from yesterday 22 october

‘What a day it’s been need to rest my head. Time for a [juice? absinthe? can't remember] no, milk it instead.’ Was that really an ad that was on television? For some reason it is embedded in my mind and I don’t think I made it up. I might have though. But then there is the coda, ‘what’d I say… I said milk it instead.’ That’s pretty compelling. Unfortunately it's not on youtube.

I am of the generation thoroughly turned off milk by the provision of free milk to primary schools which was delivered and left outside the door, in the sun, to turn rancid within a few hours, and to then be drunk by children who knew the off product as ‘milk’. That was how it worked. We were being given a healthy food in case our parents did not provide it for us.

At primary school also we had Miss Chivers (later it was funny, that her name could be said ‘mischievous’). She would come round to us as we sat in booth arrangements at the north side of the school building and put a smiley face in sauce on our pies. Today I would rather die than eat a meat pie. I could be tortured by being made to drink milk I suppose and would bear it.

One day, because of what I now understand to be an inequitable situation through which she was undertaking a strenuous degree while caring for two small children, as was my mother also I suppose come to think of it, the woman who was meant to pick me up from primary school forgot to do so. I was left waiting at the school with nowhere to go. I hung around for a long time (now, I have compounded this in my memory with other fearsome things that happened at the school but which probably didn’t happen that specific afternoon, like a bully whose name was John showing me a box of matches and threatening to set me on fire). There were two elderly (?) people who were caretakers at the school who somehow saw that I had not been taken care of who for some reason contacted the fire brigade and a teenage girl, a daughter of a fireman, took me home. How she knew where I lived I don’t know; I lived far too far away from the school to walk back myself, it was too far really for me to walk with someone else, however much of a responsible person they may have been.

What I now think is funny is that the caretaker couple apparently called the fire brigade, presumably not 000 but just rang the station. Maybe there was some other kind of arrangement. I will never know. They are dead now without a doubt, unless they were actually in their thirties and just seemed really old (no, they were old). I suppose that was about 37 years ago. I haven’t forgotten it yet.

Meanwhile, as I’m jumping around (but there is a connection: PA went to the same primary school as I did, a mere 25 years earlier) is this the last year we’ll be hearing Philip Adams and/on Late Night Live on Radio National do you think? Since I got my ipod I have been listening to more and more LNL, in fact for the first time probably – given that I commute 10-15 hours a week at least – I have been listening to pretty much 4-5 hours of LNL, the full contingent, each week. I pick and choose with the ‘classic’ show on Fridays, I’m ambivalent about that, but I particularly enjoy PA’s discussions with Bruce Shapiro and some of his other regulars (Laura Tingle is particularly good value I think, PA is a little nervous around Christian Kerr I would say and that translates to affect my enjoyment of their discussions). Anyway, when I do listen to classic LNL on Fridays, which is usually shows from earlier this decade or late last, I feel that the PA of not-that-distant yesteryear is a much sharper and less fusty man. In the last year he’s repeated himself a lot, seemed vague, and there are a lot of tech errors (on Tuesday’s show for instance he twice started talking without the microphone on; the second time, he acknowledged having pushed the wrong button).

Hey who knows maybe it’s not age, maybe there are other things involved. I don’t want him to go, because while when he’s bad he’s dreadful, I like him being there and I’ve been enjoying him a lot lately. There aren’t too many nightly talk shows that actually, literally, teach you something every time (even if the something is only ‘there are people who concern themselves with that kind of junk!?’). So I don’t think it’s time to end Philip, just wondering if there’s a succession plan.


Speaking of old crusties, Whatever Works is actually a really funny film, at least, I laughed seven times (yes, I counted, because I thought there was a chance I might not at all and when I did in the first few minutes when LD started talking to the camera to the consternation of his cronies, thought it was time to start gauging). It’s extraordinary to imagine that WA wrote this script in the early 70s; it hardly seems to fit with, say, Annie Hall or Manhattan, I started writing some meandering wonderings about zeitgeistification there but I stopped as it was unformed and perhaps even unformable. There is something frustrating about WA in the last, say, 10-15 years, I first noticed it with the film which if I recall correctly was entitled Shadows and Fog, where the dialogue sometimes gets so stylised (in a mundane way), stilted and convoluted you feel like you’re at a first play reading or listening to a Red House Painters song. But at the same time if you can relax and ease into it, it can be really enjoyable. I assumed Larry David would be a really crappy actor but he wasn’t, if it was the first time I’d seen him I’d say, yes, that guy was actually perfect for the part and did it really well. I won’t go so far as to say he is a brilliant actor, because he was still playing the character he played in CYE (i.e. something that is presumably an amplified version of an aspect of himself) but he was great here. Everyone else was good too. There was one confusing bit where I’m sure there was a description of LD’s mother in law as having a prolific range of sexual exploits starting with her affair with Leon and graduating to his friend the art dealer, but then we see her only having a relationship with both those men. I mean it’s not impossible that she would be living in the ménage a trios and also having other affairs, but in a film where so much is spelt out, why was this confusion left in?

