Oregon Dreaming

Photos by De Campo from Portland that was a long time ago now

This is merely one of the signs on the Burnside Bridge

This gang expedites trays of vodka jello shots until your esophagus turns blue

I thought the way the light hit this door was cool but I guess it could be anywhere

Mexican beer sign and boarded-up rat’s nest taken from a moving car

H, all stocked up to sit on the deck next to the cooler in Seaside


This is my Mom played by Penelope Cruz she’s awfully suspicious (taken from a moving car also) here with Woody Allen

Tiki/karaoke lounge /generous grub after midnight (free too!)

alibi grub
My old school, ripped and torn asunder

Winco foods and their dedicated rows of generic miracle whip

Revolutionary Road, probably the Best American Novel, I mean sure, why the hell not, hasn’t Richard suffered enough?

No wonder Yates was unpopular, Revolutionary Road performs a type of surgery on suburbanites. By ripping them a new one, he alienated potentially four-hundred and eighty hundred thousand of his readership because that’s how many people live in the suburbs. I should know I grew up in one and had to put the book down because I was reading it in one and it was pretty upsetting and I was on holiday and nobody wants to get upset reading on their holiday.

Published in 1961, the novel puts an entire generation of smug suburbanites on a skewer and barbeques them in the salubrious comfort of their immaculate backyards. No wonder then that upon its release a lot of people averted their eyes from the hard truths (which Richard Ford distills pretty succinctly in the book’s introduction — the smoke and mirrors quality of suburban bliss), but really these people had no other choice, they had already been barbequed. So of course when the author turned up in their town to read from the book no one showed up. He spent his evenings after reading to empty rooms alone in bars and eventually died in a lonely place, penniless and borderline mad.

Now I am willing to accept almost any work as a comedy, at least I try my best to, but Richard Ford I take action against you saying Revolutionary Road is ultimately a comedy. Hard to accept such bile-producing sentences being construed as comic. Miss Lonelyhearts is pee-your-pants funny by comparison.

Truly asinine they turned this into a movie. There’s a vicious irony to these dilettantes living in the suburbs that I’m sure those movie bozos could never translate. Huge mistake casting the guy who saved the titanic from drowning. Needed some unknown without Leo’s millionaire swagger. Frank Wheeler’s main gig is fooling people into thinking he’s capable of some nebulous brilliance by way of some rather brilliant bullshit. Leo may be full of bullshit, but he’s filthy rich and bangs a different broad every night. Seem to have forgotten what my point was going to be.

RE the casting, I blame Winslet, who I quite like and her husband, who I quite don’t. I’ve seen Kate save her bacon by acting like crazy in movies that suck so I’m morbidly curious to see how she handles herself in the shoes of April Wheeler. April’s in a far more interesting place than whatever place Frank’s in, but then again, I find Betty Draper more interesting than her husband, so I guess deep down I’m just a 50s-era ladies man.

Viaggio in Italia

Not to deny Ingrid Bergman her devastating performance, but at this point in his acting life, I doubt a woman alive other than a hooker could have stimulated George Sanders. The happy ending is not the most appropriate ending, but who gives a flying fig. The bitter pill had already been swallowed. This is troubling stuff. I'm gonna go have a meatball.

Rad Bummer

Read Middlemarch in a voracious blaze of bookish glory. De Campo and I had a couple of quiet days in Seaside prior to the commencement of straight debauchery. A whole lot of genius informs this total classic. The similarity structurally it shares with The Wire is pretty juicy and George Eliot really knows how to ratchet up the love sparks. Ends poignantly with a message celebrating good ordinary peoples’ lives and how integral they are to a fine civilisation. I got halfway through Revolutionary Road after that before caving in and shelving it — a painful, yet necessary decision as the Yates’ novel was despairing me, in part to our lodgings, a claustrophobic house in the suburbs, the primary source of Yates' ire. Had plenty to read after going to Powell’s and stocking up on the usual suspects. McGuane’s Nobody’s Angel proved to be the right elixir after Yates’ profound summer bummer. I'll revisit Rev Road in a more stable environment.





My nieces are nice girls. The day I finished Middlemarch they came to the beach. A bunch of other people came to, mostly good friends and my brother who brought tasty smoked salmon. My nieces are 18 and better adjusted than I was at their stage. It’s questionable whether they have it better together than I do now; nevertheless I can see myself consulting them on important life decisions in the near to distant future. Fun fact: our hands are identical. A hummingbird just used my parent's feeder during Todd Rundgren's Rock and Roll Pussy.

Any world that I am welcome to: Steely Dan/Eat Skull

Erika, the transsexual checker at Safeway on 29th is a fan of Steely Dan. We were buying a 12 pack of Budweiser to take over to H’s when she made reference to their song Any world that I am welcome to*. I said we were just listening to them last night. Erika looked at us in amazement, gave us both hi-fives with hands the size of bumbershoots practically smashing our palms on impact and then clutched De Campo’s bicep admiringly as we checked out.


We walked the block to H’s for the Eat skull pre-funk. Digging those dudes’ records (drummer’s a chick). Two recent long players — ‘Sick to Death’ and ‘Wild and Inside’ — are good. Anthems for living in garbage cans of which we all do figuratively or otherwise sometimes. At their show in this basement on 50th and Division the singer threw a piece of metal (distortion pedal?) at our heads, split the uprights between H and mine. Then he ripped some skateboards off the wall that were hanging on a string. Mean behaviour for a band who - at least according to the guy whose house it was - were super good friends with him.

