You know what they say about cats and dogs, well, do they say cats like to be in the sunshine and dogs like to be in the shadows? I hope so because then these pictures bear out the truth of that saying. Nancy in particular loves being out on the deck, loves it.

Also here's a bonus picture of no essential value, of a building in Parkville Gardens when we went there last night. Enjoy! 

 

more numbers

 

Just wanted to register the interesting (?) truth that there is another Numbers and Spotifuck thinks it's the same Numbers (the albumi Blue Café and the single 'No Smoking' are not by the early 1980s Sydney band) but I can't find any detail on this other Numbers at all. If you listen to the real Numbers a bit this more recent (but I suppose no less really real) Numbers comes up, they're not terrible. I've really got to get rid of Spotifuck but first I have to listen to all of The Real Thing's greatest hits. 

boogie fever

Not just 22 Original Hits by Original Artists, but 22 Amazing Original Hits!!! The biggest catch on this is The Real Thing's 'Rainin' through my sunshine' but there are a heap of amazing songs here. 1978 was a fucking trip. I adore that it's called 'Boogie Fever' but it doesn't have the song 'Boogie Fever' by the Sylvers on it. I also adore that it has such a non-conventionally sexy person on the cover, or should I say, a conventionally non-sexy person on the cover. It also has, on balance I'd say unfortunately, Sheila B. Devotion's 'Singin' in the Rain' - another one of those discofied classics. Additionally, while I adore The Motors' 'Airport', it's so far away from the feverdom of boogie it's not funny. Hilarious that it's first song side one. 

 

the numbers by the numbers #2

So my British copy of The Numbers showed up today, pretty swift. I am unreasonably pleased with it. Two things bear discussing. One is, the song 'I Don't Know'. I've been listening to Numerology which is the 15-year-old CD compilation of Numbers material, which mooshes both albums and the entirety of their first EP. 'I Don't Know' isn't on that CD, and I had kind of forgotten it,* except now I hear it again on this record I have to admit I absolutely had not forgotten one note of it - it is completely ingrained, it must have been playing on RRR when my portal was at its most receptive. Weirdly if anything it's been mashed in my brain with Blondie's 'I Know But I Don't Know' which is a more complicated but less pleasing song. 'I Don't Know' is classic teen angst of the kind of thing The Undertones excelled at (though it's not as rock). Two is the song 'Jericho' which is sitting at the end of side one of this English LP whereas it's not on the original version. It's a different version, and pretty special. A bit muddier than the version that was released as a single/appears on the second album, I guess it's kind of more primitive but/and still very enjoyable. 

I might spend some time comparing or I might not, but I suspect the whole album sounds a bit tougher and fuller than the original. It also has a lyric sheet, which my copy of the Australian version doesn't, but I don't know whether it did once. 

*I do have the Aust version of the album, so I've got two copies now - decadent! - but I hadn't played it for a while, I think because I had just assumed the CD was the entirety of the first album and about half of the second. Wrong.

railway canal

On the weekend Perry and I did a little wander down Moonee Ponds Creek almost to Docklands to check out whether there's any material evidence left of the loading dock for coal from the Railway Canal to the Spencer St railyards. We found this. I mean, really I just don't know. It seems weird to imagine that no-one had ever taken away this jumble of stone from what seems likely to have been the site of the dock, in the century plus since it was decreed redundant. But on the other hand, did they have any reason to take it away, and did anyone really need or want this little bit of the creek bank for anything else? 

The Railway Canal was a big project of the late 19th century which doesn't really seem to have been used at all much after about 1910. It's essentially one of the few canal projects in Melbourne to aid industry/infrastructure, curious that it was implemented to assist railways which had essentially supplanted canals long before this time. But the logistics made a certain amount of sense. But clearly it was pretty quickly revealed as a folly, and contributed to the ruination of the creek. 

To reiterate - I understand this amateur urban archaeology could well be way off. Way off. 

mound

Perry and I went to the dog wash place earlier today and we thought we'd just drop in behind these flats on Macaulay Road to check out the mound. I am interested in the mound and I don't really know what it 'means'. I could probably go in harder on the research but I lazily just went to that invaluable resource the Melbourne 1945 site. God bless that site but it just raised more questions. 

