So...

What a rancid, runtish, queasy, gormless, stillborn hash of a year that was.

Time to do practically everything differently.

Top 5 reasons High Fidelity is the best. Ever.

John Cusack. Rob. Talks to the camera with the most candour and insight of any first person narrative comedy ever. Beating Woody Allen at his own game. I think its something to do with the dramatic irony of his voiceover self having so much more insight than his in-character self. Whatever. Rob is warm and funny and frustrating and stubborn and vulnerable and just plain brilliant.

Soundtrack and pop-culture references. The love of music oozes out of every frame.

Quotability. I have a theory – not fully formed – that the immediacy/success of comedies is directly proportional to the durability of its most salient quotes. “I’ve been thinking with my guts since I was fourteen years old, and I’ve come to the conclusion that my guts have shit for brains”, “Get your petioli stink outta my store”, “Kathleen Turner Overdrive” and “WHAT. FUCKING. IAN GUY?!?” are genius.

Jack Black as Barry. The man has always been parody of himself, but every performance for him since this once is a pale mimicry of the nerdy verve he brings to the store-clerk-come-crooner.
It is honest. Love is hard. It is shit. It is a grind. It sure as shit isn’t glamorous. We do dumb stuff in pursuit of it or flight from it all the time. But it is the thing that is at the end of what we strive for in every other way, every day. High Fidelity is a celebration of that whole maddening mess.

Finding Neverhappenedland

So I was working on a Saturday. Quiet day, no one much around. Two guys walk in - early thirties, weekend trainers, one guy thinning, the other all vanilla.

I could tell they were from Landmark. Their coming as a pair. Their uncertainty in the gallery. Their printed name tags where the first name is twenty points larger than the surname.

They order some coffees. What with it being a slow day and all, I had to set the grinder on. Between the crunch of the beans and the shrill of the video work in the foyer I coudn't hear the conversation the two guys resumed.

I poured out the coffees, unappreciated rosetta and all. Then remembered to click off the grinder. It just so happened to coincide with a break in the artwork noise. I caught the tail - or what would be the tail end when they clocked I could hear them. What I heard was this:

"And I had always thought I had a good relationship with my mum, but..."

But?

BUT?!!!

But because of the mental manipulation of an ostensibly empowering 'education' program you're now going to foist the blame for a catalogue of regrets and frustrations for decisions you've made as man of free will onto the woman who until now has overall seemed to do a fine turn of raising you?

Well how d' yeh like them apples?

Way to save the planet y'all

Someone I know drove the 3 km or so to go to the Walk Against Warming rally, before going boutique shopping and driving home. Seriously.

Searching for answers in the library of life...

Does anyone know where the demarcation of literature into 'Fiction' and 'Non-Fiction' came from? Why implicitly give 'Fiction' more legitimacy in that it's counterpoint is it's negation? Why not 'Fiction' and 'Factual', or 'Fiction' and 'Actual', or 'Fiction' and 'Assented Supposition'? It just seems odd, particularly since if any primacy would be implied - given the investment of our society in 'truth' - it would be to the fact-ish side of writing.

And don't come at me with the 'we can never really get a handle on the truth so it's best to leave it unspecific' argument. We peddle dubious facts routinely in everyday life, let alone academia. I don't buy it.

But damnnit if it ain't buggin' the goddamn shit outta me.

Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Bue...

Monkeys with balls.

Basketball is not a non-contact sport. Putting it in anywhere near the same category as bowling or darts or even tennis given the volume of directly transferred sweat is laughable. Still, reclassifying it as a contact sport would lead to bedlam. There needs to be a middle ground - something like a pushy-shovey-but-no-grabby-hitty sport category.

Anyway, my point is there are always players on teams who will test the limits of the sweat-transference to see how much they can get away with. If they swing an elbow and don't get called, swing some more. Then try an out and out shove. Or a kidney tap. And so on. That team's general aim is to steamroll to victory putting brawn before finesse.

There are good ways and bad ways to play this game of limits. An oversize team can play to its strengths by being physical, but respect the limit the ref imposes, playing hard and tough but essentially fair and in good sportsmanship. If the other team can't take what is being dished out it isn't personal, it's just a tactic. I love a game like that. I revel in it. I'm competitive, I love playing physical and scrappy defense and fighting for position on offense. If the ball is on the floor, I'm diving on it. And in against these kind of teams, regardless of who wins, I'm proud that I played hard and will commend the opposition for doing the same. Nothing personal - just a healthy channeling of aggression.

Then there is the bad way to play tough. It involves a lot of scowling, even more complaining, and lashings of snide comments to the opposition and ref. This team wants to break you - to bully or intimidate the opposition to submission or distraction. Every non-call on their end is a national travesty and every call on your end is the grossest perversion of justice ever known. They drop the shoulder a few times to start, just to let you know they're the boss, pushing and shoving off the ball where it's less likely to get called. They try to dictate the tone, and the tone is U.G.L.Y.

After not too long - on my team at least - this shit just will not stand. It becomes not about just basketball, but about having a little pride in yourself to not get pushed around. So you sign their offer sheet of shoving and niggle, finding your own ways to grab and wrestle and push a bit back. The problem with these kind of jackass, self-inflated teams is that they can dish it, but they sure can't take it. Soon the whingeing and crying over calls turns into direct threats on you and your loved ones. The elbows are thrown with that much more intent to harm. They hate you, literally, not just for this game but for their girlfriend holding out on them, their car accident last week, the unfairness of the world on a guy trying to fight his way through.

It all seems ridiculous, but it is amazingly common. Sport as violent catharsis.

So, we played one of these teams in my bottom grade social league last night. They thought they should beat us. They weren't beating us. They tried to impose their physical dominance. We imposed right back. One guy - a good four inches and 20 kilograms bigger than I - decided to make an example of me. I kept shutting him down or pushing him out. He got shittier and shittier, no doubt compounded by my weapon of choice in these situations - being patronising. He tried to throw me to the ground for a rebound and ended up falling over himself. I patted him on the back and said "Don't worry mate, next time" with a cheap grin. That put him over the top. He ran at me full pelt, dropped his shoulder and caught me in the chest, sending me flying. I sank the free throws and he was shamed into uselessness for the rest of the game. We beat them 35-17.

It wasn't a satisfying game in the usual way, but I just get so furious when people start things they don't want to finish. I don't like hostility on the court. Hard play, but not hostility. And the idea of someone making me an arbitrary target for their aggression - makes me want to prove a point. Makes me not want to back down. Maybe I should, but damn, it just doesn't seem right.

Monkeys with basketballs, man. Monkeys with balls...

Yes We Can (muthafuckas)

Has anyone else noticed that the snappy kitch way to herald the coming of the 44th Prez of the US - "Obamarama" - fits semlessly into the tune of Shaggy's 1993 chartbuster Oh Carolina. Although it doesn't shed any light on any of the rest of the lyrics of this abysmal worm-ditty, it does nicely reference the way Barack has a knack for rhythmic lilt and finding the seam of popular culture.

Dear got I hope Obi Wan has more longevity than Shaggy.

Anyone for dessert?

