I scrapped my Aussie accent for the one I used to have, the one that’s been long dormant like a volatile volcano, so I’m using that and treating the other like ash. When I first came to this country, I picked up the Aussie accent straightaway. I was a type of Zelig person, a human chameleon.
After almost eight years, my original accent, if that’s what you even call it, it’s from a different country, surely it must be something, is now sounding really exotic to me, so I’m reverting back to that, whatever ‘that’ is. Sadly, my Aussie verbal jangle doesn’t captivate me like it used to. I’ve even started pronouncing the ‘r’ in Melbourne again. For any listeners out there, I still put a ‘tree’ at the end of cemetery, but I’ve officially dropped “to-mah-toe” for “to-may-toe”.
It’s kind of odd because I go for my immigration interview on Saturday afternoon. Some of the things I’ll appreciate about being an Australian citizen if they allow me to be is firstly being one; then voting the prime minister out of office, the odious little lap dog, the utterly spineless micro-manager who's guaranteed a legacy of pure rotten to-may-toe-ness; having a second passport and just voting in general.
Easter was fun. I went and saw lots of bands. Saw Deerhoof. They were tops. De Campo got a black, Bonds-t-shirt and a CD by LCD Soundsystem called Sound of Silver. It’s a modern dance record with punk cred and it’s monstrously good. Decampo gave me a book of essays by David Foster Wallace called Consider the Lobster. Read some of that, yeah. It’s freaking great but his intelligence is so bracing the prose comes off as mechanical sometimes and there’s so much information it occasionally reads like it’s computer-generated brilliance, but eventually you realise it’s impossible to fault it and you end up loving it, but become a bit numb with envy because he’s so far ahead of the pack with the brain of a scientist, the sensibility of a hipster and the dazzle of a magician. Disconcertingly great. I’m currently in the middle of an entertaining essay he wrote about the adult entertainment industry. After opening gifts, we rode our bikes to Pascoe Vale and ate prawns with De Campo’s family in the backyard of her sister's place over looking the city. It was our first trip out of Fitzroy (excl. city) and it was excellent.
Otherwise, I spent too much money and partied loads (hi Mom!). Gregarious Melbourne, I spoke in a Romanian accent the entire time. I bought the Velvet Underground in Print at the remainders shop. It’s Loaded and I'm penniless.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
The Lives of Others
Left the house twice over the weekend. The first was to buy a juice, taco mix and some clearance shorts, the second time was to witness movie mastery. The film was The Lives of Others. De Campo and I loved the hell out of it. More than Le Grand Illusion, for moi. She dug it harder than Chinatown. Initially tipped off by The New Yorker, after reading a stunning rave review by Anthony Lane, who’s basically your average cinephile trapped in the body of one of the most lissom and stylish prose writers around.
Written and directed by a 33 year-old stallion named Florian Henckel vons Dommersmark, in his debut, the movie is set in frigging, mid-80s Berlin, and it’s about the goddamn government placing a dashing playwright under surveillance (wiretaps, cameras, stake-outs, etc) for possible subversion. Stupendously great drama ensues.
The Lives of Others has something profound to say about all kinds of interesting things: big-city loneliness, lovelessness, paranoia (is it still paranoia if it’s warranted, or is that simply fear?), creating art in a torturous society governed by absolute power-trippers (creative compromise), not to mention comradeship, good will and straight-up, huge-hearted humanity.
Here’s a link to an amazing article about von Dommersmarck, giving excellent insight into his impressive outsized ambitions. I mean just look at the guy, his head is the size of a watermelon. He looks like Vincent D’Onofrio as a young Orson Welles.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Lulabelle & Brock
The woman on the left is 47 year-old Lula belle Wolverton-Shagpile. A former drinker, she gave her life to the flight industry and has since seen forty-one continents! She wrote a controversial high-flyin’ romp during the Me Decade called ‘Peanuts and Perfume Over Peru’ that went on to star Jacqueline Bissett and Gil Gerard (ABC Movie of the Week, September 9th 1980). She’s famous for saying ‘Don’t you go there!’ The fellow to her right is none other than Lula’s fourth husband, strongman Brock Womack. Brock is a retired stuntman and the occasional catalogue model for colourful cotton shirts. Born and bred on Cannery Row, Brock played Burt Reynolds’ double in several films, including Hooper, where he kicked Jan Michael Vincent’s ass! Brock once spent a week with Richard Harris in Southeast Asia that neither of them can remember. He occasionally experiences semi-serious flashbacks involving Harris in a tutu running wild on the streets of Hanoi, but Brock is perfectly untroubled by it and deeply smitten with his one and only Shagster.
Friday, March 23, 2007
Updike's Rabbit at Rest
I closed the book on Rabbit at Rest yesterday morning, holding back the tears like Mick Hucknall holding back the years. The book cut me up real bad and bravo to a review written by Martin Amis that I read subsequently, page after page you are acutely aware of your own heart, the odd murmur and strange palpitations, as John Updike opens Rabbit up and describes in astonishing, humourous detail the effect of bacon-wrapped scallops and cakes on Rabbit’s ailing ticker.
The four masterful Rabbit novels represent the four decades in which they were written, interpret that however you want, I can't be bothered, 1,500 pages total and concluding in 1990 where it began, thirty years earlier, on the basketball court, this time the 55 year-old squaring off against a sleek cat named Tiger, the first to 21 in the Florida sun. And to think Rabbit hadn’t even digested his breakfast bear claw…
If I had been in a private setting, and not on a tram concussed by a bevy of crass schoolgirls, I most certainly would have been on the floor howling. But as it was, only a few teardrops fell. It is quite some book. For an opportunity to win my copy of Rabbit at Rest simply tell me in the comments box what was the last book that made me cry and I will send it to you, dog-ears, pear stains (don’t ask) and all.
The four masterful Rabbit novels represent the four decades in which they were written, interpret that however you want, I can't be bothered, 1,500 pages total and concluding in 1990 where it began, thirty years earlier, on the basketball court, this time the 55 year-old squaring off against a sleek cat named Tiger, the first to 21 in the Florida sun. And to think Rabbit hadn’t even digested his breakfast bear claw…
If I had been in a private setting, and not on a tram concussed by a bevy of crass schoolgirls, I most certainly would have been on the floor howling. But as it was, only a few teardrops fell. It is quite some book. For an opportunity to win my copy of Rabbit at Rest simply tell me in the comments box what was the last book that made me cry and I will send it to you, dog-ears, pear stains (don’t ask) and all.
From the Dept. of Alarming Developments
It’s Moritz not Mortitz. One tee not two. I kindly thank you and appreciate your support.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Tunes, Inc.
Probably a rambling post because I feel like doing some shit and don’t have a coherent thing to hang it on. Whores were mad radical on Saturday night at Exile. Shame if you missed them. I took a very good photo on Sunday afternoon back at the same joint of my wonderful friend Mia, but you can’t see it I won’t let you. The light was frigging perfect too. Eastern sunlight, au naturel at 5.55pm or thereabouts.
Mia was accompanied by a flock of birds on tape, to which she sang along to her pretty little heart’s content, ‘whilst’ strumming a dwarfish Hawaiian guitar. Mia’s so tuneful she’s Tunes, Inc. After her set we dished up some crazy ass BBQ. I had three pints of German lager. I am a beer enthusiast with various areas available for functions.
Saturday morning De Campo and I pedalled to Queen Vic Market and went via the Townhall Hotel. There we ordered breakfast. For an extra four dollars I could have supplemented my American Breakfast with a shot of bourbon, but no. After two yellow jackets joined us outside, we moved inside where good music was being played. At the market we loaded up on lambchops and sausages, Bacardi, produce, champagne and Rose`. We had a barbeque later on and lots of people showed up it was gnarly.
De Campo was curious whether I differentiated between going to the grocery store or the Market. Other than the fact the food is better and cheaper, I really couldn’t. The radicalness of this thought really diminishes on paper.
She bought a cigarette case at the Market for ten bucks and had it engraved for free. “What do you want it to say?” the guy asks. “De Campo,” she said. “I was hoping it was going to be something easy like Mandy.”
Perhaps it took some daring for a Monday, but last night, for pure pleasure I listened to a whole swag of Go Genre Everything material I had amassed over the weekend. Their shows severely screw with people. On Saturday night, suitably bent, I finally peered into the band’s eye and it was like finding the essence of one of John Ashberry’s more abstract offerings. Tremendous!
Guy Blackman followed Mia on Sunday. Guy plays piano pop and he’s openly gay about it and can be quite charming. I told De Campo who wasn’t coping very well to stick around, Guy’s set will be really uplifting. Sadly his first song was a certified slog entitled Marriage, where his lugubrious vocals ponder who would dispose of his body and handle the paperwork should he get hit by a bus. Luckily the set unfolded marvellously, getting better by the song and accumulating players at an equal rate (bass, cello, lead, drums). By the end of his set the music was so fully-formed and unreal it was like we were floating on air when we were merely sitting having just had sausages and macaroni salad. Impressive result!
Down to the last fifty pages of Rabbit at Rest. His family is disgusted with him, the mood is stark and he’s on a midnight drive to Florida. Yeehaw.
Mia was accompanied by a flock of birds on tape, to which she sang along to her pretty little heart’s content, ‘whilst’ strumming a dwarfish Hawaiian guitar. Mia’s so tuneful she’s Tunes, Inc. After her set we dished up some crazy ass BBQ. I had three pints of German lager. I am a beer enthusiast with various areas available for functions.
Saturday morning De Campo and I pedalled to Queen Vic Market and went via the Townhall Hotel. There we ordered breakfast. For an extra four dollars I could have supplemented my American Breakfast with a shot of bourbon, but no. After two yellow jackets joined us outside, we moved inside where good music was being played. At the market we loaded up on lambchops and sausages, Bacardi, produce, champagne and Rose`. We had a barbeque later on and lots of people showed up it was gnarly.
De Campo was curious whether I differentiated between going to the grocery store or the Market. Other than the fact the food is better and cheaper, I really couldn’t. The radicalness of this thought really diminishes on paper.
She bought a cigarette case at the Market for ten bucks and had it engraved for free. “What do you want it to say?” the guy asks. “De Campo,” she said. “I was hoping it was going to be something easy like Mandy.”
Perhaps it took some daring for a Monday, but last night, for pure pleasure I listened to a whole swag of Go Genre Everything material I had amassed over the weekend. Their shows severely screw with people. On Saturday night, suitably bent, I finally peered into the band’s eye and it was like finding the essence of one of John Ashberry’s more abstract offerings. Tremendous!
Guy Blackman followed Mia on Sunday. Guy plays piano pop and he’s openly gay about it and can be quite charming. I told De Campo who wasn’t coping very well to stick around, Guy’s set will be really uplifting. Sadly his first song was a certified slog entitled Marriage, where his lugubrious vocals ponder who would dispose of his body and handle the paperwork should he get hit by a bus. Luckily the set unfolded marvellously, getting better by the song and accumulating players at an equal rate (bass, cello, lead, drums). By the end of his set the music was so fully-formed and unreal it was like we were floating on air when we were merely sitting having just had sausages and macaroni salad. Impressive result!
Down to the last fifty pages of Rabbit at Rest. His family is disgusted with him, the mood is stark and he’s on a midnight drive to Florida. Yeehaw.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Tales of the Unexpected (Golden Stains)
Toby and Suze usually accompany De Campo and I to our bush rock festivals, but no, not this time, not for Golden Plains. No big deal, right? Well I didn’t think it was, but their absence proved to have a deeply profound effect on the Unstoppable Forces psyche. We cried some. Squealed a bit. We came to the conclusion that without Tobe and Suze, all Golden Plains is, is dust in the wind. All it is, is dust in the wind (it is very windy there by the way and dusty too). We’ll probably go back.Mentally I was a bit mental. My cynical attitude didn’t wash at all. Nor did my tolerance for freaks constantly jutting into my grill and staying there. The festering festival crowd seemed overly crowded to me this time even though it was significantly leaner than Merediths of yore. Somehow, everywhere I went, some obnoxious dildo was eating up my space, obliviously rubbing his legs next to mine on a picnic blanket, for inst, while piggishly making out with some girl, burying her face with his vulgar technique. The fact that you’re a shit in a burgundy velvet bathrobe is embarrassing to me. Please get out of my face. You are wearing a cocktail dress over a pair of jeans and you have a beard. Please move away from my vicinity urgently.
My cynicism did not suffer fools lightly. I was a magnet for acid-bent dildos and it continually harshened my marshmallow mellow. I really wasn’t prepared for this event. Just couldn’t get it together. I guess I am one of those Golden Plains’ casualties. Normally I am a bouncing ball, very energetic, I don’t know what happened I was completely flat all weekend. Maybe I was in the throes of some existential crisis. But really, who cares?
A week of carousing didn’t help. Tuesday night was Yo La Tengo, which was so good I got drunk. Thursday night we went and saw David Kilgour w Crayon Fields and Panel of Judges. It was electrifying and David’s band played ‘Point that Thing Somewhere Else’, which is like the Mt Everest of velvety guitar pop. I packed four days of work into four days, which was strenuous and harsh. My 33 1/3 Wowee Zowee proposal got rejected. Not that that hurt so much. Truth is my submission was very puerile, but it was an attempt to write something structured, which is new to me and so for the opportunity to do that, I am grateful.
To be fair the music at Golden Plains was generally awful. I don’t blame Yo La Tengo nor Eddy Current Suppression Ring. Those cats rule, as do a few others, but overall the line-up was a horrendous doggie-pile of genres that would require significant re-jig to make work more effectively. Lack of guitar pop was devastating and overwhelming influx of World Beat was jagged, jolting and buzz-killingly dire.
