Mayer Wienermobile this ain't.

If Hendrick's Gin ever offer that car as a competition prize, my liver is in so much trouble.

I wonder if I could get a Laphroaig version.

Dear Posterity

Yesterday, in a 36-26 decision, the New York State Legislature legalised same-sex marriage. Now, in the immortal words of my hero and role model Thomas Sullivan Magnum, I know what you're thinking, "Other states have done this before, why does this matter?" (well except for janni who is thinking about marmosets for some reason and sleebo of whose thoughts I can only say I'm shocked! You have a filthy, filthy mind young lady,) but it does matter.

I am not immediately effected by this decision. I don't live in New York state, I've no immediate marriage plans, I am not gay and none of my gay friends live in New York, so perhaps the simplest way of explaining why I care is to add that I don't have children and I live on the side of a mountain, but I still regard global warming as an important issue.

We all have gay friends or relatives and those outside the US may not know that the New York State legislature is actually a deeply conservative entity. When we non-New Yorkers think of New York, we tend to think of New York City and forget the fact that New York State actually reaches up to the Canadian border and it gets wider the further from NYC that it gets and not to be judgemental but based on polling I've seen, the wider New York State gets, the narrower the minds of its citizens. Take NYC out of the State of New York and it is a very conservative place. But it is old-school conservative and the madness of the extreme right and Koch/Murdoch fuelled Tea Party mentalism has made few inroads. It's Jimmy Stewart/Frank Capra style conservatism rather than Glen Beck/Lyndon Larouche and Albany is not even the Jan Brady of the cities of New York State. (I'll leave it to my American friends to guess which of Syracuse and Rochester I think is Jan and which is Cindy, but there's no doubt that Albany is Alice, the house-keeper.)

I'm really happy to learn that such an inherrently conservative body voted in favour of gay marriage and the reason why it matters is that New York is a tipping point. Once New York has decided on a social issue, the other states will have to catch up eventually.

The decision doesn't directly effect me or any of my friends, but it makes for a better world. Marriage should not be about a man and a woman, it should be about two people who love each other.

And just so the conservatives in Albany don't think they've appeased us, here's three Canadian girls singing my favorite song about New York. (And part of the joy of this song is that it is accidentally non-gender specific, so without changing the lyrics it is a hetero/gay/lesbian love song.)



ETA: The first person to ask why I didn't go for TMBG's original version of this song will be subject to a sound beating with the clue-stick.

Dear Posterity

CNN's Anderson Cooper is a serious journalist and as such, when he is telling a joke, he's not very subtle. So when someone doesn't realise he's joking and attempts to use snarking on him as an attempt to close the gap between blogging and a mainstream media career, well... the serious journalist sometimes needs to give a lesson in not only journalism, but how to snark properly:




ETA: Hrm That embed doesn't seem to have taken. You can find Mr Cooper's smack-down here

Dear Posterity

There is a new meme out there on the internet as a result of the mid-season finale of Doctor Who, centred around this Gif.

Find it on your social networking site of choice and make your own contribution to the legend of Rory Williams.

Dear Posterity

This is a fantastic video which gives me hope for the future:

Date:	2011-06-07 02:19
Subject:	For tooticky
Security:	Public

Dear Posterity

I won't give my Australian friends who may not have seen the Doctor Who mid-series finale yet any spoilers, I will instead give a series of Idris-like non sequiturs

Victorian lesbian Silurian samurai
Loveable lactating Sontaran field nurse
Rory Williams kicks cyber-arse to find his wife
"We're the fat and thin gay married Anglican clerics. We don't need names."
Melody Williams is a geography teacher...
Good men don't need rules
Did I mention that Rory Williams kicks cyber-arse?
Remember what Idris told Rory
It's Sydney Bluestreet!
Would Mary Whitehouse have spotted that cunnilingus gag?(You're a bad man Moffatt!)
Two rules: Nobody puts Baby in the corner and nobody puts the Doctor in a trap
Spike actually ends up with Sarah and Lynda eventually realises that she's more into that one that used to run the graphics department in series one but became her assistant editor in the last season. (We all saw that coming though..) Moffatt!!!
Oh, third rule, nobody gets between Rory Williams and his wife, Cyberfolk should particularly note this rule but it does apply to other species, Gallifreyans for example.

