division 4 - the clean skins

This is a good episode (early January 1972), but I don't have a huge amount to say about it (the one following it, 'No Hard Feelings', is a bit of a masterpiece if only for the safebreakers' argy bargy at the beginning... anyway, that's not this). The thing I really wanted to say was yet again, amazing situation of Ian Smith and Anne Charleston cast once again in one episode of a Crawfords' show (IYKYK - they were married for a lifetime in Neighbours). Smith plays a character called 'Smith'.

Also, fabulous single scene from Joan Letch, who never letchs us down. 

 

what do things mean

 There is an article in today's Age about Kew, the suburb, which includes one of those before and after swipe things. You tell me wtf you think this means:

I realise you can't engage with it but you can probably see that the part on the left and the part on the right are of the same two buildings, but on the right they are more in the distance. If they were matched up more closely, I think there would be very little difference, except the person on the left might not be there. The distinction is actually really minor. So what is it meant to indicate? Secondly, what kind of time frame is '1920-1954'? I'll tell you - a meaningless one. Particularly as it pertains to two buildings that have basically barely changed (actually I think that memorial was slightly relocated at some point. If that's what this before&after is supposed to indicate, well, the pictures don't make it clear at all). 

I watched a bit of 2012 Neighbours this morning, it was not that hard to follow. I also watched a bit of 2024 Neighbours and it was really cool to hear all of Paul's crimes over the years - a few of which include actual murder - recounted. I felt the frustration, it seems to me there are a lot of people who just won't listen. About Paul and other things. 

pin oak ct

So of course the trip to Blue Flame and James Freud's house was just in the right place for another wondrous icon, which is Pin Oak Ct, the street where external scenes for Neighbours have been shot for 39 years. 

Actually, I had not intended to go there at all, or even thought about it, but once I was in the general area of Blue Flame it occurred to me that it was around somewhere and in fact it was devilishly close so it would have been rude not to visit. 

I had been there before - at least twice - once was with someone from the UK who wanted their picture taken there but who was it?! Anyway... it is much, much smaller than I'd remembered. 

It's also very nondescript. There was no-one around. I got some lemons off the lemon tree (and also picked a few up from one of the lawns where I assumed they had fallen). 

Then weirdly driving around and getting lost and finding it impossible to go particular ways because of the appalling traffic on main roads, I took what turned out to be one of those right wrong turns, because though I had not intended to I ended up driving past the old Channel 10 studio which is now basically where they film the interiors for Neighbours. I had been there before, at least once, maybe more. Anyway it was all closed up (it was Sunday) but what I hadn't realised was the building doubles for Erinsborough High. Hence the sign. 

There was a tram out the back too. I don't know why but if you do, please tell me. 

scott michaelson 32 years ago

In the continuing series of old interviews I just want to throw away and can't believe I've kept this long... my memory is that I would bring along a list and actors like Scott Michaelson would agree that it was part of their job (a dumb part, I imagine) for them to answer questions about whether 'physical attraction was important' or whether they'd 'ever been broken-hearted', blah blah. Anyway, he comes out of this a very straightforward and honest person. He's no longer an actor but a manager. 

 

ashley paske

 

Stolen from https://www.curnow.org/2004/04/where-is-ashley-paske/

I liked Ashley Paske. He was on Richmond Hill, a channel 10 show that lasted a year, and he was then on Neighbours for a while and then he disappeared, kind of, but not in a leave-me-alone way, he just stopped acting and, apparently, stopped wanting to act, and he seems mainly to be a bar manager now. He seems to be 'in a good place' emotionally which is the thing you first think of, isn't it. 

All of the above was typed on the back of Magazine Promotions letterhead. If memory serves, MP was the Sydney office for the various Fairfax magazines which were all ordered up to Sydney holus bolus in around 1987 and somehow I came into possession of a massive amount of its letterhead which I used as scrap paper for years afterwards. 

Stay tuned for more Ashley Paske soon!!! 

if you read only one interview with tom oliver today...

...you will no doubt want to make it this one, by the iridescent 'Jean MacElroy' who was one of my many noms-de-plume while I was hackily hacking out el cheapo pieces on Australian soap stars etc for the British colour press. This story must have been from 1992, as (a) that's when TO returned to Neighbours after a shorter stint in the late 1980s; and also, in 1992 yeah, he was 54. The rest of the story shows, if nothing else I suppose, my sinister fascination with old television. I hadn't realised until I started busting into my manila folder of old soap star interview transcripts/beat ups that I had such an abiding interest over such a long time, there you go. 

