www.lessercolumn.com.au

That's where we are now.

The Lesser Column


So, go there. It's WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY better.

Il Pizzaiolo

How do you write about food? Kind of like writing about jazz. Maybe it's the notes you don't hear that make all the difference.

Here's the back story. I've been to this place a couple of times before, and I like their wares. Being habitually lazy, I like anywhere that I can walk to without much effort. To say that the guy who runs it, Frank, knows his stuff is the acme of understatement. They recently expanded to the shop next door in this mini-strip around the corner from where I live. My fridge died (it's under warranty, although Hisense seem to want to doubt this notion, going out of their way to suggest that February 2013 to March 2014 is somehow more than three years...) and as someone who seems to have developed an aversion to wasting food, I'm taking the opportunity to eat out more.

The specialty of the house, their main board of fare, is this specific type of pizza from Naples. Frank has, according to his website and the large-wattage font printing on the restaurant walls, gained accreditation of the VPN Association - the Association of Vera Pizza Napoletana, or the Association of True Neapolitan Pizza. The dishes are basically prepared from scratch, and depending on where you sit, right in front of you. When laid out, festooned with white or red sauce and toppings, they're then cooked for 90 seconds at 425 degrees in a proper wood fired pizza oven right next to where they're prepared. According to their website, and their wall, '...when cooked, it should be thin, tender and fragrant.' I can tell you, it is.

I went in there on a Sunday night - the first Sunday they were open. Having gone their previously, the place had some seating restrictions that required booking. Since their expansion, such restrictions are no longer required, although with enough good notices the place should be packed and pumping on Friday and Saturday nights.

Main dishes comprise of 12 tomato-based options, and eight 'bianci' options - the white base. Additionally, they have a small but inviting antipasto menu ($6-$8, a platter for two @ $25), and an authentic Italian selection of deserts ($6-$12). Dolci, they call them, said the WASP from the suburbs. Tiramisu, which is probably the greatest thing in the history of the world, is available here, and theirs will either restore your faith in the greatness of humanity, or make you believe in Jesus. Dollar each way.

Not wanting to make an event out of it, just wanting the simple feed, I had the Salsicia. This was san marzano tomatoes, mozzarella, spicy pork sausage, roasted peppers, potatoes, fresh chilli, and a side of fresh chilli oil. It was the size of an old-timey 12" vinyl record, and was a very satisfying feed at an entirely reasonable $22. Dining alone (cue sad music) was taken care of very quickly (it was early in the evening on a Sunday as noted). It's bursting with flavour; the chilli isn't overpowering. The combination of flavours and textures is pleasing and the sausage is used enough, yet sparingly to not overpower the other toppings. They have a gluten free option, but I'm not one to ask about these things.

As dining experiences go, it's one of the more pleasant and voluminous assaults on all the senses. Well-apportioned, comfortable, tastes great, smells appealing and with very friendly, cordial staff. Wine selection is good and the Shiraz went down a treat.

The marketplace is flooded with franchise outlets; mass-produced to the point of them becoming generic. Should you not want to eat your pizza with a side order of Pink Floyd while sitting in a bean bag, this is probably more to your liking.

163 Darebin Rd, Thornbury 3071
Wednesday to Sunday: 5:30pm - 10:30pm (Friday lunch: 11:30am - 3:30pm); Sunday 11:30am - 10:30pm.

Dine in and take away. Fully licensed with a boutique selection of wines and Italian aperitifs, digestive and beers. No BYO. I paid full price and no, they're not paying me to write this.

Memo from ALP Publicity, re: Tanya Plibersek

The following memo was found next to a severed hand, in a dumpster, behind ALP headquarters in Sussex St, Sydney.

FROM: Barry Shank, ALP Publicity
TO: All staff
RE: Tanya Plibersek; Sunday Life

Comrades,

First of all, well bloody done!

I knew that when Pickles the Policy Monkey flung his breakfast at a picture of Tanya, thus signalling her as the party’s Next Big Thing™, we were onto a winner. The choice of Sunday Life was a good one as well – you can take the candidate, and introduce her to a mostly female audience in a laid back weekend supplement. That way she doesn’t have to actually, you know, ‘speak’ with any authority about matters of substance, policy and the like. We all know that the ladies aren’t big on substance (but we also know that Tanya is well versed on her portfolio and any number of policy issues; but that’s neither here nor there).

And, good choice, Pickles on Sunday Life. It’s a good thing we did a dry run ten years ago with Julia in the same magazine (Good Weekend, same-ish), basically the same story so we could make the mistakes and learn from them (learning from your mistakes is, granted, a new policy drive in the ALP). We do what we tried with Julia: sound the ominous warning of a hip young(ish) female as a rising star in the ALP. But unlike Julia, we show the ladies of the nation that Tanya is a married mother of three, ergo a breeder (and not ‘purposefully barren’ or suspiciously linked to a ‘male hairdresser’), and there’s not an empty fruit bowl in sight – quite the contrary: as part of the whole ‘you CAN have it all’ approach we’re compelled/conditioned to make about women in politics or business, we were cunning enough to have Sunday Life frame the whole thing as ‘Tanya-as-mum-on-the-go’. Open the whole thing with Tanya making her own mayonnaise. Nice touch!

I know that while this may have come across as a kind of shaming and bullying, comparable to one that Daily Life reported on recently, but that’s one of the licks we’re going to have to take. It’s not about what she has to contribute, policy wise, it’s the small miracle of how she manages to raise three smiling kids, look stylish in whatever outfit the stylist at Sunday Life set up for her, and maintain the public image of deputy Labor leader. Sure, nobody ever profiles a man in power and asks him how he manages it, coz we just assume he has a wife, right? Moot point. Tanya’s got kids, AND a job, AND looks great on Q&A, AND makes her own mayonnaise. Isn’t she clever???

We’ve learned the hard way (boy, have we!) about what we expect from lady politicians, and how the people of Australia (including the women) respond to them. But this Sunday Life profile really threw women voters the double blind: it showed them a source of inspiration minus anything of policy substance, and simultaneously chided them for being listless, unambitious tarts for not achieving the same level of career success and domestic stability. Also, that photo? Awesome. You might as well have taken it for a toothpaste commercial. They’re so white they’re almost blue.

Capital effort, people. Now, if you need me I’ll be with the rest of the chaps making decisions.

The Liberated Luddite

A recently aired episode of Parks and Recreation featured recalcitrant neo-Luddite Ron Swanson in a tirade against social media, and in an attempt to get ‘off the grid’ go to extreme lengths to remove his identity from as much media as possible. Eventually, he relented and got a mobile phone, but a simple handset that clipped onto his belt. His polar opposite Tom Haverford noted the age of Ron’s phone, and after suggesting that not only did it look like the original phone from Wall Street, but the original phone itself, exclaimed "It’s got buttons! Ewwwww!"

I recently found myself in need of a new phone, after being the owner of an iPhone3 for about four years. As far as units go, it was intriguing and fun at first, in that it combined the internet, an iPod and a phone in one, and all those ridiculous apps were worth (literally) minutes of amusement (among my collection included a Samuel L Jackson sound board, and something called ‘Fart Piano’). Eventually, the technology superseded the device and most of the apps stopped working, the internet browser slowed to a crawl and it was just a chunky piece of glass I carried with me at every moment. One day, gravity got the better of it and the screen shattered; I took this as a cue to upgrade. Without being bowled over by what was on offer, and quite frankly offended by some of the charges and fees of my (major brand name) provider, I flew into a fit of technological indignation, purchased the cheapest handset available and went home.

The handset I bought makes phone calls and sends texts; it has an attachment that allows you to listen to FM radio. The camera takes pictures, but the phone doesn’t allow you to look at them. The internet browser is slow and doesn’t seem to work on 99% of websites. The available apps are archaic and range from ‘charming’ to ‘pointless’. Its keypad even has buttons. Ewwww.

