do you remember the garry mcdonald show

Sydney Morning Herald 27 August 1977 p. 10

Well me, I vaguely remember it and I've always felt a little bit deprived that it has never really been available since it first emerged almost 50 years ago, but I also think, now's kind of the time for it to be seen again, because apart from anything else, it deserves reappraisal now all the fools above are, if not gone, probably a bit less upset. 

Sydney Morning Herald 'Monday Guide' 25 July 1977 p. 1

There should be a word for the kind of memory I have of the show's Harry Butler parody - like, I know it happened and not because someone told me. I also remember the Mo McCackey episodes and that he tried to avoid bringing Norman Gunston in but ultimately he couldn't avoid it, and he did bring him in, in later eps. 

Anyway it's all at the National Archives and I'm going to watch a few. I'll tell you all about it when it happens. Oh, and here's one more religious objection:

Melbourne Age 24 August 1977 p. 12

flook in the perth daily news 17-31 march 1952

It was an odd experience to see the Cyril breakfast-cement mixer sequences above because I've seen them before, somewhere - I vaguely remember them illustrating an article about Flook. 

 

doctor who missing episodes

 

Australian Women's Weekly 24 Mar 1965 p. 18

I have to admit the podcast about missing Dr Who episodes from the 1960s is a real guilty pleasure for me. Apparently there are now just under 100 missing episodes, because they just found a couple more, and they got Peter Purves (I had no idea that he had been a cast member of Dr Who)* to watch a couple under false pretences, so they gazumped him, but he enjoyed it. 

I lost interest in Dr Who in about 1977, gained minor interest in its revival whenever that was, but I am not in any sense a whothusiast. But I do love hearing people nerd out over nerdy things, and the men (all men - yes, all men) who staff the missing eps podcast are a beautiful blend of pedantic, cosy-complacent and smug, unashamedly obsessed and sometimes amusingly critical (not of themselves but of choices made in Dr Who 60 years ago - hold the front page!). I also enjoy hearing experts exert themselves imaginatively trying to figure out what did or didn't happen in particular episodes where they might only have images or sound or text (scripts) to help them along. (Wondering what that noise is - did actor x stumble on the way to the cell door? Etc). 

I also love the way it lifts a lid on film collectors.** So, I just read a press release from the organisation that found the two 'new' missing eps in the private collection of a man (now dead) who owned films, looked after them very well, had no interest whatsoever in Dr Who, but had six episodes of it in his collection... freak. Presumably he didn't watch them, but in that he is no freak, because I have tried to watch Dr Who from back then and if you don't know, I gotta tell you, it is boring hackneyed rubbish. If it hadn't held on through to the end of that decade and, I guess, John Pertwee it would be remembered now as nothing more than a stilted, silly exercise, daleks or no daleks. 

But you know, boring hackneyed silly rubbish is pretty much the main game for humanity, so, respect. 

*When my family lived in Britain in the mid-70s PP was one of the presenters of Blue Peter, a show I did not mind watching, but now in my memory I get him mixed up with the other male presenter, John Noakes, and then I think of that Derek and Clive sketch of 'I'm Alfie Noakes' 'No I'm Alfie Noakes' and then ultimately it all falls in a heap of messy shallow memories of names of things. I just went on wikipedia to check the spelling of Peter Purvis' name (luckily - because I had got it wrong) and found this beautiful piece of writing about another Blue Peter presenter, Valerie Singleton: 'To say how long Valerie Singleton was a presenter for is up for debate. Some people say it was 3 September 1962 to 3 July 1972. Making her time on the show 9 years, 304 days. But some people say it was 3 September 1962 to 20 October 1975 making it 13 years, 47 days. Some people say she presented the show till 29 December 1975 making her time on the show it 13 years, 117 days. Some people go as far and say she was a presenter till 7 June 1981 making her time on the show as 18 years, 277 days' I particularly like that there is no full stop at the end of that sentence. 

