Stop Breaking Down

Last Day: Tears, Jeers and Cheers

2012-01-19T21:13:00.000-08:00

Tears

Yesterday morning, in the coastal town of Galle, I asked my hotel porter if he was affected by the 2004 tsunami which had decimated the area. He burst into tears. He said his son died that day. He was seven, and would have been 15 today. His wife survived, but was severely injured. I only really cry during movies but I couldn’t help myself this time. It was the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. Seven years later the wounds are obviously still so very fresh. I gave him what money I could and he was genuinely appreciative. He smiled – a real smile – and placed the palms of his hands together and bowed his head. I can detect bullshit. This wasn’t a lie to get money out of a gullible tourist – these were real tears, and so were mine. I gave him my email address – told him to write if he needed anything. I hope he does.

Later that morning at the Galle Literary Festival (which is why I was in town) I saw a panel discussion on ‘Forgiveness, Reconciliation and Responsibility in Literature’. Pertinent stuff given the manner in which the Sri Lankan army ‘won’ the civil war against the Tamil Tigers, and the preceding decades of tension between the country’s two main ethnic groups. One of the panel members was Izzeldin Abuelaish, a Palestinian doctor who had spent much of his life trying to build bridges between the Israelis and Palestinians. Then three of his daughters were killed by the Israelis during their assault on Gaza. Death by a human hand is worse than death by Mother Nature – the bitterness is greater as you have someone to blame – and yet this man remained committed to peace. It was inspiring stuff. More tears were shed.

Jeers

At the end of the panel, the floor was opened up to the audience to ask questions. I waved my hand furiously, and someone handed me a microphone. I launched into a trademark tirade about the Government’s suppression of free speech and intimidation of journalists, and how this stifles genuine reconciliation, because you can only really reconcile the truth.

Half the 500 something crowed erupted into boos behind me, drowning out the rest of my words. It felt like a cool breeze, gently kissing my neck. Boos give me boners. The younger audience members though, including a few pretty girls, swooned at me like I was JFK. I got my first taste of what it would be like to enter politics and I liked it. Watch this space.

Cheers

I had tickets to see Tom Stoppard speak that afternoon, after which I was going to head back to Colombo and pack in anticipation of my flight the next day. I was initially supposed to be at the literary festival for two days and fly back a week later. Richard Dawkins, a man I admire greatly, was speaking the following day, and I was very excited about seeing him. However a mix-up with my flights meant I had to miss it and return early. I was pretty gutted about that. I needn’t have been.

I entered the auditorium early to get a good seat to see Stoppard. As soon as I sat down I saw a familiar face standing up in the corner. It was Dawkins. So I walked right up to him and said: “I’m so sorry for being a stereotypically sycophantic Sri Lankan but I just wanted to shake your hand *at which point I impertinently grabbed his hand* and say that it’s an absolute pleasure to have you in my country. Thank you for your reason and your patience in the face of the zealots who abuse you. This is the most superstitious of countries, to its detriment, and a logical voice like yours is just what the people need to hear. A lot of my friends don’t much care for you, but as I always tell them, at least you don’t think they’re going to hell just for disagreeing with you. That fact alone makes you a better man than even the most virtuous of Christians. ” He said, “Well I don’t know about that but thank you so much for the kind and lively words, I’m very humbled indeed”, and I interrupted him and said that I was gutted to miss out on seeing him tomorrow, and then he looked genuinely distraught on my behalf and spoke a few sentences that I was too star struck to remember. His wife walked over and he asked where I was sitting. I pointed to my seat, and he asked if they could join me. Ummm, yeah alright then!

Tom Stoppard was asked a stupid question by the stupid moderator about how we need myth and magic and fairytales, otherwise where would stories come from? I stood up and shouted “Stupid question! Can I moderate, instead of this idiot?” and Dawkins looked at me like a proud father while the more enlightened members of the audience cheered me on.

At the end he asked me for my email and put it into his phone. As him and his wife left, I pumped my fist in the air with such velocity that I knocked off an old lady’s sunglasses that were perched atop her head. But to be honest I was so happy that I could have broken her nose and not given a shit.

This was my last full day in the country and aptly enough given my encounter with the anti-creationist and pro-evolution Dawkins, it went off with a big bang. What a holiday.

Day 6: The Pied Piper of Sri Lanka

2012-01-15T22:09:00.000-08:00

After the disaster of the Italian and her bunga bunga sugar daddy, it was nice to meet some German girls on Saturday night and be reminded of my desirability. I’ll get to that in a bit though. First I need to tell you about the highlight of my trip.

On Saturday morning my parents and I left our hill country hotel to drive up to Horton Plains, a vast national park that promised some of the most spectacular views in the country. It was a promise that wasn’t broken. But writing about views is like dancing about architecture, so I’ll write about something else.

As we left the hotel I got dad to stop outside a little supermarket and mum and I went in and bought a load of sweets. So many sweets. A Halloween-worthy amount. Why? Cos we were on a mission to be the confectionary Robin Hoods of the hill country. The drive to where we were going was going to take about four hours, through the remotest of villages, down roads no tourist has ever travelled. We wanted to do something nice for the locals we’d encounter, and we decided dispensing sweets to the poor children was the way to go.

It was amazing. Every time we saw a child, which was at least every 5 minutes, we’d either stop the car and give them some lollies and chocolates, or if Dad was being moody we’d just throw them out the window. They were chasing after us. We were like the Pied Piper but without the murderously paedophilic undertones. They’ll be talking about us for years to come.

After a while we stopped seeing children. We stopped seeing people altogether in fact. The roads, which were barely roads to begin with, became even less like roads. To our left was the cliff face and an enormous drop that would have killed us all – probably from a heart attack while our car hurtled towards the ground some thousands of metres below. To our right were miles of forbidding forest – a great place to bury a body.

Dad, our driver, got scared. Mum got every scareder (not actually a word but you know what I mean). I wasn’t scared at all. I’ve always been at my calmest when in danger. Like when on the plane and the turbulence is mental and it’s shaking and shit and babies are crying and people think they’re gonna die – that’s the only time I can ever get some sleep. Impending death, and the knowledge that you’re helpless, is even more relaxing than a spliff. And coming from a massive stoner such as I, that’s saying something.

But I digress, and we didn’t die. And when we emerged from the forests we were greeted with a view that will be etched in our memory like a tattoo, but that’s one metaphor too many I fear, and as we’ve already established, writing about views is pointless.

The national park was spectacular – vast and empty, just a handful of humans. Dad told me to change my loafers and put on my sneakers, as we’re going to do a “little walking”. I told him my loafers are comfy and I’ll be right. I was wrong. By a “little walking” what he actually meant was “6km of walking through rocky paths, thick jungle and steep slopes”. I was surely the least practically dressed visitor the park ever had, but it felt so good to be so well-dressed amongst nature. It was as if I was paying my respects to my surrounds by scrubbing up for the occasion, and not dressing down.

Alright this post is getting WAY too long and I have WAY too much to do today. Sorry – expect the rest of day 6 (including the German girls), day 7 (where I proved to be the worst Buddhist ever) and day 8 (that’s today – nothing has happened yet but I wouldn’t count on it remaining that way) sometime tomorrow. Thank you come again.

Day 5: ‘O Sole Mio

2012-01-13T16:39:00.000-08:00

The biodiversity of Sri Lanka is extraordinary. There is no similarly sized nation with as much ecological variety. This tiny island, often referred to as India's teardrop, has beaches, rainforests, jungles, deserts, grasslands, wildlife reserves, mountains and more.

Beaches are for white people. Locals in the know vacation in the hill country, the highest part of the island. So at 5am yesterday morning we left Colombo and headed east. The drive was the most scenic journey I’ve ever been on. Winding roads flanked by valleys and mountains and picture-perfect tea plantations, a crystal clear waterfall around every bend, the temperature dropping as the views became more breathtaking. Literally. It’s hard to breathe this high up.

Our hotel was built in 1873 and has barely changed since then. Colonial ghosts echo in the hallways, but unlike the days of English rule there are no white people telling us what to do.

The place was empty actually. Only 5 other guests. It reminded me of The Shining, except it was a case of all play and no work makes Chaz a happy boy. Well I was happy, but that changed after dinner...

Mum, dad and I sit down in the grand dining room to eat. The only other people there are an Italian man in his 60s, and his daughter in her early 20s. There’s something so very sweet about a father/daughter relationship, and I’m a sucker for a daddy’s girl.

This daddy’s girl looked like a young Sophia Loren. Curves in all the right places, hair the colour of burnt caramel, skin just as sweet, a nose halfway between roman and ‘ohhh man’ and lips that definitely knew what they were doing. She had on a long white summer dress, with a honeyed left leg slipping through a long slit on the side. She looked right at home in this old world hotel – a starlet of the past, Miss Italy 1962.

They were sat to the right of us. She listened attentively to her dad while they shared the restaurant’s signature dish of chilli lobster, but still glanced over at me every 30 seconds or so. I was not listening to my parents and stared at her throughout the whole meal. I barely touched my food. If you are what you eat, I was nothing and she was red hot on the outside and melt in your mouth on the inside.

Five minutes into dinner I plucked up the courage to smile at her. She smiled back immediately. It was a good smile. Just the right amount of teeth. She played with her hair a lot too. Once I read my mum’s Cosmopolitan in the toilet and it told me that if a girl plays with her hair it means she likes you. She likes me!

She ate so sensuously. I imagined what else she could put in her mouth. I even started to sweat a little. I needed to talk to her, but an Italian dad is a tricky proposition, especially for a brown boy.

But fuck it. I’m on holiday and have nothing to lose. And the dad was obviously a classy chap. Classy I can do. No really. I dress nice and speak good. That’s classy right?

My parents finished their meal, and Sophia and papa had almost finished theirs. It’s now or never, as Elvis sang. Or as the original Italian version went, ‘O sole mio.

I can do this. I WILL do this. She smiled again. She wanted me to do this. I got up. Her dad leaned over and kissed her. There was tongue involved. He was not her dad. He was a dirty old man and she was a filthy little harlot, in it for the money.

Sometimes a twinkle in her eye is just a twinkle in her eye. Sometimes playing with her hair just means that she’s playing with her hair.

I should have left Cosmopolitan’s advice in the shitter where I found it.

Day 4: It's just not cricket

2012-01-12T16:15:00.000-08:00

Sri Lankans are fanatical about three things: food, cricket and talking shit about cricketers. Given how tiny this country is, how comparatively poor it is compared to the major cricketing forces like India, Australia and England, and the inevitable political interference which means we rarely field our best team, I think our cricketers do alright. Yes we’re prone to capitulation, and being a fan of the Sri Lankan side certainly isn’t easy, but we continue to punch well above our weight and have produced some of the most thrilling batsmen and bowlers the sport has ever seen. Simply put, our cricketers make me proud to be Sri Lankan in a way that our statesmen never have.

But when we lose a match the resulting shitstorm is something else. You’d rather be a Real Madrid player scoring an own goal in the dying minutes of the El Clásico to gift Barcelona victory than be a Sri Lankan cricketer returning home after a crushing defeat. We got SMASHED by South Africa the other day. It was a pathetic performance and every Sri Lankan involved should be thoroughly embarrassed, but it’s only a game of cricket, right?

Tell that to my aunties. This is an actual conversation that took place between two of them. Both are over 60. I feel a bit bad about publishing it here so I’m not going to use their real names in case they miraculously figure out how to use the internet - hell hath no fury like a Sri Lankan aunty scorned. Also try to imagine the below exchange being conducted in thick Sri Lankan accents, as it’s a lot funnier that way. In fact isn’t everything funnier in a South Asian accent?

Aunty 1: “Those bloody buggers should be shot! Aii ohh it’s a shame. A damn shame!”

Aunty 2: “What shot? A bullet is too good for these bastards. Someone should rape them!”

Aunty 1 (who ALWAYS agrees with whatever Aunty 2 says): “Yes rape the buggers! Then shoot them. It’s a bloody disgrace. Schoolchildren could do better. They should hide their faces.”

