We've been terribly remiss in linking to content from the new TVNZ Ondemand service. I've been through it a couple of times but Chris found this trip down memory lane on the site. It's ... fab.

Even the strip clubs lost business and Brian Edwards even shines today.

I confess I remember the country closing down for the last episode of The Fugitive ...

“What I want is a chance to decide, from personal experience, that a life of cocktail parties, cars, weekending at rich houses, wine, night-clubs and jazz won’t bring happiness. I want to prove that money isn’t everything, to learn that pleasure cloys.”

Kingsley Amis in 1954, quoted in this review of Zachary Leader’s “thumping great breeze-block of a biography”.

I’ve been impressed to date with Norton 360 — antivirus, restore and security all in one package; in particular the back-up, which simplifies an annoying but essential task I’ve always struggled with. Just make sure you disable any DVD packet-writing software you’ve installed, otherwise you’ll get a “disc is not blank” error when backing up files. My only problem has been that since installing Norton 360 (having upgraded from Norton Antivirus) I’ve been unable to synchronise internet time from either of the Microsoft-installed time servers. I assumed this was connected with the 360 installation. I decided to check whether this was a known issue. Norton has live technical support, which involves downloading a chat application, and it’s really refreshing after trawling through endless FAQs on Apple’s site, for example, or trying to find anything in Microsoft Help or on its websites. Neither of my helpful support agents managed to solve the problem, though, but to see how my chat sessions progressed, read on…

Alex Ross, music critic of the New Yorker, quotes French presidential front-runner Nicolas Sarkozy’s response to this question: “One often hears that classical music is elitist. What do you think?”

Sarkozy answers well: “The music called ‘classical’ is by definition the most popular because it is that which has transcended time, fashion, and society to reach us. The music of Mozart and Beethoven was perhaps revolutionary, seen as elitist in the time of their contemporaries, but how can one pretend that it isn’t popular? The number of people who have heard this music over several centuries is simply incalculable! Even the music that certain cultural functionaries call ‘musiques actuelles’, even the most contemporary rock groups, draw their harmonies from the tonal system invented by Bach and Rameau.”

But look at this from German chancellor Angela Merkel on Wagner. Amazing.

Can you imagine any of our politicians talking about culture at this level? Half the world away…

Not that I’m complaining, but there’s something very odd about local legal download website Digirama’s pricing.

They’ll sell you a single track for $1.75, whether it’s a three-minute pop song or 21 minutes of contralto Janet Baker with the LSO being wonderful in Berlioz’s La Mort de Cleopatre. And they’ll sell you an entire album for $17. Excellent.

But they’ll also sell you a multi-CD set for $17. Even more excellent for the consumer, but possibly less so for the artist. One does have scruples. As an occasional author I’m pretty keen on copyright so I do like to pay the artist, but equally I do like a bargain. Hmmm. What to do? Shop, obviously.

So in the last two days I have bought the Miles Davis complete Jack Johnson sessions, a 5-CD set for $17 ($90 at Marbecks); the 6-CD set Beauty is a Rare Thing, the complete Atlantic recordings of Ornette Coleman, for $17 ($177 at Marbecks); the 6-CD set of the Miles Davis Quintet’s complete recordings for CBS, 1965-1968 for $17 ($95 at Marbecks); and Passions of a Man, the 6-CD set of Charles Mingus’s Atlantic albums ($166 at Marbecks). There's also the complete Miles Davis-John Coltrane recordings for CBS, another 6-CD set for $17.

Of course this way you don’t get the lavish packaging, cool 50s and 60s photos, essays by jazz bores and so on – but you do get to hear a vast amount of great music for not much. In this case, 23 CDs for $68, or $2.96 each.

The other odd thing is that of the six bestselling jazz titles today, 21 April, four were the above box sets. Either my current tastes are woefully common, or Digirama isn't selling much jazz.

