trip to auckland 23 november-27 november (a week ago)

23 November 

 

Things were a bit fraught today even though it’s only a 4 day trip to Auckland, a flight roughly as short/long as the trip to Perth but it seems like such an extra thing, an international flight. 

Now (just after 7 pm on Wednesday 23/11) I’m waiting with a bunch of other very patient people for a plane which is late. I suppose that lateness will translate into getting to Auckland in the middle of the night. It’s weird how this situation makes you feel so kind of – there should be another word than anxious, but it probably is anxiety. 

I am sitting near the desk and listening to all the p-r-o-b-l-e-m-s which mainly seem to be people who stopped off in Melbourne en route to NZ from some other place unaware that they needed a visa to visit Australia, but possibly it’s more complicated than that. Or less.* You tell me. Also, ‘the guy’ keeps getting walkie talkie messages that catering hasn’t shown up. I don’t care. I don’t need any food I had a thai salad, so called, with tofu so hot I thought this is actually going to damage my mouth for a few days (doesn’t seem to have though). Wowie zowie. 

* Gosh, yes, even stranger than that. The guy has just been in the airport for 24 hours, he did not try to go through immigration or anything he's just been in transit. He seems to think this is not even slightly strange. 

homicide season 7 episode 35: bars

This Homicide episode, first screened 22 September 1970, isn't that exciting, it's kind of grim and weird. Starts off with a mother and son being shot in the Botanical Gardens (btw if my knowledge of Melbourne was all derived from Homicide there's no way I'd ever go to the gardens - it's a mess of people in the bushes killing others by shooting, drowning etc). The story is just of tracking down a couple of men, one of whom might be responsible. The main suspect seems to be this guy called Martin Cooke (John Norman) who is just like, an accidental sighting on the road in the middle of nowhere and chased by a random policeman who he then bashes with a log. I possibly wasn't paying enough attention because I couldn't really figure out who Cooke was or where he came into the picture. 

The most interesting bits were my workplace fifty years ago - not substantially changed. Oh, and I always like it when they show art and, I guess, bohemian outsiders. Like this guy who I gather is an architect: 

This is him and his flatmate, who's getting out of town not because he murdered people, it transpires, but because he's an ex-criminal who wasn't supposed to drive but did. 

This is the scene at the University of Melbourne, with the girlfriend of the guy above - her name's Karen, played by Rona McLeod. 

That's the Raymond Priestley building in the background here. Nice to see how people were able to park wherever they wanted in those days. 

This is Wilson Avenue, that little prefab (I assume) on the left is news to me. For what it's worth. I wonder what it was. 

The cops running to their cars in, I guess, Wilson Ave. Wilson Hall was built by this time but it's not apparent in this image. Bit confusing actually. 

This is Peter checking up on a lead - the killer left a bunch of sketches with prison fences, etc in it. 

The last fifteen minutes of the program were mainly with Martin Cooke staying with these two, Mr Thompson (Syd Conabere) and his daughter Elsie (Mary Ann Severne, whose name I remember presumably from previous Homicides but that's all I recall). 

Elsie is a naive farmer's daughter who wants to see the world and has a big picture of the Eiffel Tower on the kitchen wall. I really thought she was being set up to be killed but actually she was kind of the hero. 

By the way I'll call it laziness - there are two minor characters in this show both called John. John Wilson, John Lawson. 

Melbourne Age TV Radio Guide 17 September 1970 p. 10 obvs

my art from the old days

...exactly a year ago. I did these things this week (last week of November 2021)

This is the cover of Shane and Dustin's poetry book - as you by now surely know as by November 2022 it will be an extraordinary success. Last week or the week before I told them I would draw a fridge for the cover based on a line from the final poem they threw together at the last minute for layout symmetry which mentions an empty refrigerator. I misremembered the 'empty' bit though so it's full, but I retrojustified that by figuring that it could be full on the front cover and empty by the last page, why not.

The original image of the fridge was just like 3rd or 4th image that came up in google images when I googled 'old refrigerator'. 

I was pretty happy with these guys, who I based on these guys:

I know what you're going to say - why didn't you put them in the window frame with the chip - well, frankly I was worried that the t-shirt details would already be too finicky. 

