grodscorp@grods.comChris just one of the kidz
 | Posted by The Editor on Friday 27 June 2008, 10:11 am Categories: The Age Tags: ChrisJohnston, TheAge |
GrodsCorp’s favourite Age “journalist” Chris Johnston has written about sport.
The sun will beat down. The little bouncy balls will rocket around. And the players — the greatest players — will leap across the hard green of the court with their straining racquets to reach them. As the roar goes up. Then the hush. The tennis hush.
He has written written about Heath Ledger.
The result, though, was a sick and sad and talented boy who stopped breathing.
He has written about designer terror-porn.
What exactly is the purpose of these remarkable, disturbing pictures?
[...]
The setting is unmistakably an airport customs station. Two officers flank her, watching. Voyeurs; and we watch them watching her. One is only identifiable by his hairy arm and wristwatch. She looks at him, stern but impassive. He is dominant, she submissive.
[...]
It’s sexual, and odd, but also quite mundane, quite familiar.
And he has written about Krispy Kreme doughnuts.
The flagship doughnut, the Original Glazed, is sweet but not cloyingly so, and light, very light, almost fluffy, in the middle. The outside is fried crisp and the yeast-raised inside is contrastingly buttery, which is appealing.
But now he has written about his favourite Australian album of all time.
Since I Left You — the Avalanches
It’s common for bedroom producers to scour the history of recorded music to grab bits and pieces and reprocess their findings into something new.
It’s been a central angle in the newest wave of popular music since the electronic uprising of the late ’80s. What they did in 2000 with their first and so far only album was reset those rules once again. Here was a beautiful piece of musical art made entirely from samples;
Since I Left You was a jigsaw of Kid Creole, Madonna, Jimmy Webb, Sergio Mendez, Mandrill, De La Soul and the Osmonds, stolen and then rearranged by a loose-fit, encyclopedic crew of musicians into, between them, everything from turntablism to Hawaiian steel guitars.
Look at me, kids! I’m cool!
GrodsThink Ep.31 (16/9/08)
Friday 27 June 2008, 10:42 am #Bridgit Gread
Some years back I received a ticking-off from someone further along the food chain, who told me that my writing “lacked colour and spark” - so, I reached down into the abandoned sewers of my vocabulary and started writing like… well, like Chris Johnston. After a couple of months I came to a stark realisation: I sounded like a dickhead.
Journalism is for recounting facts and conveying opinion. Creative writing is for impressing your teacher in 10th grade.
Friday 27 June 2008, 11:23 am #Chuck A. Spear
It’s common for bedroom producers to scour the history of recorded music to grab bits and pieces and reprocess their findings into something new
OH, FUCKING REALLY. YOU DON’T SAY!?!
*I did a SGS Persiflage remix once. Maybe Chris can review that.
Friday 27 June 2008, 11:31 am #John Surname
He’d find it buttery and appealing.
Let’s not forget his appalling Devo review in the EG crate section recently. He should be ashamed.
Friday 27 June 2008, 2:20 pm #David
I’m trying to imagine something worse that “… a jigsaw of Kid Creole, Madonna, Jimmy Webb, Sergio Mendez, Mandrill, De La Soul and the Osmonds” … no, sorry, I can’t. I think I’d rather listen to the Celine Dion AC/DC cover. Or have bamboo splinters shoved up my arse.
Friday 27 June 2008, 2:53 pm #Bridgit Gread
I hope the Osmonds have a very small piece in that ‘jigsaw’.
Friday 27 June 2008, 3:36 pm #Krypto
“Or have bamboo splinters shoved up my arse”…by Guy Sebastian and Shannon Noll while performing a duet of a Pete Murray cover.