Latest news with #MarcelMarceau
Sydney Morning Herald
08-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Old man shouting at … well just about everything
With its crackdown on post-try celebrations, the NRL is onto something. Just not what it thinks it's onto. Wests Tigers players were served with a breach notice for their use of the gesture known as a 'khawd', a finger move only accessible to those with good digital coordination and no arthritis. It looks like a middle C piano key that goes down and gets stuck. For the NRL, this was risk management: clamping down on an action pending a culturally sensitive investigation of what, if anything, it might mean. As my friend Michael Chammas explained, a khawd might mean a lot of things, but first and foremost, it must be pronounced correctly, 'like you're clearing your throat, finished off with an 'awd' that is said with the kind of passion the Tigers finally played with on Sunday'. Apparently, you can 'khawd' your own grandmother if you do it in the right spirit, but not if she's a Bulldogs fan. So, enough of khawdgate. (Pause to clean my keyboard; khawding clearly needs practice.) What the NRL has really clicked onto is its overdue need to do something about celebrations in general. Especially the choreographed ones. The more choreographed the action, the bigger the breach. The khawd is nothing; let's see some motion on the biggest blight on the game. In the NRL, the artistry in a try-scoring movement is quickly swamped by the artistry of players conducting a circular Morris dance, imitating a dog lifting its leg, making special non-Auslan sign language, performing baroque hand-pitapats and cat's cradles, or, if the players have really prepared themselves, all of the above. By the time it's over, someone reminds them that they've scored points, but they're busy having more fun than they've had since pre-school. I assume it was fun those NRLW players were having when they celebrated with one player going on all fours while her teammates pretended (presumably) to milk her. Four points were not enough. There have to be judges who would give it a perfect 10. When I see my team hybridising Marcel Marceau and Humphrey B. Bear after scoring a try, all I can think is that they should have spent a little less time practising this jazz and a little more time learning how to pass from their left or putting the ball down without spilling it. I ask myself: Would Craig Bellamy allow this? Only if he's stormed out the back of the grandstand, maybe. Probably not. I'd like to think Bellamy would tell over-celebrating players to find a mirror and take a good long look at themselves. But at some clubs, that would be courting the risk of said players taking a longer look while fixing their braids or making interesting calligraphy with their clippers.
The Age
08-08-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Old man shouting at … well just about everything
With its crackdown on post-try celebrations, the NRL is onto something. Just not what it thinks it's onto. Wests Tigers players were served with a breach notice for their use of the gesture known as a 'khawd', a finger move only accessible to those with good digital coordination and no arthritis. It looks like a middle C piano key that goes down and gets stuck. For the NRL, this was risk management: clamping down on an action pending a culturally sensitive investigation of what, if anything, it might mean. As my friend Michael Chammas explained, a khawd might mean a lot of things, but first and foremost, it must be pronounced correctly, 'like you're clearing your throat, finished off with an 'awd' that is said with the kind of passion the Tigers finally played with on Sunday'. Apparently, you can 'khawd' your own grandmother if you do it in the right spirit, but not if she's a Bulldogs fan. So, enough of khawdgate. (Pause to clean my keyboard; khawding clearly needs practice.) What the NRL has really clicked onto is its overdue need to do something about celebrations in general. Especially the choreographed ones. The more choreographed the action, the bigger the breach. The khawd is nothing; let's see some motion on the biggest blight on the game. In the NRL, the artistry in a try-scoring movement is quickly swamped by the artistry of players conducting a circular Morris dance, imitating a dog lifting its leg, making special non-Auslan sign language, performing baroque hand-pitapats and cat's cradles, or, if the players have really prepared themselves, all of the above. By the time it's over, someone reminds them that they've scored points, but they're busy having more fun than they've had since pre-school. I assume it was fun those NRLW players were having when they celebrated with one player going on all fours while her teammates pretended (presumably) to milk her. Four points were not enough. There have to be judges who would give it a perfect 10. When I see my team hybridising Marcel Marceau and Humphrey B. Bear after scoring a try, all I can think is that they should have spent a little less time practising this jazz and a little more time learning how to pass from their left or putting the ball down without spilling it. I ask myself: Would Craig Bellamy allow this? Only if he's stormed out the back of the grandstand, maybe. Probably not. I'd like to think Bellamy would tell over-celebrating players to find a mirror and take a good long look at themselves. But at some clubs, that would be courting the risk of said players taking a longer look while fixing their braids or making interesting calligraphy with their clippers.