Hmmm, yes. Old media is dead. The MSM or, "antique media" as some call it, is being run out of town by blogger outlaws. Outsiders are busting down the gates of media. Etc, etc.

Well, there's no doubt the MSM faces challenges, mainly in the area of earning a buck out of new media channels and maintaining print circulation, but far from deserting it, the old media audience is getting bigger and bigger.

The Guardian is now a global media business, with more readers outside the UK than at home. That couldn't have happened without the internet. The NY Times is doing well too. Good to see the supposedly "liberal" outlets doing so well, really.

The Guardian's website was in profit for the first time last year as well.

Anyway the US figures are from June 2006 out of this article and I added The Guardian figures from February this year (the only one I could find). Discuss.

As the weekend draws, too quickly, to a close, we deliver our usual batch of good reads, listens and views. Enjoy.

Mark has a timeless classic from the old Harry Enfield shows. Piers Morgan, former editor of the Daily Mirror, has been a busy boy since penning his terrific memoir The Insider. And where have all the young Parisians gone?

This, from Chris via Lyndon Hood, is ironic, like rain.

Stephen finds David Farrar's election spending analysis worthy and asks why the newspapers can't do this stuff. Suggestions below, please. He also nominates the album title of the month from the band Life of Agony. The title: Best of Life of Agony.

Chris Trotter gets an OTT fisking. Some Amazon readers, allegedly, display their love of lit.

From me, the Indian civil service has cancelled plans to have female civil servants register their menstrual periods. Say what? Huffington man Chris Kelly reveals the true meaning of the term "shock and awe".

You'll have heard about the "lost" (say disappeared) White House emails, but I bet you haven't heard about Karl Rove's SMSs.

Ciao.

I've just been watching Martin Bomber Bradbury on Alt TV's Sunday Newspaper Brunch Club, live from Verona cafe. The show is billed as sticking it to the mainstream media, but it's really just a bunch of people sitting around talking about the news of the day.

Martin suggested the SST's report on an exodus from Auckland was some kind of "white flight". Of course, to do this he had to ignore the statistics and pretend Aucklanders were streaming down to the South Island, when in fact they seem to be moving to the Waikato.

Never mind. It was a fun show and having a radical perspective on the news was pretty engaging, especially when talking about our troubled Police, with a capital "P". It was also refreshing to see young people, okay tattooed people, reading newspapers. Next week's special guest is Bill Ralston ...

As part of my new technology regime I've subscribed to Nat Rad's Mediawatch podcast, and am now awaiting the podcast of today's show. I was a big fan of the TV version of Mediawatch in Australia and the local radio show compares rather well, I think, keeping a close eye the detail of reporting and how it is done.

Finally, I've also subscribed to The Guardian's Media Talk podcast, which gives a great UK and global view. The issue of the 23rd of March was from the paper's Changing Media Summit and is well worth a download.

Alan Bennett’s work is guiding me gently through life. I remember his black and white face from the telly alongside Peter Cook’s and Dudley Moore’s in the 1960s. I don’t remember the 1970s and the 1980s are best forgotten. But he made a ‘comeback’ in the 1990s, when Talking Heads reminded me of ‘home’ and the VHS tapes my mother sent to me in Hamburg seemed like Red Cross parcels. It was reassuring to know Bennett had crossed at least one generational divide, and we both continue to appreciate his uniquely northern take on life. I’ve almost finished Untold Stories; he reads me his short stories, incongruously, from my iPod; and I went to see The History Boys recently at the Lido. One of the many qualities I find in Bennett — as well as his touching modesty, observational precision and flair for humour — is his nostalgia for a world, with Leeds at its epicentre, before it went to the dogs. You sense, not his acquiescence, but that quiet desperation I think Thoreau was on about. I want to tell him (fantasising as I do of an altogether unlikely meeting on public transport) that, thanks to people like him, it’s not all bad: there are still people out here who care, who value art, state-subsidised healthcare, old movies and a few other old-fashioned values. But then, it’s not the people who read his books who need to care. The ones who turned a blind eye until their country looked like something out of Orwell, if they have even heard of Alan Bennett, are not likely to be reading his books. Or any books for that matter. And I wouldn’t know what to tell him about that.

