i am the cliche

I seem to recall that my first blog entry on Lorraine Crescent was about coffee, probably about my attempts to give up coffee which was an obsession of sorts in the first decade of the twenty-first century (why? Partly I think because someone had told me that coffee increased one's desire for carbs, and I wanted to lose weight without doing anything icky like exercising; also, living with an addict as I was, I wanted to prove that I could get by without any addiction to anything, and that was my one addiction) (and is). But I bet it wasn't long before my blog entry on cats. Also, dogs. So, coffee and pets, coffee and pets, and pop music, these are the things that move me. Oh, and shitty old television. It's sick, and worse, it's a sickness so many people of my generation/class have, maybe less so my gender but there's plenty of men who have this. Just not as many as nice middle class ladies. 

Coffee entered my life with my first girlfriend, Rachel. I was 15. She drank coffee, I am guessing probably instant, a lot, and so did I therefore. Her family also ate a lot of chinese cabbage, they relished it, but only one of those things have stayed with me (now I think about it, maybe I should try chinese cabbage again, just to see if it evokes anything e.g. the first time I ever saw/heard Duran Duran on Countdown, doing 'Planet Earth'). Coffee has been with me pretty much ever since and probably always will be, though I did successfully give it up for a couple of months some time - I forget when, it's been a long life, but I think I switched to decaf for a time either late 90s or early 00s, but of course like heroin you crave the rush. 

Pets were always there it's silly to even discuss. I have had times in my life with no pets, it's true, but seriously, why would you.

Pop music was always there, but I specifically remember a long drive with a family my family were close friend with, where they as a family sang 'Let it Be' in the car (now, obviously, that could have happened last year or ten years after 'Let it Be' came out, and if I was five I wouldn't have known whether 'Let it Be' was released in 1970 or 1850, but it was almost definitely before 1972, because we moved away from Kew at the beginning of '73 and I wouldn't have gone on a long drive with that family after that time). So that marks for me an early memory, my earliest memory, of contemporary pop music. By the mid-70s I was actually Beatles obsessed, when at school the divisions were clear: Beatles vs Abba. I switched to, or accommodated, Abba in 1976, via two sources: visiting my father in hospital I think when he was having a back operation, and seeing 'Mama Mia' on tv (extra interest because 'mama mia' was a thing kids - Italian kids? - said at school that was exotic enough to almost be swearing) but I was still not ready to be swept up in anything, but then a schoolfriend, John, described 'Fernando' to me on a school excursion, as being about the Swedish-Mexican war, and that made it stick in my mind. He also raved about it and I guess his taste had currency for me. However, I also vaguely remember mentioning it to him again a few months (a few days? who knows) later and he was entirely uninterested. I might be extrapolating false memories with that last bit. So by 1976 it was Abba vs Bay City Rollers, although some girls were still uncertain whether they were aligned with BCR or 'horses'. After the Abba thing crashed (1977?) I went into abeyance with pop music interest until around 1980 when I became heavily engaged. Rachel broke up with me and I had been saving money to buy her a nice impressive birthday present, so since I didn't have to do that anymore, I bought myself some albums (I already had the first Pretenders and B-52s albums, and I added The Undertones' Hypnotised, which I'd read about in the NME, the first Dexy's Midnight Runners album, Devo's Freedom of Choice and John Foxx's Metamatic: I actually still own copies of all of these). 

Bad TV was always good. If I am grateful to my parents for anything it is the way they encouraged me, leading by example, to regard mass media as always potentially idiotic, venal, etc. I recall at a very young age my father explaining to me that Reg Ansett misled the Australian public/government by claiming that if he was allowed his own television channel, he would produce high-quality local content, which of course he never did. I don't remember my father saying that Ansett had pals in high places who probably didn't care either way what happened, although if he had that might have gone over my head. I recall (as I have probably bored you in years past on this blog) holding uncritical attitudes to cartoons,* though on reflection, maybe having cartoons like Road Runner, or Secret Squirrel, was a chance to have something that was mine, and where my parents' hypercritical attitude didn't matter. Ditto Adventure Island. But at the same time, we would happily ridicule all stupid, obvious, mainstream television but in some instances also enjoy it because we could ridicule it. So, my sarcastic, unproductive, casual arsehole attitude was cultivated from an early age through my parents' own responses cultivated I suppose in the case of my mother, from her parents' highbrow attitude to popular culture and in the case of my father, his university arts degree removing him from his parents' lower middle class attitudes. It shocked me, as I got older and saw other people's lives, how uncritically they accepted mass media, though for all that, I am aware that my own response of trusting nothing mediated by (for instance) commercial television was/is as much a learned reaction. I wasn't taught to think critically, I was taught to always find a way to be critical. I had to unlearn that and enjoy (to pluck something from my brain's offering up of an immediate example, without thinking hard about it) 'Into the Heat' by The Angels, without wondering about who the fucking Angels thought they were or were trying to be or who they thought they were appealing to or what Doc Neeson's theatricality was supposed to indicate. I realise that's a weird example, it's just the first example I thought of, and so I went with it on the assumption that that would be more 'pure'. To problematise this, I guess we all liked older things better in our family on the understanding/assumption that artisans were more involved in the old days, and skill was more prevalent, there was some kind of talent recognition mechanism, whereas the 'present' (eg the 1970s) was more about trickery and faddishness - though if I had challenged my father, for instance, on this assumption I am pretty sure he would have happily reeled off 20 names of actors, artists, writers who were as shit as anything currently popular, and as popular in their day if not more so.  