Spectator
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Spectator
No, James Corden: London doesn't want a mayor like you
Clown. It's a great word, and I use it often. Though not a great fan of emojis, the clown face one is the one I deploy most frequently when answering unwanted and insincere private messages on X. I do this because the meaning of the word 'clown' has changed considerably over the years. Once it meant a jester, a droll, an entertainer intent on causing jollity. Clowns could be wildly different – from Marcel Marceau to Morecambe and Wise – but their basic purpose was to add to the gaiety of nations. Comedians aren't generally like this anymore. ('Comedian' has also taken on a less cheery alternative meaning; 'Looks like we've got ourselves a comedian!' TV policemen may sneer as an ineffectual criminal lies to them.) They're bitter and angry, mainly because the populace doesn't pay their pronouncements any mind at the polling station; painfully unfunny, lazy thinkers parroting the party line on there state-sanctioned group-think radio station (Radio 4) tittering about Donald Trump and Brexit.
Sydney Morning Herald
09-05-2025
- Health
- Sydney Morning Herald
At 66, I've finally declared war on my wrinkles
At age 66, I've finally succumbed to face cream. I bought it at the chemist at the ridiculous price of $27.95 for a tiny jar. It's imported from Switzerland and promises to 'remove wrinkles'. Inspired by time-honoured male wisdom, I quickly decided that since a tiny amount is said to benefit the skin, giant handfuls of the stuff will be even more advantageous. Which is why I now start every morning looking like Marcel Marceau. Why has vanity suddenly overtaken me? I have never previously taken any trouble over my appearance. Up to now, I've been influenced by that lovely chunk of wisdom from Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time, warning against 'the awful fate of the man who always knows the right clothes to wear and the right shop to buy them at'. I've worn torn jeans, rock T-shirts from before Midnight Oil was famous, and assorted shirts from that well-known businessman's accoutre-rer, Harris Scarfe Ulladulla. I have jumpers with 'built-in air-conditioning', my name for the holes that decorate both front and back, and shorts that could easily lead to a charge of public indecency. And yet, here I am, slathering my cracked skin with face cream, offering particularly copious offerings to a section, just below my right eye, which has developed a large vertical gully, much like you'd see in a poorly farmed Western Australian wheat field. In my anxiety, I'm reminded of a famous quote from George Orwell. 'At 50,' he wrote, 'everyone has the face he deserves.' I first read this when I was 15 and happily imagined the face I'd have 35 years later – one marked by a lifetime of laughter, with a sunburst of lines radiating from my mouth, and some crinkled kindness around the eyes. Not a bit of it. At 66, it's just cruel thin lips, a forehead that's had a plough through it, and this unexpected outbreak of cheek-based erosion. And so I slather on the expensive cream, a tightwad appalled by his own extravagance, as well as by his own tiresome vanity. 'You are a terrible person,' I say to my mirrored image, as I scoop out another over-priced handful.
The Age
09-05-2025
- Health
- The Age
At 66, I've finally declared war on my wrinkles
At age 66, I've finally succumbed to face cream. I bought it at the chemist at the ridiculous price of $27.95 for a tiny jar. It's imported from Switzerland and promises to 'remove wrinkles'. Inspired by time-honoured male wisdom, I quickly decided that since a tiny amount is said to benefit the skin, giant handfuls of the stuff will be even more advantageous. Which is why I now start every morning looking like Marcel Marceau. Why has vanity suddenly overtaken me? I have never previously taken any trouble over my appearance. Up to now, I've been influenced by that lovely chunk of wisdom from Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time, warning against 'the awful fate of the man who always knows the right clothes to wear and the right shop to buy them at'. I've worn torn jeans, rock T-shirts from before Midnight Oil was famous, and assorted shirts from that well-known businessman's accoutre-rer, Harris Scarfe Ulladulla. I have jumpers with 'built-in air-conditioning', my name for the holes that decorate both front and back, and shorts that could easily lead to a charge of public indecency. And yet, here I am, slathering my cracked skin with face cream, offering particularly copious offerings to a section, just below my right eye, which has developed a large vertical gully, much like you'd see in a poorly farmed Western Australian wheat field. In my anxiety, I'm reminded of a famous quote from George Orwell. 'At 50,' he wrote, 'everyone has the face he deserves.' I first read this when I was 15 and happily imagined the face I'd have 35 years later – one marked by a lifetime of laughter, with a sunburst of lines radiating from my mouth, and some crinkled kindness around the eyes. Not a bit of it. At 66, it's just cruel thin lips, a forehead that's had a plough through it, and this unexpected outbreak of cheek-based erosion. And so I slather on the expensive cream, a tightwad appalled by his own extravagance, as well as by his own tiresome vanity. 'You are a terrible person,' I say to my mirrored image, as I scoop out another over-priced handful.
