Elements Tour - Swollen Members, Z-Trip and more

Went to the Elements Tour at The Forum last night with M and W. The best night out I've had in a long time.

Jungle Brothers
Mike Gee - who's looking a little older than he did in 1989 - still has what it takes, although most of his material was unfamiliar to me. A small crowd at this point (he was first up) - so there was little atmosphere - but he demonstrated his skills and a great big smile.

Swollen Members
These guys were who I was there to see. They have a huge live reputation and I was far from let down. In fact it was one of the best performances I've ever seen. And they gave the impression they could (and may well) do it every day of the week. Prevail in particular had incredible energy and just so clearly loved being on stage and performing. The crowd were incredibly enthusiastic and there was great interaction between the band and the crowd. Prevail possibly spent more time surfing the crowd than he did on stage. Madchild was perhaps a little muffled and low-energy: he may well have been partying too hard on the tour.

The performance was absolutely jaw-dropping. The crowd was singing/rapping along to every song - and every track they played was good - and the energy had to be felt to be believed.

Some [horrible phone camera] photos.

Z-Trip
An incredibly skilled DJ, master of the mash-up... I can't say much that hasn't previously been said. Except perhaps that the heavy reliance on mixing in hard rock and heavy metal tracks left me cold - I could appreciate the skills, but given that I hate hard rock I still couldn't feel it. Some great moments - in fact, most of the stuff that wasn't heavy rock mixes was great. And Soup from Jurassic 5 was criminally under-used... did he have an easy tour or what?

Long time no see

It's been a while since my last post... an incredibly busy patch with work - sorry!

Had a great birthday weekend last week - M took me on a surprise trip to NSW. Birthday dinner at North Bondi Italian on Friday night, caught up with Sydney friends Sat AM then drove to Newcastle and settled in to watch the election. A swim at the surf beach Sunday morning then lunch at Robert's in the Hunter Valley before our flight home.

More soon.

iGoogle

Was planning a post on how well Google's many features/apps are integrated (and was planning to say, not particularly well)... so I just typed www.google.com into my browser and instead of the familiar simple interface iGoogle popped up -

and what do we have but a 2007 version of a 1997 portal.


Yes there's (much) more personalisation, yes it's not an html page with frames but a collections of feeds, yes i'm sure it's great in many ways, but it is not the no-frills homepage from you can conduct excellent search that Google is famous for (or perhaps i should say, became famous for)

Seriously - half-close your eyes and you could be looking at a 90s version of Yahoo, Excite, MSN or a million other portals. Actually I just typed in www.msn.com and (without having personalised either), it and iGoogle are almost indistinguishable

Interesting GOOG judgment

See this link to an appeal judgment in a Reid v Google - a case brought by a former employee of Google who alleges he was sacked because of his age.

Reid was formerly a Director of Engineering and Director of Operations at Google - a reasonably senior position. The reason he was given when he was sacked was that he was not a 'cultural fit'. Reid claims that the 'youthful atmosphere' at Google demonstrates a bias against older workers.

Sad news - Matt Price

Duncan Riley reports at duncanriley.com that Matt Price, the columnist for the Australian, has some serious health issues.

Price is interesting and idiosyncratic on both football and politics; I enjoy reading his columns and wish him and his family well.

Who has scored from Web 2.0?

Interesting article in BusinessWeek about the present (tough) conditions in the VC market, including this extract:

Take Web 2.0, where exactly one company, YouTube, had a $1 billion-plus outcome when it was purchased by Google (GOOG). Only a handful has sold in the hundreds of millions. And because the costs of starting these businesses are so low, venture investors own smaller stakes than they did in the last Web bubble.

I'm sure the statement is right - as far as it goes - but I'd make the following comments:

- like much in this world, it all depends on how the key terms are defined.

- many of the 2.0 companies have been founded, effectively, as single-product or niche-focused businesses suitable for early, cheap acquisition rather than building into stand-along megaliths. And much of the early development of these focused businesses took place out of the pockets of angel funding and/or bootstrapping and/or very small VC rounds. Meaning that the peersons involved probably did fine out of relatively small exits (although I'm sure some - such as the founders of flickr - wonder what might have been).

- GOOG's suite of 'web 2.0' assets would be valued at far more than $1 billion; as would Yahoo!'s; as would News Corp's etc etc. Much of the Web 2.0 upside has been captured (at least in monetary terms) by the media and Internet giants. They either developed in-house or, more commonly, bought earlier. The media and 1.0 survivors have done an excellent job in the latest wave of making smart, early, cheap acquisitions: MySpace, flickr, photobucket, FeedBurner, etc etc.

- the BusinessWeek analysis ignores the gorilla currently sitting and waving in the corner: Facebook. To suggest it has a less than $1 billion valuation at this point would be ludicrous.

Facebook v MySpace v Facebook v Microsoft

a couple of good articles re Facebook and MySpace from CNN Money:

Facebook CEO visits Seattle, Microsoft schemes

and

As Facebook takes off, MySpace strikes back

From the Facebook article

This year Facebook apparently expects to make $30m profit on $150m revenue [if this number is right it surprises me; the margin is far lower than I would have expected - but then they're presumably investing heavily in infrastructure / development / scaling]

A good quote:

Facebook is the closest thing the world has to a next-generation Internet, one structured not around Web sites but around people. In the Facebook topology, every data source or service is defined by who else is using it.

The company has, in a crude way, solved the critical problem of Internet identity. Each member's profile is tantamount to their personal Web site, which defines who you are, who you know, what you are interested in, and what you are doing now.

Another good quote re Facebook's potential to advertisers:

Facebook may be the best place yet for marketers to experiment with these new techniques. Unlike its bigger rival MySpace, Facebook's individual profile information is intended to represent a real person precisely and accurately. So by investing in Facebook, Microsoft - or Google or another intrepid company

And on Zuckerman v Gates: who is the nicer person?

It may also be worth quite a few hundred million for any company to get into bed with Mark Zuckerberg.

I have gotten to know him a bit in recent months. He is the closest thing to Bill Gates I've seen since the original. Not only does he have natural gifts for programming, leadership, and marketing - traits that served Gates well in Microsoft's first couple decades. He also, like his industry predecessor, seems mostly driven by a conviction that what he is doing will make the world a better place.

The money will come to him, as it did to Gates, not because he seeks it but as a byproduct of finding effective ways to help society move forward using software.

His focus is extraordinary. What's more, he is a nicer person than is Gates.

It would behoove any company to keep him close. His thinking about the importance and role of what he calls the "social graph" - the network of relationships that underlies a social network - is subtle and unselfish.

And from the MySpace article
"Everyone believes all the b.s. press that says MySpace is done for and Facebook has passed us," moans Tom Anderson.

Now there's starting to be real money in the business, as every major consumer advertiser realizes that if you can engage effectively with these newly networked hordes, they become agents of your brand. Last year MySpace was on the lips of every teenager. Now Facebook is growing faster, is usurping the buzz, and thus has Tom Anderson tied into knots.

But defensiveness does not behoove executives who run a division of News Corp, Rupert Murdoch's consummately aggressive company - especially not when that division is the biggest player by far in an explosively expanding business like social networking.

I haven't been on top of the stats and had no idea the numbers were so extreme:

MySpace is the most trafficked website in the U.S.: It registered 45 billion page views in July, according to comScore Media Metrix. Another research firm, Compete.com, calculates that Americans spend about 12% of all their Internet time there.

MySpace v Facebook

Comparing MySpace and Facebook is inevitable because of their dominance in the business, but their differences are profound.

Facebook is intended to be used only to connect you to the people you already know offline; it's a "utility," to use the preferred label of its founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. Its user interface is clean and tidy, and the whole vibe is efficiency and getting things done.

MySpace, on the other hand, is a mishmash of modern media - rich with music and video and comedy. It's like a rock & roll club - chaotic, loud, and packed. Many user profiles are florid and flamboyant, with flashing text and music that starts playing as soon as you arrive.

Myspace has much bigger ad revenue - this year at least

The research firm eMarketer calculates that in 2007, MySpace will sell $525 million worth of advertising, 58% of the social-networking industry's total. (Facebook will sell $125 million - less than a quarter as much.) One huge upcoming opportunity, says DeWolfe, is ad-supported MySpace on mobile phones.

The platform

In late May, Facebook announced it would open up its site and access to its 41 million members - to software created by anyone, from the largest software companies to dorm-room hackers. That made it, Zuckerberg said, a "platform." There are now more than 4,000 new applications on Facebook - and most of the popular ones replicate features already on MySpace.

Any talk about Facebook and its platform is a great way to spoil the mood around the MySpace offices. It's that defensiveness again. "MySpace has always been a platform," DeWolfe insists. "We have an open platform." What he means is that MySpace allows small software applications, known as "widgets," to appear on the site.

The Rupert anecdote

Murdoch visits the hipster-filled headquarters at least once a month, peppering DeWolfe with questions about membership numbers and sign-up rates. In early 2006, DeWolfe enthusiastically told him that MySpace was about to open its first international site, in Britain.

