Heat by Rob O’Neill

That got your attention. But, like the dastardly bastard I am, I’ve buried the evidence at the end of this post so you’ll have to read through the rest of my dross to get to it.

Aussie comedian Wil Anderson’s comments on ABC offshoot Triple J a couple of weeks ago also attracted a bit of attention. Communications minister Senator Richard Alston was having a good go at the ABC over bias when Anderson on his drive-time slot quipped, “but that’s just because he’s a right-wing pig-rooter”.

Oh how we laughed.

This morning “Professor” Anderson answered a Dorothy: “Why can’t we remember when we were babies?”

His theory: As our mums had to go without drink for nine months when they were pregnant, as soon as we were born they went straight down the pub (that’s why there’s always a pub near a hospital) and got pissed. Breastfeeding, we were all loaded too and that’s why a) we can’t remember when we were babies; b) babies don’t drive; c) babies fall over; and d) babies throw up all the time.

Simple really.

Okay, down to business. Right-wingers are dirty pervies.

We’ve always suspected, but the evidence was just anecdotal. A dodgy vicar here, a seedy scoutmaster there, guys in suits ducking quickly into massage parlours and strip joints everywhere. Then there was Herkt and Marshall’s faux tabloid scoops about pollies and prostitutes.

There was something there. A pattern. But nothing you could build a case on. Just suspicion. We needed facts.

Hard facts.

Now here it is, quantified: according to Australia’s most comprehensive government-funded study on pornography (how many have there been, for God’s sake?) Liberal/National voters are porn fiends. Australia’s most upright citizens may go to church on Sundays, but when they get home they slap a porno in the video and...

Well, let’s just say Sunday is the day of wrist.

Among other interesting findings, the fact most porn video users find the plots realistic and 20% of porn users are women.

Any bets on how Shane Warne votes?

Meanwhile, the leader of this suspect crew, John Howard, a regular church-goer himself, has once again won the trust of the electorate. You thought his promise not to introduce GST was good. You gasped at his children overboard accusations. You thrilled at his evidence on weapons of mass destruction. Now, surpassing all, he’s managed to dig a hole for himself over, of all things, Brazilian ethanol imports.

He denies he misled parliament, but nobody believes him, not even well-known ABC rent-a-redneck Andrew Bolt.

Mind you, Johnnie can do what he wants as long as Simon Crean sits across the way.

God Russell Crowe is boring.

I’ve been watching him being interviewed by Andrew Denton. Now Denton is a great interviewer, but even he can’t pump any blood into this one. Not only that, Crowe is obviously too big a star to share the programme with anybody else. So we have to put up with him for a whole bloody hour.

Last week Denton challenged Mark “Chopper” Reid, Australia's favourite earless criminal maniac. Reid challenged him back, joked wryly, used Aussie understatement to devastating effect and still gave half the programme to someone else. Great TV.

This week Russ drones on and on. Girlie declared him a wanker and went to bed, asking on the way that I not mention her in my blog.

Russ has got a new song, a duet with Chrissy Hines of the Pretenders- who really should have known better. He’s not very good. The song stinks too. To Denton, Russ rightly points out he isn’t one of these tossers that puts out a CD just because they’ve had a bit of film success. He’s the kind of tosser that put his first CD out in 1981.

While Russell is big enough to admit he was pretty bad back then, he isn’t big enough to give it away now. And he certainly wouldn’t be doing a duet with Chrissie Hines if it hadn’t been for his acting. More likely he’d be doing one with Chopper.

Yes, the Chopmeister has also been known to bless Aussie airwaves with his two EPs, “The Smell of Love” and “Get Your Ears Off”. According to his site there is another on the way. I can’t wait.

Back to 1981. That was quite a year for NZ music. The Clean, Toy Love, The Androids at the Rumba Bar, The Newmatics, Sneaky Feelings, Verlaines and the band that kept Auckland pumping when there was nobody else around: the fabulous Furies. And then there was Russ le Roc.

I never went and saw Russ le Roc and I guess I now regret it. I never went because so many people told me he was crap. Mind you, them were judgmental times, them were. Far more than now, and maybe more than anytime before, what you listened to determined who you were.

But just about everyone agreed Russ le Roc was crap.

Russ reckons he was tired and mourning the passing of fellow actor and part-time crooner Richard “MacArthur Park” Harris when he tried to lay one on local hero Eric Watson a few months ago. (Right, and there I was thinking they were in the dunny debating the meaning of insider trading). Fair call, Russ, but what we want to hear about is the ex-girlfriend you and Eric reportedly had in common. At least that won’t send us to sleep.

