Two More from Truffaut

Mississippi Mermaid

Jean Paul Belmondo is stinking rich, running a tobacco farm on an island in the Indian ocean. Hard up, he mail-orders Catherine Deneuve, as you do, who is just ‘adorable’ as he keeps reminding her (at least she doesn’t go ‘I know!’ as most modern actresses would; Catherine appears melancholy with a touch of wonderment thus making her astronomically beautiful. Jean-Paul has no choice but to put her face on a cigarette packet). Turns out, she’s loony. They make a terrific pair. She thoroughly emasculates him, remarkable given his rarefied beefy studliness. Crimes are committed and a lovers on the run tale ensues with shades of Losey’s Gun Crazy and Hitchcock-cliches abound, as the movie shifts to Paris. It’s clunky as hell and the disjointed last act seems to have been written in one 12-hour bender where the writer, struck by an attack of the schmaltz, turns pure malevolence into a sentimental weepy that is almost as amusing as it is preposterous.

Jules et Jim

Man, bohemians are nuts. At least the irreprehensible characters didn’t die. Although the guitar troubadour lives and that guy was a slut!

Two from Truffaut

Day for Night

Movie about a movie was probably Wes Anderson’s moviemaking template. Interestingly, in the movie inside the movie, Jackie Bissett is an English girl in love with her Fiance’s Father, a relationship quandary she would revisit in the coming decade as Rob Lowe’s mummy who bangs his best friend Andrew McCarthy on a moving escalator in ‘Class’. Or was it an elevator? Maybe it was both? Even though I replayed the scenes a hundred times at the time that was a long time ago. I was 13. If only Alex Chilton had written about that.

‘Day for Night’ is more ‘Love Boat’ than ‘8 ½’ and delightful for those very reasons.

The Bride Wore Black

Jeanne Moreau is on a cursing rampage to avenge the death of her husband who was murdered on the altar steps by accidental rifle-fire from a nearby apartment where five dildos are conducting a slippery get-together. By cursing rampage, I don’t mean she curses them to smithereens, she has Strychnine and well she’s Jeanne Moreau, a terrifying fact in itself. Not sure how she found out they done it, because I fell asleep. I’ll probably never find out because I wasn't that interested in the movie to begin with. I had a bloody great snooze. Perhaps I dreamt I was in a far superior caper, scored by some immaculate Bernard Hermann rip-off.

H from Portland's Current Reading

I just finished The Savage Detectives all 636 pages of brilliant bagginess. An absolute stunner. Captures the boho lifestyle better than any recent novel I can remember or anything that Kerouac has ever attempted. Hilarious, maddening, at times tedious but well worth it. I actually ripped thru it in 3 weeks. I can't wait for his magnum opus 2666 to be translated later this year. In the interim I'll probably read a Night In Chile.
I am currently going through my "Sweaty man lit" phase. This phrase was coined by the Village Voice regarding John Banville novels. No, I am not reading any Banville novels (although I am curious about his Benjamin Black series). This weekend I finished Revolutionary Road. Christ I need to catch my breath after that one. It reminded me of a 10 page John Cheever/ Raymond Carver short story that was stretched out to a pitch perfect 330 page novel. Not a misplaced sentence in this grimly hilarious novel. I can't believe that Leo DiCaprio & Kate Winslet are filming an adaptation of this. Another vehicle of theirs that I refuse to see.
After finishing it, I went to Powells and picked up Richard Ford's Independence Day (to continue with the sweaty man lit theme) Pynchon's V. and Panama for $2.25. Chet just nailed his hand to Catherines door.

Flannellette Funk at its Finest

What I am about to unload is so disgustingly rich in degradation that it will rock you like a hurricane and chill you to your inner Borgnines. My hair is the worst it’s been since I was 9. Similar in texture to that fake hair you find at the end of sticks that hippies wave unconvincingly in the air at badly organised outdoor festivals. I’ll probably have it cut when you see me again and be revived!

