Go Zackers!

To honour the Anzac spirit as defined by the Australian Football League: skill, courage, self-sacrifice, teamwork and fair play, I have composed a list of AFL teams, ordered from 'Aussie' to 'Ottoman' as determined by me, the author.

Richmond
Melbourne
St Kilda
Geelong
Western Bulldogs
Essendon
Hawthorn
North Kangaroos
Sydney
Fremantle
Collingwood
Carlton
Adelaide
Port Adelaide
Brisbane
West Coast

Lest we forget.

REVISED: Because this is important.

Richmond
Melbourne
St Kilda
Geelong
Western Bulldogs
Essendon
Sydney
North Kangaroos
Hawthorn
Adelaide
Fremantle
Carlton
Collingwood
Port Adelaide
Brisbane
West Coast

The years shall not condemn this list.

300 PERCENT HYPERBOLIC!

You expect gross hyperbole in the one line reviews on movie advertisements, but once in a lifetime an ad comes along that BLOWS THE OTHERS AWAY!


'300' was always bound to provoke strong reactions, but the stratospheric praise on this newspaper ad (appropriately bellowed in ALL CAPS) would surely leave even the film's director asking if it was actually his film the reviewers had seen.

"5 STARS. AWESOME... ONE OF THE BEST FILMS YOU'LL SEE THIS YEAR." Zoo Weekly

"THE MOST UNIQUE MOVIEGOING EXPERIENCE OF A GENERATION... BREATHTAKING, POWERFUL, INCREDIBLE." Ben Lyons, E!

"300 PERCENT ACTION, 300 PERCENT EXHILARATING. IT'S THE BEST MOVIE OF THE LAST DECADE." Robert Sanchez, IESB.net

“Best movie of the last decade”? “The most unique moviegoing experience of a generation”? Come on. Maybe I’ll be DINING ON HUMBLE PIE IN HELL come next year’s Oscars, but I don’t think so.

Actually, thinking about it, the tone of these mini-reviews works far better as a review for the film than the words themselves. It’s full bore, ramped way up to 11 (possibly 12), and completely, insanely, over the top. Unflinching, uncompromising, it stares you dead in the eye and DARES you to say otherwise!

I take it back; they’re perfect. :)

UPDATE: You’d think once the promotions department at Warner Brothers landed the accolade, “Best movie of the last decade,” they would have called it a day and gone home. But no, they continued to scour the land, searching for further words of praise with which to laud their mighty king.


Sadly for them, the best they could dig up was the oddly-expressed opinion of serial fawn, Molly Meldrum, who declared the movie:

“BLEW ME AWAY IN VISUALS...”

Look, even if Molly Meldrum’s opinion was something worth having in your advertisement, must he make reference to being blown away? Can he give it a rest just once? Glory be.

Apple a day.

When it comes to product placement, Apple are doing very well for themselves. Back in the old days they had to actually work to get their products into other people’s ads, films and TV shows, but these days they’ve pushed that little lever that lets you swing your ergonomic chair back and they’ve got their feet up on the desk. In fact, they’ve already gone home and are having a snooze by the fire in the Jason Recliner.

Because thanks largely (but not entirely) to the success of the iPod (which after all grew from a philosophy that informs all that Apple creates… except the one-button mouse, which is form giving function the finger, although thankfully Apple have seen the Might there. Oh, and the iPod’s symmetrically-shaped headphone cable sucks as well, but maybe that’s a good thing because it meant I switched back to using my old asymmetrical neck-chain Sony ones which, thanks to their being not-white, have probably saved me from being mugged every second day, and then copping a second thumping when the mugger discovers the fruit of their labour is merely a miserable third-generation iPod! How are they supposed to watch Pirates of the Caribbean on that?

But where was I? Oh yes, thanks largely to Apple being so hot right now, every man jack and his advertiser are desperate to get Apple products into their ads in the hope of picking up a little reflected glory.

Which is all well and good, but sometimes, as with this ad for New Zealand tourism, the quest for glory starts to look a little desperate and pathetic.


Note the iPod taking pride of place, but also note absolutely no reference to Apple or iPods anywhere else. Sure, they mention you can apparently organise trips to New Zealand ONLINE (Um, newsflash!), but the link from there to iPod is tenuous at best.

Less pathetic, but just as misleading, is this ad from Optus.


Optus, you’ll see, are quite happy to use Apple hardware to promote their product (once they’ve photoshopped off the Apple logo, of course), but if you’re a Mac user who signs up and calls their technical support, you’ll be told that Optus don’t support the Mac and to tell your story walkin’.

And no, it’s not an Apple Display plugged into a PC, because that’s an OS X scroll bar they’ve decided to paste in there for some unfathomable reason. And curiously, the scroll bar is showing there’s more to the page than we can see, which begs the question, “What will be revealed if you scroll back up?” Some sneaky small-print nastiness would be my guess. Possibly the bit where they let you know they don’t support Macs. :)

Just plain bizarre is this ad…


…for an Apple MacBoo… oh wait, I’m sorry, it’s not a MacBook Pro, it’s a… Twinhead or something laptop? I got confused because that’s Apple’s ‘Aqua Blue’ default desktop wallpaper you can see there on the laptop’s display. Trying to make your product look like something it isn’t is not a great way to project confidence. It’s like a Daewoo dealer sticking VW badges on his cars, hoping that no-one will notice. And I find it funny how they ask, “Why Settle For Less?” while making the brightest point of the ad a recognisable image from a competing operating system this machine can’t even run. (Unlike a MacBook which can do everything the Twinhead can do, and more.)

