I went out for pizza last night but my friends and I couldn't get a table. We drank some Little Creatures Bright Ale and some of the vinegary but pleasant house beer Blonde Bimbo, served with a slice of lemon.
After about half an hour, and a fight with a trio who took the recently freed table, we gave up and left, and started measuring other restaurants in Fitzroy with the single criterion of whether they had tables free or not.
We ended up eating at a Vietnamese restaurant that had quite a few tables free, but was serving roughly 10 people. In our desperate state it was a promising sign.
On the top of the wooden veneer bar that is a staple of many Asian restaurants was the legend 'The Van Morrison Bar'.
It became apparent that the restaurant played nothing but Van Morrison.
But it didn't stop there. There was something wrong with the CD player which resulted in hearing 'Brown Eyed Girl' five times before we got served our prawn crackers.
It is a family run and very hospitable restaurant, the kind that fills your water glass as soon as it is empty and keeps that rice coming until you say no thank you, no really, please, that is quite sufficient.
The highlight for all in the party was the green chicken curry. The beef and black bean sauce was middling but acceptable and the thingo with noodles pretty bland but satisfying in a 'filling the stomach' sense.
For drinks, all had beer. Coopers Sparkling and Pale Ale were priced the same, in bottles of course, under the names 'Coopers red' and 'Coopers green'. I pity the fool who chooses Pale in that context.
Cafe 58 Vietnamese Cuisine
58 Johnston Street Fitzroy
P.S. What is the secret of getting a table at Bimbo Deluxe on a Saturday night?
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Friday, June 12, 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
I have added three sub-sections to s.5 of my manifesto, 'Legislative Policies':
Here I stand; I can do no other. God help me. Amen.
More to come.
(i) If I were mayor, I would pass a by-law requiring all grandmothers to speak in a Yorkshire accent.
(ii) If I were Prime Minister, I would pass national legislation that imposed the death penalty on waiters who called their elders ‘guys’.
(iii) If I were Attorney-General, I would change the Sentencing Act so that stopping in a crowded footpath without adequate warning was punished with life imprisonment.
Here I stand; I can do no other. God help me. Amen.
More to come.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
On Thursday
At about lunch time on Thursday I decided that I would see The Drones that night, realising that their Friday night show was sold out.
Melbourne’s Witch Hats were first on. These young blokes are the first of the early Nirvana inspired bands I’ve seen in a support slot, heralding in substantial form the expected resurgence of grunge. They played well, but every song seemed to be arranged in the same way. I’d catch them again to see how they develop.
Kev Carmody got on at 10 pm for a half hour set, playing songs he mostly hadn’t recorded. It was a special set which inevitably closed with ‘From Little Things Big Things Grow’.
The Drones started at 11 pm and delivered a white hot blistering set. They must have melted faces in America and will go on to do so in their forthcoming European Tour.
The guitar interplay between Gaz Liddiard and Dan Luscombe was fucking hot shit. They’ve both got themselves Digitech Whammies and were using them to their full extent (or maybe it was just Dan), plus Gaz painted fabulous sonic images out of his many shades of feedback.
Highlights were ‘Oh My’, the feedback in ‘Minotaur’ and, as always , ‘Sharkfin Blues’.
My only complaint would be their choice of 'Sixteen Straws' as the first song in the encore. With Mike on harmonica and Gaz on acoustic it broke up the momentum of the gig, but they redeemed themselves by finishing with a fully plugged in Kev Carmody cover.
After I got home from the Corner Hotel I turned my reading light on and went to brush my teeth. This, as it happens, turned out to be a mistake.
My reading light is a halogen pedestal affair, but the pedestal has broken and I had adopted the practice of laying the light across the head of my bed so I could still use it to read.
While I was brushing my teeth my doona made contact with the globe and caught on fire. ‘On fire’ is something of an exaggeration, it simply heated up to the extent it turned into a smoking, embery mess.
My dearest darling sister Joanna Marie said to no one in particular – probably the universe, to whom she addresses her nothing in particulars – ‘Is something burning?’
I went to investigate and discovered my room full of smoke. I kicked the embers out and then took my doona into the kitchen so I could pour water onto the remainder, ensuring there was no semblance of ‘fire’ left.
