Have I got news for you? Well possibly not but I have enjoyed watching the BBC show lately in all its witty glory. I wish I could say the same about #MEDIASTAN. A documentary or perhaps wikimentary/Assangumentary might be more apt titles for what was a well meaning film made by young idealistic euro-journalists with Wikileaks footing the bar tab and gas bills. The premise of the film was to travel through the ‘stans’ of central Asia peddling the latest US Embassy cables to any press interests that might be crazy enough to publish them without getting arrested by the spooks.

A ‘stan centric map of the ‘stans in question.

We saw picturesque gorges and ravines under oppressive skies and palatial mansions that looked like they were designed by Stalin himself all topped off with liberal doses of kitschy gold flake. As far as I can remember the gallant troupe of five unemployed journos were Swedish, German and female. I’m not being sexist here but I can’t recall the ladies doing anything at all in front of the camera and one of the three guys was a cameraman so … perhaps they were the sound department?

It turned out to be quite amusing in some respects. The general flow of the film was the crew would rock up to a press agency in Shambolickstan and try and coerce the editor to sign a ‘memorandum of agreement’ in exchange for all the US cables that pertained to Shambolickstan. The naively expected outcome would have been ‘gimme gimme gimme’ but the reality was that after a quick call to the newspapers owner(generally in Washington or Prague), the editor would refuse to have anything to do with them and summarily call the secret service.

The irony of one situation was that Radio Liberty in Anarchistan would have loved to air the cables but was prevented from doing so by the fact that it is funded by the US Congress. Another organisation didn’t have anytime for democracy and the editor even boasted about reading Aristotle in Greek and was of the opinion that nothing ever changes. There was no pulling the wool over his eyes.

A Skype conversation with the dazzlingly coiffed argentine tinted Julian Assange himself was not enough to change the editors’ minds, in fact, it generally hardened their resolve to kick out the idealistic Assangists and call the feds. I reckon the whole film(loose term) could have been summarised in four or five lines:repeat after me(5 times), do not waste your time and/or money watching this film.

Would you publish stuff that would more than likely end up with you breaking stones in a uranium mine for the rest of your life?

As you might expect in the spirit of the whole tedious affair I illegally downloaded #Mediastan in torrent form but is it illegal to download something that is about the illegal distribution of classified material that was obtained by eavesdropping and stealth then stolen and trafficked across numerous borders? I don’t know but perhaps the NSA can tell me once they’ve read this email.

Hislop and Merton, the funny guys.

I reckon the producers of #MEDIASTAN would have had better luck sending the Beebs’ Ian Hislop and Paul Merton on the road to flog their wares. At least it would have been funny. I have to admit that the funniest part was the enterprising journo in Afghanistan who boasted that he made $12,000US in three days while doing legwork for the Swedish press. The idealistic journos fell silent when they realised that was half their annual salary and their entire annual budget pickled herrings. It got even funnier when he suggested that he would be available to do legwork for Wikileaks for the same bargain rates. The bloke was barely out of nappies but spoke good english and had one of the brassiest necks I’ve ever seen on the box. I expect him to be running his own ‘stan one of these days.

I’ve just read the blurb on the webpage and cannot believe that I was watching the same film. They say it’s a road movie! All road movies have drugs and murder as a central theme or even ‘finding your inner self’. Give me ‘Salvador’ any day. The blurb also says that somebody famous says something about Obama, ah well, I must have fallen asleep by then.

“They’re like stray dogs. Nobody knows where they come from but still they turn up and hang around for hours before clearing off without so much as a by your leave,” said the tanned old man in the fish and chip shop on the corner. I nodded feigned agreement before asking for extra vinegar on my chips. He begrudgingly sprinkled a few drops of the (seemingly watered down) liquid on my fried spuds and flake as if he was baptising a baby with precious holy water. I left him grumbling under his breath about the council and pawing through the daily paper in his greasy empty shop.

The autumnal evening sun was slowly putting itself to bed somewhere over the Westgate bridge so I grabbed a seat in the nearby park and began to unwrap my carb’ rich fish supper. As the acidy fumes tickled my nostrils and overwhelmed the sweet jasmine in the evening air I couldn’t help but pay some thought to the crowd of snappily dressed and hirsute (male and female) punters lining up for overpriced tacos being dispensed from the gayly coloured food van parked on the street. I’d noticed this phenomena of late and had to agree that it was a novel idea and a welcome improvement on seaside Mr Whippy vans and Levantine kebab installations on disused garage forecourts that only open after the pubs close, before shutting up sometime before sunrise and the first tram.  I will confess that I have never been able to bring myself to enquire what sort of meat comes ready compacted on a spit, tastes bloody awful and can be used over and over again: I have abstained these past 20 years and my morning breath is all the better for it as my cat will attest to. 

These vans have inveigled their way into the much lauded food scene of Melbourne over the past few years and ruffled the feathers of many local cafe owners to boot. And so they should. There are some overly praised dining rooms around town being a bit precious while they surf the wave of popularity and insist on punters queuing down the stairs and then being charged outrageous prices for a tin of sardines on toast. I can buy those tins direct and I’ve got a toaster too, all I need now is a snotty waiter with affectations to peel open the lid, decant the fishy contents onto my sourdough bagel and then sneer at me when I reach over to my fridge and grab a beer. Everybody has to raise their game and lower their prices to survive, which is good for the customer.

As a retired cantankerous chef (can you tell) and kitchen designer, I was mildly interested in the idea but wasn’t blown away by it at all. I’d seen these businesses on my travels overseas, heck I’d even queued up with the ravenous hoi polloi and ordered ribs, hot dogs and flaming hot tamales while visiting stateside and was continually impressed with their inventiveness and innovation at squeezing a full kitchen into a space normally reserved for a bed and two stove cooker for wet weekends in The Otways. Furthermore, the food was tasty and damn cheap too!

When I compare those experiences with what’s available here in Melbourne I’m somewhat disappointed. While there is a huge variety on offer; everything from wood fired pizzas, curries, dumplings, BBQ ribs, burgers, bagels, waffles, pancakes, lattes, sausages, wraps, pasta, oysters, pies, doughnuts and of course high-end gourmet organic gluten free low fat (but very high sugar) frozen yoghurt, I still believe we are being sold short and over charged. There are many reasons and chief among them is the prevalence of the nanny state here in Victoria. Everything in the hospitality world is so highly regulated with more red polka-dot tape than you can shake a hipster’s booty at, that there’s very little scope for the cheap mobile set-up that thrives elsewhere in the world.

Who hasn’t been to Asia and South America and partaken of the delights available from mobile BBQ stands and gutter side cafes? Who hasn’t picked up that morsel of food that’s tumbled onto the floor and landed beside the dog’s dinner before furtively popping it into your face hole? Come on, hands up, let he who is without hygiene sin cast the first truffle at the croquembouche!

Where Australia was once a frontier colony populated by soap-dodging opportunistic fossickers, gold miners, inventors, sheep farmers, damper cooking bushrangers and cross dressing bearded ne’er do wells, we now seem to live in a society where personal responsibility is negligible and litigation is king. There is no opportunity to scrape the culinary walls of the food scene and see what gives as it is against the law of the land.  Everything is so safe, so wrapped up in rules and national standards and I can’t help but think that it all came from a nasty outbreak of salmonella served up in a Vietnamese pork roll down Springvale way some 20 years ago.  

But it goes further and deeper than that. There’s always a hullabaloo in the foodie scene over the latest food Stasi prohibition on artisan food being imported from Europe (and justifiably so) whether it’s Parma ham, fragrant unpasteurised cheese, or live cultured ‘what nots’, the powers that be seem intent on taking the fun out of food and thus the innovation. The Lucky Country has turned into a day care nursery populated by portly people with designer allergies, addictions to watching ridiculously unrealistic food shows presented by pretentiously pompous cravat wearing persons of dubious vintage, and they still can’t cook!

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating the wholesale distribution of E. coli, C. perfringes and C. botulinum in our late night dinners via relaxed food standards but perhaps a ‘who dares wins’ attitude might be the way to go. The fines are already sizeable for food born illnesses and justifiably so as they can be fatal in the top and bottom ends of the age spectrum but we are but pests on this planet and we seemed to have survived so far and are proliferating at a rate of knots despite the odds.  I would propose that the onus be placed on the business to excel in cleanliness under pain of bankruptcy and a spell in the stocks on Princes Bridge, and the customer to use their sadly lacking common sense and nous in deciding whether or not a food vendor is up to the task. This would bring down the cost of fitting out and running these mobile kitchens hugely and thus lead to cheaper and more experimental fare for you and me. Perhaps people might actually learn to cook at home? A novel idea I know but we can’t be that useless, or can we? However, I will concede there might be the odd exploding Ford Transit van and nights spent doubled over the worship bowl cursing that ‘totes amazeballs cheap’ fish taco. But ain’t that just one slice of the oft’ precarious but always tasty porky po’ boy of life? 

