Trysting Fields

Wither Reality Blogging

Feed my narcissism, you cunts.

I Went To The Movies Last Night

I saw a late show of The Darjeeling Limited at the Nova. It was really, really good. Prior to that I literally hadn't been to a movie since my barely-remembered trip to Sydney last July, which is just crazy. I don't know what's wrong with me.

Sitting texting happily away waiting for the trailers to start, I remembered seeing Wes Anderson's last effort The Life Aquatic in the exact same cinema in 2005. It was all very funny and illusion-of-time and etc.

Movies are good. Note to self: see more movies.

Totally.

Trouble is: much as I fucking love going to the cinema, it's quite expensive - and I find it hard to sit down and stay still for long enough to watch a whole movie at home. It feels lazy and timewastey. "What am I doing, just sitting here?" I think to myself. "I could be wandering around in the garden smoking cigarettes and thinking about things, or taking over the world, or updating my Facebook status, or, or, or.. [is overwhelmed by infinite possibilities; goes blank]."

It's partly something I picked up from living with Bendendo and then Wouters, both of whom would sit around for hours watching TV randomly for no particular reason almost every day, in a way that made me want to slap them.

Largely as a result of this, I basically no longer watch TV at all in any form, ever. My TV's been effectively broken for the last two months. It hasn't been problematic.

But maybe I'll just have to get it fixed, and learn. I could doodle whilst I watch.

Hmm. Hmm!

What I Got For Christmas

Yemeni coffee, British cigarettes and Cuban white rum

Jellybeans & chocolate

Facial care products

Art

A scarf

A yoyo

A flipbook

Amongst other things.

Man, I Just, Like, Voted

I wasn't planning to originally, but Semi talked me into it on the grounds that the Greens will likely take some seats away from serious politicians, which is always a good cause. I hope he is having fun at Earthcore. I imagine that he is.

I just voted for the Greens whilst tripping on leftover cactus, partly in his honor. I'm sure Bob Brown (with whom I once shared a taxi, whilst dressed as a giant koala - i'm sure it wasn't just a dream) would not disapprove. I tried to imagine what John Howard would feel. I tried to imagine him feeling pain in some way. How I tried. But all I could see was him going "stupid hippies; ah well, *shrugs*, they will all self-destruct soon enough anyway", and not understanding at all. Which kind of pissed me off, but did at least make me feel like, in some obscure way, I had not done entirely the wrong thing.

Now I am trying to decide whether to watch The Dark Crystal again. I fell asleep before the end last time.

~ has suggested to me that the girl Gelfling ultimately dies; but I feel sure that this cannot be the whole truth. Henson and Oz would not do that to me. They would not dare.

I will watch their silly movie, in any case. They can bring it. Doesn't matter if the chick dies; the whole healed-crystal thing redundifies such petty concerns.

Yes, it does.

Life Is Good

nb clever peripheral utilization may or may not reveal secret hidden messages

Life is good.

What I Got For My Birthday

A can of whoop-ass Hagakure style yo Easy Surface Prep

A Discombobulator of my very own

Two bottles of apparently non-lethal Red Bull concentrate

Two bottles of Arrogant Frog sauvignon blanc

Two delicious, beautifully wrapped and generally special cupcakes (not shown)

Colourful and appealing multimedia art products

A hefty biography of John Fowles, bafflingly enough

A black 30 gigabyte iPod, which was nice

A Brave New World mug

Cards & chocolate

Amongst other things.

Thanks everyone. It was great!

Mysterious Postal Benevolence

This arrived yesterday from a mail-order DVD retailer in South Australia, with no message save for a 'Happy Birthday' appended to my name on the address label:

Apart from a few relatives who'd be very, very unlikely to anonymously send me Harmony Korine movies, I don't really know anyone in South Australia.

Anyway - whoever you are (if you're reading), thank you so much! As a present, no other widely-available DVD could please me more.

Stoked.

Stuff I Did This Week

               

- Exhaustively cleaned the kitchen, the dining room, the hallway, the laundry, and the bathroom.

- Made sixteen phonecalls, took seven phonecalls, attended interviews with three people, and lodged one detailed & tedious application form in pursuit of new revenue streams. Ate dodgy Japanese food on Chapel Street; gawped at people hanging on Chapel Street.

- Visited Bentendo at his new place.