Mosh mess ensued. De Campo armored herself with a projected elbow as bodies flew — tactics learned from her Arthouse dayz. Matt, a semi-pro bicyclist who works in financial, poured his first drink of Budweiser into his mouth and suddenly an acid-smacked kid in a backpack smacked his beer can against Matt's gums causing a finicky bloodletting. Matt also nearly lost his right thumb. Everyone agreed the music was solid. After-party at the corner bar was a hoot. Met the guitarist who gave me a little swoon-worthy cuddle.


The drive back to H's in Matt’s ‘74 BMW listening to Wilco’s latest was what dreams are made of.

*‘Any world that I am welcome to’ is one of those melancholy funk workouts that don’t need an explanation: ‘Any World that I am Welcome to is better than the one I call home.’

Tuesday Gone

The Pittock mansion was visited by De Campo and I last Tuesday. There’s a 4 poster bed in one of the rooms that belonged to Mary Todd Lincoln’s family (she was Abe’s wife). Built in 1919 by this opportunist named Henry who came over on the Oregon Trail and ended up running the daily newspaper for half a century. It’s an impressive sandstone building that overlooks Portland with views of Mt Hood that happened to be a little hazy on this particular day.



We went and had a burger in the countryside at a tavern we like a lot after that. In the photo above, De Campo is getting ready to have some of their beer. After lunch, De Campo wanted to know what kind of trees those were bordering the beer garden and I honestly for the life of me couldn’t tell her, leaving a glaring gap in my local horticulture that needs to be rectified fast!

Like two killers on-the-lam we stayed on-the-move. There’s a lot of vendors at Tuesday night market in Hillsboro hocking their homemade jams and chilli sauces. Mom was looking for a marinade to bathe her salmon in and came across this spicy basil sample that made her gag! She had some of Campee’s wa-wa to make her feel better. I always like going to Tuesday Market because I often come away with some good gems at Main Street Books and acquisitions on this outing were first-rate: Richard Yates’ 'Easter Parade' (first edition) and Tobias Wolff’s 'Old School'.

We got to talking about dogs because there were dogs all over the place. Saw a German Shepherd walk by and Dad started to laugh and then couldn’t stop long enough to talk. Tears were forming in his eyes and we asked what was so funny because we were laughing too and we figured it would be a lot funnier if we knew why he was and he said that when he was a kid living in North Dakota him and his younger brother Dick would hang out at the local gas station in the middle of nowhere for fun with their pet German Shepherd and one time a car pulled up and the man got out and offered them five dollars for their dog and they accepted. Not only that, but that man was Robert Mitchum. Okay so I was joking about that, but my Dad did meet Bob Mitchum once at a tackle shop in Eastern Oregon.

Laurelhurst Tavern serves beer into big cups that you sit and drink while a movie unspools before your very eyes. And you don’t have to do anything else but sit there and drink them (unless you order a piece of pizza that you might sit and eat between slurps like we did). Sometimes the movies are even fun to watch! Happily this one was because it made us forget about how dark and impure tasting the beer was on our angelic livers!

‘Adventureland’ is the third coming-of-age film for actor Jesse Eisenberg following ‘Rodger Dodger’ and ‘Squid and the Whale’ and that makes it a bonafide trilogy.

It’s an output rivaling the Matthew Broderick of Biloxi Blues, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, War Games and that open-minded romantic comedy about Matt and the monkey. That's actually four not so great movies.

Nine Days

Been in the Motherland for nine whole days, not nine whole yards, just days. In Seaside now, or at least that’s where I am writing this, in a beach chair on a straw mat tucked into a sandy cove watching the shark-infested waters ripple and splash at low-tide. I’m wearing micro-fibre trunks and an antique tennis cardigan. The weather ain’t great, but occasionally the sun gets through the clouds and De Campo gets a sunburn. Two days ago a maimed porpoise washed up on the beach. Turns out the predator was a Great White. Police patrolling the beach yelling at people from a PA set up in their suburban to get out of the water even though these people are right at the shoreline. There’s no temptation to get in the water anyway since, like I said, the weather ain’t great. It’s meant to heat up on Saturday when my cousin Shari has a bbq.

My ankles turned into cankles on our brutal 26 hour transit (Melbourne > Sydney > Los Angeles > Seattle > Portland). “I’m going to ring our travel agent’s neck for flying us to hell and back!” I roared. “I booked the flights on-line,” De Campo replied.

The flight was long, the United staff rude and we were subjected to two rough landings. Came back from the bathroom once, this is after everyone had gone to sleep, passed a guy in an aisle seat reading an article on how to become an orgasm whisperer. Less subtle than an issue of Juggs, I suppose (if you were illiterate).

Met my parents, a pair of sun-pickled retirees, who were full of an arena size cheer. They gave us a Mexican wave (on the inside). My ankles were quite a grotesque vision, but it didn’t cause me any discomfort, only psychological. I thought they would turn gangrenous any moment (my ankles, not my parents).

Back at their place, I opened my suitcase to show my Dad the scotch I picked up duty-free and I could only find the cap from the cardboard tube. Someone must have unzipped my suitcase and stole it in Los Angeles (we had no choice but to put the booze in our luggage because liquids are no longer allowed as carry-on after that incident with the R.E.M. guitarist and all the yogurt). I spent the next hour sulking in the bedroom that was never mine because I never lived in this particular house; my parents moved here — down the road from the house I grew up in — after I moved to Australia. I had another look and it turned out it was there I just didn’t look hard enough the first time.