Today it is warm and I thought this is about the last chance I will have to wear that 4 seasons yellow nylon shirt, without having to take it off about half an hour later and scrub it and myself. So I am. It’s a pretty decent shirt, very sharp lines, you know, lines on it. I can’t believe I am still using this laptop (I’m writing on the train – I should be marking student essays – and I will – very soon – as soon as I get this important stuff off my chest). The laptop keys are so worn that the c, the v, the m and the n are worn off. Oddly I find that if I am looking at them I have no idea what these keys are but of course when I am touch typing it’s fine (actually I suppose that’s not so strange).

I am listening to Michael Hurley on the ipod now, he is always enjoyable, that’s not true, almost always. I do like his work though. A very good sense of melody, more than most of those folk-country people. I suppose at a pinch I could put him in the same box as Jonathan Richman – a putative naïve who sometimes just happens to break out of that mould for affect; plays with popular music (including his own prior excursions within it).

If I learnt to play guitar and wrote songs, I could have a whole new musical career from which all my prior exploits in musical performance would seem like a dry run. I mean, I would be really excellent at it, and would quickly develop a wide fanbase. But I can’t be bothered.

There’s a cool band called Manchester Mourning (too bad about their name) who have a cool EP out which I’ve been listening to a lot. Funnily though when I put it on my ipod gracenote thought it was by a band called Fantastic Planet and gave the songs other titles. I suppose this happens from time to time. Now I don’t know what the songs are called. The one I’m listening to now is called ‘Fellin Lucky’ and yes the ‘Fellin’ is [sic].


What do you think of myki. I see they’re trying to get the machines operational at the moment, while there are problems with people being overcharged in other parts of Victoria. Well, could anything be worse than metcard? That’s probably the important question. Metcard has been a frustrating piece of crap since it began, and we all know it was only brought in in the first place because the tender was half the price of all the others. The product was always extremely poor and it should never have been allowed to continue. If I wasn’t so mellow I’d make a big long list of all the metcard travesties I’ve been party to or heard about. Just one: the time my weekly card got stuck in a machine about a day into its tenure and metcard refused to refund the money until I provided a receipt, which incidentally would only have proved that I bought a weekly metcard, not that it had been stuck in a machine. And another: the bollocks about how metcard validations help metlink to plan new timetables. And a third: those foul ads about how if you havne’t paid your fare you should offer to mow other people on the tram’s lawn, because they’re funding you. I mean if we start going down that road in a society where services are provided via tax contributions we’ll never stop, and we’ll crash at a bend in the road, where no-one will be able to rescue us. Still, myki seems relatively crap, by which I mean relative to other things, not necessarily relative to metcard, I guess we’ll (a) see and (b) be stuck with it whatever happens. Why payment for these things are never tied to objective measures I don’t know – actually, I do, it’s because state governments find it too hard to admit they’ve made errors. I understand that.

Hey I’m looking forward to Rush tonight. As usual. Last week’s episode at Trinity College was fine, I loved the people being shot with arrows. I don’t care strongly about the Shannon-Josh story though, particularly the idea that something good will come from that rich prick being killed with an arrow – that Shannon will help Josh get over his tragic outlook. Blah.

Today I got my glasses, they’re only for reading so don’t expect to see me wearing them unless you walk in on me reading. I needed them today though at Melbourne Central station when I thought I saw ‘Waiting to meet Bruce Chatwin’ on a girl’s t-shirt. It was actually ‘Prince Charming’ she was waiting to meet, though I think either way she has a wait, as they’re both pretty much dead men.

Can I suggest playing both embedded youtube clips in this post and the Craven Fops one below simultaneously, for a grouse result.

laptop musings

August 6 2009

It is very windy. I am at the bus stop at Glenroy waiting for the 542 to Roxburgh Park (well, to Jacana) and getting winded on in a major way. This happened this morning, too. I felt like the screen part of my laptop was going to blow off.

I need a new laptop, actually. I feel bad telling this via my old laptop but it doesn’t seem to be the phrase that unlocks Acer’s patent self-destruct process (yet). This thing is dirty and old and most importantly the screen has a big white-grey band right through the middle of it which is getting bigger and which, I am told, is unfixable though I’m not sure quite why. I know what I really want – a fabulous mac thing – but I won’t be getting it anytime soon, even though I do have superfunds coming through in the relatively near future (tax return, second part of advance on book I wrote purely by being in a zone, etc). Maybe those two together will do it but I suspect all the dosh will just get eaten up in the expenses of being a lousy bad person, which has pretty much been my forte in the last few weeks.

