There was definitely a looming sense of pressure to feel moved and come up with something profound to say when coming face to face with all the animals of the world but I think I'd rather hit it from a different angle. Visiting Taronga Zoological Park has confirmed my long held suspicion that I would be an excellent person for a jungle safari scientist to marry.
In the day he would go off in a jeep to shoot lions, tigers or gorillas with dart guns. In the morning I would ride my horse across the plains. After lunch I would retire to our library to work on my manuscript. We would wire messages to each in morse code. In the evenings we would listen to jungle noises and drink gin with tonic. Tomorrow I will write to Taronga Zoological Park and ask them to add this information to their guide books.
I want you, we want you, they want you, so why don't you?
PAN magazine wants your submissions of poetry, short fiction or essays for issue #2.
More information on the PAN website.
More information on the PAN website.
Take me down to testosterone city
If there is a god he was man-shaped and multiple and standing at the bar. The Duke of Edinburgh is a tidal pub towed by the almighty whim of the Enmore Theatre booker. Tonight it was Jane's Addiction, I didn't have a ticket, I wasn't the least interested in that band until I ran smack bang into the wall-to-wall testosterone factory filling every inch of space at The Duke.
The joint was crammed with men, real men. Craggity rock'n'roll semi-drunk testosterone-fueled men. Hallelujah. There was so much testosterone in there I think I got an erection, I certainly had the urge to wee standing up on a fence post before making rough Cowboy punch-love.
My friend, let's call her K2, didn't seem at all impresed, if anything she showed regulation level annoyance at our local once again being disturbed by a one-night-only fan crowd but I think she was just showing her age. K2 is young, young enough to follow an indie boy across a room with one secretly interested eye. I couldn't care less about indie boys, for a start they're boys and all they care about is their hair. I don't know when this Peter Pan fad became de rigueur for all male humans under thirty but I am the fuck sick of it. Grow up, organise your shelves, invest in cologne for occasional use and for goodness sake get a tea pot and learn how to provide for yourself. Growing tomatoes in pots and thinking about what you might cook to take to Christmas lunch could also help.
I still don't like Jane's Addiction but I just might become a fan of their fans because like I said, if there is a god he was man-shaped and multiple and standing at the bar.
The joint was crammed with men, real men. Craggity rock'n'roll semi-drunk testosterone-fueled men. Hallelujah. There was so much testosterone in there I think I got an erection, I certainly had the urge to wee standing up on a fence post before making rough Cowboy punch-love.
My friend, let's call her K2, didn't seem at all impresed, if anything she showed regulation level annoyance at our local once again being disturbed by a one-night-only fan crowd but I think she was just showing her age. K2 is young, young enough to follow an indie boy across a room with one secretly interested eye. I couldn't care less about indie boys, for a start they're boys and all they care about is their hair. I don't know when this Peter Pan fad became de rigueur for all male humans under thirty but I am the fuck sick of it. Grow up, organise your shelves, invest in cologne for occasional use and for goodness sake get a tea pot and learn how to provide for yourself. Growing tomatoes in pots and thinking about what you might cook to take to Christmas lunch could also help.
I still don't like Jane's Addiction but I just might become a fan of their fans because like I said, if there is a god he was man-shaped and multiple and standing at the bar.
Everyone needs a hero
My big wet writers' crush on Mark Mordue continues. I'd like to have a drink with this man. I'd like to pour whiskey down my throat and just listen to him for a while. Mordue's essay 'Towards Love: another vision of The Road' needs to be read, now.
It's on
And so it has begun. David Young and I will both be reviewing The Drones at The Annandale in a grudge match gig review challenge.
Yawntastic
Oh why don't you just bore me until I am dead. The boring thing I am talking about here is a review of The Holy Soul and The Kill Devil Hills. 'Respectful applause', I mean is that really something you want to read in a gig review?