Had some the next day at a jolly-good get-together at my parents' house that H, Eliza and their son attended, plus some people that I am actually related to. Blood relatives they're called.

SKOLIMOWSKI

I plan on teaching myself how to walk like Jerzy Skolimowski next week. Soon I will be a tough nut with a shell that is hard to crack. A brick shithouse incredibly sturdy. Couple of Jerzy early films feature him walking the decrapitated Warsaw laneways, reciting poetry and charming utter babes if and when he feels like it. Right on, brother.

Moonlighting, 1981 (Slolimowski)
A team of Polish builders, led by the iron-fisted Jeremy Irons, go to London to renovate their boss's scummy terrace. It's cold out, Jeremy is colder and no one has any money. Their cultural challenges are rendered brutally. Jeremy fashions a contemporary moustache and figures out a way to steal from his grocer, but then he gets caught. He goes to church to confess his evil, turkey-thieving sins!

Pungent it may be, but damn is it ever tasty.

Thai from Patee thai on Brunswick street is best thai ever tasted. I heated the fishy leftovers up in the microwave at work. Now everyone wants to puke. Sent an email around don’t go into the kitchen for at least twenty minutes to see if the smell would dissipate. Not at all. But I got no regrets. Fuck 'em.

Loving the ladies

Lorrie Moore is back with a sweetass new short story about a whipsmart babysitter in the New Yorker (apparently she has a novel coming out in September). I bore into that sucker big-time last night after I finished Ivy Compton-Burnett’s incredibly kickass ‘A House and its Head’. This morning on the tram I started the badass 'Middlemarch' by George Eliot. Give it to me mama.

Deep End

Classic coming-undone coming-of-age story that gets young boys’ obsession with sex just about right. It’s pretty hard to take, but then again, so are young boys. The film is about a 15 year-old but it’s not for a 15 year-old. I’ll show it to my 15 year-old and he’ll either turn gay or admit that he is gay (something I would have already suspected anyway).

Story is about Mike, a virgin in the traditional sense (fornication) and also in regards to doing a job. All this is about to change. He’s cute and he’s hired at the local swimming pool. He looks like a cross between Parker Stephenson and Shawn Cassidy. He starts work and all the housewives want to bone him, repressed London coming unglued as Mike delivers more medicated shampoo to door #4 and 5. The Lolita-like redhead nymph is a legal age dynamo sex bait of the bath house. Her natural charm and effectiveness makes Natalie Portman rather unnecessary. She’s doing it to Mike’s former swimming coach. Her fiance is a pompous drip who studies blue movies with academic discernment. She torments Mike in wicked ways. He grows up fast. The repercussions are severe.

Two sequences stand out as total classics: One unfolds at a blue movie cinema, rivaling Mickey Rourke’s turn in The Diner for outright hilarity, but also delving deeper (hence the title, no, not really). The other takes place outside a peep show and involves the ingestion of numerous hot dogs and the pilfering of a life-size nude cardboard cut-out culminating in a ridiculous ruckus on a crowded tube train.

There’s an urge to refer to this film as Deep Red, for the contrast of perverse red against the rank landscape of 1970s London suburbia is luridly outstanding. The camera work is artful, the editing is droll, the performances are classic, the climax a tad unwieldy. Cat Stevens and Can provide the soundtrack that loses to Performance in a tenth-round knockout, but puts on a hell of a fight. Directed by Jerzy Skolimowski.

Role Models movie

Paul Rudd wrote and starred in this obnoxious vehicle that’s a real worthless piece of crap. Jane Lynch steals every scene from these douches.

I'm back on the beer again

Last night’s beef satay from ____ on _______ in ______ was the worst I ever tasted.

Worthless crap

In the City of Sylvia (2007) by Jose Luis Guerin
If the underused goth in the pub had raped, then murdered the vapid artiste, I would have still left the cinema unsatisfied.

Get your flippers out

Two and a quarter hours of riveting Flipper action last night at the Arty. A lot of cool people were there hanging out and having fun. Sadie was a wild child in her element up the front. Singer Bruce kept a watchful eye on her as best he could. She mussed his hair, stole his water and spat on him. Bruce couldn't have looked more proud if she was his own kin.

Before the show their new bassist, a Tasmanian Black Walnut-haired minx named Rachel from San Francisco, offered me her scarf as it’s frightfully cold in Melbourne and I seemed underdressed to her. I declined her offer, said I’d probably besmirch it. She said it would take a lot to besmirch it… Still, I said no.

Anyway Flipper were great!

what a stupid thing to write, makes no sense

"If you're starting to get annoyed when people cough without covering their mouths, spare a thought for the thousands at increased risk of serious illness from swine flu".

- from the good daily

Okkervil River last night

I got lucky. The woman in my life won two free tickets to see some Texans* rock out, so that’s what we did last night. I woke up in a crusty state of being this morning. She kissed me goodbye and left the house in her cute new coat (The light-brown buttons are mushroom-shaped). A few hours later, I’m on a north-facing park bench digesting my Atomica breakfast (scrambled eggs, bacon, hash browns and flat white) wondering if that coat of hers was really worth it. It’s a beautiful autumn day.

* At one point I remarked on how the singer’s schtick is stretching alliterative phrasing into pliable melodies, but no one seemed to give a shit.

