By Adam Buxton of Adam and Joe. The Adam & Joe XFM Podcast is essential listening.

This Is Not Art is on in Newcastle this weekend. It’s my favourite Australian festival – if you’ve never been, you should check it out. I’ll be doing a couple of talks and a couple of performances.

and my favourite:

Thanks Urban Dictionary!

Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project

Famous Cannabis Users

Google Idol

THE MARRIAGE OF CADMUS AND HARMONY FOR CHILDS

The Mercury Theatre on the Air

Nyet

sCrAmBlEd?HaCkZ! (awesome software!)

SONY admits that CD/44.1PCM is inferior

Stagg Chili Recipes

Video Downloader

xTal – free mp3 DJ VSTi plugin

Zaatar Mix

Feel Tank Chicago

Global Cemetary Online with Sad News Update

The Interruptor – VST Devices

Possible and Impossible Aporias

Resounding the Cinematic – Resonance, Proximity and the Acousmatic in the Apparatus

The Shannonizer

Sprockets (television)

Through the Keyhole

Urbanomic

Favourites of 2005

I’ve restricted this to things that were published/screened or events that happened in 2005.

Albums

50 Foot Wave – Golden Ocean Broken [...]]]> s0metim3s has given us her favourites of 2005. I wasn’t going to do this, but since I’m waiting for South Africa to be bowled out before I head out for the rest of the day…

Favourites of 2005

I’ve restricted this to things that were published/screened or events that happened in 2005.

Albums

50 Foot Wave – Golden Ocean
Broken Social Scene – Broken Social Scene
Kate Bush – Aerial
Coil – The Ape of Naples
Dressy Bessy – Electrified
Luke Haines – Luke Haines is Dead
Jackson & His Computer Band – Smash
Lady Sovereign – Vertically Challenged
Konono No. 1 – Congotronics
Metric – Live It Out
M.I.A. – Arular
The New Pornographers – Twin Cinema
Puzahki – Daddy’s Little Skint
Rhythm & Sound – See Mi Ya
Sleater Kinney – The Woods
Smog – A River Ain’t Too Much to Love
Venetian Snares – Rossz Csillag Alatt Született

It was mainly pop/rock for me this year – I even bought a guitar (which I still can’t play)! The sort of experimental music that I’d usually obsess over, this year I’d generally listen to once or twice before moving on. See Utility Fog for all the postfolkrocktronica that I should’ve been listening to.

Blogs

Too many – see the blog roll. It has been a privilege to have participated in the blog phenomenon and to have met so many amazing people. Extra love to those who have commented at, or linked to this humble blog.

Films

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Howl’s Moving Castle
Me and You and Everyone We Know
The Proposition
Wolf Creek

I didn’t go to the cinema nearly enough this year.

Games

Dragonshard
X-Men Legends 2

Live Music

Ben Byrne & Clayton Thomas @ Disorientation
Dereb Desalegn @ What Is Music, Sydney
DJ Olive @ Liquid Architecture 6, Melbourne
DJ Z-Trip @ The Metro
Lieutenant Colonel Spastic Howitzer @ Electrofringe
Machina Aux Rock @ Liquid Architecture 6, Sydney
Peter Newman @ Electrofringe
The Residents @ The Metro
Smog @ The Metro
Social Interiors @ Liquid Architecture 6, Sydney
Thembi Soddell @ Liquid Architecture 6, Sydney
Wet Gate @ Liquid Architecture 6, Melbourne

I also played live more often this year than any other. Highlights included a solo performance at the National Gallery of Australia for Liquid Architecture 6, Canberra; a technically disastrous but well-received set with WUAL for Liquid Architecture 6, Melbourne; better WUAL performances at Disorientation and Electrofringe; duo performances with Rik Rue (at if you like improvised music…), John Jacobs (at e)scapes) and Ben Byrne (twice, at the NOW now, and a VJ performance at Science Fiction); a solo performance at The Night Air Audiotheque; a solo performance and a Time Being DJ performance at Disorientation; performances with the Splinter Orchestra at Liquid Architecture 6, Sydney and Science Fiction.

TV

Arrested Development
Dateline London
Deadwood
Green Wing
Late Night with Conan O’Brien
Lateline (ABC)
Nathan Barley
Nighty Night
Peep Show
Rome
Something in the Air
The Thick of It
Trailer Park Boys
We Can Be Heroes

Thank goodness for broadband.