"I was so excited about it," says DeWolfe. "And he's like [mimicking a deep slow Australian voice], 'How many more this year?' and I said, 'Maybe a couple more.' Then he said, 'How about 12?' So we ended up opening 14." )

Anderson has his own Rupert stories: "He called me once and couldn't log in for some reason. I was trying to help him over the phone, saying, 'Type this. Type that. What do you see on your screen?' And he says, 'It says, 'Welcome John.' And I'm like, 'John? Why does it say John?' and he says [affecting his own version of the deep, slightly cranky voice], 'I don't use my real name on MySpace.'"

Are the MySpace dream team about to jump?

So how is it really going, Chris and Tom? "That this has worked out so well and we both hope to be around for a long time is, I think, a really unique story," expounds DeWolfe, as Anderson nods. "We're almost at our two-year anniversary with News Corp. and we're probably going to sign up for another two years, and ..."

Wait a minute. Probably? When pressed, he looks sheepish.

"I don't know," he says, glancing nervously at his PR person. He hesitates. "We may stay with the company." MySpace's top two employees have spent several months negotiating a renewal of their two-year contract, and it's not a sure thing. They didn't own much stock in the parent company that News Corp. acquired, so for all their successes they have not had a big Internet payout.

The two have reportedly pushed for a $50 million, two-year pact and encountered resistance. To be fair, there is every sign they are deeply engaged in their work and are unlikely to leave. DeWolfe's hesitation in our interview could merely be a negotiating tactic.

fun for high-end geeks - Kevin Rose Kool Kit

This video has found its way to YouTube - it's an in-joke video about Digg founder Kevin Rose. Startups must have way too much time and money on their hands in Silicon Valley. In a scary way this sortof feels like a signal that the good times are coming to an end - like the infamous 99/00 launch parties.

Funny Games - NYT interview with Haneke

I've blogged before about how curious I am about the new Michael Haneke film - an English-language remake of Funny Games.

The NYT has this weekend published an in-depth interview with Haneke about Funny Games and much more. I still have absolutely no idea whether the remake of Funny Games will be brilliant or is a horrible lapse in judgment by Haneke.

The decision to remake his signature work in America with an A-list cast caused considerable controversy among hardcore cinephiles, not least because of Haneke’s reputation as one of Hollywood’s most outspoken critics. Haneke was quick to defend himself. “Of course I’m a critic of the studio system,” he said, as if it were unthinkable not to be. “But that doesn’t mean that one can’t work within that system. ‘Funny Games’ was always made with American audiences in mind, since its subject is Hollywood’s attitude toward violence.

When I asked whether the average American moviegoer was likely to appreciate having his attitude adjusted, Haneke-style, the director thought for a moment, then threw up his hands in mock surrender. “I’ve been accused of ‘raping’ the audience in my films, and I admit to that freely — all movies assault the viewer in one way or another. What’s different about my films is this: I’m trying to rape the viewer into independence.”

“Funny Games” occupies a unique place in Haneke’s body of work, not least because of his decision to shoot it twice. “Originally, I approached Michael about optioning ‘Funny Games’ for some other director,” Chris Coen, the film’s producer, told me. “And Michael’s reply was that he’d do it himself, but only if I could get Naomi Watts for the lead. I hadn’t thought about him wanting to do it, to be honest. But he said very clearly that ‘Funny Games’ was the one film of his that he’d allow no one else to direct.” Hollywood has a long and hallowed tradition of buying the rights to art-house hits and refashioning them to suit its own ends — in fact, the director Ron Howard recently acquired the rights to Haneke’s “Caché” — but Haneke’s decision to remake his own film surprised fans and colleagues alike. The peculiarity of the project seems to have been part of its appeal. “To my knowledge, no one has ever remade his own film so precisely,” the director told me in Vienna, with an unmistakable trace of boyish pride. “The new version is the same film superficially, of course, but it’s also very different: a different atmosphere, different performances, a different end result. That in and of itself is interesting.”

Watching both versions of “Funny Games” back to back is especially revealing of Haneke’s skill. Though the dialogue, framing and sequence of shots are identical, the end result is remarkably different: Michael Pitt, the other of the family’s tormentors, brings a disconcerting sweetness to his role; Tim Roth emotes where Ulrich Mahe endured stoically; and Watts herself infuses her character’s suffering with a sexuality that Susanne Lothar, perhaps intentionally, kept at a definite remove.

Haneke’s sudden prominence, and the unfailingly extreme subject matter of his films, has led to comparisons with Quentin Tarantino, with John Woo and with the directors of the so-called Asian Extreme movement, but Haneke himself sees little common ground. “I saw ‘Pulp Fiction,’ of course, and it’s a very well done film,” he said. “The problem, as I see it, is with its comedy — there’s a danger there, because the humor makes the violence consumable. Humor of that kind is all right, even useful, as long as the viewer is made to think about why he’s laughing. But that’s something ‘Pulp Fiction’ fails to do.” When I mentioned Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers,” another film that “Funny Games” has been compared with, Haneke shrugged. “Stone made the same mistake that Kubrick made. I use that film to illustrate a principle to my students — you can’t make an antifascist statement using fascist methods.”

Bizarre - Kerry heckler tasered

A heckler at a speech by John Kerry in Florida has been tasered - Kerry described the incident as a "good healthy discussion" that was "interrupted" by Andrew Meyer being arrested and Tasered by police!

In 37 years of public appearances, through wars, protests and highly emotional events, I have never had a dialogue end this way," Kerry said in a statement. "I believe I could have handled the situation without interruption, but I do not know what warnings or other exchanges transpired between the young man and the police prior to his barging to the front of the line and their intervention. I asked the police to allow me to answer the question and was in the process of responding when he was taken into custody."

"I was not aware that a taser was used until after I left the building," he continued. "I hope that neither the student nor any of the police were injured. I regret enormously that a good healthy discussion was interrupted."

See also
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=3617810

Meander Falls

M and I went to Tasmania for the weekend for some hiking.

Had a great time on Saturday hiking to Meander Falls. Beautiful scenery, a challenging hike and we had the track almost totally to ourselves... after 2 1/2 hours of hiking we bumped into a few people, then didn't see anyone else the rest of the day.

And I had an awesome time driving the ute the hire-car company gave me instead of the small car I'd requested!

The Chaser's War on Everything - APEC

Finally got around to watching last week's The Chaser's War on Everything, including their infamous infilitration of security at APEC in the guise of being Canadian.

Funny stuff.

Washington Post article on Moby Media / Tolo

Long and interesting article in Friday's Washington Post about Moby Media / Tolo, largely comprising an interview with Saad Mohseni. The article is entitled Reaching His Prime Time in Afghanistan / Murdoch-Like Magnate Builds Media Empire - and it endeavours to draw analogies between Saad and Rupert Murdoch.

They say it's a mark of independence when everyone thinks you're on the other person's side; by that measure it looks like Moby is pretty independent....

A few quotes:

In some ways, Mohseni, 41, is the Rupert Murdoch of Afghanistan.

Not only is he an entrepreneurial media lord with Australian roots who buys his soap operas from Murdoch's Indian Star TV network, his programming has been criticized as sensational, lowbrow and corruptive to the culture -- much as Fox's "The Simpsons" was panned when it hit the U.S. airwaves. And, like many of Murdoch's programs, Mohseni's are wildly popular. Both points of view came through in interviews on the streets of Kabul this week.

We are mindful of the mullahs and clerics," Mohseni said during his Washington visit. He said that his network is the only one that the Taliban talks to, because it is seen as unbiased, yet it also broadcasts Afghanistan's most popular -- and Western-style -- entertainment programs. Tolo even had a dustup with the Afghan attorney general this year that resulted in some staff members being arrested and briefly detained.

"You can kick-start social change with TV," Mohseni said.

Like many expatriate Afghans with a plan, Mohseni came to Kabul after the U.S.-led invasion loosened the Taliban's turn-back-the-clock grip on Afghanistan's business, technological and cultural life.

Mohseni is the son of an Afghan diplomat who was stationed in Tokyo when the Russians invaded his country in 1979. His father resigned his post, moved his family to Melbourne, Australia, (coincidentally, Murdoch's hometown) and settled down.

Mohseni dropped out of college and sped to the business world, becoming first an investment banker in Australia. When that proved too tame, he moved to Uzbekistan in the mid-'90s, as that country was flexing its capitalistic muscles after decades of Soviet control, and became a commodities trader.

After a few years in Central Asia, and a cultural reconnection with other expat Afghans there, Mohseni headed back to Australia looking for opportunity. It came in the wake of the U.S. military response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks . With no media background, Mohseni was not specifically looking to start a media business when he hit the ground in Kabul, but that's where he found the market gap.

By March 2003, Mohseni and his two brothers had launched Afghanistan's first privately run radio station, Arman FM, with their own money and a $228,000 grant from USAID. When Mohseni started Tolo in 2004, USAID kicked in another $2.1 million. The Mohseni brothers say they have so far invested more than $6 million of their own money.

Michael Wolff strikes again

Michael Wolff, the author of Burn Rate (a notorious and bitchy account of life as the founder of an unsuccessful Internet startup) and an excellent and highly experienced journalist, writes in the latest Vanity Fair about newser.com, a news startup which is apparently endeavouring to create a new paradigm in news and in which Wolff has a stake and is involved.

