Ivanhoe Saturday

If Balaclava was bohemia, than Ivanhoe is bland bliss. Along the short walk from our place to Ivanhoe's shopping district we climb soft hills and pass stands of gum trees and gardens abloom with roses. The old Heidelberg Town Hall (above & below) is an art deco landmark.
Built in 1937 and now known as The Centre, the building is one of Melbourne's many art deco treasures.
CBD skyline hovers over Ivanhoe's shopping district.
The proprietor of Cafe Ivanhoe, Paul was the first person I spoke to on my initial, completely off-the-cuff visit to Ivanhoe back in December when Aradhna and I were pondering post-Balaclava options. I've since become a regular at his lovely cafe. Poor guy.
Sitting at the front window of Cafe Ivanhoe, doing what Melburnians do on Saturdays.
This giant scarred tree is a sacred cultural relic for Australia's indigenous people. Each protected tree tells a story of Australia's original inhabitants.

Meet the 'new' welfare queens.

Heard a particularly trenchant line during a 10-year-old episode of The Simpsons last night (yes, The Simpsons are huge in Australia). Something about anger being the historical basis of American progress. Didn't think much of it until seeing 'anger' in every other newspaper headline this morning. The US citizenry is outraged over the AIG bonus scandal but Republicans -- led by a thrice-married, drug-addicted radio blowhard and a lunatic whose unhinged cable TV show has become the latest conservative cause celebre -- are taking it a step further and blaming President Barack Obama for taking a baseball bat to the American dream.

Makes me ask ...
-- Where was Republican outrage when Bush economic policies created the largest financial discrepancy between rich and poor in US history?
-- Where was Republican outrage when The Miserable Failure was repeating over and over and over that the US economy was 'strong' when it was actually beginning its death throes?
-- Where was Republican outrage when the man responsible for fighting terrorism before the attacks of September 11th, Dick Cheney, didn't hold a single meeting related to terrorism until after the US had been attacked?
-- Where was Republican outrage when it was revealed that our government had been warned about terrorists flying planes into buildings and yet when asked about it afterwards National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice was shocked and surprised that terrorists had attacked the US by flying planes into buildings?
-- Where was Republican outrage when it was revealed our country invaded, attacked and destroyed a sovereign nation under false pretenses?
-- Where was Republican outrage when photos of tortured Iraqi prisoners in Abu Graib cast the US government in the exact same light as 'evil' Saddam Hussein's and no one but low-level soldiers were held responsible?
-- Where was Republican outrage when a major US city drowned while The Miserable Failure patted his FEMA patsy on the back for doing a 'heckuva job'?

Know why these national calamities brought partisan bickering but nothing like the national outrage being expressed today? Because none of these things affected that great swath of Americans whose lives are rooted in owning the biggest TV and softest couch and most enormous bags of fried snacks and consuming said snacks while being assured that theirs is the only country blessed by a god most of them ignore until tragedy strikes and suddenly this god is all that separated them from the fate of their ruined neighbors and so they seek out TV reporters and thank this god 'til they're blue in the face before returning to their TV and couch and bags of snacks and forgettin' about the problems outside faster than you can say 'Where's the goddamned remote?'

This is the crowd of mouth-breathers who cheered Sarah Palin and hurled racist taunts at Barack Obama during Republican campaign rallies. This is the crowd who made TV stars out of Donald Trump and Sean Hannity and CNBC financial 'experts' who fleeced their audience while The Miserable Failure's vision of an ownership society -- propped up on an under-regulated credit market -- eroded the world's financial foundation. This is the crowd that was brought up on the conservative gospel of Uncle Ronnie Reagan's fairy tales about Cadillac-drivin' welfare queens and who now blame African-Americans and other minorities for the present economic meltdown. Not the bankers who gamed the rules and made millions. Not the corporations who maintained overseas addresses to avoid paying taxes. Not the Wall Street greed merchants who amassed fortunes. Poor people of color.

AIG executives receiving undeserved bonuses are a 21st-century version of Reagan's welfare queens. Temporary boogeymen. Placeholders. Their sense of entitlement is shameful but par for the course on Wall Street. Who can blame them for expecting to be rewarded for failure -- after all, hasn't the rewarding of failure been the 'American way' since The Miserable Failure and Dark Lord Cheney rode into Washington in January, 2001?

