DAY 305: Goin’ down the Royal Derby

3 Jul

THIS pub’s laid pretty dormant in recent years, but in the ’80s and ’90s it was the hub of the Melbourne rockabilly scene.

It’s now relaunched its Rockabilly Sundays. First day’s already packed. Good job, Royal Derby!

Keeper? Yes.

DAY 304: Gawking at Viennese Art & Design

2 Jul

A bit of the Beethoven Frieze

I’VE got a newfound admiration for Klimt. When I was younger I found him too ornate and preferred the contortions of his self-loathing protégé Schiele, or the emotional collywobbles of Munch. Now that my consumption of amphetamines has dropped off, I’m happier admiring one of Gustav’s hectic frocks. His golden Beethoven Frieze, on display here at the National Gallery of Victoria, is well worth and ooh and an aah.

Schiele self-portrait.

The interior design of this era still looks playfully modern and daring…

Get me these.

…and the typography of the colour lithographs must be giving secret boners to all the sulky graphic designers mooching around the gallery.

I’d write more, but I get told off for typing into my phone, presumably in case I rush home and forge my own Beethoven Frieze. Someone ought to direct these security bozos to the section on sexual repression.

Keeper? Am inspired to seek out a course in lithographing. I’m also itching to turn someone into a Klimt sketch.

DAY 303: Going gospel

1 Jul

ON our way to an afternoon of gospel music and soul food, Elle talks excitedly of her long-held desire to visit Al Green’s church in Memphis. I’ve an inkling that today’s event in South Melbourne may not live up to her expectations, but I keep quiet.

Perhaps because I’m all wrapped up in a Codral cuddle, this choir lull rather than inspire. Their account of Jesus watching you through the eyes of a sparrow just puts macabre images in my head.

I have to mentally slap myself on the wrist a few times for wondering if white people just don’t have any soul, but later it transpires Elle and Natalie were wondering the same thing. And besides, there are Blacks Without Soul, too.

Keeper? I was sadly unmoved, but I did hanker to be singing up there myself. Doing that, we all agreed, would add that much needed dimension.

DAY 302: Learning etiquette from a piss peddler

30 Jun

ETIQUETTE and gin have never gone together in my experience, but boutique piss peddlers Hendricks are determined to prove otherwise.

They’ve spirited pop-up shops into fetching streets in Sydney, Melbourne and – soon – Adelaide, in which they serve gin in bone china teacups with slices of cucumber.

While you’re quaffing delicately, Dr Humphrey Sixwivs and Mrs Isabella Forlornicate learn you in the ways of fancy etiquette with their Refined Courtship Clinic.

Our lesson this afternoon is the art of using one’s fan to flirt. One uses one’s fan to hide one’s mouth as one titters over one’s shoulder, or merely to wave as one’s eyes dart about the room, steadfastedly ignoring any chap who might be trying to get one’s attention. Beating the air frantically means you urgently require a drink, while snapping it shut and pointing it at a chap means you’d like to show him something outside – now.

Strikes me all the techniques we’re shown are alive and well today, with long, flicky hair or an iPhone – on which a lady humourlessly pretends to be texting – being the prop of choice.

Keeper? Might try the covert-glance move we’re shown. Watch out.

DAY 301: Going Casey the Punisher on my self-righteousness

29 Jun

These are obviously Target stockings - they've snagged already.

A WISE woman who’d given up the grog and was a-brim with inner peace, once told me exactly what was wrong with me.*

“I think you’re a bit self-righteous,” she chuckled.

As I bustled my skirts about me and explained to her the difference between ‘right’ and ‘self-righteous’, I realised she might have a point. Didn’t tell her that, of course.

Ever since then, I’ve been trying to keep it in check. Hard, when you’re so fired up with sanctimony you can scarcely stop your horsemen from galloping forth, pennants snapping loudly in the wind.

Take today. I walk into Target in my hometown, loaded up with bags I’m taking to the charity shop. (I can hear my voice getting that wheedling, confirmation-seeking tone already, and I’m only typing.)

“Harry! Harry!” Some woman at the till calls out, the moment I enter. A bloke comes and positions himself at the end of the stockings aisle, folds his arms, and leans against the wall, staring at me. I’ve got your number, and all that. It’s blatant! I stare at him, he stares at me, and I go to the till.

“There some weird bloke hanging out in the stockings aisle,” I say, fastidiously counting out the notes for my fishnets.

Once outside, self-righteousness rears like a thrashed donkey as I fantasize about going back in and kicking over their knickers rack. Fuck it, I pacify myself, it’s a trifling matter – if it gives them something to do, let them have it.

I’m very pleased with my new-found maturity, but then as soon as I relax, something inside rahs me back up again, like a cheer squad, like a pipsqueak in the ear of a bully. You’re not really going to take that are you? What was it they did again?

It’s always doing that. I need to floor that inner pipsqueak like Casey the Punisher. I need to break its spindly little legs.

Ducking into the local new age store, I peruse the crystals and stones. I’m not into crystals and stones, but what I’m after here is a physical manifestation of my self-righteousness. Obsidian is moody volcanic glass, which allegedly works on karmic issues. “Leaving a chunk of obsidian by the door,” the little label says, “ensures visitors’ rubbish remains outside your abode.”