So we were held captive by Golden Plains all weekend. We could have never expected such an oppressive environment, but our tent did almost blow away! As the song goes life is a tale of unexpectedness (it doesn’t actually go like that, but it is a song by Toby Dutton. Man I’m looking forward to some live sets by Flywheel).
AVIS supplied the wheels for our weekend getaway. I hadn’t driven anywhere for six years. It was like I was navigating a cruise ship. We got stuck in the underground carpark for an hour trying to work out how the bloody thing operated! I got nervous and hot and the confined space made me very claustrophobic. I felt like Marcello in 8 ½ stuck in traffic in a dream. Once underway, the driving was easy. Always remember no matter what side of the road you're on, you (the driver) need to be in the middle hugging the dotted line of a two-laner. I was taught this by my ex-wife’s best friend, a Meyer shopgirl who fiendishly grew to despise me. She snubbed me on the tram once. I recall I had a ghostly pallor and I said I had glandular fever and she said well I am not surprised you look terrible.
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Applecore #5
I do declare those backyard shindigs held by the Applecore gang really encapsulate what this city’s got going on: community spirit, feel for good times and rock and roll fun.
This is how it unfolded for me: Carla arrives at Unstoppable Forces Headquarters (UFHQ) at 12.30pm on Saturday. I hand her a Bloody Mary. We listen to some prog. De Campo knocks back a cranberry vodka. I pour ‘em both a refill. We listen to some more prog. Armed with Doritos and an Esky full of champagne we head out the door. We hail a cab, we buy a slab, we put the beer in the boot of the cab. We find the party. We pay our fee ($5). They hand us an apple. I fail to partake in apple goodness, but anyway, I like it here, it’s nice. Tables and chairs, an old, rusted tin shed, a stage with a gazebo, a van with Applecore sprayed across its windscreen, an outhouse and several fruit trees.
An integral part of Applecore is Ricky French, superstar, daredevil axeman for Actor/Model. Ricky works for Harry the Hirer and has delivered all the furniture, including a gazebo in a big truck. Suze, Toby, James, Miranda and Felix are here and Dane Certificate is on stage. Excitement levels are rising. A dreadlocked bassist who busts out a solo reminding me of early Nirvana even though I have no idea what that might sound like. I’m pretty sloshed by 2.30pm standards. Anyway, it’s a starter dish as good as any cup of Dooger’s Clam Chowder (Seaside Ore, est. 1981).
Aleks and the Ramps go nuts with ease and we almost die of fun. Their good spirited guitarist Simon has sideburns closing in on his nose. I suggest he shaves his moustache and goatee in order to look like Abe Lincoln (De Campo will pursue this directive and finally succeed six hours later with a blunt razor – OUCH!).
I take James and Miranda’s boy Felix onto my lap and he gets comfortable by suckling my arm. His parents reveal the hickeys he has given them. I am impressed and hand Felix back to them and go to the toilet.
Sadly I am unable to relax my urethra. They are playing Wowee Zowee between sets, merely one of several external forces that have caused me to booze excitedly. “I don’t need a minister to call me a groom.” The voice outside the john is familiar to me. Hey it’s Carla (oh my, hot, hot Steve)! So we sing a few bars together ("We call her Barbara/ Breeding like larva…Dental surf combat/ Get out those hard-hats/ And sing us some skat!!, etc. etc.) before I mosey over to Toby and Suze’s place three doors down to use their toilet in quietude. Toby is playing Sleepy Township’s Caribbean Delight and we dance like fools. Toby puts his hand through the window. Luckily De Campo is there to bandage it because I am gone.
The next three acts recall classic bands on these labels: 4AD (Pikelet), Sub Pop (Scissors for Sparrows), Kill Rock Stars (Applecross). Talkshow Boy is more of a DIY’er. "Talkshow Boy I make you fishball soup! Fishball!" is uttered by who else but the lovely De Campo, fresh from bandaging Toby's finger.
Something happens between the start of the Shooting at Unarmed Men and the end and I don’t mean it just gets dark. Everybody starts going a bit crackers. Percussion instruments are tossed into the fray and we fight over them like hyenas, celebrating in a mad, drunken manner that continues on through Actor/Model’s set. How I don’t fracture any bones I am not sure.
We leave the party singing Pavement, sing Pavement in the cab all the way to the After Dark and sing Pavement walking in the door of the bar, Outward Obtooce, Carla, Coinflow Dollar, De Campo and I, as Pikelet strums a guitar for a hundred or so hushed sitters.
The night indeed becomes very surreal, hard-to-explain by this point. I am moved in very special ways. The Kes Band unleash a jam that is completely utterly extraordinary. I feel like I am in the Scottish highlands at an obscure pub being surreally blown away by an otherworldly jam band. I love them.
Postscript: Well, I just hope the vodka tonic that overturned in my lap occurred after Kes played because I recall making a right spectacle of myself out on the dance floor. The next morning the back of my shirt was thoroughly covered in cranberry juice. Very Odd.
Stay tuned for next week’s episode of Unsolved Mysteries. Robert Stack is going to have a go at this one and its complexities could very well spell his demise.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Monday, February 26, 2007
Rejected questions for Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan by T. Boy Donutt and Reall Deal N
1. Favourite South Australian band from 1983? (RL)
2. So, you guys are married yeah!? What about the other guy does he join in, you know, the fat guy? (TD)
3. Sunny side up, over easy or Eggs Jackson? (RL)
4. Who put the bump in the bump a bump a bump? Who put the ram in the ram a lama ding dong? (TD)
5. Can you make a Roman Catholic*? (RL)
6. Can you loan me a tenner? (TD)
7. Favourite alternative form of energy? (RL)
8. Did you build that city on rock and roll? (TD)
* a drink apparently
2. So, you guys are married yeah!? What about the other guy does he join in, you know, the fat guy? (TD)
3. Sunny side up, over easy or Eggs Jackson? (RL)
4. Who put the bump in the bump a bump a bump? Who put the ram in the ram a lama ding dong? (TD)
5. Can you make a Roman Catholic*? (RL)
6. Can you loan me a tenner? (TD)
7. Favourite alternative form of energy? (RL)
8. Did you build that city on rock and roll? (TD)
* a drink apparently
Monday, February 19, 2007
Public Service Announcement
Went to see Little Children yesterday. The only reason we didn’t walk out of it is because apparently I had hit a woman in the head with my bike helmet while trying to find my seat, she turned around and yelled Jesusand I didn’t say I was sorry, I didn’t hear her, it was during a very loud preview, then part way through the movie as the whole enterprise was getting exceedingly worse by the second I felt gripped by a terrible anxiety because I was too scared to get up and cross her path again until the movie was over figuring she would have forgotten about it by then and that is sad because Little Children, and De Campo will be disgusted by the fact that I am wasting my energy writing about it, I honestly can’t remember the last time I felt so repulsed by something so horrid. I also had a hangover. Went out the night before and saw Spider Vomit (NO), Kill Boogie (NO), Lindsay Lowhand (YES!). WHOAaaa-hey.
Art is kooky, in order for it to work, it has to be killer (of course), but at its most base level, it needs to have a heart and this movie, not only is it missing pretty much every essential organ (except rod and fanny), it does not understand life.
I was happy to go see it in the first place because it’s set in a salubrious suburb on the east coast satisfying my alacrity for Cheever's dark satires, not to mention my current literary obsession (Rabbit at Rest, incredible) and being homesick for U.S. suburbia in general.
Kate Winslet is a stay-at-home Mom and Patrick Wilson is a stay-at-home Dad. They meet in the park where their kids play and start having sex after Kate makes an implausible move to ruffle the stiff, conservative Mothers in the park, who are so tediously condescended to by the filmmaker its freaking pathetic. Kate’s unsatisfied at home because her husband jerks off all the time. The less said about him the better. (“We need to talk,” storms Kate. “Can’t you see I’m at work,” he replies, a pair of polka dot underpants smothering his face. It should be funny but it’s not. It’s awkward and embarrassing. ) Patrick is married to Jennifer Connelly in one of the most unsubstantial roles for a female of her calibre I’ve ever seen. Patrick tells Kate Jennifer makes documentaries. “You mean like Michael Moore?” she says. Is it just me or is that a really foolish thing to say. Actually no, because it turns out she makes documentaries about Iraq too that are extremely tacky. A clumsy voice-over done by some sleazy soap guy gives the movie a ghastly jolt. The moments when Winslet is off-screen are absolute torture.
The movie ends with a message of hope and that is its greatest offence. There’s other strangeness too. The number of loving close-ups of mangled hands and unkempt feet are just bizarre. And it actually isn’t nice to see Jackie Earle Haley, the rat-faced teen hooligan from the 1970s (Bad News Bears, Breaking Away, etc), back in movies because the character he plays is so utterly detestable he is pointless.
The director is Todd Fields. The fact that he and I went to both Mt. Hood Community College and Southern Oregon State College has always stuck with me. The only other person I know to have done this is my college roommate. Therefore I always thought Todd and I had some sort of kinship. Now I don’t believe I could even share a shortbread cookie with him. I think he’s a screwy closet Republican, extraordinarily naïve, who has assembled an extremely unsympathetic cast of characters.
This might sound arrogant, but I believe I have already accomplished more valuable work than what Mr. Fields has accomplished, despite glowing reviews by Mr. Denby in the New Yorker. I didn’t make Little Children.
Fucken Denby.
I don’t understand, a couple years ago, he was complaining about upstart foreigners (Von Trier; the guy who did 21 Grams, which I thought was a vastly underrated comedy and this Russian asshole who made an awful movie about the perils of San Franciscan real estate) making movies set in America, that were hateful and contemptuous of U.S. values. The argument being their knowledge of American culture purely based on vile American TV.
Why not add my erstwhile soulmate and his pretentious perversities and creepy foot fetishes to the mix? I don’t see the difference. Consider this my Public Service Announcement. I urge you not to go and see this foul, heartless, miserable little turd. I was upset for a very long time afterwards until I found a great-looking, second-hand copy of Martin Amis’ Money at the Elgin Street bookshop. That cheered me up immensely. I’m going to go read Rabbit at Rest now. A tremendously funny and compassionate work of art.
Art is kooky, in order for it to work, it has to be killer (of course), but at its most base level, it needs to have a heart and this movie, not only is it missing pretty much every essential organ (except rod and fanny), it does not understand life.
I was happy to go see it in the first place because it’s set in a salubrious suburb on the east coast satisfying my alacrity for Cheever's dark satires, not to mention my current literary obsession (Rabbit at Rest, incredible) and being homesick for U.S. suburbia in general.
Kate Winslet is a stay-at-home Mom and Patrick Wilson is a stay-at-home Dad. They meet in the park where their kids play and start having sex after Kate makes an implausible move to ruffle the stiff, conservative Mothers in the park, who are so tediously condescended to by the filmmaker its freaking pathetic. Kate’s unsatisfied at home because her husband jerks off all the time. The less said about him the better. (“We need to talk,” storms Kate. “Can’t you see I’m at work,” he replies, a pair of polka dot underpants smothering his face. It should be funny but it’s not. It’s awkward and embarrassing. ) Patrick is married to Jennifer Connelly in one of the most unsubstantial roles for a female of her calibre I’ve ever seen. Patrick tells Kate Jennifer makes documentaries. “You mean like Michael Moore?” she says. Is it just me or is that a really foolish thing to say. Actually no, because it turns out she makes documentaries about Iraq too that are extremely tacky. A clumsy voice-over done by some sleazy soap guy gives the movie a ghastly jolt. The moments when Winslet is off-screen are absolute torture.
The movie ends with a message of hope and that is its greatest offence. There’s other strangeness too. The number of loving close-ups of mangled hands and unkempt feet are just bizarre. And it actually isn’t nice to see Jackie Earle Haley, the rat-faced teen hooligan from the 1970s (Bad News Bears, Breaking Away, etc), back in movies because the character he plays is so utterly detestable he is pointless.
The director is Todd Fields. The fact that he and I went to both Mt. Hood Community College and Southern Oregon State College has always stuck with me. The only other person I know to have done this is my college roommate. Therefore I always thought Todd and I had some sort of kinship. Now I don’t believe I could even share a shortbread cookie with him. I think he’s a screwy closet Republican, extraordinarily naïve, who has assembled an extremely unsympathetic cast of characters.
This might sound arrogant, but I believe I have already accomplished more valuable work than what Mr. Fields has accomplished, despite glowing reviews by Mr. Denby in the New Yorker. I didn’t make Little Children.
Fucken Denby.
I don’t understand, a couple years ago, he was complaining about upstart foreigners (Von Trier; the guy who did 21 Grams, which I thought was a vastly underrated comedy and this Russian asshole who made an awful movie about the perils of San Franciscan real estate) making movies set in America, that were hateful and contemptuous of U.S. values. The argument being their knowledge of American culture purely based on vile American TV.
Why not add my erstwhile soulmate and his pretentious perversities and creepy foot fetishes to the mix? I don’t see the difference. Consider this my Public Service Announcement. I urge you not to go and see this foul, heartless, miserable little turd. I was upset for a very long time afterwards until I found a great-looking, second-hand copy of Martin Amis’ Money at the Elgin Street bookshop. That cheered me up immensely. I’m going to go read Rabbit at Rest now. A tremendously funny and compassionate work of art.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Golf Day
Played golf today for the first time since our company last held its annual golf day. The hot sun beat down hard on my neck and I had difficulty handling the sheer hotness of it all. I didn’t kick any ass, I just got really thirsty.
I drank a red and orange Gatorade (preferring the orange I think it has a more natural flavour), two bottles of water, one that I brought myself but it got so hot in my bag I could hardy drink it, others were generously supplied by friendly chap in a cart he also gave me a Schweppes and had to duck when I whacked a shot off the 14th straight into his cart accidentally and I only went to the bathroom once in the course of five hours of action because I was so dehydrated.