As a direct result of this, I don’t have the internet with me on public transport or when having drinks with friends. I have to engage with people one-on-one. I have to entertain myself with other things – books, music, my own thoughts (egad). When in company, I enjoy the actual company of others. Smart phones have brought the internet to everyone’s fingertips at any time of the day or night. And now that I no longer have the internet, I am neither distracted by, nor seeking distraction by it (we should remember that strangely enough there is nothing in this world more distracting than every piece of information in the world, ever.)

The rate at which people are compelled to Tweet and Instagram, update their Facebook statuses and follow the activities of their ‘friends’ (real or otherwise) is something that doesn’t seem odd until the moment you step back and see others do it when your technological restraints prevent you from doing the same. If someone is enjoying an apple and wants to share that with the universe, that’s one thing, but ‘Eating an apple, feeling healthy LOL’ sent into the ether isn’t really for anyone but the person sending it. It might as well say ‘Validate me! Say you like me by acknowledging my words and actions!’

Full disclosure: I Tweet, but mostly it’s my attempt at one-liners. I share links to articles I think worthy of others’ reading. But I’ve also been a first hand witness to the socially crippling effects that a compulsive Tweeter experiences. One friend had a close to clinical compulsion to check his phone if anyone nearby checked theirs; a former girlfriend woke to, and went to sleep with Twitter close at hand and had the perplexing habit of Tweeting close to every thought, including moments of intimacy between the two of us. This was flattering at first, although it’s quite disturbing with a bit of hindsight. If you start or end your day with a cordial message to Twitter in general, chances are that you and I are vastly different people, indeed.

And yes, I know that there's something askew in ranting against social media, and using social media to do it, as well as promote it. I get that.

The fact remains that every moment need not be Tweeted; every meal need not be Instagrammed. You may be socially or emotionally isolated, and the internet might be your only avenue for human connection. Such people are in an infinitesimal minority. I’ve embraced the idea of comfortably enjoying silences with friends and companions, and my life needn’t be filled with 140-character ramblings of virtual strangers and celebrities. I now look at a restaurant table full of people focussed on the screens of their phones as a kind of museum exhibit, and it’s all I can do to say, "Look, children… in my day, we used to speak to each other."

Taking a retroactive step in this regard really is liberating. I’ve read so many more things of substance, like … novels. A recent holiday saw me – heaven forbid – leaving my phone at home. Not only did I have to make my own entertainment, I was at 0% risk of having ‘bill shock’ when I returned, having not mistakenly thought that a photograph of a Fijian sunset was something my Facebook friends desperately needed to see then and there (you learn this lesson the hard way, trust me).

Losing my smart phone has set me free. I’m a better person for it. I can heartily recommend the experience.

Portrait of the Artist as a Bearded Man

I recently completed a run as the coach, Laurie, in a production of David Williamson’s The Club. This was my fifth time at the acting trough.

Part I: Thezzing Out

Acting was never something I thought about doing, not seriously at least. Not as a career – I grew up in Perth and despite the allure of the spotlight garnered from watching movies at every opportunity, there aren’t that many avenues over there to make a solid career out of it. Sure, Heath Ledger did, so does Judy Davis and Sam Worthington. But my own reservations about doing such a thing were based in a number of factors, not being formally trained or particularly talented being among them. I graduated with journalism qualifications, and had a job to do. Then I became a school teacher and the less I had to do outside of work hours, the better. Then there’s the factor of the physical size. Among actors, especially on screen, you don’t see many that have my … dimensions. To the best of my understanding, there’s Will Smith, Tim Robbins, Vince Vaughn and Clint Eastwood who stretch past six feet tall. I’m 6’7” (which is a flat 200cm), not in any way of an athletic build, and anyone who has seen me on stage or among other actors (other people, for that matter, in any circumstance) knows I stick out like dogs balls out there. James Cromwell is apparently 6’7”, Brad Garrett is 6’8”. Anyhow, bit of a thing, a sore point. I’ve watched Inside the Actors Studio enough to know that by and large, actors have invariably (a) come from broken homes, or are the product of divorce; and (b) are shorter in stature, so it seems that the lure of the big screen, or just performing is a means by which to make themselves seem, look, feel bigger than they are. They are, for the most part, mentally unbalanced to one degree or another. Why wouldn’t they be? I mean, why would anyone on stage, screen, behind a microphone or on a professional sports arena be doing it for any other reason than saying, ‘Mummy, Daddy, look! I’m doing it!’

My parents have been happily married for nigh-on 44 years, and I don’t particularly need to feel any bigger. So I have them to blame for my emotionally stable upbringing and genetics, and have no real yearning for mass acceptance. Thanks, folks.

I had never acted before 2007. I had a walk on, non-speaking part in a high school production of Lady Windermere’s Fan. That was a few years back – 1989 to be precise. Actually speaking on stage is a different thing. I was living in Hong Kong at the time, and one drunken night (of which there were many) I got to chatting with Wendy Herbert, who was staging a production of Don’s Party. I was offered a role (she was either possessed of instinct, desperation, or both).

‘I’ve never acted before,’ I slurred, throwing back more red wine.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she told me. ‘I feel like you’ve got enough personality and stage presence to pull it off.’

Wendy might not have said precisely that, as it was Chinese New Year and I was under the influence. It was an interesting SMS to get the next morning telling me that a script was waiting for me. Script? What scri… oh Hell. We met, I got the script, and Wendy promised that at the very least, somehow I’d get laid (and she wasn’t lying either … ahem).

The thing that I’ve found with acting is that it’s not the actual performance that matters the most to me, it’s the process of figuring it out. It’s been my experience five times now that you walk into your first rehearsal with one idea in mind about how your character will speak and act, and after weeks of rehearsing, it’s entirely a different matter.

We did six weeks’ rehearsal, at least three times a week on Don’s Party and performed it all of five times leading up to a Saturday night. I thought I would be a nervous wreck going out there. But it was just like rehearsal, except warmer, and there was laughter when I said something that was apparently funny. Didn’t happen that much, but when it did… I tells ya, the first time was like that first shot of heroin (so I’m told). As an experience, it was totally worth it. I’ve made lifelong friends from that show.

Some time passed. I auditioned for a HK production of Secret Bridesmaids’ Business and didn’t get the one male role in the show; it was the first rejection I got. To hell with am-dram, I thought. Humbug. Their loss. I moved back to Melbourne (not because of that, just as it happens) and about a year later auditioned for a role in Nuts, in the part that Richard Dreyfuss played on screen. Because, I’m totally right for the part of a middle aged New York Jewish lawyer (I can do the accent, no problem, but…) didn’t get it.

The next one, I did. It was a production of Aaron Sorkin’s A Few Good Men, and while I went for the Tom Cruise part, I got the Kiefer Sutherland part and thought, aha... that’s the stuff. A shorn head, southern drawl and a pair of unflattering glasses, and I was in that for good and all. Quoting scripture, being a royal prick. It was great; an immeasurable amount of fun. Didn’t matter that a full house meant 65 people, it was the doing it (heh) that mattered. It got reviewed, and the critic said I was ‘…also effective.’ Kudos!

I also got nominated for an award, but didn’t win. It’s not about the awards, man.

I went for another lead, and got another supporting part in The Philadelphia Story (I had to tell 80% of people that it wasn’t the Tom Hanks AIDS drama). When you do plays in a place like Heidelberg, you end up performing in front of a decent sized crowd in a big, spacious theatre. I’ve seen ‘professional’ productions at the MTC done in smaller spaces, with actors endowed with far less impressive range, and unable to properly master the standard American accent, than what I’ve seen (and for that matter, been a part of) in community theatre. She who had the lead in The Philadelphia Story (Aimee Sanderson) is an untapped gem; as talented an actor as any you’ll see on local stages or TV screens. But it’s non-professional, so you don’t get a look in to the professional world. Therein lies part of the problem – you could be as talented as the day is long, but it don’t add up to a hill of beans if it’s a community theatre production. It’s a kind of artistic fascism.

