Weird. Unlike Ruth, I found this quiz to be inaccurate on every single point. Or am I just blind to myself? Look.

Wackiness: 54/100
Rationality: 60/100
Constructiveness: 42/100
Leadership: 66/100

You are a WRDL--Wacky Rational Destructive Leader. This makes you an Enemy of the State.

You are charismatic and winning and a very dangerous enemy. You favor justice over compassion, and would almost rather see your opponent fail than you succeed.

You impact the lives of those around you more than any other personality. People remember your name and respect you. You are a tremendous amount of fun to be around and astonishing to watch. You are generally abstinent in your habits, and you like things tidy and ordered.

When picking teams, it is smartest for others to pick yours.

Of the 122869 people who have taken this quiz since tracking began (8/17/2004), 1.5 % are this type.

I swear I'm not that cool. Anyway, this next one appeals to my vanity.

Sunny/Dark: 7/10
drY/Gross: 3/10
Traditional/Offbeat: 4/10
Active/Passive: 5/10

You are a DYT--Dark Dry Traditional. This makes you a Cynic.

You're a realist. You'll take the piss out of anything, and do it with style and a skinny gray tie. You find humor in the mundane. When the mundane is thousands of working class families watching their retirement savings get snarfed by unpunished white collar bandits, that REALLY gets the larfs.

You bring humor with you, and can flip over any situation to find the tender funny underbelly.

Incidentally, you're better equipped than anyone else to shake off the bad things happen to you. Mysterious lump? You've seen scarier lumps in your garlic cheesey grits. It seems like nothing makes you truly happy, but nothing really upsets you, either.

Your comic sensibility was more in tune with the eighties. But cross your fingers -- another coupla years of Bush and maybe we'll work up a nice Reagan-era national bitterness again. A sardonic orange cat will once again rule the newsprint, and Springsteen'll write more righteous Jersey retro-cock-rock anthems for the progressive pols of 2024 to cold gank. What's past is prologue!

You might like David Letterman, or maybe stay up to see if Conan has another "Pierre Bernard's Recliner of Rage."

Of the 19226 people who have taken this quiz, 10.1 % are this type.

Your Active humor score of 5/10 means you're a yellow dash of comedy down the middle of the humorous road. You prefer to listen than to be the center of attention, inserting funny observations and comments rather than driving the herd. That's cool. Just remember that the quantity of funny you provide tends to make people think you're up to something.

However, this quiz is complete balls.

Your score as a human being is 101.75.

You are a pleasure to be with and a pleasure to be. Your friends do not envy so much as admire you, and you lead your life with grace, honor, and dignity. This site is humbled to have you take a test on it.

Which brings one to wonder, what are you doing goofing off on the Internet?

Seriously, does nothing work anymore? How are we supposed to know ourselves if these quizzes keep malfunctioning? HOW?

In the few hours since I last blogged, I have -

• come to ADORE The Rogers Sisters. Really quite powerfully.

• come to believe that Love Of Diagrams are somehow very very good, though I don’t quite know how precisely enough that I could explain it to you.

• given exact change to one of the Architecture In Helsinki chicks, as she was working the merch booth.

• had the persistent smell of shit in my nostrils. I swear, I have a brain tumour. That, or something stinky is going on in Northcote.

• listened to LCD Soundsystem in the taxi home.

IN MEMORIAM
I have only just discovered that last month the world lost yet another luminary, a man of letters whose creative impulses defined a generation. Yes, William J. Bell, the creator of The Bold and The Beautiful and The Young and The Restless, who also wrote Days Of Our Lives for a significant time, is dead… And not ‘dead’ dead, either. Rather, actually dead. For real. Like, no crazy scenario whereby he somehow didn't die, but instead ended up trapped on some mysterious island with everyone else who has ‘died’ while his friends and family back home think he’s dead, and so mourn and get into romantic entanglements. And let’s just take a moment here to hope for the poor man’s sake that he wasn’t actually expecting that to happen. Sweet jesus, can you imagine the shock of his final moments if he was? When it finally became clear that no, an evil twin was not going to materialise, be mistaken for him and be taken by Death in his stead. It would torment me indeed if the great William J. Bell's last words were “…but, my obsessed kidnapper should be here by now.” I'm sure those weren't his last words at all. And now, yeah, he’s really dead. No, really. He is. I swear. Oh, how can I explain it so as you'll understand? He’s dead. As in, not coming back. Ever.

You know, I thought I had found the perfect way to communicate how permanent his death situation is. See, I was going to say he’s dead, as in ‘Taylor dead’. But FUCKING HELL. She’s NOT DEAD!

BUT HOW?

“Prince Omar appears and explains that he saved Taylor’s life and put a dummy into the coffin to be buried. In complete disbelief, Ridge turns to see Taylor walking toward him.”

No, really. HOW?

“Taylor explained all of the circumstances which lead Ridge to believe she had died. Taylor explained that when Ridge thought she was dead, she was in a coma, only. Taylor explained that Prince Omar's men had gone to the hospital and discovered that she still had a heart beat. She explained that the men revived her and brought her back to Prince Omar where she remained in a coma for a very long time.”

That fucking Prince Omar. He is one obsessed and consistent blast from the past.

Anyways, William J. "she was in a coma, only" Bell, WE SALUTE YOU.

I haven't been to the movies in months, so the backlog of films I have to see is rather huge. Even films that I had been keeping tabs on and waiting for with high anticipation, like Bad Education and The Life Aquatic, I still haven't seen. Instead of seeing movies now I just compile lists of the ones I need to see, so that I don't forget about them. And so, Match Point is definitely on the list, for obvious reasons.

HOT.
I am actually on the floor. The shock of the hotness. Is. Profound.

Yes, I have fucked up and inconsistent values. They play out like this - my reaction to new information about people is pretty much already determined by how much I already like them or hate them. For example - Tom Cruise orders flowers for his new girlfriend and I decide that this only reconfirms what a complete prat he is. While in the case of Jonathan Rhys Meyers, I can decide to stare unhealthily at the left side of the above photo and not allow any thoughts about assaulting girlfriends anywhere near my consciousness. Indeed, if I think about it at all, it is only to remark, "My, they do have a charmingly equal relationship, don't they?" I may have problems.

It is quite IMPOSSIBLE not to love Fop.

We're just saying.

I have a habit. It's a kind of obsessive and fruitless habit and I generally do it alone. I walk into a Borders, head straight to the Culture & Media section of the magazines, stare at the rack, and then walk out. I have been doing this at least twice a week since the start of the year, and sometimes I become petulantly crazed, and sometimes I almost start to cry. You see, I have been chasing the whiff of a promise made last year - that the bestest magazine ever, Radar, was coming back. And now I discover that I could just as easily have spent my time obsessively checking Gawker, who have themselves been fixated with their own Radar habit. And if I had been paying close enough attention to Gawker I would have discovered YESTERDAY that Radar is now online! In online magazine form! Can you see my ecsatic paroxysm of joy from where you are? Can you? Well just pray that you're not in the vicinity when I walk into a Borders one day in the near future, head straight to the Culture & Media section of the magazines, stare at the rack, and find THIS [*screams in classic Beatlemania stylee*]:

OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD!

Best. Lecture. Ever.

The other day, I had the best lecture ever. It was about popular music and gender. Here are some of my hazy recollections and notes, which will hopefully make it clear to you all why it was unquestionably THE BEST.