Squirming on the grass at the final hole, my vertebrae miraculously snapped back into place. Back at the clubhouse, in the cotton blend company of khaki, I tried to join in conversations about retirement villages and Chinese developers with expensive watches, but my input was pretty minimal I drank an entire jug of beer by myself. The highlight was standing in the sprinkler, which made my clothes smell like barnyard animal.
I drank a red and orange Gatorade (preferring the orange I think it has a more natural flavour), two bottles of water, one that I brought myself but it got so hot in my bag I could hardy drink it, others were generously supplied by friendly chap in a cart he also gave me a Schweppes and had to duck when I whacked a shot off the 14th straight into his cart accidentally and I only went to the bathroom once in the course of five hours of action because I was so dehydrated.
Squirming on the grass at the final hole, my vertebrae miraculously snapped back into place. Back at the clubhouse, in the cotton blend company of khaki, I tried to join in conversations about retirement villages and Chinese developers with expensive watches, but my input was pretty minimal I drank an entire jug of beer by myself. The highlight was standing in the sprinkler, which made my clothes smell like barnyard animal.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
The Jarvis Cocker Record
Actually not Joe Cocker’s son, to dispel a myth that has persisted ever since I developed chest hair. Despite the obnoxious similarities, Jarv’s Dad was a different Cocker and furthermore, Jarv’s Dad bolted early, leaving lil’ Jarv to be raised by mum, a bohemian from Sheffield and coincidentally the mining town setting for the comic hit The Full Monty. Purely a coincidence I swear. Even though I don’t like the music on this CD very much at all it is a very attractive case featuring an array of fantastic photographs of JC a fantastic man in his own right, who of course once had a band named Pulp, a very good band who did some very good things. They specialised in anthems that succinctly summarised youth culture and all its perversions, hang-ups, come-ups, addictions and comedowns. Cheeky, hook-filled pith. Damn they ruled, and they continue to do so as well. I could easily listen to Babies, Mis-shapes, Party Hard every Saturday night for the remainder of my life and still want just a little more soul. Feel free to not take my word for it, I’d love to be corrected, but the eponymous solo record is a huge disappointment.
Don’t Let Him Waste Your Time is decent enough and straightforward and his voice is always a pleasure. Black Magic steals the tune of a tired 60s number (Crimson and Clover) and has a fairly monstrous kick drum and toothy synth fang. Heavy Weather is a vague rewrite of Different Class’s Something Changed, an encouraging, if slightly pointless development. I Will Kill Again is a more condescending version of Easton Ellis' Patrick Bateman, or something, set to music.
To its discredit, the production on this album is so radio-friendly it sounds like it could be from anyone (not least the guy from Verve), which might be okay if the songs were as catchy as the album’s best and most inspired tune (From Auschwitz to Ipswich), but they’re not and often times the songs sound either laboriously overworked or lazily underworked I can’t tell, so you lean back on the couch, cut your losses while gazing fondly at the swoon-worthy artwork and remind yourself it ain’t Joe Cocker.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Scorcese's Departed
Finally saw it. Wished I hadn't. Reminded me of 'In The Cut' it was so bad. And the music sure licked. Some racket by some Boston/Irish punk-pop thing who absolutely bite played repeatedly throughout the film. Marty what are you doing? Raiding Matt Damon's iPOD? I was completely mortified. Plus he recycled songs that he has already used before in better movies. I thought it was bad when Dirty Dancing used Mean Streets' Be My Baby, but this was much worse.
The actors seemed very cozy in their misogynistic roles. The plot stank. This was one wincingly terrible comedy of masculinity. Mark Wahlberg, praised for his repulsive one-liners - sucked! Ray Winstone was in it and he was good. Brought some subtlety and nailed the Boston accent, which is like my least favourite noise in the world (the only other decent Boston accent I can think of is the one Ben Sliney used in United 93, but he was playing himself). Destroy the faux Boston accent!
I sure like Ray Winstone. Have you seen Nil by Mouth? It's an oldie (well it's not that old), but it's a goodie. Ray Winstone, boy is he good in that one too. Nil by Mouth was directed by Gary Oldham, who would have been a more interesting casting choice than Nicholson in this, even though Gary has done that part (hyperbolic nutjob) to death.
The actors seemed very cozy in their misogynistic roles. The plot stank. This was one wincingly terrible comedy of masculinity. Mark Wahlberg, praised for his repulsive one-liners - sucked! Ray Winstone was in it and he was good. Brought some subtlety and nailed the Boston accent, which is like my least favourite noise in the world (the only other decent Boston accent I can think of is the one Ben Sliney used in United 93, but he was playing himself). Destroy the faux Boston accent!
I sure like Ray Winstone. Have you seen Nil by Mouth? It's an oldie (well it's not that old), but it's a goodie. Ray Winstone, boy is he good in that one too. Nil by Mouth was directed by Gary Oldham, who would have been a more interesting casting choice than Nicholson in this, even though Gary has done that part (hyperbolic nutjob) to death.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Two Guys Discuss Deerhoof’s New Album
M: I hate to say I'm over it, but I've listened to ‘Friend Opportunity’ I think 5 times in the past 24 hours.
Moderator: Oh mah lawd. Better than ‘Runners Four’?
M: It's proggier.
I feel like I'm 14 and listening to ‘Heart of the Sunrise’ on headphones for
the first time. I'm giddy. I really can't explain it, it covers so much
ground it's like I'm on the TGV or something. As soon as you're dumbstruck
by one moment, the song bolts off in some other direction, but it's exciting
natural rather than jarring. It's really left me spinning.
You know when you hear something for the first time and it makes you jump
outta your chair and look around to see if anyone else heard it, although
you know nobodies there? It's like that.
I'm surreptitiously listening to 'Matchbook Seeks Maniac' on my Ipod at work right now.
H: I have listened to ‘Friend Opportunity’ twice. I would agree with Matt in its proggy, aural/oral? textures. Don't worry Shane it has enough leftfield feral cats being thrown from a bridge guitar squiggles to continually
please. A mash up of ‘Runners Four’ and ‘Apple O'.
This morning I asked Elizah if she wanted to hear the good news or the bad
news just before we went to work: the bad news is that Jackson just shit his
pants, the good news is that Pitchfork gave the new Deerhoof an 8.9. She was
not amused.
M: You just saved a bunch of money on your car insurance.
Seriously though, did you notice this morning's review took about ten words to mention Yes (teases mullet lovingly)? Again, Shane, don't worry too much, the atonal aural nonsequiters are still there, but man so are those gigantic prehistoric riffs. Reference Believe E.S.P. Also, Jerrell, how about Cast Off Crown? That just freaks me out. It's got maybe 7 different suites (Yes displayed ultimate pretension by listing these on their records, continues teasing) within 3 minutes. WTF?
Two hours later, H has a final thought…
I think what really pissed Elizah off was that I let Jackson wallow in his shit for 5 minutes as I read the review.
Friday, January 19, 2007
why i'm jazz fusion today
1. What shirt are you wearing?
Baby blue short-sleeve under an argyle v-neck. I'm overdressed.
2. Name the brand of your shoes you're currently wearing?
Jack Purcell (no relation to the terrier).
3. Bright or Dark Room?
Bright enough. Still in the orifice.
4. What do you think about the person who took this survey before you?
Foxy brown!
5. Where is your nearest 7-11?
North of the Glenferrie underpass. I buy edible underpants there.
6. Who told you he/she loved you last?
De Campo did. She be honeybunny-ish.
7. How many drugs have you done in the last three days?
None. Seriously.
8. How many rolls of film do you need developed?
None.
9. What do you do when vending machines steal your money?
Walk away anticipating the good fortune that’s about to come my way.
10. Are you touchy feely?
Crazy, Madly, Deepak Chakra.
11. Name three things that you have on you at all times.
Watch, belt, pack a chewie (Extra White).
12. What was the last thing you paid for with cash?
drycleaning.
13. Does anything hurt on your body right now?
Throat does a bit.
14. How much cash do you have on you?
Five and some change.
15. What's a word that rhymes with “DOOR?”
Pedroalmododoor.
Baby blue short-sleeve under an argyle v-neck. I'm overdressed.
2. Name the brand of your shoes you're currently wearing?
Jack Purcell (no relation to the terrier).
3. Bright or Dark Room?
Bright enough. Still in the orifice.
4. What do you think about the person who took this survey before you?
Foxy brown!
5. Where is your nearest 7-11?
North of the Glenferrie underpass. I buy edible underpants there.
6. Who told you he/she loved you last?
De Campo did. She be honeybunny-ish.
7. How many drugs have you done in the last three days?
None. Seriously.
8. How many rolls of film do you need developed?
None.
9. What do you do when vending machines steal your money?
Walk away anticipating the good fortune that’s about to come my way.
10. Are you touchy feely?
Crazy, Madly, Deepak Chakra.
11. Name three things that you have on you at all times.
Watch, belt, pack a chewie (Extra White).
12. What was the last thing you paid for with cash?
drycleaning.
13. Does anything hurt on your body right now?
Throat does a bit.
14. How much cash do you have on you?
Five and some change.
15. What's a word that rhymes with “DOOR?”
Pedroalmododoor.
Big Day Out
On the eve of the Big Day Out, here’s a piece I wrote about last year’s debacle that strangely didn’t run…
Two sniffer dogs ejaculated on the Chuck Taylorss of two unlucky lads in Dallas Crane t-shirts. Iggy Pop ejaculated on two sniffer dogs.
Stage right Jack White ghoulishly grinned behind his ghoulish garb as Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein conjured some shivery Hendrix voodoo. To my left spittle formed in the corner of Harry Dean Stanton’s mouth. “Sleater my peter,” he murmured, causing a tiny spit-bubble to burst on his chapped lips.
A soft place to fall was beer garden grass. Damn it was hot as hell. Toohey’s Extra Dry put Big Day Out acts on beer tins. Hundreds of fans given Gerling tins immediately demanded refunds, or failing that, exchanges for Ghetto Fabulous ones.
The competition for the most louche member of the Bumhead Orchestra was a close one, but it surely must go to Greg Wadley for his unwitting impersonation of Porn Gil (Gil has a secret for sexual endurance and it’s not dissimilar to his recipe for mango chutney).
At the Kings of Leon show latent homoeroticism was prevalent. Bare-chested stumpy guys in designer shades lassoing their t-shirts, straddling the shoulders of their shirtless buddies, sporting droopy breasts no doubt triggered by a reliance on estrogen-friendly health drinks like Soy Plus. Both arms raised, fists pumped, lyrics howled, commotion incited, fun spoiled. Kings of Leon will never sound the same again.
There was an SMS facility in the Virgin Mobile tent, where people could send instant messages direct to the big screen. Other than a good Vin Diesel joke (“When Vin Diesel was born the nurse went oh, my God, that’s Vin Diesel, then he had sex with her”) it was a witless affair in complete poor taste that will probably require policing in the future.
Media tarts notwithstanding, Franz Ferdinand were handsome, charming and smoothly electrifying; a joy to behold, pushing two minute pop songs into voluptuous pop epics.
Due to the heat and humidity and also the presence of The Stooges, the crowd was one of the most clapped-out in the history of rock festivals. Didn’t see any celebrities besides Harry Dean, but then again the eyes wandered timidly, afraid of what it might see. Jaundiced faces, skanky hair, exposed bum cracks and serpentine tattoos on repugnant parade. There were some crazy dudes on ugly trips too, wastee weasels, no sense of grace or decorum whatsoever, all sweating, spastic limbs disjointed and freakish eyeballs lurching from their sockets. A syphillitic guy in a “syphilis is the new black” t-shirt was there. Some other dude had Rip Curl underwear hanging out of his denim shorts and eagle wings tattooed on his abs in dive mode like its beak was preying on his wee wee. “When you’re up, you’re the shit, when you’re down, you’re dirt.”
You said it Iggy.
Two sniffer dogs ejaculated on the Chuck Taylorss of two unlucky lads in Dallas Crane t-shirts. Iggy Pop ejaculated on two sniffer dogs.
Stage right Jack White ghoulishly grinned behind his ghoulish garb as Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein conjured some shivery Hendrix voodoo. To my left spittle formed in the corner of Harry Dean Stanton’s mouth. “Sleater my peter,” he murmured, causing a tiny spit-bubble to burst on his chapped lips.
A soft place to fall was beer garden grass. Damn it was hot as hell. Toohey’s Extra Dry put Big Day Out acts on beer tins. Hundreds of fans given Gerling tins immediately demanded refunds, or failing that, exchanges for Ghetto Fabulous ones.
The competition for the most louche member of the Bumhead Orchestra was a close one, but it surely must go to Greg Wadley for his unwitting impersonation of Porn Gil (Gil has a secret for sexual endurance and it’s not dissimilar to his recipe for mango chutney).
At the Kings of Leon show latent homoeroticism was prevalent. Bare-chested stumpy guys in designer shades lassoing their t-shirts, straddling the shoulders of their shirtless buddies, sporting droopy breasts no doubt triggered by a reliance on estrogen-friendly health drinks like Soy Plus. Both arms raised, fists pumped, lyrics howled, commotion incited, fun spoiled. Kings of Leon will never sound the same again.
There was an SMS facility in the Virgin Mobile tent, where people could send instant messages direct to the big screen. Other than a good Vin Diesel joke (“When Vin Diesel was born the nurse went oh, my God, that’s Vin Diesel, then he had sex with her”) it was a witless affair in complete poor taste that will probably require policing in the future.
Media tarts notwithstanding, Franz Ferdinand were handsome, charming and smoothly electrifying; a joy to behold, pushing two minute pop songs into voluptuous pop epics.