HUNGER (2008)

Dir: Steve McQueen

Writ: Steve McQueen, Enda Walsh

Star: Michael Fassbender

Belfast prison. 1982. Irish freedom fighters protest their status as civilian criminals by undermining the system however they can – refusing prison fatigues, smearing cell walls in shit, pouring piss into the corridors. The inmates are hungry for validation. The prison staff are hungry for Irish blood. The IRA are hungry for martyrs. And the world was hungry for meaning. The world is still waiting.

British video artist Steve McQueen’s feature debut is an arresting, visceral and brave take on this landmark moment of Irish history. His quasi-narrative, visually stunning video works flagged a major talent behind the camera, but the path from visual artist to filmmaker is paved with vile symbolic hyperbole and terminal lack of actual story. In short, judgement was reserved as to whether McQueen’s obvious potential would translate into a satisfying feature.

Well, satisfying and more. Surprising and bold. How many debut filmmakers would have the confidence to hold a single camera shot – no pan or tilt or zoom or trickery – on a conversation in a bare room for near on ten minutes? How many would know that it was exactly the right shot for the moment? How many debut filmmakers would lead off the story following a supporting character, switch to another bit player before finally settling on central figure half an hour in? And how many would be able to avert the audience feeling cheated and instead have us loaded with empathy for all? A stunning achievement.

There are so many more superlatives, but just go. Go and see it. Go. Now.

Sour Cinema

I’ve been lucky enough lately to score some gigs writing for Australia’s best (and second biggest, circulation-wise) movie magazine Filmink. Yay for me. Among some feature articles and interviews I’ve had the supremely awesome task of watching movies on preview and writing what I think about them. Since there’s practically nothing I’d rather do than watch movies and I have an opinion on everything, this is pretty close to that magical, mystical land of loving work. McLovin’ work.

So anyways, one of the preview discs popping its silvery, binary, plasticy length through my letterbox recently was the Palestinian/Israeli drama Lemon Tree. I watched, I scribbled, I opinioned, and I cobbled together the rough shape of a review. When I write, (allow me to digress again), when I write I make a few notes, undoubtedly indecipherable to anyone else, and then I walk away. I wait and see what sticks with me – ideas or films or gripes – and roll it all around in my head until I see the angle open up. If I can’t shake an image, a phrase or a theme, that’s the point through which I approaching the subject. What resonates. What inflames. What connects me and allows more than a cursory glance.

Blah blah blah. The point is that in the few days between my hurried notes and the angle emerging I was diverted to working on a more pressing article for the mag, and by the time I came back to it, the review had been handballed to another willing writer. All, good – I ended up with both an excuse to watch a movie and a feature article. I’d forgotten about it, moved on, adios West Bank muchacos.

That was until about a week ago, when the film got its general cinema release. Tom Ryan from The Age, David Stratton and Margaret Pomerantz from At The Movies, and a host of other mainstream media gave this dreary and uninspiring offering four stars. Out of five. A high distinction. A film in the top 20 percent released on the general public. Uh, no. It isn’t. Not by a long fucking way.

To set the record straight and even up the ledger, what follows is my review of the film. Enjoy.


Based on a true story, Israeli-Palestinian co-production Lemon Tree has at its heart the noble if naive ideas that we must make a stand for what we love and that compassion has the possibility of crossing cultural divides. If that sounds like a twee lens through which to see the Middle East, it is.

There are some charming performances and engaging moments, but the whole experience is a bit…cold. The symbolism of the eponymous lemon tree is dreadfully laboured. Even the most casual observer of world affairs would realise that some situations are beyond such simplified metaphor, and not a useful lens through which to view the conflict. But not only is the land of the Arab Israeli conflict rendered simplistic – worse, in cinematic terms, it is made mundane.

It is a cruel shame that the acting talent obvious here is applied to a loaded and emotive subject with so little filmmaking subtlety. Nostalgia is shown by the tearful fingering of the outline of a face on a computer screen. Deep secrets are unearthed when Polaroids are discovered conveniently left lying around on an office desk. It becomes obvious that the creative impetus behind this film is far too invested in the sentimentality of the message the film aims at than the crafting of a compelling journey. Unfortunately, it seems most reviewers will steer audiences down a frustratingly fruitless path as victims of the same sentimentality. I’m all for resolution to the devastating West Bank conflict, and agree with the spirit of Lemon Tree that the way forward is likely to come from the grass roots – between neighbours and shop owners and unlikely personal empathy. But please, don’t see this movie. Opposite to the fruit at the centre of the story, Lemon Tree has a sweet start and a bitter aftertaste.

2 / 5

The End of the War

I hereby present my Extensively Researched Irrefutable Reasoning of the Superiority of PCs over Macs.

The drummer from Def Leppard – a beacon of hope and inspiration for maimed and disabled creative geniuses everywhere – could not use a Mac. Or at least not a Mac mouse. There is no way that the one-armed percussion juggernaught could possibly respond to his kilobytes of fan-email, cut and paste live action snaps for the Revival Tour promotional material, or complete his personal tax return online without the benefit of the right mouse key.

Apple-key plus single-button click? Puhlease.

And those talking head ads with the kid from Third Rock were amusing for about half a second, but can anyone at Apple say “dead horse”?

So kids, save yourself a few pennies and support limbless technophiles everywhere. Say NO to the sexy little milky white knobule. Say YES to the ugly grey rock with two buttons.

And speaking of...

And speaking of words that conjure drastically inappropriate and unrelated images...

"FLANGE"

Sounds like a calcified vagina to me...

Big Brother revealed

So I think I've finally nailed what is behind my uncharacteristic and admittedly perverse enjoyment of the low-brow bile-fest that is Big Brother.


The way people on the show behave when the cracks in their glossy forced relationships begin to show and the whole fabric begins to unravel, when they are at their basest - even accounting for the fact that the tensions are mostly imposed and the rifts mostly constructed - that behaviour validates and confirms my inherent cynicism about the world. Beneath all their gloss and polish, most people are repulsive, albeit entertaining.


Don't get me wrong. I spend most of my time trying to overcome this pessimism and make the most of life. But every now and again the wry and bleak heart of me needs to be indulged. Enter Big Brother. Quiet the soul. Return to making an effort with the world. Simple.

Memo to all office workers enamored of catching public transport in trainers

You look like fucking morons.

I should qualify that I am in no way shape or form against wearing more comfortable shoes for the commute - slip ons or sneakers or flats of some description. I'm sure small mercies are the only thing keeping you from going completely postal as you grind out shitty sameish day after day in recycled office air. You got a few blocks to leg it each day, your footsies get sore in patent leather.

Cool. I get it.

But hi-tech scientifically calibrated cross country running shoes are complete fucking overkill. I have owned running shoes and am firmly of the opinion that they are ridiculously impractical footwear for everything except said sporting activity. Not to mention the fluorescently white plastic/mesh poking out from under a snappy tailored new wool suit looks like dress-yourself day at the special school.

