Spitfires: "Up in the Air, I fly..."

I was in Duxford this weekend, just outside Cambridge, escorting Bram to the Duxford Air Show, a display of old war birds, (English, American and German). I have to admit that the Spitfires remain the most breathtaking. Check them out as a group of them line up to come in and perform fly past. As they roar past, their Rolls Royce Merlin engines screaming and their elliptical wings silhouetted against the sky, you can't help but stop breathing for the briefest of seconds. I was also pretty impressed by the German Focke wulf, which thrashed its way around the sky as it were fresh off the factory line, (and not over sixty years old!)

The Sunlight in Calais falls mainly on the train (station)

Voila une photo que j'ai prise a 21h dimanche soir en rentrant à Paris de Cambridge. La lumière d'été est vraiment belle en France. Elle est à la fois douce et puissante et elle rends pictoresque même les endroits les plus banals.

Michael Leunig

A little bit of encouragement from Australian cartoonist and national treasure, Michael Leunig.

Psychoville

There's something in the water in Britain that keeps them pumping out quality comedy- and it's not flouride.

The boys who brought us the frightenly sombre The League of Gentlemen are back with another creation - Psychoville - a half hour long dive into the morbid waters of the twisted human psyche.

Psychoville is inhabited by five characters: a disillusioned children's party clown; a mid-wife who believes her demonstration doll is a real baby; a mummy's boy who is obsessed with serial killers; a blind millionaire who collects stuffed toys; and a dwarf with telekenetic powers. These five characters have one thing in common. They are all being sent anonymous letters with chryptic threats, ie. "I know what you did..."

This show feels very fresh. The sets are laboriously detailled and the make-up is phenomenal. There's no laugh track and there are no helpful "laugh now" pointers. In fact, there's no real story at all. However, the characters are so carefully depicted, so intriguingly bizarre, that you find yourself just wanting to sit back and observe them. The lack of storyline only intensifies the focus on each of the characters. It's of no great matter that you're not observing them do anything in particular. All you know is that you don't want to look away in case you miss something.

We rarely take time to study weirdness. And by study, I don't mean just glancing at it- but sit down, match-sticks-in-the-eyes, let's-wallow-in-this surgical examination. That's what I love that about this show. It's unapologetic in depicting the inelegant, the repulsive and the repugnant. Each character is gruesomely laid out in front of the camera- festering pussy warts and all (figurative of course!). However, by the end of the half hour, having broken the shock and settled into a smooth gentle wallow, you find that there's something incredibly tender and warm about the darkness of Psychoville.

To give some of the characters some authenticity, the writers created youtube profiles for them. Check out David Sowerbutt's effort below. The off-camera interjections by his mum are classic.

A war has started...

BATTLE stations people. A WAR has started.

In a quiet corner of the 20th arondissement of Paris, a fight to rewrite the pages of history is raging. It's a battle between wrong and right, between good and evil, between rich and poor, woman and man, ying and yang, between space and time.

Ever since living in our apartment, we have been under the menacing glare of two evil eyes from the balcony of the apartment across the street. Those eyes be frightening eyes. Those eyes be haunting. Those eyes- belong to an inflatable horse.
Yes, indeed.

This rotund weapon of admittedly-drawn-out-but-nevertheless-quite-damaging-destruction is awkwardly perched on the railing of the balcony of the flat across the road from us. It stands there, waiting for us to break, waiting for us to crack and display our weakness, its weird fricken legs splayed outwards in defiance of physics, its head frighteningly-tilted to one side, its bulging eyes glaring at us, questioning our resolve. "Do you feel lucky, punk. Well? Do ya?"

You may think I'm being over the top, but I swear to you that every person who has stepped into our apartment has commented on the horse - no mean feat given that it is a good 70-80 metres away.