Our security and fire alarm is connected to the mains power so the whole house was raising hell in high frequency shrieks.
I punched in the code so the security system ceased its banshee wail but the singular fire alarm outside my room was still beep beep beeping. Upon pressing the button it would not stop so I wrenched the unit out of the ceiling whereupon it did indeed stop.
My room still full of smoke, my bed time was delayed as I opened my windows and turned my ceiling fan knob to high to clear the area.
Melbourne’s Witch Hats were first on. These young blokes are the first of the early Nirvana inspired bands I’ve seen in a support slot, heralding in substantial form the expected resurgence of grunge. They played well, but every song seemed to be arranged in the same way. I’d catch them again to see how they develop.
Kev Carmody got on at 10 pm for a half hour set, playing songs he mostly hadn’t recorded. It was a special set which inevitably closed with ‘From Little Things Big Things Grow’.
The Drones started at 11 pm and delivered a white hot blistering set. They must have melted faces in America and will go on to do so in their forthcoming European Tour.
The guitar interplay between Gaz Liddiard and Dan Luscombe was fucking hot shit. They’ve both got themselves Digitech Whammies and were using them to their full extent (or maybe it was just Dan), plus Gaz painted fabulous sonic images out of his many shades of feedback.
Highlights were ‘Oh My’, the feedback in ‘Minotaur’ and, as always , ‘Sharkfin Blues’.
My only complaint would be their choice of 'Sixteen Straws' as the first song in the encore. With Mike on harmonica and Gaz on acoustic it broke up the momentum of the gig, but they redeemed themselves by finishing with a fully plugged in Kev Carmody cover.
After I got home from the Corner Hotel I turned my reading light on and went to brush my teeth. This, as it happens, turned out to be a mistake.
My reading light is a halogen pedestal affair, but the pedestal has broken and I had adopted the practice of laying the light across the head of my bed so I could still use it to read.
While I was brushing my teeth my doona made contact with the globe and caught on fire. ‘On fire’ is something of an exaggeration, it simply heated up to the extent it turned into a smoking, embery mess.
My dearest darling sister Joanna Marie said to no one in particular – probably the universe, to whom she addresses her nothing in particulars – ‘Is something burning?’
I went to investigate and discovered my room full of smoke. I kicked the embers out and then took my doona into the kitchen so I could pour water onto the remainder, ensuring there was no semblance of ‘fire’ left.
Our security and fire alarm is connected to the mains power so the whole house was raising hell in high frequency shrieks.
I punched in the code so the security system ceased its banshee wail but the singular fire alarm outside my room was still beep beep beeping. Upon pressing the button it would not stop so I wrenched the unit out of the ceiling whereupon it did indeed stop.
My room still full of smoke, my bed time was delayed as I opened my windows and turned my ceiling fan knob to high to clear the area.
Saturday, April 04, 2009
A Review
Andrew Lawrence, My Contemptible Life in a Gutter of Abject Desolation
Victoria Hotel, 2 - 26 April 2009, Tue - Sat 8.15, Sun 7.15
Let me first clear it up that this is not the 21 year old American actor Andrew Lawrence, noted for his performances with his brothers Joey and Matthew in classic 1990s Disney films like Brothers of the Frontier and the thought-provoking television situation comedy Brotherly Love.
This Andrew Lawrence is a much better flavour of Andrew Lawrence and is making his debut at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival after being nominated for the if.comedy best thingo award in 2007 and the if.comedy best newcomer thingo in 2006.
I think festival head Susan Provan brought him out in a cynical attempt to capture the snobby wanker crowd who normally partake in Daniel Kitson shows with cumbersome lengthy titles. A genius move, really, as I went and saw him on the second night of his run.
I’ve done some research with video clips on YouTube and whatnot and there’s a lot of gear where Lawrence is playing guitar and stuff and wearing his red hair long, but he did none of that last night. He has a short back and sides and no guitar. No songs, less hair. This is a difference from the things I have seen on the internet and I have noted this difference for your benefit.
Also, the scroll bar on the bio page of his website doesn’t work properly for me.
The show is dark, twisted, wordy, observational comedy. He veers from self-reflexive material about his red hair, his high-pitched whiny Londoner accent and comedy itself, to external matters like his immature girlfriend and how the 2012 London Olympics can make itself more entertaining by adding an event or two.