C’mon, for God’s sake, let’s get tabloid here.

No. He drones on.

I’m going to bed too.

Proof, Sydney Theatre Company, at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House.

Proof, by David Auburn, has been a startling theatre success across the world and has won full houses here over the last few weeks before departing on a broader tour.

However, it has also attracted some criticism as being an easy play, a play designed to please without really challenging or stretching the audience. In other words, the dialogue sparkles, the characters are rounded, the acting is superior and the plot is fully developed.

Many of the write-ups emphasise that the play is a mystery. Catherine (Jacqueline McKenzie) has been caring for her mathematician father. After his death a post-grad student is going through her fathers’ notebooks, pretty much finding the ravings of a deranged mind. Catherine gives him the key to a drawer in her father’s desk and in it he finds one last notebook, this time containing a “proof”, a brilliant mathematical proof.

But who wrote it?

However, the play isn’t really a mystery at all and if you go along expecting some sort of whodunnit you will definitely be disappointed. Instead Proof explores relationship issues, and aspects of genius and madness.

It may seem an unlikely vehicle for comic writing, but there is a large amount of humour in this play. Writer Auburn began his career with comic sketches, a capability that leavens what otherwise could have been quite a dark story.

It is telling that Auburn has formed a company to revive some theatre classics. This play has a classic feel about it, a family saga with a sort of Tennessee Williamson realism. He likes the “emotional availability” of these classics, their lack of cynicism.

In that sense Auburn and Proof, at this point, represent a turning back of the theatre clock, a reaction to high art in theatre, to postmodernism and multiple layers of irony. There isn’t a jot of cynicism in this play, and that, frankly, is refreshing. But it is also a form of escapism. I had a strong feeling the play was answering an audience need in that regard.

Just how much does Proof relate to and explore what it is like to live in the early days of the third millennium? Not hugely.

The characters are all appealing in their own ways. There are no nasties and no unpleasant surprises. It is all set on a back porch and we, the members of the audience, want to be there on that porch with the very appealing characters. We want to meet the physics geeks that cause havoc at Catherine’s father’s wake and hear the maths department band. I at least (and I suspect I was not alone) wanted to cuddle up to Catherine big time.

This is definitely a play that draws you in with its warmth. It has a veneer of big ideas, but it is really about families and about romance and a bit about melancholy.

Jacqueline McKenzie is superb, but won’t be accompanying the play when it tours – she has to go back to the US. She oozes personality and vibrancy. Jonny Pasvolsky was also very good as the post-grad student. As we were with the sponsors, JD Edwards, the cast joined us for drinks afterwards. Pasvolsky’s transformation from nervous, stammering geek (and suiter to Catherine) into his real persona was truly startling.

Barry Otto is a stalwart of Australian theatre, but I found his accent a bit odd. I’m not sure what it was meant to be.

Anyway, Proof: it’s really nice.

It started off well. I was on the roof of my apartment with friends and family, drinking champers and watching the sun come up over Rangitoto while some loon made the first water-ski of the new millennium along the harbour. We were all feeling rather mellow.

That was January 1, 2000. Around 5 am.

The coming decade had already been dubbed the “naughties”. We were going to shake off the constraints of the 90s and P-A-R-T-Y like it was 2099. The boom would go on forever and we’d all skive off for long lunches and shag each-other green. The long boom would just get longer.

Well so far I’m damn disappointed. The boom has fizzled out globally but, let’s face it, Australia and New Zealand are trucking along okay, for now.

Leaving the shagging aside for a moment, everywhere you look there’s a spirit of meanness and cheapness. Corporations have screwed down their costs totally and still search for further efficiencies. Profligacy in government certainly isn’t tolerated. We are all working our asses off with half the staff we used to have, no downtime, wage freezes everywhere, no chance to look up and check the scenery. We go home tired and grumpy.

Apparently Australians are increasingly in nesting mode. They invest in their homes rather than in holidays or getting away. Fear of global terrorism? I don’t think so. They’re just plain buggered.

Maybe it’s my energy levels…

My mate Angus got hit with that one in an interview recently. Now if there’s one person that doesn’t have energy issues it’s Angus, he’s a bit like the little Energiser man. What he does have a problem with is a) having me as a mate and b) being 44. That’s what the recruitment toady was really saying, you see (being 44, I mean). I have to wonder from some of the stories I hear whether so-called HR professionals in corporate organizations know what their outsourced recruiters get up to. These guys are almost totally unaccountable. The applicant has no comeback whatsoever, not even knowing who the client is.