The horse has only ever moved once: the occupants of the flat had a party. Jerome and I watched on with glee as a bunch of drunken-revellers interfered with the beast, wrenching it from it's throne and waving it about like a pool floaty. It is safe to say that Jerome and I were exstatic. The war was over. The people would no longer have to ration their butter. But the next day, upon opening my bedroom door, there it was, IN THE EXACT SAME POSITION, head tilted, legs splayed. [If it were a film, there would have been three still shots zooming in on the horse, accompanied by the sound of Garth killing Mr. Donut man - "Ree! Ree! Ree!"] At some point during the night, it had freed itself from the drunken grasp of the now somniferous party-goers and had managed to resume its haunting watch over our lives.

Bravo inflatable horse I thought. First, you give us hope. And then, with rapidity belying your lethargic, bulbous chassis, you swiftly wrench it from us again. I take my hat off to you, sir. In you, I recognise a worthy opponent.

However, two can play at this game of psycological warfare. So meet Copers, our counter-horse specialist.
Jo bought him in the airport in Copenhagen. (Yes that's right! People are so affected by the inflatable horse that they see things in their own lives and think, "James could use that to fight the inflatable horse across the road from his apartment!" This is bigger than you and me people! Can't you hear Bob Dylan? He's writing his anti-war song as we speak!) He is actually meant to be a doorstop, but by chance, he is also awesome at buffering the inflatable horse's eternal psyche out. We salute you Copers - brave, brave little horse/doorstop.

Look at him go!

Summer nights à la maison

Jerome passed by for one last night before heading off to sprechen the deutsche in Berlin. A few calls were made and before I knew it, he had a group of mates coming over for salad and crepes. It was a beautiful night. A cool breeze blew through the basil plant on the window sill, spreading the sweet smell of basil throughout the apartment and starting a war with the cigarette smoke that was coming in the other direction.

A few games of backgammon, a couple of lazy beers, some good mates, some new music from Grizzly Bears and a special late night convo in the cool summer night air, overlooking the Boulevard de Belleville as Paris finally quietened down for the week. A perfect summer sunday night.

Voici quelques photos.

The National - ADA

One of my favourite bands. This recording is so organic.

Love the lyrics:

"Ada, put the sounds of your house in a song. Try to be speechless for minute. If you think you're going to faint go out in the hallway, let them all have your neck... Ada, I can hear the sound of your laugh through the wall."

Check it out.

Tehran

Oh mino! It's Paul Newman

After 6 months living together, Jerome has decided to leave ye old flatmate-ship. His decision to move on is probably based on one of the following reasons.

a) Musical differences. 23 hours of reggae a day just wasn't enough.
b) An increasing feeling that insufficient amounts of time were being alloted for the worship of Olympic Marseille in the household.
c) He's finally given into the psyche-out of the inflatable horse across the street with its weird fricken out-turned feet that never stops staring at us. It's still staring at us as I write this... always watching...
d) He is Michael Jackson and is now dead.
e) He's moving to Berlin and New York to undertake various internships.
f) The bed bugs have kicked in...

Oh jeune! Tu me manqueras!

Peter Costello retires himself

Getting Peter Costello to leave politics has been like trying to deflate a blow-up mattress - there's always that little bit of air left in there that you can't quite squeeze out of him.

But today, the Treasurer that so courageously guided Australia through a ten year period of unequalled economic stability and growth (that happened to coincide with a similar period of unequalled global economic stability and growth) announced his retirement. See his parting comments to the Australian Parliament in the following article in The Australian.

Mr Costello thanked both Mr Turnbull and Mr Rudd for their thoughts, saying he didn't think he would see the day when both sides of the parliament would say nice things about him.

“It is just possible both sides of the dispatch box are happy with the announcement I've made,” he said.

“It is a very nice thing to actually come here and not be quite departed and hear the kind of speeches one hears as eulogies.

“In fact, I might come back tomorrow, I'm enjoying it so much.”

