what's more offensive? (this morning 8:47am)

Music-making still performs the normal functions Background noise for people eating and talking and drinking and smoking That's alright by us. Don't think that we're complaining After all it's only leisure time, isn't it?

That's a verse from the BBC version of Soft Machine's 'Moon in June' and it's probably my favourite version of that song. The 'us' of course is Soft Machine, making the background music. I am not sure that the band were all of a mind on that one but I can't know. It would have seemed arrogant or weird for Robert Wyatt to just say 'that's alright by me...'

Anyway this morning I was in Mr Tulk awaiting the annual staff day, held this year in the State Library, and I was reminded once again that most people don't even notice, much less like or dislike, the background music played in places like this, and also, that the only thing they would notice is if there wasn't background music. I suppose this is where spotify sees a market for lame non-music* to be pumped into public spaces to its own profit. 

Anyway, this morning, AC/DC's 'TNT', a version (not the actual Beatles version, slightly faster, though it did sound like George Harrison singing) of 'Here Comes the Sun', and Supertramp's fucking fucking fucked 'Give a Little Bit' were paraded before me saying 'we won, we won, bland old shit music is here forever and you can't do anything about it', all that was required was a visual of Trump jigging and swaying to it.** 

Now, the music has been drowned out by 12 yarra trams ticket inspectors around the central table. I actually think that's preferable. I can hear something pumping underneath but luckily I can't identify it. 

* ie the music it pays people a pittance to create and sign over to Spotify forever. 

** Later song was Stevie Wonder's 'Isn't She Lovely' which I can handle but the point still stands. Although I read on wikipedia that 'Wonder performed the song live for Queen Elizabeth II at her Diamond Jubilee Concert on June 4, 2012, with lyrics modified to refer to the Queen' which is gross. 

special squad: mad mountain mumma

Mary Canny as Bridey and John Diedrich as Davis with Hawkins (Smith) in the background at Spencer St Station

Another uninteresting picture, of Alan Cassell (Anderson) and Hawkins' back. I only took this because there's the famous Spencer Street train mural in the background. I mean it is that. 

I listen to podcasts like Blank Check and The Filmcast and I wonder 'where the hell do these people get the time to be so on top of all these fucking horrendous (sounding) films?' and then it occurs to me that I have watched about forty episodes of Special Squad in the last few weeks. 'Watched' is a slightly problematic term as I have really often just had it on in the background. I have antenna primed for when they go to interesting places, which is what intrigues me most. but also, the bonhomie of the Special Squad trio is, I have to say, pretty infectious. 

In many ways, it's just updated Homicide, ten years later, and not that updated. The difference is that Special Squad don't always have to be investigating murder (a few times on Homicide they weren't investigating murder either - but they almost always were). They just get assigned the troublesome cases that need more in-depth investigation. They work long hours and they sacrifice their personal lives to the job. We don't know too much about them - Joel Davis (John Diedrich, who is probably super-annoyed that his fame is everlasting from being retooled thirty years ago to be 'Glen Twenty' on Bargearse) is a young, swingin' guy who'll go far; Greg Smith (Anthony Hawkins) is a man with a family and a moustache; Don Anderson (Alan Cassell) is their boss whose wife we met once only to see her shot about twenty minutes later by a man whose toyboy Anderson did away with; Anderson is apparently comforted by the news that his late wife was looking forward to a holiday with him (Crawfords don't understand grieving very well, in my experience, except when it's motivation for revenge). 

In an article for the Age published on 31 January 1985, Barry Dickins writes about his experience as a bit part actor on Special Squad. He talks briefly with Diedrich and Hawkins:

‘”They spent five million bucks on this series, mate”’ says John Diedrich, the star of the show. “And now they’re winding it up.”   

‘The other older Special Squad copper is called Tony, a real nice guy who tells me he wishes he was doing comedy. “Oh, they don’t like funny stuff,” he whispers to me in the Crawford caravan, putting on his Special Squad sox. “You can pull a funny face if you like, but you can’t overdo it. I think what Crawford wants to do is capture contemporary violence.”  

What I note is that line about 'now they're winding it up'. I'm not entirely sure I know which episode he's talking about, and in fact he might not even have made it in, but the point is that the show gets axed, they have to keep churning it out and I can well imagine that once a Crawfords show got the chop - notwithstanding it had a life of being repeated a few more times thereafter - they might well have done a sweep of the archives for the sillier scripts that no-one would ever have pitched in a fresh new hot show. This episode, 'Mad Mountain Mumma' (IMDB wants you to think it's 'Mad Mountain Momma' and in its defence, autocorrect does too) is not really properly documented in IMDB which had obviously given up by this point. 

This is just a silly episode, and indicates to me that everyone is going through the motions. A wealthy man, I'm not sure why he's wealthy but guess what he used to be a circus performer, whatever, he dies in the first few minutes, is picked up by his boyfriend (played by Daniel Abinieri) and chauffeur (Roger Ward) and summarily dispensed with (poisoned?). That's all par for the course I guess. But then the murdered man's wife turns up from the country (a town called Mad Mountain) and she's a witch called Bridey, played by Mary Canny in what might actually be the biggest role Canny ever played (Crawfords got her in again eight years later to be in The Flying Doctors). Bridey somehow convinces Abenieri's character ('Dillon') that she's put a curse on him and he has to go to the State Library, which is to Special Squad what the Sunnyvale High library was to Buffy) to find out how to lift the curse. 