Aunty 2: “Why can’t they be like Tendulkar? What a good man. Not like our ugly idiots.”

Day 3: “There’s more to life than books you know, but not much more.”

2012-01-11T20:18:00.000-08:00

My favourite thing to do in Colombo is hunting for old books. To be honest, there’s not really that much to do in Colombo. There’s heaps going on outside the capital, and some of the prettiest scenery you’ve ever seen - “All harmonious, all in perfect taste,” wrote Mark Twain - but in Colombo all you can do is eat, drink, shop, sleep with Russian prostitutes, fight with politicians’ children, and repeat. You probably want me to elaborate on the fighting with politicians’ children bit, but I’m not going to. They are lawless, have an armed security detail, and know how to hold a grudge. It’s not that I’m scared of them as such. It’s just that I quite like not being dead.

The best place to find books is in the predominantly Muslim ‘burb of Maradana (not Maradona, whom I referred to in a metaphorical capacity in yesterday’s post). In Maradana there is a small strip of street stalls selling heaps of dusty, tattered novels and other literary curios. First editions abound, as do bargains. It’s enough to give a bibliophile a boner.

In my mind there is no more beautiful sight than a row of old, orange-spined Penguins; well-read and much loved, torn and frayed, stained with history. And as a piece of design, they are pretty damn near perfect - a work of art that fits in your back pocket.

There are about six stalls in all, but I only go to one of them. I’ve been going to it since I was 7 or 8. The man who runs it recognises me every time. He doesn’t speak English, yet he knows the names of every author of note, and their major works. And his Russian pronunciation is remarkable – when he wraps his vowels around Dostoevsky a Siberian chill descends upon Colombo.

I bought 13 books for $5, including five Graham Greene’s. I clutched them tight to my chest like a baby as I carried them to the car. If you a love a book it will always love you back.

Day 2: Comrades and Koreans

2012-01-10T19:56:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Mum and I took a three wheeler to the shops (you may know them as tuk-tuks, but we do not call them that in linguistically pragmatic Sri Lanka). We’re attacking the traffic, deftly ducking left and right a la Maradona, when Mum notices the Bob Marley stickers on the rear view mirrors and asks the driver, in Sinhalese, if he’s a fan. He says, in Sinhalese, that he likes him, but not that much. I ask him if he’s a fan of “the ganja” and he laughs and says yes. Mum looks concerned.

Mum asks him who is hero is and he says Che Guevara, and then, in near-perfect English, tells us why. Because he swapped wealth for revolution; because he felt that humanity deserved better; because he realised we’re put on this earth for a reason. I’ve got mixed feelings about Che (Cliché Guevera I call him, cos I’m so very funny), and I definitely don’t think we’re put on this earth for a reason, but I wasn’t going to tell that to a poor Sri Lankan who just wants a better life. So I asked him about himself. His dad’s Sinhalese and cleans toilets along the railways. His mum’s Tamil and sews in a sweatshop. He’s 26 and speaks three languages.

He said: “I don’t work out my body, I work out my brain. I’m not religious, but I have a philosophy. I want to be more than I am, and I will be. Why are we here? Why is there sun and water and earth? (He reached out and touched the tarmac when he said that.) I don’t know. I am a rich man with nothing. One day I will be a rich man with money too.”

I had no idea what he was on about but I gave him a big tip to help him on his way / buy some ganja, and went off to spend money on things I don’t need.

While in the changing rooms of Sri Lanka’s only high end department store - trying on three pairs of shorts, seven shirts and a sarong - someone knocks hard on the door. I open it and there’s a young Korean couple standing there (Colombo’s overrun by Koreans at the mo – but no K-Pop princesses alas, just surly folk with round faces). The man stares at me almost apologetically while his missus just stares violently. It’s obvious that she a) wants me to hurry up and b) is a complete bitch. I say something like: “The more you knock, the longer I’m gonna take, so find another changing room or piss off”, and she launches into a Korean tirade and I say: “Sorry love I don’t speak your fucking language”, grab my crotch, stick my fingers up and slam the door shut - the universal languague of "fuck you, bitch". I intentionally take forever trying on the rest of the clothes. By the time I eventually get out of there they are probably halfway to Seoul. Sri Lanka 1 - South Korea 0. Also, shouting at girls makes me feel like a big man.

That night we dined with the former Attorney General and other similarly illustrious Lankans. The company was unfailingly lovely but the conversation became a little unsettling at one point. Someone said: “No matter what you do, the servants always leave dirty hand prints on the wall,” while a ‘servant’ was in the room. Someone else replied: “Tell me about it. I even had to have a ceramic wall put in just to make it harder for the buggers to dirty up the house.” I thought of our three wheeler driver, and left a hand print on the wall when I left.

2012-01-09T21:20:00.001-08:00

I’m in Sri Lanka! And I’m gonna write about it! And I’m not even gonna proofread it, cos that’s just the Sri Lankan way!

Day 1: Flirting the issue.

Over the past 24 hours I’ve flirted with airport staff and immigration officers in three different countries, with varying degrees of success. Actually, that makes it sound like I was more successful than I was. Correction: Over the past 24 hours I’ve flirted with airport staff and immigration officers in three different countries, with zero to minimal success.

First was the girl at the Singapore Airlines check-in desk at Melbourne Airport. I turned on the charm in an attempt to secure an upgrade. It went like this: “Hi, I like your fringe. It’s..... good”. She didn’t smile and asked me whether I packed my bags myself. If she could downgrade me from Economy to ‘Get a fucking clue, douchebag’, she would.

Then, at passport control, the nice and almost pretty lady told me that my Australian visa / Permanent Residency expired in November. She called over another lady who was pretty and almost nice who told me that they can let me leave, but they won’t let me back in unless I get my visa renewed at the Australian Embassy in Sri Lanka, which could take a while. I stroked my chest hair (really) and asked her if there’s anything she can do to speed up the process. She looked at my chest perplexed but actually made a call and put me in touch with someone who gave me a reference number to speed up said process. Success of sorts.

In Singapore it got weird. The little girl (more of a young woman than a little girl but you know how these Asians are) who searched me as I entered the boarding gate had a Hitler haircut and anime lips and seemingly stepped straight out of a K-Pop clip, so I told her. Well I told her the K-Pop and anime part, not the Hitler bit. I then asked for a photo. I’ve rarely seen a woman look so concerned. No photo was taken. She was probably a lesbian.

And finally in Sri Lanka there was a pretty little toilet attendant; so poor, so cute, just standing barefoot outside the ladies bathroom with scraggly hair and dirty fingernails and eyes like emeralds and gleaming white teeth that belied her inevitable poverty. That’s my ideal girl – dirt poor and shit hot. I wanted to rescue her, Pretty Woman style. Take her to Sri Lanka’s equivalent of Rodeo Drive and... ok so there is actually no Sri Lankan equivalent of Rodeo Drive but I would totally have bought her something from ASOS. I smiled from a distance and she looked away. I walked closer. She looked up. I used my rudimentary Singhalese to ask her if she spoke English. She said no, smiled shyly and walked into the toilet. There’s a metaphor there...

Occupy Hollywood

2011-12-19T19:16:00.000-08:00

There is a scene in Rise of the Planet of the Apes where a chimp says "no". Aside from being the most powerful scene of the year (says I; most would disagree), it’s also the pivotal scene in the film. In fact this two letter word, perhaps the most powerful word in the English language, is the essence of what this deceptively clever movie is all about.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is the Hollywood Blockbuster meets Marxist fairytale meets simian revenge fantasy meets existentialist interrogation.

At its core is rebellion, and at the core of every rebellion is the word "no".

The film is ridiculous of course. Completely implausible, requiring not just the suspension of disbelief but the wilful self-extermination of any kind of reason or logic (I’ve found that smoking lots of weed helps). The plot is MENTAL, but hey, it’s Hollywood. And more so it’s a genre movie; one does not watch a Planet of the Apes film for the realism. But there are benefits to being ridiculous; it’s precisely because the film is so fantastical that it can sneak in so many genuinely subversive elements.

The stupid plot goes thus: likeable scientist Will (played by James Franco) is developing a drug to cure Alzheimer’s, a disease which afflicts his father. He tests the drugs on chimps, which makes them extra intelligent. After one of the chimps runs riot at his lab and is shot dead, Will reluctantly adopts her child, Caesar, and takes him home. It turns out that the child chimp has inherited his mother’s intellect. After Caesar attacks a man who was threatening Will’s dad, he is sent to a brutal animal shelter / prison that’s run by a sadistic warden and an even more merciless guard. But Caesar is smarter than the humans, and angrier than them too. It’s a dangerous combination which makes for some amazingly thrilling cinema.

It’s obvious whose side we’re supposed to be on. The human beings in this movie are either one-dimensional villains or monumentally misguided Samaritans who do much more harm than good. Take Franco’s character, who gives apes the intellect of humans while knowing that they will always be treated as animals. It’s highly irresponsible science, and tantamount to giving birth to a child and sticking it in a cage its whole life. And yet he’s one of the more sympathetic humans in the movie.

Hollywood is, and possibly always has been, propaganda. For all the right wing paranoia about the film industry being full of bleeding heart liberals, the truth is that most big budget productions push a particular agenda, and it’s the agenda of government, big business, and the Military-Industrial complex. The heroes may, on occasion, be rebellious, but only superficially so, and in reality they are very much on the side of The Man. The bad guys are anybody who poses a threat to the status quo.

Rise... is different. The bad guys are us, and the good guys are the apes. Caesar is a wonderfully complex creation and the CGI is spectacular; the eyes alone are a marvel, full of nuanced expression thanks to the subtle special effects.

He’s a chimp in turmoil, mired in an existential hell, struggling to find out who he is and what his place is in this vicious world. He eventually finds his voice, literally and metaphorically, when he shouts "No!" at a guard, and proceeds to lead a chimp insurrection against the cruel human masters that comes straight out of a Marxist’s wet dream. Evolution is revolution...

The filmmakers haven’t just derived inspiration from Marx though. The ape protagonist Caesar is a tragic hero in the style of Milton’s Satan, Frankenstein’s ‘monster’ and the original King Kong. But really it all comes back to Camus, and specifically The Rebel.

A book-length essay on the history – and the philosophical implications – of rebellion and revolt, The Rebel is a seminal existentialist text and also perhaps the definitive thesis on revolution. Camus, citing history, claims that the striving for freedom and the urge to revolt are fundamental and inevitable aspects of the human condition. Every man has his limit, and as per the essay’s most famous line, "What is a rebel? A man who says no".

Saying "no" in this context is another way of saying "yes"; refusal simultaneously implies affirmation, for rejecting the tyranny of one’s environment is also to declare the importance of the self. Saying "no" to persecution and slavery is to say "yes" to a better life, but in order to say "no/yes", you have to believe you deserve better.

And Caesar believes. He’s witnessed the venality and brutality of humans, and realises he’s better than that, and thus deserves better than that. As Camus writes: “In every act of rebellion, the man concerned experiences not only a feeling of revulsion at the infringement of his rights but also a complete and spontaneous loyalty to certain aspects of himself.”

So Rise... takes up this existentialist exploration of rebellion, except the Q&A now goes thus: “What is a rebel? A chimp who says no.”

However, Camus also went on to warn about the dangers of rebellion:

“The rebel undoubtedly demands a certain degree of freedom for himself; but in no case, if he is consistent, does he demand the right to destroy the existence and the freedom of others. He humiliates no one. The freedom he claims, he claims for all; the freedom he refuses, he forbids everyone to enjoy. He is not only the slave against the master, but also man against the world of master and slave.”

That is to say, the rebel has a moral obligation to not just reverse the status quo, but to destroy it and replace it with something humane. But, as Camus realises all too well, history shows us that rebellion often just results in a new set of masters and a new set of slaves. The next Planet of the Apes film looks set to explore this theme further, as the apes oppress the humans as they were oppressed themselves.

The potential is immense. If the rest of this revitalised franchise is as clever and as nuanced as Rise... we’re in for something truly special: a big budget, all-action series of movies loaded with deft satire and philosophical inquiry, and as intellectually exhilarating and emotionally stimulating as your favourite overrated indie flick. I'm going ape-shit with anticipation.