Actually, lets face it. That earlier ramble about trainers being unsuitable footwear was a smokescreen. You could wear concrete heels studded with razorblades for all I care. But for the love of god it is a crime against fashion and general decency to pair weekend activity-wear with button-down week wear. Seriously, it looks nothing short of retarded. I don't like thinking that insurance is brokered and stocks are traded and orders processed and deals made by people who could see themselves in the mirror and find that look acceptable.

So stop it. All of you. There is a whole section of the shoe department dedicated to "casual". Please go and check it out. Or at least start running to work so there is a point to all this shameless eyesore. Honestly, who throws a shoe...

Judges uphold 'right to bear arms'

American mayors and legislators are closely studying a Supreme Court ruling today that clarifies the constitutional right of an individual to have a gun and may make many cities' gun control efforts invalid.
The 5-4 landmark ruling is the first time the Supreme Court has clarified what the second amendment means. The majority concluded that the "right to bear arms" extends to the individual, not just the rights of states to maintain militias, like state guards and police forces.

I don't even know where to start with this one.

The frustrated cynic in me says "Fuck 'em. If their educated leaders are this retarded about it all, let them shoot each other on the streets."

The frustrated optimist in me says "At least they're looking at it - maybe this will make the whole issue clearer and everyone can move forward. Or maybe people really can be trusted to look after themselves and deserve the right to do what they see fit."

Then the frustrated cynic in me punches the frustrated optimist in the throat and screams "Wake up to yourself!"

Yeah, the cynic is right. As usual.

Australia and Zimbabwe Test

Jane McGrath did so much to raise awareness of breast cancer and provide financial and institutional support for the people who work to treat it. She conducted herself with grace and dignity. Her death is sad and newsworthy.
But I am fucking disgusted - no, outraged - that her passing is the front page news item on every major newspaper and news website when an entire country is on the brink of collapse and wholesale genocide. The leader of the opposition in Zimbabwe, Morgan Tsvangirai, withdrew from the run-off election race because of escalating violence, persecution and blatant corruption by the tyrannical Robert Mugabe's ruling regime. According to Tsvangirai 82 of his party's officials and sympathisers have been murdered and thousands in hiding or displaced since his party legitimately outright won the elections in late March but were robbed and bullied of that victory by vote-rigging by Mugabe who manufactured a result the would require a run-on election, giving him enough time to orchestrate the reign of terror he has exacted on his opposition.

Tsvangirai has lead this party through from one wave of violence to the next hoping that if he got close enough to a win within the national system, the rest of the world would finally pull its complacent thumb out of its ass and back him. He got so close as to have actually won election, but still the international community sits on its big grubby hands. No oil, no gold, no bother. How could a man continue in the face of such abuse of his supporters and brutal global apathy?Tsvangirai is saving the lives of his supporters by backing down because the lives that have been lost in support of him and his party have literally been in vain. Mugabe is the new Hitler, and we are herding people onto the trains.

Today I am disgusted to be a human being. And I'm disgusted to be Australian.

The one where we look for a job

Admin superstar? Can-do all-rounder? Data entry wiz? Do you thrive on challenge? Looking for a way in to media? Inbound calls only! No cold selling! Do you enjoy the Great Outdoors? Want to work with children without early mornings? High profile national organisation! Potential for promotion! Make your own hours! Work with the latest technology! Passion for sales? Sick of commuting? Be part of a small team! Perks galore! Get paid to travel! Realise your best! Immediate start!

The successful candidate will have at least 5 years experience in a similar role with asexual species, some knowledge of arbitrary heirarchical systems, and be willing to suck it up. Experience in quashing moral objections is not essential but will be highly regarded.

This is a unique opportunity to launch your career with a highly regarded consulting company in a part time role. Applications only in writing, addressing all the self-devised key criteria listed, to the Managing Executive Director of Senior Operational Advancements. We are watching and you will learn to like it.

The employment sector - when did the world get this fucking convoluted?

The one where the question arises "What The Fuck Is Wrong With People"

The PROBLEM is SHANIA TWAIN'S UNKEMPT POODLE.

The one where I curse Jimmy Barnes for fucking with my sex life

In 1990 I was a long way from having sex. Too long, I thought in my later teens. Nonetheless, the particulars of what to do in the bedroom - apart from pull on your PJs and hit the hay - wasn't even on my list of things to discover.

I was also a long way from understanding metaphor and hyperbole in pop music. But even through the ignorance of childhood, some messages from the blanket of pop culture make it to the subconscience to lay in wait.

And what does this have to do with Jimmy Barnes?

LET’S MAKE IT LAST ALL NIGHT

THIS COULD BE THE LAST TIME I MAKE LOVE TO YOU

LET’S MAKE IT LAST ALL NIGHT

BABY GIVE ME SOMETHING TO HOLD ON TO

EVEN IF WE CAN’T MAKE IT RIGHT

BABY MAKE IT LAST ALL NIGHT

Let's Make It Last All Night - Barnesy’s stomping ballad off the classic gruntfest album 'Two Fires' - was everywhere in the summer of 1990. And nowhere more than from the shiny-red-plastic-shelled two speaker radio cassette deck perched above the faux-wood-panelled microwave in our family home kitchen. My mum had the commercial radio blaring from sunup to sundown, and the pained romantic ambitions of Barnesy and Farnsey and Ninah Cherry and Lionel Ritchie all leaked into my little putty brain somewhere.

Jump cut to years later. Through a series of cruel circumstances and what could be only called ‘bad luck’ I was a frustrated 17-year-old virgin. I realise eminently now why the turn of phrase insists you ‘lose’ your virginity, since not only was I a changed manchild after that blustery dusk on the beach, but I also cannot remember a single detail of the actual event. It’s lost. Gone. In a haze of relief and confused expectations. But one thing I do know – it didn’t last all night.

And as my unlikely sex life sputtered along, this simple fact plagued me. I could NEVER make it last all night. Even if by some magical alignment of the stars I managed to make it last over 15 minutes, I was near clinical exhaustion. And sometimes those sitcom-length dalliances were worth the effort for the other party. Yet lurking inside me somewhere, sabotaging my sexual confidence and undermining my mojo, was the belief that if I really, really cared I should make it last all night. Especially since at that age I believed that every night could be that last time I could do it.

And in my mind was a picture of Barnesy circa 1990 – looking like a man who could undoubtedly make it last all night. For several on the trot if his lady-friend demanded.

I’ve since realised it isn’t possible. At least not without Viagra, a drip and some serious tantric training. I’m not sure when I finally, consciously acknowledged that perhaps Barnesy wasn’t speaking literally and I could relax the expectations I’d put on myself. Maybe it was in the scarce moments of honesty between my male friends where I realised more than 15 minutes isn’t a bad innings. Maybe it was discovering more valuable things to a relationship than a superhuman sexual stamina. Or maybe it was just seeing Barnesy looking really fucking old.

The one where I beg for clemency

Every relationship I have ever gone into and everything that has happened in those times I've had only the best intentions. Regardless of how miserably things might have fallen apart, how far I might have turned away or how much I might have undermined the course of things, I was never cynical or calculating or cruel. And no matter how empty I left anyone, I never meant to take anything.

Is that so hard to come at? Is it possible to resolve such ruin with honest, hopeful intent? Is is possible to forgive?

