the time always comes

This is not a win for the little guy

2010-02-05T12:53:00.006+11:00

In 1983, Men At Work's 'Land Down Under' was a defacto national anthem. On incessant rotation as the backing track to Hawkie and Alan Bond's gauche, televised piss-up session following that year's big sporting victory, the America's Cup win, the song dripped with Australiana.

It didn't take a genius to spot the playful 'Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree' references in the flute line. As a nine year old, forced to screech along to Aussie folk classics of that song's ilk on the recorder - songs like 'The Old Bullock Dray' - by well-meaning and patriotic teachers, I was well aware of the connection and for years assumed the homage to that particularly Australian refrain was common knowledge for anyone who had half an ear for a tune and any affinity for popular culture at all.

So my response to this 'revelation' on Spicks and Specks many years later was 'well, duh!'. My response to the subsequent lawsuit, however, has been disgust.

The song’s author was still alive in the early 80s, and, it has been said by Colin Hay, raised no objection to ‘Land Down Under’ at a time when saturation coverage of the America’s Cup (with the song as a constant accompaniment) must have ensured that she would have heard it. After she passed away, Larrikin Publishing purchased the rights to the song, presumably to reap commercial benefits from the use of such a song as common to Australian ears as ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ is to Americans.

Larrikin now awaits the court’s ruling on the extent of its windfall – and stands to gain a fortune without having contributed to the creative process of either song in any way. Surprisingly, Larrikin’s director was only alerted to the similarities by the aforementioned Spicks and Specks episode.

Folk music is part of the creative lexicon from which we all draw inspiration as a culture. It is part of a shared history. Once an artist dies, or copyright expires with the passage of time (fifty years), that artist bequeaths a legacy to culture.

How many films and books have taken ‘inspiration’ from the long-dead Jane Austen? How many Shakespearean ideas have found their way into cultural expression over the centuries since his death? Where would Paul Simon be if there were limits on the appropriation of the old folk tune that inspires ‘Scarborough Fair’? Does Larrikin now plan to sue ‘Kookaburra’s’ most famous interpreter, Rolf Harris?

I heard a breakfast announcer on community radio this morning try to rationalise the blatant opportunism of a non-artist exploiting the opportunity for a windfall by saying ‘it’s a win for the little guy because Larrikin is an independent label, and Men At Work were signed to Sony’. I disagree. In situations such as this, the artist, and not the businessman, is always the little guy.

2009-12-09T21:33:00.002+11:00

I'm back. Tumbleweed blows through the blogosphere these days, with the departure of certain rather large-scale blogs taking those in their orbit with them. Renewed readerlessness (zero down from about two) has made me feel liberated to write what I feel, garbage or otherwise, without self-censure.

I've been riding to work. I was always petrified of it - the cars, the exertion, the hat hair - but somehow I've now become hooked. It's utterly amazing. There are scents I haven't encountered since childhood. Mostly native vegetation - subtle, buttery wattle and the bark of old gums. There are strange sounds - a man scoping out an underground cable with a detector machine that made a sound like a theramin as it passed over danger below; the swish of my tyres as I pass under tunnels. Where I used to feel fatigue at the thought of saddling up, I now look forward to jumping on my bike and scooting off at the end of another irritating day at work. And I've lost weight. I can't believe it has taken me so long to figure it out.

A woman serving the interests of the Old Boys Club... where have we seen that before?

2008-09-15T21:46:00.005+10:00

This blog says it better than I do, as do about five or six op-ed pieces in The New York Times. I have argued about it with people who should know better and to be honest I'm clean out of puff.

The fact that windbags like R*sh Limba*gh are tripping over themselves to call her a 'babe' should give everyone a clue about whose interests she serves - and it ain't those of American women - let alone men, polar bears, elk, wolves, trees or Arctic shelves, or indeed any human beings on the planet who fear the incongruous thought processes involved in a pro-war, pro-guns, pro-death penalty, pro-drilling, anti-gay, anti-green, anti-intellectual, anti-library books, anti-sex education and anti-anyone-who-gets-in-the-way platform alongside being "pro-life". Even the people who will vote for her just as easily as they'll vote for their favourite singer on American Idol don't deserve her.

I don't care if she has a 99/I Dream of Jeannie/Bewitched/That Girl/Mary Tyler Moore retro charm about her (though this is by far the best thing about her). All those women did it better than her anyway, not to mention more liberally, even though it was the 1960s... And anyway, Jeannie never used her power for ill. SP is like the evil sister.

I don't care if she believes in Frith (so long as she doesn't want to hammer it into school children) - it's the vindictive tyrant streak that worries me, and the Goebbels-inspired GOP press machine.

I don't care what her daughter gets up to either - the personal stuff is only held against her because she runs on a hypocritical, preachy, I-will-enforce-my-family-values-upon-you ticket. If Hillary had a string of lovers and a couple of adult love children, it would make no difference to her suitability. Just as it made no difference to Bill's.

I'm sorry if I sound like a member of the much maligned liberal left elite, but since when has being terminally ignorant and vicious been a job requirement for consideration in the US presidential elections? Wait. Please don't answer that.

Barack - don't mess it up. The rest of the world needs you. As do the sane 'Blue State' voters in your country, with whom we stand united.

Music is the only way to say it without bursting (another) blood vessel. Over to Cody Chesnutt...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdyNAIcGN48

(If anyone knows how I can post the actual thingy up here, I'd be most obliged. Yes, liberal, left, perhaps a little elite with pretensions to intellectualism - but a complete net luddite.)

(Crap visuals, but there's a 'catchy alert' attached. The song will be with you until November.)

Bill Henson. My take.

2008-05-28T13:52:00.005+10:00

I am hopeless at getting my opinion out there while issues are still topical, partly because I want to make sure I can stand behind what I've written, and partly because I'm a waffling old bore.

So my take on this issue has to be presented in point form, though even my 'points' can be rather long:

Many of the commentators condemning Bill Henson's work are using the 'art is subjective' line to defend their lack of understanding of it. I agree that art is subjective, but the laws governing artist freedoms should not be. It's quite a leap to go from saying you dislike Henson's art to calling for it to be banned. In my opinion saying that you find his work 'revolting' or even plain dull is acceptable. Calling for censorship based on that subjective opinion is absolutely not.

Again on the matter of subjectivity - whose subjectivity? If we are to follow that to its logical conclusion we start to see every image through the hellish prism of paedophilia rather than our own eyes. I look at Bill Henson's photos and I see nothing sexual, therefore nothing obscene. As one lawyer noted, there is no consent issue. After all, what is the girl consenting to? There has been no violation, no sexual act. It is a simple representation of the human body, the inspiration for art throughout the ages. What does it say about our society that we see sex in everything and beauty in nothing? Have we devolved over the centuries to become less complex and perceptive than Caravaggio, who lived over 500 years ago?

I'm dismayed by the uncritical thought and scent of hypocrisy around this debate. I am so tired of seeing everything in our culture reduced to the lowest common denominator knee-jerk Herald Sun reaction. Unsurprisingly, 70% of Hun readers think the photos constitute pornography, and it's this public reaction (skewed sample of the public though it is) that seems to be driving the foam-mouthed, torches-and-bayonets pursuit of Henson, spearheaded by our very own moral thermometer - the PM.

Really, who cares what these folk think when they're being spoonfed their reflected outrage by the Hun itself? Are we becoming a nation governed by straw polls and market research over reasoned discussion and analysis? I suspect most Hun readers also believe in meting out the death penalty to those who express views contrary to their own. But that's why they're not in government. Or are they?

And do these people calling for Henson to be charged with obscenity feel irked about our highly sexualised culture as a whole - the presence of Sexyland on every high street, midriff tops and g-strings for little girls sold in Target, or the inescapable billboard exhortations to 'have better sex' on every freeway? No. As usual, artists and thinkers are being targeted while the real exploiters and manipulators - of children and of the minds of the public - advertise within the very pages onto which this public opprobrium is spilled.

I don't think you need to know about art to know that further censorship of art in a society which already spurns and sidelines art for more pressing and lucrative concerns such as sport and celebrity trivia is wrong. As wrong as you can get.

Five things about me...

2008-05-12T14:05:00.015+10:00

Finally, I'm doing as the blakkat prescribed. Here are the five 'random facts' about me.

1. I was a badass - in primary school.
In Grade 4, when I was nine, I was routinely chucked out of the class for disrupting it. I was called turbo tongue and motor mouth and an attention-seeker and all those other labels schools need because they don't actually know how to stimulate smart kids. I was never a nasty fuck-up - I was just exuberant, and they wanted to suppress that. It got to the point where I would sit down at 8.30am, open my trap and be shown the door mid-sentence. Our classroom was one of those portable units and 'outside' meant just that. I was often there in the rain. In Grade 5 our teacher divided our class into Row 1 - for the brainiacs, Row 2 - for the average people, Row 3 - for the dummies and Row 4 - for the naughty kids. Row 4 only had five people in it, and only one of us was a girl. Yep! I later saw a few of the Row 1 goody goodies in high school and bless me if they weren't on their way to becoming nail technicians. Real brainiacs they were.

On camp in Grade 5 there was a boys cabin, a girls cabin and a special scary hut called 'siberia', the camp equivalent of solitary or the brig (or perhaps Guantanamo Bay). I was sent there for the night for doing something - can't remember what - though I was allowed to dress up as a punk and do some pretty snazzy breakdancing during a dance routine to Matthew Wilder's Break My Stride at the special 'music night' before I was carted away*, so that was ok.

The next year I was separated from my entire friendship group, because they thought that isolating me might shut me up. It just made me talk to new people. The Principal of the school was a rabid patriot who made us sing the turgid 'Advance Australia Fair' every Monday morning. He hated me. He always just assumed I would amount to nothing and wrote the same crap in my report every year - "attention seeker who disrupts the class and shows off all the time" - when he didn't even know me as a student. Petty as it is, about a hundred years later when I graduated with my Arts/Law degree the first thing I thought of was to go to that pissy little place and ram my degree up his arse. Not bitter. Anyway, I am now a big nerd.

2. I love the Baltic States - Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.
I guess it's all those cheekbones, high-percentage proof white spirits and the former Eastern Block associations and the romance of the Baltic Sea. I think it started with Latvia's Maria Naumova winning Eurovision in 2002...

and continued when I discovered that Lithuania's capital Vilnius features a sculpture of Frank Zappa.

Not the most impressive statue, but nevertheless...

For decades prior to my liking for the Baltics, I was a card carrying anglophile, like most Australian teenagers of my generation. The early part of this blog still bears testament to this, though I was well into adulthood when I started it. I grew up with British comedy (The Goodies, The Young Ones, Alexei Sayle, Ben Elton, Alan Partridge, The Fast Show, Ab Fab and later, The Office and The Mighty Boosh), TV drama (Cracker, The Bill, This Life etc) and even sport, and of course, I loved their music. You can keep most of their musical output at the minute, but I do still have a penchant for UK pop culture. Thankfully I'm over wanting to live in London forever (God!) or marry some fop like Rupert Penry-Jones now.

Rupert

3. I am a multiple lapsed vegetarian.
When I was ten I made my first attempt at vegetarianism after seeing a documentary about seals being bludgeoned to death for their fur in Canada. I wept into my spaghetti bolognese, and vowed never to eat it again... after this one last plate. I then followed a three day regime of carrots, apples and celery until my mum intervened. Subsequently, at 18, 22, 27, 30 I had six month to two year stints at it, where I would check for rennet and gelatine (I still do - why would you put cow spine in yoghurt or cream - no thanks!) and I was no vegequarian - I was strict, but then I would lapse spectacularly and decide to go the whole hog, as it were.

I have to say, friends and family never made it easy, baiting me with dumplings and curries, relating tales of recent sightings of my meat-devouring ways - cheering when I gave in to succulent roasts. I acknowledge my part in my own meat-eating, but I was aided and abetted at every turn. My old-school dad, encouraged by my mum (who likes nothing better than a clean plate) said I was not a N****n (surname) if I didn't eat meat. I don't eat much meat these days, but I don't have a big guilt attack when I do. I think I've learned that phasing something out is better than anniversary dates and absolutism, which can only lead to failure. And I've discovered the delights of Chinese vegetarian restaurants, with their TVP and tofu and mushroom protein masquarading as meat - and tasting far better than the real thing. These restaurants have many haters (most of whom have never eaten at them) - people who say 'why don't you just eat meat?', or 'a true vegetarian wouldn't want to eat things that tasted of meat'. Well, duh, I like meat, and if I can have it without an animal dying for the privilege all the better for everybody concerned.

4. I am shit scared of heights, and also, embarrassingly, the dark. I am not in the least bit scared of spiders, snakes or rodents.

5. I love Rob Morrow, especially in Northern Exposure. Just the sight of his face makes me feel really happy and serene. Here:

6. A bonus fact about me: I was in a band for about five seconds of my life. I was the singer. My cohorts came to my birthday and sleazed onto most of my friends - that was our first and last public appearance as a group, and it was downhill from there. I still have aspirations, so look out.

* Just to clarify, I wasn't carted away for my breakdancing, though I probably should have been.

A round-up and a recipe... stick around for the recipe!

2008-05-05T10:02:00.010+10:00

OK, so Londoners are idiots who deserve what they get, just like Australians did for 11 years. Have fun suckers! Just why you think an old Etonian with no civic governance experience, a distaste for your eclectic population and a shady agenda is 'the right guy' is beyond me. Maybe your brains have just been fried by too much reality TV. Listen up - the smiling man with the fluffy blond hair and the bicycle is not a contestant on Big Brother, he is your mayor. You used to have Ken Livingstone, whose tenure will be looked back on as a golden age. You now have a clueless conservative clown. Suck. it. up.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In brighter news, I have perfected a cannelloni dish that will fry your brain in an entirely pleasant way. I'm so proud of it that I'm going to post it here.

Sue's ricotta-less cannelloni goes something like this:

Cut open a capsicum, lay it flat and chargrill it.

Fry a little garlic in a saucepan with a generous glug of olive oil. Blend in about a tablespoon of flour (the idea is to make a bechamel sauce, but I’m going to explain the whole process to you so as not to alienate non-cooks – cos if you can’t make a bechamel sauce, that is what you are) and slowly add about a cup of milk, stirring as you go.

I then crumbled some blue cheese into the sauce (don’t be scared of it, it adds piquancy – if you are scared, however, substitute some good cheddar or maybe parmesan. If you’re not scared, all three is best). I am a heathen and I don’t like the traditional ricotta – it’s too bland. Then I threw in a bag of baby spinach leaves.

Stuff the cannelloni shells (about 8-10 of them in all, it’s pretty tedious work) with the spinach sauce mixture. Arrange the soldiers in a baking dish, scattering pinenuts over them and studding them with bocconcini. Take the roasted capsicum, slough off the charcoaled skin and layer it over the top of the cannelloni. Then drown it all in some napolitana sauce (I will not make the call about how you source the sauce, as it were, but leave it up to you. If you cannot be arsed skinning tomatoes from your garden and ripping up fresh basil and oregano in a flurry of rustic endeavour after the hard labour of stuffing the cannelloni, I will pass no judgement – and the dish will only be a degree less lovely than it would otherwise have been if you just crack that jar of shop sauce and chuck its contents carelessly over the top. Sugar and preservatives don’t taste that bad.)

Now pop a couple more bocconcinis on the top and some parmesan and bake the bejesus out of it (45 minutes on medium heat? I dunno. I’m not one for measurements of any kind - just ensure the cheese is molten and the pasta can be stabbed without too much resistance) and serve with garden salad.

For some of you this is cooking 101. But there’s no harm in me sharing it.

SAVE RED KEN!

2008-05-02T15:56:00.004+10:00

With all the fuss about impending foreign elections many of us have overlooked one very important tussle in progress as we speak, in a city very dear to my heart - and the hearts of many other bloggers I know.

To all you people who are able to do so, please, please, please save London from Boris Johnson. Ken Livingstone has done more for London than his foppish idiot rival could ever do, because he actually cares about the place. But it goes further - Johnson is not just a silly chinless twat, he is a dangerous conservative. He'll not only let Ken's good work lapse - he'll most probably actively destroy it.

2008-04-17T18:04:00.008+10:00

As both Nick Hornby and my good friend MSKP know well, a list will solve anything - be it an argument, writers' block or the blues. So without further fanfare...

Five songs I love:

Hearts and Bones - Paul Simon
This song has the same effect on me as a warm cup of tea in my favourite mug. I fucken love Paul Simon. Sad, plaintive, melodramatically romantic. I want this played at my wedding.*
Favourite line: 'one and one half wandering Jews, free to travel wherever they choose'.

Boulder - Ned Collette
Ned is part weird 70s prog (think War of the Worlds or the Monkey theme tune), part Steve Kilbey, part Go Betweens. He's not scared of a complicated melody line and he knows his way around a jaw harp (or at least a sample of one). We went to a Ned gig a couple of weeks back and heckled and mugged at him all night. But it's like the old law of the playground where the little boys tease the girls they like the most, isn't it? Favourite line: the moog solo.

I Wanna Know What Love Is - Foreigner
OK - I'm allowed to return periodically to the big-haired ballads of my childhood, because I didn't discover them yesterday.** This only gets a mention because we were in South Preston Safeway when it came on, and we entertained the checkout chick with the bit where the emotion cracks through just before the big chorus... which makes my favourite line *squints meaningfully and draws clenched fist in tight to the chest*: 'in my life, there's been heartache and pain, I don't know if I can face it again, can't stop now, I've travelled so far, to change this lonely la-ha-hafe....'

Upwards Over the Mountain - Iron and Wine
Another topical rather than all-time favourite, I&W being a gig I reviewed recently. Intimate and other-worldly and completely without pretension, the stories within the songs are so personal and evocative. I've recorded my own version of this on Garage Band. Be thankful that I have neither the technology nor the know how to inflict it upon you here.
Favourite line: That would be 'Mother, remember the night that the dog had her pups in the pantry.'

Scenic World - Beirut (sorry to be painful, but the version on the Lon Gisland EP)
I love this song so much. That hypnotic riff, the trumpet line that sounds like some old highland refrain, his gorgeous voice. This one's for the funeral. It fills my eyes with tears every time.
Favourite line: 'I lie down like a tired dog, licking his wounds in the shade.'

*I know, I know, it's about a marriage break-up. But I still want it played at my wedding.
**Upon re-reading, this is a violently snobbish and hateful thing to say, but I'm leaving it in. If someone wrote that about T-Rex, whom I didn't discover "at the time" (because I would've been about two), I'd hate them. Chris often rails against this nasty, ignorant ageism. But I'm yet to find a person who hasn't engaged in it.

Redux

2008-03-21T12:55:00.006+11:00

Thank you to those who seemed concerned about me (and this ever more indulgent blog) after my last post. I guess I lied - I'm back. I have far too much time on my hands at the moment (I'm having a bit of time off work), and we all know how things start to look a bit skewed when that happens. Let us say no more about my last couple of histrionic posts, now redacted. They remind me why I should stick to politics and music and not delve into the mire that is personal relationships on this here blog. I love my friends as they were, and as they are, but I am nostalgic and immature and a little soft in the head, and I expect people to grow and atrophy in the same ways I have, and not in their myriad different ways. Which isn't really fair.

Ray Davies says it best (if a little pithily in that last verse) in Do you remember Walter:

Walter, remember when the world was young
And all the girls knew Walter's name?
Walter, isn't it a shame the way our little world has changed?
Do you remember, Walter, playing cricket in the thunder and the rain?
Do you remember, Walter, smoking cigarettes behind your garden gate?
Yes, Walter was my mate,
But Walter, my old friend, where are you now?
Walter's name.
Walter, isn't it a shame the way our little world has changed?
Do you remember, Walter, how we said we'd fight the world so we'd be free.
We'd save up all our money and we'd buy a boat and sail away to sea.
But it was not to be.
I knew you then but do I know you now?
Walter, you are just an echo of a world I knew so long ago
If you saw me now you wouldn't even know my name.
I bet you're fat and married and you're always home in bed by half-past eight.
And if I talked about the old times you'd get bored and you'll have nothing more to say.
Yes people often change, but memories of people can remain.

Speaking of Ray, as we now are, he is one of my all time musical heroes. My adoration of The Kinks has been more constant than a hell of a lot of other things in my life – taste in clothes, housing circumstances, country of residence and occupation. My relationship with his music has even transcended friendships, and, I have to admit, it’s more tangible than that shared with most of my relatives. I even chose to write about The Village Green Preservation Society as part of my Arts degree, knowing that it was one of the few subjects I could be bothered researching*. Around that time two good friends and I were chatting about our favourite bands. Theirs were the more contemporary Primal Scream and The Smiths respectively (still more contemporary than the Kinks – a band whose best-known work was completed before any of us were born). When I was pressed to give my response I had to settle on The Kinks, because it was the truth, though it felt woefully daggy to admit it. But there it is, The Kinks still shit on not only their peers (The Stones, The Who, and yes, even the Beatles), but also on most of the melodic guitar-based music that has come out of the UK since, and especially on their horrid snivelling little Britpop imitators. Indeed, in recent times that once fertile pop territory has become a wasteland, with all the most innovative music coming out of the States (as a former anglophile I never thought I’d say it) and elsewhere (here, Sweden, Cambodia). But I digress.

One night while living in London in the mid-nineties (unfortunately this was at the height of Blur’s rather irritating appropriation of Ray’s postcard-from-Blackpool Englishness – see ‘snivelling little Britpop imitators’ above), I even took the bus up to Muswell Hill to have a look at the house the Davies brothers grew up in. This sort of obsessive behaviour is rare for me. I love music, but I rarely lurk around stage doors or any of that stuff. It’s not my bag – I don’t need mementos or validation (a la Pamela Des Barres) from those I admire. At least, I haven’t for a long time…I suppose that’s part of growing up. But in the lead up to seeing Ray at the Palais on Friday night I had been having dreams about meeting the benevolent, dimpled, twinkly-eyed genius.

So we arrived at the Palais, quaking with excitement amidst young Dave Davies lookalike coolsies and their Penelope Tree girlfriends and (the majority) paunchy silver-haired collector types. And of course Ray was brilliant – as if you didn’t know I was going to say that. Wiry and energetic, and pulling off the obligatory final-chord-scissor-kick (à la Pete Townshend) at the end of every song, he certainly doesn’t look his 63 years from a distance. His voice was pitch perfect, and the winks, gestures and wry asides suggested he is still very much on the ball. He was, as expected, utterly charming. When he launched solo into the first gentle bars of 'Days', I felt the tears well up.

My only complaint was that the set list was a little disappointing – he asked us to indulge him for a bit while he played his (very good) recent material, which we were more than happy to do, but when the old stuff came it was the safe, chart-topping, boomer-pleasing stuff like ‘All Day and All of the Night’ and, of course ‘Lola’. To be fair, all the hits had to be played, and everyone (including me) was expecting them. He left the stage after the encore without having played 'Waterloo Sunset', but then strolled back on and did it brilliantly, saying ‘Oh, I can’t believe I forgot to play this’. It might have been part of the schtick, but it was pretty convincing, and we were alarmed that he might have forgotten to play the song that 'changed his life'. Of course, we were hoarse from shouting it by the end of the night. But if only he could have thrown in ‘No Return’ from Something Else by the Kinks, ‘Big Sky’ from Village Green (or anything from that album actually), or ‘Shangri La’ from Arthur or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire, it would have been perfect. Ray bears the mark of a true artist (as opposed to simply a multi-million-selling megastar) - one whose genius can be discerned in the space between the hits, in the many memorable, diverse, off-beat album tracks. He sold that remarkable ability short by playing to the cheesy Gold 104 crowd.