Unfortunately I was the vessel of a vicious lie from TO to the readers of whatever this appeared in (assuming it did) over thirty years ago: we said that The Shifting Heart was 1969. So wrong! It was 1968:

Melbourne Age 21 August 1968 p. 6

And here's a feature on TO from the following year. 

Melbourne Age 29 January 1969 p. 2

Enjoyed all that? Good. Because this is a new feature of this blog, always full of surprises, going forward for some time to come! Thrilled? You are!!!

dealing with stuff

I mean seriously I have always been this way, at least, since the early 70s. I accumulate stuff and I can't see how it is actually cumulatively detritus. Very probably my desire to accumulate stuff (which feels more like a desire to not get rid of stuff and/or to protect it) controlled my destiny eg I am a historian dedicated to physical (usually paper-based) sources and I comprehensively reject the idea that the whole story can come from digitised (mediated) materials. For me, even the extremely undeniable advantage of (for instance) streamed music in terms of storage is outweighed by the fact that I don't trust it to give me the full picture/experience/context. 

So, I am presently digging through some boxes retrieved from under-the-house at Lorraine. They are full of media (cassettes, videotapes, small print publications, letters etc) that go back up to 40 years, to my very early adulthood. A lot of things in here that at one stage formed major enthusiasms, things I pored over and adored, then stored. There are also a lot of things that I suppose I didn't process or value quite as much, so I filed them away ('filed' is too generous a word). Some examples: 

I have always loved the work of Al Larsen. His band Some Velvet Sidewalk are that most unusual beast, a group that just got better and better (from an excellent beginning) and then kind of blew up (OK I just looked at discogs, this tape/booklet combination has been sold once, for $30+. My booklet is a little water damaged so I suppose it's worth less. I don't want to sell it. All I then discovered was there's a whole other SVS album I didn't know about, from 1997. I could obtain a copy for $10 plus $40 postage, ha ha, funny but also true. Memo to self: the point here is not to continually add to my storage/acquisitions but to stop accumulating things, even records by bands I really like). 

Changing the subject entirely: in my last couple of years in Sydney so, early-to-mid 90s, I got to slightly know Robert Tilley. If I remember correctly, Robert was doing a PhD in Divinity? at the University of Sydney. Yes, I do remember correctly and here he is. I think we got on pretty well but I always got the sense he was on his own path and indeed he was. He had been a cartoonist in the upper-level alternative press (I'm thinking Nation Review but let's not push memory to its limits) and I am pretty sure, though I don't entirely recall, that I actually scored him $20 cartooning work in some dodgy teen magazine I was involved in in the 90s. His cartoons deserve more recognition than they get. I hope I find more of these Lord of the Cloudses.  

And then there are tons of this kind of thing. Like many up till - I don't know - 2005, 2006? I was in the habit of owning videotapes of 'keeper' stuff, and videotapes that were just on rotation as keep-until-watched-then-tape-over. This was one of those. There was no program called Nomad, I just made up titles for tapes because somehow it made it easier to remember what had what program on it. The tape inside this box at present is labelled 'Garry Shandling Show >March '99>'. I have quite a few videos of the Garry Shandling Show because it is of course one of my favourite shows of all time, but as I think I have observed previously hereabouts, I have the entire show on DVD now and haven't even watched it all lol. 

The one time I'm sort of pleased I did this was when I was living in London in 1986 and taped the debut of Neighbours. My glitchy tape has been on YouTube for ten years now and it's triply interesting firstly because it shows how intensely mind numbing British TV could be; it shows the original version of the debut of Neighbours with the extraordinary nightmare sequence part of which I gather has since become 'non-canon', if that makes sense; and thirdly it shows that there is a sub-sub-subset of geek who is just fascinated by whole sections of broadcast continuity (they have a word for it which I don't remember) of programs that are otherwise available in more pristine formats. That's crazy but I also get it.

But look I think it's time to bite the fucking bullet. It's too late to say I don't want to become a hoarder, I have been a hoarder of sorts for fortysomething years, and the extent of my hoarding is such that I don't even really recognise it as hoarding (and also, like extreme enablers of all kinds, I feel a stab to my heart when someone tells me they threw something arguably culturally valuable away, even worse if it's personally important*). I don't see the junk. I remember when moving to Lorraine Crescent however long ago I thought I can relax and just accumulate material, because I'll never have to move again.** And now here I am in another 'forever home' where I am arguably able to relax and just accumulate. It's a dangerous space to be in! I mean I'm not in whatever the 2020s version of the keeping-every-newspaper stage is, and I have absolutely no problem letting go of things like books which I know exist in libraries etc. 

