Archive | January, 2011

DAY 143: Deciding whether the countryside is a) sinister, or b) non-sinister

21 Jan

MY country town is hosting Wake In Fright night, promising games of two-up (a lie, or today’s header would have been more concise), a barbecue and as much West End Draught as you can drink.

Wake In Fright encapsulates city folks’ fear of country towns; a fear I’ve tended like a bonsai tree. Released in 1971 and filmed in Broken Hill, it follows a schoolteacher (looking unnervingly like Bindi Irwin) who drunkenly gambles away his train fare to civilisation and becomes trapped in his own nightmarish benders and prejudices. It’s famed for its drinking scenes (drink of choice is West End, back in the day when ring-pulls sliced your fingers but gave a satisfying splurt of beer as they did so) and the lengthy roo shooting footage.

When I moved to the bush in a surge of head-for-the-hills adrenalin, the local paper was rife with stories of shadowy men driving around spotlighting roos and leaving their carcasses in plastic bags at the side of the road. Why? the paper rumbled, in between columns on jam-making and fetes. Fucked if I know.

Those first few months on the land were fraught with such paranoia. The local cab drivers seemed suspiciously chatty (when not lapsing into long silences); there were plenty of reed-choked creeks to casually lob bodies into; gunshots went off near my house; mysterious skid marks criss-crossed every road; and endless white utes drove slowly past. And they shoot rabbits, don’t they? I expected to round the corner to my house every evening and find a wicker man built in my honour.

The trees by my house sneak closer whenever you turn your back.

Mine is kind of like a starter town for treechangers, though. I mean, it’s got two IGAs and a train line and it’s featured on Getaway. It even has Target Country, which sells slightly less fashionable garments than Target. This place has got too much of some stuff – French glassware, candles, quilts, lattes, picture frames – and none of others, as if it caters only to the poncing visitors it’s simultaneously trying to terrify. But is it really sinister? I don’t know. I haven’t even seen a snake yet.

And where else but the bush would someone come and anonymously mow your grass while you’re out; flowers and all? Nothing sinister about that.

Keeper? I can’t pack up and leave yet – next week they’re showing Razorback, about a giant feral boar that terrorises city blow-ins. And there’s a guest Q&A with the local bloke who operated the snout.

DAY 142: Consulting the I Ching

20 Jan

NOTHING could be as fun as the Oracle, but I decide to give the I Ching a go, since it’s based around very sage, ancient wisdom, which is always handy in the absence of common sense.

It’s way too complicated to explain here (convenient), but basically you ask it an overwrought question and then either throw three normal coins, or the coins in a proper I Ching set, or even sticks. Once you’ve totted up your totals, you refer to specific passages in the Book of Changes.

My reading portrays a bird’s claw enclosing a young animal, according to Clare, who’s got an I Ching set by her bed for emergencies. It suggests both being protected and making a successful capture.

There are also mentions of ‘little pigs and fish, symbolising fertility’, although I don’t remember asking the I Ching’s opinion on that matter. Everyone’s got an opinion on that though, haven’t they? Then it starts telling me that I’m a horse that’s going to wander off (hopefully this has nothing to do with next week’s horse trekking task), and the message starts getting a bit diluted. My life is once more shrouded in mystery and confusion, the way I like it.

“There are really nice philosophies though,” I remark to Clare, giving the book a good flick through.

“Most if it,” she says. “Sometimes it tells you you’re going to cut your arm off.”

Keeper? Unsure. Next time I will test the I Ching with fiendishly difficult questions that I already know the answer to. Or if I don’t come back from horse trekking, you’ll know it’s spot on.

DAY 141: Baring my soul on a dunny wall

19 Jan

Oh, you can't quite make it out? Shame.

I HAVE scrawled stuff on a toilet wall before, naturally, but it was always limited to the words ‘Gaye Bykers on Acid’ – a band so universally hated (“they’re that shit it’s carved on the side of a mountain somewhere” some wag once declared to stoke my ire) that I felt it my duty as a fan to redress the balance.

Opening my heart and letting the blood flow freely through permanent marker? No, haven’t done that.

“Write the MOST romantic thing you can on a toilet wall” is the suggestion of Matt, whose less workable ideas (from a list of about 100) include: “Get your chainsaw licence (can arrange)”, “Spend a day with the Mafia (been a long time, but might still be able to arrange)”, “Spend a night in the lockup” and “Join the Young Liberals”.

I conscientiously decide to choose a joint where the walls are already defiled. I’m thwarted at first ― believe it or not, the walls of the Exford are unblemished ― but a quick phone call to a seasoned barfly tips me off to another joint in the city.

