Parramatta Yankee

We Take Care of Our Own

2012-01-21T11:56:00.003+10:00

Springsteen released a single from his forthcoming 'Wrecking Ball' album (due 6 March) this week that's already got critics pondering its meaning. Randall Roberts in the LA Times labels it 'patriotic'. Jim Farber of the NY Daily News -- who's been hard on Springsteen's work in the past -- calls it a 'tale of American self-reliance'. Backstreets does its homework and unearths a 2009 Nation article called 'Katrina's Hidden Race War', "... about a white 'militia' shooting at least 11 African-American men' in the days after the storm, when the city fractured along racial fault lines as its government collapsed":

Surrounded by a crowd of sunburned white Algiers Point locals at a barbeque held not long after the hurricane, [militia member Wayne Janak] smiles and tells the camera, "It was great! It was like pheasant season in South Dakota. If it moved, you shot it." A native of Chicago, Janak also boasts of becoming a true Southerner, saying, "I am no longer a Yankee. I earned my wings." A white woman standing next to him adds, "He understands the N-word now." In this neighborhood, she continues, "we take care of our own."

That Bruce Springsteen has initiated such debate over the meaning of a 4-minute rock-and-roll song in our garbage culture of vapid celebrities and corporate-approved infotainment is testament to the man's stature as an artist and his courage to challenge listeners. I've listened to the new song several times and am eager to hear if it's a meaningful outrider on 'Wrecking Ball' or signals a return to Springsteen's past method of delivering a theme across a body of work. I hope it's the latter.

2011 iPhone holiday snaps.

2012-01-05T13:32:00.000+10:00

The 'silly season' has come and gone in this sunbaked part of the world. Aradhna and I were originally supposed to be in Hobart, Tasmania for 6 days after Christmas but her mom had her gall bladder removed on Christmas Eve eve so we made a surprise visit to Sydney instead. I have yet to replace the camera that was stolen in Fiji so y'all have to settle for iPhone shots. (Damn that's pretentious.) The photo above was taken outside Gattica a week before Christmas. It will never feel right to write Christmas cards beneath warm sunlight at an outdoor cafe ... but I'll always enjoy the outstanding Melbourne coffee.

Our neighborhood is a central gathering place for what is by far Australia's largest Jewish population. Balaclava, and the surroudning suburbs of St Kilda and Caulfield, were havens for Holocaust survivors after WWII and have seen a continuous influx of orthodox Jews. One of the shops on Carlisle Street around the corner from our place had these 2 giant inflatable dradles in the window before Hannukah.

Aradhna and I christened a new Christmas cuisine: Turkey curry! Aradhna said she liked it and compared it favorably with my chicken curry. Before Aradhna's parents became vegans she was raised on her mom's variety of meat curries, so I never take her praise for granted.

Waiting for Aradhna's sister Upa to pick us up at Sydney airport on Christmas Day. It was especially satisfying to watch my wife cause at least a dozen cases of whiplash as she walked through Melbourne and Sydney airports.

Aradhna and I met friends Peter and Allison in Parramatta for lunch and made the mistake of choosing Parramatta Westfield to park in. Call me a curmudgeon but I couldn't imagine being in a place where more holiday spirit gets sucked down a drain than a massive mall 2 days after Christmas.

Parramatta holds many memories as it was the first place I ever got to know during my initial visit to Oz in February, 2005, so it was good to see the old Town Hall looking freshly painted and festively adorned.

Aradhna and I enjoyed refreshments as we awaited Peter and Allison to join us. Any hesitations on my part to deviate from healthy eating and drinking during the holidays were met with this plea: "But it's Chriiiisssssstmas!" Little wonder my wife's found success as a salesperson. Or I'm just a sap.

We met up with Radhika (shown here with Aradhna) and her husband Vipin and their lovely daughter Neha (shown below) at Ettamogah Pub in Kellyville Ridge. My in-laws built a house in the northwest Sydney suburb in 2005 and moved in early the following year. Radhika and Vipin moved there in 2010. Ettamogah, within walking distance to both homes, is an Aussie drinking barn with a children's playing area that's the size of a school's playground. Aradhna and Radhika have been friends since growing up in Nausori, Fiji together.

Neha spent the better part of 2 hours racing around the play area with Upa's son Jay, whom I neglected to photograph. Jay flirted like mad. Why wouldn't he? Neha's a stunner!

I flew home to Melbourne 2 days before Aradhna. While catsitters from Lonely Pets Club did their usual fine job looking after Theo and Oscar they're still cats and therefore dislike change. Theo, as shown here, nestled himself into my armpit whenever possible. Oscar shot looks that said, "Don't ever do that again. You bastard."

Clingy cats, defined: They'd be waiting for me in the bedroom as soon as I shut out the living room lights.

Fiji 2011: The Bad (part 1)

2011-12-01T15:00:00.000+10:00

It's been over two months since I discovered my rented Mazda 4WD truck in this condition. In my hand was a takeaway coffee from Tappoos a few shops down along the main drag in Sigatoka. I'd stopped while driving from my accommodation near Cuvu to the Sharma family's farm in Korokoro, where a two-day puja marking the end of Nana's 12-month mourning period was about to begin. It was 3:50 pm on a Saturday afternoon. I'd been away from the truck for 20 minutes -- I knew precisely because I'd dropped 20 cents in a parking meter at 3:30. I'm averse to tourist traps but the closing of my friend Roshni's 'Le Cafe' made Tappoos' hideously named 'Bulaccino' the only coffee shop in town. I normally plug my laptop into an outlet and write among temporarily tattooed tourists who throw contemptuous looks at people who dare engage in non-vacation behavior. On this afternoon, however, I was running late, and chose to leave the laptop-carrying backpack on the passenger side floor of the truck.

Guess you know what's coming.

Funny how the mind can mute blaring despair. Or maybe I'm dimmer than most. "Why would someone mindlessly vandalise a parked vehicle?" was my immediate reaction to seeing the shattered passenger-side window. I must have assumed the backpack was slung over my shoulder because it wasn't until assessing the extent of the damage inside the truck did reality crash through my mind's double-paned glass: The bag. My bag's gone. It's been stolen. What was in the bag? Laptop. Camera. Ipod. USB sticks. Two notebooks filled with anecdotes, dialogue and minutae from previous trips to Fiji. And, ladies and gentlemen, every word of a book I've been writing for two-and-a-half years.

Did I have backups? Of course. The USB sticks. Only they were in the bag, as I'd intentionally booked myself at an isolated, little-known resort that promised limited distractions (e.g., just four hours of electricity a day) beside a secluded lagoon. To write. Aradhna couldn't accompany me on this trip as she'd recently returned from a holiday in Vietnam so I was in Fiji to represent the two of us at Nana's puja and finish my untitled 'Fiji novel', a book that drew on time spent with Nana, my travels throughout Fiji and many months at the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne researching Fiji's fascinating, if tragic, late-19th- and 20th-century history. I'd amassed 600-700 pages, depending on the draft, but sought to replace bulk with precision.

Alas a thief, or gang or thieves, solved my 'bulk' problem.

After staring at glass nuggets scattered throughout the truck's interior I climbed out and took stock. Witnesses? None. Sigatoka clears out after 3 pm on Saturdays and doesn't re-awaken until Monday morning. Police? I walked to a small barracks. No cops inside. A single taxi sat in a normally busy rank. I asked its Indian driver for a lift to the police station across from Lawaqa Park on the other side of town. He became the first of many to hear my sorry tale and at the station refused to accept payment. Inside a seemingly deserted 2-story structure a burly Fijian officer sat behind an unlit reception desk. He watched me walk in, but said nothing.

"I just had my truck broken into out front of Tappoos," I said.

His eyes drooped into darkened, flabby crevices. Five seconds passed. A myna bird squawked beside a busted water pipe in front of the station. Ten seconds passed. Had I addressed him disrespectfully? Another ten seconds. He looked down, sighed, and raised his head like a matador addressing a bull.

"Come back Monday morning."

If you've played baseball you're familiar with the sudden silence, twitching brainpan and scrambled perspective of being drilled in the head. I can't remember when I last donned mitt, spikes and cap but inside the Sigatoka Police Station on a Saturday afternoon in September I had become a Little Leaguer splayed face down, knot erupting from my noggin, taste of infield dirt on my tongue. Fortunately, like ballplayers through the ages I scrambled back up, dusted myself off, and hid the concussive effects from my opponent.

"Maybe I could lodge a police report?" I asked, haltingly.

The matador buckled. With glacial velocity he wheeled to the opposite side of the reception desk, snatched a form and wheeled back. I listened to his pen scribble across a poorly Xerox'd copy of a police report. He requested specifics. I described the backpack's contents -- including the bag itself, a cherished companion bought at a pricy Aussie travel chain -- before the wallop of another hardball brought down the curtain again: My passport. My passport was in the bag. My passport's been stolen. I was in Fiji without my goddamned US passport.

A sinking man seeks sunlight so I walked outside and squeezed my head and looked at the sky and engaged in a brutal reckoning of every decision, action and plan that made this clusterfuck possible. I walked back into the station and stood before the cop.

"Your passport, you say?" he said with a smile. The daggers were in. The bull lay dying. The matador had won.

To be continued ...

CBD culture clash.

2011-11-07T10:20:00.005+10:00

A recent trip into the CBD to see Shah Rukh Khan's 'Ra.One' allowed Aradhna and I to glimpse a rarely displayed fissure in Melbournian society. The start of Victoria's annual spring racing carnival coincided with a march down Swanston Street (above) by protesters inspired by the 'Occupy Wall Street' movement in the US. Six days earlier police on horseback had used extreme measures to clear them from the small public square along Swanston Street where they'd peacefully camped for a week. This well-organised march of perhaps a thousand people marked their return to the CBD and media spotlight.

Intentionally or not, their demonstration coincided with a parade of antennaed women in stilletos and haughtily dressed men using public transport to carry them to Flemington Racecourse just northwest of the CBD. Aradhna and I were flagrantly under-dressed among the clothes horses at Balaclava train station, though our attire was surely more appropriate for the sterile environs of the train (above). A week of grey skies dissolved from memory beneath trees bursting with fresh foliage along Swanston Street. A phalanx of police on horseback near the Flinders Street intersection hinted at what was coming, but the only commotion in sight was tourists snapping photos.

Aradhna and I walked up Swanston and came upon the march at Town Hall (right). Nowhere near the 'feral' or 'unwashed' mob that Murdoch-owned tabloids had labeled them to the delight of their suburban readership, they banged drums and yelled in unison and carried signs and tore the veil of preciousness from self-absorbed racegoers like a tornado through a clothes line. Men and women wearing 'Official Observor' placards and carrying clipboards monitored the police, who to their credit gave the marchers space and halted traffic at intersections. The protesters stopped briefly beside the square where they'd camped for a week -- their proximity eliciting a chant of 'We'll be back!' -- and that's where I broke off and walked back to where my wife was waiting across from Town Hall. Two men behind me loudly discussed the merits of the march; "These people should do their protesting online!" the most memorable line.

The marchers eventually turned left at Flinders Street, spent a few hours in Treasury Gardens -- where police made it clear they were not free to camp -- and retreated to an alleyway near RMIT a few blocks away. The march made the evening news but proved no match for spring racing carnival hype, which continued unabated through the week. I was having coffee at Gattica in Balaclava when this trio of racegoers (above) passed by, theirs the parade of choice for Melburnians accustomed to still waters and faux prosperity and obeyance. But what do I know ... even after 4 years in Melbourne I fail to appreciate a weeklong 'celebration' of dress-up and gambling and inebriation. Bloody Philistine.

Happy Diwali

2011-10-26T13:56:00.002+10:00

Aradhna's mom in Sydney outdid herself this Diwali with an express delivery package full of sweets and savories -- plastic containers included.

Fiji 2011: The Good

2011-10-06T06:52:00.099+10:00

Fiji will break your heart a thousand ways and purr in your ear, "Don't be angry. You know you love me. You know you can't resist me." Common knowledge for those who've experienced its tropical splendour, its laid-back pace, its intractable woes -- or merely wandered from the fairy tale compounds of his/her resort. Unfortunately, sadly, predictably, I recently returned from my wife's birthplace with a fresh appreciation for western-style law enforcement and an English-speaking citizenry.

[Foreboding aside: All photos in this post -- including the one above of the beach at Namuka Bay Lagoon Resort -- were taken with an iPhone on those infrequent occasions when it could be charged.]

This trip to Fiji -- my 6th in 4 years, bless Aradhna's benevolent heart -- was planned long ago. Atma Ram Sharma, Aradhna's Nana and a man I greatly revere and admire, passed away in September 2010. A puja was held 16-17 Sept to mark the end of his 12-month mourning period at the Korokoro farm where he and his wife of over 60 years – our beloved Nani -- raised 16 children. With family members from overseas filling spare bedrooms in Korokoro, I elected to begin the trip at an affordable resort about a half-hour's drive west of Sigatoka. This necessitated the hiring of a 4WD, both to access the isolated resort and help deliver people/groceries/Fiji Bitter to Korokoro. The events of Saturday 16 September would make me regret nearly every decision made up to that afternoon and would lead to a cascading series of tragicomedies ... but this post is about the good stuff:

My reasons for staying at Namuka Bay Lagoon Resort just west of Cuvu: 1) I'd never heard of it before, and 2) Their website is comically inept, one of the worst I've ever seen for a 'resort', and therefore making it ripe for overhaul. (Shameless plug: My freelance business is called Interactive Intuition. My previous work for Tourism Fiji may be found here.) Reaching Namuka Bay required turning off Queens Road onto a dirt clearing that serves farmers still growing sugar cane on Viti Levu’s western hillsides. Rough and dusty, but passable. At the top of a hill about 3 kms from Queens Rd a sign for Namuka Bay pointed left. A puddle of shimmering Pacific blue appeared in the distance before the road dropped like a log flume. The truck and I bounced for another 5 kms over a single dirt and grass lane cut by cane farmers generations before tourism replaced sugar as the mainstay of Fiji's economy. As this photo (above) demonstrates, bullocks, cows, goats, and other 4-legged beasts still demand right-of-way.

The payoff (right). After a final drop through jungle canopy, Namuka Bay's humble compound appeared at the water's edge. Old cane tram lines cut through the property, thin steel reminders of the backbreaking work that drove the English to import indentured labour from India. Six villas are perched between the lagoon and tracks. This view is what I woke to every morning from my beachside villa.

Viti Levu’s spectacular inland (left) as seen along the drive back to Queens Rd from Namuka Bay.

Namuka Bay's isolation prevents it from being overrun by the masses -- I was its only guest during my 5-day stay – so its beaches are practically untouched and the lagoon (right) is pristine. Its owner, a fast-talking gentleman named Mashuk Ali, described to me his dreams of mass development once the Fijian gov't builds a proper road to his self-described ‘natural phenomena’ of a resort. One can only hope Mr Ali, who lives with his family in one of the villas, doesn't bulldoze his natural phenomena someday.

Namuka Bay can claim natural features rarely found in the Fiji Islands. One is hulking, ancient coral (left) that extends from the western spit of beach and becomes jungle-covered as it curves around the resort's grounds like ramparts of a fortress. Another is a cave which holds, I’m told, bones of mysterious origin. A regal woman named Ole, whose soaring cheekbones and tall, thin frame signal a Lau Group bloodline, offers tours of these features, but the circumstances of this trip prevented such 'touristy' pleasures.

Bouncing over the unlit cane road (right) to Namuka Bay at night was like driving along the bottom of an overgrown ocean; silent spirits lurked in every turn.

I don't normally upload photos from a stranger's Facebook page but it’s important to recognise one of this trip’s true highlights: A traditional Fijian wedding (left). My misadventures in Sigatoka necessitated a trip to Suva, home of the (spoiler alert!) US Embassy and Raintree Lodge just north of Suva City in Colo-i-Suva. I’d phoned Tom Davis, Raintree’s owner, beforehand and he extended a welcome invitation to stay at his eco-tourism oasis. This past December and January I worked for a company called Webmedia in Toorak, Suva’s oldest and dreariest neighbourhood. A colleague and I traveled throughout Fiji at the time but Suva nonetheless grew on me like the mould that prematurely ages every building in Fiji's capital. Walking along Victoria Parade on a late afternoon I was accosted by 'Aggie' (real name Ikenesi Banuve), one of the two ‘housegirls’ who looked after me and two colleagues from Webmedia. (The other was Sheila. Sheila Ki Jawani.) I hadn't seen her since returninghttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif to Melbourne in late January. She looked different. "I'm getting married tomorrow!" she said. "Come to my wedding!" It wasn't just a pre-bridal glow that had altered Aggie's appearance: She was 4 1/2 months pregnant. I'd met her boyfriend -- a quiet, solid bloke named Waqa (real name Laijia Waqanisau) -- in January but knew little about him. Nevertheless, I happily accepted Aggie’s invitation. As if bumping into her on a busy Suva sidewalk wasn’t coincidental enough it turned out Waqa worked at Raintree Lodge and had invited Tom to the wedding, too. The next day we drove to a 2-story house in Tatua Heights and witnessed the festivities. As shown in the photo, the 4-member bridal party wore traditional tapas and had coconut oil rubbed onto their skin. A minister performed the hour-long Christian ceremony upstairs while men drank kava downstairs.

