fridaysixpm

2009-04-21T13:55:00.003+10:00

The Hacienda Must Be Built

Ever since I went to Manchester I've been meaning to search out this quote. I read it at an exhibition there, on the Hacienda nightclub. Tangentially, the quote is over 140 characters: nice to see there's still a place for blogging.

And you, forgotten, your memories ravaged by all the consternations of two hemispheres, stranded in the Red Cellars of Pali-Kao, without music and without geography, no longer setting out for the hacienda where the roots think of the child and where the wine is finished off with fables from an old almanac. That’s all over. You’ll never see the hacienda. It doesn’t exist.

The hacienda must be built.

All cities are geological. You can’t take three steps without encountering ghosts bearing all the prestige of their legends. We move within a closed landscape whose landmarks constantly draw us toward the past. Certain shifting angles, certain receding perspectives, allow us to glimpse original conceptions of space, but this vision remains fragmentary. It must be sought in the magical locales of fairy tales and surrealist writings: castles, endless walls, little forgotten bars, mammoth caverns, casino mirrors.

-- IVAN CHTCHEGLOV, Formulary for a New Urbanism

2009-02-17T10:38:00.002+11:00

Living in the 70s

It was so hard to get going this morning that I decided to pretend I'd been thrown back in time into the 1970s, a la the TV show Life on Mars. It made everything seem more fun! I looked around in wonder at the strange fashions and methods of transportation while I confronted backwards ideas.

The best thing about this shift in perspective is the soundtrack. Recently I've been trapped into a Coldplay-listening loop - what Noel Coward would call the thrill of cheap music - as I've totally dismantled my fifth chapter. Now I'm listening to Crosby, Stills & Nash, and I feel the optimistic power of rebuilding descending upon me. I have my ship, and all her flags are flying.

2009-02-05T13:53:00.002+11:00

Not Drowning, Twittering

Don't worry I haven't abandoned this site. I'm just writing quite a bit at the moment and the thought of putting together something as long as a PARAGRAPH when I don't have to is utterly daunting. My random, drisky-esque thoughts have lately been escaping at www.twitter.com/fridaysixpm. I like the snippety format. Sample entry from today: "Just used the word adumbrated. T-shirt inspiration obviously working". You might like to visit - I promise I'll approve you.

2008-12-16T15:20:00.000+11:00

Back Online

Here I am! Just reconfigured stuff.

2008-11-18T14:18:00.003+11:00

Vale Miriam Makeba

I was 11 years old and writing an assignment on "prejudice" for Year 7 English. This song was hammerblow and textbook and completely perfect.

Last year I saw Miriam Makeba in a tent on the banks of the Yarra. She was amazing.

2008-11-18T13:34:00.002+11:00

Deeeee-uhrrrrr DRISKY!

Drisky is so fresh and so clean.

Dear Drisky,
I read an eight page liftout on Melbourne's City of Literature status in The Age yesterday. At least, it called itself an eight page liftout but it had one full page illustration and two full page ads; of the remaining five pages, one reprinted material publicly available online. Can I get half my money back?
Yours, Desperately Seeking Value for Money

This is a gr8 letter, DSVM: I too h8 being ripped off by false 8ness. It makes me so ir8!!!! I would head str8 for the top on this one and demand 4 pages of content addressed to your personal interests.

We could call this kind of writing "the internet".

And hey! Illustr8tions are beautiful! That page is OK. And ads make the world go around! I've changed my mind completely. You're a whinger, DSVM. I can't rel8: you need to medit8, maybe hibern8, and approach the paper with a clean sl8. If an 8 page liftout falls over in a forest, no one minds too much. Drisky.

2008-11-13T11:59:00.002+11:00

Welcome to the Driskiverse!

It's been a while. Drisky, winsome sprite that she is, has been in abeyance during most of the long, hard slog of thesis-writing. BUT now that Beyonce has come clean about her alter-ego, Sasha Fierce, AND now that my thesis needs a life-saving injection of personality, it's time for Drisky to emerge! But who is Drisky? I hear you all cry. Let me tell you a little story....

Drisky is madcap and opinionated!
Drisky talks about herself in the third person!
Drisky uses exclamation marks, sometimes in multiples!!!
Drisky swears, doodles and is always late!
There is not a critical bone in Drisky's body!
Beige, brown and neutrals are anathema to Drisky!
Drisky is down with hip hop and slang!

YEAH baby.

2008-11-10T11:20:00.002+11:00

Save the world, read a novel

As a non-non-fiction reader, I have two main sources of knowledge about the world: novels and crossword puzzles. Thanks to crossword puzzles, I am au fait with ibex and Ur and various slang terms for sailors. Thanks to Salman Rushdie, I know that Indira Gandhi had a face that was half white and half green.

We all know that crosswords make you smart, but the benefits of learning all your history from novels have been disputed. In Australia, the last couple of years have seen a regular brouhaha over the relative merits of historians and novelists: who does a better job of communicating the truth of the past?

Now the the ante has been upped by a study from Manchester University and the London School of Economics claiming that novels are more successful than academic papers at explaining the world’s problems. The study praised novels like The Kite Runner and this year’s Booker winner, The White Tiger.

Novels should be required reading because fiction “does not compromise on complexity, politics or readability in the way that academic literature sometimes does,” said Dr Dennis Rodgers from Manchester University’s Brooks World Poverty Institute. He said: “Despite the regular flow of academic studies, expert reports, and policy position papers, it is arguably novelists who do as good a job – if not a better one – of representing and communicating the realities of international development.

The naysayer quoted in that article, Tom Clougherty of the Adam Smith Institute, says there’s a problem with novels: “Fiction works by appealing to people’s emotions, not their intellect or rationality.”

Quite the kettle of fish, eh. I think everything said in those quotes is true and also not true: novels engage emotions, but they can also be intellectually stimulating and ‘rational’ (what does that mean in this context, anyway?). Some literature is complex but lots isn’t (The Kite Runner’s melodramatic climax is pretty black and white), certainly compared to some academic research.

What do people think of this bold claim? Is it tenable? Is it helpful for developing nations (The White Tiger hasn’t gone over well in India), and does literature in turn benefit from being treated as a series of development studies textbooks? Or is this the validation of the real-world power of novels that I’ve been waiting for?

2008-09-10T16:25:00.002+10:00

Guest Post: Factoid Debunked

My dad Geoff, who sometimes comments under the name "anonymous", has filed this guest post in response to a thread over at lexicon harlot.

Incontrovertible proof that dogs have hairy limbpits. The first photo is of Maeve the Dog and the second is Deirdre of the Sorrows, two separate and distinct dogs forming a wide population spread for statistical analysis. And while modesty forbade me photographing their nether limbs you can take my word that they are hairy too.

But I am prepared to concede that they may be unusual. They seem to have hair (or at least soft, fluffy stuff) in places where other dogs have, for example, brains.

2008-08-22T10:58:00.002+10:00

I live in a City of Literature

Melbourne has been officially named the second UNESCO City of Literature, after Edinburgh. I am not sure what this will mean apart from a funding boost from the state governmen for the state library....but hopefully, it will mean good things!

2008-08-11T16:31:00.003+10:00

It Begins: Rowling's Potter Prequel Nearly Sells Out in One Day

From booktrade info/google:

A book featuring an untitled Harry Potter prequel by JK Rowling became the fastest-selling collection of short stories when its print run virtually sold out in just one day. What's Your Story? is a collection of postcard-sized short stories by 13 authors including Doris Lessing, Nick Hornby and Sebastian Faulks. But it is the 800-word prequel to the Harry Potter series that had fans rushing to the tills, with 10,000 copies reportedly sold since its release on Thursday.

The book as a whole sounds pretty great, and I'm not sure it needed to be swamped by Rowling's contributon. My burning question, though: what's a postcard-sized short story? Who fits 800 words on a postcard?

It's the beginning of the end, I fear. Potter paraphernalia produced by an author who may not be able to let go of her creation. Here's how she introduces the story:

In a tantalising introduction to the story, Ms Rowling says her tale is not so much a self-contained story as a slice of narrative "from the prequel I am NOT working on".

Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

2008-08-06T08:35:00.003+10:00

Selling Shares in Your Literary Novel

The Telegraph in the UK reports that a penniless author has sold shares in the royalties of his forthcoming novel in order to purchase time to write:

Investors can pay $2,000 (£1,000) in return for a 10 per cent share of the royalties of Tao Lin’s as-yet-unfinished second novel

This guy has a blog. It's a nice pitch. The comments underneath are amusing.

What he doesn't have is a particularly convincing financial case - author royalties are usually about 10% in a publication's first market....I'm about to do maths here....if $2000 is a 10% share he will need to make at least $20,000 in royalties to earn investors back their money (assuming books in the US cost about $20), which means selling 10,000 copies. And I think that's pretty good going. In America, a successful literary novel seels maybe 25,000 - 30,000 copies. He reckons he'll sell 13,000 copies and investors will make their money back in 32-40 months. Well, I guess we can see how it pans out for Tao Lin.

I'm not turned off by his financial speak, though I'm guessing it might backfire amongst some of the literati (that, after all, is what makes the gimmick noteworthy...)

2008-08-01T10:19:00.002+10:00

Booker Longlist Madness Begins

Two Aussies this year! No Winton or Garner, sadly, but de Kretser and Toltz both look fun.

The longlist in full is:

Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger
Gaynor Arnold, Girl in a Blue Dress
Sebastian Barry, The Secret Scripture
John Berger, From A to X
Michelle de Kretser, The Lost Dog
Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies
Linda Grant, The Clothes on Their Backs
Mohammed Hanif, A Case of Exploding Mangoes
Philip Hensher, The Northern Clemency
Joseph O’Neill, Netherland
Salman Rushdie, The Enchantress of Florence
Tom Rob Smith, Child 44
Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

I’ll be trying to read the whole 13 before the winner is announced in October, if anyone wants to join me. I've set up a google group, booker-reading. If you visit it you can request to join, I think, and then we can all read together.

2008-07-26T23:31:00.002+10:00

900 and 45 minutes

Hey, that last post I wrote yesterday or whenever on some random topic was, it turns out, my nine hundredth post! As Keanu Reeves would whisper: whoa.

Say the average post length is 100 words (generous estimate), that's 90,000 words (is my maths right?) ie a phd thesis. I also have 90,000 words of phd thesis. One of these must be redundant, surely.

45 minutes till Cadel's time trial. I was quite disillusioned to read today that Gabriel Gate films his Taste of Le Tour segments in Melbourne's Southbank. Tonight when I watched (Melburnian chef...a bit of a giveaway) Phillipe Mouchel whip up lapin with champignons, I could see Melburnians dressed in black carrying umbrellas as rain fell from a grey sky in the background. I had previously been blinded! by the cheerful tablecloths and misdirected! by the cheerful accordionist. This sleight of television has tarnished my tour experience somewhat, but I'm still hanging in there...

2008-07-24T11:56:00.002+10:00

Warming Up For the Fight

I've joined the email alerts list for the new Prime Minister's Literary Awards. A few days ago, I received a newsletter with the information that the shortlist will be announced at 2pm on the 6th of August. I'll probably try and guess the shortlist a little closer to that day, but in the meantime...

The newsletter included quotes from each of the judges of the fiction awards. Cop this one:

John Marsden (photo right) said what surprised him about the entries "was the confidence amongst our authors in writing about the world at large".

Take THAT, Miles Franklin Award, with your limiting criterion that books must "portray Australian life in any of its phases". Our writers are now CONFIDENT! and write about the WORLD! The LARGE world, no less! Them's fighting words, John Marsden - it's good to see a bit of argy-bargy happening. What we ideally need now is a riposte, thinly veiled or not, from someone associated with the Miles Franklin...

2008-07-22T09:37:00.002+10:00

Eudora Welty

The cure for feeling a bit jaded, blase and flat-out tired with reading is, it turns out, more reading. Some people talk about finding escape through a book, and I guess I know what they mean, but I prefer to think of it as entering the real world: the one with truth and passion, but not telemarketers. Now I might refine this theory to account for multiple real worlds. When I'm fatigued with the blokiness of one, or the mundane prose of another, I can plug straight into the motherlode. Which was, last night and this morning, Eudora Welty.

Alice Munro was inspired by Eudora Welty, she says. I can see it. Reading Welty's "June Recital", I registered sort of pre-shocks for Munro's stories. Its depiction of a small community's suffocating embrace of an individual, for example, resonates with Munro's "Heirs of the Living Body".

