Fuscospora gunnii

Catching up through 2014, my third full year back in Australia. After the first year of slight instability after ten years away - coming home to a country you grew up in but has changed just as much as you have in your absence - and the second year of revisiting and reviewing all the Australian culture you missed greatly or had missed out on - the third year is where things start to be normal again and you can settle back into life.

We still live in an inner suburb of Melbourne, so have a lot of access to film festivals, and a wealth of second-hand bookshops. This year I ramp up the number of new books to 100, contrary to my earlier conviction that it is ridiculous and unsustainable. I maintain this conviction - but I did it anyway.

BOOKS 2014

B01. The Paper Chase, Hal Porter.

B02. Am I Black Enough for You?, Anita Heiss.

B03. Meanjin 1/1992: Women's Knowledge.

B04. A Hard Day's Night, John Burke.

B05. Sandman in Siberia, Steve Abbott.

B05a. Fat Chance, Simon Gray.

B06. Birth of the Motion Picture, Emmanuelle Toulet (tr. Susan Emanuel).

B07. Black & Violet, Jason Andrew Updike.

B08. What Did You Expect?, Ben Baker.

B09. Fun at 1: The Story of Comedy at Radio 1, Tim Worthington.

B10. Quarterly Essay 22: Voting for Jesus: Christianity and Politics in Australia, Amanda Lohrey.

B11. Poll Dancing: The Story of the 2007 Election, Mungo MacCallum.

B12. Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, David Sedaris.

B13. The Tree of Man, Patrick White.

B14. A Cry in the Jungle Bar, Robert Drewe.

B15. Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl, Donald Sturrock.

B16. North Face of Soho: Unreliable Memoirs Volume IV, Clive James.

B17. Comics: A Decade of Comedy at the Assembly Rooms, John Connor.

B18. Fawlty Towers: The Story of the Sitcom, Graham McCann.

B19. Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Investigators in The Mystery of the Whispering Mummy, "Text by Robert Arthur".

B19a. Seven Little Australians, Ethel Turner.

B20. Art of McSweeney's, the Editors of McSweeney's.

B21. I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution, Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum.

B21a. No Shitting in the Toilet: The Travel Guide for When You've Really Lost It, Peter Moore.

B21b. My Uncle Oswald, Roald Dahl.

B22. Loot, Joe Orton.

B23. Herge: The Man who Created Tintin, Pierre Assouline (tr. Charles Ruas).

B24. The Pillow Fight, Matthew Condon.

B25. Lennon Remembers: The Rolling Stone Interview, Jann Wenner.

B26. Monty Python's Flying Circus: Complete and Annotated ...All the Bits, GC JC TG EI TJ MP et al, annotations some twat.

B27. Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to its Own Past, Simon Reynolds.

B27a. Voss, Patrick White.

B27b. Mister Roberts, Alexei Sayle.

B28. A Hostile Beauty: Life on Macquarie Island, Alistair Dermer and Danielle Wood.

B29. This Accursed Land: Douglas Mawson's Incredible Antarctic Journey, Lennard Bickel.

B30. Funemployed: Life as an Artist in Australia, Justin Heazlewood.

B31. Quarterly Essay 6: Beyond Belief: What Future for Labor?, John Button.

B32. Clockwise (aka Clockwise: A Screenplay aka Clockwise: Original Screenplay), Michael Frayn.

B32a. The Bedtime Leunig, Michael Leunig.

B32b. You and Me, Michael Leunig.

B32c. Eat the Rich, P. J. O'Rourke.

B32d. Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway, Clifford Stoll.

B33. Loveless, Mike McGonigal.

B33a. The B'stard File (aka The B'Stard File: The New Statesman aka The B'Stard File: The New Statesman Expose), Rik Mayall (text by L Marks, M Gran, N Hornick, J Cutrara, T Bagley).

B34. Pilcrow, Adam Mars-Jones.

B35. The Silent Cry, Kenzaburo Oe.

B35a. Monty Python: the Case Against, Robert Hewison.

B36. Take the Cannoli: Stories from the New World, Sarah Vowell.

B37. The Funky Squad Annual, S Cilauro, T Gleisner, J Kennedy.

B38. All Windows Open and Other Stories, Hariklia Heristanidis.

B39. Facing the Other Way: The Story of 4AD, Martin Aston.

B40. Patrick White, Geoffrey Dutton.

B41. Cedilla, Adam Mars-Jones.

B42. Dark Horse: The Secret Life of George Harrison, Geoffrey Giuliano.

B43. The Family Law, Benjamin Law.

B43a. Paradoxical Undressing, Kristin Hersh.

B44. No More Curried Eggs For Me, compiler Roger Wilmut.

B45. Readings from International Conference on Humour: A Special Issue of the Australian Journal of Comedy; 1997, v. 3, no. 1, G Matte et al.

B46. The Longest Cocktail Party: An Insider's View of the Beatles, Richard DiLello.

B47. Super Expanded Deluxe Edition, Tim Worthington.

B48. American Hoax, Charles Firth.

B49. An Angel at my Table (Autobiography 2), Janet Frame.