I know what you're also going to say - that wizard's hat is a bit of a cliche yeah well fuck it! I thought it added to the overall composition as a shape and that's all that mattered in the moment. Oops, I just noticed that the red light should be at the top. Better fix that. (Fixed it). 

I suppose you're also going to point out that I turned a young black man into a very pink man, which is true, but then you tell me what the overall racial makeup is of the three I drew, I'm not going into that. I obviously wasn't presenting them in any kind of realistic way I just wanted to use the way they were walking and the joke being (in case you don't get it) kids wearing Cannanes t-shirts... on a t-shirt. The wizard hat is funny too on that basis because it's an old person's idea of what a young person might wear. Geddit? 

deadwind/ karppi season 3

I consumed season 3 of Deadwind (known in its original incarnation as Karppi) barely without noticing it over a few days, while absentmindedly avoiding watching The Sullivans (I don't suppose I've discussed this with most of you, but I have been watching The Sullivans' end-of/post- war exploits for a possible journal article) because I was uncomfortable with an adoption story arc and Homicide (you're going to think I'm a fucking idiot* but there were just too many homicides in Homicide in the late 1960s for me to handle, and I was kind of finding it hard to wade through all these child killings and young women strangleds - at least, I needed a break from them). 

Ironic that I would choose as a refresher Deadwind which has more than its fair share of insane gothic fuckedupness with people getting rubbed out left right and centre in obscenely ritualistic manner and always Pihla Viitala as Sofia Karppi with her extremely impractical lion's mane of hair and her ridiculous attitude of 'I will do anything to protect my children, except behave in a rational way at any given moment i.e. they are always exposed to my own possible demise'. 

If it's at all possible her partner in crimesolving Sakari Nurmi (Lauri Tilkanen) is even more of a mess. I don't think it's a spoiler to reveal that he indicates by weird facial reactions to Karppi that his mother shot her father then herself when Nurmi was a child. I mean, crikey. These people, incidentally, have known each other for at least three years by this time and are always constantly just about to kiss and this just comes up?! But more ridiculous is the whole insane (yes, literally insane) serial killer storyline which... well... the show is clearly not meant to be realistic, is it. I did enjoy it, let's be fair. But can I just advise any insane serial killers that leaving a trail of clues whereby links can be ascertained through various symbols splashed around in the victims' blood at murder scenes etc, probably leads to you not being able to complete your vengeful mayhem in the way you wanted, when it comes down to it. I mean when you put so much into something like that, why jeopardise it with flourishes? 

I'm hoping for a spin-off with Mimosa Willamo reprising her role as Henna, Karppi's stepdaughter who is easily as crazy brave but also more au fait with the crime world as, basically, a criminal and who has to be under the radar too after the events in this series where she essentially shops her adoptive crime family (not without reason - they had decided to execute her). 

Talking with my mother yesterday we agreed between us that a lot of the noiry shows we enjoy we'd really be just as happy with the scenery (see below) and that's it. I am not sure if that's genuinely true because I've never watched a show that was just scenery, I gather there's one on Disney + but it's just shitty Star Wars shit. Disney + has gone up in price it would seem and since I haven't watched anything on it since I got it it's probably time to throw that one away, it's garbage isn't it? Prove me wrong. 

* Don't read this then, jerk, if that's your attitude. 

asiatonta oleskelua

Asiatonta oleskelua is the new Litku Klemetti album (the title means 'Unauthorised stay') and I find it intriguing, though I have to say, nowhere near as immediately appealing as the others I've heard. 

Once again, the biggest problem is of course I don't understand Finnish. I can see from the translate camera function that the lyrics are reflective/mournful/possibly even obtuse but that might be how automatic translation always affects things like song lyrics. 

Not having to worry too much about the words means I concentrate more on the music. Somewhat regretfully I note that there are a lot of flourishes herein that seem gimmicky - like someone had a shopping list of what belongs in a 70s power ballad - and quite a few of these songs fit that bill, notably the first track 'En Elä', (which by the way google translate says means 'I don't live') which even ends somewhat inexplicably with some sergeant pepperish horns at the end - go figure. 

