Groovy Day

I'm sitting here in my little shop on King Street and everyone who walks by looks kind of groovy. They've all got their groovy shoes on, there's a groovy little bounce in their walk, a groovy smile on their groovy lips as they talk to their groovy friends about groovy little things.

The goths, the emos, the grungies and the hippies and the skater dudes, groovy one and all. Even the bland ones today, somehow they've got a little bland groove going on.

It's like the radio man said, "Hey groovy people, wake up and get out of bed, and be as grrrroovy as you can because it's International Groovy Day."

And every one jumped out of bed and said hey yeah, let's get groovy today.

Makes me wish I hadn't slept in.

Under A Blood Red Moon

Just over one year ago The Dreaded One and I had traveled to Turkey to see a full solar eclipse in a national park just outside Antalya. Tonight there was a full lunar eclipse in Australia that turned the moon red. Not sure if the red business happens during all lunar eclipses, but it was pretty special.

I thought I was going to miss the whole show because I was working, but I managed to slip out through one of the Opera House back doors and it was a great sight. I grabbed a couple of the Bangladeshi kitchen hands and an apprentice on the way so they could see the eclipse too. Loads of people were out there all looking up. The Bangladeshis chatted quietly in their language, English being a constant struggle, and after about 5 minutes one said to me, "Chef... what is happening?"

I explained what an eclipse was all about, pointed at the moon and then where the sun was (it obviously looked like I was pointing at the ground), I winged it about the redness and said it was some weird kind of light refraction phenomenon.

The kitchen hand looked at me blankly the whole time and half nodded when I stopped making words at him. We went back inside.

"That explanation," the apprentice said to me, "went so far over his head."

Guy probably thinks I'm totally mad.

Pretty moon though.

Tanja Liedtke

I've written quite recently about that feeling of living on borrowed time. Fuck me if stories like this don't make me feel even more like that. This was really sad.

There's lots of newspaper stuff about it, but I like how Chris handles the story. Google for more info.

Typical Day At The Office

Today everything about my shop was giving me the shits. I just didn't want to be there.

Still, it's quiet and I have to write a story about Earthdance. I do a lot of background reading and get started, and suddenly my story about Earthdance has talking whales in it. This amuses me a lot. I start to wonder if the new editor will let me get away with as much as the old editor did.

A good friend who won't let me call her by her name logs on and we have an extensive discussion about minions and how cool it would be to have them. I decide that minions will be the topic of my next Grumpy column.

But then I start to wonder if maybe something to do with my involvement with APEC might have better comic potential than minions. Did I mention my involvement with APEC? I'm going to be working as one of the chefs at the Sydney Opera House where the Asia Pacific Economic Community conference is being held - a building that may as well have a big bullseye on the side. Fucking hell, they really chose a hard to pick target, didn't they.

Anyway, if my background is cleared by ASIO and the CIA and whoever else is doing the security checks, I'll be part of the team feeding the likes of George Bush and his Australian girlfriend John Howard. Regular readers will find this amusing because you know how qualified I am. And if you're an ASIO or CIA first time reader, I hope you find the Australian girlfriend line as amusing as it's meant to be.

The Earthdance story is going well, but I am interrupted by a promoter/DJ friend who comes into the shop to pick up ticket sales. In the course of the conversation he wonders if it was a bad thing to have a joint before having his massage. His face is all mooshy from putting it in that doughnut pillow thing but he is as hyperactive as always, and a bit grumpy that he is not doing the closing set on the psytrance stage at Earthdance like he usually does.

He leaves. I go back to the talking whales. I have a feeling I won't be able to make it to the theatre so I email the relevant person to change my tickets to Saturday night.

Lucky because a guy comes into the shop around about the time I decide to close up and leave. He stays. And Stays. And stays. By this time I really am not happy. It's been an okay day sales-wise, but I just want to not be there.

Then the guy starts to buy stuff. And more stuff. And, like, a ridiculous amount of stuff. We start talking. He is going to Burning Man. I mention Soulclipse, the eclipse festival I went to in Turkey last year. He was there. We chat. We get along okay. I ask what he does for work because he has an American accent. He tells me he is with the CIA.

That last bit was a joke. The Customer From Heaven is with a company called something like Giggle? Gaggle? Google! It's Google, and he is setting up a Sydney office. I think Google people must have nice pay packets.

So anyway, long and short of it, what with minions and talking whales and stoned promoters and Men From Google, I had a total mood swing. I loved the shop again.

Eyes Wide Shut

Saturday night at the party was your perfect party night (for an indoor party). So many good people, so much good music.

However the highlight for me was missed by me. I didn't see it happen, just caught the tail end as my eyes were opened, and it has made me laugh.

I frequently lose myself in the music. Sometimes I like checking others out, other times I close my eyes and totally get lost in the music.

At one point this very cute girl decides to dance with me. She stomps and raunches and wiggles and smiles and is very hot and eventually wonders... why is this guy dancing with his eyes closed when I am doing all of this?

I open my eyes just as this very cute girl turns and stomps and wiggles and smiles her way to another part of the room.

The Dreaded One later tells me she thought about tapping me on the shoulder and telling me what was happening but it was just too damned funny.

Tee. Fucking. Hee.

Shopping

Although the shop has been a drag lately, it just rocks today. Today is the reason we stuck with it through tough times. It can be such a silly amount of fun. It's obviously good when it's been busy and there have been sales, but it's the other stuff that really makes it so cool. This week I chatted to a couple of Goths visiting from interstate who loved the shop, an emo girl with green hair who said she hoped the shop was not going to close, and a visitor from the suburbs of the Central Coast who was amazed that such a shop existed and walked around for ages like she thought she was on another planet.

Recently I had this conversation with a customer:

Him: So that's two expensive items I'm going to buy - will you give me a discount?

Me: No.

Him: Come on. Just knock ten bucks off.

Me: Why would I do that? You're going to buy them anyway.

Him: Yeah, but I just want a discount.

Me: You're an arsehole. I can sell them to someone else without giving a discount but in any case you're fully going to buy them regardless.

Him: Yeah but you're going to give me a discount anyway because you're a good guy.

We were laughing through all this and I gave him his discount and he left the store a happy customer, surprise gift for his girlfriend tucked under his arm. It was a funny little encounter that left me smiling - such a small discount that it obviously wasn't about the money. And I'll bet he'll be back.

Also, I've had Vancouverians in all week. They googled Sydney psytrance and discovered the shop and man do they love it. They've been back three times during the week, bought loads of clothes, shown me pictures from back home, brought friends to the shop, told me they're coming back with a CD they meant to bring to give to me... and while they're in the shop other customers I don't know tell me how sad they are that we're trying to sell the shop because they love it so much, a friend calls in and I tell him about Jocey falling over in the park and we stand there in the middle of the shop having a really good laugh, then plan to catch up for a beer at the party tonight.

I look around and realise that the Canadians are going to be at the party and they're going to have a blast and make loads of friends, and I know already that I am probably going to become a friend and that they are going to totally adore The Dreaded One... and this is a day at work.

The shop is empty now and I'm typing this while Sirius Issness is belting through the speakers, and I am really sad that we couldn't make the shop work. But I'm also pretty chilled about it because of the good parts.

Like, what other environment are you going to have someone walk up to you and say, "Hey Lee, this is my friend Ben. He's Megatron."

Days like this, I know that I am really, really going to miss the shop.

Imagine Toi Review

Just a quickie - saw former Cirque du Soleil clown Julien Cottereau last night. What a magical performance it was. His style is a bit like the Umbilical Brothers (who were in the audience), a mime act with vocal sound effects, only where the Australian duo are full-blown slapstick comedians his act is one of charm and wonder. Hilarious stuff that makes you use your imagination to realise what he is doing with his imagination. I had been concerned about the number of kids in the audience but I soon realised that there are few sounds more pure and joyous and totally infectious than that of a child in raptures of laughter (yes I did say that AND meant it). This was a funny and warm experience and I left the theatre feeling more happy than I have in a long time.

I haven't managed to get review space for this one so I think I am going to start a separate theatre review blog after all.

Meantime, if you live in Sydney the show is on in The Playhouse, Sydney Opera House until September 1. Go see it.

PS, Update, longer review here.

Happy August 9

Your senses heighten. This is extreme. The best. Emotion becomes almost more than you can bear. Best feeling ever. Total bodymindfuckwow.

Then black. Really black. Just nothing.

More time than you are aware of.

Then white. Really white. Just white and alien voices. Tubes. Machinery. Numb kind of pain. Vague understanding that the aliens are angels.

Or nurses.

Did I mention the confusion? The lack of memory? The total absence of self? Who you are, it's just not there.

Some memory.

Gaps.

And then maybe it tumbles in and it turns out you are a lucky one. You've survived because someone loves you and because strangers have done their job.

That and a whole lot more was August 9 a handful of years ago. Is it five? I think it's five.

Have been living on borrowed time ever since.

PS - six years from now the full Men's Health article will be published on Your Friends House.

Treading Water At Turtle Bay

Tired. Lazy. Here is a short story of mine that appeared in a very nice book (Southerly) about seven (?!) years ago.

These stories may as well go up here as be sentenced to the silence of pages in now unread magazines and books.

I hope you enjoy.



