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I NEVER thought I’d get to read a story called ”The night I met Oprah Winfrey”, but there it was, prominently displayed on the virtual front page of The Age.

Of course, it wasn’t actually called “The night I met Oprah Winfrey” because some enterprising sub decided to go with the headline “Guess who came to dinner in Toorak” to highlight the fact that we really are still stuck in the 60s here.  And not the good 60s, either; the 60s where… well, where people of means are still stuck, which is to say the 50s. Or earlier.

Ten thousand people crammed into Federation Square yesterday to see the TV star for 12 minutes but last night Suzanne Carbone ended up at a private dinner for 20 in Toorak with her and then inflicted her breathless name-dropping recount on innocent newspaper readers some of whom [I wish I could say "most of whom" but I have no real confidence in that assessment] really couldn’t give a rat’s arse about the self-promotions of the rich and exploitative.

Suzanne’s friend Megan Castran always dreamt about Oprah visiting her in Australia – which is a specific and unnervingly limited ambition, when you really think about it – and Suzanne is so starstruck that she can report that “if there’s someone who can make dreams come true, it’s the Big O.”

Mrs Castran met Oprah in Hawaii in 2006 and sat in her Chicago audience the year later. After the show, she gave Oprah her business card and the TV star told her she would call if she was coming to Australia.

Oprah stuck to her word. She told Suzanne last night there was something special about Mrs Castran’s business card. ”There was something about her energy. I kept it in the right-hand side of my desk.”

Mrs Castran has held taco nights at her luxurious home for 20 years and when inviting Suzanne to last night’s dinner, she said it was to celebrate her birthday, which was on Wednesday. Oprah was the icing on the cake.

Mrs Castran, surrounded by devoted husband Paul and children Max and Zoe, had invited 20 close friends including golfer Stuart Appleby and his wife, Ashley Saleet, Natasha Stipanov, Ronnie Atlas, Sarah Walker and Meghan McGann, all people who Suzanne clearly thinks we have heard of and probably hopes we’ll be as breathlessly impressed by as she is.

The doorbell rang at 6pm and Mrs Castran screamed when she saw Oprah. They hugged and Oprah handed over two bottles of tequila, Porfidio and Parfida. Well, it was taco night and tequila shots were in order.

A beaming Mrs Castran, declared: ”This is one of life’s great moments.”  [Suzanne doesn't report that her devoted husband, Paul, rolled his eyes here, but I'd hope he did.]

Dozens of cameramen, sound recordists, producers and PR people from Oprah’s Harpo Productions buzzed around [Dozens!]. Pearl restaurant staff took over the kitchen to prepare canapes and the tacos.

Oprah, wearing jeans and a shirt with her hair expertly blowdried, as usual, [I'm so happy that Fairfax, with it's recent cost-cutting, hasn't dispensed with the services of someone who can spot "expertly blowdried" hair] sat with us outside by the pool and picked up the taco shell with her hands – like the rest of them. Suzanne doesn’t report whether an “Old El Paso” commercial was then filmed, with people discussing the merits of hard shell tacos vs soft, but I can only assume – given the relentless name dropping so far in the article – that it didn’t happen.  They learnt that she sleeps five hours a night. She reiterated that we Aussies are so ”darn friendly”, saying: ”There is a vibrance (sic) and confidence in Australia that I haven’t seen in other places.”  [Suzanne omits to tell us that Oprah was saving her voice and communicating in poorly spelled notes.  Either that, or she is also skilled at picking up spelling mistakes in speech.]

Then she made an announcement. ”Everyone here is coming to Sydney!” There was applause and cheers.

Pastry chef Christopher Montebello from South Melbourne speciality cake shop Let Them Eat Cake made a flourless chocolate cake of Uluru with Oprah sitting on top. Singer Paris Zachariou serenaded Oprah with his own ditty, cheekily called Billionaire.

Mr Castran, who has done well for himself in real estate, joked: ”Anyone who said money can’t buy happiness doesn’t know where to shop.”

Commenting on being wealthy, Oprah said: ”You should try it.”

Oprah asked about Australian values, our lifestyle and even mentioned ”sex”, curious how parents educated their children about the birds and the bees.

Ross Wilson, who came with wife Tania, performed his classic song Eagle Rock and Oprah danced around the pool. Wilson said: ”It can’t get better than that.”