Here's another quirky advantage of the Internet (or, depending, serious disadvantage) and Internet news: people are willing to work for less and, even, for free. That's one result of the Internet's utopianism, that you're doing something of higher purpose, and of the myth of sweat equity, that you're working for future, fabulous riches (which sometimes you are).

Oddly, talking about the plasticity of the Internet, about the possibilities for utopia and riches, actually makes things happen. Somehow something comes into existence. While Google and its creepy form of corporatism dominate this Web era, there are now, given off-the-shelf "solutions" (meaning cheap equipment and cheap, pre-written software), more garage and dorm-room operations than there have ever been (one of which, perhaps sooner rather than later, will challenge Google). Indeed, Mark Zuckerberg's dorm-room companions continue to sue him over the ownership of Facebook because they claim it grew out of more than just idle dorm-room chat. (For the purposes of full disclosure: my financial interest in my hypothetical newspaper is about the same as that of Zuckerberg's roommates in Facebook—I will settle, if big money is made, for a small retirement home on the beach in East Hampton.)

The last few weeks

Life since we arrived back in Melbourne has been crazy. Settling back in, the Melbourne Film Festival, work busy-ness, M's mother getting hit by a car. Anyway, lots of stuff. Still a few travel summaries to come, but snippets follow:

Films
- Black Snake Moan is pretty good. I mean not good as in a good film, but good as in lots of fun.
- A Dirty Carnival is a classic Korean gangster film. It reminded me a little of Number 3, the first Korean film I ever saw. Over-long but definitely worth seeing
- Triple Dare, a Danish film about 3 teenage girls coming of age via a ritual they make u involving daring each other to perform various sex acts is even better than it sounds.
- Teeth is terrifying but good

Computer
My new 24 inch high-def Dell screen rules. Although I'm not sure I yet have the resolution or colour settings quite right.

Photos
Check out my Flickr and Photobucket accounts for preliminary travel photos. More to come.

Lost in Beijing - MIFF

A few more posts coming to round out my blog on our (amazing, incredible) 8 week trip, but we're now back and I'm into the Melbourne Film Festival for the 18th consecutive year.

My first film this year was Lost in Beijing - a Chinese film set in contemporary Beijing and showing off the city to full effect (though I didn't see streets as empty as those shown in the film when I was there last week!). The stock plot revolves around a young couple and an older couple. Through a plot device the younger woman has sex with the older man. She also has sex with her husband. She becomes pregnant. The older couple have no children as the wife is infertile. Who is the father of the younger woman's baby? (dramatic music plays)

Actually there is much to like in the film. Apart from the older woman, the acting is good. Tony Leung (the older man) is excellent as always. The film really does give a sense of life in contemporary Beijing and some of the scenes (particularly the sex scenes and the birth scene) feel particularly 'real'. Horrible camerawork.

7.5 out of 10.

Beijing

Another short one.  Having a great time in Beijing, being shown great hospitality by K.

 

Great Wall yesterday - absolutely amazing, a tourist attraction that lives up to the hype.

 

Awesome peking duck.  Great Iranian food last night.

 

Shopping and massages today.

 

Forbidden City and Tiannanmen tomorrow.

Portofino

It already feels like a long time ago, but last Thursday afternoon we took the train from Levanto to Santa Margherita (spelling?) then walked to Portofino.  SM is a very resorty seaside town.  Portofino is a few kilometres away and is a very exclusive port attracting an international crowd of yachties, playboys and wannabes.  And us.  The walk from SM is boring in parts, but most of it is beautiful and meanders past some amazing clifftop houses.

 

When we arrived we sat at a bar on the harbour for a drink with all the other beautiful people, then went for dinner.  Again with all the beautiful people, except for the woman with the scary plastic surgery at the next table.  Then the best pistacchio gelati I'm ever likely to eat. 

 

All followed by a long, painful train ride back to Levanto.

 

Portofino had the most amazing selection of shops - pretty much every top-end designer name had its own shop there, even though probably only a few hundred people live in the village.  The harbour is extraordinarily pretty and absolutely crammed with boats.  The town square is very pretty also.  Overall a good but slightly surreal experience.

Amsterdam

I still need to blog about Portofino, but right now M and I are staying with D & K in Amsterdam.  They have a beautiful huge and light apartment in the 9 streets; very central.  A great dinner last night at Nomads - a north african feast - then a wander through the central city and the red light district.  Off to Bruge for the weekend.

Cinque Terre

A few great days in the Cinque Terre, staying in Levanto. 

 

Walked from Levanto to Riomaggiore on Tuesday - about 7 1/2 hours.  The walk from Levanto to Monterosso was fantastic - far less busy than the 'cinque terre trail'.  We saw only a few people and it was very beautiful and a fantastic start to the day.  From Monterosso to Vernazza and Vernazza to Corniglia were great walks (very hilly!), Corniglia to Manarola and Manarola to Riomaggiore are nowhere near as interesting. 

 

Levanto, where we were staying, is 1 town further along than the cinque terre.  An italian-style seaside resort - the beach was pretty crappy (at least to Australian eyes) but the europeans all seemed to love it.

 

Tuesday night we had a fantastic pizza right on the Vernazza waterfront.  An amazing view and a fantastic evening.

 

 

 

 

 

Lucca

Our travels roll on.  We are now in the beautiful Tuscan town of Lucca and looking forward to exploring.

We spent the weekend with A & F in Florence at their fantastic new(ish) apartment near Piazza Santa Croce.  An amazing location.  It's great seeing A in her home environment - it's been more than 6 years now she's been in Florence.  M and I did much wandering around Florence's streets and taking in the atmosphere and had a great dinner at a local Osteria with A & F.

Dinner in Panzano on Thursday night was an experience - the local celebrity butcher (!) has opened a very trendy restaurant which has a set menu of 6 meat courses.  A & F drove down and we all had a fantastic meal in the little town. 

Also this week we visited so many places - Montepulciano, Montelcino, St Gimingano ... the list continues.  Tuscany has many, many beautiful towns.  And some great hiking quite near our base in Lucolena.

It was incredibly rejuvanating settling into a base for a week - the constant packing and unpacking is very draining.  Our little farmhouse was cute and a great base to see the Chianti region and Tuscany more generally.

Chianti

As you will have read, we are presently in siena for the Palio. 

 

We are staying in a little farmhouse in the Chianti Classico region of Tuscany, near a little village called Lucolena.  Lucolena has a few hundred people, a shop and a pizzeria which is fantastic but is open only 3 nights a week.  It is an agricultural village.  We are very lucky - our little farmhouse is very cute and recently renovated and has its own cute little garden with an amazing outlook over tuscan hills.  The satellite TV is eccentric.  2 channels of Al Jazeera, Algerian TV, Abu Dhabi TV, Syrian TV, lots of shopping, an arabic childrens channel, Azerbaijan TV and so very many more.  500 plus channels of TV and radio.  2 channels in english.  BBC International and Bloomberg.

 

In fact the views everywhere are incredible.  We are getting sick of telling eachother to look at the view - they are always good.

 

Food is great.  Pizza, pasta, cheese, bread, olive oil, tomatoes, wine, pastries and so much good coffee.  I had better not get started on the coffee or I will never stop. 

 

So far we've visited Panzano (for an arts festival), Greve, Arezzo, Cortona - and a number of small towns whose names presently escape me.  Such a beautiful part of the world.

 

 

Early post on the Palio

Am in Siena at the Palio - the famous bareback horse race. 

 

It just finished a few minutes ago and was raced and won in sensational circumstances.  There were numerous false starts - the horses simply would not line up in formation.  The race itself was sensational - 3 very very fast laps around the Piazza del Campo on the dirt track.  The end was amazing - green-and-white (GAW) was winning easily but blue was catching up fast.  To M and I it looked like GAW held on for the win.  And GAW fans certainly celebrated.  When the winner's flag was raised, however, blue had won.  Much emotion from green and much jumping up and down and celebrating from blue fans (including many standign near us).  After protests, however, GAW was reinstated as the winner.  It appeared a popular decision overall, but led to much emotion in the blue quarter.  I write this in the blue part of town, and there are many tears and much emotion.  Children and adults are openly weeping in the streets.  The mood is sort of ugly.

 

The horse I was backing - pink and yellow - lost its rider about halfway through the race.

 

An amazing experience. 

 

Perugia and Assisi

Today we visited Assisi - home of St Francis of ...

A beautiful, hilly town with an incredible, massive basilica and shops selling some of the crappiest souvenirs imaginable.  Though I did pick up a very nice St Francis snowdome.  And we ate absolutely spectacularly good pasta.

This afternoon Perugia's huge and impresive gallery of Umbrian art.  Housed in an incredible 13th century building and with more paintings of Madonna-and-Child than you can poke a stick at.

Tonight great pizza and a stroll around the beautiful streets of Perugia.

travel fatigue

One month in.

11 beds.
packed and re-packed my luggage 11 times-
most of my clothes are now stained and/or faded from over-vigorous washing.  And I am sick of the sight of all of them anyway.

