Author: Stuart McCullough

We were looking for a new car. This process involved staring at various websites and wandering into car yards, hoping that someone would come to our assistance. Some people fell over themselves to help out.
Continue reading “The Colours of My Mind”

How dare they toy with my emotions in such a cold, calculating fashion. Despite all appearances to the contrary, I have real feelings that are not to be trifled with for sport or kicked around like an emotional hackey-sack. My emotions are not to be played with or taken for granted. They ought not be subject to trickery or slight of hand.
Continue reading “The Curse of the Corporate Love Rat”

What’s the worst job in the world? It’s a question that could easily be answered in 2003. Back then, as Coalition forces poured into Iraq, the holder of the unenviable title of ‘worst job in the world’ was Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf – the Iraqi Information Minister. This was the man whose job it was to face the international media on a daily basis and try not so much to put a positive spin on things as attempt to convince you that up was down and black was white.
Continue reading “The Curse of Having Your Wish Come True”

Upon reflection, it was something of a golden age. Acid wash jeans were in the ascendency, hair spray was plentiful and the synthesizer had finally won the respect it so richly deserved. Whilst we now recognize 1986 as the very peak of the human condition, it didn’t happen by chance. No, people – this state of enlightenment was achieved through neither slothful meditation nor dumb luck but, rather, by sheer hard graft by four men collectively known as ‘Pseudo Echo’.
Continue reading “The Battle for Pseudo Echo”

Not everything should be over the top. Whilst ‘hysteria’ may be a passable title for a Def Leppard album, it’s no way to live your life day to day. Anyone who has had listened to ‘Love Bites’ or ‘Pour Some Sugar on Me’ on a regular basis would doubtless agree. In this crazy, mixed up world, there’s still a place for more leisurely pursuits – a gentle stroll along a beach at sunset, a cup of tea and the tele-visual works of Hercule Poirot.
Continue reading “Please, Don’t Pimp My Poirot”

Hit film ‘The Social Network’ charts the origins of the phenomenon that is facebook.  In the movie, a simple act of revenge whereby a jilted young man seeks to humiliate a girl spawns an idea that becomes a billion dollar industry.  But whilst the folks at facebook may try and convince you that it has moved beyond its vengeful origins, the site remains a potent weapon that, in the wrong hands, can wreak untold destruction. 

I continue to resist twitter and the rest, believing firmly that they are not a new frontier of communication so much as they are a massive time sink.  Indeed, Stephen Hawking would be well advised to update his book ‘A Brief History of Time’ to confirm that the newest black hole in the universe is, in fact, facebook.  Mostly, I’m oblivious to it.  However, I am reliably informed that there is a page on facebook entitled ‘You Know You Went to Flinders College in the 1980s if……’  Lots of examples are listed.  It is, I am assured, the nature of such things.  One of them is ‘You Know You Went to Flinders College in the 1980s if you saw 20/20 Vision live in concert’.  20/20 Vision was the name of the band I was in during high school.  This page has more than seventy members.

There are comments, of course, along with photos.  Mostly these are statements of remembrance and recognition, a sense of camaraderie born of shared memories and experiences.  No wonder people find this stuff addictive – it so often answers the question that plagues everyone when they reminisce: whatever happened to ‘so and so’?  But amidst this harmless fun there lurked something of a hand-grenade, a posting that did not come in peace but to settle a score that I had no idea even existed.

I didn’t know Darren Hornsby that well.  He was a year or two older than me and was pretty quiet.  About the only thing I remember was that he had a girlfriend for about a week and that this seemed something of a surprise, even to Darren.  We weren’t friends, but we weren’t enemies either.  Or so I thought.

It was short, it was sharp and it was devastating.  Darren posted, ‘Yeah I saw 20/20 Vision play (crap)…..’  Whilst such a critique may seem harmless enough, those words are a dagger to my musical heart.  I’ll be the first to admit that we weren’t exactly Radiohead, but we were best band the school had to offer.  That we were the only band doesn’t really come into the equation.  Number one is number one, no matter which way you slice it. 

