The Paradise Motel are one of my all time favourite bands - lush (some may say sumptuous) swirling guitar rock with a melancholy pop twinge, fronted by one of the most haunting female vocalists I've ever heard in Merida Sussex.
I saw these guys supporting the Dirty 3 at the Plaza Ballroom, a magical space beneath the Regent Theatre all done up like some kind of fairytale. (Also the first smoke-free gig I'd been to - the restoration of the space had just been finished and they didn't want it getting all dirtied up). I still rank this as one of my best gigs ever.
Very happy to read this morning while idly wondering whatever happened to Merida that they have reformed and recorded a new album, release date as yet unknown.
This clip for one of the songs though suggests that they are back in form - and I was particularly happy to note that it is set in Burnley St, Richmond (95% sure), not far from my old house.
Welcome back guys.
There's also some Paradise Motel spin-off news - a new Melbourne "supergroup" - Lee Memorial
The new band from Karl Smith of Sodastream. Off the album The Lives Of Lee Memorial released on Dot Dash and featuring Laura MacFarlane from Ninety Nine, Tom Lyngcoln the guitarist from Nation Blue and Matt Bailey former bass player with The Paradise Motel.
Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus is a real film starring Lorenzo (Renegade) Lamas and Debbie (sorry Deborah) Gibson.
I'm hoping they play it perfectly straight down the line serious and don't try to be funny. Either way, I'm sure that it can't be half as good as the trailer but I'd still watch it.
Frankenstein! Frankenstein the legend, Frankenstein the indestructible! Sole survivor of the titanic pile-up of '95, only two-time winner of the Transcontinental Road Race... Frankenstein! Ripped up, wiped out, battered, shattered, creamed, and reamed... a dancer on the brink of death... Frankenstein, who lost a leg in '98, an arm in '99! With half a face and half a chest, and all the guts in the world.
Other people might laud the recently departed David Carradine for his name-making role as Caine in the tv series Kung Fu or for his recent come-back as Bill (in Kill Bill Vol 1 & 2) but it was his work in Death Race 2000 that I like him most for.
According to the internets, it seems as though it could well have been auto-erotic asphyxiation that killed Carradine (a much cooler term than "tragic wanking accident"), in a weird way I kind of hope it was. The alternative, suicide, is just a bit too much of a bummer.
The Chaser boys have set up the jump ramp over the shark tank and are revving the motorcycle while Pinky Truscadero looks on in horror.
Maybe I'm wrong but it seems to me that they are desperately trying to land some lucrative overseas sales (or move altogether), which is why they have prepackaged so much content from their individual world tours last year. They hold onto these clips for dear life in the hope that something vaguely relevant pops up that justifies playing them. (This also means that they don't have to do as much work week to week preparing content that is actually topical)
I thought the sick kids sketch was the highlight last night of a pretty thin show. I've definitely seen that Oscar movie sketch done (better) elsewhere and I thought that the bored expression on the cops face at Buckingham Palace said it all. His comments about them going away if he gives them the punchline they so clearly wanted so they could get some laughs for their show were pure pwnage. (Points to the team for including them).
The Fritzl sketch was outrage for outrage's sake - way to stick it to a girl who was imprisoned in a basement for decades, raped repeatedly and made to bear children to her demented father. That'll show her. Seriously guys, satire is really meant to stick it to the powerful. Inbreeding and incest is funny (wrong but funny) when it's consensual but this just wasn't cool and seemed a lot more like callous attention seeking.
Generally speaking, the skits where you pick on poor schmucks working in shops or dumb vox popees on the street are similarly weak and paint you as self important tossers. I'll admit that I laughed when you did the whole bandit/stocking mask thing last season but when I think about it, those poor shopkeepers didn't deserve that kind of fright just for turning up to work.
How about trying a little harder to be funny (like the original newspaper) and a little less hard to be the naughty attention seeking boys sticking it to soft (and dated) targets.
Interestingly, it seems like the sick kids sketch - The make a realistic wish foundation - is the one that has got the Limited News media all upset.
Viewers swamped the ABC's switchboard with complaints after The Chaser's War On Everything skit called "Make a Realistic Wish Foundation", the Daily Telegraph reports.
Chaser members Andrew Hansen and Chris Taylor asked actors playing terminally ill children what they wished for.
One girl's wish was to meet Hollywood teen heartthrob Zac Efron, but instead she was handed a stick by Taylor who tells the camera, "why go to any trouble when they're going to die anyway".
Taylor went on to say the foundation's aim was to help "thousands of kids to lower their extravagance and selfishness in the face of death".
Update: Evidently my keen eye for outrage has failed me again and it is indeed the "Make a realistic wish foundation" sketch that has stirred everyone up, to the point that they have issued an apology and are cutting the sketch from a repeat of the show this even.
Sure, sick kiddies are poor taste but I still can't help feeling that the Fritzl sketch was worse.