Anyway, there was an interval – Ray announced he’d join us again in 15 minutes. During this interval I went and bought a bottle of water from the kiosk and absentmindedly shoved it back in my bag – without its lid. Everything in my bag was soaked and had to be laid out on the dark, dusty Palais floor to dry while Ray did his second set. After the show we were about halfway back to the car when Chris realised I’d left my ipod earphones on the floor near our seats. Big deal, I thought, but we walked back to the venue, carefully retracing our steps. We were let back inside to scout around for them with the help of an usher and a torch, but we couldn’t find them. Chris seemed to care more about it than I did. Anyway, as we left the venue for a second time, we spotted a little crowd waiting by the Palais side exit – its composition 70% pure spock, 30% haircutted coolsie. The coolsies had a ukelele and were (rather cringingly) singing Dedicated Follower of Fashion. We decided to lurk for a while, ending up talking to a Glenn Robbins-looking collector bloke and his tubby, bearded friend who was sporting a Kinks Official Fan Club t-shirt in XXL, replete with soup stains, tucked into his (rather too) low slung jeans – bless. A Japanese fan (who, we eavesdropped, had been at the soundcheck) and a guy with a thick Euro accent who’d seen the Kinks in 1972 (and, it sounded like, every time they’d toured since then) rounded out the group. They were absolutely lovely guys. I don’t get the Nick Hornby stereotype of the record geek who doesn’t know how to include women in conversation. I think he’s a bit of a straw man. In my experience, these guys are so blinded by the music that they’re happy to chat to anyone, no matter what their age or gender or ethnicity, who shares their passion. I’ve always found that sort of guy fascinating – they’re kindred spirits.

Anyway, we thought about splitting a couple of times, but just as we were about to, Ray emerged. I reached through the pack and took his hand and said something inane (“Ray, take care” or something silly) and he clasped my hand and said “Thanks sweetheart.” Ray Davies called me sweetheart. Ridiculously, that means more to me than so many other things, and will probably keep me warm through lots of life’s other disappointments.

Chris got an autograph (oh, the cheesiness of it all - but I don't care) and we set off for the car again. Chris was just saying what a strange night it had been when he looked down and found my earphones lying on a St Kilda footpath. Bizarre! I couldn’t have given a stuff about them – but if we hadn’t doubled back for them, I would never have squeezed Ray’s hand. And as Chris said, if we hadn’t gone back to the venue and met Ray, we would probably never have found the earphones either. So in the end, all unfolded as it should.

Thank you for the days,
Those endless days, those sacred days you gave me.
I'm thinking of the days,
I won't forget a single day, believe me.

I bless the light,
I bless the light that lights on you believe me.
And though you're gone,
You're with me every single day, believe me.

Days I'll remember all my life,
Days when you can't see wrong from right.
You took my life,
But then I knew that very soon you'd leave me,
But it's all right,
Now I'm not frightened of this world, believe me.

I wish today could be tomorrow,
The night is dark,
It just brings sorrow anyway.

Thank you for the days,
Those endless days, those sacred days you gave me.
I'm thinking of the days,
I won't forget a single day, believe me.

Days I'll remember all my life,
Days when you can't see wrong from right.
You took my life,
But then I knew that very soon you'd leave me,
But it's all right,
Now I'm not frightened of this world, believe me.
Days.

Thank you for the days,
Those endless days, those sacred days you gave me.
I'm thinking of the days,
I won't forget a single day, believe me.

I bless the light,
I bless the light that shines on you believe me.
And though you're gone,
You're with me every single day, believe me.
Days.

*I'm considering posting my essay here, with all its gauche 19 year old wordiness. But I will spare you. You've had enough of mental behaviour caused by too much thinking and too many late nights.

**Is anyone else in love with Ned Collette, or is it only me?

A Neo-Comm rant

2008-03-12T19:38:00.012+11:00

OK, I've got a bit of anger to unleash today.

Check out this stupid article:

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2187213.htm

A summary of his argument for those who can't be bothered reading this tosh:

Spending is good, it's a matter of choice and because Australia is a thriving economy, we deserve our luxury goods. People should buy their plasma telly if they want it - it's good for them and they're keeping other people in jobs with their purchases. Environmentalists only hate spending on these sorts of items because they're inherently anti-capital, not because they are concerned about the impact of these products on the environment.

Some quotes from his article:

"But buying more does not make you a bad person. Sure, excessive consumption can cause the overall economy to overheat, but individuals choose to consume more because of myriad reasons."

(No reasons are given. We all know the reason though. It starts with G and it ends with D, and I don't mean him upstairs, either.)

He goes on to quote some US economist called Deidre McCloskey:

"'Countries are rich or poor, have a great deal to consume or very little, mainly because they work well or badly, not because some outsider is adding to or gobbling up a God-given endowment,' she says. Goods are not god-given, so consuming them is not immoral.

Australians have mostly been consuming more because they're wealthier (house prices, shares and profits have all been rising) and earning more."

Where to start?

Firstly - what is wrong with being anti-capital? Capitalism and environmentalism don't exactly go hand in hand. Of course environmentalists are concerned about the end game of first world greed! Shouldn't we all be, or don't we live on the same planet? I am by no means carbon neutral, but I'm not the idiot expounding the tired old 'greed is good' line.

This guy makes it sound like we in the West deserve our greedy lifestyle because we've earned it by virtue of our thriving economy. By extrapolation, the folk in the third world, who labour away to make most of the crap we buy, deserve their lives of privation (not that any mention is made of them, short of the insulting claim that we work harder - really? I know I don't!).

So, if your economy is going to the dogs, suck it up! Trouble with his argument, even on his own terms, is that the third world economies aren't the ones going to the dogs. In fact, his hubris is astounding given that the mothership already lies shredded ahead on the subprime rocks.

Now I probably have to get this disclaimer out the way, because I know people who own plasmas and I don't have any beef with them - some people save up and buy a plasma TV and enjoy it and they don't pollute the planet in other ways (like one commenter who said his trip to work produced zero carbon which offsets his plasma). I suppose it's all about balance.

For the purposes of this rant the plasma is just code for any big ticket, mass produced item that fat westerners enjoy, without considering the energy it consumes and the human and environmental costs of its production and eventual disposal. This guy thinks consumption of these items is fine, so long as we recognise a small caveat, and don't let the economy 'overheat'. But the economy, jobs, capitalism - all these terms are meaningless when the planet finally implodes.

He makes a weak concession to smarter consumption, a wan nod to environmentalism, but doesn't get that whether we consume 'better' or 'green' until we're blue in the face, everything on this planet is a finite resource (yes, even the raw materials that go into a plasma telly, and definitely the power required to make it work) and one day, one day quite soon, these resources will run out. Diddums if it hurts the corporations who are trying to flog us stuff all the time - the simple truth is that we have to consume LESS.

Add-on sales, use-by dates and built-in obsolescence are so often used to keeping people buying, and the nuff-nuffs that just keep trying to keep up with the neighbours are sucked in time and time again, whether it be the tech-head early adopters who go through two 'next-generation' mobile phones per year, or the McMansion/plasma/SUV craving couples with the brats who demand a better toy than little Harry.

Unfortunately the same principle applies to fuel production, which the consumer has to keep coming back for. Renewable technologies have been sidelined not because they are too expensive, but for the simple reason that it is not profitable for companies to sell a product only once (ie. a solar panel) and then let people get on with making their own energy.

For similar reasons everyone should regard the march of patented gene technology with alarm. Thanks to our myopic State Government, farmers will probably soon have to pay for the IP rights to sow certain seeds. Corporations have run out of things to flog us, so they're after the free stuff - air, water, grass, seeds. We don't need patents on our ecology. Anti-GM activism is not just about middle class mummies worrying about their children ingesting GM 'food' (though this a legitimate concern and there should be full product disclosure on all labelling), it is an environmental and political problem. Environmentally it is about fucking with the food chain. Politically it's about someone thinking they own the food chain! I am sure I have eaten GM products by accident, but that's not what I'm worried about (I've got a cast-iron constitution anyway). The monster is far scarier than that. As usual, caring about these things means thinking beyond what we, as individuals with our short, fat lives, want (or think we need) right now.

True sustainability can only occur when we free ourselves from the shackles of the purchasing merry-go-round. It is possible to achieve if we can stop getting dazzled and duped by all the glittering things out there that we 'must have', and all the accessories and add-ons that go with them.

This whole post is a collection of my edited-together rants from the comments section of that guy's article, with some extra babbling thrown in. Cos I'm lazy like that.

Golden Plains

2008-03-10T09:58:00.023+11:00

We've scrubbed the dirt and grime from our top weekend at Golden Plains away, but the memories remain. What a brilliant festival - a big friendly love in. There's just the one stage with a great view no matter where you set down (and you can move smoothly to the front if you've got business with the band that's on), you can take your own booze in, the food places don't rip you off and use recyclable containers (though there were plastic forks), there's good access to drinking water and the composting toilets are brilliant - there's never a queue, and, possibly because of their green innovation, the masses are respectful of them and I never found one that was soiled or sans papier (quite an achievement for a festival dunny). It's not as hyped and hard to access as Meredith, and it pisses all over the Big Day Out for all the reasons outlined above and more. A pictorial for your edification:

The first day was slow and relaxed, after a bit of a red-faced slog to put up the tent and sort ourselves out. The enigmatic Iron and Wine was the first act we had any inclination to see, having half-watched the Triple J fodder of British India from a safe distance on a log.

The utterly captivating Jens Lekman and band. At times Jens looked like he was tearing up from the sheer beauty of his music. And who can blame him. I accidentally messed with the settings on my camera at this point (yeah, great timing Sue) and all my pics from this point on were a different size. Spewing, because they were some of the best images I took. The Jens crowd was mellow and friendly, and his set was a delight.

I just had to photo-stalk Jens's drummer - she was strikingly beautiful. She reminded me of the late French actress Marie Trintignant, who had similarly strong, yet fine, features, only she was brunette. Just look at her! Of course, she got an enormous cheer when Jens introduced the band. We correctly picked her as one of Jens's Swedish contingent (tough call), though there were Aussies in the band too, and he has toured with locals before. It's good to know he will soon be local himself and be able to make himself available for gigs regularly.

Ahhhhh.... the preternaturally talented Zach Condon/Beirut and his band of brothers (and a sister on the violin). His set was a big party and he drew screams from the young girls in the crowd every time he did his little mock-flamenco/Jagger two step between stints on the trumpet and the ukelele, to our surprise - Balkan folk music goes global!

Even the bogans were getting into it. It's understandable - I was drawn to his music long before I knew what he looked like, but his cute-as-a-button look - the chocolate mop falling into powder blue eyes - is an undeniable draw card for those fans who might need visual cues. When I saw the huge crowd gathered for him I couldn't help but feel, though only momentarily, that familiar teenage pang of loss that he's become so huge. Silly really. He deserves it - he and Jens are a welcome augmentation to the trad band archetype typified by acts like The Panics (solid as they were) and The Vines.

Unfortunately the soundcheck was a bit of a shmozzle (it's hard when there's an eight piece band sporting instruments not usually found at a rock festival) and they had a lot of technical difficulties. Which makes me wish I'd grabbed some tickets to the side show at the Corner on Tuesday, which is now sold out. If anyone wants to offload some (and you'd be crazy to), please let me know!

Our campsite. I don't know the people in the photo, but I heard the guy say 'Maybe The Vines will make up for Beirut' after Beirut's performance and wondered if we were at the same gig. I mean, The Vines? Make up for Beirut? Bah... obviously not ALL the bogans got it...

We also sat in on Ween and Buffalo Tom for old times' sake. But (refreshingly, for someone who has been recycling the heroes of her youth for a very long time) the young maestros had the day.

A book and a record

2008-03-03T22:27:00.010+11:00

1. I am finally reading 'I'm With the Band' by Groupie Extraordinaire Pamela Des Barres, thanks to a reissue and good old Polyester Books. Ah, boy crazy Pamela - stumbling headily through the sixties in garlands and see-through dresses, allowing us to piece her story together through her string of flings; whispering about boys behind her hand to us and giggling as she reclines in her pink negligee. I like her a lot - but I don't envy her, even if she did, astoundingly, rebound from Jimmy Page with Mick Jagger, and have Keith Moon as an FB. (I can hear the snorts of 'yeah right' from here).

There just seems to be an achingly long time between trysts for her. In real time, probably only two or three days; in headspace time, an eternity of agonised declarations of love (expressed with the same naive fervour for each new conquest) to her trusty diary; of aching, of yearning, of flouncing around the house feeling empty and pointless. She belongs to a time when many a woman's self image was forever indexed to her rising (and consequentially falling) stocks with the men she ran with... oh wait, we're still there. There's no doubting she enjoyed all her sexual encounters with gusto and that her subsequent nostalgia for them is real, but her heart is just as open as her mind, and the reader is forced to watch as it gets broken repeatedly. Which is not nearly as much fun as hearing the anecdotes, told with schoolgirlish glee, that precede each inevitable fall. Still, Keith Moon as a 'spare' - it wasn't a bad life!

2. I have been listening to Kate Bush's first album, The Kick Inside, over and over and over. I have always been very fond of her, and I've been listening to Hounds of Love (her later, 80s, slickly produced offering) for many years - but it is that first album, released in dim, distant 1978, that currently has me in its shamanistic spell. I can't get enough of that wild eyed, angel-voiced 19 year old channelling Emily Bronte and... well, something approaching a Chinese opera. I imagine her padding translucently through a Georgian manor to her piano, or (probably thanks to the enduring image of her limb-flailing interpretive dancing out on the moors in the 'Wuthering Heights' clip) whispering to trees in a paddock somewhere in Dorset, filled with the burgeoning desires that found expression in startlingly frank songs like 'Feel It' and 'L'amour looks something like you'. Some of the songs were written when she was only 13. She's nothing short of a musical genius and a living treasure. AND she was and still is an unutterable fox.

What does the above say about me - especially following my Bragg review? That I am culturally irrelevant? Possibly. Hopefully a trip to Golden Plains (to see, in particular, Jens Lekman, Beirut and Iron and Wine, among others) will give me the slap in the face with a wet fish I obviously need to bring my pop touchstones into the 21st century.

SORRY AT LAST

2008-02-13T18:45:00.003+11:00

Sorry. We finally have a Prime Minister with the magnanimity and stature to do it, and do it properly.

Why did it need to be done?

Because it reveals once and for all the lie that said that Rudd was me-too Howard lite. Those who could not see that before the election had obviously never had to consider how it might feel to be 'other' and live under the most divisive Prime Minister in living memory.

Because the people who don't think they should apologise for something shameful that happened in the past are the same people who are sure as hell happy to bask in past glories, particularly military, for their own political ends - these are the same people who think that interest rates are more important than saying sorry, and how sorely they have misjudged the public mood on that score.

Because the state-encouraged tearing of children from their mothers on the basis of race and in the name of assimilation is unimaginably vile - it is easy to forget what this is all about. If it happened to me I would hate the perpetrators for the balance of my days.

Because just as words can, and have, the power to hurt and insult and marginalise and wedge (see the previous government's record), they have the power to mend and unite and inspire.

My elderly British immigrant father, no indigenous studies scholar by any means, today proclaimed Rudd's speech to be "the most wonderful speech ever delivered to the Australian parliament - spirited, generous and brilliant". I feel proud that he and I have lived to see this day, so I can but only faintly grasp how significant this day is for members of the Stolen Generation.

A few thoughts

2008-01-30T20:00:00.000+11:00

Bad things on my mind at the moment:

Watering restrictions in Victoria

It's not really fair that budding (me) and experienced (my mum and other elderly) gardeners across this silly State of ours should be forced to watch our gardens die a slow death while stupid idiots are free to have 20 minute showers and wash a set of sheets per night (I've seen it done!).

Until there are metered restrictions, indoor wastefulness will go unchecked while the elderly, whose gardens (often quite literally) keep them sane, and amateur vegetable growers - whose 'food miles' are obviously going to be a whole lot fewer than people who buy Florida oranges at Coles - get dobbed in by wanker neighbours for watering - HAND WATERING! - outside of the hours of 6am to 8am twice a week.

Twice a week is not enough for my tomatoes, damn it! And if I choose to give them life rather than let water gush down the drain while I shave my legs*, and my water bill tells the story that I still use less than someone who uses a towel a day, why must my plants die?

*I didn't say I don't shave my legs. There are water-wise ways of doing that you know. Anyway, if you don't like hairy legs you're at the wrong blog.

Pentecostal churches and how they suck

I've just been meditating on how distorted the Christian faith has become in some quarters. Having followed Audrey's fight with the fundies, I have been contemplating these people quite a lot. Now, I often give organised religion a hard time, but I want to make a big distinction between old school social justice Christianity (think Wesley and Wilberforce - the latter playing a big role in the abolition of slavery) and selfish, talking-in-tongues gibberish, Guy Sebastian, happy clappy, Jesus-wears-a-pinstripe-suit Pentecostal churches.

The former is represented by the Centre for An Ethical Society, a Catholic based think tank which is concerned about rectifying broad social issues like poverty and injustice, and the latter by the Australian Christian Lobby, which takes the 'what's in it for me God?' line, and expounds what is in my opinion the most dangerous, mutated version of Christ's words, whether you perceive him to be God or philosopher or written-into-history-by-some-bored-scribes-in-around-30AD myth.

Prior to the election both camps rated the Australian political parties according to how closely their policies reflected their own beliefs and standards. The Centre for An Ethical Society ranked the Greens anti-war, pro-refugee platform very highly indeed. The Australian Christian Lobby did not. It looked at what was in it for that most conservative of societal microcosms, the 'working family', in the way of tax breaks and roads being built (to their Delfin heartlands, no doubt).* Hmmm... I wonder why selfish religion is so popular with the generation Howard helped to create?

And we all know that the thick end of this particular wedge is the horrifying Westboro "church" which administers that charming website about God hating fags. These people make me claw at my own skin with disgust that I share the same carbon life form as them. Allegedly. But I digress - I don't want to give these scumbags any more oxygen. Our stupid media has already given them enough.

Anyway, the difference in the positions of these two Christian organisations, the Centre for An Ethical Society and the Australian Christian Lobby, gave me, an atheist and a bit of a Christian-basher in my day, a timely reminder that not all Christians are equal, and not all of them deserve to be mocked and shunned. We should encourage and bond with left-wing Christians. Too often I have become part of the problem with my fiercely anti-religious stance (which of course, I will forever maintain in relation to the separation of Church and State).

You'll have to forgive me - I saw the fabulous Billy Bragg last night, and I'm still buzzing from his long rant about the dangers of being cynical in this world. This is my step towards shaking off my bearskin-like cloak of cynicism.

There were two reminders of the death of gentle, fuddy duddy Christianity and the surge of me-first, American pentacostalism and they were as follows:

1. My mother's tiny little Anglican church closed down on the weekend. All the old ladies were weeping, as were the Sudanese refugees for whom it doubled as a community centre. Now that church has a koori woman as its vicar, and I know from what Mum tells me that she preaches 'love thy neighbour' religion and is a strong, warm and articulate leader of her congregation. But there simply weren't enough people going. The oldies have been dropping like flies for the last three decades and the young folk were probably all down at the Hillsong with its multimillion-dollar marketing strategies and stranglehold on the pop industry.

2. I heard a little piece on Radio National just the other day about a bun-fight over the decline of choral music in the Anglican church. To me this decline reeks of another attempt to re-brand Christianity; to make it palatable to attention-deficient adult-escents and their brats. Get this into your heads, marketeers: rock songs about Jesus will never, EVER be cool. One of my few good memories about being dragged to boring church when I was a tyke was getting up to sing a hymn. It was beautiful and dignified on its own terms - it provided a sense of occasion, of reverence, of mystery. It was one of the cards the church had up its sleeve. If you need a point of reference, try the scene on the beach in Atonement where the war-weary soldiers' voices rise in unison to a traditional hymn amidst the rattle of heavy armoury and cries of pain. The lyrics are irrelevant - it's a moving scene. My cousin, who recently stayed with us for three weeks and is as godless as me, introduced me to the Allegri Miserere. It's an absolutely stunning piece of religious music from the renaissance, as awesome when stripped of its religious connotations as when it is echoing through the cloisters. Jesus idol rock? It's horrible either way.

*I really do blame so much on the rise of the self-help book (The Secret being the most famous). Most obvious to me are 1. the death of the novel and 2. the popularity of American style right-wing religion.

Missing out on interviewing heroes Billy and Nick

I came within a bee's dick of interviewing one of my childhood pop heroes, Nick Rhodes (do I even have to say of Duran Duran? I hope not), and one of my teenage politi-pop idols, Billy Bragg. In the end I didn't, and I suppose there's not much more to say about that. Reviewing Bill's gig will have to suffice. I might reproduce it here.

The Andrew Symonds story

There is an extended post on this in the pipeline. I think the Indian cricket team and BCCI will regret taking such a hypocritical stance on the issue of racial abuse - not to mention a cavalier attitude to the course of justice - very soon. This is a delicate topic and requires thorough, balanced analysis which I'm not going to have time to provide now. Suffice it to say that, while I am no champion of the cause of the Australian cricket team, I think that Ponting, Hayden and Clark, by sticking up for the racially-vilified* Symonds, have shown an understanding of the much-abused term 'mateship' far beyond that of the clods who ran around wrapped in Aussie flags on 26 Jan.

*We'll look at the evidence for this in my extended post.

Good things on my mind at the moment:

Thanks to some good editors and the tip off of a good mate, some of my more detailed rantings (other than those about gigs and plumbing) might soon see the light of day. This explains, in part, my absence.

The appearance of milder weather. 25 degrees I can handle.

Vikram Seth’s An Equal Music. I have set out to read the pile of neglected novels on the shelf this year. Sometimes resolutions do work – I’ve read three novels since 1 January 2008. It might not be much compared to some devourers of literature, but in my time-starved universe it’s three more than this time last year (not to come over too road-tollish on you).

A February 13th apology from the Ruddster.

Billy Bragg last night. SWOON. The man never gets tired or old. More on him soon.

I STILL HAVE NO ACCESS TO ANY KIND OF BLOGGER FORMATTING ON THIS COMPUTER. Apologies.

2008-01-12T19:45:00.000+11:00

I am getting around to coming back.

2007-12-03T19:15:00.000+11:00

I have been prodded into a self-revelatory post by the delicious Blakkat, because of my retreat into anonymous mouth-foaming far left political commentary at the expense of my interior life - with which Ms Blakkat's tag now encourages me to reconnect.

Well, I suppose now that there is some (very faint) chance that the sedition laws might be repealed if our PRIME MINISTER (oh, how it delights me to say our PRIME MINISTER and not be referring to John Winston) refrains from, ehem, fucking it up, I might crawl out from under my rock, rubbing my eyes and twitching in the glare as I do.*

GET ON WITH IT! I hear you shout, if indeed you are still awake.

So get on with it I shall.

I have several 'first memories', all jostling for position in my crowded head, so I shall recount three. We moved from NZ to the UK to NZ and eventually to OZ in quick succession when I was a tot, so the memories are from all over the place - spatially, temporally and mentally.