Due to the heat and humidity and also the presence of The Stooges, the crowd was one of the most clapped-out in the history of rock festivals. Didn’t see any celebrities besides Harry Dean, but then again the eyes wandered timidly, afraid of what it might see. Jaundiced faces, skanky hair, exposed bum cracks and serpentine tattoos on repugnant parade. There were some crazy dudes on ugly trips too, wastee weasels, no sense of grace or decorum whatsoever, all sweating, spastic limbs disjointed and freakish eyeballs lurching from their sockets. A syphillitic guy in a “syphilis is the new black” t-shirt was there. Some other dude had Rip Curl underwear hanging out of his denim shorts and eagle wings tattooed on his abs in dive mode like its beak was preying on his wee wee. “When you’re up, you’re the shit, when you’re down, you’re dirt.”
You said it Iggy.
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Tales of the Brave Shannanes!
When I graduated from college my brother Dirk threw a party for me on his acreage, a brilliant spot on a wild peak where elk and coyote still hang out on a regular basis. A fair amount of preparation was involved, shuffling the cows out to pasture, stocking the stable full of bleacher seats and parking a keg in there and hiring Gaston’s finest guitar troupe, The Fender Benders, to celebrate my freshly-inked diploma.
A whole galleon of liquored cousins, cronies and Uncle Bruce’s showed up and immediately started getting loose. We played horseshoes in the horseshoe pit and roasted a pig in the pig pit. Post-collegiate life so clearly not agreeing with me as my face developed a chemical reaction turning an alarming shade of fuchsia. I twisted my goddamn ankle too at one stage — holding my second cousin, five year-old Samantha, who was deeply besotted with me at the time— yet somehow managed to not feel a thing.
After dark the Bender’s busted out Riders on the Storm and I attacked the microphone like a monitor lizard, erupting in a profane stew of no good. My grandmother was thrilled. The show was apparently recorded and my brother valiantly tried to obtain a copy for several months. However The Benders refused to acknowledge the tapes existence and many believe they document was fried in an incinerator of fiery hell.
Ten years go by…Portland, London, Launceston, Melbourne, now Bendigo on Saturday night…
The Surrender Monkeys open for The Cannanes at the Newmarket Hotel and catapult pet monkeys with rubber arms into the audiences lap. The Cannanes take the stage and wow the crowd with every rock strength imaginable to the human ear. By the end, the front wave were armed with maracas and tambourines, and after that, everyone tried to guess what my two favourite Cyndi Lauper songs were, and in what order…
…they failed!
The after party was jamming inside the jam room Frances and Stephen converted from an old ballet studio back in 2003. Ten of us — perhaps more, David and Mia headed back to Melbourne at 3am and De Campo crashed having picked up whatever I have had inside my system since 2006 that still hasn’t worked its way out— totally jammed. Toby said it was better than the Hi-God People and I am inclined to agree. There were flute solos, melodica solos, recorder solos, bassliness like Sasquatch, riffs that were ocean-sized, riffs that were thin and wild, drum beats that marshalled crazy rhythms. Once the inhibitions were gone that’s when the fun started. It was important to not use bad language and I succeeded for the most part.
Working the MIC for the second time in ten years, I summarised the contents of a book I recently read, I ripped off Beat Happening, I shamed Morrissey, I tapped into some serious thirtysomething angst in a duet with Gavin as my father; Toby, Suze and Mia, before she departed, laid waste to so many freestyle raps your head would spin, I bled my aching heart on the floor and subsequently left my voice shredded inside the old ballet studio where it still lay to this day. We jammed for three and a half hours. Compared to us, The E Street Band are paste!
Stephen sat Hugh and I down afterwards to excitedly discuss our future. “I want to manage you. It’s something I need to do,” he said. Indeed his rates seemed very good. He obviously had thought them through.
A whole galleon of liquored cousins, cronies and Uncle Bruce’s showed up and immediately started getting loose. We played horseshoes in the horseshoe pit and roasted a pig in the pig pit. Post-collegiate life so clearly not agreeing with me as my face developed a chemical reaction turning an alarming shade of fuchsia. I twisted my goddamn ankle too at one stage — holding my second cousin, five year-old Samantha, who was deeply besotted with me at the time— yet somehow managed to not feel a thing.
After dark the Bender’s busted out Riders on the Storm and I attacked the microphone like a monitor lizard, erupting in a profane stew of no good. My grandmother was thrilled. The show was apparently recorded and my brother valiantly tried to obtain a copy for several months. However The Benders refused to acknowledge the tapes existence and many believe they document was fried in an incinerator of fiery hell.
Ten years go by…Portland, London, Launceston, Melbourne, now Bendigo on Saturday night…
The Surrender Monkeys open for The Cannanes at the Newmarket Hotel and catapult pet monkeys with rubber arms into the audiences lap. The Cannanes take the stage and wow the crowd with every rock strength imaginable to the human ear. By the end, the front wave were armed with maracas and tambourines, and after that, everyone tried to guess what my two favourite Cyndi Lauper songs were, and in what order…
…they failed!
The after party was jamming inside the jam room Frances and Stephen converted from an old ballet studio back in 2003. Ten of us — perhaps more, David and Mia headed back to Melbourne at 3am and De Campo crashed having picked up whatever I have had inside my system since 2006 that still hasn’t worked its way out— totally jammed. Toby said it was better than the Hi-God People and I am inclined to agree. There were flute solos, melodica solos, recorder solos, bassliness like Sasquatch, riffs that were ocean-sized, riffs that were thin and wild, drum beats that marshalled crazy rhythms. Once the inhibitions were gone that’s when the fun started. It was important to not use bad language and I succeeded for the most part.
Working the MIC for the second time in ten years, I summarised the contents of a book I recently read, I ripped off Beat Happening, I shamed Morrissey, I tapped into some serious thirtysomething angst in a duet with Gavin as my father; Toby, Suze and Mia, before she departed, laid waste to so many freestyle raps your head would spin, I bled my aching heart on the floor and subsequently left my voice shredded inside the old ballet studio where it still lay to this day. We jammed for three and a half hours. Compared to us, The E Street Band are paste!
Stephen sat Hugh and I down afterwards to excitedly discuss our future. “I want to manage you. It’s something I need to do,” he said. Indeed his rates seemed very good. He obviously had thought them through.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Old, Worn-out Joy
I’ve been hurting for certain. Other than the two nights where I tied one on (Modest Mouse on Dec. 30 and NYE) and the two days I was at work last week, I have been hermetically sealed inside our Victorian cottage with a bastard cold since Christmas Day.
I did manage to waltz into the hot city last night and see Old Joy accompanied by my luminous lady friend De Campo. The movie didn’t suck, nor did it make me cry, but it did make me feel beautiful and that’s no lie.
Old Joy is about a guy who’s name I forget and his friend Kurt. Kurt is played by singing sensation Will Oldham. He’s heavily forested about the face (beards are, if not his raison d’etre, they’re at least his thing) with muscular legs and a small penis.
It's adapted from a short story about two interesting men, who, like most young people, were chaotic back in their early twenties and now one has his life in order (wife is expecting) while the other remains dishevelled (Kurt). The two guys go on a trip into the woods looking for some elusive hot springs when the reality is, Kurt is trying to reclaim a part of their friendship that’s been lost and cannot be reclaimed.
Set in a Van Sant-poetic Portland, Oregon, and its wilderness beyond, OJ is an indie gem made to look like it’s 1979, which is totally effin’ sweet. The entire movie reminded me of what it was like growing up there. Passenger side tracking shots passing by clapboard bungalows, mud puddles, silos, power stations set to mellow jams by Yo La Tengo, capturing the sun peeking through rain clouds and sights around North Portland where my Dad worked for 40 years, and, and, and trees, yards and fences so familiar to me they had me wondering if I played there once and obtained grass stains on my knees of which I got in trouble for (they were my good jeans after all and I needed them for school the next day).
There are many beautiful shots of birds and bridges. One bridge in particular, the St John’s Bridge (pictured above), used to be crossed in a blue Mitsubishi hatchback on the way to the University of Portland where I used to watch basketball games with my best friend Mike, his dad Big Mike and Big Mike’s best friend Mike. Big Mike once bought Mike and I a huge packet of Hot Tamales, which were these red hot chewy candies, at a game we ate the whole box and experienced severe sugar damage. We were so totally wired, Mark E. Smith wrote a song about us.
Prior to US indie rock bands, my favourite underdog took the form of Jarvis Helaire, a thuggish power forward for the Portland Pilots who wasn’t very well coordinated. Once he picked up three quick fouls and was quickly benched. “DAT’S OTAY JAH’VIS!” I blurted out. A white boy from the white suburbs, imitating a black supporter from Alabama was a grave error in judgment to myself (what was I thinking) and my Caucasian compatriots. I received several mean looks from the brown-skinned crowd seated in rows 6-9 and quickly began fearing for my safety and imagining the worst consequences. To comprehend how this felt to a 12 year-old you must refer to Saul Bellow’s Mr. Sammler’s Planet where Sammler, an elderly Jewish intellectual catches a beguiling black pickpocket in the act, they make eye contact, cold, hard stares, and the pickpocket pursues Sammler through the NYC streets, finally catching him inside the stairwell of an anonymous apartment complex. Sammler, out of breath and practically dialling death’s number, watches fearfully as the black man pulls out his big dick and shows it to him. And that’s pretty much how I felt that night.
What most impressed me about Old Joy was its beauty.
I don’t mean it simply looked good. I mean it has a beautiful, visual language. If the sound was muted, you would still enjoy the story and feel its emotional tension. The upside is you would miss out on a script that is for the most part patchy, and the downside is you would miss out on a few lovely Yo La Tengo instrumentals and a few inspired scenes from Oldham, that like a lot of Van Sant, feel snatched from true life.
At its best, Old Joy manages to achieve powerful abstractions that resonant like literature or poetry.
There’s a scene in the diner that does for off-the-cuff charm what riotous indignation did for Five Easy Pieces. I really hope this indie inspires a renaissance of more movies like it, like the halcyon 90s, which I have been meaning to write about sometime.
Monday, January 01, 2007
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Haunted Places
The other day De Campo and I caught the 12.15pm train to the country. We were heading to a family gathering to celebrate her sister’s birthday. The destination was Riddell’s Creek, but I wasn’t really paying attention. Twenty minutes into our journey, the train made its first stop. With my nose stuck into the great escapism of Paul Auster’s ‘Moon Palace’, I wasn’t really paying attention until I heard De Campo scream “We gotta get off!” She then proceeded to trample my legs gunning for the exit. I looked outside and saw that the station said Diggers Rest and quickly trailed her. We were so late getting to the exit that the train conductor had to phone the driver on his walkie talkie and request a Code Red to get the doors to open. It wasn’t until the train had departed the station that we realised we had gotten off at the wrong stop. Three stops too soon.
When De Campo rang her Dad he was waiting at Riddell’s Creek station with her mother drinking a latte in the good air. He was on the phone long enough to hear the bad news and then the battery on his phone died. De Campo’s brother-in-law called to say that they had got in touch with the parents and that the parents were on their way. Digger’s Rest was too cold for the t-shirt I was wearing, so I put my hand inside the bag De Campo was carrying with her sister’s present in it and pulled out a brown and grey vest that De Campo said she despised. I wore that and it felt good on my back. The green bus shelter we huddled in was missing a window to the east the same direction the wind was coming from, so we removed our clothes and cuddled because I’m told that’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re freezing your ass off these days.
Thirty minutes later her parents collected us. We told them we were sorry and they drove us through the dry hills of Sunbury like hell for leather. So many derelict 70s houses with Range Rovers parked in the driveway. The second we arrived we had three minutes to order food before the kitchen closed. I had a seafood salad with watermelon salsa and a beer.
Just so you know, there are some incredible pubs in the area. Down the highway in Clarkefield there’s The Coach and Horses Inn, formerly The Clarkefield. It’s a big bluestone mansion built in the mid-1800s when gold mining was the thing to do and Clarkefield was a handy rest stop between Melbourne and Bendigo.
De Campo’s Mum met a lady at the chiropractic office where she works who said she knew the new owners of the Inn. The owners took some photos of the stairs and when they had them developed a 13 year-old girl in a taffeta dress was standing there. She wasn’t there when they took the photo. Turns out the place has been haunted for years.
Once a maintenance person was cleaning the windows outside and a hideous face inside came towards him. Window cleaner tried to lift the window (why I do not know), but window is shut-tight whereas a few minutes ago, window seemed to open fine. Hideous face receded into the darkness. Window cleaner tried the window again and guess what? Window opened!
Journalist with a death wish stays the night looking for some spectral action. No occurrences whatsoever. The next morning he notices the pump at the well is dryer as can be. Notes the observation in his log. Seconds later, pump starts to gush!
De Campo’s sister handed me a book called the Ghosts of Australia and it was there that I located a ghost house in my old neck of the woods – on Church Street in Richmond. I used to walk by the place and say Trent Reznor must live here. Chilling in a ‘I dabble with the darkside’ kind of way. Once owned by a one-armed mining lobbyist apparently. He died in bed and his kids jumped off the balcony to their deaths sometime after and to this day people can sometimes see the kids hanging out on the balcony looking gaunt and dejected.
Once a guy felt a hand grab his ankle and his conclusion was that the only reason he felt one hand was the person must have been missing the other!
We barely caught the last train at Clarkefield Station (of which the pub is right there), otherwise De Campo's parents said we would've had to spend the night!