Nevertheless having an awesome time.

today in italy

A long logistics day today.  Get up at 4.30, drive to Rhodes Airport, flight to Athens, flight to Rome, train to Rome Central, wait an hour and three-quarters then a 2 and a half hour train to Perugia then a bus then a walk to the hotel.  We made it.  Eventually.

We are now in Perugia - the capital of Umbria and a beautiful city/town.  Had a great wander around town earlier and looking forward to food and further exploration shortly.

Gennadi part 2

M and I are having a very greek time of it here on Rhodes.

 

After my last blog post, yesterday evening we drove to Prassonisi - a famous windsurfing and kiteboarding beach where the Aegean meets the Mediterranean.  The beach is wide and windy and the ocean is literally packed with really really good windsurfers and kiteboarders. 

 

Later that night we returned to Gennadi, where we played more backgammon, ate gyro and drank retsina (one of the most unpleasant drinks I've ever tasted - crappy white wine with strong overtones of pinocleen), then continued playing backgammon while drinking ouzo.  I won the backgammon of course.  In accordance with fine Turkish tradition (taught to me whilst losing to K earlier in the week), upon winning I shoved the board under M's arm and suggested we play again once she'd learned to play the game.

 

Today we drove most of the day and saw much of the island, with lunch at a highly recommended (but unimpressive-looking) fish restaurant called Lucas on the harbour in a little port town.  Awesomely fresh.  Rhodes is a beautiful island - once you get out of Rhodes town.  A very quiet and rural place.

 

Italy tomorrow.

what?

What the hell's going on while I'm away from Australia?!?!

I just checked The Age online and John Howard appears to be issuing passionate emotional appeals about Aboriginal welfare - using Hurricane Katrina metaphors. Weird!

Drop

We shared our 3 night cruise in Turkey with 11 dutchmen. We discovered (painfully) the Dutch obsession with Drop - foul-tasting dutch licorice.

It comes in a variety of forms - from soft to hard and sweet to insanely salty. The soft, sweetish variety is tolerable (but not good). The hard and salty types are beyond bad.

Amazingly enough, among the 11 dutch people on a 1 week holiday they had brought 5 varieties of Drop with them (to make it through those long turkish nights). They were keen to ensure that we tasted all 5 varieties.

Luckily I have a strong stomach and I kept them all down and luckily M is good with people so she avoided the worst few types. The turkish couple on the cruise had neither defence - they were struggling to spit it out before it was too late.

Gennadi and Amos Beach

M and I are presently in Gennadi, a small village on the coast of the Island of Rhodes in Greece. Gennadi (pronounced Yen-adi) is a world away from the horrors of Rhodes Town. It is pretty much unchanged from the first half of the twentieth century, except it's much smaller. More than half of the village's population moved to Australia in the 1950s and the population went from 3,000 at the time of WWII to 650 today. It's a pretty little town with awesome souvlakis and a long pebbly beach (i'm starting to get used to them - i don't think sand has been invented yet in europe). There are few tourists and it is pretty quiet... we're having a great time here.

We are presently caught in a heatwave. In both Turkey and Greece it has been 40 degrees plus for quite a few days now. I saw a thermometer yesterday which had been placed in the shade of a huge tree and it read 41 degrees. Much hotter in direct sun.

M and I are both very brown - me especially. In Turkey people kept talking to me in Turkish and in Greece everyone I meet asks me what part of the country my family is from. I was just told I look like a Greek tv star - I was a little insulted as I'm usually told I look like a film star. As yet no-one has mistaken M for Greek or Turkish.

Turkey was fantastic. Friendly, warm people, sun, beaches (mostly pebbles), backgammon, raki (the national drink - actually it was missable), Efes (the v good local beer), great food and much more. Amos Beach, where we stayed when not on our boat trip, is a beautiful cove near-ish Marmaris.

M's friends K&C - whose holiday house we were staying in - came over from London for a few days and we had a great time hanging out with them. We hired a boat for the day on Saturday and the four of us cruised to a few coves, jumped out of the boat for swims when we were hot and generally had an absolutely fantastic and memorable day. The captain was also memorable. Late 60s, huge white moustache, even bigger smile, so many gold chains it was amazing he could stand up and just a total dude. He thought so too of course - he had a big photo of himself (in slightly younger days and with even funkier hair) up in the boat right next to the wheel. I will post photos of him in due course.

The Kite Runner

Just read The Kite Runner - a novel about a man who had a privileged childhood in Kabul, Afghanistan in the 1970s before fleeıng to America after the Soviets invaded.  It returns to Kabul in modern times towards the end.  It ıs beautıfully written by a man who clearly has much affection for hıs homeland - although it ıs a little "neat" for my tastes in the way that all of the threads are wrapped up by the end.  Lıfe tends not to be so neatly packaged.  Thanks to my afghani friend W for the present!

Marmaris to Fethiye

M and İ have just disembarked from a 3 night cruise from Marmaris to Fethiye.  A very relaxing few days - periodically cruising to a new cove, jumping off the boat for a swim, readıng, eating and relaxing.  The water was extremely warm - and perfect to jump ınto gıven how hot ıt has been - it was 37 degrees by 8.30 thıs morning.

 

The passengers on the boat comprised 11 Dutchmen, 2 Turks and us.  Much smoking, reasonably extreme levels of politeness and a barrage of Steve Irwin questions.  Last night saw a very multicultural game of Uno. 

10:30am

Throughout our travels ın Turkey and Greece we contınue to see Englıshmen and Germans gettıng stuck ınto 1-lıtre beers from 10:30am and even earlıer. Very ugly.

Torunç

M and İ are presently stayıng in Amos Beach, a collection of holiday bungalows near Torunç, which ıs about 20km from Marmaris - which ıs sort-of near Dolaman Aırport ın Mediterranean Turkey.  İt ıs very hot here - 35 degrees plus every day (and apparently 50 plus in August).  Tomorrow we are off for a 3 nıght cruıse on a Gullet (a wooden turkısh boat) - then back to Amos, then on Sunday off to Genadi in rural Rhodes in Greece for a few days - then Italy.  We caught a catamaran here from Rhodes - an easy 1 hour ride.

 

Life is sımple here - eat, sleep, walk, swim ın the beatıful waters, clamber along the rocks and pebbles of the beach (ı keep comparıng the beach ıtself unfavourably to sandringham, but the water and the clıffs behınd and the dramatıc views cant be compared).  We have hıred a car - otherwise impossıble to get around - and I am sort of copıng with drivıng on the wrong side of teh road, though am not fındıng it so easy.  There are power blackouts lıke clockwork every mornıng and every evenıng.  I wrıte thıs from Torunç - the nearest shops to Amos.

 

Sitting on the balcony of our bungalow lookıng at the ancıent ruıns on the cliff opposıte and the dramatıcally blue-green waters whilst drınkıng an Efes beer ıs a pretty relaxıng way to spend an afternoon.

 

 

 

Greece

After leaving Israel on Tuesday, we had a day in Athens and are now in Rhodes.  Tomorrow we leave by ferry for Turkey, where we'll be staying in Torunc (a village some way out of Marmaris).

by ferry

The Acropolis in Athens was interesting, though surprisingly badly kept.  The Parthenon is heavily supported by scaffolding which hugely diminishes the effect - and the Acropolis Museum is only half-open.  Walking in the Plaka was fascinating for the sheer scale of the horrible souvenirs.

 

We are staying at a very cute little hotel in Old Town Rhodes.  The Old Town is surrounded by a wall built by the Crusaders and there is a huge Crusader fort here.  The town is absoutely overrun by tourists, many of whom are extremely pink englishmen and women who start drinking beer by 11 in the morning.  I had a huge culture shock on our first day here when we visited the main beach.  A long expanse of ugly pebbles, completely filled with umbrellas and fat, half-naked europeans slowly baking themselves.  And the restaurant touts are particularly irritating.  Yesterday we visited Lindos, another town on the island.  It was pretty much a smaller version of Rhodes Town although with a nicer beach.  We have had some excellent greek food though.

 

Today we visited the beatiful (and beautifully restored) sixteenth century synagogue and new Jewish museum.  There was a Jewish community here for millenia, until it was wiped out in the twentieth century by immigration and the Nazis.  1600+ Rhodes jews were deported to Auschwitz. 

Yad VaShem

Today visited Yad VaShem, the Holocaust Memorial.  It's an architecturally stunning set of new (2005) buildings on Mount Hertzl, just outside Jerusalem.  As you would expect, it has a very powerful emotional pull and is very sad.  It tries (and succeeds) in humanising the holocaust by telling individual stories among the greater horrors. 

 

 

Yemin Moshe

We leave Jerusalem tomorrow (sadly).

 

We've been staying in a (sort of crappy) apartment in the most amazing area-  Yemin Moshe.  Just outside the Old City walls.  It's pedestrian only, and paved with Jerusalem stone and all of the buildings are made out of the same material.  These photos don't really do it justice.  This one is better but still doesn't really capture the experience of walking down the paved streets.