The website ‘wherethetruck‘ lists 127 nationwide members of their site of which 60 odd are located in marvellous Melbourne, and most likely inner city Melbourne where their target demographic of cashed up young’uns and scenesters reside. Social media is invaluable to these enterprises. If you’re heading to a festival or bushland doof and want to make sure that your favourite gluten free sourdough vegetarian Bánh Mì is available, a quick look at their relevant web page will put your mind and inner floral health at ease. 

These are the early days where the scene is being set, the battles with council and local traders fought, and the parameters of what can actually be served out the side of a van. Would you order organic free range venison bangers on blue Congo mash, heirloom green beans and a goji-berry-infused-beaujolais-nouveau jus then sit on the street in the winter drizzle and attempt to eat it? Me neither. I’d be ensconced on my couch with a bottle of something alcoholic, the latest episode of Game of Thrones and my cat, I’m probably not alone there either. Perhaps if they rang my door bell and plated up my dinner and fed kitty I might be more inclined to part with my cash.

If you take a cursory glance at Gumtree, eBay and The Trading Post for food vans you’d be lead to believe that it’s a thriving industry, and it is, but with a high turnover rate. I’ve seen bakers’ dozens of them go to the great knackers yard in the sky only to bounce back phoenix like a few weeks later hocking Nepalese momos. You can pick up a minimally kitted out van/trailer for $15,000 or you can go top end and spend stupid money, $80,000 or more, on an imported and then fitted out Airstream chrome caravan and be the envy of the ironic masses. And don’t forget about council trading permits, parking fines, protection money and turf war extras because they ain’t cheap.

$15,000 is a mere drop in the ocean when compared to the high wages stipulated in our laws, and let’s be honest here, Melbourne is not cheap. High wages that push owner operators to work insane hours because they can’t afford to pay junior wages to school leavers, and why would you hire a school leaver with minimal culinary experience to spearhead your business? Beats me. At times I’ve seen up to three moustachioed and tattooed youngsters tripping up over each other as they serve up a menu (really, a menu?) of three burgers and fries in limited confines. Why? Get the chef in there with all his superior time management skills and experience to bang out the burgers, not some travelling backpacker who’s never worked in hospitality before. Mind you, I will concede that due to their inherent desire to partake of the amber nectar, and other such libations, their ability to drive a van and remain under the limit is dubious if indeed they still have a license and we all know about grumpy chefs and customer service. The least said the better. 

At the end of the night it’s all about competition and having a level playing field.  Sadly the field is as lumpy as the MCG after Grand Final Day, food costs are skyrocketing due to our mercurial weather patterns and there’s a bit too much money around for the customer to be truly discerning on price and quality. I have a feeling that come the great recession that we have to have, things will level out with an almighty crash bang wallop of pots, pans and entrepreneurial egos.

Somebody is bound to let the air out of the tyres of these mobile upstarts sooner or later but I’m sure they will defy the oft toned cliche of soufflés not rising twice. I venture they’ll find that necessity is the mother of invention and adapt accordingly to find their rightful niche on the culinary highways and byways of Melbourne, much to the annoyance of the local surly fish’n’chip shop owner and insecure downtown eateries.

This article first appeared in The Australia Times

I hadn’t planned on walking home this morning but the torrential downpour that was last nights precipitation forced me to to couch it out at a friend’s place. Not that I’m averse to getting wet but why bother. Anywho, there was I perambulating meself up Lygon street across from the ol’ cemetery in North Carlton when a thought came to my sleepy mind, how about some fluffy buttery croissanty goodness from Filou’s bakery? Well, I seldom have to ask myself that question twice, if ever at all. So off I went with a renewed interest in the benefits of early morning walks and could see Filou’s brightly coloured shop front a couple o’ hundred yards up the road. They do a lovely pain au chocolate and their croissants are always extremely edible, however they do fall down on the quality of their coffee and the speed of service.  The young francophones on counter duty are always charming and willing to put up with my school boy french conversational skills while they commit untold crimes against coffee.

I was half considering jumping on an approaching tram but the lure of french flaky pastry was too strong to resist. The tram stopped, a few passengers disembarked and then the driver, of Indian appearance, got off and paced it across the road and into Filou’s. I started to think what he might be buying and sympathised with the passengers if he was ordering a coffee, they’d be waiting awhile sitting there looking at dead people in the cemetery. Then out the driver popped with a brown paper bag of which I could see the point of a croissant peeping out. A moment later the tram took off and I ventured in to the shop with thoughts of hip foodie tram drivers rattling round my head.

Stupidly I asked for a latte with ‘one’ along with a ‘pain au chocolate’ and a ‘croissant’. After a few moments I had a bag full of happiness and a cup of joe to go in my hands but there was something missing… I must have impressed or distracted the young ‘fille’ behind the counter with my ‘parlez vous francais’ routine because she forgot to sugar my coffee. I pointed out this oversight which had her a wee bit flustered because she did a very unusual thing. She took off the lid, dropped in a teaspoon of brown sugar crystals and then placed the lid back on. I’m not a big fan of unstirred sweetened coffee but hey I wasn’t going to let it spoil my breakfast. It did spoil my breakfast. The coffee was ‘trop chaud’ and tasted like ‘merde’.

I started to think of the happy tram driver munching on golden flaky pastry. I wondered does he do this all the time or only on Saturday mornings? Are there other shops that he stops in at while the passengers play Kandy Krush and Angry Birds? Do they even notice their gastronomically influenced abandonment? What would head office say?

T’other night I took t upon me self to watch Jodorowsky’s Dune. I was at a bit of a loose end creatively, you know – procrastinating and lazing around on the couch watching Game of Thrones and all that jazz, when I should have been churning out the words at a rate of cliched knots and thinking about weighty matters of style and prose. Well, old Jodorowsky never fails to stimulate, shock, amaze and stir it up a bit. I’ve long been a fan of his cosmic world view, we could go back to that night when I first saw Santa Sangre.

It was in Dublin, a cold and damp city at the best of times but especially so in the depths of winter. I was working as an overworked and underpaid pasta chef in Temple Bar, had a motley bunch of friends and would have been in my early twenties full of life and doubts and drugs and alcohol. One such crew member was the singularly outrageous Dave ‘The Rave’ Hernandez. A curious blend of Irish-Latino blood with something else thrown into the mix that gave him an edge, an edge that would scare the living daylights  out of most people but not I. The story was that his father was sold to the local circus in Columbia. What he did there I know not what but eventually escaped and fled to the States.

Dave lived in a typically damp and dark basement on Synge Street, with a dude called Naylor, if memory serves. Basements in Dublin are generally inhabited by dole recipients, students, old people and bronchitis sufferers. Now you could probably add in refugees of African and east European origin but that would be mere speculation on my part as I’ve not been there for a while. It was your average miserable Irish night, I’d finished work for the night and was eager for something to take my mind off the 245 plates of pasta I’d served up in the previous 6 hours. Chances are Dave had stuck his head in the kitchen window and roared obscenities at all and sundry, in this he excelled, before inviting me over to his gaff to partake of a few beers and whatever else was hiding under the carpet. 

So off we went in the dank night with beers and wine in stow and nothing much else. You never knew who you were going to meet in the basement and this time was no exception; there was Tommy with the milk bottle glasses and friendly but dangerous face constantly looking over his shoulder for the cops, a spell in Mountjoy prison for armed robbery had given him an unhealthy paranoia; Carl was squeezed into a corner mumbling to himself looking every bit like a drugstore junkie, there was steam coming off his brown curly hair, don’t ask me why but there was; Naylor was sitting on throne number one looking cool and serious as usual with his denim waistcoat, check shirt and long dark hair falling down over his bare skull face. The air was thick with the pungent and acrid smell of hash and tobacco, a pot of tea was stewing on the two ring makeshift burner, beer cans, miniature bottles of spirits and ashtrays occupied any flat surface that was available for occupation.

“Hey cunts, I picked up this great video today from Abdul down the way. Trust me it’s gonna blow your minds if there’s anything left to blow, wink wink,” said Dave lewdly as he batted an eyelid. Nobody objected, everybody was swimming in their own sweet ocean of intoxication and hardly able to put up an objection or voice any form of intellectual interaction on the matter apart from the usual ‘Oh dear, what are we in for now?’