Torch Rockers

Zabriskie Point and The State of Things

Zabriskie Point
Corny-ass, hippy-dippy, drippy dumbshit lameness on a grand visual scale, culminating in an uncomfortable-looking sandstorm orgy in the desert. It’s enough to make you want to work for Rod Taylor’s housing developer (the film’s emblem of evil), but you no longer can, see his revolutionary daughter Daria exploded him so he be unable to make you an offer. Viva the Revolucion’!


The State of Things
A sluggishly hip, innocuous thing by Wim Wenders about a sci-fi movie that can’t get made, which is sad because it looks more fun than the one about the director who goes off in search of money to finish it which is what we’re watching! So, director leaves cast and crew in a drunken Lisbon stupor and flies to LA where he puts the top down and becomes Phillip Marlowe in an attempt to find the egregious moneybags. 1980, in black and white with pornographic synthesizers busted out at the most peculiar moments.

See New Estate before you die, or else I will kill you

Discuss

Ten Things You Probably Didn’t Know About A Movie You Have Probably Never Seen

• The name of this silent movie is "Haxan – Witchcraft through the Ages" and it came out in 1922. The execution of its niche objectives is a solid 8/10
• Be forewarned it will terrify your children
• The crazy-eyed red devils are tongue-darting pervs
• The juxtaposition of naked female tush with devils whose long sharp claws poke at them with tireless fervour is good image-making
• Narrative by director Benjamin Christenson has a pleasing ironic tone (I don’t have any examples except when he gets one of the cute actresses into a thumbscrew and pretends she likes it when in fact she is yelping)
• There are 7 parts to it
• The music (doubtlessly added retrospectively) suxx eggs and complaints regarding the badness of it were plentiful afterwards by the moviegoing contingency. A lot of silents have this problem. Makes you wonder if the movie would have been better off without it and I don’t think it woulda
• Did you know something like four million men and women were destroyed in the middle ages in the cruellest fashion for behaving in a way incomprehensible to doctors, monks and other God-fearing sucks? Hard to comprehend, I know, but once you put it into terms that people can understand such as Def Leppard would not have been able to make ‘Adrenalize’ after ‘Hysteria’ the full force of its destructive impact really hits home
• The advance of civilization was defined by the sophisticated techniques people were toasted and tortured with.
• The costume imagery and photography (brilliant blue for twilight and red for hell, plus sepia-tones for poor-house interiors) are so consistently great that you begin to lose interest in the whole operation, which is sad, but inevitable in a movie that contains no dramatic narrative or discernible flow

Shallow flicks, man.

Couple a flicks by Louis Malle, one, ‘Les Amants’, would be wise to give the flick to, poor Jeanne Moreau, the film is such a disgrace and insult to her sexuality (apparently it made her hugely popular – go figure). Requires a suspension of disbelief so hallucinatory I’m certain it’s a recommendation from the director that we all go take a flying leap.

Jesse loved it, he saw Jeanne’s boobies after all, sez I’ve changed now that I’m engaged, suspects I’d call Dorothy a trollop if I saw Wizard of Oz. My beef was with the total lack of psychological detail to validate the character’s ludicrous actions. Some awakening. I think Tristan was in my corner on this one, but he wasn’t saying much, he was too busy enjoying the ribbing I was getting from Monsieur Jackson Sheperd.

By movie’s end, I wanted to shake Mr. Malle and say what planet are you on? To its credit, the movie was strongly paced and I didn’t look at my watch once.

Next came a good one (Le Feu Follett) about an alcoholic with a good melancholy score by Erik Satie. Get this: the guy finishes The Great Gatsby and then he offs himself! The whole time I thought the actor (well-played) was Alain Delon, mirroring his own descent into alcoholism, but no, just some other hunk who had gone to seed named Alain.

Both films were preceded by the seed that germinated Wes Anderson’s fun Life Aquatic picture: a deliciously entertaining Jacques Cousteau short from the 50s when Malle was his DP.

Must be heard to be heard

I ordered Japanese for three last night in my Sean Connery voice.

Caution: Disinterest

Hungover today. Mixing red wine and champagne after seeing Steve Coogan who was damn near terrible wasn’t very smart. We had front row seats. Yayy! Imagine getting roped on stage by one of his slutty caricatures who he then pretends to bang behind the curtain. Perish the thought. Trotted off to my fav book shop at lunchtime to lift my mood. Went there with the intention of hoarding some Flannery O’ Connor or Carson McCuller based on this exchange I had with H earlier:

B: What was the last book by a woman that you read?
H: Mary Gaitskill's Veronica or Zadie Smith's On Beauty. I've recently read some more Flannery O'Connor short stories, but I thought she was a man. Actually, I stand corrected, I read Carson Mcculler's the Heart is a Lonely Hunter earlier this year, and loved it. Wrote like a deranged man. After perusing the hundreds of titles in my bookshelf, I can confirm that these are the only 4 female novelists that I own.

I ended up with Thomas Berger’s Feud about quarreling neighbours in 1930s small-town America. I selected four pages at random and every one was a winner – two of them were potentially laugh-out loud given the appropriate context. After getting back to work, I went on Amazon where there are four reviews all raves and thoughtfully constructed. I like this one for mentioning the saintly Charles Portis:

“This book is a cruel masterpiece of cynical and nasty slapstick humor. The protagonists, the Bullards and the Beelers, are both families of barely sentient wit who behave in ways that are competely understandable, completely human, and completely stupid. Berger's writing and plotting, though, are first-rate-- I laughed out loud throughout this thing, and I've read it three times over the last 25 years (time to read it again). You've met people like this before in the works of Flannery O'Connor, Faulkner, Charles Portis, and Erskine Caldwell, but Berger's light touch makes "The Feud" a real find.”

