God Russell Crowe is boring.
I’ve been watching him being interviewed by Andrew Denton. Now Denton is a great interviewer, but even he can’t pump any blood into this one. Not only that, Crowe is obviously too big a star to share the programme with anybody else. So we have to put up with him for a whole bloody hour.
Last week Denton challenged Mark “Chopper” Reid, Australia's favourite earless criminal maniac. Reid challenged him back, joked wryly, used Aussie understatement to devastating effect and still gave half the programme to someone else. Great TV.
This week Russ drones on and on. Girlie declared him a wanker and went to bed, asking on the way that I not mention her in my blog.
Russ has got a new song, a duet with Chrissy Hines of the Pretenders- who really should have known better. He’s not very good. The song stinks too. To Denton, Russ rightly points out he isn’t one of these tossers that puts out a CD just because they’ve had a bit of film success. He’s the kind of tosser that put his first CD out in 1981.
While Russell is big enough to admit he was pretty bad back then, he isn’t big enough to give it away now. And he certainly wouldn’t be doing a duet with Chrissie Hines if it hadn’t been for his acting. More likely he’d be doing one with Chopper.
Yes, the Chopmeister has also been known to bless Aussie airwaves with his two EPs, “The Smell of Love” and “Get Your Ears Off”. According to his site there is another on the way. I can’t wait.
Back to 1981. That was quite a year for NZ music. The Clean, Toy Love, The Androids at the Rumba Bar, The Newmatics, Sneaky Feelings, Verlaines and the band that kept Auckland pumping when there was nobody else around: the fabulous Furies. And then there was Russ le Roc.
I never went and saw Russ le Roc and I guess I now regret it. I never went because so many people told me he was crap. Mind you, them were judgmental times, them were. Far more than now, and maybe more than anytime before, what you listened to determined who you were.
But just about everyone agreed Russ le Roc was crap.
Russ reckons he was tired and mourning the passing of fellow actor and part-time crooner Richard “MacArthur Park” Harris when he tried to lay one on local hero Eric Watson a few months ago. (Right, and there I was thinking they were in the dunny debating the meaning of insider trading). Fair call, Russ, but what we want to hear about is the ex-girlfriend you and Eric reportedly had in common. At least that won’t send us to sleep.
C’mon, for God’s sake, let’s get tabloid here.
No. He drones on.
I’m going to bed too.