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Meredith Music Festival: Sunday 10 December 2006
After an ice coffee and a egg tortilla stuffed with hot yummy bacon, our posse gathers at the Pink Flamingo for one last hurrah. I’m the only one with the gall to get stuck into the Bloody Merediths, but why, they’re bloody good dammit (though not as good as last years). TNT (Tex N Tim, geddit, Orville?) are basically two megalomaniacs out to have a good time. They’re on stage with their shirts unbuttoned all the way grinning behind mirrored sunglasses. I remove my mirrored sunglasses and I’m like, staring into the lenses, ‘how could you do this?’ The act’s profoundly complacent, worthwhile only when it degenerates into corn like these kernels from Tex Perkins: “Fridays for funerals/Saturdays for brides/ I guess that leaves Sundays ARE MINE.” (CAPS indicate GROWL). “On weekends I perform miracles/ I turn whole paychecks INTO WINE.” With this tune firmly lodged in Toby's brain, he's dangerously funny, but mostly it’s Snoozefest ‘06, an invaluable addition to the Sunday lineup. “Sounds like ten minutes went into the songwriting process,” snorts De Campo. Most everyone goes home.
Before The Gift is run, Edan runs things. It’s a rap attack. “This goes out to all the heartbreaking ladies out there, what you do to us guys is fucked up,” he says over a sample of ‘Femme Fatale’. He then gets into a rhyme duel with his partner in crime and it’s glorious. He uses some obscure 60s soul samples, plays a little guitar, bends noise on a theremin, toots a kazoo and manipulates the bass by remote control. He closes the set with a short speech. “I have self-confidence and sensitivity, I am so secure I can take it out on some pretty shit,” he says. He then proceeds to play the biggest, noisiest, wildest, party track of the day.
The reason we’re still here is not to see fifty guys run naked through the dirt. Honest. Sometimes they trip up and sever their equipment. It’s difficult to watch. There are four heats. De Campo films three of them. “For posterity,” she asserts (probably would have done a fourth but the battery died).
Like the Sand Pebbles kicking it off, Spencer P. Jones and the Escape Committee took us out in style. They rubbed us raw! Now that’s what I call music!
Final thought: the toilet situation was totally fine this year. I really can’t tell you why. Perhaps a lot people were tormented by previous experience and became too scared and abstained. Bought a bottle of prune juice when they got back to Melbourne or wherever they called from.
Before The Gift is run, Edan runs things. It’s a rap attack. “This goes out to all the heartbreaking ladies out there, what you do to us guys is fucked up,” he says over a sample of ‘Femme Fatale’. He then gets into a rhyme duel with his partner in crime and it’s glorious. He uses some obscure 60s soul samples, plays a little guitar, bends noise on a theremin, toots a kazoo and manipulates the bass by remote control. He closes the set with a short speech. “I have self-confidence and sensitivity, I am so secure I can take it out on some pretty shit,” he says. He then proceeds to play the biggest, noisiest, wildest, party track of the day.The reason we’re still here is not to see fifty guys run naked through the dirt. Honest. Sometimes they trip up and sever their equipment. It’s difficult to watch. There are four heats. De Campo films three of them. “For posterity,” she asserts (probably would have done a fourth but the battery died).
Like the Sand Pebbles kicking it off, Spencer P. Jones and the Escape Committee took us out in style. They rubbed us raw! Now that’s what I call music!
Final thought: the toilet situation was totally fine this year. I really can’t tell you why. Perhaps a lot people were tormented by previous experience and became too scared and abstained. Bought a bottle of prune juice when they got back to Melbourne or wherever they called from.
Monday, December 18, 2006
Meredith Music Festival: Saturday 9 December 2006
Arise around 10.30am feeling like The Silver Jews' song that goes “the the the death death death”. A line from Lucky Jim also seems fitting: “His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum.” The hills are hazy and the sun is a little pink dot in the sky. Bushfire alert is on.
Waiting outside the toilet, I overhear some guy in a black singlet and skinny black jeans say to two guys walking past carrying slices of pizza: “Fucken Donuts.”
Tapes ‘N Tapes, four oversized Goonies with better chemistry than an outer suburban meth lab, cure one of the vilest hangovers of my entire life, delivering the rock show of my secret fantasies and enabling me to shake the devils out and my tail around ever so stupidly. 
De Campo bets me a Pink Flamingo that a drum solo is forthcoming, she nails it (first song even!). Goodness this is exciting. I move to plant her one, teeth collide, she chips her tooth. She looks horrified and stifles a scream. Suzie and her friend Ness bet that the drummer gets the most girls, even though he looks criminally pre-pubescent (he’s 20). Dust is everywhere. It's up my nose. I pick my nose with great hostility.
For Midlake, we are joined by Blake Menzies and his senorita, who we thought we'd never find. The two of them have the charisma that Midlake lacks. The keyboardist has excessively hairy arms. Between songs, I announce that the next song will be about the singer’s gangrenous foot, referring not so much to the gruesome warning on my cigarette packet but to his uncomfortable presence. Despite my howling, drunken demands, Midlake’s set doesn’t end with a Saints cover. Bastards! Their best songs end up being the ones with guitar solos.
“Postmodern blues!” barks Gabriel Piras, wooshing up to me during The Drones’ set. I was completely haggard by this point and I turned to him and said as much. He then replied “you think you’ve lost it, take a look at that guy.” I turned to my right and there’s a guy wearing nothing but a purple sequined g-string, dumping a VB down his neck. My inertia lifts. I join De Campo off-stage and polish off a red curry wrap.
De Campo and I bump into Julian Tovey and his girlfriend Kate. Like most everyone, they look overheated. The sonofabitch is drinking a Gordon Gin and Tonic in a can! What?! Where did you get that? we ask, explaining how we searched all over town for them. “I got the last batch,” he says. “Apparently they were all recalled after someone found metal shards in them.” Back at the camp we bless the inferior Smirnoff. Bren, Susie’s brother, vomits a biscuit he didn’t want in the first place. ‘I’ll try that with a biscuit’ becomes a new catchphrase.
We stumble back to see The Cornelius Sensuous Showcase live up to its title. Saturday night at Meredith is severely hedonistic. Guys chase around the spotlight on our flashlight like depraved members of the canine species. We're too tired for this. We share a quesadilla and a plate of revolting nachos, while some guy entertains a group of teenagers nearby with the creepiest puppet imaginable. At midnight, De Campo and I retreat to the cinema to watch ‘Faster Pussycat Kill Kill’. She is quickly snoring, while I go in and out of consciousness imagining earwigs wiggling their way into my loose clothes.
Waiting outside the toilet, I overhear some guy in a black singlet and skinny black jeans say to two guys walking past carrying slices of pizza: “Fucken Donuts.”
Tapes ‘N Tapes, four oversized Goonies with better chemistry than an outer suburban meth lab, cure one of the vilest hangovers of my entire life, delivering the rock show of my secret fantasies and enabling me to shake the devils out and my tail around ever so stupidly. 
De Campo bets me a Pink Flamingo that a drum solo is forthcoming, she nails it (first song even!). Goodness this is exciting. I move to plant her one, teeth collide, she chips her tooth. She looks horrified and stifles a scream. Suzie and her friend Ness bet that the drummer gets the most girls, even though he looks criminally pre-pubescent (he’s 20). Dust is everywhere. It's up my nose. I pick my nose with great hostility. For Midlake, we are joined by Blake Menzies and his senorita, who we thought we'd never find. The two of them have the charisma that Midlake lacks. The keyboardist has excessively hairy arms. Between songs, I announce that the next song will be about the singer’s gangrenous foot, referring not so much to the gruesome warning on my cigarette packet but to his uncomfortable presence. Despite my howling, drunken demands, Midlake’s set doesn’t end with a Saints cover. Bastards! Their best songs end up being the ones with guitar solos.
“Postmodern blues!” barks Gabriel Piras, wooshing up to me during The Drones’ set. I was completely haggard by this point and I turned to him and said as much. He then replied “you think you’ve lost it, take a look at that guy.” I turned to my right and there’s a guy wearing nothing but a purple sequined g-string, dumping a VB down his neck. My inertia lifts. I join De Campo off-stage and polish off a red curry wrap.
De Campo and I bump into Julian Tovey and his girlfriend Kate. Like most everyone, they look overheated. The sonofabitch is drinking a Gordon Gin and Tonic in a can! What?! Where did you get that? we ask, explaining how we searched all over town for them. “I got the last batch,” he says. “Apparently they were all recalled after someone found metal shards in them.” Back at the camp we bless the inferior Smirnoff. Bren, Susie’s brother, vomits a biscuit he didn’t want in the first place. ‘I’ll try that with a biscuit’ becomes a new catchphrase.
We stumble back to see The Cornelius Sensuous Showcase live up to its title. Saturday night at Meredith is severely hedonistic. Guys chase around the spotlight on our flashlight like depraved members of the canine species. We're too tired for this. We share a quesadilla and a plate of revolting nachos, while some guy entertains a group of teenagers nearby with the creepiest puppet imaginable. At midnight, De Campo and I retreat to the cinema to watch ‘Faster Pussycat Kill Kill’. She is quickly snoring, while I go in and out of consciousness imagining earwigs wiggling their way into my loose clothes.
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Meredith Music Festival: Friday 8 December 2006
Collected by Toby, co-conspirator, dude, hell of a musician (plays in Flywheel), looks a bit like a young Boris Karloff, and his fiancé named after the actress Susan Hayward, who received (deservedly) an Academy Award in 1958 for ‘I Want to Live!’, a prison movie. Incidentally I texted Suzie, as she likes to be called, the other night after I got a bad reaction to cream cheese spread. “I Want to Live!” I wrote. Suzie enjoys a good Susan Hayward reference.
No Gordon Gin & Tonic cans anywhere in Melbourne. We leave town empty-handed. It’s very upsetting. We arrive in Meredith around 2pm carting a bunch of those inferior Smirnoff tins and a lot of beer. It’s stinking hot. We set up camp amongst some trees on a slope in an area that has the prestige of Melbourne’s Eastern suburbs.
We camp near some dudes who took bad acid last year. They hope to maintain good vibes all weekend, so they are really nice to us. They offer us beers and turn their country music down, so we can hear our dire little unit pump out stuff like The Decemberists.
The Sand Pebbles open the show and class it up with an eleven piece band including Dave Graney, a turbaned snake charmer, a gypsy wearing black braces and beefy pants and two Chartreused chanteuses singing back-up.
Subsequently I skedaddle up to the Pink Flamingo Bar and knock back three Pink Flamingos (Pink Lemonade and Vodka) waiting for Wolf and Cub to start. The Pink Flamingo is located above the stage on a hill. The sound is still pretty good from up here, but the further away you get the worse it is, sometimes worse than imaginable (Macromantics=Sir Mix-A-Lot; Dallas Crane=Dallas Crane). Wolf and Cub’s first song sounded better than the smell of a Magic Marker, but their grunge act turns stale the minute they bring out the smoke machine. 
I head back to camp and get loaded as night falls and come back for Band of Horses, who are overwhelming. They play my two favourite songs, Great Salt Lake, Weed Party straightaway, which allow me to peak far too early in the set. The crowd is tight near the front where we stand. Some guy passes by and steps on my Eski. He looks down indignantly. “You brought your own Eski?” He then asks me where I intend to piss, which so happens, I am relieving myself on his shoe. Band of Horses cover Otis Redding and the detuned guitars ring like Pavement. The singer’s voice is Grand Canyon-esque. He is very charming. He streaks twice during the New Pornographers’ set. We return to camp and play tunes from a small portable unit, loud enough to attract visitors from camps nearby. “Isn’t one David Bowie enough?” a female visitor asks, during a Stephen Malkmus song. A Motley Crue number attracts a fine fellow named Mick, who takes to saying outlandish things just to be provocative. Mick looks a bit like this guy. We drag him to watch The Presets and I have never had so much fun. The Presets are perfectly awesome given the curious state I was in and the laser light show was outstanding. I also admire the number of people Mick insulted in a very short time. 
We lose Mick and hit the Pink Flamingo for another drink. The bar is nearly empty. Meredith is really splendid in the wee hours we find. We bump into a couple friends and shoot the breeze until daybreak. My final activity is using the men’s in absolute quietude at 6.30am (the program is a fine read). Sleep proves to be a disastrous proposition. The heat is unpleasant and disgusting and it hasn’t cooled down nearly enough.
No Gordon Gin & Tonic cans anywhere in Melbourne. We leave town empty-handed. It’s very upsetting. We arrive in Meredith around 2pm carting a bunch of those inferior Smirnoff tins and a lot of beer. It’s stinking hot. We set up camp amongst some trees on a slope in an area that has the prestige of Melbourne’s Eastern suburbs.
We camp near some dudes who took bad acid last year. They hope to maintain good vibes all weekend, so they are really nice to us. They offer us beers and turn their country music down, so we can hear our dire little unit pump out stuff like The Decemberists.
The Sand Pebbles open the show and class it up with an eleven piece band including Dave Graney, a turbaned snake charmer, a gypsy wearing black braces and beefy pants and two Chartreused chanteuses singing back-up.
Subsequently I skedaddle up to the Pink Flamingo Bar and knock back three Pink Flamingos (Pink Lemonade and Vodka) waiting for Wolf and Cub to start. The Pink Flamingo is located above the stage on a hill. The sound is still pretty good from up here, but the further away you get the worse it is, sometimes worse than imaginable (Macromantics=Sir Mix-A-Lot; Dallas Crane=Dallas Crane). Wolf and Cub’s first song sounded better than the smell of a Magic Marker, but their grunge act turns stale the minute they bring out the smoke machine. 
I head back to camp and get loaded as night falls and come back for Band of Horses, who are overwhelming. They play my two favourite songs, Great Salt Lake, Weed Party straightaway, which allow me to peak far too early in the set. The crowd is tight near the front where we stand. Some guy passes by and steps on my Eski. He looks down indignantly. “You brought your own Eski?” He then asks me where I intend to piss, which so happens, I am relieving myself on his shoe. Band of Horses cover Otis Redding and the detuned guitars ring like Pavement. The singer’s voice is Grand Canyon-esque. He is very charming. He streaks twice during the New Pornographers’ set. We return to camp and play tunes from a small portable unit, loud enough to attract visitors from camps nearby. “Isn’t one David Bowie enough?” a female visitor asks, during a Stephen Malkmus song. A Motley Crue number attracts a fine fellow named Mick, who takes to saying outlandish things just to be provocative. Mick looks a bit like this guy. We drag him to watch The Presets and I have never had so much fun. The Presets are perfectly awesome given the curious state I was in and the laser light show was outstanding. I also admire the number of people Mick insulted in a very short time. 