I found this exchange to be rather sad. Here is a man leaving politics after 20 years of public service. And yet his words are so petty, so...crass almost, so utterly forgettable. Maybe that's why Paul Keating once described Costello as being "All tip and no iceberg." There's simply nothing there. No feeling of integrity. No final rhetorical flurry. No gravitas.

Instead Costello uses the occasion to launch a few rather futile passive-agressive quips at his adversaries. His heart's not in it though. His apathy, barely concealed. He's functioning on instinct. Here we witness a tired boxer in the thirteenth round. He's been punching blind for the last two rounds already. Already half-unconscious and knowing he is on his way to the mat, his arms flailing clumsily at anything that moves, he staggers ungracefully around the ring, a final drunken dance before his eyes finally roll back into his head. Out. Cold. You can hear the final capitulation and the bitterness of those final gasps of air as they slowly wheeze out of him.

Time to fold him over and lie on him, then fold him over and lie on him again, then fold him over again until the last bits of air are squeezed out, and then pop him in the cupboard. Thanks Pete. Maybe next winter.

My Cousin James

So, you will remember that my little cousin James has been in Paris as part of a six month exchange program. I have written about him before on this blog.

Well, throughout his stay here, James would often come over to my house, either to use our phone to make free calls to Australia, or just to hang out. These visits started a very strange tradition. Everytime James came over, he would secretly get my camera whilst I wasn't looking and take the most ugly photo of himself possible. He wouldn't tell me he had taken a photo. Often I would only discover that he had done so a month or so later.

Strangely enough, once I worked out what he was doing, I used to look forward to checking his latest deposit, just to see if he had outdone himself.

Here is a mere selection of his work:

Côte d'Azur: Route des Crêtes - The Ridge Road

About a month ago I spent a weekend in Marseille with my flatmate Jerome Piana (oh mino!). It was a perfect weekend. Jerome's band kindly let me play with them in their studio. We managed to get in some beach action and sampled the Marseille "mauvaises". We even managed to sneak in a cheeky football match between Olympic Marseille and Toulouse at which I saw 60,000 French people go off their collective faces. It was special. I went to a school where we were taught to show appreciation for good play by the opposition. At this football match, doing so would probably have put my life in danger.

However, I have to say that if you live in Europe and you have not take a car along la Route des Crêtes then you really ought to build it into your summer holidays somehow. La Route des Crêtes winds its way long the coast from the town of La Ciotat to Marseille. The views are spectacular. Mammoth mountains fall down sheer cliffs into a sea that seems to expand for ever, even past the horizon and into the sky itself. The scale of the views makes you feel very unimportant. Its definitely the most breathtaking place I have been to in Europe.

And time took back over...

San Fran Selection

Below are some photos from my recent trip to California. They include shots from Yosemite National Park - the giant Sequioa trees in Mariposa Grove, the Half-Dome walk, Waterfalls on the Mist trail, San Fran - some shots of the golden gate bridge, jetty near Fisherman's wharf near the Bay Bridge, girls selling lemonade (the American dream starts young), and a single shot from Lake Tahoe.

The Streets of San Francisco

Each year, on the third Sunday in May, a race takes place in San Francisco called the Bay to Breakers. It's a 12km footrace which starts downtown and goes west across the city, finishing at Ocean Beach (Got to love America's use of imagination in creating place names - Big Tree Hill. Red Rock. Green Mountain). While some people do run the race seriously (the winner did it in 33 minutes), it's also an opportunity for San Franciscanites to let their hair down. Many take all day to walk the race. Some do it in costume (there are prizes for best costumes). Some even do the race naked. There's music pumping from themed moving floats, people dancing, and folk drinking and throwing tortillas at each other. The end result is a wildly debaucherous 80,000 person street party that winds its way through the city. A local SF friend of mine told me that the first year she did the race, she saw an old man walking the race naked, despite being equipped with, wait for it - a catheter. Yes sir! I thank Megan for that mental image. Anyway, I managed to get a snap of these spacemen and women who were running the race as a team. It gives you a good idea of the amount of effort people put into their costumes. Don't they look great!

