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!

In this episode The Editor, John Surname, Billybob, and Craig discuss the following:

* “Sorry”
* Brendan Nelson
* Warren Truss
* Andrew Bolt
* Education
* Bogans
* Ray Martin
* John Howard
* Russell Crowe
* Chris Johnston
* Scientology

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 GrodsCast 3 [33:22m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

GrodsCorp favourite Chris Johnston has written about Heath Ledger. The article, naturally, excels at nothingness, but it does contain this line:

The result, though, was a sick and sad and talented boy who stopped breathing.

Oh, so that’s how people die.

Realising that the 21st century is well-and-truly upon us, GrodsCorp has blundered into the brave new old world of podcasting and presents to you the inaugural GrodsCast (see the play on words there?) GrodsCasts will be recorded weekly on a Tuesday night and broadcast either immediately or the next morning depending on the number of beers we drink during the show.

In this episode The Editor, John Surname, Prophet and Craig discuss the following:

* Heath Ledger
* Scientology
* Australia Day
* Telstra
* Don Bradman
* Big Day Out
* Helen Razer
* Jim Schembri
* Chris Johnston

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I’ve moaned before about pathetic journalists resorting to the old “conducting a Google search for ‘Chris Johnston is a hack’ returns over 200,000 results” trick. Even Crikey got in on the act last Friday with this lazy editorial effort:

If you type the words “Indonesia”, “airlines”, “safety” and “crashes” into Google search there are 145,000 results

For a while the craze was to breathlessly report every stupid item up for auction on eBay as if the abuse of such systems would bring western democracy to its knees. Luckily that practice seems to have fallen out of favour but I’ve noticed that the new black when it comes to cookie-cutter “journalism” is the breathless reporting of each new incursion into online game Second Life by a company somewhere in the world. Check out this latest effort from The Age:

Telstra BigPond throws open the doors to its island playground within the 3-D online world of Second Life.

It becomes the first major Australian corporation to create a presence there, following a stampede of international companies who have started to use Second Life as a promotional and commercial tool.

Offering a distinctly Australian flavour, “The Pond” - which consumes 11 Second Life sims or “virtual suburbs” - includes virtual recreations of landmarks such as the Sydney Opera House, the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Uluru.

There are also various activities for visitors - represented in-world by characters called “avatars” - to partake in, such as dancing in the Illusion nightclub, knocking back stubbies at the Outback Billabong Bar, hooning around the race track on a BigPond scooter and snorkelling in a coral reef.

But socialising aside, the primary purpose of the island is to promote the telco’s wares.

BigPond billboards appear at every turn, and content from its main online channels - sport, movies, music and games - has been ported in.

Users can get a taste of BigPond’s content offerings, such as music tracks, from inside the world, before being connected to the BigPond Music store to purchase it if they desire.

Great advertisement for Telstra but not much else.

ps/- By the way, isn’t it funny that Lindsay Tanner got a write up in The Age today about his YouTube exploits after I (via Fang) wrote about it last week. GrodsCorp gets quite a few hits from The Age’s IP addresses every day.

Six weeks ago I highlighted the toxic stylings of Age hack Chris Johnston, suggesting that he might not want to quit his day job in order to pursue a career as a novelist. A quick reminder of his try-hard atmospheric writing for those who missed it (those prone to nausea should skip the next blockquote):

IT IS that time of year again. The tennis circus is here. It is all about Kooyong and then the Australian Open. More than half a million spectators will pack these compact, intimate arenas from today. 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.

This afternoon, after executing a vanity Google search, Chris left a comment at the original post:

thanks you so much for your erudite, analytical, reasoned feedback. it’s obvious you are a media expert and also deeply familiar with the workings of The Age. again - thanks.

Just to clarify, I think that Chris has made a ham-fisted attempt at sarcasm there. You see, when he says thankyou even though he’s deeply offended it’s obviously sarcastic. However, I have no idea why his references to my supposed media expertise and familiarity with the inner workings of The Age have anything to do with anything. As long as he feels cleansed and vindicated by writing it.

Revealing of a deeper problem is Chris’ inability to use capital letters at the start of sentences. This is a man who uses words like erudite and analytical when trying to show off, so such a simple thing (press the freakin’ SHIFT key) shouldn’t be beyond him. I mean, he’s obviously a blog expert and is deeply familiar with the workings of GrodsCorp so he should know that we don’t employ sub-editors to correct his stream-of-consciousness sub-cadet quality typing.