Travel update

On Friday evening we returned to the Western Wall for the start of Shabbat. Lots of singing, thousands of people - all dressed up, many Haredi (ultra-orthodox). An incredibly emotional experience being at the epicentre of judaism.

Saturday *everything* was shut, except in the Arab sections of Jerusalem. We walked around the Old City before entering at Damascus Gate and wandering around the Muslim quarter. So different to the Christian and Jewish sections - incredibly vibrant and colourful. Then we continued into East Jerusalem and had coffee in an Arab cafe, before going to the Rockefeller Museum of Antiquities. A great collection of objects dating back up to 100,000 years. Absolutely worth seeing with some beautiful statues, old skeletons, ceramics, glass, metalware and amazing old objects. We then walked as far as the Mount of Olives before it became a little too unfriendly. We jumped in a taxi and in 10 minutes were back standing outside the King David hotel. Sat in the sun in Yemin Moshe (the area where we're staying) then dinner in Ein Kerem (a village near Jerusalem) with the son of friends of my parents and his Israeli wife.

Today the Western Wall tunnels which were absolutely incredible. A voyage into Jerusalem at the time of the Second Temple and even earlier. The tunnels travel most of the way along the Western Wall (the Western retaining wall of the temple complex) and were dug out after 1967 - they are fascinating beyond description. Followed by the City of David (Jerusalem as conquered by David - it sits outside the Old City and is even older than it). Not as impressive as a tourist site. Then shopping in the Old City and a quick walk through the City Centre. Tomorrow the Holocaust memorial and more.

Diversity

Coming from Melbourne, where the Jewish community is relatively homogenous - most (but not all of course) are of Eastern European origin and have relatively similar traditions - Israel is showing me the diversity of the Jewish people.

Ethiopians, Moroccans, Indians, Sudenese, it seems like there are Israelis from everywhere ... as well as the usual mix of jews of European background. Last night we had dinner with an Australian-Israeli and his Israeli wife, who is half Afghani and half Iranian by background.

Guns

I'm getting used to the guns in Israel; actually it has been a lot easier than expected. Semi-automatic weapons are everywhere in Jerusalem. And they're not there just for effect - they are carried loaded, with extra clips on the belt. It's a little disconcerting (as an Australian) to look up and realise you're sitting next to a soldier taking a drink of water with his gun dangling and pointing straight at you. But you get used to it.

Today was a new experience, though. After our (fascinating - probably the best thing we've done so far) tour of the Western Wall Tunnels [they run right under the Western Wall starting from the Western Wall plaza through the Muslim Quarter, coming out in the Muslim Quarter] we were escorted through the Muslim Quarter back to the Plaza by 2 guards with handguns drawn.

Zealots, Zionism and etc

This country is giving M and I so much to think about.

The Zealots in Masada.
The unnumbered millions murdered for their Judaism throughout history.
The obvious connection Israelis have to the land.

The connections between Judaism and the Land of Israel are certainly far deeper than I had appreciated from the other side of the world.

Jerusalem and more

We are now in Jerusalem: I write this from the Old City where it is almost Shabbat. Earlier we went to the Western Wall, prayed and placed prayers into holes in the wall. It is very moving and filled with so many people. The fact that I could go there makes me very proud for reasons I won't go into in order to avoid being too political. The old city is intimidating still - although I'm sure I'd grow used to it in time; it's like a 2000 year old bazaar and full of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Armenians and all sorts of people from all over the world.

Earlier we went to the Israel Museum, which was very impressive. The Judaica and ethnography were fantastic, as was the art collection. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the 10th century bible were mind-blowing. Masada in 40 degree heat was hot. And moving and an amazing story and the fact that it exists at all is hard to comprehend.

We are staying in Yemin Moshe, the most exquisitely beautiful part of Jerusalem. The streets and the buildings are made of jerusalem stone and it is beyond description. It's a pedestrian-only area and is peaceful and beautifully kept. The apartment is ok.

Yesterday was mostly spent in the Ein Gedi Nature Reserve in blistering heat. Another amazing experience. Beautiful animals (i fell in love with the ibex'), oases, vistas and just indescribable. Swimming in the dead sea the previous day was painful. Slathering ourselves in dead sea mud was great and our skin is now silky smooth.

Food continues to be fantastic overall. Israeli breakfasts should be compulsory. The Ein Gedi Youth Hostel food is passable (just). The coffee is not.

Food!

HAving some amazing food experiences in and around Tel Aviv.

 

Dinner last night at Orna & Ella, a very cool all-white restaurant that Natalie Portman apparently ate at recently (wow - celebrities!??).  Fantastic food and drinkable Israeli wine with Tel Aviv's (many) beautiful people.

 

Lunch on Sunday in a roadhouse in Acca with a mix of jews, arabs and randoms.  Amazingly good food.

 

Incredible breakfasts everywhere. 

SAlad, olives, bread, eggs, cream cheese, fetta, butter, jam.  Good coffee.  All of my dreams have come true.

 

Dr Shakshaka in the (very) old part of Jaffa.  North African jewish food.  Lots of couscous.  Lots of attitude.  Mint tea. 

 

Great juices.  Fantastic strudel.  Shawarma.  Falafel.  All good.

 

 

An arduous journey

Our journey from Melbourne to Ben-Gurion took 36 hours. 

A mere blip over a lifetime, but nevertheless a fairly painful amount of time to travel.

 

Melbourne-Sydney-Bangkok-London-Tel Aviv. 

 

The Good Shepherd.  From what I could hear an excellent film.  The mumbled dialogue was no match for the jet engines. 

Letters from Iwo Jima.  Awesome.  Ken Watanbe was fantastic, as was basically the entire cast.

 

BA is even worse than Qantas.  But the lounge at Heathrow is quite nice.

 

English people complain a lot.

 

Arriving in Tel Aviv shorly before Shabbat was fascinating - the streets mostly quiet, but a bustling market as people finished their shopping.

 

Israeli immigration surpriusingly stress-free.  M opted for her visa on a piece of paper but I got mine stamped in my passport [this is offered as an option as a number of countries will not allow entry to people who have visited israel]. 

My introduction to Israel - part one

M and I have begun our belated honeymoon and are in Tel Aviv on the first leg of our 8 weeks of travels.

 

We are having a fantastic time.  Tel Aviv has an amazing energy and beautiful beaches and I am loving being in Israel.  It is a very emotional experience for me - in particular today we visited the Museum of the Diaspora (the Jews of the world) and I was overcome by all of the history and by the continued existence of the Jewish people against all odds.  It is absolutely fascinating to see how much more complicated (and interesting) the reality of Israel is in comparisin to the theory one reads about.  More of my theories of life later.

 

Yesterday we took a tour to Israel's north - Ceasarea, Haifa and Akka (Acre).  Roman ruins, Crusader castles, arab souqs, Ba'hai gardens and much more.  All very rushed, but incredible.  The labyrinths of tunnels and chambers created by the Crusaders in the middle ages are beyond description. 

 

Old Jaffa (a few kilometres from Tel Aviv) is also very beautiful.  An amazing old town with narrow, winding streets and beautiful architecture.  Almost wholly unlike the soviet-style concrete monstrosities making up much of Tel Aviv.

 

Much great food.  But I won't bore you with the details.

 

Given that I'm on my honeymoon, also beyond description are the sights on Tel Aviv's beaches. 

2 more days

life has been crazy lately = no blog posts.

Today was in Court in Warrnambool - 3 1/2 hours each way from Melbourne. Drove up last night. A very very long day today; in Court, won the case, drove back, preparing for Court tomorrow in a long-running clothes counterfeiting case.

M and I leave in 2 days on our honeymoon.
Israel
Greece
Turkey
Italy
The Netherlands
Belgium
England
China

yay

Fascinating article about Milberg Weiss

I read this article in Fortune quite a while ago and have just come across it again. Absolutely fascinating.

The Brillo-haired Lerach, 60, who bitterly split with Weiss in 2004, taking Milberg's San Diego-based West Coast operation along with him in a new firm, owns a home in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., and vacation properties in Steamboat Springs, Colo., and Hawaii. Lerach travels the country in a chartered jet, says his exercise is drinking Scotch, and will be married this month for the fourth time, to a partner at his firm.

When police showed up at 20563 Beachwood Drive in Rocky River, Ohio, an upscale Cleveland suburb, they were probably expecting to find just another domestic dispute. It was about 4 p.m. on Aug. 22,1996, and a 37-year-old woman named Pamela Davis had reported that her boyfriend had assaulted her, bloodying her mouth.

What the officers were not expecting was the dizzying tale that Davis began telling. She identified her attacker as James "J.J." Little, an attorney with Arter & Hadden, the big Cleveland firm. She said she'd met Little five months earlier at a bar and that although she was still married and had a young son, she and Little planned on tying the knot in December. She explained that Little had a $1,000-a-week crack habit, that it wasn't the first time Little had struck her, that one time she'd ended up in the emergency room, that Little was usually "a very gentle man," that she didn't really want to press charges, and that she was three months' pregnant with his child.