I liked the opportunity to do new and different things, so auditioned for the lead in Aaron Sorkin’s The Farnsworth Invention in early 2011. And, because it wasn’t the right fit for me, I got offered five supporting roles instead. I wasn’t all that keen to take them on, and I said to the director, Shane Ryan, that it didn’t seem plausible that there would be five people in different points through the play’s narrative that looked like me (‘… a mobile flat,’ per Keith Hutton). But Shane wasn’t concerned about that, and we got on with it. A fine, complex, dense piece of work is Farnsworth. It really has no business being on stage (the scope suggests a movie treatment), but because it’s Sorkin, it somehow works. But taking on five characters without any real personality or development, rehearsing over six weeks, then performing over three with only Monday nights off took its toll. Steve Shinkfield (rightly) got the lead in that, and played it with commensurate skill, which is what you would expect from someone of his extensive credits and talents. It was the night of the final dress rehearsal that I had a moment of clarity and realised I wasn’t cut out for the stage. All that effort, the head cold that went through the whole cast and despite the quality of the production, it wasn’t that enjoyable experience as far as acting goes. Exhausting, for that matter. It dawned on me then that if you want the good parts, the meaty ones, you had to do the hard yards. Build up a cache of performances in small roles, supporting ones, bit parts over time and get enough credo to take on the mighty lead role. You don’t just walk off the street and play Stanley Kowalski.

I hung up my boots after Farnsworth’s final curtain. I decided that my creative impulses could be sated in other areas, and that the hard yards requisite of the substantial roles were beyond my grasp, as getting to these rehearsals tended to take more time than it should have. I live in the inner northern suburbs, and a vast majority of these theatre companies … aren’t. Brighton, Mordialloc, Frankston, Malvern, Williamstown… not as convenient as one might hope. Three rehearsals a week for six weeks, then three weeks of performance; it’s like a second full-time job for which you don’t get paid. And I haven’t the first clue if I’m good or not, I just take other people’s word for it. I can’t bear the notion of watching myself perform. All the glimpses of video footage I’ve seen of myself on stage have made me want to hurl (at the very least) abuse, or at worst, food at the screen.

STAND UP STRAIGHT! STOP BEING A FOOT TALLER THAN EVERYONE ELSE! STOP SPEAKING SO QUICKLY! STOP BEING RUBBISH!

All a bit much, although not uncommon, I’ve read. Johnny Depp has never seen one of his movies. Can’t bear the thought of seeing himself on screen. So it’s me & Johnny Depp.

Two years passed before I even contemplated the idea of ‘coming out of retirement’, and that itself is the kind of preposterously arrogant twaddle that such enterprises instil in me. Keith Hutton, who was someone else who played five parts in Farnsworth was directing The Club. It’s a great play, got turned into a great film, and the idea of doing it was very alluring. We were both at Shane Ryan’s housewarming, and Keith had been trawling social media for male actors to be in this play for months. I had flirted with the idea, but it was going to be performed in some godforsaken place called Clayton, and I hadn’t the first clue if it was even a real suburb.

I got to talking to Keith. I said, not too subtly, that if I was to choose a role in the play, it’d be Laurie, the coach. Straight-faced, Keith looked at me and said, ‘It’s yours if you want it. I’ll cast you right now.’

I said, foretelling a line from the script, ‘I’ll think about it.’

I walked upstairs to get more beer. Talked about it with Shane, was encouraged to do it. I mean, how often do you get offered something like that based on trust? I’d been having a rough trot of it, emotionally. I could use a distraction, and playing the lead in a two-act play is nothing if not distracting. I went back downstairs, shook Keith’s hand and that was it.

Then the real pressure started.

Portrait of the Artist as a Bearded Man (2/2)

Part II: Yelling on Cue

The Encore Theatre Company performs its plays at the Clayton Community Centre, which has a 135-seat theatrette attached to a library, a gym, a swimming pool and is opposite the electoral office of Simon Crean, funnily enough. As a performance space, it’s aces, but you don’t rehearse there. The rehearsal space is a converted indoor basketball court a short drive away; uninsulated and as a result, creates an atmosphere akin to rehearsing in a meat locker. Your best work doesn’t come out when you’re trying to remember your lines, all the while trying to keep the blood circulating in your feet to prevent your frostbitten toes falling off.

The day Keith held open auditions back in May, I showed up to read with the chaps who wanted parts. I was pre-cast, so I had nothing to worry about, except right from the word go I was convinced I was shithouse at it. Right from the start I was thinking, they’re all better at this than me. They’ll resent me for being pre-cast when I’m not that good. As you might gather, I set myself a high water mark right off the bat. That first audition was slick, fast, small and complete within minutes. Tim Byron as Jock (playing older), Greg Barison as Gerry (playing sleazy). Tim’s not been at this for long, but OWNS this play. Greg’s never auditioned for anything before, just made a habit out of doing pantomimes and having scripts sent to him. Keith’s got Geoff Arnold lined up for Ted, who was finishing up August: Osage County – doing what a lot of folks do, which is jump out of one production and dive right into the next one. Geoff’s literally done more plays than he can remember, and is an example of better living through chemistry. Scott Broadfoot as Geoff, who shows up with professional screen credits. He’s been on the tele (Neighbours, Underbelly and whatnot). He has an agent and everything. Pressure. Matthew Coote in the thankless role of Danny, who shows up in the thing three times and spends most of the play backstage. He’s also got an agent and just landed a role in a film. So every other person involved in this play has more experience than me. More pressure.

Learning lines is tough. It’s only recently – after several months – that I’ve picked up a book that isn’t the script. Every train journey, small space at work, lying on the couch at home or waiting for friends to arrive at the pub had me going over the lines. Hoping that rote learning will get the job done. I speak 279 lines of dialogue in this play, which covers a total of 14 pages, and is 4563 words. Some of them are single word lines, like ‘Yes!’, or ‘Rubbish!’ Then there are more challenging bits, like ‘…despite what your economics books tell you, I’m not entirely convinced that pragmatism’s absolutely irreversible.’ Because people say things like that all the time. There are moments in rehearsal when you think you’ve got it down, and you don’t, and you worry that you’ll never remember it all. But you do. Somehow. I was convinced several times that Keith would have to take me aside very quietly and gently let me off the hook for being the crappy weight that would sink this vessel, but it never happened. There’s a moment where something snaps, or clicks, and it’s just embedded there. You block your scenes, you do small sections of acts first, then whole acts, then the whole thing. You make do with what you have, you try to build on your performance. As part of my preparation, I look in the mirror and give line readings, and hope that the performance I give is the performance I would want to see, as a viewer, nee, a critic.

The company is staffed by retirees who serve as volunteers, and the set was constructed in an afternoon by what looked to be the touring company of Dad’s Army. We’ve had some publicity in some local papers, and I was photographed with four of the other actors, with a caption that identified me as ‘Matt Revin’, for some unimaginable reason. They provide Assorted Cream biscuits for the actors, which is a nice touch.

I have to spend most of the play in a bad mood. I’m basically playing Mick Malthouse here, but a guy in his mid 40s, so to subjugate my youthful countenance, I grew a beard. One, it’s set in the 1970s and it’s my recollection that everyone had some kind of facial hair in that era. And, two, I just turned 38 and I don’t look 38 (I drink lots of water and haven’t fathered any children). Needing to look older than 38, the beard makes me look at least ten years older than I usually do.

Being in a foul mood comes pretty easy to me, I have to admit, but there are moments when I have to fly into a volcanic rage. One scene in particular. I hate doing that scene. Hate it. Scott’s a really talented, professionally trained actor and he has this way of doing a 1000 yard stare that would make a lamp post feel uncomfortable, and when I’m yelling – all but screaming at him – I feel just awful. He’s yelling at me. Why is he angry at me? We were just joking back stage. I’m yelling at him and I don’t want to. I don’t hate him at all. So this scene has me reach a crescendo where I yell at him about how unless he improves his attitude, I’ll drop him to the reserves for the rest of his career. I literally (proper use of the term) cannot yell louder or with more anger and venom than I do. And it’s not naturally a go-to response for me. I’m seldom that angry. I do surly well, but not explosive. Each and every time I do it, which took a long time to get to what it ended up being on stage, it’s exhausting, and rips my vocal chords apart. I speak like Barry White for a solid two hours after final curtain and am mentally frazzled. So it’s a sweet relief that I can sit down and just all-but chill for the remainder of the play, until I have to yell at Greg/Gerry about what an oily little weasel he is. I get to drink on stage at this point (iced tea in a scotch bottle) and I think if I had to do anything more than what I do, it’d all be a bit much.