He has a very nice view of the city, which I was unable to photograph for security reasons

- Reincarnated my old mobile - which I thought I'd lost, eventually replaced, and later found - as a second phone, via the purchase of a $25 prepaid SIM card.

- Updated my address book and phone contacts.

- Succesfully enticed a professional tiler into assessing dire bathroom tile issue situation, pictured. (They refused to replace the tiles, arguing that the only meaningful solution was to retile the whole bathroom.)

- Made an elaborate pictoral blog post about cooking harira.

- Inspired by trawling my own blog archives, figured out how to region-unlock my DVD player.

- Made a disastrous birthday card.

- Stupidly trammed it all the way out to the RSPCA in Burwood East to buy a kitten, only to discover that - it not quite being kitten season yet, see - they didn't have any. (Note to self: next time ring ahead.)

- Got shitfaced at The Mint and elsewhere again with Jo, Xade, Rorschach, Jaye deKoan and sundry others. An unshaven Tript was vaguely encountered somewhere in the vicinity of the Victoria Markets at around 1am. About two people at least one of whom I did not previously know ended up on my foldout couch watching Reservoir Dogs.

- Recorded a cover of Always On My Mind with my associate Mishuki One for H419.

- Made an elaborate pictoral blog post about things I did this week.

- Watched entire series of John Safran vs God (purchased secondhand last Sunday for $5).

- Went to the gym five times.

- Wrote 36 emails to 15 people.

- Et cetera.

DVD Player

I bought a DVD player on Tuesday. I am going to use it to watch movies.

(I also had to get this ridiculous adapter because my TV only takes a coaxial antenna cable.)

It came with a remote control device, which I appreciate as my TV does not have one.

(My old remote caught fire in 2003 from a candle which overflowed onto my rug whilst I lay asleep. I was awoken at 4am by my smoke alarm wailing like a banshee, the most acrid smell imaginable assailing my olfactories, to find said remote illuminated and twitching like Brundle's final half-machine incarnation in The Fly - a movie, incidentally, which I own on DVD - in the centre of a smouldering black hole in my rug.

But I digress.)

It also came with a voucher for two weeks' free membership of WebFlicks, another NetFlicks-alike ala Bigpond Movies, which I have been contemplating joining for ages although I've resisted for financial reasons. Further investigation is called for on this front.

I was assured that my DVD player was multi-region capable, but neither my region 1 copy of Baise Moi nor - most disappointingly - my region 2 edition of the BFI's Early Films of Peter Greenaway Vol. 2 will really play properly. Which is sad.

(Now I need a DVD burner, which will provide a way around that problem.)

I have not yet actually watched a movie as such using the DVD player, but I have played the following movies on the DVD player in a wallpapery sort of a way:

That I Own

• From Dusk Till Dawn (10 years old this year; time flies)
• Josie & The Pussycats (best movie ever)
• A Clockwork Orange (i feel i should say something here, because I did for the other two.. er.. try the waaaine.. real 'orrorshow etc etc)

That My Neighbour Rented

• Mr & Mrs Smith (the parts I paid attention to were good)
• Eulogy
  (in which the presence of the evil Ray "loved by everybody" Romano is compensated for by that of the godlike Zooey Deschanel)
• Fight Club (which I actually own, although my copy is held in Canberra by my friend the mysterious E)

I'm Sort Of Watching

The original Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory on tv.

I never realised how good it was. It's really good. I will have to watch it again.

All The Great Generals Were Keen On Seafood

On Thursday night I went to a double of Wong Kar Wai's 2046 and, excitingly, Peter Greenaway's last great movie, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover at the Astor.

It was pretty fuckin' good.

Cometh The Punk Rock Librarian (Part One)

Things Ben bought whilst visiting Melbourne:

• Diskonto - "We Are The People Our Parents Warned Us About" LP ("Raging dis-core; possibly Swedish, maybe Japanese people singing in Swedish")
• The Curse of Shank - self-titled LP ("Scottish power-violence")
• Combat Wounded Veteran - "Duck Down For The Torso" 10" EP ("Awesome screaming artcore")
• Dead Silence - "Hell, How Could We Make Any More Money Than This?" 7" ("Colorado guys making fun of Bad Religion")
• Spazm 151 - self-titled LP ("Raging Texan hardcore")
• A-Ha - "Take On Me" 7" ("I can't believe I paid $5 for this")
• Blondie - "Parallel Lines" LP ("Did you know Hanging On The Telephone was a cover?") (NB I didn't.)
• Joe Satriani - "Surfing With The Alien" vinyl LP ("Fuck yeah!")
• Brian The Dog from Family Guy ("He might be based on Snoopy")
• Video of John Woo's Bullet In The Head ("John Woo! Fuck yeah!")