B49a. 'Rommel?' 'Gunner Who?', Spike Milligan.

B50. Tango: My Childhood, Backwards and in High Heels, Justin Vivian Bond.

B51. Black Postcards, Dean Wareham.

B52. Mr Manchester and the Factory Girl: The Story of Tony and Lindsay Wilson, Lindsay Reade.

B52a. Holidays in Hell, P.J. O'Rourke.

B53. The Embassy of Cambodia, Zadie Smith.

B54. The Bridegroom Was a Dog, Yoko Tawada (tr. Margaret Mitsutani).

B55. Bonjour Tristesse, Françoise Sagan (tr. Irene Ash).

B56. Petit Mal, DBC Pierre.

B57. Tirra Lirra by the River, Jessica Anderson.

B58. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Yasutaka Tsutsui (tr. David Karashima).

B59. Traditional Molvanian Baby Names, S Cilauro, T Gleisner, R Sitch.

B60. Monanisms, The Museum of Old and New Art.

B61. Real Wild Child, Narelle Gee.

B62. Riders in the Chariot, Patrick White.

B63. The Crucible, Arthur Miller.

B64. The Daylight and the Dust: Selected Short Stories, Janet Frame.

B64a. The Lost Goon Shows, Spike Milligan.

B65. Fraud, David Rakoff.

B66. [Untitled children's story], Kit WIlliams.

B67. The Bone Clocks, David Mitchell.

B68. Under Stones, Bob Franklin.

B69. A Bit More Fry & Laurie, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie.

B70. Quarterly Essay 52: Found in Translation: In Praise of a Plural World, Linda Jaivin.

B71. The Burnt Ones, Patrick White.

B72. TATP: Talk About the Passion, Ben Baker and Tim Worthington.

B72a. Scarcely Relevant: Writings from The Scrivener's Fancy, Tony Martin.

B73. The Good Soldier Schweik, Jaroslav Hasek.

B74. Whoops Apocalypse: A State of the World Report, Andrew Marshall & David Renwick.

B74a. The Hippopotamus, Stephen Fry.

B74b. Dancing on Hot Macadam: Peter Carey's Fiction, Anthony J Hassall.

B75. Joseph Anton: A Memoir, Salman Rushdie.

B76. The Road to Mars, Eric Idle.

B77. The Floating World, John Romeril.

B78. Goon Abroad, Harry Secombe.

B79. The ITMA Years, Ted Kavanagh et al.

B80. The Avocado Plantation: Boom and Bust in the Australian Film Industry, David Stratton.

B81. Contemporary Australian Television, Stuart Cunningham & Toby Miller.

B81a. Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby, Donald Barthelme.

B82. The Crystal Bucket: Television Criticism from the Observer 1976-79, Clive James.

B83. Moon Lake, Eudora Welty. (Penguin Mini Modern Classics)

B84. Hal Porter, Mary Lord. (OUP Australian Writers and their Work series)

B85. Frank, Jon Ronson.

B86. A Point of View, Clive James.

B87. The End of the World, Paddy O'Reilly.

B88. More Please, Barry Humphries.

B89. To the Islands, Randolph Stow.

B90. Australian Literary Studies, Volume 19 No 2 1999.

B91. People, Alan Bennett.

B92. Nagasaki, Éric Faye (tr. Emily Boyce).

B93. A History of Capitalism According to the Jubilee Line, John O'Farrell.

B94. A Bone of Fact, David Walsh.

B95. Acorn, Yoko Ono.

B96. Higher Than the Sun, Tim Worthington.

B97. Three Stories, J M Coetzee.

B98. Not on Your Telly, Tim Worthington.

B99. The Hell of it All, Charlie Brooker.

B100. L'Amour, Marguerite Duras (tr. Kazim Ali and Libby Murphy).

B100a. The Solid Mandala, Patrick White.

In 2014 I am slowly working through Patrick White, while also reading a lot of books for what I consider the final time as I decide to discard them. A fascination with the more forgotten spatterings of English pop culture is given strong representation by all the Tim Worthington books: these excavations of cultural crannies were always interesting as a foreigner in the UK - though to be fair by 2018 and ensconced back in Australia I don't find myself going back to much of it.

I can strongly recommend Donald Sturrock's authorised biography of Roald Dahl, which authorised or not is unflinching on Dahl's inherent shittiness. I also wish all popular biographies were as densely detailed as this is.

I considered updating the details of the annotator of B26, but it is truly so awful I feel obliged to (a) not embarrass the man by naming him, and (b) warning any potential reader to avoid.

B66 is a puzzle picture book by the author of Masquerade; one of the puzzles was to establish the name of the book. I was unable to solve this so have left the title blank.

MOVIES 2014

M00a. The Parole Officer, 2001.

M01. The Battle of the Sexes, 2013.

M01a. The Best Bits of The Late Show Volume Three, 1994.

M02. The Reluctant Fundamentalist, 2012.

M03. The Wolf of Wall Street, 2013.

M04. The Trip, 2010.

M04a. Cremaster 1, 1995.

M04b. Cremaster 2, 1999.

M04c. Cremaster 3, 2002.

M04d. Cremaster 4, 1994.