• general points were made about the ridiculous tendency to reduce the plurality of popular music into the binary opposition of rock/pop, with its value-laden correlations, authentic/synthetic, masculine/feminine etc. Along with the tendency to valorise rock and denigrate pop, there is the related tendency to privilege the musical passions of young men as ‘male connoisseurship’ while denigrating the musical enthusiasms of young girls [and perhaps also The Gays]. Leading to a situation where women struggle to be taken seriously as creators and consumers in rock. Also, the tendency to bind women in [the devalued form of] pop tends to allow a situation in which female performers are too easily presented as mouthpieces of the pop machine. All of which contributes to discounting women as musical innovators. Bastards. And I was thinking, if the dismissive 'not real artist' pop thing impacts more negatively on women than men, you know I want to be able to argue against it. So luckily I was reading an interview Salman Rushdie did in the 80s in which he said "One of the things about the Indian tradition is that the performer and the creator are almost always the same person. The idea of performance as being central to creation is present in all Indian art. The dancer is the artist, for example, and not simply the exponent." Yep, I'm taking that as artillery.

• a brief history of the Riot Grrrl movement was provided, and I started freaking out with excitement when I realised that I was in a lecture that rightfully held KATHLEEN HANNA up as an authority. Loved that. Loved that so hard. Although I knew she was in Bikini Kill before Le Tigre, I had not yet made the effort to recognize how uniquely AWESOME that is, eg. Bikini Kill and Bratmobile actually created the zine “Riot Grrrl” with its catchphrase “Revolution. Girl Style. Now!” and then Riot Grrrl became the name for the whole organised grassroots political network of zines and music and meetings she was involved in, even though she was uncomfortable with that one label being taken to represent a diverse contested and debate-filled movement, etc. Anyways, I got even more excited when the lecturer started talking about Melbourne’s Rock ‘n’ Roll High School and I was like, “hey, Claire’s sister was involved in that when she played bass in that band…” and then the lecturer trumped me by going, “Now we’re going to listen to a song from Hecate”, and I completely SPAZZED OUT! Because Hecate was the band my friend Claire’s older sister played bass in for long enough to have a backstage run-in with Courtney Love, causing my warped teenage mind to settle on a stupidly low opinion of La Love which required years of accumulative breakthroughs to fully rectify. But hey, I came through when it counted. Anyways, yeah, for a few weeks back in Year 9, me and Claire stood around on the rooftop garden at school with one earphone each listening to the Hecate album after Claire was all like, “my sister just joined this band!” And I was like, “COOL!” And it WAS cool, especially this one song that I would make Claire play over and over…And you’ll never guess, but that is precisely the song that the lecturer chose to play! Amazing. So I’m sitting in my lecture grinning and, despite the huge time lag since last hearing it, mouthing the words – “By myself/ I never nee-eed/ No one else…” – and just generally having major flashbacks and appreciating just how awesome that song is. Oh yes, IT IS. Anyway, the lecturer moved on to the backlash that occurred towards the Riot Grrrl movement eg. “it’s all about fashion, it’s all fluff; it has nothing to do with substance” which was not true, but, after the Riot Grrrl-ers generally eschewed talking to the mainstream media they lost control of their image and so the popular view - as filtered through a media that trivialised Riot Grrrl’s political activist-y foundations - became distorted. And this distorted view began to have an impact within the movement itself, creating hostility, jealousy etc, in a movement originally intended to engage women in rock music on their own terms.

• anyway, the lecturer argued that Riot Grrrl’s impact on rock values meant that it was no coincidence that at the end of the ‘90s…along came GIRL POWER. With the Spice Girls borrowing much from feminism and providing an ideal counterpoint to lad culture. Girl Power meant taking control of your life and, significantly, promoting this as fun. It was a powerful and accessible form of feminism and young girls were the largest consumers of it. It was criticised as being a naïve and simplistic false ideal, and for encouraging girls to revel in and put forward their sexuality, and for feeding into and reproducing the universal awareness of women primarily as bodies, but the lecturer argued that old school feminists didn’t ‘get’ Girl Power and the way it was embraced by girls. It wasn’t about cultivating the male gaze as a source of empowerment, it wasn't about pleasing boys - it was about pleasing yourself / loving the Spice Girls to bits and wanting to be all feisty like them. And anyway, “the celebrity feminine is not the sex object imagined by traditional feminist cultural studies; her relationship with the media is one of mutual exploitation.”

• so right on cue, Kylie Minogue as a CASE STUDY!!!! How many lectures have you been in where the lecturer has said, “and now we’re going to look at Kylie Minogue as a case study”? Anyway, so women currently dominate mainstream popular music, and where women are highly visible, the way they are represented is significant. Is today’s female popstar role model a positive or a negative thing? There is a debate about it. It’s a schism that divides feminism, apparently. Anyway, critics initially wrote off Kylie as an incidental pop pawn, and a media focus on her bottom rather than her talent risks her being treated as a body rather than as an interesting artist. There is concern that despite people's undoubted ability to read more depth into a Kylie song/video/production, the generalized effect is one of body-focussed feminine glamour. So what about girls who aren’t fabulous? Is this dominant female pop form alienating to them? Can they be female pop artists? Blah blah. All open questions. Anyway, Kylie’s success and longevity - attributed by one commentator to her mix of control and graciousness in her professional/creative collaborations - also reflects women’s growing power to control their image. And Guy will like this bit, as it so mirrors his own view – people feel they know Kylie and have grown up with her while she ingeniously maintains a sense of intrigue.

• final lecture highlight: footage was shown of parts of interviews not included in the final cut of the ABC series Love Is In The Air, with the following delicious tidbits - (1) Deb Conway explaining that the unequal time limit for male and female performers in being considered 'past it' can be traced to a general attitude about reproductive age, that “As long as you can squirt, you can do anything”; (2) Angie Hart talking about touring Aussie pubs as a female lead singer, and telling the story of a gig in Gove where one guy spent the whole gig standing right in front of her with his dick out and screaming ‘FUCK OFF!’; (3) [and this is the best one] Marcia Hines talking about seeing Kylie in concert, and I quote, “Credit where credit’s due. Girlfriend works hard…I’m very proud of Kylie. ‘Go Kylie’. That’s all I can say.” OH MY GOD. Incontrovertible proof that she was already like this BEFORE Australian Idol! It’s pre-classic ‘classic Marcia’. In fact, I cannot believe how set the Marcia template was before Australian Idol ever gave her an outlet for making the performances of everyone else, ever, ALL ABOUT HER. You go Marcia. You are one consistent sister-girlfriend.

So that was the lecture. Meanwhile, WHAT THE HELL, RENÉE?!! From Jack White to… Kenny Chesney???? Girlfriend. No.

I have now watched the Big Brother launch epsiode, after taping it last night because, you know, the ABC was showing Elizabeth Gaskell's North & South and then a re-dramatisation of the life of George Eliot. Are my priorities out of whack - I honestly do not know. But, thanks to the miracle of the VCR, I never need to find out. I can have it all, and so forth. So this morning I caught up on the opening jaunt of BB05. Thoughts: I believe that I like Geneva, but I'm not sure how much her likeness to Maggie Gyllenhaal plays into it. I believe Constance is a prospect too, after hearing her describe herself as "the least successful person I know." Ah. She was the one bright spot of self-deprecation in a seething mass of self-promotion. Also, I very much want to like lefty Tim, but we shall see. Hotdogs is, of course, a tool. My god. But I did enjoy it when, after referring to himself constantly as 'Hotdogs' during his introduction tape and Gretel-time, once he actually got into the room with the other housemates he went, "Hey, I'm Hotdogs. Hey, nice to meet you, I'm Hotdogs..." Sorry, I didn't catch your name?... "It's Simon... Er, [cringing] Hotdogs." He he he. He's already regretting it! Way to be BRAVE in the face of other people's disdain, Hotdogs! Anyway, I have no idea if this season is gonna suck or not, but I am quite concerned by the high ratio of people who a) feel completely at ease in getting all gauche on us and describing themselves without the diffident qualifiers polite society requires, and b) settle on self-descriptions that either reek of cliché or that plainly do not hold up to reality-based scrutiny. Especially the boys. THE BOYS SUCK. Please refrain from talking about yourselves, ever. Anyway, you can keep yourself updated on the proper way to think about all this on Ausculture Jess' BB05 blog, or at the online diary the show itself has set up - which is utterly brilliant, by the way. Whoever writes that thing, I salute you. SO DRY.