Here's the part where I start making sense. The reviewer, David Young, clearly knows how to put a sentence together. He has a fluid journalistic style but his review is boring to read. Boring. Come on David Young this music is wild, this gig was transcendent in places and raucous in others. I walked around pretending to be a gunslinger for three full days after this gig, surely you can do better than 'respectful applause'.
The reason that music journalism has gone to hell in this country is because music journalists need to lift their game, I'm not excluding myself from this. Consider this a challenge. David Young if you happen upon this post contact me. I've got a proposition for you and it goes a little something like this. Let's coordinate reviewing the same gig. I challenge you to a 'review off'.
Here's the part where I start making sense. The reviewer, David Young, clearly knows how to put a sentence together. He has a fluid journalistic style but his review is boring to read. Boring. Come on David Young this music is wild, this gig was transcendent in places and raucous in others. I walked around pretending to be a gunslinger for three full days after this gig, surely you can do better than 'respectful applause'.
The reason that music journalism has gone to hell in this country is because music journalists need to lift their game, I'm not excluding myself from this. Consider this a challenge. David Young if you happen upon this post contact me. I've got a proposition for you and it goes a little something like this. Let's coordinate reviewing the same gig. I challenge you to a 'review off'.
Sandwich yelling gives way to more generalised slouching or let me explain about Radio Man
Radio Man happened upon Spencer and I sitting in one of our usual cafes drinking our usual coffees. I didn't notice that he was drunk until he had stopped for a quick chat, left and then come back again saying that he wanted to explain. His explanation was that his band went to Japan this morning, for a gig. I was trying to work out if that was possible given that it was still morning. I was developing a theory about the possibility of time travel as a freak occurrence when he said he'd been in the lounge and not heard the boarding announcement. He missed the flight. Tomorrow morning he's headed back to the airport for take two. He will land just in time to make the gig but in the meantime instead of drinking on a plane he's going to be drinking at home and pretending that he's on a plane. Seems like a fine plan to me. Maybe tomorrow I'm going to pretend to be on a plane.
And now for my newest genre - album review revenge
If I have to write album reviews then I am going to use them for revenge. Payback's a bitch. Sure they could say the review is poorly written and critically nonsensical but, you know, that's kind of how I roll.
Saturday - Ocean Colour Scene
Critically, you could say Ocean Colour Scene are not obviously doing anything musically wrong, it’s just that they have no taste or respect for genuine artistic endeavours. I do not like any part of this album. I don’t ever want to hear it again. I will never go and see this band play live, I will never recommend them for anything other than being shot into space and I sincerely wish they would stop stealing melodies.
Continue reading...
End Times - Eels
I used to know a man who wanted to be this album, he turned out to be a jerk. Some albums you have to turn yourself down to listen to. Some albums have an inbuilt pointed device that silences you so the music can take over. This album does not.
Continue reading...
Saturday - Ocean Colour Scene
Critically, you could say Ocean Colour Scene are not obviously doing anything musically wrong, it’s just that they have no taste or respect for genuine artistic endeavours. I do not like any part of this album. I don’t ever want to hear it again. I will never go and see this band play live, I will never recommend them for anything other than being shot into space and I sincerely wish they would stop stealing melodies.
Continue reading...
End Times - Eels
I used to know a man who wanted to be this album, he turned out to be a jerk. Some albums you have to turn yourself down to listen to. Some albums have an inbuilt pointed device that silences you so the music can take over. This album does not.
Continue reading...
I told you, don't make me walk like a gunslinger
It's no secret I've always wanted to be a cowboy. People tell me I'll never be a cowboy wearing floral dresses and drinking cups of tea but I'm pretty sure there's more to it than outfits and refreshments...
Don't make me walk like a gunslinger
It was one of those big old country pubs, two stories high and wrapped in iron lace. Somebody thought to paint the pressed tin ceiling a pearlescent cream and I can't say the effect was unpleasant. It seems like forever since I drove South through the high scrub and all that sedimentary rock until I found the ocean in a new place. I didn't see much of the ocean last night, everything was obscured by fog and the rain that turned itself from high to low then back up again.