Maybe. But I'm not so sure who is to be forgiven.

The one where my inscrutable pleb voyerism is given further fuel

Good news fellow trash hounds! Great news in fact!

The teenage try-hard suburban-terrorist serial-pest sensation Corey Delaney is joining the presenting team of Big Brother 08.

I had heard that after his infamous Ringwood 'party' - blown outrageously out of proportion - The Corey had wrangled himself a publicist. "What the fuck for?" I thought. The kid held a lameo high school party that got crashed by a hoard of bored deadshit punks who trashed the manicured whitewash neighbourhood. The fact that the party details went viral through myspace isn't testament to his part planning savvy or his marketing nous, just proof of the saturation of internet social networking sites and evidence that the term 'friend' has been correspondingly made a laughing stock.

But, kudos to his parents. The whole situation reeks of a frustrated stage mother smelling her longed-for vicarious dream waft by and seizing the chance with all her wily spirit. I guarantee you The Corey wasn't the brains behind his media saturation. So, well played mum...well played.

And when he's gracing the screen as a BB host or special commentator or running joke, don't jump to cussing the yellow-sunnied one himself. Spare some vitriol for his elders behind the scenes.

There's nothing like suburban opportunism, is there?

The one where I ruefully pre-empt my descent into shameful trashdom

It's coming again. That time of year when the putrid bottom-dwellers of society are shepherded cooing and drooling into a theme-park box and - fed on carefully rationed humiliation and each others' unique bigotry - and encouraged to pet and prod each other in an attempt to elicit even more evidence of objectionable breeding.

Big Brother '08.

And I'll be watching.

Against my better judgement. Against the integrity and culture and intellectual grooming efforts of my parents and friends. Against everything that is worthy and sacred in this world, I'll be watching.

I used to go to lengths hiding my irrational fascination. Program the VCR. Invent false appointments. Deny, deny, deny. I would whip myself with rusty barbed wire after every episode, feeling like a horny Catholic boarder guiltily cleaning himself up under the mothball-crusted blankets seeing the Virgin Mary waving vaguely down towards him. I was ashamed.

Then, something changed. I realised that as an anthropological record of the perverse phenomenon of B-grade fame, as a celebration of the spectacle in the inane, as evidence of the power of the pack mentality on both sides of the voting lines, and as a chance to out and out ridicule bogans, Big Brother equals entertainment.

Where else would a turkey slap be possible on national commercial television (even as a reference)? Where else do cattle drovers and uni dropouts transcend their station to be known to the wider public - albeit briefly - by their first name only? Where else would a mother/daughter pair celebrate their anointment with matching silicone surgeries? Where else do hoards of applicants pine for the chance to humiliate themselves and others to the basest level? And where else are we implicitly given license to heckle and deride the contestants from the comfort of our own couches?

Nowhere!

It is our right - NAY! our duty - to embrace this exposé of the vile and the cheap surrounding us. To watch so we can understand the lowest common denominator that drives our economy and our politics (these people vote! they shop!). To watch so we may find glorious self-righteous comfort in the primary fact that we aren't them.

Well...for the most part. Pass the poultry there, would you?

The one where we turn that frown upside down

Feeling beige? Need some colour? Thinking of trying to sniff that eon's old bottle of Clag just in the hope of feeling something new?

This should flush your cheeks with freshly oxygenated blood!

I present to you, dear cyberspace, the full, unexpurgated, verbatim Mis-Sent Booty Call Text Message.

Drum roll, please...

Hi! baby gal its u boi T,

bn missn u lately + wana make lov 2 u wif oil massage al ova ur body,

jst u n me,

am tnkn bout u wif me unda da blnkt.

Am also holdn ma dick tnkn dat he shud b slipin through u're sweet thais

n 2 u're pretty tight, juicy blak pussy ud u "sayn

baby T want u evry nite on bed wif me makn me cum few tyms n say u're name

+ dat u lov me so mach.

lol

ey naw i @list snd u sam nasty jok dat u wana it?

Holla sxc

I hemorrhaged. Then I had conniptions. Not just because of the crassness and complete lack of subtlety, somewhat resembling a caveman slaughtering a polar bear and affixing the jaws to his crotch in an infantile display of breeding superiority. Not just because of the gob-smackingly atrocious spelling and grammar, or the collections of letters I just flat out don't understand ("sam nasty jok dat u wana it?" Where is the question there?! Who is Sam?! What the fuck is "wana it"?).

No. All that pales in comparison to the startling fact that some educationally stunted man-whore sent this cringeworthy tome to the wrong fucking number. I needn't point out - although I will for clarity's sake - that the eponymous T of the message was NOT me, a hysterical coincidence of names though it is. This message was sent after midnight on a Saturday night only to arrive at the phone of a young lady who didn't recognise the number and does not now - nor ever has had - a blak pussy. Too bad for our hero T-boi, who may have felt rejected by the lack of reply and had to go home to finish his horny self off, all because of his incorrect digiting.

Although I can't imagine T's chances would have been significantly increased had he keyed in the correct number for his "baby gal".

Or maybe the chump would've got laid. Who knows. I just don't understand the kids today. But ridicule?

You bet I can drop that boi.

The one where we celebrate the death of the self-important gun-toting asshole

What kind of total fuckhead has a charmed career, is adored by millions, leads a gold-spoon life in retirement and then becomes the president of the National Rifle Association? Keeping the circle of violence alive from behind gated property walls.

Congratulations Charlton Heston. The karma bus took its time getting around, but it finally stopped at your door and sucked your filthy life away. I can only hope that you were shot repeatedly in your impotent cock and bled to death rather than died peacefully in your sleep as reported.

Adios fucker.

The one where we fill in the blanks with make believe

"I'll squash a fucking grapefruit in ya fucking face ya moll"

That's what I said to my memory after it again failed to summon up the resemblance of what I did only two days ago.

"How has your weekend been?" asks a well-meaning friend.

Ummm... No idea. Can't remember. Even though the oldest memories I'd have to dust off are in the region of 48 hours.

"Hey! I'm the fucking boss here Chachi - you're here for my benefit! And if I say jump to and remind me what Friday night consisted of, you goddamn well jump! Capishe?"

But no dice.

So what chance do I have over years, or decades. When I'm trying to piece together a picture of What Has Happened To Me So Far for the benefit of a new doctor or nurse (wink wink), for example.

The emotional continuum is there, and by all means that is one - very valid - kind of history. But it isn't rated as much authenticity as factual, chronological continuum. Unfortunately the facts are more elusive than they seem. Just because it is the historical truth doesn't mean it is privileged in memory.

Most of my accounts of the past are accurate on emotion and vague on detail. Does it matter? Not to me, but people think they can know you by what has happened to you.

So on the occasions when it is necessary to tell the stories, and my memory puts up doughnuts, I have fleshed out my reliable emotional memory with some unreliable 'facts'. They may be historically accurate, they may not.

But people want a story to hang their ideas of you on, and emotional honesty often doesn't cut it. We'd love it to, but we hunger for a narrative of events for our picture of people. I'm admitting that sometimes I fudge it. Some things might be too painful to accurately revive, others so subsumed by the associated emotion that accurate accounting has long been rendered moot.

