The common touch

If I'd heard William Shatner's cover of Common People before I voted then it would have got a guernsey in my Triple J Hottest 100 picks. Fantastic stuff.

I've been meditating on fame. I'm going to see short plays tonight by a friend at work and then I got to thinking of all the people I know who have some kind of profile. (Not me as I don't have any of my song lyrics published - but if you want some then I'm the best, bub):

• Martin Moon: I've known for many moons. One of the old circle of friends from Perth. Started as a drummer playing round the traps in more bands than I can name and then migrated to the guitar and became a singer-songwriter with two albums under his belt. Not to be confused with Moon Martin or a character in a murder mystery.
  
  
• Juliet Marillier: old boss at AUSTUDY, became a fantasy novelist of some note.
  
  
• Graham Kershaw: another from our old gang. Wrote a novel, The Home Crowd, that received some coverage and was shortlisted for a WA literary award. Not to be confused with the English oil painter.
  
  
• Ross Byrne: used to live in a sharehouse in Glebe with this guy - ABC sound recordist. Don't know if this equates with fame but his work is seen - or heard, rather - by a lot of people.
  
  
• James Baker: used to go in and volunteer to listen to the kids read when our daughters were both littlies. Laura won an award and I was there to share in the glory. Parent nights were made interesting as I got James to regale me with stories about playing at CBGB's or meeting Wreckless Eric.
  
  

'04, get it

Kind of like pissing into the wind innit?

• "Ara fat cat"
  
• John Kerry, the man who got more votes than Reagan in his landslide victory in 1984 but is still disparaged as a 'loser'. (The only guy who I feel more sorry for is Al Gore who fucking won.) And the other is Ariel Sharon,Prime Minister of Israel.
  
• (c)2004 the year of the documentary
  
• Ray Charles Robinson - he shortened it so as to avoid confusion with boxer Sugar Ray Robinson
  
• Britney Spears

If you were in a position to do so, what is the most offensive thing you could do in the wake of the tsunami disaster? How about donating fifteen million to tsunami relief then spending over forty million (the most ever) on the presidential inauguration? That, good people, is an absolute shitload of whistles and bells. I hope the real fat cats of this world got their money's worth.

Hands up who thinks that this vulgar display did anything for the cause of world peace, or that the rhetoric about coming to the aid of oppressed everywhere stands up to scrutiny, or that those poor oppressed took comfort from an event that would have fed and clothed entire villages into perpetuity and ended a sizable chunk of the disaffectation that brings about the conditions for a war on terror in the first place. Hands still up? Good, now at least I know whose arse to kick.