| The Last Barbarian - part 3 |
[Nov. 4th, 2009|11:15 pm] |
The next morning.
Bluey showered. He put on his cleanest black t-shirt, combed his moustache, and used some of his mum's deodorant. It took him a while to work up the courage to make the call.
"Hey," he said, when Scottish Joe answered.
"Oh look! It's Muhammad Ali."
"Yeah. Sorry about that."
"So you fucking should be, mate. I'm trying to help you here."
"I know." Bluey coughed. "We still on?"
Joe sighed. "I'll set it up. You're at your mother's place, right?"
"Uh. Right."
"Then I'll pick you up from there about eleven."
Bluey killed the time practising. Then a car horn beeped outside, and Bluey ran out, Fender still in hand.
"You won't need that," said Scottish Joe. "This is strictly meet and greet."
"Singers talk," replied Bluey. "I play bass."
They drove to a 50s themed cafe. Bluey carried the bass in with him.
"Down the back," Joe said.
And for a moment Bluey faltered. The new band didn't look like glam rock. They looked like cockatoos rolled in gelati.
There were three of them. They looked up, and Bluey caught the fear that flickered through their eyes.
That's more like it, he thought. He sat down in their booth.
"So. What sort of music do you poofters play?"
"Bluey," Scottish Joe said, "Meet the Japanese Peaches. This is Simon, Kaz and Max."
One of them was a girl, Bluey realised. They all wore so much makeup it was hard to tell.
"No," she said, turning to Joe. "He's not the one."
"Bullshit. I'm the best bass player you'll ever find."
The girl eyed him coldly. "Who's your favourite band?"
"Black Sabbath. Yours?"
"Gary Numan."
"Never heard of him."
"You're not helping your case. Why do you want to play with us?"
"The beer and groupies. Why do you want to play with me?"
"We don't." She turned back to Joe. "He's too old. His look is all wrong. Sorry, but he's just not for us."
She was right. Bluey must have been ten years older than these children. They still had pimples under their glitter and hair dye. And whatever music they made, it would be a thousand light years away from Bluey's beloved hard rock.
But they were a band. And bass player without a band was just a loser sleeping on his mum's couch.
"Look," he said. "Let's jam."
"Jam? Why the hell would we jam?"
"Because we're completely wrong for each other." Bluey paused, getting his words straight. "But are we just wrong wrong? Or are we so completely fucking wrong that we're actually right? Only way to find out is to jam."
There was silence around the table.
"I like him," the one called Simon said eventually.
"Yeah," said the one called Max. "Fuck it. Let's jam."
The girl glared at her two band mates, realised she was outvoted, and slumped back into the couch, scowling.
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| The Last Barbarian |
[Nov. 3rd, 2009|06:32 pm] |
Back from the holidays. I'll write a proper post about it soon, but it was great to get away. I've brought back a horrid cold from Queensland though, so I've spent the last few days snoozing and reading The Great Gatsby.
And writing.
It's been a barren year on the writing front. This time last year ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) jan_event and I were joking about NaMoWriMo - National Moustache Writing Month. Twelve months isn't too long between updates, is it?
( The Last Barbarian - original section )***
The bouncers threw them both out. Scottish Joe stormed off. Bluey found another pub and kept drinking.
He was good at drinking, and good at drinking alone. He propped himself at the corner of the bar, sunglasses on, and give off this don't-mess-with-me vibe. Then he drank a beer for everyone who ever loved him, a whiskey for everyone who ever did him wrong. The more he drank, the longer the second list grew. The band. The record label. His ex-girlfriends. Scottish Joe. The Japanese Peaches, whoever they were. Each shot was a little "fuck you".
Around nine o'clock, a cover band started playing and Bluey drank a whiskey for each of them too. Cover bands were the lowest of low, in his opinion, the final admission of failure. Bluey may not have a band at the moment, but at least he played his own tunes.
Sometime after midnight he staggered home to his mum's flat.
She'd left a note for him on the kitchen table: HERE'S YOUR DINNER, PLEASE DON'T MAKE TOO MUCH NOISE. He had to blink to read it.
Dinner was cold lamb chops and boiled vegetables lying in a puddle of congealed fat. His mum was a terrible cook.
