letter from hong kong

The Last Supper and the Secret Service

I see that the Aussie airline Rex has hit some turbulence of the financial kind. For aficionados of Australian slang, an old comment from a mate, I don't get the name, I've flown them a bit and they're not that bad.

A bit of a kerfufle over the Olympic Opening Ceremony, in particular over the segment featuring the plump blue chap in front of a table of drag queens. Some Christians are outraged and bishops from France, the UK and the US have weighed in. 

There is some dispute about just what the segment was about, some claim that is was a parody of Da Vinci's painting of the Last Supper, others that it was a about the Greek God Dionysus, yet others that it was meant to depict Dionysus imposed on the Last Supper. 

It's hard to know who are making the bigger fools of themselves, the defenders or the outraged. The segment was lame, it looked like it was trying to be edgy and transgressive, but just looked boring and dull and stale.  

I note some reports say that "The name of this sequence was ‘La Cène sur la scène sur la Seine’ - which for those who don't speak French, translates as 'The Last Supper on the stage on the River Seine'." , and it is a clever enough joke to have a ring of truth about it. Put it this way, it's unlikely to have been an invention of the outraged and suggests that that the segment was indeed about the Da Vinci painting.  

Reminds me of a favorite old joke of the late great comedian and writer John Clarke. He's talking about his student days and the difficulties he faced, his grandmother died every second Tuesday for the entire time he was studying poetry, and he remembered a favourite quote, Cest magnifque mais c'nest pas le guerre, which he says is translated as It's magnificent but it's not the railway station. 

I can't get that excited about the ceremony myself, my late father was a devout Catholic but quite enjoyed jokes about the faith and so do I, and though I am a sorta Catholic, I can be a hard bloke to offend. 

The daughter sent through a photo of the number one grandson dressed up as French kid for a school competition to mark the first day of the Olympics. He's in the starter class and I asked if he got a prize, no was the reply, so I asked if that meant that the school was not part of the Every Kid Must Get a Prize lot. No, it's hard and they have to earn them. Good. 

The winners probably burned down a few things and disrupted the train service for a day or two.

Do you remember the video of the three presidents of prestigious US colleges giving evidence before the US Congress? It was a train wreck of a performance and as a result none of them remain in their posts. 

The Director of the US Secret Service seems to have said, Hold My Beer. She gave evidence on the attempted assassination of Donald Trump and was so bad that congresspeople of both parties were calling for her head. It was even worse than the media interview where she said that they had not put agents on the sloping roof out of safety concerns.

The Secret Service is an important part of the US government and one imagines that they have communications people and lawyers and that before the Director gives an interview to the press or appears before Congress they meet with her and run through the questions she is likely to be asked. 

You would think that before her media interview they would have said, they are sure to ask you why a shooter was on rooftop well within rifle range of the stage, and why were there no agents there instead. If her answer to them was that the roof had a bit of a slope on it and there were safety concerns then they should have cancelled the interview and given her a lot more prep, well, when they got their head out of their hands. The same goes for the appearance before Congress. 

The Director has heeded the bipartisan advice she got in Congress and resigned, but the new Director needs to look at the comms folk and the lawyers, a few more resignations might be in order. 

It looks like they may have been to an Every Kid Must Get a Prize school. As a wag on twitter said, The good thing is that the Secret Service people tried hard and had fun. 

There were reports this week that sharks caught off Rio de Janeiro had tested positive to cocaine. It seems that the cocaine gets into the waste water and then flows into the ocean. 

What I want to know is how they knew to test the sharks for the marching powder. 

Were they staying up for two days drinking and partying, did they suddenly become blessed with extraordinary wit and wisdom, and were they full to the brim with love and joy?

Stay well.