Done, and not a single plot spoiler. (Well actually the big reveal is in there, but I hope I made it cryptic enough to not qualify as a spoiler.) Most of that happens in the first five minutes of the episode, so you have to ask "With this many ideas why hasn't Stephen Moffatt's head exploded yet?"

I really enjoyed this episode and I hope the rest of you do too.

In the meantime, I know who River Song really is and you don't so there. :-P

Dear Posterity

The lovely Ms montjoye has got me thinking about singing and when I think of singing, I think of the big fella, Josef Locke.

I can't help it, what can you do with a man whose signature tune is called Hear My Song?

And Joe has such a fascinating story. A former Ulster policeman turned singing sensation, in the early fifties he went on the lam hiding from Britain's internal revenue authorities.

He stayed in hiding in an undisclosed location in the Republic of Ireland so long that in the 1990s the film Hear My Song could be made about a shyster nightclub manager from Liverpool attempting to find him to play one gig and save his nightclub and his relationship with his girlfriend.

Here's the film's fictionalised version of Josef Locke's return across the Irish Sea.



The truth is that by that time Josef Locke's location was the worst kept secret in Ireland and he was
probably actually listed in the local phone book, but the myth of the superstar who just disappeared remained strangely appealling.

I love the story and the fact that this was the guy who did the real Eddie And The Cruisers thing and walked away from it all and he did it befoe rock and roll was even invented.

Dear Posterity

I am officially in a state of depression.

It's not funny or entertaining. It's horrible and nasty and I'd like it to end, now!

I've taken a week off work and all I want to do is sleep and forget that I am who I am.

Aparently, my shop steward at work spotted this coming before I did because tonight I got a phonecall from my union rep who was concerned about how this might affect my employment status.

I doubt that there is anything that could have improved my feelings of self-esteem more than that one call.

It is wonderful knowing that there are thousands of people watching your back.

Scott Walker, you are toast

Dear Posterity

For reasons you don't need to know, you really need to Google the phrase "kitten-faced mitherer" right now. It may save your life, or at worst ruin the career of Britain's deputy Prime Minister.

Dear Posterity

My little friend, (and I don't mean that in an Al Pacino in Scarface kind of way,) Bully, the Little Stuffed Bull, is the proprietor of possibly the finest comics related blog on the internet curated by a small stuffed animal. (If it's not already in your bookmarks, it's here: http://bullyscomics.blogspot.com/ and you should be ashamed of yourself.)

But even for little stuffed bulls life can get rough sometimes so, (puts on best Kasey Kasem voice, and I refuse to recognise the Seagrave interloper,) for one little bean filled guy in Brooklyn, here's Chet Atkins with a song to put a smile on your face.



This piece is so like Bully's work. It's very silly and fun but incredibly hard to do at home.

Dear Posterity

Newsweek recently listed Grand Rapids, Michigan as a "dying American city".

The people of Grand Rapids responded by creating a new world record for the longest sustained lip-synching music video ever done in one shot. (The one shot aspect is really important because you really do see the people of Grand Rapids in their incredible diversity all coming together . I was just staggered by the logistics of it.)

In a world full of pain and misery, I found it incredibly joyous to see an entire city getting together to have fun and sing along with Don Maclean. (And I love this song because I'm one of the seven people on the planet who actually understand the chorus.)

Dear Posterity

I've had an idea for a TV series set in the English home counties, with no ethnic minorities seen and a likeable detective played by someone who looks like that guy who used to be "Bergerac" except younger, investigating burglaries, domestic violence and teenagers hanging around the town centre wearing hoods.

My tentative title : Misnomer Murders speaks for itsself.

Dear posterity

In his Babylon 5 episode, one of Neil Gaiman"s characters illustrated her assertion that any Emily Dickinson poem can be sung to the tune of The Yellow Rose of Texas by singing:

My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night.
But ahh my foes and oh my friends
It gives a lovely light.

I have tormented Mr Gaiman for years over the fact that those aren't Emily Dickinson's words but rather those of Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Mr Gaiman has silenced any further criticisism from me by casually mentioning that for 35 years at least, I'd never noticed that the door was supposed to be pulled rather than pushed.