1. My first breach of trust

I have always been adventurous in the culinary sense, and it's clear to me that this started at a very young age. By the age of about three, as a fat toddler waddling around our suburban idyll in the hilly suburbs of late 1970s Auckland, I had apparently already managed to ingest several plastic objects and a couple of flies, all of which 'passed' without incident. Or so my mother tells me, though she was horrified at the time. My actual memory takes up in a knife-shiny expanse of hospital room with alien smells and strip lighting as far up as the clouds from my vantage point. Why was I there? At the time I had no idea. I am now told I had raided the bathroom cabinet for new objects to conquer and eat, and, falling for its smooth texture and sweet smell, had swallowed one of those tablets of bright blue toilet freshener.**

I was a gracious, well-behaved child, and I would, rather theatrically, extend the hand of friendship to strange people wherever I went. It was no different at the hospital. As my mother escorted me past all the nice people in this big hotel, I hailed each one and smiled graciously at the doctor, even as blue foam trickled down my chin. By this time I was politely complaining of a bit of a bad tummy, but I was unaware of the potentially dire nature of my situation. My mother and the benevolent doctor conspired to keep this from me. And so I chatted and smiled with the nurse as she gave me the most enormous glass of orange juice in what I thought to be a very kindly gesture. I knocked it back gratefully and was presented with another. And another. And another. At which point I politely refused to drink any more. The doctor turned to mum and said "I think you'd better leave now". And I watched her walk across the linoleum floor and close the door behind her. But that was ok - I was with the nice doc. Still unsuspecting, still magnanimous and diplomatic, I turned to him and said "I've actually had enough now, if you don't mind". He then enlisted the help of the nurses in holding my mouth open while they poured fluids down my throat. Of course, this was for my own good - they induced vomiting and out came the pesky poison. This was 70s medicine at its best. Anyway, I lived to tell the tale and become the obnoxious, argumentative person I am now, so unrecognisable from that smiling little eskimo. I left the hospital in tears, my faith in nice strangers severely bruised. Analysts might argue that my fear of spewing derives from that one sorry, half-remembered day in the hospital, but I think I can reassure you that there was no lasting trauma. Not from that, anyway...

2. Social graces

A couple of years later, when I was five, we were living in a large city to the west of London, far from the healthy, grassy, temperate foothills of Titirangi. My parents were running a convenience store. Not one of those modern places with lights so bright they sterilise your eyeballs and slick, sparsely adorned rows of shelves - this shop was dusty and stacked high with everything from fireworks to scotch eggs to plastic Christmas trees, and it had one of those front doors rigged with a cowbell to announce the shopper, just like Ronnie Barker's shop did on Open All Hours. There was dark cellar which I used to pretend housed the Red Baron and other relics from the War, and a camphor chest spilling over with dress ups. Each day I would swan down the stairs into the shop in one of mum's frillier nighties (or a pillowcase if I was trying to be a ghost) and parade around, charming the shoppers (I don't like to think how much... but moving swiftly along) and scaring the other children. I was a right little poser and a ham, and would put on performances for unsuspecting customers where I'd burst into song or recite poetry.

We had this humungous black labrador called Mac, who was bigger than me, and he used to shit all over the lawn out the back of the shop, which was always overgrown. On one occasion I swept through the shop and out into the backyard in one of mum's longer nighties. Mac had laid some rather fruity nuggets out there, and, not being one to pick my way through his minefield, I returned from my journeys with my hem trailing dogshit like the rim of a champagne glass. The punters would have loved that. I was hastily ushered upstairs after that.

There was only one flower in that backyard - a red tulip surrounded by weeds. It lived a brief, wondrous life of five days, until Mac urinated on it. At least, that's what Dad told me - no doubt for a laugh, but I believed him. It took me a good while to forgive Mac for that.

One other memory I have is that my dad used to scatter loose change in the shallows when we went to the seaside and then tell me and my cousins it was washed up pirate treasure. I bought it (I was a sucker back then. I always bought fairy/ghost/santa crap - I will reserve my dignity and decline to tell you how old and how devastated I was when I discovered the Easter Bunny was a lie. But boy have I made up for that now with my hating on religion... but I digress). My cousin Pedro was more wily. He had seen my dad sprinkle the coins liberally but discreetly from his pocket and had decided to cut out the middle man. In a flash he was tugging on Dad's cords. "Uncle Derek, Uncle Derek - give me some money!" Little cynic.

I could go on and on and on now that I've started... but I will spare you.

I don't know if I can rustle up five bloggers to do this who won't already have done this or may not wish to participate. A wish list might be John Surname, MSKP, Chai, Melbourne Dreaming and Secret Wombat. I would love to hear some tales from the mists of time from you lot.

*Because, I have to say, I did sometimes wonder if ASIO were going to come for me. Not because my views are radical, but because the government of JWH did seem to want to outlaw common sense and gag its exponents. To wit, as I have ranted more, I have retreated from indulging in personal fancy - that is, until it dawned on me that my blog was no longer the nice, idiosyncratic, pop culture-devouring, wistful affair I had started it to be.

**I will not hear a bad word about my parents in this matter. So they let me wander once or twice. It meant that I climbed lots of trees, discovered hedgehogs at the bottom of the garden and hung out with the dog without supervision - besides, they also fed me avocados and bananas, read to me nightly and quizzed me about world geography and I couldn't wish for a better start in life than they gave me.

***I can't link to anyone, or get my photos to fit, or do anything fancy at all on my Mac. And blogging from work is not allowed - Blogger is blocked. So... sorry about the primitive interface. It's the words that count though, hey?

Election night at the Trades Hall bar

2007-11-25T14:50:00.000+11:00

A perfect night. Could there be a more ecstatic place to be on election night than the beautiful old Trades Hall bar, where the faithful could feel free to scream profanities at the pleasing vision of a humiliated Howard on the big screen as the press administered his political last rites?

I've just realised that there is a hard and fast formula to having a brilliant night out - remove all Liberal voters from the venue. Trades Hall is like one giant, pest-controlled sanctuary unblemished by that nasty breed, and as a result, true camaraderie flowed freely as we all danced and sang to the classics of the pre-Howard era - Billy Bragg, The Pixies, The Beastie Boys, The Smiths, Midnight Oil (screaming along to 'Beds Are Burning' was fun, but, disappointingly, there was no 'US Forces'!), Blur, The Clash - ecstatic on the drug of hope (and endless stubbies of Melbourne Draught). No sleazebags, no spiky-haired posers, no uptight Cosmopolitan drinkers, no plastic surgery or fake tans, no pushy, aggressive bogans, no hostility. Just a feeling of absolute joy and love for every other human being in the room.

There were a few craggy old John Halfpenny/Bill Kelty looking union blokes; there were a lot of gorgeous, ecstatic bright young things who have never seen an ALP government while they have been of voting age; and then there were the troupers of a certain age, those of us who saved Keating in '93 only to see him fall to a man who was not fit to stitch his Armani suits at the following election, who cried with disappointment just as those before us had cried with recognition and those after with frustration through three elections where we hadn't managed to budge the rodent. A cross section of generations and communities all united and singing the words of 'Common People' by Pulp. Conservatives can't party like we do.

I haven't been that drunk, or stayed out that late, or danced that euphorically, or hugged that many strangers for many, many moons - since the days of my teens and twenties before the blight of Howard.

Now the hangover begins... both for me, and, potentially, for all who believe that things might be any different. There's so much for Kevin to prove, and so many doubts we all have about the man. But for one marvellous night, we danced on the spectre of 11 ugly years consigned to history.

More rage against... you guessed it - The Machine. *Parental Advisory on this one.

2007-11-17T15:38:00.000+11:00

A list of ugly, useless places that peddle mind-numbing crap and/or are backed up by shady organisations just waiting to strip away your rights and/or turn Melbourne into dullsville:

Sexyland. Everytime I pass one of these on a highway out in the burbs, I want to smash its stupid displays and fuck its shit up. I don't object on moral grounds - I object because people are boring and tasteless and need plastic toys to express themselves sexually and don't seem to mind the dearth of other sorts of outlets that might cater to their other needs - like bookshops and stuff. I also think they're a monumental waste of flashing lights and PVC.

Gloria Jeans Coffee. Anyone noticed the Mercy Counselling (for young - read 'pregnant' - women in crisis) collection boxes they have the audacity to keep at the counter? It's a thinly kept secret that this company, with its lousy coffee, is bankrolled by some sort of shady anti-gay, anti-choice right-wing Christian organisation. I want to scream this at every sap who approaches their counter to buy something, and to slap the cups of coffee out of the hands of those who just have. The more mess and embarrassment this causes the better.

The BASTARDS who bought the irreplaceable Punters' Club and turned it into a fucking pizza joint; the same bastards who then bought the Duke of Windsor and turned it into... oh yeah, another pizza joint - the same pricks who are now planning to do the same thing to one of the last bastions of sticky carpet in Melbourne - the Tote. Does nobody care? Will nobody say anything until it is no longer possible to see live music in Melbourne but infinitely possible to eat cheap pizza? Who is letting these arseholes do this to our town? Why is there an endless parade of quasi-coolsies and fat pigs who just want to eat pizza and drink disgusting flavoured vodka? It is an established fact that they aim to target every last venue that means something to Melbournians, because they are trying to shore up the loyalty of the punters. People have very, very short memories. It breaks my heart.

Years ago, the local shopkeepers of Lygon Street used their combined weight to shut Macdonalds out of the precinct. Since then, a Starbucks and a Borders have appeared with nary a whisper. What has happened to people? Why isn't there more noise about this???

STOP GOING TO THESE PLACES PEOPLE!!! If you don't, the Northcote Social Club and the Espy will be next. And then, it will be possible to feed your fat, soul-less body full of pizza wherever you are, but there will be no more music - only endless Sexylands littering the highways for all your vacuum-packed requirements.

*Dear regular readership (three at last count) - the raging fury is obviously not directed at you. But if I don't take it out on the keyboard, I'm liable to tip a Gloria Jeans coffee over the head of the next bullfrog in a suit I see popping his spare change in their coffers.

2007-11-03T13:10:00.000+11:00

This morning I am having a bit of a minor personal crisis. I did this test.

Weird isn't it? ...and of course, as anyone who has read my blog in the last few weeks could tell me, I am a left brainer. A rational, reality-based, facts and figures nerd. This has never been the case in the past and I'm starting to wonder how it has come about. Shows you what happens when you open a News Limited link - bad bad karma man... but I digress.

None of my recent posts have contained anything of myself in them - my personal political beliefs, yes, but nothing of my creative inner life, my relationships, my observations, my brain noodlings. I haven't intended this to be the case - like most of the other bloggers I read, I have found it near impossible to ignore the current big, fat, scary, future-determining battle to oust one bespectacled man and replace him with another. One of my real life friends, who, I bizarrely discovered, moves in these same blogging circles recently linked to me as a 'political blog'. This is not something I ever set out to do or be, but there you have it. It will be over soon.

2007-11-01T10:29:00.000+11:00

What a sorry couple of days it's been for Victoria. Justin Madden, who obviously knows all about planning and the environment given his illustrious erstwhile career as an AFL player, has sold Port Phillip Bay up the river. Sorry for the crap, unintentional pun - nothing about this situation is funny, or hopeful.

I am a newly initiated Planning Nerd.

2007-10-30T22:00:00.000+11:00

Sustainable, liveable urban planning is a topic with which I am newly fascinated. I am busy in my day job writing a rather involved piece on sustainability, infrastructure and the disastrous effect of developments outside the urban growth boundary in Melbourne (which are buggering up the Victorian state government's theoretically worthy planning strategy). Imagine hideous McMansions, as far as the eye can see, with little vegetation and no access to anything or anywhere by any other means of transport than automobile. I won't name names here, out of respect for the publication I write for, but I've got two words for you - C*roline Spr*ngs. Yes, they're pretty dirty ones.

Ugly, unwalkable, unbikeable, unsustainable sprawl. It is responsible for so many things - increased carbon emissions, transport poverty (a situation which can only continue to become more desperate with the upward surge in petrol prices), fractured community, deforestation, consumer excess, obesity, depression and a disinterest in the arts. At least, that's how I see it in my current obsessed state.

I have a great respect for the planning academics trying to halt outward development of Australian cities, and the designers and architects trying to make us think about functional, green building design and living. Those who know me will know that until recent times, I have hitherto given this subject little or no thought. I now believe it to be fundamental to our survival as a species.

It's a simple question. Are your 'rights' - to live in a hideous, gerry-built detached house which needs twice the airconditioning of an inner city apartment to cool your fat arse down while you glare at your expensive, power-gorging plasma, and to drive out to the living hells that are Ikea, Bunnings and DFO and fight a life-draining fight for a place to park your hotbox in a vast carpark - inalienable to the extent that you are willing to risk the extinction of human and animal life on this earth?

For many desperate home buyers in the current housing crisis, the answer is yes. It's not ultimately their fault - they don't choose the sites of these developments. In fact, they don't really choose anything about these ugly, out-of-the-box house and land packages, apart from the odd cheesy customisation. It's the nature of uncontrolled development, and most would probably prefer well designed, compact towns within the urban growth corridors - which are 25 years away from capacity, even on the most low-density projections. But people haven't been given the choice by greedy developers. And the only thing that stands in the way of gratuitous, irresponsible development by these cowboys is a hardline government planning system. That simply means planning that says 'no' to D*lfin (oops, another expletive!) when it leans, with its considerable funds, on impoverished local governments to transgress zoning boundaries.

And the more I read about the subject, the more I loathe these gated, US-style communities. They shut out reason and the rest of the world. But they can't continue to do so forever.

Thank you for your attention - you can wake up now.

2007-10-24T11:48:00.000+10:00

www.howardfacts.com

that is all.

2007-10-12T11:58:00.000+10:00

More of my endless angry invective, this time sprayed on the online Your Say column of that disappointing rag, The Age:

Every day that this man holds off on calling an election is another day he is allowed, by law, to spend public money (that's YOUR money, rednecks!) on advertising his party.

Once it is called, he has to stop.

Once it is called, he also has to stop making spurious last minute grabs for attention.

This latest announcement is shameless and shameful, and I trust no progressive person could fail to see it for what it is - more desperation from a government that set the course of reconciliation back 50 years.

Just shut up and call the election.

2007-10-11T13:44:00.000+10:00

1. A young Sudanese man gets bashed to death by three white* youths.

In a filthy, insensitive, manipulative vote grab, Kevin Andrews uses the man's death to highlight the Sudanese community's 'failure to assimilate'.

2. Not long after Andrews' comments another Sudanese youth is the subject of a violent racist attack. Coincidence?

3. Today a policeman was bashed by a 'group including Sudanese youths' and Mr Andrews leaps upon it as an opportunity to give the hackneyed epithet 'un-Australian' yet another work-out.

Just imagine how it feels to be the family of Liep Gony, the young man who was bashed by members of the Australian community (NOT the Sudanese community) at the moment. To be blamed for violence by the very people who killed their son.

Are the perpetrators of the first two crimes 'un-Australian' too Mr. Andrews? Or are you really trying to say, via your high pitched dogwhistle, that Sudanese equals un-Australian? We all know the mean-spirited answer to that. And I'm sorry to say that the voters who heed the call of the dogwhistle are dogs. Scrap that. It's an insult to my dog.

It's nothing short of fucking disgusting. Andrews, you are a bigger creep than Ruddock, If indeed that's possible. It's the same tired election ploy they used with Tampa. What depresses me to my very marrow is that it obviously works.

Congratulations Australia!

*Note that you have to search the small print of the better newspapers to find out the ethnicity of these people, who are shielded by 'virtue' of being minors - but it's there. They're white.

2007-10-10T09:19:00.000+10:00

This morning the headlines are screaming that "Federal Labor is in disarray over its opposition to the death penalty for terrorists". Interesting, that little qualifier 'for terrorists'. I wasn't aware there were suddenly different categories of death penalty. What about death being the great leveller and all that?

I am fiercely, unconditionally, eternally against the death penalty in all its forms, for any crime, in any country. It's bitterly ironic that, on the one issue where Kevin Rudd is showing some consistency, he's being made to look like a squirmer.

Stick to your guns, Kruddy, and back your minister McClelland. Give us a reason to believe that there are some issues on which you are unable to compromise - that there's an iota of ideological difference between you and Howard.

As the great Tony Benn once said, "be a signpost, not a weathervane".

Petty admin is turning me into Mussolini...

2007-10-09T20:00:00.000+10:00

Perhaps it would help if my time wasn't taken up with knocking out letters like the one below, which I present for your edification.

I know I have said in recent posts that it is important to be nice to shitkickers, but angry letters don't count. They give me a kick, and having worked at the receiving end, I am prepared to wager that they give the pen pushers at the other end a giggle too. I love a good psycho (at a safe distance)!

Dear City of Melbourne,

Re: “Infringement” no: 404858649

At 6.14pm this evening I pulled into a park on Lonsdale Street between Russell and Exhibition Streets, opposite the church. I read the meter – there were 12 minutes left on the meter, and metered parking finished at 6.30pm according to the sign. I put 50 cents in the meter which took me to 21 minutes on the metre. If you add 21 minutes to 6.14 you get 6.35pm, so I was covered for parking until 7.30pm.

I returned to my car at 7.19pm to find that one of your esteemed officers had issued a fine because, when he inspected the meter at 7.04pm (as it says on my ticket), the ‘meter had expired’. No shit! There’s no meter payment required at that time of the night. Perhaps this idiot should check the signs that are erected for his benefit as well as ours, which clearly state that metered parking FINISHES AT 6.30pm in that area, and from then on there is a 1 hour unmetered period (for me this was until at least 7.30pm) DURING WHICH I RETURNED TO MY CAR. Get a watch!

I am getting tired of parking officers who slap tickets on cars without actually checking their own rules, in the sly hope that people will simply accept the fine when it is not their fault or they have no proof one way or the other. In this case, a ticket placed on a car at 7.04pm for ‘failure to pay a fee’ when the FEE PAYING PERIOD EXPIRED AT 6.30pm clearly shows the issuer of the ticket to be a fool. I am thankful that I’m one of the lucky folk who can prove it – rock down to Lonsdale Street and check your signage. I know I did when I parked!

This is tiresome. I will not be paying this fine and I expect it to be withdrawn. Please let me know when this has been done.

Yours sincerely,

S.

PS: I've lodged an online complaint too - to ensure the message gets through and also to increase your administrative workload out of spite.

Bah to it all

2007-10-06T22:39:00.000+10:00

It's Saturday night tonight. I have had the night to myself. Here's what I did with it:

I trucked out to Heidelberg to see some young playwrights perform their original material after a last minute call to do a review. I cannot remember the last time I went to the theatre by myself. It is a soothing experience. Perhaps too soothing, because I needed to purchase an instant coffee in the interval to stay awake - not a reflection on the quality of the show, but on my general fatigue.

Afterwards I drove to a no-fuss Japanese restaurant I quite like, toying with the idea of dining toute seule on a Saturday night surrounded by horsey nouveaux northern suburbanites. I decided to get takeaway. I took home a delicious katsu curry and it was gone before I could even find a bowl for it. Mmmm, takeaway out of the container in front of the TV. I left a little in the container for Chris when he gets home - lucky him, I'm sure it will taste even better with beer-stained tastebuds at 2am.

I then made a cup of Earl Grey and sat down at my computer to hammer out some quick words on the theatre, but was distracted by routine checks of facebook, the papers and this here languishing blog. And though I've got a handful of half-finished rants in my draft folder that need to go up before they become atopical, I felt I could no longer look at my last post.

So yes, I am brewing up a couple of more intellectually rigourous posts, but given my current workload, I fear they might average a sentence a week's worth of my attention at the moment. Yes, it's like pulling teeth. So here's the sweetener.

2007-09-06T11:21:00.000+10:00

Lately I've stumbled across a lot of very satisfying revenge writing on the net. It's almost always directed at an ex-partner, and probably richly deserved.

I have been brimming with rage recently - a wordless fury exacerbated by my verbal impotence. But because it's not directed at a single source, I am unable to unleash it (and thereby exorcise it) by writing a poison pen letter similar to those I have so admired of late (thank you, Blakkat). Instead I have taken it out on the one dear, patient person who really doesn't deserve it, and it's time to address that. So I will be exploring this personal rage properly soon. Look out.

2007-08-26T11:50:00.000+10:00

I've been drowning in music lately - such a lovely way to go. Luckily there seem to be a number of songbirds around at the moment to lull one into oblivion - Laura Veirs, Martha Wainwright, Regina Spektor, Bat for Lashes. My song of the moment is Hold on Hold on by Neko Case (of The New Pornographers). I can't stop playing it, and when it's not on the stereo it's in my head. Neko has an utterly gorgeous voice. A wine-soaked Patsy Cline meets Chrissie Hynde in a diner on a lonely highway. Love it. Wish I knew how to post it here (perhaps someone with the knowledge could let me know - you won't regret it).

Anyway, do yourself a favour and buy her album Fox Confessor Brings the Flood.

HOLD ON HOLD ON

The most tender place in my heart
Is for strangers
I know it's unkind
But my own blood is much too dangerous
Hanging round the ceiling half the time
Hanging round the ceiling half the time

Compared to some I've been around
But I really tried so hard
That echo chorus lied to me
With it's hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on

In the end I was the mean girl
Or somebody's in-between girl
Now it's the devil I love
And it's as funny as real love

I leave the party at three am
Alone thank God
With a valium from the bride
It's the devil I love
It's the devil I love
And it's as funny as real love
And that's as real as true love

That echo chorus lied to me
With it's hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on
That echo chorus lied to me
With it's hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on

UPDATE: I don't really believe the website I initially grabbed the lyrics from. Whenever I hear the song I hear - 'that echo chorus lied to me', not 'that echo chorus like the beat' (as the site would have it). And it makes more sense to me, so I'm trusting my version over some crummy lyric site. I know I'm often guilty of the crime of mishearing lyrics, but I think I'm right this time. So I've changed my post. I'll get on with my life shortly!

2007-08-20T10:02:00.001+10:00

This is no surprise, because we're not stupid.

2007-08-03T09:36:00.000+10:00

I am absolutely busting with excitement to see this film.

Kaz Cooke Redux

2007-07-31T20:05:00.000+10:00

Tonight I popped over to my parents' house to eat pie and mash with Dad in front of the TV while Mum larges it in Sydney for a few days. My mission was to ensure the pets did not starve to death under his watch, and to keep the old buzzard himself fed and happy too.*

After the third consecutive crappy 'current affairs' show (he channel-surfs indiscriminately from coiffed commercial telly to Kerry's sauvignon-soaked mush back to something with Dicko/Katriona/Ernie/Eddie in it usually) I crept out of the room unnoticed to draw myself a hot bath. Perusing the shelves of my old bedroom for a book to read, I settled for a dusty copy (inscribed with my name and the year 1994 in my 20 y.o. script - yes, I seem to be stuck in that year of late, don't I) of Kaz Cooke's Real Gorgeous to soak with. I also grabbed a book on Princess Mary (our Tassie one) I'd bought for Mum a couple of years ago, which had been returned to MY shelf, but in the end that didn't make the bathtime cut.

I haven't opened Kaz's popular classic of second wave feminism, pitched at young women, since the year inscribed on the inside cover, but now I feel I must quote some of it at you with the fervour of Monsignor Baron, and considerably more righteousness. For this is the credo which saw me into adulthood and has served me well for all these years.

How times have changed since Kaz was telling us that millions of women have free range armpits - back then, free range muffs were a given. Sadly a lot of my compadres from that billboard-defacing era are now slaves to the wax - some have even succumbed to the knife, and I'm sure there will be further casualties of botox and other anti-ageing bollocks as we get on. Kaz started with the simple premise that young women should make friends with their bodies - and the subtext is that the female body is the battleground over which so many political struggles are won. The personal as political and all that.

