Monthly Archives: April 2003

Mew

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I saw “The Good Girl” at the movies. Right in the row in front of me was what I think was a grandmother and some of her grandchildren. Ok, so looking after the grandkids during the school holidays is cool, but when you take a bunch of little kids to see a movie (and these were little kids – I reckon the youngest would have been about 4, the oldest 8), pick a kids movie. Pick one with a G rating. Pick a fun cartoon or a sassy kids adventure movie. Don’t take your grandkids to a dark, adult comedy. Maybe the gran was thinking that a movie called “The Good Girl” would be about a well-behaved female child. Ha!

The kids spent most of the movie twisting in their seats, bored. The dark adult humour of the film didn’t get anywhere near them. The grandmother spent most of the movie with her neck turned towards the kids, getting them to sit down, handing them popcorn and generally not watching the movie.

But the best bit came during the scene in the movie when Tim Blake Nelson’s character comes out of his house with just a quilt wrapped around him. His dog bites the quilt and pulls it away and there’s a brief glimpse of his donger. As soon as the penis appeared, the grandmother quickly reached over and put her hand over the eyes of the kid in the seat next to her. She loudly whispered to the others “don’t look! Don’t look!”, but by then the next scene had come and the penis was but a funny memory.

John C. Riley was in it. Dylzno has a theory that all movies John C. Riley is in are good. (Ditto for Edward Norton.) I’d go for a lower hit rate, but this was one was good. This, along with “Chicago” and “The Hours” rounds out his lousy-husband trilogy. In this one he was a goofy, pot-smoking husband.

I should also mention Jake Gyllenhaal. I was totally in love with him after seeing “Donny Darko”, but I’m out of love with him after “The Good Girl”. His character is excellent. He’s what a cinematic troubled, rebellious loner teen would be like in real life. i.e. a pretentious dickhead. He’s endlessly cute on the outside, but once Jennifer Aniston’s character (and the audience) get to know him, the crazy, mixed-up ugliness is becomes apparent. And we welcome the real world, where the heroine picks the pot-smoking husband over the cute badboy.

Oh, I just gave away the ending. Or did I?

Because a film isn’t about plot, it’s about how the plot is executed.

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Oh yes, on the bus there’s now a magazine for people to read on the bus. It is called “Ticket”. I felt alienated soon after I opened it and read the the magazine was “to read as you get yourself to work”. Not school, not the shops, not uni, not the movies, not a sports even, no, just work. “Ticket” is really boring. It’s filled with boring articles on boring subjects. Boring reviews of things that describe it, but barely express an opinion on it. An unfunny humour column (but isn’t describing something as being funny almost a guarantee that it won’t be?), and that old, old trick of having an article about a subject that is later advertised in the magazine. The editorial urges readers to “stop staring out the window” and read the magazine, but quite frankly, looking out the window is way more interesting than reading boring articles.

Yeah, because if you want something to read on the bus, it’s ok for it to be light and disposable, but make it interesting. I mean, you wouldn’t want to fall asleep and miss your stop.

Vamos

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I had early morning (i.e. 10am) coffee with a few members of the MCC. It was good socialising with them, because there never seemed to be much time to do at during the course. On the last day of the course I gave everyone a copy of my zine, so there was a bit of feedback on that. I like how everyone who’s read it and talked to be about it seems to like different things. One of the MCC fellows liked the backwards writing because he’s dyslexic and it somehow makes it easy for him to read.

After that I wandered into the city and ended up running into Murray, so I had lunch with him. I forgot how much fun he is. Actually, I feel the need to note the the chicken in the chicken and vegetables I got from the Chinese place reminded me of the flesh gun in “Existenz”. Ya, so Murray revealed that Ryan was in town and was possibly having a shindig tonight.

After lunch I wandered along Queen Street and had a ramble through Smith and Caughey. The ladies toilets have been magnificently revamped. It’s very, very classy now. The eating establishment on the second floor is now a restaurant. It was previously a cafe, and prior to that, tearooms. I like the tearooms style the best because it had this really cool late ’60s decor, including a really neat booth design (excellent for evesdropping, according to my mum who, it should be added, has stolen teaspoons from the S&C tearooms). Then in the late ’80s (I think) all the booths were ripped out and replaced with lots of tables. Increased seating, I’m sure, but diminished atmosphere. Now it’s all very dark and stylish. But I didn’t eat there, it just didn’t seem nice.

I amused myself by checking the Armani section. I found a leather jacket that cost about as much as I paid for my car. That’s all very well, but I think my car is more useful and I’d have much more fun in my car than in a diarrhoea-brown leather jacket.

So indeed young Ryan was having a shindig. I showed up to that cafe place on High Street and there was a big old table full of various assorted people. Dylz was there, and so was his new girlfriend, who he met on a dating web site. At one stage Dylz was getting very excited describing one of those vegetable cutting demonstrations at the Easter show, and how it made him want to buy one. I asked him if he was gay, because surely a real man would have a hearty knife set (right, DRZA?). Then this lead to a hysterical sequence of such scenarios as a macho aggro bloke coming home from the pub and being like “julienne me some carrots, bitch.”