Note to self: .. and a new baking dish

In other news: I am more naive than I like to imagine. People are funny.

Oh, and Josie and the Pussycats is the best movie ever. (join the army)

Long, Rambling, Vaguely Triptlike Anecdote, But With More Ethics

I just had a novel encounter with a drunken Irish girl who I met on a southbound 112 tram. She reminded me a bit of my second favourite ex (she of the revolting menstrual sex) (amongst other, less totally horrendous things). She'd lost her friends somewhere between Burke & Collins Streets and insisted on buying me drinks once we arrived in the Kilda, where she is staying in a hostel.

She was really nice, and pretty, and funny, and alarmingly flirtatious. And that is the end of the story. It could potentially have been a much more interesting story, but as part of my ongoing bid to rejoin the human race I felt like I should try and behave ethically. She was falling-over drunk and lonely and far from home and nine years younger than me, and stuff.

I didn't actually *feel* any kind of moral compulsion.. just a desire to do what a normal, non-possibly-sociopathic person would do.

Am I wrong?

I have been feeling all romanticky lately lately for some reason, which was heightened this evening by having been to see Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (incredible mess, btw.. not absolutely the worst conceivable Hitchhiker's movie - it had qualities - but they screwed it up pretty comprehensively); the chick who played Trillian (who was also the Cameron Crowe analogue's sister who runs away to become an air hostess in Almost Famous.. here she is.. her name - I shit you not - is Zooey Deschanel. She also played 'Gas Station Girl' in a movie called It's Better To Be Wanted For Murder Than Not To Be Wanted At All, which I have just added to my must-see list for the title alone) was a babe of stupendous proportions (although that was no excuse for the whole romantic subplot.. what the hell were they thinking? Then they had the audacity to dedicate it to Douglas Adams. He must be turning in his grave. Cunts. But I digress...), and I just can't figure out at all if I did the right thing or not.

I half wonder if God - who, of course, I do not actually believe in - is sighing exasperatedly down at me even as I type. "Honestly, young man.. I do my best, you know.. I really do.."

It seemed especially providential since I shouldn't actually have been on that tram at all. I left my bag behind in the cinema and only realised once I was half way home. I had to go back and retrieve it, then get a third tram south again.

It sounds like the sort of story people tell their children. The kind that's meant to be sweet and charming, but actually probably just frightens the crap out of them, confronting them as it does with the horrifyingly arbitrary, random nature of existence. "If I hadn't left my bag behind that night.. YOU WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN BORN" etc.

It's been a night of stuffups all round. Irish girl (she was so lovely.. sigh) misplaced her friends, I misplaced my bag, and my sister and her fiancee Martin the Swede got hopelessly caught in traffic and missed the movie. And they both left their mobiles behind, so I had no idea what had happened to them. I had visions of having to call Mum in Geneva to find out their rego number, and calling the police to see if they'd been in an accident, and them both being dead.

To be perhaps inadvisably honest, the prospect seemed quite exciting. And it would have been a fantastic excuse to blow off work tomorrow.

Ah, who am I kidding? I'm not human. I'll never be human.

Next time, ethics can get fucked. So to speak.

Informing (you of) Your Choices

Indispensable Australian censorship news & reference site Refused Classification has a transcript of the Office of Film & Literature Castration Classification's Des Clark being grilled in Senate Estimates last week.

The proceedings were somewhat less colourful than usual this year, thanks to the absence of the insane and abominable Senator Brian Harradine, who is, pleasingly, unwell. But it still makes for most interesting - if irritating - reading.

Particular attention is drawn to this exchange:

Senator McGAURAN - But moving on, Madam Chair, many years ago I was involved in a movie called Salo, which was eventually banned.
Senator LUDWIG - Did you appear in it?
Senator McGAURAN - Pardon?
Senator LUDWIG - You said you were involved in it.
Senator McGAURAN - I was involved in getting it banned.
Senator LUDWIG - I see.