I was lying on the floor with a cushion for comfort and a nasty arctic draught shooting down my left side just to keep me honest. A hot cup of tea and a joint did little to warm me up as we were now into the dreaded month of February, the coldest and wettest month of the year. Dave assumed his position on throne number two(there were only two decent chairs in the cramped basement) and told Tommy to press play on the VCR. What followed was an orgy of the senses in glorious depravity and way the fuck out there craziness. Alejandro Jodorowsky’s world was as crazy as Dave’s, was stunning and uplifting, disturbing and just plain bat shit crazy. That night in the cold basement on Synge street a quare bunch of odd fellows basked in the vibrant colour of a Mexican circus complete with a painted lady, a dying elephant and a cast of mutants, freaks and odd-jobs. Everybody felt at home and for the next two hours or so we forgot all about the harsh world outside with its realities of life on the dole and eternal dampness.

From then on I was hooked into the cult like world of Jodorowsky, although he would never use a word like that.  He would say that if that is what you think well then why don’t you turn over another tarot card and let’s see. I’ve since read his graphic novels, his books on tarot and the occult, seen all his films and taken a great deal of inspiration from his life and art. There was no way that I was going to miss out on a documentary on how he didn’t make Dune but came oh so close only to be undone by the Hollywood machine of 90 minute features with clear and easy to follow narrative. He was just  too God damn way out there for Burbank. If you like Dali, H.R.Giger, Orson Welles, Dan O’Bannon, Chris Foss and the spiritual arts in general go check out this film.

This man is a legend at a sprightly 84 years old. He still has a mouth full of teeth and a head full of ideas. I sincerely hope that he can muster up the resolve to commit something beautiful to the silver screen again, and again and again. Here’s a brief review I wrote about his last film ‘The dance of Reality’.

Now where did I put that ‘to do’ list?

Last night, t’was a Friday night, I stayed in and kept the animals company and snoozed on the couch. Hardly the stuff of Trainspotting or The Bad Lieutenant but there was a reason, several in fact. The reasons being to catch up on some much needed beauty sleep(The World Cup has been playing havoc with my sleeping patterns), not that my looks are deteriorating at a rate of knots, but because I had a hot date down at the Victorian Writer’s centre. Several dates in fact. I was to queue up at the desks of several publishers and agents and spruik my wares and toss a few pitches here and there. Well that I did, even though I’ve nothing completed for publication but I have fantastic ideas and great intentions which to paraphrase the late great Humphrey B. ‘don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.’

It was the usual gathering of bubbly middle aged ladies in floral dresses, introverted waifs clutching their latest can’t put down novel and no more than 5 guys to the 30 odd women. Even the agents and publishers were mostly female. Now here’s the thing; all you’ll ever hear about the publishing world is how it is totally biased and skewed towards male writers. How can this be when the agents of change are female themselves? I would like to know the answer to this conundrum or anomaly or whatever you wanna call it.

Anyways I got some useful information, some encouragement and not much else for my $30 dollars worth. When standing in line three minutes can seem like an eternity but when sat down in front of ‘them’ you’d barely have enough time to get through your ABC’s. Although things got better when I left early, there was a horrendous queue to see the one publisher of note and even at three minute sittings there weren’t enough minutes left in the hour for me to get a hearing so I decamped, upped sticks and took myself down Swanston street way.

Swanston Street is the main commercial thoroughfare in Melbourne city proper and as is the case with these popular places they tend to be spotted with crap food joints, even crapper ladies wear shops, street performers and government buildings. Swanston Street has the Town Hall, a beautiful old building from the gold rush era when money was something used to light Cuban cigars with. Well, today was my luckyish day as I strolled past the The Town Hall. At twelve noon they were to open an interactive attraction as part of refugee week. Seriously, I knew not of this event and why would I? I’m not a refugee nor do I work with refugees although I should perhaps have heard mention of it on community radio but hey, thems the breaks. Todays event was ‘The Bureau of Worldly Advice’.

The by line was…take a number, have your paperwork ready and choose the advice you seek….with some possible suggestions and or examples of what you could ask the half dozen or so worldly people with advice, such as; human rights or the complexities of having a difficult name; wearing a hijab or translating; homesickness; the similarities between us; how to eat a meat pie or wade through technology. There was a board with general topics listed and the corresponding table number to sit at.

I plumped for language and something else and was directed to a lovely desk manned by a middle eastern woman and presumably her young daughter. As it turned out I was talking to Raya, an Iranian Christian refugee fresh off the plane. We chatted for about 15 minutes about whatever her limited english could handle as I speak no Persian/Farsi. She was a tour guide in Iran making good money and leading a comfortable life when things took a turn for the worst. I daren’t not venture into the specifics of her case but was lead to understand that her application was pending and as such they were existing on government money and doing their best to enjoy Melbourne. Raya liked Melbourne already, especially the rain. Well it takes all sorts.

To be honest I was expecting something a bit more theatrical and perhaps mystical. Perhaps somebody behind a big old Teak table was gonna tell me the secret to landing that book deal via some clandestine process involving trips to the font of soul selling and the passing of indecipherable notes. At least a few laughs would have been rendered by yours truly in any event.

After exhausting our conversational rations I bid her farewell and the best of luck in her application and sauntered out the door which brings me onto the second topic in my discourse on Swanston Street. There appears to be an infestation of trickery street performers of late on the pavements. What I mean is the ‘find the queen’ card tricks that you know about from watching the movies but wouldn’t have ever seen in person. Today I saw two such enterprises and several statuesque actors just standing there in their make up and plaster of Paris. Hardly ripping stuff for a Saturday morning downtown but better than old dears singing greensleaves, there is no doubt in that for sure.

I wonder how these performers get their licenses? One must give a performance of your street art in front of some municipal officers in order to be granted a permit to work. Does the officer get ripped of looking for the queen and lose a tenner or do they fall asleep while watching Christopher Columbus stand motionless for half an hour with only the odd exploratory wink from a made up face to wait for?

On a side note the whole of the street was peppered with religious types. First off I noticed the Falung Gong contingent protesting against the current Chinese ‘dictator’ followed up by the ‘Islam is friendly’ brigade handing out leaflets, followed by the ‘Christians for Islamic understanding’ front, followed by the ‘Repent ye sins now for we are offering bulk discounts on indulgences’ mob and then there were a motley crew of political protestors on the steps of The Library being closely monitored by an even rougher bunch of cops.

On a side note I ventured into Dymocks book shop to see if they had ‘The Feel-Good Hit of the Year: a memoir by Liam Pieper. They did. I bought it even though I’m strapped for cash. The reason being that it is a book very similar to something that I might want to get published soon. So I’m on a research mission and shall read it while waiting for the work phone to ring and see what I can take from it, not plagiarise but for form and style.

That’s what I did this morning, this is what I did before beer o’clock and now I’m off duty. Enjoy the rest of your day.

Last night I watched part two of John Michael McDonagh’s as yet unfinished trilogy of films dwelling on his Irish ancestry, the third part will be set in London, with high hopes of cracking my shites laughing. Well, laugh I did but my shites are still intact so to speak although there were hairline fractures showing.  Having enjoyed his previous offering, The Guard, my hopes were high but not that high that I couldn’t hurdle them with a wee small run up and throw the ol’ leg over, but, as things panned out I would have needed a spring board to clear the bar.

I’d like to know who penned the words, ‘Nothing short of a masterpiece. A very nearly flawless film,’ that appears on the above poster. Have they ever seen a masterpiece? Are they aware of Stanley Kubrick? Orson Welles? Woody Allen? I think not. Although Calvary is a good film,  a funny film and most importantly a Hiberno-centric film I still can’t bring myself to use the ‘M’ word in relation to it. In short, I found it  a bit on the nose with nothing hiding below its celluloid veneer. nothing at all. Well, let me just take that back. The many beautiful panoramas of the verdant and imposing Ben Bulben set against a backdrop of grey wintry skies did set my mind stumbling back to my Irish childhood sat in geography class at the local Presentation Brothers College (a radical off shoot of the infamous Christian Brothers) where Brothers dressed just like Brendan Gleeson stalked the hallways and classrooms for their pound of unrepentant adolescent flesh. I liked geography and was always wondering what sort of a mountain was Ben Bulben? So angular and exotic, unlike most other mountains in Ireland bar Mount Errigal in Donegal which has a charming pyramid like peak surrounded by the scree and cast offs of thousands of years of weather erosion. Can you tell I liked my geography? That was one class where I plied my book diligently under the dry humour of Mr Flynn’s tutelage. Ben Bulben is a block mountain, or so I was lead to believe at the time. Nothing mysterious about that at all but the mystery I speak off is what was it doing fighting for top billing in Calvary?

