Mad Max: Blurry Road

Spoilers. (Well, hardly, at this late stage of the game)

It's time I spoke up. For the few. For those of us who are fans but have not been blinded by the nitrous-fuelled hype-machine.

Mad Max: Furry Load, is not as good as “mastermind” George Miller would have us believe. The use of the word mastermind alone should send up warning flares. If the mastermind epithet is accurate of anything, it's the brain behind the marketing juggernaut. Or, maybe the editor. Margaret Sixel famously had to churn through nearly 500 hours of film to distil the final 120 minutes. I don't know if that indicates her remarkable patience or whether Miller has spent so long out of the game, he has forgotten how to say “Cut, that's a wrap.”

Attempting Mad Max again should be undertaken as carefully as, say, attempting Star Wars again. (Bunch of us waiting to have our hearts broken there, is all I can say.) And George, you can't just do away with major characters on a whim.

Here's the top ten list of rides in the Action/Sci-fi film world that are also characters, as voted by Grey Area is Right.

1) Millennium Falcon (Star Wars)

2) The V8 Interceptor (Mad Max)

3) Enterprise (Star Trek - not differentiating which one. We're talking about the spirit, not nerdy detail.)

4) Most Batmobiles, other than ones driven by Clooney or Kilmer.

5) Thunderbird 2 (“Thunderbums are go!”. Oh, how we laughed as 5-years-olds)

6) The Liberator (Blake's 7)

7- 10) Blah, blah, blah. Shan't bore you with the rest but here's something interesting. Coming in way down the list:

48) TARDIS*

Look at number two! Incontrovertible proof that Miller could not take this lightly. The Interceptor is a cultural icon. The only time I've ever cried at a film was when it crashed and burned in MMII. The airy-fairy way in which he dispenses with the V8 is like saying, “Whistler's Mother? She looks good on the floor. I thought the rocking chair was a touch too much.”

It does supply the impetus for a great line from Max, though, and that was almost enough for me.

"First they take my blood. Now they take my car?!"

Pity though. Many of us wanted to see more of ol' Black Beauty.

The film:

Nothing, not a thing, makes sense if you examine it. But you shouldn't.

As silly as it is, and it is plenty silly, it is a gorgeous piece of art.

Charlize Theron is faultless as an action heroin. She had me at Aeon Flux anyway - she does it again.

Quentin Kenihan is inexplicably present, playing what else but a genetic misshap in a wheelchair. (Wow, what a jarring note his sudden appearance was. “Is that...? Could that be...? I thought he was dead. Didn't he sneeze and his head fell off or something? Well. Good on him. Wait, what just happened?”)

Tom Hardy channels Max incredibly well. If I was to criticise anything it's, and this sounds crazy, he's not quite tough enough. I'm no fan of Gibson's personal life but he was absolutely, completely Max. The laconic, whippet thin, brawling survivor. Gibson owned that and Hardy does a magnificent job with action and voice. Voice in particular is uncanny - but he looks too well fed and just not merciless enough. Max's redemption lies in sudden and uncharacteristic moments of selflessness and honour. Hardy looks like he'd lay his leather jacket over a puddle for a damsel to tip-toe across at the slightest provocation. But, let's face it, the jacket could do with the wash. That leads me to some gossip.

A friend of mine, loosely connected to the production, said that Charlize was less than thrilled about working with Tom by about day two, because allegedly he got all 'method' and wouldn't step out of his character or leathers to step into the shower. Good one, Tom. It's important to remain true to the entirely fictional, two dimensional character at the expense of your workmates comfort. That's gritty realism.

The War Boys are disgusting and repellent and fascinating and what you need for a set of minions – and their death-cry, battle-rant, call-and-response is hilarious and feels very Australian for some reason:

We're on the back of a speeding War Rig. A mortally wounded War Boy sees opportunity to go out with Kamikaze style, sprays his mouth and teeth with chrome, turns to his brethren and screams, “Witness meeeeee!”

All the other War Boys within earshot, scream back, “Witnessssssss!”

Mortally wounded War Boy throws himself off the back of the truck holding two explosive spears, into the cockpit of a pursuing, entirely spiked battle-buggy, exploding it, him, neighbours and earth. He has saved his brothers-in-arms with a selfless act of flaming heroism and will be welcomed through the gates of Valhala itself.

All the War Boys who have seen this, scream, “Mediocre!”

Oh, what a lovely day.

So, I guess in conclusion, we were promised something that was going to change the world. It's not going to. It is a cracking, high-paced piece of entertainment where I spent a good amount of time wondering how stuntmen weren't killed. There is a depth to the world that we are to take on trust, but it's not mind-blowing if you're an experienced SF reader or watcher, it's competent.

And, I get that it's a scavenging society, but some detail is distracting and doesn't add depth, it makes you wonder about the wrong things at the wrong time. For instance, I wish the mask fitted over Max's face for half the film, was not so obviously a three-pronged-garden-fork with its handle removed. During an explosive race-to-the-death across a barren wasteland, I kept on thinking about little old ladies and well watered flower beds.

*We'll argue about this another time.