I remember an issue of Judy's Punch, the Melbourne University feminist magazine I used to devour with relish, which advocated the use of sea sponges as reusable tampons, to be wrung out over a public washbasin because 'my blood is not something to be ashamed of'. Being the modest prude I am, I never subscribed to this form of feminine sanitation myself, but I was there in spirit.

Anyway - back to Kaz. It's nigh on time for a '10 years on' sequel to this book. Read and delight.

Kaz on waxing (her legs, mind!):

I had my legs waxed for the first time as research for this book. Here are the results: it hurt like hell, my legs felt bald, startled and affronted, it cost about $20 and would 'have' to be done again in a few weeks (oh no, it wouldn't) plus it made my legs itch like crazy for several weeks afterwards.

She really has to do a post-Brazilian update, doesn't she?

Kaz on lotions and potions:

My favourite cosmetics ads are the ones that faff on in French. Even the exported goods only for overseas sales from France have the names in French still on them.

Why say 'concentrated gel' when you can say 'Gel Concentré Multi-Actif'?
Doesn't 'Eclat de Jeunesse' sounds less unlikely than 'Burst of youth'?
You can get respect, serenity, balance and curves in a bottle and it sounds more plausible in French - respectée, serenissime, harmonie and galbeor. What a loade of merde.

On dieting:

Dieting makes you sick, depressed, obsessed with food, unhealthy and stupid.

Perhaps the dumbest diets are single-food diets, like the Maggie Tabberer one, or the Israeli Army diet (only apples one day, only cheese another), the Beverly Hills Diet, the Grapefruit Diet, the Banana Diet, the Airline Hostess Diet (I certainly won't be eating any of them), the Martini Olive Diet, the Great Whacking Gobs of Lard Diet. Sorry, I made that last one up. All right, I made the last two up.

And finally, Kaz on plastic surgery:

Cosmetic surgery is not gentle. It's about cutting, slicing, gouging, grasping, pulling, blood, bruising and plastic drains poking out of wounds to allow fluids to escape from the body after an operation. The bulk of the work is violent, unnecessary surgery on healthy people which is presented more prettily and inaccurately as 'nips and tucks' or 'sculpting'.

Somewhere along the line the bizarre, scary, degrading practice of surgery on normal women gained respectability from the media and writers such as Dr Miriam Stoppard.

Actually, Miriam old sausage, I'm the kind of woman who doesn't want to undergo general anaesthetic unless I have no choice. I'm the kind of woman who thinks 'cosmetic' surgery is only okay in the most extreme cases - breast reduction to stop back pain, for example. I'm the kind of woman who thinks that your book describing gouging and cutting out bits of arm as 'simple and straightforward' is misleading and an advocacy of mutilation.

WORD Kaz. You should be compulsory reading for Year 7s.

Along with the hard word she puts on the media, cosmetics companies and the fashion industry, there's lots of good, solid, affirming advice about being happy with who you are and realising 'you are not your buttocks'. It was certainly a comfort to the young me.

As you can see, it wasn't subtle - she clobbered us about the head with it - but sadly, a lot of it really doesn't seem to have sunk in, does it?

*I am painfully aware of the irony of writing about having to look after my Dad because my Mum is away and he can't cook for himself in this particular post.

OOPS

2007-07-27T11:52:00.000+10:00

Never fiddle with your blog template when you're bored at work. I just deleted all my links! I will try and reconstruct them from memory, and it will be an opportunity for me to do some housekeeping and add all the great links I've been meaning to for some time, but it might take a little time. Thank you for your patience, o great throng of readers.

2007-07-26T11:29:00.000+10:00

so... today the old fuckstick turns 68. let's hope he gets the boot as a belated birthday present.

My new crush

2007-07-24T22:29:00.000+10:00

While the rest of the known universe was in lock down reading HP7, we were out and about on the weekend - the CBD on Friday, out west to Newport on Saturday night, and last night we ventured out to the jewel of the east - Ruby's Lounge - to see the beautiful Ms Sarah Blasko.

I've been singularly resistant, even hostile, to the charms of Ms B over the last few years - not least because my Chris has an unhealthy interest in her, but also because she had seemed an insipid amalgam of any number of fragile warblers. After last night I'm a convert.

It might have been something to do with the setting. I love that part of the world. We arrived in Belgrave just as the afternoon sun was faltering and the house lights were starting to pepper the hillsides. When you're up in steeply set Belgrave village the only things which stop you from falling over the sides are the leafless trees, and their branches were black silhouettes against the ice blue sky. And there on the main strip is Ruby's, glowing like a boudoir, 'an oasis in a desert of bogans' indeed.

We got to Belgrave way too early, thinking we'd have an afternoon picnic. It was freezing. So after an exercise in contrasts - an indulgent blackberry crumble and cream at the Garden of Earthly Pleasures cafe (set in a dimly lit old manor) followed by a Coopers at the simple and friendly Bell Tavern - we joined the throng at Ruby's, which was older than expected save for a very scary teenage Sarah stunt-double at the very front of the stage. She was dressed in identikit Blasko - a high-necked stripey blouse, cardigan and woollen skirt. And the devil was in the detail - hair parted in precisely the same place as her idol and swept to the side in a scrappy bunch, pink blush and wide eyes. Support act Trumpmanis spied the doppelganger and the singer remarked 'um, weren't you here last night' to the impostor's posse, who'd obviously been there since the early afternoon to secure their spot at the front. Later in the night we caught our undeterred Blastalker lip-synching and staring into her idol's eyes as she did so - and a look of discomfort on the real Blasko's face. It reminded me of Nik Kershaw performing on Countdown and being confronted by a sea of masks of his face staring right back at him. Disconcerting, but very amusing. But once Blasko took to the stage, I was totally down with our obsessed teen.

She’s remarkably pretty. Elegantly decked out in a full-skirted, belted maroon dress with customary cardigan, she paced the stage with the demeanour (and complexion) of an English nurse tending soldiers in the first world war - gentle, demure but encouraging, and somehow otherworldly. Last time I felt so stunned by the precious, fragile beauty of a singer was most probably when the impossibly small and neat Bjork took to the stage at the Big Day Out to a sea of stage divers back in 1994. She has these beautiful long fingers that she gesticulates with as she dances, and at times she sings to the ceiling in an ethereal reverie. I was transfixed. By the end of the night both Chris and I wanted to dress up like her too.

Her voice is more powerful and intriguing live than it is on record. At times she sounds like Bjork too, but at her best her voice has a surprising richness that reminds me of Portishead's Beth Gibbons. Of course, she did her cover of the Chisel classic Flametrees*, and while I like the slow, drum-led intro of her version, and she handled the emotionally charged middle 8 admirably, that song needs the hoary, beer-stained voice of a disappointed bloke to do it justice. It's uncoverable, basically. Anyway, she’s got enough great material of her own.

But it's nice to be proven wrong about someone.

*and it is a classic – yes, the cool people might be playing catch-up now, but I have always known it – since I was 10 and widening my eyes at the use of the word ‘bullshit’ in a song.

2007-07-24T09:42:00.000+10:00

The web is currently flooded with people saying things more eloquently than I.

I was going to write a post about how celebrities and climate change make very uneasy bed partners (apologies for the equally uneasy metaphor - you see! i'm having real trouble with the pen at the moment), but the lovely George Monbiot says it far better:

I was also going to rant and rave about Bracks's prevarication on the timely and vital Broad Bill, and probably still will, but there's plenty of creatively presented posts in the blogosphere on it at the moment.

I can't even be bothered writing about Rudd selling out on Tassie's forests, or agreeing 'in principle' with the unlawful detention of Mohammed Haneef, or being a general arse (but the only choice we've got), because I'm too disappointed in him to talk about it.

So I'm currently sourcing a pictorial in the style of 10 wrong crushes.

Back soon.

In defence of Rushdie

2007-07-07T15:26:00.000+10:00

For the past couple of weeks there have been some rather specious arguments thrown around on the subject of Mr Salman Rushdie and his gift of a knighthood from the British establishment. People like Jack Marx from The Age and coolsie author Will Self have surprised and disappointed me with their failure to grasp the issues, to put it bluntly*.

So Rushdie, the Indian-born author educated at Rugby and Cambridge, gushingly accepted the knighthood. As a result, predictable old angers were stirred, and there was instant furore, from left and right, in papers like The Guardian and The Age.

The issues commentators seemed to have with his gong fell into one or more of the following categories:

1. His writing isn't worthy of a knighthood.

Come on! If we set aside for a moment (I shall return to it) the notion that a knighthood is nothing more than a reward for political cronyism and that the people who receive this honour are usually a conga-line of suckholes (to poach a phrase from Mark Latham) - it's an award that dozens of deserving and undeserving people receive every year without comment from either the left or the right. It's just a measure of recognition.

So leaving the Queen out of it for a minute - do we really think he is less deserving than Ian Botham? Than Mick Jagger (give me a break!)? Than countless faceless public service drones lining up to kiss arse for the privilege? After all, he's a Booker Prize winner. Artistic merit is subjective, but at least he is an artist and not a sporting 'hero' or a bureaucrat who said the right things in the right ears.

2. As a member of one of Britain's ethnic minorities, he shouldn't be getting into bed with imperialist dogs lest he get fleas.

This is a tricky one. But it is his choice to do so, and it is thoroughly patronising for anyone other than those in the same position who have actually rejected the honour (and there are several) to comment.

3. He is irritating/smug/looks like Garfield/has married a fancy piece and is therefore not a serious author/leftie/human being.

Yes, this about sums up what Jack said in The Age. I have not heard the same accusations levelled at Paul McCartney, Bob Geldof or John Major as reasons for their ineligibility for the prize. And surely all of the above slurs are equally applicable to those guys.

4. He is Indian.

Yes, there are still vile bigots out there in Little Britain who think along these lines. We won't even bother to discuss this, save to say that I feel some concern that some of the commentators who have cited other reasons are using those other reasons as a shroud for basic racism.

5. The big one - he 'insulted' Islam in his 1988 book The Satanic Verses.

The price Rushdie paid for doing this has now gone down in folklore. The Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa (effectively a death sentence executed by the faithful, upon whom there is a 'duty' to kill him) against him. Riots and violence in many muslim countries ensued, and Rushdie's Japanese translator was killed and two other translators badly injured. Rushdie himself went into hiding and only re-entered public life in 1998 when Iran made undertakings to the British that it would no longer actively support the fatwa. Many fundamentalists believe the fatwa to be irrevocable, because the person who issued it, being the only person able to withdraw it, has since died.

Those who thought he should not be knighted for this reason fall into one of two subsets - obviously, his religious detractors, who clearly don't believe he should live, let alone receive an award, and secondly, those who fear upsetting the aforementioned group, or believe it is too costly to protect him from the consequences of a reinvigorated fatwa.

Right.

I'm not even going to bother with the 'they probably haven't even read the book' line, because in this case it's almost a guarantee that 99% of those burning effigies of Salman haven't read the book - it was banned in most of the countries where there has been protest. I'm not going to say that he has written plenty of other 'non-controversial' novels to justify his award. Because the people I'm concerned about are not just those who are angry on religious grounds, who will never be placated, but the flippant western columnists who are happy to take pot shots at Rushdie.

These commentators, in a range of publications, have taken the opportunity to extricate themselves from defending Rushdie against worrying attacks (for example, the Pakistani foreign minister saying that the knighthood would 'justify' the actions of suicide bombers - though he later modified this remark) on very flimsy grounds, and I find this despicable.

Freedom of speech for writers, artists, musicians, politicians as well as religious nutters, cronies, monarchists, fish and chip shop owners and yes, even Garfield-lookalikes is fundamental to our society.

The sort of cultural relativism that says that we must edit speech lest it cause offence is patronising to all concerned. Lots of ideas people have are offensive to me, but I don't expect anyone to edit their thoughts around me in case I pop a cap at them!

Religion is based on ideas. As long as attacks on these ideas do not stray into the realm of cultural bigotry and racism, and I agree it is murky territory, then discussion of the merits (or otherwise) of these ideas, and yes, open parody of them (them being the ideas) in art and literature, should be allowed without fear of reprisal. After all, we still live in a secular society, and long may that continue.

Whether you dislike Rushdie's writing or the fact that he's married a hot younger woman or you think he's a hypocrite is entirely irrelevant.

He is worth protecting because the freedom to speak is worth protecting.

End of rant.

*It's mortifying to have to say that I agree with Christopher Hitchens on this one.

2007-06-28T08:58:00.000+10:00

My dear Chris is back in the bogs of Tassie for two weeks. It always seems to be the depths of winter when he goes. It's nice having the house to myself, but I don't really anything to look forward to at the end of the long drive home.

I do declare there were times when I was so lonesome I took some comfort there....

2007-06-24T17:37:00.001+10:00

New Frontiers - and a once ONLY Big Brother round-up.

2007-06-04T13:34:00.001+10:00

I've had some time off from the world. I'll soon be doing something I really enjoy. I needed some time to smooth my feathers before that new beginning, but decided that, rather than grab my dearest and flee to a miner's cabin in Daylesford, I should stay home and force myself to get things organised. One of the things I did was purchase a brand new Mac, which I took a frustratingly long time to learn how to use, being the old stick in the mud I am. I sometimes find that busting through the gauntlet of technology - text encoding, compatibility, printer drivers and all that bullshit - takes all the creative stuffing out of me. When I was a teenager I'd just grab a pen, of course, so there's no real excuse. One of the technological timewasters I am enjoying is "Photobooth" though, I must say. I find myself preening into my monitor of an evening, to be joined by my even more vain boy:

I've spent a lot of time just hanging with Chris, which I love doing - going for pub meals, listening to PBS in the mornings, cooking, watching DVDs that have piled up. Watching any old guff in fact, as we shall see.

One film that I watched again for the first time since about 2000 was Human Traffic. At the time I loved it - I even bought the soundtrack, god help me. But I must have been selectively ignoring the highly irritating characters and the general conceits of its director. Put simply, I must have been as out of my mind as "Jip" and co when I watched it. Because I hate its guts now.

Firstly, the music. All that late 90s Wall of Sound/dance/drum and bass bullshit makes me cringe now. I don't believe we will ever need to revisit the sounds of Fatboy bleedin' Slim, DJ Shadow, the Chemical Brothers or Death in Vegas ever again, let alone bloody Grooverider. It's completely unlistenable to me now - it's not even good to dance to (unless you're completely off your dial, and I tend to like my dial these days), and it's obviously pretty damn useless for anything else. Perhaps it's the times we're living in, but as Jeff Tweedy of Wilco says "I just want somebody to sing me a song right now".

Perhaps it's also the times we're living in that make the characters in Human Traffic seem like jumped up, self-indulgent little space cadets. There's a scene in HT where John Simm's character opines that pop music doesn't say anything important (which, granted, it doesn't), but what does that shambolic, put-my-eyes-out-with-a-ballpoint-now-please music they spend the film waving their arms about like nuff nuffs to say? I feel embarassed for everyone involved in that film, and I don't think I was showing my age, because Chris' eyes were rolling - spinning - too.

Another pile of turds I recently had the misfortune of tuning into on crap central, Channel 10, was Hamish and Andy's 'Real Stories'. It was the unfunniest thing I've ever seen. These two primed, over-exposed economics graduates really have stretched their run of luck with friends in high places (Rove, Chris Lilley apparently) to well past breaking point. Their mock current affairs program is full of school play level writing which is desperately over-acted by both Andy and, particularly, Hamish. Not the sort of hilarious over-acting you expect of comedians prepared to make buffoons of themselves in order to be funny a la Little Britain - the sort of restrained, "I wrote this line guys so I'm going to screech it through my teeth but oh hang on, that's not my best angle and according to Who weekly I'm one of 2006's most intriguing and sexy individuals" acting that is painful to watch. It's no Mighty Boosh, that's for bleedin certain, so why do they continue to waste film and our time?

I must also admit to casting my eye over this season of Big Brother on the odd occasion - only because I was reeled in by my acquaintance with one of the housemates, since evicted. I cannot keep my silence, though I was snorted at by my dear one for announcing that I would blog about this....

That Emma is vile, vile, vile. She reminds me of the ridiculous so called 'popular' (read: loathed by everyone but their afeared lackeys and the boys from the neighbouring schools for whom they slavishly gassed the rest of us with Impulse and hairspray in the toilets) girls at my school. I'm not impressed by some of the bullying I've witnessed in that house, and bullying is what it is. Emma has systematically ignored those in the house she deems unworthy of her time - Jamie and Rebecca. Refusal to be civil to someone, refusal to acknowledge their existence, is far more damaging to their self-esteem than engaging in an argument with them - which validates them as someone worthy of battling wits with. Not that Emma has any wits with which to battle, I'll wager. For my money, bullying is as bad as racism, and the show should be hauling her up for it, and her minions, who appear to be doing all the dirty work.

Even more sickening is watching a woman who has mutilated her chest to appear in Zoo Weekly and Ralph picking apart the appearance of others in the house. She's a real sister, isn't she? Hardly surprising, as this is obviously someone whose entire existence has been concerned with her appearance, to the detriment of her brain and, quite clearly, her heart.

And I don't mean to wade into the murky territory of how she 'should' have behaved knowing that her father was very ill, but try as I might, I cannot see how I'd even contemplate going on Sale of the Century, let alone Big Brother, if I thought my father's passing might be imminent, which she apparently did. I don't get how the sort of career she is evidently pursuing could be more important than her unresolved family stuff. But then, I don't get breast implants either. That said, I don't like the show's ethics, and she should have been notified of his death to be given the once-only chance to go to his funeral.

Aleisha went into the house a sweet country girl who 'dreams about boys'. She'll leave it as the brainless sidekick who got stuck into Jamie and made him cry, because she's the sort of stupid person whose opinions are swayed by others. Watching BB has helped me understand how it comes to pass that so many people vote for John Howard. Some people are born nasty; others are too easily influenced by the nasty. Unfortunately the same goes for 'Mr. Nice Guy' Andrew - who impressed me early on. Why are humans constantly wavering on the cusp of good and bad? I'll be interested to see how our environmentalist chicky turns out. She too seems too afraid of Emma to tell her to fuck off. Respect to Daniela who appears to have no such qualms.

Susannah was sweet. I had no issue with her at all. Why should people be labelled princesses because they enjoy a bit of glam? She didn't hurt anyone. As for kicking back and treating it like a holiday - why shouldn't she? What are the others doing anyway? Don't tell me it's boot camp! Perhaps because she is a 30 something office worker, rather than a snowboarding backpacker (like Billy for example), she truly appreciates the reprieve from the drudgery of earning a living. I think I'd be exactly the same!

Anyway, I feel cleansed (but also a little bit dirty) after that purge. I read a great article on 90s feminism on the weekend. I don't know if that makes up for all the other gumpf I've visually ingested... but what can I say?

2007-04-16T21:14:00.000+10:00

please do not let them have killed alan johnston. i've heard his dispatches on the bbc world service late at night. he is a good and fair and brave journalist. and in hellish gaza i can only imagine it takes a real mensche to be all those things. he does not deserve this. i feel sick.

2007-04-12T21:33:00.000+10:00

I just bought a record off ebay that I already own just to win the auction. I think I have a problem.

I have just gone from a warm fuzzy quasi-government job (which in actual fact, thanks to the Howard's IR butchery, is no safer than the next place) to a cut-throat, well-paid-but-one-false move-and-you're-out-with-no-notice environment where it is interesting and heartening to note that the law of the jungle has not produced Lord of the Flies contract staff all out to drag each other down, but rather a culture of contractors (traditional scum of the earth in Labour market folklore, and with good cause) banding together against their fat-cat, safe-jobbed boss. Perhaps a primitive survivalism and innate socialism modelled on classic unionism has managed to prevail despite attempts to root it out and/or argue that it goes against self-serving human nature. Perhaps, (and my heart smiles at this), it IS human nature to bond together where unreasonable contract terms give you no formal, organised way of doing this. It's a pleasant surprise. So far, anyway.

I have a long term creative project underway. It feels good. It keeps me going when aforementioned money-spinner rends my soul from my body.

I miss writing. I'm going to write here once a week. Regardless of whether I have anything to say when I set down at my computer. Suffer!

I am very sad that the prolific, iconic Kurt Vonnegut has died. He had a shite job just like me before he managed to pen about 50 texts in his lifetime, but was still human enough to ache. According to the BBC:

He likened himself to a flower, which having finished blooming, "has some sort of awareness of some purpose having been served".

Until of course, Bush came along and sent KV into a last flourish of righteous creativity in 2006.

I am going to go to bed now, as my dear young man is there (we promised ourselves an early night for once) and I am sitting up.

HAHAHA!

2007-03-27T16:40:00.002+10:00

OK, here's another of those 'news tidbits', but it really struck a chord. It's got the David and Goliath thing happening in massive proportions. And I've always said that it's more than a bit sick when pharmaceutical giants own food brands. AND my pet irk was GlaxoSmithKline owning that impossibly sickly childhood fave, Ribena.

So I was very excited to hear that two smart NZ schoolgirls have rumbled them by testing the claim that it was loaded with vitamin C, and finding that it has practically none. What tickles (and disturbs) me is that with all their test tubes and chemicals, GSK wasn't bothered to chuck a little ascorbic acid into the cauldron along with all the colourings, saccharine and other nasties that must be in there. GOOD ONE!

Monday Night 7.30pm

2007-03-26T19:23:00.000+10:00

Lately my mind seems to have been so gummed up with information that I've been unable to write anything vaguely interesting. I just soak up news tidbits, work detritus and other fleeting visuals and aurals like a sponge, ponder them for a short while and then spit out some platitudes. My last post is an embarassing example of this. And, for the most part, I don't feel like dealing with my own stuff on this here page, so I write lazy leftie 101 stuff that anyone with the full complement of chromosomes is likely to agree with. I feel so uninspired. I've noticed that my blog is no longer a document of my life, but random comments on the things that happen around me.

So it's time for a round up, and a purge. Hopefully this won't be too messy. The theory is that I'll offload all the newsy, worky bullshit and maybe have something creative left over to share that comes from me - not from my sensory overload repository, which is buzzing and sparking and shortcircuiting.

The top 4 news items that have occupied my thoughts of late:

4. This story about the first class passenger who was angry about an old woman who died (DIED!) being placed in the seat next to him on a BA flight, in the absence of an in-flight morgue. Her 'wailing relatives' then showed up, and fair ruined his martini! Choicest quote (from our charming friend) 'I kept thinking "I've paid 3000 pounds for this"'. I think the commenter who said the following summed it up best:

"Too many who feel they deserve a better experience will be left alone by those they taught to honour the cash rather than the living. Those who had family about to laugh, and cry, and yes even wail, were those who spent their lives engaged in living, not demanding the best of everything at the expense of everyone else."

3. The Howard/Abbott roadshow. But those toads don't deserve any more blogspace. It's obvious what I think - but then, is it? And their foibles and snivelling soundbites take up so much of my time (particularly of a morning), I've actually had to call time on getting enraged by them. Suffice it to say I never cease to be disgusted. It doesn't help that I've been dipping into this book, which, although depressing, restores my faith in Australian journalism.

Side issues that I worry about include Ziggy "nukes are nice" Switkowski, Peter "tame and lame" Garrett (this one gives me particular pause and reminds me that to some, music is just a pastime, no matter what it seems to say) and the continued press time given to the sorry triangle of PHan, David "viagra" Oldfield and his chat show "wiphy".