I returned to Korokoro from Suva on a Saturday afternoon, watched the Flying Fijians get walloped in the Rugby World Cup on Sunday, and was tossed headfirst back into the rabbit hole of Fijian justice on Monday morning at Sigatoka Police Station. I once again placed a call to a friendly voice, this one Andrew Walkden-Brown's at the Beachouse in Korolevu, and he kindly invited me to his piece of Coral Coast paradise. I arrived via bus that afternoon with an ever-lengthening tale of woe and severely sprained ankle. A spot on the beach beside Lucy (above) was a physical, emotional and spiritual lifesaver.

Nick is a larrikin from country New South Wales who’s experienced a midlife rebirth at the Beachouse and is now a slimmed-down embodiment of the benefits of stand-up paddle boarding. This photo (above) shows him helping one of his sons become accustomed to a paddle board in the Beachouse’s lagoon.

My first appreciation of the therapeutic qualities of a woven hammock. Look closely at the left ankle (right), swollen and about to turn a garish purple.

Another of this trip’s unexpected highlights was traveling to Wainadoi and Suva with Justin, a surf instructor at the Beachouse. My sorrowful tale drove Justin to call his mom, Laisa Vulakoro, whom I later learned has released 16 albums and is referred to as the Queen of Vude (Fijian-style music). Justin believed his mom's connections could spur action on my case so we hailed one of Fiji's shiny new buses on Queens Rd and made the hour-long trek to Wainadoi, a small village 20 kms west of Suva. We were invited by a cop to take shelter from afternoon heat on the porch of the Wainadoi Police Post before Laisa arrived and delivered us all to her home a few kms inland from Queens Rd, a place she shares with her husband and son, a ball of energry named Lote (shown above with Justin as we walked Laisa's property, a former rubber plantation). Their spacious, chalet-style, mohagany wood house is situated so Fiji's easterlies pass through like a mountain stream through a rainforest.

Laisa's property in Wainadoi.

Sunset in Korotogo. My last night on this ill-fated trip was spent across the road at Bedarra Beach Inn, a reliable refuge that Aradhna and I have visited before and where two people I'd met at Raintree Lodge were staying (as per my suggestion). Charlene Edwards and Michael Pergola ... I could write 'til my fingers bled and barely scratch their collective surface. We met at breakfast on Raintree's spectacular lakeside deck. Charlene had a camera the size of a bazooka and was pointing it at the rare Fijian birds that roost at Raintree while her husband Michael and a pudgy missionary and I shared travel stories. Charlene's from Queens and Michael's a Brooklyn boy so their accents carried me to Sunday afternoons in my grandmother's kitchen. They were on a 5-month, multi-country tour with a week in Fiji followed by a month in New Zealand. I shared some Fijian travel tips and hoped to see them again along the Coral Coast. Five days later, broken and bruised and wanting only to be on the plane that would take me back to Aradhna the next night, I checked into the Bedarra and nearly shed a tear when they waved hello from their balcony. I was useless that evening but had the good fortune to enjoy coffee and Michael's company the next morning. We got on the subject of his return to Brooklyn after fighting in Vietnam and subsequent trips back, which are documented in Charlene's award-winning book called 'Voices from Vietnam' (a book I've got on order from Amazon at the time of this writing). Charlene joined us and we took a ride to the remains of a Tongan hill fort across the Sigatoka River from Nana's farm. We said our goodbyes in Sigatoka, where I caught a taxi to Korokoro. Later that afternoon I was on a bus to Nadi and then a plane to Melbourne.

Many of the Indo-Fijian-penned books I've read while researching Fiji's girmitya period incorporate the word 'paradise' ironically and by the end of this trip, I could relate. The particulars will be covered in a future blog post.

Before.

2011-09-12T16:53:00.009+10:00

Construction of the World Trade Center began in 1966 and the towers were officially opened in 1973 when I was 7 years old. I can't claim to have many memories of seeing the buildings going up, but me and my 4th grade classmates got a spectacular view during a visit to the Statue of Liberty in 1976 (I have photos, but they're back in the States). I also remember the hubbub surrounding the North Tower becoming the tallest building in the world, passing the Empire State Building in the process and garnering snickers to the effect of 'They're tall, but they ain't no Empire State'. When I worked in lower Manhattan WTC was where I took the PATH train and walked through the Financial District to my office in and art deco building on Exchange Place. It was part of my commute. Until it wasn't.

The NY Times has a typically authoritative 9/11 section -- I came across these photos in a remarkable online photo album called The Towers' Rise and Fall.
9 October 1970
12 July 1971
3 April 1973
29 November 1973
4 July 1986
The towers from the NJ meadowlands.
The observation deck in December 2000.
10 September 2011

Remember the fallen.

2011-09-11T10:47:00.002+10:00

Each was taller than the towers they died in.

Spring wants in.

2011-08-15T12:16:00.001+10:00

Colours don't lie. Winter's getting the heave-ho. 'Bout goddamn time.

R.I.P. Joe Casey

2011-07-30T11:35:00.023+10:00

Leonard Cohen (above) would have found a kindred spirit in Joe Casey. Writer, poet, painter, searcher, recluse, Joe was an echo from the '60s, a polarising figure within the Paterson diocese of the Catholic church who inspired and outraged in equal measure, and who was a dear friend of mine. Joe Casey passed away this week at the age of 70. He wrote in a recent email that he was ill and no longer ambulatory. As Cohen sings, that's not an ideal condition for a man accustomed to testing limits:

Like a bird
on the wire
Like a drunk in some old midnight choir
I have tried
in my way
To be free.

These words, and that deep, smoke-stained voice, embody the spirit of a man born just before WWII on the poor Irish side of Morristown, NJ who would strive to expand his mission within the most cloistered of organisations -- the Catholic church -- and soar and suffer in equal measure.

Joe was a regular visitor to my grandmother's house in Lake Parsippany during his time as a parish priest at St Christopher's church in the late '60s and early '70s. My grandmother -- a larger-than-life woman who left Hell's Kitchen for the 'utopia' of North Jersey in the late '50s for the sake of my grandfather's health -- was the sun for a solar system of nine children, umpteen grandkids, swarms of cousins and fellow escapees from the old NYC neighborhood. Her house was an epicentre for birthday parties, Baptism/Communion/Confirmations, graduations, holiday gatherings and afternoon beer soirees. Back in the States I've got a photo of a young Joe Casey baptising my brother Kevin at St Christopher's in 1968, an occasion that was surely followed by a noisy gathering around grandma's kitchen table. Joe often spoke about his early days at St Christopher's and the tremendous generosity shown by 'Mrs Wall' and the many occupants of 10 Jacksonville Drive. It's no surprise he performed the service at grandma's funeral in 2001 and remains a beloved figure in the Wall family.

After knowing him peripherally it was suggested by my stepmom that I visit Joe at his office at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison, NJ in 1989. Turned out no one on Earth was better suited to hear my sniveling, over-educated, suburban drivel than Joe, and not only because he performed such disagreeable duties as an FDU counselor. He saw something in me worth drilling down to, worth getting me to recognise and, most importantly, value. Frankness is easily shared with strangers but Joe applied it with equal force among those closest to him. Besides a handful of teachers and university professors, Joe was the first person to detonate the putrid mountain of excuses I'd constructed to justify the side-stepping of a writing career. He was blunt, sometimes brutally so, and never accepted a first answer as the truest answer -- a trait that generated loyalty among friends and colleagues but led to years of conflict within the intractable boundaries of his diocese.

Joe's kick up the backside helped land me a writing gig in NYC at the old Paramount Building on Columbus Circle in early 1990. My professional writing career had begun in earnest, as had my connection to Joe. Over the next 16 years our friendship grew from occasional visits to his place at the OMEGA compound in Mt Freedom, NJ to co-inhabitor of a bungalow in Sweet Valley, PA. (There's many photos I'd love to share of this magnificent hideaway, but they're all back in the States.)

It's impossible to overstate the importance of Sweet Valley to my oftentimes chaotic life. Joe gutted the bungalow and rebuilt it in his image. Its walls were covered with his art collection -- many of the artists were FDU colleagues -- and his own paintings. His books filled a half dozen floor-to-ceiling bookshelves; his library was my introduction to Vonnegut, Armistead Maupin, Bukowski, J.P. Donleavy, Robinson Davies, Cormac McCarthy, John Irving, Bulgakov, Paul Auster, Mailer, DeLillo, Annie Proulx and others. The tiny kitchen was a maze of shelves and pockets filled with spices, oils, legumes and always, always, coffee beans from Porto Rico Import Co. on Bleecker St in the Village (my contribution).

I could write a book about Sweet Valley. Maybe, someday, I will. For Joe it was a place to retreat and build and be alone with his thoughts in a forgotten corner of Northeast Pennsylvania. He was a familiar face at the hardware store and locals' diner and exchanged pleasantries, and sometimes favors, with neighbors. One, a quiet man named Gary who I was told 'worked at a toilet factory', would plow the tiny road that snaked along a hilltop and provided access to the row of post-WWII bungalows that were once summer cottages for mining executives from Wilkes-Barre, 30 miles to the southeast.

A small lake was nestled in a ridge behind tall pines. The property's Depression-era outhouse held a lawn mower, gardening tools and hornets' nests. Joe turned a small, collapsing garage into a storage bin for the pea coal we'd feed into a battered coal-burning stove that was more sensitive than a teething infant. He constructed a small deck for summertime grilling and used spare windows from a neighbor's renovation to enclose the porch, creating a perfect spot to witness the sun's morning rays cascade above distant mountains. Wilkes-Barre's local public radio station, Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Enya, Lou Reed, Mahler and many more eclectic sounds played through speakers wired in every room. The bathroom was rustic, and dry seasons would result in orange water dripping from pipes Joe and I had jerry-rigged over one particularly productive weekend.

It was not pretentious. It was a humble temple to spirituality, thought, seclusion and creativity. It was Joe Casey.

After leaving FDU Joe was chaplain at Morristown Memorial Hospital and then the infamous Greystone Park hospital where his patient-first mentality made him a favourite with the afflicted and intellectual thorn to bureaucracy. A two-and-a-half hour drive through western NJ, the Poconos and the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton valley was the price for a calm, nourishing space. A price both of us were eager to pay, and a price with rewards I reap to this day.

When Joe wasn't in Sweet Valley he lived at the Assumption Church rectory in Morristown, not far from his childhood home. He had a flourishing social life. Many bigshots and barflies desired an audience with 'Father Joe'. I'd sometimes meet him for a couple of pints at The Office or Dublin Pub or, if the night was going to be serious, the Calaloo Cafe. (Such nights generally resulted in me staying in a spare room at the rectory.) I traveled to Rochester, MN in 1997 to visit Joe during one of his stays there, a trip that resulted in an experience in a small Illinois town that may play in your local cinema someday AND my one and only Native American sweat lodge ceremony on a snow-covered Minnesota hillside. I visited him again in Rochester under different circumstances in the spring of 2006, but that's a story for another day.

Joe was close to his sister Trish, whom I first met when she worked at the Black Forest Inn in Stanhope, NJ many years ago. Saw her again when Joe's mom passed away. A difficult time for all, especially Joe, who had a loving but sometimes fractious relationship with his mother. I was familiar with the effect Joe's prickly independence had on his family.

Joe had friends throughout the US and the world. All knew him as a caring, cantankerous soul who stood on equal ground with his 'flock' whether they be parishioners in North Jersey, villagers in Guatemala, churchgoers in small Pennsylvania towns or patients in mental hospitals. I was lucky to know him as a multi-layered individual: a brave writer, prolific reader, expressionist artist, scholar, builder, lover of French food and afternoon espresso. He was far and away the most complicated person I've ever known. One who more than anyone made me who I am today.

Joe sold the Sweet Valley bungalow in 2006, around the same time I moved to Australia. He eventually acquired a property in Belize, north of Guatemala, and split his time between there and Morristown. I'll regret for the rest of my days not remaining in touch with him regularly over the past 5 years.

I visited a local tavern yesterday afternoon to toast my departed friend and be alone in a crowd. After settling in with a pint of porter and my notepad a man sitting nearby asked a question. An hour and two rounds of porter later I'd befriended a Scotsman named Duncan, a Brisbane lad new to Melbourne after spending 8 years living and working in London and Southeast Asia. We met as strangers and parted as kindred spirits. Walking home through winter rain I was reminded of Joe's intolerance for the inane, his hunger for connection countered by a need for occasional solitude, his commitment to the real. I felt his restless, curious spirit walking beside me and maybe, hopefully, within me. Joe would scoff at such sentimental claptrap, but since the first piece of advice he ever gave me was 'You can't tell yourself how to feel', I think he'd approve of the honesty.

FYI, from Joe's obituary:
"In lieu of flowers, Father Joe specifically requested: 'Anyone wishing to memorialize my departure should plant a perennial flowering plant, tree or evergreen in some place which wants a little more beauty, or make a donation to: The Christian Foundation for Children and the Aging, One Elmwood Avenue, Kansas, 66103.'"

Kelly Slater visits Cloudbreak

2011-07-12T08:47:00.005+10:00

Major swells hit the western islands of Fiji recently, drawing big-game surfers like lions to a lazy herd of antelope. Surf legend Kelly Slater is among those to be seen in this video taken at Cloudbreak, where I was fortunate to visit in January via Malolo Island's Funky Fish Resort.

4th of July, Prahran VIC (Misty's)

2011-07-05T23:32:00.001+10:00

Five Independence Days into my Aussie occupation and I finally marked its importance with an act that recognises the heroism, wisdom and sacrifice of America's forefathers: Lunch at an 'American-themed' diner in Prahran with a young man from Arizona named Andrew.

Go ahead and scoff. The Fourth is a monotonous winter's day here in Melbourne, nothing more. It holds zero status. No parades, no cookouts, no fireworks, no superfluous TV news stories detailing how 'proud locals' celebrate their 'nation's birth'. If anything, celebrating the stubbornness and tenacity of America's patriots invites ostracisation from the Queen Cult, the majority of Aussies who in 1999 voted against severing colonial ties with Great Britain. Independence? Who can be bothered? Now be a good lad and fetch me a scone ... and be sure not to scrimp on the fresh cream and jam.

Catty, right? Tens of thousands of freedom fighters, mostly tradesmen and farmers, died for a democratic cause that, while far from perfect, has been a model for generations of humans striving for what Aussies call a 'fair go'. Twelve years ago the citizens of this fair land, meanwhile, shrugged their collective shoulders at the opportunity to become a free-standing nation without a single bullet fired. Raise the subject and you're swamped with tut-tutting about deficiencies in the republic plan, an effective gov't fear campaign, boganism ... it's all garbage. What it comes down to is a preference for stasis. Why change a good thing? Besides, the Queen is such a sweet old gal, we wouldn't want to hurt her feelings .....

Onto a more satisfying subject: American kitsch. Melbourne has a few 'American-themed' restaurants that I've never felt compelled to visit. There's enough culture in this town to fill the calendar of even the most over-caffeinated trend chaser. Several weeks ago Andrew, who's in Melbourne after interning for 6 months at a rainforest hotel in India, asked what I was doing for the Fourth. I had no answer because the question's never been asked. After poking around the interWebs I found Misty's Diner in Prahran, a 25-minute walk from my place or a 10-minute tram ride. Andrew met me at Gattica in Balaclava and we walked north up Melbourne's runway model-heavy Chapel Street for a star-spangled lunch.

Framed photos of Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe on every wall. Shiny US license plates. Mirrors framed with miniature Chevy tail fins with glowing tail lights. Vinyl LPs and album sleeves from the '50s. Flourescent-coloured booths with old-diner-style table jukeboxes (topped with 21st-century mini-flat-screen TVs). American candy for sale inside a giant glass display. This was Misty's on the 4th of July. Same as it is every other day, I imagine, which is unfortunate for its wait and kitchen staff. The menu was lengthy and included such 'American' items as cheese sticks, bloomin' onions and at least a dozen versions of America's greatest export, the humble hamburger. A brief intro on the menu's cover by Misty's owner proclaiming his proud Arizona heritage made Andrew puff with Southwest pride and explained the many Mexican beers and foods listed within. I don't eat beef so I got the chicken burger shown here (yeah, they're called chicken burgers here, not chicken sandwiches) that included 3 cheese sticks inside. I ordered curly fries -- another Uncle Sam specialty, so it would seem -- but Andrew mistakenly asked our Scottish waitress what kinds of fries they had and was given a list of at least ten that I swear included something unimaginable called 'wet fries'.

As shown in the top photo hard-to-find American beers were also available. Andrew and I had our hearts set on a staple of informal US get-togethers, Budweiser, but were informed that Misty's was currently without the King of Beers. Samuel Adams on Independence Day was a logical consolation, though after putting away our baskets of fried tastiness another waitress -- she may have been the owner -- came by and said with a broad smile, "I've got cold Buds." We said yes please and drank them with a shared dessert: deep-fried Oreos (shown here on a white plate with ice cream, hot fudge and whipped cream). The Oreos could have been deep-fried anything -- I'd have guessed halved tennis ball -- but cold Budweiser washed away all deep-fried regret.

The mid-day beechwood-aged brew may have also played a role in my jubilation upon spotting a box of Cap'n Crunch cereal on a shelf while we waited to pay. It's true that a few weeks ago it occurred to me that Aradhna had grown up in a world withOUT Cap'n Crunch and that she was sitting beside me at the time, compelling me to share this observation and forcing her to once again question the sanity of her lawfully bound partner. I practically cartwheeled out of the restaurant, so tickled was I about holding a box of heavily processed and excessively sweetened childhood that I could introduce to my Indo-Fijian-Australian wife. Andrew and I zigzagged our way northward through one of Melbourne's trendiest neighborhoods, the Cap'n occasionally catching me eye from within a shopping bag. At South Yarra station Andrew and I went in separate directions, me jumping on a southbound train and he waiting on a northbound one to nearby Flinders Street station in the CBD. The Cap'n sat straight up in his seat (as shown in this photo) as we rolled towards Balaclava, my adopted home in a faraway land. What would Aradhna think when she returned from work and found an exorbitantly expensive box of children's breakfast cereal sitting in a place of pride in our apartment?