President Obama's pledge to change this culture of failure and selfishness is a threat to those whose faith is rooted in TVs and couches and snacks. Not a literal threat, of course, as a more fair distribution of wealth will bring about a healthier, better educated United States of America. But enough of a change in the status quo that right-wing media hacks may re-work Reagan's welfare queen propaganda into 'Socialist Obama' propaganda. And whaddayaknow? They can carry on uncle Ronnie's legacy of thinly veiled racism. God bless America!

A blow for Boone.

The man responsible for the last moment of euphoria (above) at Yankee Stadium is expected to undergo open-heart surgery in the next few weeks. Aaron Boone replaced Bucky Dent as the most despised Yankee in New England with a heart-stopping (excuse the pun) walk-off home run in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS. The Yankees eventually lost to the the Florida Marlins (ugh) but coming back from a 4-0 deficit to beat the Red Sox in a game 7 -- back before the 'Sawx' went on to win 2 World Series titles and finally shed their cursed status -- was sweet, sweet consolation.

Boone made the mistake of wrecking his knee in an off-season game of pickup basketball the following winter, thus necessitating the arrival of Tabloid Rodriguez in 2004 and Boone being traded to Cleveland. He was looking forward to platooning at third with the Astros this season but now, at only 36, seems unlikely to play again after such serious surgery. His name will always be synonymous with unadulterated joy to Yankees fans, however, and he'll forever be a deity in the Bronx.

Raise a glass.

Born on St Patrick's Day
raised in Manhattan's Lower East Side
The first for Eileen & Joseph
World's Fair baby in a rising Wall tide.

Imagine the city sidewalks
he called his own, even at night
Whispers of menace and temptation
shunned for the dullness of what's 'right'.

Suddenly a move to New Jersey
a wild, woodsy shock for a Manhattan lad
No regrets, no hesitation
a sacrifice made for an ailing dad.

Then job, wife, kids, commitment
What was by chance, what was planned?
The oldest of two I'd never know
but was always offered a guiding hand.

Years pass but dad's the same
a calming voice or supporter at a game
He meets Louise and changes come
too long alone, he gains a helluva dame.

Now dad's retired, a rich reward
for sacrifices made for others along the way
I lift a glass in Melbourne, Australia
and toast to him a Glorious 70th Birthday.

Written at Bridie O'Reilly's in Melbourne's CBD this morning over 2 pints of Kilkenny's, both of which were raised to my dad before being quaffed.

Oils reunite at Sound Relief.

Since the deadly bushfires of Feb 7 -- forever burned in Aussie consciousness as Black Saturday -- Australians have been quick to donate to a flurry of appeals. None have matched the return on investment ($75 a ticket) delivered by today's simultaneous Sound Relief concerts at Sydney's SCG and Melbourne's MCG. Aradhna and I drove to Chadstone for books and Dandenong for Bollywood DVDs today and listened live on Triple J to afternoon sets by Coldplay, Jet, Paul Kelly, Kings of Leon, Wolfmother, Hoodoo Gurus, Augie March, Eskimo Joe and The Presets. Still to come are sets from reunited-for-a-night Aussie legends Icehouse, Hunters & Collectors and Midnight Oil, as well as temporarily reformed Kiwi legends Split Enz.

Unfortunate that Melbourne's first significant rain since December has been falling all day, but if roaring singalongs are a barometer, it's not dampening the spirits of the crowd of 80,000 at the MCG.

Gotta love a country where the Federal Environmental Minister takes a break from parliamentary duties in Canberra to front his legendary band for the first time in 7 years for a good cause. I traveled up and down the US east coast to see Midnight Oil when they toured the States in the '80s and '90s. Best live band I've band I've ever seen. Even followed their tour bus into the wilds of Pennsylvania until they stopped and signed autographs for my friends and I. It's been an occasionally rocky ride for Peter Garrett since becoming a member of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's front bench but he's a goddamned rock legend. How many politicians can say that?

