Florence Et Machine

Last night, Shepherds Bush Empire.

Power, thy name is Florence.

Today

Please note that the "Banksy" (Fig.1) that I gleefully spotted around the corner from my pad is actually a fakey copy cat (provenance of artist unknown although likely to be in the Ballarat region).

Also congratulations, Eddie (Fig.2)! What a momentous achievement, along side the honour of being Dr Plog's all-time best live stand-up comedy experience! Sir - I doff my (animal-themed) cap ...

Pause

No, not the bar that sprung up in Carlisle Street circa la millenium: merely an acknowledgement that I am taking some time out

but I will be back shortly ...

Hope y'all are well. A big juicy slice o' apple and a sticky drizzle shel honig for those of you so inclined ...

Il Dottore

Pneumatic Number

09-09-09

I would wear this as a hemline.

The World According To Mork

"Sometimes you’ve got to specifically go out of your way to get into trouble. It’s called fun."

-Robin Williams

Happy Birthday, Judy Reynolds!

I can't get you on the phone so here's a little song for my Judy, from your Barbra.



May all your days be happy. Shkoyakh! x

Dr Plog's One Hundredth Post

To my eleven followers and countless readers ("countless" in the literal sense of the word as I appear to have no way of gauging, or am I merely as uninternetty as I've long suspected?) - I THANK YOU! I have reached my century and now I must retire this experiment, this ill-advised ... folly!

Just kidding, folks!

It's actually been great doing this, being here: far, far less scaryintimidating than I'd imagined. I am not a Child of the Web (oooh, free horror film title for any would-be Wes Cravens amongst you) and although I've been known to exhibit exhibitionistic tendencies (wee early century swing phase), this is on a much larger, unpoliced scale. Less sexy too. Unless ... hmmm ...

(DOCTOR PLOG then bursts into Halle x Gwyneth-sized tears and runs up to the podium, the delicate fringe of her emerald-green, slit to the j-lo buttcheek dress swishing glamorously around those red-soled shoes that all those lemming-stars ponificate about - you don't see Tilda Swinton and Fiona Shaw waxing lyrical, just sayin'... )

DOCTOR PLOG: (Melodramatically, between tears, yet actually genuine, heartfelt. I just have impulse control issues) I'd like to thank Meg, without whom I wouldn't be here - no, really! Girlfriend bullied me into it! I'd like to thank the blogs that have inspired me and the commenters who bring the funny and the insightful. And I'd like to thank the LA City Bus Company for taking a chance on an unknown kid ...

END SCENE

Blogging has helped my confidence, given me an outlet for all that goes in (not a euphemism) and shaped the way I literally "see" things (Lady Camera accompanies me on a lot more adventures these days). I am having more adventures these days: being braver about approaching new people and seeking out different things, ostensibly for "the blog" but really for me. And finally, FINALLY - after years and years of the most painful writers' blockage caused by Theo (Mr P's name for my thesis = the root cause of my ph.depression, my ph.dystopia, my ph.dysfunction, helped along by my "frenemy" Mary J) - I am remembering how the act of writing itself is so deeply gratifying even if the end result is messy, misspelt, misshapen: full of tangents, full of non-sequitirs, full o' shite. In other words: all one hundred posts, present crapola included, which makes me even more appreciative of your indulgences. Mille grazie!

x x x

Frances "Baby" Gumm

Frances was only seven years old when she recorded this song in 1929.

You may know her by the stage name she later adopted: Judy Garland.

Love Letters Of 1939

"One kiss would, I think, help to reassure me that there are some lovely things left in the world, that there is some good besides the monstrous evil into which we are plunging."

If you love history, or if you love the (lost? losing?) art of letter-writing or even if you just love love, you will adore this series of correspondence between Gwynne and Winnie Meara, an English couple like many separated at the outbreak of the Second World War. Just published in the Times by their son David, they "paint a vivid picture of the hope and despair of so many people at the time, as Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain made his fateful declaration on September 3, 1939."

(Image from here)

"Has The Metric System Given Your House Cancer?"

Some bright spark has come up with the "Daily Mail-o-matic", a headline generator for the British newspaper that makes me proud to be Australian.

Click "refresh" for the following gems:

"IS NEW LABOUR STEALING FROM YOUR HOUSE?"
"HAS POLITICAL CORRECTNESS IMPREGNATED THE MIDDLE CLASS?"
"IS THE BBC GIVING THE COUNTRYSIDE CANCER?"
"WILL TEENAGE SEX MAKE PENSIONERS OBESE?"

I laugh, but through gritted teeth, with a sad, heavy heart. I get a chance to flick through The Daily Fail at Friday night dinners (that and The Jewish Chronicle: I love MamaInLawlessness Plog but we damn well don't share literary tastes) and those headlines could be - to paraphrase every lazy description of Law and Order - ripped from the headlines.