What she always thinks. "Crazy American."

For LIFE.

Asbury Park

2011-06-27T09:05:00.003+10:00

The loss of Clarence Clemons got me reminiscing about Asbury Park. I added another dozen photos to a photo album on Facebook that includes the shot shown above, taken from the beach beside the Paramount Theater during a break in rehearsals in 1999. (You don't need to be an FBer to see them.)

R.I.P. Clarence 'Big Man' Clemons

2011-06-19T12:29:00.012+10:00

This isn't the first time something's happened back home that's made me feel a million light years from everything I've ever known and loved. Facebook makes it possible to 'e-grieve' with dozens of 5J (a long-bulldozed Meadowlands parking lot) Springsteen zealots I've been blessed to know, some for over 30 years, but it does nothing to ease the pain of Clarence Clemons dying at the age of 69 from a massive stroke suffered a week ago.

Springsteen released this statement a little while ago:

Clarence lived a wonderful life. He carried within him a love of people that made them love him. He created a wondrous and extended family. He loved the saxophone, loved our fans and gave everything he had every night he stepped on stage. His loss is immeasurable and we are honored and thankful to have known him and had the oppurtunity to stand beside him for nearly forty years. He was my great friend, my partner and with Clarence at my side, my band and I were able to tell a story far deeper than those simply contained in our music. His life, his memory, and his love will live on in that story and in our band.

Dealing with this news at the St Kilda library, live bootleg from 1978 playing through my laptop's earphones as tears roll down my face. Cleveland Agora show, one of my first vinyl bootlegs from the days of smoky record stores and long drives in shit cars devouring the latest illicit live or studio recordings, usually through the efforts of Jeff Stefanick, who happened to have sent me this impeccable boot from the other side of Earth after I moved to Australia.

After a few beers at a show or a bar before or after a someone in our Springsteen cult would inevitably ask, 'Can you imagine a life without 'Born to Run' or 'Darkness' or 'Wild and the Innocent'? An easy question -- of course we couldn't -- but with Clarence's passing we're left with a world without the E Street Band. My friend Mary Beth wrote that her youth died today, and it's hard not to agree. But along with despair I'm feeling fortunate. The 'Spirit in the Night' clip below from the Capitol Theater in '78 still makes the hair on my neck stand straight up, sends my heel pounding into the floor and puts me in a sweating, surging crowd, singing along and high-fiving and feeling 100% committed to a joyful moment with some of the finest humans on the planet. Yeah ... lucky's the right emotion. Motherfuckin' LUCKY.

Can't put into words how much I miss my friends back home right now. The people who've rewarded my often selfish behaviour with kindness and loyalty and amazing generosity, often in the presence of the music of a skinny guy from Freehold and a mammoth African-American saxophone player who was loved -- make that worshiped -- by a white, suburban audience for not only blowing off the roofs of clubs and arenas with his playing but by standing up there beside Springsteen and giving us a heroic vision of BROTHERHOOD -- of loving the sometimes fucked-up friend beside you, the group you hang with and would kill to defend, the men and women who see you through the bullshit and the beautiful, the people you're lucky enough to grow old with ... and grieve for when they pass.

Just made the mistake of watching the 'Jungleland' clip below and am having a hard time keeping it together in a public place so it's time to leave the library. Godspeed, Big Man. You'll live forever in all of us.

UPDATE: A few of the better columns generated by the Big Man's passing:
Jon Pareles, NY Times
Randy Lewis, LA Times
Timothy Egan, NY Times
Backstreets magazine has a dedicated page for Clarence:

Late autumn.

2011-05-28T10:30:00.004+10:00

Pretty good for an iPhone shot. Walking from Malvern with a bagful of groceries this particularly pungent collection of autumn colours grabbed my attention.

A brief sojourn in Sydney.

2011-05-05T08:02:00.006+10:00

Back in Sydney to retrieve our car, which chose the day before a 5-day weekend to become inoperable during our recent Easter road trip. This photo was taken Tuesday night at Melbourne's Southern Cross station, where I caught an overnight train after a lovely Italian dinner with Aradhna on Collins Street. I like trains but more to the point like to travel cheaply when by myself. The CountryLink train left Melbourne at 8:15 pm and arrived at Sydney's Central station at 7:30 am.

I caught a few hours sleep and was glad to arrive in the Big Smoke (as my friend Alf refers to Sydney) on a crisp, clear morning. Walked to a familiar spot on Park Street in Sydney's CBD for a coffee and a spot in the maelstrom of morning hustle and flow, where these 2 photos were taken.

Sydneysiders and Melburnians love to play up their differences but aside from the weather they're two sides of the same coin. It's almost 5 years to the day that I moved to Australia. Sydney and its western suburbs are where I started a new life with a magnificent woman and I'll always regard it as one of my many 'hometowns'. Driving back to my current one tomorrow.

'Justice has been done.'

2011-05-02T14:53:00.005+10:00

President Obama just addressed the world via the White House to announce the killing of Osama bin Laden by a small US military force in Pakistan.

My reaction was visceral, and surprising, at least to myself. Using wi-fi at the St Kilda library I caught a posting on Facebook by a friend in NYC that read 'We got Osama'. Ba-Boom. Tore through the internet for details. Palms sweaty, heart racing, I logged onto the White House website and awaited the president's address while Facebook went berserk with jubilation. Finally, this:
Nothing partisan. An intelligent man sharing news that a majority of US citizens have yearned to hear since that terrible day in 2001.

Today was the day. A damn fine day.

Sydney road trip.

2011-04-22T11:29:00.005+10:00

I've already posted an album of photos from this trip, which includes shots taken in Parramatta, Blacktown and Sydney, on Facebook. Non-FBers can view it here. This photo was taken somewhere in southern NSW during last Saturday's 10-hour drive from Melbourne to Sydney via the Hume Highway. Aradhna slept most of the way. I didn't mind. My grandfather was a long-haul bus driver. It's in the blood.

Today's Good Friday and the beginning of a 5-day long weekend. The Holden's fuel pump committed mechanical hari kari yesterday, forcing Aradhna and I to fly back to Melbourne tomorrow. I'll fly back to Sydney when the car's ready -- which won't be anytime soon. Whaddayagonnado.

I'm. Not. Dead.

2011-04-15T09:00:00.006+10:00

While speaking with a friend named Michael the subject of this blog came up. Specifically, he wondered if the dearth of updates meant I'd passed away. In a world of uncertainty and swirling dark forces I can confidently state that as I write this I am NOT deceased.

I could guarantee my death would be treated with ghoulish glee if after posting this I walked out of Uffizi Cafe in Caulfield -- this morning's 'coffice', a horrific term recently trotted out on an Aussie TV show to describe coffee-serving establishments where freelancing professionals like myself do business -- and be hit by a tram. Ex-Pat Brags of Sentience Before Dying. Too high-brow. Oh the Irony! Bragging Yank Off-ed By #3 Tram.

The photo atop this post was taken Saturday at Kathryn & Patrick's wedding in Bundoora. I'd gone up to their place the weekend before to help Patrick finish a roofed deck, where the ceremony was held. Kathryn & Patrick (shown here exchanging vows on Saturday)are a one-in-22-million couple who go overboard to ensure all visitors to their home have a great time. We did, and hope they enjoy a similarly uproarious lifetime together.

More photos of the wedding may be found here.

Since returning from Fiji I've built a website for Interactive Intuition, my freelance copywriting and web content/strategy business. The site's unfinished as of this writing but if you're reading this you're a trusted friend ... so I'd appreciate any and all feedback regarding its usability, appeal, clarity, etc.

St Kilda Festival 2011

2011-02-14T09:56:00.038+10:00

Aradhna and I took a walk on a lovely Sunday afternoon to the final day of the annual St Kilda Festival yesterday. All roads near the foreshore where closed to traffic and jammed with well-dressed Melburnians and severely under-dressed bogans from the outer suburbs. The stage shown on the left was the largest but many others were scattered throughout a 3-4 block radius, each thumping with a variety of live music acts. Vendors sold obscene t-shirts and handmade jewelery and obscene t-shirts and hippie food and obscene t-shirts. Aradhna and I wisely explored in the early afternoon before a record crowd of 420,000 jammed into St Kilda.

Luna Park wasn't the focus of the festival, but its entranceway was a popular backdrop for photos.

Babywear has come a long way since basic pink and blue. I just hope the Cash/Carter family is receiving royalties.

Is it any wonder Australia's the world's most obese country? Do they apply special Big Mac sauce to a wound? Use thick creamy shake drips to treat dehydration? Did Mayor McCheese use his political clout to become chief surgeon?

A 'Zumba' demo caught Aradhna's eye as walked along St Kilda's boardwalk. A frighteningly fit woman repeatedly told participants that they were, in fact, doing Zumba, because Zumba is so easy. If it's so easy, why do suburban housewives pay through the nose for it?

This place cracked Aradhna up. At last, a solution to the perpetual fried potato delivery system conundrum!

A Hare Krishna festival was taking place alongside the much larger St Kilda festival. These statues caught my eye, but Aradhna was more interested in a booth selling Hare Krishna snacks.

Three words I've never seen used in the same context: 'Hare', 'Krishna' and 'Security'.

Just another lovely day with my lovely wife in lovely St Kilda.

Suva peeps.

2011-02-12T07:44:00.002+10:00

Been back in Melbourne for a week, finishing up the Tourism Fiji project and enjoying the company of my lovely wife. This photo was taken at the Webmedia office in December, just before Prayush and I left for Savusavu and the start of our 'Fiji for the Holidays' promotion. Great group of folks. I miss 'em.

Lagoon Labradors

2011-01-20T07:34:00.005+10:00

Still in Suva, still posting blogs, photos and video to FijiMe.com:

FijiMe homepage
http://www.fijime.com/

FijiMe blog posts w/photos
http://www.fijime.com/fiji_vacation/

FijiMe YouTube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/bulafijime

Had to post these photos of Lucy (top) and Diesel (below). They belong to Andrew Brown, owner of the Beachouse along the Coral Coast. Most dogs in Fiji are strays and live brutal lives, so seeing these two healthy and happy specimens living the life of royalty was especially heartwarming.

The President's speech in Tucson

2011-01-14T12:55:00.001+10:00

Via Digby:

To the families of those we’ve lost; to all who called them friends; to the students of this university, the public servants gathered tonight, and the people of Tucson and Arizona: I have come here tonight as an American who, like all Americans, kneels to pray with you today, and will stand by you tomorrow.

There is nothing I can say that will fill the sudden hole torn in your hearts. But know this: the hopes of a nation are here tonight. We mourn with you for the fallen. We join you in your grief. And we add our faith to yours that Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the other living victims of this tragedy pull through.

As Scripture tells us:

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy place where the Most High dwells.
God is within her, she will not fall;
God will help her at break of day.

On Saturday morning, Gabby, her staff, and many of her constituents gathered outside a supermarket to exercise their right to peaceful assembly and free speech. They were fulfilling a central tenet of the democracy envisioned by our founders – representatives of the people answering to their constituents, so as to carry their concerns to our nation’s capital. Gabby called it “Congress on Your Corner” – just an updated version of government of and by and for the people.

That is the quintessentially American scene that was shattered by a gunman’s bullets. And the six people who lost their lives on Saturday – they too represented what is best in America.

Judge John Roll served our legal system for nearly 40 years. A graduate of this university and its law school, Judge Roll was recommended for the federal bench by John McCain twenty years ago, appointed by President George H.W. Bush, and rose to become Arizona’s chief federal judge. His colleagues described him as the hardest-working judge within the Ninth Circuit. He was on his way back from attending Mass, as he did every day, when he decided to stop by and say hi to his Representative. John is survived by his loving wife, Maureen, his three sons, and his five grandchildren.

George and Dorothy Morris – “Dot” to her friends – were high school sweethearts who got married and had two daughters. They did everything together, traveling the open road in their RV, enjoying what their friends called a 50-year honeymoon. Saturday morning, they went by the Safeway to hear what their Congresswoman had to say. When gunfire rang out, George, a former Marine, instinctively tried to shield his wife. Both were shot. Dot passed away.

A New Jersey native, Phyllis Schneck retired to Tucson to beat the snow. But in the summer, she would return East, where her world revolved around her 3 children, 7 grandchildren, and 2 year-old great-granddaughter. A gifted quilter, she’d often work under her favorite tree, or sometimes sew aprons with the logos of the Jets and the Giants to give out at the church where she volunteered. A Republican, she took a liking to Gabby, and wanted to get to know her better.

Dorwan and Mavy Stoddard grew up in Tucson together – about seventy years ago. They moved apart and started their own respective families, but after both were widowed they found their way back here, to, as one of Mavy’s daughters put it, “be boyfriend and girlfriend again.” When they weren’t out on the road in their motor home, you could find them just up the road, helping folks in need at the Mountain Avenue Church of Christ. A retired construction worker, Dorwan spent his spare time fixing up the church along with their dog, Tux. His final act of selflessness was to dive on top of his wife, sacrificing his life for hers.

Everything Gabe Zimmerman did, he did with passion – but his true passion was people. As Gabby’s outreach director, he made the cares of thousands of her constituents his own, seeing to it that seniors got the Medicare benefits they had earned, that veterans got the medals and care they deserved, that government was working for ordinary folks. He died doing what he loved – talking with people and seeing how he could help. Gabe is survived by his parents, Ross and Emily, his brother, Ben, and his fiancée, Kelly, who he planned to marry next year.

And then there is nine year-old Christina Taylor Green. Christina was an A student, a dancer, a gymnast, and a swimmer. She often proclaimed that she wanted to be the first woman to play in the major leagues, and as the only girl on her Little League team, no one put it past her. She showed an appreciation for life uncommon for a girl her age, and would remind her mother, “We are so blessed. We have the best life.” And she’d pay those blessings back by participating in a charity that helped children who were less fortunate.

Our hearts are broken by their sudden passing. Our hearts are broken – and yet, our hearts also have reason for fullness.

Our hearts are full of hope and thanks for the 13 Americans who survived the shooting, including the congresswoman many of them went to see on Saturday. I have just come from the University Medical Center, just a mile from here, where our friend Gabby courageously fights to recover even as we speak. And I can tell you this – she knows we’re here and she knows we love her and she knows that we will be rooting for her throughout what will be a difficult journey.

And our hearts are full of gratitude for those who saved others. We are grateful for Daniel Hernandez, a volunteer in Gabby’s office who ran through the chaos to minister to his boss, tending to her wounds to keep her alive. We are grateful for the men who tackled the gunman as he stopped to reload. We are grateful for a petite 61 year-old, Patricia Maisch, who wrestled away the killer’s ammunition, undoubtedly saving some lives. And we are grateful for the doctors and nurses and emergency medics who worked wonders to heal those who’d been hurt.

These men and women remind us that heroism is found not only on the fields of battle. They remind us that heroism does not require special training or physical strength. Heroism is here, all around us, in the hearts of so many of our fellow citizens, just waiting to be summoned – as it was on Saturday morning.

Their actions, their selflessness, also pose a challenge to each of us. It raises the question of what, beyond the prayers and expressions of concern, is required of us going forward. How can we honor the fallen? How can we be true to their memory?

You see, when a tragedy like this strikes, it is part of our nature to demand explanations – to try to impose some order on the chaos, and make sense out of that which seems senseless. Already we’ve seen a national conversation commence, not only about the motivations behind these killings, but about everything from the merits of gun safety laws to the adequacy of our mental health systems. Much of this process, of debating what might be done to prevent such tragedies in the future, is an essential ingredient in our exercise of self-government.

But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized – at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do – it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.

Scripture tells us that there is evil in the world, and that terrible things happen for reasons that defy human understanding. In the words of Job, “when I looked for light, then came darkness.” Bad things happen, and we must guard against simple explanations in the aftermath.

For the truth is that none of us can know exactly what triggered this vicious attack. None of us can know with any certainty what might have stopped those shots from being fired, or what thoughts lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man’s mind.

So yes, we must examine all the facts behind this tragedy. We cannot and will not be passive in the face of such violence. We should be willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of violence in the future.

But what we can’t do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another. As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.

After all, that’s what most of us do when we lose someone in our family – especially if the loss is unexpected. We’re shaken from our routines, and forced to look inward. We reflect on the past. Did we spend enough time with an aging parent, we wonder. Did we express our gratitude for all the sacrifices they made for us? Did we tell a spouse just how desperately we loved them, not just once in awhile but every single day?

So sudden loss causes us to look backward – but it also forces us to look forward, to reflect on the present and the future, on the manner in which we live our lives and nurture our relationships with those who are still with us. We may ask ourselves if we’ve shown enough kindness and generosity and compassion to the people in our lives. Perhaps we question whether we are doing right by our children, or our community, and whether our priorities are in order. We recognize our own mortality, and are reminded that in the fleeting time we have on this earth, what matters is not wealth, or status, or power, or fame – but rather, how well we have loved, and what small part we have played in bettering the lives of others.