2. The roadblocks in the David Hicks saga. Particularly the latest attempt by his "prosecutors" to use his father's words against him. Terry Hicks is made of strong stuff. I would have keeled over and died of heartbreak long ago. What worries me is that we may yet see that before we see Hicks return home.

1. Bob Woolmer being murdered. For me, cricket is both exotic and happily familiar, like a childhood holiday. It makes me think of the sun-drenched Carribean set to a soundtrack of Jamaican ska and the tinkle of steel bands. It makes me think of mulleted and afroed 70s and 80s heroes like Viv Richards, Dennis Lillee and Ian Botham (attach mullet or fro as appropriate). It makes me think of newer tottie like NZ's Daniel Vettori, Oz's Andrew Symonds and England's Simon Jones. It makes me think of the waft of pies and beer at the MCG (the other day I had a sausage roll for brekky at work and someone exclaimed 'It smells like the GEE!'). OK - I am an unforgiveable cricket dork. Perhaps someone should strangle me. But Bob? No. No. No. Did a player do it? The horror. We shall see.

OK. Now the things that are actually happening in my life. These are the things that I'd be pondering if I lived in another era, if there were no internet, radio or print media to distract me (thank fuck I don't watch TV or my head would explode!):

1. On Friday I finish up at a job I have occupied for far far too long. I am not sad to see the back of it. But I am actually devastated to leave my friends there. I am quite surprised by how quickly the emotion has crept up on me. On Monday I leap straight into another job. I barely have time to notice the rain drumming on the roof, or the gentle change of the seasons. So much of my time is spent staring at screens. Perhaps that's why I don't write here much.

2. My dad is a water diviner. He believes I may have inherited the gift. I feel sad that I may never get the opportunity to test out the theory. I fondly imagine him as a lad, scrambling over the Devon moors in his schoolboy britches, discovering underground springs and perhaps even treasure. I looked it up on Wikipedia, which takes the view that water divining is bullshit - so I won't link there. Why is something so magical bullshit? I am sick of the modern age. It has made me ill. My dad is of the generation that can't use the internet - he thinks IT'S bullshit. I'm not sure who is right any more.

I think there's a lot more to say, but I will continue later...

Some thoughts

2007-03-16T11:12:00.000+11:00

Bad musicians go in and out of rehab, possibly to be isolated from having to listen to the crap they produce:
Keith Urban
Robbie Williams
(maybe James "at least my music gets me laid" pipsqueak, er Blunt would complete the unholy trinity)

Good musicians are so pained by the existence their music attempts to quantify, they actually leave us for real:
Kurt Cobain
Elliot Smith
(the list goes on but I'm feeling a bit lazy today)

Why is it that the good ones check out permanently while we get the revolving door rehab of the ones that stay with us shoved down our necks every time we open the paper?????

**i just heard that the voice of boston is no longer. it completely changes the timbre of their upbeat songs for me. forever.

Go Maxine GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2007-02-26T10:19:00.000+11:00

It would be sweet victory indeed if this intelligent, principled woman, who I've watched in many a televised stoush with Howard and his ilk on Lateline (mopping the floor with him I might add), were to personally wipe that smirk off his face. Howard, I don't think you realise how much some of your electorate hate your guts.

Stop Press! Blair does something vaguely progressive...

2007-01-30T10:48:00.000+11:00

Finally the Blair government has done something that differentiates it from its 'coalition of the willing', religious tub-thumping friends the US and OZ, and reminded us that his is a (so-called) labour government after all.

He's refusing to allow (government funded) Catholic adoption agencies to discriminate against gay couples wishing to adopt. Some of these agencies have declared that they would 'rather close' than adopt children out to gay couples. Don't abort your child, they say, and when you are forced instead to give it up for adoption, we'll decide who it goes to, based on bigotry rather than what might be good for the child and fair to everybody concerned. Talk about boxed in by ideology. But Tony's not having a bar of it. So, finally, (and with gritted teeth) good on you Tony!

Contrast that with that clown Abbott and his dogmatic, misogynistic agenda - denying teenage girls the pill on Medicare before the age of 18 (yep, that'll reduce the number of abortions), dithering on the provision of Gardasil (which would vaccinate girls against the virus that causes cervical cancer) on the PBS and, scandalously, awarding abortion counselling 'contracts' to churchy agencies willing to twist arms and use scare tactics to save the unborn at the expense of the living. Don't be fooled by these agencies - they rarely nail their colours to the mast. It's not a straight-forward matter of:

Agent: 'Don't abort your child please, it offends God'
Woman: 'I've considered all the options and I don't want to keep it, and anyway what business is it of yours?'
Agent: 'OK then'.

Like all sly viral marketing, which the churches are far from averse to employing to recruit unsuspecting punters (see Christian metal bands), this counselling will be cloaked in false impartiality and deceit. Most women I know are painfully aware of their reproductive health and looking after themselves. They are therefore vulnerable to suggestions that there might be any nasty damage to 'their bits' through a termination procedure. This is the jugular vein these vipers will go for to seal the (non-termination) deal.

The more I see and hear of organised religion, the more sickened I feel by it.

Two quick things

2007-01-25T15:35:00.000+11:00

We're moving! It was easier than I thought. By the end of this long weekend we will be ensconced in our own snug place, from which art, song and the written word will emanate on a regular basis. Hooray!!!

Happy Birthday dearest love.

Liberation

2007-01-11T22:29:00.000+11:00

Here's a round up of events following my now-dreamlike holiday in the land of my birth.*

Christmas lived up to its 'Silent Night' reputation round my way. Most of it was, thankfully, spent in NZ airports - meaning less time forcing smiles with the olds.

In that No Man's Land between the 26th and the end of the year, commonly otherwise referred to as the Boxing Day Test, my dear friend Robin ate dumplings, dragged us to bars where he eyed up chicks and generally hung with us before heading back to Berlin. We also drank martinis with Elly and beers with Maddy and Will and Max (he passed on the beer, being not yet one year old).

On the 31st, through misadventure (supplied by Robin before he boarded the international flight) I missed midnight. Chris nursed my remains until we awoke at 12.45am. Oops. But bollocks to it - it's for bogans.

We pulled up magnificently on MY BIRTHDAY and went to see Marie Antoinette, which seduced us with its Gang of Four/Bow Wow Wow/Adam Ant and best-ever-New-Order-song ('Ceremony') soundtrack, though as a history purist I was more than a little disturbed that our 'heroine' came over as nothing more harmless than a 19th century Paris Hilton, and that many of the kids in the audience would not have realised 'what happens next' in the scheme of things (the small matter of the guillotine and the birth of La Republique), as the movie politely ends where all that messy real stuff begins. Still, musn't quibble. I love the confused dreamscapes Sofia creates - dappled sun through treelined boulevards at Versailles and powdered high camp set to an intriguingly complementary New Wave soundtrack. She is starting to build a very shimmery, impressionistic body of work. Perhaps if she worked with a clever wordsmith her dialogues could still be fat-free without being a chromosome short (as they sometimes are, unfortunately). Sofia! Over here!

On the first real day of 2007 it all started to unravel...
First I returned to work to be slammed with a potential job crisis (still unresolved - hello Centrelink!); then there was some desperate flat hunting with Chrissy, necessitated by our respective housing situations; then I copped a $145 fine from a cop who was tailing us and did me for not wearing my seat belt during said flat hunting; and finally, the old family dramas resurfaced.

And that was just the first week.

But you know what? I'd rather have financial and 'career' woes than emotional ones, and throughout all these trifling but compounded stresses I had a soft, warm hand to hold and a lot to laugh about. Even at the height of what we have called my misadventure, which at one point entailed buckets and heads-down-toilets, I felt that soft hand stroking my slimy hair. What would I not get through with such a companion? He's the best SSRI getting around!

*Stay tuned - I promise to finish off that little travelogue. And for those of you who thought that blog was a little light-on for sex, drugs and rock n roll, let me reassure you that what started off as sleepy holiday with spectacular scenery on a tourist bus with a bunch of British 50-somethings ends with Chris and me in a campervan parked at the side of the road in the plush suburbs of central Auckland like two blissful vagrants with only Dolmio bottles for 'comfort', to coin a very coy American euphemism (used earlier in our trip on tour buses thus - 'there will be a five minute comfort stop at Hokitika') via a Wellington doss house.

2006-11-24T19:14:00.000+11:00

In a week's time I will be reading the following beautiful Judith Wright poem at my best friend's wedding:

Song

When cries aloud the bird of night
then I am quiet on your breast.
When storms of darkness quench the trees
I turn to you and am at rest:
and when the ancient terrors rise
and the feet halt and grow unsure,
for each of us the other's eyes
restore the day, the sickness cure

You, who with your insistent love
dissolved in me the evil stone
that was my shield against the world
and grew so close it seemed my own -
gave, easily as a tree might give
its fruit, its flower, its wild grey dove -
the very life by which I live;
the power to answer love with love.

The next day I'm fleeing this dull town for beautiful NZ. Equipped only with a few clothes, a Rough Guide, and Chris.

CIAO!

PS: We're doing a full on travelogue with photos which we'll update as we go - check it out.

It's official. The Age is bullshit.

2006-11-09T22:01:00.000+11:00

Let's face it, Australians are hardly spoilt for choice when it comes to print media. We've got ONE national newspaper to the UK's ELEVEN*, and it's Murdoch-owned. As for Melbourne papers catering to the country's supposedly most cosmopolitan, progressive, European city - the average punter/commuter has two choices:

1./Pick up a cheap (and nasty) copy of the Herald Sun, and therein discover the boeuf du jour of paranoid halfwits like Andrew Bolt, or the latest phoney/patriotic group hug.

2./Do what every Melbourne citizen with an IQ over 60 is forced to do. Buy The Age. Or visit its dumber online cousin.

(The third "choice", which I'll ignore, is the MX. Naive people always marvel at "how they afford to hand it out for free at the train station!". Maybe they need to learn that this generosity is all about a little thing called the advertising dollar - and the captive market.)

So most of us settle for The Age. I have endured years of its sloppy journalism - half-formed "facts", grammar that sadly reveals itself to be ignorance rather than rush job (the latter being wholely acceptable from time to time), the ominous creep of editorial to the right - with little more than the occasional disgruntled letter. But the recent spate of truly retarded, puerile 'blogs' is doing my head in.

What I detest about these blogs is that, apart from the way the writers all sound like excitable twits ("Like, okay people, herrre's the deal!"), they dabble in the arrogant and very risky practice of playing social barometer - flattering themselves they're in touch with their readers ("everybody's doing it!!"), while gently nudging them towards social enlightenment ("so why aren't YOU?"). It's a very irritating conceit.

The latest one is about whether men should wax.
(I couldn't resist - I posted a comment on this one.)

The writer takes it as a given that women accept ridding their bodies of hair as the norm, and presents male waxing as the Next Great Frontier. Hmm, a topic of earth-shattering importance.
Try this for an irritating opening line:

"Hairy legs. Hairy chests. Hairy bellies. And - worst of all - hairy backs. Guys, ladies just aren't standing for it any longer. Waxing's the way forward (just ask Rove, who had his lip done on telly last night!)."

(Why would I ask Rove anything anyway?)

And this:

"Poor blokes. At least us (sic) women know where we stand when it comes to hair. Men, it seems, are more confused than ever."

I don't need some spray-tanned, semi-literate New Media graduate prescribing cultural norms for me! Do I need to know where I stand when it "comes to hair"? Last time I checked, it didn't matter where I stood on the rather dull topic of hair (especially the hair not visible to the general public) - not to me nor the people I love.

Are people really so tragically vacuous that they think hair removal or a boob job will make them better? Clearly The Age thinks the answer to that is a given, and the question is more "Are we prepared to risk the pain and shell out the bucks?".

Here are some of the more annoying (and scary) bits of the post which sought to answer the really big question (pardon the pun) of Do we all desire double Ds?

"So let's get down to it. Do we all want big breasts? Most men, of course, will say yes."

Will they just? Quantative research? Bullshit generalisation? Or is it viral marketing... The writer of the post ensures she mentions (and links to) an organisation which happens to offer truly frightening sounding plastic surgery 'getaways' to Thailand, where the laws governing medical malpractice are no doubt even flimsier than they are here. I wonder if this is a sponsored link... like the nod to The Plastic Surgery Sourcebook, which also sounds disturbingly like a plug for the knife, from the quote provided:

"Often a patient who has had a breast augmentation finds herself standing up straighter, walking more self-assuredly, and marvelling about how great she looks and feels in her clothes."

Does she feel great about her sense of humour, her intellect, her conscience, I wonder? Does she feel great about her ability not to be conned into giving her (obvious surplus of) cash to cowboys who can't be frogmarched to court if they botch the job? Does she feel great that the type of man who will notice her new assets is likely to be a stupid, sleazy arsehole who will do more to ruin her obviously fragile self-esteem than her throwing money at it could ever improve it?

This, fellow Melbournians, is what we're stuck with. And like, it really sucks.

Post Script: The Age would be less of a rag if it concentrated on exposing what a callous little misogynist prick Tony Abbott is. This time for refusing to put Gardasil, which would immunise girls against cervical cancer, on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, thereby making it available to all and not just the rich. And from time to time, it does. But most of the time it's more concerned with blogs that make those girls (even more) paranoid about their body image.

*Murdoch-owned and, blessedly, otherwise.

Heather and Paul - The rules of engagement...

2006-10-25T23:31:00.000+10:00

...or You Never Give Me Your Money

The rules are:

You do not mess with a Beatle and get out alive.
The Beatle vigilantes will get you even if the law won’t – as John's hapless killer Mark Chapman will tell you. When that Parole that keeps getting knocked back finally comes through, he won’t be free to dance off into the sunset, Shawshank Redemption style. He’ll be picked off by some some Mojo-reading sniper of a similar vintage, who owns one of five remaining complete sets of fibreglass Beatles miniatures (with optional Pete Best and Stuart Sutcliffe). Deep down Mark Chapman knows that Prison is his Friend if he wants to stay alive – but he probably doesn’t any more. I’ll wager the weight of being one of the only males to have seriously messed with a Beatle (Brian Epstein aside) has been too much to bear.

If you’re a woman, you don’t mess with a Beatle, even if you're actually really nice to him.*
Our Heather obviously hasn’t been boning up on her history of Beatle women. The facts are, even those women who forged and sustained lasting, loving relationships with the Beatles were either shunned, treated with suspicion or, at best, ignored by the (largely male after 1965) Beatle fanbase until sheer endurance gained them a tacit acceptance.

Exhibit A: Yoko Ono
Yoko and John fucken loved each other. The overwhelming weight of evidence that I have ever sighted attests to this. In 14 years they spent more time together than some married couples manage in 40. If we look at her in cold blood and now that the dust has settled, Yoko never really did anything to stir serious rancour amongst Beatle fans except to 1) be Japanese and 2) “break up the Beatles”. But she was still despised for a long time, and probably still is by some idiots out there.

Exhibit B: Saint Linda Mccartney
Let’s not forget that Yoko’s blonde counterpart Linda was, if we travel back down the years, at one point accused of exactly the same things as Yoko (of course, she fared better not being Japanese). Perhaps finding real love and not having random groupie muses and teenage brides (sorry Cyn, I actually liked you) as pegs on which to hang the meaningless sentiment of their lyrics (as a counterpoint to the brilliance of their music) simply made the Beatles dull – cf. John’s later, immensely tedious ‘Yoko and Sean are the only things I can sing about’ lexicon – but you can hardly accuse Yoko (or Linda) of breaking up the Beatles. Nevertheless, angry male fans (and a few jilted girls) did.

Exhibit C: Jane Asher, Cyn, Maureen, Patti Boyd et al
Used as props in some films, then largely ignored, shunned, envied, ignored and shunned. By the Beatle fanbase, if not the boys themselves.

Anyway, people got used to Yoko's squawky attempts at angular early 80s synth pop and role as professional widow as surely as they had grown accustomed to Linda and her daggy Wings offsider schtick, and vigourous vegetarianism. Heather's stint, on the other hand, has lasted a nanosecond compared to Yoko's and Linda's. Nobody knows her and she clearly knows nothing about what she’s got herself into. Like how to handle a national treasure. Before all these sensational claims she made the famously self-deluded complaint that the Last Living Beatle with any Talent “got more attention than her”. Poor Heather simply couldn’t figure it out. He is in the only field of endeavour where, in my books at least, it is acceptable to be hideously wealthy. Let me qualify that. Pink is not in Macca’s ‘field of endeavour’. Peter Andre is not even in the park over the road. The reason I don’t begrudge Macca his millions and squillions where I’d slap Rupert Murdoch for his is that Macca has made music that people are fiercely, violently protective of, and he’s got to people in a way that is deeply personal but also unifyingly powerful. And his influence reverberates through the generations. Music fans don’t forget that in a hurry, and they don’t love someone who tries to destroy that….even if she might be telling the truth**. And that's why we love and forgive all music's other ratbags, regardless of what they might have done to someone we don't know.

The talentless Heather would do well to remember that when she gets her lonely, bitter billion out of someone who’s made more people happy than she ever will.

*While I obviously don't subscribe to of the misogynistic stupidity of past Beatle fans described here, I don’t give a fuck if I sound like the ultimate Beatles dork. I am unashamedly so. My other listening credentials round me out for any of you “too hip to like the Beatles” suckers.

**Next Post – why I don’t think she is telling the truth, and she’s making a mockery of real domestic violence situations… and if she is, and I’m horribly wrong, well, a billion ought to just about make up for having me slander her. Paul isn't a ratbag. As one English blogger put it 'it's time to take out the trash, Paul!'

2006-10-09T15:50:00.000+10:00

Ruminating on all the discussions on a Greer theme on the interweb of late, my wise, dear, ridiculously gorgeous Chris, one of the few men who you could really call a feminist, said to me yesterday (of the expectations some women have of men and their confusion of this with true equality):

"Why would you want to be treated like a princess? They die in car accidents."

I have discussed this at length with friends of mine. We want to be treated like equal, intelligent human beings. Not princesses.

2006-10-02T08:51:00.000+10:00

I'm sick of looking at my last post. It's too curmudgeonly for this beautiful spring day.

Instead I'm going to plot out my immediate future.

Tonight I'm going to finish writing a song that popped into my head yesterday, writing itself as it went. Unfortunately I went to one of those amazing back cracking Chinese masseurs halfway through the song's evolution and promptly fell asleep. When I awoke the song was gone. I felt like I'd hurled it like a precious diamond ring into a swamp. That night I watched Idol with Chris and Shaun and that rinsed away any trace of original song material from my tired, cranky brain. This morning I sauntered into work with the tune magically playing in my head on repeat! I will set it down tonight.

I am going to write a screenplay for my darling dollface to direct in his inimitable style.

I am going to write a diary about why I'm happy as a lark even though life has been very difficult of late.

I am going to plan my epic adventure to NZ with Chris in December.

At the very least, I'm going to start thinking about doing some of these things in the next few sunny weeks.

2006-09-14T13:15:00.000+10:00

I was going to maintain a dignified silence through the deaths of Steve Irwin and "Brockie", because I don't like to speak ill of the dead, and, moreover, I've seen what happened to Germaine when she tried. But I will say the following:

It's sad that they died, but they both did very dangerous things to earn their celebrity, and so in a sense died the way that they had lived... a very sad loss to the respective families, but not the tragedy of national proportions the media has turned it into.

Colin Thiele died on the same day as Irwin, and shamefully, NO ONE gave a damn. I'd hope Thiele's classic children's books will one day be viewed as a more valuable Australian contribution to the future than Irwin's circus. I know Irwin gave a lot in dollar terms to conservation, but he also supported the two biggest desecrators of the planet alive today, Howard and Bush (dare I say licked their arses??), and he treated animals like freakshows, jabbing and prodding at them for the dollars of the gaping gits looking on. If you love them, leave them alone!

I didn't think it was possible for so-called fans of a conservationist to be so stupid and cruel as to commit revenge attacks on stingrays. When I heard about this I was ashamed to be human/Australian/alive. I find it creepy when people pretend to mourn someone they never knew, and the celebrity death cult phenomenon that has been around since Princess Di seems to turn ordinary people into self-deluding morons.

Well, I think I've made my allegiances pretty clear. Germaine, you are and always have been one of my idols, and one of the last ballsy, loud, angry voices. Don't stop saying it because the 'bitter, old' men (who dare to lob the same insult at you) try to shout you down.

2006-09-01T14:35:00.000+10:00

I've been averaging a post a day of late - pretty good going for someone who was about to call time on 'the time always comes'!

This one is because I've been told by Ro.

So I'll make an unceremonious start.

Three things that scare me:
Death
Mental Illness
The thought of killing little creatures that leap suicidally in front of the car when I'm driving at night in the country

Three people that make me laugh:
KWISSY
My scrawny old buzzard of a dad
Me

Three things I hate the most:
Four wheel drives and their owners
Warmongers
Pharmaceutical and petrochemical multinationals

Three things I don't understand:
The Law
Chris
Liberal voters

Things I'm doing right now:
Streaming with flu
Rubbing my eyes
Leaning from the bed to the computer in a way that is probably bad for my back

Three things I want to do before I die:
Travel more
Create art which will make my small life seem bigger than it was
Stop being a lazy cow

Three things I can do:
Talk/lecture/proselytise/bore
Write (when people stop listening to the above)
Write a song and sing it (when neither of the above two will work)

Three ways to describe my personality:
Hot headed
Kind
Tough

Three things I can't do:
Exercise regularly or care about it
Grow up
Organise my life

Three things I think you should listen to:
A nice cat purring
Neil Young
Your conscience

Three things you should never listen to:
Music that is the product of reality TV or Neighbours
Andrew Bolt, John Laws, Alan Jones (sorry, that's three in one - but I don't want to waste the question on those pricks)
Doubters and nay-sayers

Three things I'd like to learn:
Swing dancing
Sound production
to be less of a headcase

Three favourite foods:
Jam Donuts
Spaghetti Bolognaise
Trifle

Three beverages I drink regularly:
English Breakfast Tea
Green Tea
Jasmine Tea

Three shows I watched as a kid:
Grange Hill
The Goodies
Countdown

I TAG:
Chris
Susanne
anyone else that reads me - IS THERE ANYONE ELSE?

Worth losing your bond for....

2006-08-30T14:20:00.000+10:00

Landlords are the single most loathable group of people on this earth, next to four-wheel drive and gun owners. If you’re not in a car or walking around in a game park or somewhere in South Central you can usually manage to avoid the last two, but landlords are the reason most of us jump when the work whip cracks. Not only can we not avoid them, we haul our sorry arses out of bed each morning to work for them. Some landlords manage to have whole apartment blocks, nay, whole suburbs of worker bees keeping them in convertible beamers. When I was a student living in a seven person shit-hole, my landlord would squeal up outside in one of his fleet of fancy cars like he owned the place and produce a string of keys as long as a skipping rope. He did own the place… the suburb that is. Each key represented a prime piece of Carlton real estate. But before I get lost in the polemic of how nobody needs to own more than two properties (which I seriously believe, by the way) I’ll tell you about Snowy. For this is the purpose of my post… and the punchline has a parental advisory, so all those relatives and language-sensitive readers of mine (oh the hordes!) might need to avert their eyes.