TREADING WATER AT TURTLE BAY

"I think we should go to Turtle Bay."
This stops me mid-sentence. I close my eyes and feel my jaw muscles dance. Louise cannot see that my eyes are closed, not through the book, not through the sunglasses. I have not heard of Turtle Bay, but I do know I don't want to go there. Not when I am so content here. For several moments I fantasize that Louise has not spoken at all. I feel some sweat trickle down my back. I want to reach for my drink but don't dare move for fear of spoiling my fantasy.
"Pat? Did you hear me? I said I want to go to Turtle Bay."
I dog-ear the page and put the book on the ground beside the deck chair. I lean forward for my drink. The brown neck above the foam cooler is warm against my lips, the beer inside is cold.
"Where is it?” I ask, “and why do you want to go there?"
Louise tells me that it's near a place I've heard of but know nothing about. I think I’ve seen the name on sugar packets or bottles of cheap rum. She tells me that turtles go there to lay eggs on the beach. She tells me it would be really interesting.
I nod slowly, but not in agreement. I watch one of the other hotel guests pull herself from the pool and walk across to her deck chair where she settles without bothering to towel her glistening skin; second fantasy of the day.
"Pat? What do you think?"
"I don't know. I'm just as happy to stay here. What is it - two, three hours' drive?"
"About that."
"North?"
Louise nods.
"It'll be hot."
"It's hot here."
"Yes but ... we're here already."
"The turtles aren't."
I couldn't be less interested in the turtles, but I can't say no. That would be selfish. She must be made to realize for herself that it's a bad idea.
"We might go all that way,” I caution, “and there might not be any turtles.”
"This is their season." Louise holds up the brochure she's been reading.
"Anyway, we won't get any accommodation. You need to plan ahead for these things."
"If I get accommodation can we go?"
"If it's a tourist attraction we won't get any accommodation."
"But if I do ...?"
"It’ll be booked out. It gets really crowded during turtle season.”
Louise smiles as she stands up. "I'll make some calls and see if I can get us in somewhere."
I give her a suit-yourself shrug and a don’t-get-your-hopes-up smile as I aim my face to the sun.

Should have just said no, I tell myself, scowling darkly. And somewhat pointlessly, I acknowledge. But it makes me feel better, so I continue to scowl and berate myself for not having the balls to say no.
We've been on the road for three and a half hours and there's still another sixty two kilometres to go and the air conditioning's broken and Louise The Turtle Queen is sleeping like a baby. I consider jumping on the brake for no other reason than waking Louise, but that would be childish, so I just entertain myself by thinking about it. I also think about turning around and trying to make it back to the hotel before she wakes, but that would be foolish. Almost there now, I think gloomily. Soon my scowl starts to soften. Almost there. And it's only for a couple of days anyway. I shrug. At least we haven't broken down. At least we haven't had an accident. I sigh into the heat and think about turtle eggs on toast.

"You're lucky," the manager tells us in a thin, dry voice as he takes the key from the peg board. "This was a last minute cancellation, otherwise we're all booked up."
"That was lucky," I say. "Lucky us."
The man is old - seventy years or more - and thin and leathery. His face is angular with large, dark eyes like wet gemstones. He tells us to follow him in the car, he'll take his push bike.
"Do you suppose," I ask Louise when we are back in the stifling atmosphere of the car, "that everyone in Turtle Bay looks like a turtle?"
Louise giggles and slaps me casually on the shoulder.
We follow the manager as he leads us leisurely along a winding path through the caravan park. He rings the bike's bell from time to time and waves one large hand loosely at his guests. Kids are everywhere, playing games, bombing each other in the pool. I realize that although I have not set foot in a caravan park since I was their age, it is all so familiar it could have been here, just last week.
The manager waves us to our caravan and keeps riding. I pull into the car space and switch off the engine. We sit and look at our caravan, a relic, I suspect, from everyone's childhood. Already I know that the interior is fake wood grain, chipped chrome and green vinyl. Somewhere in the distance is the ping of a tent peg being driven into the ground.
"Not exactly five stars," I comment.
"It's all I could get. Besides, what do you expect for $12 a night?"
The humidity at this place is something I've never experienced before. I feel short of breath as we walk to the front door. I can imagine going mad in such heat. There are a few more caravans near ours and some aluminum cabins with air conditioners humming. There is a path leading down to a low, scrub-like forest beyond which is the beach. A father and son are walking along the path armed with fishing tackle.
Louise unlocks the door and we step into our $12 a night accommodation. I actually gasp.
"Unbelievable," I say. "Someone's left the air conditioner on hot."
After a brief inspection I am dismayed to find that this is not the case; there is no air conditioner. Our caravan is simply hot. Suffocatingly hot. Hot in red, shimmering letters. We open all the windows, winding the little crank handles furiously, and quickly escape to the comparatively cool heat outside. There is no breeze, no relief at all.
"You could go mad in this heat," I mutter. "Completely - "
"Let's go for a swim," Louise suggests. "Let’ cool off."
Images of heat-induced madness grow more vivid as we walk along the worn track through the scrub. Louise walks silently in front, and I wonder what she is thinking. It is generally unwise to intrude on such silences, especially with the observations, suggestions and recriminations I really want to make. I decide to save these for later.
On the other side of the scrub the track dips down before rising to a sandy crest covered sparsely with tough sand grass, and once over this there is at last some relief. The breeze, though warm, is soothing, almost intoxicating. I am stung with happiness. I stand with my eyes closed and feel the breeze wash around me. I am aware that I am smiling foolishly, but I am too happy to care. My comfort is sublime. I dream I am alone, drifting through eternity, a single, utterly content being caressed by this divine breath ...
"Better?" Louise asks.
I open my eyes. I am me again. At this place. "Yes," I say. "Better."
The beach is surprisingly deserted. I guess that everyone is reluctant to leave their air conditioners. We stop at a random place, spread our things and shed most of our clothes. I sit cross-legged like some guru.
"Aren't you coming in?"
I am content to sit and enjoy the breeze. I do not want to be wet. I do not want salt drying on my skin.
"Come on," Louise says playfully. "Come in with me." She tries to tug me to my feet. I force a smile and tell her maybe later. She pulls my hand once more before releasing it, her smile vanishing in an instant. She looks at me blankly for a moment before turning sharply and heading down to the water. She walks over the dark sand and dives into the water without hesitation, and while submerged the only evidence of her existence is her small pile of things. I stare at her things, and then I start to bury them. I bulldoze the sand over them, and when they are completely buried I sit back and it’s as if Louise has never existed. I am truly alone, as free as the last living creature.
Louise’s head and shoulders break the surface and sits like flotsam on the rise and fall of the swell. She looks up into the hard, blue sky, then out to the horizon. She is refusing to look in my direction in case I see her looking. I sigh and smirk. I stand and adjust my swimmers.
The water is like the breeze, somehow cool and warm at the same time. I walk lazily into the water, and soon the rolling swell is lifting me from the earth and setting me gently down again. I find this easy rhythm quite hypnotic. I close my eyes. I could almost fall asleep.
“Nice, huh? Glad we came?”
“Yes,” I agree, “nice. But where are these turtles?”
“They come out at night. They come up onto the beach at night and lay their eggs.”
“Oh.”

I am surprised by the number of people who want to see some turtles lay some eggs at 11 o’clock at night. Hundreds of them. Or a hundred, anyway. At least a hundred. Or maybe it’s only fifty. Or eighty. Or one hundred and thirty six. If there were only four people I would still be astonished that they would want sit up all night waiting for something to lay an egg. We are sitting on the ground waiting to be dispatched in small groups as each reptile is spotted making its way onto land. We have been through the turtle museum and have looked at shells and eggs and back-lit photos of turtles laying eggs and even dead babies in jars. People are talking in murmurs. Some - other city folk like us - are looking awe-struck into the vast depths of the brilliant night sky. An old man nearby has brought along a folding canvas chair in which he is sitting, slumped over, snoring gently. I look around and think that I am probably the drunkest turtle watcher present. Perhaps I am the drunkest turtle watcher who has ever lived. What in God’s name, I wonder, am I doing here?
“It’s kind of exciting, don’t you think?” Louise whispers. “It’s like an invasion or something. It’s like being a kid again. I remember when my parents got me out of bed at three in the morning to look at the comet. It’s a bit like that.”
“Did you see the comet?”
“I can’t remember. I just remember that sense of excitement. They said it was a once in a lifetime experience.”
“Getting out of bed at three in the morning?”
“You know what I mean.”
Another turtle has been spotted. Another group is dispatched. By my count, the next turtle is ours. If there is a next one. What if there are no more turtles? What will the troops do then? A constant stream of people is still trickling through the museum and joining the expectant crowd. Why do they assume there will be more turtles? The arrogance, I think. What is it with people?
“What are you shaking your head at, Pat?”
“What?”
“You were shaking your head again. What were you thinking about?”
“Shaking my head?”
“You do it all the time.”
“I do not.”
“Yes you do.”
She could be right. Maybe I was shaking my head. People sometimes tell me I frown too. I frown as I consider this.
“Well?” Louise prompts.
I scratch my head and shrug and wish that I was uncouth enough to open one of the beers I have in my shoulder bag. I just want to get drunker or go to sleep.
“Oh I don’t know, just something that guy said in there,” I lie, referring to the museum curator.
“Mm?”
“Um ... when he told us that the sex of the baby turtles is determined by how deep in the sand the mother buries the eggs. I mean, yeah right. Guy’s got his wires crossed, for sure. It’s just too bizarre.”
Then I think about drinking beer and smoking cigarettes in a crowded pub every Thursday night, from a turtle’s point of view.
The longer I sit and wait the more restless I become. I want to go, but having waited so long it would appear churlish to leave now. Nearby, a fellow turtle hunter is deploying a volley of the most malicious weaponry devised by humankind. The two syllabled -
“Mar-arm?”
“Sh!”
“But Mar-arm?”
“I said sh!”
“Bud I don’t care about the turdles. I wanna go home. Mum? Mar-arm!”
I despise him whilst embracing him as a kindred spirit. I tip my head back and lose myself in the starry sky.