The other issue I have with calvary is the way it extracted  the michael out of the Catholic Church. I’m all for such humorous diversion but it all seamed like a rather badly written episode of Father Ted. The digs and jibes at The Church were never ending, in fact I think they went on far longer than the ‘eternal damnation’ my Parish Priest would yabber on about as payment for carnal sins. I did like it, I enjoyed it and I also enjoyed the ribbing that ‘The Rich C*&ts’ received for crippling Ireland and wiping their arses with its outdated financial legislation. The kidney punches at the ‘Holy Institution’ of marriage were good too but then it went back to the wholesale slaughter of the Holy See, again, and again and again just for good measure.

It would take a cave dwelling idiot to suggest that the clergy and their employers are beyond reproach, are still resident safely in The Pale, are purveyors of  guilt edge moral fibre and what ever else you might want to get your gob around but hang on a minute. It seems that whatever come back could have been written into the script, just to increase the gambit and gag potential, was buried in that awful pit of children’s bones out in Tuam. Now that wasn’t fair was it? It’s off to the workhouse for me because of my seditious writings and immoral thoughts. Or should that say ‘amoral’? I’m not sure and can’t recall if we were ever taught the difference in Religious Education.  No wait, amoral was reading Ulysses and immoral was smuggling a few copies of the band manuscript into the country from England.

What I’m saying is that the bad guy in this film was so fucking huge and an awful screen hogger at that, that there was no room for anything else. Apart from the only other thing bigger than a Bishop’s bishopric which as we all know is Ben Bulben. Ah, Ben loves the limelight sure he does. It’s a well known fact that for the good guy to be really good, like a fucking angel or something, the bad guy has to be a shameless bollix of the highest order and Calvary kinda got it all wrong.

In my humble confused and addled Irish opinion I reckon Mr McDonagh could have increased the subtlety factor a tad, like a country mile tad, and eased off the easy targets. Sure I’m not sure that the Pope was mentioned at all at all all. The film started to expose it self to me like a play. All two person dialogue scenes and then move along there now, nuttin’ to see here boss. I can only surmise that Mr Mcdonagh was in a bit of a hurry to go and see Garth Brooks at Croke Park and didn’t have the decency to send the script to his brother, the other Mr McDonagh of ‘In Bruges’ fame, for a quick read through and perhaps a cup of Lyons tea and a few mikado biscuits.

But then what would I know? I have no plays written or performed, no film scripts optioned and haven’t even had a book published yet. What I do know is that Littlefinger’s Irish accent was a bit heavy on the ham and white sauce and I’ve never seen such a bleeding awful church in all my past life spent in Ireland that  wasn’t owned and built by the Jehovahs. And what was with the ending? Just desserts or what? Like I said earlier, it was all a bit on the nose, the Pope’s nose at that. There I said it!

Welcome to the land Downunder where our ignorant leader daily makes a blunder. Even when he is visiting the neighbours he can’t help but embarrass us and make us look like a nation of extremist apparatchiks. Things are getting so bad that I’m running out of offensive things to say about our dear leader. They don’t seem to carry any weight anymore. It’s like saying Santa Claus doesn’t exist, we all know it but choose too let it lie.

Only today he compared Britain’s colonisation and invasion of Australia to investment. He says he’s a friend of the unemployed, students, the climate, the Earth, single mothers and who ever else he wants to cut funds to. With friends like this…

I honestly think the fellah is suffering from some form of early onset senile dementia. Have you seen the way his head shakes and his whole body goes into meltdown when he’s asked a tricky question. I swear that he thinks he’s yards ahead of everybody else. After all he was a Rhodes scholar, yes, a bleedin’ Rhodes scholar! There’s a list of Rhodes scholars here which includes Kris Kristofferson!

The really funny thing about our illustrious leader is his, and his party’s, attitude to refugees. More of an out and out declaration of war than an attitude. He was born in England and he struts around like the farmyard rooster Foghorn Leghorn, although that does cast my favourite cartoon chook in a rather disparaging light.

So, who voted for this intellectual colossus? It would appear that great swathes of Australia is populated by people who couldn’t or can’t see the wool for the wolf in sheep’s clothing. They were under the impression that Australia is wallowing in a bottomless pit of debt and is being over run with Jihadist refugees willing to blow up anything including themselves on occasion. I could go on but I think you get the idea. Just think of the Tea Party brigade across the water and you’ll instantly know what I mean.

Here’s a link to an article about yet another racist attack on public transport not committed by a Nazi sympathising thug but by a middle aged women who then went on to say she didn’t know what came over her. It’s interesting that the English man brought in to clean up the transport system said he’s never heard such racist abuse before and he from the great melting pot of England. His quotes and presence have since been removed from the article. This lucky country of ours is fast becoming a right wing cess pool of ignorance and money grabbing intolerance.

I could go on but what’s the point?

Hangs head in collective shame and bangs it on desk. Repeatedly.

So the mighty Germans have done it again, and again and again. And why not? They are united, organised, efficient and they keep going like the Duracell Bunny. Well done and may the steins flow freely in Bavaria and elsewhere in strudel land.

There was so much I wanted to write about half an hour ago; sci-fi romance in Brasilia, the many challenges of being Clive Palmer’s tailor, the new season of Hemlock Grove and then some. I’ll start with the disgraceful showing of England in Brazil 2014. What were they thinking? They didn’t have a Jim Dandy chance in hell of winning the pub raffle let alone a game and it’s all pretty obvious really. They have the richest league in the world with all the best players and foreign managers that big money can buy and therein lies the problem: the English team is second rate and their management even worse. I reckon there’s gonna be a TED talk about it soon.

Australia did well despite not progressing and can hold their heads up high. They had unity and gusto in abundance, take note England. Did anybody even notice the Russians slink off to Moscow after barely getting their kit on? The African contingent tried valiantly before playing silly buggers over bonuses and fixing matches. Algeria may hold their heads high after donating their collective prize money($6M) to the poor bombarded Palestinians. They deserve the fair play award for that.

T’was good to see the Italians beat England and still go home along with the Spanish and Portuguese and did anybody miss them later on? No.

The US of A played well and were unlucky not to progress a little further. Ditto Mexico and Chile. Japan and South Korea slept through the alarm clock. France looked good but ran out of puff along with Switzerland. Uruguay lost their appetite and their bite but still showed the Poms a thing or two.

Costa Rica were the dahlings of the show and deserve everything that comes their way. Holland scored more goals than England have in donkey’s years.

The Brazilians had a nightmare and will need some serious group therapy to get over it all but at least Argentina didn’t win the final in the Maracana.

Argentina played well, Messi played better.

FIFA made a fortune, somebody made a fortune selling dodgy tickets for years. The media didn’t show any trouble on the streets. The whole show went smoothly despite the nay sayers predicting mass transport chaos, social unrest and concerns of stadia not being ready on time.

Roll on Russia 2018 which is bound to be interesting in so many ways considering all the shite going on there.

Winter, winter, hail and binter…the telly is crap and the you’ve out drank the vintner.

So there I am pacing the kitchen and poking an eye in the fridge for culinary inspiration. I’ve got a kangaroo sauce on the stove nicely simmering for tomorrows lasagne but what of tonight’s repast? Ah, I see some unloved mashed potato from a previous shepherd’s pie, mmmmm. I see some tastes of the mediterranean; kalamata olives and semi sun dried tomatoes, and cheese too. Lookee here, some home made cole slaw(carrot, red cabbage, cucumber, roasted and ground caraway seeds and kewpie mayo), now what to do. In short I started thinking of potato cakes fried in olive oil and finished in the oven. So I mixed up the mash with the olives and semi sun dried tomatoes, added in grated cheese, an egg for binding and some potato starch to hold it all together.

15 minutes later I’m sitting down with a deelish plate of leftovers and Utopia(not  to be confused with Pilger’s damning indictment of Australia) on the telly. Strike a light! Season two, episode one of Dennis Kelly’s Utopia goes way back before the first season and then some. I reckon it’s the most twisted, intelligent, beautiful, artsy, shocking thing on telly right now. The makers have nailed it in every way possible; old school tv aspect ratio, heightened colour saturation, grotesque characters, historical manipulation, unsettling soundtrack and cerebral excitation a plenty. I’d forgotten how much I loved the first season, how much it blew everything else out of the water and into the bin of safe mediocrity.

My plate of spud cakes and slaw, as good as it was, lay unloved as my eyes feasted on the saturated colours of 1970s England and the meatiest script I’ve heard in months. A friend of mine mentioned in passing that episode two was to be shown on the next night and he was going to watch them back to back for added continuity and indulgence. I nodded in agreement. I am now much the wiser. I was drunk on the first episode, I’m now enjoying an autopsy hangover of sorts and couldn’t handle a second bottle of overproof Utopia if I tried.