These first two things are not what this post is about. They are just some preliminaries to get out of the way before the Main Blog Event:

Thing #1. I neglected to mention this, but I hope you took your cues from someone else who told you to watch Nighty Night when it was on. Because it was brilliant and I loved it and now it is over, so I hope you watched it too. Just in case you do take your cues from me on these matters, you are now most definitely advised to watch I Am Not An Animal. Most hilarious moment for me from Wednesday's debut was when the animals were getting out of the truck and 'blending in' by making their animal noises, but the monkey was making cat noises and so the horse hissed, "Hugh, your real noise!". And the monkey obliged by saying, "monkey". HA HA HA. This was not the only hilarious part, of course, as this show rocks. LOVE this surreal black comedy jaunt we are on now.

Thing #2. Went to see The Vasco Era supported by The Roys at the Northcote Social Club. Only saw the last few songs of The Roys, and hmmm… Nah. Anyway, still love The Vasco Era. Especially when the lead singer whacks those drum things, because the look on his face when he does it is priceless. I burst out laughing each time I see it. It’s so adorable. And awesome. Also love it when the bassist breaks out some rhythm blocks. Dock dock, dock. However it annoys me that these, their extra-awesome songs, aren't on the EP I have. Anyway, pretty much everything I said last time still stands.

AND NOW THE MAIN BLOG EVENT... [it's dramatic]
So the other day Florida went all crazy, yeah? By way of explanation, I tender this dramatisation...

Florida: "No you cannot possibly have an abortion, you cheeky 13-year-old girl, you."

13yo girl: "Why can't I make my own decision? It's my business...It would make no sense to have the baby. I'm 13, I'm in a shelter and I can't get a job."

Florida: "Aha! She admits it! In a shelter, you say. Perhaps in the care of the state? You are so busted! Hoisted by your own petard, you darling fecund girl. You see, due to an infallible and thoroughly correct Florida statute we made, well, 'In no case shall the department [of Children and Families] consent to sterilisation, abortion, or termination of life support.'”

13yo girl: "I see. Um, WHY does a statute governing the state's social services department have anything in it about abortion at all?"

Florida: "Um, because we’re Florida. In fact, we're Florida LAWMAKERS. We are FUCKING CRAZY."

13yo girl: "Get bent. The US constitution guarantees me the right to an abortion, and it's all federal and shit, so it totally overrides your piddling 'state' stuff, doesn't it. Ha!"

Florida Court: [stepping forward, clearing throat] "Er, we're going to say... no."

13yo girl: "What do you mean 'no'? But, but... can anybody help me?" [looks in Jeb Bush's direction]

Florida Governor: "What? ME? Nope. I must of course concur with the brilliant judges of Florida here... [moves to pat her on head] Now girlie, you may be too young and sexually active to know this about me, but my record is utterly consistent on this kind of thing. I totally leave sad and tragic cases like this to be settled in the courts. I would NEVER attempt to intervene. Did I mention that I am really really really CONSISTENT on this?"

13yo girl: [begins to cry, silent, wrenching tears]

ACLU: [from stage left, soothingly] "Hey, hush now. Don't listen to him. Don't listen to any of them. They're from Florida. They are fucking crazy. Of course we'll help you. How could we not? We are cool. And not evil."

Florida: "Shut up, ACLU. Everybody hates you."

Sigh. So I suppose after Florida's little outburst of crazy, I maybe shouldn't have been surprised to find that now it's Texas' turn. I mean, of course it is. Florida does something stupid or nasty or crazy, Texas just has to keep up and vice versa. I know it's the way of things, but I really wish they wouldn't egg each other on like this. Anyways, so now Texas is all, "You think you're so crazy? You don't know crazy. Take this, Florida. TAKE IT!"... 'IT' being, in short:

Texas' House of Representatives voted 85-55 to approve a bill that would forbid sexy cheers and give the Texas Education Agency authority to punish schools that allow "overtly sexually suggestive" routines at football games and other events.
State Representative Al Edwards, a Houston Democrat who sponsored the bill, complained of cheerleaders "shaking their behinds, breaking it down" [ha ha ha ha ha]. "People are calling and telling me how disgusting it is to see sexually suggestive routines on the part of marching units or cheerleaders," he said.

Ooh yes, DISGUSTING, yes. You are so right! I am DISGUSTED and OUTRAGED and whipped into a FERVOUR re: the sexy dancing. It is the MOST DISGUSTING THING EVER...[psst, readers, I'm being devilishly sarcastic here. Oh boy, just wait a few beats and prepare yourselves for the glory I'm about to unleash: my blazing all-purpose Texas smackdown. Here it comes. It's gonna be like, BAM!]... Freakin hell, Texas. If you want to ban something disgusting, um… START WITH THE DEATH PENALTY.

Boo yah! That zinger does not get old. You can use it in EVERY situation, EVER. Do try it. Anyway, I've realised that for the sake of keeping the Florida-Texas thing even, [so they maybe won't feel duty-bound to further compete for the 'social policy most damaging to the public' prize next week] I shall have to provide a dramatisation for Texas' recent craziness too. All fair, all even. Please, I did not mess with the balance, see...

Texas Lawmakers : [all flushed and excited and pleased with themselves] "Look at us! Look at our excellent priorities! And we are SO SMART! So much smarter than Florida. In fact, we trump Florida big time. We even nip stupid Florida's problem in the bud. Check it: with our ban, not only do we put an end to the heinous evil of booty shaking, we also in effect prevent teen pregnancy altogether by tackling it at its source (booty shaking). So we'll never be embarrassed like Florida was, 'leaving it to the courts' like sissies. It's pure logic: Texan teenagers won't have sex now because they won't be watching the sexy cheerleading which leads to sex. So, there'll be no teenage ward of the state problem pregnancies for us! EVER! Oh yeah baby. Texas pisses all over Florida."

[high-fives all round. Cigars. Silence... Uh-oh, these are Reflective Cigars! NO! They leave time to THINK. And so the dawning realisation of what Texas has done fills all eyes with horror (to which the cigars add pungent smoke)]

Texas Lawmakers: "OH. MY. GOD. Circumventing teen pregnancy...? [gasps...screams...tearing out of hair] What have we done? WHAT HAVE WE DONE? Don't you see what this MEANS? Now we may never get the chance (not even the chance!) to ban a 13-year-old girl from having an abortion! EVER! [starts breaking things] YOU ASSHOLES! You call yourselves Texans! Banning 13-year-olds from having abortions is the whole reason I got into politics in the first place! YOU KILLED MY DREAM!"

THE END

This morning on the radio show we had a studio guest - Cameron Reilly, one of the founders of The Podcast Network. I think I almost got my head around this podcasting thingo. Which is good to know, since it's coming and all. He said the content at the moment is highly geeky, but will no doubt broaden out, a la blogs. An interesting development, anyways.

SOME THOUGHTS ON TONIGHT'S LOGIES...[psst, they were terrible]

The GOOD
As far as I could gather from the [classy!] White [classy!] Carpet Special, I think Best Dressed was a draw between Toni Pearen and a girl from Blue Heelers whose name I don’t know. She has blonde hair, was one of the ones who got some Maybelline action, was nominated for best newcomer or something, was wearing Toni Maticevski. I will try to post pictures to show you what I’m talking about as soon as I find some. Both these women also had EXCELLENT shoes. Mark my words. They dressed the best.