UPDATE: The Oils sounded more like a force of nature than reunited rock band on the radio simulcast. Environmental Minister Peter Garrett (above) and the boys have garnered universal accolades for closing Sound Relief at the MCG with this blistering set of classics: Redneck Wonderland / Read About It / Advance Australia Fair (on electric guitar, a la Hendrix's 'America the Beautiful') / Blue Sky Mine / One Country / Beds Are Burning / King of the Mountain / Dead Heart / Power and the Passion / Best of Both Worlds / Sometimes (encore)

Fiji Redux: Caqalai Island pt I

The quintessential South Seas Paradise aspect of this most recent trip to the Fiji Islands was a 2-night stay on Caqalai Island (above).
A 20-minute skiff ride delivered me and 2 American tourists to the island.
A flawless Koro Sea.
Our skiff's welcoming party.
Beachside? My bure (visible on the left) was practically surfside.
My electricity-free bure.
From my bure's tiny doorway, looking towards the dining hall.
It only takes 30 minutes to walk the rim of Caqalai Island.
Most of the island's 14 acres are impassable jungle.
Caqalai's tiny resort is on the western side of the island. Its eastern face gets hammered by Pacific trade winds, leaving a beach of exposed volcanic rock.
Snake Island. Home to ... long, white sea snakes. I saw one while snorkeling. Amazing swimmers.
A walkable passageway to Snake Island appears at low tide.
Looking back at Caqalai along the passageway.
A massive thunderhead passes east of the island.

50 years of cultural genocide.

China's economic might may have given it a place at the big boy table, but their government is still a totalitarian, propaganda-spewing abhorrence that should be shunned by the international community. The Dalia Lama addressed these Tibetan monks yesterday to mark the 50th anniversary of the uprising that resulted in his exile from Tibet. The 73-year-old Nobel Peace Price winner called Tibetan life under Chinese rule 'hell on earth'.

Few in Tibet heard the speech, of course. China deployed a massive 'security force' (i.e., army troops) to prevent protests. Or anything resembling free speech. But hey, they make cheap socks!

Science, resurrected.

Right-wing nut-jobs won't care -- they're too busy screaming 'Socialist!' and 'Earmarks!' to notice -- but President Barack Obama is about to undo another of Bush/Cheney's grotesque betrayals of American principle: Along with lifting restrictions on funding for human embryonic stem cell research, he'll "issue a presidential memorandum aimed at insulating scientific decisions across the federal government from political influence." Amen.

Not hard to imagine Bush/Cheney ideologues fighting the US space program back in the '60s or Salk vaccination efforts to eradicate polio in the '50s. Like religious extremists of the Middle East, evangelical conservatives in the US put dogma first, societal progress second. With a man who claimed Jesus Christ himself made him president, they were granted carte blanche to denigrate proven science regarding evolution, climate change, medical research and more. President Obama's efforts will hopefully bring a quick end to this intellectually backward epoch of American history.

Joy, chore, curse ... or worse?

Authors discussing the ups/downs/sideways of writing is usually equal to eavesdropping on Gen Y urbanites bemoaning their oh-so-tragic trust fund lifestyles. This collection of novelists commenting on their craft features unusually frank appraisals that avoid navel gazing. Here's two great quotes, the first from Hari Kunzru:

I get great pleasure from writing, but not always, or even usually. Writing a novel is largely an exercise in psychological discipline –- trying to balance your project on your chin while negotiating a minefield of depression and freak-out. Beginning is daunting; being in the middle makes you feel like Sisyphus; ending sometimes comes with the disappointment that this finite collection of words is all that remains of your infinitely rich idea.

The second from Will Self:

That the transmogrification of my beautiful thoughts into a grossly imperfect prose is always the end result doesn't faze me: all novels are only a version -- there is no Platonic ideal. But I'd go further still: fiction is my way of thinking about and relating to the world; if I don't write I'm not engaged in any praxis, and lose all purchase.

Cricketers under fire.

The bloody daylight attack on Sri Lanka's cricket team in Pakistan has captured headlines in cricket-mad Australia. No surprise there. What does surprise me is the preponderance of knee-jerk, and therefore half-brained, commentary made by Aussie players and officials. Of course it was horrific -- a half dozen Pakistani security officials are dead and many Sri Lankan cricketers wounded. And of course it's damaging to the sporting world -- hell, it's damaging to the civilized world, or whatever's left of it that in that increasingly unstable area. But to say these dozen gunmen can cause the end of cricket tours to Pakistan or be responsible for 'the 9/11 of cricket' is to conflate this attack into something greater, and in the process reward cowardly madmen with the perverse glory they seek.