Clint Doesn't Get My Coin

I like to read the book before I see the film. American Psycho Sniper is a difficult one to write a fair review of, particularly as a non-American. As I was reading it I found myself almost laughing at what an unreconstructed plonker the guy was. What I didn't know until the end, was that he was killed recently and the edition of the book I read had the testimonials and memorials from many who knew him, after the main body of the book. While it's not traditional to bad-mouth people in that sort of message, they couldn't say enough how good he was. He evidently touched a lot of people's lives in a positive way.

Now, let's pretend that he's still around so that I get the chance to warn you off this book in an honest fashion, without feeling like I'm speaking ill of the dead.

It is jaw-dropping in its infantile view of the world, the blind patriotism, the one-eyed religious bigotry and the unexamined hypocrisy. It's sort of like Ronald Reagan whispered his fevered fantasies into Donald Rumsfeld's ear, who then in turn dictated them to Captain America's, Down-Syndrome brother.

The guy was far too happy about killing people and dressing it up in patriotism. I understand that soldiers gotta do what they gotta do, but he didn't see any problem with calling in air-strikes that would flatten entire city blocks. There is no way that only combatants were killed. He also mentions that every time he looked through a scope, there were “bad guys” for him to kill. Far more than any other snipers he was working with at the same time. You know what that suggests to me? Yeah. They weren't really all bad guys.

So, he loves killing “savages” to protect Americans and their way of life, but gets on his high horse when not everyone back home agrees with or supports what he and his comrades do. Guess what, psycho - That's one of the major things you're fighting to protect: The right to disagree.

The book is also extremely disappointing in what it doesn't talk about. If you are going to read one of these sorts of books, it's because you want to be a little bit pervy and nerdy and you want to hear what an expert has to say on the hows, whys and wherefores. As an example, he works with the Polish GROM a lot. He respects them but says there were a lot of differences in the way they did things. Then doesn't mention any of them. He's always getting into bar fights. Always. He never mentions any detail. Like I say, if you're reading a book about a SEAL, by a SEAL, you would expect to hear how a professional soldier handles these things. Nup.

He also says extraordinary things such as; the reason he didn't wear a helmet, but preferred a baseball cap on backwards, was because if you want to be cool, you have to look it.

Nup. No. Never. That is almost exactly the opposite of how real cool works.

Even more weird, is that it is just plain dull. I don't know how you achieve that when you are facing daily life-and-death situations but Chris Kyle and fellow writers managed it.

The one shining achievement that stands out for the American military machine, is the effectiveness of their indoctrination.

The delicious, horrible, mortal irony is that he was killed by one of his beloved comrades-in-arms, back home in the US. If it didn't leave a grieving family, you'd almost say it was poetic.

I will not be seeing the film.  

Our Culture Just Lost 'The Culture'

Iain Banks died today. For many of us it will feel like we’ve lost a complex, visionary and hilarious friend. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to be his new widow, as he was notoriously good company in real-life as well as on the page. Banks has been my favourite author for nearly 30 years. He’s the only author I have bothered to collect and re-collect in entirety, several times. 

(When you really love an author, you always end up “re-collecting” because at dinner parties you recommend and loan to guests. The guests might return, but the books rarely do. I don’t mind. Books are fair that way. You’ll do the same at someone else’s dinner party.)

Banks is such a favourite for so many of the right type (i.e. people who think like me) that he is a touchstone for a couple of my best friendships;

“Hey man, good to see you. Have you read your latest Banks Statement?”

“Yeah. Better than the last one, not as good as the one before that. How about that bit where…”

And we’re off.

He wrote under two tags, Iain M. Banks for his Sci-Fi and plain Iain Banks when he was doing literature. When he announced he was “poorly” a few months ago, I started reading more things about him. Here’s something I found amazing:

It was assumed in a lot of places, including my own, that his Sci-Fi books were his dirty, great cash-cow that supported the more highfalutin literature.

Wrong - and by orders of magnitude. Mr B. himself reported that his literature outsold his Sci-Fi, four-to-one. I find that astonishing. I think good Sci-Fi is as important as any other writing, so I’m not going to say that it’s heartening to hear that, but I do find it mighty interesting. He also said that he enjoyed writing his literature - but always looked forward to getting back to the main character in his Sci-Fi universe, The Culture.

I read him in order simply because I read as his publishers released. I suggest, if you haven’t read any and are interested, that you start out of order:

Iain Banks - Espedair Street

Iain Banks – Complicity

Iain M. Banks – Consider Phlebas

Iain M. Banks – Use of Weapons

If you’re a Sci-Fi bod, do Phlebas and Weapons first. (Maybe Player of Games. That’s also a cracking place to start.)

After that, you’re on your own and I’m jealous that I don’t get to go there with you, for the first time, again.

I will doubtlessly need to rebuild my collection of Banks books in the future, and they will move inexorably into the digital realm, rather than being in the physical. It’s deeply unfair that he won’t get the chance to be uploaded and go digital like some of his characters and give us more, but he lived in and wrote about a deeply unfair and uncaring universe.

Bloggers Note: This blog is called “A Grey Area” first and foremost for one of Banks' characters, the GCU A Grey Area.

Prometheus

Imagine a futuristic flying machine constructed by humans landing on an alien world.

