Lesson 1: The internet can get you fired or it can save your life.
Lesson 2: Copying someone else’s tune to make millions in royalties is wrong but you can’t stop an ISP’s customers from illegally downloading whatever they want.
BabbelOn observes that:
(a) It was lucky that the woman in Germany was admiring the sunset over the North Sea and not the Miranda Kerr photo spread.
(b) Men at Work should agree to pay damages of 60% of all the royalties collected by iiNet.
The Richmond skipper calls. One of their rookies has been in a car crash. Can I get there? Sure, I say. It’s 1.30am.
He rang the captain. That’s a good sign. There’s hope for him. Sometimes they don’t call anyone, try to get away with it. If they’re lucky, the papers don’t send a photographer, there are no fans with mobiles who recognise them.
Rookies get off lightly that way. Any senior player who smashes his car or is thrown out of a nightclub is bound to be snapped by everyone in sight and facebooked.
Lygon Street, That’s bad. No serious injuries, that’s good.
Police are there, if they’ve breathalysed him and he blew over 0.05, it’s a disaster. Career over before it begins. Players have been dumped for less.
There is a mercifully small crowd. The usual late night young and legless. It is drizzling, the road slick.
I find the kid being interviewed by the police. The car is totalled into a pole. A girl is sitting on a bench on the footpath with the ambos. She looks shaken, but OK.
I introduce myself to the constable. She looks at me with complete disinterest. The kid, Kelly is his name (an outside midfielder with raw pace picked at #17 in the rookie draft) is wide-eyed, possibly just over excited, possibly more. Maybe he has realised his new lifestyle is hanging by a thread.
The AFL has a protocol for this situation, and just about any other one you could dream up. The days of letting the clubs handle player behaviour are long gone. Pay-offs and cover-ups are not part of the new code. No-one expects squeaky clean but what it boils down to is fewer bad column inches in the Herald than league or soccer.
It shouldn’t be hard to out-perform the NRL, which sets a new benchmark every year (with rape and assault over-represented on the rap sheet). But this summer has been a hot one.
Kelly has no idea who I am or why I am here. I guess he slept through his induction. I’ll bet he took notes when the slide of the Ferrari went up in the financial planning session.
After the police have finished with him I take him aside.
Are you OK? Yeah, no worries.
Did they charge you? I think so. Who are you again?
(Jesus.) I’m from the AFL. Who’s the girl?
I dunno. I met her in the club.
Is it your car? Nah, it’s hers.
Were you driving? Yeah, she was too pissed.
OK, I’m going to put you in a cab. I want you to go home. Where do you live?
Dockside.
Do you have a key? Yeah.
I hail a cab and put him in it. Give him my card.
Go straight home and go to bed. Call me when you wake up.
You’re from the AFL? Am I in the shit?
Big time.
Bullshit. I didn’t do anything.
Just go home and get some sleep.
I tell the cabbie Dockside and the cab leaves, taking the cocky little bastard off into the cold, dark night.
I don’t see any press. I try the constable again. He’s been charged but she’s not saying anything more.
She looks at me curiously. She doesn’t know who the kid is and wonders why I am there. I tell her I’m a friend of the family. The protocol calls for full disclosure but there doesn’t seem to be any reason to bring football into it. What did he tell her his job was? Student if he was quick, probably more like gigolo by the look of him.
The ambos have finished with the girl. I introduce myself and sit next to her.
Are you OK? Yes.
What’s your name? Kristen. Where’s Jason?
He’s gone home. You should too. Where do you live? Bayview.
How old are you? 18.
Do you live with your parents? Yes.
Can you walk? Yes, I think so. I want to see Jason.
He will call you. Does he have your number? I don’t know.
Give it to me. Let me get you a taxi.
I write down her number and put her in a taxi. I give her my card, the plain one.
The girl’s new Corolla is winched onto the back of a tow truck. Her father will be thrilled.
It’s 3am by the time I get home. Friday morning. I love pre-season.
This year’s Turner Prize went to a man who paints on walls.
Don’t bother looking at the official website if you want to see the work (BabbelOn nominates the Tate gallery’s Turner Prize page as the world’s worst arts website.)
The work cannot be transported or, therefore, sold. It will be painted over – all that gold leaf and hours of labour for nought (well, not quite, there is the £25,000 prize money to consider). It looks beautiful but does its ephemeral quality give it an unfair advantage, like a pretty girl glimpsed getting into a taxi?