Compelling Reasons To Live (An Occasional Series)

Exhibit A: The Draughtsman's Contract.

However jaded I may have become, I still heart this movie so fucking much it hurts.

(You might want to go away and do something else while the pictures load.)

First saw it when I was about 14. Completely changed my life.

Latterly, before making the mistake of allowing baby sis to borrow it, I used to have it on as audiovisual wallpaper from time to time, but I can't have actually watched it properly for maybe three or four years.

No wonder I've been so miserable.

MR NOYES: Mr Chandos was a man who spent more time with his gardener than with his wife. They discussed plum trees. Ad nauseam. He gave his family and his tenants cause to dread September, for they were regaled with plums until their guts rumbled like thunder and their backsides ached from overuse. He built the chapel at Fovent, where the pewseats are of plumwood. So the tenants still have cause to remember Chandos through their backsides, on account of the splinters.

"It is said that the Duke de Courcey invited his water mechanic to the top of an elaborate cascade he had constructed, and asked him if he could build such a marvel for anyone else. After offering various thanks and pleasantries, the mechanic finally admitted that - with sufficient patronage - he probably could.

The Duke pushed him, gently, in the small of the back -- and the wretched man plummeted to a watery death!"

(raucous laughter)

MRS HERBERT: Thomas, why is Mr Neville interested in my sheep?
MR NOYES: He is to draw them wet outside the laundry.
MRS HERBERT: Wet? Why does he want them wet?
MR NOYES: Madam, I cannot answer you that. Perhaps he has fond memories of being a baby.

MR NEVILLE: Madam, who is this child who walks the garden with such a solemn look on his face?
MRS TALMANN: That is my husband's nephew, Mr Neville.
MR NEVILLE: He attracts servants like a little midget king. What is his patrimony, Madam?
MRS TALMANN: His father was killed at Ausbergenfeldt. His mother became a Catholic, so my husband had him brought to England.
MR NEVILLE: To be reared as a little Protestant.
MRS TALMANN: He was an orphan, Mr Neville, and needed to be looked after.
MR NEVILLE: An orphan, madam, because his mother became a Catholic?!?

MR TALMANN: It is imperative, Augustus, that in representing me, you ask of yourself the very best. And you do not fraternize with whomsoever you choose. Chasing sheep is a tiresome habit best left to shepherds. If Mr Neville chases sheep, he is not to be emulated.

Drawing is an attribution worth very little - and in England, worth nothing at all. If you must scribble, I suggest that your time would be better spent in studying mathematics. I shall engage you a tutor. And who knows - one day you, Augustus, may add the Talmann name to the Royal Society.

Augustus?

Your tutor, of course, must be German. There are far too many English influences on your life as it is..

MRS TALMANN: Mr Neville, I have grown to believe that a really intelligent man makes for an indifferent painter. For painting requires a certain blindness; a certain refusal to be aware of all the options. An intelligent man will know more about what he is drawing than he will see. And in the space between knowing and seeing he will become... constrained. Unable to persue an idea strongly; fearing perhaps that the discerning - those who he is eager to please - will find him wanting if he does not put in not only what he knows.. but what they know as well.

Fucking.. fucking.. I love you, The Draughtsman's Contract. Still. Will you marry me?

Magus Saga Continues, Etc

Well, the end of the month has arrived, but despite my resolution, I'm still 168 pages shy of completing The Magus.

I have been contemplating suicide, but it really wouldn't suit my style and besides, I want to find out if the ending is really as ambiguous and unsatisfying as everyone says.

The DVD of A Zed & Two Noughts I was coveting here has gone, I discovered today. However in its place was one of PG's preceding feature, The Draughtsman's Contract (pictured, below) - also with director's commentary! Go the digital revolution etc. Feeling in need of a compelling reason to live some retail therapy, and wary of being gazumped again, I bought it.

Yay, DVD of The Draughtsman's Contract with director's commentary.

What else? I happened to pass pipe-smoking Bolte Bridge participant Operative Arachni on Barkly Street this morning. I smiled at her, but I don't think she recognised me.

Here is a picture of someone else's toaster (my own is too retiring for photos):

Fischer in LA (part 2) & The Matrix @ The Astor

Mail from Madeline Khan:

I hereby confirm that Ms. Bridget Fischer is currently traveling abroad and that the west coast of the United States of America is one of her many intended destinations. Furthermore, I can confirm that I am the author of the email recently reproduced upon Operative Midnight’s web journal.