Hail the Messiah.

The most common slur hurled at President Obama during the election campaign -- aside from racial epithets muttered by ignorant f*ckwits -- was 'The Messiah'. This implied two things: 1) Obama was an uppity, holier-than-thou phony; and 2) The majority of US citizens who voted for him over the laughable ticket of McCain/Palin were suckers who'd regret falling for his disingenuous schpiel.

It's early, and dead-end haters like Limbaugh/Hannity/Malkin have been pumping anti-Obama sewage with the fervor of bailers on a sinking boat, but I wonder if the hard-working men & women who were quick to label candidate Obama 'The Messiah' can honestly find fault with a president who's following up his populist campaign promises with bold, courageous action.

Whereas Bush/Cheney declared war on a country that posed zero -- ZERO -- threat to the US, President Obama has declared war on the special interest groups that have left the greatest country on earth on the brink of disaster:

In his weekly radio and Web address Saturday, Obama said the banking, insurance and energy industries are sure to buck him on issues like cutting off big tax breaks.

"I know they're gearing up for a fight as we speak. My message to them is this: So am I," he said.

"The system we have now might work for the powerful and well-connected interests that have run Washington for far too long, but I don't. I work for the American people," the President said.

"I didn't come here to do the same thing we've been doing or to take small steps forward, I came to provide the sweeping change that this country demanded when it went to the polls in November."

Sweep away, President Obama. Sweep away.

Fiji Redux: Trip to Ovalau pt III

I've been remiss in chronicling the remainder of my month-long excursion to the Fiji Islands last year. These palms stood guard in front of my bure at a small resort a few miles north of Levuka, Fiji's colonial capital, on the island of Ovalau. 19th-century fortune seekers from the US and Europe planted massive copra plantations on Ovalau and Taveuni. The Westerners are long gone but vast stands of palms remain.
Walking a block or two from Mary's Lodge in Levuka one morning I came across a man who asked if I wanted to explore the hills overlooking Levuka. We set off immediately. It's unusual to find concrete structures like the steps pictured here outside of Fiji's cities. Levuka is steeped in such colonial remnants.
My guide's hillside home, which he shares with a wife and son.
Looking down on Levuka from halfway up the hill.
One of the hillside's many colonial-era structures.
A sparkling Koro Sea from a vantage point used for centuries by indigenous Fijians near the top of the hill.

R.I.P. Brad Van Pelt

My dad is the last man in the world you'd see hounding an athlete for an autograph. He grew up in an age, and a neighborhood, and a family that scoffed at such speciousness. He'd holler at the TV when the Giants, Yankees or Rangers were on, and better yet yell in person at Yankee Stadium, MSG or Giants Stadium, but never fussed about game results afterwards. I can only guess what he made of my sports-posters-plastered bedroom on Dayton Road and wonder if he ever noticed above-average Rangers like Dave Maloney and Ron Greschner looking down from the ceiling. (Wisely, my dad didn't climb the stairs to my room very often.) A safe, suburban childhood provided my friends and I with the freedom to scour malls for sports paraphernalia and therefore prove our devotion to our teams, our players, and our sporting apparel brands of choice.

At the pimply age of 13, however, I did not have the means to collect the autographs of my sports heroes. But I did have a dad who was willing to forgo his instinct and upbringing and come home from a charity function with a program signed by nearly every member of the 1979 NY Giants. I spent hours gazing at those signatures and uniform numbers of my Sunday afternoon heroes during a time when the swamps of Jersey weren't the only things stinking up the Meadowlands: #64 John Mendenhall. #13 Dave Jennings. #53 Harry Carson. #44 Doug Kotar. #18 Joe Danelo. #55 Brian Kelley. Even the Giants terrible QB twosome of #12 Jerry Goldstein and [gasp!] #9 Joe Pisarcik.

The largest signature was the one my eyes stopped at most, and not only because of its abundance of blue-ink swirls. #10 Brad Van Pelt was a 5-time Pro Bowl linebacker with the rugged good looks of a British Columbian lumberjack. Like Don Mattingly of the Yankees, Van Pelt was beloved by Giants fans for being a standout player on a sad parade of pathetic teams. If I close my eyes I can see his signature floating apart from the others, just as his skills and class separated him from the crappy teams he played on. It was the first thing I thought of when news of his death at the much-too-young age of 57 hit the papers this week.