I buy a cool, smooth lump to keep it in my pocket. Now, whenever that old familiar feeling whips its own flank into action, I’ll transfer it to the stone of self-righteousness.

Keeper? Yes. It’s cradled in my fist right now.

* Don’t feel moved to do the same – I’m only taking that from someone once.

DAY 300: Going to work in the nuddy

28 Jun

I WAS just thinking about how I’d never done the turning-up-at-some-bloke’s-door-in-a-trenchcoat-with-nothing-underneath-it thing (for fear of guffawing reprisal, mainly), when it occurred to me that I could just breeze all the way into work in nothing but my coat and some over-the-knee socks.

Why? Dunno.

Cycling’s clearly out today, so I trudge to the station with my hands thrust in my coat pockets to override any gusting.

I’d like to report that I feel like a giggly little minx on the train in, but instead I feel like a creep, particularly because I have to wear my laptop on my lap to cover any gaps left by the safety-pins. So far as having a secret no one knows about goes, it doesn’t come close to the ol’ sneaky bottle of vodka cuddled in the coat pocket.

Keeper? Not giving up yet – being in grim marching-to-work-mode didn’t help. A nuddy footy match might be in order. GOAL!

DAY 299: Writing to a stranger in a magazine

27 Jun

I’VE written to magazines (Boars and Whores), I’ve written thank you notes, but I’ve yet to write to a thank you note to someone in a magazine.

This woman wrote a brilliant, risk-taking personal article in what’s usually the sort of magazine that’s copped one too many knocks to the head with the hair straighteners. It’s also a subject close to my heart.

Unlike my letter to Adam Ant for Women of Letters, I’m not trying to save her, and unlike my letters to Cher and Lydia Lunch in my preteens and teens, I’m not asking for help. Sometimes a simple note of appreciation will suffice.

Keeper? Yes.

DAY 298: Dancing to Pat Benatar in public

26 Jun


FOUNDED in Wellington, New Zealand, the Real Hot Bitches ’80s Dance Troupe now have a Melbourne chapter. They specialise in histrionic workout choreography: pomp rock stylin’ in loud G-string leotards.

Today my friend Elle and I join them in an East Brunswick warehouse, where they’re walking new recruits through Pat Benatar’s ‘Love Is a Battlefield’.

We take to it quickly. There’s loads of thrusting and complex arm pumping, plus pained facial expressions to master, but we’ve done all this before as little girls.

I still remember my choreographed routine to Limahl’s ‘Never Ending Story’ and Elton John’s ‘Nikita’. Just  like my eight-year-old self trying to convey Nikita’s “eyes like ice on fire” through hand movements, the Real Hot Bitches are keen to take a literal approach to lyrics. Imagine, if you will, the physical interpretation to this verse:

You’re begging me to go, you’re making me stay
Why do you hurt me so bad?
It would help me to know, do I stand in your way
Or am I the best thing you’ve had?
Believe me, believe me, I can’t tell you why
But I’m trapped by your love and I’m chained to your side

Oh god, it all makes perfect sense. My favourite move is the eagle taking flight, but you’ll find the lobbing of hand grenades while crawling on one’s belly satisfies the more adventurous. The x-rated, on-the-back squirmings (“You open your legs on ‘touch me deep inside’, FYI”), meanwhile, make me feel like I’ve been busted doing naughty things at a pajama party by someone’s mother. No wonder the absent Jane Fondle – choreographer of many epics – is talked about with the same reverence as Colonel Kurtz.

It’s all daggy as a sheep’s bum, to be sure, but I love it and so does Elle. On the tram home she tells me about her own blog that never quite came to fruition: Hula-Hooping Your Way Out of Heartbreak. Her plan was scuppered when her ex-boyfriend came back, bearing platitudes and talking rubbish. Time to resurrect it, I think.

Keeper? Definitely. I was really feeling it.

DAY 297: Inviting readers to design my bumper sticker

25 Jun

She's a beauty.

I PUT the call out on various social networking sites for readers to design a bumper sticker for my troublesome ute.

I’m confident it will be roadworthy in no time at all, if not a few months, and in preparation I’ve perused a bumper sticker website to jazz the thing up a bit.

I’m going with “I love…”, and the suggestions are as follows..

Utes
Cupcakes
Speeding
Spatulas
Being goosed from behind
Explosives
Explosions
Boobies
Boat people
Ginger whiskers
Vegans
Libraries
Politics
Love
Thunking noises
VicRoads
Mechanics

I’m going to go with ‘mechanics’, even though it was my own suggestion, as hopefully then random ones will take pity on me and tinker under my hood.

Keeper? Ordering it now.

DAY 296: Being taught the Fibonacci Sequence by a precocious young boy

24 Jun

Maths punctures my yolk.

MILO is 11, and studying advanced maths so enthusiastically that he’s keen to show me the Fibonacci sequence, apropos of nothing. I stabbed my last maths book to death with a biro, so this is a dangerous quest.

Turns out it’s quite simple: each number is the sum of the previous two numbers – 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, etc – until infinity. I feel like I should know this, but if I have done it before, I’ve blocked it out.

And what is the purpose of such a mathematical phenomenon, you might ask? A mathematical phenomenon bestowed with such heavenly handles as Golden Ratio and Divine Proportion?

Buggered if I know.

Keeper: I’ve got it, but I don’t know what to do with it.

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