As the singer, I often bathed in the adulation that being in a teenage rock band brings.  Walking between the portables and across the quadrangle, my fellow students gazed at me in what I assumed was quiet worship.  I thought everybody loved us.  Clearly, I was mistaken.  Darren didn’t make his feelings known at the time – if he had some constructive criticism he wished to provide, all he had to do was speak up.  I feel betrayed.

Although I could try and draw some succor from the fact that Darren’s scathing assessment did not prompt a flood of similar comments, neither did anyone charge to our defence.  This is in spite of the fact that of the seventy-plus people in the group, two are my sisters and one was a member of the band itself.  Under these circumstances, such silence is disturbing.  Rather than a disgruntled lone wolf, perhaps Darren is part of a silent but still angry majority who have been waiting all these years for the chance to stick their boots in.  It’s as though he has bided his time, patiently anticipating the creation of facebook and social media where his true feelings can finally be revealed.  I can’t recall him even liking music, and yet he has dismissed the finest efforts of our teenage years in a single word.

How should I respond?  Should I accuse him of having ears of clay or simply demand satisfaction and challenge him to some kind of dual?  Sadly, whilst facebook gives you the option of accepting or declining an offer of friendship, it is completely without a function that lets you organize pistols at dawn.

The members of 20/20 Vision will soon reunite for the first time in more nearly twenty years.  Whilst we could probably be forgiven for retaliating by way of a letter advising Darren that we’re not wild about him either, I don’t think that’s the way to go.  I’d prefer to dust off the instruments and turn up unannounced to his house, set up on the lawn and start playing.  Or, if that’s not possible, perhaps we could transfer some of the old cassettes to compact disc and present him with the very first copy of ‘20/20 Vision – The Anthology’. 

Facebook may be a fascinating portal into the past, but it’s also capable of delivering some fairly confronting surprises.  When I first heard of the ‘You Know You Went to Flinders College in the 1980s…’ page, I assumed it would be filled with earnest debate as to which 20/20 Vision best encapsulates the spirit of the band, a full list of our live performances and a petition begging us to reform.  Maybe even chord charts to allow our die hard followers to play along.  But instead of fan worship all I found was criticism that’s twenty years too late in coming.  Darren, had I only known how you felt.  I am truly, deeply sorry.

It’s on.  The trash talking has started with a flourish and it’s time to brace yourself for a good, old-fashioned, bare-knuckled slap down.  The creator of the TV program ‘Glee’, Ryan Murphy, has let rip at Kings of Leon, accusing them of more or less trying to destroy musical education and crushing the hopes and dreams of children everywhere.  The term ‘traditional rivals’ is no more meaningful than when the combatants in question are a rock band and a teenage musical comedy show.  Clearly, there is no love lost between them.

Music thrives on competition.  Lennon and McCartney.  The Captain and Tennille.  Eminem and his mother – there are rivalries everywhere in music.  That the protagonists operate in very different worlds may lead you to think this battle might be one-sided.  All things being equal, a television musical has no business picking a fight with a rock band.  That’s like the Cast of The Sound of Music challenging Cradle of Filth to a duel.  Or the Munchkins from the Wizard of Oz saying to Metallica, ‘you, me, car park, now’, albeit in a very high voice.

Leaving aside the difference in genre, feuds between musical acts are a tradition stretching right back to Mozart and Salieri.  In recent decades we’ve seen The Beatles verses The Stones, Duran Duran up against Spandau Ballet and Blur going at it with Oasis.  Mostly it was good, clean, harmless fun.  Rappers took it to another level in the 1990s by introducing firearms, but left it to the black metal bands of Norway to perfect with a combination of both homicide and church burning.  This, however, is as nothing compared to the wrath currently being aimed at Kings of Leon.