From Korea with love – Snap, Crackle and K-pop

2011-12-06T22:37:00.000-08:00

When future historians study the minutiae of my life, they will, if they’re doing their job correctly, note that 2011 was the year that I fell in love with K-pop and became a Seoul man.

As I always say, the Asians will rule us all. And they will do so with the cutest girls you’ve ever seen singing the catchiest songs you’ve ever heard.

If you don’t like pop music please leave immediately. Not for your own benefit, but for mine. I hate you with all the vitriol in my soul and do not want you anywhere near me or my words.

Everybody else please check the below clips for a (small) selection of my favourite K-pop (I wanted to do more but it’s sunny outside and I got distracted). And if you’re a little apprehensive about listening to foreign music, don’t worry. It’s so very similar to US and European pop music – even many of the songwriters and producers are the same – but it’s also a bit better. The videos are slick and fun and sexy and the songs are perilously close to pop perfection, but best of all it's just so refreshing to see an Asian spin on such a distinctly western art form.

Secret – Shy Boy

Secret - Shy Boy from lee jung mae on Vimeo.

This was the first K-pop clip I ever watched, back in January of this year. As anyone who knows me will tell you, my favourite era of women is the 50s and 60s. There’s an innocence to the girls of that period that’s intoxicating, and not at all innocent: beneath the bootie socks and polka dots lurks pure sex-appeal. Also note how, unlike American and UK girl groups, every single member of Secret is hot. That’s the K-pop way. There’s no ‘ugly ones’ in their girl groups. Everybody’s a Beyonce. But I don’t just love K-pop for the videos and the girls. The song itself is wonderful – twee and self-consciously cutesy but with plenty of pep and spunk to prevent the sugar from getting too sickly sweet, and very sing-along friendly too despite it being in a different language. It’s all I want in a pop song, and Secret are all I want in a girl group. And also, like with a lot of K-pop songs, the best bit is the rap bit (2.40 - 2.53).

Hyuna – Bubble Pop

The impossibly gorgeous Secret threatened to ruin white women for me forever. Hyuna made the threat so much more real. She is something else. Out of control hot and the perfect specimen of oriental (albeit westernised) loveliness. One of my favourite pastimes is putting this on my iPod, then taking a walk around the Melbourne CBD (which is packed full of K-pop-lookalikes in suitably short shorts) and pretending I’m in my own music video. I have no idea what she’s singing about, but of course it doesn’t matter. Pop music has always been at its best when at its most nonsensical. Da Doo Ron Ron, Do Wah Diddy, Louie Louie. The meaning of words is essentially irrelevant; it’s how they sound that matters. The ‘ooh ooh ooh ooh oohs’ kill me. And by "kill me" I mean "turn me on something chronic". Same goes for the totally ridiculous and unnecessary dubstep breakdown 3/4 of the way in. Bubble Pop is as catchy as it gets; it’s practically all hooks, actually sounds like bubbles popping, and is kinda like an STD that’s good for you. So sexy and infectious – why the fuck isn’t it on MTV?

4Minute – I My Me Mine

Hyuna is also a member of 4Minute. Most of what they do is great, but this is my fav. There’s so much going on in this song (and so much going on in my pants when I watch this clip). It’s pop music, yes, but there’s heaps of contemporary club influences in there too. Your favourite indie band wishes they could make music as inventive as this.

2NE1 - I’m The Best

2NE1 are Diplo’s favourite new act. Not his fav new K-pop act, or fav new girl group, but his fav new act full stop. He recently said: “They’re beautiful. They have crazy charisma, they’re amazing live. It’s loud, there’s dancing, explosions, stuff all over the place, confetti, cannons, etc.” He is correct. These girls have MAD attitude and are a nice antidote to your average identikit American pop star (not that the rest of K-pop isn’t full of identikit, interchangeable pop stars). This track takes my favourite approach to pop production: shove everything in the proverbial washing machine and see what comes out. The Koreans aren’t frightened to push the boundaries; they’re effortlessly imaginative even when they’re stealing from others. Just check all the disparate elements rammed into this: Korean and western pop, some Indian and Arabic stylings, club/rave/electro – and there’s no chorus! When’s pop’s as thrilling as this, and listened to predominantly by 13 year old girls, it becomes positively subversive and more punk than most punk.

Miss A – Bad Girl, Good Girl

Miss A are essential and massive. So many storming tunes to their name, but I think this was their first. It’s a pretty special debut, so breezy, it just rolls along effortlessly and has a toughness to it too, and I love how loads of Korean songs have a few English phrases thrown in just for the fuck of it. Also note the perfect posteriors on these girls. DAMN SON.

Wonder Girls - Nobody

This is a few years old but I only saw it this year. It has Supremes outfits, handclaps, and an Apollo Theatre themed video. The Wonder Girls do love to reference the 60s...

Wonder Girls – Be My Baby

More 60s references in this one, from the title to the clothes to the Motowny melody. This is their most recent single and here’s what critic Anthony Easton has to say about it: “The fur collars/muffs on their sleeves might be worth a 10, the modesty lace inserts on their dresses might be worth a 10, the weird gorgeous Kusama style dots on their dresses might be worth 10, whatever is happening with the electronic spiraly bits might be worth a 10, but the chorus, the pitch-perfect Odeur 53 style, nothing-natural-and-nothing-proper, plastic chorus puts it into pure 10.”

Girls Generation – Gee

This is probably the biggest K-pop single to date so it’d be remiss of me to leave it out. Its appeal is self-evident. Sometimes stupid can be a lot cleverer than clever.

GD & TOP - Knock Out

Diplo produced this. I don’t really listen to the K-pop boys much, just because there are too many smoking hot girl groups making amazing music. But this is wild. Diplo’s obviously having so much fun on the production; he probably can’t believe that he gets to make pop music this weird and wonderful. And these lads can rap, although not in any conventional sense. Their flow is so stoned and relaxed and their Korean vowels sound splendid and so different from the rap I’m used to. And how good do they look? More dapper than Kanye ANY FUCKING DAY although we won’t hate on Mr West cos he too has produced K-pop.

Anyway, the above is just a very small selection. There’s so much more K-pop out there, much of it sounding nothing like the above. It’s in your interests to get on Youtube and listen to as much as you can. One day soon the Koreans will be our ridiculously attractive overlords and those that don’t know their music will be left to perish in a heap of David Guetta records, auto-tuned to oblivion.

The Finite Lives of Infinite Minds

2011-11-21T21:55:00.000-08:00

About this time last year I found a floppy disc lodged in an old wallet. ‘Summer 97’ was scrawled on the label. It was the first floppy disc I’d seen in a while, so I was intrigued. I found a compatible laptop, and loaded it up to see what was on it, hoping that it contained pictures of naked girls that had last aroused me in my youth. Nothing beats a nostalgia wank.

No such luck. The disc contained my first and only novel, written when I was 17. It was wonderfully awful, although perhaps more awful than wonderful. The title didn’t help: The Finite Lives of Infinite Minds. Yeah, me neither.

It’s hard for brown boys to blush, but blush I did once I started reading it. I had no idea I was such a wanker at 17. But once I got into it, I started to enjoy it. Not because it was any good, but because it was like a time capsule of teenage pretension.

I posted some excerpts on my Twitter last year, when I first found the disc. Those high/lowlights and more are below. There is a certain shit genius to them.

She had a glimmer of idiocy in her eyes, and sparkled like a slut buffoon.

Theirs was a Lemonheads kind of relationship; saccharine and slight. A three minute pop song when they wanted an opera.

Outside the bedsit window they could make out the silhouettes of lovers lost and found, slowdancing in the distant mist to invisible melodies that would go 'da doo ron ron ron da doo ron ron' if they could only hear them.

There was violence in her fingertips; electric tremors. The occasional bass from the stereo next door soundtracked his arousal.

Love isn’t quite blind but it has a squint.

Her words said it was all over, but the quiver in her lips as she delivered them said otherwise.

"We both wanted it. We just didn’t know what 'it' was. And the only thing we knew for certain was the fragility of our embrace."

"Do you love me?" she said, more in hope than in expectation. "In a way," he said. That was better than nothing, and her heart floated to the surface like a dead body.

Life’s not so complicated, but living it is. They realised this now, finally. But it was too late, and too perfect too. Intervention, or freewill, was pointless. Love’s conducted by the Gods and people are merely players. So they smiled and they cried and they said something they'll never be able to remember and their awkward goodbyes swirled in the wind and got sucked up by the sunset.

Three chords and the truth

2011-10-10T21:49:00.001-07:00

These days everybody’s into everything. The punks love Pink Floyd, the mods are just better dressed rockers, the hip hop kids listen to Coldplay (rap fans have the WORST taste in guitar music), the indie kids dance to dubstep and everybody owns a Ramones t-shirt.

But nobody likes country.

It’s the last musical taboo. I have a badge that I wear most days (pictured below) which says ‘I LOVE COUNTRY MUSIC’, but from the reactions it elicits, you’d think it says ‘I FUCK KIDS’.

The ignorant (which is pretty much everyone this side of Nashville) deride country music as the preserve of irrelevant rednecks mumbling increasingly cheesy clichés about heartbreak and horses. Well it kinda is like that, but that’s a good thing, and to get into country music you need to get over the cliché and listen a little closer.

Firstly, all genres have clichés. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be genres. But country’s clichés aren’t ‘cool’, whatever ‘cool’ is. It’s very much a country for old men, and the young just don’t get it. That’s a pity. There’s clichés in country because country, at its essence, is about the obvious stuff; those human truisms that connect us all: love and loss, the land, family, a search (however misguided) for spiritual sustenance and divine guidance. And that’s why it warrants devotion, not derision, despite how ostensibly daggy it is. There’s more truth, instruction and solace to be found in those mumbled clichés than in practically any other genre, and if I’m ever stranded on a desert island, it’s my country records that I’d want to wash to shore.

Secondly, cliché is just mythology’s younger sister, and country is ALL about mythologising. Every country cliché reinforces its own legend, and to love the music you need to love the legend. It’s a pretty easy lesson to love. If you’ve ever enjoyed a Western, you’re halfway there. If you’ve never enjoyed a Western, you’re halfway retarded.

I like country for three main reasons.

1. Every song tells a story. In no other genre is songwriting and storytelling so entwined, and the importance of narrative so enshrined. And not only does every song tell a story, it does so without pretentiousness, in a language anyone can understand. It’s folk music, and like its closest relative, the blues, is sung by the common man and woman for the common man and woman. But unlike the blues, it’s not made by black people. Black people are cool. Rednecks are not. Nobody’s gonna lose any hipster points for loving Robert Johnson, but just try telling someone that Dolly Parton’s the most underrated female songwriter of her generation (and she really is).

John Prine might just be the most underrated male songwriter of his generation. Bob Dylan (whose love of country can be heard on almost every single record he made) said of Prine: "His stuff is pure Proustian existentialism. Midwestern mindtrips to the nth degree. And he writes beautiful songs. Nobody but Prine could write like that."

This, perhaps his most lauded song, dispenses with some of the more commonplace country conceits to tell a story about a junkie ex-soldier. It might make you cry. It’s sad and lovely and a deceptively angry indictment of America – no hillbilly jingoism here.

2. Woman are integral to country music, whether as artists or as subject matter, but it’s the men (no homo) that I love the most. And when I say men I mean real men. Men who shoot guns and drink whiskey and yet are not afraid to bare their emotions with a confessional zeal and cry about lost lovers and dead pets, because when you ride horses, wrestle steers and piss moonshine, nobody’s gonna call you a pussy.

George Jones was a real man. A United States Marine no less. This song is so wry and ironic (there’s plenty of irony in country if you listen close enough, and the only reason people hate country is because they don’t listen close enough) but the pathos is palpable and the heartbreak so real and the delivery so sincere. And the video’s more country than Dolly Parton’s massive tits (i.e. very fucking county).

Kris Kristofferson is also a real man, and has fucked more women than you ever will.

