Last night’s stage however, was terrible. Contador was jeered off the podium for his lack of sportsmanship. Doubly hoping Saxo-Bank ride Astana into the ground in the coming stages now. In the meantime, I’m practising my Spanish. Contador es un bastardo.

Easily my favourite, and probably least favourite also, part of this story is that Julia Gillard is living in sin with her hairdresser husband. I am eagerly anticipating the effect of a hairdresser who has such influence over the government of a country. We call him her ‘partner’, because it sounds so grown up and therefore somehow legitimate, but lets out it for what it is…

Australia’s Prime Minister lives with her boyfie. Heh.

Mikelangelo is a beefy man (and you get to see most of him, as by the end of the show he was in his underwear), who sings baritone. He started in some kind of ruffled shirt, looking like he was an Elvis impersonator (from a time long before Elvis was around), before switching shirts once, and then appearing in his underwear, which also kept the old-style aesthetic going. The Black Sea Gentlemen are Rufino the Catalan Casanova on violin, Little Ivan (pronounced ‘Ee-vahn’) on double bass, Guido Libido on piano-accordion, and The Great Muldavio on clarinet. They all switched instruments when necessary, and each member got a turn at the spotlight to sing a little ditty or tell a tale. Between cracking jokes at the expense of the others, and pulling a comb out of his pocket to fix his hair, Mikelangelo strutted around like nobody’s business, sometimes piggybacking his bandmates around, sometimes harassing audience members, sometimes even jumping up on the tables to dance and tip people’s wine glasses over his own head.

The best parts of the show were the humour, which is maintained throughout; the aesthetic, which is never broken–they all look the part down to the last detail; and the clever songs and storytelling. Even seeing Little Ivan walk out of the Opera House after the show with a beer in his hand and three more shoved into his jacket pockets (classy) didn’t make me any less impressed with them.

Their MySpace profile has an unfortunately limited number of songs you can listen to, but it’s worth a few minutes of your time.

Watch it, then watch it again and get all the bits you missed. I’m all cool with selling my soul to Nike now, really.

Even the Australian brands are getting into it;

Edit: And while I’m at it, Dan alerted me to this advert, which accurately explains the coming weeks.

Νυνὶ δὲ χωρὶς νόμου δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ πεφανέρωται, μαρτυρουμένη ὑπὸ τοῦ νόμου καὶ τῶν προφητῶν, δικαιοσύνη δὲ θεοῦ διὰ πίστεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, εἰς πάντας τοὺς πιστεύοντας: οὐ γάρ ἐστιν διαστολή: πάντες γὰρ ἥμαρτον καὶ ὑστεροῦνται τῆς δόξης τοῦ θεοῦ, δικαιούμενοι δωρεὰν τῇ αὐτοῦ χάριτι διὰ τῆς ἀπολυτρώσεως τῆς ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ: ὃν προέθετο ὁ θεὸς ἱλαστήριον διὰ [τῆς] πίστεως ἐν τῷ αὐτοῦ αἵματι εἰς ἔνδειξιν τῆς δικαιοσύνης αὐτοῦ διὰ τὴν πάρεσιν τῶν προγεγονότων ἁμαρτημάτων ἐν τῇ ἀνοχῇ τοῦ θεοῦ, πρὸς τὴν ἔνδειξιν τῆς δικαιοσύνης αὐτοῦ ἐν τῷ νῦν καιρῷ, εἰς τὸ εἶναι αὐτὸν δίκαιον καὶ δικαιοῦντα τὸν ἐκ πίστεως Ἰησοῦ.

– Παυλος, προς Ρωμαιους

In a couple of thousand years, when we all speak Spanglishdarin, and no one writes anymore (“We do not know exactly what the ‘email’ and the ‘iPhone’ are, but we are led to believe that the death of writing occurred around the same they came to prominence”) they will ‘dig up’ this video of a diatribe from Mr. K. West and debate it’s meaning. Did Mr. K. West in fact say “I’d do anything for a blonde” or was the word dyke included on the end of the sentence? There is much attestation to the former, but the video shows it coming from the man’s own mouth. The addition of the word dyke does not make much sense at all–history tells us that ‘dyke’ comes from a Dutch word, and was used to refer to an artificial bank of earth used to regulate water levels. How can such a construction be blonde? But the harder reading of course should be preferred. We have omitted the word, but give it only a C rating, due to the copious amount of attestation (notably including the important SongMeanings.net and LyricWiki.com MSS), and the harder reading of the word dyke. And what did Mr. K. West mean by this statement? Was he saying that he would have done anything for a specific blonde (out of goodness or love or treaty?) which he has in mind? Or would he do anything to obtain a blonde? It is known that in a similar stage of history a number of race issues rose to prominence–was Mr. K. West making a statement about racial inequality, because he himself was black? And so it will go on.

Imagine a world where George Bush’s stuttering and Obama’s cool sunglasses mean that the war film genre is given a whole new spin… oh right, you’ve imagined it, okay. The Hurt Locker tries so hard to be ‘real’ I kept expecting the characters to suddenly burst out with, “Oh my gosh, how gritty and forlorn is this non-CGI situation I’m in right now!”

I can’t give any spoilers, as nothing actually happens in the movie. It’s like it tried to be a documentary. But it wasn’t, it was fiction. It was a film, but not entertaining either. All it did was implore you to feel the awesome weight and burden and terror and futility of war–whatever that is when it comes to you from the silver screen.

Intensely boring.

I don’t know if you got a man or not
If you made plans or not
But if God put me in your plans or not
I’m trippin’ this drink got me sayin’ a lot
But I know that God put you in front of me.

The aren’t the most amazing live band, but they were solid. And their music just blew me away. Sometimes, like what’s been happening recently, I go through phases where I do things like listening to Lady GaGa (a lot), but when Mr. Alban sung Goodbye Girl a capella during the encore I was again reminded of just where it’s at. After the gig I shook Mr. Alban’s hand and said thank you.

Listen to Epicure, they have an anthology out, but I’d recommend The Goodbye Girl.