“Did you hear me Pat?”
I cannot tell how long I have been away.
“What?” I say as I close my eyes and roll the stiffness from my neck.
“I just wondered why you did it.”
“Sorry, must have dozed off or something. Did what?”
“Buried my things in the sand.”
I frown as I ponder this. “I don’t know,” I tell her. “I don’t think I knew I was doing it.”
“It just seems a strange thing to do.”
Her knees are drawn up under her chin. She is gazing at a twig she is twirling slowly between her thumb and forefinger. Strangely, she looks lost. I wince as feelings stir. I know I love her. I really know this.
“Okay folks,” comes a hushed voice infused with excitement, “we’ve got another one. I’ll take everyone up to ... here -“
“But Mar-arm ...”
“And the little boy too. Everybody follow me.”
Louise tosses the Twig Of Infinite Mystery casually to the side and stands. She waits for a few moments before falling in behind the group as it makes its way into the darkness. I swear quietly as I climb awkwardly to my feet. Using the cover of darkness and movement I fumble about in my bag. I twist the top off the bottle and silently toast the cosmos.
There are people everywhere, shadows moving through the darkness. Here and there torches cut the darkness, beams of light dancing madly across the sand. And after waiting for so long in relative silence the noise comes as a surprise; the white hiss of the surf washing over the wet sand, talk, laughter, the occasional shout. At various points along the beach, far into the distance, groups of people are huddled around pools of light, esoteric rites taking place. I stumble along over small dunes and hollows, entranced by the strangeness of it all. I have lost Louise. I have no idea where my group is.
I come across a small procession slowly making its way down to the water’s edge. At the front of the group there is a woman aiming a torch at the sand just in front of a large turtle which is clearly weighed down with ineffable weariness. A kid wants the torch but the woman grips it with dogged determination.
“What are you doing?” I ask quietly.
“What does it look like? I’m leading it back to the water.”
The turtle is not walking or even crawling; it is shoving itself over the sand. Each lurch forward is followed by a few moments of rest.
“Come on baby,” Torch Woman coos, “you can do it. Come on.”
If Louise was here she would be telling me not to say a thing.
“I don’t get it,” I tell the group. “Why ...?”
“Weren’t you listening to the ranger?” the woman admonishes in a matronly tone. “They follow the light. It looks like the moon and they follow it to the water.”
“It’s the breakers, darling,” comes a voice from the entourage. “He said the white light resembles the white of the breakers..”
“It’s the moon, Dad. Of course it’s the moon.”
“But they’re prehistoric creatures,” I point out. “They’ve been doing this sort of thing since ... well since prehistoric times. Don’t you think it’s heading to the water in spite of you and not because of you? Do you really think that waggling a torch about in its face -”
“Excuse me, but I don’t think you’re from this group at all.”
“No. Sorry. Excuse me. I’ll go and find my group, but you keep up the good work. All of you. You’re all doing excellent turtle work. “
I decide to wander aimlessly, drinking as I soak up the balminess, but almost immediately I bump into someone whose job is, it seems, to patrol the beach for stragglers like me.
“Are you here for the turtles?” the man asks in an earnest monotone.
“Yes,” I tell him in my own secret agent’s tone, ”I’m here for the turtles.”
“Then come this way. This one’s laying.”
The man leads me by the arm to a nearby group before vanishing phantom-like into the darkness. I look around at the under lit faces while a park ranger speaks inconsequentially about the number of eggs and the high mortality rate of the hatchlings. Louise is not present, but as no one has yet accused me of being an infiltrator from another group I decide to stay. I look down at the turtle. Its expression seems one of both intense concentration and desperate boredom as soft, shiny eggs fall from its rear end into a sandy pit. The ranger is on her hands and knees trying to angle a beam of light up into the egg-producing orifice.
“And ... yes, here comes another one!”
Another soft egg drops gently into the pit.
“So there’s a lot of job satisfaction, then, in shining a torch into a lizard’s private parts and stating the eye-glazingly obvious?” is a question I decide, inexplicably, to keep to myself. At least for now. I look around at my fellow spectators and am impressed by the range of expressions - everything from the awed to the bored. One little boy is openly disgusted by such a vulgar display. A young girl sitting next to him is not interested in what is happening at the other end; she is content to gaze lovingly into the ancient, glassy eyes. She is muttering to herself, or to the creature, perhaps marveling at the wonderful things those eyes have seen.
“Jesus.”
“Shit.”
“Bloody hell.”
“Oh my god I’m blind!”
“Please don’t take photos,” the ranger requests politely. “It’s not good for the turtle’s eyes.”
She continues to speak, but I am preoccupied with rubbing and blinking the spots from my eyes.
“You sir? Would you like to put out your hand?”
“Wha.. .? I reply as I instinctively put out my hand.
“ .. . to really experience it. Feel how soft it is? Feel the mucusy covering? Pass it along for everyone to experience.”
When I realize what I am holding I cannot pass it on for others to experience quickly enough. I shake my head, baffled by this woman’s behavior, as I flick the remaining warm slime from my hand. Others are apparently getting some thrill out of holding the egg. I am baffled by this too.
“All right,” the ranger calls as the turtle starts to use its thick, leathery fins to flick sand over the nest. “I need the egg back now.”
The egg is not forthcoming.
“Can I have the egg back please. I need to return it to the nest now.”
Milky light illuminates facial shrugs. We look at each other and frown in concern.
“Look, this is serious. If that egg isn’t put back in the nest now it will die. Now whoever has the egg, hand it over. You sir - I gave the egg to you. Who did you give it to?”
“I gave it to him,” I tell her, pointing.
“And who did you give it to?”
“I dunno. Her, I think.”
“Maam?”
“I haven’t got the egg.”
“Then who has?”
“Jason have you got the egg?”
“Why would I steal a stupid turtle’s egg?” is the belligerent defense.
“Because if I find out that you have …” hangs the threat.
“Frisk Jason,” I suggest helpfully. “He sounds like an egg thief to me.”
“Get stuffed mate.”
I wince at the sharp crack of flesh against flesh. “How many times have I told you not to talk like that?”
“Ow. Ya got me on the eye again. This sucks.” Jason marches angrily into the night, shouting back at us, “I haven’t got the stupid egg, and if I did I’d squash it and throw it in the bin with all the smelly rubbish!”
Jason’s mother runs after him. “Sorry, darling. I didn’t mean to get you in the eye. I meant to get you on the side of the head. You must have moved. Jase?”
“This is too much,” I mutter as I turn to leave.
“Sir - where are you going? No one leaves until I have the egg back. That egg … if that egg isn’t put back in the nest it will die. Whoever has the egg please think about the baby turtle. It doesn’t stand a chance out of the nest. It’s .. . it’s not fair.” Her voice is trembling with emotion now, and this fills me with contempt.
“Look, forget about it,” I tell her. “It didn’t have much of a chance anyway. You told us that most of them get eaten by seagulls or sharks - what’s the difference?”
“But that’s nature. This just isn’t .. .”
“It isn’t what?”
“Pat? Is that you? What’s going on?”
“Someone,” the ranger accuses in italics, “stole a turtle egg.”
“And who was the genius who took the egg out of the nest?”
“Pat, did you steal that egg?”
I am more depressed than angry that Louise would as such a foolish question.
“For god’s sake, Louise. You must be joking. What the hell would I steal a bloody turtle egg for? Why do you say things like that? I mean, you think someone knows you .. .”
The light is so weak that I cannot make out Louise’s expression. We stand there for several moments, looking blindly at each other.
“I was joking,” Louise tells me as she turns to walk away. “I was only joking.”


The night is long and hot and deathly still. I lay in the darkness with my head tipped back, my mouth gaping. I am desperately tired, but hour after tortuous hour is spent skimming across the surface of sleep. Occasionally I drop below the surface and almost dream, but this does not last and I am back in this box, clammy sheets rippled about me, head tipped back, drinking the hot, still air.
Beside me, Louise is sound asleep. From time to time she will snuffle and snore quietly. She might mutter slurringly. She grinds her teeth throughout the night, a sound so familiar it no longer bothers me. Our naked bodies touch, move apart, touch again.
This will do it, I think, another hour of this will kill me or drive me completely mad. I must fall asleep. I just can’t take any more of this. Not another minute.