3. It’s outlaw music. It might have been co-opted by the Republican Party and anodyne performers like Garth Brooks and co., but at the heart of country are working class anthems that tap into the great streak of American libertarianism: music for rebels and revolutionaries, fugitives and miscreants. And if the history of rock’n’roll has taught us anything, it’s that rebellion is sexy and outlaws are cool. Johnny Cash is the only country singer that people who don’t like country like. He has legitimacy with the kids because he covered a Trent Reznor song and had a movie made about him. I don’t have a bad word to say against The Man in Black, but there’s plenty of other country outlaws out there too, like The Allman Brothers - a moustachioed bunch of countrified Southern rockers who don’t wear their confederacy on their sleeve quite like Lynyrd Skynrd did, but who rock as hard as The Stones. Very few people loved their country as much as Mitch and Keef (it’s one of music’s most mentioned ironies that some lads from England did blues and country better than most Americans) and it’s easy to see from the below clip why they liked the Allman Brothers. It’s country and it rocks.

My baby

2011-09-20T23:05:00.000-07:00

I'm always asking people what their favourite song is, even though I don’t care what their favourite song is, and even though most people don’t even have a favourite song. "There’s just too many," they invariably say. Boring! Stop sitting on the fence. Pick a side and fight for it; be a lover, not a slut.

Not having a favourite song is like having a series of meaningless one night stands and going through life without ever finding 'the one'. Well I've found 'the one', and I only ask people what their favourite song is so I can tell them about mine.

Mine is Be My Baby of course. And it really is mine. That's the whole point of a favourite song. Other people might check it out from a distance; they might even take it home on occasion, or take it for a drive. But I live with it. It wakes me up in the morning, sings me to sleep and soundtracks my sex life (even if I'm not listening to it).

It begins with those dramatic drums, which I reckon mimics the sound of a heart beating hard when a pretty girl walks past; that lovely thud that lets you know you're smitten. It's definitely the best intro ever and probably the most iconic drums in all of pop.

Then the rest of the song unfurls with a sonic striptease – slinky strings, muffled piano, castanets coming on like a teenage girl's handclaps – building up to a symphonic surge of lust and longing that's a pitch-perfect articulation of that most inarticulate of emotions.

And then there's Ronnie's voice. So fragile and adolescent, barely hitting her notes but filled with enough sexuality, sincerity and yearning to break through the Wall of Sound and be the star of the song: Whoa-oh-oh-ohhh...

Phil Spector's the producer of course, and Be My Baby is his baby (and along with River Deep - Mountain High is the definitive example of his Wall of Sound). But Ronnie's his baby too (he married her a few years later) and this song is really all about her. She's enough of a blank canvas for the listener to project his or her desires onto, but she has enough spunk and personality to own the greatest 2 minutes and 40 seconds of the 20th Century.

The first time Brian Wilson heard the song on the radio he had to pull his car over. Then he started crying. For a while he listened to it 100 times a day. The first time I heard the song was during Dirty Dancing. I didn’t start crying, but I knew I loved it, and for a while I listened to it 100 times a day. Those were the happiest days of my life.

Click here for a great clip of Ronnie & co.

Click here for the spectacular Be My Baby soundtracked intro to Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets.

And here are some of my favourite songs that have been inspired by my favourite song:

Oh Canada

2011-09-12T22:00:00.000-07:00

When I was seven I was a little out of sorts. I’d been in England a few years, swiftly learned perfect English, and then decided to stop speaking it (or any other language) for six months. I saw a child psychiatrist after a month of not talking, but that didn’t work. Nothing did. Then I stuck a peanut up my nose. My first words in six months were "thanks, that was starting to hurt" after the ENT surgeon removed it. I haven’t stopped talking since. But that’s another story.

When I was seven I was a little out of sorts, and Dad decided to move us all to Canada. Nova Scotia to be precise – a barren land on the east coast, populated entirely by inbred lobster fishermen of Scottish and French descent. We were the only brown faces within a 300 mile radius. It was a scary place. They didn’t even show Transformers on the telly. They had Gobots instead. Fuck Gobots.

Dad got a job in a hospital, and got Mum a job in the same hospital. We lived in a big blue house with a pond and a strawberry patch. School was literally across the road, which was handy given the frequent snow storms. Once it snowed so deep that I could jump out my second storey bedroom window. Grown men wore ear muffs.

On my first day of school, at recess, some older kids came up to me on the playground. One of them says: "Say glass!" "Glass," I say. He says: "No, say it correct". "Glass," I say, again. He then PULLS OUT HIS COCK AND STARTS PISSING ON ME.

Canada's scary. A girl in my class, Sarah, wanted me to stay with her family one weekend. Mum said I had to. While there, we went upstairs to the attic to play. Her cousin and her cousin’s boyfriend were there. They were about 11, and were making out on the floor, violently. Sarah jumped me. It was my first kiss and it was terrifying. I was only seven. It was another seven years before my second kiss.

Another girl in class, Rabia, apparently had rabies. I realise now that this wasn’t true, and it was just other kids being mean on account of how she was brown, poor and curiously named. But at the time I didn’t mind that she had rabies. In fact I wanted it. Maybe then people would be too scared to piss on me.

I asked Rabia to bite me, so I could catch what she had. She didn’t, so I made friends with the other bullied kid at school, Trevor. Trevor was also poor, and his mum was a slut. We’d be playing with our fucking Gobots, and she’d be fucking different guys in the next room. We didn’t really know about intercourse and stuff. We just thought she really liked hugs.

Mum threw a little party for my eighth birthday. I had discovered ThunderCats, which means I could get rid of those fucking Gobots. Sarah was there, but I don’t think I spoke to her. She gave me a toy of Lion-O, the leader of the ThunderCats. It was a good toy. But another boy gave me it as well, so I pushed him in the pond. Mum was livid. She still talks about it. One of the most embarrassing episodes of her life apparently. I made all brown people look bad apparently.

15 months and 100 feet of snow later, we moved back to England. I still remember everything about Canada so vividly. Everything except for Lise. She was a girl in my school. I know this because she wrote me a message on my last day at school. That’s what the above picture is. But I can’t remember her at all. Was she just joking, or did she actually hate me? And why? Girls don’t stab strangers in the back. They stab people they love. I think maybe she loved me, but knew that skank Sarah had gotten there first. I think maybe I love her too, and I hope she’s aged as well as I have.

"My eyes adored you, though I never laid a hand on you"

2011-09-05T20:44:00.000-07:00

I’m presently embroiled in a passionate flirtation with a girl in my building, conducted with just our eyes. I see her EVERYWHERE. Not just in the lift or in the foyer, but on the street, on the tram, in stores, in supermarkets, and even in my dreams. And every time I see her, she sees me, and our eyes meet, and we have violent ogle-sex. It makes me blush and I love it. She never blushes and she loves it.

Sustained and intense eye contact always feels like a covert fuck behind the bushes. It’s as thrilling as actual outdoor sex, only there’s no attendant grass stains, no stray grains of sand in your orifices, no perverted policemen sneaking a peek, no children to frighten and parents to offend.

A girl’s eyes are not the window to her soul, but the window to her vagina. And the longer you look into them, the wetter they get.

Anyway, about this girl. She’s one of the few non-Asians in my building (for the benefit of the Brits, I’m referring to yellow Asians, not brown ones), has legs longer than my entire body, and seemingly had an accident in a hosiery factory when she was younger which has resulted in her never-ending pins being permanently clad in provocatively patterned tights. Her skin is as white as Marie Antoinette and her lips are redder than a menstruating communist; it’s the most wonderful juxtaposition, like vanilla ice cream with a strawberry swirl. She’s perilously close to perfection, and is my perfect part-time pick-me-up.

Someday we will speak. Her accent will sound common. Her vocabulary will be limited. She will have nothing of interest to say. And I will never be able to look her in the eyes again.

Never rat on your friends and always keep your mouth shut.

2011-08-14T18:12:00.000-07:00

For a while my life was mired in the third act of Goodfellas: cocaine paranoia, jittery drum solos, witness protection programs, egg noodles and ketchup, Joe Pesci with a Tommy Gun and Sid Vicious' version of My Way acting as an ironic reminder that the reason I'm in this sorry mess is precisely because I tried to do it my way.

But I now seem to be reversing into the second act: the Layla piano exit, rising action, girl group pop-operas, fur coats and pink Cadillacs, stuttering fucks, schmucks on wheels, shiny shoes, De Niro's heel slow-mo smashing into the back of Billy Batts' head, Bobby Darin soundtracked prison dinners, Copacabana tracking shots and rock’n’roll heists.

And best of all I still have the first act to look forward to: vintage doo wop, wide eyed innocence, gangster mentors, running numbers and rags to riches.

Amy's Gospel

2011-07-23T20:44:00.000-07:00

You came on with a whisper and killed me with a yell.
It's called soul music for a reason.

You did the Billie and the Ella and the Aretha as well.
Lonely and ferocious.

That honey dripping beehive, perched atop your head like a statement of intent.
Lips like a bloodied fist.

A shattered chanteuse with everything to lose,
Some fruits only become fragrant when bruised.

Bow to the elbow

2011-07-14T23:48:00.000-07:00

Anna Karenina was inspired by two things – a newspaper report about a woman throwing herself in front of a train, and an elbow.

The story (about the elbow, not the suicide) goes thus: Tolstoy was having dinner at Pushkin’s house, and was transfixed by his lovely daughter. He went home to his study, started reading some of Pushkin’s prose, and slipped into a daydream about a "bare exquisite aristocratic elbow". From that elbow Anna was born.

Anna Karenina was the first woman I ever loved, and the woman I compare all others to. I had read the novel three times before I heard the elbow story, but when I did eventually hear it, I loved Anna (the woman and the novel) even more.

Boobs are cool, and I’m most definitely a leg man, but it’s the more neglected appendages that get me going.

When inspecting a girl, I start with the ears, then make my way downwards, caressing the nape of her neck with my gaze, a quick visual kiss on each shoulder, and then very slowly down her upper arm, stopping at her elbow for perhaps three or four seconds, then continuing down the rest of the limb to her wrist and fingers.

If a girl’s got that bit right, you don’t even need to see her face.

See, a girl can have great tits but a shit face. Similarly, a girl can have great legs, a tight inviting posterior, and a shit face.

But if her neck is elegant and supple, if her shoulders are pert and sophisticated, if her arms are tidy, her wrists pristine and her fingers ladylike, her face will be fine. Promise.

There’s something so resolutely feminine about that part of a girl. And femininity is good, and not at all anathema to feminism. Nothing wrong with being girly – it’s a lot more powerful than being manly. Promise.

I like a lady. Not a princess, ‘cause princesses are prissy. But a lady. And what is a lady? Elegant, classy, sophisticated, intelligent, unpretentious. And it all starts with the neck and ends with the fingers.

Necks should be licked, bitten, stroked and choked – a good neck provokes all four responses. Shoulders are mainly there for support, but they can, and should, be decorative too. Personally, I like skinny arms, but chubby arms can also work, depending on the consistency of the flesh. Wrists, ideally, would be slender, with just the right amount of veins. No veins and she’s a sex doll, too many and she’s a junkie. Fingers must be dainty, and fit easily in my mouth.

The allure of the elbow is more intangible though. I can’t put my finger on it (metaphorically) but I always put my finger on it (literally). I think it’s partly the whole notion of finding beauty in such an unexpected place. I mean, elbows are essentially the buttcrack of the arms.

But the right elbow... oh boy. So suggestive, so peculiarly erotic. Perhaps not quite the stuff of poetry, but most definitely the stuff of perversions, and what’s 'love' but a poetic perversion?

There’s nothing pretty about pretty

2011-06-27T01:31:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine once met a girl with one arm. I asked him what she was like and he said, “Let’s just say that I wouldn’t have found her as attractive if she had both her limbs intact”.

I know exactly what he meant. Physical perfection, especially in today’s hyper-stylised, aesthetically impeccable world, can be a turn-off.