Lerach signed on in 1976, opening Milberg's California office in San Diego. He was ferocious and creative, and worked like a madman, building "Milberg West" into an operation that competed with the New York office for influence and profits. His special target was Silicon Valley companies, whose volatile stocks made them juicy prey; he transformed Milberg into a lucrative volume business that churned out scores of class actions a year. This business model allowed him to settle cases when he wanted; if defense lawyers didn't buckle, he'd simply cash in on another lawsuit and continue to torment their clients.

A favorite Lerach tactic was to scream at CEOs, telling one: "I'm going to take away your f***ing condo in Maui! I'm going to take away every penny you own!" Milberg sued several companies repeatedly - 3Com (Charts) nine times. T.J. Rodgers, CEO of Cypress Semiconductor (Charts), called him "lower than pond scum."

Nine out of ten cases did settle. Companies reasoned that paying up was safer and cheaper than going to trial, since insurance companies paid most of the settlement bill. On average, investors recovered only about 15 cents of every lost dollar, while Milberg Weiss routinely pocketed millions. Weiss and Lerach saw their personal takes soar from $3.4 million apiece in 1990 to $16 million in 1995. During the 1990s, both men earned more than $100 million. Bitter executives came to view it all as an extortion racket - they called it getting "Lerached."

Myspace photobucket acquisition

It appears the News Corp (through MySpace) is acquiring photobucket - it has not been officially announced as yet but the price is said to be between US$250m - US$350m [presumably details will become clear in time].

A few thoughts:

- a good defensive acquisition; there is a huge crossover of users and this enables tight integration between the services

- the acquisition will cement News' interactive properties as a leading web desination; photobucket has a huge number of enthusiastic users

- if photobucket's video service expands then this could significantly reduce myspace's reliance on youtube for videos

- nevertheless it will not deliver significant 'present day' revenue to News Corp; and US$250m+ is a significant sum to pay simply for 'eyeballs' and 'integration'

- it is worth remembering that $250m+ is getting towards half of what News paid for MySpace and its associated businesses a year ago... with at least 2 implications (both of which are probably reasonably obvious):
* MySpace is now worth very substantially more than News paid for it;
* Web acquisition valuations are presently looking very very stretched by any traditional valuation methodology. And last time traditional methodologies were thrown out the window it turned out very badly for all concerned [except for vendors who were paid in cash or who promptly converted their shares to cash].

My solution (one which I believe News Corp has specifically rejected) is that News should sell a signficant minority stake in its online division, either to private equity or via a stockmarket float. This would validate the valuations (if this were thought to be useful) and would also provide a huge warchest [of other people's money!] to be used to further build the division.

PKD article in NYT

The New York Times has a (fairly lengthy) article on one of my favourite authors, Phillip K Dick. I really should write a full-length post on him sometime soon. The article is a little derivative of things I've previously read about PKD (and a little obvious: it doesn't really break through the surface of who/what PKD was), but it's nevertheless a good read.

I've set the full article out below.


A Prince of Pulp, Legit at Last

ARTICLE By CHARLES McGRATH
Published: May 6, 2007

ALL his life the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick yearned for what he called the mainstream. He wanted to be a serious literary writer, not a sci-fi hack whose audience consisted, he once said, of “trolls and wackos.” But Mr. Dick, who popped as many as 1,000 amphetamine pills a week, was also more than a little paranoid. In the early ’70s, when he had finally achieved some standing among academic critics and literary theorists — most notably the Polish writer Stanislaw Lem — he narced on them all, writing a letter to the F.B.I. in which he claimed they were K.G.B. agents trying to take over American science fiction.

With his inquiries of reality and what it means to be human, Mr. Dick’s influence extends into science and technology. Left, a Dick android developed by a roboticist.
Joseph Lederer/Paramount

Nicolas Cage and Julianne Moore star in “Next,” taken from “The Golden Man,” the latest Hollywood adaptation of a Dick story.

So it’s hard to know what Mr. Dick, who died in 1982 at the age of 53, would have made of the fact that this month he has arrived at the pinnacle of literary respectability. Four of his novels from the 1960s — “The Man in the High Castle,” “The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch,” “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” and “Ubik” — are being reissued by the Library of America in that now-classic Hall of Fame format: full cloth binding, tasseled bookmark, acid-free, Bible-thin paper. He might be pleased, or he might demand to know why his 40-odd other books weren’t so honored. And what about the “Exegesis,” an 8,000-page journal that derived a sort of Gnostic theology from a series of religious visions he experienced during a couple of months in 1974? A wary, hard-core Dickian might argue that the Library of America volume is just a diversion, an attempt to turn a deeply subversive writer into another canonical brand name.

Another thing that would probably amuse and annoy Mr. Dick in about equal measure are the exceptional number of movies that have been made from his work, starting with “Blade Runner” (adapted from “Do Androids Dream”), 25 years old this year and available in the fall on a special “final cut” DVD. The newest, “Next,” taken from a short story, “The Golden Man,” starring Nicolas Cage as a magician able to see into the future and Julianne Moore as an F.B.I. agent eager to enlist his help, opened just last month. In the works is a biopic starring Paul Giamatti, who bears more than a passing physical resemblance to the author, who by the end of his life had the doughy look of a guy who didn’t spend a lot of time in the daylight.

Mr. Dick died while “Blade Runner” was still in production, already unhappy about the shape the script was taking, though not the kind of money he hoped to realize. “Blade Runner” is probably the best of the Dick movies, if not the most faithful. (That honor probably belongs to “A Scanner Darkly,” released last year, in which Richard Linklater’s semi-animated technique suggests some of the feel of a graphic novel.)

There’s no reason to think Mr. Dick would have approved any more of the others, especially “Total Recall,” in which Quail, the nerdish hero of Mr. Dick’s story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale,” turns into Quaid, a buffed-up Arnold Schwarzenegger character. Meanwhile, as several critics have noted, movies like the “Matrix” series, “The Truman Show” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” though not based on Dick material, still seem to contain his spark, and dramatize more vividly than some of the official Dick projects his essential notion that reality is just a construct or, as he liked to say, a forgery. It’s as if his imaginative DNA had spread like a virus.

Part of why Mr. Dick’s work appeals so much to moviemakers is his pulpish sensibility. He grew up in California reading magazines like Startling Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories and Fantastic Universe, and then, after dropping out of the University of California, Berkeley, began writing for them, often in manic 20-hour sessions fueled by booze and speed. He could type 120 words a minute, and told his third wife (third of five, and there were countless girlfriends: Mr. Dick loved women but was hell to live with), “The words come out of my hands, not my brain, I write with my hands.”

His early novels, written in two weeks or less, were published in double-decker Ace paperbacks that included two books in one, with a lurid cover for each. “If the Holy Bible was printed as an Ace Double,” an editor once remarked, “it would be cut down to two 20,000-word halves with the Old Testament retitled as ‘Master of Chaos’ and the New Testament as ‘The Thing With Three Souls.’ ”

So for the most part you don’t read Mr. Dick for his prose. (The main exception is “The Man in the High Castle,” his most sustained and most assured attempt at mainstream respectability, and it’s barely a sci-fi book at all but, rather, what we would now call a “counterfactual”; its premise is that the Allies lost World War II and the United States is ruled by the Japanese in the west and the Nazis in the east.) Nor do you read him for the science, the way you do, say, Isaac Asimov or Robert Heinlein.

Mr. Dick was relatively uninterested in the futuristic, predictive side of science fiction and embraced the genre simply because it gave him liberty to turn his imagination loose. Except for the odd hovercar or rocket ship, there aren’t many gizmos in his fiction, and many of his details are satiric, like the household appliances in “Ubik” that demand to be fed with coins all the time, or put-ons, like the bizarre clownwear that is apparently standard office garb in the same book (which is set in 1992, by the way; so much for Dick the prophet): “natty birch-bark pantaloons, hemp-rope belt, peekaboo see-through top, and train engineer’s tall hat.”

To a considerable extent Mr. Dick’s future is a lot like our present, except a little grungier. Everything is always running down or turning into what one of the characters in “Do Androids Dream” calls “kipple”: junk like match folders and gum wrappers that doubles itself overnight and fills abandoned apartments. This sense of entropy and decline is what Ridley Scott evokes so well in “Blade Runner,” with its seedy, rainy streetscapes, and what Steven Spielberg misses in his slightly schizoid “Minority Report,” in which Tom Cruise waves his hands at that glass console, as if it were a room-size Wii system.

The theme of “Minority Report” — pre-cognition, or the idea that certain people, “precogs,” can foresee the future, with not always happy results — was an idea that Mr. Dick began exploring in the mid-’50s, along with themes of altered or repressed memory, which became the subject of “Total Recall,” “Impostor” and, more recently, John Woo’s “Paycheck.” Most of the Dick-inspired movies come from short stories of this period — several of them, including “The Golden Man,” written in the space of just a few months.

In the ’60s Mr. Dick turned his energies to novel writing, and with the exception of “Do Androids Dream” (considerably dumbed down in “Blade Runner”) and “A Scanner Darkly” (published in 1977 and, incidentally, the first book Dick wrote without the assistance of drugs) the novels don’t lend themselves so readily to the Hollywood imagination.