“You’re up early,” Louise says from the doorstep of the caravan where she is sitting, brushing her hair. “Did you sleep well?”
“You’re kidding,” I reply as I look down at the large blisters of moisture on my forearms. I have returned from the shower block and cannot tell if the water is from the cool shower or if it is sweat. It is not full light yet and already the temperature is into the high twenties.
“You didn’t sleep well?”
“I didn’t sleep. I was murderously tired and I just couldn’t sleep.”
“I wonder what that means - murderously tired.”
“I don’t know. I’ll leave you to ponder my parlance while I drag my carcass down to the beach. I have to get out of this.”
I make my way to the beach plodding along the narrow path, arms hanging loosely by my sides. I trudge up the sandy crest and stare at a glorious, golden sunrise through stinging, half-closed eyes. My squint intensifies as I see, far out to sea, a giant waterspout. I have never seen one before. I look around for someone to share it with but the only other person on the beach is an old fisherman, and hell, he probably sees giant waterspouts every day of his life. I walk over the sand, vaguely aware of the chaotic mess of footprints, and down to the water’s edge. The sea bed drops away quite sharply and the water level quickly reaches my waist, my shoulders, and then I am swimming into the rolling swell. I remain focused on the waterspout, dancing and swaying on the horizon, as I swim farther out into deeper and darker water. My arms and legs ache as they sweep and scissor. I am in poor condition and am soon exhausted, but I push on regardless. I feel a desperate need to keep going. I want to be far out to sea. I need to make it to that watery vortex. I swim on and on, lost in my obsession.
I am jolted from my folly as true exhaustion sets in. I slip below the surface. My limbs are heavy. I sink further and further down, convulsing as I resist the urge to breathe. My wide eyes scream into the darkness. I see things. Shapes. Shadows. Things moving towards me and away from me. Something brushes against my leg. It feels rough, like shark skin. I tip my head back and look up at the vast halo above and know that I am doomed. This knowledge is terror in its purest, most blissful splendor. I reach out to the light. I can breathe this light. I can breathe it.
The halo shatters as some animal lust possesses me, propels me up with unexpected violence. The light is suddenly hard and dry. I retch into it, drink from it. I hear a strange barking noise and realize that it is my own desperate breathing. My arms and legs, though cramping with pain, have found the life to flail heavily through the water, and I continue to breathe, my breath gradually falling from desperate to merely exhausted.
Using a clumsy series of kicks and strokes I manage to spin by degrees until I am facing the shoreline. I am appalled (and vaguely impressed) by just how far I have managed to swim. I know that I cannot make it back; I can barely keep my head above the surface. I simply cannot make it. I laugh a little and feel hysteria close by. There is no logical way to explain this, I think. How did I - how did this happen? How did I get myself into this?
Through stinging eyes I look at the white ribbon of sand. Even from this distance I recognize the small figure walk down onto the beach. I know she is looking for me. She looks first one way along the beach, then down the other before doing a double salute to the horizon. I smile and want to wave to her but I don’t have the strength. Besides, if one limb ceases moving I know I will sink again.
She sees me. She runs to the water’s edge. She doubles over. Is she laughing? Is she laughing at me? No, she is not laughing. The fisherman runs to her. There is pointing and waving. The fisherman runs from the beach towards the caravan park.
Louise and I look at each other across this seemingly impossible expanse of water, and we wait for something to happen.

Three Things That Made Me Laugh This Weekend

Overview of a large weekend: Finished my temporary shitty cafe job at 3pm, headed in to Sydney Opera House for another full shift at 4pm. Home. Sleep. Opened the shop Saturday morning as I received a text from shop partner who was supposed to be taking over at 3pm so that I could head down to The Opera House for another night shift. He's been out all night and even though it's 11am he's still kind of out and can I please organise someone else to take over at 3. Lots of expletives. That squiggly vein on my temple throbs a lot. I call around but the backups have plans. I ask a friend who has never worked in the shop if she can do it and she proves what I have long suspected; she's a bit of an angel. I spend the first couple of hours in the shop writing out instructions and procedures. Then I flick my brain switch and write the review of the play I saw on Thursday, which is due first thing Monday morning. I hit The Opera House at about 4.30pm. Finish at 10.30pm. The Dreaded One and I have planned to go to a psytrance night but don't actually get our shit together until about 4am due to the high level of nonsense we are talking whilst blobbing on the couch. We go to the club and have a couple of hours of fun. Back home at around 6am and prepare to go to a psy party in the park. Make it there at around 11am and have a blast. Serious fun. It is going until 10pm Sunday night but I have an Important Meeting with a Cool Dude on Monday afternoon (which I have just returned from) so I attack the day early with the intention of straightening up enough to be Mr Charming Pants for The Cool Dude. We get home around... sketchy on the details here, but I did have the strength of will to leave what was a pretty damn fun party early. Fell asleep on couch. Woke self up with inadvertent finger poke to the eye due to sleepy head nod. The Dreaded One laughed at this. Food appeared. Ate. Drank wine. The Dreaded One fell asleep so I poked her in the eye and laughed at that. Made it to bed at about 10.30pm, having packed in rather a lot.

So the three things that made me laugh?

At the club for our brief appearance. Dancing. Loads of Israeli's who love their psytrance almost as much as the Brazilians do. They're all pretty drunk. I feel disturbingly sober. Still, it's fun in a messy kind of way. Spilled booze makes it the stickiest dance floor ever.

At one point this big wall poster comes away from the wall and wafts down to the floor. It sits on the sticky floor, just being all big and white and oblongular. There's a girl dancing just in front of me, dancing just on the edge of the poster, so I tap her on the shoulder and say, "Excuse me - you have a little piece of toilet paper stuck to your shoe."

She freaks out a little and looks for the little piece of toilet paper stuck to her shoe. I say no, this piece of toilet paper and wave my arms at the poster. She gets what I mean and doubles over laughing. She looks up at me as she laughs and I laugh too, and isn't that the best feeling? Making someone laugh like that.

Then her boyfriend who has watched this without knowing what was so funny comes over all possessive and wraps his arms around her and starts snogging her. And I'm thinking it's cool, dude, I didn't want to put The Big Kahuna inside your girlfriend, I just made a joke.

Second thing that made me laugh... at the party in the park there are these weird sculptures scattered around the place (it's a psytrance party so there are also lots of scattered people scattered around the place). They look like elongated doughnuts... or like big eggs with holes through them (and yeah, I'm talking about the sculptures, not the scattered people). Someone tells us that earlier in the day someone was taken to hospital because they tried to dive through the hole through the middle of the sculptures and split their head.

Like, I feel for them and everything, but this is exactly the kind of shit tripped out psy-people are doing all the time, so I can't help but laugh (and it's just reminded me that I still haven't told you about the tripper who tried to make friends with the ostrich). And looking at the hole they tried to dive through, it's not exactly small. In fact it's so big that I consider having a go at diving through one myself... but I have an Important Meeting with A Cool Dude the following day and I don't really want to explain that the fresh stitches in my face are a result of trying to jump through the hole in the middle of a giant egg in the park.

Third thing that made me laugh... talked with lots of people in the party in the park Had a really good conversation with a lovely girl called Jocey. Music's pumping, people are stomping or sitting around talking and laughing, everything good. We're having a really good chat about lots of stuff. Standing there chatting. Listening. Talking. Not moving. The ground, being a park, is big and green and flat. It is also not moving.

Suddenly Jocey starts flapping her arms about and kind of teetering like she's a tight rope walker. I'm a bit stunned because I have no idea what brought it on. Her arms do spastic windmills in the air and she bends at the waist, first one way, then all the others. Her back arches backwards and she bends fully until she is touching the ground with her fingertips. She stays like this for several seconds while I helpfully stutter, "Erm... what... are you... is this a normal thing... um..."

Jocey finally kind of springs back to a standing position, looks at me, giggles a bit and says, "That was close."

"What was that?" I ask. "What did you just do?"

"I've had vodka and I think I just fell over. Happens all the time. Friends tell me they don't know I'm drunk because I hold myself together so well, but sometimes I fall over."

I've just remembered more things that made me laugh. You'll have to come back another time.

Major Bang Review

Latest of my reviews to appear in Drum. It struck me again how easily normal people laugh. I think I smiled a couple of times but didn't make any of the hahas. I don't know whether that was because there was a very human message at the heart of the thing and it was making me think too much to laugh... I don't know. It happened at A Porthole Into The Minds Of The Vanquished too, although that had no message as such, I think I was distracted from the humour because of the inventiveness of the show.

Anyway, here's my 350ish words worth. Last line didn't come out the way I'd intended. I was trying to say that part of the show's point seemed to be that in reality most of us in Western society are largely less under threat from terrorism than we are from more mundane threats, like traffic accidents or illness, yet this culture of fear exists and is nurtured by the governments, more than likely as a distraction. Here in Sydney we've recently had tax payers' money ploughed into the promotion of the "Go Bag", a bag of emergency items we're supposed to have at the ready in case we find ourselves under attack or victims of natural disaster.

If this is not a case of the government asking us to live our lives in fear, what is it? Besides a bit of accidental comedy in itself.

MAJOR BANG
OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE DIRTY BOMB

12 months ago I was on a train in London headed for Heathro Airport. Crowded train, lots of travelers. An American woman started getting jittery about a suitcase that had no apparent owner. Panic rising, she started asking people if they owned the suitcase. Crowd reaction was a mixture of what the fuck is she on about and heeeey, maybe it is a bomb. In the end she woke the guy sitting next to the suitcase and he said yes, it was his, and he went back to sleep. Stupid American. And yet...

This is what Kirk Lynn’s play does. It lampoons the culture of fear we’re burdened with in the Age Of Terror while at the same time making it obvious that in so many ways, we do have reason to fear. It’s funny, sure, but it also gets into your head and will have you discussing it for hours afterwards and thinking about for days.

The patchwork story starts with an abandoned backpack. It could be a bomb. It could be a backpack. What if it’s just a backpack? What if the treacherous symbolism we now attach to abandoned luggage is unfounded? What if our jitters are unwarranted?

