Posts by Joe Wylie
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Although, to be fair, I'm the one who's dissecting the parentage of the guy who came up with the word for telescope 400 hundred years ago, so...
Well, that's a fecking sight more interesting than the exercise in arrested development that gave rise to it. But then, if you happen to be inside the magic circle of media pixie-dust, it's probably all rather riveting.
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Christ. This is the most depressing thread-page in the history of PAS. :)
Take it away Mr. Diamond. -
No offence, but how much Wiggles have you watched? For one thing, there's four of them. Plus, the major strength of the Wiggles is that they don't imitate children - they are clearly depicting adults, who occasionally interact with children.
You got me on the numbers - if only I'd taken the time to remember the colours. As it happens, I've been subjected to enough Wiggles to find them annoyingly smarmy - though, as you note, less so than their many imitators.
What bugs me is the way their franchise is protected against even well-meant parody, such as the group of volunteer firefighters at Ararat in Victoria a few years back, who let it be known that they were preparing a "Giggles" skit as part of a fundraiser for bushfire victims. The Wiggles' lawyers served them with a cease and desist order, along with a demand to surrender their costumes. Intimidated by such formidable legal clout they quickly complied. I find that downright creepy.
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Neil Diamond, right? I'm all alone in thinking he wrote some good songs? 'I'm a Believer'! That's a good song!
Cracklin' Rosie
Cherry Cherry (She got the way to move me)
Daydream BelieverI believe I could go on, but Ghod there were some real turkeys. And you can have Hot August Night. I mean, feck, have you seen the cover? He appears to be miming auto-eroticism on stage, and it's, like, about four feet long. That "knowing cheesiness" has hopefully improved with the years.
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I'm guessing someone had been told to include popular songs and so be relevant to the kids but hadn't really thought the whole thing through.
Ah, state-sanctioned pedagogical grooviness - the long road to the final hegemony of The Wiggles. BTW, am I the only one that finds it a little weird that, in a world prone to moral panics about child molestation, three rather creepy child-imitators are Australia's all-time top-grossing act?
The long term effect was to leave me with a lasting hatred for Neil Diamond.
So there was a certain soundness underlying the method. Though perhaps they slightly overdid it - a detached disdain for Mr. Diamond (& all his works & pomps) would have been sufficient.
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How enigmatically wistful (yet sinister) half-smiles? My Nana had one that screamed "I know a secret, and you don't want to find out".
Saw "something nasty in the woodshed" when she were a girl?
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And the whimsy. Don't forget the whimsy.
I did have prog-rock in mind. That and the persistent pustule whose posts have now been mercifully zit-squeezed. But yes, a dash of whimsey would have improved, say, Emerson Lake & Palmer's Fanfare for the Common Man.
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I believe that Giovanni made both of them up.t
I'm impressed. Boring ol' Tito's a bit one-dimensional though.
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Hang on: are we in the prog thread now?
Overweening pretension + minimal talent? Sounds progressive.
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(Now honestly all I want to do is drop everything I'm doing and reach for my copy of Flow my Tears. Curse you, Ian me!)
Wouldn't Confessions of a Crap Artist be more appropriate right now?
BTW, speaking purely as a figment, it's a bit disappointing to discover that Craig is just someone you invented to play sillybuggers with.