A perfectly symmetrical face, pristine hair, magazine make-up, Hollywood teeth and fully functioning appendages are nice to perv over on the big screen, but in real life it’s just a bit dull.

Proust said: “Let us leave the beautiful women to men with no imagination”.

It’s the best thing he ever said, and it’s a sentence that’s resonated with me like no other.

So just memorise the line, think about its implications, and save yourself the trouble of tackling the ten thousand plus pages of À la recherche du temps perdu (just check the Monty Python sketch instead), because once you’ve finally recherched your temps perdu you’ll realise that in your search for lost time, you lost a lot of fucking time.

Now I’m not sure precisely what Proust meant by those words, but I’ve appropriated them for my own purposes, and even reworded the quote accordingly.

My version reads: “A classically beautiful woman is wasted on a man with imagination”.

You’d probably want to memorise that too. It is my mantra, and it defines me.

I appreciate that it does not require Proustian levels of perception to recognise and extol the pleasures of imperfection, and that poets, pundits and pissheads have been saying the same thing for centuries. However, in the contemporary era, where physical conformity seems to be key, and where even physical non-conformity conforms to certain rules (shit tattoos, pointless piercings etc), I think it’s important to state, without equivocation, that it’s ok to look like an accident.

Too pretty a face is too easy to dismiss, too easy to forget. Give me something that jars. Make me a little uncomfortable. Don’t let me fall in love with you at first sight. Make me work for it. Make me stay awake at night trying to figure out if you’re pretty, wondering whether my friends would see what I see (and hoping that they won’t). I don’t want the girl that every guy fancies. I want the girl that only I could love.

Proust said it best, but Lorenz Hart, in his lyrics to My funny valentine, also said it well:

Your looks are laughable,
Un-photographable,
Yet you're my favourite work of art.
Is your figure less than Greek,
Is your mouth a little weak,
When you open it to speak,
Are you smart?
Don't change a hair for me,
Not if you care for me…

The Boss said it well too, in the best song he ever wrote, Thunder Road:

Show a little faith, there's magic in the night,
You ain't a beauty, but hey you're alright,
And that's alright with me..

Now obviously I’m not saying I like ugly girls. The girls I like, and the girls I get, are pretty. But not necessarily pretty to all.

I like beautiful woman. I love beautiful women who are a little fucked up.

A lazy eye perhaps, a roman nose that protrudes a touch too far, a crooked mouth, big ears, a prosthetic leg, an indelicate birthmark, a mischievous mole, a missing finger, nicotine teeth. From such flaws true beauty is born... beauty that transcends the caprices of artists, the aesthetic conventions of society and the financial imperatives of the entertainment industry. Beauty that’ll never make the pages of Vogue, but beauty that’ll make it all the way into my heart and my head - a face I’ll never forget.

Pizza, weed and brown guilt

2011-06-21T00:34:00.000-07:00

I always assume that the pizza delivery guy, after he reveals his face to me on camera, negotiates his way through my building's security entrance, presses the top right button in the lift, arrives at the 44th floor and eventually enters my apartment to find me slouching around my lounge in stoned abandon, with bloodshot eyes as red as the suede Tod's loafers that I, preposterously, choose to wear as slippers - views me as a kind of stoned Bruce Wayne.

That would be a good thing if not for the fact that said delivery guy is invariably brown (either Indian, Pakistani or, worst of all, Sri Lankan).

This makes me guilty. Dude's probably working two shitty jobs while studying, sending every cent back home to the subcontinent to feed his family of 36. And here I am, his ethnic brother from a similarly complexioned mother, in my swanky apartment, wearing my swanky clothes, eating my swanky pizza (Crust counts as swanky, right?).

I imagine him getting back into the lift with his 2 dollar tip (hey, I don't feel that guilty), face forlorn and head drooped, going down while I'm living it up. It’s the same expression Indian students give me when they see me holding hands with a pretty white girl: bemused, depressed and jealous.

My elderly aunty has her own pizza predicaments to contend with.

She's just figured out how to order pizza online. Crust is a bit expensive for her though, so she goes with Domino’s - the geriatric’s choice.

When you order online with Domino’s you are given an option to leave some specific instructions for the delivery guy. Domino’s, helpfully, provide the following example:

“e.g. Beware of the dog or The lift is broken, please use the stairs".

And so every time my aunty orders from Domino’s she diligently types: "Beware of the dog or The lift is broken, please use the stairs"…. despite her lack of dog, lift or stairs.

Oops!... I did it again.

2011-06-14T01:39:00.000-07:00

Last week I was in the lift at work with a pretty girl I’d never seen before. She had some chocolate on her chin. I said: “You’ve got some chocolate on your chin” and reached over and TOUCHED HER FACE to remove it. It was a birthmark.

My ability to manufacture a faux pas out of the most ostensibly innocuous of situations is unparalleled. Prince Philip may have the monopoly on ill-advised diplomacy defiling one-liners, but there’s not been a monarch yet who can match me for gaffes.

My life is a litany of bloopers. I literally blunder my way from day to day, leaving a trail of smashed etiquette and broken protocol in my socially clumsy wake.

It’s not because I don’t know any better. I do. I was brought up ‘properly’. I’ve read Jane Austen and Edith Wharton. I’ve seen all manner of period dramas (as in Downton Abbey or Merchant Ivory, not menstruation related aggro). And I’m dear friends with the Southern Hemisphere’s premier ethical arbiter, Adrian Fernand.

I know the dos and don’ts. I just don’t do them.

People who know me would scoff at the suggestion that these social transgressions are accidental. They think I’m wilfully mischievous and thrive on awkward situations.

Both assumptions are correct, but I promise most of my indiscretions are unintentional.

When I was a kid there was a cartoon about two adolescent gorillas called Bangers and Mash. They meant well, but were always getting into trouble. I loved and hated this cartoon for the same reason I love and hate Curb Your Enthusiasm. I adore Larry and Jeff and Bangers and especially Mash, but get so frustrated and sad and angry whenever their wife/mother/Wanda fucking Sykes shouts at them.

They are just misunderstood, like myself and Van Gogh and Tracy Morgan and Jesus.

Society’s a minefield and propriety is hard, whether you’re a Jew, a gorilla or just a simple Sri Lankan with a big heart and a bigger mouth. Mostly I just try to make people laugh. That's not so bad is it?

Bearing that in mind, here’s some of my more memorable social clangers.

There was the time I drunkenly proposed the porno spoof ‘Dunblane Buttfuck’, mere months after the massacre took place, only to find out a few pints later that one of the people at our table - a six foot, flame haired, fiery tempered Scotsman - was related to one of the victims. When his protestant fists alerted me to this connection, I tried to pacify him by pointing out that he’d probably be entitled to royalties if they were related by blood. Speaking of blood, my nose spills a lot of it when punched.

Then there was the time I was on a flight to Sri Lanka and was sat next to an 8-year-old with Down syndrome. He was very cute, so I let him play ‘Snake’ on my Nokia phone. But the kid accidentally deleted all of my contacts and I jokingly said: “Are you some kind of retard?” momentarily forgetting that he was actually some kind of retard. His mum wasn’t impressed, and promptly told the stewardess. Then, on cue, the plane hit some turbulence, and the adorable mongoloid went ballistic. His mum blamed me, as did my fellow passengers. Receiving the evil eye at altitude is much worse than when on land. The air’s a lot thinner for it to cut through, and there’s nowhere to hide in Economy.

And then there was the time I was on the 86 tram and offered my seat to a pregnant woman. She said no, but I insisted, so she informed me that she was not actually pregnant, at which point I tried to backtrack (but with good intentions, promise) and said that the premise is still the same – she’s too heavy to stand. She proceeded to go off, like only a fat woman can. I didn’t mind – her jowls got a good workout and she would have lost a few calories. But here’s the thing – other passengers joined in to berate me. Why would they do that? Can’t they see I meant well? And surely the initial act of chivalry, admittedly misdirected, hinted at my sweet nature and gentlemanly sense of duty?

And finally (well ‘finally’ for the purposes of this post - I could go on for at least 5000 more words with tales of my fuck-ups) there was the time a few months back when I did some DMT, went to the 7/11 after it wore off (except it hadn’t really worn off), bought a Toblerone, realised that it was out of date, had a massive argument with the Indian behind the counter, until he exclaimed: "DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT YEAR IT IS?!" I thought we were in 2012. Oops, again.

Not so hard to say you're sorry

2011-06-06T19:19:00.000-07:00

There should be more syllables in 'sorry'. Then it would really mean something.

It’s just too short, too easy to say, too easy to blurt out without even meaning it.

The French say désolé. Now that’s how you say sorry. It has gravitas, and there’s sincerity in every stretched out syllable, especially when prefixed with "Je suis très". Certainly a lot more solemn than sorry.

If désolé was a physical gesture it'd be all outstretched arms and open palms, a mix of contrition and lament. If sorry was a physical gesture it'd be a nonchalant nod of the head, delivered in a second and forgotten in two.

Sorry is such a sorry apology, and a victim of its ubiquity. It's everywhere, because it's so easy to say, so effortlessly curt.

It should be complicated, a chore to enunciate, with a few tricky vowels and a couple more awkward consonants.

Something that requires a deep breath and a modicum of thought before it can be negotiated.

Then I’ll be sorry, and glad of it too.

Girls on film (and a couple of boys)

2011-06-05T23:46:00.000-07:00

I think this was the first article I had published in Australia, for Oyster magazine in 2005. It certainly isn’t the best thing I’ve ever written, but it might be my favourite topic.

In homage to the actresses and actors that have inspired us with their sartorial invention, Oyster salutes those enduring exemplars of celluloid cool who have ensured their place in the pantheon of fashion.

Film and fashion have always enjoyed an intimate relationship, with each art informing the other.

The leading names in fashion design take their cue from the cinema’s foremost style icons, who are in turn influenced by the runway.

One of the earliest style icons of the cinema came in the angular and androgynous form of Marlene Dietrich, and her indelible influence on fashion is as strong today as it was seventy years ago.

The femme fatale Dietrich’s confrontational deployment of masculinity, and realisation that women didn’t need to sacrifice their sensuality in order to don menswear, was channelled in recent collections by Valentino, Viktor & Rolf, Prada and Helmut Lang.

A different sort of provocation was represented by the playful vivacity of gamine Givenchy muse Audrey Hepburn, who did much to redefine the concept of femininity.

Hepburn and designer Hubert Givenchy dispensed with the exuberance of earlier eras in favour of something decidedly more understated: refined – albeit irreverent – elegance as opposed to overblown ostentation. Elfin and kooky, yet impeccably graceful, Hepburn infused left bank bohemia with an aristocratic sensibility to inspirational effect.

Her slender frame – a sophisticated retort to the dominant hourglass physique – was adorned with chic simplicity: capri pants, wide brimmed hats, oversize sunglasses, sleeveless frocks, hooped earrings, turtlenecks and trench coats. And she did more for the little black dress than anyone bar Coco Chanel.

If Hepburn was the brunette du jour of the late 50s, Grace Kelly was the blonde. She looked good in every film she made, but her finest fashion moments occurred in Rear Window and To Catch a Thief.

In the former she plays a paradoxically steely and sensuous socialite magazine editor, affluently attired in Christian Dior’s ‘New Look’. And in the latter the Princess-to-be sports a prom queen meets euro-sophisticate style.

Revelling in the Riviera setting, Kelly is the embodiment of exquisiteness, deliciously delicate with immaculate hair, pristine white gloves, and pastel frocks as polished as her vowels.

How a mere mortal is supposed to successfully replicate the savoir-faire of Grace Kelly is another matter altogether, but fortunately the canon of cinema has also thrown up some more attainable looks, like those featured in Jean Luc Godard’s seminal slice of French New Wave À bout de souffle.

Subversive, seditious and sexy as hell, the film changed cinema forever, and thanks to the existentialist chic of its two protagonists Jean Seberg and Jean Paul Belmondo, also stimulated the catwalk and the high street.