Bluey ate it anyway, wiped the grease from his moustache and rinsed the plate off in the sink. His mum had made the living room couch up with blankets and a pillow. Bluey sat down on it, shucking off his boots.
I'm thirty-two next year, he thought sadly, staring at the framed family photos on the wall. The last barbarian of rock and roll.
The Fender was tucked away under the couch. He slid it out carefully and balanced it on his lap. It was a beautiful thing, black and curvaceous. Bluey played the riff from "Bat-Winged Woman", one of the band's early songs, and the heavy strings purred beneath his fingers.
He loved this bass. He loved playing it. He loved feel of it, the smell of it, the scratches and the dents on it. It was the one thing that had never broken his heart.
The toilet flushed in the bathroom, and his mother tottered in wearing her nightie.
"You're home then, Bluey," she said.
"Shit. Did I wake you?"
"Nah. Had to pee. Get your dinner alright?"
"Yeah. Thanks."
"Good day?"
Bluey shrugged. "Scottish Joe wants me to join this new band."
"That'd be good. Get you out of my hair," she said, affectionately.
"Yeah."
She bent down so he could kiss her cheek, then she tottered back to bed. Bluey fingered the riff over and over.
He wanted to play bass again.
He wanted to be on stage again.
Bluey put the bass away and lay back on the couch. Fuck it. He'd call Scottish Joe in the morning.
He was going to be a barbarian again. Even if it meant playing in some poofter glam rock band.
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| Daniel Kitson - We Are Gathered Here |
[Oct. 10th, 2009|02:43 pm] |
Last night we went to see Daniel Kitson talk about death.
Specifically, the recent death of his aunt, and the existential numbness that followed. Not exactly hilarious material, so he padded the show out with jokes about cake and wanking.
This was his new stand-up show, We Are Gathered Here at the Athenaeum.
Despite the subject matter, this was the happiest and mellowest I've seen Kitson. There was much less railing against the dickheads of the world. Even the obligatory telling-off of a disruptive audience member (for playing with his mobile phone) was more a gentle chiding than the venomous lacerations he's dealt out in the past.
There's an arc to Ktison's shows: he lures the audience in with light-hearted jokes, takes them down to some darker places (rage, despair, philosophical culpability), and then leads them back to light with a sense of wonder at the tiny beauties and joys of the world. And if I had a criticism of this show, it's that that final upswing doesn't quite work, isn't quite strong enough to exorcise the gloom of knowing everyone you've loved and cared about will die.
Or maybe I was just in a mood.
Because I laughed loudly and I laughed a lot. Kitson is an expert performer, holding his audience rapt for over two hours, and making it all seem effortless. One quantifiable measure of how much you enjoyed an act is whether you go see them again, and I've already booked tickets to his show at the Arts Centre in January - 66a Church Road.
And when we got home, we learnt that NASA had bombed the Moon. Apparently, this might start a war. With aliens.
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| Thanks |
[Sep. 28th, 2009|08:47 pm] |
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Thanks to everyone who came to our drinks on Sunday. It was a pleasure to see you all there. |
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| Holiday |
[Sep. 24th, 2009|09:45 pm] |
Holiday booked. Going to go play with the dugongs. Very much looking forward to it. Work has kind of swallowed my life recently. Also: andricongirl and are having birthday lunch/drinks at the Napier this Sunday from 1. It would be lovely to see you, if you can make it. Posted via LiveJournal.app. |
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| Let's Say You Want A Revolution |
[Jun. 17th, 2009|07:57 pm] |
The protests in Iran have got me thinking...
Is there a manual for nonviolent revolution?
A step-by-step guide to organising protests, neutralising suppression, gathering international support, forcing out an oppressive regime, establishing a new government, and preventing the old guard from staging a counter-revolt? Sort of like Machiavelli's The Prince, but for good guys?
A quick search of the internet later...
Wikipedia has an article on nonviolent revolutions, but that's more history than how-to. It does mention that billionaire George Soros's Soros Foundations are involved in helping Eastern European countries transition from communism to democracy. They might be worth talking to.
Portland Indiemedia links to a PDF booklet Nonviolent Struggle: 50 Crucial Points from the Center for Applied NonViolent Action and Strategies in Belgrade. It's a very slick document, and includes a section on working under repression. The CANVAS website also has a lot more resources, and links to material like 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action from the Albert Einstein Institution*.
