Home

Sometimes, Mark Watson does very long shows. In 2004, he did a very long one indeed: Mark Watson’s Overambitious 24-hour Show. I wasn’t there, but Andy McClelland was, and by all accounts a wonderful time was had by all.

In 2005 I became inadvertently entangled the next ill-advised marathon show, called “Mark Watson’s 2005 Years in 2005 Minutes”. I got to play some music. I absolutely loved the experience, so I blogged it.

Last year, Mark held a marathon show in Edinburgh again, this time it was his seemingly-impossible 36-hour circumnavigation of the world. I was stuck here in Melbourne, so some Melbourne comics (primarily Andrew McClelland, Lawrence Leung and Janet McLeod), punters and I got together and formed a Southern Embassy, complete with Web Site and online store. It got 5 stars in Chortle, so hurrah for Mark on this gargantuan effort. A record of the event appeared in The Groggy Squirrel.

Now, the 24-hour show hits Australia. Melbourne, to be precise. And what a time for it to hit! For it’s smack-bang in the middle-ish of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

The show will be held TONIGHT, Sunday 22nd of April 2007, from midnight, until the following midnight. 24 solid hours. Oddly, in light of previous years, this feels like rather too little time to run a show. How quickly one adjusts.

Nevertheless I implore you to come on down, particularly if you are a lovely person with a variety of skills and blessed with equal measures of mischief and patience. Entry is just $5.

You can sign up for the mailing list and track events as they happen at www.watson24hour.com.

Google lets you embed gadgets in your own home page now.

Three people have come to my site this week after searching Google for “whore licence”.

In amazement, I told my co-worker, and he said “why would that bring them to your site?”.

More to the point, who the Hell would type that into Google in the first place??

As YouTube gradually replaces TV as the idle brain’s opiate of choice, I am tempted to write such arrogant know-it-all tidbits as “it was only a matter of time before big-money PR firms took notice”. With the benefit of hindsight, and a helpful article by ABC News, I’m going to act like I always knew that Republican PR firms would use YouTube to subversively knock cultural artifacts that don’t suit their warped world-view.

Case in point: This absurdly dull video pushing the already-done-way-better-by-South-Park premise that Al Gore is boring when he talks about climate change. It turns out that the video was produced by Republican PR firm DCI, and funded by… Exxon! Check out the comments below the post for some Web-2.0-style punches to the head.

I hope that web culture can maintain this kind of democratic edge in the face of the occasional crackdown on bandwidth and free speech. And I dearly hope that DCI continues to post its astroturf videos on YouTube for immediate dissection by 8 million eager e-chisels.

After a week in damage-control mode after a drunken anti-semitic diatribe, Mel Gibson blamed his behaviour on resurgent Alcoholism and sought forgiveness from the Jewish community.

This morning, however, Gibson held another press conference - this time, on the balcony of his Malibu home - in which he blamed his Alcoholism itself on “the stinking Jews”.

I… hic… am an innocent man! Thatthatthat BOTTLE in my CAR was put there by a STINKING JEW! Andandand ANOTHER thing, he poured it down my… my THROAT, like THIS! (Gibson holds tequila bottle to mouth and takes a long swig) You see that? (Gibson talks directly to bottle) You Jewish piece-a-shit! Aaaaaaaah fuckit (Gibson throws bottle off balcony at a hedge, narrowly missing reporters)

The brand of Tequila that Gibson was drinking is produced in Guadalajara, Mexico by a local company.