Seberg stars as the mischievously impish Patricia. Sauntering down the Champs Elysee flaunting a cheeky Americanised take on Parisian style, she practically screams ‘Icon’. Effortlessly hip with close cropped hair, logoed t-shirt, cute pedal pushers and ballet flats, and looking equally cool in a stripy top and underwear or a demure black and white dress, coquettishly feigning naivety while really giving a rebellious come on to corruption.

In contrast to the pixie-like Patricia is ex-boxer Belmondo’s Michel. Cigarette permanently in mouth, an intensity of expression halfway between seductive and scary, and an arrogant swagger, this smooth criminal exudes sex infused insouciance. And with a crookedly positioned fedora offset by sharp suits and sharper ties, not to mention bright white socks, the man looks exceedingly dapper. Who says crime doesn’t pay?

Not Bonnie and Clyde, who thanks to Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty will be forever revered as the coolest convicts in history. The film’s defiantly chic yet historically accurate aesthetic had a tremendous impact on the late 60s fashion scene and inspired a revival of 1930s styles from the likes of YSL, allowing boys and girls worldwide to emulate the Bonnie & Clyde look.

Beatty attains iconic status with the finesse of his attire and the poise with which he wears it, while Dunaway is a voguish revelation, re-popularising the beret and sparking a craze for fitted mid-length skirts and tight sweaters in impossibly soft fabrics.

The prudes bemoaned the evident eroticisation of criminality but designers and the public were more than appreciative.

As they were of Annie Hall. Released in 1977, Woody Allen’s film caused a commotion in the fashion industry, with Diane Keaton’s Ralph Lauren designed look of trousers, ties and man shirts exhibiting a very NYC devotion to functionality which was adopted by thousands of everyday women worldwide.

It’s a look that still enjoys prominence today, with Karen Walker, Stella McCartney and Chloe borrowing liberally from Keaton’s gloriously uncoordinated yet eminently wearable appropriation of menswear.

New York was also responsible for Wild Style’s visceral depiction of the burgeoning b-boy culture, which helped set in motion hip hop’s eventual domination of streetwear.

Still with the 80s, Madonna’s messy make-up and expertly dishevelled threads in Desperately Seeking Susan spawned a legion of material girl imitators.

And like Madonna, Quentin Tarantino had an incendiary impact on the visual aesthetics of pop culture. His films are notable for their terrifically turned out characters, wearing outfits that have inspired a host of designers, including Dior Homme’s Hedi Slimane, whose sleek silhouettes, lean fits, fondness for black and white, and details such as blood stains on shirts distinctly recall Reservoir Dogs.

So it seems that cinema’s stimulation of fashion design, and indeed vice versa, is destined to continue. The eternal search for inspiration means that all creative forms on expression will inevitably cross over. And while they do so, it is we, the style attentive consumer, who will reap the benefits.

Charith and Patricia

2010-05-13T00:59:00.000-07:00

The woman I'm going to marry is 85 yrs old, reads French literature in French, is currently learning Russian so she can read Dostoevsky in his original tongue, is also learning Italian, regularly drives from Melbourne to Sydney so she can listen to Chopin at length and be alone with her thoughts, volunteers at an immigrant detention centre among “proud, intelligent men” whom she “respects and loves” and "who don't deserve to be imprisoned like criminals", fights with the ‘prison’ guards on a daily basis, lives in a retirement home and avoids contact with the other residents who are all “ignorant old bags” who should “quit worrying about perfectly charming immigrants and start worrying about their own sorry, toxic lives”, abhors nationalism, regularly visits the graves of the Turkish dead at Gallipoli, reverted back to her maiden name as her kids were getting too embarrassed about constantly seeing her name in The Age's letter page, suffers from intense depression which she tries to ward off by helping others and losing herself in her thousands of books, says the best thing about being over 80 is “that nobody looks at you any more, just through you, so you can be pretty well invisible and say exactly what you want to, and they just think you’re an eccentric old cow”, is the only person in the world who agrees with me that Eustacia is indeed a wonderful name for my future daughter, is an avowed atheist, fights the power at every juncture, claims that she’s much too attractive for the vast majority of men her age, and much too intelligent for them too, loves impressionism but sometimes lies to people and says she prefers cubism in order to make herself sound more interesting, drinks two glasses of brandy – straight – every night, once got drunk with an Afghani woman in a burka, refuses to watch television news or buy any newspaper associated with Rupert Murdoch, would “stab Sarah Palin if it wasn’t for my arthritis”, and is often ashamed to be a white Australian.

I interviewed her this morning, via telephone, and we both fell a little bit in love. We’re having lunch next week. She said “you are lucky if you have three close friends”, and that she only has one.

Well now she has two.

I shall be her knight in shiny new loafers, and prove to her that most people are idiots, but I am not most people.

Update: We never did get around to getting lunch. I had to cancel. Then I forgot to reschedule. Now I'm too scared to call in case she's dead.

La Haine

2010-03-30T03:34:00.000-07:00

(An old, previously published piece on La Haine. Well I think it was published somewhere, or maybe it was rejected. I can't recall. It's good though)

Befitting a film whose title translates as hate, Matthew Kassovitz’s incendiary indictment of a fractured France struck an indignant cinematic fist through the hypocrisies of Liberté, égalité, fraternité.

A monochrome shot, hip hop soundtracked day in the life of ‘les banlieues’ – the crime ridden, run down suburbs on the periphery of Paris – La Haine follows three ethnically diverse friends as they react to the brutal police beating of one of their estate’s Arab inhabitants, and the rioting which ensued.

Vinz - an angry young Jew prone to De Niro impersonations and visions of cows, Said - a hyperactive sex obsessed Arab, and Hubert - a black man whose aspirations of becoming a boxer have been dented by the destruction of his gym during the previous night’s unrest, provide a bleak snapshot of an ethnic French underclass on the brink of explosion.

Eschewing a conventional narrative, and offering forth a contemptuous vision of contemporary France, the film’s protagonists wander aimlessly around a desolate housing estate, and a Paris that seems set on excluding them, as they find themselves embroiled in various incidents which anticipate the film’s shattering finale.

Kassovitz makes few concessions to impartiality, and his movie’s morality is as black and white as the stock on which it’s shot, featuring a corrupt, uniformly racist police force intent on brutalising and dehumanising the capital’s racially mixed, terminally underprivileged youth: the one dissenting, well intentioned voice in the police proves ineffective amidst the prevailing bigotry.

La Haine is less an objective meditation on the roots and ramifications of France’s social ills, and more a provocative condemnation of officialdom and authority. As the director himself stated at Cannes, where he received the Best Director award, “La Haine is an anti-police film and that is how I meant it to be understood”.

Few solutions are offered, but the film’s overriding pessimism proved sufficiently shocking to initiate intense political debate in France, and ensure that the problems rife in ‘les banlieues’ exited the ghettos and entered the mainstream.

Far removed from the fantasy and whimsy of less confrontational French fare a la Amélie, and taking its cinematic cues from Cassavettes and Scorsese, La Haine mixed urban grit with visual invention in as realistic and relevant a depiction of societal malaise ever documented, and duly (and deservedly) attained iconic status in little over a decade.

Revelatory Relaxation

2010-03-11T21:30:00.000-08:00

Losing my job had its benefits, chief of which was all this idle time I suddenly found myself with. Idle time is easily my favourite kind of time. It’s the closest thing I have to leisure. I don’t get the phrase ‘leisure pursuits’. If it’s a pursuit, then how is it leisurely? A pursuit is an activity, and activity requires one to be active, and one cannot be leisurely if one is actively in pursuit of something. Leisure for me is blissfully lying down, eyes closed & mind open. Sometimes I kid myself that I can relax with a book or a magazine, but I can't, and I soon realise that fact after a few pages and put it down.

I know I'm supposed to use this free time to aggressively search for work, but that in itself is an activity, and even in the midst of poverty I'm still not inclined to be active. There are better ways to spend my time, and my brain (and consequently my overall well-being) has benefited as a result.

Being unemployed has allowed me to lie down on my couch and think. And it’s the best kind of thinking. The kind when you’re not really thinking. That’s when you have the best thoughts - when your mind is relaxed, and instead of trying to focus on thoughts, the thoughts (by their own volition and at their own - leisurely - pace) focus on you. They’re so much clearer and deeper that way because they’ve come to you intact, and you don’t need to search for them and piece each elusive fragment together, bit by bit.

I’ve been averaging an epiphany an hour while lying down on my couch. That’s pretty good going. Unfortunately I'm also fond of a particular herb which, while undoubtedly in possession of certain mind-expanding qualities, is not especially conducive to retaining ideas, nor memory in general. Therefore many of the aforementioned epiphanies have been lost, often mere minutes after they emerge, and thereafter destined to meander around the maelstrom of my mind amongst all those other stray ideas, submissive and silent, until a suitably significant event arises to triggers them back to life.

That's cool though - when they do eventually appear it's like finding $20 in the pocket of a jacket which you haven't worn in months, or experiencing a flashback from an ancient acid trip (that was always the chief of appeal of acid to me, it's like 2 for the price of 1!). And besides, with an epiphany an hour you can afford for a few to go errant.

These hourly epiphanies range from the seemingly trivial (the notion that I'm only as good as my last haircut) to the profound (the realisation that when it comes to love, the best I can hope for is to be the one that got away). They're not necessarily epiphanies I can act on (no 'EUREKA!' moments as such), nor are they epiphanies that are going to change the world. But they are very personal moments of sudden insight, revelations that were hidden from me prior to my idle time, and nuggets of subtle wisdom that give me a slightly better understanding of who I really am, and what it is that I'm doing with my life, or should be doing. And if I was in full-time employment, I wouldn't have had them, so when any prospective employers ask me what I've been doing this past month, I know exactly what to say.

Cinema Paradiso

2010-01-19T21:49:00.000-08:00

The thing about cinema, when done right, is that it's able to incorporate everything that's great and powerful and profound and beautiful about all the other artistic mediums and roll them into one glorious sensory assault that hits you on every level.

The best films are essentially literature and painting and music and theatre and dance and documentary and fairytale and opera combined, but with something else too, something which holds them all together, and something which burns their stories and images and sounds and performances onto my brain forever.

That doesn't mean it makes the other mediums obsolete. Of course it doesn't, and a perfectly poised three minute pop song i.e. Dionne Warwick doing Walk on By will still always wow me and floor me and excite me and move me like nothing else.

But there's something about the movies.

So when I look back on my life, which my narcissism impels me to do regularly, and ponder those truly defining moments that have made me who I am, or who I think I am, my thoughts fix on those films that have meant the most to me.

I mean, I can literally close my eyes and picture a favourite scene and I'm transported to when I first saw it, or when I first REALLY saw it, when it first clicked, and made sense, and affected me. And it feels good. Here’s a couple of those scenes for now (more to follow soon).

I can probably pinpoint the precise moment when I REALLY fell in love with both cinema and music to when Harvey Keitel's head hits that pillow and the opening drums of Be my baby kicks in, which is the greatest song ever recorded in case you didn’t know (and this is definitely my favourite movie). I’d heard the song before (in Dirty Dancing) but I hadn’t seen anything like Mean Streets.

I was 14 when I first saw it, on Channel 4 back in England. It was 10pm on a school night but Dad let me stay up and watch it. I didn’t really know what to expect, although the TV guide referred to it as ‘seminal’, which I had to look up in the dictionary. All I really knew was that it was a gangster film, and I liked gangsters because they were cool and lawless and didn’t answer to anyone, and I was a pretty awkward kid who would count the hours until bedtime so I could dream about getting a gun and getting the girl.

Well Mean Streets changed my life. Not in any tangible way I guess, but it made me realise what a camera and an actor can do (set alight to your soul – I’m not being hyperbolic – it really did!) and that anything truly cool in life always has a soundtrack. The music never stops – Phil Spector, The Stones, Nu-Yorican soul, Opera – and to this day, when I’m walking down the streets and Be my baby or Jumpin’ Jack Flash comes on my iPod I start swaggering as if I’m in a Scorsese movie and I own that sidewalk.

