An Old Blog

I'm destroying the source, so I thought I'd give this blog a good home. I wrote it about a year and a half ago.

So this couple was sitting behind me on the Bus...

So this couple was sitting behind me on the Bus back from my mother's coastal town residence. And this isn't as easy as it sounds, cuz I was way up the back, like a black guy in the forties, and there was only one pair of seats behind me but there this couple was anyway. The guy was American, and I had that weird feeling when you hear a yankee accent talking in person, not on TV. He seemed kinda humble and passive though, so maybe he wasn't American. Maybe Canadian. The girl was Russian, or at least part Russian cuz she spoke English fair good. But her accent was as strong as the American/Canadian. I remember I thought 'Hey, I don't know any Russians', (Russky's, like Slim Pickens says in Dr. Strangelove, man I love that movie, thank god for Wason showing us movies when he should be teaching) but then I remembered that a friend of a friend of mine is part Russian and then I realized that the only reason I figured this girl behind me was Russian was that her face reminded me of the other Part-Russian girl I fractionally knew. I really should call this couple Man and Woman, not Guy and Girl, cuz they were easily in their late thirties. Come to think of it, maybe they weren't together. Didn't see them kissing or anything. But they did have that manner, that we're-together manner. Plus they left together, got up and went down the front of the bus.

Maybe they actually got off (the bus, you dirty fucks) but I didn't see them. I mighta paid more attention but I was sort of somewhat distracted by this kind of tingling, nervous (literal, as in, body-nerve related) anxiety in my lower left leg. That had pretty much been buzzing away since last night, when I had been reading Misery, and this description of an axeblade squealing as crazy-Kathy Bates lady wrenches it out of her favourite author's shin bone (three tries and she got the whole foot off) had been annoyingly persistant. It had the kind of effect that happens when guys see another guy get his balls shattered and instinctively reach down to protect their own - most of the busride I every-so-often had to check my shin wasn't secretly in pieces.

See now, this shit was published in 1987, shit it took a couple of Melbourne punks seventeen years to work into their Saw movies and become filthy rich off of. But King isn't a petty guy, I'm sure he knows he has the last laugh.

And I realized I was listening to Linkin Park, and I was thinking of skipping it because Linking Park have their time and their place, neither of which were here or now, but then the guy who had been in the toilet came out. I forgot to mention I was also sitting really close the bus toilet, but it was fully discreet and everything, just looked like a little booth for, something. And the guy who had been in there was pretty fucking wasted. Either that or he had cerebral palsy, but I'm pretty sure he was wasted cuz his eyes were out of it and he had a bottle of something. Maybe he was he was drinking his cerebral palsy away.

So then the drunk cerebral palsic (that's not a word, pretty sure) went somewhere down the front of the bus, maybe to visit the YankRussky couple, and I remembered there was a girl on here with her 9, maybe ten year old sister before who was strangely attractive for a bogan (the older one, I mean), and I thought maybe she came from a family of bogans and she's trynna fit in but it's not working cuz you just didn't believe her as a bogan, she wasn't right for the part. But she was gone now and that was a drag because she was attractive and just having attractive people around, even when you can't see them cuz they're facing away from you and there's bus seats in the way, make you feel just a little better than everyone else, including the version of you sans (without) attractive stranger.

But the next stop a really, really old couple got on and the man, maybe 90, 95 had fucking horrible burns on his face and his face looked like a mask. I don't mean horrible like to look at him but horrible cuz you knew it meant at one point in his life this guy's face was on fire. But this really old woman was like, still with him, getting slowly on a bus to dandenong and I remember thinking, what the fuck, why are they going to Dandenong? Why is everybody on this bus going to Dandenong for heaven's sake.

