Love, Death & The Rhythm Of Language, Baby: A Eugoogooly

I've got a fair bit of writing I have to do this week and I'm writing a short story that I'm pretty excited about. It's moody as hell and although I've actually just come out of a mood fug and am feeling pretty happy, I don't really want to write anything funny. I just want to write about this character, Ruben Jane. So far, the story feels at least as good as Remembering Argos. It's called Leaving Ruben Jane, and it's got The Thing. First really good fiction I've written in a while and I'm hoping that being so hooked on the rhythm of language is going to finally spill over and really get me into fiction again. It's all about love, death and the rhythm of language, baby.

But last night, after a really good day at The Big Pointy Building I got home and watched Zoolander. I'd forgotten how much I like this movie. I think it is just about comedy perfection. Excellent cast, really funny writing and great comic acting. Think I'm going to go get a copy today.

I have to stay moody for Ruben Jane so I don't want to try to write anything that my cold, walnut-sized brain thinks is funny. But watch this clip. This is a very funny movie.

The Tennis Court Of King Arthur

I was talking to someone in the kitchen at The Big Pointy Building today about the rare times in our lives we had won things. She had won an Easter Egg decorating competition at school, which was was quite prophetic (visit her blog and you'll see what I mean).

I remembered the time I won something, and it went a little like this: (Please note, each * indicates embellishment for comic purposes)...

When I started out on my tennis addiction phase I was not very good. But I get good when I get these obsessions. At the time of this little story, however, I was not very good at playing tennis.

However I was obsessed and I bought all the clothing and drooled over racquets I couldn't afford and I'd stay up all night watching people who were good at playing. And I bought Tennis Weekly, or whatever the damn mag was called. Bought it every week. Sometimes I bought it twice a week because when I get hooked on something, I am hard fucking core.

One week, they had a caption competition and I thought bugger me, I like writing silly shit, I think I'll enter.

I thought of a hilariously inventive caption for EVERY photo and assumed I'd win something. I even wondered if the judges would have the integrity to give me first, second and third prizes... all of which I wholly deserved.

Next mag came out and after a quick scan I felt a bit crap because I didn't rate a mention. Another, more detailed read and I found I'd actually won the first prize I assumed I was going to win. I'd won an amazing, imported, thousand buck Donnay. The picture alone took my breath away to the accompaniment of Heaven's own angels singing their praise.

The Donnay (as I referred to it forever after) arrived in the mail. It was kind of as if King Arthur had been mailed Excalibur. This was the stuff of unfolding legends.

When I turned up at the new tennis club with Excalibur in its shoulder bag, people took notice. I kid you not, people looked. People talked. The guy at the booking desk even asked where I got hold of such a racquet, such was the awe it inspired.

"You won it?"

"Yeah, in a competition."

"He won it," he said, turning to his assistant. "In competition."

Fuck me, I thought, that came out way wrong. Before I had a chance to explain, the guy said, "So you're pretty good?"

"I was pretty good in this particular competition, but you know..."

"Wow," desk guy said to his assistant, "cool and modest. We have to check him out."

A crowd had gathered by the time I made my way to court 7, and all I could do was pray to the powers that be that something magical was about to happen... something... please?

* To be continued.

Scratch Improv For Cracker

No theatre reviews this week, just a couple of stories covering a couple of acts for Sydney's Cracker Comedy Festival. There is rather a lot of comedy on offer at the moment.

Thoughts From A Cold, Walnut Sized Brain

You know what shits me most about the mental midget who left the comment about me being inept in the previous post? It's not their criticism, it's the fact that they did it anonymously. How pathetic can you be? I have to write stuff about the work of others, which is something I've always had a bit of a problem with (for the last couple of years that I've been doing it), but my name always appears at the end of the review, positive or negative. Clumsily written or well written.

And some limp-dick thinks it's okay to slag me off without leaving their name.

Humans can be so dreary.

Brilliant Monkey Review And A Bit Of Head Scratching

I reviewed this play and I didn't like it very much. Crapping hell it bored me. So I said as much in the review.