(photo pinched from here: thomashawk.com)


Modest Mouse were fiery as all hell the other night. They keep producing hit after hit. I can name a bunch of bitching tunes of theirs off the top of my head (Heart Cooks Brain, Convenient Parking, Lounge (Closing Time), Gravity Defies Everything, Third Planet, Float On, Ocean Breathes Salty, Black Cadillacs, Blame it on the Tetons, Bukowski) plus a few killer ones off their latest, which is flannellette funk at its finest (Parting of the Sensory, Missed the Boat, Dashboard, Florida). The Mouse were much better than the last time we saw them with (name-dropping alert!) thirty three and a third of The Cannanes. That was shitful. Love the Cannanes.

Speaking of whom, or rather fifty percent of that fraction of feelings, she (FJ to the G) recently introduced me to Simon Gray, who writes while he thinks (in The Smoking Diaries), whereas I have spent several hours on this sentence alone, though it is really superbly well-crafted, ye must admit. I suppose I’d be a little disappointed if Simon did revisions although I believe he does because every now and again he alerts you to the fact he’s going to leave something there as it is and if he wrote everything down that came to him in an instant, he wouldn’t be saying stuff like that.

I particularly enjoyed reading his recollections of Robert Lowell, who he once had a sardonic, drunken dinner with. Simon was mates with Ian Hamilton who I recall wrote two books that I read and adored called Searching for JD Salinger and another about the literary heavyweights of the 20s working in Hollywood. He was also Lowell’s biographer and one memorable night long ago Lowell was dropped off in Soho by a middle-aged mistress mute long after Hamilton and Gray had already eaten. Lowell then proceeded to order copious oysters which he didn’t so much as touch and mucho wine when there were already two bottles half drunk on the table. Just disgraceful.



Gray is appalled and disgusted yet impressed to see Lowell writing a cheque as he gets up to leave. Lowell hands Hamilton the check then is whisked away by his drab mistress. Hamilton shows Gray a cheque made out to the tune of six million dollars.

What amuses me most about this recollection is that in The Armies of the Night, Norman Mailer describes Lowell as a serene angel of unfathomable depth, whose intelligence and grace makes Mailer feel furiously inadequate. I don’t think Lowell was any tamer I just think that Mailer was quite severely mad. The portrait of Lowell was so touching in Mailer’s book that I bought a collection of poems in Daylesford over the Queen’s Birthday and it was with Lowell’s poems where I truly believed that I began to understand how to read poetry. Why it’s simple, I thought, you read it like prose. How I was blissfully enlightened by such a rudimentary concept befuddled me.

Gray quotes a Lowell poem in ‘The Smoking Diaries’ as the only one he has really admired called ‘Home After Nine Months Away’, so I looked it up in the collection I have (Selected Poems) and I all I found was 'Home After Three Months Away'. Gray either has it wrong or there’s another poem out there. Personally I could care less. I read the thing when I was brutally hungover on Saturday and it did not register in the slightest way whatsoever with my thick skull and I became rather pissed off you know. Began hating myself. I won’t reach for it now, but honestly it felt like everything I had worked hard for just walked out of my life for good like a wife and six kids in a trailer park that deserves a lot better than this. I'm pretty sure I'm delusional.

OUT OF OFFICE MESSAGE REPLY

Sorry,

Olivia has left to buy a toaster.

She leaves you this exciting message

it's gawddamn great

!!!

I Love Everything

(Jane Badler and Sir at Golden Plains)

'I Love Everything' is a song by Jane Badler and Sir. Not the theme of this entry because that would be untrue. I did love Golden Plains rock festival, but I'm not about to discuss this with you now.

Sidney Lumet’s ‘Before the Devil Knows Your Dead’ conveys how much it would suck to have a loved one murdered by accident. It sucks so bad you kind of wish you were the one dead, but you don’t because you’re a deadbeat.