The immediate landscape is a large, desolate depression surrounded by geological features that are ill-defined because of their distance although obviously massive. In the middle of the vast depression is a dome. It could be the result of natural processes but it is more likely built and is evidently very old. It is also forbidding.

The occupants of the craft exit and approach the dome. They are nervous and excited. At the end of their epic journey they wonder whether they will meet proto-humans or perhaps sit at the knees of their makers and learn cosmic truths.

As it turns out, a little from column A, a little from column B. But enough of In the Night Garden (ABC2 for Kids) with the naughty Igglepiggle and the sleepy Tombliboos and on to my review of Prometheus.

One of the reasons it has taken me so long to write this review is that I wanted to include spoilers to make my point and you all should have seen it by now.

The other reason is that I only got around to seeing it myself the other night and I’m now going to try and make a habit of only reviewing films I’ve actually watched.

In the classic sense the story of Prometheus is a sad one. He taught little cave peoples lots of nifty tricks, not least of which was fire. He was not lauded by some of his colleagues for his efforts and wound up in really sub-par accommodation chained to a rock with his innards regularly used as a bird-feeder. Unlike the protagonists in the Ridley Scott movie, he meant no harm. These half-baked clowns (who somehow manage to snag a trillion dollars to go chasing an intergalactic pipe-dream) are the equivalent of graffitists in the Louvre.

The film has some serious problems. To borrow from the inimitable Micallef, the plot has more holes than a machine-gunned piece of Swiss cheese with stigmata. I spent a lot of the time thinking, “Why would you do that?” So, let’s get into some of these occurrences. Bitching is fun.

In any film, when the scary music starts and the woman is alone in the house, we are always mystified by her next action which is to go and check the basement with a busted torch. It’s the same with Sci-Fi thrillers. Why, in the name of all that is creepy and crawly, do highly-trained astronauts and scientists feel the need to take their fucking helmets off at the first opportunity? No sooner is the needle on the dial pointing to “Breathable”, than some bone-head is sighing loudly and unclipping the protective covering on his noggin, intimating that it was as comfortable as a sandpaper g-string. It’s the year 2094, people. The helmets are comfortable, lightweight, have all your comms gear in them, are tougher than an end-of-term assignment and, oh, what is it again? Oh yeah - HELP YOU BREATH.  I’d be showering with that sucker on.

As for the really dangerous looking bit of fauna, here’s a tip from Alien Husbandry 101. Don’t tickle it under the chin. This bit of egregious fauna mishandling in the film is particularly galling. Let me set the scene. One of the scientists, a biologist qualified enough to crack a spot on a trillion dollar interstellar voyage, sees a giant penis dentata type thingy and moves towards it for a better look. The earthworm-alien cross-breed reacts by, now pay close attention here, reacts by spreading the cowl behind its head. The highly qualified biologist has never seen a cobra and thinks that bearing your teeth and rearing up to look bigger is the interstellar language for ‘give us a hug’. He gets a hug, alright.

There are many other utterly nonsensical bits in the film. The music is pretty dire at times, too. But it’s still a good flick. There are dramatic and horrible deaths. The tech is gorgeous. The look is wonderful. The 3D doesn’t feel like a waste and Fassbinder is magnificent as the android who wants to shout “no prisoners”.

There are some lovely tie-ins to other Alien films that I found satisfying and the casting of Noomi Rapace was bang on. She actually looks a little Ripley-esque in some scenes and that provides a nice visual continuity to the Alien series.

The biggest mistake the movie makes is that it tries to insert more meaning into its content than it deserves. I don’t need the big questions and answers in an Alien film. I need people yelling, “Oh, well that’s just great, that is,” and, “Get away from her, you bitch!” and of course, “They mostly come out at night. Mostly.”

I need my pants scared off. I need shootin’ and runnin’ and tongues with teeth. I do not need pseudo-philosophy and matters of faith. I’m going to show my hand as an amateur futurologist (a polite term for someone who makes shit up).

The whole premise is flawed. If we have the tech in 2089 to get that far into space, we sure as hell are not going to need to explore the dangerous dome in the middle of nowhere in person. We will send in our robots and tele-presence devices and do it all remotely. As they suggest in Aliens we could just do it all from the safety of orbit, including nuking it. But, I suppose that’s not really going to make an exciting Sci-Fi romp and that’s really what we were all there for in the first place.

I give it 7.5 eggs that you should never look into, out of 10.

A Book What I Read

You read a Steven King book for a few reasons:

You’re stuck in a flat on the 37^th floor by the one-night-stand who accidentally dead-locked you in - and it’s the only thing in the bookshelf to keep you entertained until they get home.

You’re in an airport in Soviet Uzbekistan and you found one of the books chocking up the wheel of an abandoned Tupolev and you’ve eight hours till the next flight out.

Bubba from the prison library hands it in through the bars.

Whatever the reason, you don’t read a Steven King book to be enlightened or delve into any larger philosophical realms. You read it to pass the time in a slightly more interesting way than trying to pick your nose until it bleeds.

King’s latest, 11.22.63 has a premise and tries to delve: Save the world by saving JFK. It also plods into the murky world of conspiracy theorists who are still certain of magic bullets and Lee Harvey Oswald’s incompetence.

