They’ve been playing Christmas music in the shops for a few weeks, and Christmas is still two weeks away!
Here in Australia, there’s a certain cringe factor with the likes of Michael Buble and Mariah Carey with their “Christmas Albums”. However, as I’ve written previously, the Swedes seem to love it, and at this time of the year, the Swedish charts are usually full of a combination of new and older Christmas songs.
This, by the way, is my favourite Swedish pop song for Christmas, performed by the awesome Magnus Carlsson. Awfully catchy, awfully camp, but not awful.
Oh, and if you think it’s all cheesy and schmaltzy, check out these recent Christmas songs from Swedes which put a “twist” on things.
If you take a look at this week’s Topplistan, you’ll see there’s at least thirty-five Christmas songs in the top 100, including Bing Crosby and Andy Williams. They’re pretty easy to find, but if you look for the Swedish word for Christmas, “Jul”, you’ll find the others.
I often tell younger colleagues that we’re lucky these days to get one scroll on a mobile phone, perhaps two. If you don’t communicate the core point in the first couple of sentences, the message is lost, because no one gets that far. Sounds pessimistic I know.
This concept of having only one scroll’s worth of attention is the direct digital descendant of the newspaper industry’s term: “Above/below the fold”.
The term originated with broadsheet newspapers, which were physically folded in half for display. The “fold” was the physical crease in the middle of the page. The top half, or “above the fold,” was the prime real estate reserved for the most sensational headlines, captivating images, and lead stories—the content designed to grab a passer-by’s attention and compel them to buy the paper. Anything placed on the lower half, or “below the fold,” was considered less critical and was at risk of being ignored.
On a computer screen or mobile phone, the “fold” is the line at the bottom of the screen. “Above the fold” is the content you see immediately when a page loads, and “below the fold” is the content you must scroll down to view.
A good example of this is the email header. I’ve taken to front-loading crucial details in the email subject or the very first line of the body—things like the time, date, venue, and subject matter of a meeting. Yet, I still inevitably receive replies asking: “When is it on? What’s it about?” IT’S IN THE FIRST FREAKING SENTENCE!!!
I’ve also noticed a significant increase in the sheer lack of acknowledgement. I’ve sent emails for both work and personal projects and received no reply at all, not even a delayed one. I don’t mean a detailed response, but simply an acknowledgement of receipt. This has happened quite a bit lately.
This effort/attention mismatch was brought into sharp focus when I was asked to review and make recommendations about a significant work project. I dedicated a large amount of time to this project, but when I handed in my final, detailed review, I knew immediately from the look on the requestor’s face that he never actually read it. He’s gone now.
When a platform like Microsoft Office offers a simple reaction tool (like a little ‘:-)?’ emoji), a basic one-line reply would be far more helpful: “Thanks for the information, I’ll look into it,” or “No, I can’t do that.” The silence suggests a reluctance to commit to anything, which is possibly a separate issue altogether.
This new dynamic stands in stark contrast to the way we learned to communicate formally. I was thinking the other day about learning to write letters as a child and mastering the difference between when to sign off with ‘Yours faithfully’ versus ‘Yours sincerely.’ We learned these conventions, but the urgency and addictive nature of modern connectivity have rendered them effectively obsolete.
To combat this, I now adopt a ‘scan-first’ approach. I write key information in bold text within the email body to make it immediately obvious and easy to scan. Ultimately, though, all I’m really looking for is a quick acknowledgement of receipt to confirm the message has landed, and read.
I contrast, I’ve taken to listening to longer podcasts, and people are bringing long-form TV shows. Maybe we’re entering a post-reading era?
As I approach my 60th birthday, have I simply become a grumpy old man?
Often when you go to the opening night of an exhibition, there’s a bunch of hangers-on who’ll stand around quaffing the wine and consuming the canapes, but who pay very little attention to the exhibition itself. That was not the case at launch tonight of “Diana – A Celebration” at Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum. Although I would sometimes include myself in the category of exhibition hangers-on, as soon as the exhibition doors were open tonight, I was inside very quickly.