Who knows what became of that autographed program. I don't regret losing it because of its potential dollar value -- I miss gazing at it like I did as a kid, letting my eyes linger over the signatures of so many long-retired Giants and feeling as I did over 30 years ago: Lucky to have #10 Brad Van Pelt's autograph and luckier still to have Pat Wall as my dad.

Shea goodbye.

Final piece of Shea Stadium tumbles down on Wednesday morning as space is created for a parking garage for attendees of Citi Field, new home of the NY Mets. My lifelong allegiance to the Yankees and their cathedral in the Bronx didn't keep me from venturing to the Queens eyesore through the years to see the Mets, especially during the HoJo/Doc/Strawberry/Mookie years in the mid-80s. Even saw the Jets there in one of Joe Namath's final games in the '70s. My last visit was for a Springsteen show in October 2003.

Shea had its roots in space age hopefulness, when quirkiness was outdated and sleek, utilitarian structures designed to host baseball & football games were built in circular uniformity. I clearly remember Goodyear blimp shots of Busch Stadium (left) in St Louis and Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh and admiring their angle-free monotony, their Colosseum-esque grandeur. Up close, of course, they were nothing more than cheaply built concrete warehouses for beer, hot dog and souvenir sales.

Love how the Times' description of Shea's last gasp reads like an obituary:

Shea Stadium, the site of the Mets’ two World Series victories, their many seasons of futility and a few historic concerts, met the fate of Ebbets Field and the Polo Grounds on Wednesday morning. At 11:21 a.m., a demolition crew pulled down the final section, and what remained of the old blue stadium was gone in a cloud of dust: the final collapse at Shea. It was 45.

Victorian Valentine's Day.

Aradhna and I saw a new Bollywood film called Billu Barber on Valentine's Day in the CBD. Here's a few photos of the excursion.
Walking to the nearby Eaglemont train station we encountered a line of people at a sausage sizzle being held for victims of the bushfires. Neither of us eat beef so we made a donation.
If it weren't for late-model cars lining its tiny main street, Eaglemont would look no different than its 19th-century incarnation.
While most greenscapes have been scorched during Melbourne's driest ever start to a year, the CBD's Fitzroy Gardens are preserved by specially sanctioned waterings.
Indigenous plants thrive in even the most dire of Aussie conditions.
Picnickers were a familiar sight throughout the Gardens ...
... as were posing wedding parties.
Northeastern horizon from Aradhna's 43rd-floor office window is obscured by bushfire smoke, a condition that will persist until a miracle of precipitation descends on us.
St Patrick's Cathedral towers over Old Parliament House.
Oscar in his usual spot -- and state of excitement -- when we returned to Ivanhoe.

Mammoth dry.

Just heard something remarkable during tonight's weather report on ABC: Melbourne has received 2.2 millimetres of rain in 2009. That's barely 3% of the 77 mm we should have gotten by this point.

3%.

Something to think about while watching this startling video from Black Saturday. A man filmed it from the porch of his home in St Andrews as the smoke of an approaching firestorm turned into an unimaginable wall of flame that surrounded his property. He sought refuge in a concrete bunker when radiant heat made it impossible to continue filming.

A long-distance dedication.

We all owe debts to others. Debts that range from shouts at the pub to bacon-saving rides to the airport to borrowed couches to unforgiving currency. Some debts are a moose on the interstate or a racist uncle at Christmas dinner, demanding recognition. Others accumulate over years, steadily, like sand in scrub grass the wind sculpts into dunes.

I owe a debt like this to someone I believe celebrated a wedding this weekend. Can't say with certainty this is so because the milestones of her life are -- justifiably -- no longer any of my goddamned business.

Don't know the propriety of expressing this on a blog but it should be publicly noted that I am forever indebted to this person for propping me up over the course of a decade despite my best efforts to rest face-down in muck of my own making.

I humbly offer my congratulations and best wishes to her and her husband, a man I've met and admire. I know more than most just how lucky he is.