What’s In / What’s Out

What’s out:

CDs
Censorship
Copyright
Free to air commercial TV
Newspapers (in print form)

What’s in:

TEH INTERNETS!

Anarchism, or the Revolutionary Movement of the Twenty First Century

Blogging for Independent Artists and Creatives

The Chappelle Theory

Deleuze and Pop Music

EFF’s Jason Schultz explains how Sony BMG is about to be so pwned!

GWEI – Google Will Eat Itself

M/C Journal – Affect

Minimalist menace: The Necks score The boys

The Night Air – The Wire

Vidomi

The Visionary [...]]]> Anarchism and Political Theory

Anarchism, or the Revolutionary Movement of the Twenty First Century

Blogging for Independent Artists and Creatives

The Chappelle Theory

Deleuze and Pop Music

EFF’s Jason Schultz explains how Sony BMG is about to be so pwned!

GWEI – Google Will Eat Itself

M/C Journal – Affect

Minimalist menace: The Necks score The boys

The Night Air – The Wire

Vidomi

The Visionary Art of Luke Brown

I watched all six 30-minute eps of this show the other day. It’s a brilliant dissection of contemporary British politics’ obsession with spin (one of the main characters is clearly based on Alistair Campbell).

It’s basically Yes Minister meets The Office, and was devised and directed by Armando Iannucci, the comedy genius who was Chris Morris’ [...]]]>

I watched all six 30-minute eps of this show the other day. It’s a brilliant dissection of contemporary British politics’ obsession with spin (one of the main characters is clearly based on Alistair Campbell).

It’s basically Yes Minister meets The Office, and was devised and directed by Armando Iannucci, the comedy genius who was Chris Morris’ main collaborator in the early ’90s.

Chris Langham is perfect as the hapless Minister for Home Affairs. Langham is perhaps best known for playing (the voice of) Roy Mallard in the classic mockumentary series People Like Us. Apparently he also used to be a writer on The Muppet Show!

And now I discover that Langham has recently been arrested over child porn. Oh dear… What is it with the prurience of British celebrity culture?

Anyway – check out The Thick of It if you can – you’ll probably have to download it as it’s not on DVD yet, and like most good recent British TV comedy we’ll be lucky if it screens on Australian TV any time soon.

One-glove wonder out to rip ya bloody arms off again

By Stephen Gibbs Sydney Morning Herald November 23, 2005

She’s still big, round and fat, but don’t tell her that. She has ridden her black bike, driven through the night and, after more than 30 years of waiting, she is finally coming home.

Hello, Aunty Jack.

For [...]]]> now this is good news:

One-glove wonder out to rip ya bloody arms off again

By Stephen Gibbs
Sydney Morning Herald
November 23, 2005

She’s still big, round and fat, but don’t tell her that. She has ridden her black bike, driven through the night and, after more than 30 years of waiting, she is finally coming home.

Hello, Aunty Jack.

For the first time since bidding her a fond farewell in 1973, Australian television viewers can welcome a transvestite boxer into their lounge rooms – The Aunty Jack Show is out on DVD.

For those not old enough to remember the two years when the “Queen of Wollongong” was terrorising the South Coast, the phrases “I’ll rip ya bloody arms off” and “me little lovelies” might finally make sense.

Perhaps no other Australian television program is steeped in such mystique. That mystery has included how a biker who wore red lipstick, one golden boxing glove and a tent-like, blue-velvet dress could disappear.

Whole generations have not seen the program that introduced Norman Gunston and colour broadcasting to local TV. It was rumoured for many years that the ABC had lost or taped over most of the 13 episodes.

Instead, they have been digitally restored with the help of the National Archives and the first season of seven episodes will be released by ABC Video and Roadshow on December 1.

Aunty Jack was created and played by Grahame Bond, an architecture graduate whose Sydney University friend Rory O’Donoghue played Thin Arthur and wrote most of those songs.

They were supported by John Derum as Narrator Neville, Sandra MacGregor as Flange Desire and Garry McDonald as Kid Eager. In the second series, McDonald appeared as the TV reporter Gunston.

A fixture on most lists of seminal and all-time-great Australian TV shows, Aunty Jack’s mix of anarchic sketches and musical comedy has not been repeated since the second series finished in 1973.

The following year the show’s anthemic closing song, Farewell Aunty Jack, topped Australian music charts. The character came back for five minutes in 1975 to present a segment introducing colour to Australian TV.

A gloved Aunty Jack is on the DVD cover. “Watch it,” she warns. “Or I’ll rip your bloody arms off.”