And then I remember thinking, oh man, I'm never gonna be a Russian or an American or even a Canadian, I don't think I'm ever gonna have that manner, that manner that couple have and the old couple have, and I mean I hope so but I don't think I have it in me. And then I thought but I'm lucky, I'm lucky, my brother's sitting next to me and he can't hear properly, and I don't have cerebral palsy and I'm not trapped in a manic psychotic's house with shattered legs and no thumb and no soul, and I could be an alco maybe later but I won't, I won't drink that much cuz I can't hold it, and I hope my face doesn't catch fire, cuz I don't know any one that's not family, (i don't suppose attractive psuedo-bogan strangers account for anything at all) that would get on buses to Dandenong with me, but jesus christmas at least i can thank my lucky stars I dno't live in fucking DANDENONG!

And then Linkin Park stopped and I remember thinking, you know, this has been a pretty strange couple of minutes. And then I remember thinking, you know...

this has been a pretty strange eighteen years.

No Fun At All

is offering the same academic opinion in front of a class room of people that has just been proposed by the tutor himself not thirty seconds ago while you were out of the room.

I recommend instead having someone put a 'Kick Me' sticker on your back without your knowledge. You will slightly less of a fool.

Song the Second

I think a while ago I may have put some lyrical ideas up here or something. Which is why I proclaim this to be the second. If I am wrong, I apologize.

The following are lyrics I wrote in accompaniment to music very quickly and viscerally. They are what you call lies, because they claim that I am a person that I am not with many experiences I don't have. I thought it over, and it doesn't bother me. I'm happy with the result.

I hope someone in the interverse thinks they are decent.

Untitled (I Will Title It Later)

We were always down and out,
just never wrote about it.
So it all came out
in fights and fucks in dirty bars,
where they all had to shout
to even tell the girl
the poison they need, and now,
before the sober world
wakes up.

But then we found that place
just down the street
that's always open late,
where we could play for free.
I could pound on wood,
and you could sing, but good.
And there was silence when we stopped, our ideas sucked, but...

If nothing came, then we'd trade fours
til the owners came to lock the doors.
Then we'd go home with a melody
stuck in our head,
until we fell asleep instead.

We forked out fifty bucks
to buy a crap guitar
and beat it around like the fucks
we know we are.
But we found a couple of chords,
we wrote a couple of words,
and sung them to each other while we fucked
in our broken car.

If nothing came, then we'd trade fours
til the owners came to lock the doors.
Then we'd go home with a melody
stuck in our head,
until we fell asleep instead.

I'll bet the weather's warm wherever you are sleeping.
Here we're expecting storms - I bet they'll be real strong.
But some guy on the tv show
said rain is good for the soul
It might be shit, but it sounds nice; I should put it in a song.


There it is.
I'm not wild about having so many 'fuck's in there, I feel it diminishes the effect a bit. But they all work in their context, and I don't want to move any of them.

The Movies (and their occasional treasures)

Through what was really random chance and marketing fate, I (and one or two others) caught a session of Ben Affleck's Gone Baby Gone at the Westgarth last night. In one of those delightful moments, it turned out to be the only thing about the day that went right.

A summation - I didn't get to sleep til about four in the morning the night before, through no fault of anyone's. I then had to get up at eight thirty to find my way to a session of Babel (sullied, though I enjoyed it, by the fierce disenjoyment of those around me) and bookended by the life-sucking greyness of one particular cinema studies teacher who lost his passion for people around about birth. Not only does he loudly shush the sparest of whisperings, he actually separated two people. Moved them to different seats, as though we were primary school students.

After all this, there was a fair bit of waiting around, boring for me and Morgan, but I imagine far worse for Martin, who had to rewrite an already written essay. We were not alleviated by one iota of sunshine from dawn til dusk, by the way.

Once this was all done, a haphazard planning wound us up at the cinema much too late - we had intended to get there early in order to photograph the beautiful view for purposes that may or may not be legal. Suffice it to say, we weren't interested particularly in the movie we were watching, it was only an excuse to get inside the theatre. Once we got there (late, fucking peak hour), we found that the movie we were watching was in entirely the wrong cinema.

The interesting part of all of this, however, is that Gone Baby Gone was a really great movie. And I don't mean "great" in the popular, flippant, I-liked-it-a-lot-in-despite-of-my-appalling-taste sense of the word. I mean it was a really well written, well directed, well structured, well acted piece of cinema with a message that hadn't been pedaled to death by a million other far better films. Some how the Affleck clan have created something genuinely great.