TVNZ's bean-counters are "profoundly anti-journalist", says one of its staff members. Maybe.

They will be profoundly anti-audience if they go ahead with serious cuts to the programme-making side of their business.

The only point of TVNZ is to make local programmes, high-end and low, important and forgettable, otherwise the broadcaster is entirely irrelevant. We've been raised on foreign imports; it would take very little for many people to switch off our culture altogether.

If Garth George thinks that global warming is a crock, reason enough to sign up as a believer.

Even if you still have doubts about the science, the reality of rises in temperature, and how much we are to blame, as a significant minority of Garthites clearly seem to, have we abandoned old-fashioned conservation?

Drive your six-cylinder tank into the ground, because oil is never going to run out, pollution is ideal for baby food, and God put the Earth here for His children to waste and despoil as they see fit.

The crucified planet Earth,
should it find a voice and a sense of irony,
might now well say of our abuse of it,
“Forgive them father,
that they know not what they do.”
The irony would be
that we know what we are doing,
and when the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
“It is done.”
People did not like it here.

(Requiem, by Kurt Vonnegut, from A Man Without a Country, 2005, read on KCRW Bookworm, 6 April 2006)

Last night, NZBC cub reporter Joe spotted the news on the ticker at Foodtown, of all places, and the Steely Dan website confirms there will be at least two Kiwi dates: 22 September at Auckland’s Vector Arena (tickets on sale 23 April); and 24 September at Christchurch’s Westpac Arena (also on sale on the 23rd of this month). Tickets will cost between $93 and $130 with small price variations between venues. The band will be Donald Fagen (keyboards and vocals); Walter Becker (guitar); Keith Carlock (drums); Jon Herington (guitar); Carolyn Leonhart-Escoffery (backing vocals); Michael Leonhart (trumpet); Cindy Mizelle (backing vocals); Jim Pugh (trombone); Roger Rosenberg (baritone sax); Freddie Washington (bass); Walt Weiskopf (sax); and Jeff Young (keyboards and backing vocals). The band I saw in Hamburg on the Art Crimes tour in 1996 featured a couple of the same musicians and it was one of the best live shows I’ve seen anywhere. More details at the promoter’s site, here.

PS: I hope, before arriving in NZ, the band is issued with essential local knowledge like this.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote an article in the Sunday Star-Times about public intellectuals.

Who are they, and did we need them, the piece asked. It took a deliberately softly-softly approach, as I was keen to tease some debate from this rarely touched subject in the gossamer-thin brainscape of Kiwiland.

Was this a waste of time, on the part of the writer, the publisher, and me? Was this a waste of money, the marketing money, the money given to get this project into print?

I have respect for the editor - he was a tutor. I have respect for a contributor, Roger Horrocks - he supervised my thesis.

But surely the role of public intellectuals is to engage with the public, in a timely fashion, regardless of the forum, regardless of the publication. Public intellectuals in Europe - Umberto Eco, etc - write smartly, amusingly on everyday subjects in the public eye in the papers. That is the point.

If you have something to say, say it. And say it with wit and style and intelligence.

Public intellectuals, if they do exist in NZ, need to say and do more.

The UK Ministry of Defence is making its calls for the future and it ain't pretty. In fact it's kinda scary: neutron bombs for ethnic cleansing; electromagnetic pulse guns to knock us off the internet; a marxist middle class (presumably not infatuated with the property market any more); militancy; terrorism; climate change ...

There's only one solution - increase the MoD's budget, of course.

I suspect this will be one of those reports we look back on and have a bit of a chuckle about. It's all possible, but haven't we seen these kinds of scenarios trotted out many times before?