We lose Mick and hit the Pink Flamingo for another drink. The bar is nearly empty. Meredith is really splendid in the wee hours we find. We bump into a couple friends and shoot the breeze until daybreak. My final activity is using the men’s in absolute quietude at 6.30am (the program is a fine read). Sleep proves to be a disastrous proposition. The heat is unpleasant and disgusting and it hasn’t cooled down nearly enough.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Lilys Interview: Part Four (The Conclusion)
What’s your favourite song on the album?
Um, I think the one that makes me consciously smile and giggle is probably Scott-Free by David Rappaport and I’m not saying that the ones I wrote or the ones that I was more in charge of are not as good, but there’s something kind of timeless about it.”
It’s lovely.
“That’s it, it’s just fucking lovely. David Rappaport did a fan-fucking-tastic job. He wrote it, he recorded it on a four track in ‘99, he changed it when he recorded it in the studio and he did a cover of the 4 track version that’s actually sampled from the cassette tape.
How many singers are there?
Well I sing predominantly the lead vocal. If you can call it that. I sing the head or the melody. Michael Johnson sings the kind of beauty school dropout, the Queen or Grease vocal, he’s doing a total Todd Rundgren thing a mile wide and once again, I always find my self learning more from what we didn’t do, and the energy we could have put in…”
Your songs are very economical though.
“Yes absolutely. Well it’s not about ELO anymore. That’s what makes it sad about the early 90s because everything was becoming a joke.
I was into rap then. Talk about your economical songs.
“Yes, I was going to say, once again, I turned pretty exclusively to R&B and hip-hop and really it’s only been in the last 3-5 years watching the Gorillaz rise up with Demon Days and Kanye West…
See I don’t know if I like them all that much.
“I’m not talking about liking. I’m talking about the unit shifters. Those with multiple publicists, multiple stylists. They have tour staff of upwards of 25 people and two tour buses and an 18-wheeler bus and they are not even the booshy boosh-country superstars like Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, who have eight buses and twenty tractor trailers! See where I’m going?”
It’s ridiculous.
It could shift people’s awareness of the history of music and their earned lineage. We are at the threshold. Either there will be misinformation about how music is done or the current winners will rewrite this is how reggae always has been played uh you know Faith Hill will do a reggae version of ‘Take Another Piece of my Heart’ by Big Brother Holding Company. (Kurt gets distracted. There is noise in the background). “Baby Mama just said, communication is truly my occupation.”
You guys coming to Australia, or what?
“We’re on our way, that is, I’m just hoping a political party or a corporate entity finds value in bringing us over there, because it really is such a turning point in both our careers and I think we’re looking outside of how bands have toured before. I probably will have to give a media psychology lecture to be able to underwrite this or Australia might have a task, as they might say, a janitorial service, a toilet that might need scrubbing, someone’s got to get this shit out of here, oh and Kurt Heasley’s the man for the job. Figuratively speaking.”
Um, I think the one that makes me consciously smile and giggle is probably Scott-Free by David Rappaport and I’m not saying that the ones I wrote or the ones that I was more in charge of are not as good, but there’s something kind of timeless about it.”
It’s lovely.
“That’s it, it’s just fucking lovely. David Rappaport did a fan-fucking-tastic job. He wrote it, he recorded it on a four track in ‘99, he changed it when he recorded it in the studio and he did a cover of the 4 track version that’s actually sampled from the cassette tape.
How many singers are there?
Well I sing predominantly the lead vocal. If you can call it that. I sing the head or the melody. Michael Johnson sings the kind of beauty school dropout, the Queen or Grease vocal, he’s doing a total Todd Rundgren thing a mile wide and once again, I always find my self learning more from what we didn’t do, and the energy we could have put in…”
Your songs are very economical though.
“Yes absolutely. Well it’s not about ELO anymore. That’s what makes it sad about the early 90s because everything was becoming a joke.
I was into rap then. Talk about your economical songs.
“Yes, I was going to say, once again, I turned pretty exclusively to R&B and hip-hop and really it’s only been in the last 3-5 years watching the Gorillaz rise up with Demon Days and Kanye West…
See I don’t know if I like them all that much.
“I’m not talking about liking. I’m talking about the unit shifters. Those with multiple publicists, multiple stylists. They have tour staff of upwards of 25 people and two tour buses and an 18-wheeler bus and they are not even the booshy boosh-country superstars like Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, who have eight buses and twenty tractor trailers! See where I’m going?”
It’s ridiculous.
It could shift people’s awareness of the history of music and their earned lineage. We are at the threshold. Either there will be misinformation about how music is done or the current winners will rewrite this is how reggae always has been played uh you know Faith Hill will do a reggae version of ‘Take Another Piece of my Heart’ by Big Brother Holding Company. (Kurt gets distracted. There is noise in the background). “Baby Mama just said, communication is truly my occupation.”
You guys coming to Australia, or what?
“We’re on our way, that is, I’m just hoping a political party or a corporate entity finds value in bringing us over there, because it really is such a turning point in both our careers and I think we’re looking outside of how bands have toured before. I probably will have to give a media psychology lecture to be able to underwrite this or Australia might have a task, as they might say, a janitorial service, a toilet that might need scrubbing, someone’s got to get this shit out of here, oh and Kurt Heasley’s the man for the job. Figuratively speaking.”
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Lilys Interview: Part Three
Did you grow up in Philadelphia?
“I grew up in Washington DC.”
My sister and her family live in Arnold. It’s near Annapolis.
“Yes Arnold, Maryland. I lived directly below in the Fairfax County. In Lord Fairfax’s county, yes, her majesty”.
Oh so you would have been influenced by Unrest, Mark Robinson’s band.
“Mark? Influenced? I know Mark. I mean he was maybe 17 when I was 15. He’s not that much older than me. He was still doing punk rock when I was doing pop. He started doing pop music a little later on. What really transformed the band Unrest into what you know as ‘Isobel’ was when our guitar player Archie Moore from our first album ‘In the presence of nothing’ was in a band called ‘Velocity Girl’. The singer Bridget Cross left music altogether because of her boyfriend who wanted to spend more time with her, so she stopped touring, she...
Who’s that guy?
“Exactly! You don’t know his name because he doesn’t exist anymore. Mark saw Bridget at a show and said, 'why don’t you come in play bass chords on any song, so they started to play. She wrote a series of songs, he then countered and with Wharton Tiers, recorded ‘f.f.r.r.’', which is where people think Unrest began. That’s like Mark’s 27th record or whatever”. Adopts sarcastic tone: “I’ve only done seven so I’ve got twenty more until I find my identity! In the world of Mark Robinson, you know. But yeah, he’s, he’s, I mean I love him. But he wasn’t always doing pop music. I think Fugazi had as much songcraft as anyone, if not more, than a lot of my contemporaries today. And it makes me sad that he and Ian and…they’re all incredibly activated people and yes, I grew up with that self-actualisation and that element of personal sovereignty that I’m only going to be the person I am and the person that you wake up as is the person you’re going to be and you use experience and experiment to prove what you believe to be true because if you believe something to be true in the province of the mind, it is true, until you’re able…I mean this is where you know, religious dogma, and you know, fear-based, sex and negative body image, advanced marketing techniques that do not encourage development of human potential are based. They are preying on the vulnerable and it is part of, I have only said no to two jobs and I won’t go into what those two jobs are, but they are saying, you couldn’t get more aggressive company into uh, outsourcing as Nike. I’ll admit I am wearing a pair of solid rubber Birkenstocks gardening clogs right now...
“I grew up in Washington DC.”
My sister and her family live in Arnold. It’s near Annapolis.
“Yes Arnold, Maryland. I lived directly below in the Fairfax County. In Lord Fairfax’s county, yes, her majesty”.
Oh so you would have been influenced by Unrest, Mark Robinson’s band.
“Mark? Influenced? I know Mark. I mean he was maybe 17 when I was 15. He’s not that much older than me. He was still doing punk rock when I was doing pop. He started doing pop music a little later on. What really transformed the band Unrest into what you know as ‘Isobel’ was when our guitar player Archie Moore from our first album ‘In the presence of nothing’ was in a band called ‘Velocity Girl’. The singer Bridget Cross left music altogether because of her boyfriend who wanted to spend more time with her, so she stopped touring, she...
Who’s that guy?
“Exactly! You don’t know his name because he doesn’t exist anymore. Mark saw Bridget at a show and said, 'why don’t you come in play bass chords on any song, so they started to play. She wrote a series of songs, he then countered and with Wharton Tiers, recorded ‘f.f.r.r.’', which is where people think Unrest began. That’s like Mark’s 27th record or whatever”. Adopts sarcastic tone: “I’ve only done seven so I’ve got twenty more until I find my identity! In the world of Mark Robinson, you know. But yeah, he’s, he’s, I mean I love him. But he wasn’t always doing pop music. I think Fugazi had as much songcraft as anyone, if not more, than a lot of my contemporaries today. And it makes me sad that he and Ian and…they’re all incredibly activated people and yes, I grew up with that self-actualisation and that element of personal sovereignty that I’m only going to be the person I am and the person that you wake up as is the person you’re going to be and you use experience and experiment to prove what you believe to be true because if you believe something to be true in the province of the mind, it is true, until you’re able…I mean this is where you know, religious dogma, and you know, fear-based, sex and negative body image, advanced marketing techniques that do not encourage development of human potential are based. They are preying on the vulnerable and it is part of, I have only said no to two jobs and I won’t go into what those two jobs are, but they are saying, you couldn’t get more aggressive company into uh, outsourcing as Nike. I’ll admit I am wearing a pair of solid rubber Birkenstocks gardening clogs right now...
Monday, December 11, 2006
Lilys Interview: Part Two
Pardon me for the gap in follow-ups. Been out of town is my excuse, shaking it around in Golden Plains Shire for the past few days. But more on that later. Here’s another dose of Kurt for your reading pleasure.
*****
“Prescott-Bush (President Bush’s grandfather), he of course was a tire salesman until he was married, that was when his father-in-law gave him a job in his bank and later he went on to start Union Bank with Averell Harriman. Now Union Bank of course is one of America’s first and most staunch supporters of, ironically enough, speaking of terror and fear mongering: The Third Reich. They put about 40 million dollars into the Nazi Party in 1930, but I’m not saying it wasn’t…I mean Communism was horrible, horrible, but you know what, the same people, the same exclusive rich, you know rich beyond…rich to the point where governments need them to fight wars-rich. I asked him (not sure who he means, the Australian lawyer, perhaps) do you know how many towers fell on September 11, 2001 in New York City and he was like two? And I was like, this is where I am going to say it’s misinformation not disinformation; only because three towers fell that day, tower north, tower south and tower seven. Now this is very true. The owner of the World Trade Centre said, in an interview, yes um the building was just so damaged we decided to pull it at 5 that night.”
I read somewhere that the security advisor was related to the Bush family.
“Oh it’s the President’s brother, but his contract was actually over September 11, ironically enough. They insured the World Trade Center for 3.5 billion, over 200 percent what it was worth and remember the World Trade Center was an asbestos nightmare. Unfixable. Yes, so you must be speaking of its owner, Silverman, yes Mr. Silverman, good guy if you’re into that. I mean if you’re into that kind of stuff.”
What do you mean?
“I don’t know. I don’t know, I don’t know what I mean by that.
Laughter.
“It seems a bit…it seems like there’s a lot…I mean, I have a friend who was the actual litigator for the Victims Compensation Fund —name was James McGarry. Partner in the law firm Barasch McGarry, who for twelve years before, were the legal representation and council for the fire department of New York City and when September 11 happened, now remember, he was also managing bands on Astralwerks, he was putting out records by Lilys. In 2003, James L. McGarry was lead council for the VCF. He doesn’t even live in this country anymore really, he comes back to New York every once and awhile, but mostly he just travels.”
So he was doing something good then?
“Yeah, but that’s not what they wanted. They wanted to go to war. They wanted a reason to go to war.”
He was looking after the victim’s families.
“People who had put out every single fire in a building and then all of a sudden the building implodes on them, OK?
What spins me out is all this talk of a controlled demolition and then Oliver Stone goes and makes this sentimental Hollywood pap I mean isn’t he supposed to be this huge, subversive guy?
“Why is Michael Moore fat.”
No, no, you can’t be as blunt as that.
“Hey I was someone who at the point in my life when I felt the most cornered, put on 78 pounds in three and a half months. I went from 200 pounds to 280 pounds. “
You would have been a beast.
“Oh I was”.
Did you play basketball?
“I only play for fun. I play clean. I like the old school. I don’t need money for sports you know?”
Oh God, I didn’t mean that.
“Oh well some people play, you know, not for…and there are some dudes who play for the love of the game and that’s beautiful and they have the psychology of it. They have like the Carl Jung approach too, they suddenly realise they are only playing to make their mother cry”. He starts trash-talking: “Their mother’s weeping! She’s can’t believe she went to good titty time on you! Bitch! She look like a bitch and you are going out, bitch, yeah! Carl Jung fuelled basketball court psychology. I’ll abide by that.”
