Ulalume
NoScars
These great film performances didn’t win an Oscar – so who cares? The Oscars have been a joke for decades, and the presentation doesn’t even live up to Johnny Carson’s famous description: “2 hours of sparkling entertainment packed into a 5-hour show.” Most of us know that when it comes to the Oscars, those people ain’t right. Disclaimer: When we say, for example, that De Niro gave a great performance in Taxi Driver, we are not having a shot at Peter Finch, who won the Oscar in that year. On the other hand, when Judy Garland didn’t win in 1954…..TVC…
Continue Reading →Write, Don’t Talk
(Random thoughts regarding Adelaide Writers’ Week, 2023 – a verse dialogue) (With apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Thomas Stearns Eliot) READER A lovely form there sate beside my bed, And such a feeding calm its presence shed, A tone so pure, far from earthly leaven, A message reassuring, newly down from heaven. ‘Twas some comfort – A fact drawn from bone; “We read to know that we are not alone.” AUTHOR And yet here it shrinks back, as if mistook! That weary, wandering, disavowing look! ‘Twas all another feature, look and frame, And still, methought, I knew, it was…
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 →Suddenly it’s Christmas (Reprise)
(Apologies to Loudon Wainwright III) Suddenly it’s Christmas, depending on your view, A time for winding-up and thereby going on the brew; In the north, they’re dressing warm and feeling rather nippy, Celebrating an illegitimate Jewish povo chippy. It is a time for contemplating meats of every kind, Chewing on God’s creatures, drinking oneself blind; ‘Tis the season, wear a mask and get that shot into your arm, Else men might come and haul you off to some dread animal farm.
Continue Reading →Queensland Art Gallery – The Ugly
November 2021 In liquid heat TVC hit the street and made their way to the Art Array. We are pleased to report there is much good to be found here (of which more in a forthcoming post) but there is also a selection of work that can be kindly called comic (except by Queensland taxpayers). A sample below: The above work, signed by Ian Di-Jirus, c/- ‘The Lucky Country’, invites the Chairman of the People’s Republic of China to enter into a Treaty. But before treaties, first we have to have a war… One recalls Peter Garrett‘s comment: “[much] contemporary…
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