That process of reflection, of making sure we align our values with our actions – that, I believe, is what a tragedy like this requires. For those who were harmed, those who were killed – they are part of our family, an American family 300 million strong. We may not have known them personally, but we surely see ourselves in them. In George and Dot, in Dorwan and Mavy, we sense the abiding love we have for our own husbands, our own wives, our own life partners. Phyllis – she’s our mom or grandma; Gabe our brother or son. In Judge Roll, we recognize not only a man who prized his family and doing his job well, but also a man who embodied America’s fidelity to the law. In Gabby, we see a reflection of our public spiritedness, that desire to participate in that sometimes frustrating, sometimes contentious, but always necessary and never-ending process to form a more perfect union.

And in Christina…in Christina we see all of our children. So curious, so trusting, so energetic and full of magic.

So deserving of our love.

And so deserving of our good example. If this tragedy prompts reflection and debate, as it should, let’s make sure it’s worthy of those we have lost. Let’s make sure it’s not on the usual plane of politics and point scoring and pettiness that drifts away with the next news cycle.

The loss of these wonderful people should make every one of us strive to be better in our private lives – to be better friends and neighbors, co-workers and parents. And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more civility in our public discourse, let’s remember that it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy, but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation, in a way that would make them proud. It should be because we want to live up to the example of public servants like John Roll and Gabby Giffords, who knew first and foremost that we are all Americans, and that we can question each other’s ideas without questioning each other’s love of country, and that our task, working together, is to constantly widen the circle of our concern so that we bequeath the American dream to future generations.

I believe we can be better. Those who died here, those who saved lives here – they help me believe. We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another is entirely up to us. I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.

That’s what I believe, in part because that’s what a child like Christina Taylor Green believed. Imagine: here was a young girl who was just becoming aware of our democracy; just beginning to understand the obligations of citizenship; just starting to glimpse the fact that someday she too might play a part in shaping her nation’s future. She had been elected to her student council; she saw public service as something exciting, something hopeful. She was off to meet her congresswoman, someone she was sure was good and important and might be a role model. She saw all this through the eyes of a child, undimmed by the cynicism or vitriol that we adults all too often just take for granted.

I want us to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as she imagined it. All of us – we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children’s expectations.

Christina was given to us on September 11th, 2001, one of 50 babies born that day to be pictured in a book called “Faces of Hope.” On either side of her photo in that book were simple wishes for a child’s life. “I hope you help those in need,” read one. “I hope you know all of the words to the National Anthem and sing it with your hand over your heart. I hope you jump in rain puddles.”

If there are rain puddles in heaven, Christina is jumping in them today. And here on Earth, we place our hands over our hearts, and commit ourselves as Americans to forging a country that is forever worthy of her gentle, happy spirit.

May God bless and keep those we’ve lost in restful and eternal peace. May He love and watch over the survivors. And may He bless the United States of America.

State of the Union in 2011

2011-01-09T13:08:00.000+10:00

Fiji for the Holidays 2010

2011-01-04T16:57:00.008+10:00

Been terribly delinquent in reporting my whereabouts this holiday season.

Short answer: Working in Suva for a small web shop called Webmedia Fiji.

Longer answer: Working on a project for Tourism Fiji called 'Fiji for the Holidays' that's seen me and a colleague named Prayush traveling to ten resorts throughout the Fiji Islands in 12 days, with New Year's Eve in Suva a bacchanalian bonus. Writing now at the last, most posh and least appealing place of all called Warwick Resort & Spa on the Coral Coast. Being treated to another spectacular Fijian sunset but as ugly families and sleazy Aussies aren't my thing I'm eager to return to Suva tomorrow morning and produce the remaining deliverables.

Those deliverables include a daily blog with photos for the Tourism Fiji website and a 'Fiji for the Holidays' YouTube video channel. We'll also produce collateral for the individual resorts and service providers we've had the pleasure of receiving free accommodation, meals and 'adventures' from.

Our itinerary has included Savusavu on Christmas Eve, Malololailai Island in the Mamanuca Group on Christmas Day, Malolo Island, Nadi, Pacific Harbour on New Year's Day and the Coral Coast.

Top photo was taken during a jungle trek that's one of the daily activities offered by The Beachouse on the Coral Coast.

Ohhh .... you've got EXTENSIVE experience .....

2010-12-16T12:18:00.002+10:00

Time for us all to reword our resumes/CVs.

Bula. Again.

2010-12-16T07:56:00.004+10:00

Back in Fiji. Specifically, the capital city of Suva, where this photo was taken as I sipped a reasonably tasty flat white yesterday morning at a cafe around the corner from where I'm working/staying. Whys / Hows / Whats / Etc of this trip are still being worked out. Complicated tale.

Aren't they all?

Ni sa moce, for now.

Jay-Z & U2 conquer Melbourne.

2010-12-02T07:42:00.018+10:00

Above, U2 kicks off the Australian leg of their 360 Degree Tour with 'Beautiful Day' last night at Etihad Stadium in Melbourne.

Beneath a spaceship-like stage that shone and smoked and pulsed with billions of pixels the Irish rockers played a set that reflected their four decades as self-described rock & roll pilgrims. The Edge a one-man noise machine on early anthem 'I Will Follow' and iPod anthem 'Vertigo'. Larry Mullen jr and Adam Clayton pounding organic beats that Henry Rollins to this day hears in his tormented sleep. All of them sidemen for World President Bono, who prior to last night was seen on Aussie TV chatting up the Australian Prime Minister and former PM like an impish foreign dignitary sprinkling rockstar pixie dust.

At times the concert brought memories of sitting on a NJ beach on the Fourth of July, phosphorescent majesty delivering suspense-filled payoffs while a tinny Souza soundtrack played from rented speakers. This was a Show. That spaceship muthafucka was Cool. Its tentacles brought band members around, above and beside those already lightened in the wallet for the privilege of standing near the stage. Those of us at the opposite end of the stadium enjoyed a colder, yet more visually dynamic experience, responding with 'oohs' and 'aahs' as the stage changed color and shape and we pointed cameras and cell phones at it like tourists in Times Square.

Of course stadiums are lousy concert venues. Of course rock & roll belongs in sweaty clubs with low ceilings and fire code violations up the ying yang. But as someone who in 1993 saw U2 way atop the upper deck of 'old' Giants Stadium during what I think was the second part of the Zooropa tour (I'd seen the first part in 'smaller' Brendan Byrne Arena, with the Pixies as opening band), I'm glad to have experienced the evolution of stadium rock from one requiring rented binoculars to a mind-blowing spectacle.

For the record: My most memorable U2 concerts are seeing them in 1985 at a jammed Madison Square Garden during their 'Unforgettable Fire' tour and then a year later at Giants Stadium as they obliterated the likes of The Police, Bryan Adams, Peter Gabriel, Lou Reed, Joan Baez, The Hooters, Little Steven, Jackson Browne, Howard Jones, Joan Armatrading, Miles Davis and even Yoko Ono during the finale of Amnesty International's 'Conspiracy of Hope' tour.

Twenty-five years later, Jay-Z came across to me like U2 had at that Conspiracy of Hope show.

Lacking the drama of darkness and playing to an unfilled house Jay-Z and his band nonetheless stormed on stage and roared. I don't know the precise thoughts of Shawn Carter as he looked over the packed floor of Etihad Stadium but I imagine it was something like 'Look at all those G-D white people'.

This was the hip-hop mogul's first-ever Australian performance but he took the stage with the swagger of a 40-year-old superstar who's sold over 50 million records sold since 1996's Reasonable Doubt. The video screen atop U2's mammoth stage helped magnify his visage, but it was Jay-Z's voice and stage charisma that shrunk the stadium to the size of a Brooklyn street. By the time he thanked Melburnians for welcoming him to their hometown, he said it was time to play a song about his own, and launched into my favourite song of 2009, 'Empire State of Mind', which received rapturous applause and seemed to warm even the starchiest of Aussies to Jay-Z's streetwise charm.

Jay-Z and band onstage. Etihad Stadium has a retractable roof that needed to be open in order to accommodate U2's colossus.
Aussie crowd proving it can take direction well from anyone who can drop beats.
Ever-changing moods of 'the claw', shown here and below.

The video screen descends and expands ...
... until it's the size of a McMansion suspended over the stage. Yeah, it's got nothing to do with music, but after Jay-Z left the stage the night stopped being about sound and started blowing people's eyeballs out of their heads.

Leonard Cohen in Melbourne

2010-11-17T09:47:00.001+10:00

Saturday morning, I was all set to post a review of the Leonard Cohen concert Aradhna and I saw the night before at nearby Rod Laver Arena.

But I couldn't pull the trigger. It would be too much like posting about a dream, or a hope for the future. A Cohen concert is not something witnessed. It's absorbed. And so breaking it down into highlights feels rote, or dishonest.

Found this photo from Friday night's show (above) on an 'official' Cohen tour blog. For those interested in a detailed review of the show have a look at this Cohen forum post, which includes a breakdown of the night's setlist:

Set 1
01 Dance Me To The End Of Love
02 The Future
03 Bird On The Wire
04 Everybody Knows
05 Who By Fire
06 Famous Blue Raincoat
07 Democracy
08 Chelsea Hotel #2
09 Waiting For The Miracle
10 Anthem

Set 2
11 Tower Of Song
12 Suzanne
13 Avalanche
14 A Singer Must Die
15 Sisters Of Mercy
16 The Gypsy's Wife
17 The Partisan
18 Hallelujah
19 I'm Your Man
20 A Thousand Kisses Deep [recitation]
21 Take This Waltz

Encore 1
22 So Long, Marianne
23 First We Take Manhattan

Encore 2
24 I Tried To Leave You
25 Closing Time

The Basics: Show kicked off at 8:15. Cohen did a jig off the stage to end the first set. Half hour passed before he returned with an acoustic guitar to start the second set alone (as shown in the photo at the top of this post). His final jig came at the end of the second encore at 11:15. Rod Laver Arena seats 15,000 but the section behind the stage was carefully covered, giving the place a slightly more intimate feel and eliminating echo. As a Cohen concert is as much about the quiet between notes, the venue's outstanding sound was a relief. Crowd was old and white but steadily increased its enthusiasm as the show rolled on, gathering converts and working up the blood of Cohen cultists. Among those in attendance were Emily and Michael, whom we met beforehand in Southbank and took a water taxi along the Yarra River to the arena (below, along with Shug & Diane). All in all, a wonderful evening, and one that must be experienced -- felt -- to understand.

'STICK !!!'

2010-11-13T22:11:00.011+10:00

Aradhna and I just returned from a one-time screening of 'The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town' at Chadstone. Theatre packed with middle-aged white guys like me, Aradhna an exotic sweet in a carton of eggs. Her Bruce Blind Spot is one of our relationship's more remarkable anecdotes. She was familiar with his name when we met in 2004 the way people are familiar with the date their car registration is next due, or the name of a kid they sat beside in 3rd grade but changed schools before the beginning of 4th. Her familiarity with his music remains ... abysmal ... but she understands his place in the telling of my life's story and is therefore open to multi-media exposure. I provided context for the documentary during the 15-minute drive to Chaddie but contemporary commentary by Springsteen, Mike Appel, Jon Landau, Jimmy Iovine and members of the E Street Band made preparation moot. Not surprising I devoured every second of 32-year-old black & white studio footage with crack addict intensity, especially snippets of Bruce yelling 'STICK!' at a flustered Max Weinberg before Chuck Plotkin came along and solved their collective snare drum conundrum. Afterwards, Aradhna said she enjoyed the doco. It's a start.

The CD/DVD box set releases 19/11 here in Australia. Here's remarkable footage of Bruce and the E Street Band performing a complete studio version of 'The Promise' -- keep an eye out for a cool 'Miami' Steve Van Zandt looking like he's in-between visits to a smack dealer uptown.

Oh, Bill-O! Foxtel replaces 'Christ' with 'Fox'.

2010-11-11T08:36:00.003+10:00

Just posted this to Facebook but had to put it up here, too: With the holidays approaching, Fox News' Bill O'Reilly will undoubtedly take up his annual 'keep Christ in Christmas' jihad. Here's an ad running for Rupert Murdoch's Foxtel (TV cable provider) in Oz that not only takes 'Christ' out of 'Christmas' ... but replaces it with 'Fox'! Oh, the secularist hypocrisy!

Phony Fiji Sun

2010-11-09T12:36:00.009+10:00

Somebody should let Fiji's self-appointed bully-in-charge Voreqe Bainimarama know the 'www' in URLs stands for 'World Wide Web'. Censoring a newspaper in a small South Pacific nation is easy. If the Fiji Sun and Fiji Times were the only papers on the planet putting Bainimarama's antics to print he'd be a Prince of Democracy.

But they aren't. And he ain't.

Hillary Clinton's recent trip to Australia brought a straightforward, and brief, Australian Associated Press wire report headlined Push for Return to Democracy in Fiji:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the United States will work with Australia to push for a return to democracy in Fiji.

"We're going to be working together with Australia to persuade the military government in Suva to meet its commitment to bring back democracy to Fiji," Ms Clinton told an audience in Melbourne on Sunday.

It's no surprise this bit of news wasn't run by either of Fiji's two gov't-censored papers. And I guess it's not surprising that the Sun, a grimy tabloid even before Bainimarama dispatched a military overseer to its newsroom, ran an article headlined 'Bid to isolate Fiji fails as Washington steps up contact' that mentioned Clinton's visit to Australia but NOT her quote regarding the return of democracy to Fiji. In fact, it amateurishly reports what 'is likely to have been discussed' -- a full day after the wire report detailed EXACTLY what was discussed. An example of Bainimarama's wishful thinking becoming wishful and wildly inaccurate reporting. The Sun doesn't allow the sharing of individual articles, so here it is, in its entirety, with more wishful reporting in bold:

Australia’s campaign to isolate Fiji for its failure to hold early elections has backfired, with the US and other important powers side-stepping Canberra to build influence with the Fijians.

Kevin Rudd’s tough policy towards the Fijian Prime Minister Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama, inherited from the Howard government, is failing and could damage his campaign to win a UN Security Council seat for Australia.

A switch in approach towards Commodore Bainimarama, to hold him to his promise of elections in 2014 and help in preparations, is likely to have been discussed when Foreign Minister Rudd and Defence Minister Stephen Smith met Hillary Clinton and US Defence Secretary Robert Gates in Melbourne for annual talks.

In recent weeks, the US has intensified contact with Fiji, as part of a new foreign policy of being more "visible and effective" in the Asia-Pacific region, partly to counter China’s rising power.

Mrs Clinton included Fiji's Foreign Minister, Ratu Inoke Kubuabola, in a meeting in New York with senior Pacific leaders, and her assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, Kurt Campbell, who is also in Melbourne, told a congressional committee the US wanted dialogue with the Fiji regime as long as the 2014 election date was firm.

"[Fiji] is the centre, sort of architecturally, of transportation and the like in the Pacific," Dr Campbell said.

"It is high on the American priority to figure out if there's a way that we can be helpful in engaging diplomatically. We are stepping up our co-ordination and dialogue with New Zealand and Australia, who we also believe have key critical interests in Fiji."

Fiji's UN envoy, Peter Thomson, said that he had been assuring foreign officials that the 2014 election timetable was "set in stone".

A new US embassy building soon to be opened in Suva will now include a regional office for an expanded aid program in the South Pacific, it was announced last month, in a step to compete with China’s vigorous civil aid and growing military ties, which are filling a vacuum in training and equipment created by Australian and New Zealand sanctions.

Note the mention of China's "vigorous civil aid and growing military ties" at the article's end. Reads like a threat ... because it is.

Down by the river.

2010-10-26T08:13:00.012+10:00

The Sigatoka River, that is, with Brownie, Raj and Hunter during my recent stay on Nana's farm in Korokoro.
Brownie waits -- Raj and Hunter don't. When I first stayed on the farm in 2007 he and I would take walks to the river and were almost always joined by Raj and Hunter. Now as soon as I head in the general direction of the rear of the house I feel Brownie at my side, wagging his mangled tail, willing me to escort him riverside.
These western storm clouds predictably missed the Sigatoka Valley, which is in the midst of a crop-crippling drought.
A horse and her foal watch us warily. There are no stables in Fiji. When not being used for field work or transportation horses are loosely tied to a spot and moved every night.
An Indian home sits high across the river.
Hunter and Raj. Both are true outside dogs -- mean and territorial. They act like competing adolescents around me.
Brownie's delight.

Korokoro dusk.

2010-10-18T07:45:00.015+10:00

The farm at Korokoro is a unique workplace for this refugee from the steel and glass caverns of Manhattan. Picking, planting, turning over soil, moving horses and cows to fresh grazing areas, burning -- it's all done in a place as picturesque as any of the resorts that ring Fiji's scattered islands. Just as the moods and hues of Manhattan's skyline change as the sun makes its daily journey, so does Korokoro make a final claim of magnificence at sunset. While picking tomatoes with Ajay mama during my most recent trip to Fiji I grabbed my camera as the sun set behind Nadroga hills. These photos show the darkening landscape as we finished for the day.
Siddharth moves bullocks past a withering cornfield to another part of the farm.
Those tomatoes ain't gonna pick themselves, boys. They'll eventually get eaten by tourists at resorts in Denerau.
Looking west.

Ajay mama checks the afternoon's harvest.
Despite his passing, I'll always know this place as Nana's farm and compound. His roots here run deeper than any crop, tree or man-made foundation.

Fijian balm

2010-10-18T07:21:00.003+10:00

Melbourne's been unseasonably cold the past few days. This image from the Sunset Strip, just past Korotogo along Viti Levu's Coral Coast, is enough to warm my bones.

