Syms Covington

A hodge podge of blog porridge

2007-07-05T22:14:00.000-07:00

A few things to cover, and not enough eloquence to do it seperately.

1. Seems that one of my low blow posts has trundled one step closer to infamy. This was very entertaining to follow this afternoon. Thanks [talia], although I think we did meet at Homecake last year. Directly related to my original blog on this topic, Melbourne's The Green Guide today published this interview with Richard Kingsmill.

2. Faux Pas aka Tim Shiel (aka Crowbar Harry) is a damn fine. On his acclaimed records, he cuts and glues oldey timey samples and releases them like John Woo's doves in slow motion in a violent church shootout. He has a little site and punches out a blogg, each week handing out a free remix with a bread roll. He also have a jovial slice of my most favourite musician attribute besides talent; ie humour - slap-handled mad dashings of it! Good on you Harry.

3. Famous Joe Hardy is not famous yet, but he will be.

4. I am flying up to Brisbane to watch the first ever gig of schimmelbusch next week. As the man with the hat says, they are playing at a place called Ric's Cafe (which my sources tell me is in "the Valley") next Wednesday 11th July - just after evensong. A review will follow.

5. Contrary to popular belief and or slash evidence, Dan Forrest is a poet.

6. After watching 5 episodes of Arrested Development in a row on Monday night, I am now fully qualified to say...wait, hang on, did you say there's another episode of Clark & Michael up?

Snapshots of Sinners

2007-07-04T22:06:00.000-07:00

Those of you that are spitting on, buffing and polishing your reviews for mangy old media street rags such as The Brag and Drum take note...

Sydney-based music blog Polaroids of Androids has dusted off its golden trumpet of yore and blasted out a shiny invitation to dirty human beings, no less, to contribute to its electronic pages - with record and gig reviews. I haven't yet plugged myself into this chance, but wait, my friends, soon I will be broadcasting to the world!

In the meantime, the tubes are waiting for your call.

Plumbing the Wells of hygiene

2007-07-04T21:22:00.000-07:00

I am a regular reader of Hollywood Elsewhere (see looky, links) which is an independent US movie blog by Jeffrey Wells. Although he can be somewhat bitter, he regularly provides a very entertaining commentary on the US movie biz and beyond.

Like all good writers that use their blogg as an extension of their personality, Wells sometimes throws in travel photos and musings about the oddities of life. But earlier this week, he went into just-plain-bizarro territory with this.

Here's a slice: "I'm wondering if anyone has ever used air-freshener spray as a substitute for a deodorant if you've run out of the latter and nothing else is in the house."

Even more amusing are the bachelor-esque comments after it: "I used shampoo and conditioner as shaving cream once. I'd strongly advise against anything but shave gel/cream."

HAHahahaha!

I wonder what Can of Preen would think?

Fucking mutherfucker

2007-07-04T21:06:00.000-07:00

Techno-choc

2007-07-03T20:47:00.000-07:00

This is a quick one, but figured that if the ambulance-chasers can review one Apple product simply by reading a marketing blurb, then I can review the new HTC Touch phone using a similarly lazy method.

For those of you that are not aware, the HTC Touch (bizarrely also known as the Elf) was launched right before Apple let the iPhone out of its cage. As I am a techno-luddite at the best of times, I did not know this until today when a colleague walked in with one - a review copy if you will that journos get from time to time, but ultimately have to hand back to the company.

In a new interpretation of the phrase "wanky marketing", the company had also handed out replica Touch phones made out of chocolate - which my colleague kindly gave to me. Now, using the Asher Moses school of analysis, I will review the HTC Touch phone by eating the chocolate phone. Here goes.

Mmmffw Graaaaffmmmwaah crrughmm...dry, cheap tasting, sweet but with a bitter aftertaste, really chunky...mmmwaum. Wow that was quite a lot of chocolate, the box was deceptively deeper than it looked. My teeth are fuzzy. Boy, am I thirsty.

I bet I'll be hungry again in 20 minutes.

A Brimful of Asher

2007-07-02T15:20:00.000-07:00

This post is essentially a link to a glorified blog, and a post by ambulance-chasing tech journalist Asher Moses, regarding Apple's upcoming TV product, which acts as a bridge between a normal televisual tube and the more sophisticated inter tube. I found it interesting, and while there is a whiff of lazy space-filling journalism to it, it certainly has some merit.

Here's a slice: "Apple TV is essentially an expensive paper weight that's incompatible with most video formats...For all of those reasons - especially the lack of movies and TV shows on the Australian iTunes store - I am dumbfounded as to how Apple is able to sell even a single unit in the Australian market."

Palm-fisted meanderings

2007-07-02T14:09:00.000-07:00

I have been in Melbourne the past few days, ostensibly to watch The Basics officially launch their album Stand Out/Fit In, and will speak about that here later.

But first to warm up here is a pointer to a US-based independent music blog called A Better Offer, which runs extended profiles of independent artists as its site states: "Our goal here is to spotlight a band for an extended period of time. We anticipate writing about one band exclusively for approximately two weeks."

This fortnight they are writing about Gotye, which means a whole bunch of posts and meanderings over the next days. There is a lot of mess and noise out there about this guy, but it good to see a foreign and thus 'cleaner' (removed from the dirty hype which influences writing) take on the music.

It works as a good companion piece to the recent Shifted Sound interview with Wally de Backer, the palm-fisted man behind Gotye and wild man-god [literally, sitting] behind The Basics. It goes for an hour and features songs by both acts, as well as some of Wally's own selections, and can be found here.

In completely unrelated news, the latest episode of Los Bazura Projeyo is up. Gold!