miscellaneous

Some thoughts on the miners’ interview

Posted by hil

I watched the Ch. 9 interview with the two rescued Beaconsfield miners on Sunday night, and far from being bored, was quite fascinated. Some thoughts:

I was rather touched to watch how they were still taking care of each other. If one was struggling to keep his emotions in check, the other stepped in to relate something funny, or change tack, or give a reassuring touch, while he gathered himself together.

There was not one mention of god or praying. Their spiritual sustinance had been thoughts of their families and taking care of each other. I wonder if this secular aspect would be allowed to persist in a Hollywood version of their story.

These big boofy guys were wonderfully resilient and resourceful. They had good sense and medical knowledge and used them. One was less articulate than the other, but as someone here said, he pegged out the four corners of what he wanted to say, and left you to fill in the middle. I liked that description.

Channel 9 were really lazy. Their editing was sloppy, and they used an old graphic of the men’s position, obviously from a few weeks ago, presumably because they hadn’t been bothered to do a new one with the info the men provided. But I was glad the interviewer for the most part just let them talk without much interuption.

Follow-up to my mash-up post

Posted by hil

A friend told me that a Sydney church had already jumped on the bandwagon. I googled, I goggled, I gonquered:

bloody

 

I encourage them to go the whole hog and adopt my script (we can come to some arrangement) for a full-blown national media campaign. Mine has the distinct advantage of avoiding pointing the finger of blame and guilt for past demeanors, and suggesting a bit of head scratching and bemusement.

Updated links 2015

So where the bloody hell is the church mash-up?

Posted by hil

There is a curious $150,000 church advertising campaign on in Canberra at the moment. With the tag line ‘I’m not into religion, but I reckon a lot of what Jesus taught is pretty amazing’, it really makes me feel as if the institutional church knows they are up against the wall. Some of the banners outside the participating churches give the main impression of the face of a pretty girl, and the word ‘Jesus’. I always look for the exclamation mark…

I propose they would have more success with a mash-up of our controversial tourist ads, which have been almost banned in Britain (because of the ‘bloody’), in Canada (because of the beer – huh?), and now in the US (because of the ‘bloody’ and the ‘hell’ disturb the ‘family values’ mob):

  • We’ve brought you a wine (picture of chalice filled with wine)
  • And we’ve had the camels shampooed (3 wise men and camels)
  • We’ve saved you a spot on the pews (Lara Bingle in bikini smiles invitingly from pew)
  • And we’ve got the rockspiders out of the pulpit (squeaky clean bishop in pulpit – perhaps a woman?)
  • We’ve got the ghouls off the gravestones (ghosts exiting manicured graveyard)
  • And Peter is on his way down to open the front gate (St Peter at Pearly Gates)
  • The angel’s waiting (Gabriel)
  • And supper’s about to be served (Last Supper)
  • We’ve turned on The Light (flooding rays of holy light)
  • And we’ve been rehearsing for over 40,000 years (?) (celestial choir)
  • So where the bloody hell are you? (Lara again)

I’m fighting the temptation of making it into a flash movie myself, so if you want to do it and save me the trouble, go to it!

Updated links 2015