*****
“Prescott-Bush (President Bush’s grandfather), he of course was a tire salesman until he was married, that was when his father-in-law gave him a job in his bank and later he went on to start Union Bank with Averell Harriman. Now Union Bank of course is one of America’s first and most staunch supporters of, ironically enough, speaking of terror and fear mongering: The Third Reich. They put about 40 million dollars into the Nazi Party in 1930, but I’m not saying it wasn’t…I mean Communism was horrible, horrible, but you know what, the same people, the same exclusive rich, you know rich beyond…rich to the point where governments need them to fight wars-rich. I asked him (not sure who he means, the Australian lawyer, perhaps) do you know how many towers fell on September 11, 2001 in New York City and he was like two? And I was like, this is where I am going to say it’s misinformation not disinformation; only because three towers fell that day, tower north, tower south and tower seven. Now this is very true. The owner of the World Trade Centre said, in an interview, yes um the building was just so damaged we decided to pull it at 5 that night.”
I read somewhere that the security advisor was related to the Bush family.
“Oh it’s the President’s brother, but his contract was actually over September 11, ironically enough. They insured the World Trade Center for 3.5 billion, over 200 percent what it was worth and remember the World Trade Center was an asbestos nightmare. Unfixable. Yes, so you must be speaking of its owner, Silverman, yes Mr. Silverman, good guy if you’re into that. I mean if you’re into that kind of stuff.”
What do you mean?
“I don’t know. I don’t know, I don’t know what I mean by that.
Laughter.
“It seems a bit…it seems like there’s a lot…I mean, I have a friend who was the actual litigator for the Victims Compensation Fund —name was James McGarry. Partner in the law firm Barasch McGarry, who for twelve years before, were the legal representation and council for the fire department of New York City and when September 11 happened, now remember, he was also managing bands on Astralwerks, he was putting out records by Lilys. In 2003, James L. McGarry was lead council for the VCF. He doesn’t even live in this country anymore really, he comes back to New York every once and awhile, but mostly he just travels.”
So he was doing something good then?
“Yeah, but that’s not what they wanted. They wanted to go to war. They wanted a reason to go to war.”
He was looking after the victim’s families.
“People who had put out every single fire in a building and then all of a sudden the building implodes on them, OK?
What spins me out is all this talk of a controlled demolition and then Oliver Stone goes and makes this sentimental Hollywood pap I mean isn’t he supposed to be this huge, subversive guy?
“Why is Michael Moore fat.”
No, no, you can’t be as blunt as that.
“Hey I was someone who at the point in my life when I felt the most cornered, put on 78 pounds in three and a half months. I went from 200 pounds to 280 pounds. “
You would have been a beast.
“Oh I was”.
Did you play basketball?
“I only play for fun. I play clean. I like the old school. I don’t need money for sports you know?”
Oh God, I didn’t mean that.
“Oh well some people play, you know, not for…and there are some dudes who play for the love of the game and that’s beautiful and they have the psychology of it. They have like the Carl Jung approach too, they suddenly realise they are only playing to make their mother cry”. He starts trash-talking: “Their mother’s weeping! She’s can’t believe she went to good titty time on you! Bitch! She look like a bitch and you are going out, bitch, yeah! Carl Jung fuelled basketball court psychology. I’ll abide by that.”
Thursday, December 07, 2006
Lilys Interview: Part One
The first I’d heard of Lilys, a pop group from Philadelphia, was their ‘Everything Wrong is Imaginary’ CD released earlier in the year. To my surprise it was their seventh! Gosh, I thought, if their back catalog was half as good as this, and I had a sneaky feeling it probably was, then I am falling over and laughing because ‘Everything Wrong…’ has sweetly slayed me for daze. I was fortunate to interview their enigmatic frontman Kurt Heasley for a Melbourne weekly recently. My assignment was a piece considerably shorter than the 2,500 words I ended up with. Kurt rambled on for ages, totally off-topic, which is a rare thrill if you can find it. What Kurt was saying really tickled me and it compelled me to continue transcribing. The process was an arduous one and I often felt like I was typing out the manuscript to ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’ – searing insight amidst profound tidal waves of nonsense sweeping over me.
Kurt is tall (6’6”), psychedelic, loquacious and something of a mystical shamanistic dude. The pantleg part of his trousers has more talent than that jackass from Brian Jonestown Massacre’s entire body (and to think they made a movie about that guy). Kurt’s unyielding brain activity and blitzkrieg verbiage belies his spare pop songs, and in conversation his dogma is delivered in a hilariously grandstanding oratorical style that recalls Gore Vidal at his most didactic and highfalutin. There is no order, no pause in a Kurt Heasley interview, just a cursory mention of lunch and suddenly we’re cast-off into the otherworldly world of Kurt Heasley. This is the first of, I don't know, ten or so parts.
“So what are you going to have for lunch today?” he asks. I was thinking of picking up some Japanese. “A sushi roll?” Yeah, would you approve of that? “I would.” What are you going to have? “Well it’s 11.18pm and I’ve already had two or three different dinners and the uh, no, well...you know someone just asked me if there was someone downstairs and I’m like no, that would imply that the door is unlocked and there is way of getting in a locked door unless they smash a four and a half foot piece of glass, eighteen inches wide and you would hear that, you would hear that, probably long before you would hear anyone foot-stepping around so...you know I was having a dialogue with a former lawyer, also Australian. We were talking about guilt through omission, misinformation versus disinformation. I think it is implied that misinformation could say I was incorrectly informed or I read the briefing wrong. Disinformation means there are three blue dots in the line and four red dots and saying there are two blue dots and one red dot...
"So I asked him because we are coming up on our senate and congressional election. Very important. I’m not particularly of the democratic or republican view but more of ‘where are our voices of reason?' We have all these wonderfully eloquent extremists that can give hellhouse scenarios and really get people excited about the worst possible change of events, and fear mongering is valid, it worked for the Third Reich, several political machines have used it to fantastic success. We have a government and a media that is completely at ends with each other and this is why it’s very, very… but if one thing ties them all in together, they were born into a ruling family elite. I am talking about the exclusive. And I’m not saying that new money and new blood and new ideas are not coming out, they are coming out, people are rising to the top, new philanthropy is out there, people, you can’t really stop someone from finding it out but you don’t have to tell them where it all is."
to be continued...
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Mike Slope, Author, Friend, Dead
Mike Slope died yesterday.
I phoned him this morning, hoping to meet him for carrot cake, but his sister said he had died. It didn’t come as too great a surprise seeing his condition had been deteriorating rapidly since August.
When I first met him, at Launceston’s Happy Chef Restaurant in 2000, Mike was a smooth waiter, magnanimous in the face of my dramatic rejection of (count ‘em) three bottles of Gewürztraminer for their disputed corked-ness. We fast became friends, bonding over Judy Blume and blueberry blue brie.
Mike was a teen fiction writer who had lost his acne-blunted mojo. When 'The Adventures of Bucky Todd' came out in 1967 it was one of the five best debuts in the Christmas edition of Chap and a Half ; it was an unusually rich, blue-chip crop of teen fiction authors that year, new voices that today are so engrained in the contemporary consciousness that is impossible to imagine the genre without them. They are the giants: Tick Bugler (nominated that year for 'Becky Can’t Dance'), Amanda Railsback (for 'Spent'), Nancy Pendleton ('Capsicum, Lasagna and Peas') and Fiscus Chamberlain for 'The Atomic Chewing Gum'. These authors have together sold more than 14 million copies between them. The only name left off the list is that of the long-forgotten author of 'Bucky Todd', Mike Slope. The number of books Mr. Slope sold pales in comparison to his luminous counterparts. Intended for a long and fruitful series, ‘The Adventures of Bucky Todd’ didn’t make it. A popular read with young people in 1967 it was out of print by decade’s end.
Loosely based on a deprivation experiment that took place at Casanova High School in the 1950s, this odd, little detective story concerns itself with the culprit of several misdeeds involving soap. “It’s almost inconceivable to comprehend the interest kids had in this story and honestly it’s the last thing anyone’s ever thought about for a very long time,” said book critic Casper Gently in 1983. As the story goes, Bucky (‘the droll quoll”) takes to campus like a mouse does cheese and begins asking questions. Off the clock, he moonlights as a disc jockey, spinning reggae exclusively during Casanova’s variety hour, earning something of a reputation as a maverick and developing more than a friendship with a shy Jamaican exchange student named Theresa. The mystery unravels when Bucky discovers a stash of soap in the faculty broom closet. A finale involving a heap of suds takes place during a peace summit in the auditorium.
After the book failed, Slope got a job as a busboy, distributing quail eggs to work stations. He was promoted to waiter and held positions at upscale restaurants throughout the Tamar Valley. He moved to Victoria last year to be near his sister. In the last 12 months, Mike developed a perverse sense of time and it progressively made him insane. At first he would forget what hour it was. Then he lost track of the day and soon after that he was a month behind. He died anticipating autumn in the springtime.
I phoned him this morning, hoping to meet him for carrot cake, but his sister said he had died. It didn’t come as too great a surprise seeing his condition had been deteriorating rapidly since August.
When I first met him, at Launceston’s Happy Chef Restaurant in 2000, Mike was a smooth waiter, magnanimous in the face of my dramatic rejection of (count ‘em) three bottles of Gewürztraminer for their disputed corked-ness. We fast became friends, bonding over Judy Blume and blueberry blue brie.
Mike was a teen fiction writer who had lost his acne-blunted mojo. When 'The Adventures of Bucky Todd' came out in 1967 it was one of the five best debuts in the Christmas edition of Chap and a Half ; it was an unusually rich, blue-chip crop of teen fiction authors that year, new voices that today are so engrained in the contemporary consciousness that is impossible to imagine the genre without them. They are the giants: Tick Bugler (nominated that year for 'Becky Can’t Dance'), Amanda Railsback (for 'Spent'), Nancy Pendleton ('Capsicum, Lasagna and Peas') and Fiscus Chamberlain for 'The Atomic Chewing Gum'. These authors have together sold more than 14 million copies between them. The only name left off the list is that of the long-forgotten author of 'Bucky Todd', Mike Slope. The number of books Mr. Slope sold pales in comparison to his luminous counterparts. Intended for a long and fruitful series, ‘The Adventures of Bucky Todd’ didn’t make it. A popular read with young people in 1967 it was out of print by decade’s end.
Loosely based on a deprivation experiment that took place at Casanova High School in the 1950s, this odd, little detective story concerns itself with the culprit of several misdeeds involving soap. “It’s almost inconceivable to comprehend the interest kids had in this story and honestly it’s the last thing anyone’s ever thought about for a very long time,” said book critic Casper Gently in 1983. As the story goes, Bucky (‘the droll quoll”) takes to campus like a mouse does cheese and begins asking questions. Off the clock, he moonlights as a disc jockey, spinning reggae exclusively during Casanova’s variety hour, earning something of a reputation as a maverick and developing more than a friendship with a shy Jamaican exchange student named Theresa. The mystery unravels when Bucky discovers a stash of soap in the faculty broom closet. A finale involving a heap of suds takes place during a peace summit in the auditorium.
After the book failed, Slope got a job as a busboy, distributing quail eggs to work stations. He was promoted to waiter and held positions at upscale restaurants throughout the Tamar Valley. He moved to Victoria last year to be near his sister. In the last 12 months, Mike developed a perverse sense of time and it progressively made him insane. At first he would forget what hour it was. Then he lost track of the day and soon after that he was a month behind. He died anticipating autumn in the springtime.
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Fellinesque
For reasons peculiar, I can remember the exact song my parents were listening to when I was conceived inside a musty Best Western hotel room with dusty drapes on the outskirts of San Francisco in early ‘72. The author of the song was George Harrison and the name of the song was ‘Something’ and it was by a group of Liverpudlians known as The Beetles. I’m Casey Kasem...There are no songs accounted for between the ages of 2-5. I’m something of a blank, perhaps some Wings in the women’s department at the JC Penney in my hometown, me confusing another woman for my mother due to the similarity of terrycloth blouse, as the horrific Live and Let Die crescendos over the company loud speaker. Anyway, without further adieu, the songs in my life, the songs I have loved hard, the songs that have loved me back even harder, starting at age 6.
Age 6, Wooly Bully, Sam the Sham
Age 7, Calling Dr. Love, Kiss
Age 8, Eruption, Van Halen
Age, 9, Blackout, The Scorpions
Age 10, Living after Midnight, Judas Priest
Age 11, We’re not Gonna Take it, Twisted Sister
Age 12, Everybody Wants to Rule the World, Tears for Fears
Age 13, Rocky Raccoon, The Beatles
Age 14, Legalise It, Peter Tosh
Age 15, Cold Gettin’ Dumb, Just-Ice tied with Super-Hoe, Boogie Down Productions
Age 16, Just Watch by the Untouchable Force Organisation (U.T.F.O.)
Age 17, Listen to the Bass, Mantronix
Age 18, Soul in the Hole, 3rd Bass, Goodbye Stranger, Supertramp
Age 19, Miracle Man, Elvis Costello
Age 20, Dreams, Fleetwood Mac
Age 21, Any Major Dude, Steely Dan
Age 22, Freedom of ’76, Ween
Age 23, 6’ 1”, Liz Phair
Age 24, Sister Ray, Velvet Underground
Age 25, Misunderstood, Wilco
Age 26, Grave Architecture, Pavement
Age 27, Point that Thing Somewhere Else, The Clean
Age 28, Wrong, Archers of Loaf
Age 29, Modern Age, The Strokes
Age 30, Grounded, Huon
Age 31, Dream Planner, New Estate
Age 32, Jelly Bones, Unicorns
Age 33, Twin Killers, Deerhoof
Age 34, European Oils, Destroyer
Thursday, October 26, 2006
All About My Mommy
My Mother is number three in a line of four extremely bodacious girls born to a boisterous publican dame and an ornery Native American stud, who slicked an unconscionable amount of pomade through his quiff, before disappearing into the wilds for days at a time.
Childhood was grim and dysfunctional, but laughably so, the sisters say, who nowadays nip out to the local Indian reservation for a spot of conservative gambling and a prime rib dinner at the buffet.