Chris and his housemate have just moved out of Snowy’s block. We first encountered this snivelling little man in the unfortunate flesh when I unwittingly parked in his car space. Before the engine was cold he was at the front door, nervously informing us that he was ‘a very busy man’ and my car was in the way. At that stage we didn’t know who he was – not that it would have made a blind bit of difference had we known. I don’t grovel to people simply because they’ve managed to live off the fat of other people’s labours and have got land titles to prove it. Snowy wasn’t to know this, and on his second angry visit (again about carparking in the block), he announced ‘I own this block!’.

When you pay rent, you score yourself the ‘unalienable right to enjoy the property without hindrance (or something – perhaps law grads less rusty than myself can enlighten me about the exact phrasing of that piece of property law)’. Having the landlord’s son (yep, it turned out that Daddy Snowy owned the block – not his useless son) rapping on the door all red-faced and spluttery and stuttery and nervous because he wants to assert his rank, doesn’t impress me at all. That ‘his’ flat was plagued with problems (lack of basic plumbing for starters) he never bothered to fix was even less impressive. Laughably, the affluent little nerd would get about in a Sex Pistols tee-shirt, which hung uneasily above chinos and sensible shoes. “Yeah, rock on”, Chrissy heckled one day when we spied him in it, as Snowy flushed with embarrassment.

Worst of all was that we’d hear the ‘Very Busy Man’ actually, er, getting busy. Snowy seemed to be slumming it in Daddy’s block with the junkie-looking tripper who lived in the apartment above Chris’s, and he was rather anaemically ‘seeing to her’ (as he’d probably put it) of a morning. It was around this time Chris started bashing on his ceiling every time the hollow, boringly rhythmic bed creak would start up. She probably silently thanked us as the angry little weazel rolled off her and skulked into the bathroom to sook about it.

Anyway, when Chris and Shaun moved out they painted all the doors, steam-cleaned the carpets – did all the usual stuff tenants do to get their bonds back. But they forgot one thing. Chris told me last night they’d received a notice to remove ‘obscene graffitti’ in the house. I remembered and laughed out loud – Chris had written “P Snowden is a small dicked, ugly cunt" on the window sill. And he'd forgotten to scrub it off!

2006-08-25T14:59:00.000+10:00

Last night Chris and I slipped over to Soul Mama’s for a bite to eat. We were after food, not ‘tude, dressed as we were in our office junior best - slacks, daggy jumpers and woollies - and feeling a tad sheepish about it, especially with glamourous, slick St Kilda types all around us. So we got off to a bad start when the kerrrayyzee!! pierced and shaved extreme sports waiter – complete with ‘pineapple’ hairdo, a piercing you could pass a small rodent through and a broken arm – pounced upon us with glee, spying Chris’ cast (yes, Chrissy has fractured his wrist – a saga in itself) and an opportunity to earn a tip. An ‘awesome dude’-spattered, injury-trading conversation later (of course, being knocked off a bike on your way home from work doesn’t earn the cred points of a snowboarding incident after a late season dump at Hotham) we sat scratching our chins like a pair of straight laced old farts, puzzling over the menu and wondering why we weren’t at Smorgy’s. It was one of those nights. If you’re having ‘one of those nights’, don’t stumble haplessly into Soul Mama’s. You’ll probably be forced to sit at the bar for an hour anyway, if you haven’t booked, so stumbling in isn’t much of an option.

I don’t have a real gripe about the food, but it’s not of the restaurant standard its price or surrounds would suggest. You get to choose four or five mains from around the world, which all keep each other company around a little mound of rice in a big bowl. Thing is, I’m not sure I like dahl bleeding into pasta sauce in turn contaminating a beetroot stew. By the end of the meal, you’ve got a transcontinental fusion you never bargained for, and you might as well be eating the whole lot with a spoon. That or go to Crossways for lunch instead, the fabulously predictable and cheap Hare Krishna ‘restaurant’ that slaps down a vegetable curry and a rich custardy dessert in exchange for six bucks. Much better value!

Real vegetarians probably don’t have much truck with Soul Mama’s 1970s vision of their diet, because they’ve probably had enough of well-meaning, carnivorous hosts cooking them those dreaded soupy, tomato-based lentil and chickpea concoctions for tea. In 2006, there are many more satisfying ways to be a vegetarian. One is called the Vegie Hut, the best Chinese vegetarian food in Australia (and I’ve scoured the Eastern Seaboard at the very least, so I know) the other is called Shakaharis, which dares to acknowledge that vegetarians have tastebuds as well as a conscience.

Now, I’m no restaurant snob (or vegetarian, for that matter). My parents took me to Sizzler on the occasion of my 21st birthday, and Chris and I have been fixtures over the last few months at the aforementioned esteemed bastion of suburban gut-stuffing that is Smorgy’s. But I prefer low rent food to come with all the low rent trappings. Glen Waverley (or other outer suburban) location; lots of grease and fat; people of similar purpose and aspiration as yourself (i.e. dressed for gorgefest comfort in trackies and other girth-adjustable attire designed to accommodate a heavy eating session) and staff who don't try to hide their boredom behind day-glow smiles and banter. To that end, Smorgy’s is everything you could want on a lazy Sunday night. Roasts, lasagne, Chinese, soup - even some fruit for the end of your meal, when it finally comes. Because the thing about Smorgy's, like Sizzler and the Swagman before it, is that you are there to eat as much as you possibly can, and then some to store for the winter. It's the reason my parents love the classy old Manhattan Hotel - a 'brasserie' in the depths of the outer suburbs, where a long hard day at the discount outlets and hardware shops can be finished off (quite literally) with an all you can eat pig out. For their generation there's something magical about the abundance and variety at these establishments. And I have to admit the Smorgy's hit is all about being let loose on loads of crappy, fatty food, and stuffing yourself to the gills, surrounded by people ever larger and hungrier/greedier than yourself. You learn to watch the old ladies when you're angling your plate to catch the roast tatties being dealt out at the carvery - they've got the sharpest elbows. And the kids swiping your knees with their softserve.

Most of my friends who also grew up in the outer suburbs fail to share my enthusiasm for these places (and the 'burbs themselves). One night we told my caffeine-addicted, soy drinking, terminally inner-city friend Robin we were taking him to Smorgy's. With a wry chuckle he jumped aboard my Micra, only to have the knowing smile ripped from his gaunt mug as he realised there had been no irony in our claim. As he watched den-like bars and 'decent coffee' outlets give way to big ugly bungalows and shopping malls, he realised that he had been kidnapped - a hostage to bad taste - and was in for a long night!

2006-07-19T10:46:00.000+10:00

I'm starting a new, anonymous blog. This one's fine for saying nice, anodyne things that you'd expect to hear from me - but that's all become a bit boring. I'll still update this one from time to time, but I've got controversial, salacious and even just private things to say which I don't want to say to the small audience I have, most of whom know me in real life and might recognise themselves in my tirades. Not you Ro, and not dear Chrissy of course... just people at work, and who inhabit my life. I can't write a decent character study (good, bad or indifferent) in a forum where I'm connected to my profile and thereby the people who know me.

So - I'm going to turn up in these very circles, quite soon, as somebody else. Someone who wants to observe and comment without the restrictions of being 'Susanna'. All the best writers have pen-names for their side projects and secret fetish work which might otherwise harm their reputations. As happy as I am with my life - my life is for me (and a few strangers in blogworld when it suits me!).

In fact - who's to say my alter ego is not already out there?

A song we were talking about last night

2006-07-12T13:26:00.000+10:00

Little Boxes

by Malvina Reynolds

Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of ticky tacky
Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes all the same
There's a green one and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses all went to the university
Where they were put in boxes and they came out all the same
And there's doctors and there's lawyers, and business executives
And they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.

And they all play on the golf course and drink their martinis dry
And they all have pretty children and the children go to school
And the children go to summer camp and then to the university
Where they are put in boxes and they come out all the same.

And the boys go into business and marry and raise a family
In boxes made of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.

Because I had a sick day...

2006-06-07T19:29:00.000+10:00

and on sick days I sometimes go through old diaries, boxes of stuff, photo albums and tape collections and get nostalgic... I found a tape of the JJJ hottest 100 from 1991, when the world was still big and exciting to me, and there to be conquered. I remember staying up 'til the wee hours to tape it off Rage in the weeks after I finished school. Back then I had the arrogance and abundance of youth and I was still forming the ideals and friendships that have remained with me to this day. .

There was a time when that tape, and the bands on it, meant everything to me. Even now, the long dead and forgotten songs of that era (Lock It by the Falling Joys, Birdhouse in your Soul by They Might be Giants) make me smile. When my beloved childhood cat was dying of cancer, Tomorrow Wendy('s going to die) was going round and round in my head on the day she was put down.

At the time, I would've made lifelong friends with people who liked the songs I liked on the list (what am I talking about - I did!)... conversely, I might have spurned people who didn't care for this music, and what it represented to me. In fact, I distinctly remember how little time I had for the mainstream music bores that made up 99.999% of the population. That might seem shallow, but in this day of Big Brother and brazilians I can think of far far shallower (and more callous) criteria by which to measure (and shut out) people. No, fuck it, I'll be blunt. If you didn't like this music and were a boring bogan who preferred, say, Gina G or Barnesy or whatever was on Fox FM at the time, you could fuck off. This method of friend selection worked well at the time, and I think I'd still apply it today. Music should be everything, no matter what age you are.

The tape was from a time when they still rated the best songs 'of all time', rather than that particular year, but of course it was peppered with era-specific anomalies like Prince's Cream, and stuff by The Clouds, Jesus Jones and Tall Tales & True that probably now gathers dust under the stairs of Fitzroy houses. Today I found the complete list for 1991 on the JJJ website. So, to remember a time when music was the great fucken leveller - here's the list:

1. Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit
2. Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart
3. Nirvana - Lithium
4. Hunters And Collectors - Throw Your Arms Around Me
5. Andy Prieboy - Tomorrow Wendy
6. Smiths - How Soon Is Now
7. Stone Roses - Fools Gold
8. Cure - A Forest
9. Violent Femmes - Blister In The Sun
10. New Order - Blue Monday
11. Cure - Just Like Heaven
12. REM - It's The End Of The World
13. The The - Uncertain Smile
14. Nick Cave - Ship Song
15. Janes Addiction - Been Caught Stealing
16. Cult - She Sells Sanctuary
17. Janes Addiction - Jane Says
18. Violent Femmes - Add It Up
19. Kate Bush - Wuthering Heights
20. Falling Joys - Lock It
21. Violent Femmes - Kiss Off
22. Billy Bragg - Sexuality
23. Jam - That's Entertainment
24. New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle
25. Sex Pistols - Anarchy In The UK
26. Dead Kennedys - Holiday In Cambodia
27. Guns N Roses - Sweet Child O Mine
28. Pixies - Debaser
29. Smiths - This Charming Man
30. Led Zeppelin - Stairway To Heaven
31. Church - Under The Milky Way
32. REM - Losing My Religion
33. Clouds - Hieronymous
34. Died Pretty - DC
35. Cure - Primary
36. Smiths - There Is A Light That Never Goes Out
37. Cure - Close To Me
38. Boys Next Door - Shivers
39. Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Give It Away
40. REM - The One I Love
41. Ratcat - That Ain't Bad
42. Sinead O'Connor - Troy
43. Cure - Boys Don't Cry
44. Cure - Lullaby
45. Hunters And Collectors - Talking To A Stranger
46. They Might Be Giants - Birdhouse In Your Soul
47. Radio Birdman - Aloha Steve And Danno
48. Cure - In Between Days
49. Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody
50. This Mortal Coil - Song To The Siren
51. Tall Tales & True - Trust
52. Triffids - Wide Open Road
53. Hunters And Collectors - The Slab
54. Soft Cell - Tainted Love
55. New Order - True Faith
56. Sonic Youth - Kool Thing
57. Billy Bragg - Waiting For The Great Leap Forward
58. Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here
59. Doors - The End
60. Metallica - Enter Sandman
61. Jimi Hendrix - All Along The Watchtower
62. REM - Orange Crush
63. Metallica - The Unforgiven
64. Massive - Unfinished Sympathy
65. REM - Fall On Me
66. Straightjacked Fits - Down In Splendour
67. Clouds - 4PM
68. Cure - Pictures Of You
69. Frente - Labour Of Love
70. Church - Unguarded Moment
71. Neds Atomic Dustbin - Grey Cell Green
72. Smiths - Bigmouth Strikes Again
73. Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb
74. Cure - Love Cats
75. Billy Bragg - Levi Stubbs Tears
76. Nirvana - Come As You Are
77. B52s - Rock Lobster
78. Doors - LA Woman
79. Dinosaur Jnr - Freak Scene
80. Def Fx - Surfers Of The Mind
81. Stone Roses - She Bangs The Drum
82. Ride - Vapour Trail
83. Yothu Yindi - Treaty
84. Only Ones - Another Girl Another Planet
85. Dramarama - Anything Anything
86. Wonderstuff - Size Of A Cow
87. Rolling Stones - Sympathy For The Devil
88. Nick Cave - Mercy Seat
89. Metallica - One
90. My Bloody Valentine - Soon
91. Pixies - Monkey Gone To Heaven
92. Public Enemy - Bring The Noise
93. XTC - Dear God
94. Pixies - Wave Of Mutilation
95. Jesus Jones - Info Freako
96. Go Betweens - Cattle And Cane
97. Clash - London Calling
98. U2 - Bad
99. Nick Cave - Deanna
100. Prince - Cream (the biggest bum note of the list, for my money)

At last....

2006-06-02T14:31:00.000+10:00

Read this. Just read it.

Feelin' Groovy on a wet weekend...

2006-05-22T11:46:00.000+10:00

I enjoyed my weekend immensely.

I rediscovered the craft of cookery, honing a delicious pumpkin soup and the king of all beef stroganoffs from some simple, market-purchased ingredients.

I hung with some funny friends from work on Saturday and we cackled like crows for hours.

I saw Cody Chessnutt with Chrissy on Saturday night and we felt the vibe, though others didn't. More about the actual gig another time - but as we were leaving, a boob-tubed girl gave Chris a very approving once over and then clocked me and gave me a nod of appreciation. I shot her a smile that said 'Yeah, he's alright, my mazer'.

Later that night when my feet were about to fall off, Chris carried me some of the way (and got heckled to 'give her one from us' by some lads) and then ran around the streets of St Kilda like the lanky streak of piss that he is, searching for the car, which we'd parked somewhere in a labyrinth of tree-lined streets. I sat on a rock waiting for him to bring the car round when he found it. Yes indeed - he's alright, my mazer.

We sat with tea and treats in front of Eurovision* and the gas heater on Sunday eve, tired and content, with the rain gently drumming on the roof.

Today, I am sitting at my desk, doing no work, reflecting that all my friends are correct and present (after a phone call from a long lostie and an email this morning from another), I've won my bids on ebay for two old 80s keyboards (I will know whether this is a good or bad thing when I get around to paying my plastic off in a year's time or so), and life could be so much worse than it is. No - I'll put it another, better way - life is grand.

*On Eurovision:

Boo hiss to the winning entry Finland - their entry stank of undercover Christian cheese-metal, and the costumes looked like cast offs from Lord of the Rings.
Russia, France, Ireland all stuck to the formula of forgettable big ballads (that'll find their way onto ads, no doubt), while Romania and Malta went for Eurotrash dance pop. YAWN. There was a hell of a lot of YAWN this year, unfortunately.
Bosnia-Herzigovina's entry was the only well crafted, properly arranged song in the whole competition, and while I know that's not what it's about any more, I felt a bit sorry that they didn't win.
The UK entry was, as predicted, cloyingly kitsch and awful, but at least entertaining and far more listenable than the Streets. And, as usual, their countrymen went for that cheese ticket when it came to voting, bigging up the novelty factor they love so much (as their music charts attest).
Lithuania's effort was a very effective piss-take, and made us laugh out loud.

Eurovision fever

2006-05-19T11:37:00.000+10:00

I've come into the possession of a copy of the official Eurovision CD (aptly enough from the same source who lent me 'One Night in Paris' - he's a very useful supplier of pop cultural detritus), which I'm listening to to relieve some Friday morning ennui at work in between bidding for an 80s Casio synth on ebay and eating some Coles pikelets at my desk.

Without the visuals it's even more disturbing! I prefer the countries with the balls to sing in their native tongue - and there's a fair number of them this year. My current faves are Spain and Bosnia Herzigovina. Will I be watching, tonight? You bet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*If any of you Europeans who read my blog (well, the current count is one - my cousin) DARE to reveal the result before I've had the opportunity to live through the whole satisfying 'nil point/douze point' voting saga, I will be cross.

Hare Krishnas and Art for lunch

2006-05-11T14:08:00.000+10:00

Chrissy and I just had a lovely lunch meeting. We went to Crossways for a quick, cheap plate of vegetable slops and some porridgey but delicious dessert, then strolled through what I think is the Block Arcade to a quaint, pokey little shop I enjoy trawling through called Anonymous Posh. It has heaps of vintage hats and coats and trinkets set in a room the size of a closet. We found this lovely girl - very much in keeping with her surrounds - manning the desk. She'd been scrawling a letter to her long distance love in Sydney. She showed us her artwork and put us both on side by telling me I had the perfect bob and Chrissy that he looked 'dashing' in a hat he tried on. We liked her.

Gold Mine

2006-05-11T09:16:00.000+10:00

I'm really chuffed that the two Tassie miners are safe and well, but I'll admit I spent the last few days in the lead up to their rescue knowing, just knowing, that I'd end up being sick of the whole bloody thing.

Sick of hearing the words 'heroes' and 'mateship' being mouthed by botoxed cadavers like Richard Wilkins, that smug, fat idiot Mike Munro and finance analyst turned self styled man of the people, "Kochie". Sick of pushy, loudmouth reporters shoving mics in the faces of the miners' very young children and forcing them to emote for the cameras before they'd even been rescued ('Liam! Liam! are you going to give daddy a hug!?'). Sick of hearing the opinions of bystanders and 'locals' on high rotation. I barely watch the TV, yet I knew there would be no escape from the headlines at the train station, the banners on the internet, the utter saturation coverage of the whole saga, from every. exhausting. angle.

I wearily accepted that before long I'd be trying to avoid soliloquies by sickeningly smarmy commentators like Andrew Bolt in the Herald Sun 'thanking God' for their survival. In his horrid little column he talks about a rescuer 'getting down on his knees... as in prayer' to relay the news that the miners were alive. I'm sorry, but I don't need a cynical opportunist like Bolt using a genuinely happy piece of news to shove whatever ideology he's peddling (in this case the usual Bolt blend of conservative Christian family/Aussie mateship values) down my throat. I'll admit I'm a hardened cynic who will always think the worst of our media and government, but I do sometimes like to be pleasantly surprised. So why oh why did it have to unfold exactly the way I predicted... nay, worse!

The two miners are gearing up to earn squillions for their story, and I don't begrudge them that at all - but isn't that letting the mining company, which sent them down there even after a safety scare last year*, get out of jail free? As usual, our publicity mad society is driven by the notion that stories are there to be bought, and if you haven't got a story, fuck off. The family of the miner who died certainly don't have a bankable, feel-good story to tell - so how will they feel with the measly pay-out they'll be getting, given that his mates will be in clover courtesy of Eddie McGuire et al? Eddie's a clever businessman. He's made all the right noises, praising those 'working class heroes' and putting a tab on the bar at the local pub - but only because he can hear the coffers filling up with all that lovely advertising money he'll be getting when the miners cut him an exclusive deal!

There's something quite sickening about the mine owners being able to dodge their responsibility to their employees courtesy of the story-hungry media. They've even become quasi-celebrities by virtue of media coverage and interviews. It's pretty disgusting. They should have to pay for their failure to ensure that the mine was safe in the first place. The media, by throwing millions at the miners in pursuit of a hot spot exclusive, are allowing them to escape that responsibility. 'Chequebook Journalism' used to be an unwelcome perjorative in press circles. Now there's nary a tisk about it. It's all part of the process.

*The unfortunate, late Richard Carleton, with whom I rarely agreed when he was alive, was the only media person who actually drew public attention to the role of the mining company in all of this. He died shortly afterward, but in death he's less cadaverous than the rest of the media parasites still circling.

2006-05-08T16:29:00.000+10:00

there's a little song going around and around in my head. it's making me smile, and keeping me sane, as music often does.

If this is the face of Australian 'indie' music....

2006-05-03T10:58:00.000+10:00

...shoot me now.

Chris and I went to the Corner Hotel on Friday night to see The Grates. Never has a more apt moniker for a band been conceived, for grate they bleedin' well did.

We were cajoled into going along by Chris's friend, Eko (aka 'the King' and the titular character of this post), and acquiesced in the spirit of 'a good night out at the Corner'. Our feet instantly froze when we remembered that King, for all his charming attributes, is guilty of the guillotine-able crime of liking James Blunt. In fact, such is his legend as a fan of the bland and MOR that Chrissy has in the past plundered King's CD collection to make a joke mix CD for me.

Anyway, the tickets had been bought, and we were stuck with them if we were to save regal egos and preserve good feelings.... or were we? Well, yes we were, because I failed in my 11th hour bid to off them at work and on this here blog (but not on ebay where I am very possibly blackbanned for offering Franz Ferdinand tix, then rescinding my offer, then offering them again - a dark crime in webworld).

So there we are at the gig. We chat to Eko and his equally-good-music-shunning friends, who are pumped to the max but with backs turned to the stage and clutching Jagermeisters. When the Grates come on we do what all decent gig-going folk do and shuffle to a possie where we (or at least, gangly Chris) can see them.

They bounce onto the balloon and shiny foil lined stage. Our little lead singer friend pogoes around tirelessly, stopping between kiddie-punk songs like the schoolyard chant '19 20 20' to deliver seamless, Play School hostess banter with the audience. Now, it might be that Chris and I hated it because I am a grizzled old-timer who likes to hear some smash-the-state polemic (or at the very least a bit of angst), and Chris is an ex Tool gig stage diver turned Sigur Ros listening aural aesthete - but it could also be that the Grates sucked. They were incessantly upbeat and their nursery-rhyme shouty shouty handclappy pop would have left the sardonic Punters Club audience of long ago absolutely cold. As it did me. Surrounded by lyric-mouthing drones who whooped and cheered every time our giggling girly hostess made some cringingly, cloyingly cute remarks about losing pink hats or hating people from Perth, Chris and I started to see red. Why was it that nobody else did? It was like being at some religious convention or cult!

And that was what really got me - there is something sinister about JJJ-feted, styled-within-an-inch-of-their-eyeballs bands like The Grates. Firstly, they can't handle heckles. It's clear from their stage-managed, cutesy banter and demeanour that they are not used to hearing "I want to see you fall over and bleed!"... though perhaps this sort of running commentary (delivered from the lips of a rather tanked punter in a red checked shirt who shall remain nameless) should probably really only be reserved for the truly vile (paedophiles and the like) rather than harmless bad musos.

Secondly, and more importantly, they arrive on the scene complete with slick (consultant-developed) web site and unerringly enthusiastic, air-punching fan base intact. How does that happen without some huge push from above by a record company mastermind or some other shadowy svengali? It doesn't. Their DIY look is as carefully crafted as the overproduced pop over at FOX or NOVA - and sonically even less palatable. I hate to say it but I'd rather listen to James Blunt.

attention melbourne bloggers

2006-04-28T11:52:00.000+10:00

i need to offload two tickets to the sold out Grates gig tonight at the Corner Hotel. I will be selling at cost or just under - bottom line is, we can't go, so you reap the rewards. Please drop me a comment if you're interested, and post your email address and we can go from there.

i promise a real post will follow shortly - for those who are interested!

OK... so we ended up going. and it was crap.

We're going to Sydney!!!

