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.

Matisyahu

My next obsession, I think, will be Matisyahu - the orthodox/lubavitch hiphop/reggae artist and nominee at the 2007 grammy awards. I must be jumping on the bandwagon pretty late, because there's a fully-formed wikipedia page.

I'm not as yet fully convinced by the Message in a Bottle cover, but Jerusalem rocks.

See official website here.

And some more Rachel

I've had a pretty crappy few days; perhaps a few more Rachel pictures will improve things a little

Revisiting Miller's Crossing

Watched Miller's Crossing the other day for the first time in years. Like a few other films I loved then left for years (eg. Blue Velvet) it is even better than I remember it... and Gabriel Byrne is simply incredible. The film that showed me the true talent of the Coen Brothers.

Intricately plotted - and it all makes perfect sense at the end (so long as you pay attention). Fantastic minor characters (and character actors). A cool anti-hero. A film set in the prohibition era, confronting issues of racism and homosexuality. A sexy femme fatale who screams trouble. Awesome dialogue. I could say plenty more but duty calls.

Just because

It's been too long since I posted a Rachel Bilson picture

Allen keys and more

As I sit on my couch typing, M is putting together a large, expensive floor lamp which was a wedding present. She is complaining a little, but I know she loves putting things together - it is in her genes as a third-generation engineer. Whilst as a lawyer I am pretty happy watching her do it and making witty / annoying comments.

In recent years I've watched many items of furniture being assembled; it is clear that we live in an Ikea world - even if we never actually buy anything from Ikea.

It is virtually impossible to buy any large item without [sorry for the interruption - I just had to go hold the lamp while M screwed something in] having to do most of the assembly work yourself (or, in my case, sitting around while your wife does most of the work).

A combination of European design and Chinese workmanship ensures hours of fun for the whole family... so long as you have the right Allen key.

A painful field of expertise

As someone who has broken ribs on three separate occasions, I can definitively state that it hurts. Quite a lot. And everything is sort of harder for a few weeks. And sneezing really sucks.

This time I don't even have a good story.

The first time: go-karting at Mike's bucks party
The second time: whilst having sex

This time: tripped over at home while thinking about work and fell onto an outdoor umbrella stand.

Bloomberg

Bloomberg's money machine

There's power in that name. The man, Michael Bloomberg, runs New York City and may have even grander ambitions. The company, Bloomberg LP, is a prodigious success and just keeps getting stronger.


Fascinating article on Bloomberg LP from Fortune... the company is an absolute powerhouse as a leader in the financial information oligopoly - a pretty good place to be!

Assuming operating profits are indeed $1.5 billion, and assuming also that terminal sales will keep rising - there was a gain of 26,000 in 2006 - a price of $20 billion might be not only possible but close to a floor. Amounts above that seem entirely feasible.
And even at $20 billion, Mike Bloomberg's stake would be worth more than $13 billion - which is a far sight above the $5.5 billion that Forbes has just accorded the mayor in its billionaires' list

When a customer buys a standard Bloomberg Professional subscription he enters into a two-year contract, paying quarterly in advance. If the customer has just one Bloomberg, the rate is $1,800 per month. If he has multiple Bloombergs, which is overwhelmingly the case, the charge is $1,500 for each. Should the customer want Bloomberg to, for example, effect equity trades or supply flat-panel screens, there are additional charges; real-time stock prices are among the other items that cost extra.

An unusual element of this pricing structure - and a pillar of the business model - is that Bloomberg absolutely will not provide volume discounts. The monthly price if you have two Bloombergs is $1,500 for each; the price if you have 2,000 Bloombergs is $1,500 each. Neither can you buy only a portion of Bloomberg's data. It's the whole megillah or nothing.

Facebook

Excellent blog post / article / meta-article about Facebook on the Fastcompany website.