The movie is acted with real balls by Philip Seymour Hoffmann and Ethan Hawke. If I was an actor I would not do the film but these guys are ballsy. They are successfully unenjoyable as characters throughout. Ethan has one great scene, that’s not enough and it never is, also it was the final scene.

I walked down to the toilet after the show and there was this mean-looking Samoan at the mirror picking something out of his teeth. My feeling was that he was going to pull a gun out and shoot me with it.

If there’s one positive to come out of this movie it’s that US movies take murder too flippantly and finally here’s a gruelling picture that shakes you to your core with death. Still I thought I would be murdered afterwards. I cannot recommend this movie highly enough.

We rode our bikes back home and there were cop cars parked at the Rainbow Hotel. This was right around the time that Spencer P. Jones was meant to take the stage.

I watched Beaches the night before last. Five girls who rock harder than any band full-stop. Beaches are indie rock. Poppy with classy, ass-shaking riff-mongering. The fact that they are my new favourite band is quite irrelevant. I really don’t buy anyone’s opinion of them not being their favourite band so don’t discuss it with me. I don’t even want to talk about it if they are. I don’t even find this discussion worthy of pursuing any longer, but I'll see you at their next show.

More GP Photos...

De Campee, Andrew and Gemma

Alex always grimaces when I'm within three feet of him

Jesse Shepherd in the art of the unwind











There’s only a few other things I would like to say at this point and one of them is that my outfits lately have been quite remarkable.

I am off to lay on the floor and listen to the Grateful Dead and read Thomas Berger’s ‘Reinhart in Love’. Read this book before you die.

Oh yeah I saw the ‘Russian Ark’ the other night. My response could be summed up in a text message I sent directly afterwards. ‘What a bag of Russian shit. Best part about were the end credits and even they were tedious.’ That may not be the actual text msg because I deleted my sent items the other night and my girlfriend deleted the msg because apparently, ‘it was of no significance.’

Ween, Forum

Cigarette packets and fortune cookies sat atop their amps. Like Bananas and Blow it was a typical Ween incongruity that made perfect sense. Deaner riffed a lot and made faces like he’s pounding his girlfriend unhappily. The intensity with which he flailed his guitar, we too felt on the receiving end of those copulant thrusts, his expression contorting within an inch of a Nixon mask, sweat gleaming through a wash of coloured lights, droplets raining down from his not-insignificant nose and chin. It was a bit heavy in there. Not up his nostril, but inside the Forum

Exactly where I’m at was a corking fuse to light up with. HIV/AIDS was a dance celebration, a very grim one. Voodoo Lady’s guitar solo was so dredged in classic sounds it warped back to the 60s and gave birth to a psychedelic chicken that laid an egg that hatched Lobby Lloyd! Jokey tunes enacted by a louche Gene doing the sleaze lounge get-up ala the Ramada Inn at noon on a weekday were particularly unpleasant — Piss up a rope being a high water mark, no pun intended. Gene then lit a ciggie, picked something gross off his face (seriously what was that?) and threw it down on the ground with impunity. From there, the band lobbied a sax-less, yet sexy Your Party. Good times.

"See ol' Jimmy Wilson dance, give that boy a dime and you don't stand a chance, oh see ol' Jimmy Wilson dance," Ween sang during Waving my Dick in the Wind and my girlfriend yelled out that it reminded her of Charles Portis' Dog of the South. I looked at her strange. "You're in that hotel foyer", she said. “And you my cuteness are on Planet Jupiter”.

The Stallion was good, to which an encyclopaedic fan nearby noted pedantically over the din, “ITS PART 5, THE FINALE IN THE STALLION SERIES!!”

Someone said the ex-Blood, Sweat and Tears keyboardist was the ex-keyboardist from Earth, Wind and Fire, but I thought those dudes were all brothers and this dude was white — anyway he played a fantastic synthesiser solo at the tail end of Zoloft, or at least that was what my notes said, but those things were unbelievable, not unbelievable like wow, but unbelievable like they should not be trusted.