At 7.30pm, Oprah departed with her Uluru cake, pausing on the tennis court to reflect: ”I got to meet real people in a real family setting. That was as good as it can ever get.”

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Sure, there are tongue-in-cheek elements – the “pausing on the tennis court” to reflect on real people part.  But it all seems to be predicated on the basis that we will recognise the names dropped and will therefore be able to really place it as absurd.  Or maybe that’s just my limited knowledge of a social set that the rest of Melbourne is familiar with…

The New York Times is exploring new ways of reading online, and the Times Skimmer is one of these.  It offers a much better reader experience than the traditional page layout. I also find it easier to browse than the Google Reader format.  As with Reader, you are given the headline and an abstract of the article.  To read the full article, click on it and it opens in the skimmer (ads, embedded videos and all)  The Times Reader is also available for download and has a similar interface to the Skimmer – the download is free and allows access to the front page stories and previews of all stories in the paper; to read the full edition of the paper you must subscribe.  It has a handy “browse” feature, which you can use to flip through the stories and the stories are presented more as they are in a hard copy – columns of text with accompanying images, which are often left out in online versions.

One of the elements of Murdoch’s proposal for paid content that has most riled me is that it hasn’t been presented as anything but a grab for cash; there hasn’t been any discussion on investing in the web to make the content more reader-friendly, the ads less intrusive, or the discussion in the comments better moderated.  What the NYT seems to be doing is demonstrating an understanding that the web and the hard-copy are two distinct media, and showing a willingness to invest in ways of translating the content to best fit the internet.

Wilson hates Twitter because, unlike “Facebook and blogs (which) appear to serve some useful purpose, Twitter just does not – it is puerile, inane and a shocking waste of time”. Moreover, Twitter users are “vacuous people with too much time on their hands who like to believe we actually care what they are doing”. Wilson has a column where she is paid to spout her own vapid opinions, but she resents the fact that Twitter allows everybody to do the same. She seems particularly peeved that tweets are limited to a character count (she doesn’t seem to be able to settle on whether that count is 140 or 160), although I doubt she’d prefer more extensive “blow-by-blow descriptions” of the “tedium and uselessness” of the lives of people she obviously despises.  (How somebody can be “turgid” within 140 characters is a mystery.)  Perhaps it’s because she can’t summarise her own vacuousness to the form that Twitter is, to her, “the single most hideous technological breakthrough of the past decade” (she’s never tried Microsoft Songsmith, then, but that’s another story).

Wilson focuses on the celebrity tweets – which, yes, are largely inane and pointless – but doesn’t address the communities that are emerging and the conversations that are taking place amongst witty and articulate Twitter users. These conversations might sometimes seem trivial, but they are also frequently challenging and instructive. I wouldn’t have known where to attend rallies supporting disenfranchised Iranians, were it not for Twitter. On matters less serious, I would not have 500g of Tassie cheese in my fridge right now if it weren’t for the recommendations of people I follow on Twitter; I would have risked sub-standard pizza at our usually sterling local had I not been warned of a less-competent pizza-maker on shift on Sunday night; I would have missed the first episode of the current season of The Amazing Race.

Here’s the crux: Wilson thinks it’s all about her. Her entire column rails against Twitterers “…who like to believe we actually care…”; she characterises them as “…those who think we care (giving) us turgid, blow-by-blow descriptions of their every move…”. For her they are “…a whole new generation of bores … let(ting) us in on the tedium and uselessness of their lives”. I use Twitter, but I don’t tweet – or blog – because I believe that people actually care what I’m doing. I don’t tweet for Rebecca Wilson or others who aren’t interested. I don’t care what she thinks of what I’m thinking. I don’t care if she doesn’t find any links that I tweet interesting or amusing. I’m happy that she’s not clogging up Twitter with her crassly constructed “critique” of the medium. (Incidentally, she slams Wil Anderson for his hilarious tweeting from the Logies for “offering a less than constructive critique of Gretel Killeen’s performance” because it’s obviously all about the “constructive” criticism for Wilson.)

She closes by appealing to the memory of her grandfather (won’t somebody think of the grandparents!): “My grandfather used to despair at the idea of an idle mind. The Twitter generation would have absolutely terrified him beyond belief. I can just hear him now: ‘They all need to do a bloody good day’s work. That would shut the lot of them up.’”

I wonder if Grampaw Wilson would have considered scrawling a barely-literate column as “a bloody good day’s work.”