The Chaser boys won again. They beat John Safran but...Yay! And The President vs David Hicks won. Yay!

Casey Donovan achieved good hair – at last – but she really should ditch the Aretha-style wrap. Really.

Highlight of the night: the Neighbours spectacular. It was bonkers, unexpected, surreal, out of place. And therefore BRILLIANT, obviously. The most interesting and opaque thing to happen at the Logies in years. Everything’s white. Harold comes on with a white suitcase, and you’re like, “What is he going to do? I feel like some kind of Marcel Marceau street theatre freak on is about to happen.” Oh YES. Only on a much grander and more ridiculous scale. Involving Dr Karl putting a white stethoscope to a white lawnmower, Harold busting some white boy rhymes, and Principal Susan Kennedy and others interpretive dancing their white bums off. I repeat, BONKERS. However, upon reflection, and after teasing one kernel of possibility out from the multitude of meanings always present in performance art of this undisputed calibre, I have come to wonder whether this apparently ‘purposeless’ playful delight might in fact cloak a message of hate, all wrapped up and delivered unsuspectingly by the Neighbours cast on behalf of some evil agenda-bending behind-the-scenes honcho. Can it be possible that this confusing display was not at all a case of “oh we are a bunch of INSPIRED silly gooses”, but rather a coded “yes we are VERY FUCKING WHITE! Whitey forever!” response to Green Guide writer Brian Courtis’ recent spray? Has Neighbours been co-opted as a vehicle for a race war? Was this its chilling manifesto, a declaration of escalating hostilities?…Jesus, performance art does my head in.

The BAD
Eddie Maguire is a desperate, desperate man, becoming ever more fully aware of how over he is. Also, he is lazy. Don't think we didn't notice how his appearance in the Logies opening credits was a straight cut-and-paste job from the Footy Show opening credits, which left McManus and O'Keefe to fit themselves in around Eddie's many seasons old footage.

Hello. I henceforth dub thee Catriona 'my breasts deserve their own tiara' Rowntree.

However, I blame Alex Perry completely. For some reason, I cannot think badly of Catriona. Have I been programmed?

What is with the fashion sense of ALL female newsreaders?

Anyways, Worst Dressed definitely goes to Pauline Hanson. Because she really did have a horrid dress on... is horrid, etc. And, may I repeat, SHE IS NOT OKAY. This whole 'her being okay' thing is NOT OKAY.

Just generally, whoever booked the talent needs to not be doing that ever again. In particular, what the hell was Il Divo doing there? And, a separate but equally vexing question, why was their performance backed by images of the Statue of Liberty/map of New York etc? They are an Italian 'opera boy band’ [trailblazing! mould-busting!], performing at the Logies. Where does New York figure into it at all? Yeah, they were singing a Sinatra hit, so what? It was My Way, not New York, New York! Where is your brain?

And finally, is anyone else having flashbacks to Tara Reid’s swollen too-taut-skinned bursting boobies? I just look at Madeleine West’s here and wince. OUCH!

So, I went to Architecture In Helsinki quite intrigued about how they would all manage to fit on the Northcote Social Club stage, and then navigate all the position swapping and such. But they managed fine, and were good. I don't think they were as awesome as when they supported David Byrne, but they were still good, and their cover of what I'm told was Roxy Music's Love Is The Drug was excellent - as of course were their own musical stylings, eg. Do The Whirlwind, It's 5!, Wishbone, In Case We Die, and that love song one, etc. Anyway, aside from the show, what is with cunty types, and why do they have to put themselves about, especially where you don't expect to find them? Like at the gigs of really good bands. How can boorish 'lads' like the same music that I do, or even be interested in it? It's actually worse when they do have an interest in the music. Because then they proceed to have preposterous conversations. Tonight wasn't very bad in that way, but me and Erin talked about it a little while watching some wankers, and now I'm just having flashbacks to cunty types, young and old, at various gigs around the place, who have astonished me with their existence. Have you noticed that some subsets of this general cunty type are inordinately excited by beer, even though it isn't even brand new or anything? Still, it must be commented on every time, nonethless. Sometimes high-fives are required too, and just generally looking cuntsmug. Cuntsmug is my new word. I stole it off my brother, whose friend claims to have coined it. You use it in this way - "He's not just smug. He's cuntsmug." See? Isn't it wonderful? Anyway, the point of my detour here is this: crap people are wankers. Deep. Getting back to the gig, Prue was there tonight with a posse of former telemarketers, circa 2000. And one of them was the AIH bassist, so I got to shake his hand and say "I'm Elanor. EL-A-NOR." Which was neat and brief, but an exchange nonetheless.

I'm not dead! But I don't have internet access, and I have nothing to say, which explains my "ghost blogger" status of late. But right now, I have red wine and parental broadband, so here's one of my patented "whirlwind" rundowns...

1. I went to Destiny's Child last tues, and Beyonce is a goddess, Kelly is spunky, and Michelle is scratchy. They are all also possibly robots, and I think they were playing the macca's theme (their sponsor) throughout the finale, at a level just below audible. They also churned out horribly scripted banter about how they love each other, and chat all the time on the phone - you know, the usual stuff. I'm sure they hate each other, and resent Beyonce for her goddess status and amazing ability to dance and sing perfectly.

2. Did anyone see those McDonald's ANZAC Day ads? You know, the ones where the immaculate maccas chick is standing around staring at some old diggers having a "McCoffee". One by one they fade out (like, moving on), as she gets more teary. Finally they're all, well, dead, and then the text comes on saying "they might be gone, but their memory's not" or something. BUT aren't there still three alive? Ooops. Almost as bad as last years with the whole "No, thank... you" thing. Shame on Maccas for trying to wheazel its way into our foundation myths.

3. Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise. Surely Scientology prevents this?

4. Kylie, Made of Glass - amazing.

5. Lindsay Lohan's shocking weight loss - shocking.

6. Hmmm... what else? I've got nothing else to say, which makes my life seem very, very small indeed. Oh, oh oh, how amazing is Gwen Stefani, just generally? I want four Japanese chicks to follow me everywhere, looking tough and cool. Yay for her. The new Madonna now that she's become all annoying and lame. THAT'S IT! More when I get my new internet connection... possibly.

AND THE WORLD SAID, "DEAR GOD NO. PLEASE. IT CAN'T BE HAPPENING! NO!"
When good girls go bad in Hollywood...

...SHUDDER. Things don't get more unpleasant than Tom Cruise.
What a rude shock. 'Abomination' is not a word one throws around willy nilly, but surely you would agree it has undisputed relevance to Tom Cruise-related matters. And now he's going to abominate Katie Holmes by association. This is quite horrifying to me. PLEASE MAKE IT STOP BEFORE THERE’S IRREVOCABLE DAMAGE DONE TO HER INCIPIENT COOL. Katie has been doing so well lately – choosing Pacey, doing Pieces Of April, etc. All fine demonstrations of TASTE. But this is insupportable! What is it about girlfriending Tom Cruise that makes women defer their powers of speech to him, in favour of striking poses of beatific adoration? What does he do them? Is there a complusory course they must take? Does he drug them? What? Ergh. Just look how incompatible they are – exhibit A: the sunglasses. His are terrible. Hers, fabulous. Height of incompatibility proven, yes? Not convinced? Okay then, just CHECK OUT WHAT A LAMEASS HE IS:

The Sun reports a source at the Hassler Hotel as saying: "He wanted a romantic atmosphere and ordered as many red roses as we could find to fill the suite."
Apparently, jewellery was delivered to the room for Katie and more than 40 outfits were sent over by designer Giorgio Armani.