* Actual connection to Albert Einstein spurious.
Okay. That's enough to stage your nonviolent revolution. Then what? How do you go from revolution to functional democracy?
Oh look -- the US Department of State includes the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization.
Resources on their website include a Reconstruction and Stabilization Essential Tasks Matrix. It's a dot-point to-do list rather than a detailed guide. But if you ever find yourself having overthrown, say, a Middle-Eastern theocratic regime, I'm sure the Office would be happy to send you out some consultants post haste.
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| Star Trekking, across the Universe... |
[May. 9th, 2009|09:08 am] |
Saw Star Trek last night.
It's a good, solid sci-fi action-adventure film. There's fistfights, explosions, giant space battles, and enough character development to give it some emotional heft.
It's easily the best Star Trek-related thing I've seen. But I've seen very little Trek, and what I have seen was uniformly bad. So my opinion may not count for much. The film doesn't measure up to, say, the new Battlestar Galactica, but that may be an apples-to-oranges comparison.
The plot is about an evil Romulan blowing up planets, but really that's just background colour for the story about how Kirk and Spock start off hating each other but then end up best friends.
The star of the film is definitely Zachary Quinto as Spock. This is a younger, sexier Spock, and the conflict between his seething human emotions and his coldly logical Vulcan side is the main character arc in the movie.
Chris Pine as James T. Kirk was probably meant to be the star, but all he really does is be smug.
Eric Bana plays Captain Nero, the aforementioned evil, planet-destroying Romulan. He's fine as an actor, but he never really gets enough screen time to be anything except a fairly generic bad guy. Which is a pity - the quality of a sci-fi film is generally directly proportional to how cool the bad guy is.
There's some cheesy moments, some in-jokes for the fans, lots of action, a clever explanation of how this franchise reboot fits in to the original series, and at least one frustrating plot hole (see Spoilers section). The flim runs for just over two hours, but it keeps up a breathless pace through it all. I'd actually have preferred it if there were a few less punch-ups and a bit more characterisation. But even taken as it is, it's a good bit of sci-fi action fun.
( Spoiler Bit )
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| Star Trek? |
[May. 8th, 2009|09:40 am] |
Anyone want to come see Star Trek with us tonight?
We're thinking dinner at the Terminus Hotel at about 6:30, then over to Victoria Gardens to see the 8:45pm session.
I've never really been a fan of Star Trek. Being stuck on a flight between Africa and England watching Generations didn't help.
But this new movie looks pretty good. Hell, Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton both gave it 4 stars. |
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| Comedy Festival 2009 - In Conclusion... |
[Apr. 26th, 2009|10:22 pm] |
The Festival is over, once again.
It's been a slightly weird festival for me this year. I saw a bunch of shows at the start. Then I lost interest in the middle bit, and had to rouse myself to go and see some more shows before it all finished.
I saw 12 shows this year. All of them were good, but none of them were amazing.
My favourite was Dave Bloustien. He show was solid example of classic stand up - a great story serving as the core, and lots of clever diversions, all delivered by a friendly and likeable comic.
But nothing blew me away this year. Nothing like the first time I saw Daniel Kitson, or Josie Long. Or even Andrew McClelland and his Pirates show. Maybe I saw the wrong shows. maybe it's just been a quiet year.
Or maybe I'm just getting old and grumpy.
( List of Shows Seen... )
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 16th, 2009|08:38 pm] |
The Girlfriend is out working at the Comedy Festival.
I'm home. Eating kangaroo roast with roast sweet potato, pumpkin and wilted bok choi. Reading a 60 page report on Retail Management Systems, because someone at work has to.
The glamour never ends. |
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| Comedy Festival 2009: josie Long, Storyteller's Club, Dave Bloustien, The Suitcase Royale Space Show |
[Apr. 5th, 2009|03:37 pm] |
It's only the first weekend of the Comedy Festival, and I'm slipping behind in my reviews already.
THU 02 - Josie Long - All the Planet's Wonders (Seen In Detail)
Ah, Josie Long. Her comedy belongs to the same whimsical, indie-pop style as Daniel Kitson. She's one of my must-see acts, not because her work ishilarious, but because it gives me a warm glow inside.
