Every Thursday night at around 8pm the same questions occur to me. Was John Clark actually as funny as I remember when he was Fred Dagg? Or were those sketches just as utterly devoid of humour as his 7.30 Report stuff with Brian Daw? Or do comedians lose their bite when they’re uprooted from the culture that spawned them? Maybe Paul Hogan is another example.
I think I know why we’re getting so many double comment box posts at TA. It’s because the comment function is so slow as to be amost unuseable, and some commenters click “post” a second time in frustration. I apologise. I don’t know why the system’s so slow. I got Scott to delete the MT “anti-spam” patch because I thought that was responsible, but it hasn’t helped. Maybe if Scott reads this he might have time to investigate over the weekend. Posting, editing and rebuilding are also drastically slowed and have been for well over a week now.
Devious manoeuvres in the Parish family have resulted in my needing to be in Sydney on both the weekends I’ll be “down south”. Consequently I’m going to do 2 short trips away instead of one long one. But it also means I’ll be able to attend Scott Wickstein and Michael Jennings’ blogbash on Saturday 8 November (instead of having to arrange a separate one). Now all I need to do is find out where and what time it’s on.
“Posting, editing and rebuilding are also drastically slowed and have been for well over a week now”
no doubt wen, like me, simply assumed the drastic slowness was normal.
I think you need to pay more attention to the subtle nuances of the Clark-Dawes duo.
I think you need to pay more attention to the subtle nuances of the Clark-Dawes duo.
I’m sorry bout the thing- and I don’t know how to fix it.
I’m going to have to do some drastic surgery behind the scenes, like totally re-installing TA. This will be a pain in the arse but should make things faster. Only thing is, I’m not sure when I will get time; this weekend is taken up for cricket, so probably Sunday week.
Samizdata have installed a totally different anti-spam solution and I’m going to have a look at that. That we need it is unarguable- just ask boynton
Perhaps the large amount of traffic to several sites all using the one database (that is, all ubersportingpundit sites) is exposing a bottleneck somewhere? (But how on Earth would you fix it?)
Hey, that’s good news about the Blogbash- We’ve not arranged a time and place yet – I’ve subcontracted that responsibility to James Russell and Michael to sort out.
I will try and do a complete re-install of TA coz I think that’s the only thing that will fix it. This will be a work in progress I fear.
http://www.roadtosurfdom.com/surfdomarchives/001562.php
YAY!
We’ve not arranged a time and place yet – I’ve subcontracted that responsibility to James Russell and Michael to sort out.
Um… yay, I suppose. Look, as long as it’s not that shithole the Century Tavern…
Oh shit. I meant to cut and paste Ken’s bit about joining us in Sydney on the 8th, but instead for some reason I managed to cut and paste Tim Dunlop’s URL. Sorry…
Yes Ken, deleting 150+ comments is no fun, especially when they’re compliments. Good way to get to know the meaning of ‘gratuitous’.
And I don’t seem to suffer the slowness issues at my small UT outpost – tho’ perhaps this reflects the relative traffic? (which is why boynton is easy prey for complimentspam I guess ;) )
“Subtle nuances of Clarke-Daw”!!!
If you REALLY think that Niall (or are you really being fiendishly ironic? Gwarn, you are, you’re taking the piss aren’t you? You MUST be.) you would have to go to the very tip top of the “You know when you’re a lefty” list.
I used to larf my head off at “The Games”, but now, boyoboy, it’s all so predictable. A pair of smart arses in suits, trying trying trying and miserably failing to ring true and doing no more than come across as a pair of faded ageing lefties without a single nother funny line in the locker.
Ken, John Clark is an odd one, brilliant one week, dull as fart the next, and often it’s hard to tell why one appearance is better/worse than another. Anyway, see you at the blogbash
James, why not the Nelson again? Free lesbian sideshows and pinball….
I guess Clarke and Dawe are lefties but they seem pretty balanced most of the time IMO, and that is really all we RWDBs can expect out of Australian contemporary performance. I rather enjoy them.
The old US President getting the Australian PM’s name wrong gag is surely getting a bit tired now isn’t it? I think it has been made about every President and PM combination for the last 30 yrs at least. All a bit cringey.
Niall never tires of that gag. He has funny names for all the Australian politicians on his site. I recommend you go read it. Make sure to claw your eyes out first, though.
I have to agree that “the games” was bloody funny. Can’t comment on their 7:30 report gig, never seen it.
i couldn’t disagree more, Ken. i laughed my head off during this week’s clarke & dawe. i think the reason some people don’t appreciate the humor is because their satire is so close to the bone that sometimes it actually doesn’t feel like comedy at all.
The getting the name wrong gag – is that referring to the time in which a Whitehouse press briefing incorrectly named John Howard as John Major? Predictably, the Weekend Guardian at the time claimed that the gaffe had caused “outrage in Canberra”. Yes, Howard did seem rather outraged in a placid sort of way didn’t he?
Mr Howard said rather than viewing it as offensive, it showed the author of the notes was uninformed. “Some of the White House team are pretty good at that, there’s a long history of them getting the names of Australian prime ministers wrong and this is not the first mob to have done it,” he told the Nine Network. Asked if he expected an apology, Mr Howard replied: “I don’t get perturbed about it.” He said, unlike some of the president’s staff, Mr Bush would never make the same mistake. “I gauge my relations with the White House through my relations with the president and with all of my dealings with him, I’ve found him the essence of courtesy and the person who has on every occasion that he’s asked something of Australia he’s done it with a total understanding of our constitutional process,” Mr Howard said. “One of the things I’ve found about President Bush himself is that he’s an extremely courteous, extremely well-informed person and he himself would never have been guilty of that sort of error.”
In that case, it’s a great sounding story except for the fact that it’s apparently also untrue. The press briefing was not on proper whitehouse letterhead and contained some spelling errors. The story was erroneously run by AP and then picked up by the other media outlets. The link eludes me for now but I’ll have a peek around.