Okeefereport: Six point three weeks out and building.

Here, just in case you’d heard of Saturday week when I arrived at work wearing a work boot on one foot and a jogger on the other (one foot always going faster, the result: circles), please judge for yourselves my mental health.

Don’t you just hate it when dumb people log their music onto the net as “Cathy’s Clown’ by Celiene Dion rather than by Dion DiMucci. Of course you might think it was by the Everley Brothers and you wouldn’t be alone but the original was by Dion and not Celiene. The upshot of this casualness and amateur approach to accreditation is a bank of work, all attributed to Fela Kuti, which should in fact be credited to artists as diverse as Ray Davies and Sammy Davis Jnr.

Do they seriously expect me to buy this? Well no I guess they don’t and I don’t, I get it all for free, downloaded from my peers on torrent sites, who haven’t the sense, guile or history to check their facts and correctly attribute ownership of the goods they are essentially stealing.

It’s confusing isn’t it? I am affronted by the inaccuracies relayed in the data that I download for free and make no attempt to repair before it in turn is passed on, thus not only stealing in terms of avoiding purchase (often impossible anyway) but also contributing to the eventual theft of the artists copyright itself, at least in the communal sense.

Does this really worry me I ask and the answer it seems is no. Essentially I am of the Lead Zeppelin School who believe that the ‘song remains the same’ no matter to whom it is attributed or how much it cost. If I like it I am not going to worry too much about its prodigy until the quiz master on some Spicks and Specks or Einstein Factor asks the question and even then not unless there’s money riding on it.

Of course the pleasure I find in listening invokes a mushy feeling for the Elvis singing or the Lennon writing but both are dead and can not benefit from the cost of purchase or the artistic credit though of course the latter is always debateable. As for the so called owners of copyright to these works I shall have to suggest that until they can establish a definitive way of differentiating between the works of Celine and DiMucci and provide an authentic, attractive and comprehensive online catalogue from which I can purchase, I shall be unmoved.

Well! Last year it was Chris and Sue living it up with Grace Jones at The fabulous Mission Beach Resort. This year it is Stephens turn to cavort with his boss Marilynne Paspaley and his new friends Ros Packer, Janet Holmes a Court and of course Barry Humphries at Broome’s famous Cable Beach. I suspect he would have had a word or two with Peter Garrett about power and passion before falling asleep in the Meditation Garden after the alfresco dinner. Well isn’t that the point of meditation gardens.

In the mean time I’m a little happier with my new pink car; a little too close to vandal red really, since the vendor chose to apply one of the few polishes still available before undercoats begin to appear as overcoats. It’s the radio no make that entertainment module that makes the difference. CD player with the two rear deck mounted mega speakers that require only a boot full of woofer to qualify in the Grand Parade Brighton doof doof competition. There is even the option to pluck the sound source from its cradle and carry it away in a patent capsule least it might inspire avarice in others less fortunate.

So enamoured am I that I have broken the once a year wash and clean prior to rego inspection rule with a complete dust off this past weekend. As it turned out I found the Sunday afternoon suburban ritual quite charming under the watchful gaze of my rev head neighbour who feigned interest in his son’s ball games and bicycle tricks to cover his interest in my endeavours.

Earlier on this day of unusual motivations, much earlier at 4AM, I woke and knew immediately that I would walk early and experience sunrise by the harbour. Over coffee, in the paper, I noted that City to Surf was on and thought maybe that would be something to photograph. I saw the sky lighten outside the Pyrmont hotel which was still bursting with yesterday’s drunks. I found port a loo lined Park Street populated by police and fluorescent vested volunteers but no runners. Some radio station had taken over the early warning alarm system installed for the pope and were setting their levels while their star presenter tried to stay warm in his TV lounge set suite high above St Mary’s Cathedral pool.

I proceeded up the abandoned and secure William Street to the Cross where yesterday’s carnal debauchery was in its last and most dangerous throes. Drunken Youth and Maori security haggled at every open venue. Insect legged women with lads of middle eastern origin, even without their balaclavas, screeched like cockatoos. The street was an open sewer of shit, vomit and cardboard takeaway refuse. How would we take a internationally acclaimed fun run event through this I wondered? The answer arrived in the shape of a council ute with four following workers, three brooms and one high pressure hose to dislodge the refuse and sweep it to the street where a following road scrubbing machine devoured all in its path. Behind this cleansing onslaught the deodorised pavement seemed too clean for any of yesterday’s revellers who retired defeated to taxis leaving the streets to today.

Safe in the knowledge that our event was secure I returned down William Street to the starting line where still there were few other than the group of refrigerated mushroom girls and the lone superman who had like me gotten the start time, nine AM, tragically wrong. Starbucks was making a motza out of under dressed people on this coldest morning of the year and of course City Rail had cancelled the inner western lines (see Stanmore) as no one from there would be so silly as to run. I walked to Central and now seriously in need of my muesli caught a bus home.

Toodle Pip

Newtown concerns #1