Tonight I'll sort of move between the study and the loungeroom in an old cardigan with a glass of whisky in my hand , recalling past triumphs and remembering those who put their trust in me before I stomped on their dreams and brutally dashed their hopes, and then I will sit down to eat a Not Dog and watch the Amazing Race it starts at 9.30pm on Channel Eight don't miss it.

To walk in a leisurely fashion

My new desk allows for an open dictionary, encouraging me to seek out definitions for words such as trundling and the like.

De Campo has turned me onto mushrooms – goddamn I swear I wouldn’t submit, then they turned up in my soup rather unexpectedly. I’ve yet to become The Soft Boys Vegetable Man, but I am appreciating vegetables more everyday. I no longer think they are poor people food.

Mistress Bel did not turn me onto Christopher Isherwood don’t believe her if she tells you she has, it was an good-looking older man who did.

I took an early lunch and raided the work fridge for butter eventually finding some on the shelf inside a plastic bag behind some rotted eggplant. I dashed to the bench and spread it on my toast as fast as I could but then I couldn’t remember how this person had tied the bag up in the first place and was forced to come clean in a office email. I received one reply and it was from my boss who had the temerity to ask why I needed the butter in the first place, before adding, actually on second thought…HAHAHA

Mambo Girl, (1957 Hong Kong)

She Mambo, he Mambo, she crazy, she make you wild, make everybody Mambo too, Daddy see Mambo girl sing, he see her dance, he see her crazy, he see genius in her front foot, magic in her face, but Daddy can’t dance, nor can Mommy, Mambo girl is the daughter of a toilet attendant in Hong Kong, mambo repeat x infinity

Sentences

Email Harpers at 11.17am: Please tell wyatt the orange black scrotum in Olt gained me as a reader
Email from Harpers 12.12pm: I will tell him.
Email from Harpers 12.26pm: I will tell him indeed.

Read it it's good

Warrior in Smith Street Safeway

Best supermarket Sunday rush-hour track ever: The Soft Boys’ ‘I Wanna Destroy You’. My friend Suzy would probably pick ‘Where are the Prawns?’, while Toby, her husband, is a ‘Black Snake Diamond Rock’ guy all the way. See Soft Boys Underwater Moonlight for more examples. Check out Toby's new blog here.

So, what else been happening in the land of Moritzio?
Well, I heartily recommended the deep-fried flounder I had from Djakarta on Bridge Road in Richmond Friday night to most anyone I came in contact with. I was whetting Marc and Brad’s appetite at Sadie’s Party on Saturday, but maybe they were just wet. After all, it had been raining outside and they had just arrived and then to get bombarded by some guy raving about a flounder. Geeze. Marc and Brad looked as if they had come straight off the set of this video.

Later we were discussing the new movie Iron Man and Mia asked if I was going to blog about it. I said probably not, well (brightening up) maybe, if I can think of something interesting to say about it, then I rocketed into a totally killer reading of Gwyneth and RD Jr.’s dynamite chemistry and how it was likely to have been the explosion that detonated her marriage to Chris Martin (doing the wild thing off-set, I reckoned).

Actually I didn’t have a whole lot to say to people on Saturday night. It was an Egyptian-themed party and I could have discussed Tutankhamen I now realise. Miranda said do you remember telling me about the first time you saw your Dad naked? I said ‘yes, I happened upon him urinating in a forested glade while grey digger squirrel hunting, did I mention I made excellent pancakes today?’ The following day I stayed in bed until 2pm finishing Glamorama, before going to the supermarket. I am just accomplishing so little on the weekends in the way of creative enterprise. I think I need to have a baby.

Our Man in Portland

“I went to the Barack Obama rally on the Waterfront yesterday. 75,000 Portlanders showed up (go to KGW.com for pictures). The Decembrists opened up for him. I missed them on the account that I was in line for 3 hours. The line started 25 blocks away from the event (you thought the Cat Power line was long¹). I based all my political votes for the Senate primary based on the music establishments picks. I voted for Steve Novick (he is 4'9 and has a hook for a right hand. I am not kidding) based on the fact that he was vetted and endorsed by Colin Meloy, Britt Daniel and Corin Tucker. Plus on his local ad², it shows him popping a beer cap off of a bottle with his hook.”