He paints well-observed vivid grotesques with his words and reveals truths of the ridiculousness of modern society. It is a snappy, well-written set where the only false notes were a couple of bits that strayed a shade too far from the border of human decency.
Lawrence happily admits that these moments occur at least once in a show that throws the mind-to-mouth filter out of the window. The best comedy often happens when people dance on the borderline so it is small price to pay.
The material was mostly very vivid and original, but his hotel stuff is a little too similar to Bill Hicks’ material on the same topic. I got the impression he was holding back a little bit because of jetlag or being in a new town on the other side of the world. When he's settled in this will be one of the hot tickets at the festival.
As this goes to net it has come to my attention that Daniel Kitson is in fact in town for the festival but he did not make it into the guide due to the last minute nature of arrangements. His already sold out show is Work In Progress presented at the Triple R studios from 5 to 26 April.
Although we can’t make it to the show he will be doing three broadcasts during the festival as per usual, but asn’t per usual these will be in the live performance space with guest comedians from the festival instead of Dan in the studio playing music from his iPod.
Victoria Hotel, 2 - 26 April 2009, Tue - Sat 8.15, Sun 7.15
Let me first clear it up that this is not the 21 year old American actor Andrew Lawrence, noted for his performances with his brothers Joey and Matthew in classic 1990s Disney films like Brothers of the Frontier and the thought-provoking television situation comedy Brotherly Love.
This Andrew Lawrence is a much better flavour of Andrew Lawrence and is making his debut at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival after being nominated for the if.comedy best thingo award in 2007 and the if.comedy best newcomer thingo in 2006.
I think festival head Susan Provan brought him out in a cynical attempt to capture the snobby wanker crowd who normally partake in Daniel Kitson shows with cumbersome lengthy titles. A genius move, really, as I went and saw him on the second night of his run.
I’ve done some research with video clips on YouTube and whatnot and there’s a lot of gear where Lawrence is playing guitar and stuff and wearing his red hair long, but he did none of that last night. He has a short back and sides and no guitar. No songs, less hair. This is a difference from the things I have seen on the internet and I have noted this difference for your benefit.
Also, the scroll bar on the bio page of his website doesn’t work properly for me.
The show is dark, twisted, wordy, observational comedy. He veers from self-reflexive material about his red hair, his high-pitched whiny Londoner accent and comedy itself, to external matters like his immature girlfriend and how the 2012 London Olympics can make itself more entertaining by adding an event or two.
He paints well-observed vivid grotesques with his words and reveals truths of the ridiculousness of modern society. It is a snappy, well-written set where the only false notes were a couple of bits that strayed a shade too far from the border of human decency.
Lawrence happily admits that these moments occur at least once in a show that throws the mind-to-mouth filter out of the window. The best comedy often happens when people dance on the borderline so it is small price to pay.
The material was mostly very vivid and original, but his hotel stuff is a little too similar to Bill Hicks’ material on the same topic. I got the impression he was holding back a little bit because of jetlag or being in a new town on the other side of the world. When he's settled in this will be one of the hot tickets at the festival.
As this goes to net it has come to my attention that Daniel Kitson is in fact in town for the festival but he did not make it into the guide due to the last minute nature of arrangements. His already sold out show is Work In Progress presented at the Triple R studios from 5 to 26 April.
Although we can’t make it to the show he will be doing three broadcasts during the festival as per usual, but asn’t per usual these will be in the live performance space with guest comedians from the festival instead of Dan in the studio playing music from his iPod.
Daniel Kahn is a public servant who divides his time between the computer and the television. The Melbourne International Comedy Festival runs until 26 April 2009. Don’t forget about daylight saving finishing.
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Car Park Clichés
I have returned from the gymnasium where I saw a powerful symbol of the world we now live in. The normal disabled car parks were out of use because of construction, so the good people at the gym placed temporary signs in front of the next nearest car parks to the gym door. They were steel signs held erect by an easel-style tripod arrangement.