While Richard Wright is celebrated, Britain’s most famous wall painter, Banksy, is criticised for painting over the work of a rival. Apparently there are rules when it comes to graffiti.
BabbelOn would like to see Banksy’s work in the Tate, painted over once a month, and Richard Wright’s on a public wall, preserved forever.
Perhaps he is too out of it to know what he is saying*?
We ought to be putting our resources into ensuring that kids stay off drugs, and for those who have become addicted, into helping them get off drugs.
*Or perhaps he is Andrew Stoner, New South Wales Nationals leader and BabbelOn is just trying to be funny.
Presumably James Cameron is so rich that he could personally find the $400M or so it took to make Avatar. Nevertheless, imagine what it would be like to be a studio executive meeting him to discuss his next project.
JC: It will take five years, cost more than twice as much as any film ever made and will rely on technology that hasn’t been invented yet.
You: Fine thanks Jim, how are you?
If it bombs, it will take down the studio (and possibly the media telecoms conglomerate that owns it). But if it works …
Could you afford to say no?
So what if the script looks cliched? That never sank Titanic. People like a story they can follow. You don’t want to make ‘em work too hard. Why eliminate the low-brow end of the market? Art house is for the little guys who can’t afford anything else and the French.
There’s a lot to like about Avatar. The planet (Pandora) looks astounding. In 3D it is astonishing. Sam Worthington is terrific. The narrative is strong and the opening scenes fly along, right up until Sigourney Weaver appears asking for a cigarette.
She is playing a smart-mouthed environmental scientist. At this point, a bell went off for BabbelOn. Sigourney is still Ripley (believe it or not).
The difference here is that the aliens (Na’vi) are blue (Na’vi blue?) and they might be friendly (if we don’t push them too far).
Sam arrives on Pandora, is kitted out with his new blue avatar and off he goes stumbling into the jungle, like Andie MacDowell in Greystoke.
His mission is to get to know the natives, earn their trust so the mining company can loot their planet.
The avatar concept (conceit?) offers much for the screenwriter (JC gives himself the only credit). Issues of identity, empathy and prejudice can all be addressed. “I see you” is the way the aliens greet each other. But can we get inside their skins, literally? For Sam, it’s the ultimate embedding campaign.
However, as this is a James Cameron Film, the cliches do begin to pile up. The head of the security force is a tough talking, big noting, battle scarred veteran straight out of central casting. The female chopper pilot is another Linda Hamilton character – down to the singlet.
The alien who saves our hero is, naturally, female, the chief’s daughter and (albeit three metres tall and blue) a babe.
The Na’vi operate a tribal system much like (exactly like?), say, the Navajo, riding horses (albeit six legged) and shooting bows and arrows. Not so original after all, even in 3D.
Our hero is taught the ways of the tribe, even to the extent of becoming initiated as a man (A Man Called Horse?) Bearing in mind that the Na’vi are deeply suspicious of the humans, sure that they only want to destroy the planet for its minerals, it’s as if Al Qaeda were to knowingly train a CIA operative, hoping to convert him to the jihadist cause. Now there’s a story idea.
Sam falls in love with the Na’vi babe, changes his allegiance and fights with the Na’vi against the imperialist, plundering humans. So, who are the real aliens? Cameron leaves us in no doubt.
Pandora is the Amazon, Vietnam, Africa, Iraq, the Wild West, Woodstock, a WTO protest, the Body Shop and Greenpeace.
Avatar is Dances with Wolves.
Andrew Bolt sees it as the end of the climate change movement (sunk under the weight of its own hubris).
BabbelOn wouldn’t go that far but does see it as the beginning of 3D movie-going.
Surely after pulling himself through 96 kms of fetid New Guinean mud, a short drag across the carpet in the Brisbane Airport would be no big deal?
Arrogant celebrity disabled person Kurt Fearnley had a hissy fit at the Jetstar counter when asked to check in his wheelchair. Fearnley claimed that the wheelchair offered to him was unsuitable as it had little wheels and he couldn’t push it himself. He described the alternative offered to him as being strapped to a trolley.
BabbelOn has obtained a transcript of the check-in conversation. Readers can judge for themselves whether Jetstar discriminated against Fearnley.
Jetstar staff (Richelle): Morning Sir, can I see some ID please? Can you reach up here?
Thanks, Kurt. And how many bags are you checking in? Just the one?
You’ll have to check in your wheelchair.
KF: Um, how will I get to the gate?
JS: We have a chair that you can use. Bevan, can we have a wheelchair please.