Having sifted through the forums and chat rooms late into the cold night I am delighted to know that HBO will attempt a remake. Delighted but also fearful that they will tone it down, sanitise it or just fuck it up. It’s perfect the way it is and uniquely English in it’s delivery, it’s strangeness, it’s originality. To say that it is verging on the macabre doesn’t quite do it justice as there is something unknown about it. To look at it as a damning indictment of what governments and industry do when they jump into bed together leads to nightmarish scenarios that are present in today’s world. All you gotta do is think of white men in conservative pinstriped suits shaking hands with Monsantoesque R&D departments and a nasty whiff of sinister eugenics floating in the air.

Do not adjust your television.

Designer, style guru, rap muse and film director Tom Ford has given us his 15 commandments of sartorial, physical and mental must haves. I reckon he gets off to a good start but falters along the way.

Let’s take it from the top;

1 Goes without saying really but you’d be surprised how many people didn’t receive the DNA coding for a funny bone.

2 This is old school. After waking from a night of snoring and sweaty dreams most men used to head for the toilet and relax their bowels while reading yesterday’s paper, and sometimes using it in place of loo roll. Smart phones and smart pads have nearly made newspapers a thing of the past and the journalism is so shit these days you just won’t believe what goes to print. But a good knowledge of world events is essential for any man of the world.

3 Life is sport of a sort. Most men give up sports upon leaving school and entering the workforce preferring to make sport at work and work out at the bar. Still, pool and darts are sports of sorts but wouldn’t it sound way cooler if you could say that you’re a champion steeplechaser or much admired pigeon fancier?

4 I can confess that I have gone for extended periods without a tweezers in my make up bag. The reason being I’ve generally used them for deboning salmon sides and extracting the most from my stash.

5 Rum and smoke has been my signature aroma for years now and I’m not about to change although I will concede that tiger balm is a good fresher for those hot days when you can’t drink or smoke.

6 Most men would struggle to own a well cut anything after being circumcised let  alone a $3,000 suit but point taken.

7 Doc Marten’s are classic lace ups aren’t they?  Another valid point here from Tom. I found an old pair of fashion shoes at the charity store some time back. They fitted my slender feet like a cop at a riot. The only problem was their awful white/grey/silver colour scheme which wasn’t a problem for long once I’d sprayed them with some gloss black Hammerite.

8 Blazers are so… I don’t know but what I think our Tom means is an iBlazer with bluetooth and touch screen controls.

9 Is their such a thing as a perfect dark pair of jeans? Possibly if you spend stupid designer money on them. I’ll settle for no brand cheapies.

10 Well hold on a second there Mr Ford. ‘Lots of crisp white shirts’? Really? Are we talking Immelda Marcos lots or two or three whiteys?

11 Most men are an embarrassment in the socks and jocks departments. Valid point though Tom because you never know when you might get run down by a bus.

12 These are for hiring or perhaps a tuxedo shirt will suffice which are way cheaper and can be washed warm and soapy.

13 Watches are so yesterday. Smart watches are the way ahead.

14 Elton John had what he would have called perfect sunglasses at the time, but now?  It’s all a matter of taste and time.

15 It’s off to Thailand for some perfect teeth, a new suit, some cheap designer undies, perfect sunnies, silk tuxedo and the rest. In fact I would suggest that this whole list, bar number one, can be bought on the streets of Bangkok for a fraction of the price at home. So, I would add a trip to Bangkok to Tom’s list of must haves for the men.

In a bat shit crazy world like ours what can be done to make it all so much easier to get out of bed with a smile on one’s dial and greet the world with expectant joy rather than fearful anxiety and a wobbly arse? Well, I’ve given it a wee bit of thought, as I am known to do, and have come up with these totally rational solutions to our most pressing problems.

1-Global warming. The planet is not that different to one of them thar fancy fridges the 1%ers have. You know the type I mean: ice cube maker, crisper section, hot box etc. Well, Planet Earth is much the same so the logical way to cool things down is to turn up the dial beside the light. It works for me all the time. The dial for Planet Earth is located under the old Leyland factory in East Chorley in England.

2-Over Population. Now here’s a quare one. We are now seven plus billion bipedal munchkins schlepping around on the planet’s crust, which I reckon is just a tad too many. This is easily proven by the lack of affordable housing world wide. I do not call working for 40 years to pay off a mortgage affordable. So if we get rid of a cool billion or so it should only take 20 years to own that nice house. My idea is that we genetically modify the Ebola virus to only infect and kill people who have ‘outy’ belly buttons or religious and political extremists.

Ewwwww, gross.

3-The Middle East. This is the easiest one of them all. Quit simply treat them like little children and ignore them. Yup. Don’t go there, don’t listen to them, don’t give them money to keep them quiet and most importantly of all delete all reference to The Middle east from anything that was ever written or posted on Reddit. They will soon learn, calm down and sleep off their tantrums just before supper.

4-The 1%ers. Start calling them the something less elitist, like ‘the selfish c*nts’ or ‘specky four eyes’. Nobody ever liked being called that when I was a kid in school. And let’s face it, they’re all acting like kids.

5-Democracy. It just doesn’t work unless you have bags of cash or are a politician on your way to making bags of cash and people only vote for whoever promises them bags of cash. Let’s get rid of the two party system and replace it with something that Edward de Bono might come up with. Anything is better than one fat cat calling another fat cat a liar or worse, a man of the people.

6-Capitalism. What will be left to sell when everything is gone? Probably those horrible green wine gums or kettles that don’t boil. We invented money and shit so why can’t we un-invent it? Capitalism should only extend up to cars, jet skis, yachts and fancy bespoke suits. After that everything should be provided by the state in return for your dreams.

7-Religion. Not much can be done here because if we were to send religion back to the manufacturer for being unfit for purpose we would only go and buy another one on eBay, or a law could be passed prohibiting anybody speaking about religion unless you happen to be in a toilet by yourself reading ‘The Life of Brian’.

8-Reality TV. Rebrand it as surrealism TV. Fuck all people like or understand surrealism anyway so the chances are nobody would watch it.

9-Cancer. This is the easiest one so far. If we euthanize anybody who might get cancer a few years before they actually get cancer we’ll solve the problem in one fell swoop.

10-Extreme weather patterns. I suggest we go back to a pantheistic philosophy and blame hurricanes and tornadoes  on Zeus or Apollo. We could then sacrifice Tea Party members and other delusional types(1%ers and Fox news believers) to appease the Gods. This would be great fun and provide wholesome family entertainment thus simultaneously replacing the need for reality TV. I’d love to see some of our climate denying politicians sacrificed to Poseidon whenever a natural disaster hits town or wipes out the national peach harvest.

A few thoughts on what I’ve been watching on the goggle box:
The Knick-loved every minute of every episode, including the music by Cliff Martinez. Clive Owen ain’t bad either. Keep it up Mr Soderbergh.
Boardwalk Empire- thoroughly enjoying the this last season despite the sudden kill offs. The flashbacks are very well done and the younger versions are brilliantly mimicking their older versions.
The Affair- just getting into this newie and I’m immensely impressed with the depth of the writing and subject matter in general.Dominic West is plays it well and there is something about Ruth Wilson, like she reminds me of Laura Ingols from Little House on the Prairie turned all risque and sexy. Early days yet so…
Strange Empire-the sisters are doing it for themselves out west. A tad uneven but still something new and worth a gander.
Gotham- ah, who cares. Ain’t getting any traction with this big budget affair, perhaps it’s a slow burner but I doubt it. I’m kinda over the whole seeing Bruce Wayne’s parents being killed for the umpteenth time and the butler sucks ass.The Penguin is a bit too emo for my liking.
Gracepoint- the yankee version of Broadchurch, with the brilliant David Tennant(another pom putting on a stateside accent, seems to be all the rage-Martin Freeman in Fargo, John Simm in Intruders, Sean Bean in Legends etc). I’m liking this even though I ain’t seen the original. Oh, and Nick Nolte is in it too.
Brooklyn Nine Nine- daft, harmless and fun. Sometimes I forget that I live in a country that voted for Tony Abbot and that is invaluable.
How to get away with murder- not sure about this one apart from wanting to shoot half the cast I’m still stuck to it, but only just.
Peaky Blinders- ain’t Tom Hardy the business! He’s kinda like the modern day Marlon Brando in some respects. Cillian Murphy(could be Paul Newman) is chewing up the show and I reckon it’s the best thing Sam Neil has done in yonks. I will say that it is a bit too stylistic and sometimes the music is a bit try hard but it still tastes like crack cocaine to me.
You’re the Worst- kind of wrong but enjoyable and funny. Aya Cash is super dooper fantastic and sassy and sexy and hawt and…I’m drooling now… nuff said.
The Flash- superheroes are just a bit overdone at the moment but I’m sure the kids will like it.
Jane the Virgin- think Bigas Lunas/Pedro Almodovar doing mainstream US sitcom. Funny and colourful like a christmas tree.
Kingdom- I never thought I’d watch a show about MMA. It’s better than you’d think.
The Walking Dead- the sooner they all die the better as far as I’m concerned with yet another Brit putting on the slow drawl. Gave up watching this before anybody had ever heard of ebola.