A few extracts:

a billion dollars (allegedly) is a lot of money. But specifically for businesses that live on the web, memories from the bubble of yesterdecade – epic stories of overvaluation and excess, business plans on backs-of-napkins, etc – have taken on powerful second lives as punch lines and cautionary tales. Hey: Lesser mortals, even well-meaning ones, have blown through investor money only to end up as occasional entries in “where are they now” columns. Or worse. And we all love the smell of schadenfraude in the morning. I mean, come on.

Facebook investor Peter Thiel put it this way - “The strange boom/bust cycle in the late ‘90s is a big part of things here. Most people who lived through that remember the bust more than they remember the boom. That distorts a lot of thinking.” (I lived through it, and he’s right.) His bigger point is that Zuckerberg’s youth works in his favor – he’s less likely to be haunted by a specter of imminent market meltdown and stay focused on building something worthwhile.

You'll all recall Peter Thiel of course - founder of X.com / Paypal and superstar hedge fund investor / space nut.

although I suppose it’s possible that Facebook could seriously screw things up, I’m inclined to believe that they are up to the task. This is a pretty smart group – 200 strong - who think very deeply about what, how and why they do what they do. And as any weary Web 1.0 survivor can tell you, a company that is ramping up for the sole purpose of selling itself off to the highest bidder has a very specific feel to it

Truer words were neve spoke

Meanwhile, the main Fast Company article about Facebook is here - I will post about it later

A long week

(almost) the end of a very long week - running 3 cases in a week is exhausting...

wedding photos

Anyone not already overdosed on the M&T wedding is welcome to check out a fairly random selection of photos posted up on photobucket.

A very proud moment

Just checked out the photos Lucas posted of my bucks night... Am very very proud to report that one of the photos has been deleted for violating Photobucket's terms of service.

Wow, it must have been an even better night than I remember.

How can I be the last person to blog about it? It was my f*n wedding!

Since writing my last post, I've become aware that both Lucas and Emilie have blogged (at length) about my wedding last weekend.

Lucas' post has its charms - I enjoyed the reprint of his speech - but Emilie's post is by far the better of the two, as it contains absolutely no snarky comments or allegations of totalitarian repression.

In fact I think it is worth reprinting a few short extracts from Emilie's post:

M was escorted through the gardens to the Chuppah by her parents.
Her dress was divine.
It was a golden cream sheath that had gold glass beading with thick straps.
The veil and the material of the Chuppah echoed each other.
It really was a golden experience.
The bride and groom were smiling and so was every single guest.

T and M are so different
She's a really out-doorsy engineer who'd traveled all over the world in a hardcore kind of a way and is really into things like sky-diving, rock climbing and black water kayaking
T is a Barrister, uber-educated gentle person who is into interesting things like Korean cinema.
He's a top guy.
And I love that they thrive on each other’s differences and are eager to learn, understand and experience each other’s passions.
They are a perfect human compliment.

What a great wedding!

T has restored my faith that not all Jewish boys in Melbourne are complete knobs!

In case anyone's curious, both Emilie and Lucas have included a few photos of the wedding.

The big day

M & I were married last Sunday 18 March 2007 at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne, under a big old gum tree in front of the lake. It was a perfect day and a perfect location.

The wedding was followed by an (awesome) celebration at the Observatory Cafe at the Gardens... dancing the hora, a bbq dinner, various funny & short speeches, drinking, more dancing, a Swollen Members track, then back to our house with about 20 friends to keep partying ... we had a great night and I hope those of my readers who joined us for the wedding and celebrations did too.

And we followed this up with a few days in Red Hill, which was great. Lots of relaxing, a hike along the Two Bays track and a spectacular private picnic at Montalto winery.

More wedding minutiae to follow, including possibly some photos and an edited extract of my speech.

Goodwill

BB has today posted on the Google acquisition of Youtube and the much-hyped 'fact' that the acquisition was on a price/revenue multiple of 100.