The full article is here; below are some items of particular interest to me.

“Street violence is not a new phenomenon here, but neither is it one that most, or even many, people risk encountering every day.” Actually, street violence is something people risk encountering everyday.  Yesterday morning there was a brawl in the street outside.  Injury was only avoided because the combatants’ efforts to trade blows were thwarted by their extreme drunkedness.

“Two acts of senseless violence in a short space of time do not make a trend, but for those who want statistical evidence the trend is there.” Of course two acts of senseless violence don’t make a trend; many, many other acts of violence were perpetrated over the past week and went unreported.

“The binge drinking once thought to be a product of restrictive licensing has continued, and the availability of other drugs that increase aggression as alcohol lowers inhibitions, has fuelled much of the rising street violence.” Good to see that there is acknowledgement of the role of factors other than alcohol, but wouldn’t it be more helpful to undertake some real analysis of what’s changed, rather than just knee-jerk reference to the Nieuwenhuysen report? Maybe factor in the increased number of sex clubs in high traffic nightlife areas?

“The Premier has urged parents, friends and workmates to send a message to young men that violence is “anti-Victorian”.” Exactly when was I meant to convey my belief that violence is “anti-Victorian” to the young man who assaulted my partner? Given that I didn’t even see him until he’d knocked my partner to the ground, was I supposed to overcome my shock and fear that the other three would start in and make my statement then? I would have thought that going about our lives in non-aggressive, law-abiding ways might have been enough to keep us from being victims of violent thugs. Perhaps Mr Brumby is going to provide Victorians with colourful wrist bands with anti-violence slogans to wear as a talisman against random attacks.

“If the perpetrators of the violence are susceptible young men, however, long prison terms in the company of hardened criminals are unlikely to influence their conduct for the better. Insofar as the courts can address the problem, community-based orders that force offenders to reflect on the consequences of their actions would be a wiser course.” Okay, for a start, why characterise violent men as “susceptible young men”?  This is nonsense. As for the suggested solution, how would a community-based order “force” offenders to “reflect on the consequences of their actions” when the consequences of their actions are… a community-based order to reflect on the consequences of their actions. Surely even the most blunted intelligence would conclude from their reflections that their actions have no consequences and further conclude that there is no reason, therefore, to modify their behaviour.

“It is a problem generated by all of us, because it is, as Mr Overland says, the result of a deterioration of public standards. “ No, it most emphatically is not a problem generated by all of us. There is no point in trying to spread the responsibility to all when it is not a responsibility shared by all. Put the responsibility with the perpetrators. Street violence has become my problem, but it is not my fault and I will not accept responsibility for it.

As demonstrations continue in Iran, more information is emerging about the legitimacy of the election, including reports from some districts where voter turnout was greater than 100%.  Protests in support of disenfranchised Iranians continue around the world – #iranelection on Twittersearch is a good place to find local action.

Our amazement … soon gave way to grateful and respectful astonishment. The quality of the work was even more impressive than the quantity. Lens readers in this hemisphere, in Europe and in Asia showed an imaginative command of the medium. Their work exploited the idiosyncracies of the Polaroid formats, especially the SX-70 films: the square format, the slightly soft-edged rendition, the occasional defects from the developing process, a color palette that paradoxically seemed warmer than normal but also bent a bit toward blues and greens.

And here they are.  It’s best to look at them in full screen mode.  Amazing!

theage

(melbourne)

magazine

There’s an awful lot to dislike in this shiny, inconveniently sized publication.  Earnest lower case titles, random use of contrasting colours, and enthusiastically misplaced brackets are only a small part of the problem.

A much larger part of the problem is the sheer pointlessness of this production.  The content (sorry, the(content)) is divided into three main sections: the cover, the features and the regulars.  In the current issue – #55, apparently – the cover story is an interview with Sigrid Thornton.  The features are: a profile of a sex therapist (it’s called the love doctor. Really); an article about surbubanites growing things (pigs, chooks, grapes, bees); and an article about the Julie Ramage case (a book on the case, written by an Age journo, has just been reissued – this, therefore, is mere promo).  The stories are weak, which is also how the Good Weekend has been recently.  None of these pieces would be out of place in the current GW – they could be included in the GW to try to bring it back to a place where it’s at least a lengthy, if not particularly interesting, read.