M04e. Cremaster 5, 1997.

M05. 風立ちぬ ('The Wind Rises'), 2013.

M06. L'Année dernière à Marienbad ('Last Year in Marienbad'), 1961.

M07. Biba! One Island, 879 Votes, 2011 (including 2013 postscript).

M08. 12 Years A Slave, 2013.

M09. Blue Jasmine, 2013.

M09a. The Best Bits of The Late Show Volume One, 1993.

M09b. The Best Bits of The Late Show Volume Two, 1993.

M10. Half / ハーフ, 2013.

M11. 百合子、ダスヴィダーニヤ ("Yoshiko and Yuriko"), 2011.

M12. A Life Exposed: Robyn Beeche, 2013.

M13. Carts of Darkness, 2008.

M14. Winter's Bone, 2010.

M15. Philomena, 2013.

M15a. キューティー　ハニー ("Cutie Honey"), 2003.

M16. The Grand Budapest Hotel, 2014.

M17. American Hustle, 2013.

M18. The King's Speech, 2010.

M19. The Book Thief, 2013.

M19a. The Tulse Luper Suitcases 1: The Moab Story, 2003.

M19b. The Tulse Luper Suitcases 2: Vaux to the Sea, 2004.

M19c. The Tulse Luper Suitcases 3: From Sark to the Finish, 2004.

M20. The Zero Theorem, 2013.

M21. Alexei Sayle's Pirate Video, 1982?

M22. Under the Skin, 2013.

M23. Les Creatures ("The Creatures"), 1966.

M24. リアル ("Real"), 2013.

M25. Sans toit ni loi ("Vagabond"), 1985.

M26. ドールズ ("Dolls"), 2002.

M27. Snowpiercer, 2013.

M28. Believe in Me, 2007.

M29. Little Noises, 1991.

M30. Hross í oss ("Of Horses and Men"), 2013.

M31. August: Osage County, 2013.

M32. Dallas Buyers Club, 2013.

M33. The Tempest, 2010.

M34. Hořící keř ("Burning Bush"), 2013.

M35. Dylan Moran: Monster, 2004.

M35a. Down Among the Z Men, 1952.

M36. Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, 1982.

M37. Tom a la ferme ("Tom at the Farm"), 2013.

M37a. Backbeat, 1993.

M38. Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, 2010.

M39. Monty Python Live: One Down, Five To Go (90 min TV edit shown on SBS), 2014.

M39a. Spies Like Us, 1985.

M40. バトル　ロワイアル ("Battle Royale"), 2000.

M41. Bjork: Biophilia Live, 2014.

M41a. Brazil, 1985.

M41b. The Draughtsman's Contract, 1982.

M42. Down Terrace, 2009.

M43. 小さいおうち ("The Little House"), 2014.

M43a. Barry McKenzie Holds His Own, 1974.

M43b. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2004.

M44. Mad Dog Morgan, 1976.

M44a. Erik the Viking, 1989.

M45. Red Dawn, 2012.

M46. Tomorrow, When the War Began, 2010.

M47. Harry Brown, 2009.

M48. Wired, 1989.

M49. The Mule, 2014.

Tingamarra porterorum

I have been neglecting this blog, but has it really been five years since I updated my reading/watching lists? Yes it has. So here's what I read and watched in the year 2013.

Once again, numbered entries ("B1") were books/movies I had never read/seen before. Italicised entries with an a/b/c appended ("B1a") were books/movies I re-read/watched, for pleasure or punishment. The list is in the order that I finished each.

BOOKS 2013

B01. The Friends of Emily Culpepper, Ann Coleridge and Roland Harvey.

B01a. Hello Sailor, Eric Idle.

B01b. A Book of Milliganimals, Spike Milligan.

B01c. Silly Verse for Kids, Spike Milligan.

B01d. Puckoon, Spike Milligan.

B01e. Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall, Spike Milligan.

B01f. Sex, Drugs & Mum in the Front Row, Evan Kanarakis.

B02. Cash for Comment: The Seduction of Journo Culture, Rob Johnson.

B02a. The Man in the Rubber Mask, Robert Llewellyn.

B02b. Thin He Was and Filthy-Haired: Memoirs of a Bad Boy, Robert Llewellyn.

B03. Cook'd and Bomb'd Annual 2013 (aka The Cookd Book 2013, aka Waxwork Rene Preservation Society Annual 2013), various.

B04. 1001 Australian Nights, Dave Graney.

B05. And The Ass Saw The Angel, Nick Cave.

B05a. The Wacky Top 40, Bruce Nash and Allan Zullo.

B06. Cook'd and Bomb'd Annual 2012, various.

B06a. Illywhacker, Peter Carey.

B06b. The Penguin John Lennon, John Lennon.

B07. The Thick of It: The Missing DoSAC Files, A Iannucci, J Armstrong, I Martin, S Blackwell, T Roche.

B08. True History of the Kelly Gang, Peter Carey.

B08a. Monty - His Part in My Victory, Spike Milligan.

B08b. 3 Beers and a Chinese Meal, Helen Razer and Mikey Robins.