We did 11 performances. Some performances were better than others, some audiences were better than others. Second to last one was an ill-conceived Saturday matinee where the audience outnumbered the cast by two people. Disheartening to say the least. On the other hand, one earlier performance had friends of mine giggling every time I called someone a turd, and cheered when I said ‘Bullshit!’, because apparently they thought they were at a pantomime.

The thing with this business is, you don’t do it with the hope of scaling the heights of fame, being discovered and then being cast in a film which gets you representation at William Morris; the next thing you know, you’re Eric Bana or Russell Crowe or Cate Blanchett or someone else. It is, for the lack of a better word, a hobby. A pastime. You’ll invariably be performing for a small crowd of octogenarians who’re dozy after a steady diet of Mogadon sandwiches and lamingtons, and the only reward you’ll get out of it is the satisfaction of a job well done. Once you get your mind around the fact that you’re not getting paid for it, it’s a most pleasant way to spend some time. It’s also the equivalent of what the Brits call ‘rep’, learning the craft in real situations, giving it professional attention and devotion. The only thing that differentiates what’s done on community stages as opposed to professional ones is the money. The Club was directed by someone who has been acting for 45 years and done in excess of 150 shows, but nobody with any connections to professional theatre shows up. Their loss.

I’ve been through some … stuff this past year. Had a lot of thinking to do, a lot of … stuff to process. The thing about being on stage is that when you’re out there, there’s a surge of adrenaline and there is nothing outside that scene that permeates. The disappointments of your life, the traumas and stresses don’t so much evaporate as disappear altogether and you’re nothing more than that guy in that situation, with that beard, and your motivation is nothing more than getting it done, and well. You have to stay on your toes in case someone in the cast takes a mid-play elocution safari or just forgets their lines. It’s happened more than once. I’ve delivered the wrong lines; Geoff sometimes looks at you in a way that suggests, ‘Well, I can’t find what I need right now, you have a go!’, and in our second Sunday matinee, Tim did a mid-show edit by accidentally dropping an entire page of dialogue from his performance. The thing is, nobody in the audience notices and everyone on stage thinks (in hindsight) that it’s hilarious. We never got it perfect. But it’s the arts: is there a perfect to be got?

We’ve got some good feedback. People who saw the thing liked it and seemed to get value for money. A man who looked about 103 told me that he thought the first act was boring, but the second act lifted enough that he enjoyed himself. My advice to him was to register his grievances with David Williamson, not me. Another lady told me I was ‘… so very noble.’

That’s all very rewarding to know, but the thing is, I’m doing this for me, and it’s been great to know that I can do justice to a great part in a great play. Creatively, it’s hit all the right notes in me. I’ll not do another one for at least a year or so, but for this one I’ve felt I’ve added something, been a part of something good. I’ve felt a sense of camaraderie, felt a sense of responsibility, engaged in a rewarding routine and helped to build something good.

So, no cigar-chomping talent agent spotted me. So, Martin Scorsese wasn’t in the crowd. So what? Their loss. I had fun.

An Open Letter to the Prime Minister of Australia

Dear Prime Minister,

I thought I’d reach out to you, as there’s been some clearly bone-headed insanity taking place over the past couple of weeks (or is it months and years?) that has reduced the political debate and news media in this country to a shambles.

I’ve had some quandaries with the decisions you and your government have made over the last three years; like I had some problems with your predecessor’s government (which you were a part of), and infinite problems with the Howard government. All of these problems and counter-points were based on policy decisions and politics, and none of them had anything to do with anyone’s gender or bedroom antics. Aside from anything else, ew. Seriously. Ew.

Your government has made some decisions that bothered me. I’ve disagreed as to the right way to solve certain problems, addressed various grievances and suggested alternatives. As a remorseless, unreconstructed Whitlamite, I’m more than a tad discouraged by the direction Labor has gone in the past few years; at a book signing, I asked Mungo McCallum why he thought the ALP had swung so severely to the right – he countered that they (you) hadn’t, they’d just swung severely to the bottom. Seeking out the approval of the lowest common denominator. Dirty pool, Ms Gillard.

I’ve had problems with your personal style of politics, the manner by which you got to be Prime Minister, your ‘captain’s pick’ of someone grossly unqualified to be in the Senate, the mishandling of the Slipper and Thomson matters, the non-starter that was media reform, and the fact that your big tentpole speech in the House about misogyny directed at Tony Abbott was heralded as some kind of feminist milestone, which it would have been in my eyes as well had you not crossed the floor to vote with him about half an hour later. Your values and principles are really only worth something if you exercise them when it’s inconvenient. But it’s a moot point.

Your feminist credentials haven’t really impressed me that much (said the white middle class, middle aged straight man from the suburbs). I mean, it’s great that we have a female PM, but feminism – to me – suggests equality among all women, with men. And that’s all women, not just the ones that look best in photo ops. Equality under the law and society which should mean leading the charge for the rights of women who are gay and want to get married, women on a boat on the Indian Ocean currently seeking asylum, women in remote Aboriginal communities, or women who are single mothers and used to get more funding than what is in the NewStart allowance. And just on that whole gay marriage thing, can I ask you, how do you look Penny Wong in the eye and tell her that she can’t have equal rights under the law because of who she loves? Not cool. Gay marriage is really none of my business, and it seems like it’s none of yours either. But more on that later.

There was an episode of The West Wing where Sam Seaborn criticised a speech written about rich people and swimming pools, because it looked like it was written by a teenage girl. They have a lot of things to offer the world, but good writing isn’t one of them. Which brings me to the ‘men in blue ties’ speech. It was, to my ear, a bit of clumsy, poor speechwriting that smacked of a 14-year-old girl who had just read the Cliff Notes on The Female Eunuch. Speculation abounded about what motivated this clumsy, to my mind hackneyed bit of sputter shot gender warfare, and frustratingly I agreed with Julie Fuckin’ Bishop when she labelled it a desperate and condescending act of political sleight of hand.

But the media seemed to lap it up. I wasn’t buying it, especially since the forum for this speech, the launch of ‘Women For Gillard’ (the gender equivalent of ‘Christians For Jesus’) appeared to be a cynical exercise born of desperation. The class warfare thing didn’t cut it, so let’s play the gender card. Men in blue ties? Give me a break. Pass.

Then that Liberal fundraiser menu scandal happened. Now, on the surface, it looked to be just more unfunny nonsense, and I was on the verge of giving Mal Brough the benefit of the doubt on whether or not he knew about it. The restaurateur said he printed one out as a joke between him and his son, and it was then leaked to the media. I was thinking that it was dopey and unfunny, but not enough for you to get riled up about. I figured you’d just let it go through to the keeper, but you blew it up, adding fuel to the gender politics fire, which given what’s been going on recently seems like a fair enough choice. I’d have gone differently, as I wouldn’t want to give it credence and encourage like-minded reactionary twits to do something similar. I figured that Mal Brough probably didn’t know about it, because if he did and lied about it, that would make him close to the dumbest man in politics, and not even a Tory from Queensland can be that mentally deficient. I seem to have been proven wrong about this. Then that oxygen thief Joe Hockey seemed to revert back to his seven year old self and rationalised the menu joke by saying that you once called him fat. Truly head-slappingly stupid. I weep for the future of political discourse in this country.



Is it me or is the Australian news media like that dog in Up?

Oh, look, poor poll numbers! Speculation of an electoral wipe out! In-house scuttlebutt! Kevin Rudd on the loose!

SQUIRREL!

Gender politics! Sexism! Men in blue ties! Sexist menu joke! Howard Sattler!

Howard Goddamned Sattler. Prime Minister, as I illustrated before, and many times in various forums, I disagree with many of the things you’ve said and done. The gender thing was – to my mind – clumsy and unnecessarily polarising.

