As mentioned a couple of days ago I was surprised to see that a year ago in Turku with that lavish spread I was apparently unproblematically consuming various kinds of cheese. Bread is less surprising because I was eating bread up to two months ago without too much issue, indeed, going to good bakers like Crumbs in Kensington or making my own bread without care.
Oddly enough I now perceive cheese (as part of the dairy slavery cabal) as cruel and weird, and while intermittently I dabbled with fake cheese I feel now that that stuff (perhaps depending what it's made from - should I try them all out experimentally?) actually makes me feel unwell, probably it's too rich in something. Not only can I now do without cheese and even cheese substitutes, I feel a little nauseous when I think about cheese generally. Remember that Simpsons episode where the cheap mafia milk is rat milk? Well, to me rat milk or cow milk, I make no distinction. That said, I really like this stuff called 'Like Milk', which is apparently made from peas, and I am also fine with oat milk, though I was disappointed to read in Wikipedia that the Oatley company is kind of morally dodgy these days.
Bread is different, though I do often recall my father detailing the yeast process to me in terms that the yeast thinks it's going to have a life but then it gets baked and dies, although really, I am pretty sure yeast doesn't have ambition. But while I can't entirely remember when I last had bread, I do know I don't really want any anymore (I also recall that in the last year or so, bread has often caused me pain). So I don't know that I'll be going back to that anytime soon.
I suppose the time is approaching when I absolutely cease engagement with a culinary aspect to my tourism, whether it be local or global, and perhaps also going out to a restaurant aside from a completely vegan-friendly restaurant is off the cards. I don't want to rarify myself out of existence with these kinds of things but it seems natural and normal so why not.
I have been reading Dean Wareham's book Black Postcards, a very readable piece of musical biography with no strong female characters. Thanks Shane for lending it to me on NYE. I enjoyed Rage on Saturday night, with an episode of Rock Arena from late 1984, an episode of Countdown from I think 1988 or thereabouts (?) and inbetween an overlong documentary about Countdown from 1979. This was particularly interesting because it started with the Marc Hunterless Dragon doing ‘Love’s not Enough’ in the studio and later, a discussion of the updated group’s appeal (or lack of) by members of the Countdown Committee. Fabulous. The Rock Arena was amazing for a number of things, all going to remind me of how much fun 1984 was. About half of the show was the Machinations live from the Chevron. I am 99.9% positive that I saw my old rock ’n’ roll (and otherwise) friend Sue Grigg in the audience. I am pretty damn sure it was her. She was wearing blue. Not atypical. That she liked the Machinations is not in any doubt: I have a few of her Machinations singles, which she was going to throw out and which I rescued, with her name written on them, in her handwriting no less. And anyway she wouldn’t deny it. It was a thrill to see her on TV. Within two years she was playing in Chad’s Tree. The Countdown was OK, ‘Take On Me’ by A-ha (or is it a-Ha?) is still one of the greats, and the Kids in the Kitchen song was so hilariously awful it made me love them again, but when it came down to it I think the Machinations show took the cake. They actually had some really good songs, and that first album is very adventurous. When they became overly funky and shit, they got shit. There is no way to say this nicely but I feel the need to say it for some reason, that Fred Lonergan was an extremely unlikely looking frontperson. I wonder if his unlikely-lookingness (oh. I have found a way to say it nicely) cost them fame and fortune? As it transpired, he had a serious accident where he broke his neck or something and they band sold all their equipment and started up computer shops (the story goes). Someone should do a sociological, and anthropological, study of the bands from various private school catchment cohorts. Machinations were all north shore, erm, St Ignatius or something? Not an Iggy reference. Cockroaches/Wiggles, where were they from? More working class catholic boys I think. Now we’re talking about it, poor Rowland S Howard, the only member of the Birthday Party/BND who wasn’t from Caulfield Grammar, but I guess he got lumped in with that shit. That’s the other thing Rage did on Saturday night – played a massive amount of Birthday Party in honour of RSH. A lot of BP but insufficient Crime and the City Solution or RSH solo, and maybe there just wasn’t that much video of that stuff though really I would have so much preferred C&CS to that hoary old BP guff which was awfully exciting in 1980 and I still love Junkyard and the subsequent EPs but shit, RSH was much more than a Nick Cave adjunct – he was, well, better by far. A charming and interesting man, too, in my experience of him. My one RSH reminiscence, which has little to do with RSH himself but perhaps says something about the ambient myth: at one of the final Birthday Party shows (when the band came back to Aust without Mick Harvey and Des Hefner filled in) I was in the foyer with my friend Michael and we were