Here's Welty, describing two children who watched an elderly woman try and start a fire in the town of Morgana:

Pinning Loch tightly by the arms in front of her, Cassie could only think: we were spies too. And nobody else was surprised at anything - it was only we two. People saw things like this as they saw Mr. McLain come and go. They only hoped to place them, in their hour or their street or the name of their mother's people. Then Morgana could hold them, and at last they were this and they were that. And when ruin was predicted all along, even if people had forgotten it was on the way, even if they mightn't have missed it if it hadn't appeared, still they were never surprised when it came.

Here's the Munro moment it makes me recall:

As long as they lived most of them would remember that I had bitten Mary Agnes Oliphant's arm at Uncle Craig's funeral. Remembering that, they would remember that I was highly strung, erratic, or badly brought up, or a borderline case. But they would not put me outside. No. I would be the highly strung, erratic, badly brought up member of the family, which is a different thing altogether.

I probably haven't explained this very well. But they're both beautiful stories.

2008-07-18T10:03:00.002+10:00

The Play's The Thing

I'm hoping to put Chapter Two down for an extended nap this afternoon, and if that's going to happen I need to head (as superheroes were wont to say) To The Library! But before that, briefly....

Last night I went with the lovely lexicon harlot to see Holiday at the Malthouse. This low-key production captured with uncomfortable precision the soporific banality of us rich westerners when we're on holiday - it was inspired by footage of white tourists drinking cocktails etc after the Boxing Day Tsunami - but it was kind of affectionate as well. The two guys slouching around the wading pool in their speedos were trying, in unfailingly pleasant tones, to say something meaningful. Conversations would start with lines like "are you a drinker?" or "I've been going to confession a lot lately" but they would dribble inevitably into fatuous generalities. Bless. There were also some subtly powerful moments where you weren't sure if the characters were relating an anecdote, relating a dream, or DREAMING OUT LOUD. Trippy. Beckett-esque.

I'll leave you with my favourite two lines of dialogue from the play, which capture everything:

Person 1: My earliest memory is of dragging a stick across the front lawn.
Person 2: What kind of stick?

2008-07-17T15:30:00.005+10:00

Sylvia and Me, We Understand Each Other

I joined librarything in a fit of late night fuzzy benevolence - I paid real electronic money for a lifetime membership - and I'm so glad, because it is deeply awesome. One of their recent projects is to upload the libraries of famous dead authors. Then you can see what books they read! And, what books you own that they own! James Joyce and I have only one book in common, Crime and Punishment, and I haven't even read that properly. But Sylvia Plath and I have 16 books in common. Considering I mostly like contemporary fiction, much of which she wasn't alive to purchase, that's a pretty good score. I here reproduce all 16 books endorsed by both Beth and Sylvia:

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler
Dubliners, James Joyce
Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne
Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
Orlando, Virginia Woolf
A Passage to India, E.M. Forster
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
Sanctuary, William Faulkner
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
Wings of the Dove, Henry James

I wonder if we did the same courses at university? I'm embarrassed to admit that of that list, I've only read seven; classics I've bought but not read sound like university syllabus material to me.

I do like that she picked the trashiest Faulkner to own (I own and have read them all, ha!, so I can expose the shallowness of her shelf).

2008-07-16T16:58:00.002+10:00

Vive Le Tour (is it any wonder I'm tired)

Yesterday's rest day for the Tour de France came not a moment too soon. The whole yawn-through-the-day thing was starting, believe it or not, to have an impact on my performance at work. But it's not my fault! I'm only interested in the recipe and the last bit where someone wins. But the telecast is arranged thusly:

10:05 - repeat of yesterday's highlights - ie, the highlights I watched at 6pm.
10:30 - RECIPE!! YAY!!!
10:35 - bit with slightly annoying, abrasive commentary from Some Guy
11:00 - the good commentary starts! We all love Phil Liggett. Unfortunately, this is a boring bit of the race when everyone still has energy...I'll just stay up a little longer and see the pack stretch out a bit...a little longer...
11:45 - I've fallen asleep on the couch. I give up. I've stayed up too late and still somehow missed everything interesting (except the recipe, bien sur)

Tomorrow night will be both more tempting and more rewarding than usual as the race goes through the bit of France I stayed in two years ago - the exact little village in the middle of nowhere, Tuchan. Tonight, I might try and pretend it's another rest day. But what if Cadel needs my support? And what if it's a good recipe? I'm doomed...

2008-07-15T10:46:00.005+10:00

Temptation

If I wanted a career as a typographer I should have trained accordingly and not wasted my time on content-generation. But oh, the temptation of the road not travelled: Adobe Garamond is beautiful, see especially page six.

Sadly, I think a divinely typeset thesis would just make examiners (rightly) suspicious that I'd spent a little too long procrastinating and not long enough thinking/writing/I always forget researching is part of this too. Also, I can't afford the font.

Move on!

2008-07-14T10:45:00.006+10:00

No More Big Brother!

Channel 10 will not be renewing Big Brother next year: the franchise that seemed dated by 2003 will expire, finally, at the end of season 2008. If you're asking me why....well, I have two theories. Ironically enough, I don't think the canning has come to pass because the reality TV fad is over, but because it has become more complex - more of a freakish social experiment - and the original just looks kind of plain-vanilla. Or maybe, it's because reality TV has to have celebrities in it these days.

The end of Big Brother makes me feel all nostalgic, because in a funny sort of way it was BB that got me blogging. I just found it interesting, way back in 2002. I thought I might put up a few of the BB posts over the years as a kind of clip show, pre-empting the inevitable retrospectives 10 will throw our way.

Fridaysixpm's FIRST EVER post was on Big Brother. It didn't say much. But my ninth ever post, on June 22, 2002 offers a raw glimpse of the newness of reality TV and the innocence of me. God help me, I was only young:

My moment of greatest vulnerability was yesterday evening, when for the first time I accessed the live camera on the Big Brother website. Alone in my apartment, I could suddenly see the housemates and, more significantly, hear their live conversation. I was stunned by the impact of what felt like unmediated presence - familiar voices in an intimate setting. In this moment, Big Brother was not a cultural event that I found fascinating, but a source of relationship and comfort. I've been reliably informed that this makes me a Sad Freak. Certainly, it strips me of any delusions of superiority vis a vis other Big Brother fans -- we're all lapping up the illusion of friendship offered by the show.

Superiority soon crept right back into my analysis, as did a kind of cheesy glee that replaced the seriousness of my media analysis. A highlight was this guest post from Lyn: "Jo, It's Time to Go", on June 12, 2003. I have no idea what I was banging on about in the intro - some wombat called Warren?:

It's time to go . . . Jo

I think everyone agrees that Warren has done a dismal job of being a Big Brother secret agent. All he ever seems to sniff out is new Optus deals and handsets. I'd feel ripped off, but then what did I expect from a wombat? Lyn would be a much better secret agent, as this sizzling critique establishes.

Ah, Big Brother. Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in. This week, the nominations comprise the princess (Jo), the court jester (Dan), and the most popular housemate of all time (Reggie). Does anyone seriously think Reggie will get evicted? No? Good. Let's move on to the real substance - reasons why Jo is going to go down.

1. The Sydney Morning Herald says so.

2. Jo and pink boots.
"She leaves her pink boots all over the place. It's a tripping hazard, and it's confusing and annoying." Dan's excellent reason for nominating Jo this week.

3. Jo and mirror obsession.
"Every time I talk to her I feel like she's looking in the mirror." Reggie's excellent reason for nominating Jo a few weeks ago.

4. Jo on world affairs.
"I hope Australia's not at war still", mused Jo, during week 5 of Big Brother. A laudable sentiment, even if it was a bit of an awkward sentence. The problem, as the Big Brother website pointed out, was that Baghdad fell about two weeks before everyone went into the house. Rating: 2.5/5. Whatever, Jo.

5. Jo on masturbation.
"I swear on my unborn child, that I have never done anything like that." And sex therapists across the nation roll their eyes.

6. Jo on "unwelcome advances."
Before she went into the house, Jo was asked "If someone was interested in you, but you weren't interested in them, how would you let them know?" Jo responded "If it was that obvious, I would talk to that person who had made those advances towards me and try to set them straight and say, 'Look, I'm not interested.' I'm an upfront person so I would try to engage them in a discussion to that effect, but also be quite gentle and not cut them down..." So how has this philosophy fared in practice? Well, this leads us to ...

7. Jo and Patrick: I love the way you brush my hair.
This one fortunately, didn't last very long. But did allow the great moment when Jo asked Ben whether the fact that she brushed Patrick's hair could be misconstrued. "Sure", said Ben, "so would you sitting on my knee." "Gosh", said Jo, "if they wanted, they could misconstrue Dan massaging my back." Patrick emerged relatively unscathed, dignity largely intact. I'm not sure if as much can be said for ...

8. Jo and Vincent: romance isn't dead, it's just tedious.
He growls in her ear. She giggles. He speaks Italian to her. She flutters her eyelashes. He tells her that he doesn't know what will happen with his girlfriend outside the house, because everything has changed now, Jo, things are different, there's no one like you around. Jo says, "that's really nice, Vincent." Vincent's all, did I mention that everything has changed? can everyone at the back see the subtext now? Okay then. Which leads us to ...

9. Jo and Saxon: isn't this illegal in some states?
She gently prompts with a little suggestiveness as to her fragile ego, and starry eyed, nineteen year old Saxon waxes lyrical for hours about how Jo is beautiful, and intelligent, and amazing, and wonderful. And instead of cutting him off with "yeah, that's nice Sax, but I'm not Mother Theresa", Jo just sits there and looks receptive. Sneakily, such scenes always take place in the absence of other housemates - so no one has an idea of the extent to which Jo keeps her boy whipped.

10. Yeah, yeah (an interlude).
"But the boys are also to blame", I hear you whine. Well, yes. Yes they are. I hope Vincent and Saxon feel horribly embarassed when they get out. I'm sure Vincent's girlfriend has a few choice things to say to him, hopefully in front of a live audience. But are they up for nomination? Not this week, they're not. Saxon I forgive for being nineteen (although if he bawls uncontrollably when Jo leaves, that may change). But Vincent? His days are numbered my friends, and I estimate those numbers at two weeks, tops.

11. Jo and the boys: It'd be almost cool if it was a tactic, but it's so not.
What's the likelihood of Jo saying when she gets out of the house: "Yes. I flirted outrageously to get an advantage. I knew I needed the guys' votes, and I did whatever I could to keep them in line." My guess: approximately 0%. Get ready to hear a lot of references to 'editing', and 'just friendship', and 'you don't know what it's like in the house'.

12. But ultimately: we all have younger brothers like Saxon, we want to have friends like Reggie, we admire Patrick's laid back cool, Chrissie is a champion at standing up for others, Dan is hilarious and doesn't take the whole thing too seriously. And Jo? what does Jo have to offer? Well, it's her turn to go.

Ah, Jo and her pink ugh boots. Good times. Meanwhile, in 2004, who could forget Merlin's free-the-refugees protest?

What gives, indeed. This is the biggest clash of pop culture (subsection: reality TV) and politics we've had in a long time, and I've had nothing to say.

A bit like Merlin, really.

Merlin Luck was a Big Brother contestant evicted recently. The eviction special, however, was hampered by the gaffa tape gag Merlin wore as he held up a sign reading "Free Th Refugees". The E fell off sometime when the sign was smuggled inside a patch on his shirt.

There were two aspects of this that interested me. First and foremost, I loved watching Gretel's reaction. Gretel Killeen is superb at her job; poised, confident and natural. On the Sunday night in question, she was mightily pissed off. She had no intervieweee and an hour to fill. I saw the show the next night, and Gretel was grilling Merlin again, and she was still so angry! It's rare to see her rattled like that. Personally, I think she's even impressive when she's angry - so polite, but so cruel (I was reminded of her interview with Jo last year).

The other interesting facet of the whole shenanigans was the reaction of the crowd. They booed and hissed Merlin and his political stand. Did they disagree that refugees should be freed? Unlikely. Did they not give a shit and just want to be entertained? I think so. But I just can't be disillusioned by a crowd of pre-teens holding misspelled signs who have travelled god knows how far to watch Gretel strut and see televised footage of sub-ordinary dweebs.

I think Merlin is pretty cool, though. My friends have pulled some political stunts in their time, but this takes the cake for commitment and impact.

In 2005, I wrote an enormous rant about Miranda Devine that brings back the seriousness WITH INTEREST. It's the kind of nit-picky dissection of newspaper articles I used to thoroughly enjoy. Good times. However, that really was my last BB hurrah. In 2006, I was too busy swanning around the south of France. In 2007, I was too busy hanging out at the Sydney Film Festival, and in 2008, I...didn't care. Au Revoir, Big Brother. Thx 4 the Memories.