But in the end, if it is true to how it felt, do the details matter so much? Well, maybe they do, which is bad news for a chump like me with a monkey behind the memory desk.

Most Definitely

The Beethoven of the spoken word. The Picasso of rap. The Brando of hip hop. This is the humble face of the most talented recording artist of the last 15 years. Every genre. Flat.

I can't make you listen to music you don't want to listen to. Only despots and school principals have that power. But if I could, I'd jam a boot in your mouth, gaff some headphones on your scone and play this man's catalogue. And you would see a light. Maybe not the light, but there would definitely some sort of illuminatory process.

Mos Def, I salute you.

The (not so) Modest Mouse

*(This guy is not in Modest Mouse. Read below for clarification of his origins.)

They sure are a weird rag tag bunch of guys. A Ronny Wood lookalike on one end, a bulging punker at the other, Mormon twins on two huge drum kits and a drunken sailor in between – but god damn did they make a spectacular wall of sound. Yes they did. The sonic orgy that is Modest Mouse played to a packed out and spellbound Palace Theatre last night. As a magical surprise treat I was among the rapture. Gloriously supported by the soaring pop of Sparkadia (keep an ear out peoples – these kids are going to go MASSIVE) and belting post-something rock of Hot Hot Heat, it was mystifying and satisfying and automatic and hydromatic. It was greased lightning.
But I was left troubled by some questions. Questions beyond music and spectacle, beyond bleeding ears and cooing souls. Questions that probe at the very essence of who we are. When is a moustache no longer ironic? Is frontman Steve from Hot Hot Heat directly related to Lionel Ritchie? Does crazy help sell art?

And do you think I have an answer?

Well, I do actually...

!. A moustache is no longer ironic as of 2006. Now it's just dirty lip hair. Some people dig that, but it sure isn't an ironic "how bad were the late 70's" or "I'm cool enough to pull this off by the very fact I'm doing it" statement. FYI.

@. Yes. Steve is biologically half Lionel Ritchie and half Bob Dylan. Unknown to most of the musical and gossip-column world, the two ageing musos are unnaturally infatuated with each other, and have been for some time. They formed a secret genetic research and IVF laboratory many many years ago, and Steve Bays is the result of their labour of love. DNA strands from Ritchie and Dylan were fused, injected in a hollowed out egg, implanted in an Innuit virgin and delivered to the loving arms of a Canadian adoptive family. True story.

#. Crazy has, and always will, add to reputation. And reputation, as much as talent, sells art.

There. Cracking night out overall. Any questions?

So You Think You Can Host?

Natalie Bassingthwaighte is an embarrassment to soap-star-turned-electro-pop-front-women-come-reality-TV hosts everywhere. She might be the worst host full stop since David Letterman's 1995 Oscars travesty.
Not that I don't like the girl. By all accounts she's a real sweetheart, and as much as I'd rather fingerbang a rhino than listen to a Rogue Traders album, I think she's pretty damn good at what she does in the musical arena. Charismatic, sexy, the vocal skill to carry it off live. Leader of the pack, if that's what you're into. And as far as her turn as Izzy on Neighbours, she was cheeky, sultry and compulsively watchable. For a while there Natalie was the reason Channel 10 at 6.30 was many people's dirty little secret.
But something happens to the poor girl when she isn't playing make-believe. There's more wood in her face than on a year 9 school camp. Maybe she's upped her botox intake. Maybe she's still genuinely stunned by the vastly inane contributions of the so-called judges. Or maybe the poor poppet is just plain out of her depth. My money's on the latter. All the evidence is there. She doesn't blink. She speaks v e r y s l o w l y. If there's a cliche within arm's reach, she'll find it.
I feel for her, and feel embarassed for her, and ache for her to find some animation and pray she finds her groove. But then the less sentimental part of me reaches for the remote and blessedly changes the channel. And writes a strongly worded letter to the powers that be, begging them to leave Nat to the world of fiction.

To Tatt, or Not To Tatt Too (or To Shut Your Pie-Hole)

Other than the dude on the right, a lot of people have tattoos. I contribute to that fact. The difference between LizardMan and I (and, presumably most of the rest of the tattooing community) is that I didn't get my tattoos to completely subvert my ink-less identity. Oh, there are degrees of intended subversion, and intended augmentation, and intended cool-ification.

But assuming that Lizzo's head-to-toe inking (and bone grafting and piercing and stretching and slicing and levering) is a meaningful and defining transformation is probably fair enough. And given the literal nature of the transformation, it's probably fair to assume he was comfortable with the general public making assumptions about - or even asking - what it means and how it defines him.

On the other hand, for the general public to feel entitled to ask what my clearly symbolic markings mean is just plain fucking wrong.

I seem to have reached my limit of boozed-up retards in pubs grabbing me by the wrist and examining my tatt like it's public property, then demanding to know what it "means".

How about "choke on my scrotum, you socially-stunted silverback".

Maybe its purely an exercise in aesthetics. Or maybe since it isn't literal means it's private i.e. it's none of your fucking business what it means. If I had've wanted all and dipshit sundry to "get it" I would have had a prose paragraph written there and a nice brochure printed up for visitors to take home.

The End of the Internet

A good friend of mine and I were discussing cyberspace. The weird ether of thoughts and fears and data and 1's and 0's. How many people have poured themselves into an intangible mess of instructions and light.

And we got to talking about the End of the Internet. He let me know there is a site (in fact there are many) claiming to be the End of the Internet. Pretty pedestrian, but there you go.

And he told me he was disappointed by the End of the Internet.

Rightly so, I argued. It would be like finding the end of an idea.

But he corrected me. It wasn't the concept he was disappointed with. He just thought there should be some girls.

So I claim this post to be nominally the End of the Internet. And here, my friend, are some girls.

The Way to Fame

The mysteries and wonder of the creative process are not limited to those who by innate talent or arbitrary circumstance or some combination of both become successful. We can take successful anyway we want – the spectrum swings from being able to eat more than bread and cheese off the sole income from art to powdering your asshole with coke and fucking beautiful people. But is it only when you can rub two blank canvases together and sell the pair as an installation that one may call oneself an artist? Is it just to inhabit the state of mind that one is an artist to be an artist?

Of course not. Art is more than just a state of mind. It is a state of minds. Every artist touches themselves in the greatest feint of happiness and shyly mutters, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers”. Because even a wide as the widest circle of family and friends cannot buy enough of your work or show up at openings to make any human in being an artist. Not enough minds, y’ see. It takes a stranger’s opinion, an unknown quantity, to validate their deepest wish (see: creating something of influence and permanence and intangibility. See also: “Sticking it to the Man”). It is the kindness of strangers to care enough about the not-yet-art and top see value (perhaps with a red dot sticker) that has the inertia to begin the trajectory toward aforementioned artistic debauchery with the surety of the title ‘artist’.

(Note that not all ‘artists’ need to want to rim their assholes with coke or commit adultery – it is enough that the precedent has been set.)