One of the funniest things I saw was a lone christian man standing in the middle of the road as a sea of naked or half dressed drunk people flowed past him. He was holding up a solitary sign to the oncoming throng saying "You are all going to hell". If you look up "hopeless cause" in the dictionary, there is a photo of him. You have got to give him points for trying.

Are you going to San Francisco?

Yes I am. Tomorrow morning to be exact...

The Slouch Hat and The Dawn

Anzac Day 2009

What a special Anzac day it was this year. Two Australian lasses and I hired a car and headed up to the Australian National Memorial in Villers Bretonneux for an Anzac Day dawn service. We left Paris at 2am to get there on time, and arrived at about 4am (Thanks for the driving Jo!) It was more than worth it. Almost 3000 Aussies made the pilgrimage for the service. For many it was the pinnacle of their sojourn to Europe from the wide brown land. What a special place that hill just outside Villers Bretonneux is. Something about arriving in the shadows of the early morning, moving amongst the rows of graves with only the sound of the wind in the leaves of the trees made it all the more moving. I felt like I had intruded on a sacred spot of earth at a time when it was not expecting my visit.

I also managed to trek out to see the site of the Battle of Pozières, where my great grandfather, from whom I get my middle name, was wounded. In the words of Australian official historian Charles Bean, the Pozières ridge is "more densely sown with Australian sacrifice than any other place on earth." I couldn't get over the fact that this insignificant mound on the side of the highway had been witness to such unnecessary violence.

Aint got no/I Got Life - Nina Simone

The second part of this song makes me smile out loud, everytime I hear it.

"Got my hair, got my head, got my brain, got my ears, got my eyes, got my nose, got my mouth, I got my smile!"



What a voice. No doubt she would be eliminated in the first week of Idol.

One for The Boss

I'm always amazed at just how much energy James Brown could generate through his vocals. You can't help but move your body. This song in particular always gets me going. Listen for the very first vocal. It's electrifying! It's as if the brass provides the introduction and then, right from the word go, on the down beat, he makes his entrance and gets his message out, like a bolt of lightning direct to your soul bone:

"RAISE UP! Get yourself together and drive that funky soul!!!!"

Put on your dancing shoes.

Songs that make me smile: The Summer - Josh Pyke

As the days in Paris get longer and longer, this song just gets more and more appropriate. Josh Pyke's lyrics are so unapologetically Australian. The imagery he manages to squeeze into a pretty standard verse/chorus song is quite superb. It is a complement to the "evocativeness" of the lyrics that I found the actual clip to be a bit of a disappointment. It was as if I didn't really need someone to provide me with images for the music. I had them all in my head already.

Listen for the perfect slide guitar on the very last note. It's like the very last of the sunlight slipping away on a summer evening as you play cricket in the street with your mates, using a taped up tennis ball and an otto bin for stumps. All songs should end this way.



The Summer - Josh Pyke

If I could bottle up the sea breeze I would take it over to your house
And pour it loose through your garden (Does everyone feel warm inside?)
So the hinges on your windows would rust and colour
Like the boats pulled up on the sand for the summer
And your sweet clean clothes would go stiff on the line
And there’d be sand in your pockets and nothing on your mind

But every year it gets a little bit harder
To get back to the feeling of when we were fifteen
And we could jump in the river upstream
And let the current carry us to the beginning where
The river met the sea again
And all our days were a sun-drenched haze
While the salt spray crusted on the window panes

We should be living like we lived that summer
I wanna live like we live in the summer

And I’ll remember that summer as the right one
The storms made the pavement steam like a kettle (so great!)
And our first goodbye always seemed like hours
In the car park in between my house and yours
And if the summer holds a song we might sing forever
Then the winter holds a bite we’d never felt before

But time is like the ocean
You can only hold a little in your hands
So swim before we’re broken
Before our bones become
Black coral on the sand