2008-07-11T11:57:00.004+10:00

Art Deco at the NGV

This year's NGV Winter Masterpieces exhibition is on Art Deco, a collection assembled by the Victoria and Albert in London. In previous years, this blockbuster event has featured works by, you know, Picasso, the Impressionists, the Dutch Masters. This year it was teapots, hats and advertisements. Sure, the design was nice, but the overall impression was one of wandering through a crowded, dark department store where everything was a bit tatty and you couldn't buy it anyway. The commercialism combined with the repeated emphasis on glamour and hedonism made it all feel a bit Cashed-Up Bogan. There was even a Cartier bling tennis bracelet/watch for Bec.

Still, it was a pleasant excursion, and I enjoyed the snazzy new tearoom at the NGV. Also, I bought an awesome mini disco pig moneybox in electroplated silver at the gift store which makes me happy every time I look at it. It's not Art Deco, particularly.

2008-07-09T16:15:00.004+10:00

My Word of the Day: Autotelic

It's so nice when you come across a word, have no idea what it means, look it up, then realise that it is a lovely word that you have been looking for all your life and will probably use every day.

au·to·tel·ic [ àwto téllik ]

adjective

Definition:

1. done for its own sake: done for its own sake rather than to gain a material reward or avoid a punishment

2. possessing internal purpose: describes an entity or event that has within itself the purpose of its existence or occurrence

[Early 20th century. < Greek autoteles< autos "self" + telos "end"]

au·to·tel·ism noun

2008-07-09T10:44:00.002+10:00

Frank O'Connor Award Dispenses With Shortlist, Announces Winner Early, Heads Down to the Pub

The international Frank O'Connor Award goes annually to a collection of short stories, and is worth 35,000 pounds. I like short stories, I'm interested in prizes, and I'd never heard of this one. But I have now, thanks to a piece of derring-do from the judges. They've announced that no other collection comes close to Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth and they're not going to bother with the cruel sham of releasing a shortlist.

The litbloggers are spitting chips. Check out some of the responses on the Guardian blog. My favourite?

Say what you like about the FOC judges, but they're nothing if not compassionate. In other professions, knocking-off early to go down the pub is frowned upon, but as the FOC judges point out, they're actually saving the writers the stress of seeing their sales increase (it would only give them false hope in the short-term), and saving the publishers (some of whom are tiny, dedicated short story presses) the suspense of seeing whether they can fulfill those extra sales orders that may well keep them afloat.

Heh. And the other commenters make excellent, substantive points. Shortlists engage readers, promoting a participatory literary culture. They bring visibility to a handful of books, and in this case, to a genre, that otherwise struggles for sales (although Lahiri sells well).

Still, I sort of don't mind this decision. It's brought awesome publicity for the award, for which future years' shortlists may be grateful, and after all, they did release a longlist - readers should just suck it up and read harder. Also, I've read Unaccustomed Earth and it's pretty great. I love the idea of the judges nailing all their colours to their mast and making such a big call.

2008-07-07T10:21:00.004+10:00

Mediterranean Wholesalers

I think we all knew that it was just a matter of time before I posted my shopping list here. Just as this blog has become progressively less edgy/thoughtful/socially aware over the years, my world has shrunk into a thesis-vortex where a shopping trip is literally the most exciting thing happening in my life. That said, and following a worried text from my friend, the thesis was behaving itself by the end of last week! I submitted my "notice of intention to submit" which was very satisfying, and finished off my last chapter. I even came up with a title, something I haven't managed in the three and a half years to date. Happy happy days.

But back to shopping. Although, I might digress again, and say that obviously when I said I was going to post every day in July that didn't include weekends. I'm quite suspicious about computer use on weekends. They steal your soul. I'll only make an exception to buy a song off iTunes following my religious 15 minutes of viewing on a Saturday morning (unless I'm too embarrassed to buy the song I *really* like...which might be by, say, Jordin Sparks and Chris Brown....) and maybe to buy a movie ticket. In the case of this weekend, I was far too busy buying groceries to engage in these other, computer-aided, cultural pursuits, and anyway, I wouldn't have posted on the blog.

Sooooooo.

I've been wanting to go to Mediterranean Wholesalers for FOREVER. Or at least, since I read this rave review. But somehow, Sydney Road just always seemed too daunting. This Saturday, however, I was hanging around in Brunswick with two friends, one of whom was Italian and as excited as me by the thought of a trip to MW. In fact, he made it feel like my own episode of Food Safari. "This," he'd say, holding up a mysterious packet, "you grill with a little fresh thyme." "This," referring to a tiny little pasta shape, "goes with a roast chicken, a few onions, a carrot." Awesome.

Mediterranean Wholesalers occupies a city block, and has a dedicated parking paddock out the back. There are two, long aisles of pasta. Enormous wheels of parmesan cheese. Chinotto by the slab. Fresh almond pastries, wine tasting in the middle of the store, a coffee shop in the corner, old women dressed in black, anchovies the size of my hand, a fridge full of fresh pasta, omigod, everything. I spent $150, but on the plus side, I think I bought enough food for a year. Anyway, the way food prices are rising, soon $150 will only buy you a packet of laundry powder and three tomatoes at Coles.

Do you want the Mediterranean Wholesalers shopping list? Of course you do. I'll see what I can remember.

A SLAB (24 cans) of tomatoes
6 bottles chinotto
6 bottles pear juice
half a kilo of parmesan
fresh ricotta ravioli
crinkle cut pappardelle
orrechiette
farfalle
two other kinds of pasta, that look a bit like squished penne
marinated artichokes
anchovies with semi-dried tomatoes and chilli
tuna paste with sicilian orange
rye bread
pistachio biscotti
semi-fizzy mineral water
2 bottles of passatta
a tub of baby mozzarella
vanilla flavoured little wafer biscuits
dark chocolate flavoured little wafer biscuits
eggplant pasta sauce
porcini stock
2 packets of coffee
2 bottles of wine

and a partridge in a pear tree, yeah yeah. I made myself sick yesterday eating a little bit of everything. And of course, although I call this a shopping list, the fact that it was assembled after the fact is testament to the kind of gay abandon with which I shopped on Saturday. Viva la groceries.

2008-07-04T16:42:00.002+10:00

Testing Torture

It's American Independence Day. Right-wing writer Christopher Hitchens has submitted himself to waterboarding, as used by the US government, and announced it is definitely torture (not "extreme interrogation").

The "official lie" about waterboarding, Hitchens says, is that it "simulates the feeling of drowning". In fact, "you are drowning — or rather, being drowned."

2008-07-03T22:11:00.003+10:00

Every Day in Every Way

Kerryn and Tim are posting every day in July, and I've been looking for a bandwagon. I missed yesterday so I suppose the pressure of perfection is already off.

Let the minutiae begin. It will probably take list form.

I'm cutting across four to-read piles at the moment. This is leisure reading, not the reading I do all day. They are:

1. Australian crime fiction by Kerry Greenwood, Gabrielle Lord, Leigh Redhead, Angela Savage and more - preparation for my upcoming hosting duties at the Melbourne Crime and Justice Festival. All the books I've read so far have been massively fun and entertaining.

2. And by way of startling contrast, Flaubert's Sentimental Education. A French masterpiece of 500 pages in which *nothing happens*. I say leisure reading, but this is really for study - it's my man Pierre Bourdieu's favourite book. I just think this book can only be read late at night, half asleep, or in a day-long couch session while it's raining outside.

3. Joseph Heller's Catch-22. I can't tell you how much grief Clay is giving me over this book - it's *his* favourite - and it's funny, just kind of....same-y. I'll get through it, I promise.

4. Dave Eggers, What is the What. Inspired by Emmanuel Jal, I finally picked up this novel I bought last year at the Melbourne Writer's Festival and had signed by Dave Eggers who I adore, and I've always meant to get around to it. It's a novelized autobiography of a Sudanese refugee in America, and so far it rocks.

Might go do some reading now....

2008-07-01T12:53:00.002+10:00

Beating PhD Panic

Here's what to do when you're all alone in an office, working on your thesis, and you realise that "fixing up the intro" - a job to which you've allocated half a day - is turning into a project of fractal-like complexity with a difficulty rating of a million, and you have a panic attack.

1. Call half a dozen people who might come by and "rescue" you: coffee breaks solve most things. Confront the sad truth that other people have demands upon their time that render them useless for your purposes.

2. Breathe

3. Make some chamomile tea

4. Listen to radiohead

5. Write an enormously long to-do list with jobs broken down into teensy-tiny manageable units. Start working on number one.

6. Externalise your problems on your blog, which you must accept is increasingly turning into a diary of tediously traumatic study...

2008-06-30T14:30:00.009+10:00

Emmanuel Jal at Nelson Mandela's 90th Birthday Concert

I cried when I saw this late on Saturday night. Of course: Emmanuel Jal turns his heart-wrenching story of being a child soldier in Sudan into an inspiring, hope-filled gospel anthem (complete with classic V, IV, I chord structure and mass choir) set off by the rawness of hip hop, as he bounces around the stage wearing a fluorescent, smiley face T-shirt. The song is called Emma.

2008-06-26T10:46:00.004+10:00

Structure Solves Everything

Here's an insight into my thesis work for today. Keep in mind it's only 11 am and I've already performed this incredibly laborious intellectual work:

Previously on Beth the Thesis Slayer, Beth's supervisor said "You're reporting what these people say as if it's true!" Beth was confused, wondering why people would lie to her. She thought hard for a week...

Beth: Hey. Instead of organising this survey of Australian publishing chronologically, I could organise it by commentator. Then say what I think about what they think.

Host of Thesis Angels Watching Over Beth's Shoulder: HALLELUJAH!!!!

You know, back when I was a high school debater, one of my friends affectionately called me Method Queen. That is, if I couldn't get the 30 marks for charismatic presentation (manner), and I couldn't get the 30 marks for brilliant arguments (matter), I could sure as shit get the 15 marks for being organised. I like to think that today, Method Queen rode again.

2008-06-20T10:42:00.002+10:00

Steven Carroll wins the 2008 Miles Franklin

Steven Carroll's novel, The Time We Have Taken, has won the $42,000 Miles Franklin Literary Award for this year. I didn't have any special predictions, but it seems like a good result. Apparently Carroll is nice and the book looks fun - it's the third in a trilogy about the life and times of a Melbourne suburb. It's already won the regional Commonwealth Book Award. The Miles Franklin has been fairly low key this year...it will be interesting to see if much hype accretes around this novel, a la Carpentaria last year.

2008-06-18T16:21:00.002+10:00

Checking In

Listening To: The Presets, This Boy's In Love (perfect dancey pop)
Not Admitting to Listening To: Kelly Rowland, Work (easy energy)
Reading: Jhumpa Lahiri, Unaccustomed Earth (very good short stories)
Watching: The Mighty Boosh (season 2 not as good as season 1)
Eating: berry-lime chewing gum, chocolate, chickpea curries
Drinking: cleanskin Chilean sav blonk, two coffees a day
Wearing: my favourite woollen jumper. Every day.
Flicking Through: a disappointing edition of Vogue Living
Growing: five types of white-flowering bulbs

2008-06-02T11:58:00.002+10:00

Andrew Davies' Jane Austens' Emma

How pleasant it is to spend a Sunday evening at home, with a blanky on the couch, watching a glossy BBC production of a a Jane Austen novel. Last night, it was Emma.

I've been in a reading group reading Emma aloud. It's taken us 2 years to get to approximately the same point that Andrew Davies' version reached in 20 minutes. And yet Davies' screenplay managed to keep some of the quirks and digressions that make Emma so fun. Kate Beckinsale was rather wonderful as early Emma: haughty, know-it-all, spoilt and naive. Her post-transformation Emma, however, was a bit sappy. That's a problem pretty people have when they try to act like they're in love and repentant. Samantha Morton was much more true to my mind's image of Harriet (young, blonde and ditsy) than any other actor I've seen in the role, which is all the more impressive when you consider Morton's other performances, such as the ball-breaking suffering wife of Ian Curtis in Control.

2008-05-31T00:14:00.003+10:00

Rock On, Web Log, Rock On

Hey look everybody: I did a re-design! More of an un-design, really, since I removed a lot of elements. And what I left on the page is loosely aligned at best. But it's great to spend some quality time with fridaysixpm again.

Here's how it went down.

It's a Friday night, and I'm tired but wired. I've just finished reading Tim Winton's latest novel, Breath (middle bit about surfing is awesome, framing story a bit heavyhanded, but geez what a writer) and I'm not ready for sleep yet. The iPod is on random and so am I.

