The Gap Between The Pauses

Zeitgeisters, I caught the tail end of an alleged story on Channel 7’s The Morning Show with Larry Emdur and Kylie Gillies . They were interviewing some egregious twit from one of the Australian celebrity magazines. She shall remain nameless because I decline to publicise her or her vile publication further. The subject was celebrity children. That is the non-famous children of celebrities. There was some discussion about how much paparazzi can get for a sought-after snap of a celebrity’s child. No discussion of the morality here, just some mindless chatter about comparing the looks of the famous person’s child with one’s own. I mentioned this to a colleague at my workplace ( Media Dell ‘Arte , Fremantle). She expressed some satisfaction with magazine stories showing Angelina Jolie with a big packet of chips and her many kids in tow. She argued that seeing a big Hollywood star having to bribe her kids with junk food gives aid and comfort to other frazzled parents out there. Even so, ...

Zeitgeisters, Before he became a murder trial celebrity, Phil Spector was more celebrated for producing some of the greatest hit records of the 1960s and for inventing the so-called “ wall of sound .” Spector reportedly held out against the innovation of stereo sound for some time. He was said to play the songs he produced through a tinny little speaker as a kind of final test to see how they would playback on an average monophonic transistor radio. This is more or less what I have in my vehicle in 2008. Every song undergoes the Phil Spector test. Naturally most songs are “produced” in a way that was unimaginable in Spector’s heyday. You can hear everything quite clearly, even when you don’t want to. Train’s “ Drops of Jupiter ” comes to mind. Can you imagine no first dance, freeze dried romance five-hour phone conversation The best soy latte that you ever had . . . and me. Yeah, its that “best soy latte” line. I know not everything has to be universal, but that particular lyric has a...