Four of the five temporary disabled car park signs were still in action, but the fifth had been knocked over by a Land Cruiser that decided that a) it needed to reverse into the car park and make a big show of it, because Land Cruisers never park easily and the drivers savour the wait they make everyone else in the car park endure while they dock their vessel, b) it didn't matter that they were parking in a disabled car park that they were not entitled to, and c) knocking over the sign didn't matter because capitalism has bestowed upon them the alienation from their true human spirit that makes them careless and selfish. Carefish, I think the attitude is called.
People at my new work speak in clichés some of the time, stuff like 'you can't just come off the street' or 'so this is a stop-gap job'. They're not really clichéd clichés, sort of fringe ones that are still clichés because they're pre-packaged words for concepts that would otherwise take more time to communicate, but ones that only freethinkers use.
The sentence previous would be significantly less communicable if one of the new breed of Australians, who refuses to mark nouns when converted to their adjectival form, tried to communicate with you.
'That's so cliché,' they say. 'I was so tan over summer,' they say. This is okay if you're an American and don't know better, but Australians - and anyone who has been raised on the English language - should know better. See:
Toodle.
Four of the five temporary disabled car park signs were still in action, but the fifth had been knocked over by a Land Cruiser that decided that a) it needed to reverse into the car park and make a big show of it, because Land Cruisers never park easily and the drivers savour the wait they make everyone else in the car park endure while they dock their vessel, b) it didn't matter that they were parking in a disabled car park that they were not entitled to, and c) knocking over the sign didn't matter because capitalism has bestowed upon them the alienation from their true human spirit that makes them careless and selfish. Carefish, I think the attitude is called.
People at my new work speak in clichés some of the time, stuff like 'you can't just come off the street' or 'so this is a stop-gap job'. They're not really clichéd clichés, sort of fringe ones that are still clichés because they're pre-packaged words for concepts that would otherwise take more time to communicate, but ones that only freethinkers use.
The sentence previous would be significantly less communicable if one of the new breed of Australians, who refuses to mark nouns when converted to their adjectival form, tried to communicate with you.
'That's so cliché,' they say. 'I was so tan over summer,' they say. This is okay if you're an American and don't know better, but Australians - and anyone who has been raised on the English language - should know better. See:
- I am tanning/I have tanned/I am a tanned person (temporarily)/this bag is (the colour) tan.
- That's so clichéd/the clichéd blog entry/this is a clichéd blog entry/this is a blog entry about clichés.
Toodle.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
The Best Ten Drumming Clips On YouTube, As It Stands At April's End 2008
I am not a drumming drummer but I like watching drumming drummers drum. Some are funny, others are just awesome. In no particular order.
Korean Drummer Steals The Show
Buddy Rich Drum Solo (1970)
Dawn Landes - Bodyguard
The Bad Plus do Aphex Twin's 'Flim'
Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins
Rowan Atkinson Who needs a kit?
Jacob Armen Best of the Internet's demoralising child prodigies.
Dave Grohl 2: The Grohlening On a child's drum kit.
Michel Gondry - Drumb and Drumber
And of course, the best drummer in the world takes this baby home.
Korean Drummer Steals The Show
Buddy Rich Drum Solo (1970)
Dawn Landes - Bodyguard
The Bad Plus do Aphex Twin's 'Flim'
Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins
Rowan Atkinson Who needs a kit?
Jacob Armen Best of the Internet's demoralising child prodigies.
Dave Grohl 2: The Grohlening On a child's drum kit.
Michel Gondry - Drumb and Drumber
And of course, the best drummer in the world takes this baby home.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
They're Using Real Lasers
It's been almost two-and-a-half months since my last post, and Goon tells me that I am now classified brown in his RSS reader. Ostensibly, this is an objective colour code assigned according to the period of time since the last update on a blog or website, brown meaning that a site hasn't been updated in months.
I like to think that it means more. The Internet is sorting the men from the boys. These days I am attempting to put things on the Internet only when I have something to say, which explains my absence in a much more self-effacing way than laziness, but the machines are saying back to me, 'Don't bother, browny.' Not being one to bow to binary pressure, I decided to piece an entry together immediately.
Unsurprising for those of your who are returning to Not, here's another piece about a night out a The Tote, peppered with facile tidbits about my life. In fact, the very last entry was on the same subject. Brown indeed.
I kicked it into Collingwood after dropping into a house party last Saturday night, so I missed out on the first act Big Cats.