On the surface Major Bang is fun stuff, playing with the bizarre story of the ambitious Detroit boy scout who built a nuclear device at home to earn a merit badge; Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove; sappy movie The Bodyguard; an impressive Lenny Bruce take on the culture of fear; and more. Actor Steve Cuiffo is also a magician so there are a few card tricks and other sleight-of-hand visuals, and his comical dexterity at playing several characters simultaneously is impressive. Maggie Hoffman is his cohort in this performance which surprises and delights like a fireworks display of humour and ideas. The closing soliloquy is poetic and human and quite moving.

Can local government boffins pull their heads out of their “Go Bags” (WTF?) and see Major Bang please? You’re in dire need of the kind of reality hit this absurdist play delivers. Cancer’s scarier than terrorism.

At the Playhouse, Sydney Opera House until 29 July.
LEE BEMROSE

House Head

Check it out. I call the Opera House The Opera Home because these days I am either Faux Chefing there or seeing theatre there to review, then The Dreaded One comes home with this so that if we wake spooning, I have a fluro pink image of The Opera Home burned into my eyes. Fucking sensational.

Who The Hell Is Crash Tyler?

Last night I dreamed I had completed my crime novel and had taken the manuscript to an agent. They liked it and wanted to have a meeting. The agent is a real one who I once sent a dodgy novel manuscript to and I didn't want to jeopardise my chances with this one, so I was using a false name. The pen name my sleeping mind gave me was Crash Tyler.

In real life I have a different name to the one I was born with, and as far as pen names and nicknames go I've been (or tried to be) a variety of different names, and I am always coming up with names for characters in stories. I have never thought of the name Crash Tyler. But that was the name my subconscious mind was having me introduce myself as to my agent.

I quite like it. I may have to build a story for Crash to live in.

Take The Moon Ride

The plain, bare fact of the matter is that I am scared to throw myself into my novel. I have the storyline worked out. I have a five page synopsis including the cast of characters. More information came to light recently about the enigmatic main character (whose name is Quick), so that now I know him well enough to step fully into character, which I have done before.

I have the first 5,000 words written in the form of a short story that was published in a magazine called Crime factory a few years ago. Crime Writer Garry Disher recommended I get in touch with the magazine when I mentioned that as well as stories like Remembering Argos, I also dabble in crime fiction. I think he possibly had something to do with how quickly Quick the short story was accepted. The publisher at the time said he definitely thinks there is room for a Quick novel.

It's all there, waiting to be written. And yet I keep stalling. It's not "writer's block", it's just fear. Fear of comittment, fear of failure... I'm just a useless piece of shit at the moment.

I sat at my desk the other day and mind-watched the novel and almost started writing. I allowed myself to be distracted. I fiddled with other things. I went back to the novel. I watched its complexities and possibilities unfold. I didn't bring a word into existence.

At the end of the day I felt a little sick, because I had let another entire day go by with nothing written.

*

I was fascinated by this though: Bubba Shaggins is alive and well and rumour has it he is contemplating a comeback.

For those who don't know, Bubba Shaggins was (is?) the lead singer/guitarist of legendary Australian psychedelic folk/rock collective Bilbo Nanna Shaggins. BNS released one album in the early '60s called They Came On A Moonbeam. The album, like the band's name, was a dedication to his mother and father who he believed came from another planet. The album remains almost unheard of by the wider music-loving community but has achieved mythical status by "those in the know" for being the most sampled album of all time. Pink Floyd started the ball rolling by sampling the track Cosmic Lullaby on Dark Side of The Moon, and the legion of artist to sample other tracks on range from Led Zeppelin, The Beatles through to more contemporary artists including Jeff Buckley and Simon Posford (Hallucinogen).

The psychedelic music community around the world is buzzing with the news that not only is Bubba Shaggins alive and well and living just out of Nimbin in Northern New South Wales, but that he is putting the finishing touches on a long-awaited - and, many would argue, long overdue - follow up album, reportedly titled Return Of The Moon Rider.

Very exciting stuff.

Devolution

Until a few minutes ago I was convinced that that whining hilton piece of rubbish was the last human being I would ever want to meet.

But I just saw something on the increasingly useless television about an utter utter twizz-head called posh/victoria, appendage to a man called david who kicks balls around a big green oblong and has nice hair.

Jesus fuck... where, exactly, is evolution taking us?

Underbelly Review

I really enjoyed this music and arts festival. Good things are happening at The Carriageworks. This is my little tiny review as it appeared in Drum Media.



UNDERBELLY

I fucked up with this one. I didn’t arrive early enough. I should have gone through the fortnight leading up to Saturday night to check out all the works in progress that would culminate in what turned out to be a pretty amazing music and arts fest. But at least I made it along on Saturday night... did you?

The Carriageworks is a wonderful venue and Underbelly utilised its full potential. It was a visual and aural wonderland, a spellbinding feast for the senses that had this writer wandering around in the daze of a delighted child.

I tried scanning the program to see which performances and installations I wanted to see but in the end gave in and simply allowed myself to be swept along by the ebb and flow of the very colourful crowd. First up I found myself in a darkened room watching a whimsical shadow puppet show about a kid called Minkhead and her friend Bumpy to the sound accompaniment of Meem, and I was completely enchanted.

I was less enchanted by Aural Adventures, a kind of musical game show where the audience held up coloured cards to put the band through hoops; it was kind of funny but basically one joke that went on for too long, and there was too much else going on outside to stay in one place for ¾ of an hour. You couldn’t help but be restless.

Wandering, wandering. Nooks, crannies, sit down and become part of the artwork, expect the unexpected. Magical things were done with shapes and shadows and lighting; a room appeared to have been recently vacated by its down-and-out inhabitants; a suspended block of ice dripped into a pool casting mesmerizing shadows across a concrete wall while a thousand downy feathers swirled underfoot in the chilly winter night air. A maze of giant screens hung from the high ceiling and carried moving images of modern day trains in this cavernous relic; at other times the sculptures were tiny, intricate things. At yet other unexpected moments a seemingly impromptu work of flesh and blood would explode into living art and draw a crowd of surprised and delighted onlookers.

Underbelly played to a capacity crowd and was a wonderful success. I want another one please.

The Underbelly public arts lab & Festival was on at The Carriageworks from 3 – 14 July.

LEE BEMROSE

Pigeon Christ

The column below was one I wrote when back at the other mag, probably about three years ago now. Or two. Something like that. It's being turning gradually yellow, stuck to the living room wall beneath a yellow fluffy duck who has been crucified on a couple of wooden spoons. The duck is known as Pigeon Christ, by those in the know. I hadn't read the column probably since sticking it to the wall. It's become part of the furniture and I've almost stopped seeing it. But I leaned closely and read it again after all this time, and it amused me. I thought I'd share.

Story behind it is that I was flat out trying to make Friday deadline. I was writing more than I probably should have and was starting to feel a little worried about this last job for the week because I had no ideas. Usually there's stacks, but not this time. I finished a pretty angry half page about violence in clubs because a couple of really sweet girls I knew had been bashed in a club I used to go to all the time. I was really angry and I vented (got fan mail for that one)... and then it was time to flick the switch and write some humour.

Nothing. Not good. Not time for nothing.

Then an email came in. It was from a good friend. I read the email and my whole mood changed because here was a gift, here was my column.

The opening few lines are straight out of her email. Somewhere into it I took over and together we produced a pretty damn silly last minute Acid Tongue column. It saved my arse.

Acid Tongue

by Grumpy Bird

I ran out of sleep juice at about half five this morning and I have been lying in bed thinking about nailing pigeons to skateboards and pushing them down a hill. But then it occurred to me that pigeons' feet are probably not the best for nailing, seeing as they are more toe than feet, and really, tying them on just wouldn't have the same effect. And then I thought, it's a bloody good thing Jesus wasn't a pigeon because they never would have been able to crucify him and the last 2000 years would have been so totally different. I mean I can't imagine the Spanish Inquisition happening over a pigeon that didn't get nailed to a plank of wood. And then I thought, maybe it isn't such a good job Jesus wasn't a pigeon... Pigeon Christ, when you think about it the world as we know it simply wouldn't be the world as we know it if Jesus had been a pigeon that wasn't nailed to a cross by some cranky Romans... in fact the symbolism of the cross would never have come about because trying to nail the pigeon to the cross would have made the Romans even crankier and one of them would have eventually suggested nailing the pigeon to some other shaped piece of wood... like cutlery. Yes, a wooden spoon nicked from the Last Supper... whoa - that's another one. If Jesus had been a pigeon nailed to a wooden spoon stolen from The Last Supper, what would Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper have looked like? How would he have managed to get the model pigeons to sit around the feeding bowl for long enough to paint them and... would the disciples have been pigeons too? Wait on... yes. Yes of course the disciples would have been pigeons, and so would Leonardo da Vinci and the cranky, kleptomaniac Romans, they would have all been pigeons. But what would all these pigeons be doing with spoons and what would they be doing trying to nail one of their own kind to cutlery designed by those nuisance humans. Clearly none of it could have happened because it just doesn't make sense. No sense at all... now a duck, on the other hand, is practically built for skateboard nailing.

A Bit Of Crime

I write darker stuff too. Scroll down to my name or click here. Writing this kind of stuff is still fun... just in a twisted way.

Reviews: Dead Caesar and Dinner

Hello, regular reader. You might notice I've dropped the nom de keyboard I was using for this blog and am just using my real name. Why? Because Quick is actually the name of the hero of the crime novel I am about to get back to writing and he's nothing at all like I am. One of those wanky creative things where I needed to separate blog me from the character completely.