Clickety click bait!!!!   Yup, I’ve fallen foul of click bait journalism. Even someone of high ethical morals and modesty, such as myself, can succumb to gutter journalism techniques. Although it’s hardly gutter journalism these days as even the respected broadsheets do it!. But wait, there is a story here: A story of honour, bravery, courage, migration and jiving at the kreuzung.

Many years ago before paypal and cookies were invented the much put upon Irish were trying to cast off the English yoke of oppression with not much luck. They’d been valiantly trying for 800 hundred years or so and were getting a tad disheartened, as one does when one starts to believe Quentin Crisp’s mantra of ‘if at first you don’t succeed then failure is your style’.

T’was around 1914 when a yacht called the Asgard was used to smuggle 900 antique rifles, old army surplus from the Franco-Prussian war of 1871, into Dublin from a secret rendezvous off the Belgian coast. The guns were eventually used in the less than successful but still bloody Easter Rising of 1916. At about the same time a certain Michael Keogh from Ireland, was attempting to round up a band of Irish POW brothers willing to don the German uniform and fight against zee Eeeenglish. Keogh had been captured by the dastardly Krauts while fighting in France for the sneaky Poms in 1914.

Michael Keogh

As it happened Keogh was a natural at army stuff and eventually found himself a bona fide member of the German Army, married to a local lass and fluent in the local lingo. It was in 1919 that he heard an almighty kerfuffle going on one night and to cut a long story short broke up a rather nasty fight among some soldiers. A young Adolf had been spouting fancy words and incendiary rhetoric to a bunch of soldiers in a gym. Keogh stepped in and rescued Hitler from copping a good skewing from a several bayonets. With this one interception WW2 was saved from not happening and kept on schedule.You can read all about it here.

There must have been something about Keogh that Adolf took a fancy to, or perhaps he stopped to play him a wee jig and a reel on his tin whistle, because he became a fan of Irish traditional music. Personally, that’s an affliction I’m happy to cure with some good old rock and roll or even some blues. Goddammit, I’ll even take prog-rock over trad any day of the week.

Anyway, back to the story at hand. So, there we are in Berlin, circa 1936, and old Hitler is well and truly getting into the swing of things and sends out an invite to Sean Dempsey to come and play for him and the boys. Sean was a player of the uilleann pipes, think of bagpipes that work via an arm powered pump. So, off Sean goes to Berlin to play for the Fuhrer but no, there’s not a spare seat in the house. Something about Hitler’s henchmen being avid music fans and not wanting to appear negligent in their duties had the house packed. Well, old Hitler didn’t appreciate this and ordered a nearby SS goon to get down on all fours and provide something for Sean to plonk his derriere on(this is true, I shit you not!). Apparently Goebbels was there too as he was also a fan of fiddle dee dee potatoes music.

After pumping his uilleann pipes and knocking out a rare old tune of haunting beauty Mr Dempsey finished up and took his bows only to be nearly knocked senseless by an over appreciative Adolf and somewhat zealous Goebbels as they clapped and whooped wildly. I dare say the Guinness and pure drops were flowing freely that night and not to make light of it, I can imagine der fuhrer trying to plan the invasion of Poland the next day with a shocking hangover. You can read the full-ish story here.

Now, if a certain Otto Skorzeny had been around to protect Hitler from the demon drink things might have turned out differently for Poland. Otto was a big strapping potato of a man weighing in at 18 stone/114kg(that’s a shit load of spuds) and standing 6′ 2″ tall. He was to become one of Adolf’s best commandos and was responsible for saving Mussolini and with exporting all them nasty Nazis off down to Brazil and Argentina when the game was up. He also served as Eva Peron’s bodyguard in between raiding the local vineyards and asado restaurants.

After Otto had done his fair share of thuggery in the name of the much maligned swastika he decided to retire to Ireland in the late fifties. I mean, why not? Who’d go looking for him there? Ireland really only started to exist on an international level when we started winning the Eurovision song contest ad nauseum.  So there’s Otto living on The Curragh in county Kildare, just a stones throw away from the hustle and bustle of cosmopolitan Dublin. I can see him now ploughing the land one handed and planting spuds with t’other. Then he’d go and milk the moo cows before retiring with a big bowl of Irish stew and a few flagons of porter while the lambs bleated and the grass grew green.

The truth is that he wasn’t the only old Nazi to drop anchor in the Emerald Isle. If legend be true it wasn’t uncommon in those post WW2 days to see legions of senior army officers drop down to earth with their silken parachutes and pockets weighed down with gold bullion. I might even have met a Wolfgang type down Wicklow way meself sometime ago. You can read about this interesting Otto over here. 

I’m loving this new nico-no diet that I’m on. I’m not usually one for fad diets but this one is the shizz and has me hooked. It’s not for everyone mind you. It’s really simple and fun to do as well.
Firstly, get yourself a 20 year nicotine habit.
Secondly, try and give up.
Thirdly eat everything in sight for as long as it takes for the nasty hungry butterflies in your belly to calm down and fall asleep. I’ve been enjoying big breakfasts, bigger lunches and massive dinners followed by humongous bowls of ice cream and ice cream, peanut butter, chocolate and rum milkshakes.
Fourthly, avoid doing anything fun that you used to do with friends, caffeine, drugs and alcohol.
On the plus side you can eat whatever you want to just as long as it ain’t a ciggy.
Your only limits are not to spend any more on extra food than you used to spend on fags and the length of your belt.

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks on planet Earth, or what’s left of it. Imagine if you were down the local boozer back in the 1960s and opining forth on the what the future might hold for mankind et al. You’d hardly imagine an obese and unhealthy population all obsessing over pencil drawings of some prophet from donkeys years ago would you? The internet might be the best thing since sliced bread but what else has progressed markedly enough to warrant inclusion in any sci-fi flick? Sure, there’s a few tricks now being used in hospitals and buildings are bigger but what else?

We still drink out of pint glasses and believe in omnipotent imaginary beings cruising around the globe with their trusty panopticons strapped to their waists. Even though we may be in the future we’re still obsessed with what charismatic  dudes allegedly said while wondering around the deserts of the middle east high on life. Imagine what would have happened if Monty Python made ‘The Life of Abdul’ and didn’t hold back? The world is run by an increasingly insecure bunch of idiots. In the west you have the christian Yankees protecting their interests all over the world in a most fanatical manner and as a counter balance you have the other lunatics taking offence at any perceived slight of their religion. Meanwhile both sides slaughter and maim with impunity under the banner of freedom. The French have a saying, which I am about to paraphrase badly, that extremes eventually meet.

What sort of future do we envisage 60 years from now? Will there be winners or losers or both? What sort of dystopian society will we be a part of? Because, let’s face it, the future never looks rosy. At least in Hollywood  that is. And have you ever wondered why that is?  From Bladerunner to Elysium to Logan’s Run the future always looks like a big pile of steaming dung and we are the dung beetles rolling shit around for a living. It’s all so like the life of Sisyphus. I’ll tell you why:it’s all about storytelling.  You can’t have goodies without baddies and the bigger and badder the despotic tyrants of oppression are the the blonder the hero’s highlights can be. The formula works out at about two thirds bad assness to one third goody two shoesness. The imbalance in the ratio is what keeps things moving along and us, the pirating audience, entertained and distracted. As any writer will tell you it’s all about conflict and desire. It sounds a bit Buddhist right? Well yes, and no. The peaceful way is to eliminate desire and embrace change but where is the fun in that?

So, let’s get back to Hollywood. They have us conditioned to believing that the future sucks balls. That we may as well give up and wait for Keanu Reeves to come along and save all our sorry privatised asses and reset the fuck-up clock back to ‘there’s still time to change your dumb ass ways’. Why do they portray this vision of the future as such? So we’ll accept it when it comes along. “Hey this future is just the way I thought it would be, totally fucked up. But wait, is that a playstation 35 I see? Quick, order some pizza all is forgiven.”

And guess what? All the bad guys will eat falafel and sheep’s eyes. They have us conditioned to think so. Have you ever heard of white commandos raiding a magazine and killing the scribes over cartoons? Actually, I’m sure the Ruskies are guilty of this and several Sth American dictatorships too and come to think of it McCarthy was up to this stuff way back when, and then there’s the Chinese and the Khmer Rouge.