Then 6PR’s ‘turd that won’t flush’ asked you those questions about your domestic partner.

I would like to apologise to you, on behalf of Australian men. On behalf of men originally from Perth. On behalf of thinking primates. Under no circumstances would Howard Sattler have ever questioned Sonia McMahon’s sexuality, or the validity of John & Jannette Howard’s marriage. There is no way anyone, EVER would use the same kind of specious reasoning (hairdresser = gay) for a male political leader. I can’t imagine the Sattler/Jones/Mitchell/Hadley types saying to Tony Abbott, “Well, Mr Abbott, you’re Catholic. Are you a paedophile? It’s just that those kiddie fiddling priests were also Catholic, so, you know, it makes sense…”

I was wrong to assume that your take on gender politics was a cynical exercise or a strategic fake-out. I’m endlessly impressed with the fact that you didn’t just stare at him when he asked you that, and ask him “What the holy fuck did you just ask me?”. I would’ve punched that smarmy, reactionary hack right in his stupid fat head. Where I used to think the more prudent thing would have been to just brush that dirt off your shoulder, all of a sudden I’ve concluded that if you wanted to go militant separatist feminist and start spelling ‘wymyn’ thusly, then it makes perfect sense. Start a riot grrrl band and name roads and bridges after Andrea Dworkin. Anything you say and do on the subject of gender and sexism won’t register a peep out of me from here on in.

The minute I saw that clip, all I wanted to do was that hand gesture blackjack dealers make when they change shifts at the casino. I’m done.

Go to town. I hadn’t given a great deal of thought to voting for your party on September 14, but if this is the predominant mentality incarnate in what would be Tony Abbott’s Australia, then my vote’s with you.

So that’s it. Sorry about the language.

Sincerely,

Matt Reddin, chap.

Why I won't See 'The Great Gatsby'. In rhyming verse.

We’re a nation of big talents
It’s a disproportionate imbalance
With a film scene striving to create something new
Such a solid Whitlam decision
To fund the cinematic vision
Of Beresford, Schepisi and Weir, just to name a few

The directors of this nation
Get far-reaching adulation
And their work often brings in box office bucks
But despite this commendation
And analytical self gratification
The simple truth remains: Moulin Rouge sucks

Baz Luhrmann, you’re a hack
You’re the monkey on the back
Of an industry that’s forgotten how to boo
Coz you’ve been hailed as a genius
With a patent love of penis
Since your dumb fucking luck in ’92

You were hailed an artist and an auteur
Whose ballroom dancing film did stir
The heart strings of the entire lemonade set
Paul Mercurio tried to teach us
Lest those new steps would beseech us
And he kissed the girl like he just lost a bet

There was mass widespread acclaim
Although the film was kind of lame
A story based not in substance, but in style
And the one thing that it proved
Is that Australians can be moved
And have way more sentiment than they do guile

Then the worst adaptation yet
Of Romeo and Juliet
With this overly literal interpretation, it was marred
How so quickly we forget
That all the teenagers got wet
Or, if not wet, then maybe ¾ hard

I was thinking, what was next?
What’s with this homoerotic subtext?
Shouldn’t classic plays be closer under guard?
And then thought after I’d seen it
I would never dare to dream it
Kenneth Branagh’s not the only one who messes up the Bard

Baz Luhrmann, you’re a hack
You’re worse for us than crack
If real life was Paradise Lost, you’d be John Milton
I hated every single portion
Of that Moulin Rouge abortion
The only tackier vision of Paris, is Paris Hilton

Did you see Nicole Kidman and Ewan
Who we were meant to think were screwin’
With a plot like that you surely couldn’t lose
But their chemistry didn’t gel
It was the partnership from hell
More fake than her fake marriage to Tom Cruise

It couldn’t possibly be gayer
If the music was by Leo Sayer
With endless close-ups of Ms Kidman’s Botoxed kiss
So many badly sung pop songs
Some films stink, this one just pongs
I honestly thought he was trying to take the piss

Then it turns out that Australia
Was a monumental failure!
When the box office was open, no-one went
Then as he was playing with his nads
Baz did these fucking awful tourism ads
Now that’s tax payer dollars truly well spent


Baz Luhrmann, you’re a disgrace
You should be shot deep into space
For making such pandering, jingoistic bloody nonsense
And your hyper-kinetic pace
Makes me want to punch a dolphin in the face
It’s other people’s money, don’t you have a conscience?

It was well-documented in the Herald
He went and re-imagined F. Scott Fitzgerald
Apparently this is something we needed to see
Adding to the litany of wrongs
He’s filling it with crappy industrial dance songs
And that wanker's gone and filmed it in 3D

Baz Luhrmann must be stopped
From an aeroplane, he must be dropped
He’s a one-trick pony whose trick was never good
While he sucks on the cinematic teat
With fawning sycophants at his feet
If nobody’s tried to stop him, then somebody should

Baz Luhrmann needs to die
Nobody would wonder why
Although some may have cause to hazard a guess
As the movie world would be cleared
Missed only by his trophy wife-slash-beard
Because this ugly world would suck a little less

There are a plethora of ideas
People have been pitching them for years
But no producing bastard will return their calls
So as far as I can tell
They can all go straight to Hell
For spending all their time ladling on his balls

I’m not saying that I’m jealous
Although these words have been quite zealous
And the film industry is filled with talentless fucks
And it may sound glib and pissy
To despise this film making sissy
But the simple truth remains: Moulin Rouge sucks.

Funeral For a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding

This is kind of perverse: that I’m using a blog, and promoting this blog entry through Facebook and Twitter (of all things) to eulogise someone I’ve known most of my life. But the circumstances which bring about this modern world social media perversion are perverse themselves. There is nothing more frustrating, ignoble or unfair than cancer. But this is kind of what I do now, so we shall consider this eulogy more e-ulogy.

I also make puns.

I met Stephen Sunderland in about 1983 or 1984. I remember the first time this happened, my parents owned one of Perth’s few videos stores at the time, in Wembley and Stephen came in to the shop with my father and was talking to me (then about eight years old) about the videos I liked. At the time I was a fan of The Muppet Movie and Buggs Bunny (still am). The thing about meeting Stephen at the time, and in the years that followed was, that he was as big a film junkie as I, and always seemed to be interested in what it was I had to say about movies. This is a pretty cool thing when you’re eight.

Stephen got a regular gig on Perth TV shortly after, and I recall it being unassailably cool for me to be able to make reference to someone I knew who was on TV. The better aspect of it was that he was talking about movies on TV, so if you were watching Good Morning Perth on Fridays (this probably meant you didn’t have a job), you’d see Stephen in various states of fashion catastrophe, and increasingly thinning hair, talking about movies with Jenny Seaton, and invariably giggling with her when one of them said something that could be misconstrued as vulgar.

Stephen and Cassie bought me a subscription to Premiere magazine when I was 15. Great gift for a teenage movie nerd. He gave a brilliant speech at my 21st made up of several dozen movie titles describing my life to that point, which ended with “Although now he spends most of his time Home Alone, Spanking the Monkey.”

Spot on. It absolutely killed.

As a teacher, he was always interested in my academic progress, which started well enough, lessened as my teenage years wore on, then eventually rose to acceptable heights at university. He had wisdom and insight, very quick with useful advice. When I was first beginning my own (short-lived and ill-advised) career as a teacher, he had plenty of advice for me then as well. As far as media was concerned, radio specifically, he wasn’t so keen on me infringing on his ‘turf’; I once told him over the phone I had a weird dream about reviewing films on this new Perth radio station, and he told me that it wasn’t going to happen. He’d see to that. “It was just a dream, Stephen,” I said. “Doesn’t matter, I wouldn’t let it happen,” he laughed back. Sinister bastard.