So I guess to the degree I thought about it, I thought that the gasometer on the site was probably set back a bit from the road and the mound in some way remediated the ground underneath it which probably couldn't be built on because, you know, a century of gas-related residue in the earth. But I see that the gasometer was at the road on the far southeast of the site and this is part that definitely has residential space atop it now. 

I am sure there's an answer to the question of the mound but today is not the day. I will say this: my reearcher tells me it is tasty. 

stories from the golf

Cliff Ellen and Monica Maughan in Stories from the Golf. In the service of one of my forthcoming books I am forced, forced to watch a lot of Australian comedy DVDs and this is one of them, from 2003. It's the first Robyn Butler/Wayne Hope series - 5 minute stories all revolving around one hire car (the Golf). Butler and Hope are the usual stars but sometimes there's some real surprises and this was one of them. A really simple and dare I say touching story with some funny things thrown in. Good series! 

nuttelex milk

Well I have nothing against almond milk exactly though usually I go for oat milk, I am not entirely sure why since I like them all. I was fond of that one, I now can't remember the brand, which claimed to be made from pea protein. It was probably the closest in flavour-consistency to real milk although tbh I haven't drunk a glass of cow's milk for over forty years so do I really remember. Anyway, I am a fan of the Nuttelex brand, when it comes to both margarine and now their milks, and I like the no-nonsense packaging too, which essentially says the lie of, 'we've been making this kind of stuff for almost a century, haven't you noticed? Well until recently it was only medical.' I noted that the Nuttelex brand was in 'clearance' mode at woolworths this week and I hope it's not going out of production (of the milks. I'm sure the margarine line is solid, there are so many options). 

coburg wander yesterday

 First, houshops:

Second, just things/buildings that are sort of interesting:

maybe dolls - propaganda

It's been CD city round here lately as I lazily pick up releases by Go Genre Everything, Hot Palms and as promised/threatened/muttered a few days ago, Maybe Dolls. 

It's funny how this album sounds so much more dated than The Numbers' records - I don't know if that's an objective reality or just a feeling, perhaps a suspicion that with Maybe Dolls the Morrows are trying harder to be a part of some current trend. Apparently at the time they were compared to Baby Animals. I don't remember BAs well enough to have an opinion on this but I do think the first track on Propaganda sounds like a very good approximation of a lost track from the first Pretenders album. I am utterly not against that. 

Whereas almost all the Numbers' songs were by Chris Morrow completely (the story goes that he was the singer and Annalisse was 'just' the bass player almost up until they recorded their first album) these songs are co-writes between the two of them, and she is putting a lot more into her performance, but you know, I kind of liked the restraint on the Numbers records. 

This is by Brett Thomas from the Sydney Sun-Herald 15 March 1992 p. 125.  

Remember safe love? Yeah. 

SMH 19 March 1992 p. 31

And below is I suppose where they got their name from.

Sydney Sun-Herald 31 Oct 1971 p. 151

arden st kensington this evening

 

for some reason...

everybody in Melbourne, and the tourists, were all at QVM today. They couldn't go yesterday I suppose so they were borek deprived. It was insane and I'm amazeballed that I was able to get to the nut shop. 
 

foodies april 2021

Five years ago today Laura and I walked past the old Foodies on Nicholson St and, seeing that part of the fence had fallen/been pushed down I went on a quick detour to see what it looked like inside. I half expected a commune in there but no just a clean-ish empty space. That's OK. The pages taped to the outside are all council saying you have to make this property safe and secure, etc, dated September 2020. I can't remember when Foodies closed down but I am strongly of the opinion that when this post appears on my blog the Foodies building will not be here anymore.