Then my mind reels back to a review I wrote yesterday. Yesterday was a difficult day. I was eating sudafed like candy and bouncing off the walls of the dusty 6th floor attic I call "office". All of a sudden, I dropped into drisky mode. When the review is online, I'll post a link and you can see for yourself: it's about the play Frost/Nixon and I start talking about rocking chairs. VINTAGE drisky.

You know, the other day someone was saying maybe I should delete all the archives of fridaysixpm. Like, it was immature and embarrassing, digital detritus that could only hold me back. As if! I only wish I still cared about Big Brother as much as I did in 2002.

Blogging is fun and I'm back in the groove.

2008-05-06T15:24:00.002+10:00

Back to Booktown

I’d been trapped at home for three days by a combination of rain, a sick boyfriend and my own inherent laziness. So perhaps that’s why, as our car motored along the Western Highway from Melbourne to Clunes, I started singing. “We’re going to Booktown!” “All aboard the Booktown Express!” “You can always go - to Booktown”.

I wasn’t the only one to jump out the car with alacrity and gulp the crisp autumnal air of Clunes, a small town near Ballarat surrounded by low, golden hills. The residents of Clunes came up with the idea of Booktown last year as a way of combating the dip in the town’s fortunes following the drift of industry, business and residents to the city. This year it was a two day event with music, author talks, sausage sizzles and over fifty second-hand book dealers set up in various historic locations across the town. The atmosphere was great, the locals were really friendly, and I loved wandering around the glamorous gold-era buildings.

The books themselves were a bit underwhelming: at least a quarter of those fifty stalls were military history, and the rest seemed divided between needlecraft manuals, local memoirs and Bryce Courtenay. These books weren’t even kitsch enough to be cool - except for one I found on the history of beer can collecting. I still managed to accumulate an even dozen of books, mostly from $2 bins: Joyce Carol Oates, Elizabeth Jolley, Shirley Hazzard, a first edition George Johnston (yes - still $2),and some other stuff I’ve forgotten already. I’m not sure I even intend to read some of these. But it was such fun! I’m going to Booktown again next year - perhaps on Saturday morning instead of Sunday afternoon, but still singing all the way.

2008-03-25T09:50:00.002+11:00

A Very Noir Easter

In lieu of going away somewhere exciting over Easter, I decided to have a loungeroom festival, in the tradition of the IRFF Comedy Series, Hooverdust's Festival of Seldom Seen Seventies American Films and toxic waste's Zombiethon! This fest was noir to its bootstraps: Double Indemnity (1944), followed by Gilda (1946) and Touch of Evil (1958).

There were venetian blinds. There were alleys. There were sultry stares, overcoats, shrugs and murders. It was all totally brilliant.

That said, there was also the unintentional comedy of "Shut up, beh-bee" as a prelude to a kiss, Rita Hayworth's rather obvious seduction methods and Orson Welle's over-the-top auterism.

All this, and an Easter to remember, for $9 in rental fees and the price of a packet of chocolate biscuits!

2008-02-13T11:00:00.000+11:00

What Sorry Looks, Sounds, Feels Like

This morning, I joined thousands of people at Melbourne’s Federation Square to listen to Kevin Rudd apologise to the stolen generations. It was beautiful: a community coming together to recognise the importance of symbolism as well as action, a rare moment of reflection on who we are as Australians that seemed to sidestep political bickering and sloganeering.

The text of the apology itself was moving, but the two stand-out moments for me came later. The first was when Rudd showed what saying sorry means - taking on personal responsibility - and in so doing spoke the simple, honest words that needed saying:

As Prime Minister of Australia, I am sorry. On behalf of the Government of Australia, I am sorry. On behalf of the Parliament of Australia, I am sorry. And I offer you this apology without qualification.

That raised a huge cheer from the crowd, an audible expression of relief and satisfaction. The point when I really started snuffling, though, was at the end of Rudd’s speech. He, Julia Gillard and many other parliamentarians turned around to applaud members of the Stolen Generation seated in the gallery of parliament. We saw what an apology looks like, as well as what is sounds like: the applause acknowledged past sufferings and offered genuine respect. It was a good morning.

2008-01-18T15:54:00.000+11:00

Laver's Law: Or, A Meditation on Fluoro Slogan T-Shirts

Indecent 10 years ahead of its time
Shameless 5 years ahead of its time
Smart Now
Dowdy 1 year after its time
Hideous 10 years after its time
Amusing 20 years after its time
Quaint 50 years after its time
Charming 70 years after its time
Romantic 100 years after its time
Beautiful 150 years after its time

At the same time, apparently, the cycles of fashion are getting dramatically shorter.

2007-12-07T16:19:00.000+11:00

East West 101

For nearly a decade, there’s been a raw, gaping Wildside-shaped hole in Australian television. There have been other crime shows. There has been other scriptwriting of high quality. But nothing has captured the heart-stopping, confused urgency of life on Australian streets the way that Wildside did. Until, of course, last night.

East West 101 reunites much of the Wildside production crew: producers Kris Wyld and Steve Knapman, director Peter Andrikidis, and I think many of the same writers, casting agents and other personnel. It takes the heady cocktail of personality clashes and police work and throws religious conflict into the mix; the main character is a Muslim detective caught between loyalty to his community, idealism, police culture, family pressures and who knows what else. Lead actor Don Haney is mesmerising to watch, the camerawork is layered and dynamic, the music is intense, and the supporting cast, which includes William McInnes and Susie Porter, adds strength and depth to the show.

The first episode may have sounded a few false notes, but the overall concept and execution are nothing short of exhilirating. There are five more episodes in this season - so don’t make any plans for Thursday nights between 8.30 and 9.30 - and a second season is rumoured to be on the way. SBS has put together a pretty great site for the show which includes interviews with the producers, the director and the cast.

Summer programming will not resemble a ravaged wasteland. Australian TV drama is exciting again.

2007-11-28T16:25:00.000+11:00

The Definition of Poignant

Listening to radiohead's slow piano ballad "videotape" while watching an animated gif titled "dance like a gay spiderman". It works surprisingly well, but maybe that's the cold and flu medication talking.

2007-11-15T15:30:00.000+11:00

Tree of Smoke Wins National Book Award

Denis Johnson's Vietnam war novel "Tree of Smoke" has won the National Book Award for fiction. I bought it on Amazon because it was touted as "mammoth" - and it is. I'm about fifty pages in so far, and the highlight has been a ripping folk tale about the aswang, a vampirish creature that is totally spooky.

Perhaps most significantly, it's one of the few Vietnam War novels I've read, and I've read a few, including The Quiet American by Graham Greene and The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, both of which I loved, but Tree of Smoke is one of the few Vietnam War novels to actually include Asian characters with subjectivity and multifaceted personalities. Nice.

2007-10-31T12:46:00.000+11:00

Varieties of Disturbance

The front cover of Lydia Davis’ collection of short stories, Varieties of Disturbance, is a pale, weathered ivory, dark at the edges, with the name of the author and the book in a slightly embossed font of the same tone. Right below the “i” in Davis there’s an ultra-realistic photo of a fly.

I find that disturbing.

The frontispiece cuts off the edges of the titles. I find that very disturbing. So, two varieties of disturbance so far and we haven’t even read a single one of the stories. Clever!

Actually, the fly really bothers me. Every time I see the book on my coffee table or by the bed I feel a shiver (ick!) and an irresistible urge to swat the thing. I think it’s because I’m middle class and bourgeois. That makes me the perfect target for my favourite story in the collection so far, “The Good Taste Competition”. The story, all one page and a half of it, compares the taste of a husband and wife:

The husband was felt to have very good taste in both food and alcoholic beverages, while the wife had inconsistently good to poor taste in food. The husband had better taste in clothes than the wife though inconsistent taste in perfumes and colognes.

And so on in Beckett-esque splendour for 20 or so lines, until the end:

After a brief discussion, the judges gave the decision to the husband for his higher overall points score.

Ouch. Skewered! I can never buy anything, ever again.

I bought Varieties of Disturbance because it’s nominated for the National Book Award, and because it’s described as a “cult favourite”. I hate to think what sort of story Davis might write about those flavours of pretension.

cross-posted at sarsaparilla

2007-10-17T13:30:00.000+10:00

It Could Have Been Worse: McEwan Could Have Won

So out of six novels, there was one I loved, one I hated, one I put money on, two that were fairly explicitly political...and the winner.

I like Anne Enright's The Gathering, recently crowned winner of this year's Man Booker Prize. Yes, it's alcohol-soaked, miserable, angst-ridden...but it's kind of, maybe, redemptive too. And besides all of that, it's the only one on the longlist that I wanted to re-read. It's just about the only book I've read this year and wanted to re-read. Which says something about the quality of her sentences and the intriguing structure of the novel.

The Chair of the Judges speech sounds pretty fantastic: Howard Davies basically slammed reviewers for being overly reverential towards big name authors and ignoring quality new novelists. Yeah!

2007-10-09T15:35:00.000+10:00

Even the Booker Prize had to start somewhere

Last month, I spent three days immersed in the archives of the Booker Prize, reading my way through type-written agendas, hand-scribbled memos and newspaper articles curling at their sides. And what a delicious world of politics, horse trading and manipulation I uncovered! As well, of course, as touchingly sincere desires to promote the cause of literature. But it’s the bitchiness that kept me reading.

I thought I’d share a note from a publisher about contributions to promoting the shortlist. The note, from Chatto and Windus to the Publishers Association who administered the fledgling prize, recalls the witty, outraged and frankly amusing responses of publishers to Angus and Robertson’s recent decision to charge fees for shelf space. It’s the tone of indignation I love:

“Thank you for your letter of September 2, with the gloomy news that we owe you $80 for not having been awarded the Booker Prize 1970. Enclosed is our cheque, which I fear will not enhance the vast profits of Booker Brothers Ltd. by quite the same percentage as it will reduce our more modest margin. Ah well…I suppose it’s all in a good cause, though I sometime wonder whose. Neither of the books that has won the Prize so far seems to have rocketed its author to fame and fortune, and as for the also-rans…All best wishes” etc.

2007-09-26T16:05:00.000+10:00

Things I Learnt At The British Museum

1. The Elgin Marbles are not spherical. See above.

2. Kissing the Rosetta Stone will not give you the gift of the gab.

3. People really do bury treasure. Even if that treasure is just 100 odd silver spoons.

4. Too many gift shops are barely enough.

2007-09-17T08:09:00.000+10:00

Rambles, Brambles and Blackberries

I channelled my inner Enid Blyton today and went for a long walk through the charming English countryside, keeping my eyes peeled for the Magic Faraway Tree and Timmy the dog. I picked blackberries from hedgerows, climbed over wooden stiles, kicked conkers, drank cider at a local pub, peered at tombstones near a twelfth-century church: the full catastrophe. To honour the occasion, I spelled channelled the British way in the opening of this paragraph. And again just there.

2007-09-04T22:00:00.000+10:00

Searching for Ally

I left my frighteningly hip loft apartment early this morning, and walked through Manchester's Northern Quarter looking for a place to buy the newspaper. I'm getting better at the Guardian's cryptic crossword; it involves a bit more lateral thinking than The Age's, which is fun. But that's by the by. The point is, ever since I arrived here I've had a strange dislocated feeling: it's almost the set of Cutting It, but not quite. I keep hearing the voices of the characters and realising that it's just how people speak here. And the narrow streets of the show end, improbably, in multiplex cinemas or a massive shopping centre. I keep expecting to turn a corner and see Ally, or Gavin, or Mia (or at least their rival hair salons) but I haven't yet.

This morning, though, I did run into a television crew filming outside a cafe called Love Saves The Day. The guy at the newsagent assured me it was a pretty common sight.

Briefly, other trip highlights:
* Faith in academia and its potential for social transformation utterly renewed by Beyond the Book conference
* Crush developed on sociologist Elizabeth Long
* Brum balti for dinner with three French-speakers
* Bought a waistcoat. Now look just like Kate Moss but much better.

2007-08-24T10:58:00.000+10:00

A Tale of Two Crime Dramas

First it was the Grey's Anatomy/House dilemma, now I find myself torn in two over competing crime dramas.

Unit One, available now on DVD and screening on SBS from September, is Danish, features some very depressing, misty scenery, and stars the utterly divine Mads Mikkelsen. It features a different crime to solve each week, but continuity is provided by the turbulent personal dramas of the main characters. It's evocative of Wildside: muted palettes, soulful music, moody men and a strong but troubled central female character. Love it love it love it.

I've now watched two episodes of The Wire on DVD, and it's something else entirely. It feels more like watching a long, looping movie, and it moves seamlessly between the viewpoints of cops, detectives, criminals and lawyers. It's a bit blokey so far, but it's just so interesting: bottle fights and car burning in the towers of Baltimore, witness intimdation, and a dark-eyed Irish loner called Jimmy McNulty.