I generally look up what other reviewers have been saying after I've written my review and it was hilarious how much all the others have been gushing about this one, compared to mine.

What could I do? I really was quite bored with it and I really didn't think the humour was very funny, but with so much opinion being so opposite, I must have just been in a grumpy mood. Still, this was my experience of this play and I had to send it in.

Odd, because I had been in quite a good mood before going into the theatre. And yet... was my mood such a factor in my not enjoying the play?

I don't know. I'm not sure about very much at the moment. Given the evidence, I probably got it wrong with this one. Just have to roll with it.

Half a week later: And look, because the comments have been good and supportive (and I do appreciate that), read one of the many positive reviews about an earlier version of the play. This review, like so many others, would make me want to see the play, and there must have been something about it that made me want to see it regardless. It really does sound like the kind of theatre I'm into but there was obviously something wrong with me on this occasion.

It's been an interesting process. I am very tempted to go back and see the thing this afternoon. Now there's an idea...

Sub-standard

I have this habit of going over stories I've sent into the mag and seeing ways of improving them. I tweak and resend. I did this recently and received an email from my editor. He said, "Here's a bit of advice: Let it go. When you re-send stories I've usually already subbed them and I just have to re-do the whole thing."

I've bitten my tongue forever in the past. Sub-editing is a strange craft and a lot of editors aren't quite as good at it as they like to think they are. Subbing is not about changing the text to suit yourself. Subbing is about getting things right - facts and tone and the voice of the thing. Let the piece have its own voice. And make sure the facts are right.

I've seen some really weird shit come out in my stories and I'm generally not too much of a princess about it. The part in this story, in the Bill Hicks piece that says something about weak semen? Totally not my words. A staff writer was obviously told to Penthouse-it-up a little and he added that bit. I thought it was an odd thing to do but what the hell. And that was all he added so again, what the hell. Whatever.

But when editors change things and make them worse I fucking hate it. Happens all the time when you're writing humour - a joke will go over their head and they change the words so it makes some sense to them and it totally fucks up the joke. If I were a more important writer I would demand final proofing rights.

But in reply to the piece of advice about letting it go, I wrote back saying, "Yeah well, you might want to take a look at the tag line I sent you compared to the one that went to print after you subbed it. One was accurate, the other was not. I'll be sending the next review to you shortly. Have your way with it. I'll have my fingers crossed."

It's amusing to think of bitchy stuff like that, I just don't know about the wisdom of sending it.

But send it I did because what the hell. Whatever.

Men, Love and the Monkeyboy Review

Click on the image to make big and read my impression of Men, Love and the Monkeyboy.

I liked this play. I just thought it needed to be tweaked a little. If you live in Sydney and you disagree, let me know.

Cool People

Because of this post, I'm writing this when I really should be sleeping.

I wrote this story and thought it went well. There was something about the writer that I liked. I wanted to meet him on opening night because... I dunno. I just like something about him.

Anyway, I went along and knew it wasn't going to happen. Packed theatre, my tenuous connection with him was preoccupied with everyone else. I set Ann's jacket on fire and then we went in to see the play.

At the end of the play these two old ladies came over and just started talking to Ann about her hair. One wanted to touch her dreads. Then they kept talking about chick stuff and I was starting to get a bit thing about it all. I mean, I wanted to see the play and meet the playwright, and here are these two old women, charming and lovely as they are, going on about Ann's hair.

I kind of wanted to leave because the night was not what I'd planned, but they were really quite cool people and fuck it, cool people are cool. We chatted and it was really nice.

Then one of the women asked me what I thought of the play. I said I liked it. We talked for a bit and it turned out that she had read my interview with the writer and liked it a lot. Turned out she also knew the playwright quite well; he is her nephew. The other woman his mother.

Moments later, Caleb came over to say hello to his mum and his aunt. Aunt Jill introduced me and he was civil but was obviously having a night when every bastard wanted to chat with him. Then Jill told him I was the guy who wrote the Gorillas In Our Midst piece and his face melted into happy creases and his hand shot out for a real handshake... it was just a totally good moment.