He’s tried something less ethereally spooky and more down the straight Sci-Fi lines than his normal stuff by doing this time travel book and he’s not that good at it. His strength with the supernatural, spooky and gory sort of overwhelms his ability to have a bit of logic and internal sense to a world that is being affected by time travel. He was trying to be serious and really, he’s better at the semi-amusing possessed cars.

To be fair, it’s a tough trick to pull off, particularly around an event that is so well documented and scrutinised. Subsequently, he has too much source material to work with. There are huge chunks in the middle of the book where our hero is surveiling Oswald that simply don’t need to be there. It’s well known that Oswald moved around a lot and there was a lot of life’s messy backwards-and-forwards in his increasingly dysfunctional marriage. Even if our hero’s movements do dovetail in with these events to give the appearance of a story that is believable and logical, they do not make for good story telling. Real life shouldn’t interfere with a Steven King book and there is far too much of the mundane in this monster.

Like the last book from him, Under the Dome, the covers are far too far apart and I wonder if editors aren’t afraid to edit King. I wonder if there is such an aura around him now that no-one but the most foolhardy attempts to tell him that quantity is not necessarily quality. Also, like the last book, there is absolutely no deeper explanation as to how the enabling “magic” happened. It’s akin to a doctor saying, “In an unlikely turn of events, you have contracted Pernicious South American Bum and Gum Rot” and you asking, “How is that possible? I’ve never been to South America?” and him saying, “I have absolutely no idea in the world - but it sounds awesome so I’m sticking with the diagnosis.”

There are elements of the book that are likeable (the main character’s voice is pleasant. The female lead, if shallow, is ok) but King makes a mistake he warns against in his own advice on how to write. He “tells” rather than “shows” on too many occasions.

If you ever want to be beaten over the head with a repetitive phrase, this is the book for you. He must have typed the words, “The past is obdurate” a thousand times. Again, in the quantity is not quality way, repeating things endlessly does not necessarily make them true. It just gets people to agree because they can’t bear to hear it one more time. Writing a book about repeating the past till you get it right, is not necessarily the right thing to do either.

Zombies

Emergency Contact and I recently watched a film that was pretending to be a zombie movie and while 28 Weeks Later is a total stinker, it did lead to a revelation. I suddenly understood why we love zombie movies. They’re actually revenge stories.

Vampire movies are aspirational. You’re lying to yourself if you don’t want to be a vampire. Immortality, great wardrobe, no Monday mornings on public transport, finally being able to take advantage of bank interest rates by waiting, waiting, waiting. Bitey bitey slurpy slurpy. What’s not to like? But, it’s fantasy. You know you’re never going to get bit by the right gang-fanga who just wants to look after you in the lap of decrepit luxury.

Superheros are a bust. Their stories are too easily dismissed. Superman in particular is as boring as Batman’s poop. Quite frankly, I’ve never understood the attraction to fighting crime the minute you can levitate. Sure, the meek might inherit the earth, but in the meantime the strong are going to have pretty nice time of it. Again, it’s not going to happen. You are not suddenly going to wake up being able to leap small ponies in a single bound and being invincible to anything but Samsonite.

Zombies though – that can happen, brain owner. We’re all just one useless penicillin shot away from world-wide, dawdling apocalypse and we always imagine ourselves as one of the few remaining survivors. Here’s what dawned-of-the-dead on me the other night.

It’s a chance to kill your neighbours.

Guilt free.

Admit it.

The instant the first syllable of Braaai… is halfway of the mouth of the selfish son-of-a-bitch who always parks across two car spaces, he’s getting his moronic head caved in.

The second that fucker across the landing, the one who always screams at the football late at night, lifts two arms up in front of herself, she’s getting two of Remington’s best in the face.

The tiniest hint of a shambling walk from that idiot in the post office and we’re finally going to see how sharp that axe really… what… he only had a hip injury? He wasn’t really a zombie?

Let’s just chalk that one up to a mercy killing. But you know what I mean. Come the zombie apocalypse, all bets are off and some of those painful bastards who make the world a worse place are finally going to get what’s coming to them without all the hand-wringing that goes with assisted suicide.

Defence Of Planks

A couple of weeks ago, my colleague Smurfy said to me, “I heard that someone died from planking. I was really worried until I realised I’d misheard the radio report.” We both chortled like the witty raconteurs that we are and then went on to list words that rhyme with wee-wee.

After the death of that guy in Queensland, the standard position on planking (other than lying rigid on something unlikely) was that it was bad and stupid and only bad and stupid people did it. This was reinforced a couple of days later by a woman who, when talking about the Queensland death at a dinner party, ended up in hospital after an unsuccessful dining chair demonstration to her perplexed mates.

Emergency Contact came home one day to report that a mate of hers had asked, “So, let me get this right. It’s people pretending to be wood?” Which to me, is a perfectly incorrect although amusing explanation and exactly why I’m not anti-planking.

Planking is funny. It’s anti-art but occupies exactly the same space. It is something that exists for no other reason than itself.

It requires skill. Not everybody can do it, as evidenced by the deaths and injuries. I’m not being flip about that.