To sum it up, I'm doing an extremely good job of avoiding the temptation to sit in front of the TV for every waking hour. Which is just as well, because I'm reading the 838 page Booker stunner, and that requires at least a modicum of concentration...oh, and I'm going overseas for a month on Monday. Haven't packed/organised accommodation/written the paper I have to give. It's a matter of priorities.

2007-08-17T13:22:00.000+10:00

Longlist Reviews: McEwan and Singha

So, I just finished On Chesil Beach five minutes ago, and I can confidently pronounce that it's just the sort of book the judges will love: that is, it's a steaming pile of pretentious, overwrought, underimagined, insecure, inauthentic crap. It's ineffective pornography that makes you feel bad about the world. If it had been one page over its "novella" length, I woudn't have bothered. The only thing that makes me think it won't win the Booker is that I have a hunch the judges want to consecrate a newbie.

Sinha's Animal's People, by way of refreshing contrast, is original and fun. It's potentially heart-rending and do-gooderish - the author is a real life volunteer for victims of the Bhopal poison tragedy - but the mix of aggression, sexuality and humour makes it work. Pretty good stuff.

2007-08-09T08:47:00.000+10:00

Holy Passage of TIme! The Booker Steals a March

While I was busy handing in my review, dumping my mobile phone in the rubbish bin from whence it was devoured by the steel jaws of the garbage truck, collapsing in a heap etcetera, those darned Booker prize judges weren't waiting for me to get ready. The long list is out. Good news: just 12 books. Let's go.

Darkmans by Nicola Barker (Fourth Estate)
Self Help by Edward Docx (Picador)
The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng (Myrmidon)
The Gathering by Anne Enright (Jonathan Cape)
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid (Hamish Hamilton)
The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies (Sceptre)
Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones (John Murray)
Gifted by Nikita Lalwani (Viking)
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan (Jonathan Cape)
What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn (Tindal Street)
Consolation by Michael Redhill (William Heinemann)
Animal's People by Indra Sinha (Simon & Schuster)
Winnie & Wolf by A N Wilson (Hutchinson)

Early tip for a win = On Chesil Beach. Because I don't want to read it.

2007-07-31T15:16:00.000+10:00

Finding Your Inner Furry Blue Monster

One of the highlights of last weekend was a visit to the Pixar exhibition at ACMI, which was so much more than pictures. There were animations, colour scripts, detailed studies, sculptures and...a zoetrope. A spinnning, ye olde worlde, strobe-lit animation spectacular with cute waving aliens.

From those giddy heights, I've plummeted into a world of frantic revision and writing preparatory to my 2.5 year review next week. I'll talk to you on the other side.

2007-07-26T11:41:00.001+10:00

The Tour Makes Itself Hard to love

All these drug scandals suck - it makes it hard to convince anyone else the sport is worth watching. Poor old tour.

2007-07-24T09:44:00.000+10:00

Vive Le Tour

Can you tell I was sick when I wrote that last post? Like, by the way it made no sense and had nothing to say? My poor fevered brain and virus-stricken body spent last week on the couch, but my recovery was hampered by the seductive, late night thrill of the Tour de France.

The tour is my favourite sporting event ever. First and foremost, it is the only sport I have encountered that presents a recipe at the beginning of the telecast. Gabriel Gate presents the Taste of le Tour - baked snapper with tapenade, or even more delightfully, hazelnut meringue with raspberries. On the very best recipe segments, he introduces his "brother" Francois (Gate in a silly hat) to do the cooking. There's wine matching, history of the region, and bon vivant galore.

Second only to the recipe in its appeal is the scenery. The tour goes through the absolute prettiest bits of France, and the cameraman in the helicopter has his priorities right. He'll zoom away from the cyclists to circle an interesting castle on a hill, or a pretty church in a town. Last night's telecast featured a long, lingering tracking shot of a Pyrenean condor.

Finally, of course, the actual sport itself is extremely interesting. There's tactics at play here - weird team manouevres, breakaways, attacks, catapults. And there's gruntwork, too.

Did I mention the hilarious commentary? You can drink everytime Phil Liggett or the other one says "But, that's the tour" or that Basque rider Txurroko is the "lightest rider in the race". And the bystanders who line the route with their campervans and funny costumes? It's brilliant. Vive le Tour.

2007-07-19T13:02:00.000+10:00

With Teeth

Amongst my Thailand haul is a Nine Inch Nails album, With Teeth. I bought it on the strength of an article by Gina Gionfriddo in the June/July edition of The Believer, which was just one of several bizarrely interesting and informative pieces (the history of the mellotrone? A rant against Dylan fans, oh yeah). The beginning of the article is available online, which unfortunately isn't the best bit. Read the Paul Collins mellotrone piece instead, maybe, which is available in full text.

Anyway, With Teeth is as good as the article promised, full of anguished faith questions and tense guitar riffs.

2007-07-16T11:35:00.000+10:00

Back Home With The Stone Roses

To give you an idea just how depressing it is to be back in Melbourne after my beach holiday in Thailand, I'll give you a list of the the cocktails I sampled over two and half weeks, at an average cost of $4 each:

Banana daiquiri
Strawberry margarita
Caipirinya
Banana colada
Black Russian
Gin and Tonic (x several)
Baileys nightcap on the beach, with my feet in the water. It was about 11pm, and sleep was not an option because there was a beach party with fire twirlers and bad 90s house music going down.

I bought some of the new mint chocolate Baileys at duty free on the way home. Along with that alcoholic compensation I'm feeling cheered by the extensive collection of "surprisingly" cheap CDs I bought from various roadside stalls. Chief amopng my delights: The Very Best of The Stone Roses. It's research for my Manchester trip. No one told me how cool they were! Not even their foray on the Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels soundtrack hinted at the sheer depth of coolness this CD offers.

2007-06-27T10:57:00.000+10:00

SFF10: Rescue Dawn; and, I blow this grey, rainy city

The final delectation in my smorgasboard of filmy delights was Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn, and it was a confronting epic of survival in the jungle which involved eating live snakes! And maggotty rice! And helicopters, and waterfalls, and madness. Lots of madness. I would have liked a little more political engagement - it was set during the American bombings of Laos in the leadup to the Vietnam War, and while there are lots of interesting stories to tell about that time, they are about the Laotian communities not the US forces. Herzog's apoliticism in this context feels dishonest. There's a quote I can't find by (Sir) Salman Rushdie, talking about books set in British India that focus on English people's experiences, that says to tell only those stories is so far from an accurate portrayal that it becomes a lie.

Anyway, that concludes my festival wrapup! I'm off to Thailand tonight for three weeks or so, and this dreary, drizzly, morose city can kiss my plane's shiny metal ass.

2007-06-21T09:53:00.000+10:00

SFF9: Away From Her

dir Sarah Polley

Away From Her is a beautiful, beautiful film that had me weeping by the time the credits rolled. I mean, a Neil Young soundtrack is poignant enough on its own, but match it with a crystalline, snow-covered setting in Canada, a careful, tender portrait of a marriage, the heart-rending effects of Alzheimers, Julie Christie's elegance, and poetry, and I'm totally lost. Helpless, helpless, helpless. This is Sarah Polley's first feature film as director, and its based on an Alice Munro short story, and it's brilliant. It eclipses Hallam Foe to become second best of the fest for me.

One of the motifs that resurfaces throughout Away From Her is a travel book by Auden and MacNiece called Letters From Iceland, which the husband reads to his ever more vague and unresponsive wife . I went and borrowed Letters From Iceland this week from the library, and it's just the most amazing book. Clay hates being read aloud to, but I couldn't help myself - particularly when I got to the Icelandic proverbs ("Pissng in his shoe won't keep a man warm for long"), the fairy tale, the photos of the whaling station, and of course the beautiful poem that rang out so clearly in the film:

Isn't it true however far we've wandered
Into our provinces of persecution
Where our regrets accuse, we keep returning
Back to the common faith from which we've all dissented,
Back to the hands, the feet, the faces?

2007-06-19T11:20:00.000+10:00

SFF8: West

dir Daniel Krige

West is the only Australian film I saw during the film festival, and the screening I attended was the Sydney premiere - Lyn and I were sitting amongst crew members including the costume designer. The atmosphere was right, I was enthused, but the film was terrible.

It wasn't the actors' fault - Nathan Phillips, Khan Chittenden and Gillian Alexy put in nuanced and attractive performances as marginalised slackers from Sydney's western suburbs. It wasn't the cinematographer's fault either - the shots of concrete underpasses and train stations were far more beautiful than they had any right to be. No, the blame can be laid pretty squarely at the feet of the script, which was melodramatic without providing real emotional climaxes and which flattened out the complexity of the film's characters and issues. Your girlfriend is pregnant to your criminal best friend, so you confess to the murder he committed and then jump under a train? Sure. Fine. Whatever.

2007-06-18T10:33:00.000+10:00

SFF7: Dry Season

dir Mahamat-Saleh Haroun

I was a little skeptical about this one - a film set in Chad and based on the themes of Mozart's last opera - but boy was I wrong. Dry Season draws a subtle and surprising picture of the relationship between a war criminal and the boy who seeks revenge against him, encompassing themes of love, maturity, family and resolution. And baking. The ending is intensely powerful and the two lead actors have the most beautiful, expressive gestures. You can check out the trailer.

2007-06-15T10:00:00.000+10:00

SFF6: Hallam Foe

dir David MacKenzie

When this film gets its mainstream release, as it undoubtedly will, you should go and see it. A coming-of-age story featuring Billy Elliot (real name, Jamie Bell), Hallam Foe offers a totally convincing portrait of grief with a healthy dose of bizarre humour. Here's a skeleton scenario that gives away as little as possible: Hallam lives in a castle by a lake, wears a skunk hat and likes watching people. He moves to London and begins an unusual relationship with a young woman who resembles his dead mother. The whole thing rings true, emotionally, while staying fresh and surprising in every scene. Good music, too. Second best film of the festival!

2007-06-13T12:57:00.000+10:00

SFF5: The Witnesses

dir Andre Techine

The Witnesses (Les Temoins) is set at a really fascinating moment in history: the mid-80s, when AIDS first broke in the West. The pathos, fear and confusion of this time isn't the focus of the film, however: instead, each of the four main characters offers a typically brusque, French, "fuck you" to the issue, the viewers and each other. They're so unlikeable! It was kind of brilliant, in a way. But also uninvolving and tedious.

2007-06-13T12:11:00.000+10:00

SFF4: The Walker

dir Paul Schrader

This is it, people. My hands down, number one favourite film of the festival (so far). The Walker is a darkly seductive and caustically funny murder mystery set amongst Washington's elite. The film tracks the vulnerability of its main character, Carter Page III (Woody Harrelson in a mesmerisingly dissonant performance, complete with wig and false teeth), a gay man with father issues who escorts the wealthy wives of others to cultural events. The character of Page is based on Nancy Reagan's walker, and his fragile place in society is powerfully evoked. The trio of women he orbits is played with equal parts of brutality and charm by Kristin Scott Thomas, Lauren Bacall and Lily Tomlin. I totally adored the music, particularly the haunting synth-pop of Byran Ferry's "Which Way to Turn".

So, producer Deepak Nayar spoke at the screening and said that The Walker hasn't found a distributor in Australia. If you're reading this now, wield influence in the film industry, and love richly nuanced films like Donnie Darko and Mulholland Drive, then it's time for action! Get your people to call someone else's people, or whatever it is you people do.

2007-06-13T11:46:00.000+10:00

SFF3: Once

dir John Carney

Tell me what's not to love: a genial, bushy-haired busker plays his guitar on Dublin streets by day, working in his Da's hoover repair shop by night. He meets a young Czech girl who sells flowers, sings and plays piano. Together, they make beautiful Irish indie music.

There were only two small flaws that stopped me raving as much about this film as I will for the next one. First, there really is no getting around the fact that Once is a musical, starring real life musicians Glen Hansard (of The Frames) and Marketa Irglova. Instead of a plot, it offers a series of loosely strung together, film-clip style musical sequences. "Oh look, a room with a piano in it." "Why don't you play me one of your songs?" "OK". I know other people like musicals, but I can't stand them (except Les Mis), and even the very lovely aforementioned Irish indie pop and charmingly ambiguous characterisations can't save the format. The second flaw is a hint of what I hate in The Kite Runner: the film builds in its own ideal reception. The characters chime in, "Did you really write that? It's amazing", "You're incredibly talented", "Fucken brilliant, son." It doesn't really leave much space for your own reactions.

Still, Once is beguiling, adorable cinema.

