the princess

Last night I semi-watched probably half of a film called The Princess, with the sound turned down. It's a kind of a fantasy action film that seems to involve a lot of stabbing with long swords and either falling or dangling out of castle windows. Incredibly skilful in terms of the camerawork and the, I guess, choreography. I wikipedia'd it a little and it seems that the notion is that there are two princesses, one has been promised to some evil guy, as a bride, but she's not up for it and he decides that if he can't have the kingdom via marriage he's just going to take it over anyway. So she runs through the castle killing off all his henchpeople in terrible ways. I kind of feel sorry for the henchpeople, they're just doing their jobs, it's not personal. Anyway I suppose we're meant to be mainly interested in the princess. As mentioned there's a second princess who is also in danger and the king and queen and etc. 

I admit I had the sound turned down so I wasn't exactly fully engaged. I turned it off about half way through (I'm guessing). I don't even know why I'm mentioning it except that I'm just really enjoying having a big fat fuck off television in my living room. I am watching a lot of bad old shows just because they're big and in colour. I am also amazed by the ads. It's been so long since I watched tv ads and they're intensely novel (actually I should be careful. Watching tv ads in Warrnambool last year got me aware of the Homicide DVD series). Whether it's the shows I watch or just the way tv is now, the ads are totally for old, old, old people. Older than me. Simplicity Funerals kind of old. 

Speaking of old and ridiculous, I have found another Finnish band to love. Tamara Luonto. (When I say I found them, that's a lie. Spotify found them. Played them right after the Ninni Forever Band). They only have a single, a cassette, and a so-called single on spotify i.e. not a real single. I mean they're not Pintandwefall but that 'Made in China' single really has all the ingredients I love, the sound of it. I have no idea what it's about though. The video doesn't help - the video tells a story about a woman who gets some chinese food delivered and over a few days has a relationship with the woman who delivered it. 

In other news, I saw Wendy Hughes. 

I know she's died. It was in Homicide. 

To be honest I didn't recognise her till I saw her name in the closing credits. Of course she's completely unmistakeable. It's a very ineffectual part, only one scene I think. Not really sure what it's supposed to be for.

Here's one more interesting thing that I can't really say much more about. It's a Housing Commission publication, very handmade (roneoed except for the cover) about concrete houses. Just look at that woman. What is with her head?  

I completely do not understand that head at all. Do you? Is there some way of looking at it that makes sense? Is she wearing some kind of Chico Marx hat with a sun visor? Or does she just have a peaked skull and a huge nose (and no eyes)? 

Also isn't she kind of tiny for that house? Also, is she balancing on the point of one foot? 

did everything i set out to do

Essentially, I wrote 2500 words today, on two different projects - a book chapter and a conference paper - though 'wrote' is possibly the wrong word - 'assembled' might be better. I added in these words and made them make sense in the right order, more or less. I hope that's good enough. By the way, the day's not over yet so who knows. I watched an episode of Homicide called 'Love is a Silver Chain' which has this great shot of a woodyard entrance - with Briquette ads/signs:

This is yet another Jacki Weaver episode. This time around she plays a fairly dippy marijuana addict called Peta. 

As you can see she is not happy to see the police. 

So there are scenes here where the murderer (that's not a spoiler, he does the murder before the opening credits) plays with his band in a club called I think the Love-In or something like that. 

I am sorry to report that the band, not sure if we're told their name, play so quietly in the club it's difficult to tell for a while that they are actually meant to be playing. And perhaps they're miming. It's really not clear. 

That's George Mallaby there I think on the left about to quiz Peta about her... I can't remember. I wasn't terribly engaged with this whole thing, to be frank with you. 

Then I watched another one where a girl gets murdered in the first two minutes and I'm just like... nah. So I put in the codes to persuade my newish tv that I actually do have a Stan account, an iView account and an SBS catch up or whatever it's called account, and still none of them had anything to watch. THERE IS NOTHING. Oh, wait, there's Phoenix. 

caught being a tv show

Two episodes of Homicide broadcast a week apart in 1967 and my eagle eye caught this very nice piece of lizard art in the act of being a painting on the wall in 'Lovely Lady' 11 July1967 and...

'Big Time Operator' 18 July 1967. 

This latter story also features two old friends those of us of a certain demographic would regard fondly: Kev Goldsby (as small-time crook Nick Corbett - that's him standing in the street, below) and the motel now known as the Park Squire and oddly I'm pretty sure at this time known as the Royal Park Motel, not the Park Motel, and yet, here it is, quite plainly labelled the Park Motel. 

You don't need me to point out all the things it doesn't have any more and/or didn't have then. Here it is on google map at the moment. 