R.I.P. Nana

2010-09-26T06:43:00.007+10:00

Returning to Fiji late tonight to attend the funeral of Pandit Atma Ram Sharma (above). Aradhna's grandfather. My saasuma's (mother-in-law's) dad. Father of 16 sons and daughters who are spread out around the world. Legend on the island of Viti Levu. A source of wisdom, strength and inspiration to all who heard him speak, who met his family, who played soccer against him in his youth, who drew a game of snooker against him at the Sigatoka club. Nana was a living rebuke to the Fijian policy of indigenous 'land rights', a policy that barred him from owning the land he and his family have worked for over 50 years. In a country with an atrocious health care system he remained vital well into his 80s. He battled a variety of after-effects of a stroke several weeks ago and finally succumbed early Friday morning at a hospital in Lautoka. His funeral near Sigatoka and on the farm in Korokoro will draw men, women and children from all around Viti Levu. Indo-Fijians and indigenous Fijians, Hindus and Muslims. Greatness is rare in Fiji. Nana was an exceptional exception.

Above, Nana waits with cane knife in hand for an afternoon storm to pass. The photo below shows him beginning a day the way he knew best: cane knife in hand and a farm to maintain on land he knew like a sculptor knows clay. It is how I'll remember him.

Fiji's Coral Coast

2010-09-22T09:53:00.017+10:00

Nearly all of our recent trip to Fiji was spent in Korokoro attending Ashu & Danny's wedding, but Aradhna & I made the most of our wonderful accommodation at the Bederra Beach Inn in Korotogo. This photo (above) needs no description.
Breakfast view at the Bederra Beach Inn.
Aradhna looking gorgeous in front of the Bederra' lagoon.
The Fiji Islands are the remnants of volcanoes ringed by reefs that create lagoons of various sizes and depths. It's possible to snorkel Bederra's lagoon when the tide's in -- which I did on our first morning -- and local villagers roam it at low tide, harvesting ... well, I don't know what they harvest.
Yeah, relaxing by a Fijian lagoon is mindblowing.
The view looking up ain't bad either.
Aradhna kicks back ...
{sigh}

Ashu & Danny's wedding in Korokoro

2010-09-20T07:44:00.004+10:00

This is one of hundreds of images captured at Ashu and Danny's wedding in Korokoro Sept 10-12. I've posted many to my Facebook profile -- the photo albums may be accessed by non-FBers here:
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3

Ni sa moce, Sigatoka.

2010-09-16T11:02:00.003+10:00

Bid goodbye to the Coral Coast view from our balcony (above) at the Bederra Beach Inn, our wonderful family at the farm in Korokoro and friends in Sigatoka town yesterday. Arrived to a cold, windy and wet Melbourne and immediately wished we'd never left Fiji. Ashu's 3-day wedding was magnificent. Plenty more photos to come.

'The Promise' reborn.

2010-09-05T20:00:00.020+10:00

Banner ads are the digital equivalent of 8x10 flyers stuck beneath windshield wipers. Much effort, nil impact. Our brains are conditioned to ignore them, which is why advertisers indidiously scurry them across body copy like lava swallowing hillside villages. A recent visit to the NY Times' site presented a nostalgic exception. Just above the masthead was an image (left) as indelible to my childhood as my first baseball glove (Willie Stargell Rawlings), car (1976 Mercury Bobcat V6), or girlfriend (Tina Trezza).

The ad promoted an upcoming November reissue of Bruce Springsteen's 1978 masterpiece in a massive box-set called The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story (below). The 'Deluxe Package' of the set will include a documentary of Bruce and the E Street Band circa '76-78, over 4 hours of concert footage (including a much-bootlegged Houston concert near the end of the 'Darkness' tour and a recent performance of the album in its entirety at the Paramount Theater in Asbury Park), and 21 previously unreleased songs from the Darkness recording sessions.

'Previously unreleased'. A term only a record company executive could apply to the 1976-78 stuudio recordings of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band -- recordings that have resonated with fans for decades and helped me cement a friendship that long ago crossed over to brotherhood.

I am a child of NJ. Grew up in quiet, Caucasian suburbs crisscrossed by interstates. Played little league baseball and high school basketball. Decorated the walls of my wood-paneled room with Rangers, Yankees, Giants, Knicks, girls in bikinis and an evolving roster of musicians and bands. Shared with my brother a drumkit that our dad mysteriously dragged home from Leo's Tavern one night. Underachieved in school. Wore bad haircuts and zipper shirts bought from Just Shirts at the Willowbrook Mall. Went into the City for trouble. And passed through every stage of adolescence listening to the music of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.

One afternoon in 1977 or '78 neighbor and friend Vin Fiorito came by with a copy of Born to Run and put it on my turntable. I held the gatefolded album while 'Thunder Road' played and instantly had to know more about the scruffy guitarist and monstrous sax player pictured on its front and back. The Beatles, Pink Floyd and Boston (yes, Boston) dominated my tastes at the time, but Springsteen's appeal was visceral, like the smell of hot grease in an auto repair shop. At the conclusion of 8th grade a friend named Frank Alfieri invited me and a few others to his family's shore house in Seaside Park for a junior high school graduation weekend. One of Frank's sisters supplied buckets of beer but I vividly recall a boardwalk awash with Springsteen, Led Zep and Jim Morrisson t-shirts. Bruce's world domination via the Born In the USA juggernaut was several years away but in Seaside Park in the summer of 1980 he was the undisputed Boss.

Junior high also featured a one-and-only exposure to Springsteen lyrics as learning material. A petite, peroxide-blonde English teacher named Ms O'Neill handed out Xerox'd copies of the lyric sheet inserted inside the Darkness on the Edge of Town album and led a class discussion. Whether she examined the blue collar heroism of Springsteen's characters or the preponderance of cars in his songs I have not a clue. I only remember floating near the ceiling until the class bell rang.

The River was my freshman-year companion in the back of buses traveling to and from away basketball games. This was pre-iPod ... pre-Walkman, too. I carried a battered boom box and cheap cassette copies of 'The River' or listened to it in my bedroom via cheap, puffy headphones. Like manilla paper markers in an old library card catalog, each subsequent Springsteen album sonically delineated periods in my life.

Unlike the glut of multi-media materials available in our digital age, the early '80s were a dry time for Springsteen fans. Bruce was a notorious perfectionist in the studio and was loyal to organic album themes -- even if it meant jettisoning songs with commercial appeal like 'Because the Night' and 'Fire' (which were turned into hits by Patti Smith and the Pointer Sisters, respectively). He was also involved in a protracted lawsuit with manager Mike Appel over song rights and was unable to release new music, a struggle that resulted in lyrics like this from 'The Promise':

Well I built that Challenger by myself
But I needed money and so I sold it.
I lived a secret I should have kept to myself
But I got drunk one night and I told it.

Bootlegs filled the long gaps between official releases. And this, ladies and gentlemen, brings us to a young man named Jeff Stefanick.

Whether it be at the Englishtown flea market or a vinyl record shop off the Morristown Green owned by a chain-smoking divorcee named Mal, nobody had a nose for finding studio outtakes like Jeff. They were the prize. Alternate takes of released songs with different lyrics, instrumentals with familiar passages and 'new' songs left off official releases. We laughed at the musings of Backstreets magazine founder Charlie Cross as he pleaded with Springsteen to release 'Roulette' and studied the back of Dave Marsh's Born To Run: The Bruce Springsteen Story for the origins of unreleased songs. Live bootlegs were common, especially after Springsteen performed radio-simulcasted concerts in 1975 at the Bottom Line (released on bootleg as 'The Great White Boss' an allusion to the first bootleg ever, 'The Great White Hope' of early Dylan demos) and two concerts in 1978 -- one at the legendary Capitol Theater in Passaic released on bootleg as 'Piece de Resistance' (above), the other at Winterland in San Francisco bootlegged as 'Live in the Promised Land' (right). My first vinyl bootleg was one of many to use 'The Jersey Devil' as its title, forgettable but for clean live versions of The Drifters' 'Up on the Roof' and Chuck Berry's 'You Never Can Tell'. That was the nature of early boots -- there were no online reviews to consult or labels that guaranteed quality, as would arise with the advent of bootleg CDs. We were in thrall to the thrill of discovering a studio outtakes boot offering something -- anything -- we hadn't heard before.

Truth be told, there was more to '76-78 studio outtakes than the lure of the chase. A disaffected Springsteen sang songs like 'Outside Looking In', 'Candy's Boy' and 'Spanish Eyes' with the tired desperation of a hostage reading a manifesto written by his captors 'Outside Looking In', with its Buddy Holly beat and Byrds jangling 12-string guitars, at first sounded like a rough one-off with the band but on subsequent listens revealed a pain never heard before on a Springsteen record:

My life's the same story
Beginning to end
Beginning to end
I'm on the outside .... lookin' in.

Even a jarring background vocal by Clarence Clemons couldn't dilute the power of a song this heartfelt and raw, which was the nature of outtakes of this period. They were non-mastered mana for Jeff and I as we drove the state and county roadways of Morris County in a variety of crap cars, stopping for post-midnight Whoppers at Burger Kings along Rt 46, dumping tales of romantic angst on each other, wondering where the literal and figurative roads of our lives were taking us.

This photo of Jeff and I (below) was taken in Albany, NY, where a dozen or so of us traveled to see Bruce and the E Street Band during their reunion tour in November 1999. Over the years he and I saw more shows together up and down the East Coast than I could possibly remember. We'd often be in the same building if not in adjoining seats, and if I was at a show that he wasn't I'd wonder what he'd think of that night's setlist or special guest. Still, there was something pure about the nights spent driving aimlessly together, listening to 'Darkness' era outtakes, a couple of tortured souls lucky to have crossed paths in 7th grade science class. Nearly 30 years down switchbacks and straightaways neither one of us ever saw coming and the only downside to The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story being released this November is that I won't be able to listen to it with Jeff beside me, a full tank of gas to burn, and miles and miles of stories to share.

2010-08-26T08:31:00.000+10:00

Late winter, Caulfield Park.

Islamophobia is the new black.

2010-08-17T14:20:00.017+10:00

"We want to push back against the extremists." So said Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf (near left), lead organizer of the effort to establish a community center and mosque in Lower Manhattan. The response of right-wing blogger Pamela Geller (far left) sums up the hyperbolic deceit passing for modern conservative discourse: "Monster Mosque Pushes Ahead in Shadow of World Trade Center Islamic Death and Destruction."

A timeline of this most recent example of the dominance of right-wing media bias in US politics shows Geller's almost comic overreaction was the controversy's fault line. Glenn Greenwald posted a remarkable exchange between a CNN anchor and interfaith group director that illustrates the mainstream media's anti-Islamic bias:

Lemon: Don't you think it's a bit different considering what happened on 9/11? And the people have said there's a need for it in Lower Manhattan, so that's why it's being built there. What about 10, 20 blocks ... Midtown Manhattan, considering the circumstances behind this? That's not understandable?
Patel: In America, we don't tell people based on their race or religion or ethnicity that they are free in this place, but not in that place ...
Lemon: [interrupting] I understand that, but there's always context, Mr. Patel ... this is an extraordinary circumstance. You understand that this is very heated. Many people lost their loved ones on 9/11 --
Patel: Including Muslim Americans who lost their loved ones ...
Lemon: Consider the context here. That's what I'm talking about.
Patel: I have to tell you that this seems a little like telling black people 50 years ago: you can sit anywhere on the bus you like -- just not in the front.
Lemon: I think that's apples and oranges -- I don't think that black people were behind a Terrorist plot to kill people and drive planes into a building. That's a completely different circumstance.
Patel: And American Muslims were not behind the terrorist plot either.

The shameless demagogues running Fox News have long equated a few hundred deranged al Qeada thugs with 1.4 billion practicing Muslims. It appears CNN is heading down that same ratings-grabbing road. Fox stooges have, naturally, attempted to slap the one-size-fits-all 'extremist' label on Feisal Abdul Rauf. One of the more educational retorts to this deliberate ignorance is a NY Times opinion column detailing the beliefs and practices of "... Sufism, the mystical form of Islam, which in terms of goals and outlook couldn’t be farther from the violent Wahhabism of the jihadists", which Feisal Abdul Rauf practices:

(Feisal Abdul Rauf's) videos and sermons preach love, the remembrance of God (or 'zikr') and reconciliation. His slightly New Agey rhetoric makes him sound, for better or worse, like a Muslim Deepak Chopra. But in the eyes of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, he is an infidel-loving, grave-worshiping apostate; they no doubt regard him as a legitimate target for assassination.

Taking a wit-sharpened scalpel to Fox's attack dogs, Jon Stewart gives toothless poodle Glenn Beck an especially satisfying evisceration:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Mosque-Erade

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Tea Party

In case you missed it, here's a killer line from John Oliver:

Muslims are allowed to put a mosque near Ground Zero, just like Catholics can build a church next to a playground.

Finally, a columnist for the NY Daily News named Michael Daly, who's been profiling the heroism of police and fireman since long before Sept 11, 2001, makes a convincing case that blocking the so-called 'Ground Zero mosque' is just what the terrorists want.

Aamir Khan at MIFF

2010-08-11T09:19:00.004+10:00

Aradhna and I had a chance to see a giant of quality Indian cinema in person last Friday night, as Aamir Khan introduced 'Peepli [Live]' at the Regent Theatre. Khan produced the film, which was screened as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF). More photos of his appearance may be found here.

It's criminal that Khan's work remains largely unknown outside of Bollywood circles. He's more than a wonderful actor -- he's a visionary with a social conscience. 'Peepli [Live]' illustrates the plight of Indian farmers while exposing the greed, deceitfulness and outright lunacy of politicians and media members. The film is set in a poor Indian village, has no big stars, and casts an unflattering light on key aspects of Indian society. In other words, a tough sell. Khan's star power has never been brighter after starring in India's all-time highest grossing film, the unbelievably enjoyable 3 Idiots. 'Peepli [Live]' deserves an audience of equal enormity.

Despite Khan's relative anonymity outside India, he's adored by those who've grown up with his films (like Aradhna). This video I took of him being introduced Friday night proves adoration was in full display at the sold-out Regent Theatre:

Jon Stewart is an oracle.

2010-08-06T09:42:00.004+10:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

I Give Up - 9/11 Responders Bill

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Tea Party

Many may find it odd that I've remained staunchly partisan about US politics. I'm odd, yes, but in an age of electronic media it's easy to remain informed (perhaps too informed) of the Horseshit Olympics among US politicians, pundits and others of ill repute.

Australia's national broadcaster -- ABC -- has four channels on free-to-air TV. One -- ABC2 -- broadcasts The Daily Show and Colbert Report back-to-back on weeknights at 7:15 pm. This stellar pairing provides the equivalent of a daily physical check-up of the health of US politics & media. Most nights, of course, the prognosis is grim. Very, very grim.

Never more so than the contents of the above clip that involves congressional chicanery and gutlessness regarding a health care bill for Sept 11th responders. Stewart calls the segment 'I Give Up'.

There are times when I believe Stewart presents the only rational voice in the great cacophony of TV screamers and swindlers. He's a hero to progressives, of course, but I challenge anyone, regardless of political leanings, to find fault with the sentiments of this clip.

I literally don't know whether to laugh or cry.

'Christmas in July' 2010

2010-07-27T15:41:00.016+10:00

Nothing symbolises the true spirit of Christmas like a paper Chuck Norris star atop a Christmas tree, so Aradhna and I were indeed infused with holiday cheer when we spotted this one at Emily & Michael's 'Christmas in July' party this weekend. I haven't rectified our camera situation (meaning it's camera phones until I get a new Canon) so these grainy images of the soiree that Aradhna snapped with her iPhone will have to suffice.

I understand the eastern half of the US is experiencing an oppressive summer so viewing this photograph of a roaring fireplace may be as inviting as a solar-powered electric beach blanket on red-hot sand, but when it's a very moist 4 degrees C outside (40 degrees F) a stoked hearth is a requisite in every mountain home. (Holiday-related sidenote: When describing the annual Christmas Eve 'Yule Log' broadcast on New York City's channel 11 as a kid, I received stares one would expect if caught using the solar-powered electric beach blanket described above.)

Fellow American ex-pat Emily grew up outside Columbus, Ohio and met her New South Wales-born husband Michael while they both worked in London. They owned a place on Collins Street in Melbourne's CBD for several years before buying a house in the Dandenong Ranges, about 35 kms southeast of the city. The transformation of the formerly rustic first floor is complete and looks spectacular. Michael said the upstairs is a work in progess which I'm eager to admire.

A look down the table reveals Emily to the left, a lovely woman from Scotland whose name I forget because I'm a schmuck, a candlelight-obscured Michael at the table's far end, the Scottish woman's equally lovely Scottish husband, a mad Melburnian named David who runs a pub in South Melbourne and whose banter with childhood buddy Michael is like a never-ending Python skit doused liberally with single malt, and an old man from the USA.

Emily & Michael prepared an outstanding 5-course meal:
1) Perfect mushroom soup
2) 'Cleansing' pear & parmesan salad
3) This amazing plate of Christmas favorites turkey, stuffing, potatoes & gravy
4) Another cleansing salad, this one strewn with juicy blood oranges
5) American-style pumpkin pie (i.e. made with Libby's brand canned pumpkin purchased from an American-import store) served with whipped cream. There was also an English pudding, but this Yank paid no attention to it.

Aradhna captured this table-level view between courses. As you can see, large glasses of wine dominated the tablecloth-covered landscape. The woman in red is David's American wife, Jen. She's a Florida native. Not shown in any of these photos are David and Jen's three lovely daughters. They were no doubt whispering to each other in an upstairs room about their shared lack of adult role models.

Aradhna grows more beautiful by the day while the lug beside her deteriorates in equal measure.