2007-06-12T09:53:00.000+10:00

SFF2: Ad Lib Night

dir Lee Yoon-ki

A kind but enigmatic young girl leaves Seoul to impersonate the daughter of a dying man in a Korean village. Maybe she is actually his daughter. The village elders bicker. During a long, silent scene in which the lead actress washes her elbow, Beth dozes off. She wakes up briefly to witness a long, silent scene in which the lead actress stares at her feet. Then picks a book up and puts it down. Then stares at her feet some more. Beth stretches her own feet into the aisle and falls back asleep.

The deadly combination of a crawling pace, subtitles, a late screening time and a cultural context I didn't fully grasp conspired against Ad Lib Night, but you know, if you're the sort of person who likes slow, dreamy Asian cinema then this is the sort of film you'll like.

2007-06-12T09:45:00.000+10:00

SFF1: Deep Water

dir Louise Osmond, Jerry Rothwell

This documentary tracked the mesmerising story of Donald Crowhurst, a young engineer who left his wife and four young children to participate in the 1968 race to become the first person to sail solo around the world. The story had the contours and the pathos of a classic Greek tragedy, with brutal corporate sponsors, failing equipment and the indifferent violence of the sea playing the role of fate while Don's own poor decisions and moral weaknesses ticked the box of hubris.

Despite a paucity of material that left the doco feeling rather stretched, I loved watching it because of all the big, abstract issues it brings into play. The conclusion is stunning, inevitable.

2007-06-12T09:21:00.000+10:00

Hey Ho Let's Go: The Sydney Film Festival 2007

It's time to get cinematic. I have a 5 day window in Sydney and my Mission Enjoyable is to fit in as many films as I can physically manage while still leaving a respectable amount of time for shopping, Balmain cafes and ferry rides. If Lyn ends up reviewing films at lynscreens.blogspot.com you should definitely check in, but I'll also be posting reviews here.

2007-06-04T11:53:00.000+10:00

Medium Love for BigLove

The latest HBO drama to be imported here was shoved so far back in Channel 9's programming that it dropped into SBS, at an actually quite reasonable time. I'm always up for a bit of Sunday 8.30pm action - even if I feel nothing will ever come close to the spinechilling Bleak House adaptation of 2006.

Be that as it may! BigLove has considerable charm, following the intrafamilial tensions of a polygamous American family. I think the clearest strength is the actors who play the wives: each is powerful, complex and mesmerising. If Jeanne Tripplehorn was the elder matriarch in my unconventional family arrangement, I know I'd do whatever she said. I also really love the way it teases out issues of religion and belief - these always make for crackerjack serious television.

Unfortunately, Bill Paxton as the harried husband is flat and a vacuum of personality. To be honest, I'm not even sure what his character's name is. Al? Phil? Bill? It doesn't seem to matter. Who knows, though, later weeks may allow him to develop.

2007-05-30T11:53:00.000+10:00

Brick: A New Movie For Me To Love

Imagine your favourite Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler novel coming to life around you - that's what Brick feels like. The dialogue is noir to its bootstraps, but the setting is high school. Our hero gets into fights in the parking lot, blackmails the Vice Principal and skips class.

The film was a lot like Veronica Mars, but with an extended, twisty movie-length plot and a bit less fairy floss. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a revelation as the teen Phil Marlowe; he's probably far too sexy and assured for a high-schooler but hey, why not? The sheer emptiness of the settings hit me too - deserted corridors, empty sporting grounds, lonely streets.

A totally fabulous film to hire on DVD in the face of abysmal Tuesday night television.

2007-05-28T11:21:00.000+10:00

9 Steps to Avoiding A Cold

I've already had three bad colds this winter and I'm fed up. This list is taken from a great article in the freebie hippie newspaper "Living Now", by a Bondi naturopath who I can't remember the name of, but will look up and add when I have the article in front of me. I like the commonsense approach and the timely tips, although it misses the big one - avoid all contact with people.

1. Keep Warm. Wear proper clothing.

2. Eat sensibly. Avoid chilled drinks, icecream and salands - eat hearty soups with root vegetables.

3. Go for lots of Vitamin C, A and Zinc: try almonds, kiwifruits, oranges.

4. Eat as much onion, garlic and horseradish as the people around you can stand.

5. There are herbal supplements around, like echinacea. I can't really be bothered getting into all that.

6. Reduce stress and workload

7. Sleep properly

8. Exercise regularly

9. Laugh. It's a proven immune system booster. Go to funny movies, read comic strips, choose to be happy.

2007-05-23T13:24:00.000+10:00

Two Colours Manchester

I found out today my paper has been accepted for a HARD-CORE theory conference in Manchester later this year. I was just joking yesterday with a friend who described the perceived need at uni to "arrive riding on a dead Frenchman". I propose to do exactly that with my paper on Bourdieu and the Economy of Literary Production which bandies the words discourse and narrative about like nobody's business.

What those theory buffs at the University of Manchester don't know is that my real motivation for going to Manchester is to perform a "Cutting It" pilgrimage - I'm going to walk the steps of those hairdressers at war in work and love. Listening to the audio commentary of the DVD of season two today, I picked up some important location information. Look out for me, Northern Quarter. I'll be sacking the tossers, hopping in a joe and gegging right in. End of.

2007-05-18T12:14:00.000+10:00

Bad News for the French

After a February of French cuisine that has dominated my kitchen for, oh, 15 months, there's a new kid on the block. The same cookbook - but the SPANISH version. I'm up in Canberra at the moment (beautiful hills, coloured autumn leaves, no traffic) and Dad and I broke the new cookbook in last night. We cooked six dishes and each one was a triumph! El menu:

Salted almonds
Marinated capsicums
Chorizo and chickpeas
Jamon and mushroom croquettes
Patatas Bravas
Garlic prawns

Plus, as my brothers noted, token amounts of "garden waste" on the side. We also conducted a Spanish sherry, or jerez, flight, matching the fino, manzanilla, oloroso and pedro ximinez varieties to different dishes. Fancy.

The hilarious part of the process was shopping. Each recipe had pretty much the same four ingredients: olive oil, sweet paprika, garlic, onion. Way to cut down on the spice cabinet and condiment collections!

The same series of "a little taste of..." cookbooks also has Indian and Japanese manifestations. We live in exciting times.

2007-05-14T11:32:00.000+10:00

Like Bollywood, Only Arty: Metro

After visiting what I thought was a fairly superficial and ugly exhibition of Bollywood posters at the NGV, I suppose it was only fitting that I follow the experience with a commodified, fetishized Bollywood film.

Metro, starring UK celebrity Big Brother winner and Richard Gere kiss-ee Shilpa Shetty, is suspiciously like Paris, Je t'aime, by which I mean suspiciously arthousey. Five interlinked couples struggle to make sense of life in the big city. Their stories have genuine pathos, there's a bit of unconventional loving (I particulary like the nursing home couple) and it's all quite beautifully shot. Sure, the main thread got a bit heavy handed with the moralising - RED filters show that ADULTERY is BAD - but overall, it was engrossing, well-structured and I wanted to see how it all ended.

Unfortunately, there were no dance numbers. Fortunately, the action was frequently broken, There's Something About Mary style, by a band of three musos: all fat, all greasy, all with too much hair. They'd stand on something tall, like a building, or they'd pile together onto a motorbike, and they'd sing their hearts out. It was cheesy enough to make the exoticism-seekers happy.

2007-05-09T10:58:00.000+10:00

I Still Heart Six Feet Under

Wildside is probably the show that has affected me the most deeply, but after that it's a tie between The Sopranos and Six Feet Under. I'm re-watching Six Feet Under, from the beginning, and it's amazing me all over again. I mean, I thought I watched this show attentively the first time around but I missed *so much*.

I think the major revision that's happening my brain is to do with Rachel Griffith's character, Brenda. I love Rachel Griffiths, and love her in this role, but I did always see Brenda as a bit of a self-absorbed pain in the ass. This time, her vulnerability shines through in every scene...it's just such a beautifully layered performance.

Rachel Griffiths was also the best thing about the recent Logies, by the way.

2007-05-02T12:11:00.000+10:00

Felix the Shoeman

One of the rewards of defying the inbuilt obsolescence that characterises contemporary consumer culture is meeting people who know how to fix things. Today I took my sad and sorry boots to a hole-in-the-wall on Church Street; a narrow room cluttered with machinery and teetering shelves, with walls bare except for a blue, flower-shaped, plastic clock. As I pushed open the door, the whirring sound of machinery came to an abrupt halt and an elderly, bespectacled man came forward to the counter.

At this point I was convinced I was in Giupetto's workshop and half-expecting a talking wooden puppet to emerge. Instead, Felix handled my footwear with callused, gentle hands. He spoke in a thick Germanic sort of accent: "I tell you vot I will do". He launched into a long explanation that involved millimetres, glue, stitching zig-zags, running back into the shop to bring out demonstrations, and my fairly total incomprehension. I was delighted! I would have paid any amount! Especially when he gave me a little chocolate bar with my receipt.

2007-04-30T10:32:00.000+10:00

The Eerie Metropolis of White Lego

On Saturday, I elbowed aside a bunch of kids to participate in Danish artist Olafur Eliasson's installation, the cubic structural evolution project 2004. On a long table in front of the cascading water wall at the NGV, I built a tower out of white lego. It was utterly absorbing and surprisingly fragile.

2007-04-20T12:54:00.000+10:00

How Harry Potter Humbles Me

Since November, I've been working on a chapter for my PhD about Harry Potter, and it has been unbelievably difficult. Mostly, due to the unexamined assumptions I brought to the task. Over and over, I've had to go back to the drawing board and re-frame my entire approach. For example, I decided I did need to read the books themselves. An Einsteinian revelation. Then I realised teachers were a lot cooler and more complex than I was giving them credit for. And then it occurred to me that maybe it was more interesting to look at the literary reviews that praised Rowling (and why) than the ones that took cheap shots at her. All these pieces were in place, I had actually strung together about 8,000 words of semi-coherent prose, and I expected, this week, to tidy up a draft.

Oh, no no no.

After five frustrating days of turning on the computer, opening up the document, staring blankly at it for fifteen minutes then giving up (disgusted at my weakness and poor work ethic), I have realised that actually, I have some serious work to do. I need an argument. So that means going back to the six novels, fifteen selected reviews and twenty-odd educational articles and looking for some kind of meta-theme to pull all my work together. I think I have one (appropriately enough, "anxiety"), but I need to know if it holds water.

It's like a friend of mine said yesterday, sometimes the last 5% of writing takes 80% of the effort. This chapter has been nothing if not a constant reminder that this PhD is smarter than I am.

2007-04-18T11:27:00.000+10:00

How to Shatter Adolescent Innocence: Anne of Green Gables 3

I've got a bit of a cold - poor me - so over the weekend I hired the Anne of Green Gables movies. The first one was delicious, the second lovely, and then there was the third: Anne of Green Gables, The Continuing Story. The front of the DVD had a picture of Anne holding up a toddler so I was all set for the House of Dreams, Ingleside, Rainbow Valley and the aimless domesticity of L. M. Montgomery's later novels.

Oohhhh nooo. AOGG3 is a hideous travesty, an original story (apparently due to legal wrangling) in which Anne goes off to be a nurse in WWI and tracks down her missing husband. The plot is achingly dull and inappropriately violent. But what really hurts is the characterisation. The same actors play Anne, Gilbert and Diana, but they're all a good 15 years older, despite a little back story suggesting only three years have elapsed since the end of AOGG2. I'm willing to bet the lovely Megan Follows spent those entire 15 years smoking, because her voice is cracked and gravelly and her mouth is thin and puckered, while Gilbert is almost bald. Way to shatter my dreamy comfort-viewing, producer Kevin Sullivan!

I need to read the books again, stat. But I can't find proper copies at the library - only "eBook" versions. All in all, I probably should have just watched Soap again.

2007-04-13T11:18:00.000+10:00

Eco-Living

The surprise TV hit of Thursday night was a documentary on a couple who were renovating a barn in England, eco-style. It was a hit because the couple were complete nutters, although likeable and quite dignified. They worked without plans, but with lots of breaks for meditation and listening to the barn. I was struck by the idea of contemplating previous buildings that made you feel happy, and trying to recreate that in the present. I was not so struck by the green dragon that curled around the barn. Anyway, the building ended up completely gorgeous, with massive double-glazed windows and timber beams and beautiful stonework. And a three-level reed pool for filtering sewage.