First things first: exactly how did Kings of Leon manage to get themselves on the wrong side of Glee?  Did they run over a cast member in the band bus?  Refuse to participate in lamington drive?  Sadly, no.  Instead, they exhibited the temerity of those who think they have brass for bollocks by refusing permission to use one of their songs.  The sheer nerve. The band were diplomatic in their refusal, citing concerns of ‘over-exposure’. They should have been more worried that their song would be ‘Glee-efied’, a process by which every sharp edge is shorn off and the hardiest of rock anthems is swiftly placed on the express train to Naffville.  The band even went so far as to emphasise that it wasn’t personal and that they turn down heaps of licensing requests.  It was to no avail. Ryan Murphy accused them of missing the ‘bigger picture’ which was that “a seven-year-old kid can see someone close to their age singing a Kings of Leon song, which will maybe make them want to join a glee club or pick up a musical instrument. It’s like, OK, hate on arts education.” 

That’s right.  A simple refusal was elevated to the status of hate crime.  As the band themselves put it, the whole thing had gotten ‘out of hand.’   Whilst Kings of Leon avoided criticising the show, that doesn’t mean others can’t sink the boot in.  If ever there was a television program that was cruisin’ for a bruisin’, it’s the toned pop moppets on Glee.  Consider the numbers: more than five million in album sales.  Terrifyingly, in 2009 the cast of Glee had 25 singles on the Billboard Hot 100.  Twenty five!  That leaves them second only to The Beatles for most entries in any calendar year.  In terms of all-time hits, they’re now second only to Elvis Presley.  This is not so much disturbing as it is an affront to humanity.  There’s just no way that the list of greatest musical acts should read The Beatles, followed by ‘the cast of Glee’. 

Let me be honest: I can’t stand what Glee does to music.  It is, in essence, a sober kind of karaoke and has the same air of artificiality that turns junior beauty pageants from cute to creepy.  If I had to describe it, I’d say it’s like regular music, only placed on a severe regimen of anti-depressants.  It’s a shiny, glossy, sugary confection that may well be fine in small doses but, like fairy floss, should not be considered a substitute for a proper meal.  If Glee was a food, the list of ingredients on the back would include things like hydrolysed protein, flavour enhancer 621 and stacks of trans fats.  It would have no nutritional value whatsoever.  

They must be stopped.  It’s my belief that this air-brushed approach to music is forcing more traditional acts to take extreme measures in a desperate attempt to get attention.  Just the other week saw Jimmy Buffet’s disastrous attempt to crowd surf go horribly wrong.  What could possibly be next?  Will Crosby, Stills and Nash end their show by forming a human pyramid?  Will hard rock bands other than AC/DC start dressing as schoolkids?  It’s time for action.  Glee’s creator can say all the nasty things he likes, he just better make sure he can cash the cheque his mouth is writing.  If Glee wants to rumble, then so be it.  The war begins here. 

If Kings of Leon are reading this, it’s time to man up.  The hour has come in which you must throw down the gauntlet and prepare for battle.  The cast of Glee ought to be invited around to the back of the shelter shed where any differences of opinion can be sorted out.  Normally, such invitations to violence would be abhorrent, but these are exceptional circumstances.  The survival of music as we know and love it now depends on you.  Who’d have thunk it?

As adult contemporary soft rock titans Asia so deftly put it, the purchase was made in ‘the heat of the moment’.  The urge to buy something whilst trawling through an antique shop in Campbelltown Tasmania was simply too great to resist.  Like mermaids luring sailors to their demise, so too am I a sucker for a house of antiquities.  This attraction can be boiled down to a single word: potential.  What keeps me going is the possibility that in some dusty, wonky corner I’ll find something amazing, beautiful and precious for a price that is one step removed from shoplifting.  However, as much as I choose to seek permanent residency in ‘hope’, I had never actually succeeded in finding such a bargain.  This matters not.  It is the possibility that inspires me, no matter how illusory it may be.  But as I peeled away the cobwebs, I thought my luck had finally changed.

In a lonely, neglected corner of the store sat a display cabinet.  It had a chipped oak veneer and the wobbly legs of drunk who’s just siphoned the petrol out of a motor mower, but I was entranced.  So far as I was concerned, it was an item of abject splendor.  And even though the glass shelves had more chips than Las Vegas, I did not allow this to deter me.  In an instant, I had determined to buy it.

