Steve Cadman/Creative Commons 2·0 I don’t profess to be an expert on how Hong Kong law functions these days with its mix of old British ordinances and the laws made after 1997, but one thing that struck me with at least the news reports covering the criminalizing of insults against ‘March of the Volunteers’, the […]
Read More… from Where does Hong Kong’s new national anthem law leave parody?
A lot of the world’s population has come together in the fight against COVID-19. Except Facebook, of course, who is exploiting the virus for profit. Facebook has done well in the first quarter of 2020 with positive earnings. Freedom From Facebook & Google co-chairs Sarah Miller and David Segal note (the links are theirs): ‘Facebook […]
Read More… from Facebook exploits COVID-19 for profit, and viral thoughts
One bonus of the lockdown was the live Easter Day concert held by Hong Kong’s own Sam Hui (許冠傑), perhaps fairly described as the king of Cantopop. I had no idea this was even on if it weren’t for the fire at the Baxter’s Knob transmitter that took out television transmission in our […]
In 2013, I wrote a small note on my Tumblog about Roger Nichols’ theme to the TV series Hart to Hart. The music was played as the opening and closing themes in the pilot, and as an incidental theme to many episodes later, but few remember it. I’ve even seen websites proclaim that the Mark […]
Read More… from Roger Nichols performs the original Hart to Hart theme
I see Billie Eilish is singing the next James Bond title song, and it sounds pretty good. The last one, ‘Writing’s on the Wall’, wasn’t one of my favourites and while I didn’t mind Sam Smith’s composition, I felt a female voice might have suited it better. On a Bond music forum on Facebook […]
Read More… from Social media produce some terrible clairvoyants
Looking back over the years And whatever else that appears, I remember I cried when my mother died Never wishing to hide the tears. And at fifty-nine years old, My father, God rest his soul, Couldn’t understand why the only lass He had ever loved had been taken, Leaving him to start With a heart […]
What a coincidence to come across a letter from composer, arranger, conductor and former TVNZ bandleader Terry Gray, dated May 25, 1991, after I blogged about him on (nearly) the seventh anniversary of his passing. Here it is for others who may be interested in a little slice of Kiwi life. It looks like ITC […]
I sincerely hope I’m wrong when I say that the passing of Kiwi composer, arranger and conductor Terry Gray went unnoticed in our news media. I only found out last month that Terry died in 2011. As a kid of the 1970s and a teenager of the 1980s, Terry’s music was a big part […]
Read More… from In memoriam, Terry Gray, British-born New Zealand composer, 1940–2011
Virginia McMillan/Creative Commons Now the PM and her partner, Clarke Gayford, have shown off their daughter to the world (video at the end of this post), it reminded me of my own experiences in the maternity ward many years ago. I’m not a parent at the time of writing: I’m talking about the 1980s […]
Read More… from The maternity ward of the early 1980s was a very different place
Fed up with the Electoral Commission barring Darren Watson from expressing his valid view with his satirical song ‘Planet Key’, I made a spoken-word version of it for my Tumblr a week ago, with copyright clearance over the lyrics. I wrote: Since the Electoral Commission has imposed a ban on Darren Watson’s ‘Planet Key’—in fact, […]
Read More… from ‘Planet Key’ is good old-fashioned Kiwi satire