the regulars (damn this e e cummings pretentiousness!) is broken up into five sections, all of which mirror the sections in a number of other Age liftouts: eat drink, fashion, maintenance, homes, box office.  In fact, “mirror” is apt, judging from the eat drink.  Larissa Dubecki is welcomed to the team as the new restaurant critic and her contribution to this magazine is to cannibalize the reviews she’s done over the past few weeks as the new restaurant critic for Epicure.  Her main review is of Brown and Do: it’s essentially a condensed version of her review of a month ago, but she’s changed the cheesy war references (not cut them, changed them – instead of “lines of demarcation” and “occasional reconnaissance mission(s) into territory” there are “subtle little forays”) and de-purpled the prose (thank God).  dishitup is the second page of the eat drink section and is more editing of previous work from Dubecki.

Seriously, I can’t figure out why this magazine exists.  Every piece could fit into another publication, and some of it already has (albeit in a different form).  Even one of my least favourite M sections has a twin here: THEMELBOURNELOOK is a match for “Street Seen” (this is in the insideinformation section, along with EATTHIS, NEEDTOKNOW, WE’RELOVING and HAPPYBIRTHDAY.  Where did these production designers learn their skillz?).  Clearly it’s an advertising vehicle – three double page ads and a left-hand full page before the contents page – but couldn’t that advertising be sold into one of the other publications and the quality throughout the supplements raised?

I don’t know – I’d like to say this is the last rant I’ll have about The Age, but Sophie Hexter has promised a “makeover” to the Ask The Stylist section in M, so I might not be able to restrain myself…

Jezebel linked to a story about a couple who were reunited, after a two year period, with their much-loved 20lb Maine Coon cat.

Bob was brought to the local humane society in Minnesota two years after his disappearance and workers found a microchip embedded under his skin with the Meide’s contact information. When they moved they didn’t update their contact information. Workers could not find their new phone number, but eventually thought to search for their names on Facebook. “We love everything about his personality. We love the size, we love big, fat cats,” said Nicole Meide, who first got Bob with her husband after they returned from their honeymoon. She said Bob’s return “brought tears of joy.”

It was a good week for fat tabbies and their estranged owners, although the story in The Age’s Diary section was bittersweet:

Five years ago, Amanda and William (who preferred to keep mum about their surnames) returned from a weekend away to find their beloved moggy, Francisco, had vanished. “We spent forever looking for him,” said Amanda, who was eight months’ pregnant at the time but frantically pounded the streets distributing flyers, knocking on doors and searching in vain. “He was a big, fat, tabby cat — very good-looking, actually — but he wasn’t adventurous,” she recalled. The couple thought they had heard the last of Francisco until they got a surprise call last week informing them their fat cat was alive and well and living under a new identity with a family in Malvern East. It turns out another family had taken in Francisco five years earlier after they found him whimpering under their veranda, two kilometres away from his original home. His past life finally came to light when the family took him to the vet last week to get him microchipped only to find he already had one. Francisco’s original owners were shocked to get a call informing them of their cat’s apparent resurrection just before Easter. After some reflection, they decided not to enter into a cat custody battle with the new family who had come to love their long-lost pet, now known as Piper. “He is our cat technically, but there’s no point in making another family miserable,” Amanda told Diary. “My husband came home and said, ‘We can’t do it.’ We’ve already mourned him. But we are glad he is alive.” The couple are willing to settle for access rights and hope to arrange a reunion soon. A furrytale ending for all.

Probably because of the “Man in a Jacket” Witchery campaign, I’ve become a bit cynical about some of these “heart-warming” stories. Of course, against-the-odds-pet-reunions do happen and are reported (usually in that spare couple of minutes after the weather), but the timing and similarity of these stories made me suspicious: were they planted in support of “International Pet Microchipping Week”?

A Google search brought up a blank on a global Microchipping push and the Facebook page for Shane Meide checks out – he even has the photo of his cat as the profile pic – but I’m still dubious about the local version of the tale. There’s something about them wanting to “keep mum” about their names that piques my interest…

Maybe I just have to get back to work and spend less time trawling the internet.

So, what are the things I hate most?

“Street Seen”

In this column, Arsineh Houspian photographs and interviews a random person about their fashion choices.  I’m not quite sure why.  The profiled person usually comes off as such a narcissistic prat that the column seems to be nothing more than an act of deliberate cruelty.  In this weeks profile, Marlene Digby (54) completes the “When I was a kid” sentence with:

I loved dressing up in high heel shoes and trying to look like Ivana Trump.