He could be deadly serious when he needed to be; he would reflect on moments of supposedly volcanic anger – experienced a lot of the time in traffic, or on aeroplanes; but there was always a self-deprecating humour attached to it in retrospect. Stephen had this ‘big fish’ way about him in the small pond that is Perth’s PR/entertainment/film/media ‘scene’. He had a way of owning every room he walked in to. I saw this over the years, if I was tagged along to some movie preview or event, there’s Stephen, commanding the attention of those who moved and shook. Later, when I started reviewing films for Curtin’s student guild, I got to go to more of these events. Then, in late 1995, Stephen’s notorious lead foot got the better of him and I was called upon to be his chauffeur for a spell while his driver’s license was under suspension. I didn’t mind, it meant I could go to the movies with him more, which was good because I like going to the movies, could be (sort of) important by proxy, and if I was to drive him home afterwards we could talk about movies some more. Eventually, when I was having by-lines in The West Australian, he started seeing me in more of a colleague’s light; as associates. Equals, almost.

Almost.

Stephen’s caustic wit was a major part of what made him what he was. He could be sharp, and bitter, and ever so bitchy when he wanted to. It was funny to see him square off with Holly Wood; I recall being at Ron Tutt’s theatrette at one point and just seeing these two grown adult males working hard to out-camp each other. Holly won, as far as I was concerned. No contest, try as Stephen might have.

For most of the time I knew him, his wife, Cassie played ‘straight man’ to him. They were an interesting pair; Stephen about being the focus of attention, and Cassie, always there to be a quieter, more grounding influence – the straight man – and basically call him on his bullshit. Cassie had this way of silently editorialising on Stephen’s more ludicrous comments, a slight raise of the corner of her mouth, an ever so gentle eye roll and head shake. The kind of minimalist gesture that always, hilariously said, ‘Oh, for fuck's sake.’ Cassie could be brilliantly funny at times, too. I recall once I was struggling through using a one-armed bottle opener at a Sunday BBQ. Cassie, a non-drinker, looked at this implement I was handling.

“Hmm,” she observed, deadpan. “Thalidomide.”

Brilliant.

The last time I saw Cassie was the day after my sister and brother-in-law’s engagement party. She was smashing, totally destroying my mother’s guacamole, which is an excellent dish. This was heartening considering her chemotherapy had robbed her of an appetite for so long.

Stephen was, as you could imagine, a different kind of man after Cassie’s death – from cancer – in 2001. He still had that same bite about him, but you don’t lose your soul mate and not blink. But his taking charge of sole parenting of his sons Andrew and Cameron gave him, as you might expect, the impetus to keep at it. The fact that his other, non-teaching career – being 94.5’s entertainment reporter – was ended by his contracting throat cancer is another sickening, ironic twist in an already disheartening story which should not be inflicted on anyone.

I find it hard to get my head around the fact that someone I have known for nigh-on 30 years isn’t going to be around any more. I suppose because of the harsh, elongated nature of his illness, this is something everyone who knew him had to have considered was a possibility, even when hope and optimism was the order of the day. I haven’t spoken to him much over the past couple of years, me being in a different part of the country, although I was lucky enough to see him this last Boxing Day, his form as good as ever: him talking about what he was going to be doing for the next Christmas; us both reflecting on what a major fucking plastic hassle Christmas tended to be. Stephen always made an effort to come over to my parents place for scones when I was in town. My mother makes excellent scones, too.

I think that moments like these, when those you know and love move on to the next world, you take stock and embrace the opportunity to reflect fondly on them. For me, Stephen Sunderland was always kind of surrogate uncle, a mentor, and that lucky bastard who most people in any given room would warm to, want to talk to, or be seen with; and he was the one who had the job I wanted – wouldn’t anyone like a job where you talk about movies? But when I was there, in those rooms with the people wanting to float in his orbit, he always had room for me; a special place in this orbit for the Matt satellite, since I’d known him since whenever, before these things mattered. Not that they ever really mattered that much.

There seemed to be infinite blessings in his life – loving wife, two mightily impressive sons. The curses that afflicted him later are more perverse than I could have imagined, unworthy of a man I knew and we all loved for so long. My sister Ainslie mentioned her sadness during her wedding speech that Cassie wasn’t there, as it was something she always assumed would just happen. Stephen told her that Cassie would have loved to have been there. I’m in a similar predicament now, I just never figured Stephen wouldn’t be a part of my world, reduced as it has been to text messages or Facebook posts as many things are these days. He posted that he liked my blog entry on The King’s Speech and thought it spot on. I’m sure he’d want to be here. It really does weigh heavily, and gives added weight to my already loaded devotion to atheism. This kind of thing really isn’t fair, and doesn’t bode well for notions of a higher power who supposedly loves us.

It just doesn’t.

But this is, I have to convince myself, not the time to reflect in negatives. I wrote about Amy Winehouse last year and said that we’ve lost the source of joy, but not the joy itself. Same goes here. We’ll have memories and anecdotes and hours of embarrassing TV footage with all those 80s fashion moments, and that wedding photo where he looks like he was in a Moody Blues tribute act.

I have a mate, Ed, who took on cancer, and because there are still forces of good in the universe, HE BEAT THE FUCKER. For this we all cheer, and I will say that the world is a far better place for Ed Wilcox’s presence; so this is as good a forum as any to say that we should embrace the idea that who we have in our lives make us better for them. That this particular day is a sad one is very true. But this is one of many. I’ve known Stephen for about 10,000 days, so it’s rather unkind to levy sadness towards someone when only one of those days is like that, as opposed to the thousands upon thousands when Stephen gave us laughter and arguments and knowledge and arrogance and company and friendship and love and advice.

I’ll leave it at that and after this, return these pages to ill-informed ranting about movies I saw, music I’ve listened to and books I’ve read. It’s what Stephen would do, although he’d probably have done it on the radio, and it would have taken less time, and he would have been paid more, and would be consumed by about 300,000 times as many people.

It was, and remains, a pleasure to have known him.

Slurpee (and I know it)

Smart phone apps can be strange things. I was in a pub last night and saw a couple of ladies at the bar laughing hysterically at the sounds one of their phones was making when they shook it – stock whips, shotgun blasts and the like. I made my ‘pocket sitcom’ app applaud and laugh at them on cue and they laughed and I laughed and everyone had a good time. I have one app called ‘Fart Piano’, and there’s really nothing more to it than the name of it. It’s all right there. Hours of entertainment.

I’m inherently cynical about smart phone apps that have been put out by corporations. I’m inherently cynical about marketing for a starter. But I looked at this Slurpee app, as part of a marketing push by the 7-Eleven people and I kind of get it, I can see where they’re coming from and it essentially makes sense to me. Through strange means that I needn’t go into, I’ve found myself in possession of the new Slurpee app from 7-Eleven and I decided to examine it. Call this an exercise in new media deconstruction, or just a new genre writing challenge for me, a neo-luddite, but I figured it was worth a shot. I’m clearly not the target demographic, that’s for sure and certain, but I know that the people they want to get on board the Slurpee train (can you imagine how sticky those seats would be?) will be lapping this gear up.

The inherent value in this app is the technology they’re using could be applied to any number of products or services that anyone could use. There’s limitless potential here. One feature of the app is by using a Google maps-type function to show on a map of your area where your nearest 7-Eleven store is located. I live in the CBD, so it’d probably be more useful for me to be shown where the nearest 7-Eleven isn’t located. Between them and the Pie Face outlets, I can barely see straight.

Say, for example, you have a hankering for a Ginger Beer Slurpee. I can’t imagine being in such a predicament, but there you go. The option sits there, on this app for you to hit that button, and the machine uses the GPS function to find the nearest outlet which sells that particular "flavour", down to how many metres you need to walk. It’s a genius bit of marketing for people who want their super specific icy slushy treats. There’s a Space Invaders-type game thrown in there called Slurp Attack (a term which had a different meaning when I was growing up), where by tilting your phone back and forth you can make your beverage fire small wads of its icy innards at rows of marauding aliens attacking you row by row. It could be a metaphor, but since the Slurpee is the ‘gun’ in question, I can only figure the aliens represent some abstract form of hunger or thirst. Anyhow, fun to be had there. Much of what you’ll find on the average iPhone or its ilk is a timewaser, unapologetically, and this is no exception. A fun one, let’s not deny it.