Hence, by the way, the character of Elyse in Persiflage, who has an uncritical, base, positive response to a tv sitcom which she is too naive to even understand and on which she imprints other emotional ideals, but from which she filters through everything else in her waking life. Sorry to bring it back to my silly graphic novel but of course that's what that shit's about. I'm fascinated by the reality behind fiction/drama/play-acting and I'm fascinated by popular culture tropes and what they really 'mean' to an audience. I am also of course fascinated by the perceived background or underpinning or context to music, or to celebrity. 

To go back to Abba: they fascinated us as 12 year olds at Auburn South Primary. Two girls and two boys in our class (one of the girls was an absolute crush of mine at the time, and I was not alone) were allowed to use the classroom during lunch time to workshop a play they were formulating about the lives of Abba members. I think in hindsight probably more likely they were learning how to kiss, but what do I know (one of the boys later told me and other boys he had fucked the girl I had a crush on, which I accepted uncritically. The story went like this: 'she came to my house with her parents for a party, and I said do you want to come up to my room and she said yeah, and we fucked'. About twenty years later I thought - hey wait a minute - that actually is really, really unlikely, not least because I'm pretty sure the girl in question only had a mother not a father but also for class reasons - those people would never socialise, ever). Another Abba story, from a girl in I'm guessing grade 6: 'Abba all went into a sauna together naked, and the boys went out to roll in the snow and the girls locked them out of the sauna, naked'. This is actually much more likely than the local fucking story, but still that it was told at all shows how exotic and exciting Abba's lives were to us, as we modelled our understanding of what it was to be physically perfect and sexually active super-white adults. Boy were they a cultural manifestation as Australia got over White Australia. They were with us at exactly the same time as the first Vietnamese refugees started to be accepted (or not) as Australians. 

I don't know how to end this but it's not like I'm writing for The Monthly or something** so I don't have to have a neat ending, I can just end. 

*Also comics, which were however a very different beast to me, as different as novels are from films - of course. 

** They wouldn't have me

reasons

I won’t say reasons to be cheerful as that is a cliché but that is probably my meaning. There are a lot of things around at the moment that are likely to make a 44 year old white man living in the suburbs of the large Australian city in which he was born feel relatively content. I am not saying it is as thus and shall always beest, and nor am I saying that the fact it is thus means it should always be. All I am is noticing this is presently the case. I don’t wish to be smug or to invite karma off smugness… OK disclaimer over.

I enjoyed seeing She’s out of my league. I thought it was really a pretty funny film. I have always had a sick leaning towards entertainment I didn’t have to think about much. It cushions and lulls me. I don't feel guilty.

We got this really big pumpkin out of our backyard. It was amazing. Mia reminded me it is not just a case of a natural accident, that she cultivated it, which of course I know to be true. I was thinking only yesterday about that annoying ‘money doesn’t grow on trees’ saying. It is annoying because a pumpkin we might otherwise have paid money for grew on a plant in the backyard. OK. It was delicious.

I am liking this Yo La Tengo album which came out I guess late last year and which I am listening to now on the tram.

I really liked Jim Crace’s latest book.

It’s autumn, my favourite time of year, and coming up to my birthday.

We had some children round our house on the weekend who were blithely and aggressively patting Charlie and she didn’t savage any of them once.

I’m getting an electronic drumkit for my birthday.

Also, eggplants are still frequently appearing in the backyard. These are eggplants that if you saw them in a shop you might buy them even if you don’t like eating eggplant. (I do, a lot) just because they look so amazing.