** It also lifts the lid on how the BBC sold shows throughout the Commonwealth in the 60s-70s and where shows went - Australia bought them, then sent them on to Zambia, or whatever. Nutty people are trying to trace them all over the place. Also, there are amazeballs theories about various collector types who reputedly have various eps, but won't admit it. So funny (not to the presenters of that podcast, not really, though they try to appear amused). 

northcote folly

You know I can boast about my skills in research but I wonder if I could ever add anything to the story of this item. It's been around for a  long time and it's crazy. I wonder if there is anything in the City of Northcote archives that might explain a little. 
 

Update 24 March 26:

I can't be too harsh about this, because it did take me over a week to notice. But on that website I linked to above, there are images of the folly in its original (? or at least a former) location, and when you hover over the images you get a kind of a caption or whatever it's called. Alt text. Well, 

The surmise here is that the second image 'appears to be the same folly' as the first. But hell, it's exactly the same picture, unless perhaps that man sat on that bench every day to read his flamin' paper!

Anyway, I ordered the relevant file from the PROV, or as close as I can get to the relevant file, because the parks files for 1925-1940something are suspiciously missing. Cover up. 

flook in the perth daily news 1-15 march 1952

 

I apologise for falling down on my Flook duties a bit, I have been distracted by work. So, not a lot of consequence storywise is happening here but the drawing is incredible, absolutely top-notch. To think that these drawings would almost certainly just be thrown away afterwards is a bit horrible to contemplate. 

You might recall some time ago I relayed the possibility that Wally Fawkes was a bit of a pot smoker when he was at work. I think the Nelson's Column stuff might reinforce that likelihood, not necessarily because it's almost psychedelic and trippy but just the general intense concentration that some people find is aided by soft drugs. 

More in a week or so... 

i was made for these times

 

I don't know who this person is, perhaps he's AI? He seems to go to some pains to keep his identity a secret, in any case, which is his business, or the business of his creator. Anyway, because I'm sixty, white, and like (or am interested in) some things, youtube shoves this channel in my face all the time, so I finally decided to watch one. Well look he might be AI, but his opinions (as exemplified here) are as rote a collection of perceptions as anyone of his age (I am a bit concerned because he's apparently not even 60, at least 1968 is in his URL, and yet he looks like that) could possibly have on as boring a bunch of records as you could imagine someone opining on. I mean obviously when you start out to compile a list of the ten worst albums ever that a mass audience (of middle aged men) is going to respond to, you naturally draw from a small pool of 60s-70s rock stars, each of whom have some extreme or other in their catalogue. So he goes in on Loaded (making the typically stupid observation that, had it been a Doug Yule solo album it might have been ok - so - fuckwit - it's actually an ok album but it's just in the wrong sleeve? That seriously makes it amongst the ten worst albums ever??!), Two Virgins, Landing on Water (admittedly I can't comment, never heard it) Down in the Groove (ditto) Cut the Crap (see what I mean about predictable as?!) Mardi Gras (Creedence, I have to admit I now want to hear that), Leather Jackets (an Elton John album) and three others, I don't remember. Oh a Van Morrison album of recent vintage. 

I guess in the present day you can always find some rarified piece of crap that will tell you anything you want to know, or don't. It's all geared to some of us. This sucked, but I watched it (distractedly) and just as was the case with the fool I caught on threads yesterday posting 'ten random songs' which just happened to all be by white men, bar one, it doesn't matter to the algorithm whether I hated it or loved it, point was I engaged with it, and so I will be getting more soon. Fuck my luck!

I wouldn't start to try a worst albums list, not because it's subjective, though that's reason enough. Frankly I just know the worst album is not the low point in a great musician's career, it's the best album by a terrible artist. Dark Side of the Moon, say, or something like that. Although most major artists aren't that terrible, even if they're bland - they still, by definition, have something to keep people interested. I can't stand Floyd or Mac but I know they, too, have the juice for many-most people at least in my age/ethnicity bracket. It's not a terrible situation. 