And of course not all strangers are literate with art – apparently there are billions in ‘other’ countries that can’t even read – so it helps if the not-yet-art has some sovereign signifiers or features identifiable by the stranger-masses as acceptably belonging to the enterprise of art. I pity the fool who tries to claim the weather as their art (as inevitably someone will some day). Simplistic I know, but is any other sense of not-yet-art any more real?

So in the interests of safety and in a blatant attempt to exploit arbitrary nature of who makes it and who doesn’t, the time has come to publish a tome on a total unknown.

But I must digress momentarily to the concept of an ‘arbitrary nature’. Many may be tempted to – once it is known that outcomes are arbitrary – give up one the whole enterprise and take to the bottle. More fool them. Arbitrary does indeed mean random, but implicit to arbitrary is resolution. And a resolution means some course of action, some shunting of circumstances. It’s a numbers game. Increase the percentages. Like a lottery, the more ways you are open for the arbitrary (but inevitable!) thing to happen to you specifically you, the more chance there is that your particular circumstances will be shunted. Remember that word – shunt. So if you want to shunt, the only way is to whore yourself out to the milieu of coat-tail-riders that spin like satellites around the truly talented. Luckily most don’t know talent from bin juice so someone is always willing to pander to a little whoring. Whoring is not cheap, nor is it shameful. It is the oldest profession and its necessary to beat the urge to reproduce, and don’t artists want to be the last in the line of history, or at least have something of them survive to the last. So whore without reticence. Play the numbers. Aim to get shunted. And if you can, put it in a frame.

Who in this Brave New World can make things anew? The Artist! Who can draw blood from our modern hearts of stone? The Artist! Who can hear rhetoric and see a fluffy white clouds and a crocheted cosy? The Artist! Who can dress up terror in a snappy suit of grey tweed? The Artist! Who can see past the end of their nose to the end of their family unit? The Artist! Who among us can still box clever? The Artist! And all without drugs or hitting the bottle or scarring or little plaques on white walls that go so little a way to peeling away the layers – these are all Optional Extras. At root is the truth that like a succulent to the sun the artist must turn to the darkest corner of the human condition and there light a candle (or aim a blowtorch).

And no less an artist is s/he who shines that light in a button down outfit with a box of brownies to share. After all, everyone likes brownies. They look like the rest of the shit but that sugar hit sure does take the edge off.

Chewie Loves Leia

Indeed!

(and we all thought incest was her crime...)

“I Started at the Top…”

"...and I’ve been working my way down ever since."

I’m gonna say it. Just come right out there and say it. The opening shot of Touch of Evil is overrated. Technically impressive, artistically forgettable. There. I said it. And I have never been able to appreciate the rest of the film because Charlton Heston as a Mexican is so ludicrous (and massively offensive) in so many dimensions – especially given Heston’s latter-day real-life gun toting – that I can’t begin to comprehend how anyone made such a casting blunder, even in the studio days.

But enough of that…

There’s no doubting that when within the first decade of time in features you write/direct/act in such cinematic genius as Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Stranger and The Lady From Shanghai, you are among the all time greats.

But where do you go from there?

Well, you voice the nefarious intelligent planet-eating cyber planet Unicron in the 80’s animation genius that was the Tranformers Movie. Few cinemaphiles would many reviewers would acknowledge the merit in this kind of role – especially for a giant of the medium like Welles. But not only is the film one of the truly brilliant of it’s genre, Welles lends a chilling menace and moral ambiguity to his part that confirms his versatility and downright genius.

And a decade earlier, in some of the most bruising and intriguing autobiographical moments ever committed to film, he made the obscure classic F For Fake.

Beginning ostensibly as a biopic of the great 60’s art faker Elmir de Hory, the film moves on to chronicle the rise and fall of fraudulent biographer Clifford Irving and the ‘art’ of the fake in general. Implicit along the way is Welles’ fascination with trickery, which blows out in the latter parts of the film to a categorical questioning of his own career and his part in peddling illusion.
The brilliance in the crafting of the film and the heartfelt immediacy of Orson’s confessions cannot be overstated. For this film jockey, F For Fake heralds the legendary status of the big O more than any other film. See it (and the Transformers Movie too, naturally…).

Letter To Michael Leunig...

Dear Michael, you smug fuck,

How many more centimetres of column space will it take before you will be satisfied in your mission to smuggle cynicism and your patronising superiority complex into the zeitgeist of the little ‘l’ liberal public under the cloak of cute and quirky insights.

I’m baffled at how you’ve seeped in so ubiquitously, but bravo for identifying a fault line in the bullshit firewall of the Australian upper-middle class. And bravo for exploiting this collective psychological weakness for wallowing to your own financial ends. Who else would’ve thought that selling us back our own neuroses and paranoia as harmless new-age witticisms would bear such fruit of fame and fortune. Who would’ve thought that such mean spirited and condescending triteness would be happily read as sincere insight.

How are you the self-anointed St Paul of modern society? With a depressed, impotent muppet and his duck? What gives you the right to illustrate our failings, offer none but the tritest consolation, while placing yourself so squarely outside the glass house? Do you really know any better than the audience you ‘illuminate’? If so, please for the love of god, don’t be such a grandiose fuck and spend your time doing something constructive rather than holding a filigree one-way mirror. Peddling cynicism and misery is not a career.

Nothing you say is revelatory. Most of it is actually pointless, and the rest is too fundamentally too mean-spirited to be worth taking on board.

I urge you Michael – kill Mr Curly and the duck and go and work in a shelter. Or at least shut the fuck up in the media. I'll even give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you know not what you do. But that’s no excuse.

Yours humbly and curly-ly,
Trent Griffiths

What Atticus said...

A friend of mine told me that a bar we were going to had changed it's name from Plan B to Atticus Finch.

I thought, "Well of course. It's the same thing".

Atticus Finch - or some divine intervention like him - is the Plan B for all of us.

Plan A is to act like a tool, ignore any advice or help, dive headlong in on assumptions and half-truths, pre-emptively parade around like king shit while everything invariably fucks up behind us. We don't mean it - sometimes we're even deliberately lead astray by malign forces - but the mess doesn't care for justification or excuse. It just ripples around, poisonous.

Then we desperately hope for a transcendent someone to save the situation and our pride. A knight in shining armour; a superman; an Atticus. And as he passionately, defiantly cries "In the name of God! Do your duty", we might be tempted to believe in a deity, an omniscient being with Finch as it's messenger. But only for a moment. Because Atticus was played by Gregory Peck. And Gregory Peck prided himself played good courageous men who conquered evil in the face of impossible odds. Gregory Peck was a celluloid God. And Gregory Peck died of pneumonia. So much for God. So much for Atticus. There goes Plan B...

The first rule of Fight Club...

I've fucked every relationship I've ever had. Each of them could be qualified. Like Anti-Tyler to Marla as the back of his head is hanging by a thin strip of skin and Y2K is being hastened with homemade explosives - "You met me at a very strange time in my life".
But that's bullshit. It doesn't get any clearer, any more sure, any less strange.
I've been reciting in my head the lines I've given - the "reasons" - from over the years. Somethimes I can't remember, but I can guess.

