Summertime Sadness
Songs in Our Heart # 77 Summertime Sadness (by Lana Del Ray) (written by Lana Del Ray and Rick Nowels; released June 2012) [As Miranda famously said, “the end of summer is like someone dying.” This elegiac fable of doomed, dying lovers is brilliant and beautiful, a kind of pop “Gloomy Sunday” with an Ennio Morricone-spaghetti-western feel. Sensational.]
Continue Reading →Something on a Stick Day
We at TVC regret that we failed to mark that important celebration, “Something on a Stick Day” on the 28th March, as is traditional. So, please accept our apologies and enjoy this touching cartoon by Michael Leunig, even if we are posting it a little late :-
Continue Reading →Bottling the Acid
"Wait till you hear what THIS says.." (artist: G. Cades circle)
(3 ways to cope with “flaming” online) The ‘interweb thingey’ has turned us all into publishers. Unfortunately, much material published on the world wide web desperately needs decent editing. Furthermore, the relative anonymity of social media platforms can attract the kind of thuggish commentary more suited to the Stanford Prison Experiment. For example, let’s say a website offering goods or services has a list of Google Reviews. People like ‘social proof’ so these reviews are read as a priority, and if enough positive feedback is on display, it may lead to a decision to click-and-buy. But what if you get a no-star…
Continue Reading →Play All: A Binge-Watcher’s Notebook by Clive James
Play All is James’ reflection on binge-watching box sets (yes, he says ‘box sets’. Perhaps he eats ‘fry rice’ while watching). He differentiates between a television drama in the “old sense” of a network weekly serial which just happens to have been boxed-up (box up?) such as The Good Wife, and a box set drama in the “new sense”, such as Game of Thrones. He adores both and watches 3, 4, 5 episodes of either in one sitting with his daughter. He sees “the main advantage that a long-form tv show has over a movie” as affording “room to search souls”, and explains the addiction : –“very soon…
Continue Reading →More Than Naught
Songs in Our Heart # 76 25 March 1977: Stiff Records release Elvis‘ first single, the incendiary Less Than Zero, a bitter snipe at British fascist leader Oswald Mosley. This was the song he famously terminated early on ‘Saturday Night Live’, since it would have gone over American heads at that stage (later he uncorked a ‘Dallas’ version of the song, with lyrics more suitable to U.S. audiences). It was described variously as “a trebly hybrid of ska and garage punk“* and “a crunchy anthem to nothingness.“** Elvis thinks it might have been the song he was playing when he was arrested…
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