sentimental jamboree

More stuff from under the house at Lorraine and more storage quandaries. Actually the storage quandaries come not from this tranche of drawing, which I can almost live with close to thirty years later (Clearly what I needed was just enough time to be a slightly more mature commentator on the very slightly younger people I was encountering as a mature age student at the University of Sydney). The real problems are with material older than this, when I just had no capacity to end anything. I would just break the fourth wall to finish the page. By this time I could at least come up with a kind of punchline, even if it was a bit non-secaturish. Winky Pinstripe never broke the fourth wall. This is half a random Winky comic strip that I suspect was never published anywhere, though who knows. The frame where Winky pushes Mal to the ground is pretty well-drawn for me. 

In the early-to-mid 90s I did a few Winky Pinstripe comic books (the best one was, I think, the fourth one which was very long and basically made for my grandmother Mavis, so it had no casual or coarse sexy stuff in it, not that she would have said anything if it did, indeed, she probably didn't even read the fourth one, who knows). Clearly in the story below I used some version of Ben-Day film, very inexpertly, to give the drawings a little bit of texture. This has now yellowed. I also cut and pasted bits out of magazines to suggest ambient background conversation snippets in the party scenes and it's so unclear that's what this was, that it took me a while today to realise it wasn't just random decoration. Obviously there was another version of this page, photocopied, which became the 'master', where I fixed whatever mistake I made in 'addressed' (frame 2 - looks like I spelt it with one D) and decided to change the music playing at the party in the last frame to 'Punky's dilemma' (as per margin note: 'If I were a 1st lieutenant').  

If you haven't seen any Winky Pinstripe comics before basically the idea is that he is a hipster of sorts a bit like Rik from The Young Ones I suppose though less consciously trying to break away from privileged roots. It was such an easy character to work with it was ridiculous, wrote itself. As I said above I encountered people like that all the time at university which was a slight eye-opener but of course also I was parodying myself, and not even myself at a younger age necessarily, though more myself at a younger age than my late twenties self. 

So, below, welcome to a conception of the internet, 26 years ago. The character Judy had a fanzine called Arsewipe thereby contriving the opportunity to write the line most authors dream of, 'Dear Judy I love your Arsewipe'. The thing that pleases me most about the Winky stories is that absolutely no-one has any redeemable qualities - Judy here for instance is absolutely the female Winky - and even  his friend Mal who appears superficially to be some kind of voice of reason is only a voice of reason insofar as he knows a little more stuff than Winky does. I feel a twinge about evoking 'Slim from Kill Rock Stars' (i.e. Matthew 'Slim' Moon who started and ran the record label) only because I have never met him and had nothing against him at all. That said a lot of the time I had an extra depth of deceptive/self-deceptive behaviour running with Winky - in this case either, 'he only thinks he was talking to Slim Moon', or, 'he thinks Judy would be impressed if he said he was talking to Slim Moon'. I also like how the next day he stumbles on her name, because he is only ever focused in the moment, and even then only barely. 

This (below) is in amongst the same stuff, so it's probably from roughly the same time, but it's a good example of not being able to finish anything. (I don't know what the last frame is/was, whether it was the beginning of an idea or what):

This below is also from the same bunch of drawings. I don't know what I intended for this but I am going to guess it's unfinished. 

This is in the Winky vein and pretty much a cheap shot, I think it's from 1995 and a time when it felt dangerous to be casually withering about Andy Warhol and Lou Reed though of course these characters are clearly not them. Creatively strange (inept?) use of Ben-Day in the fifth panel. When I see things like 'Arté Farté' (last panel) I just groan inwardly but you know, it's long ago and far away isn't it. 

I almost feel like republishing some of this material properly although to what end? Maybe I'll set up a website for it. It would seem less self-aggrandising if someone else did it but when other people put things I did online people assume it's me doing it anyway so what difference does it make. 

in memoriam 21 september

So, another September 21 passes by. It has always been important to me, as the following entries from my various diaries show, and not only because of its vital use as a stopgap, or wedge or period of rest, between other dates in September the exact numerical delineations of which I am uncertain. It is also the birthdays of my friend Gavin Butler and my brother-in-law Robert Barrese.

To say I have kept a diary since 1994 is a piece of nonsense, but I have had appointments diaries since then and I have, literally, kept them (except, as you will see, 2006 which is AWOL). Here is what I did, or at least intended to do, on the past 15 September 21s.

1994 merely says ‘Masters – SS’ and the word ‘Masters’ is circled. I don’t think the Schutzstaffel were my masters then, that's a joke, a stupid one, but that is kind of what it looks like I'm saying in the diary. I don’t know what it means. I wasn’t planning to do masters at the University of Sydney, or anywhere, and that was the year before I graduated anyway. Ah! Looking back I see that the previous week is labelled ‘Porter/ Masters’ and a small line is coming out of ‘Masters’ to another phrase, ‘Rose Fancier’. I think this might have something (well, alright, everything) to do with the writer Olga Masters, and I was studying literature then, and 'SS' probably stands for 'short story', since Hal Porter and Olga Masters were both noted for writing in this form. I wonder if anyone teaches Hal Porter these days, something tells me his reputation has undergone a bit of a battering, for reasons largely but not entirely unrelated to his work. The 21 September 1995 entry is marked merely ‘Market’ and this (or something else) happened ’11:45 – 10ish’. I was going to work reshelving books at the Badham library 5-8 but I crossed that out, and instead did a shift 9-12 am the next day (I am assuming this was a rescheduled because the 22 September arrangement is double underlined as if to say, 'no, not 21 September 5-8, but 22 September 9-12). In 1996, by which time I had moved back to Melbourne, 21 September was - oh goodness, do you remember? - a Saturday, and my diary for that day features an ’11:00 show’ at Flinders Street (!?). 1997 there is a ‘grand final’* and ‘Canberra’ (where I was to be for three more days after that time). 1998 indicates nothing; I suppose I sat in suspended animation (or anticipation: the next day I received $237 from Rolling Stone); also in the other 1998 diary, which was one we used for phone messages, there is the circled word ‘rubbish’. 1999 – a big line from 12 to 6 pm with no explanation. 2000, a date to meet an historian of note at the Deakin University Burwood campus’ Café Plateau, and in the evening (or at least, under ‘notes’) The Dave Graney Show. 2001 is blank and indeed it is not for three days (Monday 24) that something happens: ‘Chapters 7+8’. Could mean anything. 2002- nothing (the day after, some essays due). 2003 – back from Heathcote but nothing special on that particular day, which was a Sunday. 2004 nothing. 2005 ‘recap tests’ for second year subject and that night it appears I had dinner (there might have been more to that story: a ‘W’ is crossed out). I can’t find my 2006 diary, so there’s a worry, for posterity at least. 2007 – I was in Adelaide for a conference; this entry also has prominently but for no apparent reason the address of a well-known 20th century architect who did not live in Adelaide. In 2008 there is nothing more than a reminder to be minding Kenzie. That reminder about minding reminds me to reproduce here and now Toby Dutton's impressive recent portrait of Kenzie right here and now:














And all of this brings us up to yesterday, the most recent 21 September we have had. I rode my new Huffy to work for the first time in a long time. It's not new, it's second hand, and I've had it for months, but it is mine, and it's tops. I felt very smart and important. It rained at night and it was a Monday. There you go.

* A week later, I realised this was the VFL grand final. In those days I was an ardent supporter of the Preston Knights. They didn't make the finals.