There’s also this function within the app where you need to ask the Slurpee Sensei (yeah) a yes or no question. With all the scientific wherewithal of a magic 8 ball (an item I can freely admit to owning), you shake your phone and an answer comes forth. I asked it if there were ninjas nearby and its reply was ‘Totes’. Not sure if this is an answer in the affirmative, or the ninjas were just carrying sensible shoulder bags.

But what actually impresses me is the way that this app can influence developers to incorporate the ideas into apps for other goods and services. I have an app that tells me how far away the nearest tram is, so imagine if you could open an app to show you how far you had to walk to hail the nearest available taxi? Or if a record store chain could identify which branch had the new (insert whoever your favourite band is here) CD? Or something actually useful.

Click me all over!

I have t-shirts to give away. Want one? Just be the twelfth caller, or the first to comment. Or ask me...

Really...?

And now, a segment stolen from Weekend Update. Really...?

Really, Craig Thompson? You paid for escort services on your work credit card? Really? You didn’t think that this would leave a trail? You call a brothel called Bad Girls from your hotel room and then tell investigators that someone else used your credit card and forged your signature. Really? But then you didn’t report the alleged fraud to the authorities. Really? And really? You expected your work to cover the cost? I have big enough troubles claiming expenses on a pack of AA batteries, and this guy is spending $2500 on prostitutes. Really.

And, really, NSW ALP? You gave preselection to someone who was an obvious liability and had a history of escorts being paid for on his work MasterCard. Really? Did you think nobody would remember you slipped him $100k so he'd avoid bankrupcy in the lead up to the election? Really? Do you like being in opposition, or do you just prefer the ‘Russian Roulette’ approach to government? I mean, really.

While we’re on the subject, Really, Prime Minister? You have ‘full confidence’ in Craig Thompson and think he’s doing a 'great job'? The last person who had that said about him while being a monumental screw up was Michael Browne, the head of FEMA in the US, and under his administration, the city of New Orleans was destroyed. Heck of a job, Brownie. Really. Were it up to me, I’d eject him from the cabinet, the party and the parliament for just been a total ’tard. Really.

But, at the end of the day, Really, Craig Thompson? If you want to pay for a prostitute, you can always use your own credit card, because in Victoria and NSW – guess what? It’s legal. If you did that, this isn’t news – it’s just gossip. But maybe you don’t want your family to see it on a credit card statement; good thing you used your work credit card, because now we’ve all seen it. Really. While nurses are working long shifts and actively fighting for better pay and conditions, you’re using their union dues to have your junk worked on by a girl named ‘Bubbles’. Really.

And Craig? You know that there are these things called ATMs now. Really. They dispense cash and you can pay for goods and services with it. And I cannot imagine there’s a working girl in the world that doesn’t take cash. The only hooker I know that doesn’t is LJ Hooker, and I think they would in a pinch if you asked them nice enough. Because, really. You’re not getting re-elected no matter what. If you get forced out of the parliament because of this, there’ll be a by-election, the ALP will lose the seat, lose their majority in the lower house, the caretaker PM will call a double dissolution election and then the coalition will win government in a landslide that will blow your mind more than whichever ‘Bad Girl’ did back when you were with the HSU. Then this country will be lead by Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Really.

I mean Really. Huh. Yeah. Wow.

Auditorium – ‘Be Brave’

A few years ago I was out wandering the streets looking at nothing in particular with a friend of mine. We happened upon a record store – because that’s what we do, we happen upon them – and he (of more senior age than I) recommended that I buy Forever Changes, the apparently classic album by Love. I did. I’d never heard of them, I wasn’t one to just leap head-first, willy-nilly into these kind of things, but the price was right and I really haven’t looked back since. Just one of those random things.
Speaking of random, I got an email from a publicist looking to spread the good word on Auditorium, a one-man outfit who was being touted as a ‘musical genius’. It was random, in that publicists usually don’t contact me. But there you go. There was a link to a music video, which I eventually was able to play once I found an internet connection that was open to playing clips from You Tube (ie, not work) and upon listening to the music (in this case, the single ‘The Enforcer’), I thought, yes. I like this. It reminds me of Love.
See? Synergy. One thing leads to another and it’s all connected and the circle of life and everything.
Auditorium is the stage name of one Spencer Berger, a Los Angeles troubadour (and how often do you hear that word used as a modern-day descriptor?) cut from the same cloth as Tim Buckley, Ralph McTell, Steve Poltz and the like. Sung and performed with a unique kind of ethereal earnestness, Auditorium’s self-styled melodies and harmonies are nothing if not earnest and resonate with lyrics that don’t stray too far from the journeyman-singer-songwriter-balladeer playbook.
I would sincerely hope that this, or any future efforts that Mr Berger puts out gets a solid, proper, professional mixing job done on it, as it seems Auditorium is aptly named as on occasion Be Brave sounds like it was recorded inside an empty football arena. More solid production values would have made this admirable effort shine.
You know what? I’m impressed with the fact that he went out and did this. Steven Soderbergh won a Best Director Oscar in 2001 for Traffic, and in accepting his trophy said that he wished everyone watching would go out and do something creative every day. That’s what’s been done here. While major labels are falling over themselves trying to sign the next teenage sex gimmick to fill the void when Lady Gaga self-destructs, there are actual musicians, passionate ones at that, who are out there, toiling in the fields of performance and doing what they can to get their voice heard. Spencer Berger is doing just that, which is more than me, and I think he deserves all the credit in the world.

Sex and the City – Take the Quiz!

Thanks for taking Cosmo’s ‘Which Sex and the City girl are you?’ quiz. By taking part in this highly scientific join-the-dots exercise, you can finally put to rest any and all assumptions you may have had about you not being one of four crudely drawn cultural stereotypes from a long-defunct TV show about three prostitutes and their mother.

I’m a Carrie!
You make a habit out of dressing well, and by ‘well’ we mean you’re a pair of zany shoes away from being a carnival attraction at the next Ringling Brothers event. While espousing unwashed faux-intellectual rhetoric and unanswered questions disguised as a ‘sex advice’ column, you proudly spout notions of the ‘modern woman’ and nouveau feminism through the guise of being defiantly independent and determined, all the while having a kind of morbid and unhealthy obsession with the acquisition of material wealth, in the form of clothes and shoes. You pride yourself on being seen in the finest, hippest, coolest restaurants, but apparently you never eat as you seem to be the size of a hotel room soap after a solid weekend’s worth of showering. Although you pride yourself on the loyalty you have to your friends, you only seem to have three of them, who are willing to endure your obvious character flaws because they themselves have faults that are just as bad, if not worse. You are a recreational smoker, give lip service to your religious and cultural heritage and treat outwardly decent men with utter contempt, because the man you want the most has lots, and lots of money. You’re willing to endure shabby treatment at his hand because of said fortune, which makes you an enabler; a mafia wife. Where once, for about one year in the late 1990s your exploits were witty and incisive explorations of the dating world (and the titular sex), you’re now all wound up and seemingly obsessed with marriage. This is nice and shows some degree of character development and everything, but it’s not really feminist, and kind of belies your whole MO. All the while you live the life and maintain the churlish obsessions of a middle aged gay man, who dictates the wherewithal of your existence. Also, apparently you encompass everything ugly about Americans when you’re abroad and seem to have utter contempt for the Muslim world. Good for you for not curbing your whorish behaviour in a culture that apparently doesn’t understand you and needs to ‘get with it’. Somehow the world of women’s media have latched onto you as a style template even as you dress like a self-medicated fortune teller and have a face that reminds most people of Lance Armstrong’s instep. Essentially, you’re the reason why terrorists hate westerners and when all is said and done you’re a sub-human cretin with the moral compass of Joseph Stalin. You go, girl!