B08c. Losing the Light: Terry Gilliam and the Munchausen Saga, Andrew Yule.

B08d. Mussolini - His Part in My Downfall, Spike Milligan.

B08e. Where Have All the Bullets Gone?, Spike Milligan.

B08f. The Wit of Sir Robert Menzies, comp. Ray Robinson.

B09. Larva: Midsummer Night's Babel, Julian Rios (tr. Richard Alan Francis).

B09a. Stranded: The Secret History of Australian Independent Music 1977-1991, Clinton Walker.

B09b. Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, William Blake.

B10. Four Dubliners, Richard Ellmann.

B11. All Souls, Javier Marias.

B12. Matilda, My Darling, Nigel Krauth.

B13. The Specialist, Charles Sale.

B14. Amplified Silence, Stephen Jones.

B15. The Lucy Family Alphabet, Judith Lucy.

B16. Cowra, Teruhiko Asada.

B17. McSweeney's Issue 42.

B18. A Golden Age of Freedom, Rupert Murdoch.

B19. Goodbye Again: Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, ed. William Cook.

B20. Ten Sorry Tales, Mick Jackson.

B21. Brodie's Notes on Patrick White's The Tree of Man, Jean Herd.

B21a. Being There, Jerzy Kosinski.

B22. Bears of England, Mick Jackson.

B23. Scarcely Relevant: Writings from The Scrivener's Fancy, Tony Martin.

B24. The Widow's Tale, Mick Jackson.

B24a. Goodbye Soldier, Spike Milligan.

B24b. Gas Smells Awful: The Mechanics of Being a Nutcase, Helen Razer.

B24c. Peace Work, Spike Milligan.

B25. The True History of the Black Adder, J F Roberts.

B26. Eight and a Half Women, Peter Greenaway.

B27. Plays, Oscar Wilde.

B28. Austen Tayshus: The Merchant of Menace, Ross Fitzgerald and Rick Murphy.

B29. Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi, Bob Woodward.

B30. Come in Spinner, Dymphna Cusack & Florence James.

B31. The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture, Ruth Benedict.

B32. All My Friends Are Still Dead, Avery Monsen and Jory John.

B33. Bad Monkey, Carl Hiaasen.

B34. The Call of the Weird, Louis Theroux.

B34a. A Field Guide to the British, Sarah Lyall.

B35. All My Friends Are Dead, Avery Monsen and Jory John.

B35a. Rainbow Rabbits, Dee Huxley.

B35b. Anno's Three Little Pigs, Mitsumasa Anno and Tuyosi Mori.

B36. Young Kangaroo, Margaret Wise Brown.

B37. Storm Boy, Colin Thiele.

B37a. Now We Are Six, A. A. Milne.

B37b. A Nest of Occasionals, Tony Martin.

B37c. Online Diaries: The Lollapalooza '95 Tour Journals of Beck, Courtney Love, Stephen Malkmus, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Mike Watt, & David Yow.

B38. Let the Credits Roll: Interviews with Film Crew, Barbara Baker.

B38a. Unconquered Countries, Geoff Ryman.

B39. Ninety 9, Vanessa Berry.

B39a. Superman's Song: The Story of Crash Test Dummies, Stephen Ostick.

B40. High-rise, JG Ballard.

B41. Meanjin 2/1986.

B42. Strangers, Taichi Yamada (tr. Wayne P Lammers).

B43. The Instructions, Adam Levin.

B44. Homer and Langley, EL Doctorow.

B44a. Adam's Navel, Stephen Jay Gould.

B44b. The 'If You Prefer a Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One' EP, Stewart Lee.

B44c. Unreliable Memoirs, Clive James.

B44d. Vaughan Oliver: Visceral Pleasures, Rick Poyner.

B45. Saint Hiroshima, Leigh Kennedy.

B46. Crooked, Kristin Hersh.

B47. Norstrilia, Cordwainer Smith [Paul Linebarger].

B48. The Gifts of War, Margaret Drabble.

B49. Sex, Madonna.

B50. The Escape, Adam Thirlwell.

B51. Happy Valley, Patrick White.

B51a. Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas: Not the Screenplay, Terry GIlliam & Tony Grisoni.

B51b. Geoffrey the Tube Train and the Fat Comedian, Alexei Sayle and Oscar Zarate.

B52. The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned a Million Pounds, John Higgs.

B53. Flood, S. Alexander Reed and Philip Sandifer.

B54. The Living and the Dead, Patrick White.

B55. Life Kills, Miles Vertigan.

B56. Murder in Mississippi: the true story of how I met a white supremacist, befriended his black killer and wrote this book, John Safran.

B57. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman.

MOVIES 2013

M01. Hawking, 2004.

M01a. He Died with a Felafel in his Hand, 2000.

M02. Stephen Merchant: Hello Ladies... Live!, 2011.

M02a. A Cock and Bull Story, 2005.

M02b. DAAS: Dead and Alive, 1993.

M03. Cloud Atlas, 2012.

M04. Django Unchained, 2012.

M05. Hitchcock, 2012.

M05a. Vertical Features Remake, 1978.

M06. Judith Lucy: Nothing Fancy, 2012.