Also, Melbournites: The Matrix is screening at the Astor in St Kilda tomorrow night. Never seen it in a cinema before. Bit exciting. I'm certainly not the only Cammer who's a fan of this movie; anyone else thinking of going?

I'll be wearing my identifier..

Greenaway

I often feel like I've been struck by lightning.

I want to watch Peter Greenaway's 1980 short Act of God again. It's a documentary comprising a series of interviews with lightning strike victims. Lightning strike is recognisable as a phenomenon comparable to the mysterious Violent Unknown Event at the centre of Greenaway's subsequent feature debut The Falls.

I originally saw both films about ten years ago, deep in the bowels of the National Library, where you could watch 16mm prints from the enormous film collection that they used to hold (which I believe now lives at Screensound) on quaint old Steenbeck viewing tables.

I was completely and totally obsessively in love with Greenaway's work throughout my teenage years. It was the centre of my whole world. I want to get reaquainted with it.

I still possess dodgy VHS recordings (mostly taped off Eat Carpet over the years) of a number of his early shorts (H Is For House, Water Wrackets, Windows, Dear Phone and A Walk Through H), but not Act of God. And I've still never even seen Vertical Features Remake.

I really need to get these two DVDs.

I rescued these two books about PG from my parents sinking ship of a house:

Museums & Moving Images by David Pascoe and The Films of Peter Greenaway by Amy Lawrence

If I ever finish The Magus (I'm not going to give up on it now, but like others I've found it a tad bromidic) I'm going to read at least the Lawrence one again.*

And if I ever resolve my current deeply unsatisfactory employment situation, I'm going to celebrate by buying this DVD edition of A Zed & Two Noughts that I discovered at Chronicles on Fitzroy Street the other day, which features a director's commentary track. My sixteen-year-old self would probably have keeled over dead with sheer excitement at such a prospect.

*Sidebar watchers will have noticed that I'm also currently reading Scepticism Inc by Bo Fowler - at work, since The Magus is a bit too bulky to fit comfortably in my pocket. It's narrated by a sentient shopping trolley. It's about a man who runs a metaphysical betting shop, which makes a killing because - metaphysical propositions being inherently unverifiable - it never ever has to pay out. These are just two of many great things about it.

Astor

This is the current program poster for the Astor, AFAIK the only dedicated revival house in Melbourne (apart from ACMI, which doesn't really count). The previous occupant of my domicile was on their mailing list so I've been faithfully putting these up on my wall since November, but although I've passed by the premises a number of times I hadn't actually patronised them until last night.

I went to a double of Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby (I quite liked his previous effort Mystic River) and Hotel Rwanda (as endorsed by Operative Li).

It looks pretty run down from the outside... and it is. But the facade doesn't do justice to the interior; it's wonderfully grandiose inside. It has this whole faded glamour thing going. The auditorium is beautiful.

Seeing as how I was ten minutes late for the session and had to be torched in I couldn't quite muster the nerve to ask them to give me a job. But they're high on my list...

Movies

So I want to start watching more movies. I like movies. Before the weight of the world crushed my spirit, I was going to be a film director when I grew up. I studied cinema for a year at ANU in 2000, and subsequently for four weeks during my recent aborted BA attempt at Melbourne Uni.

Saw Alexander Payne's Election the other night; it wasn't as good as I remembered, but I still liked it a lot. Just arranged to go and see his recent Sideways at the Nova on Saturday.

Been thinking about joining Bigpond Movies, which is a local version of Netflix. I like the idea of racking up everything you want to see via a web interface and then having it come to you, rather than just browsing arbitrarily at a video store.

Before that though, there are a couple of movies ripped from borrowed DVDs sitting on my hard disk to be watched: The Hunger, which was my primary school best friend Toby's favourite movie; and Alexandra's Project by Rolf de Heer, the amazing Australian director who made Bad Boy Bubby, The Quiet Room and The Tracker, amongst others.

There's also a video, which has been gathering dust by the teev for a while now, of Harmony Korine's dogme effort Julien Donkey Boy. It was never released in this country but I was able to buy it in cruddy pirated form late last year from Polyester in Carlton. Korine's first feature Gummo is an all-time favourite; I think I've been putting off watching JDB because I just know it's not going to be nearly as good.