January 2007

The Houston Enforcers are the inaugural champions of the WCL.

The World Combat League, that is. Chuck Norris's baby no less.

Houston defeated the Miami Force 139-131 in the 2006-07 championship game at the Erwin Center, Austin on Saturday. It sounds like an NBA score but it's actually derived from a collection of bouts involving boxing, kick-boxing, taekwondo, kung fu, and a few other flavours of Asian combat sports.

Asha Bhosle and Brett Lee doing a duet. Imagine Barbra Streisand sharing the stage with, say, David Beckham and you get the picture.

Asha's coming to Australia in March, performing with the Kronos Quartet in Sydney, Melbourne and at Womadelaide. Any chance she'll do a gig in a local pub with Six and Out???

ENVIRONMENT: Swiss Glaciers Melting Rapidly -
BRUSSELS, Jan. 19 (IPS) - Receding Alpine glaciers are appearing a sure telltale of global warming. In Switzerland, 84 out of 85 glaciers under observation became shorter in 2006.
[Inter Press Service]

I can't remember the first time I read any of the work of the great American satirist Art Buchwald who died Wednesday. I think that I probably read some of his stuff at the height of Watergate. I do have an early recollection of seeing his work in a rather unlikely context.

For whatever reason, I was looking at a copy of the daily Hansard for the House of Representatives in the school library, probably around 1974 when I was in Year 10. I can't recall now who it was, but the MP in question was quoting a passage from Buchwald in one of his speeches, one which used biblical phraseology, but alas I can't remember any further.

The death of a 28 year-old mother-of-three in a competition run by a Californian radio station entitled "Hold your wee for a Wii" is genuinely tragic.

Hopefully, it will be a wake-up call to breakfast radio people everywhere to realise that you don't have to treat listeners like idiots - or expendible statistics - to be successful.

There's one broadcasting company in Sacramento that hopefully is going to be put out of business for being so tragically reckless.

A 59 year-old Vallejo, California man suffered second and third-degree burns across half his body when a mobile phone in his front pocket spontaneously combusted while he was sleeping.

The San Francisco Chronicle picks up the story.

"It's a whole new ball game
KFC Twenty20 is back"

- promotional blurb in various locations on the Cricket Australia website

Excuse me, but how can it be back when it is whole new?

Just about everything I have to say about Tuesday night's Twenty20 international at the SCG was said one year ago after the Australia v South Africa game.

Just a few additional observations:

If the game was a sell-out, and the official attendance was 35628, then that's about 11000 members who didn't turn up!

As I said on Friday, Shane Warne has wrapped up the 2006-07 Midwinter-Midwinter, the rickeyre.com BoG award for this summer's Ashes series.

(BoG stands for Best on Ground, a more appropriate term I believe than MVP)

The Midwinter-Midwinter is not an Award, Trophy, Prize or such, it is simply the Midwinter-Midwinter. Named after one of the few cricketers to have played for both sides in Australia v England Test competition.

Elvis is 72 today. If you happen to spot him at Macca's or KFC today give him my regards. His contribution to world culture is embodied by his presence on the soundtrack of Disney's Lilo and Stich movies.

More pertinent, however, is the fact that January 8 is also the birthday of David Jones - not the Monkee or the department store chain, but the artist who would become known as David Bowie. Today he turns 60. Scary eh?

To mark the birthday of an extraordinary craftsman, here's a playlist of my favourite Bowie numbers. In no particular order, though I've tried to give some form of thematic flow. My favourite of all is the last, even if I was suckered in at the time by the (for 1980) brilliant video clip.