Category Archive: LIFE
Let Me Be There: Olivia Newton-John
Olivia Newton-John (26 September 1948 – 8 August 2022) The quintessential girl next door sang like the girl next door: no screeching, no vocal tricks, no auto-tune. A mellow, pellucid delivery in the fashion of Karen Carpenter. At one stage, in the 1970s, country fans thought her a country poseur but listen to songs like ‘Jolene’, ‘Banks of the Ohio,’ ‘If You Love Me, Let Me Know,’ and ‘Let Me Be There,’ and she more than justifies the mantle of country singer. Her apple-pie purity was used to great effect in the hugely commercially successful film Grease (1978), and when…
Continue Reading →The King is Dead
Neil Kerley after the 1973 Grand Final
Neil Kerley (20 February 1934 – 29 June 2022) Tonight, Saint Jude (the patron saint of desperate cases and lost causes) is having dobs with Neil Kerley. ‘Knuckles’ specialised in taking football teams from despair to triumph, or at least respectability. West Adelaide, a good team, could not win Grand Finals. Until Kerley took over and captain-coached the Bloods to the 1961 Premiership in the “The Turkish Bath Grand Final.” South Adelaide, eating its gruel with 1963’s wooden spoon, was talented but clueless. Until Kerley took over and captain-coached the Panthers to the 1964 Premiership. The Glenelg Tigers had descended…
Continue Reading →The Slap
(28 March 2022) Black velvety tunics, At a gang-bang held for eunuchs, When a joke that tasted sour Brought a show of feeble power And the man who did disparage Proved the sham that was his marriage. He laughed, then quivered at the cold Of his woman’s eyes, and so he rolled On stage and did lash out; Returning to his seat, to shout. Such doglike devotion Gives the world a certain notion; Laud a neuter to the nation Or fix degrees of separation? ———————————————- [We’d rather read Chris Tsiolkas.]
Continue Reading →Vale Republican Party Rascal
P.J. O’Rourke, Journalist and satirist (14/11/1947 – 15/2/2022) O’Rourke was once (c. 2009) a guest on the ABC’s Q & A programme, surrounded by the usual suspects. After listening to the various diatribes, he stated a forceful rhetorical question: “Why does the Left assume we’re all as stupid as they are?” His whole life was filled with such sublime bon mots. Read one of his essays, diary notes or other pieces, and you will find a fair bit of wisdom and a hell of a lot of hilarity. (A firm favourite is his ‘book review’ of “Everything to Gain: Making the…
Continue Reading →Pandemia
How Coronavirus Hysteria Took Over Our Government, Rights, and Lives (by Alex Berenson) (2021) This splendid book is both a comprehensive review of how the world got everything wrong about Covid-19 (or, if you have a conspiratorial bent, how the plague was weaponized by authoritarian forces to cow and terrify us into submission), and a story of how one man kept yelling from the back of the truck that this emperor had a spiked crown but no clothes. Or in his words, “how media hysteria, political partisanship, overreliance on unproven technology, and scientific illiteracy brought the United States and the…
Continue Reading →