What else. Oh The Important Job Interview... Nothing terribly predictable happened, like me running late because my shoelace got caught in the escalator at the railway station and they had to shut the whole thing down and get the emergency rescue people in and in the end I decided that rather than be late I'd leave the entangled shoe there and make it to the interview on time wearing one shoe, which I put in dog poo but didn't notice until the interview was underway.

Nothing typical like that.

Still, it could have been better. I probably won't get the job. I didn't realise how much I wanted it until I arrived at the office. I wanted that job a lot and it would have been the start of New And Good things. Oh well. Getting the interview at all was a bit of a coup and the experience was good.

Below are two reviews as they came out, more or less, in Drum this week. I had intended to expand on the 350 words of column space I'm allowed for each, but I can't be bothered right now. Right now, I want wine.


DEAD CAESAR

Having watched the Chaser team grow ever more desperate for laughs on the small screen (did anyone find the Sophia Loren thing funny?), I was curious to see this play, a comical look at the life and times of Julius Caesar, written by The Chaser’s Chris Taylor.

No desperation here, just a big, silly romp. It’s farce with song and dance, a sprinkle of lefty preaching and loads of laughs. The Monty Python influence is unforced but unmistakable. Dead Caesar played to a packed audience and the laughter rarely stopped.

Actors break out of character, cue’s are missed with precise comic timing, racial stereotypes are nailed, everyone falls down and gets up again, there are songs about togas, songs about scene changes even when there are no scene changes, a very funny bit about a NIDA-trained thespian pissed off because he only gets one line (this is milked to perfection), there’s a bit of cabaret, more silly ditties, stabbing, more stabbing, a song about stabbing, a bit more stabbing, lots of referential jokes from everyone from local theatre critics to Diver Dan to Steve Irwin to Amanda Vanstone, and there are a couple of interludes featuring the stabbing scene as interpreted by the likes of Martin Scorcese and Woody Allen.

And just for good measure, there’s a bit more stabbing.

I agree with playwright Chris Taylor who thinks Shakespeare missed his opportunity when he wrote Julius Caesar, but it’s just as well because it’s given Taylor the opportunity to redress the bard’s oversight. How can a story about a political leader wearing a toga and being stabbed by his closest toga-wearing friends not be funny?

I think even Sophia Loren would find Dead Caesar a bit of a cack.

At Wharf 2 until July 28.
LEE BEMROSE



DINNER

Perfect, wealthy wife Paige holds a dinner party to celebrate the publication of her husband Lars’ new self-help book. The guests include dippy hippy Wynne, former lover of Lars; a scientist mate of Lars, Hal, and his brand new ‘news babe’ trophy wife Sian; and rough around the edges stranger Mike. There’s also the menacing presence of a silent and efficient waiter hired especially for the occasion, and we know from the start that the waiter’s going to do it, but we don’t know exactly what he’s going to do.

The dinner party as a battleground is hardly an original device, but it does present the opportunity for heated discussion of ideas as well as the clash of personalities as egos and personal rivalries are unleashed by copious quantities of wine, thus ensuring The Dinner Party as an enduring theatrical setting. Oh yeah – there’s also plenty of opportunity humour, served, in the case of Moira Buffini's play, with acid.

The humour is probably what will ensure this season is a success. Belinda Giblin is excellent as Paige, so icy and acerbic it’s scary. She skewers her guests and her husband with ice pick precision as her bizarre culinary concoctions are laid out on the lavishly set table. Alice Livingstone as the tree-huggin’ Wynne also has several quite hilarious moments. In fact all characters have their moments, albeit it with varying degrees of success, with the scientist and the news babe feeling a little like caricatures there for the set-up rather than properly fleshed out characters.

And that’s probably the weakest aspect of the play – each character represents something larger, which in turn makes us question what, exactly, the play is saying; it is questioning the notion of fulfillment and what true happiness is. Much is made of Lars’ great tome of wisdom, and there is a great little sight gag which speaks volumes about the self-help industry.

If the play is not completely fulfilling with close scrutiny, it does come close if you simply sit back and enjoy it for it’s deliciously dark comedy. Definitely worth seeing.

At SBW Stables Theatre, Kings Cross until 4 August.
LEE BEMROSE

Choosing

I might start posting some short stories here. Some have been published and disappeared into the secrecy of pages between covers surrounded by books sitting undisturbed on shelves. Others have not been published and might never see the light of day.

The very short one below was written a looooong time ago. I've never believed in what this micro-story is about and I still don't, but the idea is a nice one for the purpose of stories. I can't remember what prompted this story, but I do remember that I sent it in to a radio station for some arts thing and they selected it to read on air. I was driving at the time and was caught by surprise when they mentioned the title. I pulled over to the side of the road and everything seemed to stop because my words were coming out of the radio.

It was a nice little moment in time, and I hope others find the story as warm and fuzzy as it's intended to be. The radio announcer liked it, then speculated because of the androgynous nature of my name, "Do you reckon Lee is a girl or a guy? Hmm... I reckon she's probably a girl."

Enjoy.



CHOOSING

Cats, she said simply and slowly.

He gazed down as though she had tossed the idea before him for his scrutiny.

Cats, he repeated, yes cats could be nice.

This really meant that he thought he had a better idea. She knew this. She knew him.

You have a better suggestion? She asked.

In his strange way, he smiled.

What this time, she wondered. Horses? Birds? Or white-eyed fish from the bottom of the ocean? She thought about cats – fur, warmth, laziness, sleep.

What could be better than cats? She asked.

Again he smiled.

People, he replied.

She thought about this. He watched her think about it.

Eventually, after a time, she shared his smile.

Human beings, she said, a good idea.

They joined hands, as formless entities might join hands, and drifted down once more.

An Introduction

There appear to be a few theatre types dropping by after a mention by this always engaging blogger. It's doing my head in a bit because on the one hand this blog is about silly shit. On the other hand it's been increasingly about theatre reviews, which I sometimes even take seriously. I've been trying to decide whether I should split the two blogs and have one for reviews and theatre discussion, and this one for what it is that I write here... which is... what it is.

Anyway, by way of introduction to people who have not been here before, here is a pretty typical night at the theatre with me. You can scroll down for a couple of reviews that I have taken seriously and there are a bunch of links to others on Sydney Stage, now Australian Stage.

And that's the thing. If you come back - and I do hope you do - you might get a review of Dinner, which I am seeing at The Stables tomorrow night, or Dead Caesar which I am seeing at The Wharf Theatre on Saturday night.

But you're also just as likely to get the story about the tripped-out hippy friend who tried to make friends with a cranky ostrich and was consequently terrorised, which is what I had been intended to post today.

Or if you come back tomorrow you'll no doubt be reading about what went wrong at the Very Important Job Interview I have tomorrow, because that's what happens to me. Stuff goes awry. It just does.

Anyway, hello, and hope to see you again soon.

PS, if you scroll down to this recent post, beware: fruity language warning.

Things Not To Include In Your Resume

I've been sending out a resume for quite a while now that I saved as "Resume." I haven't read it in quite a while. I just write a covering letter and attach the file.

Just minutes ago I got curious and decided to read the actual resume in case in needed to be tweaked or updated.

Horror.

Maybe a year ago I applied for something involving humour (clown? Probably), so I decided then to tailor the resume to the job. Stupidly, I saved it as "Resume" and forgot that it had been comically tweaked.

So ever since then, prospective employers have been reading a resume that includes such things as: "Prior to 1997... look I really can't remember what I was doing prior to 1997 because there was rather a lot of alcohol involved and it's all a bit of a blur. I think I had fun though... lots of blurry fun."

Then there's this gem: "I consider this an achievement worth mentioning because I had always regarded myself as being breathtakingly lazy."

I think I have to implement some sort of resume labeling system. Yes. That's the thing.

Belated Porthole Review

I recommended this production to someone and he went along with half a dozen friends, none of whom liked it. Woopsie. I didn't guffaw quite as much as those around me, but then I'm not a guffawing kind of guy. I did smirk a lot though. It was really very silly.

I'm getting closer to getting serious about separating theatre reviews and my mindless twitterings into two blogs. I just have to come up with a suitable blog name. And then get around to actually doing it.

Anyway, here's this almost as it appeared in Drum Media recently. Bit late if you live in Sydney, but keep an eye out for it if you live elsewhere. I think it's worth checking out. I enjoyed it a lot.



A PORTHOLE INTO THE MINDS OF THE VANQUISHED

Initially I thought this was going to wear thin pretty quickly. It’s absurd musical sketch comedy set in the twilight zone of the mind unshackled to reality. It’s a variety show of weirdness coming to you live from Studio Insomnia. Nothing makes sense. It’s surreal. It’s surprising. And my concerns that it might wear thin unraveled into a purple belly button banister.

In short, this is very silly, very funny stuff. Tamlyn Henderson and Warwick Allsopp morph into a bizarre gaggle of characters existing in that dream place where chaos reigns supreme. Almost asleep but not quite, we see people and things we recognise from the waking world, but nothing predictable happens. It’s a bit like climbing into a Dali painting with the Monty Python team singing a lullaby about iguanas and umbrellas. Totally loopy.