"All the Planet's Wonders" is about her joy in discovering science. She tells stories about creepy old men on regional tv, Hieronymus Bosch, and visiting the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. And she tells them with a mixture of self-deprecation and child-like wonder. She had a few first-night fumbles when I saw her on Thursday, but she still charmed the audience.
FRI 03 - The Storytellers' Club - "scary" theme
The idea behind the Storytellers' Club is get five or six comedians, musicians and other performers together to tell stories late at night. This year, each night has a theme, and Friday's was "Scary Stories". We heard a UFO story and a horrible date story from the host, Sarah Bennetto. James Dowdeswell talked about his old school friend who turned into a school shooter. We also heard from Maeve Higgins, Alison Bice, Danny McGinlay, Josie Long.
The quality varied from excellent to middling, but to me part of the pleasure of the Storytellers' Club is seeing performers kicking back and doing something less rehearsed than their usual show. And there were a few perfectly timed cracks of thunder to complement the stories.
The roster for upcoming shows is listed on the Storytellers' Club Facebook page.
SAT 04 - Dave Bloustien - The Social Contract
Dave Bloustien was sued last year by a dodgy promoter, and had to prove that he was funny in court. That story forms the backbone of "The Social Contract", but Bloustien diverts off into jokes about working advertising, the economic crisis and the racism by text message. He's written for Good News Week and The Glass House, and his humour is full of that style of clever, political quips. Smart, friendly and funny.
SAT 04 - The Suitcase Royale - Space Show
Like a shambolic Mighty Boosh, only not as pretty.
There was a plot in there, somewhere, about three astronauts (Kevin Bacon, Kerry O'Brien and Chuck Norris, no less) searching the galaxy for a cure to a disease that was ravaging Earth. But the plot was only an excuse for cardboard robots, tinfoil sets, bizarre characters, beachballs doubling as planets, and the occasional musical number.
This was humour as high weirdness. There were a lot of laughs, but I had two problems with this show. Firstly, some the characters felt too much like Mighty Boosh imitations. And secondly, all that surrealism never quite coalesced into a whole. |
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| Time Ninjas - Andrew McClelland and Lawrence Leung |
[Apr. 1st, 2009|10:05 pm] |
Yes. That Lawrence Leung. The one off the ABC.
It feels weird to write that. Lawrence has been doing shows at the Comedy Festival for years. But I overheard several people saying they had just discovered him via Choose Your Own Adventure. Anyway...
Time Ninjas is about McClelland (foppish, sideburns) and Leung (dorky, beard) traveling back through time in Stephen Hawking's wheelchair to meet Jesus, kill Hitler, and stop Lawrence from getting dumped by his high-school girlfriend in 1994.
There's cardboard props, musical numbers, PowerPoint slides and lots of silliness. It's more of a sketch or theatrical piece than their usual lecture-style shows, and it felt a lot more lightweight than their best work* -- mostly it's just them running around the stage being daft. But they do it with charm and infectious humour, so it works.
Lightweight, silly, lots of fun.
* A Somewhat Accurate History of Pirates, Lawrence Leung Learns to Breakdance
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| Too old to emo, too young to die |
[Mar. 9th, 2009|10:42 pm] |
Been sick the last week. Stomach bug. I was meant to go to karate camp on the weekend, but illness precluded it. (Insert joke about brown belts here.)
The Girlfriend is in Tasmania. I'm sitting at home feeling all bleargh and lonely.
And then I discovered it: My So Called Life is up on YouTube.
Blurry low-resolution Claire Danes with dyed red hair being all 90s adolescent angst? Heaven.
Except goddamn Warner Music Group have pulled the audio from some episodes just because it infringes their artists' copyright. How dare their corporate greed interfere with my illegally pirated viewing pleasure!
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| Nine Inch Nails, Festival Hall, 25 Feb 2009 |
[Feb. 26th, 2009|10:43 am] |
They were excellent.
They were so good, that's the first concert at Festival Hall I've been to where I didn't leave complaining about the venue.
We got let in early, as part of the nin.com presale tickets. Jel had to check her studded blt, which was a nuisance, but we still had time to grab a spot on a barriers to the left of the stage.
Support band were Jaguar Love. Who would have been entirely forgettable, if it wasn't for the singer's Steve Tyler-esque falsetto, which pushed them over into being ridiculous. "HEEELLLOOOO MELBOURNE," he squealed between songs, slugging at a bottle of Jameson's.