I have a great podcast regimen now, based on NPR, Radio National, and Radio 4. There is pretty much a new program for me every day, sometimes 2. Oh, also I listen to Boxcutters, which isn’t a radio program made into a podcast – it’s just a podcast.

I walked alongside the Western Ring Road today to the Airport West tram. It took about an hour. It was fine.

Alright now I am starting to think of more things and they are starting to be less marvelous and bug me so I will stop this list now. Thanks for your indulgence.

walking dogs once more

I am notoriously oversensitive to all criticism real or implied, so I have to report that, a few months ago when I came across a casual comment somewhere on the internet that my blog was full of me bleating about a lost kitten, I stewed over it for quite some time, and indeed, continue to stew. It has been a long time since I lost a kitten, certainly long before I started this blogging enterprise, but I suppose the person who accused me of promulgating such content was alluding to the furkids element herein. I guess I have to wear that.*

This afternoon Millie and Charlie and I went for a walk around our lake. I have discussed this kind of thing before and I suppose there isn’t too much new to add. There was no spectacular birdlife (we did upset some plovers when we first got to the water, don’t know what their problem was) and in fact no people in particular either, which was more unusual.
It occurred to me for the first time ever that the landform at the edge of the creek was undoubtedly man-made, perhaps dating back in some regard to early settlement (this area was first farmed in the mid-19th century) but probably more likely to the major works undertaken in the early 1970s, when a few small tributary watercourses were put underground and so on. It’s funny how when you live in the city you don’t develop the ability to read the landscape at all really, you just take it as it comes (or I do, anyway).

We found evidence of some kind of car theft or damage, a taillight I think, though there was nothing but this (Charlie found it interesting).

It is strange to think that 6 months ago it looked like Millie was going to have to retire – in fact, it looked that way even before she had that horrible accident in April – but now she seems to have a new lease of life, even if she now really does look old. Nevertheless, she maintains her irritating habit of falling behind in the walk and, basically, asking to be called.

When we got to the isthmus between the creek and the lake, Charlie did an odd and rather quaint thing of sniffing all the yellow flowers on either side of the path. (This picture is not intended to show that exact act.) She seemed to get lost a bit in each one. I was reminded of something I hadn’t thought of for years and years. When my sister Nicola was about three, she and our father and I were doing something at their house (I can’t remember what we were doing) which involved going in and out of their shed on a few occasions. Each time she passed through the doorway, Nicola would make a little fist (the only kind she could make at that age) around a nail which was in the doorframe sticking out quite far but half way out pointing down at a right angle. After she did this a few times my father asked her what she was doing. ‘I’m getting a drink’, she said. Well, far be it for me to anthropomorphise Charlie any more than I already do – i.e. totally – I suppose she wasn’t playing with the flowers at all, more likely they had brushed on an animal/ some animals which she had to check up on. Anyway, it was kind of sweet, if you like Charlie, which I suppose it’s time to admit I do.

Other news. There is a good new café locally here in the Pearcedale Precinct (I don’t know what the café is called or what the people who run it are called or nothing). It is cheap and cheerful and they are threatening to name my breakfast from this morning after me (I asked for mushrooms and spinach on a muffin). The coffee is excellent and they get the papers in and this morning we were treated to a radio station that was constantly saying ‘we’re playing two hours of Australian jazz’, which was exactly what I wanted to hear at that moment (those words and the music they heralded). So now there are two great cafes in this general proximity – that one, unnamed, and Silver Sage. You should come and visit.

Tonight I am babysitting April. I saw her and Nicole yesterday in one of those grouse April vignettes thus: I was driving up Lorraine Crescent and came across an unusual impasse a little like a sacred cow reputedly can cause in India, wherein a man had been backing his car out of the drive and he somehow came to appreciate that a white cat was sitting in the road absolutely unconcerned about a vehicle coming backwards towards it. So I had to stop, he was in the road shooing the cat away though the cat had absolutely no interest in moving, and April and Nicole were on the pathway watching. April looked like this scene was one of the highlights of her short life which, though it has been a short life, is hard to believe. But it’s the thought that counts.

This morning in Niddrie Salvos I bought a light beige Pierre Cardin suit.