The precise number fails me but she and I have attended more than a handful of Springsteen shows together. That means it's either appropriate or predictable that I borrow the chorus from a new song off Working on a Dream called 'This Life' to sum up my appreciation for the support, hope and grace she showered on me for far longer than I deserved:

This life, this life and then the next
With you I have been blessed
What more can you expect

This life, this life and then the next
I finger the hem of your dress
My universe at rest

Thom Yorke displays his '15 Steps'

Radiohead - 15 Step
Uploaded by Alisvideo

Not sure which is the more intriguing element of this Grammy Awards clip: Radiohead's use of the USC Marching Band or singer Thom Yorke's funky dance moves.

Bushfire sunset.

Smoky morn.

Woodsmoke hangs in the air this morning, a result of the first easterly wind since Victoria's bushfire season exploded last week. Fires continue to burn roughly 40 kms to the north and east of Melbourne. Easterlies are usually moist, but this morning have created a hazy, smoky sky.

Ivanhoe, our new place of residence in Melbourne's northeast, made fire-related news yesterday. I was home making dinner at around 5 pm when Aradhna sent a text asking about a fire in Ivanhoe. I immediately went outside but didn't see or smell anything unusual. Came back inside and grabbed the remote, turned on the TV, flicked through some channels, and quickly came upon a traffic report showing a live aerial shot of a scrub fire in East Ivanhoe, less than 1 km from our place, burning in one of the many parks along the Yarra River as it snakes its way north. Firefighters had it under control. Investigators have labeled the fire suspicious and are seeking a young male suspect.

The mind reels at the mindset of anyone who'd deliberately start a blaze under any conditions, but with a nation mourning the destruction of entire communities and scores of dead at the hands of arsonists, you'd either have to be a superhuman brand of f*ckwit or have a death wish. Aussies are ready to draw-and-quarter firebugs. Justifiably so.

True heroes.

What can I say? Once again, the bravery, dedication and selflessness of firefighters defines the TRUE meaning of the oft-abused term 'hero'.

Bucolic apocalypse.

Today's cover of the Age captures the feeling in Melbourne two days after Australia's worst peacetime disaster. The death toll stands at 131 but will certainly rise as fires are put out in devastated towns and victims are discovered; over 30 fires continue to burn throughout country Victoria; more than 5000 people are homeless. Horrific stories are poring from survivors, firefighters, doctors and volunteers. The nearest deadly fires were roughly 50 km north of Melbourne but most everyone has a friend or relative directly affected, casting a pall of numbness and an opposing spirit of generosity.

Unlike areas in California annually threatened by Santa Ana winds -- where subdivisions of hundreds of homes can be destroyed by a single wall of flame -- country Victoria is like most of Australia outside city limits: Pastoral, largely unpopulated and pockmarked with tiny villages. People are scattered but come together in towns called Kinglake and Marysville -- just two of many now wiped from the map. Survivors describe their experiences in apocalyptical terms: How fire came over hilltops like a 'tsunami of flame'; how houses didn't burn but exploded and were gone in a flash; how people thought they'd dodged a bullet but suddenly, with Saturday's late wind change that brought cooler temperatures but breathed new life into the firestorms, were inundated by black smoke and a sky that 'rained fire'. People weren't in the midst of a natural disaster -- they were being attacked by a relentless, bloodthirsty beast.

Of course, and most sickeningly, many Victorians don't consider this a natural disaster. Firebugs are suspected of causing many, if not most, of the fires. Experts are quick to warn that Saturday's once-in-a-lifetime weather conditions, combined with years of drought, made fire as inevitable as the explosion of a lit firecracker. Forensic experts are combing for evidence, but Australia's premier Kevin Rudd spoke for the nation this morning when he said arsonists are guilty of 'mass murder'.

Aradhna and I have driven through many sections of country Victoria. The words of this heroic firefighter capture the quiet pride that's been replaced by stunned horror and disbelief:

Firefighter David McGahy is a farmer who pulls no punches -- a man with a manner that suggests he is not the most easily bothered of souls.

But in the past two days he has seen and heard more devastation in his tiny community -- next to Arthur's Creek - than he could have ever imagined. His blue eyes work at a feverish pace; he has simply seen and heard too much.

The fire cut a swathe through the once picturesque town, leaving bloated cows with hooves pointed skyward, burnt-out buses, houses with only chimneys standing and plenty of heartache.

Looking towards the town from a battle-scarred front yard, Mr McGahy, the captain of the Arthur's Creek CFA brigade, and the divisional commander of this section of the fires, fought back tears.