Planking, when done properly, is anonymous. A really good plank is done with the face away from the camera, which for some reason amuses me even more. Animate objects pretending to be inanimate - in odd places. It amuses for the same reasons we find faces in inanimate objects amusing. For the same reason that the ‘lampshade on the head’ is still referenced to describe certain absurd party moves, planking relies on the absurd, the surreal and quite often the most picturesque and high places. The implied back-story is always, "How the hell did they get there?" and even better, they're not mugging for the camera, they’re pretending to be a lost bit of wood. There’s nothing in that sentence that I don’t find amusing for a couple of seconds and let’s face it, it’s the net. It’s an ephemeral source of entertainment.

I don’t think we should get all disdainful about people trying some danger-art for grins, and certainly don’t think we should get all upset when it occasionally goes wrong. Think of how much more famous Stelarc would be if he plummetted to his death with a bunch of tear marks in his back. That’d be good for no-one.

Bossypants

I just want to get in there and say that I’ve always liked Tina Fey. I liked her before the whole Sarah Palin thing: I was aware of her from Saturday Night Live; and she was the teacher in Mean Girls who was hotter (and definitely better company) than the mean girls. When I saw she’d written the film, I liked her all the more. Her turn in Date Night is the strong point of the film.

In fact, if Emergency Contact was to accidentally fall down those badly tiled and sometimes very slippery stairs on the front landing and die, I would take a crack at getting Tina Fey to be the next Mrs Grey Area. I have a feeling there’d be the use of ether and restraints if we were going to make it work, but while there’s breath there’s hope.

I’ve just finished reading her book, Bossypants. It is the type of book that appeals directly to me. She’s got a really nice turn of phrase, I like her sense of humour (I’m aware that’s not a universal thing) and she’s no dummy.

I am left perplexed and a little disappointed, though. I’m hoping I can get over it so that our relationship can continue without my nagging feeling of doubt. See, the book has just a few too many references to God and matters religious to make me think she was being purely ironic.

Her Mother's Prayer for Its Daughter is funny. A non-believer would write it that way, as a sketch. It is the correct vehicle for that monologue, but still the doubt remains.

The phrases God given and Intelligent Design appear. Admittedly, on the latter she says that’s why she likes Ikea, so if it's for the sake of a joke, fine. As I mentioned, she's no dummy and I'm one of those weirdos who has quite the thing for smart women, but it's hard to truly admire someone who believes in a being who can listen to all our thoughts and is content with the amount of human suffering they can hear. I suspect that Tina Fey truly believes.

The following assertion is not scientific, but I base it on the material (often anti-dogma) and the intelligence (manifest): There aren’t many religious comedians.

From the ancient Greek observation that a thinking man views the world and is forced to laugh, a feeling man must cry: comics and comedians tend to fall into the first category and being in that category requires scepticism and smarts. Religion usually doesn’t sit well with those two qualities. I think Fey must be a very rare thing if she really is a theistic comic writer.

But, here’s the value of her book. I laughed out loud several times. I will even take on board some of her management tips and I will try and look past her possible religiosity as I go about hosing down those tiles on the front landing.

Dirty

Shannon Lush, judging by her book sales, has very good tips on cleaning. Using nothing but a blend of white spirits and black magic, she tells you how to get blood out of stone, donkey entrails out of a donkey and a gay midget out of a cupboard. She throws in advice on getting red wine out of mum and dad’s shag-pile carpet as well.

Shannon Lush sets a bad example, though. It’s too much pressure for normal folk. She thinks that all things should be hospital white; that you should be a best-selling author simply for shits and giggles; and she also happens to be as nutty as a snickers bar hidden in a man-squirrel’s underwear.

Today, I accidentally hit on the antidote to Shannon.

Get home late.

If you get home after the sun has gone down, you just can’t see most of that crap. I had to work from home today… and I literally saw the place in a (new) light. No good.

My first reaction was to go into a Lush-like frenzy - followed a nano-second later by the realisation that that shit had always been there and the answer was not to fix it, but get home in the dark and ignore it.

Fuck off, Shannon Lush. If it’s that bad, I’ll buy a new one.

Fallout (Pt 1) From Fallout

In a disturbing development, I have become addicted to a video game. It has infected my mind. I roam its shattered landscape in my dreams. It’s eaten into blog writing time and that’s no good for the roiling creative drive in my loins (eyeeew).

It’s not even a new game. I picked it up for 30 bucks on a whim. It was sitting next to the thing I was sent to the shop to buy, and the cover design caught my eye. If I can lose my personal will to a three-year-old video game, what’s going to happen when total-immersion holographic environments are available? You’ll find my emptied, inanimate husk with a sensory helmet and a grin on its head, by following the smell.

Damn you Fallout 3 and your depressing, yet fascinating world. Damn you to the fiery, apocalyptic hell of which you so ably illustrate the aftermath.

I have to pull out. I have to make the break. In stages, though baby, in stages. I can’t go cold turkey. I’ve decided to try and kill two mutant birds with one irradiated stone in an effort to get back into the real world. I need to write a blob. Yeah, writing and an addiction in one go – how could you not be entertained?

The Diary of AGA’s Character, in Fallout 3.