• I don't need a mother I need a lover (because, heaven forbid, someone cares).
• It's just moving too fast (by my decree).
• I just don't feel like you understand me (or at least the version of me I'm citing now for the purposes of this excuse).
• I'm at a place where I need to focus on me (but actually need to get out of my own head).

Blah blah blash etcetera you know the drill...
Petrified.

Evening On the Ground (or Regret)

(Lilith's Song)

I've covered the best line from a love song ever written. I've heard a lot of Iron & Wine's work - a clutch of albums and a handful of EP's - and although he has a lyrical romanticism, I don't think Sam Beam will even be considered for entry into a love song category. Even fleetingly.

But dammnit, the man is a wordsmith. And on the final track of the cracking Woman King EP - dense with tightly wound, almost spiteful folk songs - he drops what I consider the greatest line in a pop song ever.

Evening on the Ground is a loaded song. To me it feels as though it is an exercise in self-loathing, shouldering and issuing blame because of the loss of love. It hints to me that the lost love might refer to a dead child. There is the explicit reference to "rocks and baby bone", but that isn't conclusive in the context of the song. But for some reason the repetition of the "broken lock"to a garden is so evocative of children. Anyway, literally or metaphorically, the lyrics are powerful.

Especially this line:

We were born to fuck each other

One way or another

I'm not sure why, but it reminds me of a friend Ionce knew - a girl I was very very close to in junior high school. She was fiesty and funny and cool-headed and had the biggest heart you could imagine. And she was beautiful. And I was in love with her. I didn't need to be with her, I just needed to be around her.

When my parents broke up and I was angry, angry, angry, I would stay at her house for a week at a time, sometimes sleeping in the spare room and sometimes in with her. We never hooked up, we were just there for each other. Or mostly she was there for me. She lived with her mum - her dad had disappeared years ago - and her mum understood our connection and opened her arms to me like I was her own.

Then we moved to a new school - senior high - and we started drifting to different circles. We tried to stay close, but when she dropped out of school (it never did suit her style), she disappeared from of my life altogether.

Then years later when I had just moved to the big smoke I saw her on the street. In the dodgy part of town. She looked strange - sort of drawn - but we were genuinely so, so happy to see each other. We went for lunch. It was wonderful catching up, being around her again.

She asked me to go shopping with her - she was a dancer and needed some new gear. I said sure. She lead me into a sex shop. I'd been in one before, but didn't know what we were doing there. She showed me six-inch plastic fuck-me boots and asked what I thought. I should have put two and two together before, but I was still shocked. She was stripping. "Dancing" she insisted it was. Dancing with no clothes on.

I pulled her out on the street and asked her to be straight with me. The mask started to strip, but she kept insisting she was living her childhood dream of being a dancer. Buying the line she had been forced to sell to herself, and that club owners and punters had happily sold her. I asked if she was doing drugs. First "no", then "sometimes", then "no more than anyone else does". If anyone else does it every day.

I realised that on some level she wanted help. And by showing me her world in the way she did, she wanted me to help. But she wasn't ready enough to actually admit that she needed help, let alone accept it and make a fresh start. And I was a nineteen year old student, a dumb kid new to the city with no money of my own, and no balls to be the strong one.

I said I had to go. She asked me for my number - she wanted to hang out more (to try to lever herself into a new direction?). I didn't give it to her. She started to break down, the mask gone. She never wanted this, but she didn't know a way out. I didn't know what else to do. I walked away from her.

It is the greatest single regret of my life. I still don't know what I would have done. I wish I'd done something.

But I guess we were born to fuck each other one way or another...

SWEENEY TODD: The Battle of Impossible Bone Structure

Stunningly sumptuous staging, breathtakingly beguiling bloodthirst, compelling characterisation, beautifully black...
Mrs Bonham-Carter's production of Sweeney Todd is about as perfect a rendering of this bastion of Broadway that anyone could ask for. Even the warbling imperfections of Johnny D's singing voice and piercing shrill of Helena are folded so beautifully into the texture of their characters and the mis-en-scene that to Lindsay-fi them would have been criminal.
But the problem still remains that this is a musical. And the time it takes to get to the point in musicals is so fucking arduous. The spoken parts of the film romp along at a crackingly engaging pace. Then someone starts to trill and the whole thing grinds to a halt. A colourful and well-montage'd halt, but grinding nonetheless. For the time it takes porcelin-boy Anthony to warble to us the extent of his love for the comatose Johanna he could have robbed a guv'ner, hired a hit and disposed of her protector the Judge. Get on with it!
Admittedly I've never been a fan of that particular sub-plot. Altogether to much waving of silk handkerchiefs and sterile indignity for my liking. The grot and grime of the Sweeney/Lovett mess is much more compelling.
Then there is Timmy B's casting. Brilliant on paper, but on screen... If you cast Johnny Depp as your money man - the living definition of ridiculous bone structure - for the love of God don't put Helena Bonham-Carter opposite him. It looked the whole movie like they were going to have each other's eyes out with their cheek bones. Then Jamie Campbell Bower as Antony looks as though he's taken one of Todd's blades to his jowls in an effort to mirror Depp's face-scape. Despite the colour and flourish and swell of the production, at times all I could do was stare in disbelief at the miracles of genetics in front of me.
Does that make it a good movie? No. But it doesn't make it a bad one either... Just one in which the big punches connected from unexpected places.

DEFIANCE In The Face Of CRUSHING LONELINESS

I realised something. That everything I did today - and every other day - is in the quest to be loved. To have love.
The jobs I have had, the friends I keep, the money I have spent and coveted, the places I've travelled and every single other action of my life is an effort to be loved more. To continue to be loved. Yet in every way I have ever been active in my own life is also a reminder of the crushing loneliness of experience.

Britney is hot.

Seriously. Stark raving mental is the new black. Which was the new yellow for a second but thankfully that was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it phase.


But seriously, she's only getting hotter. Her star is only beginning to rise.



She'll be like Jesus, with less hair (you know what I mean...huh, huh).


She's set for such massive stardom that she'll eclipse the importance of our own families and jobs, and the Western world will grind to a halt. Then we'll get taken over by Britney-proof commies and we'll be sold for slave labour. THAT'LL learn us...

The Cinema Files Part 1

Just saw No Country For Old Men (2008). By myself. Behind me were two girls of the 'repeat-the-plot-out-loud-and-ask-dumbass-questions' moviegoing variety. Like "Is he the guy that killed all those other guys?" Y'know what sweetheart, we've been watching the same f*%king film as you - no one else knows yet either. So shut your cakehole and assume we're going to find out.

How you can go into a mystery film and ask those kind of questions is beyond me, it really is. Is it that these people have such a track record of missing the point that they're conditioned to think they must have missed some crucial piece of information glaringly obvious to everyone else? In which case, I should have more sympathy. Clearly then they've had a hard-knock life. But I suspect it is more a case of having no basic social manners and liking the sound of their own voices.

And the even worse culprits (although mercifullyy it didn't come to this tonight) are the ones who are indignant when you tell them to can it (politely of course). The I-paid-my-hard-earned-cash-to-be-here-so-I-have-a-right-to-act-like-a-tool mentality. Like everyone else in the theatre paid to hear their dim commentary.