Henderson and Allsop seem like such a perfect creative team that you marvel at the odds of them coming together at all. Both clearly possess a delicious sense of off-kilter humour; both appear to be excellent actors; and they belt out a bloody lovely tune to the musical accompaniment of keyboardist Jeremy Brennan. Apparently the material was written mostly via text messaging while Henderson and Allsopp were away touring on separate ventures. They obviously spent a lot of time trying to amuse and out-weird each other, and we reap the rewards.

So what actually happens on stage? Erm... there’s a kind of radio show with commercials and sleep-deprived late night callers; fractured horoscopes; a self-knowledge quiz (I think that was my favourite segment); a creepy, wise old Chinese guy (hang on – he was the funniest bit); a thoroughly warped promotion for self-improvement (shit – this was the funniest part); there’s a guy trapped inside a phone; a bit about releasing your inner Audrey Hepburn ... it’s all disjointed and funny, but with something potentially disturbing not too far away.

They’ve been hits at local comedy festivals and are now heading to the Edinburgh Festival. I’d wish them good luck, only I really don’t think they need luck. A Porthole Into The Minds Of The Vanquished is just a very good show. See it. You’ll laugh your penguins off.

At The Studio, Sydney Opera House until 30 June.

LEE BEMROSE

Grand And Noble Achievements

This man has about three hundred million dollars... say it slowly... threeeee huuuuundred miiiiillion dooooollars... because he made a little white ball go into a hole lots of times. Clever man. Clever mankind.

A Festival And A Review

How good does this arts festival look? I had to read the profiles of four of the 100 artists involved to do a quick Q & A for them for a feature for the mag. They all get a week or so to work on their various performances/installations/ visual projects or whatever, and then there's a big day where you wander around soaking up all the works you've watched take shape through the week. Fun stuff. Had to do a group of musicians working with a film maker, a VJ, a trio of actors making short films and a collective who make site-specific sculptures.

Also, here, below, is a theatre review appearing in the current issue of Drum.

I'm still getting my head around the role of a reviewer but ultimately come down to this: I'm a punter telling other punters what my experience was like and whether I enjoyed a performance or not. If a performance irritates me so much that I am tempted to walk out because I have better things to do with my time, then I'm pretty well obligated to telling other punters that that's how I felt.

But I get this residual thing where I wonder if I've been too harsh. I think of what the performer will think when they read what this nobody reviewer thought of their creation. I hate that period between sending the review in and waiting for it to come out.

Then there's also the worry of what if I missed the point? What if I got it wrong?

I know - everyone says you just have to be honest and everything, there's no right or wrong really, just your opinion. But that's easy to say when you're not the one putting your name and credibility on the line. When you bag something that has had amazing press build up you will have doubts about whether you got it right.

But I wrote what I honestly felt and this was the result. At the end I'll link to another review of the same performance that came out in on the same day in a bigger paper. Pretty interesting.

EIGENSINN

It’s not a good sign when members of the audience are stifling laughter in the opening minutes. Not laughing because the performance is humorous; stifling laughter because they are watching pretentious wank that appears to be taking itself seriously - even if it does have a couple of pretty lame attempts at humour.

The theme is based on a Grimm Brothers story, The Wilful Child. God knows how or why this story has survived.

Credit where it’s due, Germay’s Antje Pfundtner is an amazing physical performer. I loved it when she danced. Her movements were absolutely captivating. She has obviously closely studied deformity and it’s quite amazing to watch her physical transformation from the graceful to the grotesque. She was pure spastic elegance. (That’s more a compliment than it sounds).

But when she wasn’t moving she was just plain annoying. Those stifled laughs from the shiny and quiffed audience members in the front row were the wrong kind of laughs, and they spread throughout the audience. And never more so than that excruciatingly long segment when she sat at a school desk and did nothing.

And nothing.

And nothing.

And nothing.

And still nothing.

Annoying, no?

Okay, so as an interpretation of the Grimm’s micro morality story it was more interesting than the story itself. But as an hour’s entertainment it was - like an indulgent child – pretty hard to take. And sure, that’s the whole point and it’s art so it’s meant to be challenging, but man you should have heard the politeness in the applause at the end of the show.

The Studio season over.
LEE BEMROSE

And here is the other review in the bigger paper.

Mark Who'sadoofus.

What the hell is wrong with people? This is so ugly. How does "The Scud" (sometimes, I think, called The Pig Pou) hold his head high? Tosser. Tosser and bimbos and idiots who watch this sort of thing. Fucking hate them all. Fuck off to another planet. Please.

Cunts.

What's A Reviewer To Do?

I find this story pretty interesting. A restaurant reviewer ripped into a new restaurant, the restaurant went out of business. The owners blamed it on the negative review and have sued for defamation.

Makes me wonder if the review had been favourable and the restaurant had gone on to great success, would the owners have also attributed its success to the review? Paid the reviewer a slice of their takings?

I'd also be interested in finding out if the review was justified. It's savage, but he did go to the restaurant twice to give it a second chance, and I find it hard to believe that a writer with such a high profile would risk his credibility by giving a great restaurant such a bad review. I know food critics can get a bit carried away sometimes, but they're not fiction writers.

Do theatre reviewers have to worry about being taken to court if they dislike a performance? If so, I could be in the poo when Drum hits the streets tomorrow. Saw a performance on Saturday that made me quite cranky.

Indie Rock Chick From Outer Space

Went for a trial day yesterday working in a corporate cafeteria. It's the kind of place The Dreaded One and I used to run, only this one is grotty and soulless. In fact I almost laugh at how unclean and untidy it is. I'm amazed that such a high profile bank would allow their head office cafeteria to be in this state. I realise just what a good job The Dreaded One and I had done with our shiny place. Ours was full of vibe, happy customers, new music you don't hear on the radio, the smell of gourmet food.

The guy who runs this outfit obviously did that thing where you bring a newbie onto your turf and you suddenly see things through their eyes. He apologised about it being such a pig sty as he rubbed his fists into his reddened eyes. He also introduced me to his assistant and I was relieved at her appearance; it was as unkempt as everything else in the place, but kinda cool in that indie rock chick way.

Both their personalities seemed pretty chilled, so that was good. And the filth? I'd just clean by stealth.

The day was all right. Few alarm bells. Food hygeine and stock rotation didn't appear to be on the agenda. Their pricing and some of their systems were weird. I was a little embarrassed about some of the food we were serving. And Indie Rock Chick had a muttered running commentary about what she was currently in the process of doing, and I couldn't decide if it was endearing or creepy.

Music was a big topic of conversation and I dunno, I was lowering my standards but I need a regular job for a while. End of the day the manager asks if I want the job. I say yes, mainly because after getting through one trial day I can't be bothered lining up another with the hope that I might get somewhere better.

"Cool," the manager says. "Indie Rock Chick likes you, and that's the main thing."

Indie Rock Chick is all smiles as she says, "Yeah. Can we keep him?"

I leave with the impression that this is an outfit who won the contract somehow, but they don't really care about it all that much. Their boardroom functions are sandwiches and cheap biscuits. I almost do burst out laughing when I see the poor quality of the bickies they're plating up at one stage. I didn't realise catering this bad still existed. Clearly these are people who just want to get through the day and get the hell out of there. I'm not sure how long I will be able to stick this out. I know I will keep looking for something else, but for now...

This morning, the manager doesn't show. Indie Rock Chick collects me at the front lobby and she seems a little stressed. "Just the two of us this morning," she mutters in a foreboding tone. I shrug. This is not a busy place. I saw what she called The Lunch Rush and it was a joke. At one point during the previous lunch rush, an elevator opened and she muttered urgently to me, "Here they come. There's nothing then they come in hordes," as all four suits made their way to the counter.

Turns out the manager stayed up drinking and watching the football last night and was hungover. Got to love that professionalism. It appears to have put Indie Rock Chick in a bit of a mood (not the least because he does this all the time and everything is always left up to her). Suddenly everything I do is wrong. I am not moving fast enough. I just don't understand how busy it can get around here. I need to be spoken to in a condescending tone.

I remain chilled because there is nothing, as far as I can tell, actually wrong. A few customers trickle in and are dealt with, but the few minutes it has taken to serve them has apparently thrown time itself out of whack and we are never going to recover and be ready on time.

I feel a tremor of concern run through my chilled mood because this kind of behaviour works itself up into a state. I've seen it happen. Mountains and mole hills. It's fucking ridiculous and doesn't achieve a damn thing.

Suddenly we are swamped with, ooh, six customers? And Indie Rock Chick is in a total flap. She's asking for everyone's orders at once, stuffing up orders and generally totally sabotaging what would otherwise be a very peaceful and orderly operation.

I watch in awe as she starts telling one perplexed customer that she simply cannot cope with all the pressure of setting up by herself and trying to train people.

Then she chews me out in front of customers I suspect have witnessed this kind of thing before. She gives me some condescending, snippy lecture about lifting my game, and I'm sorry but customers present or not, I'm not having that. I tell her to calm down.

"I am calm," she snarls.

"No you're not. You are stressing and it's not helping things at all."

"I'm stressing because it's stressful!"

And then I can't quite recall what is said but I know the two of us are having a proper go at each other while bewildered customers look on, and it's right as the hungover manager makes his disheveled appearance.

On the other side of the glass partition separating the kitchen from the service area, the manager has asked what the problem is and Indie Rock Chick is all tears and waggly arms as she storms from one end of the kitchen to the other Picking Things Up and Putting Them Back Down again.

I'm not sure what just happened, but I am sure it's not going to happen again. I think it also goes some way to explaining why all the customers kept asking what happened to former short-term employees.