The sounds and the smoke machine made everybody light up doobs despite the no smoking policy; this swarthy dude beside me was toking crazily. The guy to the other side of him asked him for a drag, and Richard Smoker started whingeing about how if he gave him some then he would have to give some to everybody and then he wouldn’t have any left and then the guy told him he was going to blackmail him and he would probably end up in prison new best mates with a seven footer named Bubba.

In Praise of Royalchord’s Car

They’re more fun than an action park full of Frisbee and a laughter and a scream and will be missed even though we hardly ever saw them (Berlin and Belgium bound and that’s indefinite). They popped over at the tail end of an impromptu BBQ we had last Saturday cause they operate on their own clock and are anything but predictable. Bless ‘em. Tammy busts out a horselaugh if you do something funny and Eliza is game for living a life that’s full of surprises. I’d listen to their music if only I had it on my person (I actually had this thought while at work. I’m at home now and can easily access their LP Nights on the Town from the next room, so all's okay).

We got in their car and they took us to a rooftop show in Carlton attended by a exquisitely bored cross-section of Melbourne’s art-damaged denizens, who Panel of Judges are kind of like the flagship of, though it must be said, Panel are legends and their performance here was one of the best I have ever seen probably up there with the best of The Clean and I don’t think it was because of the excellent views of the city and housing estates from Rathdowne Street though they were something else too.

Getting back to what I was talking about, it wasn’t an extensive trip in the Royalchord car, no longer than five minutes duration, but those five were five good ones. The girl’s have great taste in music, so of course the jams were pumping. The second we got in we were treated to ‘Fiesta’, that partystarter off the sweet new Ween album*. Last year at a party in a St Kilda backyard (punctuated by a sizzling Jon Langford performance) we caught a lift with them back to town and it was a real magical moment (photo taken by Campee in the backyard prior to the lift). A cross between Pulp Fiction, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, American Graffiti, Easy Rider and Corvette Summer it was. Can’t remember what we were listening to at the time but whatever it was we toasted it with a champagne. If this were the 70s, Royalchord would be driving a van with carpeted interior and there would be no funny business just oodles and oodles of good vibrations. They’re the Frank Whaley of motor-hospitality in this town, and now they’re gone. When the night ended De Campee hugged Tammy so enthusiastically her two feet left the ground!

*Ween kicked a lot of ass and produced much flavour last night at the Forum

Spanking the Monkey

Done some good writing today. Man you're only as good as what you write next. That's a pretty tough way to live. I feel like Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy. Looking between the radiator pipes for a sandwich.

Oscars last night

Jon Stewart made me laugh as much as Ellen what’s-her-name did, so that was good. Best picture, whatever, the Coen Bros are such smarmy dills. I wanted to poke the little brother hard in the gums (and I’m non-violent) because he did the same gag twice. The taller brother I found to be quite handsome. The little brother showed a lot of gum when he opened his mouth (probably a good idea he didn’t speak).

Daniel-Day Lewis would come away a winner regardless. He kissed george Clooney on the way to the podium that will count against him. Every time they mentioned best actor I get disgusted because I missed seeing Viggo in that Russian mob movie.

I love Laura Linney almost as much as my sister. They are pretty much the same person (in so much as my brother is Mark Ruffalo, except my sis watch too much tv). Ellen Page = barf.

Jen Garner looks better to my eyes everyday, yet has she inflated her lips several pounds? Nicole’s surgeon meanwhile is turning her into a winter weasel.

Javier Bardem looked like he came straight from a bar fight. Actors today so physical. Remember when it was just Russell crowe and David Hyde-Pierce? As Fred willard’s Mike LaFontaine might spout: wha happened? Some neat actors in supporting men’s category. Hal Holbrook from Creepshow. Tilda’s acceptance speech bugged me for some reason. I think I need to watch The Deep End again just to cleanse myself of what I saw her do last night.