The owner was more than helpful.  He even went so far as to offer to deliver it to the apartment the next time he travelled to Melbourne by ferry.  It all seemed so easy.  In the weeks that followed, I dreamed of my antique display case and how it would surely change my life for the better.  Only when it arrived did the problem become apparent.  That problem being that I have absolutely nothing I want to display.

The whole point of such an item is that it allows you to show off.  Such brazen acts of braggadocio are as foreign to me as the ‘world movies’ section at the Video Ezy.  But it’s not solely a matter of modesty; I am simply not a collector.  It wasn’t always this way.

As a kid, I had a stamp album.  Children today, I suspect, do not engage in philately and may not be aware that stamps, in fact, exist at all.  But whilst our sink was often littered with envelope corners ready to soak off the affixed stamp, it was never my passion.  Hours spent over the stamp album always seemed like time I could be better spending doing something more enjoyable such as watching Diff’rent Strokes or organizing my sock drawer.

I needed something to collect and, almost at random, chose rocks.  Upon reflection, it is no small irony.  Whilst I sought samples of as many igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic stones as I could lay my hands on, perhaps what I was really drawn to was ‘rock music’ but simply lacked the necessary courage to ask my parents for a Stratocaster.  In the end, I abandoned my efforts and my collection was wrapped up in newspaper and stored away forever.  There were other, more mediocre attempts to collect; a single season of football cards (incomplete), the occasional yo-yo and a few random smurfs, none of which I’m now comfortable putting on display. There were four whole shelves to fill, but nothing to occupy them.  But just as I was about to scream off down the street in search of every porcelain cat figurine I could get my hands on, something caught my eye on the mantelpiece.  There was, indeed, one object in our house that was worthy of ‘display status’.  The blue chicken.

The origins of the blue chicken are a mystery.  Whilst the truth has been somewhat obscured by the mists of time, it took pride of place in the middle of the table at every major family gathering during my childhood that I can remember.  It belonged to my grandmother.  Whether she had brought it out with her from Ireland as a family heirloom or gotten it free with a packet of custard powder at the local milkbar, I really couldn’t say.  I do know, however, that the Blue Hen is the state bird of Delaware and I’d like to think that our glass blue chicken is Delaware’s equivalent of the Ark of the Covenant or Dead Sea Scrolls.  That, even as I write and you read, teams of archeologists are combing the Americas, never realizing that the prize they seek lies on the other side of the earth with a payload of Maltesers inside it.  

Regardless of its exalted status in The First State, at our family table it would be filled with confectionary.  Better than that, it was one of those items that with the simplest of decorations could compliment any occasion.  Just as any hamburger becomes ‘Hawaiian’ through the simple addition of a slice of pineapple, so too could the blue chicken be transformed.  A single red heart for Valentine’s Day, eggs for Easter and a pocket calculator for the end of financial year.  Yes sir-ee, ours is a working chicken.   So whilst the blue chicken is worthy of the display cabinet, its time is not yet up.  There is, I feel, still one more thing to do.  On Christmas Day, it will take pride of place on the table.  I will, naturally, add a piece of plastic mistletoe.  Some like lights, others a star.  For me, a blue chicken is all I need.  And if you want to know what to get me, perhaps something decorative I can put on display.  After all, I have a cabinet to fill.  Merry Christmas.

They’re here!  After months of anticipation, the buzzing hoards have finally descended, devouring all before them.  Having swarmed across the nation, resistance is largely futile so allow me to be the first to say: welcome Oprah Winfrey and her imported audience of excitable Chicagoans.  Enjoy your stay. I only hope that a visit to Kryall Castle is on the agenda. Oprah’s television audience, however, aren’t our only visitors.  We also have locusts.

Talk about a build-up.  For the past six months, we’ve heard that the locusts are coming.  Now they’re finally here and are intent on taking over.  I first noticed them whilst out running.  In the early morning darkness, I could feel the little blighters as they ricochet off my head.  Until then, I hadn’t realized that I run with my mouth open.  However, after several courses of locust served rare, it occurred to me that my mouth needed some kind of protective grill, much like a storm water drain or a Ford Fairmont.  