When I get there, though, I discover their loo walls are black, so I’m forced to take a pen to the bathroom mirror. I feel terrible about this prospect – and even more terrible that I go ahead and do it anyway. The owners were smiley, they went and made me one of the nicest drinks I’ve ever had, and then I go and scrawl my trite observation all over their décor. Despite the sentiment being enough to move the most hard-hearted bastard to tears, this defeats the point of my mission – of doing something I’ve never done before, but with good intent.* I might as well have joined the Young Liberals.

* I do have an Evil Intent list, but that’s just for my amusement.

 Keeper? No. Anyone know how to get marker off mirrors?

DAY 140: Fearing heights really bad

18 Jan

LOOK, there are some absolute corkers of adventures coming up, just not today. Today I am curing my acrophobia.

‘Acrophobic’. What a fitting term for someone who sways like a seven-day pisspot around acrobatic equipment – and only finds this out after they have booked in for a 12-week course. (See also: ‘Fuckstick’.)

Week one’s trial trapeze lesson was just pretty bad, which made me cocky enough to hand over my credit card details. Week two is really, really bad.

It starts halfway up the ladder and ends when I leap off the platform, at which point I’m kind of busy with other stuff. For the 10-minute bit in between I’m shaky, sick and smelling a bit ripe. Internal dialogue goes along the lines of: “You’re going to fall. You’re going to faint and fall. Or you might just fall. You could just get down. But on the way, you’ll fall. Why am I here? This is your fault.”

I try a bit of positive reinforcement: “Look how strongly you are climbing this incredibly unsafe, only-room-for-one-foot-at-a-time ladder, despite the fact that your grip is slick with sweat.”

“That’s it – now you are at the top you can simply hook one leg casually around the pole like you’re a chick in an Elvis Presley movie, and observe with interest how the other girls are doing. So long as they’re not anywhere below eye level.”

While the physical effects are real, I suspect I’m hamming it up Gary Oldman-style by clinging to the pole with such a dramatic expression. In some respect, phobia is a safety net – if you make it clear you have a problem, it’s okay to back out should you need to. To get around this I’ll use an ACT technique, whereby you give an unwanted train of thought a name, and then whenever it comes up, acknowledge: “Aha. This is the ‘Can’t Do It Because I’m a Special Case Story’.” Then you should give a bit of a wry chuckle.

I reckon the best bet is desensitisation though. For the next week I will stand atop things of increasing height, like this table.

Keeper? If these don’t work it’s exposure therapy: having a good plummet.

DAY 139: Finding north

17 Jan

“WHICH way does your house face?” Emerson asked as I bemoaned the constant extinguishing of my pilot light and why that might be.

I wracked my brain, trying to remember the real estate blurb, but couldn’t. “No idea,” I eventually admitted.

“Go outside and tell me where the sun is.”

“Wait … It’s in front of me.”

There was a slightly strangled silence on the other end of the phone. “Is your back actually to the house? I don’t want to find out you’ve just turned around to look at the sun and you’re telling me it’s in front of you.”

Eventually we established the lay of the land, but I do fail to see the bigger picture when it comes to directions – bigger than “left at the petrol station”, I mean. Emerson’s way of navigating by sticking his head out of the window and locating the Sirius or Etamin clusters (instead of reading road signs like the rest of us), seems like a pretty complicated way of working, so I’ve gone and bought a compass.

On getting it home I see it’s a fiendishly complicated one. You can do a magnetic Azimuth reading with the bits and pieces that flip off it, which kind of presumes that the owner will know what an Azimuth looks like if they happen across it in the woods. On a more basic level, you can shake up the compass like a snow globe and the needle will still end up pointing in the same direction, which I think has something to do with magnets, the North Pole and sorcery, but I can’t be any more specific than that.

If you ever see me out, though, scream: “WHERE’S NORTH?” and I’ll tell you.

Keeper? I don’t think I’m really master of the compass yet. Coming tomorrow: I find my finger and pull it out of my arse.

DAY 138: Training for a Chinese lion dance

16 Jan

I'm working up to this.

OUTSIDE the Chinese Youth Society of Melbourne clubhouse in eastern suburb Laburnum, barrel-chested patriarch Bill tests my biceps and gives a friendly snort. I’m here to train with his squad of lion dancers, who are gearing up for the Chinese New Year performance in Chinatown, but he seems to be implying I have a ways to go.

Inside, around 30 members dressed in muscle shirts and pants are leaning against walls and gasping. They’ve just been on a sprint around the neighbourhood in the searing hot sun, and the pain’s only just begun.

While they’re recovering, I have a nose around the clubhouse, which is decked out with banners, newspaper clippings about processions, and photos of footy teams through the decades, not to mention a stonking collection of traditional weaponry. The club’s been going since 1968, so almost everyone here’s grown up with it and can drop in and out. There’s no shortage of older souls to keep a rambunctious, lost young kid out of trouble.