Apparently he has to make an axe and cut off her head, and we do spend quite a bit of time with him making an axe and chopping a watermelon in half, but this element of the story goes precisely nowhere thereafter so let's forget about it. 

I'm nearly through these episodes and then I'll have to figure out what precisely I have learnt. The next episode has a small role for Alwyn Kurts (yes his eyes are open! Wide open) as a crook who dies in the first five minutes. Crawfords always had a place for their own. 

three irritations

Public Records Office today: (1) a man who was apparently unaware that his phone was on speaker. I said to the guy behind the counter, 'is someone in here talking really loudly with their phone on speaker?' and he said 'Yes. Libraries are changing'. (2) some old bitch yelling at the top of her not insubstantial voice all the details of her parents, where they lived, what they did, spelling every name out loud. I couldn't tell whether she was trying to explain something to a staff member, talking on the phone, or talking to herself. 

SLV: (3) I thought some young fool was listening to a lecture or something on a portable speaker but then I discovered she was just tolerating the noise of another young fool on the other side of the partition listening to his own voice speaking on a video he was watching on a screen ... or was it his twin I don't know what was going on! All I know is it was in a library, which is a place where people go to read and reading is hard and we shouldn't have to be distracted by people's fuckuppery! 

To calm us all down here are some images from the 1962 RIBA Journal I was looking at (OR TRYING TO)

i was tired at the slv

Just too much to do. Everybody here is a FUCKING IDIOT*

*Of course they are not (at least I have no evidence one way or the other). I just don't feel like dealing with people atm
 

no boundaries

I hate to say it about a place I like so much, and spend so much time in, and intend to spend oodles more time in the future, but there are a lot of odd people at the State Library. What makes an old man talk in coughs as he reads through old newspapers on microfilm? And no, I'm not referring to myself though I do sometimes worry that I do things like that too and don't realise. I felt like I was in some kind of experimental comedy film from 1970 directed by Eric Sykes when I found myself walking far out of my way around some desks in the microfilm reading room to avoid a very large basket-trolley which had come to a stop while the lady pushing it stared off into the distance. She roused herself and pushed it a little further to come to another thoughtful stop exactly between me and the printer, which was where I was headed. Once again, she was staring into the distance. Perhaps some tragedy had befallen her, perhaps she was thinking it's 4:30 if I can just stretch this trolley thing out a little longer I won't have to do anything else before the weekend.

Then after a while you start to feel paranoia about all the other people using the library, like for instance everyone.

Yesterday I was in a different library and a nice woman asked me nicely if I could show her how to thread the microfilm. I must look like I know this kinda shit. So I showed her and about 30 seconds later brrrrspttltltltltltl she'd wound it off. She tried unsuccessfully to wind it back on. So I did it for her a second time and shortly afterwards you guessed it, brrrrrsptt etc. This time, however, spoiling the Eric Sykesness of my story, she managed to put it back on by herself. Then she asked me where she could get a lens that allowed her to zoom out more. Which really wrecks the story. Though I was expecting a Candid Camera -style denouenment which is yet to come.

i drank a lot but didn't seem that drunk

It was the whisky, I suppose. It has that effect if you take it occasionally. I started out at the State Library. Yeah, the State Library bar. No, I started the afternoon at the State Library looking up various great things, and finding a few (I am going back there this afternoon to get other things I didn't get around to getting this time) and then to Greg's to attend to a couple of minor things re: the comp, then back to town to the Pony (via Pellegrini's - still the best coffee in the world) to see New Estate play a great show to a small priveleged crowd. We all had to get out of there fast because these weird, stuck up tap dancers showed up and started bossing everyone around. I was already pretty into whisky by that stage so I was less affronted than I might have been. Then we went to a housewarming party for some friends of Olivia's in north Coburg, who seemed like very nice people and they had a music room which unfortunately many people took as a reason to play some music. Actually I did that too, now I remember. Damn. The house had great decor, old cartoons from the Bulletin etc. Looked terriffic.

At about 2 am Mia and I walked to Pascoe Vale and got a taxi.

I did drink a lot, it was only Ballantyne's whisky but I think that is still an alcoholic one. but I feel fine today. Maybe I am kiddin' myself.

I have been reading Ada Holman's Sport of the Gods. It was a runner-up in C J De Garis' great Australian novel competition, 1921 and she won a hundred pounds for it. She was wife of William Holman, a NSW Labor premier, and a staunch feminist. The book was published by C J De Garis publishing and I am going to look into the books he published as an expression of his personality and ambitions, if that is possible. The same way W F Archibald's Bulletin was a vast rich text about W F Archibald, qv Sylvia Lawson's The Archibald Paradox. Or is all this just the whisky talking.