The film is so raggedly, and ferociously, beautiful. Scorsese’s camera is practically possessed – I didn’t know cameras could move so much – frantically at times, yet with grace. Colour – I had no idea how colour could make a film until I saw Mean Streets! It’s full of violent hues – neon red and the electric blue of the streets. And the story – in one sense it’s a collection of expertly executed & seemingly inconsequential vignettes, but there’s also an overarching theme, of redemption, or rather, the elusiveness of redemption; the opening line of the movie (which has been cut from this Youtube clip) is "You don't make up for your sins at church; you do it in the streets; you do it at home. The rest is bullshit, and you know it." Thematically heavy shit, but delivered so nimbly and with such vitality - I guess it’s possible for someone to be bored during Mean Streets but I would imagine that person is also bored with life, and they certainly wouldn’t be any friend of mine.

This was also De Niro’s first major role – he plays Johnny Boy, which is what I eventually named my Teddy Bear (previously called ‘Teddy’). Johnny Boy is the one fictional character I identify with the most, although I’m actually not really anything like him. He’s the romanticized Chaz – reckless and incendiary, all action and completely fearless. He’s out of control, and it’s clear from the beginning that his story isn’t going to end well. But self-destruction rarely looked this cool.

It’s apt that someone who loves film would pick Mean Streets as their very favourite. Scorsese, more so than any other contemporary director, is a student of cinema, and while Mean Streets is determinedly fresh, it’s also heavily indebted to the French New Wave and American auteurs like Cassavetes. I wouldn’t have known any of this if it wasn’t for the fact that Mean Streets made me want to know EVERYTHING about the movies. There's even an interlude in the film where the characters actually go to the movies, to see John Ford's The Searchers.

And back to the intro – that Super 8 home movie footage is just so real. Reality's a hard thing for a filmmaker to portray, maybe even the hardest, but Scorsese takes you into his world and onto his streets – right from the film’s beginning. I can smell New York when I’m watching it, because I don’t really watch it… I live it. But it’s not just a recreation of reality – it’s avant-garde too.. surreal at times.. it’s basically everything, or at least it’s everything to me.

I’m just really blurting out these words, somewhat inarticulately I suspect, but one day I’d like to do this proper – write a book about why this is the most amazing piece of art I’ve ever been exposed to.

I watched Goodfellas a few months later (my dad got it for me for my 15th birthday) and I loved it almost as much, but not quite. It was a little too slick, and everyone else had seen it. Mean Streets was gritty and raw and immature – and at least amongst my friends, nobody really knew it. So it was all mine, and I still think of it as all mine to this day.

Brief Encounter is ostensibly nothing like Mean Streets – it’s a black & white, quintessentially British love story. I was a lot older when I first saw it (about 21) and I liked it a lot, but I was even older when I first REALLY saw it, when I ‘got it’. I think that, aside from maybe Anna Karenina and one or two Bacharach & David songs, it’s the greatest love story ever.

A man and a woman, both married to other people, meet at a train station. She gets grit in her eye, he removes it, and they fall violently in love.

And they never fall out of love, but they’re good people, with good spouses, and so they say goodbye, except, as the above scene shows, it’s barely a goodbye at all, and so horribly cruel. As Laura (played perfectly by Celia Johnson who does most of her acting with her eyes) says: “I've fallen in love. I'm an ordinary woman. I didn't think such violent things could happen to ordinary people."

And it really is violent. And yet nothing happens, at least on screen. Not one single kiss! The most passionate, romantic and brutal movie I’ve ever seen, and not so much as a kiss.

It’s a film that could only have been made in England. It’s about reserve, and how emotion is at its most potent when restrained. I love the English stiff upper lip, because when it eventually quivers, you know that it’s been moved by something real. No counterfeit emotion here – just the real deal: all consuming love.

It’s also a film that could only have been written by Noel Coward. Coward was gay during an era that wasn’t especially hospitable to homosexuals, and so this is a film about the impossibility of love – how unfulfilled passion kills ‘ordinary people’.

The above scene, the movie’s last, are the most devastating 6 minutes in British Cinema. They’re trying to say goodbye forever. If the Rachmaninov on the soundtrack doesn’t make you cry, the look in their eyes will. These are probably the most precious moments of their life, and they have the most beautiful, dignified, heartbreakingly sincere exchange: “I do love you, so very much. I love you with all my heart and soul”; “I want to die. If only I could die...”; “If you'd die, you'd forget me. I want to be remembered”; “Yes I know, I do too”; “We’ve only got a few minutes”.. and then the moment is suddenly punctured by the shrill words of the unexpected guest: “Laura, what a lovely surprise!” The irony of those words… it’s clearly the least lovely surprise possible. So cruel, and excruciating to watch – even now, when I must have seen that scene at least 50 times, the way the whole tragedy unfurls just kills me.

And then: “I felt the touch of his hand on my shoulder for a moment, and then he walked away. Away out of my life forever”. And that’s it – not even a ‘goodbye’. It’s so perfect – you wish it was different, but you know it can’t be.

And when it all becomes too much she runs to jump in front of the train (just like Anna Karenina did) only she stops short. Again – this is a film about what doesn’t happen. Every time I watch it I wish she just jumped.

About five years ago I had a fight with the girl I was in love with, and later in the day I sent her a text to say that Brief Encounter was on television and that she should watch it as she might like it. She texted me as soon as it finished with, “If you'd die, you'd forget me. I want to be remembered”, and that was when I really knew she was special, and that’s also probably the biggest compliment I could pay this film.

New Year's Resolutions

2009-12-30T20:03:00.000-08:00

1. If at all possible, say what I mean, and be as mean as possible when I say it.

2. Reinvent myself as a Spector-esque svengali / musical genius and manufacture my own girl group called ‘The Chazettes’ who go on to have three consecutive number 1 hits (UK & US) before all the girls (inevitably) fall in love with me (massively), infighting ensues, the whole thing collapses, and I drift back into oblivion.

3. When conversing with girls, stealthily pepper my speech with Morrissey lyrics (and claim those words as my own) in order to feign wit and erudition i.e. “We can go for a walk where it's quiet and dry, and talk about precious things, but the rain that flattens my hair - these are the things that kill me”.

4. Think less and dream more.

5. Invest in a hair dryer and trouser press.

6. Try and be a bit more sensible with my footwear purchases i.e. avoid brightly coloured suede. $750 is a lot of money to spend on a pair of shoes that you ruin at Revolver within three weeks of purchase.

7. Buy more socks instead.

8. Continue to stay away from anything even remotely resembling exercise (except dancing), avoid healthy foodstuffs, keep smoking, keep drinking, never moisturise, get minimal sleep etc. I’m 30 years old and can pass for 17 when cleanly shaven, which means I must be doing something right. On that note, lock up your 17yr old daughters.

9. Stop making up stories to Sudanese cab drivers about how “my family were massacred in a civil war and I’m thus bringing up my 2 younger siblings by myself” in an (ordinarily successful yet enormously shameful) attempt to get cheaper fares.

10. Stop spending $300 on you know what. It’s inordinately expensive, massively overrated, turns nice folk into wankers, and wankers (i.e. me) into even bigger wankers. It’s not big and it’s not clever (and yet I wish I was home right now so I could get on it instead of writing this).

11. Regularly tell my friends that I love them (and mean it, obviously).

12. Listen to criticism and ignore all compliments. Compliments are so pointless - all they do is tell me what I already know: “Nice shoes Chaz.” Well what the fuck else did you expect?!

13. Get at least one bad haircut in order to better empathise with the rest of the world.

14. Use the word ‘delicious’ more. It’s probably my favourite word, and certainly one of the most underrated. It even sounds delicious. Go on, say it slowly and try not to drool – ‘dee-lishh-ousss’. It's almost onomatopoeic (sorta) in that in order to mouth the word you practically have to mimic the act of eating.

15. Never believe a single thing that the government or mainstream media tell me. I take offence at the negative/dismissive connotations of the term ‘conspiracy theorist’. Once you accept the proposition that the institutions that govern/control us do not have our best interests at heart (and really, you’d have to be a fucking idiot not to realise that) and are only concerned with pursuing their own nefarious agenda, then surely the people questioning, disputing and rebelling against these institutions are amongst the sanest people alive? If the Global Financial Crisis, Israel/Palestine, Afghanistan/Iraq, doesn’t wake people the fuck up (which it hasn’t) then we’re all fucked (which we are).

16. Be a better son.

17. Channel George Costanza / Larry David more

18. Use the lyrics for Scott Walker's Jackie as a design for life.

Tramps like us (and we like tramps)

2009-12-13T21:27:00.000-08:00

There’s an old homeless woman I see a couple of times a week in the courtyard of my building.

She wheels around a little trolley which holds a few boxes and a tartan blanket, wears a tattered patchwork dress and scuffed brown shoes, has an unruly head of wispy grey cotton candy hair that looks like it hasn't been washed for at least a decade, and her skin is so worn and wrinkled that I'm sure every single line could tell a story.

She doesn't ask anyone for money, so the security guards generally just leave her alone. All she does is pick up cigarette butts from the floor, then sit down and smoke them while gazing into nothingness.

I'd love to know what she's thinking about. She has a kind face but a sad gaze - I always look right at her and smile, and occasionally she meets my eyes, but always seems to look right through me.

I don't think she's crazy, but she's definitely lost. That must be hard - being old, but still so alone. I'd like to talk to her but I wouldn't know what to say, so sometimes I just sit on a bench near her, smoking, with my headphones on but the volume down, hoping she'd ask me for a cigarette so we could start a conversation. She never does.

I've made up a back-story for her. Her name is Natasha and she is from Russia. She was a great beauty when she was younger and had many suitors but only one true love. His name was Andrei, and although he was poor, he was strong and handsome and kind and clever, so she married him at 18 against her family's wishes. Russia was tough, but Andrei loved Natasha very much and made her very happy, and when he asked her to move to Australia she trusted that it was the right thing to do and knew that she'd be happy as long as she was with him. Australia wasn't as tough as Russia and although they missed their motherland lots they were the happiest they had ever been. But before Andrei could give Natasha a child he died while cycling to his job at the factory. He was hit by a car, and Natasha had to identify the body, and when she saw him her heart broke, and some hearts stay broken for ever.

I haven't thought too much about what happened next, because it wouldn't be very nice. But here she is now - 40 or 50 years later - in my courtyard a couple times a week.

My dad used to work at a psychiatric institution called Severalls, and sometimes on school holidays I'd come into work with him and he'd let me wander around the grounds on my own.

It was almost pretty. There were trees and bushes and a few flower gardens and lots of birds. But the buildings were horrible - fading bricks, harsh, oppressive concrete, and endless sterile corridors full of lost souls and unsympathetic staff - a little like a prison I would imagine. And there was an imposing water tower in the middle - I always used to imagine patients trying to climb up it and jump off.

Severalls was built in 1910, and looked like it too. It also hosted plenty of questionable experiments in the past, such as electro-convulsive therapy and lobotomies.

Apparently, back in the day, many of the patients had been admitted by their own families for simply having an illegitimate child. They slowly went mad, and were eventually lobotomised, and although I don't believe in ghosts, there was something ghostly about the place. It scared me and I liked it a lot.

Dad was never worried about his young son roaming around what was effectively a mental asylum, and the doctors and nurses and porters never seemed to notice me. But the patients did.

I remember how I would never see them in groups, or even in pairs. They were always so solitary, and I think I liked that because I was a solitary kid. I was a bit too young to really know why they were the way they are, and why society deemed them to be in need of 'treatment'. But I did know that they weren't like most people - 'normal' people I mean.

They would just sort of wander over, and look at me, and sometimes smile, and sometimes talk. And sometimes I would even wander over to them.

I remember all of this quite vividly, but I can't recall the content of a single conversation I had with them, which is a pity, as I'm sure a kid and a mental patient would have some beautiful discussions. But something did stick with me, and perhaps made me a little bit more predisposed to the vagrants and tramps and all those other peculiar people who exist on the periphery.

I always think of them whenever I see 'Natasha'. I can imagine her being institutionalised when all she really probably needed was a hug and a friend.