That’s because they’re much harder to reduce to a single concept or plot line. Three of the novels collected in the Library of America volume — “Do Androids Dream,” “The Three Stigmata” and “Ubik — are arguably Mr. Dick’s best. (Some diehards hold out for “VALIS,” his last major work, but that’s really his “Finnegans Wake” — a book more fun to talk about than to read.) All three are less gimmicky than the stories and are preoccupied with two big questions that became his obsession: How do we know what is real, and how do we know what is human? For all I know, you could be a robot, or maybe I am, merely preprogrammed to think of myself as a person, and this thing we call reality might be just a collective hallucination.

This kind of speculation — the stuff of so many hazy, bong-fed dorm-room bull sessions — takes on genuine interest in Mr. Dick’s writing because he means it and because he invests the outcome with longing. His characters, like Rick Deckard, the android-chasing bounty hunter in “Do Androids Dream,” desperately want something authentic to believe in, and the books suggest that the quality of belief may be more important than the degree of authenticity.

“The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch” and “Ubik,” written five years apart, are in many ways two versions of the same story, one tragic and one mostly comic. The title character of “The Three Stigmata” (1964) is not much to look at — his stigmata are steel teeth, a robotic arm and replacement eyes — but he still possesses Godlike, or perhaps Satanic, powers, and is able, with the help of a drug called Chew-Z, to enmesh people in webs of hallucination, one within another, so slippery and perplexing that even the reader feels a little discombobulated. The book is a horror story of the imagination gone amok.

“Ubik” (1969) is more redemptive. The godlike figure here is an entrepreneur named Glen Runciter, who runs what’s called a “prudence organization”: for a fee, he will debug your company and rid it of “teeps,” or secret-stealing telepaths. He manages to communicate with some of his former employees even when they’re dead and supplies them with a salvific aerosol spray, called Ubik, that appears to at least temporarily resist the tendency of everything to regress backwards to the way it was in 1939. Mr. Dick describes Depression-era artifacts — Philco radios, Curtis Wright biplanes — with great affection, however, and in this book death turns out not to be so bad; it isn’t eternal extinction, but a kind of half-life partly imagined by a restless young man (also dead) named Jory.

Jory is a bit of menace, but Mr. Dick has a soft spot for him as a dreamer and fantasist, as he does in “The Three Stigmata” for the colonists on Mars who, bored silly, like to get stoned and play with their Perky Pat layouts, elaborate Ken and Barbie sets that let them make up nostalgic stories about life on Earth. He also likes to embed in his books still other books, emblems of imaginative possibility, like the novel in “The Man in the High Castle” that postulates an Allied victory.

There is doubtless an autobiographical element to Mr. Dick’s novels; they read like the work of someone who knows from experience what it’s like to hallucinate. Lawrence Sutin, who has written the definitive biography of Mr. Dick, says that he took LSD only a couple of times, and didn’t particularly like it. On the other hand his regular regimen of uppers and downers, gobbled by the handful, was surely sufficient to play tricks with his head, and Mr. Dick worried more than once that he might be turning schizophrenic.

The books aren’t just trippy, though. The best of them are visionary or surreal in a way that American literature, so rooted in reality and observation, seldom is. Critics have often compared Mr. Dick to Borges, Kafka, Calvino. To come up with an American analogue you have to think of someone like Emerson, but nobody would ever dream of looking to him for movie ideas. Emerson was all brain, no pulp.

Tolo TV - Washington Post

The Washington Post has an article today about media freedom in Afghanistan, including coverage of the current Tolo TV controversy.

Last month, a nasty clash erupted between Tolo and the country's attorney general, an aggressive and flamboyant figure who took issue with a video clip of his comments suggesting that certain accused criminals would be executed soon, even though they had not yet been convicted. He accused the TV channel of misquoting him and sent a large squad of police officers to the Tolo offices, where they detained several staffers. The incident set off a high-profile bureaucratic and legal battle that is still playing out.

"Things are going wrong for the government, and they are trying to kill the messenger," said Saad Mohseni, one of three brothers who own Tolo TV. "It is the only sector that is holding the government accountable, but they see any criticism as a direct threat."

The master of the universe?

Interesting counterpoint to the recent Murdoch / Citizen Kane picture. I still think he's the ultimate biopic subject

Tolo TV update

See article from the Afghan Recovery Report, produced by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting.

Mohammad Abdullah, legal advisor to Tolo TV, denies the accusation that the station is partisan.

"It is absolutely untrue that we are taking sides," he said. "We are very careful about balance, accuracy, and fairness in our news. And we do not pick on one group—everyone complains about Tolo."

"Tolo is against Islam," said Mohammad Rahim, 35, a Kabul resident. "The prosecutor did a very good thing. Tolo is always insulting famous people. It goes completely against our culture. When I wake up at 4:30 in the morning and turn on the television, I want to hear a reading of the Koran or other religious programs. But Tolo is dancing at that time."

Another Kabul resident, Rahmin Karimyar, agreed. "If Tolo had no mistake with the news, why were they afraid to go to the prosecutor general's office?" he said. "Most of Tolo's programs are against the government, against the regime. It's okay that we have freedom of speech, but that does not mean that you can say anything you want."

My wedding speech

I FINALLY have my computer back; F***N Volante took about 6 weeks to fix it. Thanks M for lending me your old computer in the interim. Much appreciated.

And very excitingly I have access to my files - so here is what I know you've all been waiting for... my notes for my wedding speech.
Try not to get too excited.
And feel free to skim through the thankyous at the start; the good (or at least better) material is towards the end.
I freestyled a little while up on stage; but I think I kept pretty close to my notes.

Samizdat7's speech at his wedding on 18 March 2007

Thanks
M and I would like to thank a very large number of people. First, our parents for hosting our wedding and for making today possible. My new sister L, who is responsible for our amazing invitations and for so much more. E, T, M, V, P and R for their invaluable help with logistics today. My brother D for his help in making today a success.

L and D for being supportive and beautiful bridesmaids for M. I would like to thank L and A for their speech, and also to note that their time will come. In fact for A it is imminent; she will be married in May. L may keep us waiting a little longer. M and L for their assistance as MCs. M, L, D and D for keeping the Chuppah from blowing away. M, J and D for being called up at Shule with me. And of course I must thank J for bringing M and I together on Cup Day in 2004.

Guests
• D & K from Amsterdam – after travelling more than 40 hours and missing their London connection due to fog– nevertheless I hope that our wedding is a welcome respite from an Amsterdam Winter
• W all the way from Kabul, Afghanistan – I’m sure she’s welcoming the opportunity to leave the bodyguards at home and attend a social function without the presence of an armed militia
• M & M from Tokyo – I haven’t seen you in years and I’m very happy that you could make it here today
• S from Brisbane – thankyou for making it down to Melbourne for our wedding
• A & J, L, M & R, K, J and E & M from Sydney – well the obvious comment is that today they’re being given the opportunity to experience one of the Major Events Melbourne is famous for

My family
• As many of you will know, I have followed my parents into the law. Proof that some people never learn, no matter how clear the lesson.
• I feel very fortunate to have found a profession that I love and in which I hope to build a long career. I thank my parents for giving me the opportunity to obtain an excellent education and for instilling in me a belief in justice, integrity and the importance of reputation.
• My parents are crazy about M; which is fantastic, except when I get the feeling they are much more excited when they hear she is coming to visit than they are when they hear I am coming.
• Thankyou H and T for making today happen and for the love and support shown to me throughout my life.
• Thankyou also to D and his beautiful wife K – I am very very happy that you are able to be here to share this special day with us.

M’s family
• Have been made to feel very welcome both by M’s immediate family and by all of her extended family.
• From the first family function I attended – Pesach at the R’s in 2005 – I have been warmly welcomed.
• When I told S I planned to ask his daughter to marry me at C’s first birthday party last year he avoided the obvious temptation to make me sweat, for which I will be eternally grateful.
• Thankyou all

Commitment
This weekend M & I have made a number of commitments to each other.

In plain English, a form of language for which lawyers often strive but rarely achieve, M I promise that I will love you, that I will be there for you, that I will work with you to solve any problems that come up along our journey and that I will be true to you. And that we will have a lot of fun.

I am so excited about building a happy, Jewish home with you and about creating a family together and of course about the adventures we will have together over the years.

M
Apart from the obvious – that she’s beautiful, smart and a lot of fun – what can I say about M?
• Never met anyone like her
• As you’ve heard, we met on a blind date. Yes it does happen.