Places

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While I was waiting for my laundry to be done I wandered down to the Dominion Road shops. I think that area’s specifically called Eden Valley, but it’s the Dominion Road shops, ok? It’s an interesting neighbourhood with cool secondhand shops mingling with new Asian-themed shops.

I bought “Lovage – Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By”. It’s a kind of cynical love album, like it Barry White had been dicked over by a few too many devil women. It’s also very fine. Oh so very fine, etc.

Having previously moved in with his girlfriend, my old flatmate has now moved into his own bachelor pad. His entire flat costs $10 a week less than mine, but it’s about the same size as my lounge. Because of its tininess, I went over and helped him sort through his crap.

If you move around a bit, like he has, and like I have, you end up with boxes filled with inessential stuff that never gets unpacked. From flat to flat the boxes are schlepped around and never opened, never unpacked. Before I went to Melbourne I went on a ruthless culling spree through all my stuff. I threw out so much stuff that I just had no use for. Now I don’t have any unopened boxes. Everything is unpacked.

So I helped Teh Matt sort through print outs of web pages, university notes, old computer disks and manuals, bad poetry, scraps of paper with phone numbers and a flowery yet touching break-up note from an old girlfriend, written in the way that only 17 year old girls write. It’s nice when everything figures out a place to go.

Holy

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The bad arse rock boys came over last night. Hodad, Throb and (oh, what nickname can I pull out of my arse in a hurry?) How arrived and laid into the hardcore drugs. Ok, Red Bull syrup isn’t a banned substance, but y’know, if I drank a bottle of it I wouldn’t have had any sleep last night.

Throb started looking at my CD collection. This made me feel very nervous and exposed. Despite the frequent culling, there’s still enough stuff in there to reveal almost every side of my personality. He found the Rubicon CD. “I DIDN’T BUY THAT!” I yelled. No one believed me. Then he got really excited. He had found my David Hasselhoff “Close to Heaven” CD. He put it on and the boys mercilessly mocked it. It was great.

Then we all piled in a taxi (yes, one piles in to a taxi) and it was off to the St James for Sly and Robbie. Ok, this is what it comes down to: there was a moment when I realised that I didn’t know who was Sly and who was Robbie, but then I realised that it didn’t matter. What mattered is that there was some really excellent music being played and that I was really enjoying it and having a bloody good time.

This is how mighty the show was: at one stage the PA cut out, but the on-stage sound was so loud that the music could still be heard, and the energy and the vibe in the audience didn’t really drop much. Fortunately the sound soon kicked back in and the mighty, glorious beats returned to the St James. We pity the fools who went to the Audioslave concert instead.

Back at my whare, the absence of M2 was felt. It just seems right that when you come home from a gig that watching music videos is the right thing to do. But “Jackie Brown” was on. There were a few scenes that involved two people talking, and the camera would cut between each person. It seems very much like each actor had filmed their lines separately and then the conversation was edited together. There was no flow, it was slow and unnaturally paced. So, the question is, is “Kill Bill” going to be a magnificent return to form, or will Mr Tarantino reveal himself to be a two-trick pony (albeit an inspiring and highly influential one)?

Oh, but I digress. The bad-arse rock boys settled down for the night and were very well-behaved. In fact, I almost wish they had fucked shit up a bit, then I’d have an interesting tale to tell. Instead I could relate tales like my friend who’s about my age and he’s wooing a girl ten years younger who lives in another town, or my friend who’s 16 manho and is doing rude things with creme eggs. I’m such a nun.

Grindcore

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I saw “Roger Dodger”. Here’s what other people thought of it as they left the theatre:

The guy walking in front of me: “Like Tarantino used to do.”
The woman walking behind me: “Horrible. Really, really bad.”

It was neither. It was about a fellow whose nephew shows up and asks him to help him be a hit with the ladies. But while it was about the art (or science) of seduction, it’s also about ree-lay-shon-ships. This lady sitting a few seats down from me laughed a lot at stuff that wasn’t remotely funny. Like, there’d be a cut to a new scene and she’d laugh.

Tomorrow night I will have houseguests:

man, its going to be farken choice. you are farkrn choice for putting us up for the night. perhaps you are innocent and naive and have never hosted dodgy rock n roll musicians in your innocent unspotlt flat before? yes, that’ll be it. if thats the case, apologies in advance. but hey, you might get a nice article for your zine out of it.

Oh my!

st00 came over and we watched the Brit Awards. J. Timberlake sang a medley of songs then Kylie came out and they performed “Rapture” and Justin grabbed her arse and it was magnificent. st00 accused me of liking Robbie Williams, and I was going to get all defensive and be like “I DO NOT LIKE HIM!!!!”, but then I realised that actually if I was in his rockstar manor with cocaine and champagne all that shit, I wouldn’t be complaining. Well, something like that, anyway.