Safety Last
Safety Last...Todd Russell 'clocks off' (checks in his personal safety tag)
9 May 2016 10 years ago today, Todd Russell and Brant Webb left the Beaconsfield mine in northern Tassie, where they had been trapped for two weeks. We honour them and their not-so-lucky comrade, miner Larry Knight, who perished far underground. However, their dramatic story remains ripe for political and commercial exploitation – there’s a TV mini-series in the offing, and a photo-opportunity has already availed itself on the campaign trail. See our updated link to Ace in the Hole for more details.
Continue Reading →Two Gentlemen of Verona
A better gentleman of Verona...Diesel (Crab), photo courtesy ATG
(By Will Shakespeare) (Adelaide University Theatre Guild, 7 May 2016) (Dir. Gary George & Angela Short) Early Shakespeare – it’s a kind of Dumb and Dumber – two friends scrap over the same girl, leading to slander, exile and attempted rape, with all merrily forgiven in the wash-up: not the Bard’s best by a long chalk, but no one can resist this early emanation of two great characters, the servant, Launce, and his mischievous dog, Crab. Let’s hear about Crab from the crypto St. Francis, Act IV, Scene IV: “When a man’s servant shall play the cur with him, look…
Continue Reading →Married Life
(By David Vogel) (1929 – translated by Dalya Bilu) Mr Rudolf Gurdweill is a struggling writer, small, slight, jewish, vacant and rather nice. He shambles through life, borrowing small sums of money and taking aimless, unsatisfying excursions about 1920s Vienna. His friends in Nescafe Society are the kind that obviate the need for enemies. Naturally he decides, on impulse, to marry a ‘Baroness’, the type of union that gives holy matrimony a bad name. His friend Lotte Bondheim, who carries a doomed torch for Gurdweill secret only to Gurdweill, is hysterical at the news: ‘”Oh, no,” she cried, “it’s too ridiculous…
Continue Reading →The Invitation
“Mors aurem vellens ‘vivite’ ait, ‘venio.’” (Virgil) — Looking back at it, the cause was indeterminate. Carol believed that she knew the people. Paula knew the place. Nestled in the crook of worn-down mountains, its gimlet, art-deco eyes glowed in the mid-winter murk, warm. and austere. Fog having delayed flight, delay having undermined their arrangements, the sun was already weak and remote when they set off from the airport. “It must be the sponsors who put-up the spa weekender for the lottery.” “So they punish us now? After all this time?” Dead tones from the dashboard guide the two businesswomen over…
Continue Reading →Learn to Win
Glenelg v Woodville-West Torrens Eagles, Glenelg Oval, 6 May 2016 After humiliating themselves with three appalling quarters last week, and fighting back grimly in the last to win some respect, the team displayed the right attitude in taking on a solid outfit of opponents and held a slight advantage during much of the game. But a mere 4 day break took its toll and the Bays wilted in the last term, enervated as they were by some umpiring decisions that seemed even more bizarre than usual. Konrad Lorenz ought to have done some studies of the effect of hierarchical status on the…
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