talking and then he said, sh, here comes the most beautiful man in rock ‘n’ roll. It was RSH of course. Pip Proud is recording some vocals to music by Kes Band next Sunday. Pip has a song called 'Slimy Fighters' to which he wants a dance piece performed probably best described by the song’s title. Pip is doing alright, all things considered (throat cancer for which the tumours have apparently stabilised; stroke; alcoholism). You could argue these things were if not caused by each in succession (in reverse order to which I have listed them) then they aided and abetted. He is on a lot of drugs and his radio won’t tune properly but he can get a distant, fuzzy News Radio which he loves and for which I say, thanks ABC. Music myself I am still greatly enjoying the Dacios album (probably along with royalchord my pick for 2009, though I may have forgotten a few others) and continuing to love Emerson Lake and Palmer, not least for my discovery that shows my own innate dumbness and slowness to catch on and willingness to believe whatever stupid flip assessment was put before me by others, that ELP are yet another prog rock band who are decidedly unpofaced, all things considered, and often fairly witty or at least amusing. I enjoy that. Actually, my dismissal of ELP did not come just from my willingness to accept punkers’ evaluation of them; I did unwittingly see their Pictures at an Exhibition film about thirty years ago at the Valhalla and it kind of sort of made me think, there has to be more to rock music than this pretentious bollocks. I don’t know if I missed something then, or what. I like the self-titled album and of course Tarkus. Actually I love Tarkus. Tarkus is hott. Who has memories of the Chevron? Is there a facebook group?
The other thing that was on Rock Arena was, excitingly, not one but two videos feat. Noah Taylor - I'm Talking's 'Trust Me' and Beargarden's 'Finer Things'. If I remember rightly these were Noah's first two filmic experiences, yes, even preceding Doggo Goes to Jail.
People are stopping me in the street to discuss my sentimental post of last week re: things I remembered. They were particularly interested in my friends from that time, Felicity Provan and Mark Gurvitz. Where are they now? This is a good question. I saw Felicity Provan's name in a record by a jazz group called, if I remember correctly, Merry-go-round or maybe they just had a merry-go-round on the cover of their record and they were called Killing Massacre. From what I can gather she is a saxophonist and well-known and respected in her field. I don't know what happened to Mark Gurvitz, he was American and was only in Australia temporarily I think, until his parents tracked him down no, his parents were very nice and even glamorous as I recall, his mother made jelly oranges. So since he disappeared completely out of my life in 1972, I thought I should have a look for him on the internet and he may be a tv producer, or that might be someone else with his name. Anyway I feel about as creepy looking up old schoolfriends on the internet as I would if I were looking at the Anna Nicole clown video online, and I imagine it only compounds the problem by writing about it here.
Meanwhile, it rained like billy-o this morning at exactly 6:22, I know the time because that was when the train was meant to be pulling into Broady station but it didn't so we all got wet. I had a hankering for a donut upon landing at Melbourne Central but none were evident. I have to write a spoken word version of a conference paper today, and a seminar for a few weeks away, also see some students, and hopefully I will get to spend a bit of meaningful time with the 1924 volume of the South Yorke Peninsula Pioneer. There was a lot going on in SYP (as it's known) then, and it's my white man's burden to Tell Those Stories.
Yep, the korean dvd series i bought on Ebay (with help from Steve - thanks Steve) showed up in the mail yesterday. And it's a doozy, well, I've only watched one episode but I have enjoyed it greatly and even managed to translate one word (the word for 'bread') via my Korean-English dictionary, which incidentally is a pain in the arse because it transliterates all the Korean words into the roman alphabet, which is one alphabet I could really do without, but on the other hand I suppose in the immediate present that's a good thing because it forces me to learn the hangul letters.
And anyway it has rough English subtitles on it, which I knew it did, I really only wanted it so I could hear Korean being used and maybe figure out some street signs or whatever, I actually know absolutely NO Korean and of course it's virtually impossible for someone in their forties to learn another language particularly a notoriously difficult one like this but gee, live for the pain I say.
The DVD is not hassle free and in fact the second episode for some reason not only repeats a scene from the first but it seems compulsory to watch this episode with a dubbed chinese soundtrack, which wasn't my preference, and I can't seem to change it back to Korean.
The original Korean title is not, as it happens, Sweet Buns but Ring Shaped Bread. It seems to be a love triangle story so far, or a hate triangle perhaps, as it is two girls and a guy who went to school together, and the girls lovehate the guy, who they call Ring Shaped Bread, for reasons I am not going to go into here, or anywhere, ever.