Manager comes out after sending Indie Rock Chick outside for a cigarette and asks how I am. I tell him that I am fine, but that I don't think it's going to work out. He looks a little disappointed, but resigned.

I help out for a while longer and things calm down. I ask if Indie Rock Chick is okay even though it's clear she's going to ignore my presence until I go. She says yeah and gives in and apologises quite a bit. I'm not sure what the problem is, but I do know that I don't want to deal with it.

It's lunch time now. I imagine the customers asking Indie Rock Chick, "Where's that guy you were introducing us to? I thought he was going to settle in."

I wrote another song last night. I am enjoying writing songs. I had intended to show Indie Rock Chick my song to see if she could use her musical skills to do anything with it. Now instead I am going to write a song about her.

"Oh I-hindie Rock Chick,
Who'd guess behind that sweet face,
Lurks a demonic alien,
Indie Rock Chick From Outer Space..."

More later.

Sex.

Writhe. Sweat. Saliva. Skin. Smell. Taste. Lick. Fuck. Moan. Give. Take. Take. Take. Give. Give. Tense. Heave. Suck. Scratch. Tense. Taught. Give. Release. Ohfuck. OhGodohGodohgood...

Her: (sighing) "Shit that was good."

Him: (sighing) "Yeah. Good. Um... can you get off me now?"

Pillow: (on face) "WHUMP!"

Strangers In A Park

Rain is spatting against the window right now, wind tearing through the palm leaves just outside. It's bleak. Cold. Dark. You just want to be inside with warmth wrapped around. I've barely cracked a grin all week, but I keep thinking about the stranger in the park, and that does it for me.

One week ago, guy and a girl in a park. Hasn't been a great week for him, but here and now - check this awesome day. Seriously, a harbour some people in some parts of the world would die to see, sunshine and warmth and the biggest threat maybe the shrill squawk of a child.

The guy doesn't realise until much later that he's opening up more than usual. More than he has in a long time anyway. He's had some pretty weird shit happen. The father. The mother. The whole family thing, he rarely mentions it, but for some reason (the booze... they are drinking wine by the way) he opens up and it's kind of strange because these are memories that he doesn't dust off very often.

He listens too, because she has also had a strange life. He watches as he listens, and he sees the activity beneath the surface. She talks of her whole family thing.

And it's serious and wonderful because look at that view and how did we meet again and how long have we known each other and...

Then there's this sound. It's the best sound ever. He makes them stop talking because this sound is one you have got to hear. Girl lying on the warm grass a little further down the hill, she's laughing. She's on the phone and she's twisted over laughing. She's lost it completely. She is giving it everything, has gone all high pitched and breathless and is rigid with the absolute joy of it. You have to stop when you hear a laugh like that because really, does being human ever get better than that?

Her laugh eases. They continue to talk, but then she's off again and it's better than before. Whatever the person on the other end of the phone is saying is just the funniest stuff ever. Through her high pitched squeals she gasps as she grasps the phone, "No don't. Don't go. Don't go." And she's off again into that state of writhing, hoarse ecstasy.

When she ends the call, reality comes back and she's here in this gorgeous place. This still and quiet place. Cleared throat. Green grass. Harbour. View you'd kill for. She's here away from whatever caused the laughter. She sits for a few minutes, alone and thinking what a scream that was. Then she gets up to leave. Dusts the grass from her jeans.

The guy has to ask. He calls out to her, "Hey. What was the person on the other end of the phone saying?"

She looks at these two strangers and asks, "What?" Then she smiles and has a little residual giggle, then tells the guy and the girl that she was talking to her family, her family in some other place. Some in-joke about them all being together on the couch watching television in the nude and the phone being passed between them and it probably doesn't make any sense or seem funny at all now that I say it out loud. Something about how she always pees her pants when she laughs too much and that's when they were saying they should go and she said no don't go.

She apologises because she thinks she has intruded. Then she asks if the guy and girl know where the toilets are because she really needs to pee.

Stranger in a park, her laugh and her family thing is a sparkling little memory.

Operation Chervil

Sometimes when you are playing the role of Faux Chef for A Very Impressive Catering Company operating from the bowels of a Big White Pointy Sydney Icon, you have to do repetitive and not necessarily glamorous things.

Like picking herbs for canape garnish.

Herbs like chervil.

Things is, although I like to kick into action and do big stuff, I also don't mind chilling out and doing mindless things like picking tiny little leaves from their stem in a delicate manner for the greater good of a kick arse canape. Or several canapes, because as you may or may not know (and I definitely now know), chervil makes an excellent accompaniment to... oooh... TOO MANY canapes.

I was given half a tonne of chervil and told pick that. Fine, I thought, one of those jobs but that's cool because I am not in the mood for thinking. I am quite in the mood for picking chervil.

"So it's about 700 tiny little leaves you need to pick."

"That's cool."

"But that's the single leaf chervil garnish, not the multi leaf garnish."

"Still cool."

"Hang on... okay, so that's 700 smalls, 700 bigs..."

"Still cool. Getting less cool. But cool."

"Okay... looking at the week's menu there's quite a lot of chervil to be picked. May as well do it all at once. So..."

Soon - and I'm not joking - I was staring at a chart. The Chart Of Chervil. Operation Chervil. Clearly I was starting to look confused so The Canape Queen decided to help me by adding asterisks next to the canapes requiring chervil (in either it's big or small form). I wanted to draw up my own chart but she insisted that it was all right because she had already drawn up a chart for me.

"Cool."

I forgot to mention there was a chervil-picking helper that had been assigned to me. There had been quite a lot of discussion about chervil and the various sizes and quantities required and at some point along the way, she proved to be a very... a very efficient chervil picker. She managed to pick an awesome amount of chervil and classify it according to size and box it and label it with its quantity, which left me to refer to the chart to try to determine which boxes of tiny little (or not so little) chervil went onto each job and each job fridge.

Yes. It's big catering and every job has a number and a job fridge and you really do not want to put a box of 120 small chervil leaves into the job fridge requiring 700 large chervil sprigs.

There was also this: "No not all asterisks refer to chervil! It's just the black ones! You should have ignored the red asterisks - that's baby coriander!"

Fuckers

I cannot fucking believe that those utter bastards awarded MY tiara and MY sash to some other fucker. God, this whole thing is a travesty! Old people and pooh... when was that ever funny? Bah! Everything can just go to hell's pottie.

(Was being ironic, for those not familiar with me).

For those who are familiar with me, I'm still in a mood. A mood. Will be away for a bit, more than likely. But do come back. Please do. I'll be happy and silly again, and we can laugh about those golden days of wine and roses...

Never Swim Alone & This Is A Play Review

Saw a couple of really good short plays last night. Review below.

But alsotooaswell, I'm on a bit of a sleuth mission. There's a guy I met through another theatre critic acquaintance who I see at opening nights all the time. I have forgotten his name and we're in that funny situation of kind of recognising each other but not enough to really say hello. He comes across as very earnest, so it's kind of weird to see him at so many comedies. He sits through them not cracking a grin while everyone else is laughing their ears off.

I suspect I know who he writes for because a review a certain reviewer wrote recently was exactly the kind of earnest, I-only-appreciate-intellectual-humour review I'd expect this guy to have written. But I don't know if they are the same person. Somehow, I have to find out.

His review of this play will be out this weekend. It will be interesting to see if our reviews are polar opposites again. And then I have to get all gumshoe and find out if they are one and the same person.

Anyway, here's my review of last night's plays. Won't be in the mag for another week, which is a bummer. And 350 words is bloody frustrating, but that's all I'm allowed.



NEVER SWIM ALONE & THIS IS A PLAY

Few things give me as much pleasure as plays that make me gush with enthusiasm. I love writing reviews where I get to say things like you should go see it because I laughed so hard my bottom almost fell off. This is one such review.

Daniel MacIvor’s two short plays demonstrate why he’s apparently so popular in his home country of Canada. This is very funny theatre, very clever theatre (in that not-too-clever way), and all-round satisfying theatre. If you don’t enjoy these plays, stop going to the theatre immediately because you are clearly missing the point.

In This Is A Play three actors and their over-nourished egos hit the stage in a melodrama about three lettuces separated at birth. They are hyper-self-aware that they are Actors who are Acting In A Play before A Real Live Audience, with lines being the very stage direction they are (badly) acting out, as well as what should be their inner thoughts while delivering real lines. The actors go through the motions while all the time trying to upstage their fellow actors, and it’s a device both targeted at those involved in theatre as well as those of us who simply recognise a good piss-take. Direction and comic acting did justice to what is a pretty simple concept, and at 35 minutes MacIvor demonstrates that he knows not to give us too much of a good thing. Very funny.

Never Swim Alone is also good comedy, albeit a darker one. In examining the fierce rivalry between two lifelong “mates”, we go back in time to the seeds of their competitiveness to an event that clearly haunts them through their lives, but from which they have learned nothing. It’s a kick in the guts to male posturing and bravado that if anything could have been a little more brutal. After all, as silly as such characters as Bill and Frank are (unfortunately you will recognise them in the real world), the effect of their idiotic rivalry on those around them is pretty brutal. Still, this is gradually darkening comedy peppered with some quite evocative and poetic writing - and it felt so Australian that it’s hard to get your head around the fact that it’s an international creation. And Lotte St Clair’s presence would reduce a lesser reviewer to concluding a review by saying something immature like Lotte St Clair is, like, uber-babe.

At Darlinghurst Theatre until 23 June.
LEE BEMROSE