Dear Diary,

It’s been an odd sort of day. I came to consciousness with a bright light in my face and Liam Neeson leaning over me in a paternal manner. He bade me welcome to the world, made me pick my name and my gender, fussed around with a lady next to me and then quickly left the room. I gather the lady was my mother, but I’m not certain. She didn’t last long and I didn’t get a chance to question her closely on intent, relations, worth-in-caps or upcoming moves. The next thing I knew, I was cruelly thrust forward in time and found myself inside a drab room with the bars of a playpen blocking my way to a heavy door. If this is childhood, it’s brief, it’s entirely grey and someone needs to see to the amount of fluffiness. There’s way too little fluffiness.

Liam came in to the boring room again and started banging on about things I needed to do and made some broad hints about character defining stuff – he left the room pretty quickly again. I’m confused as to how I knew it was Liam Neeson. It’s sort of like I have the spirit of a bloke from 21^st Century Australia talking in my mind, like a poorly qualified puppeteer. I seem to know inconsequential things about a place and a time that is very far away. I would get to the bottom of this, but first I had to see what Liam was on about.

Dealing with the bars of the playpen was easy and the puppeteer, or my Spirit Guide as I will think of him, advised me to trundle around the room looking for everything I could to pick up and steal. Not finding anything immediately useful, I sat down to read the only book that was at toddler height i.e. on the floor.

At this point, you might be wondering. Reading? Toddler? I’ll put this down to Spirit Guide shenanigans again. Anyway, I read a nice story where I got to move numbers around on the book, which apparently affected the basic attributes of my physical and mental make-up. This is tough work for a little girl, but Spirit Guide (SG) had some pretty strong ideas on what makes up a useful individual in this world.

I had the feeling he’d had a previous vessel to commune with and had found them wanting. I got the real feeling that he had a plan for me. He said I was going to be S.P.E.C.I.A.L. The Spirit Guide (SG) also gets a bit funny about that and starts to laugh and talk about “Special Olympics”.

I’m not sure what any of this is about, but as far as I can tell, I have:    

Strength: of an ox

Perception: of ox poo

Endurance: of an ox

Charisma: of the worm that lives in the ox poo

Intelligence: of the Dean of Smartology at Oxford

Agility: of an ox

Luck: of an ox who, when being transported to the abattoir, is accidentally loaded on to the wrong truck and ends up hosting Top Gear

Like I said, Dear Diary, it’s been a funny old day, let’s [Do You Want To Overwrite This Data] and see what the next one brings. I think that Spirit Guide (SG) might be good and kind... or some kind of wanker.

Yours,

jules (SG cannot do capitals on a console.)

You Could Knock Me Over With A Sledgehammer

There's a lot of criticism of Benji Marshall at the moment. People are saying he's really let them down. I agree. He was out late at night punching blokes in the head. Not a glassing, dog, drug bust or sexual assault in sight. What kind of "Face of Rugby League" does he call himself?

Stop Teasing

Burlesque; I don’t get it. On the other hand Emergency Contact does, so we sashayed into town to see the return of the Ruby Revue.

I can imagine better venues than the Arthouse in Sydney, I can imagine worse. Imagining better would involve a taller stage so you can see more than just the T of the T&A. Imagining worse is quite easy. You’re watching cabaret - just add Nazis.

To the casual observer (me) burlesque is trading under the “smut + time = class” rubric. As a basic hetero male, I find it anodyne. Don’t get me wrong, I like a good looking woman voluntarily writhing around with not much on but I don’t want to be told that it’s classy or art. I particularly don’t want it to remain suitable for all ages for the entirety of the show. What’s the point? I kept thinking that it occupies exactly the same spot in the spectrum as a drag show. It’s for women and gay men. This suspicion was born out by the crowd. There was an overwhelming majority of women.

If you are a straight guy at a burlesque show, here’s a tip for what to look out for. The thing that makes a really good performance in burlesque/cabaret style of entertainment: Infrastructure. It’s all about gear. If you are gazing into your drink and thinking of other things and you hear stuff being prepped on stage between acts, it’s time to pay attention.

Last night, every act that had props was fun. One woman did a number that started with puppets and ended with gyrations inside a costume designed by The Borg. That was a good one. Another act started with The Inchworm Song and she did her undressing as part of the chrysalis-to-butterfly metaphor. The metaphor underwent a hyper-illogical progression as she bounced out of a cocoon topless and waved some bunting painted like butterfly wings, but it all operates to its own internal weirdness and those bits were dangerously close to being real entertainment.

Burlesque is a series of short acts. An M.C. is an important link in the performances. Not only is it period appropriate, they should also pull the audience into the intimacy of the idea and build on the rhythms of the evening. I know that I speak for our table when I say that the M.C. last night failed in every part of his job except standing upright and making noise into a microphone. Cameron Knight adds a “Hot August” to the middle of his name when he does this gig, and that is all the clue you need. If you have Foxtel, you would recognise him and that’s a good thing. It means you can avoid him in the street. You could catch something.