They had a Flannery O Connor book of short stories there A Good Man is Hard to Find, but I put it back and picked up two James Purdy books. I’ve heard good things about him. Gore Vidal calls him a genius. I was tempted to buy both, but I got freaked out by the almost fuchsia-coloured covers and the publisher Gay Modern Classics while at the same time Hercules and Love Affair came on my iPOD, I almost had a crisis of identity.

I’m still on the lookout for books by women writers. One of my goals this year is to read Middlemarch.

SIDE A: Taurean Trouble / SIDE B: 100% more Toby Dutton for your buck

Yeppity yep, apart from the BIG NEWS, it's getting towards Taurean time again!!

So you better grab a texta and draw some pretty little cell bars on the calendar square that reads Saturday May 9th because you are required to come celebrate the bull, the beer, the me, the bands, the other deliciously rad Taureans and the new NEW ESTATE!!! WOO!

Old Bar shall be hosting this awesome roll-up roll-up event, with extra special guests on the night Midnight Caller and Elizabeth Pistol Club.

And... surely a pre-funk at UFHQ, or dinner somewhere (??) will be in order, so put forward your ideas and we'll get something sorted!

De Campo xx

Little pleasures, cont...

Back again at the eucalypt tree with the big hole in it, I clicked my tongue a couple times and my two friends hurried out to see what the hubbub was all about. I had been whistling along to an acoustic version of Cold Blooded Old Times prior to that and who knows maybe that encouraged them to crawl out and take a long look at me. Them two are like two winged lovers in tie-dyed t-shirts.

Really quite animated with me again this time. Scratching the part of their green head where most people have ears. Their friendliness makes me suspect that people give them treats. One is more yellow and green then the other one who is red and blue. They kept twisting their heads and looking at me like a dog trying to make sense of things. The red and blue one flapped its wings and flew to an upper branch where it teetered on skinny branches and munched on these little tiny fruits.

A big guy in a loose fitting muscle shirt showed up and parked it on the bench nearby while his fat blonde Labrador went down to the river. I left the birds eating the bark off the tree and strolled passed the huffing and puffing dude on the bench, who I recognised as Gary Lyon, the ex-football guy. I almost told him about the birds, but he didn’t look too happy. He was sweaty and despondent. His dog was immersed in the Yarra barking at him.

Little pleasures

The rainbow lorikeets who live in one of the trees at the park where I stroll on my lunchbreak are back and almost started talking to me today. I repeat: they were gone, but now they’re back and almost chatty.

Unstoppable Forces @ Summer Tones

I have very little recall regarding Mistletone’s fun-filled Summer Tones music party. The guy who protects patrons by keeping recalcitrants at bay wouldn’t let me into the kitchen to have a pizza at the end of the night. Not to worry De Campo and I moseyed over to the 24 hr Mcdonalds. Sadly it was closed. There were a number of people milling there for whatever reason. I guess they were surprised as we were that it was shut. We walked to Acland Street and found a burger joint. The streets were rather quiet kind of refreshing when you consider the state of Brunswick street these days. I fell asleep back at our hotel room midway through eating my Mexican-themed cheeseburger with guacamole and jalapenos. I woke up this morning and ate it cold. It was still pretty good though I wouldn’t give it more than two stars. I had some of de Campo’s too because she hadn’t finished hers either. She didn’t find it was very good cold. It was thoughtful of her to put them in the refrigerator and told her as much.

We got our things together, showered and tried to become more human. We talked about the wild night we just had. I remarked on my garbling remarkably incoherent self. I vaulted on stage during the Panel of Judges set and was just as quickly ordered off by their none-too-amused singer. Probably a good move in retrospect. I did the same thing at Applecore last weekend during Actor/Model and flipped the keyboard switch on Ricky’s guitar pedal, the sound cut out prematurely ending their set.

Unstoppable Forces DJ’ed when the doors opened yesterday. Feisty Jes Cogger who DJs in the front bar on weekends, showed up to give us moral support, which was lovely. The essential Carla (‘oh my darling, hot, hot Steve’) Thomas was our entourage. The decks were located at the top of the stairs of what is one of Melbourne’s most excellent drinking rooms. We had a great time and we played a lot of sweet tracks. From memory we spun Silver Jews’ Party Barge, Travelling Wilbury’s Handle with Care, De Campo played three in a row, Slumber Party Madeupmymind, She & Him’s something or other, Eddy Current Suppression Ring’s Wrapped Up, then I played three in a row, while De Campo went to get Coronas, Flying Burrito Bros’ Burrito #2, a cool live version of Pavement’s Father to a Sister of a Thought and Kath Bloom’s We didn’t do this to you. My memory becomes hazy after this, I can remember what we played I just can’t remember the exact order they were played in. Under the Blacklight by Rilo Kiley, Royal Trux’ The Spectre, Spoon’s Don’t You Evah, Billy Squier’s In the Dark, Tommy Roe’s Sweet Pea, Straight down to the Bitter End by Yo La Tengo, Lilliput’s Igel, The Breeder’s Tipp City, Cotton Fields by CCR, Rebound by Sebadoh, Sunday Girl (French) by Blondie (that was for Carla) and again Rilo Kiley with Smoke Detector.