2006-04-12T16:45:00.000+10:00

Chrissy and I are headed to Sydney for Easter on the Greyhound bus. We depart tomorrow night. Adventures abound, I am sure of it. I cannot wait.

Bad news for people with decent taste in music...

2006-04-06T13:11:00.000+10:00

...apparently you can get booked for listening to The Clash in public now.

This is what you get when you turn that bumbling, moronic mass of philistines we know as The General Public (of which cabbies are a fine example) into a bunch of dangerous dobbers.

shoes, neck, muir, bads, t.i.n, pet, billy bob, babycakes....

2006-04-03T09:30:00.000+10:00

all these people make me very happy.

Clean sweep at the Empress rock quiz

2006-03-20T10:00:00.000+11:00

While a handful of colonials battled it out in stadia across Melbourne for cheaply-hewn pieces of metal, a band of five were putting their music trivia reputations on the line for a far more precious and coveted prize - a slab of Mountain Goat, the finest organic ale in the southern hemisphere.

Like Uma's Fox Force Five in Pulp Fiction, our gang (three girls, two boys) had the perfect mix of expertise and balls. We had the old fart questions covered by Robin ('the Baron'), who pulled out those pesky 'history of rock' answers (usually featuring Carl Perkins, Hank Williams, Scott Walker and the like - yawn), leaving the glam and the 80's pop to Caro, Ro and I. We also had a mean by-line in bogan Oz rock, but I wasn't so well versed in American geography, sadly, answering 'Miami' to a question about which state Sonny Bono governed. Rounding out this near-invincible gang was the very handy (and for more than his music knowledge alone, as we shall see) Chrissy, with his schooling in more recent, heavier alternative music (I am no Rage Against the Machine expert, after all).

Our gang blitzed most questions, and ended with a staggering 12 point lead over our nearest rivals - a big gang of dyed-black-haired pretenders who recognised a Killers song but failed to spot Geno by Dexy's Midnight Runners or Jilted John by Jilted John - need I say any more about those mobile-wielding loser-cheats!? There were bruised egos on our part too though - we almost killed ourselves over who wrote the theme to 'St Elmo's Fire', for even with that bombastic tune pulsing through everyone's veins, we were at a loss to place its big-haired author. This was a matter of honour, and even with the combined muscle of three certified 80's cheeseballs on the team we didn't get the answer (in frustration, Baron scrawled 'Michael Fuck' on our ballot), making our team's massive victory, and the taste of that Mountain Goat a little -only a little mind! - less sweet.

We were pretty bad winners, and we would have made horrendous losers. Baron commented that, this being our local watering hole, I might care to tone down my whooping and mugging at the opposition. After all, a crate of beer is finite and I might wish to venture back to the Empress one day soon without being bashed for being 'the lairy bitch at the pop quiz'.

Make that 'the lairy bitch at the pop quiz with the insane boyfriend'....

...for in the end, it was the novelty segment that provided the greatest moment of triumph, and this was where my darling Christopher came into his own, with his willingness to out-loon a cowboy-suited madman with beads in his beard. The hosts of the evening asked that a representative of each team take to the stage and bust some James Brown moves. Of course, each team pushed its own slavering-lunatic-most-likely to the fore, and in our case who could go past the one and only, the shameless 'mad dog Muir'. Looking disarmingly and deceptively wallflowerish as other part-time Godfathers spun hackneyed standards like 'the dying fly' and a rather anaemic attempt at the pizzle on a string routine (pretenders!!!), when our Chrissy took to the mic (to shouts of 'YOU ARE A WARRIOR!! from the team) he let forth with a blood curdling scream, prompting Baron to comment - 'I thought James Brown had entered the room for a moment'. There he was, resolutely puny and white, jogging on the spot, starjumping, bugging his eyes and generally wigging out. If Napoleon Dynamite had had a set piece even half as funny as my twitching, breakdancing friend, it might have been a half decent movie. He spat out a few random lines from the Brown back catalogue, out of sync with whatever Brown classic they were playing to accompany him, and by the time he hit the floor for some neck spinning and caterpillarin', the house was crumbling down around his thonged feet - even our black-clad, po-faced rivals were gasping for breath between shrieks of laughter. As for our table - the normally reserved Baron declared 'I thought I was going to vomit, I laughed so hard'. And we, like the fat Santa man who was to follow that unfollowable act, knew that the west had been won.

What a night!

I love my dad

2006-03-10T13:54:00.000+11:00

There are days when all I want to do is flee this den of mediocrity in which I work, catch the train way out to the 'burbs and sit with my darling dad and watch fusty war documentaries, listen to the BBC World Service and Phillip Adams on Radio National and talk and talk about the world - where it's going, what it means - 'wot's it all abahht, guv'nor?'. I want to extract and capture the contents of his long memory - to absorb all those witty stories, smoothed like pebbles caressed in a sea of many years of repetition, refinement and perhaps a fair bit of embellishment. He has seen so much more of life than anyone else I know, and I'm proud as punch of him. He'll be 80 next month. I haven't known many 80 year olds, and I doubt I'll see that age myself. What on earth can I do to mark an occasion like this?

Was Tom Ryan watching the same film as me?

2006-03-03T11:05:00.000+11:00

Matchpoint review

Matchpoint. Love All.

2006-02-28T11:44:00.000+11:00

In Matchpoint, Woody Allen replaces classic Allen film hallmarks such as a gentle, sardonic wit, closely observed conversations between believable characters, and his own ugly but sympathetic mush with the tawdry opposite - sexual histrionics, plot twists which stretch belief, school play dialogue of the ‘by jove, I’ve got it inspector!’ variety, and beautiful, flesh-baring, but ultimately unlikeable leads.

Problem number one with this film is Jonathan Rhys Meyers. The jury has been out on this pouting Irishman for a long, long time - since he graced the screen as a Bowie-alike in Velvet Goldmine, looking fabulous while boring sane audiences witless. The next time I saw him he was the lust object in Bend It Like Beckham. He acquitted himself in that one – but he hardly needed to act. With this latest outing, the jury has returned a unanimous verdict - his repertoire is largely limited to playing the smouldering himbo, with his ‘wrong side of the tracks’ accent and morose demeanour written into the script to avoid the embarassment of watching him slaughter any other brogue or attempt to crack a joke.

Rhys Meyers plays tennis pro turned stockbroker-in-training Chris Wilton, who marries into money and privilege before starting a hot and heavy affair with a struggling young American actor (Scarlett Johansson). He slavers and pouts his way unpleasantly through the film, his acting crimes aided and abetted by Allen, or whoever wrote the shocking pick up line ‘has anyone ever told you you’ve got the most sensual lips?’ uttered to a similarly pouty Johansson. For the rest of the film we are supposed to believe that this sleazy character (whose one skill, we are told, is playing a good game of tennis) reads Dostoesvky and has a penchant for quoting Socrates to ghosts (yes, ghosts - but more of that later).

Which brings me to problem number two. Johansson, as Nola Rice, holds our attention admirably as the nubile object of the camera, and Chris’s gaze. She is clearly a superior actor to Rhys Meyers, but is confined by the script to two modes – glossy, undulating mound of she-flesh and screeching, hysterical mistress a la Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, only strangely muted and impotent. The difference with this film is supposed to be that, unlike that unreconstructed piece of 80’s misogyny, it is the man who turns out to be the villain of the piece, albeit one we’ve followed as the ostensible protagonist with bemusement and scant affection for the (2 hours?) duration. After watching him plodding his way uncharismatically through the film and cheating on his little sparrow of a wife while using her father’s power and influence, we are asked to sympathise with our hero’s decline and fall. In a scene which appears to have been intended to afford a certain gravitas and pathos to the character, he converses with his demons, Hamlet-style. Yes… this trivial, shallow, nasty piece of work has a dark night of the soul. By this stage there is not a dry eye in the house. But they’re not the sort of tears one suspects the scene is supposed to elicit from the audience.

As usual, Allen manages to capture a big city in all its excitement and beauty, but he hasn't done his research on the culture to which he has transplanted his latest New York tale. Thus we have a doddery, tweed-sporting, grouse-shooting patriarch of landed nobility spouting unlikely (and terribly nouveau riche) business verbs like 'focussing' and 'fast-tracking' when he approaches Chris about the possibility of joining the family firm to do business with the Japanese. Maybe in Manhattan, Woody, but it doesn't ring true if you're even slightly acquainted with the fusty English class system.

In fact, it's quite hard to believe this is an Allen film at all, given its reliance on hokey plot devices over some decent dialogue. It's a big ask indeed for audiences to believe all the coincidences that mysteriously occur. While all cinema relies on some suspension of disbelief, this film stretches the concept well past breaking point, introducing a string of unlikely sightings, chance encounters, ridiculous alibis, bit part players who know just enough and detectives who stumble across the right clues at the right time. It all starts to look and sound like a school play - written on the hop, with scene upon scene clumsily designed to ramp up the action on the cheap. Like when Chris just happens to see Nola at the Tate Modern and thereby resumes his affair with her… and the service man who just happens to be on Nola’s front stoop when Chris comes a-calling, and has enough knowledge to utter mysteriously that ‘she left yesterday’, but can’t tell him any more. Then there’s the friends of Chris's powerful inlaws, who, in a walk on appearance, announce that they’ve seen him hailing a cab round Nola Rice’s way – casting doubt on his fidelity in the mind of his wife, who is handily present - before exiting stage left. By this stage, I didn't care if the whole cast was interred in Pentonville for crimes against the noble profession of acting.

But even a string of lazily written coincidences might still have worked – indeed, they’d have worked well for a laugh in one of Allen’s earlier outings - if we had not also been asked to buy into a ludicrous cop show/CSI-style investigation farce nine-tenths of the way in, starring Spud from Trainspotting and the Northern Irish guy from Cold Feet. Spud and Mr Nesbitt throw around all sorts of Miss Marple suppositions, and can them just as rapidly, before deciding to close the case. At this point I was laughing hysterically. I can only hope this is what Woody intended. But I don’t think we can give him credit for that.

A writer's job is to 'talk truth to power'...

2006-02-23T10:54:00.000+11:00

No-one has summed up what I feel about the recent Packer circus better than this Fairfax employee:

Packer - the Great Aussie Grovel

I promise this is the last time I use someone else's words as a filler for my blog. But in return you must promise to read the above article. It will restore your faith in the print media.

Brokeback - more than just nice scenery.

2006-02-13T15:23:00.000+11:00

As with all great movies, it is the characters, not the scenery, cinematography, soundtrack or any of that peripheral bollocks that really make this film. A few people have commented on its 'breathtaking scenery'... but here's why I loved Brokeback Mountain:

Jake Gyllenhaal's Jack Twist was a flesh-on-bones (and what flesh! what bones!) human, whose hunger for his Ennis was larger than life, yet palpably, touchingly real.

Heath Ledger was a perfect foil as the lone wolf who tried to convince himself he didn't need that shit, but who bitterly yearned for it in those final, futile drafts of his beloved's shirt collar.

That shining button Michelle Williams was, unlike Johnny Cash's first wife in the inferior Walk the Line, a full blooded, sympathetic "wronged" wife. Their love wasn't her fault; and the film didn't try to blame her for it.

It made me blub like a bairn, which drew a shake of the head from our stoic Chrissy and a witheringly proffered tissue.

A quick gloat

2006-02-10T14:25:00.000+11:00

Daylesford, a miner's cabin, Chrissy cooking dinner in a towel. Last Saturday was a good one!

It should be surprising, but it isn't really.

2006-02-08T09:53:00.000+11:00

So those yanks couldn't handle a few ancient Stones lyrics from the 70's at the Superbowl... I mean, how long has Start Me Up been knocking around the airwaves!!? I can remember rocking out to it as a tiny kiddie when 'You make a dead man come' might have made me think of ghosts visiting in the night if I'd stopped to think about it, which I didn't. Bleeping out the word "come" is not going to fool anybody - and it's only going to make the kiddies wonder what that word could possibly mean if it doesn't mean 'approach'.

Isn't society supposed to get more progressive as it matures, not less? So we've* regressed from a point in the 70's, where we could take a bit of naughty word play or the odd double entendre, to the present, where we now flush hotly at the thought of the Rolling Stones being lewd and rude - despite them having made a living out of it for 40 years? I don't understand.

*I say 'we', because the US are the cultural arbitors of the world. Not my world, but a world which even my close friends - who watch the OC, Prison Break, Desperate Housewives etc - inhabit. There's no escape.

Freedom of Speech and the Freedom to Smoke

2006-02-06T10:53:00.000+11:00

Two very interesting articles in The Guardian today.

About the need for people to debate and satirise even taboo subjects, in the interests of preserving the intellectual rigour and freedom of expression of the Enlightenment:

A few bad cartoons are no reason to fall out

And on a loosely-related note -

I smoke therefore I am

My barn having burned to the ground....

2006-02-03T10:03:00.000+11:00

I can now see the moon.

Old Chinese Proverb

2006-01-31T15:18:00.000+11:00

If I don't pull my finger out and start doing something I really love with the hours in my day, I will get medieval on my own or someone else's ass. I'm dying slowly in this job.

Yet another BDO before I hit The Great Gig in the Sky.

2006-01-31T12:56:00.000+11:00

It has been 12 long years since my first Big Day Out. There are probably several reasons for this hiatus -

because, with its iconic line-up featuring a mix of legends (The Ramones when they were all still alive), independent darlings of the decade (Smashing Pumpkins; Bjork) and personal favourites (Teenage Fanclub), I feared '94 could never be topped;

because back then, even at 20 with my fashionable middle parting (which was red along the scalp by the end of the day) stripey tee and connies, I was exhilarated but bloody-near flattened by the heat, the punishment of the mosh, the beer;

because I had started to feel like I cared less about rock than I used to (which I have discovered is still a fuckload more than most of the twentysomething STIFFS who watched silently; gormlessly while an ant-like but still mesmerising Iggy Pop busted out peerless classics many metres away);

because for many years after '94 I had believed in hand-selecting 'boutique' gigs to attend (Morrissey, New Order, Primal Scream, Franz Ferdinand) where the fans would really be fans and the gig would be full-length - rather than joining the great unwashed to eat dangerously pink hamburgers, queue for the girls dunnies and fight my way through henna tattoo vendors and socialist worker bookstands to see the back of some tall guy's head.

All that changed this year. I went to the Big Day Out. Much to my dismay, I didn't get bruised and battered in the glorious, insane thick of the mosh like I did back when people hadn't yet died in the name of rock (well, at least, not at the Big Day Out)...

But I still came away feeling like music has survived. and I'm here to tell the tale. Stay tuned......................

Hang about. Maybe I don't need to tell the tale, cos in the time honoured tradition my mazer has done it for me. Have a bead - it's pure gold.

Anger at the blood lust of a geek - a somewhat delayed reaction

2006-01-23T12:53:00.000+11:00

Or... "Proof that we live in a big bad world #23,822"

My friend at work just mentioned that a woman he had just spoken to was a big fan of looking at burns victims on websites - which is quite wrong, though entirely in keeping with our voyeuristic times. This made me think, for the first time in ages, of the lurking spectre that was present at my car accident at 2am near the Vic Market some 8 years ago.

I guess the crash looked quite spectacular, with my crumpled VW '73 model Beetle flying sideways to be impaled on the 'No Right Turn' sign I would've done well to clock before the fact. It probably looked like blood, guts and corpses would make a showing. As it happens, I sat forlornly but unscratched with my crumpled wreck for some time before it was dislodged and dragged to the scrapyard, never to be seen again - my trainered feet dangling out the side of an old friend. But from the outside it must've looked like someone had died and was yet to be taken away. Indeed, some friends of mine - who'd wisely decided to walk from the same venue at which I'd been DJing in the happier, earlier hours of that evening - saw my little feet poking out of the stricken vehicle and gasped in horror, thinking they were casting their eyes over the erstwhile me.

Anyway, I just wanted to share my small, belated rush of indignance that the strange man who was inexplicably filming the night's proceedings from the safe distance of the street corner (at two in the morning) was probably thinking, nay, hoping for the same thing! What a sick fuck!! He was hoping for a glimpse of my brains, dashed against the windscreen - and for no other reason than to satisfy his compulsion to see (and film - for a subsequent wank?!!) guts spill. Bet he felt ripped off that he was merely witnessing the birth of yet another boring insurance claim. Oh, and the death of my olive green v-dub.

Anyway - lurking, leering, filming types at car accidents, hey... just further proof that there is no depravity to which we humans will not stoop in the pursuit of twisted kicks. And, to get another political stab in there - further reason to curtail the machinations of a free market which will cater to every one of these whims. Snuff films? Not if I'm the star, baby!

Well, I guess he's the one person I can identify from the gallery of characters from my past who I can say with any certainty 'wanted me dead", though I'm sure he wasn't the only one...

Tony Banks

2006-01-12T23:44:00.000+11:00

Well, I might have had my head in the sand, but I did open The Guardian long enough to read the gut-wrenching news that that animated, witty lefty commentator and some time British Labour politician Tony Banks died recently.

I always enjoyed his talking head on various current affairs programs, spouting its opinion in his special brand of rapid-fire south-of-the-Thames-Estuary English.

He also stood up for animals, liked sport and was a fan of the very, very great Tony Benn. What is not to mourn?

Britain's losing all its fine leftie pollies, it would seem.

Good Night, And Good Luck

2006-01-12T20:52:00.000+11:00

I thought this film was elegant, eloquent and pertinent, free of condescension or compromise, and reminiscent of two brilliant films of the B&W era - Sidney Lumet's Failsafe and Billy Wilder's CLASSIC The Apartment. The latter in style, the former in content. Like Lumet's startlingly powerful essay, made at the height of the cold war and thus balanced finely on the axis of the controversy zeitgeist, Clooney's film makes a statement that is neither glib nor safe in times like these. It's not Saving Private Ryan: "war is dumb and quite messy", or Black Hawk Down: "American lives should be saved at the expense of thousands of 'skinnies' in their own country", or Titanic: "forget the ship - let's watch two vaguely attractive morons get it on", or...
let's leave it there, my housemate Robin has come up to ask me if I'd like to get a pizza. and I would.

Does happiness make you a bore?

2006-01-11T14:35:00.000+11:00

Perhaps it really does. I must apologise, for in the last month I have been suffering from a severe bout of bloggers' block. It's not that I don't still have mad rushes of rant-inducing emotion - my head is still full of thoughts... I just haven't had the same aggressively nerdish fixation on stuff that, for me at least, has always bred a good blog spiel.

What has caused this temporary interference in Suze's circuitry?

...four fundamental friends were OS over Xmas and NY - in Spain, India and Taiwan. Less debate, less stimulation, less diversity in my social scene. Less love, but less maintenance too, it has to be said.

...disappearing to Tasmania over the festive season meant that I couldn't take stock of all the "that was the year that was/top 50... of 2005" round-ups in the print and electronic media; couldn't watch the boxing day test (or all manner of dreary Xmas telly for that matter); couldn't argue bitterly with my olds and get thrown out of the house during festivities like I usually do. Instead I engaged in timeless activities like camping, meeting some other olds (though not quite of the vintage of my dad), and participating in that special Tassie tradition, inculcated from infancy, of the duelling banjos - in this case updated for the 21st century by our kind sponsors (Sony Playstation) to allow the duellers to cast aside their instruments and squawk lines from modern pop classics at each other. I know who won that little contest baby, I know....

...and, recently, I have been sweetly insulated from all those Things Afoot In The Big Bad World to which I used to be inexorably drawn in disgust and outrage - draconian IR "reforms", race riots, legislative infringements on human rights - by the warmth of my affection for this darling Tasmanian native creature. I am still angry with the world, but it's talking to the hand for the moment. Inequity is never shielded from my hawk-like scrutiny for long though. Believe.

Anyway, whatever the reason, I apologise. I will be back with a vengeance in 2006. As Luke of Bendigo might say - peace out dude.

C & S at the Office Xmas Party

2005-12-06T20:20:00.000+11:00

What's wrong with the odd happy snap, eh?

Please Sir... Can I have some more?

2005-12-05T14:34:00.000+11:00

A film I starred in recently - with some assistance from the friendly friend on my right.

An eye for an eye and we're all blind...

2005-12-01T11:16:00.000+11:00

The plight of that poor bastard on death row in Singapore has been on my mind almost constantly as the date approaches. At 5pm this arvo his last visitor will depart, leaving him in that Changi cell with nothing but his last thoughts reverberating around his as-yet still properly connected head. Tomorrow he will think no more. And the state of Singapore will be responsible for that.

I have thought for a long time about writing a post about the death penalty for drug-related (or any) crime. But there is nothing to say about it other than it is barbaric in ANY form it takes; it should be abolished in every state that employs it as a method of so-called deterrence/control; and I feel sickened at the hypocrisy of those who call for it - cheer even - one minute, and half-arsedly ask for clemency the next. It should never be an option. Not for serial killers and no, not even for terrorists. Still less drug mules...

And on that note I'm just a tad sick of hearing from various concerned types about how "one of those hits could've killed my daughter". What... just as ciggies, torrents of booze and quite possibly an unnatural appetite for Maccas could, if your daughter didn't have the backbone not to let that happen? You can't double dip, and blame both the mule AND the drug taker (as most capital punishment advocates inevitably do anyway). It's not as if Van Nguyen is there, tapping the air out of that needle while she pulls the tourniqué taut with her teeth.

Come to that, your average drug dealer is no better or worse than any other free market capitalist. After all, when he thought it was worth strapping all that junk to his body for cash, he was just a microcosm of a society that "responds to market realities", which operates by exploiting the Market For Just About Anything and thrives by allowing private companies to keep fresh water and other vital services at a premium (not to mention prescription pharmaceuticals).

Every time I open my Inbox I'm inundated with SPAM flogging everything from the unnecessary (penis enlargements and fake Rolexes) to the downright unhealthy (all manner of uppers and downers; lifters and deflaters) to the dodgy, illegal, sickmaking and depressing (Harvard degrees; animals, kids and your garden variety woman caught in the odd unsavoury act). In this world where products are literally shoved down your throat at every turn by the big guys, I admit it's tough to resist (especially that pirated copy of Dodgeball) - but if I manage it, surely "your daughter" can, Angry of Noble Park.

I watched Lateline last night... can't you tell?

2005-11-25T12:04:00.000+11:00

Two recent indicators that Aussie politicians are desperate whores:

John Howard (the most unco-ordinated, unpopular boy at his elitist school for snotty little brats I'll wager) trying to convince some Pakistani school kids he knows what a cricket ball is for and having it trickle pathetically to a standstill halfway down the pitch. Jeanette probably knows all about that action of his.

Barnaby and the other Nationals prickteasing us all with their maybe-I-will, maybe-I-won't stance on the IR laws. THEY WERE NEVER GOING TO!!! But like the frumpy wallflower at a 1950s prom, they thought their prevaricating might create some interest, some sniffing around from their suitor (the general public) where before there was utter disinterest.

SHAME, you bunch of fuckers.

My darling dollface

2005-11-23T14:01:00.000+11:00

You're one in a million.

H&M, Hypocrisy and La Moss

2005-09-27T18:37:00.000+10:00

We live in an intellectually-challenged age of doublethink and political scapegoats, of public shamings and media trials, and now we have our latest martyr - Kate Moss.