I like this bit though:

The 90-page report comments on widely discussed issues such as the growing economic importance of India and China, the militarisation of space, and even what it calls "declining news quality" with the rise of "internet-enabled, citizen-journalists" and pressure to release stories "at the expense of facts".

Of course, that's the present, not the future.

The DG is playing with his new toy, The Muse has been given a temporary reprieve and all’s right with the world! More or less. This story prompts Mark to ask, rhetorically at least, if it’s worth suing blogs:

“…You would think an accountancy firm would be, if anything, rather delighted to have a successful blogger on its books — it’s hardly the world’s most glamorous profession.”

He also discovers one way to review an ethnic restaurant: take along an “ethnic” and reproduce her email.

Is Mark put out or impressed by the effing and blinding ex-X-Filer Gillian Anderson? Hard to tell, I’m afraid, but he may have felt curiously satisfied, as I did, to discover Coupling’s ditzy Gina Bellman was born in New Zealand:

“I decided to get rid of my New Zealand accent because I kept getting bullied about it.”

Mark says we don’t understand Japan and likes this PA post, in which David Haywood again provides excellent reader value. Stephen offers something uncharacteristically naughty, and Michele Hewitson on Kevin Ireland, adding that she’s done a better job than anything else he’s seen writing about the NZBC’s favourite New Zealand poet. Not everyone across the Tasman takes David Hicks seriously; Stephen’s favourite right-wing Aussie blogger Tim Blair for one. He claims that despite Hicks’s legal team’s description of the Guantanamo bay inmate as gaunt, he is in fact a Talitubby. Stephen also notes that they do these things so much better in Australia, and recommends The New Yorker’s Alex Ross on how reports of the death of classical music have been exaggerated. Talk about a long tail:

“Herbert von Karajan: 200 million records. Georg Solti and Pavarotti: 100 million records each. And they’re still selling.”

Readers of the SST puzzled by a 25 March editorial criticising the decision of another newspaper’s decision to outsource its subediting may wonder what that was all about. Here’s Merrill Perlman to tell you.

Finally, from me — in the spirit of minimalism, and with a tip of the titfer to Richard Carter — should you ever be in doubt of the futility of existence, you’ll find ample musical evidence here.

C/Net takes the April 1 prize. Study this page - at length.

And check out the TiSP link on Google's home page.

Well, if you think the New Zealand iTunes Store is cool, Rob, this (hat tip to Dave Awl at Ocelopotamus) is really going to kick things up a notch, as Emeril’s crappy catchphrase goes. What’s more, it’s already on the NZ iTunes Store. There have been a few occasions lately when I’ve bought a single killer track by an artist only to discover a short while later that I actually want another… and then the whole album — which would until now have meant double-dipping, double paying. Now, if Apple would just add a few more classic albums to the store, my troubles really will melt like lemondrops.

A handful of you may have noticed my absence over the last few months. I've been working unusually hard since about October last year and then my PC became intolerable. I guess I hit a bit of a blog wall as well.

Anyway, I'm still really busy but at least I've tooled up with a new laptop - as of this weekend in fact. And that was cause for some unusual geekiness on my part.

I've spent the weekend downloading and growing quickly to love iTunes. It just makes using music (can you use music?) so freakin simple. There are already 180-odd songs in my collections and that will grow fast.

Then I downloaded the Second Life client and popped in to see what it was all about. I don't think I'll be making it a regular stop but it was kinda interesting. Virtually.

I've also downloaded Audacity with vague ideas about podcasts, for work and pleasure.

Anyway, it hasn't all been straightforward. My new Dell is great and Telecom were very patient as I was getting it online (Let's just say I made it unecessarily complicated by being an idiot). Vista I find quite pleasant for a Microsoft OS but I've already had several incompatibilities with older software I wanted to install - and with the drivers of a newish printer.

But still, being able to do all the stuff Chris does ... Magic. Even Blogger is behaving itself, more or less.