Amy Adams (pictured) sang and looked pretty. De Campo and I then talk about eating breakfast next to her at Cheebos on Sunset Boulevard back in 2007. Man, those were different times.

Deakins got two nods for cinematography but no dice. Never forget Dave Kehr saying that Deakins probably knows more about light than anyone else on the planet. Interesting!

Watching Atonement collect nominations like costume design made me want to puke. The whole look of the thing is execrable.

I swear there were more animation movies from this year than three. Ratotuille looks good, although I’m plenty sick of the way middle-age actors whinge like babies in these movies; their voices are excruciatingly painful! Peter & the wolf looks good. I once re-enacted that story for one of my classes in high school. Special voices for the animals (Stanislavski-influenced) leaving a positive impression.

What’s Sound Editing? That actually makes no sense. Do they mean sound dubbing? Bourne Ultimatum won it, well deserved, the movie's technically brilliant, anyone who argues over that is an idiot. Same goes for Transformers. God I would never see that crap. Anyone who says otherwise should be taken out and eradicated.

Owen Wilson didn’t make any jokes nor did he attempt any, admirable. Seth Rogen and his sleazy fat friend have become so greatly insufferable. It’s sad downfall time for those boys and I dare say it is their own bloody fault. Cormac McCArthy gave the Coen brothers a standing ovation because his books stand to make a million from all the publicity.

Mcguane

Thomas Mcguane’s Panama tells the story of Chet Pomeroy, a rock star burned out in the Florida Keys. He’s full of so much cocaine he can’t remember his dog’s name (it’s Dierdre) or the fact he married Catherine in Panama ten years ago. He still gets loaded and the addled moments in this story are like crossing a busy street blindfolded.

Panama is a darker read the second time through much like Miss Lonelyhearts, another book I found simply hilarious the first time. Or maybe the humour diminishes the second time and you are left with a sadness. Panama is genuinely sad though. Goofy Chet doesn’t want to face up to the fact his Dad is alive; he tells people he perished in the Boston fire. The final scene between father and son will tear your heart into little pieces. Miss Lonelyhearts on the other hand, has a sardonic streak running through it like a tremor in that Kevin bacon movie.

I couldn’t sleep Sunday night, so at 4am I picked up Panama and didn’t go to sleep until I finished it. Then I had a dream about Thomas McGuane. This is notable for the fact it don’t happen too often to people I don’t know too well. This makes McGuane the second artistic fixation to walk into my dreams (Malkmus being the first; the only difference is Malk and I are now good friends. Just kidding…or am I?).

I’ve been obsessing a lot about McGuane lately. Follow this link to read a pretty good piece. Ordered an expensive biography about him on the weekend. I listened to a radio show he gave in 1985 and I positively identified his answers as being identical to the ones I would have given to the questions even though he was 45 at the time with several books behind him, a family, a ranch in Montana and on a successful book tour of New York, a place I’ve never been.

In the dream we are on a mountain. McGuane gives a talk and then disappears. I begin scrambling around the premises trying to find him. I bump into someone who looks like him only much younger. ‘Hey, you’re that guy!’
‘No I am his son. I star in his movies.’ (McGuane made a couple of obscure films in the 70s in which he romanced the hell out of his co-stars, Elizabeth Ashley and Margot Kidder. Ashley wrote about it in a tell-all book that I have at home). In my dream I have seven copies of the aforementioned biography in my backpack for him to sign all in a variety of formats with different dust-jackets.

I finally find McGuane and say ‘I would have kicked myself if I didn’t take you aside and tell you how much you mean to me’ and he said something like ‘c’mon let’s go powwow’. ‘Your accent is wild,’ he says and I told him it’s Melbourne via Portland and then I looked down and saw that his writing hand was a stump and his wife walked up and her mouth was all deformed and I couldn’t understand her and I got really upset.