Playwright In Demand was devoured by the night, Ann and I spent some more time talking to these lovely older people, then we went home.

There will always be the boy from the fucked up family in the dreary suburbs whose eyes will flicker over at the end of a night like this who will think as he drifts into sleep, good yeah? Yeah, good. Yeah, sometimes it's pretty good.

I Love The Smell Of Jackets

I say I don't like it, but I fucking do... when you finish work and have slotted in an hour to finish a story and you manage to do it and feel good about it, and there's someone saying please where is the funny column you promised but there's no time no time no time because you have to bolt to the theatre because there's something you have to review before another deadline.

And then the play is good and you have a lovely night in a most unexpected way. I loved tonight. I loved it for reasons I'll try to go into later, reasons I just didn't expect, people I didn't expect to meet. It was a very cool night.

But read this next little bit, which is my next Grumpy column for Tsunami, and... look I dunno. Sometimes shit is funny, innit.

Grumpy

Standing in front of the mirror at home, she says how cool is this jacket that I haven’t worn for ages and which is now my new favourite jacket all over again? How sexy is this jacket? How lucky are you?

I’m all, ooh babe, it’s sexy and you are too. My favourite girl is wearing her favourite jacket, which makes you look hot ‘n stuff. How lucky am I?

(Said jacket is hard to describe... its backdrop is grey with all these little white tufts that come out like candle-wicks. Very out-there, very cool).

We get to the theatre opening night because that’s the kind of cosmopolitan life we lead. I’m a smooth theatre writer dude with this awesome chick that everyone wants to know. Sometimes they want to know me too, but that hardly ever happens. Mainly it’s just her with her hair and her clothes and her sparkly eyes and I’m just usually crying in the corner in this rugged and manly way... (I made that last bit up).

Aaaanyway... we’re at a table having a cosmopolitan chat over a cosmopolitan glass of wine when this fucking hellish Godawful stench just about knocks everyone in the theatre out cold. Like, if Satan did a sloppy number twos on your BBQ while you were cooking satay skunk skewers and then all the neighbourhood cats lined up to piss out the flames, this stench would be worse.

A nearby cosmopolitan theatre-goer leans over and tells me something I really don’t want to hear: “I think your jacket’s on fire.”

Only, it’s not my jacket, is it. I mean, I moved said jacket to the side of the table to make room for my elbow, but the fire is coming from my girlfriend’s re-discovered favourite sexy jacket which I have absently shoved across into the vicinity of the very low candlelight.

How lucky am I?

And at intermission, is everyone talking about the play? No – they are jokingly asking about The Burning Jacket Incident. Hahahaa...

Oh yes, how lucky I am.

White Moth

Okay so this is a cack: I'm sitting here a few moments ago writing to someone and this amazing white moths flaps and struggles at the window and makes its way through the blinds. It flutters up and lands on the roof and I stop what I am writing to say something like "Whoa - this really white moth just came into the room. It's beautiful like a snowflake."

It doesn't bat about the light like other moths, it just sits there on the ceiling directly above my head. Is it looking at me? Why did it want to come inside and why did it land exactly above my head? What is it thinking?

I think maybe it's a good omen. I think maybe some good stuff is going to happen. I mean, it's landed right above my head. Oh goody.

Then I read up on what white moths represent.

Oh dear.

Looong Looong Weekends Covered In Beautiful Feathers

That weekend was rather large. The Dreaded One and I had Thursday off and because we had been gearing up for the festival (see below) we felt like not going out. Sitting in The Old Fitzroy enjoying a chilled glass of white on Thursday afternoon, I saw that Dave Seaman and Nick Fanciulli were playing that night. We waved goodbye to sobriety and swan dived into the abyss.