I think what I need to do is find a way to communicate the pleasure I get from the randomness and potential richness of this stuff - videotapes of old tv shows with ads and news and stuff in them for instance, which is historically interesting because it conveys a time you hadn't thought about since you just generally accepted them in the understanding of 'this is now'. Does that make sense? I am thinking I might set up a website and just start to scan or digitise things and put them up there - then jettison them as I do so. It will be therapeutic I reckon. 

* Personally important to them. I mean, I should mind my own business. 

** Not the reason I wanted to buy a house, except I suppose its's part of having 'agency'. 

lorraine crescent ten years ago: 'A familiar tramp' (16 April 2005)

Went for a walk down by the wetlands/creek just before it got dark. Which it now is. Millie and Charlie were as usual incredibly excited. Charlie has been known many times before to bark uncontrollably at people she meets particularly if they have dogs. The barking still goes on but these days I think I notice a little restraint and something approaching a willingness to one day retire from this activity. Last time she and Millie met someone (not with a dog; some young guy who I couldn’t really see because he was in silhouette on the other side of the hill, not really even shouting distance if I’d wanted to shout) they were very gracious and pleased to see him, for no reason as I’m sure they didn’t know him. That was the first time I’ve known Charlie to meet someone happily. Well this evening she met two women with a spaniely-type dog; the women seemed to enjoy her barking but the spaniel ignored her totally. Then shortly after a woman with an Alsatian who wasn’t pleased. I am not sure how displeased the woman was (she had a prominent set of headphones on so she wasn’t really there) but the dog was against the whole scenario. Naturally Charlie went back for second barks and thirds. Oddly enough, after those events, which occurred just as we reached the ring road, the furthest point of the round-the-wetland walk, we didn’t see any other pedestrian or dog on the bike track side, which is usually far more crowded.

Down at that ring road end, however, I did see two herons. One was grey and small, another white and quite big, it looked too stylised and fragile to actually belong to nature. They were close together (though surely not friends or related?!) where the creek runs over rocks before it goes under the concrete bridge. Later, I saw another white bird in the middle of the wetlands area either with fantastically long skinny legs or sitting precariously in a tiny clump of reeds.

Young teens were doing footy training down at the oval. It is nearly time for Neighbours. Then an evening of marking papers and cleaning.

neighbours 2012

I barely watched Neighbours in 2011 (Mia says it's because I don't get home before 6:30, but this is somewhat untrue). (Apart from anything else, I've been overseas for three months).

So now my new year's resolution is to watch as much Neighbours as humanly possible. Right now I am watching Toady and Sonya and, erm... someone else talking about Chris, who is collapsed in a garage apparently and who we have just been told is 'shutting down' and not breathing. Someone with a tie is looking after him. I don't know who Chris is so I'm not that invested in his life - except that of course he's another human being, however fictional. Sonya is wearing a very unusual white and green angel robe. Perhaps she died and Toady's imagining her a la Sixth Sense?

Toady is being very defensive of someone called Peter Noonan - perhaps over some Hermanan's Hermitans reformation? Someone (hereafter known as Woman Thing) has come to Kate's door looking for Lucas and I don't know who she is. Woman Thing who Kate wants to know has been dared by Kate to go out with her because Jade, whoever that is, and whoever Woman Thing is.

The interesting part of the Chris in the garage story is that it's a lot about a new supermarket development and corruption surrounding demolition and rebuilding. Toady has now just been visited by a scottish superintendent who has in fact insisted, not requested, that Toady come to the station to address some serious allegations.

All that happened between the opening credits and the first ad break!!!

Now Toady is being grilled by Scottie. Sky and Andrew (?) have gone to the hospital. Lucas was the man whose name I couldn't remember above, I have never quite worked out whether he was a good thing or a bad thing. Dr Red Shirt is now reminiscing about what he had to do in the garage with a stanley knife to keep Chris alive (actually by what we just saw I would have said to kill him, but according to reviews I read in the paper, it was to save his life). Now Kate and WT are drinking yellow cocktails. I give them (oh shit, I was going to say I give them 3 seconds before one of them spots a guy, but I got to that part of the sentence and they did). I got the sense Kate was about to come out or something but who knows. Another ad. Not much happened in that segment.