If anyone is capable of analysing this dream I would appreciate your insight.

Explosive combo

Seeing sonic youth tonight play daydream nation in its entirety. I’m going to all you can eat Indian beforehand

She crazy

A woman came up to me on Glenferrie Road around lunchtime and yelled: "They thievin' lie when they get caught up with...they do!"

Simply an Enormous

- January 23

To the Victorian countryside in a blue Toyota on loan from the odious Avis rental car company. They are jerks and screw you with hidden costs. Bollicking bastards. Not only that the CD in the car doesn’t pump out enough bass. On the plus side, we arrive at 4.59pm - one minute before they close.

We reach Guildford and the Divine Miss Lovely’s 40th birthday party at 8pm, six hours after party started. That’s okay there’s still nine hours of fun to go. Miranda looks exciting and muscular and she is speechless throughout.

The party is a bloody ripper. The microphone needs to put a restraining order on me.
At one point, G Roy has the weight of the world on his shoulders and his ankle gives out.

Wake up next morning covered in bites. After a splendid bbq breakfast, supplemented by a Martin Amis-like routine from G Roy involving his feet (two English brothers: one is an effete, intellectual; the other an uncultured thug) we’re feeling fine like it’s 1989. A group of us bids farewell to our darling hosts to take a dip in nearby Vaughn Springs, only to be forced out when a leech grabs KB and refuses to let go. Everybody shrieks out, except G Roy who stays in the murky drink until he is attacked; it takes awhile perhaps due to his toxicity levels, sadly the suction occurs out of reach on his backside, and its not until courageous daughter Sadie joins him in the muck, destroying the leech and dragging Dad out of infested Spring water to safety.

The entrepreneurial Hugh sees moneymaking potential in this and suggests we make a sea-devil out of G Roy and charge admission, using Vaughn Springs as a pilot before taking the show to Europe.

It makes sense.

Following this, a three-car caravan reconvenes for jugs at Guildford Pub in their great, big beer garden with sizable thrones to match. Fond memories of our time there being recalled just now.

Next stop Book Heaven resulting in the procurement of a veritable phalange of hot titles. Waugh, Portis, Nabokov, Paris Review from ’63 (cranky interviews with Waugh and perelman inside), De Campee snares an old German camera that sounds abominable when it clicks. This trip took place so long ago I have already finished Norwood, Charles Portis’ debut from ’66, though that’s not saying much, you can get through it in a couple of days. It is exactly the type of book I would love to write some day. The comedy hits that awkward pitch that I find endearing without ever drawing attention to itself or announcing its attentions: the literary deadpan. Brilliant.

We stay at Woodend and drink a paddle of beer at Holgate brewery, an ingenious way to consume seven shots of dark beer, prior to gorging on three courses.

Sanatorium Lake the next day for an up-close visit with a falcon and over to Dayleford’s Lake House for a decadent lunch during kookaburra feeding time. The mains are $38 and to be honest they aren’t that good.

Oops, I almost forgot our visit to Mt Macedon winery. Go there now, it’s lovely. Drink a bottle of their blush and eat cheese on the porch.

In Daylesford we find Double Nut Chalet, a marvel of splendid accommodation, look it up, it is a dream.

We drive home the next day.

Now I took down something I posted drunk Friday night at 3am because I wanted to make a few amendments to it and lift my work up to a standard of professionalism I deem acceptable. Instead of the German Shepherd taking a most extraordinary shit it is now simply an enormous crap. Revised entry reads thus: "I got off the tram the other day not feeling my best and on the footpath there was a German Shepherd taking an enormous crap and its owner, this bald prick in a pink shirt, forearm covered in tatts, snarled at me and then looked down at his dog, whose mouth he had tied up in his lead and shouted c’mon, dragging the dog away and leaving the pile in the middle of the footpath; meanwhile today I was in a cab driving by a parked car and there was a dude who opened the door and tossed two banana peels out on the street.”