He has talent as a guy who can stand up and make noise at a crowd but it was way too much noise, in length, volume and stupidity and his “style” was jarring in the extreme. In the revivification of an art form that is trying to convince you that women getting their kit off in time to music is not exploitative and really very sophisticated, the “I’m so drug-fucked and horny I could do boob and dick jokes all night” shtick, is moronic. He made a trial out of being in a room with professionally nude girls.

For me, there’s a fundamental problem with Burlesque. Good looking women in clothes are good looking. Good looking women out of clothes are better looking. The in between bits are not so good. Getting your clobber off is ungainly and it doesn’t matter what music you put it to, there are always too many moments of fiddling with laces and hook-eyes and zips and working out where to throw the whalebone and when it catches in your hair how do you make it look like part of the act... you can’t.

Seriously, you’re fit, funny, coordinated and nicely depilated. I’m flattered just to be here. Now get your clothes off and get back to me. Basic Boy doesn’t need all the high maintenance crap.

When It Was Hip To Be Hip He Was Hep

Like a character from a William Gibson book, I have certain talents when it comes to identifying true, underlying, structural coolness.

I don’t have any cool myself. When I was a teenager I worked out that I was never going to be cool. I have too many clashing, un-unified personality traits mixed in with fussy tendencies and blended with a propensity to giggle to ever be a cool person.

It is actually an enormous relief when you work out you aren’t cool. It allows you to get on with doing fun stuff… like giggling. Sadly, unlike a William Gibson character, the cool does not rub off on me. I can only point at it and say “yay” or “nay”.

I never go looking for the genuinely elusive cool, so my opinion is always going to be lagging behind the people who aim to industrialise it by marketing, producing, recording, filming, programming, coding or cooking it. Doesn’t make my opinion wrong, though. In the 90s, someone in New York said to me, “Hey, come and see this band. They are the best. They’re going to be bigger than U2.” And I thought that sounded like something fun to do. Tiny little music venue near the Lower West Side of Manhattan. Cool. Thirteen seconds in the same room as Matchbox 20 and I knew they weren‘t. I told my host that they might be big, but they were never going to be “it”. He didn’t agree. I stand by my judgement.

The upcoming review is well behind the release date. I just want to say that I have witnessed it and it pinged away at the cool gland in my brain like no other film in the last twelve months. It wouldn’t matter what decade you watched it in.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: White-hot-cool.

The first time I watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, I got this excited, wee-wee charge in the pit of my bits that let me know I had seen something very cool. Something that was going to be defining. I wasn’t first on the bandwagon but I certainly wasn’t late, I was smack in the middle of its arrival across the English speaking world.

Scott Pilgrim gave me that kind of kick. It fits together, it looks a bundle, everybody’s gorgeous and it is funny. Oh, and cool. Don’t forget cool.

Major Contributions To The Australian Music Industry

Powderfinger announced their retirement this week. After twenty scandal-free years they have decided to stop. I think this is a bit of a poor effort. For famous pop rockers, a properly disreputable exit is not just expected, it's required. They are supposed to burst into flames dressed only in their own vomit or drown horribly in a motel room wrapped around a telegraph pole.

But, they're not going to do that. You'll probably meet them down at the library fairly soon, promoting their books on cheese making and plugging themselves back into their own respirators. Powderfinger were an entirely professional moneymaking outfit. In fact an old mate of mine, The Right Dishonourable Loaded Dog, and I are probably responsible for their worst piece of public behaviour.

Loaded Dog is among the last of a dying breed. Not because times were better then and they don't breed them like that anymore, no, because most of them have died due to poverty and poor personal hygiene. He wouldn't mind me saying that. He only very loosely fits into that category now because he's got a job these days and that, for him, borders on personal tragedy and major artistic failing. He's a bone-deep pub-rocker.
So, as I said, he's an old mate, part time broadcasting partner and, by coincidence, a dead-ringer for Bernard Fanning, the lead singer of Powderfinger. (Emergency Contact thinks Loaded is much better looking, but I am never going to tell him that.)

Loaded Dog and I don't live close to each other anymore. Not because of any court decisions, just by the luck of the draw. When we get together, we tend to pick a pub halfway between us and they're rarely proper 'local' style establishments. They are usually something you'd classify as 'touristy'. So, one day we were in one and it's here that I need to round out the picture a bit.

Loaded D looks like a rock star the morning after, all the time. His "indefinable it" apparently depends on what kind of girl you are (and I ain't no kind of girl) but I am reliably told that he has 'it' in spades. He certainly wears the clothes to suit and has a certain presence. I used to call it BO, but again, I am reliably told that's probably me being jealous and uncharitable.

He is flamboyant and thinks nothing of wearing a tropical shirt tied at the waist set off with a sombrero that could double as a beach umbrella. I am peeved when I only get 15 years out of a black t-shirt and when those years are up, I replace the back T-shirt with a black t-shirt. He is the height and weight of a grumpy woman with a pint in her hand. I weigh 115 kilos, am 190cm tall and often have his pint and mine in one hand as I drag him away from a grumpy woman. I have short hair and have never tried to apply CPR to life-size but deflated Santa decoration "in the spirit of rescue and entertainment." As you may surmise, he usually has longish hair and has tried to resuscitate a sagging Santa while screaming, "Live dammit. Live. Come on Santy, don't go towards the light!"