I realize that, broadly speaking, locusts are terrible and consume everything before them without discrimination, but the same can be said of members of the Barmy Army and yet we welcome them with open arms.  Perhaps they’ve only themselves to blame.  Ever since locusts allowed themselves to be used as pawns in the whole ‘Egyptians versus the Israelites’ debacle, their arrival has been greeted with all the fanfare of an impending apocalypse.  That they should turn up along with the type of rain that would send Noah scurrying to the nearest Bunnings for all the nails and timber off-cuts he could lay his hands on hasn’t helped any.

I think we’re looking at this all wrong.  Whilst, if history is any guide, the sea will shortly turn red and oceans will boil over, there’s still time to take a ‘glass half full’ approach.  In short, we should see them less as the eighth plague of Egypt and more as a once-in a lifetime marketing opportunity.  There’s an old saying; when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.  As I picked out the mortal remains of a dozen locusts from between my teeth after my morning jog, I contemplated but then dismissed the idea of turning millions of tiny insects into a liquid, fizzing beverage treat and settled for a simple sauté.  For whilst some see marauding hoards of twittering insects as a problem, I see a source of protein that simply can’t be beat.  

The time has come for us to eat our way out.  Think about it.  The entire history of human existence is a sorrowful tale in which we’ve managed to drag once plentiful species to the verge of extinction because we can’t say no to a plate of seconds.  Oceans have been raked bare, fragile ecosystems bulldozed to make room for more cattle.  As good as we are at wiping things out, I fear we may have been consuming the wrong species.  It now occurs to me that we’ve been looking at this all wrong.  Say what you will about cows, they’re hardly aggressive.  Sure, they’re slow and not too bright, and suffer a chronic flatulence problem that may well be heating up the atmosphere with all the speed of a Ford Laser parked in the sun, but they’re not out to destroy us.  We shouldn’t be putting our allies onto our dinner plates – we should be eating our enemies instead.

    I realise that many will recoil at the idea of chowing down on a plate of locusts, but I feel this is nothing more than a simple image problem.  For example, if locusts were given a different, more accurate but less Biblical name such as ‘short-horned grasshoppers’, people may not be so quick to rush to judgement.  Throw in an episode of MasterChef devoted to the best ways to cook short-horned grasshoppers and you’d have people queuing up to buy them in bulk.  (If this world suffers anything in plague proportions, it’s cooking shows.  And if there’s anything that this multitude of chefs have taught us it’s that there’s nothing in this world that can’t be eaten without a pinch of sea salt and a drizzle of olive oil.)

    The tourists would surely flock to see locusts invading Melbourne.  If we can train a million or so to perform tricks, we’ll be set.  I figure if they can get the dolphins at Sea World to do as they’re told, there’s no good reason to think we can’t do something similar with an army of insects if only we provide them with the right kind of motivation.  From this point on, the tram and Arts Centre spire will mean nothing – our tea towels and commemorative teaspoons shall all feature the locust.  Forget the Pink Heath as our state flower.  We should replace it with a simple stalk and a locust sitting on top.  

So let them come here in their millions.  As the bright lights of the Melbourne metropolis act as a siren call to the advancing locust army, we should sit back and let them come ever closer before luring them into our kitchens.  Toasted, roasted or barbecued – the options are really only limited by your imagination.  Perfect as a light snack between meals or as the crowning glory at your next dinner party.  Delish!  So fire the stoves and stoke the barbecues, it’s time for dinner.  As for me, well, I feel I may have already eaten my share.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be sure to suck down a few more next time I elect to go for a run.  But the simple truth is that, at this moment, I just don’t have the appetite.

Allow me to explain the awkward truth of my man-crush on Kerry O’Brien.   There are things in this world that we all too readily take for granted; water, air and the ability to conduct a reasonable interview.  Only when these things are taken away from us do we fully appreciate just how good we had it. It wasn’t always this way.  Once upon a time, back before Take That’s first reign of terror and when a grateful nation knew precisely what the phrase ‘Frankie Says Relax’ meant, every media outlet devoted time and resources to proper TV journalism. But like a pair of day-glo leg-warmers, such things have fallen out of fashion.  Save for one exception.