The Treetops started playing, we left the turntables smoking and took our gear back to the nearby hotel and drank some peach vodka with Jes and Carla and watched American Idol. The Novotel is not a hotel I would recommend. Between the hotel and the pub was a park and we lounged there before heading back to the club to watch Kes Band.





I love the Kes Band, but this set seemed to plod more than usual. I complained about this to Simon Grounds, a man who knows about this stuff and Simon said you got to hand it to them they came with a plan to play turgidly and they stuck to it. I was just pissed that the music didn’t make me dance. I shot a query at one of the Mistletone directors about liquid compensation for our amazing DJ set and he pointed me upstairs to the green room where I saw Dan Deacon eat the largest chunk of guacamole I have ever seen. Just this huge blob of guac teetering on this strip of red capsicum. Subliminally I suppose, guacamole would play an important part in my choice of eats throughout the rest of the day. Quesadillas for dinner and the aforementioned burger at 2am.

Three stages and hundred or so bands. The basement bar was home to the best most-debauched action and out of some real good ones, I think the Twerps’ set was my favourite. I’m totally smitten with those guys. Last night was a fricking riot.

OMG!!! JCVD!!!!

OMG!!! JCVD!!!!

It’d be easier to borrow a tent because I’d prefer not to drive if I don’t have to

Amelia

Haha!

That would be ace! She just has to work out how to get her parents’ tent between now and then

Cheers

He wants to meet her for lunch

Gnarlikins-a-go-go!!

She wanted a bird then she wanted a forest with birds flying in the distant vista

HAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Did you find a golden ticket?

I threw mine up

You should get the album image as a tattoo

For brekkie

Hugh was pretty hunky wasn’t he

That sounds terrific. She is an absolute hoot.

I decided to follow Party Barge with Traveling Wilburys

Tell her to hold up, she’s next in the queue!

McGuane Remembers Updike

It’s surprising how quickly a writer’s death provides a seismic reading for anyone who had taken an interest in his work. The news of Updike’s death really startled me; he had written so well and so importantly for so long and until so recently that his absence is hard to contemplate. Something is missing. I had a spell of indignation as I thought of the nonentities who won the Nobel Prize while he was eligible through being alive. Now he’s disqualified! Terrible.

I met Updike a few times and today have been looking back on those encounters, baffling one and all. Harry Crews and I had won awards at the American Academy and found ourselves pressed against the wall of a large room staring across substantial space at a large collegial group of Northeastern writers who seemed to know their way around the place. Crews was content to remain, but I wandered haplessly into no man’s land, where Bernard Malamud felt sorry for me and led me to the group in the middle of the room, where he introduced me all round, and to John Updike, who peered at me and said, “We don’t know who you are.” Well, I got over it and kept reading Updike, admiring his daring, the high finish of his prose, his extraordinary erudition, and, sometimes in the face of some quite nasty critical attention, his undaunted commitment to his work. As a regular and accessible commentator on art and literature, he hasn’t had an equal since Edmund Wilson. It is impossible to imagine a less complacent major writer.

I don’t know if some assonance is suggested by noting that I felt the same sort of blow at the death of Rabbit Angstrom, an unwillingness to let him go. I sent Updike a note to this effect and got a warm reply in which he expressed some mystification that everyone was so attached to Rabbit. My translation suggests he wasn’t comfortable with this august tetralogy towering over the rest of his work. But that’s what happened.

Thomas McGuane, January 28, New Yorker

Rant from H sponsored by Miss Lonelyhearts

Speaking of savagery with the pen, I am finally reading the copy of "Lucky Jim" that you got me. I plan to continue to make up my own book clubs. This will be paired with Martin Amis's "The Information". The other pairings include the Jim Harrison collection I got from you tied with McGuane's "Nobody's Angel". This sub-sect of the club will be entitled "Writer's that Moritz loves who are deeply indebted to Hemingway, who by the way, Moritz can't stand". The next suite will consist of German writers (I always read Russian or Latin writers) that wll involve Kafka's "The Trial" and Thomas Mann's "Death In Venice and other collected stories". This will alternately be known as "Fassbinders Mix-tape". The final book club will consist solely of Melville's "Pierre, Or the Ambiguities". I am going to the coast this weekend, and always carry a Melville novel that I have absolutely no intention of reading.

- H

extract from forthcoming novel

"No compunction whatsoever to relieve myself with a claw hammer.
A feeling I was pretty unaccustomed to!"

Tic Tacs are inferior in every way

WHAT?

In Bruges got a nod for best original screenplay. That frigging disgusts me.

Man, I’m struggling a bit with Oscar, not being Dominican and shit. My inability to be held captive by its mercurial energy gave me horrible night sweats last night until I realised it was only the full moon, but still.

Year in Reading

Books I’ve read in sequence, and in brackets, how I’d rank them. Below that is a short spiel on each.