A few thoughts:
- I am surprised the multiple isn't higher... youtube would at the time of acquisition have been generating f-all revenue... it clearly wasn't bought on the basis of present revenue, but on the basis of its clear leadership of a segment in which google would consider itself the natural leader
- it is inconceivable that the price/revenue multiple would have been the deciding factor (or even a relevant factor) in determining the purchase price or the valuation. a very early stage (almost pre-revenue) company like youtube can only really be valued on the basis of its potential or else on raw belief / hype... multiples of any kind are largely meaningless
- BB writes that $1.2b of the purchase price is assigned to goodwill. From my M&A experience, 'goodwill' is that part of the purchase price that doesn't fit anywhere else... you can't fairly call it a tangible asset (eg. a computer, a chair) or an identifiable intangible asset (eg. the copyright in a software program, a trade mark). Although of course I do not hold myself out as an expert on accounting for intangibles under US accounting rules.

The Host

Great review from the New York Times of my favourite movie of 2006

It Came From the River, Hungry for Humans (Burp)

The plug-ugly monster that jumps out of a city river in “The Host” to scoop up and chomp down on those unlucky enough to cross its path — men, women, a whip-smart 13-year-old girl named Hyun-seo — looks like something you might find lurking at the bottom of a Hieronymus Bosch painting or trolling the depths of a murky restaurant aquarium in the middle of a toxic dump. Blink and it looks like something that slimed out of the sea in a creationist nightmare.

It would have to be an awfully big aquarium, as it happens, because this fishy creature, this mystery from the deep with the gulping petaled mouth and prehensile tail is the size of a school bus and restless to boot. It rushes underwater and races over ground, its sturdy little legs churning turf. Every so often it spirals into a back flip as gracefully as a prepubescent Romanian gymnast or drops into the water like a knife, scoring a perfect-10 dive. It’s as ugly as sin, this thing, but it has style to burn. As does this film, a loopy, feverishly imaginative genre hybrid from the South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho, about the demons that haunt us from without and within.

By turns a carnival of horrors and a family melodrama (variations on the same theme), “The Host” is also a rethink of those 1950s cine-quickies in which mondo ants, locusts, wasps, crabs and snails and one seriously ticked off amphibious reptile go on the rampage, visiting punishment on a hapless, guilty humanity. Like Godzilla (Gojira in the original Japanese), some of these mutants were born under a mushroom cloud; others were hatched in the B-movie hothouse of box-office opportunism. The creature running amok in “The Host,” meanwhile, was spawned by a 37-year-old South Korean who has spent his entire life in the shadow of the American military presence. No wonder the bad guys look like character actors on leave from Hollywood. They are.

As if in preparation for the carnage to come, the once-upon-a-time story opens in a modern autopsy room with two men, an American and a Korean, dressed in scrubs. Bathed in an eerie, silvery blue light, the American boss (Scott Wilson) orders the Korean (Kim Hak-sun) to dump bottle upon bottle of formaldehyde down the drain, on the pretext that the containers have become too dusty.

Stunned, the Korean objects, noting that the chemical will flow from the drain into the Han River, the fat ribbon of water that cuts through Seoul and empties into the Yellow Sea. The American grimaces, capping his request with a barely veiled threat (“That’s an order”) that betrays him as an emissary of American military might.

Fast-forward to a day like any other and the Park family running its snack stand on the banks of the Han. Calculatingly, goofily dysfunctional, with enough issues to populate a couple of 12-step groups, the Parks don’t seem all that different from the brood in “Little Miss Sunshine.” There’s gramps, Hee-bong (Byun Hee-bong), his three adult children — including an unemployed salaryman, Nam-il (Park Hae-il), and his archery-champ sister, the lovely Nam-joo (Bae Doo-na) — and only grandchild, the aforementioned Hyun-seo (Ko A-sung). Mostly, though, there is the family’s oldest son, Gang-du (the wonderful Song Kang-ho), an overgrown baby with a shock of badly bleached blond hair and a moon face that waxes and wanes depending on his proximity to his beloved daughter, Hyun-seo.