I won't go on, but I will say that, not unlike The Departed and Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone is a very unique and rich portrait of Boston, a town which seems infinitely able to harbour characters and stories worthy of Shakespeare - and attractive to filmmakers that can treat them with the respect they deserve. Casey Affleck's almost childlike persona resonates strongly here, where he becomes an ambassador for the not-yet-bitter but still grown-up generation of Boston and its social catastrophe, a man with morals and principles struggling to assure himself of them while their practicality is being severely undermined. It's a film where that which is inarguably right is also inarguably wrong.

Yet none of it ever becomes abstract - very wisely every politic and motive relates firmly to the issue of a child that is in danger. The town which seems so eager to swallow up children and spit out damaged goods is also eager to save the innocent from itself. It's a simple story, and one whose twists actually serve it well, rather than seeking to simply be surprising and keep things fresh. It's a film that could satisfactorily end at almost any time, and yet that we are pleased to see keep going. And its ultimate end is, in this viewer's opinion, immaculate. I came out of Gone Baby Gone with faith renewed in contemporary cinema.

When we left, someone had dinged my car and the driver's door wouldn't open.

"Baby, you are gonna miss that plane"

There's something interminably magical about Richard Linklater's Before Sun- films. I've seen both of them several times before, but only yesterday did I have the pleasure of seeing them both back to back for the first time, courtesy of some academic something-or-other.

I think there's a certain type of person who can be wholly entertained by two people talking for almost three hours all up, and that I am this type of person. What you need to do to make it work is really pay attention. Pay attention to what Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke say, the way the say it. The way they look at each other when the other is talking, or act when the other isn't looking. It's an accumulative effect of a thousand words and mannerisms to build to nothing more than two extraordinarily real people experiencing a profound connection. Most films fail in plot, development and meaning because they never properly established that real connection, and those real characters. Linklater fucks all those narrative trinkets off and strips everything right back, just to get these basics right.

In the end, though, I think its the reflection of self and society that appeals to me through these two very quiet, slow and uneventful films. It's a diluted mix of that same feeling I get from Eternal Sunshine. Although a lot of the dialogue is philosophically derivative and vapid (and although we forgive this because it sounds genuine and builds the characters well), there are occasional nuggets of gold that hit home. For me, it was Ethan Hawke professing that he always felt like a thirteen year old boy, pretending to be an adult, taking notes for when he'd have to actually do it.

And in the grand scheme of things, this couplet of movies really says a lot about the notions of romance, idealism, lost time and broken hearts. The two young lovers never met up again in Veinna, as they arranged to do at the end of the first film. We discover this at the beginning of the last. So that romantic plan went bust. Then we hear all about the subtle but drastic impact their encounter had on the rest of their lives. They seem shocked to discover that their connection really was as profound as they thought it was. Something always seemed "off" to them. Something should have happened, and it didn't. In a way, this gives the series an odd kind of romantic cynicism: yes, there is such thing as true love, but you'll probably fuck it up.

What I love most about the franchise, and the second film, is that it resolves the open ending of the first one, and then leaves us hanging yet again. Their second chance encounter ends with Ethan Hawke having a tea with Julie Delpy in her Parisian apartment. He is married with a kid, she is in a serious relationship with a war photographer. Life went on and saddled them with second best, then hooked them up again to talk about it. Yet the look on Hawke's face, the last shot of the movie and series, is one of almost unbelieving contentment. She seems happy enough too. I think getting to see each other again is close enough a happy ending for both of them.

Whether its close enough for us is our choice, I guess.

Titles

The following are a list of titles for novels that I have encountered in my own imagination that set the scene beautifully for content of an astounding quality.

God May Be Gone - Assumedy this would be some kind of semi-fictional debunking of religious fanaticism using the continued and increasing horror, disillusionment and technological miracle of modern society. Of course the story would also examine the genuine loss of traditional Christian, Muslim and Jewish values that are of great importance and compassion, as not to make it too nasty or one sided.