[from Sky News]

Roses in the suite? BARF! The world is not an Oprah audience, Tom. We can only hope that you at least have the capacity to refrain from ordering the scattering of rose petals on the bed, you knob. Ugh. Tom Cruise makes me wanna retch. Unrelentingly. So please, Katie girl, you have to remove yourself from his taint ASAP. You do understand that if you go on like this you will have to continue spending time with him, don't you? And nobody wants that. Least of all you, right? Right? Please, she cannot be happy. It’s TOM CRUISE for chrissake! He's CRAP. Oh, why do people insist on finding happiness in such lame places? WHY? You know how a while back I was making the case for Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard being the ultimate Hollywood Glamour Couple for a new era? Well, Tom and Katie [if it goes on, and it mustn't] are the anti of that. RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY!

Defamer is, as always, brilliant on this:

Excuse us while we figure out a way to press our naked eyeballs onto the burners on the electric stove.

I love you, Defamer. In other news, I’m quite stung and unnerved by the disintegrating relationship between Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. Because, I love Nicole. She makes Paris seem okay. Best friends 4 eva! And while I am highly curious about the Kimberley Stewart thing, I can't help but think that without Nicole to pick up the slack, I maybe don’t like Paris Hilton. And I HATE thinking that.

Now, some music. Got the Kaiser Chiefs album and I like it. You will like it too. What I like extra about it is that the lead singer is/was an art school lecturer. Which RULES! No life of unfulfilled bitterness for him. Moving on, here’s something that, if you are like me, you will really really really love - the Futureheads album. Somehow, and I’m not quite sure how, it seems to have only just been released here, which is odd, because I swear I bought it at the HMV in Bourke St Mall quite some time ago. Yes, I’m quite certain I did, having owned it for many months now. It's true, I had to ask for it. And then they had to go down into the bowels of the place to get it for me while I stood around awkwardly making chit chat with the cashier dude - "So, do you like music?"..."Yes, yes I do."..."Mmm, me too. I really like it."..."I also really like it."..."Yeah, music's great." Anyway, the ablum emerged eventually. And I bought it. I've even played some of it on the radio. So it kinda freaked me out when I was in there last week and they had one of those ‘coming soon’ signs where the Futureheads album would have been. And I was like “Wha?…Bbu-but..” And then for some reason I patted all my pockets, as if being able to find completely-unrelated-to-the-crisis things still where I had left them would make the world all right again. It did, incidentally. Also, checking my iPod to make sure the Futureheads was still already on it made me feel better, and I became almost convinced about not having experienced some sort of freaky Vonnegut-y time slippage. Anyway, now that the Futureheads album is ‘out’ here for proper, GO AND GET IT. As Anita would say, ah luv eht. Eht being, particularly, the songs Danger Of The Water, Stupid and Shallow, and, yes, a fantastic version of Kate Bush’s Hounds Of Love.

Anyway, got to go. Seeing Architecture In Helsinki tonight. But before that, Australia’s Funniest Home Videos is on. Yay! That show is GENIUS! It’s all in the writing, I say. GENIUS. I’m being deadly serious here.

Longest. Blog silence. Ever.

Erm, yeah. Let's get straight back into it, shall we? By way of explanation, I spilled coffee on my keyboard, fucked it. So, if I had tried to blog something, it would have come out all is]piooedcoffeeoyuyoyhujyyoardikfuciedi. Of course, I did actually consider posting that. I was going to put is]piooedcoffeeoyuyoyhujyyoardikfuciedi in large at the top of the post, and then in smaller writing beneath, I would put the translation, "I spilled coffee on my keyboard, fucked it". But then I realised that to do that, I would have to type "I spilled coffee on my keyboard, fucked it", into my brother's laptop, save it, bring the disk ALL THE WAY to the home computer, put the disk in, turn on the computer, slap my head in exasperation and say "Why do you always forget that?", eject the disk and strike any key, wait for the computer to ready itself, push the disk back in, open up blogger, use fucked home computer keyboard to type "I spilled coffee on my keyboard, fucked it", watch it be wittily transformed into mangled gibberish, then open the disk and the saved translation document, cut and paste it into blogger, and publish. The planned post would have looked like this;

is]piooedcoffeeoyuyoyhujyyoardikfuciedi

"I spilled coffee on my keyboard, fucked it"

I really was going to post that, honest. I had it all planned out. But then I realised that posting it raised the unavoidable question of how it was still possible for me to show the fuckedness of the keyboard and also the translation of the fuckedness into what it was supposed to say, the answer to which would necessitate the whole laptop/disk backstory. Fuck that! A revelation of the effort I was prepared to go to in getting two little lines of blogging done made me uncomfortable. [How impressed are you by my concept of 'effort', by the way?] Also, what was the point of showing how fucked my keyboard was [implicit excuse to bunk off] if doing that also revealed how it was still possible for me to blog, using the aforementioned brother's laptop and saving to disk method? So, yeah. I didn't do it in the end... GOD! The amount of time I spend thinking about not blogging. Ridiculous! And yes, for you sharp ones out there, I did plug the old fucked keyboard back in just now for the purposes of this post, to give you all the authentic experience of what actually results from the intention to type, "I spilled coffee on my keyboard, fucked it". Sigh. Poor old keyboard. It is now on the junk pile, usurped by a used old harlot we picked up from Cash Converters. Look how she types! Brazen hussy!

I should probably point out that when I murdered the keyboard by my sloppy coffee control [friends will attest that this is an ongoing problem for me], there were really only a few days of no-keyboard freedom in this house. The blog silence extended for two weeks because, well, the little break combined with my pre-existing laxness kinda altered my mind, and I got used to not thinking about fashioning the world into blogging material. So, when the time came that I was easily able to do so again, I just kinda...didn’t. Also, Guy could not step into the breach because he has moved out to a Carlton sharehouse with NO INTERNET CONNECTION, and so he spends his time doing weird things, like TALKING TO PEOPLE for hours and reading and drinking tea. And convincing himself that he has a wasting disease, again. Ah, Guy. When he was doing his Honours thesis about fin de siècle notions of decadence and decline blah blah industrialisation blah blah sites of projected social anxiety or whatever, he demanded that a doctor test him for syphilis because he had been reading about it. He’s a bit crazy, see. Anyway, this time around, I’m quite hopeful about the crazy-making effects of his research. As far as I can gather, his Masters has something to do with Dandies, so irrespective of the rich and diverse cultural and political underpinnings of the Dandy aesthetic that Guy will no doubt be getting into deeply, I’m just waiting for the day when I go to meet him for dinner or coffee or whatever, and he’s rouged up and wearing a cravat, screaming "I'm making an intervention. A CRITICAL INTERVENTION!" Or something. That would rule.

Anyway, now it’s time for SOME THOUGHTS ELANOR HAD IN THE PAST TWO WEEKS THAT SHE NEGLECTED TO BLOG ABOUT...

1. Holy freakin crap, I just referred to myself in the third person.

2. Britney's baby – when I heard the news, this was my thought; “So it’s not a new boob job then. Suck on that, awfulplasticsurgery. I was right and you were wrong. HA!” Did some hopping from foot to foot while clapping, followed by attempted moonwalk aborted in favour of dusting off shoulders. Later, “Where the hell is the ‘Oh bay-beh bay-beh’ headline? I can’t see it anywhere!” Outrage!