Hey Jack by Barry Hannah (20)
Fargo Rock City by Chuck Klosterman (26)
Armies of the Night by Norman Mailer (1)
Norwood by Charles Portis (6)
Panama by Thomas McGuane (13)
Reinhardt in Love by Thomas Berger (2)
The Smoking Diaries by Simon Gray (26)
Laughter in the Dark by Vladimir Nabokov (11)
The Loved One by Ev Waugh (29)
Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis (10)
Mao II by Don Delillo (28)
Couple of Comedians by Don Carpenter (14)
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail by Hunter S Thompson (16)
Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S Thompson (17)
Anagrams by Lorrie Moore (5)
Like Life by Lorrie Moore (18)
A Cool Million by Nathanael West (20)
CATCH 22 by Joseph Heller (22)
Ask the Dust by John Fante (12)
Born Standing Up by Steve Martin (24)
Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (4)
Ninety in the Shade by Thomas McGuane (3)
Josh Hartnett Definitely Wants to do This by Bruce Beresford (25)
Gulcher by Richard Meltzer (15)
Professor of Desire by Philip Roth (30)
The Summer he Didn’t Die by Jim Harrison (7)
The Boat by Nam Le (27)
This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff (8)
Keep the Change by Thomas McGuane (9)
Black Postcards by Dean Wareham (23)
A Good Day to Die by Jim Harrison (19)

Hey Jack by Barry Hannah
Very good novella about a doctor of questionable repute. Full of the trademark Hannah razzle-dazzle.

Fargo Rock City by Chuck Klosterman
Didn’t finish it. Hell I lived it when I was 12.

Armies of the Night by Norman Mailer
Mailer, in incendiary 3rd person, takes in a Vietnam war demonstration. Causes a ruckus. Thrown in the slammer. Even more than Hunter S Thompson, Mailer dishes verbs like fists, and his furious prose cuts through diamonds. Exudes a heavyweight literary scholarship that doesn’t seem to exist anymore.

Norwood by Charles Portis
Angel of a book with a knucklehead charm.

Panama by Thomas McGuane
The crawling out of the ass of frozen elephants now behind him, ex punk star Chet Pomeroy retires to Key West with a coke-affected brain that forgets simple things like what his dog’s name is and whether or not his Daddy perished in a Michigan fire. Wasn’t as good the third time through; still a fav though.

Reinhardt in Love by Thomas Berger
Comic immortality, set in Cincinnati, among the bureaucrats, thieves, plagiarists and Black Panthers, a town Mark Twain said he’d like to be when the world ends because it’s twenty years behind. Standing heroically amongst it all: Carlo Reinhardt.

The Smoking Diaries by Simon Gray
Fascinating perspectives on life and art and getting old from the pen of the late playwright.

Laughter in the Dark by Vladimir Nabokov
Slim and spellbinding. As I recall, the final scene in the dark is extraordinarily vivid and suspenseful.

The Loved One by Ev Waugh
Regrettable, as California must have been for Waugh.

Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis
Biblical in its delicious spearing of celebrity culture. Loved it.

Mao II by Don Delillo
Didn’t work for me at all.

Couple of Comedians by Don Carpenter
Funny borderline psychotic world of a platinum-selling comedy/singing duo. Narrator is the deadpan and his partner is the genius. Carraway to his Gatsby.

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’71 by Hunter S Thompson
Thompson’s last great book. Mighty.

Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S Thompson
Oral biography using Plimpton’s Paris Review technique (see also definitive books on Truman and Edie).

Anagrams by Lorrie Moore
Lorrie writes the best brainiest, wittiest single women around. This one shall we say has an active imagination. Tells a lot of elaborate jokes ad the strike rate is damn near 100 per cent. Has drawn comparisons to Sally Bowles and I can see that.

Like Life by Lorrie Moore
More stories about bracing wit as tonic for life’s eternal disappointments

A Cool Million by Nathanael West
Inventive whimsy of misfortune befalls main character in his quest for bourgeois respectability

CATCH 22 by Joseph Heller
A reader-friendly Gravity’s Rainbow

Ask the Dust by John Fante
Starving for literary prestige in Thirties L.A.

Born Standing Up by Steve Martin
Starving for stardom in Sixties L.A.

Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Devil descends or rather ascends on Moscow in early Twentieth Century, terrorising literary mag editors, theatregoers, and accountants with elements of the dark supernatural. Accompanied by a seven foot jockey and an enormously fat cat with a cold black heart made of shit. On the ‘Amazing Race’ a few weeks ago contestants went to Bulgakov’s apartment as part of their scavenger hunt.

Ninety in the Shade by Thomas McGuane
A second read of this ensured its entry into the echelon of my favourite books. Never would I have thought a novel about fishing guides could be so essential.

Josh Hartnett Definitely Wants to do This by Bruce Beresford
Reading this, I recall being struck by its similarity in style and thought to the Simon Gray diaries, only to discover, in these pages, that Beresford read it and hated it! Curiously indirect bit of self-loathing perhaps? This book is a classic.

Gulcher by Richard Meltzer
Series of short, random essays from one of my writing heroes.

Professor of Desire by Philip Roth
I hated this book!

The Summer He Didn’t Die by Jim Harrison
I loved this book!

The Boat by Nam Le
Auspicious debut. First story is the piece de resistance, though I’ve yet to finish the rest.

This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff
Seriously great.

Keep the Change by Thomas McGuane
Wonderful book. The scene where Joe shows up to meet the lawyer covered in cologne samples and the reaction he gets is so priceless it had me laughing out loud on the tram. You really can’t ask for more than that first thing in the morning.

Black Postcards by Dean Wareham.
Like I needed an excuse to pull out my Galaxie 500 and Luna albums. As good as the Steve Martin book (another honest book about the implications of being an urbane artist), or any of Dean’s musical achievements.

