todd rundgren tonight

My life is actually pretty great, all things considered. But the last few months have been gruellingly depressing due to, you know, the world. All the things in the world. 

So seeing Todd tonight was just magic. He played a very esoteric set with songs from this century, you know, what some might call 'deep cuts'.* His voice is not always perfect (he's 76 this year I believe) but he gives it a go, he doesn't shy away from anything. Audaciously, he bundled a few hits-that-people-came-to-see into a medley, which I think was a great idea but could have turned nasty after he put the audience through a lot of incredibly fine, but extremely unfamiliar other songs. 

Anyway, look, I am not writing a review or anything. I just really enjoyed it and it renewed my faith in people for an hour and a half. Not just people, perhaps even Americans! 

* Like 'Weakness' from 2008's Arena which is such a great album heard, I suspect, by a tiny fraction of the people who'd love it, and 'Truth' from Liars (2004). 

d4 - petty cash

A lot to love about this episode originally broadcast 1 August 1973. Great actors, like Bill Hunter (as usual, playing a vicious crim)

Keith Eden, playing the part of Russell Ward (so, obviously, not the same name as the extremely famous historian Russel Ward).* 

Gerry Duggan, what an amazing face! As Charlie Reid. 

Peter Adams as Harold Jones 

And, wonderfully... 

This time, they call her Louise Homfrey, probably so she could still collect the dole or something, I don't know. She plays Mrs. Adams, and her boarding house (oh yeah, of course she runs a boarding house - of course she does) has her name in big letters out the front, which might have made Peter Adams feel a bit weird. Or seen. 

Also, kudos to Marie Redshaw who is terrific as 'Mrs. Jones', an ebullient drunk who doesn't leave the living room for any of her scenes or if she does she takes the gin bottle with her. 

A while ago I was very excited about the fake (of course they're fake, it's not real) newspaper headlines in Homicide, you don't often see them in D4 though but here's one! Bad capitalisation irregularities and all.  

One more novelty - for this episode the usual final scene announcer Bruce Mansfield is dispensed with, and I think Gerard Kennedy is given the job of telling us everyone's sentences, but whoever it is, they're not credited. Mansfield is back the following episode but not the one after it. Go figure. 

PS! 

The building in the first picture is 503 Orrong Road. It seems it no longer has a wall around it as it once did. 

* In fact, although Eden is credited as playing 'Russell Ward' in the show, actually it's a false name and his name is something that sounds a bit like Russell Cock but it can't be can it. 

d4 the toffee apple man

 

27 June 1973. I am not quite sure when it was - probably about season 3 - was the absolute worst Homicide episode, ending in a christmas sing-song with George Mallaby on guitar. Well, this is D4's idea of a housewarming party (for Marg). When was the last time you went to a part where the only music was what came out of an acoustic guitar? Well, you're lucky. 

division 4: 'sweet kid, good familiy'

Good solid episode with all the tension, kitchen sink drama and satisfying (if a bit sad) ending we have all come to expect from D4. 

What grabbed me the most though was the great pleasure of seeing Louise Homfrey in more than just a 'keep that noise down' role. She plays a boarding house landlady with a theatrical past. If I were writing a biography of Louise Homfrey the way some people write biographies of Margaret Dumont, I would definitely use the line she gives early in the piece regarding 'every night lights, the applause, I never missed a performance, not one, oh I was in great demand.'

These are a couple of her more unsavoury boarders who, guess what, are crims. 

One more thing to say about this one - don't get me wrong, it's great, but it's not especially great - is that for some reason it begins with the old credit sequence, abandoned a few months previously. Wonder what that was about. 

Age 20 June 1973 p. 28. 

The episode was shown in Sydney about five weeks earlier - 2 May. 

please end summer, you suck

Not only will summer ending be a good thing in itself but it will reduce the number of summers before we see a conclusion, for there must be a conclusion, to the right-wing insanity of much of the world at the moment. IE the end of summer will be a hurdle. Indeed if we see, as we surely must, Trump's power reduced at the US midterms in um 2027, then we really only have one full summer to get through. 

I have made a decent writerly space for myself on my small balcony which actually works well although the wifi is not always brilliant (but still, it gets there more or less). It was a junk space for years and I will most definitely sometime be locked out there you bet but I also find it very good for getting stupid little things done, like today I finessed my first lecture of the year. This is the so-called view from the balcony - pretty ridiculous I suppose, though it is definitely trees (and slightly miserable pot plants which I water lovingly every day). 

Mouldy cat picture rescued from a street in Flemington, plant Laura didn't want anymore and I did. 

The loyal animals nearby: Helms

Nancy - very much in repose

Perry - he stays close

Books for me to read while I wait for someone to come and rescue me when I get locked out on the balcony, which will definitely happen one day before too long. 

rate my professor

 

Just for a second, and knowing this is bullshit all the way intended to draw me in for what precise reason I don't know, I was tempted - on analysis I realised I was really only interested because I wanted to see how they were going to try and boost my ego even more. 

I then came to appreciate they were using professor in the American sense of, anyone who teaches - possibly works for all I know - in a university is a professor, so my rating of four stars (out of forty, I assume) might mean the world to me. But only a complete dufus, I mean, professor dufus, would think a rating on Rate My Professor would be a suitable thing to put in a job application etc. 

Still, I'm sure nobody has rated me as a professor (if it was a student, why would they be doing it the week before teaching starts?) or anything else. It's that old adage of if something looks too good to be true, or really, too anything to be true, well, most things aren't true. 

magpie commune in gardiner reserve this evening