'The Rising' closes 'Spectacle'

2010-07-21T16:41:00.005+10:00

Springsteen plays the final song on Elvis Costello's phenomenal Spectacle TV show with members of the E Street Band and one time Attractions/Imposters behind him.

Nearly 10 years down the road and this song still cuts through me like a sub-zero laser.

RIP Bob Sheppard

2010-07-12T12:26:00.013+10:00

One of the more remarkable aspects of legendary Yankees & Giants PA announcer Bob Sheppard's life was his anonymity. Reggie Jackson once said he possessed the 'voice of God' and he's got a plaque in Monument Park, but for the bulk of his 50+ year career would have gone unnoticed in a mob of the most rabid NY sports fans.

I can picture him at one of the sports bars on 161st Street beside the old Stadium, bravely wading through a crowd of burly fans, most of them wondering what a stick-thin and tweed-jacketed older gentleman is doing in a packed tavern. Finally catching the eye of a barman, the dapper man with a book tucked under his arm opens his mouth.

Thank you. If you will. Please bring me. An ice. Cold. Budweiser. With a glass. Budweiser.

All but a TV above the bar is silent. Men freeze, beers in mid-swallow, fingers in mid-point. He's here. The voice of Yankee Stadium. Here. Right here. The men watch his face like construction workers ogling a woman in hotpants. The barmen hands him a longneck. The men brace themselves as Bob Sheppard's mouth opens again.

Thank you.

Bob Sheppard drinks his beer while around him men use hard hands to rub away tears. No one approaches him. Who would dare? Firemen, cops, Wall Street bigboys, all overwhelmed to share space with the holy spirit of their cathedral. None feel worthy to address this ordinary man with a seminal voice.

Bob Sheppard finishes his beer. Men want to reach for their wallets to pay for his drink -- these same men want to pick the small man up and carry him through the streets -- but it's too late. Their bodies are numb from shock, happiness, awe. All they can do is watch as Bob Sheppard lays a $5 bill on the bar, adjusts his jacket and walks out into October twilight. He crosses 161st Street and disappears into a navy blue ocean of fathers with children, vendors, young men with wives and girlfriends, all buzzing with pre-game hope. Bob Sheppard casts a thin shadow as he strides to the press gate, going to work, just as he's done in the Bronx since 1951.

The lights are on. The field is bright green. Bob Sheppard is at the microphone. Yankee Stadium is ready for baseball.

Winter walk with my girl.

2010-07-09T17:10:00.011+10:00

Aradhna & I took a long walk on a cloudless winter's day, Balaclava to St Kilda to Middle Park and through Albert Park (above), before succumbing to the rattle of a #16 tram at Fitzroy St for the trip home.
Looking south along Beaconsfield Parade in Middle Park.
A magnificent fig tree hangs over Albert Park Lake.
Aradhna waits for her dopey husband to quit imitating a nature photographer with his crap phone camera.
Australian black swans (black & white courtesy of illegally downloaded software).

A confederacy of tyrants.

2010-06-30T08:20:00.005+10:00

Fiji's miseries continue with the passing of a judicial monstrosity called the Media Industry Development Decree 2010:

Effective immediately, the decree imposes fines and jail terms of two years for the publishing of material 'which is against the public interest or order, is against national interest, offends against good taste or decency or creates communal discord' and orders that all media outlets must be 90% owned by Fijian citizens who live permanently in the island nation.

The Fiji Times - the oldest, (founded in 1869) and largest of the country's newspapers and one of the oldest newspapers in the Asia-Pacific region - is wholly owned by News Limited, publisher of The Australian, and has three months to comply with the decree or be closed down. The newspaper has its own board, which includes several Fijian nationals as directors.

Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, who detailed the laws, has described The Fiji Times as a "purveyor of negativity" after its robust reporting of the coup and failure of Mr Bainimarama to hold democratic elections.

Bainimarama long ago placed gov't censors within the newsrooms of Fijian news outlets, so this decree is more fait accompli than a surprise. Equally unsurprising is that today's edition of the Fiji Times is completely free of any reporting of this news.

I'm usually the last person to defend anything espoused by a Rupert Murdoch-controlled media outlet, but as a student of journalism and advocate for its role in a functioning democracy, I agree with every word of this column condemning Bainimarama's 'bully tactics':

There is only one way of interpreting the latest move by the bullies running Fiji.

It is an astounding tribute to the fear that a free press - even a censored press - can instil in the hearts of tyrants.

It proves that media freedom is the natural friend of the civil society that Fiji's dictators are trying hard to bury. And it shows that newspapers are much more than a commercial enterprise.

This amounts to a retrospective expropriation of foreign investment that cannot be ignored by leading democracies, let alone the world's capital markets.

There seems to be no limit to the ability of the Fiji regime to dream up ideas that will inevitably hurt its own people. It has a shocking record: an elected government was overthrown, the last remnant of judicial independence has been demolished and the country's leading lawyers have been intimidated. The last Australians and New Zealanders who were part of the independent judiciary left the country long ago. They have been replaced by more malleable folk.

It seems clear that Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum was not satisfied with merely removing critical articles from the Fiji Times. He wanted praise and acceptance for his regime as a legitimate government that was pledged to reform past wrongs.

This regime seems to think that, once the pernicious influence of foreigners is removed, it will have far more success in encouraging the media to see things their way.

But if respect and legitimacy is the goal, this move is a step in the wrong direction.

It will give the regime's opponents a powerful new ally. Until now, Fiji had been doing its best to persuade the international business community that it was business as usual. World capital markets and ratings agencies will now be forced to take account of the fact that there is no doubt that capital is no longer safe in Fiji.

This may well cause more dislocation to Fiji than any move against the country's judiciary.

Fiji's coupmakers are a threat to international business.

Don't tell Hillary.

2010-06-24T20:51:00.006+10:00

When the majority of Australians sat down for breakfast this morning, the once highly popular but recently embattled Kevin Rudd was Prime Minister. By lunchtime, 'K-Rudd' was out, Deputy Minister Julia Gillard was in, making Gillard Australia's first-ever female Prime Minister.

You think Hillary Clinton, who spent two years unsuccessfully campaigning for US president, is wishing she was part of a parliamentary democracy right about now?

RIP Pan Da Koala

2010-06-23T14:31:00.011+10:00

Sad news. Pan Da (above), a rescued koala that came to represent koala preservation in Redland Bay, Queensland, has been euthanised at the Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital. Autopsy results haven't been released, but Pan Da had to be treated for cystitis in April. Considering the other, more gruesome forms of death faced by Southeast Queenslands's koala population, one would hope that a recurrence of the common koala malady is what took the little guy.

My brief time working in Brisbane introduced me to the preservation efforts of Redlands City Council (RCC). The area is home to the largest population of 'urban koalas' in Australia. A precious, valuable commodity? Hardly. A decade of mad development has decimated koala habitat, thousands are killed every year on Southeast Queensland's roadways, and irresponsible dog owners allow their pets to attack koalas scurrying from one eucalyptus tree to another.

It's a depressing situation. And, like kangaroos and wallabies, koalas are at the mercy of a human population whose fondness for them doesn't ... quite ...... translate ......... into ............ action.

The only tangible step taken by RCC was the creation of a Pan De Facebook page. I was lucky to meet the woman who for two years wrote Pan Da's status updates and posted photos that attracted over 13,000 'fans' from around the world. She understood the severity of Queensland's declining koala population and everyday smacked into an unmoving bureaucracy. The last time we spoke she remained optimistic that the foundation of concern she'd helped develop with the FB page would spur civic protection. (Her contract with RCC was not renewed this past April.)

I attending one meeting at RCC's shiny building in Redland Bay to discuss a koala preservation website with about a half dozen people. It was more than enough to evoke sympathy for any koala activist's plight amidst people with the willpower of dish detergent. The time to ACT was ten years ago, yet this collection of bureaucrats was interested only in ensuring their place in a circular loop of information that was, by design, not intended to progress beyond the discussion phase.

Nothing is less important to politicians and their gofers than the protection and/or preservation of wildlife. Native koalas will very soon disappear from Southeast Queensland. Hands will wring, voices will cry out, Southeast Queenslanders will soothe their collective conscience by swallowing the false claim that it couldn't be helped, and attention will return to that evening's telly offerings. Any footy?

All props to Pan Da's carers, who no doubt took the news of their little battler's death hard. It's up to the next generation of Southeastern Queenslanders to protect their precious natural fauna.

In that way, Pan Da's brief life and notoriety will have been more than a successful social media campaign for a gutless city council.

Aussie TV Bizarre-O World, cont.

2010-06-13T09:12:00.003+10:00

As if repackaging overseas TV shows with Aussies and stuffing schedules with lousy US programs wasn't shameful enough, a recent Channel 9 promo cut-for-cut steals from a Discovery Channel promo for an entirely different show. Watch and cringe.

More Melbourne minutiae.

2010-06-02T08:58:00.012+10:00

My wife is a patient woman. Which is good, as whenever we take a stroll together she's forced to wait as I snap photos of the most benign things (like the autumn colors of an Elwood maple tree shown above). My eyes love Melbourne -- lack of a decent camera be damned.
A small reserve in Elwood, one of Melbourne's most desirable bayside locales.
An approximation of 'New York' -- or, more accurately, the Hollywood version of Manhattan -- is a common selling point among property dealers.
Walking from Elwood to St Kilda along the promenade.
Trees are serious business in the City of Port Phillip (which includes St Kilda & Elwood, among others). This one's public declaration of being '100% dead' was surrounded by stapled pleas from residents wanting to turn it into a public art piece and, thus, be left untouched by chainsaw-wielding city workers.
Entrance to St Kilda's beloved Luna Park.
My view of City Hall and Carlisle Street from inside St Kilda's public library.

Phone snap potpourri.

2010-05-24T14:59:00.012+10:00

Guilt over losing my digital camera in Brisbane hasn't subsided so I'm still snapping neighborhood pics with a hand-me-down Nokia phone. If some look familiar it's because you've seen them on Facebook. You get what you pay for ... and this is a free blog.Morning in Caulfield Park.
St Kilda Botanical Gardens.
Fall colours along Balaclava Rd.
Local street art.
Saturday at Chadstone.
Shell-shocked face of a man whose wife is shoe shopping on Bridge Rd in Richmond.
Nothing screams 'Quality Merchandise!' like the frontage of this shop on Bridge Rd in Richmond.
Beloved literary character pimped out for overpriced threads. Or did Harper Lee decide to hawk women's clothes?
Oscar is Kitty King of the Mountain.

Gut-splitting genius.

2010-05-17T09:22:00.000+10:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Back in Black - Glenn Beck's Nazi Tourette's

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Tea Party

"In one paragraph, Glenn Beck tied one of the most positive words in the English language to Hitler's genocide. It's 'Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon' ... except there's just one degree ... and Kevin Bacon is Hitler."

Blinded by science.

2010-05-07T16:11:00.011+10:00

While sentencing 21-year-old Farah Jama (left) to 6 years in prison for the rape of a 48-year-old woman, Judge Paul Lacava said the attack was offensive, repugnant and intolerable in this society.

"You raped her when she was in a most vulnerable state," he said at the trial's conclusion in July 2008. "You obviously saw her and sized up the situation. Instead of assisting her ... you raped her for your own immediately and short-lived sexual gratification." The judge went on to say he was guarded about Mr Jama's chances of rehabilitation despite his youth because he had shown no remorse.

Farah Jama showed no remorse because he was innocent.

As he and his family testified in court, the young man was praying at his dying father's bedside on the night the woman claimed to have been raped in a locked toilet cubicle at an over-28s nightclub.

Yesterday, 'bad science' was the topic du jour as Mr Jama and a variety of legal types assembled to comment on the release of a report that:

... slammed Victoria Police, the Office of Public Prosecutions, and forensic medical officers over the case and the authorities' failure to consider any other evidence connecting Mr Jama to a crime that not only he was innocent of, but one that never occurred.

The report, written by a former Supreme Court judge named Frank Vincent, tore everyone in the state of Victoria involved in the collection and analysis of DNA evidence a new asshole.

Mr Jama had his conviction overturned last December. The prosecutor admitted the DNA evidence -- the only thing linking Mr Jama to the crime -- was contaminated, resulting in a 'substantial miscarriage of justice'.

Vincent's report stated:

The DNA evidence appears to have been viewed as possessing an almost mystical infallibility. The outcome was, in the circumstances, patently absurd.

Victoria's Attorney-General Rob Hulls had this to say yesterday:

I'm very sorry. This case is a wake-up call for everyone involved in the criminal justice system not to be blinded by science and the so-called CSI effect.

The 'so-called CSI effect'.

Is that all?

Could there be something different about Mr Jama, who moved to Australia from Somalia as a child, that caused Judge Lacava and the jury to blithely accept scientific 'proof' without any other evidence to wrongly convict him of a crime that never took place?

What is it about Mr Jama that caused Judge Lacava and the jury to overlook corroborating testimony given by members of his family?

What is it about Mr Jama that Judge Lacava and the jury could SEE with their own eyes that convinced them he was so improbably guilty beyond a reasonable doubt?

I wonder ....

How to save democracy.

2010-05-04T16:57:00.003+10:00

American hero Bill Moyers signed off his TV show for the last time last week. As is his wont, Moyers described in plain language how 'plutocracy and democracy don't mix' (via Digby):

You've no doubt figured out my bias by now. I've hardly kept it a secret. In this regard, I take my cue from the late Edward R. Murrow, the Moses of broadcast news.

Ed Murrow told his generation of journalists bias is okay as long as you don't try to hide it. So here, one more time, is mine: plutocracy and democracy don't mix. Plutocracy, the rule of the rich, political power controlled by the wealthy.

Plutocracy is not an American word but it's become an American phenomenon. Back in the fall of 2005, the Wall Street giant Citigroup even coined a variation on it, plutonomy, an economic system where the privileged few make sure the rich get richer with government on their side. By the next spring, Citigroup decided the time had come to publicly 'bang the drum on plutonomy'.

And bang they did, with an "equity strategy" for their investors, entitled, Revisiting Plutonomy: The Rich Getting Richer. Here are some excerpts:

"Asset booms, a rising profit share and favorable treatment by market-friendly governments have allowed the rich to prosper...[and] take an increasing share of income and wealth over the last 20 years..."

"...the top 10%, particularly the top 1% of the US -- the plutonomists in our parlance -- have benefited disproportionately from the recent productivity surge in the US...[and] from globalization and the productivity boom, at the relative expense of labor."

"...[and they] are likely to get even wealthier in the coming years. [Because] the dynamics of plutonomy are still intact."

And so they were, before the great collapse of 2008. And so they are, today, after the fall. While millions of people have lost their jobs, their homes, and their savings, the plutonomists are doing just fine. In some cases, even better, thanks to our bailout of the big banks which meant record profits and record bonuses for Wall Street.

Now why is this? Because over the past 30 years the plutocrats, or plutonomists —- choose your poison —- have used their vastly increased wealth to capture the flag and assure the government does their bidding. Remember that Citigroup reference to "market-friendly governments" on their side? It hasn't mattered which party has been in power —- government has done Wall Street's bidding.

Don't blame the lobbyists, by the way; they are simply the mules of politics, delivering the drug of choice to a political class addicted to cash —- what polite circles call "campaign contributions" and Tony Soprano would call "protection."

This marriage of money and politics has produced an America of gross inequality at the top and low social mobility at the bottom, with little but anxiety and dread in between, as middle class Americans feel the ground falling out from under their feet. According to a study from the Pew Research Center last month, nine out of ten Americans give our national economy a negative rating. Eight out of ten report difficulty finding jobs in their communities, and seven out of ten say they experienced job-related or financial problems over the past year.

So it is that like those populists of that earlier era, millions of Americans have awakened to a sobering reality: they live in a plutocracy, where they are disposable. Then, the remedy was a popular insurgency that ignited the spark of democracy.

Now we have come to another parting of the ways, and once again the fate and character of our country are up for grabs.

So along with Jim Hightower and Iowa's concerned citizens, and many of you, I am biased: democracy only works when we claim it as our own.

Shaming Arizona.

2010-04-29T15:24:00.002+10:00

A walk in Sherbrooke Forest.

2010-04-27T08:44:00.011+10:00

Succumbing to a demand from Aradhna that we venture to the Dandenongs -- precise destination determined by me, of course -- my lovely wife and I took a 45-minute drive to Dandenong Ranges National Park and walked an easy track in Sherbrooke Forest. I drifted among towering mountain ash and fern trees like a child wandering beneath a circus big top, bewildered by the proximity of natural splendour on offer so close to the Melbourne CBD. Aradhna, bless her heart, put up with my constant prattling and pauses to snap photos with her iPhone (I have yet to replace the camera lost in Brisbane -- my penance). Here are the results.
Aradhna snapped this as we snaked into the Dandenong Ranges.
The Dandenongs were clear-cut to build Melbourne in the 19th-century. These soaring Mountain Ash are over 100 years old.
Even a galoot like me fit comfortably into the trunk of this massive tree.
Aradhna waited as I made like a hoodied possum ...
... and even joined me for a photo.
My inglorious dis-hibernation.
Snapped this just before a rain shower 'refreshed' us on our way back to the car.

US in Iraq to "out-terrorise the terrorists".

2010-04-25T10:09:00.008+10:00

Army specialist Ethan McCord (right) was at the scene of the extermination of 12 innocent Iraqis and two Reuters journalists three years ago in a Baghdad suburb, a video of which was released by WikiLeaks a few weeks ago. He and another former soldier named Josh Stieber have co-written a 'letter of reconciliation' to those injured in the attack.