M07. Anna Karenina, 2012.

M07a. Ross Noble: Fizzy Logic, 2006.

M08. Argo, 2012.

M09. The Secret Policeman's Ball [2006] ("The Ball in the Hall"), 2006.

M09a. Finisterre, 2003.

M10. Holy Motors, 2012.

M11. The Impossible, 2012.

M12. Flight, 2012.

M13. Threads, 1984.

M14. Reign of the Fallen, 2006.

M15. The DC3 Supported by ROOT!, 2013.

M16. Silver Linings Playbook, 2012.

M16a. The Bed Sitting Room, 1969.

M17. Song of the South, 1946.

M18. Derek and Clive Get the Horn, 1979.

M19. Deconstructing Dad, 2012.

M20. Like Someone in Love, 2012.

M21. Felicity, 1978.

M22. First Position, 2011.

M23. The League of Gentlemen: Live at Drury Lane, 2001.

M23a. Not Only But Always, 2004.

M23b. Les Patterson Saves the World, 1987.

M23c. TISM: A Film by Antonionioni (aka Save Our TISM), 2004.

M24. Barry McKenzie Holds His Own, 1974.

M25. 陽炎座 (Kagerou-za), 1981.

M26. The Edinburgh Years, 1990.

M27. So Wrong They're Right, 1995.

M28. Patrick, 1978.

M28a. Shaun of the Dead, 2004.

M29. The Look of Love, 2013.

M29a. District 9, 2009.

M30. Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge and Other Less Successful Characters, 2009.

M31. Jerry Springer: the Opera, 2005.

M31a. Band à part ("The Outsiders"), 1964.

M32. (Lenny Henry in) So Much Things to Say..., 2004.

M33. 時をかける少女 ("The Girl Who Leapt Through Time"), 2006.

M34. おくりびと ("Departures"), 2008.

M35. 田園に死す ("Pastoral: To Die in the Country"), 1974.

M36. 3X3D, 2013.

M36a. Tideland, 2005.

M36b. Drowning by Numbers, 1988.

M37. The World's End, 2013.

M38. 김동무는 하늘을 난다 ("Comrade Kim Goes Flying"), 2012.

M38a. Les Amants du Pont-Neuf ("Lovers on the Bridge"), 1991.

M39. După dealuri ("Beyond the Hills"), 2012.

M40. Stewart Lee: Carpet Remnant World, 2012.

M40a. Stewart Lee: Stand Up Comedian, 2005.

M41. Elysium, 2013.

M41a. TISM: Gold! Gold!! Gold!!!, 1998.

M42. Siesta, 1987.

M43. Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, 2011.

M43a. Prospero's Books, 1991.

M44. Sir Henry at Rawlinson End, 1980.

M45. L'écume des jours ("Mood Indigo"), 2013.

M46. The Misadventures of Margaret, 1998.

M47. The Tundra Book, 2011.

M48. ALWAYS 三丁目の夕日 '64 ("ALWAYS -Sunset on Third Street- 3"), 2012.

M48a. An Angel at my Table, 1990.

M48b. Bob Roberts, 1992.

M49. Shell, 2012.

M49a. Jabberwocky, 1977.

M50. The Sunnyboy, 2013.

M51. Creation, 2009.

M51a. The Baby of Macon, 1993.

M51b. The Pillow Book, 1995.

M51c. 8½ Women, 1999.

M52. 座頭市物語 ("The Life and Times of Ichi the Masseur"), 1962.

M53. 桐島、部活やめるってよ ("The Kirishima Thing"), 2012.

M54. Бумажный солдат ("Paper Soldier"), 2008.

M55. しとやかな獣 ("Elegant Beast"), 1962.

M56. 舟を編む ("The Great Passage"), 2013.

M57. 手をつなぐ子等 ("Children Hand in Hand"), 1947.

M58. Kill Your Darlings, 2013.

M59. On the Beach, 1959.

M59a. MEMORIES, 1995.

M59b. Four Lions, 2010.

M60. Scumbus, 201?.

M61. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, 2013.

M62. Astérix et Obélix contre Caesar, ("Asterix and Obelix Vs. Caesar"), 1999.

Solanum cinereum

(")Norm(") is a gentleman of great taste. For one, he has made one of the most impressive mix CDs I have ever received, which I am still floundering about trying to respond to over a year later. Sorry, Norm.

A few months ago he started a personal finance blog which I have been observing with interest, as he's very open in outlining all his expenses - and it's been interesting to compare costs. Not just on the macro level (i.e. I don't have to deal with a single snow-related expense) but also on the micro level (i.e. vegetable oil is identically priced in Melbourne and Small City, NY).

While the vegetable oil statistic is comforting, the idea that Norm bought an entire house for US$130,000 is anything but. Excellent work, Norm.

I decided to try to replicate one of his Cost Per Serving posts, where he makes a meal, and then calculates the cost of each serving. Was I desperately interested in how much the figures differed? No. Nor was I that excited about speculating on whether the differences were based on our different countries, or levels of urbanity. I was, as ever, primarily interested in getting things wrong.