Spencer picked me up in his big old car, it was full of friends, with beer. We drank beer (except for Spencer), ate chocolate bars, sang along to the stereo. There's nothing quite like a road trip.
I walked in out of the rain lugging a bass guitar in a hard case. I ran straight into Brendon Humphries, the singer from The Kill Devil Hills. He held out his hand and introduced himself, it was a small conversation but I was struck by something odd. It seemed to me that he was kind and open, unguarded in a genuine sort of way. It might be ten thousand years since I have met a person who will just stand like that on the floor and hold out their hand to greet a stranger. Maybe living in the city does have its downside.
I've seen the Kill Devil Hills before, even reviewed them but this gig was by far the best. The crowd was older, more sedate, satisfied to sit at their tables taking long swallows of beer while the band stood up on the stage. For part of the show I moved outside to the long verandah. I sat on an old leather couch watching the torrential rain pour over the ocean while the sound moved through the windows behind me. I'm thinking that moment might have been ideal.
I've written about The Kill Devil Hills before, I think I said there's something of the horizon in their music and I'm not about to change my mind now. Everybody needs a bit of horizon projected by a band of hillbilly pirates once in a while. If you're in the mountains today head up to Hotel Gearin, buy yourself beer, shake the rain out of your hair and just listen. The band will do everything else.
He says that he's tired of singing this song but I don't think I'm tired of listening to him sing it. It's not fair but if I had my way drummer Steve Gibson will be singing 'Drinking Too Much' as often as possible until the day he dies.
Spencer picked me up in his big old car, it was full of friends, with beer. We drank beer (except for Spencer), ate chocolate bars, sang along to the stereo. There's nothing quite like a road trip.
I walked in out of the rain lugging a bass guitar in a hard case. I ran straight into Brendon Humphries, the singer from The Kill Devil Hills. He held out his hand and introduced himself, it was a small conversation but I was struck by something odd. It seemed to me that he was kind and open, unguarded in a genuine sort of way. It might be ten thousand years since I have met a person who will just stand like that on the floor and hold out their hand to greet a stranger. Maybe living in the city does have its downside.
I've seen the Kill Devil Hills before, even reviewed them but this gig was by far the best. The crowd was older, more sedate, satisfied to sit at their tables taking long swallows of beer while the band stood up on the stage. For part of the show I moved outside to the long verandah. I sat on an old leather couch watching the torrential rain pour over the ocean while the sound moved through the windows behind me. I'm thinking that moment might have been ideal.
I've written about The Kill Devil Hills before, I think I said there's something of the horizon in their music and I'm not about to change my mind now. Everybody needs a bit of horizon projected by a band of hillbilly pirates once in a while. If you're in the mountains today head up to Hotel Gearin, buy yourself beer, shake the rain out of your hair and just listen. The band will do everything else.
He says that he's tired of singing this song but I don't think I'm tired of listening to him sing it. It's not fair but if I had my way drummer Steve Gibson will be singing 'Drinking Too Much' as often as possible until the day he dies.
Oh you know, just walking around a little before undressing in a surprise disco
After we got kicked out of The Duke, well politely told by Victor that the beer garden was shutting and to please move inside, I was all set to walk home but Spencer, Skywalker and The French One had other plans. As we walked past The Enmore I wanted to explain to Spencer that I was tired and drunk and needed to go home but the only thing I could manage to say was 'I am too drunk to have this block of cheese in my handbag. Do you think it will be all right?' Spencer rarely looks baffled but he was approaching something quite like it as he enquired as to why I had a block of cheese in my handbag. I wanted to explain how the aging process of cheese effects lactose levels but all I could think of was that I had bought it at the same time as black shoelaces, a box of matches and a roll-on deodorant and that a very tall man had been in front of me in the queue for the checkout. Once I might have diligently explained all of these things but I have decided to cultivate an air of mystery.