Bong Joon-ho’s previous features include a smart-aleck exercise in gratuitous nonsense called “Barking Dogs Never Bite” (they just comically kick the bucket) and the shiver-inducing thriller “Memories of Murder.” As he did in “Memories,” about the hunt for a serial killer, Mr. Bong relies on a familiar bag of movie tricks in “The Host.” But, much like Steven Spielberg (an unmistakable influence), he makes all those old tricks feel new. That’s especially true during the monster’s first attack, when Mr. Bong instills an initial sense of calm and then of rapidly escalating panic through his masterful orchestration of the various tempos created by the actors (walking, then running), the monster (swimming, then galloping), the camera (tracking, then racing) and the edits (slow, slow, fast!).

The opening attack is sensationally well directed, and if the rest of the film never quickens the pulse in the same accelerated fashion, it does give the story both its principal excuse (the monster grabs the granddaughter) and something just as satisfying if unexpected: a portrait of parents, children and the ties that bind, sometimes to the point of near-strangulation. “The Host” may be born out of sociopolitical tensions, scares about SARS and the avian flu, or Mr. Bong’s imagination, but it’s also a snapshot of a modern South Korea bordering on social anarchy, one in which a fatalistically obedient old-timer and his three preternaturally immature adult children face down a rampaging beast along with clueless doctors, Keystone Kops, faithless friends and even hordes of paparazzi.

Besieged by humans and monster alike, the family has nowhere to go but deep inside itself. This us-against-them strategy works deviously well because it ensures that the Parks are the star attraction, not the monster. Not that the creature doesn’t have its share of show-stopping moments, as when it’s caught by surprise in midgulp, a pair of legs dangling from its mouth. Or when it regurgitates a corpse into its lair with a slimy splat, an act it seals with a tender lick of its long tongue. It’s in this lair that Hyun-seo, her face and schoolgirl’s uniform flecked with muck, proves her mettle, retrieving the cellphone that becomes the lifeline to her family and playing protector to another child who adds a touching dimension to the mix.

Although some of Mr. Bong’s action scenes here are the match of those in “Jaws,” he seems made of sterner stuff than Mr. Spielberg. He can seem just as cruel, readily putting children in mortal danger, but he doesn’t share the American master’s compulsive need for tidy endings.

“The Host” is a loose, almost borderline messy film, one that sometimes feels like a mash-up of contrasting, at times warring movies, methods and moods. Mr. Bong would as soon have us shriek with laughter as with fright. But it’s precisely that looseness, that willingness to depart from the narrative straight and narrow, that makes the film feel closer to a new chapter than a retread.

Likewise it is Mr. Bong’s willingness not just to contemplate but also to deliver a worst-case scenario that separates “The Host” from run-of-the-mill horror and may have helped make it a runaway hit in Korea. Closer to home the film reminds me less of the usual splatter entertainments that clutter American movie theaters and more of another recent horror film, the one in which a newly thawed alien with a giant brain delivers apocalyptic warnings to humanity about its imminent future. I’m talking of course about the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Much like that Al Gore big-screen lecture, “The Host” is a cautionary environmental tale about the domination of nature and the costs of human folly, and it may send chills up your spine. But only one will tickle your fancy and make you cry encore, not just uncle.

AB, RS and I - lunch @ Pier 3

AB and I - lunch @ Pier 3

AF & JM @ Melbourne Wine Room

NP and me

BB & AP @ Melbourne Wine Room

Double chivas on the rocks - my bucks' night @ Melbourne Wine Room

(self-)censored almost to a crisp

Well, I survived my bucks' night (query appropriateness of the apostrophe). And early reports are emerging - BB, the man for whom the phrase unreliable narrator was coined, provides a version of events here

I planned to write my impressions of the evening but after some minutes work have given up the task as impossible due to haziness of memory, the necessity for self-censorship and the varied humiliations involved.