So I chose Norm's February 19, 2015 winter treat, Eggplant Dirty Rice, and I used the same recipe from international superconglomerate Time Inc.

I wanted to make sure I could calculate a correct cost-per-serving, so I had to buy products I actually already owned, just so I could work out a cost metric. This meant forgoing our preferred soy sauce (of which there is plenty in the pantry) and buying a cheaper supermarket version which was flavoured sweetly for Chinese cooking. We do a lot more Japanese cooking than Chinese cooking, so the only benefit here was that it will bring the cost-per-serving down by a fraction of a cent. (Three months later - because that's how long it took me to get around to typing this - the new soy sauce is still sitting around.)

Then there was the problem that the recipe and Norm's page gave Imperial measurements, which I translated into metric, but then had to estimate as best I could when measuring the ingredients: e.g. 1.5 cups medium grain white rice is fine if you have cup measures, but oh dear there is no 354.88 millilitre line on my measuring cup.

I also had to have faith that, while I know that what I call a green capsicum is called a green pepper in the US, the general size of said fruit would be roughly the same in the two countries. Actually I had no faith that this was the case, but would continue with my horrendous brew.

So on 24 February I popped down to my local monopoly and bought - well, here you go:

So, a nice round AU$20.15 (US$15.98, that is, taking no account for exchange rate variance between February and May). This isn't the total cost of the meal though, because while I have bought a tiny tin of tomato paste I am clearly only going to use a skerrick of it. Let me try to work out how much it cost to buy the ingredients which were actually used in the recipe (I'll use US$ for all figures to allow easy comparison, with Norm's cost in bold and mine in red):

1/4 cup canola or vegetable oil: 0.15 0.14

Celery (3 stalks): 0.36 0.84

Green peppers (1lb): 1.99 1.86

Onion (1): 0.40 0.36

Eggplant (1lb) 1.99 2.51 is what I should have spent had I not bought too small an eggplant

Dried thyme (1tbsp): 0.91 0.26

Garlic (3 cloves): 0.27 0.22

Tomato paste (1tbsp): 0.15 0.30

Soy sauce (1tbsp): 0.07 0.18

Rice (1.5 cups): 0.45 0.77

Broth (2 cubes): 0.14 0.21

Total cost of ingredients in USA 6.88

Total cost of ingredients in AUS 7.65

Total cost per serving in USA 1.37

Total cost per serving in AUS 1.53

The mighty USA wins by a not inconsiderable US$0.16 per serving!

Apart from my terrible kitchencraft, lazy measuring skills and general disinterest in food unless I can convert it into calculator fun, what are the variables here?

Obviously it was the end of winter in February in the Northern Hemisphere but the end of summer here, but I can't see any clear influence that would have had on the cost of fresh food. With a smaller population to pay for the same costs of transportation, it makes sense that fresh food is more expensive in Australia. The cost of rice is probably because I bought a tiny one-kilo package of rice so I could get a precise cost-to-weight ratio, whereas Norm sensibly has decanted his rice into a storage jar, presumably from a forty-pound sack. His soy sauce also doesn't come in the world's dinkiest container, the wobbly design being paid for by muggins here. I don't understand why his thyme is so pricey - though it's clear I will be welcomed as a god if I start distributing cheap thyme across the United States.

And how delicious was it? I'm glad you asked! It was fucking awful. I only had a shallow casserole dish, the rice didn't soften, which meant I had to add a new step to the recipe involving five hours in the slow cooker. The next morning it was nice and soft, but the salt from the stock which would otherwise have steamed away had all been retained under the cooker lid. It was eventually made edible with the addition of a lot more rice.

Tune in to my cooking blog next week when I set my hair on fire while making cornflakes.

Eucalyptus melliodora

For my fifth post in five years, I'm going back to this blog's early concerns with books and how they - as physical objects - crop up in the various wanderings of human lives. I have two stories for you today: a straight-line story, and a very, very, very-very big circle of a story. That's a straight line and a circle, which in binary equals the numbers of stories I am about to tell.

Story 1:

My battered and tea-stained UK first edition

I'm not a collector of first editions, but if I come across one at a very low price, I will certainly be pleased with the find. This copy of Patrick White's The Solid Mandala comes with a torn but complete dustcover (a rarity for 1966) and cost me the grand total of £1 in 2011. After work I would sometimes wander to Charing Cross Road and spend an hour in the basement of Any Amount of Books. I bought this intending to read it straightaway but didn't get around to it until I'd returned to Australia.

There's an inscription on the flyleaf page showing that it was a gift to Sylvia when brand new - but I can't work out who gift-giving-Eric is, and whether he is from, or in, or called, Hove, or a House, or perhaps a Hovel.

The day after the Beatles' final concert, and a week after the premiere of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

More interesting is the address scribbled on the dust jacket flap:

Nashleigh, Nashly Farm, Chesham, Bucks 

For a long time I assumed this to be the possibly grand home where Sylvia and this book dwelt, and I was pleased recently to find that Nashleigh Farm is a very grand country house which is currently up for sale, so you can click your way through its rooms, gardens and awful collection of miniature bottles at this link, or just admire it in the picture below. Nashleigh Farm itself is a few fields away from Chesham Prep School, where Stephen Fry broke his nose two or three years before Sylvia cracked the spine of The Solid Mandala.