Second act Aleks and the Ramps do crazy left-field off-kilter Northcote commune psych folk rock, with animal noises, glockenspiels, banjos and shouting at each other. The best bit was when the bass player shreiked and imitated a cat, rhythmically. I place them somewhere near Animal Collective, Akron/Family and Xiu Xiu in the spectrum. Aleks' lead vocals are technically appalling but work like a charm with hilarious lyrics and powerful delivery. Their harmonies aren't really harmonies as such, but four-part vocals that are shouted or sung loudly and clashing each other. They're touring Canada in the middle of the year.
Writing now, a lazy music scribe could possibly quickly classify Yves Klein Blue as an Australian answer to Babyshambles, or Australia's Supergrass if they were writing ten years ago. Point being, they use a variety of influences (especially from British rock) but the tunes they kick out are tight and all their own. Singer Michael Tomlinson is a charismatic frontman with a great voice, with existential lyrics The rest of the band seem to be having a hair-growing competition, which they are taking very seriously. None seems likely to concede defeat for the time being. It was a great night of local music and it only cost ten bucks, so if you're able, get out there. Both these bands were awesome and deserve your love.
The Black Keys dropped their new album Attack & Release on April Fool's Day. It's very solid. Producer Danger Mouse hasn't compromised what makes them a great band and the bells and whistles that have jumped on board fit naturally with the music instead of navigating the ship into the murky waters of pointless additions for embellishment's sake.
And not only is the album good, the promotional video for lead single 'Strange Times' is one of the funniest clips I have seen in a good while. Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney are playing laser wars against children and teenagers. But they take it far too seriously and use actual lasers, proceeding to freak out everyone else in the skirmish. Unfortunately it's not accessible from Australian IPs on YouTube so you'll have to see it on rage or wait until it's available to us poor folks in the southern hemisphere.
See you in a couple of months.
I like to think that it means more. The Internet is sorting the men from the boys. These days I am attempting to put things on the Internet only when I have something to say, which explains my absence in a much more self-effacing way than laziness, but the machines are saying back to me, 'Don't bother, browny.' Not being one to bow to binary pressure, I decided to piece an entry together immediately.
Unsurprising for those of your who are returning to Not, here's another piece about a night out a The Tote, peppered with facile tidbits about my life. In fact, the very last entry was on the same subject. Brown indeed.
I kicked it into Collingwood after dropping into a house party last Saturday night, so I missed out on the first act Big Cats.
Second act Aleks and the Ramps do crazy left-field off-kilter Northcote commune psych folk rock, with animal noises, glockenspiels, banjos and shouting at each other. The best bit was when the bass player shreiked and imitated a cat, rhythmically. I place them somewhere near Animal Collective, Akron/Family and Xiu Xiu in the spectrum. Aleks' lead vocals are technically appalling but work like a charm with hilarious lyrics and powerful delivery. Their harmonies aren't really harmonies as such, but four-part vocals that are shouted or sung loudly and clashing each other. They're touring Canada in the middle of the year.
Writing now, a lazy music scribe could possibly quickly classify Yves Klein Blue as an Australian answer to Babyshambles, or Australia's Supergrass if they were writing ten years ago. Point being, they use a variety of influences (especially from British rock) but the tunes they kick out are tight and all their own. Singer Michael Tomlinson is a charismatic frontman with a great voice, with existential lyrics The rest of the band seem to be having a hair-growing competition, which they are taking very seriously. None seems likely to concede defeat for the time being. It was a great night of local music and it only cost ten bucks, so if you're able, get out there. Both these bands were awesome and deserve your love.
The Black Keys dropped their new album Attack & Release on April Fool's Day. It's very solid. Producer Danger Mouse hasn't compromised what makes them a great band and the bells and whistles that have jumped on board fit naturally with the music instead of navigating the ship into the murky waters of pointless additions for embellishment's sake.
And not only is the album good, the promotional video for lead single 'Strange Times' is one of the funniest clips I have seen in a good while. Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney are playing laser wars against children and teenagers. But they take it far too seriously and use actual lasers, proceeding to freak out everyone else in the skirmish. Unfortunately it's not accessible from Australian IPs on YouTube so you'll have to see it on rage or wait until it's available to us poor folks in the southern hemisphere.
See you in a couple of months.
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