Monday, July 24, 2006

Ask a Ninja

Dont ask me questions, just go there. Now.

Sunday, July 23, 2006

What’s in a name?

Ever since seeing that horrendous Robert Redford movie about TV journalism with Michelle Pfeiffer playing ‘Tally Atwater’ I have been increasingly amused by the names of Australia’s television journalists and anchors.

A list of my favourites include:

Mignon Henne (as in Filet Mignon, juvenile humour I know but it makes me laugh. There was also a highly amusing incident involving her finger getting bitten by a horse during a live broadcast. Classic television.)

Harry Potter (I find it very difficult to take a journalist seriously when I can only imagine him donning an invisible cloak.)
And my very favourite:

Leith Mulligan (Say it out loud. It makes me giggle. I can’t fully explain why.)

Further suggestions very welcome.

Monday, July 17, 2006

Brutally Confused

Heritage Victoria has listed the Harold Holt Swimming Pool and despite a genuine interest in heritage preservation I cannot really get worked up about it. As every news article in the last two days has suggested, it was highly amusing that it was named after a Prime Minister thought drowned off Point Nepean but aside from that I had no personal attachment to it and couldn't really care if it was preserved or not.

What I can get worked up about is the fact that the heritage profession continues to make the same media blunders and continually misunderstand their own reasons for giving something heritage protection. I heard a Heritage Victoria representative on the radio defending the decision to put it on the register on the grounds of its brutalist architecture. Now that's all well and good, but when Jon Faine began to argue it was still too ugly to be preserved she began to argue that the pool was significant as a recreational place for many people. Which is it?

Something can be heritage listed on the basis of its architectural significance or its social significance, but if it has been listed purely for its architectural significance (as the media reports suggest) then you cannot use its social significance to justify it.

Often the reasons for heritage listing are slippery ones, based more upon emotion than hard facts and the result is a convoluted mixture of architectural, social and historical significance that ends up sounding more like Dennis Denuto's 'It's the vibe of the thing' than it does a logical justification for heritage listing.

Wondering how badly confused that justification can get? Check out the Statement of Significance for Waverley Park...

Friday, July 14, 2006

LORD BYRON



For all the things I once said about you Byron Pickett, I unreservedly apologise.

AFL WORLD OF ADVERTISING

I figured I might as well begin this little sojourn into the wonderful world of the electric internet with a confession. I have been to AFL World.

During a lunch break this week an equally footballing tragic friend of mine and I made the trek and paid over the hefty attendance fee to be perhaps unsurprisingly disappointed.

I’m not really sure if you call it a museum, an entertainment centre or as their advertising suggests a ‘sensation’ but no amount of Naomi Klein-style homework could prepare me for the bombardment of advertising and product placement that awaited me on the other side of the lift doors.

The exhibition was inseparable from its advertising and the only section to be sans-advertising was the woefully inadequate Hall of Fame, which had bee clearly neglected because it could not provide an advertising windfall. AFL World is less a ‘sensation’ and more a sponsor’s dream.

The place isn’t all bad I guess, as long as you took a smaller football-loving relative along (I recommend someone around hip height) you could probably have a fairly good time. Just be prepared for the inevitable questions… Can I have a coke? Why can’t I have an xbox? Can we watch channel 9 tonight? Why don’t we listen to triple M?