But for all the gorgeousness, I can still out-hippy those eco-freaks. One: my house is already constructed, so I didn't use any of the earth's precious resources for manufacturing materials or transport. Two: my house has a tiny footprint, letting the earth breathe, and my garden is only one metre-square, tops, minimising water usage. Three: rather than being in the countryside where it requires a 30 minute trip in a gas-guzzling car to pick up milk and a newspaper, I can walk or take public transport to most places I need. Ha! Stick that in your recycled-timber pipe and smoke it. Along with whatever other substance is in there.

I realise I've posted something similar to this recently, but I do get seduced by prettiness and need to remind myself of "what truly matters". And if that involves bragging, so be it. At least I'm not styling myself as an ecological educator and hosting an eco-challenge show on SBS that is only a hair's-breadth away from the exploitation of "Wife Swap".

2007-04-11T11:15:00.000+10:00

Who writes this stuff? A Short History of the name Driscoll

When Time magazine made "you" its person of the year, it was celebrating the widespread democratic sharing of ideas that has taken place through internet phenomena like blogging, myspace, youtube and wikipedia. And yet surely, that august publication did not intend to reward writing and scholarship like this:

In Australia, Driscoll's have flourished and have spread their working class Irish Catholic charm as a contribution to a rich, multi-cultural society. Very often, the name Driscoll will appear in credits of films and television shows, or as a name of a character in a show particularly an Irish character used in a US made program. This reflects the depth of integration and influence of Driscoll within a broad Western Society.

That's pretty much the entirety of the Wikipedia entry for Driscoll. And, to grace you all with a little of my Irish charm, it's utter shite. Let's not even notice the misplaced apostrophe; the clumsy attempts to avoid prejudice and the sheer logical frailty of equating appearance in the credits of TV shows with "integration and influence" is enough to make me howl. So is the ugly alliteration of integration and influence, for that matter. And I don't like including "depth" and "broad" in the same conceptual bundle much.

Of course, I could edit this entry and fix all the aesthetic monstrosities. My problem is my ignorance. Who knew there was a town called Driscoll in Texas? Driscollians, I suppose.

2007-04-03T10:50:00.000+10:00

Oprah and Cormac Make Beautiful Music Together

The first Cormac McCarthy novel I started reading is also the McCarthy novel I keep re-reading. Every time I pick up Blood Meridian, I’m entranced by the dense, powerful language and the dark plots. And then I hit page 54, the aftermath of an attack by Native Americans and the end of a chapter:

Dust stanched the wet and naked heads of the scalped who with the fringe of hair below their wounds and tonsured to the bone now lay like maimed and naked monks in the bloodslaked dust and everywhere the dying groaned and gibbered and horses lay screaming.

I just cannot cope with that. I’ve had nightmares about those horses screaming, nightmares, and let’s not even begin with the horrors of bloodslaked dust. Yet it appears Oprah is tougher than me. She’s selected McCarthy’s most recent novel, The Road, for her next Book Club pick. The Road is a post-apocalyptic, faux-naif tale of a boy and his father on the eponymous road. As reviewed by Tim Sterne, the novel is super tough. It’s about as far away from the sentimental, romantic ethos of the original Oprah’s Book Club as can be imagined.

My take on this is that the selection is an assertion and consolidation of literary authority by Oprah. There’s always been a tension between the commercial and literary aspirations of her project: Jonathan Franzen might have pooh-poohed her credentials, but Toni Morrisson used the club to build her canonical status. Oprah’s dressing-down of James Frey for the “betrayal” of readers’ trust involved in his fake memoir illustrated her growing confidence and authority in the field.

The sheer literary coup of securing an interview with notoriously shy Cormac McCarthy is one more step in Oprah’s campaign to be taken seriously by the literati. And she’ll get there. What’s in it for McCarthy is a little harder to discern, but of course the judging of the Pulitzer isn’t far away. The whole literary field - authors, prizes, clubs and kitchen sinks - moves ever closer to a purely market-driven logic of operation.

cross-posted at sarsaparilla

2007-04-02T09:10:00.000+10:00

New Tunes: Mika and JT

Despite desparate infusions of indie-cool from Lyn, my music collection seems to be getting more and more mainstream. I guess I'm just a sucker for the singalong hook. Witness this weekend's two iTunes purchases:

1. Grace Kelly: Mika

Mika is billed everywhere in the media as Scissor-Sisters-meets-Freddie-Mercury and, you know, sure. The young fop with floppy hair does indeed channel these two acts (who aren't a million miles apart themselves). I love the song for its wildly upbeat chorus and the cha-cha-cha, 3-beats-against-2 bit where you can't help shaking your hips. And my hips don't lie. Recommended for: blue Monday mornings, pre-party confidence boosting, housecleaning.

2. What goes around....comes...around...interlude: Justin Timberlake

There are more ellipsises in that title than I know what to do with. I think I've exaggerated above, but I wouldn't bet the house on it. Anyway, this is my first JT purchase. I'm the girl who's been wooed and wooed and has finally succumbed, swooning, into his smooth-groovin' arms. I'll be faithful, Jus - I won't cheat on you, so you won't have to be so smug about me being cheated on in turn, and I certainly won't die in a vengeful car crash like Scarlett Johannsen does in your video clip. Not if I can help it. I'll be too busy swaying around the loungeroom to soulful close harmonies and that soft shoo-wop beat.

Recommended for: moody moments and "in-the-mood" moments. Or your Tuesday night pole-dancing class, or your guest spot on that burlesque show, or your audition for Pussycat Dolls, or whatever the latest raunch culture thing is. But just because it's sexy doesn't mean it's not also very nice pop.

2007-03-29T09:04:00.000+10:00

A Review of Stasiland by Anna Funder; or, the letter "I" and me.

I've spent the last two days having the top of my head blown off at a course, Writing For Readers, which helps transform academic writing into commercially-viable, for the General Public writing. We met publishers, editors, publicists, authors and booksellers, and workshopped ideas. It was a completely brilliant learning experience - for example, we got to make a direct pitch to the senior deputy editory of The Age - and I still haven't absorbed all the new information, the new sensibility.

One of the things we had to do at the course was read a generalist work based on serious research. I read Anna Funder's Stasiland, with an eye to how she did it. The exercise was quite provocative. I loved reading the book, and polished it off in one day; I learnt a lot about East Germany, the Stasi, and the wreckage they left behind. I didn't, however, particularly admire the style of the book. It was too personal, in a kind of unnecessary and even fiantly manipulative way. Funder never explains why she has an investment in her research material, why she is in Germany, why it's important to know she went out drinking with a rock star. There isn't enough of a link between her lonely life in a brown linoleum apartment (as evocative as that is) and the subject of the book.

This came up at the course, briefly and tangentially, when one of the publishers urged us to write in a "personal" voice; include yourself in your research. I said that I thought this was perhaps a fashion rather than an abiding rule of writing. Sure enough, another editor that day declared a distaste for overly personal writing, which she thought lent itself to the reaction, "So? Why should I care that you walked down the street this morning?" Exactly.

It's funny, because in the cloistered halls of academe I'm on a crusade to make writing more personal - use the word "I", don't contort yourself to avoid it, be honest about your research, it's done by a person, it doesn't arrive fully-formed from the ether. This is less inconsistent than it sounds, because I think I'm trying to develop a style that's personal without being self-indulgent. Other than on vanity-project websites, of course.

2007-03-22T11:39:00.001+11:00

My MySpace Space

Beth: So, I've just set up a MySpace page.
Clay: What's that?
Beth: It's a website; you can chat to people, play music, stuff...
Clay: Don't you already have a website?
Beth: Yeah, but MySpace seems to be what people do now.
Clay: Will it do anything different from your blog.
Beth: Not really.
Clay: So why...
Beth: It's what the young people do now.

You can visit my MySpace page at www.myspace.com/fridaysixpm. Maybe you can help me figure out what to do with it now it's there. At the very least, you can admire another facet of Federation Square.

2007-03-21T11:31:00.000+11:00

Soap: A Strange Kind of Genius

Over the last few weeks, on Rich's recomendation, I've been watching Season 1 of the 70s sitcom "Soap". Each episode begins with a hokey piano tune and an extended voice-over that always starts the same way: "This is the story of two sisters...." But this nostalgic/retro intro and the laugh track and the occasionally clumsy plotting mask a more profound truth. As Lyn said when she watched it on Sunday night, "That's kind of brilliant".

The show mocks the conventions of soap operas by presenting ludicrous sub-plots like the man who decides to have a sex-change operation so his footballer boyfriend will marry him, and the estranged son who speaks only through a ventriloquist's dummy. One of the best sub-plots reached its climax in the episode I saw last night, in which Peter "The Tennis Player" (as he's ominously credited) is stabbed, shot and has a brick thrown at him. But was the murderer his lover, Corinne, his ex-lover, Corinne's mother, or someone else? These questions and many others will be answered in the next episode.

The other highlight of the show is its acting. This was Billy Crystal's breakthrough show, and his wide, wry smile is just adorable. Benson, the black butler who got his own spin off show, is reliably bizarre, while Bert (who killed his wife's first husband - or did he?) is a superb practictioner of physical comedy - every step, every raise of the eyebrows, is hilarious.

I'm now compulsively watching at least two episodes a night; each season has 25 episodes so I have a few fun weeks ahead of me.

2007-03-14T08:54:00.000+11:00

Popcorn Taxi: Hot Fuzz and the Dudes from Spaced

Last night I went to a screening and director/stars Q & A for the new flick, Hot Fuzz. It's a police-action spoof set in a small English town. Think, The Bill-meets-Agatha Christie. Or, Miami Vice-meets-The Vicar of Dibley. Or any other humorous juxtaposition. It's pacey, visually engrossing and high-larious. If you liked Shaun of the Dead, you'll lurve this. There's even zombie-movie-esque violence.

The questioning at the end showcased the charm and humour of Edgar Wright, Nick Frost and Simon Pegg. One of my favourite snippets went loosely like this:

SIMON: A lot of the episodes in the film were based on real life. For example, the cops in such-and-such a town really did need an interpreter for someone with a thick country accent

EDGAR: We just made it two interpreters. (wryly) That's the secret of comedy: Just Add One

(pause)

NICK: (gazing into middle distance) Where does it all end though? It's like seven star hotels. Where does it all end?

Champagne stuff. The only problem with this riotous evening of fun and laughter was (a) the reminder that it still wasn't time for a third season of Spaced and (b) obscurely, I didn't like seeing all the other fans there. I thought I had a special thing happening with this crew. It turns out I'm not special. I'm not even the keenest fan - I didn't queue up for an autograph, or a photo, or anything. I just made space in my heart.

2007-03-07T12:06:00.000+11:00

Totally Obsessed By LibraryThing

Now I really know what a labour of love means. I stayed up until 2 in the morning cataloging the first three shelves of my library onto the free service, LibraryThing. It looks beautiful - you can arrange your collection by cover art. It allows endless re-organisations according to tags that you pick: I'm particularly fond of my Australian lit section. Maybe best of all, you can attach all sorts of information to each book - I've included reviews, notes on who gave me the book, inscriptions inside them etc. You can also visit other people's libraries and I've already found three of people I know. Checking out people's bookshelves is a time-honoured way of sussing them out (it's not what you're like, it's what you like!)

So, yeah, totally in love and obsessed. I'm off to do my G-I shelf now.

2007-03-06T09:31:00.000+11:00

Kerekere: Raising the Stakes on Ethical Consumption

I'm wondering just how ethical I can get before I explode. I shop at farmers' markets (local, sustainable, often organic) , and if they're not on, I go to macro (fair trade, organic). I offset my gas and electricity bill. I don't own a car. I live in medium-density housing. I reduce, re-use AND recycle. I am ticking all the boxes, people.

And then kerekere opens in the courtyard outside my building. Kerekere is a coffee cart that (a) sells sustainable, fair trade coffee, (b) employs at-risk youth and (c) re-distributes its profits to environmental and local charities. They have a blog at www.kerekere.blog.com. They make an extremely yummy chai and are very friendly.

Is it bad of me to get a sudden urge to do something really, really evil? I might throw a plastic bag from my window.

2007-02-28T16:13:00.000+11:00

Condiment on Death Row

Gallivanting Green Tomato chutney is toast. In a manner of speaking. That particular jar has been forcibly removed to free up fridge space, and provided a rather tasty supper on its way.

The newest victim of Condiment Death Row holds a special place in my heart. Or should that be stomach? Anyway, it's a shiraz jelly, bought for me by my mother from Domaine Chandon in theYarra Valley. I've been hoarding the last centimetre for months: it keeps being divided into smaller and smaller translucent, wobbling cubes of deliciousness. But now I have a new shiraz jelly - with cracked pepper, even - and the old one must go. I tried last night at moonlight cinemas, but I didn't quite scrape the jar clean. The days are, however, firmly numbered.