I’m a Samantha!
Having presumably had your first orgasm in utero, you emerged from the womb sometime in the mid-1940s with your focus zeroed in on having your orifices stuffed with as many things as was humanly possible, as often as was possible. You take sexual liberation to a confounding extreme, and would apparently fuck anything with a pulse. On the surface, you pride yourself on your garish accumulation of phallic encounters and have enough notches on your headboard to have whittled it down to a toothpick. Bound by an overwhelming ego and a contradictory absence of any kind of self-worth, you choose to not restrict yourself to any one particular partner in life, despite any number of people offering themselves to you with boundless love and affection for reasons that fail logic. You’re not one to judge your friends’ infidelities and obvious flaws, for you yourself have little to no regard for anyone aside from your inner circle, and the minute they could not for any reason afford to lunch or drink with you in the places to be seen, you’d be done with them faster than it takes to swallow whichever jizzload you just imbibed from the random manservant you looked at with a furtive glance. Most experts would diagnose you with acute nymphomania, in that you indulge in sex without love or intimacy, and have been ploughed so many times not only is there no tread left on the tyres, it really would be like throwing a hotdog down an elevator shaft. This is itself ironic in that you don’t seem to have anything more than two dimensions; the third would presumably be restricted to the depth of your cooter. When visiting a country in the middle east whose traditions and approaches to women are different to those experienced in New York’s east village, your solution would be to assume that your host nation is primitive and you would go out of your way to do nothing short of a public cervix announcement in front of the local Islamic cleric. Apparently your brain/mouth filter is redirected via your clitoris. As a menopausal woman, your antics make you, quite frankly, embarrassing to observe. The winner of the Bendigo Hotel’s ‘Cougar of the Year’ contest oozes class and sophistication by comparison, and that woman found her way home at 4.00am with vomit in her hair after one of the audience members gave her a rogering in the back of his cousin Darren’s late model ute and posted blurry iPhone pictures on his MySpace page. You go, girl!

I’m a Charlotte!
Your bubbly enthusiasm for life is contagious, and you maintain your peppy disposition by only shopping in the best stores and dressing only as the latest mode dictates. Thankfully, you had a career as an art curator that didn’t require a great deal of intellect, and paid a disproportionate amount of cash for something that you clearly haven’t the first idea about. Your stiff upbringing gave you something of a sense of right and wrong, but while you may be repulsed by others’ outward sexual bravado, you yourself really do like getting seen to quite a lot. Your first marriage was a sham, as you thought you could marry up, but you can’t seem to look past the size of a bank balance to see the very real human flaws even the best families have. Unlike some of your other friends, you can fuck ugly, but only if it’s successful ugly, or rich ugly. Your husband looks very much like a shorn scrotum, but because he’s an attorney with a solid portfolio, you convince yourself that you have developed ‘character’ by deeming him worthy of your sacred temple. Having found yourself the mother of two brats, your first instinct is to whine endlessly about them and how your life isn’t as enjoyable now that you can’t be completely self-obsessed. You need ‘me time’, all the time, because maintaining a façade of style-magazine prescribed ‘beauty’ isn’t easy, or cheap, and is becoming increasingly harder now that you’re rapidly approaching your 50s. You’d undertake plastic surgery or botox were you not such a spineless chickenshit, and your prime obsession is the style and maintenance of your own hair. Thank goodness for Photoshop and a savvy marketing department at Paramount Pictures, so you can now look much younger than you really are, because despite your ill-informed feminist ideals, phsically ageing scares the living shit out of you. Because what can a pretty girl do when she gets old and has no discernable skills or talent? Pick up a copy of Woman’s Day and marvel at Bec Hewitt’s perfect bogan life. You go, girl!

I’m a Miranda!
Yes you are, you fierce, independent career gal, you! Well done, you fiercely independent career gal, getting yourself to one of the higher rungs on the corporate ladder, despite the plainly obvious and frequently asserted (by you) handicap of being a woman. Sure, there are laws to prevent gender discrimination in the workplace (and you should know about those, being a lawyer, you fiercely independent career gal, you!), but that doesn’t stop you from playing the gender card every time you’re passed up for a promotion or don’t receive plebeian congratulations for doing your job. Which is hard. Being a woman. How much you’ve achieved, being a fiercely independent career gal, whose successes are many, and being the only person in your small group of friends with actual marketable skills, you find yourself having to actually work for a living, so it’s understandable to see that seeing these other gals in your circle have lives of comparative ease would make you just a little bit ... testy at times. Just a little bit… harsh. Just a little bit… irritable. Just a little bit… cunty. Being a fiercely independent career gal means you have less time for socialising, and the men you end up with tend to be on the less-than-impressive side. In fact, one particular chap seems to be an overwhelming douchebag, but you still managed to let him impregnate you – sometimes being a fiercely independent career gal makes it easy to forget the little things, like subjective judgement. And contraception. Somehow, a misguided sense of either pity (self or otherwise) has lumbered you with this hackneyed jackass, spouting stereotypical goombah nonsense to the point that he looks like an extra who strolled off the set of Jersey Shore. But you don’t mind, somehow being a harshly fiercely independently minded career gal has robbed you of your self-worth to the point where the highlight of your day is the five minutes you can find to reminisce about the three seconds of calm you experienced 20 years ago when you were sleeping with someone not beneath your station in life and really didn’t care about where the next day was taking you. But at least you have your small circle of friends, who you know are morally and intellectually inferior to you, but you associate with them anyhow, because it’s nice to spend time with someone who doesn’t eat with his fingers or spit when he talks. You go, girl!

So there you have it. Should you identify yourself with any of the above archetypes, or aspire to be like them, well done. You’re a major reason why there is gender inequity in the workforce, why there won’t be a female prime minister or president of the US for a while yet, and why most media for women is overwhelmingly stupid and tailored to bitchiness, gossip and speculation about talentless cretins and celebrities. Reading about the misfortunes of celebrities, be they divorcing, or gaining weight, or in career freefall, doesn’t actually give you license to feel better about your own "messed up life" you go home to every night in the suburbs; it’s actually Schadenfreude, which translates from the German as ‘damage’ and ‘joy’, in that you’re getting your escapist thrills out of others’ misfortunes. That they’re famous is irrelevant, it really just makes you a cunt.

Sex and the City 2’s trailer tells you to ‘Come for the fun. Come for the friendship. Come for the fashion!’. It’s a cultural event for women the world over, apparently. Germaine Greer would be so proud.

You go, girl.

Some Pontif-ication

TO: All of the one true faith
SUBJECT: Further, um, ‘issues’

We are again experiencing some, shall we say, ‘unpleasant’ issues that may be affecting our eventual salvation. Ireland, now deaf Canadian kiddies? It’s been a spell just trying to keep up.

It’s not the fact that it happened, because we all know about it. Hell, I was there for most of it, but I can’t remember much due to the shocking Morphine monkey that was on my back. The 60s were a stone solid gas, man. I’d blame the last guy, but I’ve been in the pointy hat for the better part of five years now. Hey, in other good news, I finally got that awful ‘old Pope’ smell out of the Encyclical rumpus room. That guy ate a lot of pitted prunes.

The problem stems from the fact that despite all this being ‘our little secret’, the word keeps getting out there. I, for one, am sick to bleeding death (happy Easter, by the way) of having to hire PR guys to deny it all or cover it up. Can’t we all just keep our traps shut? What’s the point of having a cover-up if it keeps getting uncovered? Dang! Back in the day, in the old country, when I was a boy, the people running the place knew how to keep things quiet. Boy, I miss those days. The marching was awesome, and talk about impressive architecture! Good times.

Anyway, investigations into this issue are underway and we are sure it’s the work of perverted agitprop socialist Jewish pornographers, which is a ‘Websters’ way of saying ‘the media’. How’s about another Spanish inquisition to thin out their ranks? Just an idea.

In the meantime, I’ve been on the phone with Mel Gibson, who is planning a kind of old school publicity stunt to distract the fourth estate long enough for us to burn some more evidence. Mel’s a great guy, but he’s a bit bummed since the low returns came in for Edge of Darkness. This ought to give him a project for a while and he’ll be smiling like the maladjusted wafer monkey he used to be before you can say ‘body of Christ’.

Thank you for your ongoing patience with this matter. We’ll just see who’s laughing when the Rapture comes.

Yours in cahoots,


Pope Benedict XVI
Seat of Peter
Vatican City, Rome