In my reasoned and scholarly analysis of Kate's downfall, I will try to put aside the rather childish and embarassing fact that I was transfixed when, as a 16 year old, I first saw her in the pages of The Face (she was 16 too). I'll also add the disclaimer that, while I have nothing but disdain for celebrities who are famous for nothing, I make an exception for Kate because she is to my generation what the heart-stoppingly, iconically beautiful Jean Shrimpton was to the sixties. Add to this the earthy, shabby, potty-mouthed, eminently fallible (but never fragile) South London everygirl image, and there is something irresistible about her - to me anyway. So what if she's more likely to be caught peeling herself off the floor of some upmarket nightclub than leaving yoga or the therapist's? Back in my youthful day, so was I (though perhaps the nightclub was not what you’d call ‘upmarket’)!. And, morons, she's a model, not a role-model. She is part of the cut-throat, decadent and openly misogynistic fashion industry. An industry whose bosses, it has long been alleged, actively encourage their emaciated charges to hoover up the class As, and then discard them like so much trash. Who the hell are we kidding? Anyway, I’d like to think I would defend anyone who was the victim of hypocrisy, whoever they were. And I am lost for words at the laughable corporate hypocrisy of the labels scurrying to drop her from their ad campaigns. I mean, take a look at her contemporaries.

What made Paris Hilton famous? It wasn’t her brains. It wasn’t her acting or singing ability. It wasn’t even her looks, God help her. No… over and above her inheritance and her penchant for micro-minis - cut appealingly to show off her latest Brazilian - it was her starring role, at 19, in the home video made by her ghastly and exploitative ex-boyfriend Rick Solomon, imaginatively titled ‘One Night In Paris’. That’s right – Paris’s star hit the ascendant because of a porno.

Having been afforded the opportunity to view this cinema classic (courtesy of a DVD doing the rounds of my office*), I can tell you that she comes across as a wretched, dim-witted victim of that slimeball boyfriend; mewing at him not to point the camera at her; caught in the infra-red beam like a rabbit about to be shot; dull-eyes staring blankly as she sets to work on him; plucked bits and lipglossed mouth stuck for an inordinately, painfully long time on the end of his gruesome member. It is truly an ordeal – and I was only able to watch a fraction of it, shot as it is with the pornographer’s eye for plot twists and turns.

To cap it all off, the film is dedicated ‘To 9/11 – we will never forget’. A priceless touch! Perhaps it’s the patriotism that lets Paris and little Ricky off the hook. Perhaps it’s even un-American to criticise such an enviable debut.

This film made Paris the It Girl sensation she is today – admired by young fillies across the world. It literally, single-handedly made her. By contrast, some pictures of Kate Moss (doing what half of Hollywood does) have brought the poor girl’s career to a halt? How does that work? Since when has being completely humiliated and subjugated by some festering bloke, as Paris avowedly was in this film, been glamourous? And anyway, how much would you like to stake on Paris, or any young starlet for that matter, being a powder-free zone? Not much, I imagine…

If any impressionable young girls really think they’d like to be Paris Hilton, I’d encourage them to take a look at this poor snivelling dullard as she is figuratively and factually shafted by her stinking ex-boyfriend, and tell me they’d rather do that than a few lines of charlie with Kate. Personally, neither option remotely appeals to me, but at the risk of opprobrium from my less enlightened readers, I think what Paris did is far more disturbing and self-demeaning – and far from hurting her career, it has sent it into orbit… This is the bit I really don’t understand. Er… you go girl.

But back to Kate’s plight. Ultimately, who is the most deserving of a corporate rooting in this sorry tale? Surely the enlightened approach - with all forms of addiction - is to provide some kind of rehabilitation. Surely the owners of H&M (Hennes & Mauritz) and Rimmel Cosmetics would cut a much more compassionate dash with their young market if they offered Kate rehab rather than dismissal. Do we really want to discard and disown people who have habits? If so, there’d be a hell of a lot of people discarded, from the uppermost eschelons down. And more than a few of them would be these ruthless, hypocritical bosses of modelling agencies, of fashion houses, of record labels… I’d wager there’d even be a few politicians in there. But of course, they're not in a position to be sacked by anybody. No, not even the politicians. Kate's decline also highlights the fragility of even a so-called 'rich and powerful' woman's position in this barren post-feminist world.

Anyway, I've decided to boycott the label that has provided me with approximately a third of the clothes in my current wardrobe - that very handy little Scandinavian manufacturer of cheap, shitty clothes, Hennes, whose clothes Kate must have been paid a pretty penny to pretend she wore. I know sanctioning Hennes was probably something I ought to have considered when I realised the implications of their exotic 'Made In... (child labour-friendly) Cambodia, Romania, Thailand, Turkey, Russia' tags... but it wasn't, and I didn't, so I guess the persecution of an affluent, wayward supermodel will have to do as a peg on which to hang my principles. That, and the fact that I now live a good 12,000 kilometres from the nearest H&M high street.

As for Chanel, they're terribly badly made you know, darling; Burberry is the chavs' own choice, and Rimmel makeup, with its line in magenta glitter gloss, could only look good on a face as flawless as Kate's - though I'm sure she'd never touch the muck on her off days.

*In case my boss is reading this – said horrendous DVD was viewed off the premises, and I will not disclose the name of the lender!

Commissioned Post #2

2005-09-21T23:44:00.000+10:00

Having just written a come back epic which I implore you to read, I have now been tagged - presumably because I had failed to write anything of note in just on 3 weeks. Anyway, I've capitulated and scribbled out some answers, but only because I'm feeling generous and prolific. Speaking of prolific, I will only be passing this tag on to my colleague Dean, to give him something to get his teeth into, and my gorgeous cousin, in an effort to get him to write something, ANYTHING. I know them both in the flesh (well, the clothed flesh) so I don't feel like I'm pestering them with some dastardly chain letter style bollocks. And if they feel that way they can just tell me what to do with my tag...

Here are my answers to the following questions:

Seven things I plan to do before I die:
1./ Enter the political sphere and change the system from within maan.
2./ Write a treatise on the impact of modern consumer culture on international conflict.
3./ Explore the futility of work and become hideously successful for doing bugger all in the process. Like most other hideously successful people of our times.
4./ Visit Latin America.
5./ Read Crime and Punishment. I'm sure it will be good for me.
6./ Having learnt something from Crime and Punishment, go back to England and teach a certain person a lesson in physical pain.
7./ Shag Stephen Harmison.

Seven things I can do:
1./ Sing like bloody Julie Andrews.
2./ Nerd it up like no other - give me an interest and I will explore it to the max.
3./ Talk til your ears and my tonsils bleed - in that order.
4./ Drive like Nelson Piquet (is that how you spell it? when I was young I thought it was 'PK')
5./ Spell.
6./ Brood.
You said seven? Er...
7./ OK - cook, write, dance, paint, think, assemble bookshelves, strip floors (of carpet and the like), midwife for a cat, live on my own in a town I hate (not London, dear rellies, don't fret - Canberra. oh yes. That's a blog unto itself).

Seven things I cannot do:
1./ Sing like Dusty Springfield.
Seven.... I cannot think of seven.

Seven things that attract me to another person:
Nothing. I'm too bitter to think that initial charm, wit and humour are anything more than a chimera which before long gives way to mentalism, alcoholism and other unsavoury isms.
I can tell you what I find unattractive though - fascism, SUV/4WD driving, cruelty to animals, hypocrisy, Jude Law and blandness.
And these days (well, this month) I don't find anybody attractive unless they play first class international cricket for England.

Seven things I say most often:
Recently these have become a little crude. And I have to remember my audience. I remember watching television with my old dear not so long ago, and that horrible little flea of a man, our Prime Minister, appeared to whitter on about some tax cut he was going to give the rich. I said 'Christ that man is a cocksucker!' - thereby insulting every tenet of good behaviour and bad language my mother had ever bothered to set herself. So I've got to be careful. Not least because these days you can be deported from our good country for saying anything vaguely controversial.

Seven celebrity crushes:
I'll play this one fairly straight.
1./ Simon Jones (England fast bowler - see pic in blog below)
2./ Did I mention Stephen Harmison? (England fast bowler - see pic in blog below). Poor guy will be taking out an injunction order soon...
3./ Just watched an episode of Spooks and have a freshly minted crush on this beautiful boy - Rupert Penry-Jones (though he looks a bit foppish and crap in this photo):
He was the love interest in Charlotte Gray, whom she foolishly throws over for an intellectual. Never go the intellectual, girls! Take the blond fluff when it is offered up!

4./ Bryan Ferry

5. The young David Hemmings (RIP)

6. Dicko (it's an Aussie thing - and I like him for the same reason I like Jack Black)

7. Thierry Henry (it's a Brit thing)

And please just one more, because I don't want to come across as a sport groupie (something I've never been before), and because I'd pick him over them all:

Dave Gahan of Depeche Mode.

Hmmm... disturbed by the lack of Aussies (and predominance of foppish Brits). In an effort to prove I am not an anglophile, I'm going to make it my mission to get out there tomorrow and see if I can spot an 'adonOZ' (sorry) on AFL Grand Final Day. Er, after all, I love a drunken, pudgy, pie-eating, bogan ocker footy fan as much as the next sheila. Honest.

Two reasons for neglecting my blog...

2005-09-21T23:05:00.000+10:00

I've got a new computer. I've had it loaded up with a software package that allows me to tape my entire record collection (and I mean the vinyl) onto my computer's hard drive. It's (literally) hours, days, weeks, years of fun. I might never leave the house again.

I have been floored by the emotion of the cricket. I've tried to put words to this wordless moment of triumph, but I simply can't. If I do finally manage to, it will be hopelessly, pointlessly out of date. On that score, I note bitterly that The Age has a female 'Chief Cricket Writer'. I have been vigilantly critical of her cricketing knowledge, assuming her to be some poor cadet hack who got stuck on the sports pages. I WANT HER JOB. I guess it would be a useful exercise to write something about it myself, to prove my knowledge of the nerdy intricacies (I mean, would this cricket journo sheila know a flipper if it came around the wicket at her and pitched outside leg stump, to be caught at extra cover!?), but I can't. It means too much to me. Stay tuned though....

Until then, I've had a bash at something that really doesn't mean all that much to me... a spot of restaurant criticism. Something my dad was apparently a bit of a dab hand at, back in the 60s. It's all one huge tweak! (Which I imagine to be a wank, but with tweezers - a nice double barrel insult I've thrown about a bit lately).

Restaurant Roulette

2005-09-21T21:18:00.000+10:00

Last night I hooked up with a friend I'd not seen for a good 9 years. He was a literature/philosophy student when I knew him. He graduated and went, as most of us humanities ponderers do at some point, into the closely related field of hospitality. I’m sure there's a steady stream of waiting staff the world over who've poured over Foucault, Derrida and Kant only to find ample opportunity to flex that useful knowledge in their jobs. A degree in philosophy also works well as an apprenticeship for a career in that other related industry - retail. It’s an obvious career progression.

Anyway, he probably would've been a waiter forever, except that with his nous and tenacity, not to mention a good line in bullshit, he must have made 'the right friends' and has now reinvented himself as a 'Wine Consultant' (I very nearly typed 'Wind' there - and what an apt little slip it would have been, as you’ll soon see), and is set to start a food and wine column for some rag of repute in Melbourne - knowing as he does, 'the right people'.

When we hooked up last night he took me to a splendidly tasteful little establishment where we had an assortment of rather costly tapas, and the star of the evening was a bottle of wine which exceeded my yearly projected budget for the stuff. During the course of the evening I learnt a little bit about wine appreciation - about notes, about acidity, about fruity wines (they are cheap unless there is a depth and balance to the other elements apparently), about the scent of the earth which yielded the crop. I was told that the wine we were having was a 'deeply unfashionable, much maligned yet eminently drinkable' Riesling, and I was counselled against drinking more wine after dessert, lest the acid notes dominate by comparison, thereby corrupting the memory of that first, cleansing sip, which I was told would be akin to biting into a Granny Smith apple. My companion did do an exceedingly good line in bullshit (indeed, I expect no less from any self-respecting fellow Arts graduate) and while I felt for much of the night as if I was at an audition reading for the film ‘Sideways’, he (and perhaps the wine itself) managed to convince me that it is possible to keep a straight face when musing that there is un soupçon of asparagus about a glass of white. Well, as long as they pay you well to say so.

The evening made me realise what a miserable little cheapskate I am when it comes to eating out, with little sense of occasion and even less of those other vital ‘eating’ senses like smell, touch and taste…although perhaps it is fair to say I have a finely honed bullshit detector. And a keen sense of my own financial reality. If I were to write a review of the last place I ate at, it would go something like this:

The Shanghai Dumpling House* is tucked away in a less traversed part of Chinatown. It retains the 70s period charm of oak-panel veneer and a carpet not unlike that of a nightclub that has seen years of beer spillages, bodily emissions and gum-trammellings. A few years back it was on the brink of closure after it was visited by some officials from the Department of Health, who declared it unfit to continue trading. The reports mentioned rats, cockroaches and dishes that were less than clean. I was horrified – not about the rodents, but about the prospect of losing this gem of a place, where you can fill up on unprocessed, delicious food for less than 10 Aussie bucks. This was an establishment I’d frequented a few times with nary more than the odd stomach pain, and I’ve yet to come across a friend who has had a bad experience after eating there. Perhaps we all have iron guts, but I think it’s more a case of enjoying the odd spot of restaurant roulette. If you’re prepared to risk a bout of mild food poisoning, you get for your trouble a cheap, no-fuss, nutritious meal - the way it might be served in China itself. Luckily, the SDH remained open to the public, with little discernable change to its practices….

At the SDH, patrons help themselves to scratched plastic mugs, still dripping wet from whatever large vat of other dirty dishes they might have been lifted from. You pluck them apart from the stack of other cups they’re suctioned to and line up, Salvation Army style, at a huge steel (you hope it’s steel anyway – that would reduce the likelihood that what comes out of it is tarnished by rust) urn and flick a little lever, cask wine style, to release a very murky looking liquor which you can only hope and surmise is ‘tea’. You then collect an assortment of plastic crockery and utensils (chopsticks if you’re feeling lucky) and head back to the table to order. The menus are soup-stained, dog-eared and present challenging descriptions of ‘chillie prorn noodle’ and ‘peanut satan stick’. The ‘Chinese menu’ is always much longer than the ‘English menu’, perhaps because the more sinister dishes involving the off-the-beaten-track parts of some poor animal cannot be adequately described to the anglophone punters. At least, not without further trouble from the Health Department or the RSPCA.

You will likely be served by a very young girl with no understanding of anything you are trying to say, or an older woman who knows all too well what you are trying to say but is being as wilfully unpleasant as she can possibly be. Whoever your host is for the evening, she or he will invariably move any old globs of soy sauce around the table with a bacteria-ridden, grey dishcloth before dealing out your orders and leaving you to get on with it.

Choose carefully though, and you are rewarded with succulent dumplings, handmade noodles with shiitake mushrooms, emerald green vegetables, all in the tastiest of sauces. It helps to be a vegetarian, like me – how badly can a carrot poison you? SDH has a lightning turnover, and everything comes out of the kitchen at a 100 degrees, so as long as you knock it back before it goes lukewarm, there’s no way those little suckers are going to have a chance to work their voodoo on your guts. Five stars.

*Names have been changed to protect the guilty.

Commissioned Post

2005-09-04T20:04:00.000+10:00

I have finally been tagged by a blogger I don't know - which I guess is actually all of you except cousin ptolemy and countess rowena. Mind you, I had to invite myself to be tagged! Anyway, I don't as a rule like the writing-on-demand caper that is tagging. I prefer to write at leisure about whatever takes my fancy (even if nobody bothers to drink in the genius) but it so happens that my virtual friend GW has raised a subject close to my heart - that of the written and printed word.
So here goes:

BOOKS

1. Number of books I have owned: Far, far too many to count. The number is bolstered by a) the collection of charity shop paperbacks I've acquired for around 30c a go b) the many books I have borrowed and would gladly return if I could remember who had originally lent them to me c) the number pilfered from my parents.

2. Last book I bought: Les Enfants Terribles by Jean Cocteau.

3. Last book I completed: Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. I have crossed my fingers behind my back at this point for telling a porky. I did, last week, read one of those McPotter books because I was curious - but I don't think it counts, or I'd be counting my grocery receipt.

4. Five books that mean a lot to me: I'm going to sound very predictable to those that know me... a)1984 by George Orwell - still the most prescient book ever written b) Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger c) Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte - it shits on Pride and Prejudice d) The Millstone by Margaret Drabble - I read this book over and over when I was a teenager, which I don't often do with books e) Watership Down by Richard Adams - read it when I was about 9, and haven't read it since, but I'm sure I'd love it just as much now. And I have to add this book because it's just fab - Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse. And The Wasp Factory by Ian Banks. Also all of Douglas Adams's output. I was never into sci-fi AT ALL but he managed to combine it with pop culture and make me laff. So five stars Douglas, if you're out there in the ether...

5. Which five bloggers are you gonna tag?
I don't know if I know five... so Ro, you have a go, and cuz, you can too. Others who are welcome to have a bash are Dirk, Yorkshire Soul and Russell Allen...and Ian - but Ian never listens to instructions so I'm sure my invitation is wasted!

Against All Odds - a lament for fat, bald, old rockers

2005-09-03T13:57:00.000+10:00

Like many others, I watched Live 8 in July this year, 20 years after I first stayed up in my oversized fluoro nightdress to watch every move made by Sting, U2 and the delectable Duran Duran as an impressionable pre-teen. While watching I realised that there was something seriously lacking… and it wasn’t Pete Doherty’s memorable ‘performance’, which did at least appear to owe something to the rock lizard preening of his 85 forebear Adam Ant. Predictably, Bob and Midge managed to wheel out a few of their compadres from the class of 85 (and many of those were middle-aged even then), but I don’t think we can even blame them for the absence of the true bombast we saw in 85.

Who can forget the sight of the Freddy Mercury practically felating the shared microphone and busting a few minor arteries as he went for the big guns at the climax of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. Who can forget Mick and Tina (clad in a leather dress) doing the Ragamuffin over in Philadelphia – get a room, you old tarts! I certainly couldn’t get all that raunch and extroversion out of my scandalised 11 year old head.

This year we had the temperate, sober, some might say soporific Coldplay, the worthy, modest REM, the bored looking (but very welcome) Richard Ashcroft. It was all a bit sedate really, wasn’t it? All these guys have been to the indie and post-indie school of rock understatement. There’s none of the gleefully daggy, figurative and sometimes literal bald showmanship of, say Phil Collins or Howard Jones. And even though I was moved to tears by the wonderful, re-formed Pink Floyd – they did seem like relics from the Rock Museum. The days of balls-out hoary old rock, of playing the piano with your arse, and of making grandiose (and yes, ultimately empty) gestures to the fans are gone. Quite gone.

It made me think of something rather silly I’d started to write a while back. I was thinking about the lack of variety, of historical anchorage, in modern mainstream pop. And I wondered if I could make a case for the return of….

THE ROCK DINOSAUR.

It’s a spurious and spectacularly ill-conceived premise, but hear me out, dear reader.

I never thought I’d lament the passing of the rock dinosaur. In the 1980s we saw a glut of middle-aged males flooding the teenage pop charts. Most were cashed up former members of the mega bands of the previous two decades, from both sides of the Altlantic, whose bloated egos were lured out of tax exile with the promise of solo success. The carcasses of the Eagles and Genesis proved particularly fertile, spawning two 80s solo monsters apiece. Don Henley and Glen Frey and their British counterparts Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel produced some of the more memorable pompous epics of the decade. Those of us raised on defiantly underground, scowling, posturing acts like Sonic Youth or the Dead Kennedys might shudder at the thought, but we all know the lyrics to ‘Boys of Summer’ and ‘Against all Odds’ – not least because farty-voiced Pop Idol winners and opportunistic dance producers have bludgeoned us with pale copies in the last few years. And while you might shudder in the admission, ex-indie kids, you will be hard pressed to deny that those original tracks make you want to punch the air – or at least, punch something…where the recent covers leave you completely indifferent.

Throughout the 80s, 1970s juggernauts like Steve Miller Band, Boston, Toto and Chicago (it appeared if you could name your band after an American city you were almost guaranteed soft rock gold) were still issuing overproduced LPs with terrible cover art, noisily grinding into the dotage of their careers. Their solo escapees also basked in this baroque twilight of hairy-chested, old-time rock n roll – Robert Plant, Boz Scaggs, Bob Seger, Peter Cetera of Chicago, Lionel Ritchie of the Commodores - all these thinning, pock marked men of middle age had mammoth hits in the 80s. Some became even more famous in their solo iterations. More surprising still, some middle-aged men – Huey Lewis, to name one – had their first success in that decade, without an earlier, sexier incarnation to smooth their way... unlike respected 70s legend Bruce Springsteen, who was forging ahead with ever more commercial, off-road-vehicle-advert friendly output. Here in Australia, Jimmy Barnes had freed himself of the rest of Cold Chisel and was running amok in the charts in his solo incarnation as the 'Working Class man'.

And who could forget the supergroup? When it wasn’t David Bowie and Mick Jagger getting into their pastel golfing best to dance like Dad at your Aunty Pat’s wedding for ‘Dancing in the Street’ it was a band of rock legends (only three out of five of whom are still alive), the Travelling Willburys, croaking out million selling records and scaring the kids with their ugly mugs on MTV.

And it wasn’t just the out of shape geezers who were making comebacks with Grammy nominated 17th albums and armies of session musos plucked from around the globe. The 80s saw a revival of the careers of several great sixties divas. Aretha, Dusty and, spectacularly, Tina Turner were big all over again – and it wasn’t just their hair. The enormous, middle-aged Aretha Franklin was imploring her mystery man with all the subtlety of a drag queen to ‘drop the pedal and go’. There were dykes about in those days too – Melissa Etheridge, The Indigo Girls. And there were women who really looked like they might be – Annie Lennox, Joan Armatrading, Tracey Chapman. And what about Cher? And Heart? Quite a rag-tag collection of shapes, sizes, colours, ages and preferences. And all big, big hit makers.

The point I’m making is that there was once far more variety for the pop-loving, impressionable pre-teen Countdown (or Top of the Pops) viewer, who at least in my case was to morph into the self-conscious Cure or Smiths or Pixies fan a few years later. But before this happened – before I was old enough to blanche at the mere mention of Billy Joel – variety was an important part of my musical youth. It is now almost impossible to imagine a man who looks like Paul Simon making an impact as a solo star in the sleek, choreographed pop world that we know today.

No short baldies in pop. Is that a problem? I hear you ask. Well, yes….it is.

Like Mike and the Mechanics or, understandably, loathe them, they hail from a time when popular music – admittedly overproduced, often cringeworthy and preachy – was more important than the image of popular music. These were days when a hook was still more important than a headline, a riff more important than a tan. These were days when you might not know what a band (let alone a dance act) looked like at all before you bought their CD. I’m not saying they were pretty times. Politically they were pretty barren times. But the thing about them was, even if we graduated to po-faced independent cool and forever disowned the past, those of us who grew up listening to the pop charts were exposed to a healthy, varied diet of novelty pop, last ditch dinosaur rock, the fading embers of wonderful things like punk, the new wave and synth pop and, admittedly, some horrible American-imported MOR balladeering thrown into the mix. The good, the bad and the ugly. It refined our taste reflexes! These days, if you’re 11 and you listen to popular radio, even if you wanted to hear something by a man over 40 – still less a woman of that age – you simply wouldn’t know where to start.

Picture this

2005-08-21T03:52:00.000+10:00

Me in said office environment - at Christmas party, hiding behind the cabinet during boring speeches. Note plastic cup of chardonnay and spot the office clown.