I don't have £1,895,000, but as a Melburnian I am flabbergasted that this comparative pocket change buys a 10-acre, 6-bedroom, 6-reception room farm four minutes drive from a Tube station.

However, if you were going to write your address in your own book, you wouldn't take two stabs at spelling it, and you wouldn't scribble it on the dust jacket. You might do the above if you heard the address on the radio or telephone - so I doubt this particular first edition ever made its way to Nashleigh Farm. I will never know the story behind this book's first 47 years, but I'm hanging on to it now.

The novel disappointed me when I first read it - it was only the second White novel I had read, and it didn't excite me nearly as much as Voss had. But then last month I re-read it after having made my way through all White's earlier novels chronologically, and I settled into it completely. It might be the shortest novel he wrote, which could be a positive, as I personally took a long time to adapt to his languid, almost leaden narratives. I now see his novels are packed with incident, but almost all interior. Minds crackle and gleam in White, but everything else rusts and falls over.

Story 0:

Shortly before I left the UK, and directly after a morning of laps in the public pool, I borrowed Adam Mars-Jones's Cedilla from Jubilee Library in Brighton. This was mostly because I like cedillas, and I liked even more the very funny front blurb for the book. In other circumstances I would not have borrowed Cedilla, because it was the second novel of a series of which I had not read the first; and because it was so long I knew I wouldn't finish it before the date printed on our aeroplane tickets. But I threw myself into it anyway, admired the hell out of the portion I managed to read, returned it to the Jubilee Library in Brighton, and then bought the book (remaindered) in Melbourne.

In good time I found the first book in the series, Pilcrow (remaindered again I'm afraid, Mr Mars-Jones) and enjoyed that just as much. I'm waiting for books three and four to be written, and would like to take this opportunity to reassure Faber and Faber that I will pay full price for them. So in retrospect it was a fortuitous day when I walked out of the Prince Regent Swimming Complex with wet hair and damp goggles and straight into the Jubilee Library.

The Prince Regent Swimming Complex and the Jubilee Library are separated by a small and windswept square, featuring a small and windswept Pizza Express. All of these lie on Brighton's shortish Jubilee Street, later the title of a song by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. The song, to its discredit in my view, mentions neither the Tesco Express nor the Yo! Sushi.

Anyway, I had resigned myself to having a few years' wait before reading any more of Adam Mars-Jones's work - but then I found the earlier book pictured below, a harrowing mid-eighties collection of short stories by AMJ and Edmund White, called The Darker Proof: Stories from a Crisis.

with found object bookmark

These are deeply horrifying stories of loss, mostly set in critical illness wards where the first few men were sent to die of AIDS by a culture that knew little more of AIDS than the fact that nothing was known. It is chastening to be reminded of just what a holocaust AIDS was in the 1980s, now that the passing of time and the mostly-successful management of HIV means that I had largely forgotten about its impact on society when I was a child. These stories were published when I was about eight years old, at which time I was being given nightmares by this famous TV advertisement.

But while the stories themselves humanise and bring to reality the personal toll AIDS must have taken on society - and particularly on gay society, demonised as carriers - again, it is the physical that really forges a connection. My second-hand copy of The Darker Proof was bought for a few dollars from a charity shop. Wedged halfway through was a ticket stub for a 1992 'Dance Party - FOR women BY women' at the Sarah Sands Hotel, just a few minutes walk from the charity shop.

The Sarah Sands is now a Bridie O'Reilly's chain pub. I went there to take a picture.

They haven't gone so far as to chisel the original name off.

I wonder who that predecessor reader was, and if she had a good time at the dance party, and what made her buy this book, and whether she lost someone close to her - and if, 22 years later, it all seems like another world? Or could it never?

I sat here in Melbourne and read the book. In the short story A Small Spade, a couple - Neil and Bernard - have a weekend away from London. They travel to Brighton, which is a nice surprise for this reader as an ex-resident, though given its fame as Britain's most gay-friendly city, not too much of a narrative surprise.

Neil is fired from his job for being "antibody-positive". In 2015 I was foolishly a bit surprised to realise or remember that this might have happened. Particularly so given that Neil is a hairdresser. Wouldn't his hairdressing co-workers rally around in We're Here, We're Queer fashion? In the end they rally amongst themselves in more of a We're Queer And We Don't Want To Catch Anything fashion. On the Sunday, Neil and Bernard decide they need a swim:

It took them a few wrong turns, all the same, to find the swimming pool, but when they got there it was open. It was also called The Prince Regent Swimming Centre. 'Isn't that just as piss-elegant as you'd expect,' said Bernard as they queued for tickets. 'Other people have pools. The Prince Regent has a Swimming Centre.'

'I think it looks stunning. There's a water slide.' 

... Beside the water slide, the swimming centre had a separate diving pool, and a supervised lane for serious swimmers...