2007-02-27T09:32:00.000+11:00

Is There Any Event Less Fashion-Forward Than The Oscars?

Sure, we all love Grecian goddess gowns. They're "gorgeous": tasteful, flattering, and eminently safe. Likewise up-dos and diamond earrings. Totally boring.

Don't actresses understand that here in Australia, there are bored students in desperate need of mid-afternoon entertainment? When I'm procrastinating from doing yet another database search for articles on Harry Potter, I need bold, surprising red carpet choices: swans, not togas. Frankly, I'm disappointed in the lot of them. Although at least Gwyneth Paltrow had bad lipstick.

2007-02-26T10:52:00.000+11:00

Hell is Woden Plaza, Not Sportsgirl

I woke up suddenly and with a sense of dislocation this morning, mid-dream. I won't go into all the tedious details: suffice it to say that I had died and gone to hell, and hell was Woden Plaza, specifically the corner on the ground floor where Sportsgirl is (used to be?). The colours were garish and there were baby animals involved.

And yet I don't hate Sportsgirl, not at all. Shopping malls I hate, but provided I can duck into a Sportsgirl outlet from a footpath and retain occasional glimpses of natural light, I like the store. They know how to embrace a trend whole-heartedly and I find that endearing.

No, I think the idea of consigning Sportsgirl to the inferno came from an article I read in yesterday's paper about fashion companies using cigarettes in their advertising images. The founder of Wheels and Doll Baby - a kind of grungy, goth-lite brand for girls who listen to triple j - defended their ads by saying the brand had a certain aesthetic: "We're not Sportsgirl". It's funny, because actually they are quite a lot like Sportsgirl - same demographic, same price range. Often it's the small differentials in market niches that are defended the most vigorously.

2007-02-21T10:25:00.000+11:00

Am I Distracted?

I don't know, you tell me: on Monday, I sprayed myself with vinegar instead of perfume.

I'm not sure how that mistake is even possible, but there you have it. I've spent the last couple of weeks pulling together a conference on public transport that was held yesterday. It went over a treat, despite near-invasion by hordes of O-Week students waving balloons and trying to steal muffins.

Anyway, having thrown myself into that rather people-oriented, real-world-connected task, it's time for me to retreat again and weigh up my priorities. You know the schtick: devoting myself to what's important not urgent. Giving my best energy to what matters most.

At about this point in most bloggers' crises of purpose, they announce a hiatus from the "distraction" of blogging. Not me! Blogging is central to my own "I Have a Dream" credo. So, expect more posts. But I'll also have a stab at some research and writing.

2007-02-07T09:32:00.000+11:00

Reading Notes

The Patrick White Reading Group is reading The Solid Mandala this month, to coincide with discussion on The First Tuesday Book Club on 6th March. I'm going to join in - I was really inspired by David Malouf's piece, reprinted in The Age recently, on the career and cultural legacy of White. I happen to own every single novel White wrote, thanks to my friend Michelle who studied him in an honours course at ANU and couldn't wait to move the books off her bookshelf.

This brings my total of book clubs to a scarily high number:

Normal book club. Current book: The Corrections
Jane Austen book club, "The Assembly". Current book: Emma
Booker Book Club. On hiatus. I should read that Desai novel.
The Book Thing with Sterne. Starting very poorly, but that's part of its charm. No current book.
18th Century Book Club. Current book: Tristram Shandy
Pierre Bourdieu Reading Group. To be kicked off in March
Patrick White Reading Group. Current book: The Solid Mandala
Honorary status on Dad's Book Club. Current book: Last Orders

Other than my book club commitments, I'm trying to read all the novels my Year 12 students are studying this year - so far, Ammaniti's I'm Not Scared and Tyler's The Accidental Tourist have been brilliant - as well as those Harry Potter novels.

Other than THAT I've decided to have a reading theme for this year: I'll only read books over 700 pages. If a book doesn't take me a long time to pore over, I just can't seem to remember it these days. So, options for my personal reading include:

Last Living Confederate Wido Tells All (via Rich)
Middlemarch
War And Peace
The Proust one with the madeleine biscuit. Temps Perdu etc.
Vollmann's Rising Up and Rising Down (a history of violence)

2007-02-06T10:55:00.000+11:00

Less Love

One of the joys of iPod's shuffle function is the unexpectedly, serendipitously, totally appropriate song. The song you didn't even know you needed to hear. This morning, arriving at uni, I received an unlooked-for boost of purpose and energy courtesy of Rage Against The Machine's cover of "How I Could Just Kill A Man".

Ten minutes ago, a swirling miasma of vagueness induced by google was dissolved when Alabama 3 prompted me to laugh out loud. I thought I'd share the lyrics, presented with what wikipedia calls "irony and righteous energy". Actually, I thought the lyrics were a lot funnier before I did some basic research and found it was a sample from Jim Jones, of the Jonestown Massacre. Someone said this seriously? Now I'm just disturbed...

"Love is the only weapon - shit. Bullshit! Martin Luther King died for his love! Kennedy died talking about something he couldn't even understand, some kind of generalized love, and he never even backed it up! He was shot down!

Bullshit, “Love is the only weapon with which I got to fight”. I've got a hell of a lot of weapons to fight! I got my claws, I got cutlasses, I got guns, I got dynamite, I got a hell of a lot of fight! I'll fight! I'll fight! I will fight! I will fight! I will fight! I will fight!

That's right - what the world needs now is a little less love. Crazy cult leaders.

2007-02-05T11:16:00.000+11:00

Bookmooch: the ultimate feelgood experience

Everyone should go and join bookmooch immediately. It's a site where you list books that you have and don't want, and get the opportunity to swap them for books you do want. Genius. In essence, you get a point for every book you send, and each book you want costs a point.

I read about it a while ago, but my bookmooching has been totally eclipsed by Lyn - who seems to own books that people actually want, unlike my pile of gimmicky cookbooks and fourth rate novels. Maybe my other problem is learning to let go; I only have an inventory of seven or so books, compared to Lyn's fifty. Anyway, I'm getting there.

Here's why you should join bookmooch:

the site is pretty
it's a froogle thing to do
there are links to local libraries, so you can see if they have the book you want
you can donate your points to charities that need books

How great is that! And there's even a second life venue with a pretty garden and classical music for book discussions, if you're into that sort of thing.

2007-01-24T11:08:00.000+11:00

Newsflash: Harry Potter Novels Not Too Bad

I've read three of them now, which is a significant improvement on my first effort at reading Rowling's ouevre. Back then, I read the first page, choked on the cliches, and threw the novel down in disgust. But now I'm churning through them with considerable enjoyment.

Here's the verdict: Rowling is no worse than Enid Blyton. Poor writing, thin characterisations and predictable plots don't really matter for kids books. They can just be fun. I've been pleasantly surprised by the flashes of good humour and wit that illuminate Harry Potter's adventures: Rowling really is good at names, especially.

I do find the compulsive readability of the novels a bit like ordering popcorn at the movies - sure, you keep eating until it's all gone, but you feel a bit sick afterwards. I read Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban last night between dinner and dessert, and reading that fast does leave you with a sort of literary indigestion. But there's a time and place for that (I call it childhood).

Whether I receive the movies with as much grace as I've accorded the novels remains to be seen.

2007-01-18T11:43:00.000+11:00

Review: Sneaky Sound System

Sometime between my bookish adolescence and my quasi-middle-aged, home-owning present, I had a social life. I went to parties, danced at clubs with dubious guys, took road trips to festivals and wore T-shirts with bands' names on them.

That heady period of joy and grooviness has come flooding back with the purchase of Sneaky Sound System's self-titled debut album. Fundamentally, they are a band from my youth - the lead singer, Miss Connie, sang for a band called Primary that I adored back in the late 90s. I remember seeing them as support for Savage Garden (of all people) at a free outdoor gig in Sydney's Domain. I was screaming for Primary while the teeny-boppers looked bored, and then they screamed for Darren and whatshisname while I giggled at an improbably bad cover of Imagine. I also saw Primary in a tiny pub on Brunswick St when I first moved to Melbourne - Connie wore a white pantsuit and masses of eyeshadow, strutting her stuff like she was already Robbie Williams. She rocks.

Sneaky Sound System have a pure, strong, clean sound that teams quirky vocals with upbeat danceability. They're Australia's Basement Jaxx, perhaps - with a bit less aural stuffing around. My favourite track is Tease Me, a number that makes me tap the steering wheel, jump up and down with my hands in the air and grin like an idiot. Not necessarily all at once. I also like Hip Hip Hooray: "I wanna go home with you and I don't even know your name!!!" You can hear that triple exclamation mark. In fact all the lyrics are playfully young and sexy. The absolute highlight is from Track 7, when Connie wails "I've got business on busy days". Or at least I think she does: idiosyncratic articulation has always been part of her charm.

So. I Love It. I want to go to a smoky bar, or an overly fluorescent club, and see them play. I'm 18 again.

2007-01-15T10:09:00.000+11:00

Inspiration

Things I'm Currently Inspired By

So You Think You Can Dance
Bright orange, apple green, palest blue
Howard Arkley
Design
The squeaky clean beats of Sneaky Sound System

Things I'm Not Very Inspired By

The written word

Yeah, so suddenly the whole writer-in-a-garret dream isn't very sustaining. On the upside, I have the opportunity to demonstrate grit! And determination! And those qualities are in all the inspirational movies, so I should be alright. Speaking of inspirational movies, I saw Centerstage last night after So You Think You Can Dance, and it was the awesomest high school dancing movie ever. The plot meandered everywhere while remaining utterly formulaic, the actors inhabited their cliches without a hint of irony - it was totally like reading Sweet Valley High or (more appropriately) A Dream Of Sadler's Wells. Loved it.

2007-01-09T10:17:00.000+11:00

Re-reading The Corrections

I never re-read books. For a start, there's that stack of unread books by the bed that we all have; then there's the mental list of books that seem interesting; then there's the books on my shelf that were on special and I thought I might eventually read; then there's the host of recommendations I get from others; yadda yadda yadda. But beyond the inevitable guilt I'd feel from re-reading under these conditions, I have a sort of philosophy that celebrates the new, unconquered literary turf - I've always liked contemporary literature more than the classics, for example, although at the moment (and fifteen years after all my friends) I'm rather captivated by Charles Dickens.

Beyond all THAT, I associate re-reading with comfort reading (Anne of Green Gables when youve got a cold) and adolescent, infatuated reading (Lord of the Rings, over and over).

These ideological tenets notwithstanding, I decided this summer to re-read Jonathan Franzen's "The Corrections". I'd been touting this book as the best of the last five years for so long that I thought I'd better double-check my assessment. And, as a non-re-reader I found it a very interesting exercise. First, I read it much more quickly the second time around; I didn't have to work as hard. I was disappointed to find the characters - my friends and companions! - still struggling with the same issues they had to confront in 2001. Some of Franzen's concerns seemed outdated, others (like genetic engineering) had gained new poignancy.

Most of all, Franzen's writing still impressed me: his deft, nuanced characterisations, his elegant sentences. Actually, it was Franzen who wrote, in an essay, a passage that inspires my own writing more than anything else. It's kind of dorky, but what inspirational quote isn't? Here it is, misquoted because I can't find the original:

To write sentences of such authenticity that people can take refuge in them. Isn't that enough? Isn't that rather a lot?

I'll keep recommending Franzen. Has anyone read his new one, the memoir that mirrors much of The Corrections?

crossposted at sarsaparilla

2006-12-21T11:28:00.000+11:00

Last Minute Best Of

I don't know what my problem is - normally I'm doing best of lists all through December. Maybe my mind has been fuddled by the persistent, burning haze of smoke that hangs over Melbourne this summer. Anyway, here's my stab at a moment of reflection.

Best CDs: Cat Power, The Greatest and Camille, Le Fil
Best gig: Paul Kelly, L-Z at the Spiegeltent
Best book: Edward St Aubyn, Mother's Milk and M.J. Hyland, Carry Me Down. But it was a bit of a lean year for books - nothing as exciting as last year's winner in this category, Europe Central.
Best film: Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. So shoot me.

2006-12-15T13:05:00.000+11:00

No More Than a Fish Loves

I'm going to transfer my email to my official uni account, after the deluge of daily spam filled my quota and stopped me communicating effectively with, like, my supervisor and employers and friends and stuff. So as a farewell gesture, I thought I'd present the subject headings of a selection of today's more interesting spam in a format that allows their poetry to resonate.

No more than a fish loves
This would look great on your wrist
As the man came close he stood still
apothecaries, and when thou good: nor any peace James, and shout O
Address crisis!
I almost forgot
gigantic parakeet