3. New Pope – yucky! Basically, the only hope I had going into the papal election was that it wouldn’t be Ratzinger [or Pell, obviously – but as if!]. For the past few months I’ve taken to narrowing my eyes and saying his name in a low tone filled with menace – Ratzinger. It sounds so sinister and mediaeval. Anyway, here’s my take on him: doctrinally batshit stifler of dissent and proponent of STUPID ideas. Hmph. He's called for "unity", so you know what that means. He won't be brooking any change, or debate even, on any of the current senseless and unconscionable Church positions, eg. God exists, homosexuals are sinful, women in general aren’t great either, safe sex is A SIN, and yes, we do see those people dying like crazy in Africa, etc etc etc. Oh dude. If you hold these positions, you are not a respectable person. If you actively participate in enhancing their negative impacts on people, YOU ARE NOT A RESPECTABLE PERSON. You, in fact, SUCK!

4. Prue MacSween is a hideous bint. Did anyone else catch her on Mornings with KAK the other day? Hateful, hateful idiot. She was doing the whole “lock em up forever, or better yet, kill em. And if you disagree with my well informed and rigorously thought out view on this, you’re just an apologist for violent criminals and you obviously LIKE it when they hurt people” thing. She was making such a fool of herself. But KAK was agreeing with her, and taking her side against the guys who were trying to make points about the weight of evidence, and such. KAK once even cut off a fair-minded point one of the others was making, nodded to Macsween and said, “Go for it, Prue.” Terrible. Just terrible. Prue MacSween is a pollutant. A pollutant with frightful fashion sense.

...AND SOME EXPERIENCES

1. Went to see Mel's show, and she's right to think it's tight and funny, and definitely more than "tolerably amusing". The songs are excellent. I still love Stand Up, Sit Down the most. Ooh, actually, I think my favourite one is the drunk one, you know, where she goes "Why don't you let me in?" with perfect petulance. And I've had the Salad Song lyric "he should be eating rabbit FACE" in my head for over a week now. It's alarming that on the night we went it was almost cancelled until Laurie arrived with her boyfriend, allowing the show to go on because the position of Secret Buff had been filled. Also, certain male comedians should be much more appreciative of Mel's charms.

2. Went along to a Landmark Education meeting as ‘research’ for a friend’s proposed sharp and skewering short film about the self-help industry, which I will apparently be co-writing. It was pretty much four hours of people telling us little other than Landmark is GREAT, and it REALLY WORKS! And I was like, who are you? And what does this Landmark thing turn you into other than a spruiker for the product? And why on earth are people all around us signing up and paying $480 to take part? And why is that woman crying? I know she has time-management issues, but seriously, CHILL OUT. Nothing moving has happened here at all! What has gotten into all of you? Stop it. This is lame! We actually got told that we were thinking “too analytically” about it, and that we should just shut off the critical voices in our heads and do Landmark because it really works! RED. FLAG.

3. Went to see Midnight Juggernauts and Wolfmother on Thursday. Weird thing, people tried to talk to me. I was approached twice by strangers, both of whom were gregarious types named Georgie, wanting to make chit chat. Weird. Of course, eventually my noncommittal responses and joyless dullard demeanour killed the brightness in their eyes and we found opportunities to part ways. That was inevitable. But what I’m still confounded by is why they made the effort in the first place. I mean, I’m not an appealing sort of person. You don’t look at me and go “Now that’s someone I want to know!” Anyway, meh. Gregarious types are weird. So, the show. I love Midnight Juggernauts A LOT. I think they were probably better the last time I saw them, but who gives a crap! Anyway, after their set I decided to move off to the side and lean against a wall to wait for Wolfmother, and, you know, be an unobtrusive loner at a gig in the hope that no-one else tried to talk to me. And then I think something embarrassing happened. Um, you know how it doesn’t really matter where you stand in a crowd, so long as you don’t invade the space of an already established group of friends? Like, you wouldn't just move through the crowd and take up a position right in between a couple, yeah? There are private spaces within a public space, is what I’m saying. Well, I think that by trying to be all unobtrusive and putting myself in the corner, I may have inadvertently crashed the band/muso section. I was really tired at the time, so it didn’t really hit me then – you know, the sort of tired when everything just bounces off you and you’re all glazed over and detached from much of your surroundings - but now that I think about it, I’m realising that I probably stuck out like a sore thumb, being quite obviously the only person in the vicinity that the Midnight Juggernauts, and I think some Cut Copy dudes too, didn’t know. Especially when one of them was introducing his dad to all his friends, and the dad turned to look to me in a ‘nice to meet you’ way, and I had to quickly avoid eye contact. Jeez, I can’t believe I didn’t see how awkward that was! Anyway, Wolfmother were quite good. I mean, I guess they were very good. I was very tired. Also, I’m quite sure that my heart’s not in it with them.

4. Went to see Cut Copy and Pnau last night....HOT SHOW! HOT SHOW! HOT SHOW! Oh, it ruled so madly. Pnau were AMAZING. And cool and loud, with geeky but cool moves. Fantastic. And I’ve been told to mention the t-shirt. Yes, it was a very good t-shirt, and did you notice he also had a great 80s-ish leather jacket on when he was setting up? I thought there was a major misstep in the pants area, though. Far too baggy. Pants gots to be tight. Tight. TIGHT! Ah, the Cut Copy boys, they know pants. Yes indeed. EXCELLENT PANTS! And excellent show. I don’t have much to say other than I really really loved it. The whole night, if dancing was my thing, I totally would have danced. I mean, I hope I at least looked happy, just standing there shaking my leg. Because I WAS. I really really was.

So, will definitely blog more frequently. Promise. No promises on the quality though, obviously.

The following is a list of how I will be spending money that I don't actually have:

Thurs 21 April - Wolfmother & Midnight Juggernauts at the Corner Hotel

Sat 23 April - Cut Copy at the HiFi

Sat 30 April - Architecture In Helsinki at the Northcote Social Club

Thurs 19 May - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds at the Melbourne Town Hall

IT JUST HAS TO BE DONE!

Here's a good name for you to know. This morning on the show I interviewed Frances Kissling, president of Catholics For a Free Choice, about John Paul II's papacy. And dudes, she makes Catholics cool. Yes, Catholics. Well, you know, some Catholics - the pro-choice, feminist kind. Also, on the CFFC website, check out her Bio & Quotes section. How HILARIOUS is it that I, miniscule 3CR 'media personality' that I am, have interviewed someone who has been on Jim Lehrer, Larry King, DONAHUE, and who once even had a shit-fight with Jerry Falwell?!! JERRY FALWELL! HA HA HA HA HA. International phone calls rule!