Nobody Sleeps In Lonely City - This title covers all manner of sins, don't you think? I'm imagining a quiet, slow exploration of future society, experienced through a character who has only very recently been reawakened from cryogenic sleep. This guy will have been frozen sometime around the Vietnam war, I think, as so modern happenings (Internet, 9/11 and such) can be explained to him as long gone history. Think he should have a dead wife that he yearns for, and to whom he adresses his story. There's very evident noir in that title though, have to work that in somehow. Future noir is nothing new, anyway.

Melvin Mahogany Will Rule The World - Surely some comical adventure. I have been recently tickled by the prospect of a supervillain named The Convincer, who aspires to world domination via very rational and sane plans. He should have an office, where he invites people and disarms them with his charm, ie "Look, some people in my profession go in for blunt force, Brain Wave guns and things like that... uhhhhh, it's not my thing. I mean, I can barely work my phone, anyway, I'd be hopeless with a Brain Gun or what have you. But really I'd rather not insult your intelligence. I believe in informed decisions, not quick fixes. Here's an outline of my and my enterprise's first steps, please take a copy home with you, phone the office if you've any questions, some one will put you through to me. I really want you on board with me for this, Dave."

Also I think Mother Music Loves You is an excellent name for a lively big band.
And the title of this blog (I Fear the Worst on a Day Like Tomorrow) would be a splendid album name (preferably by a low-key indie outfit).

The Most Inadvertently Sexy Video I've Ever Seen

Speaking of Fucking Up

A close friend of mine who is traveling and being brave made a short stop in London very recently before she continues on Contiki tour to Ireland. I managed to catch her on remote online messenger and chat and such like, wherein she told me that she attempted to call the previous night, but no one answered. I felt bad about this, a) because she tried to call and was let down and b) because I really really would have loved to hear from her and hence I now feel let down. This was 11 pm Melbourne time, 2 30ish pm London time when we got to chat msn style and I heard about this.

I told her, hey you should call again when you've gotten back from your internet cafe to the motel you're at, seeing as you are leaving for Ireland in about 20 hours. She promised she would. I went to bed at this point, but I should point out that this was only to thoroughly establish the setting of being snug in my bed in the dark while it rained when I got to talk voice-to-voice with my friend on the other side of the world. I had no intention of falling the fuck asleep. I thought, even if I do fall asleep, the handset is right next to me, it's ring will wake me up.

The next thing I knew it was five thirty in the morning, which would have been about 8 in the evening in London. I can only assume she rang... and no one answered. My excuse, which is that I fell asleep, is really quite poor. I did, after all, implore some one to ring me and then not answer the phone, even if it was due to unconsciousness. But I had no way of telling her that. I left a bunch of messages for her at various internet locations explaining and apologizing. As of now I don't believe she had the time to go on the internet to read any of them.

After three hours of sleeplessness, at about 8 30, I got showered and dressed and wandered up to the tram stop to go to uni, which begins at 10. I was there til two. There were delays with trams and buses which meant I didn't get home til three. I was there for maybe an hour, checking internet and phone. Nothing. Then I was whisked away to various band related functions that kept me out until fifteen minutes ago (20 past 10 at night, for those keeping track). At one of these band functions, I will mention I ran into a mutual friend of this mysterious traveling girl who told me she was rung up on the telephone by her earlier in the day (while i was out doing fucking band shit), and that at the time of the call she was at the airport, going to Ireland.

When I got home, I found a message on the machine that was about 4 seconds of silence and then a hang up. It was left at quarter to six (while I was out doing fucking band shit) and its almost impossible that it wasn't my friend in London. So now, not only have fate and I cheated myself out of something which I really wanted - talking with close friend, finding out how she is, how Europe was, how she's feeling - but have no choice but to consider it from her point of view - She rang three times and got no answer on any of them, including a call that I solicited quite strongly. What must she think?

So now I'm thinking thoughts a little along the lines of

fuckfucketyfuckingfuckedfucktardfuckingfuckFUCKFUCK!

and hoping that she's feeling better than me, cuz I feel positively awful.

I really did want to talk to her.