There you go. Do you need help getting in to it?
KF: I can’t use that chair. I can’t push it, it needs someone to push it.
JS: Do you have a carer here with you? Or a friend?
KF: My brother is here but I don’t want to be pushed. Why can’t I take my chair to the gate?
JS: It’s our policy. It’s for safety reasons. All wheelchairs have to be checked in.
KF: I’m not getting in that chair.
JS: Could I ask you to just wait over there? I’ll just check these other people in while you decide what you want to do.
KF: I’d rather crawl through the airport than sit in that chair and be pushed.
JS: So you’ll be checking in the chair then will you?
No discrimination there. Jetstar treats all its passengers that way.
It was hands down the toughest thing I have ever done.
Kurt Fearnley on crawling the Kokoda trail (ABC 702 22 November).
While other athletes cheat and whinge about funding and promote dubious hair restoration techniques and glass their girlfriends and share their tawdry stories in return for royalties and botox and sunbed themselves and abuse umpires and take drugs, you just quietly win the New York marathon and then crawl 96 kms through the mud to raise $20,000 for charity. Just what kind of a role model do you think you are?
BabbelOn nominates Kurt Fearnley for un-Australian Sportsman of the Year.
The amiable looking chap with the generous hooter and the knowing gaze could write a bit.
Bech saved Petrescu for last, and walloped his back, for the man had led him to remember, what he was tempted to forget in America, that reading can be the best part of a man’s life.
John Updike (1932-2009)
Nice try Rex but save it for the judge.
In an unrelated story, Californian President Arnold Schwarzenneger has shown grammatical dexterity, if not linguistic subtlety, in a letter to the motley club of girly men that passes for a legislature in that golden, if bankrupt, state.
You can read the letter here.
| At the outset, Babbelon applauds the use of language, |
| carefully constructed pieces that play with a |
| reader’s mind, exercising a full range of faculties, beyond the |
| obvious and literal, opening the recipient up to the |
| sub-surface. If an undercurrent is pulled across the warp of |
| the text, a resonance is produced that delights |
| intellectually. To find such creative depth in political |
| California gives Babbelon hope for the word. |
There is a name for the particular structure achieved by the Governator but it escapes Babbelon for the moment. No doubt it will be back.
My name is Rex Crane and I am a hero,
I fought in the war – I showed no fear of
the Japanese though captured and tortured
and held as a POW, after my mates were all slaughtered
I was only 15, left behind by my family,
in Malaya, just my older brother and me
We joined the other “stay behinds” and fought as guerrillas
We were only young men but we were fearsome killers
Eventually the Japs caught us and threw us in jail
My feet were beaten, my hand pierced by a nail
We worked on the Burma railway, two thousand men died
But my brother and I made it, we came home alive
Now my brother has passed but I still carry on
Reminding Australia that we have to be strong
I’m not really a hero, just one who was there
Australia’s war dead are a cross we all bear
I’ve had a good life, I’ve been lucky I think
The ex-POWs of Australia President
I’ve had a long innings, I’m 83 now
I’m ready to die quietly, to take my last bow
Until the phone rang on Wednesday and it all went awry
You see everything I just said is an absolute lie
I never lived in Malaya, I never fought in the war
I grew up in Adelaide, life was a bit of a bore
I wanted to join up, it seemed like the go
My mates and I rode our bikes to the depot
But the navy bloke there said “You’re too young to fight
Just get back to work, get out of my sight”
So that’s what we did, we went back to school
It should have ended there, but I was a fool
I did an apprenticeship, worked all my life
Ran a hotel in the bush, found and married my wife
One day I saw an advertisement, Singapore POW Day
So I went along, I knew what to say
I’d read a few books, I thought I’d pretend
Play the war hero, have a bit of a lend
They invited me in for tea, everyone was so kind,
Before I knew it I was in a bit of a bind
One thing led to another, I had to keep going
They gave me a pension, my profile was growing
Until a war researcher saw straight through me
She’d written a book about the “stay behinds” history
She rang a journalist, they all started looking
My days were numbered, my goose was cooking
My brother’s alive, he lives in the States
The journalist rang him, he soon put her straight
then the journalist rang me and the party was over
I’d been living a lie and she blew my cover
I always just hoped to peg out you see
And that would be it, my little fantasy
No one would know, no one would care
Isn’t that OK, isn’t that fair?
People believe what they want to believe
I know it was wrong, I was naïve
But you know that you need me, so I put on a show
We all need our heroes, even fake ones, you know?