McCord and Stieber do more than prove their decency as human beings with the letter. They provide harrowing insight into their jobs as soldiers in Iraq.

In a BBC interview, McCord said he enlisted to go to Iraq and help the Iraqi people:

I was living in a fairytale, obviously. Our job was not to protect the Iraqi people, it was more along the lines to out-terrorise the terrorists.

You'd be hard-pressed to find a more damning indictment of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Death of a superstar.

2010-04-20T08:26:00.008+10:00

The city of Melbourne was rocked by the murder of its most famous citizen this week. The victim, pictured above walking with his wife Roberta, was the subject of a mini-series that won his portrayer (and Roberta's) critical recognition and blockbuster ratings. The shelves of 'crime' sections across Melbourne's numerous bookstores sag with books adorned with his portly mug. Roberta herself wrote a bestselling tome, describing life with her celebrity husband and his 'colourful' cohorts, and continues to get paid for providing 'exclusive access'.

Who is this man who once referred to himself as 'The Premier' because he 'ran this f*cking state'? The man who had morning radio DJs asking callers where they were the moment they learned he'd been killed?

The man is Carl Williams, Australia's most notorious gangster. During Melbourne's 'gangland wars' of the late '90s - early '00s, Williams was responsible for the murders of nearly every member of the Moran family, a competing pack of low-life drug dealers who'd shot Williams in 1999 over the production and distribution of amphetamine. His baby-faced, bogan appearance made him an unlikely drug kingpin and mafia don. Which, of course, only added to his marketability.

Williams has been jailed in isolation since 2007 but around lunchtime on Monday had his skull crushed by one of the two inmates allowed to share an exercise room with him. He was found dead in his cell soon afterwards. No guards witnessed the attack, either in person or via CCTV. The other inmate was on a wall phone throughout the attack. Watching.

Suspicious, no?

There are now three inquiries looking into how such a high-profile prisoner could be murdered in a maximum-security facility. On the morning of his murder, Melbourne's leading tabloid reported that Victorian police had paid $8000 towards his daughter's tuition at a private school. Coincidence? Not according to so-called experts. If it turned out Williams was cooperating with police in return for financial assistance it would make him a 'dog', the lowest form of prisoner. The Herald-Sun denies its front page treatment of the story led to Williams's murder and their columnists are predictably decrying his fame. Fame they manifested, stoked and made untold riches exploiting.

Who's next?

Saturday in St Kilda

2010-04-17T16:35:00.007+10:00

Moving back to Balaclava means being a 15-minute walk from the St Kilda foreshore, which Aradhna and I visited today on an absolutely perfect day.
Looking towards the shore from the St Kilda pier.
Along the promenade.
Entryway to St Kilda's venerable Luna Park.

War: The Video

2010-04-07T14:33:00.009+10:00

Harrowing doesn't begin to describe this video. Please do so knowing you're about to watch war in its sadistic glory.

That is, the extermination of human beings by fellow human beings. Who enjoy it.

Being 'anti-war' in 2002 meant being tagged as more than just a lefty, a liberal, a peace-loving hippie. It meant being called a pussy, a wuss, a naive, wide-eyed doe bounding through sun-drenched fields, unwilling to accept the hardness of a dark world intent on destroying me and my blessed-by-god country. I watched Colin Powell address the UN and was shaken by his conviction, if not his 'proof', of the threat posed by Iraq and its wacky dictator. It was clearly bullshit. Nevertheless, the American public assumed the role of terrified children in need of protective adults like Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rice and The Miserable Failure, who lied with comforting gravitas and impunity. The US media, to its shame, carried water like pampered minions desperate for acceptance into the cool kids' clique.

Convincing a brainwashed populace accustomed to TV war coverage introduced by waving-flag graphics and soaring soundtracks was like explaining the hazards of gambling to a person gleefully waving a million-dollar-winning lottery ticket. The reality of war was irrelevant. US = Good. Brown-skinned people = Bad. War as humankind's most evil invention was relegated to a far corner of the mind by a great bulk of the world's most prosperous country. Bloodlust was in the air. Only a fool wouldn't breathe it in.

I've read dozens of books written by soldiers or war correspondents but have never been exposed to a more searing indictment of any country's decision to go to war than this 18-minute video. This is war. This is what it does to soldiers and civilians. This is how it destroys all that it touches, regardless if they walk away from the battlefield.

Clusterf*ckistan

2010-04-04T10:50:00.002+10:00

Only in the rabbit-hole-realm of the US military can a horrific admission regarding the murder of innocent locals garner praise. But the frankness of Gen. Stanley McChrystal's admission to troops serving in Afghanistan that "We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat" is remarkably commendable. He was telling the truth and, in doing so, revealing the regularity of atrocities in Afghanistan.

A spokesperson for Gen. McChrystal said "the general was urging his forces to exercise courageous restraint (by suggesting that it is unlikely that erratic behavior at a checkpoint constitutes a threat) while also expressing sympathy for the confusing and threatening situations in which both soldiers and Afghans find themselves."

Here's the full exchange:

Q: "On escalation of force, have you considered engaging the local community on the issue? We could explain at the brigade/battalion level what behavior we find threatening, and how we are trained to react when we feel threatened. We could negotiate with the community leaders over mutually agreeable actions and reactions that are better understood by both and gives part ownership of the issue to the community and empowers them in line with our approach to reintegration."
Gen. McChrystal: "That's a great point. I don't know if we have, but we certainly ought to be doing that. We have so many escalation of force issues, and someone gets hurt in the process, and we say, 'They didn't respond like they were supposed to.' Well, they may not have known how they were supposed to respond, so as they approached an area or checkpoint or whatever, they may have taken actions that seemed appropriate to them, and when a warning shot was fired they may have panicked. I think this is a great thing to do, to engage people and tell them the kind of behavior on their part that would lower the chance that they would run into problems.
"I do want to say something that everyone understands. We really ask a lot of our young service people out on the checkpoints because there's danger, they're asked to make very rapid decisions in often very unclear situations. However, to my knowledge, in the nine-plus months I've been here, not a single case where we have engaged in an escalation of force incident and hurt someone has it turned out that the vehicle had a suicide bomb or weapons in it and, in many cases, had families in it. That doesn't mean I'm criticizing the people who are executing. I'm just giving you perspective. We've shot an amazing number of people and killed a number and, to my knowledge, none has proven to have been a real threat to the force."

I admire the general's honesty. His job is an impossible one -- keeping frightened soldiers from killing, when killing is what they've been trained to do.

Remembering a murdered mob.

2010-03-28T19:10:00.016+10:00

The shameful slaying of two dozen roos in South Morang was commemorated today at a gathering of Wildlife Rescuers and Wildlife Victoria volunteers in the paddock where the slaughter took place.
Volunteers brought signs, roo masks & tails and plush roos. A number of journos milled about, photographers snapping photos of the more interesting sights (like the woman shown here). Notables from both organisations reviewed the details of January's secret slaughter and exhorted the crowd to turn its outrage into action. I was able to reconnect with several Wildlife Rescue volunteers and am eager to jump back into the fray.
Speakers address the crowd.
Wooden roos represented those shot by the DSE. People were invited to write messages on them -- they'll be on display at Parliament House on Wednesday @ 11 am during another protest.
Narelle asked me to join her and several volunteers to check on a roo call in Whittlesea after the demonstration in South Morang. We found a large male in the front yard of a home, obviously injured. He was knocked out by a dart shooter from 30 metres. The photo above shows him surrounded by volunteers (his head is covered to minimise stress). The lower part of his leg was badly swollen and he showed other injuries that would indicate a collision with a motor vehicle. We put him in a roo bag before he was taken to a property in St Andrews to stay for the night. He'll be taken to Healesville Sanctuary tomorrow for x-rays. Sadly, his prognosis is not good.
Just after we carried the injured roo to a ute, a mob of roos came bouncing over a hill behind the house. Must have been at least three dozen. They leaped over a paddock fence, crossed a dirt road and bounded into an adjoining paddock. Graceful, athletic ... and tragically underappreciated.

A sickening slaughter

2010-03-25T00:00:00.010+10:00

If left to politicians and gov't bureaucrats, the fate of wildlife in Melbourne's northern suburbs is doomed.

Damning, disgraceful proof is the slaughter of a mob of at least two dozen roos (two of whom are shown above in a photo from 2007) that wildlife volunteers were in the process of relocating from a quickly developing suburb called South Morang. The 'humane cull' took place in January.

In secret.

By a cowardly collection of paid-off and morally bankrupt henchmen called the Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE).

Narelle Smith, a woman I've been fortunate to work with as a Wildlife Rescuers volunteer and who'd been involved in efforts to relocate the roo mob, was quoted as saying: "We had been assessing relocation sites in Humevale, Whittlesea, St Andrews and Strathewen as recently as last week ... No one had known (the kangaroos had been shot). We were only advised today (Friday)."

Ron Waters, incompetent bureaucrat. Ron Waters, trigger-happy stooge. Ron Waters, perversely titled 'wildlife manager', formally explained the DSE's decision in a press release with the sort of illogical and cold-blooded reasoning common to government hacks. The 'health and safety of the roos was at risk', 'it was a difficult decision' blah blah blah. Oxygen waster Ron Waters knew these roos could be saved. But Ron Waters chose to have them murdered. His words are as worthless as the souls of the 'professional shooters' who did his dirty work.

I left a comment on the article in the local paper:

I wonder ... did the DSE hold a lottery to pick the roo shooters? As this was clearly NOT a humane undertaking—volunteers were ready, willing and able to relocate the animals but a bloodless bureaucrat chose to murder them instead—I can imagine there would have been a great demand among ‘sportsmen’ to shine up their rifles and blast the heads off of Australia’s national symbol.

You know, for fun.

How would we know WHAT these people did, as it was all done in secret?

Issuing a press release after undertaking something so vile shows just how cowardly these bureaucrats are and how completely out of touch they are with the people who live and embrace these creatures in their communities.

Heroes save animals in need of help. Cowards kill them and call it ‘humane’.

A memorial protest is being held this Sunday 28 March 2010 at 2pm at Oleander Drive (just off McDonalds Rd) in South Morang. This atrocity cannot go unchallenged.

And I can guarantee not a single gutless coward like Ron Waters from the DSE will be in attendance. It'll be daylight, with lots of witnesses. Not Ron Waters' style.

Farewell, 'Poppa O'

2010-03-20T21:46:00.007+10:00

Our time on this Earth is limited. Not a groundbreaking thought, but one that lingers like sulphur from a lit match when you learn of a familiar person's passing.

I was only in the presence Ralph Ortiz ('Mr Ortiz' to me) a handful of times. First in NJ when my brother Kevin and his wife Ruth were preparing to get married in the mid-'90s. Mr Ortiz was mild-mannered, quick to smile, kind ... a gentleman. Magdalena, his gorgeous, pint-sized wife, was clearly the 'talker' of the two. Whatever came his way, Mr Ortiz handled it with the grace and good humour of a man of depth.

Mr Ortiz got sick several years ago. Ruth and her two brothers, as well as my amazing brother, have done what they could to help him and Mrs Ortiz during his decline, which ended last week with his passing.

Besides hoping Mrs Ortiz was coping, my immediate thought was a wish I'd gotten to know Mr Ortiz better. Like most men of his generation he wasn't inclined to share his story -- he was more interested in asking questions and listening intently to others. My most memorable time with him was a Thanksgiving spent at Kevin and Ruth's home in the foothills of the Smokies. The Ortiz's were there, as were other members of their family and me and mom. Mr Ortiz spoke of meeting his wife and playing semi-pro baseball and creating art and raising three kids in North Jersey. Nothing earth-shattering, but absorbing all the same.

He was a man of substance, not style. A man to respect. A man to emulate.

And now, a man to miss.

Kevin sent an email the day after he passed. It began with 'Poppa O in peace now' as the subject:

Hey guys, hope all is well. The funeral went very well, the priest who married us 15 years ago performed. He's now a bishop -- a beautiful man of love and understanding. He came to the house 3 days before Ralph passed. He was at the viewing last night and came to Poppa O's tomb as well. The funeral mass was held at the cathedral in Newark, you know where we were married. Now instead of walking with his beautiful daughter down the aisle, she was crying uncontrollably. He was pushed by men who loved him, with sobs of others around him who already miss him. Some beautiful words were spoken by many last night and today by family and friends. It's amazing how we can touch others' lives in many ways, either by big ideas and actions or just small actions and kind/wise words. Maddy O holding up well. Love ya Kevin.

Aradhna and I send our love and condolences to everyone in the States blessed to have known Mr Ortiz. I wish we were there to pay our respects.

Cattle v Cringle

2010-03-18T10:31:00.008+10:00

This is a cow in a feed lot. From the moment it's born its fate as food is sealed. It doesn't know this, of course, and so eats and craps and sleeps and interacts with other cows until one day it ends up in a feed lot like this and is soon after killed and processed through one of humankind's most nightmarish creations, an abattoir.

This is Michael Clarke and Lara Bingle, or 'Cringle' as some wildly unimaginative Aussie journos have labeled them. They are sometimes referred to as the David and Victoria Beckham of Australia, the difference being that Beckham and his one-time Spice Girl wife are known around the world and Cringle could ride on white horses through Times Square and no one would give a damn. Clarke is vice-captain of the Australian cricket team, a notable achievement in a sport played in a handful of countries. Bingle is a model whose break came a few years ago as a bikini-clad bimbo beseeching British TV viewers to visit Australia (below).

Like our cow awaiting slaughter at the top of this post, Cringle has been at the mercy of others for nourishment since their moment of conception (most likely after several cocktails at one of Sydney's many glamorous hotspots). Aussie tabloids and women's magazines have sold countless copies to the masses craving intimate details about a guy who plays cricket and a woman with enormous ... teeth. Cringle, of course, happily submitted. Their engagement graduated the pair from gossip mags to serious news across all Aussie media outlets, especially after it was reported that Clarke popped the question with a $200,000 ring (not much of a question, really -- what woman would resist the devil himself for such expensive bling?).

Unlike our cow, however, Cringle understood its place in the food chain. What it apparently did not understand was the inevitability of its slaughter.

The details of this slaughter nearly match those of an abattoir, so the less said the better. The gist: Bingle (and a newly hired publicist) decided to sue a well-known and married AFL player (with whom Bingle once had an affair) for circulating a nude photo of Bingle taken with a camera phone. The photo was immediately splashed across front pages and TV screens throughout Australia. In other words, a publicist's jackpot. A women's magazine ran the 'demeaning' photo and then paid Bingle $100K to dish HER side of the tale. This led Clarke to abandon his teammates in New Zealand and return to Cringle's $5 million Bondi Beach apartment (funny how most things Cringle-related have price tags -- viva los publicists!). Like the sharks that regularly visit Bondi's beautiful blue waters, paparazzi swarmed Cringle's posh love nest. Suit-wearing 'reporters' speculated on what they could see from outside the building. Bingle made it easy for the breathless cretins below with a one-finger salute from Cringle's balcony.

This turned out to be the final act of resistance. By the time it was officially announced that Cringle was finished -- after tabloids and wacky morning radio DJs sang hosannas with a rumour Clarke had rang a local plumber to come and rescue the $200K ring that Bingle had flushed -- there was nothing to show for its carcass but reams of rubbished newsprint, hours of prattling heads on video and a national press corps that, unlike abattoir workers who at least hose down the killing floors, was happy to wallow in its own filth.

Saturday in Sassafras.

2010-03-07T12:41:00.009+10:00

Aradhna & I drove up to Emily & Michael's Sassafras abode yesterday for a party celebrating Michael's b-day. Lovely to see both of them, of course, but also a pleasure to meet their friends (a bunch of whom are pictured above). Emily is a fellow ex-pat who met her Aussie husband when they both worked in London. Several ex-pats were at the party. Always nice to hear a familiar accent -- even ones being worn unrecognisable by years in Oz.

Wild weather made Emily & Michael's lush property a multi-sensory experience. A wall of wind crossed the Dandenongs, followed by sheets of wind and hail the size and shape of human eyeballs (right). Sassafras is roughly 40 km from Melbourne's CBD, which copped a pounding from the 'freak storm' that dropped hail big enough to damage the roofs of Southern Cross Station and the Arts Centre.

No such dramas in the mountains. The party carried on unfazed while a soft fog wandered through the tops of surrounding evergreens (left). I stepped outside several times to absorb the air's ripeness and sink my feet into beds of soaked pine needles and mud. A brilliant change from Brisbane's unrelenting sub-tropical onslaught. It's good to be back in Victoria.

Ivanhoe in bloom.

2010-03-05T05:14:00.003+10:00

Aradhna stands beside one of the many blooming front gardens to be found in our neighborhood. The Brisbane experiment has run its course. I was lucky to experience the best of Australia's most populous sub-tropical city, but glad to be back in Melbourne. Aradhna and I recently signed a lease for an apartment in our old stomping grounds of Balaclava. Fortuna's wheel keeps spinning ...

Whinge medalists.

2010-02-22T10:02:00.003+10:00

If whinging about umpires, judges and referees was an Olympic event, Aussies would surely dominate. Aussies don't lose fair and square -- they get screwed by officials.

Results of a society that places athletic achievement above all else.

'It doesn't work.'

2010-02-17T13:23:00.009+10:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

The Apparent Trap

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care Crisis

Stewart skewers 'pussy' Republicans for flailing and bawling that Obama's invitation to discuss health care is a 'trap'. Cutting, hilarious, and sad -- typical Stewart -- but it's a piece by John Oliver at the clip's 3-minute mark that's enraging.