But having said the above I have had this thing in my head a lot since I last listened to it on the weekend, and bits keep popping up. You will note from my supermodel Perry above I actually bought the CD, that was entirely on accident, I didn't know what I was doing. I have a CD player upstairs but not downstairs at the moment (tbh it would be super easy to patch it in to my 'system' but I'm going to be pulling all that apart and putting it back together in a few weeks when I get my shelves put in, so, blah blah wgaf) so I haven't listened to it since I played it in my mother's car which I borrowed because mine's being repaired because it has a problem with its clutch and wah wah wah. 

So point is I think I will come around, I was just a bit challenged by the conventional sound and style of this album, but the tunes are really good and it is just paradoxically harder to get into because, you know, I don't understand Finnish. I mean I understand around three words per song.  

perry's wednesday morning

Perry and I went to the dog park twice, once on the way to the polling booth in Mt Alexander Road and, you guessed it, once on the way back. He still hasn't 100% got the hang of the dog park but I think he's getting there. It's clearly very stimulating judging by the extreme sleep he's undergoing at this moment. 

We got all the way to the polling booth (I want to vote early) and we were then told that Perry couldn't come in so I didn't vote today. It doesn't matter massively to me when I do it as I know who I'm voting for, but I think Perry was a little annoyed about his first exposure to democracy, judging by the way he pulled at the lead, bit it, lay down and refused to walk further, etc. Actually on reflection I think it might have been his failure to eat much breakfast that might have caused this response. Who really knows. 
 

perry progress

So it will of course not surprise you to hear that this boy is dominating a lot of my time at the moment. He is very personable and a good companion a lot of the time, and a real pain in the arse some of the time, particularly his apparent complete inability to stop himself biting me. It's affectionate. But it's also a fucking nuisance and takes a lot of the pleasure out of our relationship. The biting is particularly prevalent in the evening, and I suspect it happens mainly because he's tired and cranky after a long day of being entertained (and fawned over by basically everyone). Nevertheless, it does bug me. 

But the rest of the time we have fun things in our lives like the way he likes to walk along this little wall

...and how today he went to the staff forum with me (he did not sleep on the seat most of the time - he slept on the floor) and was asleep for the entire thing except at one point when people clapped, and he barked. It was hilarious. The dean called me out by name (he had met the dean the day before and tried to chew her lanyard - as you do). 

Pissing is a problem with Perry and I am perplexed. He seems mainly ok with doing it in the right place and increasingly on command but he is also a bit of a territory marker I think a lot of the time. Today though was the first time I saw him piss, and then kick out with his back legs like a man does. I don't really know what that means, but I know it's something that marks a change out of puppydom.

He is a beautiful little dog, with a lot of fine personality traits and developing skills. He'll go far. 

the beginning of the end?

While walking the dogs on the morning of 12 November 2012 I stepped in a hole and fell completely over. I mentioned this to Ann Maudsley this afternoon in the context of a discussion mainly about her great grandmother who just died aged 102. When I fell over I imagined that to anyone who saw me it would have looked like I'd been shot. I thought at the time 'is this the beginning of the end?' I thought it would be a good idea to make a record of this just in case it is the beginning of the end, and I had not made a proper notation of when the end started beginning.

Ann Maudsley said she hoped to live into her 90s, since I think she is currently in her mid-20s this would put her impending death at around 2075 or thereabouts. I actually anticipate living to around 2050 myself but not if I start falling over all the time. 

perry

Too tired to write anything about him. It's day 9. 

rip it up

It's been forty years since this album came out (Nov 82), and I don't want to tell you anything you don't already know, but it was a massive disappointment in so many ways. I really don't think this version of Orange Juice captured ten per cent of the excellence of the material up to and including the first album. Oh well. I don't have anything more to say about it. It is what it is and sadly it also isn't what it isn't. 

The hit singles are OK. There are one or two decent tracks. But fuck it. 

It's a shame because all four of them were so thoroughly talented. David McClymont put out his best music ever, a double album, this year that is about a billion times better than this! 

rabbit rabbit

 

flook november 1952