Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm
Songs in Our Heart # 15 Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm (Crash Test Dummies) (Written by Brad Roberts; released October 1993) [Song for the bereft.] (Anyone who bases an album cover after Titian can’t be bad…)
Continue Reading →Mon amour est bleu
Venetian Songs (Elder Conservatorium of Music) Adelaide 17 June, 2016 This was a nice programme of short, light but not inconsequential French song cycles, beautifully sung (in French) by soprano Rosalind Martin accompanied by Roy Howat on piano. Composers such as Chausson, Poulenc (from poems by Apollinaire, including a great slacker’s song where the protagonist says he’d rather smoke than work), and Satie, created varying moods, most of them moving. Though my dodgy French found it hard to keep up, I liked the Satie song (Le Chapelier by René Chalupt) that has the Mad Hatter complaining that his watch is three…
Continue Reading →The Talented Mr Ripley
(by Patricia Highsmith) Talented Tom Ripley is. He has a facility for languages, art appreciation and deception. Charming Tom Ripley is not. Full marks to Highsmith for avoiding that trap. Tom thinks he is a master of seduction, a truly interesting and ingratiating kind of chameleon. He is even a little annoyed and contemptuous of the ease with which (he believes) he can fit in wherever he choses. Sadly for Tom and so many other psychopaths, he has no insight and cannot see that in fact he baffles and repels any slightly discerning human. Sadly for Tom’s target Dickie Greenleaf and his entourage, they are themselves neither discerning nor moral and are ripe…
Continue Reading →The Lathe of Heaven
Mt Hood, Portland, USA, in a good world
(by Ursula K. Le Guin) In his Aegypt cycle, John Crowley asks; what if the world was different once, but we don’t remember? What if it changed again, and we thought the new world was the way it had always been? In The Lathe of Heaven, Ursula K. Le Guin asks the same questions but adds – what if you could control that change? If you could have whatever you wished for, how carefully would you have to word those wishes? When George Orr dreams “effectively”, the world changes to align with George’s dream and only George notices that there has been a…
Continue Reading →Dear oh dear oh dear – take 2
Elizabeth R gets the bad news from the Prince: "Apparently, the Tigers were never in it..." (photo by Philip Allfrey)
Glenelg v North Adelaide, Queen’s Birthday, Monday 13 June 2016. After a long lead-up to this game, an important one, especially in light of the launch of the ‘Save the Tigers’ campaign, with a good and good-natured holiday crowd, we really expected better, although we’ve had trouble with North recently. The Bays were thrashed, and thrashed all day, losing every quarter, despite a strong final term effort. North were simply faster, more focused and made few errors. With the visitors leading 16 goals to 4 at three-quarter time, it was a relief to end-up only having our score doubled, not…
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