My Mother liked the Big Bopper best and her spastic dances with her sister Sally to Chantilly Lace are remembered wincingly.
After a year on the wharf as a young adult, my Mother came to love the Oregon Coast and the harmonies of the ocean and the betwixing schlorne of neighbouring mermaids migrating from the Yucatan Peninsula. “Ecchi Wa-Quiche-Arumba.” She would answer in response to one of their obtuse queries.
Together with my father, a carpenter, obscure airplane enthusiast and later, club golfer, they produced three, fine upstanding citizens. I came last in the litter. My sister was eleven when I was born. My brother was eight. Basically I was a complete afterthought.
An addiction to clam chowder left my Mother strung out and feverish, hospitalised in a rehabilitation centre forcing my sister to raise me through my stark infancy (I later learned my mother simply worked nights).
Happy Birthday to the woman in my life that has been, next to my sister, deeply fond of me the longest. Mom.
Sometimes I would accompany my Mother to the neighbours for ceramics night. Me, a 7 year-old boy, in a room full of suburban housewives. I was in seventh heaven. We made Christmas decorations. Two charming pieces, a glittering snowman and a raccoon, have become a bone of contention between my Mother and I as to who the true artist is, to me the craftsmanship is obvious, eventually forcing me to move to Australia when she refused to admit that I was the responsible party.
The neat thing about my mother is that she is considerably older than me but she actually looks a few years younger (I am sure Paul Auster would have a field day with this one).
So yeah, Happy Birthday Mommy (from eight days ago). I am a piece of shit. Mom, I love you. . I can’t sing it strong enough. The Pavement Wowee Zowee re-release should be arriving in your mailbox shortly. Fight this Generation… Fight this Generation… Sing it Mom: Fight this Generation! Who loves ya baby
Childhood was grim and dysfunctional, but laughably so, the sisters say, who nowadays nip out to the local Indian reservation for a spot of conservative gambling and a prime rib dinner at the buffet.
My Mother liked the Big Bopper best and her spastic dances with her sister Sally to Chantilly Lace are remembered wincingly.
After a year on the wharf as a young adult, my Mother came to love the Oregon Coast and the harmonies of the ocean and the betwixing schlorne of neighbouring mermaids migrating from the Yucatan Peninsula. “Ecchi Wa-Quiche-Arumba.” She would answer in response to one of their obtuse queries.
Together with my father, a carpenter, obscure airplane enthusiast and later, club golfer, they produced three, fine upstanding citizens. I came last in the litter. My sister was eleven when I was born. My brother was eight. Basically I was a complete afterthought.
An addiction to clam chowder left my Mother strung out and feverish, hospitalised in a rehabilitation centre forcing my sister to raise me through my stark infancy (I later learned my mother simply worked nights).
Happy Birthday to the woman in my life that has been, next to my sister, deeply fond of me the longest. Mom.
Sometimes I would accompany my Mother to the neighbours for ceramics night. Me, a 7 year-old boy, in a room full of suburban housewives. I was in seventh heaven. We made Christmas decorations. Two charming pieces, a glittering snowman and a raccoon, have become a bone of contention between my Mother and I as to who the true artist is, to me the craftsmanship is obvious, eventually forcing me to move to Australia when she refused to admit that I was the responsible party.
The neat thing about my mother is that she is considerably older than me but she actually looks a few years younger (I am sure Paul Auster would have a field day with this one).
So yeah, Happy Birthday Mommy (from eight days ago). I am a piece of shit. Mom, I love you. . I can’t sing it strong enough. The Pavement Wowee Zowee re-release should be arriving in your mailbox shortly. Fight this Generation… Fight this Generation… Sing it Mom: Fight this Generation! Who loves ya baby
Monday, October 16, 2006
Ballbreaker (or Kid Rock ain't got nothing on me)
Gazing into the mirror earlier I couldn’t help but notice how well my follicles were in order. Upon closer inspection however, I spotted a moist beige swathe, the consistency of mudmask, glazing my fringe. I sniffed the substance that was now present on my fingers. I was relieved to discover that the substance was odourless and according to my way of thinking eliminated the possibility of birdshit in my hair. Chances are it was the hummus that I had for lunch, but I still don’t know for sure, nor do I know how it got there, but I am yet to wash my hair or inform De Campo, so it’s of little concern to me now.The Evelyn, normally a place of rancid comings and goings was strangely beautiful on Friday night. During the Ramps ripping set, I drifted off into a reverie of which there were many cinnamon rolls, golden chariots and bluebirds. I returned to the present right as Joe leaped off the stage like ‘The Superfly’ to take me out. Later I lost my balance on the dance floor and lay there writhing in a puddle of my own effluvium.
The after party back here was extraordinarily debauched. It was like Studio 54 all over again. Toby and Suze had just returned from the UK. They were straight hitched and we were missing them loads and feeling super hot and we celebrated like heck. They partook in the journey to the end of the night and so on and so forth. We played basketball at 9.30am. Then we got hot and consequently got thirsty. Armed with supplies back at the gaffe, the cork was popped in doors on accident. It was that kind of morning.
I played vinyl like it was no tomorrow and truly there wasn’t. Kirsty and Fiona paid us an awesomely fun visit and we swooned in the sun. Fiona I called at 10am urging her to come over and drink champers with us. She said she would love to, but she shouldn't - she's pregnant. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. What news! Well it turns out it was Olivia's sister who happens to have the same name and who's number is listed right below the other Fiona on the same sheet next to the telephone.
Sobriety has been very rewarding ever since, even more so than Little Miss Sunshine, which we saw yesterday. It was OK.
Thursday, October 12, 2006
And forever the deer shall run
As a boy, I would often join my parents on excursions to the Oregon Coast. Since the only way to get there was over a mountain, we would sometimes see wildlife ducking into the pines from the window of our van. Once my mother thought she saw an injured deer in a distant field. Dad pulled over, we got out and walked to the edge of the field. There the deer lie on its back, its right leg mangled, a compound fracture exposing the anklebone somehow leaving the hoof just hanging there. Dad said on account of there being no flies the deer hadn’t been dead long. For years the cruel sight of the dangling hoof haunted me, but in 2004, my memory changed, the hoof healed better than before and the deer's splendid stride was fully restored thanks to the thousand beautiful tones and bionic hip-shattering rhythms emanating from Deerhoof’s The Runner Four, a CD capturing a band prophylactically penetrated by jazz and perverted by pop with a sweetly poised, profoundly absurd Japanese girl getting her quips stalked and mimicked by guitars spicier than Wasabi, Runners Four was like a Kinks’ allergy administered with an explosive dose of NOW heaven. A true force of nature, it remains the most mind-blowing guitar album I have heard this century.
Monday, October 09, 2006
Searing stuff
I believe I was the only person wearing shorts at the birthday party on Saturday. No disrespect, Frances. The beer garden at the Standard gets really crowded, especially on bright, sunny days. It was a bright, sunny day and I wore shorts so sue me.
Delightful to see people like James and Miranda, who I haven’t seen since Pookie T. I copped a feel of Miranda’s belly the current home of a happy lil’ person, who’s lease is up in like 10 days. The firmness of Miranda’s area is quite foreign to me and thumbing through my history of touch, perhaps it most closely resembles the rear cartilage of a wombat.
A peculiar game called I Spy was played and I am not even sure if it qualifies as a game — more like a gam or a ga. How it works is someone thinks of an object and your only hint is its first letter and the fact it is located within the visual vicinity. I was a naturally good player, quite gifted really. Gavin and Jane’s two young daughters, despite their extensive experience playing I Spy did not control the game nearly as much as everyone expected. There were regarded as early favourites but there was some disappointment when they did not live up to their expectations.
Polly and I had Flywheel t-shirts on, although I came wearing mine, it’s yellow; and hers’ she had in her bag, which she put on, a green one, in an attempt to show me up. A vote on what colour t-shirt was better went to me hands-down. I did not feel good about winning the vote so unanimously, but the truth hurts sometimes, just like love does, as the Nazareth song goes.
David and Annabel were dressed as Robert De Niro and JoBeth Williams in the Deer Hunter. Searing stuff.
Later that night, a contingent of painters, writers and rockers led by F to the J to the G came over and offered gardening advice and irreverent humour. Stephen had a premonition he had been in our house before with the guy from the Pansy Division. It left him in the grips of a very interesting séance that was intense viewing for all.
De Campo is effusive in the praise for the burgers I barbequed last night. I think she likes me. They tasted to me like someone else had made them that’s how good they were. I managed to fire the barbeque up, cook and round-up condiments in the time it takes to play Pavement’s Brighten the Corners in its entirety.
There was a quite gust out there so I put on a lightweight jacket; the sun was shining and while the burgers fried I read a story on Diane von Furstenberg, interesting at first and then growing impatient and skipping to read all the dish about her flings of legend. Would you believe Ryan O’ Neal, circa Love Story? Seriously who didn’t he do it too.
Delightful to see people like James and Miranda, who I haven’t seen since Pookie T. I copped a feel of Miranda’s belly the current home of a happy lil’ person, who’s lease is up in like 10 days. The firmness of Miranda’s area is quite foreign to me and thumbing through my history of touch, perhaps it most closely resembles the rear cartilage of a wombat.
A peculiar game called I Spy was played and I am not even sure if it qualifies as a game — more like a gam or a ga. How it works is someone thinks of an object and your only hint is its first letter and the fact it is located within the visual vicinity. I was a naturally good player, quite gifted really. Gavin and Jane’s two young daughters, despite their extensive experience playing I Spy did not control the game nearly as much as everyone expected. There were regarded as early favourites but there was some disappointment when they did not live up to their expectations.
Polly and I had Flywheel t-shirts on, although I came wearing mine, it’s yellow; and hers’ she had in her bag, which she put on, a green one, in an attempt to show me up. A vote on what colour t-shirt was better went to me hands-down. I did not feel good about winning the vote so unanimously, but the truth hurts sometimes, just like love does, as the Nazareth song goes.
David and Annabel were dressed as Robert De Niro and JoBeth Williams in the Deer Hunter. Searing stuff.
Later that night, a contingent of painters, writers and rockers led by F to the J to the G came over and offered gardening advice and irreverent humour. Stephen had a premonition he had been in our house before with the guy from the Pansy Division. It left him in the grips of a very interesting séance that was intense viewing for all.
De Campo is effusive in the praise for the burgers I barbequed last night. I think she likes me. They tasted to me like someone else had made them that’s how good they were. I managed to fire the barbeque up, cook and round-up condiments in the time it takes to play Pavement’s Brighten the Corners in its entirety.
There was a quite gust out there so I put on a lightweight jacket; the sun was shining and while the burgers fried I read a story on Diane von Furstenberg, interesting at first and then growing impatient and skipping to read all the dish about her flings of legend. Would you believe Ryan O’ Neal, circa Love Story? Seriously who didn’t he do it too.
Thursday, October 05, 2006
Leadhead
I lost the plot mid-way through when Henry’s head pops off (incidentally replaced by alien boy head, his kid, a strange creature his equally strange, yet normal-looking girlfriend gave birth to although that’s neither here nor there. Sitting next to Jesse James Shepherd at the time, the smooth operator in the vivid synth outfit Sir, who then said “good message for birth control” to which I giggled lightly), drops from a second-storey window, hits the street, retrieved by Mexican boy who smuggles head in his arms (much to the unspecific chagrin of a toothless weathered wino, gasping from a nearby bench) and after a brisk walk through a much deserted streetscape, delivered to a hairy hotel concierge who sneaks boy and said head into a dark, mechanical room where a Harry Dean Stanton-type, working on some ominous piece of machinery, takes head in hand and armed with hand drill begins putting hole in head, the contents of which gradually revealed in a slim, cylindrical object that is inserted into the sinister machine and turned on — once in motion machine shows assembly line of #2 pencils, a concept of which made absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. So I’m thinking head of lead, Lead Head, what’s the expression…I didn’t know. My brain had long departed the scene. When the movie ended I explained how the scene lost me and Jesse exclaimed, “Eraserhead!”
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Lost Highway
If you don’t go to The Tote tonight, you’re a poor excuse for a man, you are a non-entity. Sub-human scum.I’m going to the David Lynch Retrospective at Cinemateque. Should be fun. They’re showing Eraserhead and Lost Highway. I saw the former many years ago at Cinema 21 in NW Portland. I went with this guy who once exuberantly declared I was the devil during a despicable teenage drunk. The movie was one of the last times we ever spoke to each other. Not that words were exchanged afterwards – our tongues were tied. He probably walked me to my car and said Goodbye Satan.
Lost Highway was a recent anniversary gift from someone who feels strongly enough about me to get me Lost Highway as a gift for our anniversary. I haven’t watched it yet, I actually got in trouble for not watching it the other night and I told her I have been saving myself until I am married. A little joke. Tonight I will be deflowered by a thirty foot tall Bill Pullman. I have been waiting for this moment for quite some time. Meanwhile she'll be at The Tote.
Today is hump day and it’s out of control. The dance card is chock full. Shooting at Unarmed Men are playing for five measly dollars. I think they make real head-banger music that belies their shorthair and bubbly personalities.
De Campo works downtown and therefore has interesting lunch experiences. About the most exotic detail I can think of is the bain-marie, which I have referenced to death (most recent: September 29) or the fact the sausage rolls have doubled in size at the Tramline Cafe. I get the worst service there. The guy in leather sandals calls me mate flagrantly and I am ready to say why don’t you cut your toenails. The sausage rolls are so hot that by the time I get them back to work and let them cool they are soggy as all get out and barely edible, so it’s not pleasant and I am $2.50 out of pocket. Meanwhile at the back of some laneway in the city de Campo’s drinking Thai lager and stuffing hot beef into her voluptuous gob!
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