Oliver interviews GOP jackasses with no knowlege whatsoever that the state they've gathered in to bash health care insurance reform -- Hawaii -- has successfully provided coverage to the bulk of its citizens for over 40 years. These white, well-off and shockingly clueless GOP nitwits repeatedly answer Oliver's questions about government-backed health care coverage with variations of 'it doesn't work'. It's almost -- almost -- painful to watch them squirm from beneath the reality of Hawaii's successful government-run program, but they do, and hang their hopeless cause on convincing the easily persuaded that a successful, 40-year program they know nothing about does not, in fact, work.

Here are the people fighting reform in the US. Millions of uninsured Americans are sacrificed so these relics may keep their glistening lawns and gas-chugging sedans and summer cottages. It's all here -- the lying, the spinning, the sanctimonious tut-tutting about 'socialism', the pro-business scare tactics dumped on fearful TV viewers every hour of every day by wretched propandists like Fox 'American Taliban' News. Blood suckers covering for their insurance, pharmaceutical and medical industry masters that have too much to lose if real reform were to gain traction in the US AND SAVE THOUSANDS OF LIVES EVERY YEAR.

This is especially timely for me. I'm currently sick as a dog. In Australia, every man, woman and child is guaranteed affordable health care. Here are the precise steps I've taken to remedy my condition:

Called a local medical practice for a same-day appointment ('Can you be here in 40 minutes?')
Walked 3 blocks to the practice.
Offered my Medicare card as proof of eligibility. (Note: No paperwork was required, as my details are kept on Medicare's database.)
Got examined by doctor, who diagnosed the flu.
Billed $67 for visit, about two-thirds of which will be reimbursed by Medicare.
Took Dr's prescription to local pharmacy where I paid $15 for amoxicillin. (Note: Triple this figure for comparable US price.)

No HMO-approved doctor list, no demeaning questions about insurance, no piles of paperwork, no deductibles, no outrageous drug costs.

IT DOES WORK.

Lying motherf*ckers.

Snorkeling the Tangalooma Wrecks

2010-02-15T18:41:00.034+10:00

My residence in South Bank is a block from a cineplex so I escaped late afternoon heat and humidity on Sunday by seeing an advanced screening of 'The Hurt Locker'. The film's premise is revealed in an opening quote from Chris Hedges, a former war correspondent for the NY Times:

The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug.

I know exactly what Hedges is getting at, man. I mean, I live it.

I'm a coral reef junkie.

Got an extended fix at Moreton Island on Saturday. Snorkeled an artificial reef there called Tangalooma Wrecks, which is composed of 15 majestically decaying hulks. First one was scuttled in 1963, the last 21 years later. Mostly dredges and barges that are now barnacle and coral covered and alive with a variety of tropical fish.

Won't go into details of the day, as it involved certain tourist-y elements that I strive to avoid. Met a few extremely pleasant German, French and Turkish tourists, but an illness that a West End doctor has since diagnosed as flu was already bashing me about the sinuses so I only wanted to snorkel and sleep. Still without my beloved Canon digital camera so I picked up a cheap waterproof Fuji disposable. Along with the photos above, here are the results.
Looking back at the Micat ferry, the main mode of transport to Moreton Island. Many passengers drove onto the vessel in 4WDs, which they use to get around the mostly uninhabited sand and scrub-tree island. It's a 75-minute ride from the Port of Brisbane.
I battled high tide currents to explore the wrecks twice before my group donned wetsuits and protective gloves later in the afternoon for a 'guided' exploration. It was low tide and much easier to access so at least two other groups of snorkelers descended on the wrecks. Wetsuits provide buoyancy so I put off taking photos until this last visit. Like previous underwater photo-taking endeavors I went through film like a kid attacking a bag of Halloween candy. Was glad to capture sunlight streaming through to the sea floor but missed a later appearance by a pair of pied cormorants that swam and dove beside my snorkeling group as we chucked chunks of bread to swarming fish.
In the water ... wreck dead ahead.
Of course I've been spoiled snorkeling for hours among soft coral in Fiji. But a junkie doesn't whinge about texture.
Bones of a wreck.
Streams of sunlight flood a wreck.
My group takes a break.
Back on the Micat, looking north (via awful camera phone).
Final look at Moreton Island as the Micat pulled away, looking south (via camera phone).

A year on from Black Saturday.

2010-02-06T18:58:00.015+10:00

Many Australians are taking a moment to remember the 173 lives lost last year on this day. It's a horrifying figure, of course, but the man-made fires killed -- by conservative estimate -- at least a million animals. Many that survived the hellstorm died from stress-related illness and disease weeks and months afterward. Or starved. As is almost always the case, animals are bouncing back. Like many Australians close enough to smell the smoke of Black Saturday, I was motivated to become a wildlife volunteer, and as a result met a subset of truly remarkable men and women.

A pair of rescue calls brought me to Kinglake and Strathewen two months after the bushfires. I'd been to some areas at night looking for wombats, my first brush with the moonscape aftermath of many mountainsides, but these rescue calls were my first daytime views. As these photos show, regrowth had begun, but nearly all man-made structures were in ruins.

Giants Stadium no more.

2010-02-05T14:14:00.029+10:00

This post would probably read best as a blues song -- something like:

They tore down the ol' Stadium today.
The swamp just swallowed it whole, some say.
Everyone better off that way.

I'll avoid further embarrassment by conforming to a prose style more befitting a white guy who grew up 20 miles west of the maligned but memory-filled Giants Stadium, shown above in an early stage of demolition.

A non-story here in Australia, of course, but I imagine comedians and local TV reporters are hauling out the ghost of Jimmy Hoffa (left). The Stadium's unveiling in the '70s unleashed a hail of 'Hoffa's buried 10 feet unda de 50 yard line' jokes. Giants football had been so bad, for so long, they'd become non-entities. Moving to Jersey from NY was considered ... appropriate. Wisecracks about the fate of the long-missing union boss gave the new place instant notoriety -- a little juice.

Giants Stadium. Concrete concourses ripe with the smells of cheap cigar smoke, overflowing urinals, spilled beer, burnt pretzels and Old Spice. A list of memories as long as a walk down one of its spiral ramps. Here's the escalator version:

Because the Giants of the late '70s were terrible my dad was able to get great seats downstairs to see the league's better teams, including the Cowboys, Redskins, Eagles. Legends like Roger Staubach, Tony Dorsett, John Riggins, Wilbert Montgomery and others manhandled the Giants of Joe Pisarcik (right), Dave Jennings, John Mendenhall and Brad Van Pelt. I loved Big Blue anyway.
Voice of Bob Sheppard: "Pisarcik to Gray, incomplete. Fourth down." Slumming it on the west side of the Hudson, far removed from his papal-like perch at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx.
A young Joe Montana handing off to an old OJ Simpson during the running back's final season with the 49ers.
Attending Cosmos soccer games. My dad ... an absolutely magnificent man. Would love to ask him why he took Kevin and I to watch a sport he cared little about. I clearly remember Latino fans jeering Italy's Giorgio Chinaglia (left) for hanging back at midfield. Germany's Franz Beckenbauer, Brazil's Carlos Alberto, Holland's Johan Neeskens, even the American Ricky Davis ... some of the world's greatest, right there amid North Jersey's checkerboard mix of ethnic neighborhoods.
Sitting slack-jawed as a young madman named Lawrence Taylor re-invented the definition of linebacker. And civilisation.
Watching from seats high in the clouds on a frozen Saturday as Joe 'Big Nose' Danelo kicked a late field goal to send the Giants into overtime against the Cowboys and then kick another one to pave the way for the Giants to advance to the playoffs for the first time in my life in December 1981.
Partaking in an all-day Amnesty International 'Conspiracy of Hope' concert in 1986. Lebanon Valley College pal Tod Roach and I sat on a poorly tarped floor of the Stadium and got stoned on clouds of second-hand smoke. Concert highlights were many, though I've forgotten most. A band from Philly called the Hooters opened early in the afternoon and were followed by Yoko Ono, who got booed singing 'Imagine'. Rest of the day brought acts ranging from the mighty Joan Armatrading to Lou Reed to Bryan Adams to Howard Jones to Peter Gabriel to U2 (at the height of their youthful powers) and a special reunion performance by The Police.

A David Bowie show that featured two widely divergent opening acts: Squeeze, whom I'd seen a half dozen times in much smaller venues, and an act with a hit single at the time called Lisa Lisa and the Cult Jam. Other than a great show by Bowie, my strongest memories are of drunken white guys hailing Lisa Lisa and her bandmates with an ocean of middle fingers and my buddy Dave trying to protect his half-naked girlfriend from being groped on the Stadium floor.
Becoming aware of a morbid fascination as Emmitt Smith of the Cowboys single-handedly knocked the Giants out of the playoff picture on the last game of the '93 season. With a broken shoulder. Pain of the OT loss was blunted by the company of Eric Houston & co.
U2 in the early '90s in seats that were most likely in a different area code than Bono's position at the mic.
During the Cowboys mid-90s domination I went to a game with Edward Natoli. His uncle, who lived near the Stadium just off Rt 17, was a season ticket holder who' strangely agreed to sell his tix to, in Edward, a long-time, die-hard 'Boys fan. Great seats, downstairs just up from the field. But I had to sit beside a guy rooting for Dallas. Worth it? I really couldn't say.
A Jets game. It rained. The Jets at Giants Stadium? Please.
Springsteen and the E Street Band, simply too many times to count. Just as important was parking lot 5J, home to dozens of pre- and post-show gatherings with friends from around the globe.

It's a wonderful life, given extra oomph gas by a big ol' windy hulk of a stadium in the swamps. Who'd a figured, huh, Jimmy?

Australia Day 2010

2010-01-25T10:44:00.013+10:00

Question: What's different? Read on for the answer.

Happy Australia Day from my balcony overlooking South Brisbane. Sun has drifted into shadow and a breeze is gradually sweeping out the afternoon heat. Amplified sounds of an Aboriginal performer to the south is battling a rock band's eastern thunder. Walked South Bank's foreshore two hours ago and people were already staking spots to watch tonight's fireworks over the Brisbane River.

The Aboriginal performer now sounds as if he's complementing the sound of his didgeridoo with primal scream therapy.

It's mesmerising.

Answer: The top one includes the Aborigine flag, the one below does not. Thus, this pair of images represents a rare gaffe by Google. The top (and original) design was created by an 11-year-old student named Jessie Du. It won a Google-sponsored competition to appear on the search engine giant's homepage today. A last-minute flap with the Aboriginal flag's copyright owner resulted in Google stripping the flag from the drawing and using the bottom one shown above. A terrible outcome for all parties.

The design of the Australian national flag (left) is likewise in the spotlight. A respected Aussie 'journo' named Ray Martin is pushing for a new flag, saying he believes the current one is 'too colonial'. He mostly objects to the Union Jack, which of course dates to Australia's origins as a dumping ground for England's poor and unruly. (Convicts? Yes. Criminals? No. Stealing a loaf of bread because you're hungry doesn't make someone a criminal.)

Another well-known Aussie, rock musician Mark Seymour, gave the 'Australia: Love It Or Leave It' crowd a sharp slap to the head in a column inspired by those words on a bumper sticker. I instantly related to Seymour's impatience, as many Americans spout that nationalistic garbage like a dog throwing up pieces of its plastic bowl.

It may be served, but you'd be stupid to eat it.

This photo (right) is indicative of the scene I encountered walking from the State Library of Queensland through South Bank to my apartment. Kids splashed while moms and dads hovered in shorts and t-shirts, Pacific Islanders did cannon balls into deep water, teens in boardies and bikinis soaked the sun and waved cheap plastic Aussie flags at each other, Asian and Indian families huddled in pockets of shade, eating ice cream to keep cool.

Australia Day. A good day, for every type of Australian.

Last snaps.

2010-01-20T21:38:00.022+10:00

Loss of a valued possession happens in stages. First, of course, is the losing, which the mind can't recollect but lingers as a shadow, a foul tingle, a haunting of the conscience that something's amiss. The brain's Battalion General quickly swings into action, uninvited, and claims control of the situation. "Enemy combatants have been accounted for," it bellows. "False alarm, false alarm!" Like all military proclamations, these assurances fade like smoke from a rifle, and the rational brain gets itchy for visual proof that all is indeed well. A futile search follows, revealing nothing. The shadow grows and hovers, a brutish ghost with heft and an axe to grind: Stupid possessor. Foolish owner. Loser.

So ... here are the last photos taken with a camera that was a constant companion in the Fiji Islands, several Aussie states, even the US back in 2007. The one above is the last one downloaded onto my laptop. It was taken Sunday from outside the State Library of Queensland in South Bank.Aradhna and I enjoyed a lovely lunch at Emily & Michael's ever-improving homestead in Sassafras.
Bahut sundar ladaki.
Dandenong Mountains skyscape.
Theo seeks shade outside our Ivanhoe apartment.
Aradhna with Kathryn, a former colleague and friend who's had us up to her newly built home in Preston for several delicious meals.
Aradhna is greeted by Dot.com, Kathryn's friendly pooch.
Some doofus.
Theo showing what he's got.
My ride back to Brisbane.
Riverside view in South Bank Parklands.

So hard to say goodbye ...

2010-01-09T17:54:00.005+10:00

A view of Melbourne's CBD from upstairs at the Ivanhoe library. Returning to Brisbane tomorrow after 2 1/2 weeks with Aradhna and Oscar and Theo and other Victorian delights ... {sigh} ...

Avatar? Astounding.

2010-01-04T08:57:00.012+10:00

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven't seen Avatar, do not read this post. See the film -- IN 3D -- before proceeding.

Aradhna and I saw James Cameron's latest blockbuster yesterday at Chadstone. Above the indescribable visual effects, GI-Joe-goes-New-Age plot and dizzying action sequences, I was struck by the film's raw indictment of the Cheney/Bush era's 'military superiority = moral righteousness' dictum -- especially as it was nearly ten years in the making, cost around $300 million and follows, in Titanic, a film greeted with critical and box office success that made Cameron a household name and allowed him to rightfully proclaim himself 'king of the world' at the 1998 Academy Awards.

Then again, maybe this king is taking maximum advantage of his throne with this subversive sci-fi masterpiece.

I put off reading about 'Avatar' before seeing it; its blatant political message surprised me. However, in an interview with Agence France-Presse, Cameron said he saw the movie 'as a broader metaphor, not so intensely politicized as some would make it, but rather that’s how we treat the natural world as well'. He went on:

There’s a sense of entitlement — 'We're here, we're big, we've got the guns, we've got the technology, we've got the brains, we therefore are entitled to every damn thing on this planet.' That's not how it works and we're going to find out the hard way if we don't wise up and start seeking a life that's in balance with the natural cycles of life on earth.

This ethos is brought to shameful life by a cold-blooded corporate type who leads an (American) effort to extract an extremely valuable plutonium-like resource from a sacred site on Pandora, the bucolic moon of an unnamed planet, in the year 2154.

A massive military presence accompanies the extraction efforts, led by a psychopath named Colonel Miles Quaritch who pumps iron, spouts non-stop jarhead jargon and is 'happy' to have a massive scar running across his skull to remind him of the 'savagery' of Pandora's indigenous population, whom he's content to destroy at will. For my money, this colonel rivals George C. Scott's maniacal general in Stanley Kubrick's Dr Strangelove. The film states these soldiers are guns for hire but the army's massive firepower and military mindset is a note-for-note smackdown of disgraced neo-con theology espoused by Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz in their heydays.

The parallels with Cheney/Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq are blatant, as is the flagrant disregard of protecting innocent lives in the United States' use of drones to drop bombs on 'terrorist cells' in Afghanistan that turn out to be weddings or schools. I'm a proud US ex-pat, but watching Quaritch get his what for is about as satisfying an on-screen moment as I've ever seen.

You know what? Regardless of its reverberating politics, it's still very true that Avatar, as the New Yorker's David Denby stated in the first line of his review, 'is the most beautiful film I’ve seen in years'.

Joyeux Joey

2009-12-21T21:25:00.001+10:00

Brilliant disabusal.

2009-12-14T15:51:00.003+10:00

A perfectly pitched response to climate change deniers taking delight in mocking a woman whose home in the Solomon Islands is slowly being flooded:

Out come the selfish, bigoted, narrow minded recalcitrants again on their hobby horse that everyone in the climate science community, the political class and the bulk of humanity are wrong and they are the only ones who have access to the truth. They squeal like stuck pigs every time they think that they might have to think about someone but themselves. Long after effective climate action has been taken and we have moved on to the next challenge to humanity and the planet they will still be promoting their shonky science and insisting they were right all along.

We need a new category in the Darwin awards for those who have done most by their sheer obduracy and pigheadedness to threaten the future of humanity. This lot would be the clear favourites to scoop the pool. The fascinating thing about this whole debate is the passion with which the denialists hold their views and the determination with which they struggle to avoid producing any peer reviewed science to support those. It is not hard to find the reason why of course, as the material they need does not exist.

They go on quoting 'facts' they have trawled from the internet which, on examination turn out to be fraudulent or irrelevant to the science. It is a tribute to the capacity of humanity for the endless pursuit of meaningless activity.

My new favorite song ...

2009-12-08T17:07:00.007+10:00

... is called 'Question and Answer' by Pat Metheny. Here's it performed at a 2008 jazz festival by Metheny and Gary Burton, with Steve Swallow on bass and terrifyingly good Antonio Sanchez on drums.

Part I's above, part II's below.

Watch for Sanchez's drum solo around the 5 minute mark in part I and Metheny's 4-minute synclavier solo at around the 1:30 mark on part II. Some people are simply stinking with talent.