What goes up can bring you down

2009-11-25T22:59:00.000-08:00

Is there such a thing as upskirt etiquette? Earlier on today a sudden gust of wind sent a girl's skirt flying right up to her waist and after sneaking a sly two second glimpse I swiftly averted my eyes.

This seems about right to me. I mean, she WAS rather attractive, and right in front of me, and I'm heterosexual, AND she had on a g-string, so I couldn't NOT look, right?

But for the most part, upskirts are much better in theory than in practice. For every attractive young thing in a thong that may make your day, you're forced to witness 20 heffers with putrid folds of fanny flab feebly held in place by a pair of sexless granny pants.

The revelation of flesh is fine from a budding lingerie model, but an accidental flash from a larger proportioned woman - particularly one not especially acquainted with vaginal hygiene - ain't pretty and can scar you for life. I know this because I have been scarred for life.

I've had two defining upskirt moments.

The first was courtesy of a spectacular Asian girl at Dandenong station (truly a diamond in the rough) a few years ago. As she descended the stairs an over-amorous breeze playfully lifted up her skirt (seemingly in slow motion) to reveal this lithe little body clad in surprisingly scandalous lingerie - stockings and suspenders no less. I guess she may have been a prostitute, although a very expensive one I would imagine given that she couldn't have been much older than 18 and was certainly the hottest Oriental on the Pakenham line.

She just sort of stood there with a sensual stillness, like a suburban goddess - so carefree, so comfortable, so HOT - as the soft fabric of her buttercup coloured summer dress swirled around her almost adolescent hips while her inappropriate underwear invited your eyes to caress her every curve.

Myself and the rest of the male commuters at the station (being Dandenong they were either African, Indian or inebriated) stared transfixed, united in lust. And then a few seconds later the wind quit its teasing, the dress descended, and she came down the stairs and right into my heart.

I appreciate this makes me sound unnervingly perverted, but I wear my perversions on my sleeve (and she wore hers on her thighs) and I make no apologies. And besides, any happiness I derived from that moment has been brutally counteracted by the horror of my other defining upskirt moment.

I've borne witness to many a vomit-inducing upskirt at the Rooftop bar in Melbourne's CBD. A lot of the patrons are tourists from less sunny parts of the world, such as England, and are thus neither as tanned nor as toned as your average Australian girl. That's fair enough, and I don't judge them for it. Except that is when they flail around on the astroturf with their legs spread and their dignity shattered.

EVERY SINGLE TIME I'm there, which is quite often during the summer months, I'm reminded why modest clothing is an excellent idea and why the Taliban aren't all bad. I know you're on holiday, but cover the fuck up for fucks sake - I like my white girls demure and my Asians out of control.

But one such occasion induced more vomit than the rest. Writing about it doesn't help either. It's imprinted on my psyche and all I have to do is close my eyes and I'm immediately assaulted by one of the most shocking images I've ever suffered to see.

It's up there with the Buddhist monk who set himself alight protesting Vietnam, '2 girls, 1 cup', and Fergie.

I can't quite recall what exactly she was wearing, other than the fact that it was far too short and she was far too large, and if I come across as a little misogynistic it's only 'cause she was a whole lotta disgusting. Or rather, one particular part of her was a whole lotta disgusting.

It looked like 2 beef burgers with a bit of lettuce in the middle. Why the fuck wouldn't you wear underwear if your reproductive organs resembled a Big Mac? Maybe she needed to air it.. I would imagine something so foul looking also packed quite a stench. Or maybe it actually ATE her underwear. Regardless, I spat out my beer, and knew full well that even though it was only a 2 second glimpse, I would be living with that moment for the rest of my life and no amount of teenaged Asian Marilyn's could ever rid me of it.

Whenever I want you, all I have to do is dream...

2009-11-11T19:22:00.000-08:00

I had a beautiful dream last night. It was me and Grace Kelly except she wasn't Grace Kelly.

She had the frock, the arms, the pretty little hands, the dainty neck, the exquisite back and the slender legs. She even carried herself like Grace Kelly, with that polished posture and aristocratic gait – a barely perceptible slink of the hips with every step... slinking her way right into my heart.

Thing is, her face wasn’t Grace Kelly’s. It wasn't anyone's. It was blank, but then it wasn't blank. It was as if her face could've been anybody’s, but then not just anybody - but somebody; somebody I wanted it to be.

And I don't know who I want it to be (although I have my suspicions). I just know it could be someone; someone real, not imaginary, not fictional, not unattainable; that I could touch and kiss and hold and who would love me back, like Cathy loved Heathcliff or Anna loved Vronsky, and it was wonderful because I know Cathy or Anna could never love me back, but this faceless Grace could, and would, and in that vacant visage was everything I ever wanted.

And Van Morrison was playing in the background; “If I venture in the slipstream, between the viaducts of your dreams”.

Dreaming in stereo…

I don't know if that makes sense, but I know it was beautiful. And I don't know if it was a short dream or a long dream, but I guess that doesn't matter. It was me and this gorgeous apparition who didn't seem like an apparition at all. And all we did was hold hands, for maybe hours or maybe minutes, and when I woke up my heart was beating.

I rarely have beautiful dreams, and I rarely remember them if so, and I’m sure I’m not alone in this. It's the not so beautiful dreams I remember - the strange ones, the scary ones, the sad ones. And these are the dreams I usually have.

It might even be a factor in my insomnia; maybe I subconsciously resist sleep because I don't like the places my thoughts - impudent at best, outright masochistic at worse - wander off to while I'm slumbering. They are not nightmares as such, and are often quite mundane, but they are loaded with all kinds of anxiety, precisely (perhaps) because they are so mundane. The tedium of the everyday is as terminal as anything I can think of.

I only really have two fears in life - mediocrity and dying alone. The former is sheer paranoia, and I'm gradually getting over it, and every new day provides further validation that I'm not normal or average - 'normal' being a bad thing, obviously. But mediocrity is so fucking frightening to me that even though I'm (hopefully) a long way away from it, it still scares the shit out of me.

The latter fear - dying alone - is much more pronounced though, and that's because it's much more justified. I don't mind the living alone part, even if it is lonely, but the thought of dying alone kills me.

It's my own fault. I read too many books and I watch too many old movies and I spend way too much time with these incredible fictional creations - these ideals of feminine perfection - sensitive, beautiful, intelligent, kind, witty, and a little bit wild. And the love affairs these women have, and which I'm privy to, are so passionate, so intimate (in both senses), so romantic, and so powerful. They soar, and they take you with them, which is why as far as I'm concerned, love stories are the only stories. Problem is they're not real.

So when I venture into the real world, which on occasion I have to do, I look for perfection. I'm also very conscious of the fact that I'm far from perfect myself, but if you don't aim high, what's the point? If you settle for mediocrity, then really, what is the point?

I'm not perfect, but I have something, and it'd be nice if there was someone who saw that something and perhaps had something themselves, and together those somethings would be an everything (I think that’s how it works), and while nobody ever lives happily ever after, at least they live (on occasion), and the only way to live is to love and be loved, right?

Remember the A-Ha video for Take on me? I'd love something like that to happen to me, except instead of falling into a comic book, I would fall into Wuthering Heights, or Anna Karenina, or Casablanca, and it would all end unhappily ever after, but like Humphrey Bogart says in 'In a Lonely Place', "I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me". It's those few weeks that are important, that make everything else worthwhile.

And even though you die when she leaves you, you don't really die alone, because you'll never forget what you had, and when you die what you had is by your side, not comforting as such, but a reminder that you didn't live in vain, and I'm quite sure most people live in vain, and I don't want to be most people.

I never dream about falling into a book or a film by the way, but I daydream about it. It's mostly the only thing I daydream about.

But my actual dreams, at nighttime, are like a Bergman film or an Ibsen play - black and white, desolate, oppressive. There is a beauty to them I guess, but it's a sad beauty, and they are not the kind of films or books you’d want to fall into, because you'll drown.

But I had a beautiful dream last night, and maybe I'll have some more, and maybe the beautiful dreams will entwine with the not so beautiful reality, and then that reality will be a little bit more beautiful. Maybe.

The ballad of Frankie Valli

2009-10-14T19:47:00.000-07:00

Frankie Valli came into my life at a time when I really needed Frankie Valli to come into my life.

Steve Serene had just pumped his final vial of smack into those beautiful brown arms and I had to convince his mother that the overdose was surely accidental so as to spare her from contending with the suicide of a son and a husband; Victoria, who was one of the good ones, realised I wasn’t, and promptly headed towards less precarious pastures; and dad would hide mum’s pills while she would hide his whiskey.

But one sultry Sri Lankan summer evening, just before the monsoons came down and the mosquitoes came out, while I was struggling to get comfy on a torn bamboo cane couch, staring up at the rickety ceiling fan, listening to Tony’s scratched 7 inch of "Walk like a man", a tiny little kitten, snow white save for a few tangerine blotches, nonchalantly hops up the front door step, trots over to where I was lying, and opens its mouth to meow, but nothing comes out, and he tries again, but there's silence, and he looks so confused, so I grasp him with an outstretched hand, place him on my sweaty chest, and he leans forward and, just as the chorus kicks in, nibbles my nose:

Walk like a man
Talk like a man
Walk like a man my son
No woman's worth
Crawling on the earth
Just walk like a man my son

And I said (all Sri Lankans talk out loud to animals) "Thanks Frankie, this must be a sign". And I really believed it was. I’d been feeling especially vulnerable, and if Frankie was outside on the streets for one hour longer he would have drowned in the rains. But instead fate decreed that an emotionally crippled human and a mute kitten would become friends.

We had a fair few adventures during those two weeks.. nothing too strenuous, he was only a kitten remember.. but plenty of fun.

We'd go down the beach so he could jump on the backs of turtles, or head to the hotels so the pretty young Italian tourists could swoon over how soft he was, and at night we'd hang out in my dead uncle's empty house, staring through the window at the downpour outside, with a glass of scotch in my hand and a bowl of milk by his paws; but our favourite game was the following (copied and pasted from an old email I'd sent some friends at the time):

"The other day i learnt that fireflies maintain luminance up to an hour after their Chaz inflicted death. For a creative mind such as my own, this can be the catalyst for all sorts of inebriated hilarity. The best game I've come up with so far is to kill two fireflies, turn off the lights, place them on a tiled floor (ideally a floor which has slight grooves between said tiles) and then flick them. If done correctly this game should bear an uncanny resemblance to the film Tron. However, if you have a kitten it might prove prudent to use your discretion, as i'm pretty sure Tron didn't feature a feline called Frankie Valli which ate the speeder bikes and somersaulted all over the tracks".

Chaz and Frankie (or Frankie and Chaz as he’d have put it).. two drifters off to see the world (and there's such a lot of world to see). But if happiness was forever it wouldn’t be special, and I duly received an email from a magazine in London telling me to come in for an interview.

At the time it was my dream job, and although I thought long and hard about coming home, and leaving my new best friend, I realised that this was the end. I loved that kitten, I really did, but it turns out that I loved myself much more, because the decision wasn't even that difficult to make. My career took precedence over his well being, and I determined to pack my bags and leave at once.

For a supposedly Buddhist country (a religion which preaches benevolence to all creatures) Sri Lankans are so very callous when it comes to animals, particularly strays, so I had to make sure Frankie had a good home before I left.

Luckily the local temple practised what they preached, and prided themselves in being a haven for destitute pets. I gave the head priest 10,000 rupees (as a gesture.. he didn't ask for any money of course) and left Frankie with him. I kissed him on the forehead (the kitten.. not the priest) and departed.. my dejection tempered by my belief that I was doing the right thing.. for me.

So I arrive in London, attend the interview, and find out two days later that I was unsuccessful. I immediately phone Sri Lanka, and ask a friend of my father to check up on Frankie. He phones back the next day, informing me that Frankie had run away on the same night that I had left for England. A stray kitten wouldn't last five minutes on his own.. he could get run over, savaged by a dog, drown, or simply starve.

And one year later, back in Sri Lanka, at my granddad’s house up high in the hill country, an impudent little black and white cat rocked through the open doors, and I kicked him out straight away, knowing it would all end in tears.