I am now on the 542 going through North Glenroy just near where the train would have once left the main line to go to Tullamarine, if that plan had ever ultimately been followed. Which it has yet to be. Now I am going over the Western Ring Road. It is dark. There are two people on the bus, not including the driver, who is on the bus too.

August 10 2009

It is 20 to 8 on a Monday morning I am en route to the workplace where I have many preparations to make before my class at the end of the day. It is raining lightly (so the laptop was once again subjected to stress, not from rain this time but from light water drops on the keyboard). When your laptop gets to this kind of stage in its life (except, does anyone really know; it’s unknown territory pretty much I would imagine, all they can do is use laptops furiously hoping wear and tear will be like time’s ravages) you are unsure whether it’s an old workhorse that enjoys constant use or whether it needs a long (permanent) sleep. Since all I really use it for is word processing (though there are a lot of images stored on it) I may as well use it until death, though there is always that thorny question of backing up, should I, the answer being yes, but who can be bothered, most of the stuff on here is bullshit. Old lectures, old notes from old projects, etc etc.

(Half an hour later) actually that was pretty interesting. I went through a lot of stuff and deleted heaps. It felt pretty good. Mostly drafts of papers, which seem to go through about 7 or 8 renamings/renumberings before they become fit to be seen as brilliant enough to submit and turn the world on its ear, no-one can ever believe the new insights into early C20 urban history revealed in my incisive text. Perhaps erroneously assumed that stuff I had already had published, I did not need in a word file. Hmm, now I come to think of it, that might be true. And since it’s all pretty easy to back up, maybe that’s what I should be doing, rather than deleting. Oh well, too late now. It’s not like stuff is lost; the worst case scenario is that it would be a hassle to retrieve it (worst, worst case scenario: retype). (Later that evening) It’s really a great feeling to hit ‘yes’ on ‘are you sure you want to delete these 87 items?’. It is dark and raining now and I am on the 401 bus to North Melbourne station. I wish the 401 would stop advertising itself as a new service (18 months new now, I guess). It is 7:17 pm I had a meeting after work which had to be done. Big day. Nothing on tv tonight I think though I have yet to watch back episodes of Rush which I am pleased is on again. You can see them all pixelated on the Channel 10 website. Pixelation looks pretty good. How long before someone evokes/ fakes it in a retro piece of filmmaking?

city homicide v rush

Last year when City Homicide started we watched it a lot. I am still a little in thrall (can't help myself) to that old attractant of the possibility of seeing places one knows, on television. Why this is so interesting I don't really know. An early episode of City Homicide featured one of the State Savings Bank homes in Port Melbourne (well, Fishermans Bend) and I found that marvellous, though the idea that these houses have basements in which you can conceal people trussed and gagged and hide the entrance with a bathtub, was a little less of a buzz. However, CH started to pall a few months ago with the episode featuring a kind of poor man's Hannibal Lecter - actually he wasn't a cannibal, just some kind of taunting weirdo all bound up and crazy for mutilatin'. I can't actually remember what he did to his victims but I do know that the lack of imagination in this storyline put me off the whole shebang. (Just to thwart the clarity of this dismissal I watched CH last night and although it did involve a grisly dismemberment and some bizarrely bad plot twists, I didn't mind it. I think the blackmailing couple might have lived in Gowanbrae or Gladstone Park or something, which was cool). (Anyway anything with Noni 'n' Nadine in it has to be above average).

In fact, I don't really care for police/crime shows much, especially since they seem to concentrate almost exclusively on brutal murders of sassy adolescent girls (or, in the case of The Mentalist, poor girls savin' up to go to college). It seems to me to highlight a feature of present-day society in which no-one can think of young girls as anything more than something to sexually exploit and/or kill, or am I going way out on a limb there.

That said, I'm really enjoying Rush.

It's much deeper and more charactery than City Homicide and yes, of course, you still get the Melbourne locations, so I'm happy with that. A lot of Rush seems to have been shot in the inner west (looks like Kensington, etc - though mainly the industrial area). But one great thing about Rush is no-one necessarily gets murdered, a scenario I would posit (perhaps controversially) is often truer to life. Many times, in life, no-one gets murdered. Last week's Rush involved a faked kidnapping (or is it a kidnaping? That looks weird) which, natch, involved teenage girls but they did not end up dismembered and perhaps most interestingly - not only did the crooks get away, no-one particularly cared that they got away: the rescue was 'a good result'. My initial response was, 'they got away!?' but my second response, a little later, was: well, why not. You can watch Rush here* if you like.

*22/5/20 update: hi! I really shouldn't come here and interfere with things from twelve years ago but the dead links to what I assume were promos on youtube really bugged me. So I did. I guess I'm allowed to, why not. Anyway, the 'here' above still, in 2020, takes you to channel 10's website but I'm guessing you can't watch Rush there. Which is a pity, it was a good show.