Earlier this year, Kerry had the greatest strike rate of any interviewer in the country and watching him toss up the hard questions was a thing of beauty.  The resulting struggle as his guests attempted in vain to produce an answer only to look like goldfish on a footpath was endlessly entertaining.  It was like seeing a student explaining themselves to the principal.  Positions that had once seemed as permanent as something carved into stone tablets on Mount Sinai melted like fairy floss in a rainstorm under Kerry’s steely gaze.  At the end of an interview, the most common expression on a subject’s face was one of sheer relief.  His studio must have seemed like the Bermuda Triangle – once inside, anything could happen.  This year, however, was Kerry’s last on The 7.30 Report.

So why step down?  I understand that he plans to work at Four Corners, but that hardly seems enough for someone accustomed to being on the box four nights a week.  I don’t know whether he’s planning to spend the rest of his time running a juice bar or a dog grooming service, but the truth is that his country needs him.  The problem is not, I think, with Kerry so much as it is with the people he interviews.  Put simply, Kerry has continued asking questions, but his subjects have stopped answering them.  This madness must end.

It started, as these things tend to do, quite simply.  Those being interviewed would ignore the question they had been asked in favour of one they regarded as more important. This went so far as to see some people asking their own questions before setting off in pursuit of an answer by spending as many words as possible in the hope of running the time down.  And so what began as a rather subtle attempt to redirect the conversation culminated in an absolute disconnect where journalists were rendered entirely redundant.  Too often those being interviewed were allowed to get away with this.  

I realise that ‘taser’ use is somewhat controversial, but if ever there’s a case for deploying such a weapon, it is when someone chooses to ask and answer his or her own question.  For those who regard current affair interviews to be a little boring, throw a thousand volts into the mix and you’ve got yourself a ratings bonanza.  Kerry, sadly, is not the tasering kind.

I’d like to make the case for reconsideration.  In short, Kerry shouldn’t leave The 7.30 Report; he should simply try a change in approach.  I believe the answer lies not in going away, but in going stark raving mental.  Whilst I respect Kerry O’Brien for his even-handed fairness, perhaps the time has come for him to channel what there is of the darker side of his nature.  In doing so, he should draw his inspiration from another journalist – Hunter S Thompson.

Hunter S Thompson invented ‘gonzo’ journalism.  It’s a slightly misleading term in that it has absolutely nothing to do with a beloved children’s character of the same name, although, like the Muppet, Hunter may well have had romantic feelings for chickens.  When despatched to the field to report on a seemingly mundane event, he responded by ingesting what might be described as a ‘who’s who’ of pharmaceuticals and intoxicants to make even driving through the desert seem interesting.  Dissatisfied with the incident he was supposed to report on, Hunter made himself the story instead.

In his masterpiece, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Thompson recounts the adventures of the intrepid journalist Raoul Duke and his overweight Samoan attorney, Dr Gonzo.  After subjecting himself to the kind of treatment that would make a laboratory rat feel faint, Raoul manages to haul his battered carcass onto a domestic flight.  Once seated on the plane, he pulls out a grapefruit and a large hunting knife.  Seeing the look of apprehension on the face of the stewardess, he smiles and says, ‘I never go anywhere without a grapefruit.’

    Kerry shouldn’t be allowed to leave; it’s too close to saying that the non-answering nitwits have prevailed.  He should stay on and take a leaf out of the very entertaining and hugely enjoyable book of Hunter S Thompson.  I can see him now – watching as his guest begins to answer a question that nobody has asked – and leaning way, way back in his chair.  Tiny beads of perspiration appear as Kerry reaches under the desk and produces a basketball-sized citrus and an even larger hunting knife.  The stream of verbiage would trickle to a halt before an awkward pause.  Kerry would then smile and say, ‘I never go anywhere without a grapefruit.’