Everyone present today is training to be a lion dancer, but separate troops who perform as dragon dancers and unicorn dancers also train here. There’s rarely any swapping of allegiances, much like you’re born into barracking for just one footy team. As well as the traditional performance for the Chinese New Year, the club might be paid to come out by a shop or restaurant that’s opening, to scare away evil spirits (hence also the banging of drums and letting off of firecrackers). It’s complex stuff and you really need to be comitted (Bill’s son Derrick even has the logo tattooed on him). You also need to be really, really, like really, fit.

Hung Kuen is the martial art of choice here, and the members practise it when they’re not focusing on a performance. Back in China the two principles are sometimes combined – rival lion dancer clubs will fight each other in the street, in costume.

After the push-ups, sit-ups and jumps, we work through the various stances needed to operate a lion: ‘horse’, ‘golden chicken leg’, ‘dragonfly touches water’. It’s all about keeping a centre of gravity to maintain balance on various limbs for aeons. My host, Huy, reckons I look more like a crane than a dragonfly, but given that he can’t stop yawning from “lack of oxygen to the head” and keeps surreptitiously balancing his leg on the gym equipment behind him, I don’t think I’ve got anything to worry about.

Then it’s outside into the blazing heat for a variety of hip-swivelling kicks. Everyone’s dripping with sweat, and personally, I look like I’m an inspector from the Ministry of Silly Walks

The 7kg lion heads are made of papier-mâché and bamboo, with a string operating eyelashes and ears. To animate the mouth you need to balance the head on your arms so that you have a hand free. As the performer’s sight is limited, clowns tumble alongside the lion so that their feet are always in the peripheral vision.

The drums start up and suddenly all the stances we’ve run through make sense, as the stronger members take up the costumes and run the motions into a fluid, thigh-punishing dance.

While the musicians practise their percussion outside, there are about six lions on the go in the clubhouse, including a pink and white one… for the ladies. Australian local Kate has risen through the ranks and is busting a gut leaping and crouching at the head of one lion, alongside considerably more muscle-bound guys.

The dance involves accepting an offering made by a shopkeeper or restaurant proprietor, giving it a good chew, then spitting it out. An offering might be a lettuce, orange, live eel, or – rather inconveniently for the dancers, who end up quite bloodied – live crab. Sometimes there’s beer, which gets sprayed around liberally. Whatever the offering, if you end up splattered with it, that’s really good luck.

There’s a ranking system here – one to three stripes, followed by a flower – and the three-stripers are concentrating on leaping atop platforms of varying heights, in a death-defying fashion. The tail performers lift the head dancers onto their legs and shoulders and they land by rolling together on the floor. It’s brutal stuff, and any misses – particularly involving steel platforms – will be remembered for weeks to come.

Huy and I decide to sit this part out. And next to the meat pie table and sausage sizzle seems as good a place as any to sit.

The CYSM crew in action.

Keeper? Verrry tempted to beg them to adopt me. And will definitely practise the ‘horse’ stance in the privacy of my own home.

DAY 137: Soft porn and hard landings

15 Jan

A prince. Credit should at least be given for the lack of fireman's helmet.

DAY after day I drum it into myself: no expectations, no expectations, no expectations… no expectations, and you won’t be disappointed. But with all-male revue Princes of the Night at Crown Casino’s Fusion club, I manage to keep those expectations at sea level without even trying.

I don’t wish to be harsh, but there are some hideous examples of humanity out here in the queue. I’m sandwiched by girls in LBDs and heels casually slagging off the bride-to-be they’re here to rally and the bride’s other gal pals.

“We’re so much younger than all of them,” the one behind me observes. “It’s strange, because you would have thought she would have wanted a more fun crowd tonight.” “I’m getting married, I’m getting married, I’m getting married,” another wails, like she’s just witnessed a horrible accident.

I’m here alone, markedly underdressed in jeans and only a few mm of foundation. (How is it my girlfriends willingly flocked along to see full gash-flashage at a strip club for men, while not one could be persuaded to accompany me to see male strippers? Should I be asking questions?) Thank god I’ve still got a couple of eyelash extensions left.

“Latecomer?” the doorman sympathises. “Your party must already be inside.”

“Er, no, I’m here checking it out for a… friend,” I blurt, totally fluffing my “scouting for a prospective hen night” story.

It’s icy cold inside, presumably to keep everyone’s nipples erect. I skulk at the back with my notebook like a pervert, and tuck into some stale nibblies, spilling humous all over me in the dark. An inflatable male doll is being tossed around the main arena and the girls are onto it like seagulls on a chip. Squawking starts in earnest when our compere, who sounds disquietingly like Yogi Bear, urges us to get excited. Right on!