WARNING: THIS IS ABOUT REM

Here are some things you need to know about me. The name of my previous cat was “Stipe”. I named him that because he had white fur, obviously. I don’t quite remember now why that made sense, but it was definitely the rationale at the time. He is now buried in the front garden. When I did art at school, and it came time to start doing portraits – you know, when you bring in a poster of a celebrity, and copy that poster onto a grid to make a lead pencil portrait, thereby learning the wonders of shading – well, I did a portrait of Michael Stipe. It’s still on my wall. You will remember from art class that when all the possibilities of lead pencil have been exhausted, we graduate to actual paintings. Using paint. So I did a painting of Michael Stipe. Actually, for some reason, I put Michael’s head on Picasso’s body and restricted my palette to blue, black and white. Does this make sense to anyone? I have no idea why I did that. But I still have that painting, too. I also have an REM poster section on my wall. Most of the posters are photocopies of a calendar my sister got for being in the REM fanclub, circa Monster. Between us, we own pretty much all of REM’s albums [except for the Best Of one they released last year – as if]. My sister and I drew our whole family into our REM thing. Not just our parents and brother, but cousins too. REM albums were played in the car on family trips. We sang along. Indeed, I can’t now think of the Grampians without associating it with New Adventures In Hi-Fi, or Mallacoota without Green. We even have a pointless four-disc set, called The Automatic Box, with B-Sides, Instrumental Tracks, Vocal Tracks, and Cover Versions, and I once spent hours lying on the floor at Blairgowrie with REM’s cover of The Lion Sleeps Tonight playing on repeat. For hours. The only ‘single’ I have EVER bought is The Great Beyond. I do not buy singles. I buy albums. It’s like, part of my identity - I don’t buy singles. Buying singles is weird. But I broke with that identity in order to buy a song from some movie I never saw, simply because it was an REM song. And I can’t actually tell you the number of times I have watched the REM documentary, Road Movie, which I taped off the TV. Also, do you know that I keep a close watch on the career of Stephen Dorff, always looking for signs of his impending massive come-back, because that doco revealed he is a friend of Michael Stipe’s? Do you know that I only got into NIRVANA after I found out Kurt Cobain was a friend of Michael Stipe’s? Do you know that I make a point of seeing and liking Single Cell Productions films – Velvet Goldmine, American Movie, Being John Malkovich, Saved! - because that’s Michael Stipe’s production company? [And also because they’re awesome movies. Lucky.] Are you starting to see that maybe REM was the first band I was ever into, and that it kind of became ‘a thing’ in our family? Do you think this catalogue of evidence is creepy enough yet? Well, I saved the worst proof of my slavish devotion to REM for last – I actually bought REM’s most recent album, Around The Sun. Then, I LISTENED to it. Even though I KNEW it was quite terrible BEFORE I bought it! I AM CRAZY! I told someone this the other night, and they called me a ‘completist’. Touché, monsieur.

So anyway, I should probably get to the point. The thing is, until tonight, I had never seen REM live. Ten years ago, I decided not to leave our family vacation in Mallacoota to take the nine-hour bus ride back to Melbourne to see them, and then return to Mallacoota on a nine-hour bus ride the next day. I have always regretted that decision. My sister did see them. And she said it was all worth it. So, you might assume that I became very excited when I found out a few months back that REM were coming here again, giving me an opportunity to undo the mistake I made as a 13 year-old girl. But I wasn’t excited at all. In fact, I was like, SHIT. And initially, I decided I wouldn't go. Because it would be TEN YEARS LATE. WHEN THEY’VE GONE TO SHIT. TOURING A SHIT ALBUM. AND BILL’S LONG GONE. And, did I mention HOW SHIT THEY ARE NOW? But time passed, and I saw them play one of their shit new songs on Parkinson. And, when they played it, it didn’t seem so shit. So I tried again with the album, but it was still a really fucking shit album. Really terrible. But I started thinking, if I don’t go and see them now, I might NEVER see them. I might never see MICHAEL STIPE. And he was my Favourite Person In The World for a good four years. Yeah, I’m kinda over the band at this point, but, it’s completely incongruous to the story of my life that I never see REM properly, live in concert. So I bought a ticket. And it was expensive. So I began rationalising the purchase by telling myself to keep in mind that I would also be seeing Little Birdy, who I like well enough, and Bright Eyes, who I want to get into. Anyway, today came - concert day - and I was still very trepidatious about how SHIT it was going to be. I spoke to my sister in Darwin, and she managed to sound jealous. So that made me feel better. But she’s gagging for live music anyway, because all they get up there is The Cat Empire and John Butler. Shudder. But anyway, I got to Rod Laver Arena, and this is what happened......


THE GIG

Little Birdy were off the stage by 8.15, and Bright Eyes’ set can’t have been more than 20 minutes long. And this is the set list, as far as I can remember, of REM’s show:

I Took Your Name
Bad Day
Animal
The Outsider
Pilgrimage
So Fast So Numb
Electron Blue
Electrolite
Turn You Inside Out
At My Most Beautiful
Leaving New York
Orange Crush
I Wanted To Be Wrong
Final Straw
Imitation Of Life
The One I Love
Walk Unafraid
Losing My Religion

ENCORE
What’s The Frequency Kenneth?
Everybody Hurts
Drive
Country Feedback
I’m Gonna DJ
Man On The Moon

If, before I went, you had shown me this breakdown of what the night would offer me, I probably would have stayed home. Seriously, it reads like a specially tailored Nightmare Of Disappointment for me. But that is just on paper. Because, in reality, IT WAS FUCKING GREAT!


I only caught the last two songs from Little Birdy, but hurrah, they were Excited and Relapse. I mean, I didn’t expect to hear Andy Warhol anyway, so, no disappointment so far.

Then came Bright Eyes’ [admittedly short, but] fucking wonderful set. I had not heard ANY Bright Eyes music before this. I'd told myself I should really listen out for it, and had read all those articles about Conor Oberst, and promised a girl I work with that I would make sure to get into her totally amazing favourite band/person. But I still hadn’t got around to it before tonight. But who cares about that now? I LOVED IT! I love HIS VOICE, I love HIM, I loved everything I heard, I wished I was closer, and I wanted to become obsessed. And I began thinking, “damn, damn, DAMN! Now I really desperately want to go on Tuesday when Bright Eyes play the Prince with New Buffalo. Oh GOD! How gorgeous and special is that gig going to be? Sob. Damn my stupid fucking essays!” So, my advice to anyone in Melbourne on Tuesday night is to go and see Bright Eyes at the Prince of Wales if at all possible. Please, YOU HAVE TO GO!

Anyway, then came REM. And I have never heard Michael Stipe’s voice sound better. Truly. He sounded FANTASTIC! I was in AWE.

They kept choosing to play songs that weren’t on my wish-list, and songs from the new hated album. But IT DIDN’T MATTER! It all sounded amazing! And I realised that you just have to trust performing artists to know what’s good for you. They know what they are doing. All the songs I thought would be crappy and boring WEREN’T CRAPPY AND BORING AT ALL! They were EXCELLENT! Indeed, I overheard a lady behind me complaining four songs in that she’d only heard one song she knew so far. And I was like a) that’s what you get for not being a slavish completist, and b) lady, you’re never going to hear these songs sound better! They generally don’t leap out at you like they are doing tonight! JUST LISTEN AND ENJOY. REM KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING! Anyway, I just gave myself up to the experience, because REM were just sounding SO GOOD at whatever they turned their attention to. I WAS SO HAPPY. Years and years worth of repressed REM-love started filling my insides. It was great! I still think we could have done without Everybody Hurts [although, the lighters coming out were HILARIOUS], and I would have loved to have heard Tongue, Lotus, World Leader Pretend, and also It’s The End Of The World As We Know It [just so that I could tick “yelling Leonard Bernstein!!!” off my list of things done during life]. But WHATEVER. IT WAS ALL FANTASTIC.

Song highlights can be divided into two groups. Group 1 Highlights are songs that are actually good, and remain good, or get even gooder, when played live. Group 2 Highlights are songs that I thought were BAD, TERRIBLE in fact, but which tonight somehow became EXCELLENT.

Group 1 Highlights
I Took Your Name, Turn You Inside Out, Electrolite, Walk Unafraid, Country Feedback
[I actually squealed when they started playing this. I also did yet another thing that I would only ever do with REM – I called my sister in Darwin and held the phone up so she could hear Country Feedback too. I AM SUCH A LOSER!]

Group 2 Highlights
The Outsider, Electron Blue, Final Straw
Truly, these songs sounded SO GOOD that I wanted to come home and listen to Around The Sun again. But then I did, and the recorded versions STINK. They’re so unlike what I heard tonight in terms of excellence and cool and energy and panache, you would never think they could ever be good. And, listening to them on the album actually KILLS the memory of how great they were live. How WEIRD. How AWFUL.