"I've had a fair bit of criticism from people saying why didn't you help me, but I couldn't help them," he said.

"I couldn't do anything."

Killer bushfires. UPDATED.

Sadly, yesterday's record-setting heat and gale force winds wreaked a tragic toll: As of Sunday morning, 25 people are confirmed dead after Victoria's worst bushfires since 'Ash Wednesday' in 1983. Officials fear the number of dead may rise to at least 40.

UPDATE:84 Victorians are now confirmed dead as of Sunday evening, making this Australia's worst-ever bushfire disaster. Over 700 homes have met this fate:

Australian falls. UPDATED.

Plane trees in Heidelberg burst with unseasonal fall foliage after being cooked by this summer's heat wave like potato slices in a deep fryer. Today is forecast to top 44 C (111 F), which would make it the hottest February day of all time and, combined with northerly gale force winds and a continuing severe drought, the 'worst day in history', according to Victoria's Premier (the equivalent of a state governor). Why? Because the entire state is a perfectly packed fireplace, and today Mother Nature is bringing the gasoline and flamethrower.

Meanwhile, 'fall' carries a more predictable but equally devastating connotation in flood-ravaged north Queensland with a prediction of more torrential rainfalls. One half burns while the other half drowns. Australia is a land of extremes.

UPDATE: Another 'fall' -- as in record for all-time highest temperature in Melbourne -- as the mercury hit 46.4 C (116 F !!!!) this afternoon. The hottest day ever recorded in Melbourne. Aradhna and I ventured out for breakfast at a local cafe earlier in the day. Felt like walking through a hurricane in a pizza oven -- sans rain, of course. As a matter of fact, with humidity below 10%, we had to keep our mouths closed during the 15-minute walk home or else feel like bushfires had broken out in our esophagi.

Fallen leaves along a sidewalk in Elsternwick should be the result of autumn chill, not scorching heat.
Flowers in Fitzroy Gardens mimic the reaction of most Melburnians to the heat.

A sensible man.

How long has it been since words this sensible have been uttered for public consumption by a US president?

This is America. We don’t disparage wealth. We don’t begrudge anybody for achieving success. And we believe that success should be rewarded. But what gets people upset — and rightfully so — are executives being rewarded for failure. Especially when those rewards are subsidized by U.S. taxpayers.

Say what you will about President Obama's performance after 2 weeks in office, but you cannot question his connection to the mood of a fed-up-with-fatcats constituency.

Ciao, Mikhala.

The lovely Mikhala is surrounded by the crew at Elsternwick's hopscotch espresso (Greg, his dad Max, Andrew & some dopey Yank in the back) for the last time. She's moving on to new adventures. Her spot-on ribbing will be missed by this hopscotch regular.

There's joy in that-there rock.

Been a while since I walked out of a rock club dripping with beer-scented sweat. Yet there I was on Swan Street in Richmond last night with a few hundred other soggy souls courtesy of Brooklyn-via-Minneapolis band The Hold Steady. They played a raucous 100-minute set at a sold-out Corner Hotel. Crowd seemed a bit heavy (literally) with music biz types but the front of the house hung on every word spit by gentile madman Craig Finn and pumped fists to Tad Kubler's soaring solos (some played on a Jimmy Page-circa-1975 double-neck guitar). They opened with 'Stuck Between Stations', performed on the Letterman show in 2007 in the video above.

Quite a musical Monday: Springsteen and the E Streeters obliterated the bar for future Super Bowl halftime shows in the am; The Hold Steady blew the doors off the Corner Hotel in the pm. Rock lives. Long live rock.

A blast of Bruce & the Band.

Not much to say about Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band's concentrated blast of heart-stoppin’, pants-droppin’, earth-shockin’, hard-rockin’, booty-shakin’, earth-quakin’, love-makin’, Viagra-takin’, history-makin’ rock & roll during the halftime of a memorable Super Bowl. As usual, Springsteen-inspired memories tore through my heart & soul like a six-string tornado in a trailer park. Twenty-five years of seeing Springsteen so many times, in so many places, with a group of amazing people who are more family than friends had me bawling with an ear-to-ear grin from 'Tenth Avenue Freeze Out' to 'Glory Days'.