As for the film...I didn't get it. Was it about the futility of pursuit, whether on the side of criminal or justice? Was it actually representing what it is to get old (a bit shambolic and very, very bloody)? Or whas it a great existential western on the page that didn't quite translate the gravity on screen? Despite near flawless performances from the entire cast (although I'm not sure Woody Harrelson has any scrap of acting credability left, even in a Coen Brothers movie), I wasn't on anyone's side. I wasn't afraid for anyone or frustrated with anyone or impressed or shocked or moved by anyone. The plot rolled along, people came and went and stuff happened in between. Strangely distant. A mystery without suspense. Or maybe just No Country For Generation Y.

The Earnest Guy

I realised from rereading my last post that I come of as one of those patronisingly earnest people who smuggle in doomsdaying and righteous pessemism under the cloak of upbeat irony or observational humour (although assuming my last post resembled humour is a stretch).

Think John Butler (of the John Butler Trio) or devil-spawn Michael Leunig. Both emotionally manipulative peddlers of depressing guilt.

So I'm nipping my membership to this rancid club in the bud with this simple segueway. How good are boobs. Discuss.

There. I feel so much better now. As you were.

How many roads must a man walk down... (hint: more than seven)

The mighty US of A has around 300 million legal registered residents. (According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, the resident population of the United States, projected to 01/26/08 at 10:15 GMT (EST+5) is 303,309,531.)

And I’m not gonna go bashing them. Any of them. Well, not right now at least. But I discovered a US fact today that I couldn’t help but judge. (Just so we’re all clear, judging isn’t bashing. Its much more haughty and condescending than bashing.)

The mighty US of A has around 5.5 million roads. Roughly 5.5 million planned and constructed, engineered and named vehicular carriageways. One length of tar and paint and compacted earth per 55 people.

Think about that. How many people live on your street? How many people would live on a street in New York City? A lot right? So somewhere, in the burbs of the Midwest or the keys of Florida, there’s one family per street. And laying a street is no mean feat. I’m no engineer, but I’ve seen the army of machines roll in to level a patch of dirt into a gleaming strip of bitumen. It’s a lot. A whole Tonka range. Is it necessary? Even in the lap of luxury developed world, do we need to have everything so freaking accessible? Or should that read segregated?

Now I’m not sure if the ratio is any better in Australia (god bless google, but some searches just weren’t meant to be fruitful). The figure is probably similarly shocking. And I’ll admit there aren’t even any direct conclusions to be drawn. But for some reason this figure – one road per 55 people – brought home the grotesque affluence of the West more than anything else in a long time.

I take my life for granted and complain about the government and get road rage and lose myself in petty squabblings routinely. 1:55 pulled me out of that. Maybe for just a while, maybe for longer. But at least for now I know how lucky I am, and I remember the guilt of privilege, and hopefully some conclusions will come to me…

Umm, Like, Love Songs and Shit

Joan Wasser is responsible for what I rate as my favourite album of all time. Coincidentally (since I am not known for my musical taste or prowess) said album may also rate as one of the best albums of all time, according to some objective scale I'm clearly only guessing at. The album - under the moniker Joan As Police Woman - manages to be both wonderfully soaring and disarmingly intimate; playful and earnest; obtuse and immediate. At every turn it is utterly compelling.

Think Fiona Apple covering Springsteen's Nebraska, or PJ Harvey backed by Burt Bacharach. Actually wait. Don't. Joan is much too good for such facile projections.

And although the album is lyrically and musically miles away from [inverted commas] "ballad" territory, it boasts the most heartbreakingly beautiful love song I've ever wrapped ears around. The opening (title) track Real Life is shimmering and alive, reeling you in with the perfectly simple opening piano chords and opening up to gliding strings and almost tangible emotion. Close to the perfect love song already. But skirted over in her delivery, hiding behind grander lyrics, is the line that elevates this song above any other I have heard or can imagine.

i've never included a name

in a song

but i'm changing my ways for you,

jonathan

Stop the press.

No other names on the rest of the album. No other direct references to love specific. Just this simple, stunningly honest declaration. And every time I hear it, I wish I was Jonathan. Not Joan's Jonathon. Just someone's Jonathon - that I was the person they'd change their ways for.

Yep, I'm a sap, and Joan brings it out in force. I recommend you let her seduce you too. And crack out the tiny violins of love...

Don't ask me why it matters...it just does.

Sport.
Specifically, following a professional team.
Some people will never get it. Some people don't like exerting themselves in that kind of way. Or at all. Some people are so passively non-competitive that they shrink from the idea of any activity with scoring (although they may be content to pound themselves shorter legs on kilometre-plural runs, something I confess is completely beyond me. There are those who find a nice urban family game of soccer in the park on a Sunday - Secret Life of Us style - fun and diverting, but still can't understand the rabid, violent passion of a true sport fan.
My New Orleans Hornets (basketball) are 29 and 12 with the third best record in the league right now. MY Hornets. I've never been to New Orleans. I've never been to the US. I play basketball, but not terribly well. I just think its a cracking game to watch, and I chose to follow the Hornets because I THINK I'd dig New Orleans, and they have some great players, and I fancy myself as an armchair saviour - supporting the team trying to make it work in a hurricane ravaged city from the other side of the world.
The trouble is, even knowing how arbitrary the foundations of my support are, I am now a full-blow, obnoxiously passionate supporter. I've got the jersey. I listen to the games online. I check the scores of every other team to see how they compare. I read every related blog on the net. I exalt and I seethe. I blame refs I can't see.
And I wonder through it all "Is this healthy?" "Am I channelling some other buried and destructive frustration or passion through the artifice of professional sport?" "Am I a little bit mental?"
I know I'd get a lot more done if I stepped back from my flag-waving, but I'm unsettled by something deeper. I think I'm missing something. Seriously. Help me. I need an explanation. I need to know. Please...

What do you do with a drunken sailor?

So, I got fired. A month ago, but I'm only really gathering the steam to be truly, deeply pissed about it now that I'm back from holiday and looking for a new job.
The reasons given me when I got fired were almost verbatim the reasons I was told I was hired for three months before that.

Thinking outside the box.

A fresh take.

Passionate.

A little bit tongue-in-cheek.

Had become:

Too far outside the box.

Not on the same page.

Argumentative.

Cynical and patronising.

The steel they sought me out for turned into the sword I was to fall on.

Of course politics played its part too - whenever a superior repeatedly calls you 'bolshie' and 'cocky' without a trace of endearment, something is clearly rotten in the state of Denmark. But I digress...
I am now more pissed than ever before because I'm facing the very sobering prospect of returning to retail work. Or worse still (god help me) hospitality. I was dumped with no warning, and before I'd been at this monolith long enough to have a showstopping resume or the contacts to nepotise (?) my way into another gig.
But I've had the taste now, and the only work I ever want to do again is writing. Like half of the rest of the Western world. But I've had a taste dammnit! A taste!
Ah well, what do you do with a drunken sailor, eh?