Anyway I hate this fake guy, I hate his delivery, I hate him constantly reading shit off to the side and I don't ever want to see his head again or hear his English voice. 

bearable sunday

 

It has been a bearable Sunday. Mainly doing a lot of writing for a book chapter I have had all the materials sitting around for for yonks now, but I haven't had the time/motivation to get it done, but now I've started it's coming together pretty nicely really all things considered. I have to write 4000 words and I have written over 2000. That's ok isn't it. It's mainly quality narrative, it's not just mapping out crap, though some is mapping out. Also, I took Perry to get some snacks and dinner food at the pet shop and have a wash in the wash place, and I combed quite a bit of matted junk off his leg (one leg is fine now, one still has a bit of stuff on it, he only has so much tolerance for the tugging). When we were in the pet shop there was a child at the counter with two rats. They seemed nice enough but I didn't know how Perry would feel if he saw them. Or what he would do. Anyway the woman at the counter - who knew Perry's name, I don't know how - advised the child to leave for a short time so I could make purchases. 

Yesterday we went to see Nirvanna the band the show the movie (I think that's what it's called) which was actually pretty impressive and funny. I would like to go to Canada someday. I wonder if there will still be much of a planet left when Donald Trump dies or if we are all going to die together, with him. At least he would then be dead but I think I've earned the pleasure of outliving that moving lump of shit. 

helmi on a pillow

Imagine being so small (and sad) that you can sleep on half a pillow at an awkward angle (I know it doesn't look like she's sleeping but she was a split-second before this picture was taken - story of my and every photographer's life, more or less, you take the picture just too late). 
 

back to d. p. nelthorpe

 

Since I can't sleep (again) I am showing you the sum total of what I know about D. P. Nelthorpe aside from the previously mentioned exhibition. There is the above, which was in a book the state library has of D. P. Nelthorpe's, called, yes, The Island of Triska. And there is the book itself, which is copiously illustrated as per below. 

Now I will try to go to sleep, again. 
 

listening to side 1 of born again on the bus this afternoon

It is odd in hindsight that I was very aware of Randy Newman's Born Again at the age of 14. It has always been a favourite of mine. I looked it up on wikipedia and the story seems to be that not many people liked it when it came out. I guess it was RN's first album after he had a hit in his own right (with 'Short People') but of course he had had other hits previously but covered by other people. 

I had a little listen. I think that really the drumming on 'It's Money That I Love' doesn't work, but it's the same drummer on 'The Story of a Rock 'n' Roll Band' and that drumming is amazing, especially all the toms after the bit about calling ELO 'The Renegades'. That song btw is still hilarious almost 50 years later.

Perhaps it's the sequencing that people didn't like, or someone should have put all the 'dark' songs on one side and the 'funny' ones on the other, that might have worked, whether they were labelled as such or not. I mean 'Pretty Boy' is such a great track in itself and would undoubtedly go on the 'dark' side though I suppose it might have flummoxed a few people at the time because its narrator is, I guess, homophobic and this was a time when that was cool. 'Ghosts' goes on the dark side too. 

I remember in 1979 or 80, whenever I heard the album (it came out in late '79) talking with a friend about the song 'Mr Sheep' and how weird it was (it really isn't) but I think possibly what we were reacting to was the unreliable narrator who is a prick, then starts to be conciliatory, then becomes a prick again. These days I really like that but then it possibly confounded me. 

'They Just Got Married' possibly troubled me as well because while it is kind of resolved, it seems to portend a terrible outcome, but it really doesn't - the first wife dies and the second one seems a bad choice but she is also very wealthy, so the second marriage might be (in the conventional way of thinking) a bad choice but it's also one that will at least end up with everyone being rich. I guess there's a kind of tossed-off feel to this too, which is not problematic for me now but might once have been, for me and everyone else. 

Anyway, it's still my favourite RN album, I will listen to it again soon (I had it playing on spotifuck while I was in the supermarket and it just cut off at the end of side one, I don't know why but it was ok as I had to go and stand at the checkout while two ladies who both worked for Woolworths one of whom was buying stuff but had some discount coupons, fiddled over the coupons for an excessively long time which I decided to be nice about because a smile costs nothing).