Anyway, HOW MUCH DO I STILL LOVE REM? HEAPS! Dangerous levels of love are back. And you can bet your ass I'm watching Denton this week. MICHAEL STIPE! ACTUAL MICHAEL STIPE!

Was reading an article in the Good Weekend today, and I came across another example of something I’ve been meaning to blog about for a while. The article was about Michael Winterbottom’s new film, 9 Songs, which is another one of those Intellectually Interesting Real Sex Films, which have been appearing with increasing frequency in the last few years, eg. Intimacy, The Brown Bunny etc. Whenever I hear about these films, I have the same reaction, and it seems a natural and obvious reaction to me, one that comes immediately and that I don’t even put any thought into - completely reflexive, etc. But, as each wave of talk accompanying such films comes and goes, it’s become a curious thing to me that my reaction - or at least the focus of my reaction - which I find so obvious, hasn’t yet been represented. I mean, I assumed it would show up somewhere. Actually, I thought it definitely would. I didn’t even expect that much patience would be required on my part before it showed up, because I have a deep and abiding faith in the following ‘things’:

1) people are primarily motivated by a vital concern not to be seen as foolish or out of touch

2) people who comment on Public Culture Things are in a bit of a competition to distinguish themselves by their exceptional takes

3) the early sameness of the general response to Public Culture Things eventually forces someone’s hand to react contrarily - motivated either by their own dissenting initial reaction, or by their perception of an opportunity to swoop in and bust a move which differentiates them from the pack - and so a new and exceptional ‘take’ is expounded which also takes aim at the views expressed by predecessors and proclaims them old-hat and embarassingly flawed...etc etc.

These are life’s certainties, yes?

Well, as far as I can tell, this has not been happening in regard to Intellectually Interesting Real Sex Films. So I’m starting to feel that some of my fundamental certainties about human existence, behaviour, and cultural criticism cycles might not be as certain as I had thought. And that maybe I am weird, and that my reaction is weird, because according to all my predictions and expectations based on the logic of my fundamental beliefs, my reaction should have come into vogue by now. But it hasn’t. So, am I weird? Because I thought my reaction was completely normal, and my brother agreed with me.

Anyway, maybe I should get down to the specifics of ME vs THE WORLD and the completely different reaction ME seems to have regarding Intellectually Interesting Real Sex Films, as compared to THE WORLD.

Basically, the difference can be broken down to this:

ME: “How could HE (the Actor) do that?”
vs
THE WORLD: “How could SHE (the Actress) do that?”

The “How could SHE do that?” reaction is just an over-arching title I have given for any reaction that focuses on the Actress’ participation in an Intellectually Interesting Real Sex Film, and these reactions have included; What is the value of her doing that? What will be the repercussions of her doing that? Will she lose professional esteem? What does it say about her that she did that? Is she just like a whore or porn actress now? Is she being exploited by taking part? How will she go on now that she has been so publicly degraded? Can we respect her now that she’s done this? Etc etc.

My reaction, the “How could HE do that?” reaction, is not really an over-arching title encompassing a variety of concerns, because, as far as I know, I’m the only person besides my brother to have this reaction, and I haven’t really fleshed it out in the various ways that the large number of people whose reactions were born out of a focus on the Actress have. So, the “How could HE do that?” reaction is pretty much just about The Erection at this point. Yep, whenever I hear about a new Intellectually Interesting Real Sex Film, my mind immediately thinks about The Erection, and the requirements and repercussions of The Erection. I think this is a very interesting area to think about. Because, seriously, HOW COULD HE DO THAT?

I don't mean that in any outraged way. What I mean is, whenever I hear about movies that contain ACTUAL fellatio or ACTUAL penetration, my logic goes, “The women are fine”. I figure women can perform sex scenes without the need of actual physical arousal, so, in my mind, they’re fine. They’re safe. They’re not exposing themselves in a highly intimate or unavoidably present way. They can get through it without there being a break into real-life physical processes, or at least, not so as you'd notice for sure. They’re protected by fiction. A fiction that can be maintained, and that protects them from a loss of dignity. However, when I consider the man, I go, “Oooh, that’s risky! He’s put himself in the way of potentially MASSIVE humiliation there. Actually, it’s quite a minefield for him, really.” I see his position as quite precarious, pride-keeping wise, because he has to provide an ACTUAL erection. In reality. Physical proof of his arousal. I see this as really opening him up to exposure/violation/humiliation/judgment regarding deeply private reality-based matters. And then on top of this, there’s the minefield of dealing respectfully with his co-star. He has to, as well as maintaining a raging erection, remain aware of his movements and how they might be interpreted. Constantly on tenterhooks about jerking or making any movements that might piss her off or transgress the boundaries she has set, making her doubt his intent and start thinking he might be a total asshole – because there would always be that element of distrust in her, wondering if he’s enjoying it on an unacceptable level – he would be aware of the distrust and so would be freaking himself out trying to constantly prove he wasn’t dodgy. He’s in this constant state of being on the verge of committing a MASSIVE PROFESSIONAL FAUX PAS, and I think it would be a tough thing to negotiate with dignity. Yeah? Am I making sense here?

I think that the risk to dignity and esteem for actors who take part in Intellectually Interesting Real Sex Films is what both ME and THE WORLD seem interested in in our respective reactions. But I still cannot understand why the involvement of the male actor doesn't seem to get much play, and why there is the assumption that if anyone is going to be negatively impacted or exploited or experience a loss of power, it will of course be the woman. Why can't they be equally affected, either positively or negatively, if they're both making the sex - with the particular contexts of the scenes providing the details that tip the balance, rather than any a priori gender determinism? Why the continuing focus on the woman's involvement, with a pejorative anger often accompanying it? I mean, I do eventually think about the woman involved too, especially when I come into contact with views that isolate her role and then argue “Wow, she’s dodgy now” or “Wow, people will think she’s dodgy now. She’s ruined. Degraded. It’s unavoidably what people will think.” And then I go, “No she’s not. You are totally lame! Shut up! Don’t you care that people will think YOU’RE TOTALLY LAME if you say that?” See, I always assumed that people would be far too concerned with their own reputations to risk offering up a reaction sooo unreconstructed. I also thought that, if such views were gaining momentum, at least someone would step in and go LAME, and throw the prominent view into critical relief. I mean, Public Culture Critics are catty like that, right?

But I’ve really been surprised by how widespread the focus on the Actress involved has been, and the cloud of questions raised over whether she remains ‘intact’ and credible, or is now sullied, and whether that is her fault, or the director’s, or the culture’s, or mostly hers, blah blah blah. The other day, even Mel commented that “if you blow Vincent Gallo on screen in The Brown Bunny, you are no longer an It Girl”.

In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, [the movie, starring Kristy Swanson as Buffy] Luke Perry said “I’m not disappointed, just angry”, in a witty flip it up on ya alteration to the old saying. Then, he spun his motorbike around and sped away in a huff of said anger. Well, like Luke, I also want to emphasise that I’m not disappointed either. Nor angry. No, in this situation, I would say, “I’m not disappointed, just really really, like, surprised!” And then I wouldn’t swing my motorbike around and speed off in a huff, I’d just keep on walking it alongside Buffy/THE WORLD with a curious searching look on my face. I guess what I'm asking is "Is this what our culture has come to?" But I think that "what our culture has come to" can be judged not by the mere existence of films that contain real sex, but by the quality of our reaction to them. And this reaction seems to lack something quite obvious at the moment - complexity. And it's a rather easily arrived at complexity, too.

Okay, I was watching ET, and Marcia Clark has SO just got back from having work done.

Marcia TODAY
vs
Marcia 2004

Guy, an analysis of the procedures, if you please.