Category: Miscellaneous

New Old Australian Video: Animals

  • July 24, 2011

The other day Florence reminded me of ‘drop-bears’, which in turn reminded me of an almost-promise I made over three years ago. It’s funny how the mind works, isn’t it?

So today I keep that promise in spades, with two blog entries consisting of video recorded on two different Australian trips dating in 2000 and 2008. The video from 2000 is quite crude, recorded as it was on an early digital camera that had a maximum video time of 15 seconds!

In this post I’ll put the animal videos. In the other I’ll put the other stuff, including two that short the unusual hair style I sported in January, 2000 🙂

Here’s the running Koala video, which was recorded at Blackbutt reserve. I believe this (January 12 2008) was before the storm that heavily damaged the bird and koala exhibit.

Here is a video recorded the same day of myself failing to feed a curious kangaroo. I like how I start insulting at as my efforts continue to fail! (And who calls kangaroo’s “kanga” anyway?!?)

Some stick insects at Australian Wildlife World at Darling Harbour:

Here’s Cheeky the wombat, at Gosford reptile park (this is from 2000):

And lastly (for this post), Lucky the cat at his filthiest. Prior to this he was no doubt digging around in the garden:

  • Posted in Miscellaneous
  • Robert

Monkey Magic

  • July 15, 2011

It is a source of some frustration to me that in these days where everything seems to be available online and video formats are more or less a thing of the past, that the 1978 Japanese TV show ‘Saiyuki’ (known as ‘Monkey’ to Australians) has never been made available in the USA.

Monkey was based on the classic chinese tale Journey To The West, published more than 400 years ago in China. It told the story of a Buddhist monk who sets off for India to receive some sacred Buddhist scripture. Accompanying him on his journey is the powerful and brave Monkey King and Pigsy, a once-heavenly general reborn as a pig-man. Hijinks and adventures follow, and you can take my word that the novel is a good read even today.

Back in 1978 the Japanese made a TV show about the legend called Saiyuki, and it went on to become a big hit not only in Japan but also in Australia, the UK and other European countries as well due to a wonderful BBC translation. Here is a compilation of scenes from the show:

It was played non-stop during my youth and in fact up until me leaving Australia. I saw every episode countless times and loved them all. Sadly no NTSC version has ever been made available, and although someone (the BBC?) still holds the rights to the English language version, they’ve never put it on iTunes or any other download service available to Americans.

I’ve been thinking about the series a lot recently because I recently finished the excellent PS3 game Enslaved, which is also based on the same tale (a futuristic take this time). In fact Journey To The West has been inspiration for quite a few movies, manga, anime, TV shows and video games over the years, not the least of which is the famous manga series Dragonball.

Here’s Monkey himself  in various guises, including the well-known Goku:

Monkey

Here’s the good monk Tripitaka, who was so famously played by a woman in the original series that all later incarnations seemed to become female!

tripitaka

And here’s Pigsy (known as Oolong in Dragonball):

pigsy

Those Enslaved graphics look almost too good to be true don’t they? Well they are not, and it’s easily one of the most beautiful and well-animated games I have ever played.

Monkey, Dragonball and Enslaved: 33 years separate these three very different – but all great – versions of a 400+ year old story. I’m sure there will be many more versions told in the future.

  • Posted in Games
  • Robert

Me @ 20

  • July 1, 2011

Robert in 1992 04

I love the above photo. Taken during a period in my life when few photos were taken of me, it shows me relaxing in MMcN’s apartment in about July 1992. It’s interesting in so many ways:

1) I’ve got long hair but no beard
2) I’m skinny!
3) I’m wearing a watch (that I have no memory of today)
4) My backpack is hung on the door behind me (note the ‘Sisters Of Mercy’ I lovingly drew on it)
5) The cigarette smoke indicates there was absolutely someone else there. Who was it?
6) What am I eating? It looks a little bit like a redskin…

It’s strange I only have one such photo like this. What else was on the reel of film? Who owns them now? Who even took them? (I could guess the answer was Elizabeth R.)

I love looking at old photos and wondering what the subjects are thinking, and what they can see outside the frame of the shot. It’s a little unusual when that subject is me.