• Less than 2 months after we met, M and I headed off together for a holiday in New Zealand. Obviously it was too early in this new relationship to show my true colours, so I said yes to whatever was suggested.
• This explains why on that trip I somehow ended up blackwater rafting, hiking the Tongariro Crossing, kayaking in Able Tasman National Park and staying in a youth hostel for the first time. And not just any youth hostel. For some reason M organised for us to stay at “Extreme Backpackers” in Turangi
• I really should tell you about my blackwater rafting experience on that trip. When M suggested it in the safety of my apartment in Balaclava, I said ‘yes, sounds like a great idea’. Of course I had no real idea what it involved.
As a lifetime claustrophobe, I hadn’t appreciated that blackwater rafting means dressing in a wetsuit and floating for a couple of hours down an underwater river in the inner tube of a truck tyre. In a cave. I think my veneer of cool was somewhat tarnished when I started hyperventilating as I clambered down and realised that the last of the natural light was vanishing somewhere behind me.
Nevertheless, going back (and humiliating myself further) seemed somehow worse than continuing. I made it through the next hour and a half by breathing shallowly and refusing to contemplate what was happening.
Eventually we made it back out. And I announced that never, under no circumstances would I ever be doing anything like it ever again.
• Of course the next year we ended up hiking through Khao Sok National Park in Thailand. A rainforest teeming with life. Dangerous, terrifying wildlife. After a further exploration of the true nature of terror we made it back to our accommodation, which consisted of a treehouse where the wildlife was just slightly further at bay.
Luckily it wasn’t until after we returned to our treehouse that I read more about the park and the leopards, tigers, bears, cobras, pythons, vipers, scorpions, tarantulas and other members of the animal kingdom to be found there.
• M has introduced me to jogging. Despite a couple of years of half-hearted attempts, the highlight of which was a 10km funrun (aka a deathmarch) M has steadfastly refused to make fun of my speed, style or stamina. For which I will always be grateful.

• M has boundless enthusiasm and energy and is the most positive-minded person I’ve ever met.
Despite 2 ½ years of trying, I haven’t yet managed to break her spirit. And I hope I never do.
• It is hard to avoid clichés at a time like this and I’m not going to try too hard; sometimes they really are appropriate.
• M and I are very different but our differences, generally, bring us together.
• She sees the positive side of everything, she loves life, she gets things done and she is incapable of accepting ‘no’ as an answer.
• She encourages and supports me to pursue my passions and embraces my idiosyncracies.
• M's confidence, vitality, optimism, intelligence and support give me confidence and mean a lot to me. She challenges me and she loves me, and together M and I are capable of much more than we would be separately. I love her and look forward to sharing many, many more adventures with her over the years ahead.

The next chapter in Australia's most incredible career

I can't wait for the inevitable (but surely some years off) K Rupert Murdoch biopic.

From Today's NY Times (referring to the Dow Jones / WSJ offer):
And now for the charm offensive.

Interesting lyrical mashup

Jerusalem, if I forget you,
fire not gonna come from me tongue.
Jerusalem, if I forget you,
let my right hand forget what it's supposed to do.

They tried to make me go to rehab but i said 'no, no, no'
Yes I've been black but when i come back you'll know know know
I ain't got the time and if my daddy thinks I'm fine
He's tried to make me go to rehab but i won't go go go

Joseph descended sold as a slave,
thrown into a dungeon cause he wouldn't be swayed
Interpreted pharaoh's dreams and Egypt was saved
stock piled food for seven years of rain
then sold to all the nations when the drought came
Joseph rose to power and the yiddin stayed

They started to build and success was made
Pharos getting worried let's make them pay bound in chains
First born was sent down to their graves
Moshe was saved and a prince he was raised
Hashem spoke to him hears a message to relay
Take my Nation from Mitzrayim (Egypt) I see the suffering
Hard hearts ego breaks take sparks and make way

Sweet reunion, jamaica and spain
Were like how we were again
I'm in the tub you're on the seat
Lick your lips as I soak my feet

Then you notice lickle carpet burn
My stomach drops and my guts churn
You shrug and it's the worst
To truly stuck the knife in first

I cheated myself like I knew I would
I told ya I was trouble, you know that I'm no good
I cheated myself, like I knew I would
I told ya I was troubled, yeah ya know that I'm no good

Tolo TV

Tolo TV and its associated businesses (including Arman FM and Lemar TV) are the pre-eminent independent media outfit in Afghanistan. Together with a number of related enterprises Tolo TV is run by the Mohseni family - Saad, Zaid, Jahid and Wajma. Wajma's a good friend of mine (she flew all the way from Kabul to Melbourne for my wedding!) and things aint looking that great over there right now.

A recent (17 April 2007) press release by Tolo TV is reprinted in full at the bottom of this entry, but in short Tolo TV appears to be at war with Afghanistan's attorney general. And that's not a good place to be.

SEE Tolo TV entry on Wikipedia

See also recent blog posts at The Huffington Post, American Footprints and again here, Afghaniblog, Safrang and various other places

The present state of play (as I understand it courtesy of The Guardian) is that a government commission has ordered Tolo TV to apologise, it has refused to do so, and it continues to play (and to make available on its website) footage of police attacking the Tolo TV offices.

Tolo TV press release
Tonight at about 7pm Kabul time, more than 50 armed men from the 10th District Police, under direct orders from the Attorney General, Abdul Jabar Sabet, surrounded the offices of TOLO TV in Wazir Akbar Khan in Kabul Afghanistan. The Police physically entered TOLO TV premises and violently attacked staff of TOLO TV, taking three staff members of TOLO TV with them. The TOLO TV staff members, were taken directly to the Attorney General’s Office and detained.

Earlier at about 6.20pm tonight, the Attorney General, Abdul Jabar Sabet, had complained of a news clip on the 6pm TOLO TV news, which he claimed was inaccurate or misrepresented the Attorney General’s comments at an earlier press conference today. After investigating the complaint, TOLO TV management found the complaint to be invalid. The TOLO TV news clip broadcast was accurate and representative of what the Attorney General had said at the press conference.

At the time that the District 10 Police came to TOLO TV offices, they sought the detention of Hamed Haidary, who was the journalist covering the news clip mentioned above, and the “person responsible” for TOLO TV. The Police did not have any legal documentation. When asked to produce such documentation, the Deputy Commander of District 10 Police, wrote on a piece of paper the following:

To the administration of TOLO TV
In accordance with the order of the Attorney General, the responsible person for TOLO TV, and Hamed Haidary, the reporter, are required to appear at the 10th District Police Office.
Signed on behalf of the Commander of the 10th Police District, Mohammad Qasim Aminzoi


The above document was handed to TOLO TV staff, but was not accepted by legal advisors to TOLO TV as it is not valid in Law. Under the Constitution of Afghanistan, Article 38 states as follows:

Residences shall be immune from trespassing.
No one, including the state, shall have the right to enter a residence or search it without the owners permission or by order of an authoritative court, except in situations and methods delineated by law.

In case of an evident crime, the responsible official shall enter or search a residence without prior court order. The aforementioned official, shall, after entrance or completion of search, obtain a court order within the time limit set by law.


No arrest warrants, Court orders, or other legal or written documents were produced by the 10th District Police (other than as noted above). They advised that the Attorney General had verbally ordered them to detain TOLO TV staff. When TOLO TV staff, including TOLO TV legal advisor, Mohammad Abdullah, TOLO TV Administration Manager, Siddiq Ahmadzada and TOLO TV Security Manager, Lal Mohammad, tried to reason with the Police they were physically assaulted and then dragged into Police vehicles. These three TOLO TV staff members were taken to the Attorney General’s office (not the 10th District Police Office), where they were held until public pressure forced the Attorney General to release the TOLO TV staff after about 1 hour. A number of other journalists, including 4 staff members of Associated Press who were covering the incident, were also detained without charge and allegedly assaulted and their footage allegedly confiscated.

It should also be noted that under the Media Laws of Afghanistan, all complaints about the media should, at first instance, be directed towards the Media Investigation Commission which is tasked with investigating such complaints. This Commission is then able to refer the matter to the Attorney General’s office if warranted. This procedure was not followed in this instance.

We hereby state as follows:
- the actions of the District 10 Police and the Attorney General's office, including the Attorney General, Abdul Jabar Sabet, were a complete violation of the Constitution of Afghanistan
- the manner in which TOLO TV were physically abused and detained was completely unacceptable and against the law
- the physical transgression into TOLO TV offices is against the Constitution and the laws of Afghanistan
- the taking of TOLO TV staff to the Attorney General’s office was against the law
- the direct ordering of District Police by the Attorney General’s office is against the law
- these actions of the Attorney General’s office and the District 10 Police are not only against the rights of media enshrined in the Constitution, but also against the principles of democracy and against the national interest of Afghanistan



Further, we demand as follows:
- the immediate suspension from duty of all persons involved in this incident including the Attorney General, the Commander of the 10th District of Police and the Deputy Commander of the 10th District Police
- the creation of a commission who will be tasked with investigating this incident, to be comprised of members acceptable to the media
- the dismissal of all those found to have had any involvement in this incident which is against the laws of Afghanistan
- the prosecution to the full extent of the law of all of those found to have committed any crime

Further, TOLO TV Management would like to thank all of those people who have indicated their support for TOLO TV, including all other media organisations of Afghanistan and international organisations who have covered this event, human rights organisations, members of Parliament, unions representing journalists, the staff of TOLO TV, Lemar TV and Arman FM, all other organisations who have expressed their public support, and most of all the public of Afghanistan who have been unswerving in their support.

Amy Winehouse

I must be having a jewish recording artist phase. Following on from Matisyahu, I've decided Amy Winehouse is very listenable. Particularly Rehab.