It was a one-thing-lead-to-another kind of weekend that quite frankly I am glad is over (good thing and too much and everything). At one point an MC was doing some fucked up voice stuff over the music a DJ friend was playing in a warehouse and I was trying to explain Senor Aubergine to a drunk lawyer... and I don't think that was the silliest thing that happened. ("You know - an eggplant with arms and eyes and dancing asparagus feet and I'm telling you this because I think if you listen closely the vocalist mentions him... he likes to tango... no the eggplant, not the MC... although I don't know him very well so maybe he does like the tango...")

Anyway, all systems are returning to normal and I will have words to write a little later. For now, all I can manage is hitting the scan button. Here is the interview with Caleb Lewis for Men, Love and the Monkeyboy.

Regen Vs Degen

I'm not where I was supposed to be this weekend. I was supposed to be here, only two years later. I was really looking forward to this party. I wanted to plant some trees. I wanted to be outdoors at this amazing place with so many smiling party people.

The guys who organise these events grew 5,000 small trees from seeds and spent around $20,000 setting the event up, and after giving initial approval for the event, the local council backflipped at the last minute and the event had to be canceled. International DJs and live PAs had been booked, plans had been made... 5,000 trees would have been planted, Goddamnit.

It sounds a bit conspiracy theory (but also not), but apparently there's a tactic they use in the USA where authorities give initial approval for outdoor events, allow the promoters to invest all their time and energy, then pull the plug at the last minute. Do that a couple of times and most promoters go broke. I spoke to one of the promoters of this event and he said in hindsight that's exactly what it felt like had happened. And he said it will work because he can't keep doing this. But he said he will organise an event to make sure the trees go in the ground, it will just be without the party element.

I don't know exactly what the issues were that went against this event - one that has been going now for about four years without any hitches at all. I do know that local businesses have lost income. And I do know that issues of safety and evacuation were raised but representatives of the event were not allowed to speak at the meeting to defend the safety precautions the promoters have in place.

It's hard not to believe that we are looking at a crackdown on outdoor events of this nature. If there were real and justifiable safety concerns, why were they not raised earlier. It's the initial approval/last minute disapproval that's so suspicious. Not to mention plain spiteful. There were no sponsors involved, all the funds came out of the pockets of hard-working individuals trying to do a good thing.

The international DJs will get a chance to play tonight. A club was hastily booked as a bit of a fund-raiser to cut the losses the promoters have so unfairly incurred. It will be a good party, no doubt... but we just wanted to be outside with the elements and we wanted to plant some trees. What is so wrong with that?

Señor Aubergine

Mostly when I pull 10 to 15 hour days Faux Chefing at The Big Pointy Building, it's so busy I can't remember what I tell people my real name is. Other times... rare times... it's apparently a little less busy.

Then again, there are those times after long insomniac nights and longer days when an eggplant with arms really does leap right out of its vegie box and say, "Heeeey... I am Señor Aubergine who likes very much the tango dance..."

Chloe Takes On Kamikaze Man

Top and centre (click on the image to make big, obviously) is me about five years ago with one of my most treasured friends. I would love to know what I had just said to get such a reaction. And yeah, funny we are both wearing T Shirts with big faces.

Lovely, lovely person and a very cool friend. We tried recently to recall what had happened at the time the picture was taken. She's been nagging me for ages to get on Skype so we can chat, so I suggested that was what she was saying... "When I move to New Zealand in a few years time, you'd better get Skype or I'll keep nagging you!"

Tunnels, Light, Laughter And Good Things.

The way it works is the person you're interviewing tells you when they are available. You work around that because they are the subject and you are just the messenger. With Laurie Anderson I said I was unavailable when she was available twice before getting the interview... I still don't believe I did that and that I did finally chat to her.

Anyway, latest thing is with a playwright called Caleb Lewis. He's written a play called Men, Love, And The Monkey Boy. I was to phone him at 10.30am this morning.

12 hours before the phone chat time I was ensconced in a food and wine orgy that was quite Roman. There are still bottles. Empty bottles. Lots of them. But in the back of my mind I knew I had to come up with some questions and sound reasonably intelligent and but in the end what the woo hoo... pass me some more wine you fuckers...