— H

¹ Last year, H, De Campo and I were denied entry to a free Cat Power show in an industrial warehouse by the river. We left it too late. The line was long.

² The Ad is here

Boyle & Doyle

Two writers, one’s named Boyle, the other's named Doyle, together they are Boyle and Doyle.

Recent works of Fiction in The New Yorker that when read together, offer interesting counterpoints to the Deadbeat/Schlubby Dad Lit genre.

Boyle’s Dad, 26, after a night drinking margaritas with his ex-band mate, calls up work and tells his boss, Radko, his baby’s dead and then goes out for breakfast and then to the movies.

Doyle’s Dad is a 48 year-old Dubliner with several kids. The youngest is 18 and soon to leave home. You get the sense that the Dad is gonna miss the kid even though he doesn’t get the kid. They watch a movie about a womanizing dwarf and the Dad is like huh?? Dad’s local pub is two k’s from the local he grew up in. Y’see, if nothing else, Dad likes his comfort zones and he likes to get tipsy. Dad goes to Spain with his mates, also 48, gets hammered, gets in a bullring, then goes back to the rental in Valencia and pukes in the pool. Fucking genius.

The stories were so good they made me want to have kids just so I could totally get into the characters’ heads. After that of course I would have to give the kids back. It’s a really good idea. There should be somewhere you can call before you are allowed to read these stories, you know giving childless guys the opportunity to look after babies so they can get the maximum benefit from this stuff.

“I’m a stud muffin,” I shrug. “Take a bite.”

I’m heavy into Bret Easton Ellis’ Glamorama, the Zoolander of literature, although literature might be too strong a word for what it is. Make no mistake Ellis is an amazing writer and I find his ridiculous tale of Victor Anderson, similar to, yet somehow more human than Amis’ Money, a book I was unable to finish. He doesn’t namecheck everybody, but he does namecheck Evan Dando.

Ben Stiller ripped this book off so bad. Thinking I was all insightful, I just read this on wikipedia: “Ellis has stated that he is aware of the similarities, and went on to say that he considered and attempted to take legal action."

I picked up more reading time since I (flew over the top of my handlebars and) wrecked my bike and started taking the tram again. I read Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One, which disappointed me.

Kicking_K’s cover story in Plan B this month on disco label Italians-Do-it-Better is my favourite piece of writing in the magazine’s history. I actually felt cool reading it. How Victor Anderson is that? I don’t own any of the label’s stuff, but I think I will ask for the three-vinyl After Dark comp for my birthday. Two of the bands, Glass Candy and the Chromatics, are from Portland. Gee Portland’s changed a lot since Big Daddy Meatstraw were running things (or since I left town).

How cool are those popsicle maracas Jeff Koons designed for Google?

Loved '400 Blows' last night. Got really sad when it ended. Was really enjoying myself in the company of Antoine Doinel.
I went home and read essays on Truffaut and reread the New Yorker ‘New Wave at Fifty’ article from a few weeks back. Critics were never as exuberant in their writing about Truffaut as he was with his movies. I'm mainly referring to Pauline Kael and David Thomson. Godard of course came to despise Truffaut's "style" of entertainment.

Guy at work just casually mentioned how he cried watching the 'Bucket List'. He said he wants to see it again, but only on DVD because he doesn’t want to go through that again’(It’s prompted me to put a photo of Godard and Jean Seberg on the wall of my new workplace, thus establishing where my cinematic allegiances lie).

My trophy for winning the first annual New St Table Tennis Championship on Saturday is proudly displayed on top of the TV set. It’s a garden gnome holding a spade that looks more like a paddle after Tobe and Suze painted it red. Since it was too wet for a barbie, Suzie made lasagne and I put so much of it away. It was really yummy. But my tummy, oh my. I won the championship with a bellyache 7-0 over Joshtown.

Been listening to The Cannanes live at Applecore bootleg I scored off Ricky. It’s a score and a half. I feel like I’m in Tutankhamen’s Tomb for the first time. The Cannanes live at Brunswick Hotel was something I participated in after the TT tourney on Saturday, down the road from tobe and suze, hitting tambourine during the encore though my timing was off, everyone seemed to love it, except James and Gavin who glared and counted every mistake (five apparently). I even stopped mid-song to part my hair. We followed this with a legendary episode of the Name Game, which lasted until 4am. They should try and make a documentary about that!

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