Ivana Trump is 6 years older than Ms Digby, didn’t marry The Donald until Ms Digby was 23 and was unlikely to be on the fashion radar out here until our fashionista was her late 20s.  If The Sunday Age was interested in people’s stories in any way other than to cheaply fill a supplement, they’d give their interview subjects the benefit of a little editing. Are there any subbies left at Fairfax?

“Ask the Stylist”

I have to assume that the letters to “stylist” Sophie Hexter are all faked.  I also like to believe that “Sophie Hexter” is a dadaist performance by a freegan philosopher.  If 1. the letters are real and 2. Sophie’s advice is genuine, then there is a greater concentration of vacuous morons in this city than I’d previously believed.

“Sophie” does seem to have toned down some of her advice recently, perhaps in an attempt to avoid the lynch mobs when the revolution comes, however she still managed to include a $1550 Hermes notebook and $3700 Longines watch in her response to this query:

My husband just got promoted into a very public and important job.  What should I wear when I attend events with him?  He is also shorter than me.  Should I ditch the heels when we try to present a united front?

Sophie did advise flats, which was particularly stupid advice.  This little man probably got his “very public and important” job due to a lifetime of overcompensation for his short stature, and if his wife takes that sense of physical inferiority from him, he might lose all motivation and crumble into nothing.

“The Culture Tracker… Where we’re at this week”

Should be titled “where most of the internet savvy world was at a few weeks ago”.  Really, Culture Tracker?  There’s a “buzz” around Dollhouse? Peter Jackson’s “Hobbit” films are “pre-buzz”? Tell us more!

“Shop Talk”

I seem to think that when this first appeared, it featured small boutiques and was, therefore, quite an interesting idea.  I didn’t think the supply of independent fashion retailers could have been exhausted so quickly – just to get through Brunswick Street, Gertrude Street, Smith Street and Chapel Street would surely take a year or so.  Anyway, for whatever reason, chains have poked their heads into recent weeks, which smacks of recycling media releases.  Of course, to maintain the fiction of “shop talk”, the reporter focuses on a particular branch of a major retailer, for example, the Collins Street Cue.  Edgy!

There was no “Shop Talk” this week, so fingers crossed that it’s been scrapped.

“Filter”

More internet trawling dressed up as magazine content.

“Rewind”

Are you a celebrity who was once famous?  Do you have something new to shill, but can’t afford to take out any advertising?  Contact the folks at Rewind.  They’ll be happy to puff your former career and then promote your current project.  What’ve you got to lose?

Two things I dislike about this week’s supplements

Spotlight

The photo of Nick Frost is uncredited, so it probably came from his agent, but REALLY?  I skipped straight past this when I read the section, because I thought “there’s somebody I’ve never seen or heard of”.  I only found it again when flipping through to write this.  It looks nothing like Nick Frost!

The Serve

How can you write about “Tutto Bene” and not mention the Risotto Al Presidente?

One thing I’ll miss when I stop buying The Sunday Age

Overheard, by Oslo Davis.

It passed.  I realised that I could tolerate most of the people I came into contact with, and actually liked some people rather a lot; that I was generalising the negative to the point of irrationality. I’m not completely recovered, though, as I realised this week.  Due to an insatiable need for news on what is happening around the state, I’ve been going to news sources I would normally shun and this has reactivated a generalised loathing of folk.

The Herald-Sun allows – in fact, encourages – comments on its online stories and this, I have discovered, brings out the crazy.  Suggestions that the bushfires are, in fact, an Islamic terrorist group’s work, complete with references to the recent Benbrika trial and sentencing and that, therefore, Muslims should be deported.  Suggestions that the aid offered by neighbouring Indonesia is inadequate when compared to the aid offered by Australia in response to the Tsunami.  Suggestions that any arsonists found should be tied to trees and left to perish in fires, presumably of the vigilantes’ making.  Suggestions that it’s all the fault of the Greenies, or Labor.  Suggestions that the PM was “faking” his emotion for the cameras.  Suggestions that those who “choose” to live in the bush shouldn’t expect assistance from those “sensible” enough to live in cities.  And more.  So much more.

I realise, now, that I’m not a completely recovered misanthrope; that I retain a tendency to generalise the worst of certain people’s intelligence and behaviour to the remainder of the species.  So, I will not revisit the Hun site – I don’t need the aggro.