A Good Day to Die by Jim Harrison
Hillbilly rewrite of Jules & Jim. Narrated by cultured, reckless feller. Disturbing and heartbreaking.

4 Days and 4 Nights in Daylesford

photos by de campo

Year in Music

Albums I reviewed for Plan B this year, in order of preference, accompanied by tantalising review extract.

CCR reissues
“Creedence is Creedence is Creedence, Man! Shall I continue? Sure!” (And by golly he did..)

Softboiled Eggies, Try it Again
“Floating on a galaxy of warm, downbeat poly-rhythms, crush-worthy singer Janet does Mari Elliot dub reggae, Raincoats’ covers and tears up future dance parties with a triumph called Can You Send Blame? “

Flavour Crystals, Ambergris
“At first I wanted the songs to slide off the rails a bit, but not anymore. I’m cold. I don’t want to be surprised. Just soothed.”

Yellow Moon Band, Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World
“Needs a sticker on it that says, ‘Now you’re jammin’!”

Inner Space Soundtrack, Sven Libaek
“Wes Anderson plucked this rare pearl from the clamshell of soundtrack obscurity and plugged a few cuts into his Steve Zissou picture where they fit like an old pair of flippers.”

Destroyer, Trouble in Dreams
“The mood is caterwaul casual and the message is the world is fucked.”

Beaches
“Pronounce Bitches like a louche Mexican and there you have it: Beaches, a stone-cold classic.”

Atlas Sound, Let the blind lead those who can see but cannot feel
“The tall, skinny deer caught in the strobe lights of Deerhunter’s dazzling art-rock, singer Bradford Cox brings seven layers of stoned noise to this, his official debut under Atlas Sound (a name he’s recorded with since he was 12).”

Boyracer, Flickering B+W
“Like the motto stencilled on Charley Varrick’s van, Boyracer are one of ‘the last of the independents’.”

Pivot, O Soundtrack my Heart
“A stunning assault on the John Carpenter precinct of electronic rock...minimalism so absolute they named a vodka after it.”

The Lord Dog Bird, The Lord Dog Bird
“When done this well, 4-tracks speak truer to our messed-up existence than any other method — additional tracks just seem superfluous.”

Taman Shud, Goolutionites and the Real People
“Give some top grade acid to an environmentally-conscious hard rock band whose name means ‘The Ultimate End’ and suddenly all they want to do is save trees.”

Castanets, In the Vines
“Ringing guitar tones hang in the air like vultures in some weird burrito western.”

Part Wild Horses Mane on Both Sides, Bataille de Battle
“The ‘War and Peace’ of scorching flute skronks.”



Gable, 7 Guitars with a Cloud of Milk (Loaf)
“Attention Deficit Twee (ADT) from Paree, sporting a deadpan melancholee.”

Spectrum, Milesago
“You won't find any Neu-inflected space trance here, only an earthy Mike Rudd imploring you to 'Do the Crab' (from the ten-minute, four part 'Sideways Saga') with a humour that’s hard to decode.”

KES Band
“It's like Raymond Carver without Gordon Lish. He needs an editor.”

Star Spangled Banger
“Often likened to Bonzo Dog Band, who, if I’m not mistaken, are today’s musical equivalent of a stop sign no one pays any attention to.”

Renfro
“She said it sounds like The Blow on a bad day, I said it's not that good.”

Grand Salvo, Death
“A neat concept from Down Under about a bear, a bird, a rat, a rabbit and a hunter. Still it’s hard to care about a dying rat. And why no marsupials?”

The Bronx, The Bronx
“Angus Youngish riffs, but more relentless than AC/DC ever were. Gives me a reason to be unhappy about a lot of stuff I should care a lot less about.”

The Condors, Wait for it
“That band from that seaside bar who you kept begging to play Two Tickets to Paradise the night you got totally shitfaced and busy with the Mother of your ex-girlfriend's fiancé, who walked in and saw you all over Mother with a bottle of beer foaming in your hand.”

The All New Adventures of Us, Best Loved Goodnight Tales
“Northampton’s very own Friends. The Ross of the group mourns a world gone sad (“Does anyone remember laughter?”) and makes dreadful admissions (“I know a girl with two grazed knees and I like her”), while the others marshal a fearlessly militant twee.”

Alberta Cross, The Thief & The Heartbreaker
“My advice is dump those shitty Ryan Adams’ records in the river and try on some Tom Petty (but don’t whiten your teeth!).”

I’m listening to New Order with my shirt on backwards!

Only I don’t know it yet. When I go outside for a walk I will attempt to put my iPOD in my breast pocket and I will discover there’s no breast pocket nor is there an alligator insignia down the front. That is when I will realise that my shirt is on backwards. I will quickly duck down a secluded side street and remedy the situation. Then I’ll ask myself why not one person had alerted me to this fact. I will wonder, am I that unworthy of people’s attention. A solitary tear will drop from my eye.

Define twee

Literary-minded, musically-spineless and the singers are usually these awfully tedious people who feel superior because they’ve read all of F Scott Fitzgerald’s books. Oscar Wilde said people are either charming or tedious. So basically what I’m saying is you have Jarvis Cocker at one end and some wispy dude in spectacles with a trenchant head cold giving cardigans a band name on the other. Their fans are interchangeable so a night out can be a humourless soul-sucking disaster. I imagine them to be very good at trivia. Twee has become a pejorative for mediocre bands of a certain style that royally suck. Probably the best example of twee is a Melbourne band named after a seasonal mammal.












not twee