The episode also has some scenes in a car park which really do look like they were probably done in the real car park. Additionally, a scene with the motel manager who has to be the real manager, he is not a good actor (mind you he throws a bit of improv Leonard Teale's way, asking him to sit down, which Teale completely ignores, presumably because it's not in the script and/or would mess with his blocking). 

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
 

july 1952 flook

 

Well who would have thought they'd go to Helsinki. I would have liked to have seen some more of the city itself. Nice forest in the 14 July strip though. 

where were you...

...when you heard Alvin Stardust was dead? 

The emergence of Baz Luhrmann's Elvis set me thinking, self-obsessedly, about my experience of celebrities particularly in regards to their deaths. Actually, first of all it set me thinking about Lou Reed's song 'The Day John Kennedy Died', which is on his album The Blue Mask, from 1982. My initial memory was that it was the first time I'd ever heard a Lou Reed song, and that my thought was, 'This is that guy that everyone goes on about?' but geez, I was 17 in 1982 and of course if nothing else I'd heard 'Walk on the Wild Side' which came out a decade earlier though I am surprised to see, on doing a li'l research, that it wasn't a hit (at least not nationally, perhaps it was a hit in Victoria). So I listened to Lou Reed's John Kennedy song and it is a terrible song, but it's not terrible in the way I remember it. I remember it much more rambling, made up on the spot, with bad rhymes. It does have reasonably bad rhymes but it's a lot more 'folk' than I recalled, maybe everything was more 'folk' then so it didn't stick out. It's certainly something the world could have done without. 

In any case, my point is that of course I wasn't anywhere when JFK was shot, but I do remember where I was when I heard the JFK song, or at least I am pretty sure I do, I was in the backyard of our house in Scott St, Hawthorn and I was listening to it on a portable radio, I think someone was actually playing a few songs from The Blue Mask; I definitely remember the song 'Women' as well from that time, and thinking 'fuck, that's horrible'. Also, 'that's a really, really, horrible song'. And, 'Christ that is terrible'. Additionally, 'what the hell was he thinking writing that song let alone singing it.' It was a sunny day. I wonder what made me persist? With listening to the radio I mean. I don't care that Lou Reed made a terrible album, or at least, not enough to question my own existence, just its. 

I remember where I was when Elvis died, or when I heard about it, roughly speaking. At least I remember seeing the headlines outside the milkbar in Riversdale Road near Robinson Road, and in my recollection the headline actually didn't say 'Elvis is dead' but something like 'top pop star dies', indicative of the fact that Elvis was at that time seen as so much of a washed up oldie that his name wouldn't sell papers, but the mention of a top pop star, which he undeniably once had been, would.* That was August 1977 so I was 12 and I'm going to go with this memory, even though you'd imagine that with my interest in pop culture and the world I'd have a little more comprehension but to be fair to me, (1) before 16 August 1977 (actually, 17 August in Australia) Elvis was on the level of let's say Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly or Johnny Cash - old, long ago music from before I was born (2) the name Elvis is weird, yes, but the name Alvin also has L, V and I in the middle of it: I was confused between 'Elvis Presley' and 'Alvin Stardust'.** I didn't entirely know the difference between the two of them. I do recall the first time I became aware of Elvis Presley as an entity was from a riddle in a joke book: 'What lives at the bottom of the garden and sings? Elvis Parsley'. This is almost funnier when you don't know there is someone called Elvis Presley but it also meant that for years I had to work backwards from 'Parsley' to 'Presley' to remember Elvis Presley's name. (I note that Elvis Costello released his first album a month before EP died; I am pretty sure I had no knowledge of him). 

A la Michael Jackson, once Elvis died, he was instantly a legend and undeniably perfect to many, and little kids who weren't really aware of any singer much, were suddenly besotted with him. I don't know what that's about but it's a thing.

I have probably already told you about how I found out about Princess Diana's death. It was when I was living in Hartwell and Mia and I were crossing the railway tracks there and a man came up to us out of the blue and said 'Princess Diana's been in a car accident. But she's going to be OK'. Hmm, so now I look at it I suppose that wasn't really finding out about her death, but it was finding out that something that happened to her was going to be enough of a phenomenon that strangers would talk to other strangers about it. Incidentally that's part of Lou Reed's song about JFK - that at first, he only knew that Kennedy had been shot, then he found out he was actually dead. 

I have other memories of celebrity death but that'll do for now OK. 

* This is the cover of the Age announcing Elvis' death; it was front page news, but not the biggest news of the day. By the way, what I was discussing above re: 'top pop star' was a point of sale poster, not a headline on a newspaper, but I don't think it was the Age's point of sale, probably the Sun. Presumably those things never get kept anyway. 

*Alvin Stardust by the way has been dead for almost eight years, and I have to say I was only dimly aware of that. Or, to be honest, I just wasn't sure. 

rabbit