Which brings me nicely along to my next point; freedom of expression. All this terrorism plastered on the front pages around the world justifies the increased security presence on the streets. Our freedoms are being curtailed and truncated at a rate of knots. The cops aren’t there to stop criminals doing criminal things, they’re there to stop civilians doing civilian things, like protesting and venting an opinion contrary to the allegedly democratically elected stooge in power.

The sad thing is that we are humans oppressing fellow humans for peanuts. Not alien invaders or sentient dinosaurs but flesh and blood humans. Here is the problem in a nutshell, and here too:

And this is the only answer as far as I can see:

I’d like to continue on from my last post and talk about Hollywood for a bit. So there we have producers and movie moguls making films with happy endings, endings that always involve a spunky hunk saving all and sundry from imminent disaster or whatever. Just like Jesus is gonna save us all from Satan and his evil henchmen. They are reinforcing the whole singular omnipotent God floating around the clouds idea, just waiting to save the world and all who sail in her. We believe that this dude up on high has dominion over all things in our cosmos and can make and mould things to his liking. This is known as The Ceramic View of Creation. As in there’s a guy sitting at a pottery wheel making pots, the pots being metaphors for our worlds. The interesting thing here is that if the potter makes a great pot, let’s say a priceless Ming dynasty vase or something, we all say ‘bravo’ and give him a slap on the back. But, if he whips up something that you’d buy in the local one dollar shop we let him know in no uncertain terms just how bad a craftsman he is. This is the way of white western theism.

Remember all those documentaries that you watched as a kid where the old dude in the grey hat is fossicking through some dry dirt before letting out whoops of joy and exclamations of pious obedience when he finds a few broken pieces of pottery? Where there’s pottery there’s civilisation. And where there’s civilisation there will be Gods, because Gods cease to exist without humans.

Now let us look at The Non-Ceramic View of Creation. Here there is no potter operating the wheel and moulding lumps of clay into Adam and Eve, he doesn’t have a long white beard or piercing blue eyes and definitely doesn’t do sudoku when he’s waiting for the pots to bake in the kiln. The non-ceramic view of creation centres on the Shakespearian trope of all the world being a stage populated with bipedal idiots and omnipotent Gods alike. The Gods are as powerless as we in that they are just playing a role and have no more control over the lighting or stage directions as we do.

Hollywood doesn’t like this concept, it’s all a bit too vague. Where’s the good cowboy with the never fail six shooter and Devil may care look in his eye? Well, he’s on the stage with everybody else sitting down to some fixin’s and beans. In the morning he’s gonna lasso some steer then have a nap under a covered wagon before making amorous passes on the unlucky lady folk. If he’s lucky he’ll get a poke by the creek and if not he’ll pass the evening gazing up at the Milky Way and life will go on for the players on the great prairies of the west.

This is the Hindu way of thinking about life, the universe and everything. Where the answer is probably number 42; a lamb biryani with papadums and mango chutney. This way of thinking about life takes away the scapegoat and the saviour in one fell swoop and being of the pantheistic persuasion allows you to pick and choose your Gods according to your daily needs. C’est la vie.

What I want to know is how on earth did Shakespeare come up with this enlightened view of the world when he never left Albion? I doubt that he ever read books on eastern philosophy and divinity but I’m damn sure Sir Francis Bacon did. But that’s another story.

Continue reading →

This last year has been a funny one for me and my relationship with the Grand Old Dame of Melbourne. Ever one of her staunchest supporters since we first met twenty years ago, I was beginning to grow tired of her charms, they didn’t glitter as once they had and their hold over me was waining at a rate of knots. It’s a terrible thing to fall out of love with someone or something especially after such a long romance but, but, and triple but, the death of one thing can lead on to the birth of another. Where there is disaster there is opportunity, where there is closure there is an opening.

In short I’d say that Melbourne was going through a rapid pace of change in trying to overtake Sydney as THE first city of Australia. Something that will eventually happen as there is nothing to hem in the fine city of Melbourne. In my personal opinion I think that Melbourne has ‘jumped the shark'(google it), too much change and not all for the best. I’ll not bore you with a list of my perceived problems in the old Dame, I shall however just leave it as this; I’ll not be back for a while my dear.

Several opportunities had presented themselves to me last year, educational ones, so I thought I’d grab the bull by the proverbial gonads and hang on for dear life. My instincts were right but a simmering desire in me to hit the road was about to come to the boil and I don’t think that I could have turned the gas off in time so I had to go with it. I’d long yearned to chase the horizon, to see new towns and meet new people who were unaware of quinoa and the blizzard of snowflakes blanketing my dear old Melbourne. I sought the counsel of my wise inner circle and began to plot my escape.

Escaping isn’t as easy as it sounds when you have 17 years of rubbish and shite all about you. It took me a good 7 weeks to clear the decks of tangible memories and dust gathering detritus before I was able to finally close the book on Melbourne.

On the morning of the 8^th of January, a Monday morning, I ate a Scottish fry up at The Laird McShane’s fine family home, supped on freshly brewed coffee and inhaled the last few rollies I’d enjoy for quite a while. I had over indulged the night before at Raccoon Bar before being experimented on at Bladwell’s Brain Lab’ where things took a less than cerebral turn but after a good nights sleep I was good to go and bid my last farewells to my Scottish family and good friend Charlie Big Man.

It was a typical Victorian morning, the low grey cloud being tickled by the plethora of new sky scrapers deforming the city. A hint of rain in the air but no regret or remorse, nothing to stop me turning the key in the ignition and opening a new door to parts unknown.

Now, let us have a look at the dramatis personae as it were for the show that I was to be a part of for however long was necessary:

Obviously there is me, or I. A 46 year old gypsy type, Jack of all trades but master of none is better than being good at one. My main role in this production is to drive which brings us to Utee Bootee.

Utee Bootee

A 2.8l diesel 5 speed manual 1994 Hilux. My car of choice for the past 10 years or so and a really reliable workhorse. I’d had her serviced by the Italian mechanics with no expense spared. Utee was to be loaded up with all the things I couldn’t sell and was bringing with me. Probably about 400kgs of weight if the truth be told.

And last but by no means least was a dear friend of mine who I rescued from a sleazy burlesque revue bar down Boneshaker Place in Melbourne.  He was playing piano and telling bad jokes to support his nasty junk addiction so I gave him an offer he couldn’t refuse or see coming. Before I hit the Calder freeway I kidnapped Fozzy Bear while he slept it off at a musicians refuge in Fitzroy. I was determined to get him off da skag and help him start a new life on the west coast. I imagined him playing piano on a fancy 5 star yacht off the Abrolhos Islands and I was damned if I wasn’t going to make it a reality.

Some time after 8am I finally found myself on the on the road. I was going to take the Western Highway all the way to Adelaide, approximately 751kms or eight and half hours of driving. I’d planned to have one last look at Melbourne which didn’t happen due to the still grey vista behind me, nothing photo worthy there. The only thing I wanted to do was drive and keep driving to Adelaide. Seriously, I don’t think anybody has ever been in a hurry to get to Adelaide like I was. Utee Bootee was chewing up the road, Fozzy was still conked out in a smacked out reverie and my foot was hard to the floor.

I’d asked some of my music snob friend to make me up a few mix tapes on USB sticks. Stuff that would occupy my mind as I drove the estimated 3,500kms to Perth, my final destination. I’d factored in a few stops here and there, some unintentional nights spent on the side of the road and all up I was giving myself anything from seven days to two weeks to go from coast to coast.

So, For those of you who might be geographically ignorant of the distances in Australia I shall try and illustrate this for you. They say a diagram speaks a thousand words, if that is true then I am well and truly over my daily word count and should probably go have a lie down now.

As a rule I can’t drive without music or noise of some description. My preference is disco or techno. After about three hours of uninspiring music choices from my friends I was suddenly brought to an emotional cliff face. That mad bastard of a man, Charlie Big Man, had snuck in Abba’s legendary and iconic ‘Dancing Queen’. It brought a wide smile to my face, a few more revs to the engine and before long I was karaoke-ing my way to South Australia. I’d been in an odd mood up until then; not quite joyous or sad, just resigned to the task at hand of moving interstate.

Well, this all change a few moments later when Laurie Anderson’s ‘Oh Superman’ came on. Suddenly I felt emotional, overjoyed, released, free, alone, happy, euphoric, teary eyed and most of all relieved that I was finally gone. There was something about the vibration and sentiment in the song that got me, the deliberate slowness of it, the way it cupped my heart and gave it a little tremor. You may listen to it here if you like.