Via a screen above the stage we get a bit of perfunctory plotline – there’s these medieval knights, right, all brothers, whose father made them become monks, but who now have risen and are quite keen to taste the pleasures of the flesh – before a swagger of dudes burst out in monk robes and start pulling flamboyant dance moves, grinning sheepishly.

Much ass swatting and manhandling of brides-to-be later (one poor girl has her knees pressed together so tightly they go white), it’s the interval, and I’m off. SixFtHick are playing at the Espy, which means proper stripping with actual pubes and real moving parts.

In between hurling themselves around and hauling people on stage so hard their clothes actually fall off*, the brothers Corbett get lewd in a way that makes a mockery of the day’s earlier gyratings. Ben, who must lose half his bodyweight in sweat down his arse-crack, unbuckles his pants and gobs down them, which is a gambit that ought to be trademarked, while Geoff rocks the Wolf Creek sex crim style to stunning effect.

Photographer Zo Gay reckons SixFtHick are "porn for women". She'd know.

Keeper? I doubt any of the small army of friends who suddenly recovered from hangovers/lethargy/leprosy in time for the second part of my evening would say no to a rerun.

* The band told me one girl has broken her nose twice at Six Ft Hick gigs, and I was half hoping that might be my new deed of the day.

DAY 136: Mining the past

14 Jan

IT took me a while to dig up the best hijnks to be found in my goldmining town, but it seems these places have been full of idiocy for centuries. Hyuck hyuck!

The ‘Changing Face of Victoria’ exhibition at the State Library has on display an 1855 diary of an unknown miner, written in tight script and fair humour. He’s a likeable chap. He drinks ginger beers to ease his hangovers, heralds the arrival of new prostitutes, ponders the escape of a Bengal Tiger from the travelling circus (which ran off down the main street of Ballarat), and marvels at the theatrical delights of showgirl Lola Montez. Lola carried a bullwhip, drove men to death by alcoholism and duels, and devised the Tarantula Dance, in which she’d frantically paw at her body and tear off her clothes, as if to locate an errant arachnid.

It wasn’t all fun and japes, though. Our man also details the murder of the local butcher and a pub fire that killed 11 people, including six of the newly shipped prostitutes, which must have been very disappointing.

Maybe historians will find a cache of this blog, long after I’ve deleted it in a fit of regret, and will study the descriptions of cow hugging, train gangers with hard luck tales, and execution of perfect donuts, hypothesising as to whether this was the norm in the region, circa 2011.

A mean newspaper depiction of Lola.

 

Keeper? It’s a hefty historical exhibition so I’ll have another peruse. I like coming out of these places and imagining everyone I pass on the street is from olden times. Put a bonnet on them and hey presto.

DAY 135: Becoming a psycho Chiko chick

13 Jan

I’M going for my citizenship test soon, so I’m keen to immerse myself in as much Australian culture as possible – particularly since a question on this national delicacy is bound to come up in the test.

“A cheeko roll please,” I toothily bid the good man at Wanna Pizza Me on Elizabeth Street.

He scrapes a saturated cylinder off the bain marie, puts it in a little paper jacket and hands it over. I peruse it sombrely, weighing its sinister, leaden mass in my hand. The best thing to come out of Wagga Wagga since the Sturt Highway, this is, and already it reeks like yesterday’s regrets.

Together with two giant coffees, the Chiko Roll is to make up today’s breakfast… but five minutes in I’m like a kid amped up on orange squash. I make a few regrettable phone calls that should have gone well, before realising I’m so flushed with adrenalin-pumping food-rage I actually want to punch on. Cor – that’s after just three inches, imagine what the full seven would do.

I back away from my inbox and telephone for a bit, and instead have a quick Google of the snack. On eBay there’s a Chiko Roll chick sticker going for $76.

There have been some surfy, Roxy-style updates, but you can't really top this ad. The angles are poetic.

Keeper? If I’m planning on making an emphatic point I might snort one of these down first.

Day 134: Laughing solo

12 Jan

HAVING a good guffaw is supposed to release all sorts of endorphins and feel-good chemicals, lower blood pressure and boost immune function.

I can’t quite bring myself to do group laughter therapy just yet, so I try two minutes on my own this morning.

It sounds proper sinister, sniggering and wheezing alone, but eventually your stomach muscles sort of take over, in an involuntary spasm. The rabbit comes to investigate, as he always does when I make strange noises, which only adds to my discomfort… but by the time I’ve finished I feel kind of dizzy, which is good.

Amusing incidents from the back catalogue to draw upon:

The time I ran my driving instructor’s car off the road and he screamed like a girl.

The time Mum started howling at one of Dad’s dead-serious “it was the winter of my discontent” ruminations and couldn’t stop.

The time that guy in the pub introduced himself as Phil McGuinness.

Keeper? I like that you have to stand with your hands on your hips. I am going to stand with my hands on my hips next time I laugh at someone.

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