In the wee small hours I ooze through sleep and see this bit of journalistic excellence unfold in my dreams: "Fuck. I know we've only just started, but I've totally run out of questions. Can you just talk for a while please?"

A short time later the Dreaded One wakes me asking, "Was there something you had to get up to do before we go to work?"

"Yer," I droobled through my oozledreams, "but that's ages away... FUCK!"

Anyway, what I did was, I went in nude. I had nothing. I didn't have my usual way too many questions. I freestyled, baby. I just hit the guy's number and when we started talking, I listened. I listened and reacted and I barely looked at the three questions I'd written when drunk the night before prior to crashing out.

I think I got some good stuff and I am looking forward to writing this one up.

And for the first time in many, many months, I spent a day feeling happy. Days like today, I almost feel like I know what I am doing.

Reviews: The Wet Spots and This Is How It Goes

I am getting lazy with this blogging thing, aren't I? Why write when you can just scan and post? Here are a couple of recent reviews for Drum. I saw Keeper at Belvoir St last Sunday and have to write the review for that today. It was a tight little drama that I quite enjoyed. The two reviewed here are very different creatures but I also enjoyed them a lot.

Bananas

Got in touch with Time Out mag (Sydney version) and one of the editors there seemed keen to get me on board. She's the former editor of another magazine I write for (incidentally, what the hell is going on when you can be contributing to five different magazines and still have to slog your arse off at other jobs to make ends meet? There is something very wrong) and she asked if I'd like to contribute to the comedy pages. The above Q & A was a last minute rush job that I had to do via email. Interesting thing from my point of view is how much personality was taken out of the questions. For example, the one about Sydney versus Melbourne? What I actually asked Hughesy was, "I’m a Sydney-sider born and bred and I’ve always thought Sydney crapped all over Melbourne. But then I recently actually went to Melbourne and at the risk of re-igniting the Melbourne versus Sydney debate, Melbourne actually craps all over Sydney. Like, really. All over it. In every conceivable way. Better bars, better pubs, better restaurants, better theatres, better comedians, better trams, better footpaths... it’s just a much, much, much better city. Do you agree?"

But what came out was a question that is totally bland. I dunno. For me, kind of took the fun out of it.

Anyway, that's how it goes. And it highlights the beauty of street press - they generally allow contributors much more freedom to be silly. Still, Time Out is quality and overall the tone of the mag is one I'm drawn to. If I keep writing for them I'll find my Time Out voice and all will be sweet.

I'm On The Cover Of Australian Penthouse

Okay so it's not a photo of me on the cover of Australian Penthouse (man, if I looked like that I'd never leave the house... I'd just wander about all day checking me out in the mirror and pursing my lips at me and touching me on the boobies and...), but see the bit that says Tragic Comedians? That's the piece I wrote for the mag. So. There you go. I'm on the cover of Penthouse.

And here is the piece. Probably not the funniest thing I've written, but hell, it doesn't get much sweeter than being paid to write a bit of silly. Especially when the research part involved me watching and reading these guys and laughing my arse off.

An Interview With The Wetspots

Here is a very short interview I did recently with Canada's Wet Spots. They are very funny people. Saw the show a couple of nights ago. Will post the review shortly.

oh - and I've just realised that the play featured in the story opposite is the one I saw last night and which I have to write a review for by Monday. Going to be tight given that I have a double shift tomorrow and an all dayer on Sunday. Good play but.

Strange Days

Strange bundle of days... went to a wedding on a beach. Funniest thing ever. Everyone dressed in fantastical strangeness... faeries and angels and demons and pixies and pirates and magicians. It really was a parade of the bizarre on a gorgeous sandy beach. They played Massive Attack's Teardrop as the bride made her appearance. Hit play, listen and agree that it is beautiful.

Vows were swapped and I watched two people tell each other with cracked and trembling voices that they love each other, something, surely, they have already said countless times. Regardless of how unnecessary it was, it was moving. I was moved in a happy way.