Then it ended. It was great! Can't wait for tomorrow's.

tv quiz

Stolen from Wayne. Do you snack while watching TV? Very rarely. But I will eat dinner watching tv. What is your favourite TV show? Of all time - It's Garry Shandling's Show (though I'm having trouble getting through the box set). Currently - Big Love, Mad Men, Community, Doctor Who. What TV show makes you run to change channels? Sport. Hey Hey It's Saturday. How do you view your TV guide: online, on-screen, newspaper, magazine, other? 'Where's the fucken Green Guide? This is last week's.' Have you ever been surveyed for your TV-viewing habits or do you know anyone who has been? Yeah in the 70s. Do you watch TV news and/or current affairs regularly? News, 7:30 report, the first twenty minutes of Q&A. Do you watch any TV “soaps”? (Truth please, even if it is embarrassing.) Neighbours What other series shows do you try not to miss? Well I'm excited Rush is coming back on. Three more sleeps. Hope it finally jumps that shark. Any previous series or shows you really liked? Of course, I'm 45. Do you have pay TV or are the digital channels enough? They're not enough, but do I want to pay a thousand dollars a year for repeats of (tries hard to think of some generically uninteresting tv show from yore) The Wacky Races? Do you only watch certain TV shows online? Very occasionally try i-view. Do you regularly use services like ABC catch-up or other online replays? What did I just say? Pay attention. Do you ever pay any attention to the adverts? I like the coffee break ad and the AMI 'what about me' ad. I don't endorse or use either of these products. Do you multi-task while watching TV & if so what else are you doing? Sometimes read or draw. Is there a TV show that makes you laugh out loud? Community Have you ever said no to a social invitation to stay at home and watch TV? (Truth again please.) Mind telling us what the show was? No doubt, though not for a long time. Do you record TV shows & if so why and how (VCR, DVD recorder, TIVO, laptop, etc.)? Nope Least favourite TV personality/actor/character? I don't really pay attention any more. Most popular TV personalities/actors/character? Who cares. They're all a bunch of wastrels and bludgers. Have you ever seen anything really memorable on TV (not news/events – made for TV drama, etc.)? Yeah the Den and Angie argument on Eastenders late 1986 where the window washer kept barging in. Also one time on Neighbours in the early 90s Jim pointed to the toaster and the toast popped up and Paul was balancing a spoon on his nose. Do you prefer TV series or stand-alone shows? Series. Is there a specific show you find yourself recommending over and over? Community, it would seem, judging by the above. 

Whatever happened to burcin kapkin

This morning is a mental health day as they say which will involve a long dog walk, review of six book chapters back from the editor, and I dunno what else. The newspaper is still too much of a downer for me so I started watching old Home and Away on 7two. Instantly I was swept up in a story of Roo being coerced into surrending baby Martha (played by Burcin Kapkin) by Brett Macklin, under threat of Alf being driven out of business by the Macklin Corporation. Compelling.

It’s interesting isn’t it how so many Australian soaps include massively rich businesspeople with multi-million dollar projects that impact on everyone. It’s amazing how Paul Robinson for instance can move amongst people many of whom depend on him for their salaries, etc, but while relations with Paul are never that easy in Ramsay Street there is certainly never any sense that he is better than anyone – he doesn’t even seem to think so. In fact, most people seem to assume he is worse than them. I guess Brett Macklin, who was a much lesser character, is kind of similar. That said, it’s a different world in soaps where people always have to be ‘reset’ every few weeks or written out. Now I’m watching Shortland Street, which was a great favourite in the early 90s when SBS used to run it. I do enjoy New Zealand soaps – Outrageous Fortune etc – particularly because it doesn’t just seem to be a parallel universe, it is one. And because SS is a Grundy production (or whatever they’re called now) they often have actor crossover with Neighbours. Well, historically that’s been so though the episode I’m watching now is difficult to get into. I did enjoy the fugitive with eczema being referred to by his former girlfriend as having a poxy face (thus you knew he was innocent and she was flying off the handle, using his affliction against him).

Shortland Street is a classic soap premise, hospital, and must be wonderfully cheap particularly the cheap clothing (they’re usually wearing light blue pyjamas, like all hospital employees, even the doctors). They don’t seem to do too many second takes either if the amount of accidental furniture kicking, etc that goes on is any indication (nb this is just based on one episode – maybe a weirdity).

I must say that SS’s multiracial cast shows up Neighbours for its unrealistic whiteness, something I know is an issue but tend to forget in the day to day.

new neighbours

I am adopting a 'wait-and-see' attitude for the rejigged Neighbours. I must say I felt a stunning ambivalence towards the tragic truck-van collision at the end of the ep and was fairly disgusted that Mickey caused it with his broom-brooming in the new family's hire van. Who's going to pay for that!? Apart from someone with their life. Or someones. Fraser and Rosie's vows were, as Mia correctly pointed out, worst ever and blah blah as I have often said who cares what I think about this I am not the demographic and more to the point I probably shouldn't still be watching this show at all, come to think of it.

Hey, that's right - I shouldn't! (Scales fall from eyes).