Here’s an idea: every recruitment ad has a unique hotmail address listed where the applicants can communicate – or at least vent – direct to the client about the performance of their agent.

Anyway, I felt my age on the weekend too, playing cricket out at Burwood in the inner west. Glorious winter’s day, ground like concrete, very small pitch, we chased 290 off 30 overs and didn’t really get near. I’m sore all over.

It was interesting to note the obligatory war memorial in the corner of the park listed the NZ Wars as well as the usual suspects - Boer, WWI and so forth. I haven’t seen that before.

Anyway, I was never a great cricketer but I like to think I was a handy social player. Well, it’s all gone to pot. My bowling was inoffensive when it wasn’t wide. Batting my feet don’t move any more – not even a little.

The guys I was playing with are computer industry types. I don’t want to say geeks because they were all much more capable than me, even in my prime. But when your most effective bowler is nicknamed iMac and your skipper is Webco, there’s really only one place this is going: retirement.

Angus may not have “energy level” problems, but I sure do.

Ciao.

The level of debate and discussion over media matters here in Australia is several steps up from that back home. It is also very robust, with ABC’s MediaWatch taking the lead, closely followed by Crikey. The Australian has a weekly Media section but it’s often forgettable.

Mediawatch over here is fronted by David Marr, who was described by Crikey recently as “forensically accurate”. He did make one minor error, though, in this week’s show which he duly corrected. That involved his war of words with Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt. Despite that Marr has easily had the best of the row.

Bolt attacked author Alison Broinowski as a grant fed artist and intimated her loyalty to Australia was suspect. It was a fairly typical rightist attack, lacking a lot of substance and relying much on hyperbole. While Broinowski did receive some minor grants in the 1980s, that was hardly enough to earn the epithet “grant fed”. She would have starved to death long ago if relying on this government largesse.

Crikey chimed in on the debate to reveal Bolt himself has fed deep of the government trough. He has apparently received more dosh from the ABC for appearances on its Insiders show than any other pundit. And this while he attacks the ABC for lefty bias! Very rich.

Now nobody would describe Crikey as “forensically accurate” – even just plain “accurate” is a stretch. But the site is great fun and produced on a shoestring. It’s an odd mix of shareholder activism, media commentary and scurrilous gossip. Wanna fly a kite, this is the place to do it.

I really should subscribe…

Crikey chimed in on the Bolt-Marr debate on several occasions, including a very amusing recycling of an old Bolt column to help establish his credibility. Check this out:

So keen to find evil-doers

By Andrew Bolt

THE strange thing about the "debate" over our treatment of asylum seekers is that so many "good" people are so keen to think we're monsters.

Earlier this week, Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock said Iraqi boatpeople had thrown their children overboard when HMAS Adelaide tried to turn their boat back to Indonesia.

He said our sailors had to jump into the sea to rescue some 14 children and adults.

Only a fool could think Ruddock would make this up, given the incident was witnessed by dozens of sailors and officers.

Yet by this morning the Greens and the Australian Democrats were muttering doubts about the truth of story. Refugee advocate Marion Le told Jon Faine on ABC radio 774 she'd had "doubts from the beginning" and called for a "full inquiry into what exactly did go on and whether or not these claims were true".

Then Faine demanded Ruddock provide "independent corroboration" for his claim, stating: "We can't any longer simply say, well, someone told me that might be what happened."

Elsewhere in this paper you can see the photographs of the incident which I got from the Defence Department simply by asking for them. Proof positive."

Thank you Andrew. Message received: we should never question our political masters, at least not our Liberal ones.

What I find interesting about these debates is that I’m sitting there watching MediaWatch, feeling pretty sophisticated and so forth, but the Girlie loves to watch it too. Marr really knows how to dish out a serve.

This week he slayed a couple of Channel 7 morning presenters who totally lost it when a guest used an expletive. Over several days they revisited the debacle, digging themselves an ever deeper hole. Marr displayed the dictionary definition of the offending word, “fuckwit”, and then suggested some illustrations to go with it: pictures of 7’s morning presenters.

Oh how the Girlie laughed.

In my experience, journalists and media types are far more sensitive to appearances in the media than most of their victims – it’s something they share with PRs who also hate to become the subject of a story. Back in NZ Warwick Roger, former editor of Metro, had a bit of a rep for issuing writs and threatening fellow journos when he felt slighted.

This always seemed bad form to me, but maybe that’s because I don’t have a reputation to uphold – except for drinking too much.