Then we walked down the beach to the reception, and the next day we would hear that locals all along the beach sipping their sunset drinks on their verandahs had been agog and amazed and pleasured by this most unexpected of parades.

Stayed with two of the most charming men I have met in a long while. Such utterly charming hosts with a kind of old fashioned sense of hospitality. Their beach house is amazing and they said we are welcome any time and I wished we could have stayed and cooked a meal for them to repay them. Perhaps another time.

Days later I am in court for a bit of stupidity. My solicitor is running late and I am freaking because this is A Big And Serious Place and how the fuck am I going to represent myself? There are barristers and criminals and police and it's another freakshow but without the love and the humour and what the fuck am I doing here?

Sometime later my legal person has showed and we are inside. It's cattle in there. It's odd to me and a perfectly normal day at the office for so many others. I have dressed well but there are others not so fortunate and I feel for them and feel guilty for being as privileged as I am. But we are all there for the same reason. We all want to get off as lightly as possible and get back to our own interpretation of normality.

I watch the judge judge the ones before me. I watch every move, every twitch, every reaction. I listen to the shifts in tone. I start to squirm because he is stony hard and not to be fucked with. I'd hoped for compassion and softness. There is none of that.

One guy, he's 89 years old and went through a world war and was persecuted by the Nazis. Made it to Australia and has been clean that whole time, but now he's started driving through red traffic lights. I am amazed that this whole Nazi thing has come into it, but it's what we are all doing - trying in some way to present ourselves as victims. Playing the sympathy card. But really - Nazis?

Next girl up stands when told to then sits again, and I see she is a real victim. She's fucked on heroin. Here, right now in the courtroom while a Legal Aid chick tries to save her. Heroin girl has the noddies. She's listless and hasn't a clue what's going on. Her mother - surely the most disappointed woman in the world - comes up and shakes her gently but with a sense of urgency to try to make her pay attention. Heroin girl comes to and thinks she has been told to speak to her legal person who is talking jargon with the judge. Man, it's all so wrong. Sit down, go away, pull yourself together... then the judge booms SIT DOWN! and you don't argue with that tone.

Next guy is up and his legal guy says his bit, then Judge Boom asks if the defendant understands the charges. And the defendant lifts this thing up to his throat and it's one of those electronic voice pipe contraptions, and this Dalek buzz comes out and says Yes I do.

And I look sideways at him and think that is fucking genius. There's a broken arm over there and a broken spirit there and now this broken voice... and me in my nice clothes with nothing broken to offer at all.

And after a lifetime it's my turn and it's longer than I want it to be and more confronting than I want it to be and there are hitches and it looks pretty bad. I don't feel good but then I haven't felt good for a long time. This thing has been looming. Thing is, I know my faults and I'm willing to put the tip of the dagger to my throat and say do what you feel is fitting. That's too dramatic, I know, but that's how I feel. I'm just me, these are the facts, do what you feel is the just thing.

Judge Boom has a stare like a fucker, but I know him by now because I've watched, and I stare back. Not a stare with attitude, but just the kind of eye contact he wants. He is talking directly at me, me specifically, and I know every other eye in this packed room is also looking at me, listening to this man's opinion of me. I feel small and uncomfortable but know that this is part of my punishment. These words come out slowly and precisely and there's a theatricality about it all that is kind of wonderful and real and scary as fuck, and you never want to feel it again. Not from this point of view.

And when finally it is over I realise yet again that I am lucky. I get off more lightly than I was expecting. It's not happiness that I feel, it's relief. This thing has been hanging there and it felt like the exclamation mark at the end of a shitty year, and now I know what I am dealing with and I can get it sorted and a new phase can finally start.

Weird bundle of days.

Tomorrow I meet the editor of a mag who recently said "... and what's nicer is us working together again!" (Exclamation mark was hers). Which was a small and cool thing to say. And then two opening nights at the theatre for review and a job to go to and... you know, just some brightness in my version of normality.

Strange Days.

Also, check Peacharse out. You're Not The Only One is blogging for a good cause. It's a cool thing.