But before we were allowed downstairs, it was time for speeches from a couple of Powerhouse Museum officials and former NSW Premier, Neville Wran, who famously danced with Diana many years ago. He spoke of the significance of Diana on a number of levels, declaring her a “phenomenon”. Most memorably, Wran reminisced about the famous quote from Sir Robert Menzies about Queen Elizabeth – “I did but see her passing by, and yet I love her til’ I die” (or something like that), declaring that, had Menzies lived to another generation, he probably would have declared the same about Diana. He also reflected on the nature of celebrity, declaring that anyone could be a celebrity these days, fewer could be legends, but that Diana was a “phenomenon”.
Although a colleague told he me thought Wran had delivered a “dreadful speech” because he had failed to talk much about his personal contact with Diana, I quite enjoyed it. In fact, I remembered a high school teacher many years extolling the virtues of Wran’s speech giving abilities at the opening of extensions to the Casino Hospital in Northern NSW in the early 1980s. A recent victim of throat cancer, my high school teacher noted that Wran was thereby forced to deliver a speech of utmost brevity, and thus delivered something quite memorable.
Diana – A Celebration
Most memorable for me, as we wandered through the exhibition launch was who was there. I couldn’t help but notice there were a lot of women between about the ages of 30 and 45 and a lot of gay men (including a very cute red-headed guy! – hello if you’re reading). What seemed to touch most people most was the ordinariness of some of the material including the school uniform, the diaries and other personal items. In many respects, these were far more touching, because of their sheer humanity, than were some of the more spectacular items, such as “the wedding dress”.
A lot less glamorous than it appeared on television, and faded with age, some of the lace on the dress actually looked like something you might pick up from a Splotlight store. The three of us who attended also smiled when we reflected on how incredibly awful some of her dresses were. Listening in to nearby conversations, it seemed there was a lot of interest in how large or small Diana was as a women, and the extent to which the dresses gave people an indication into what she was like as a person.
One of the women I was with reflected on how important some of the photography was, including the publicity photographs for this exhibition, in helping to create the “Diana” phenomenon. Those wonderful black and white photographs seemed to capture the heart and soul of Diana in a way many other photographs failed to, and I guess played a significant role in allowing the public to connect with her.
At times I felt a little teary walking around the exhibition, especially when I read the original text of her brother’s speech at her funeral, simply because of the humanity of her life. Other times I giggled at the silliness of it all, wondering why she was important at all. Although an important part of the lives of many people of my age for a variety of reasons, I wondered for a moment how this phenomenon would be remembered in fifty years time.
When I was in Brisbane the other week I walked past “The Alliance Hotel” on Boundary Street. As I peered through window, I noted it seems like a very modern “boutique” hotel these days. However, I remember it back in the 80s when it was a fairly down-market gay bar.
“Down-market” is probably the wrong phrase to use, as it’s a venue I remember with fondness. They had $3 meals on a Monday night, as I recall, which was a very attractive offering to an impoverished university student living such as myself.
But it was the Sunday nights I remember the most. There was a “Sunday Session” from roughly four until ten, which was always a wonderful opportunity to catch up with friends for a beer or two. And they had a wonderful drag show which seemed to go on for hours. Although there were lots of drag legends in Brisbane at the time such as Toye de Wilde (who once ran for the Queensland Parliament) and Destiny Devine (who we named our cat after), the “star” of the show was a character called Freda Mae West. Freda Made was, probably, in her 70s, and her “star turn” was an inability to lip-sync properly. Most famously, the line “I see you shiver with anticipation” from Rocky Horror had the crowd in rapturous laughter.
In some ways, the Sunday night show at Sydney’s Stonewall reminds me of those days at The Alliance. Hosted by Polly, the show is all about having a fun time, having a few drinks with your mates, and in preparation for the week ahead, not taking life too seriously. A treasure.
As a child I remember my mum used to love “The Young and the Restless”. I used to watch it occasionally too, if I was home sick from school.
Even though I was only a child, I vividly remember Mrs Chancellor (my favourite) and her philandering husband Phillip who was having an affair with Jill.
Along with “Days Of Our Lives”, it was one of my mum’s favourite shows. Mine too, actually. There was nothing quite like a day home from school when I could sit and watch “The Mike Walsh Show”, “Days of our Lives” and “The Young and the Restless”.