Cringeworthy. I went and bought earphones during their set.
NIN hit the stage at 9:00pm, and they were tight and loud and ferocious. Trent had announced that NIN would be taking a break after this tour. During he show he said that ever since making that announcement, the shows had become a lot more precious to the band. This wasn't a greatest hits tour -- they were playing the songs they felt were right.
And the band did seem a lot more relaxed. Trent was the most chatty I've ever seen him. And there were none of the temper tantrums from 2007's Year Zero tour.
( Setlist... )
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| Kelp Bed Canyon |
[Feb. 23rd, 2009|09:35 am] |
Ten metres under the waves. I'm kneeling gently on a bed of kelp. The fronds sway softly in the currents. Above and to the right of me, one of the students is having a panic attack. But she's in magnificent hands: _ryn is calming her, holding her hand, settling her breathing. Soon the class will be ready, and we will swim deeper. There's a blue devil fish down there, and a undersea canyon that used to be the Yarra, and a toadfish that the instructor will pull by the tail so that it puffs up into a spiky ball. And after that: the heavy climb back into the boat, then hours of theory, and the final exam, and the instructor quietly informing who is now a certified Open Water Diver, and who still needs more work. But that's all still in the future. Right now, I'm kneeling on a bed of kelp, ten metres below the waves. And all I am thinking is yes. |
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| Weekend - Boardgames, boobs and Barbarella |
[Feb. 16th, 2009|11:09 am] |
FRIDAY:
Birthday drinks for a_carnal_mink at the Tyranny of Distance. Lovely to catch up with her and kits_the_dm . Had nice paella for dinner, then the stress of the last week hit me and I had to go home and sleep.
SATURDAY:
Karate. Lunch with Toshi, a fellow karateka who's going back to Japan for a year.
Dinner at Ito, then off to the East Brunswick Club for Sugar Kitten Cabaret. Which was tight and funny and fun, as well as raising money for WIRE. Thumbs up to missmalice for organising it.
SUNDAY:
Lunch in Royal Park with the High Tea Society.
I'd offered to make gluten-free scones. They came out less like delicate little pastries suitable for elegant dining and more like something you'd put in a sling-shot and use to slay giants.
Still - the High Tea included antique linen, a working gramophone and a game of croquet. Plus lots of charming people. (waves at all the new people we met, and whose LJ names we've promptly forgotten).
Sunday night was finished off with Battlestar Galactica: the Board Game at Alex's house.
( Board game geekery... )
TODAY:
First day of two weeks leave. *relaxes*
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| Adam Hills preview |
[Feb. 11th, 2009|09:22 pm] |
Last night: saw a free preview of Adam Hills's Comedy Festival show.
He's such a sweetie. Even when he was picking on the audience members, he did it with a friendly twinkle in his eye.
His show was mostly stories - polite Dutch audiences, heavy metal forensic specialists from Wales, and the crudity of the athletes at the Beijing Special Olympics. He finished up with the obligatory uplifting meaningful bit, which felt like Daniel Kitson without the swearing.
His support act was Hannah Gadsby, with her deadpan stories about growing up in small-town Tasmanian, lesbian haircuts, and her eccentric mother. She started out a bit stiff and nervous, but she warmed up as the audience warmed up to her.
Tonight: swimming. 16 continuous laps (400m), then a few short ones, then 8 continuous laps (200m), a few more short laps, and then another 4 continuous laps. Not exactly going to win the Olympics, but that pwns the 200m swim test for my Open Water Certification in a week.
ObBushfires: Registered at www.donateblood.com.au. Haven't given blood in years, not since the whole chronic fatigue thing.
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| How To Miss The Point Completely |
[Feb. 3rd, 2009|09:34 am] |
The Age has an article about all-women bands in Melbourne. The girls are all right, it's headlined. Sub-heading: No gimmicks - Melbourne's all-women bands just want you to get into their music.
Ok. Fine. There's interviews with members of Killer Birds, The Spazzys and Super Wild Horses.
"We just happen to be female," [...] "We're not trying to make a social comment. People might think, 'They're just a girl band,' but once they have heard us they might not think that any more."
Great!
Except...
The article never once tells us what these bands sound like.
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