I also wanted to add that all people are stupid and lazy and we need to collectively join together to remove all the scum off the streets.

Fetching combo

“Your lawyer is wearing sneakers,” said the last of the prisoners.

It was De Grazia. He was dressed in a corduroy jacket of moss green, pants of compatible lemon, a red shirt and a white collar. De Grazia’s eye for color had even worked an art for he wearing spotless white sneakers. In some triumph of the sartorial, they were suitable.

— Norman Mailer, The Armies of the Night

The Darjeeling Limited

It’s a good movie that I think is just great. It’s very charming and the boy’s faces are nice to look at. They feel sad, their Dad died, they haven’t talked for several long times, they see each other in India and it is colourful. Oldest boy Francis bumped his head in a motorbike accident, has his head all bandaged up. Actors 2 and 3 very good also: one a short story writer in greasy moustache and the tall one who wears his Dad’s vintage shades and learns that shaving while train is in motion is probably not a good idea, but he didn’t make any mistakes so who’s to know what these actors are thinking all the time?!! Francis’ brothers don’t like Francis telling them what to do. It’s funny when Francis orders cookies for tall brother and tall brother says I don’t like it when you order for me and after looking at the menu ends up ordering cookies anyways. They drink too much cough syrup, misplace a cobra, pray and lose their shoes

THE END

Lilliputian Queens

I love my Liliput 2CD so much. My fav song of theirs (it changes almost daily) is Ring-A-Ding-Dong. I heard it on my lunchbreak and punched the air, kicked up my feet and nearly pulled a muscle. There’s a swarm of sound going on in this tune but the parts never seem to interfere with each other. The sweetest moment is that funky little descending piano bit. I was hoping to link to one of their shows from Zurich, but the only clip I found on youtube was this odd one of a girl sitting at her computer picking her nose to the beat of one of their songs.

Fun fact: They were once called Kleenex until the toilet paper company said no— incidentally, Kleenex is the brand of toilet paper the Cannanes use and it’s one that has inspired many of their minions to use also, after one of the many pilgrimages up to the Wipplegong estate. Decampo uses it, practically relishing the ribbed texture, but doesn’t approve of what Kleenex does to the environment — a sad, final note to an otherwise lovely story.

Occasionally something brilliant will pop into my head – this was not one of those occasions

In a cab coming back from Brighton today, quite taken with the leafy, sun-dappled serenity of the surroundings, I quickly fetched a pen and pad from my backpack and wrote down the following: “your face belongs beside one of the more heinous masterworks of men…”

I Had a New York Boyfriend

Not me, but Julie Delphy, or at least she should have after her appalling display last night in Two Days in Paris. Adam Goldberg should have dumped her derriere in the Siene (I actually thought he might do this, why he didn’t we’ll never know, but I guess she is French, bohemian and the film's scriptwriter)

There was a lot of resistance going into this movie in the sense that I flatly had no desire to see it. But my girlfriend, plying me with local beer and shoestring French fries at Collins Quarter, persevered convincingly. Must say I’m a fan of Adam Goldberg, Delphy I find interesting, but still I’ve seen the lovely Linklater movies, so why would I bother with this?

I psyched myself up by using this movie as Julie and Adam’s chance to light up the screen and win me over as people, if they didn’t then they would not only come to be known as overrated actors but failures as human beings. So either way I would come away enlightened. Glad to report they succeeded. Still I’m not exactly sure what it is I like about Goldberg, okay I have a slight crush on him. But all those tattoos! They really run foul of his character.

Julie, I know would make a terrible Parisian girlfriend, she should have come from St Louie. However, she’s a seeker of truth in art and I admire that. The first part of the movie she wears Woody Allen’s glasses so there’s that too.

Feelings about fruit

I fucking love a good pear.