It's been seven hours and sixteen days, since my bedroom light became possessed by a poltergeist. The light works when it wants to, flashes on and off when it wants to and sometimes doesn't work at all. I didn't really mind until I came home drunk with a block of cheese in my handbag and found myself undressing inside a surprise disco.
There were other strange parts to my day, free Grolsch at an art gallery, free review copy of Avatar, free chocolate sorbet in Newtown, spending five hours arranging and rearranging the articles for issue #1 of PAN magazine and of course being interviewed by a journalist for Cleo magazine. It can't all be just swanning around drunk with cheese.
It's been seven hours and sixteen days, since my bedroom light became possessed by a poltergeist. The light works when it wants to, flashes on and off when it wants to and sometimes doesn't work at all. I didn't really mind until I came home drunk with a block of cheese in my handbag and found myself undressing inside a surprise disco.
There were other strange parts to my day, free Grolsch at an art gallery, free review copy of Avatar, free chocolate sorbet in Newtown, spending five hours arranging and rearranging the articles for issue #1 of PAN magazine and of course being interviewed by a journalist for Cleo magazine. It can't all be just swanning around drunk with cheese.
When you go down Dixon don't order a special wife
We ordered the Special Wife Cake because it was called Special Wife Cake. Madam Squeeze tore it carefully in half, pausing mid operation to ensure the halves were even in size. The cake was tiny, flat and round like a raised biscuit made of pastry but in the centre something was lurking. At first glance the cake appeared to be filled with reconstituted apple-flavoured squid or half-dried superglue but it tasted much worse than either of those two things combined.
We tried turning it into a game, animal, mineral or vegetable but my mouth would not decipher the taste. The pastry flaked but tasted short and emitted a malodorous vapour detectable only once mastication had commenced. Madam Squeeze tried dipping her half in jasmine tea but claimed it did not in any way improve the flavour. I tried leaning back in my plastic chair and smoking a cigarette but that also had no effect.
I almost made it through my half of the Special Wife Cake, almost but not quite. Three bites worth of cake lay listless on the white square plate on the table between us. It felt important to me that we finish the cake because of its special and possibly mystical name. Try as I might I could not finish my half. Madam Squeeze, in an act of selfless bravery, attempted to finish my half of the cake but could not in the end stomach it.
I'm not sure that I want to be anyone's special wife but as I walked away that minuscule piece of cake taunted me, saying 'This will be the reason you rattle through the world alone'. Madam Squeeze asked me 'Who do you want to believe, rational thought or the imagined voice of an undelicious cake?' I said 'rational thought' but I was thinking 'cake'.
We tried turning it into a game, animal, mineral or vegetable but my mouth would not decipher the taste. The pastry flaked but tasted short and emitted a malodorous vapour detectable only once mastication had commenced. Madam Squeeze tried dipping her half in jasmine tea but claimed it did not in any way improve the flavour. I tried leaning back in my plastic chair and smoking a cigarette but that also had no effect.
I almost made it through my half of the Special Wife Cake, almost but not quite. Three bites worth of cake lay listless on the white square plate on the table between us. It felt important to me that we finish the cake because of its special and possibly mystical name. Try as I might I could not finish my half. Madam Squeeze, in an act of selfless bravery, attempted to finish my half of the cake but could not in the end stomach it.
I'm not sure that I want to be anyone's special wife but as I walked away that minuscule piece of cake taunted me, saying 'This will be the reason you rattle through the world alone'. Madam Squeeze asked me 'Who do you want to believe, rational thought or the imagined voice of an undelicious cake?' I said 'rational thought' but I was thinking 'cake'.
I will fight you on the beaches
In 2007 I performed a Home Hitler Self-Test by attempting to grow a moustache and burn books in the fireplace in the library. Tomorrow I will perform a Home Churchill Self-Test by eating breakfast in bed, running the nation's war efforts from the bathtub, taking a nice walk, drinking cocktails before, during and after dinner before retiring to bed chamber by 11pm. Wish me luck.
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