Currently listening to: Hoodoo Gurus, Denim Owl, Red House Painters, Wa Wa Nee

* I am also of the opinion that if you ‘put yourself out there’, i.e. make public pronouncements, on whatever minor level, you shouldn’t complain about what people say about you or how they typify you. At the same time, of course, it does come as a bit of a jolt.

shallowness plumbs new depths

It occurred to me today, about two weeks after being informed of his demise, that I had met Ernie Bourne when I was a child, at a party, I knew him then as Fester Fumble from Adventure Island (well probably I knew the difference between a character and an actor, maybe). It must have been quite a formative influence to me, that you could meet celebrities, I met Daryl Somers when I was about 7 years old, he shook my hand, I was a fan already before that time, he was doing some kind of appearance at something I don’t remember what and a friend of my mother’s – maybe a work colleague? – had to pick him up and take me there so she took me along, I sat in the back seat. I mean admittedly I would probably have been as thrilled if it were Skeeter or Marty or Marilyn or Fred Bear, who I think I once saw in person too, though that could be false memory syndrome. I recall Daryl telling the assembled crowd that Ossie Ostrich couldn’t be there as he had his head in the sand. That’s all I remember. I hadn’t thought of that for decades. The Ernie Bourne thing, to get back to that, was a party with my parents, and the other thing I recall about that party, really the only thing, is that their friend Georgie was there and someone joked, and I believed it, that the Seekers’ song ‘Georgie Girl’ was about her. I mean I suppose my reasoning would have been, if you are at a party with Fester Fumble, then you might well be there with the woman about whom the song ‘Georgie Girl’ was written. It’s true.

My next brushes with fame were – well, I had a friend my age whose older brother had appeared as a character in a series of children’s books – I wrote a letter to the Akta-Vite magazine about television programming – I saw Zig and Zag live. Now I recall I also saw Uncle Norman and Joffa Boy do an instore, it wasn’t at Waterfront. I think it was at McEwans, is that possible? My grandmother took me but she may not remember either. Additionally I am not entirely certain what McEwans is or was. For some reason the words Uncle, Norman, Joffa, Boy, Mc and Ewans all fit together for me in a special tag cloud. I am pretty certain that although this was Uncle Norman and Joffa Boy, indisputably, they were long past their time as hosts of the celebrated and important Tarax Show, though when you’re a child of 4 or 5 or 6 or whatever I was, a long period could be a week or a year I daresay, depending on your mood. It couldn’t, on reflection, have been that long because I certainly wanted to see them and so did many others. On reflection, how bizarre that two old men without appropriate child psychology qualifications would be considered appropriate children’s show hosts, although I now know Joff was a genuine television stalwart and a respected comedian (and similarly how amazing that you could call a character on a children’s television show Fester Fumble without someone making instant connections to self-hating gaydom). Speaking of Normans though, when we were in the UK in the mid-70s Norman Hunter took a coin out of my ear and… I can’t recall what else happened… met Roald Dahl at some kind of instore… I think I went to school with Bono*… we were going to see The Goodies in a live appearance but they cancelled, I think Graeme had his head in the sand. I was an attendee at the Dr Who fanfest at Longleat, were you there? But there were no celebs, unless you count Daleks. I daresay people now write sentimental long essays about those early Dr Whofests. I don’t think I want to read them, too evocative and sentimental. I am really racking my brain for more celebs, as I know that is primarily your interest, if it’s not werry porn, and I know celebs are a hot topic for me then as now. Nancy Cato off Adventure Island (who also edited the Akta-Vite magazine, this is getting a bit bizarre now isn’t it, as is the fact that there was an Akta-Vite magazine and that I apparently subscribed to it. Actually that is making me chuckle because I just realised how stupid that is) lived round the corner from my grandmother, serious. How bizarre. I went to her house and couldn’t stop laughing, not about Akta-Vite, I don’t know what about. Anyway how did I forget that additional Adventure Island connection when I was talking about Ernie Bourne above.

Also once when I was 12 or so I got shown round channel two and saw the actual clock that sat inside a camera and was the clock that the tv screen would routinely snap to on channel two in the seconds before the news or similar. It was a bit shabby! Around the same time I was in Carlton and I saw Mick Conway in Johnny’s Green Room, that was a blast. But that’s getting more into adult-world celebrity isn’t it and less of a surprise and less of an event. Still, if only I’d kept a diary. Who can I sue for not inventing blogs thirty years earlier?

I suppose it is time to muse on celebrity and its value or lack of, but who cares. We all know what it’s about.

* The only lie in today’s gallery of memories.

By the way, there is a nice four minute thing here which will mean little to anyone who wasn't a viewer of the original and obviously I was very young because it barely means much to me. I loved the viewer comment: 'I was very priviliged to be a child in this era.Sadly a time which is long gone and probably never will return.' I mean I loved the 'probably' bit. Live in hope.