Here's something else though. A few doors down from what became Foodies was The Bluebird, a 24-hour establishment that I remember in the early 80s as notable for its old cheap plastic toys and this unreplicable smell that I equated with old ice cream. When I came to know Mick Turner in, I guess, the late 80s he told me the hilarious story of the owner of The Bluebird trying to blow up the new 24-hour place up the road and the wires from the dynamite he'd deposited there going all the way back to The Bluebird. I'm not saying I didn't believe Mick's story, but I am surprised how 100% accurate his relay of the story was! This is from the Age 13 July 1987, p. 5:

I won't put the shop owner's name in text here, he seems to have a career in real estate now and he doesn't need the notoriety I suppose. He was sentenced to five and a half years in prison with a minimum of three and a half ('Man jailed for trying to blow up food store', Age 19 August 1987 p. 16). If he is the same person who currently works in real estate, he says on his facebook page: 'Riddle me this: When all is taken away and you have nothing left in your life. what are you left with?'

this is my city

 

filmcast

Have I ever mentioned this show is a major part of my life, one of those 'major part' styled components of a life that I barely ever really think about except when I'm listening to it and even then not that much? 

I don't remember how or why I started listening to it, but I do know it was when Adam Quigley was still part of the program, so that is before 2013 - I was bonded enough with the show that I was mildly perturbed/disturbed when he left. 

The show is usually three men: David Chen, Devindra Hardawar, and Jeff Cannata (doomed always to be the lastnamed as he is the one who replaced Quigley) talking about film-related news and then, in the main show (as opposed to the 'After Dark', of which I am a patreon listener) review a film. They are Americans and very Americacentric notwithstanding Chen and Hardawar are second generation Americans and Chen is presently living in Portugal. 

The weird thing is that (actually when I come to think of it, like quite a few things I 'subscribe' to) it is totally not in my wheelhouse in terms of content. I could give so little a fuck about Marvel or for that matter DC films, for instance, and other things they see as cornerstones of their film experience, big name action films or films based on games, are just unpleasant to me. I am also occasionally stunned by their lack of knowledge of cinema things I know a lot about: they just got on board at a certain time (I guess the late 80s-early 90s) and didn't really look back too far. But in last week's After Dark Chen described the show as a 'hang' - or rather, he described it as having developed into a 'hang' - and that is totally true. I enjoy these men's company, and their takes and their interaction. Three people with quirks and specialisations in a conversation where two might ally against the third, or all three disagree, or of course all three agree, is just compelling when you're a human I suspect. They could be talking about spark plugs or Judy Nunn novels, really. It doesn't matter what the core topic is, it's how they react to the subject and each other. Of course, they make it much more user-friendly for me because sometimes they talk about something I'm interested in. 

I actually thought about this more today and was moved to briefly spend ten minutes writing about it because Jeff Cannata, who in general I enjoy, went off on a spiel about wrestling and why he enjoys it (as a spectator) and I felt cheated (even though all I really had to do was fast forward for what seemed like twenty minutes of egregious bullshit, I assume it was, because wrestling... christ... could you bore me more? The mere thought of thinking about it is wearying). I have to remind myself that, firstly, I am not forced to listen to this (and I didn't) and secondly, different people have different interests (ouch). 

With The Little Dum Dum Club, I stuck with it for all episodes but it was diminishing returns (though I definitely learned a lot) and while I was a bit irritated when it finished, I haven't thought about it too much since. I wonder how long I will stick with The Filmcast? I still get a lot out of it I suppose. I see it's coming up to a big 20th anniversary in two years. Maybe like TLDDC they'll take advantage of that auspicious milestone to make the decision for me - ? 

flook in the perth daily news april 1952

So... Tuesday 1 April is missing, I can't explain it. 

This was 11 April - issue missing here. However, it doesn't seem to make any difference to the numbering/narrative. 

All in all a pretty satisfying narrative, though it's hard to get into the mindset of a strip a day. So readers would be able to remember where they were up to as the story inched slowly forwards? It takes about 5 minutes to read all 24 strips, a month's worth.

Fawkes is absolutely top of his game with these drawings - it's extraordinary to think of how much work he must have put into this. It's a shame that with Trove (which is where I'm sourcing these) you can only screenshot (screenshoot?) the images which I think makes them a little less crisp, but of course you can still appreciate how good the work is...

More in a month.