So, there I was cruising along the highway passing towns called Keith(as boring as it sounds), Ki-Ki(nothing), Nhill(nought) all with their various tourist gimmicks hanging on the side of the road like fly paper. I saw a big rhino(no bigger than a normal rhino), a pioneer town(yawn) and a jeep on a pole at Keith. Hats off to the genius who had that brain fart. It wasn’t until I crossed the border into South Australia that the sun finally came out and the quality of the roadside attractions increased dramatically. On the right hand side of the road I spied a herd of camels hiding behind a shitty white fence. Eyelashes and humps peeping over at the passing traffic. Later on at Coonalpyn the first of the grain silos came into vision. I would just like to say for the record that I have a thing for grain silos. Especially ones that have been painted up. There’s something about them that I just can’t put my finger on. I like their shape, their closeness to train tracks and big yellow fields of wheat. They stand alone in defiance of every God damn thing.

I have another ‘thing’ that I need to talk about, clouds. I fucking love them. Big billowy white citadels sailing across a lapis lazuli sky. Slim wispy feint feckers jagging their way from east to west or north to south, horsetails they call them. One of the many things I will miss about Melbourne is the constant atmospheric battles between the hot desert winds, the cold antarctic gales and the wet westerlies from Adelaide. All these fronts do battle in the skies of Melbourne on a daily basis, the cloud formations can be breathtaking at times. Big long   banks of cloud cutting the sky in two, like a surgical scar. The best place to witness these battles is driving west over the Westgate bridge in the evenings when the sun is setting or just before a cool change in the afternoon. Anyway, the clouds were coming out for me and I was happy, like Superman.

As Adelaide approached I was enjoying the changing architecture, gone was the bluestone and in was sandstone or yellowstone if you want to get all visually descriptive. The style of building changed, the flora was different and the clouds magnificent. I made Adelaide around five in the evening and had booked myself into an AirBnB for two nights. My plan was to stock up on supplies, do some sight seeing and then head north to Port Augusta. The poles were about to flip.

Adelaide, oh Adelaide! The city I don’t know so well. For those of you not in the know, the city of steeples and spires has a dark history which belies it’s sleepy appearance. Some of you may be familiar with the grim film ‘Snowtown’. Some of you may be aware that it wasn’t settled by convicts but by well meaning God botherers, hence the proliferation of houses of worship. They are quite literally on every other effing corner. Which in my book says that there has to be a fairly sizeable representation of those studying the dark arts.

Now, good reader, I have nothing against Satanists, in fact I reckon they’re an alright straight up bunch of heads who incidentally do believe in God but decide to worship his alter ego, the fallen angel that is Lucifer.  This fact always brings a wry smile to my moustachioed cake hole and some times I’ll even venture a wee chortle or snigger at just the thought.

As a wee aside I’ll let you in on one of the many public pranks I used to pull when I was living in the land of the rising sun while teaching the Japanese how to cook. Stop laughing. Please stop laughing. This is as true as the day is long. I used to take great pleasure in reading contentious books on the subway in Tokyo during my sojourn there. One of my favourite titles to leaf through while commuting to the Irish Embassy and other notable destinations was Anton LeVey’s The Satanic Bible. I took great joy in noticing the many sideways glances I’d get from the devoutly religious expat American community  as I read the tome over the heads of the diminutive Japanese commuters. It was a hobby of mine to find obscure and perhaps obscene paperbacks in the many coffee shops of Koenji and then purloin them for my nefarious needs and personal enjoyment.

I shall digress no more in my description of Adelaide and get straight to the point, the steeple point as it were.  Apparently the Dalai Lama won’t fly over the city such is its wickedness and when they screened  Pier Paolo Pasolini’s seminal(phnar, phnar) ‘Salo,or the 120 days of Sodom’ on a grey day in 1975 it was said that the queue contained a veritable who’s who of  sexual perverts and deviants all known to the local constabulary and vicarage. But, let’s not besmirch the good name of Adelaide any further now that I have given you some background into why its denizens are so eager to depart its city limits for less religiously oppressive locales.

I’d booked myself into a nice old stone domicile in Beulah Park, a stones throw away from The Parade in the foody centre of Norwood. My host was, and I guess still is, a single mother of Italian extraction with a Chilean geological engineer on a scholarship at the local university. His name escapes me but his love of avocados does not. I chose this residence because I was able to lock up my ute behind a solid gate in the back yard. I was a bit paranoid that somebody might try and pilfer some of my many belongings from the back of my ute. My paranoia wasn’t justified as I didn’t see anybody walking that street over the next two days which got me to thinking that perhaps something else was going on and why hadn’t I seen anybody strolling of an evening. One of the few people I saw walking around was an old gent with a fine walrus moustache, khaki pants, safari jacket and believe it or not a colonial era pith helmet. I couldn’t rightly tell but I think he might have been sporting an ivory walking stick. I shit you not.

After my first night out of Victoria, the Garden State of Australia, and after a sonorous slumber in a squeaky bed I ventured out to Glenelg. I should admit that I had been in Adelaide 14 years previously for a weekend filming an up and coming band on their first ‘tour’ for want of a better euphemism and we had ventured to the beachy environs of Glenelg. I had an average breakfast of scrambled eggs with bacon and a passable coffee before taking in the sights and doing some chores. I wouldn’t rally describe buying bathers and visiting the post office as chore-some but I’m feeling a bit lazy in describing the early part of the day because it was less than memorable.

Beach front at Glenelg.

Things were to change as I ventured into town and found the Central Market, funnily enough located right smack dab in the middle of Adelaide. Kind of like where you expect The Docklands to be in any coastal city with a port. Apparently Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Market used to be similarly constructed.

Well, I was very impressed. So impressed in fact that I bought enough fruit and veggies and more fruit to feed a small militia for a month on the road. I just couldn’t help myself. Mangoes, limes, nectarines, asparagus, cured meats, jerky and fresh garlic were a tumbling out of my basket. I ended up doing three trips backwards and forwards to my ute with provisions for my onward adventure. There are few things I enjoy more than shopping for food ahead of an expected dearth of options on the desert road ahead. Some of you, my dear vicarious readers, may not be aware that I am a culinary type of person and have worked as a chef in a previous unhappy and grossly underpaid lifetime. I now consider myself a retired chef as it has a better ring to it than a disgruntled, druggy, cranky foody wanker.

Back to the house it was with my new bathers and bags and bags of provisions to see me through the long trip over the world famous Nullarbor. I rearranged my mobile kitchen, bought bags of ice, filled my eskies, chilled my ice blocks and charged all of my power hungry  devices before retiring to bed for the night and heading north in the morning.

Wispy clouds and a water tower.

It was while I was in bed supping on a mug of cocoa and rum that I stumbled upon an idea whilst surfing the webs.

‘Yes, why not?’ I said to myself. That sounds like a jolly good idea and it was then and only then, at about four minutes past the hour of ten that I decided I was heading south to Kangaroo Island. It was then that I got the second buzz in my system since leaving Melbourne. My adventure was finally starting and by starting I mean going off tangent to somewhere that had not previously seemed like nor had presented itself as an option. So I booked the ferry crossing for me, my Utee Bootee and Fozzy Bear who was still in a semi-comatose state due to his dose of cold turkey. Incidentally he didn’t raise any objections and nor was he in a position to do so as I had zipped him up in a bag for the night. I didn’t want him heading downtown to score a hit while I slept like a cherubic bub in Beulah Park.

Over priced peach cocktail served with nectarine.

Now here’s a funny thing. I had made the decision to abstain from my good old friend Mr Nicotine and leave him behind in Melbourne so I’d taken the precaution of purchasing patches and had fuelled up my trusty vape too. Well, let me tell you something about them patches, you do need them stinking patches. They are the doors to reveries revealing delights. My first and second nights in Adelaide were marked by marathon like technicolour dreams in full stereoscope sound with added sensorama interludes. I was waking up goggle eyed with traces of Freudian visions as they became nothing but sleep in my eyes. ‘How on Earth do these patches know so much about me?’ I would say to myself in the morning. Perhaps I should have zipped myself up instead of Fozzy.

‘Who needs drugs when you got nicotine patches?’, was my next thought. And then it dawned on me that I’d been doing it all so wrong all these years. I will add that after my evening in Bladwell’s Brain Lab the night before my departure my cerebral facilities were a tad challenged to say the least. I will also add that I was now doing my own cold turkey having ditched the ol’ 420, but enough about that and onwards with the adventure at hand.

I awoke at the crack of dawn after another exhausting  excursion into my subconscious and set about getting my ute in order and planning my route down south. It was going to take me a good 90 minutes to get to the ferry terminal at Cape Jervis and I still had a few more provisions to get so I made haste, drank my non fair trade, multiple origin cheap as chips Lavazza coffee and said good bye to Adelaide, albeit temporarily.