We are very different, but have a lot in common.

So, there we were, giggling away at each other about important things in a pretty touristy sort of pub and three guys keep on trying to insinuate themselves into our conversation. On the way past they'd say something, or comment on the game on the telly, obviously trying to get us involved. They were looking at us way too much and it was getting on my wick, so I placed myself to block their view of us and put the physical barrier up.

I leaned into Loaded and said, "What's with this bunch of winners?"

 "It's happening again. They think I'm him and I'm 'out with my muscle'," whispers Loaded.

Oh goody. We were giggling even more.

Then the mood from the guys started to change. It got stroppy in only the way an Australian can get righteously stroppy if he thinks that another Australian is being a bit up himself and needs to be taken down a few pegs. LD and I had them pegged as Brisbane boys as well, so it was even worse. Imagine the gall of Bernard Fanning, a Brisbane boy himself, bunging it on and being all un-proletarian. Actually, Sydneysiders are snobs compared to Brisbanites and I wouldn't have it any other way. Who gives a fat rat's arse what a Queenslander wants and we certainly weren't going to start handing out fake Bernard Fanning signatures just to keep those yobbos happy.

So I stood up, moved over and said, "Lads, give him a bit of peace, alright? It's been a long, tough tour and he just wants to have a quiet one without being bothered. Right?"

Loaded backs it up by putting his flat hand up against the side of his face to protect from prying eyes and says into the air, "There aren't any cameras or film crews, are there Nicky?"

"No mate."

At this, the three sneer and sigh all at the same time, finish their drinks and get up. On the way out, one says unnecessarily loudly, "I always said I thought he was a wanker!"

They're Just Teasing

On the cover of the Sydney Morning Herald this weekend, I was dead excited to see that they had an article in the Spectrum lift-out on, “How to tell a child they’re fat.”

I have a technical interest in this and couldn’t wait to get to the juicy script guidelines I expected to find in the article. Do you make it a ‘tight five’? Do you harangue over a period of years? Surreal humour or simple insulting rhymes? So many choices. So much scope. You need articles like this to point the way and there was the joy of the Sydney Morning Herald seeing the light and fighting its way back to modern relevancy.

“Honey, clean your teeth and get gently into your giant, specially reinforced bed.”

“Goodnight. Sleep tight. The bedbugs won’t bite. They’re frightened.”

“… and no you can’t have your floaties, you don’t need them. In fact, I can’t get them on. And, swim between the flags. We don’t want the Japanese whaling fleet getting any ideas.”

“You’re not a morning kid, are you? You sort of wake up in sections.”

“Of course you’re special to me. I’ve always wanted a kid with her own postcode.”

“Not everyone’s bellybutton comes with it’s own echo, you know Billy?”

"While I'm paying for petrol, can you check Timmy's oil, please? And for God's sake don't put anymore air in his tyres."

And so on.

But no. Stupid SMH had a reasoned piece that said the same old sensible predictable things. Lead by example. Limit the portions. Get some freakin’ exercise. Total let down.

Floriade - Tick Tock, Tick Tock... Bloom!

Many of the pieces here at A Grey Area are designed to help you avoid modern pitfalls. You are welcome to learn from my mistakes. I am out there, losing my mops, swamping my ute with wet mattresses, taking my own temperature with meat thermometers and many other hazardous activities, all in the name of investigative blogging so that you don’t have to.

Today I have two handy tourist tips for when you visit Canberra to see the Floriade exhibition.

Number one. Don’t instantly assume that everywhere charges for parking quite the way Sydney charges for parking. I pulled into a car park exactly outside where we wanted to go, walked over to the Pay-and-Display ticket machine, dropped my money in and got a ticket out that said it was good till 9.30, Monday morning. Seeing as it was Saturday afternoon, I thought that was pretty good value. I thought I was paying for an hour and here I was getting closer to 40 hours for a paltry dollar fifty.

Emergency Contact said, “I don’t think you need to pay on the weekend.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

She said, “See, I think you paid for an hour like you thought you needed to, but that hour doesn’t start till 8.30 on Monday morning.”

I said, “Are you saying that this parking, here, in the middle of the so-called CBD, right where we need to go, is free?”

“Yes,” she said, laughing a little.

“I simply don’t understand.” I said, flustered. I realised that some locals were looking at me with a look that said, “Oh, bless. Look at that poor out-of-towner thinking he had to put his money in the machines on a weekend.”

What we had parked outside of, was Floriade, which leads me to tip number two.

If you want to see it next year, get there at the start. It is a spring celebration that goes for a month and largely consists of flowers. We arrived on the second-last day. The second last day of an exhibition that goes for a month and is made of flowers. See where I’m going with this?

I’m sure that in week one, maybe even week two of an exhibition of glorious, exotic, delicate flowers planted out in the Australian climate, it looked fabulous. End of week four? Not so much.

So, a little underwhelmed, we went back to our Formula 1 hotel. Now, I’m not even going to go into this experience as a tourist tip. You know everything you need to know about Formula 1 hotels already. The pixilated light board on the outside of the hotel that advertises the double-digit price per room is all the indication you need. We just didn’t have any choice. Buggered if I know why, but Canberra was full.