But where you could explain the Twinhead incongruence away as being some PC guy who liked the wallpaper and just downloaded it, I’d love to know the explanation for this double-take from The Sopranos:


Here’s an establishing shot of Janice Soprano tapping away evilly on her Apple PowerBook G3. But when we cut to her point of view, what do we see?


Windows?! What?! Even back in 2002 she could've easily used OS X and a multi-protocol IM client for her trickery, but she went instead for a Windows emulator? She really is insane!

Magic iPod.

I love my iPod. Even if it is merely a third-generation iPod whose small storage capacity and even smaller monochrome screen makes the kids of today wonder how I can even bear to be alive. “How do you handle having to watch movies in black and white? What? You can’t even watch movies on it? Wow; go to bed, old man. How old did you say that thing was?”

But after yesterday I love my iPod even more. For you see I have discovered that my iPod is not just an iPod, it is a Magic iPod!

The day began like any other: at my Mac, strong long black and a quick flick through my RSS Reader for the news of the day. I noticed Apple had just released a new ad for Apple TV, so I went and had a look. It uses a clip from Jack Black’s film, School of Rock, where he’s instructing his students on how to play the rock classic, ‘Smoke on the Water.’ Nice ad. Playtime over, I put on my headphones, set my iPod to shuffle all songs and pressed Play. Of the 4312 tracks it had to choose from, guess what it chose? Yep, Smoke on the Water. What are the odds? Like, seriously? Talk about push advertising. I nearly fell off my chair!

Then! If that wasn't enough, last night I headed to the cinema for an evening drenched in blood, glory and spittle as 300 Spartans shouted themselves hoarse while hacking an endless sea of Persians to pieces. Magnificent. Anyway, I popped into the Men's Room before the session and heard Veruca Salt's 'Volcano Girls' playing over the PA. It was quite a surprise to hear something I actually liked over a PA, something that was very much not the easy-listenin' musak you would normally expect. And they must have given Kylie the night off because then as I walked into the cinema, Radiohead's 'Sit Down, Stand Up' came on. "Wow," I commented, "two good songs in a row. It's like they've got my iPod plugged in." And then next up, also to be found on my iPod, was the stomping 'Seven Nation Army' by the White Stripes. I couldn't believe it. Three from three! The pre-show "entertainment" then started up, so my run came to an end, but only for two hours because as the movie ended and the lights came on, so too did Lamb's 'Gabriel,' which is not only one of my all-time favourite songs, but also the track Kate sauntered down the aisle to! It was Pirate Radio and my iPod (tucked away in my satchel) was at the board pushing the buttons. (Or whatever it is you do at a Pirate Radio).

I know Bill Gates' smart-house will create a personal playlist based on preferences stored in that chip in your skull and pipe your music after you as you walk from room to room, but Apple have trumped him once again by extending the feature out into public places! With an astounding, apparently unique, magic-feature like this, I think I can mollify the upgrade desire for a few more years at least...

UPDATE: The Magic Lives On, and not just in the hearts of children, but within the electronic heart of my Magical iPod as well, as it continues to broadcast its playlists out through ethereal pipes and into the world around. Huzzah!

I’ve just finished watching the third episode of the last ever absolutely the last final full stop never again nine episodes of The Sopranos. And of these three episodes, two have featured tracks taken directly from my Best. Jazz. Ever. playlist on my iPod. First up was the sublime perfection of Dave Brubeck’s, ‘Take Five,’ which was followed two episodes later by Benny Goodman’s stomping, ‘Sing, Sing, Sing (With A Swing).’ If either of the next two episodes feature Charles Mingus’ pinnacle of jazz expression, ‘II B.S.’ I’m declaring this magic-to-be-or-not-to-be speculation officially settled.

UPDATE 2: I know you’ll think I’m joking, but there’s some freakshow over here who reckons he prefers—get this—his old 2nd-gen iPod to his new 5th-gen video iPod! I know, I know! Crazy fool. Hopefully he’ll let us know when the shuttle lands.

UPDATE 3: SO CLOSE! When laying down a fleece to test the Magicalness of my iPod, I chose to use my all time favourite jazz track, 'II B.S' by Charles Mingus. Well, I didn't manage to land that stomper, but the final Soprano's episode, did feature another of my Top Five favourite jazz tracks, Duke Ellington's standard, Caravan; a track I love so much I've collected 42 different versions of it (and counting). It wasn't my favourite version, but it was still a track on my iPod! So, how amazing is that? Three of my Top Five in the final run of seven episodes. Magic!

She speaks.

Well, I think we can call it. We've moved past nothing but meaningless babble, and I think we can officially sign off on Winter's first real word.

For a while there we thought it was going to be 'da,' meaning 'dad,' because she'd quite clearly say it when pointing at me. But when we noticed she'd also say it when pointing to CK, we pretty quickly changed our minds.

And so, Winter's first word is [drumroll] (no, not 'drumroll', but how cool would that be? Not as good as dodecahedron, but still pretty good)... [um, another drumroll] it's... 'Ma.'

But before you ladies all start high-fiving each other like it's some kind of competition (alright, it is a competition), 'ma' does not mean 'mum,' but 'Thelma,' as in Thelma the cat.


Thelma is Winter's favourite friend, and few things will get her as excited as Thelma padding into the room. Winter only needs to hear her bell tinkling in the distance and she'll look around and say, "Ma?" And Thelma seems to like Winter too, because despite Winter's rather uncoordinated patting (which is more like a game of Whack-a-Mole), Thelma will always come up and lie down next to her, patiently enduring her attention.

And Winter's favourite stuffed toy, an orange cat called Comma, has also come to be called 'Ma,' although we've realised 'ma' is just Winter's word for 'cat.' Still, the '-ma' connection to her two favourite cats is a nice coincidence all the same.