Around the same time, there was another show, an Australian TV show called, “The Restless Years”.
Years later and I’m wondering still what are “the restless years”. Are they the years in your twenties, your thirties or maybe your forties?
In your twenties you think you’re so much brighter and smarter than anyone who has lived before you. You think people in their forties and fifties are people who don’t understand “the real issues” and who have lost touch with reality. Or at least that’s my recollection of the twenties.
In your thirties, you think much the same. You can tend to look down on those in their twenties as naive, unaware of the big picture, and you begin to feel a sense of restlessness about how much you need to achieve. And you wish those baby-boomers would just hurry up and retire. Again, that’s my recollection.
And then in your forties, you think much the same. You’re still wishing for the boomers to retire. But you also start to think there’s more to life than your job. And if you haven’t gotten involved in a relationship or have begun to have children (if you’re female), you feel as though time is against you. Or at least that’s how I’ve felt, aside from the child thing, as it’s pretty unlikely I’ll have a child at this point in my life.
So I’m beginning to think the forties are, in fact, “the restless years”. The years when you think you have so much to achieve, but so little time in which to do it.
And that’s how I’ve been feeling lately. Restless.
For the last few years when I’ve been arriving home from an overseas holiday I’ve felt a certain sense of restlessness. You go away, you have a wonderful time, and then you’re transported back into life as it was. Every time this has occurred, I’ve been trying to find a way to re-invent my life in some small way to make things different.
My friend Graeme calls it post holiday travel depression, but that’s not how I view it. I’ve never experienced post holiday depression at all. Depression yes, but never post holiday depression.
For me, it’s all about always trying to keep your life moving on. And returning to “reality” is not going back to the way in which your life was, it’s about moving on and trying to find new adventures and new challenges. I’d hate to think life went back to the way it was just because of geography. I’m hoping to have new adventures in my 70s, 80s, 90s, whatever, not just right now and not just through travel.
Anyway, that’s all a bit random. In some ways I could be auditioning for the role of pnb or maybe I need to get into home renovation?
As I made my way home from work tonight, I noticed the Blockbuster Video Store on Crown Street, was once again “closing down”. There was a “false alarm” a couple of years ago when they had a “closing down sale” on the weekend, only to re-open on the Monday. The truth be told, I haven’t rented a video since the early 2000s, and so if they really do “close down” this time I wouldn’t be surprised.
A couple of years ago, when I expressed concern about the relocation of the Commonwealth Bank to a “ritzier” part of Crown Street, resulting in yet another empty shop in my area, I was reminded by a local real estate agent who commented on my blog, arguing:
Crown Street is just doing what it has been doing for more than two decades now, which is that it is morphing into one of the most popular & vibrant retail strips in Sydney.
He was absolutely right, Crown Street has changed so much in the time I’ve been living here. Shops open; shops close.
But two years later, the Commonwealth Bank remains empty. So too, is Nandos across the road, as you’ll see in the photograph. And about half a dozen (probably more) shops in “my part” of Crown Street are either up for lease or, seemingly, permanently closed.
I really love living in this part of Surry Hills, and so it pains me to see so many empty shops at the moment. Having a vibrant main street makes you feel good about the area you live.
But yeah, times change. And so many of the “shops” we used to go to are no longer relevant. As I think I’ve previously noted, I think we’re in “transition” when it comes to shops, and I wonder if our town plans are reflecting that. Are we just waiting for new shops? Or have we moved to a new world where we no longer require as many “shops”?
Meanwhile, the “gourmet” toffee apple shop on Cleveland Street (which I always thought had a rather dubious business model) seems to be doing just fine twelve months after opening. Yes, really.
Row of tents comes to my mind, many rows. What if Santa is Gay was a good laugh.
My favourite line from Happy Ho-Ho-Ho is how she wants “diamonds and gold, stuff that I can sell when I get old…”
Extraordinary. I don’t think these videos will get a run in Tony Abbott’s house this Christmas.
My favourite expression currently for this kinda thing, Victor, is “Cory Bernardi’s head explodes…”