It was from this very lane that I had emerged to discover Adam Mars-Jones's writing. But it had taken me around the world to make this discovery. In a way I'd chased one of his stories from the UK to Australia, and then another had chased me back, in a giant tracing of meridians, as a circumference around an unknown.

I think what I've learned is that, over time, the centre always becomes complex.

Thylogale billardierii

I recently found some time to see a couple of shows at the Melbourne Fringe Festival, and because they were so enjoyable (and because a few people I know would have loved to attend) I thought I'd write up a bit of a rundown of what I remember of them.

TONY MARTIN: THE YETI

Shortly after I went to sleep one evening in June 1992, my dad woke me up to watch the last fifteen minutes of the first episode of a new live comedy show on the ABC called "The Late Show". That TV show and the others it spawned turned out to be probably the biggest influence on my teenage life, and principally this was because of one man - Tony Martin.

He looked like an older version of the 13-year-old me, a dag in a pair of round glasses, but he was funny and confident on stage. Like much of the population, we had "The Late Show" on every Saturday night without fail. When it ended in December 1993, some of the cast embarked on a series of stand-up tours across the nation. I was still a few months short of 15, and living in a semi-rural town which for entertainment had an occasional Blue Light Disco - there was to be no live version of Not With The Good Scissors for me. The stand-up stopped well before I was out of high school, but Tony was suddenly more accessible as the presenter of the national radio show "Martin/Molloy", which broadened his appeal to include people who didn't watch the ABC.

It was to be a full twenty-one years before I got to see him live, in (no less true for being a cliché) the intimate venue of The Butterfly Club. I'd never been there before; you go down a city alleyway, climb two flights of stairs, walk through a long bar and a long lounge decorated thusly, then go up another flight of stairs to a miniscule stage with seating in roughly the same layout as a 767. I sat in what would have been aisle seat 2C.

I knew that the show was a retelling of "The Yeti", a piece from Tony's autobiographical collection "Lolly Scramble" - but even though it was going to be largely stuff I was already familiar with I was excited to hear how he would perform the piece. There doesn't seem to be any love in Australia for the audiobook, which is the perfect presentation for his solo material, but I'd heard one piece ("Breakfast in Dubbo") performed before as an audio segment, and I wasn't going to miss this chance to hear a second piece performed live.

Sometimes when you see a person you've known through the media for years, it's a bit weird. You notice that they're shorter than you assumed, or they have grey hair behind their ears, or they're a fucking racist. But when Tony Martin walked onstage, there he was. It was Tony, he nodded briefly in acknowledgement of the applause, and he launched straight into the tale.

The story of "The Yeti" is of a young Tony Martin living in a boarding house in Auckland, run by an eccentric couple who only seem to take on eccentric boarders. From such a humdrum topic is wrought almost an hour of amusement. It wasn't constant laughter, but that wasn't what I was there for. I've no idea if the performance was altered from the published version - if it was, it was minor, and certainly there was nothing that I hadn't read in the book. That sentence might read as a criticism, but this was emphatically not a stand-up show - it was fifty-five minutes or so of character, of escalating bewilderment, of giving voice to the bizarre and exaggerated individuals who peopled the one-man play.

There was no audience interaction. No "you know" or "right?" to acknowledge the presence of others. And this worked. There was a mirror onstage, fixed to the wall stage left. It formed no part of the show. Every five minutes, a small blackout marked a pause.

So, it got to the show's end, which in the book reads

"all I have left is a copy of the article about Boyle's cigarette holder, a handwritten list of over fifty of Gunter's most popular sayings [...] and a single blurry snapshot of the house itself. Only when I look at these fading, fraying items can I be sure I didn't simply dream the whole damn thing."

It ended the same way in the show. But magically, astoundingly, a projection appeared on the white back of the stage, and there were the items concerned.

I'm not overly fussed when comedians exaggerate events, borrow stories, or compress and move things around to make funny things funnier. Stewart Lee, in his book "How I Escaped My Certain Fate", details how he described things his wife saw as things he himself saw, or tellingly changed the inappropriate inflatable alien doll left outside Kensington Palace after Diana's death from the now-forgotten A.L.F. to the more familiar E.T. (and then gets a further joke out of this change). I've heard Tony Martin do it himself on the "Late Show" DVD commentary, stating that there were three websites devoted to stagehand Alf Camilleri by the time the series finished, which is funnier than saying that there would have been if the internet was used for things like that in 1993.

So picture my shock, my glee, my undisguised delight when "Smoking Goes Out the Window" turned out to be a real newspaper clipping, with Boyle himself looking the elaborately-mustachioed prize dick we know him to be; when Gunter's sayings on a frayed bit of foolscap written in the identifiably younger hand of T Martin appeared; when a woman in the audience cooed at the washed-out old picture of a New Zealand house torn from everyone's shared childhood. It was truly astounding and just what I wanted to the show to be.

CONFETTI

This was a weird little live art happening that I attended having arrived much too early for the DC3 show. I had read about Confetti in the festival program, which succinctly describes the performance as lasting about two minutes, playing to one person at a time, and being donation only. As it was going to be performed to an audience of just me, I assumed that it would be somewhat personal in nature. Beyond imagining that someone might ask me to blow a feather into a basket in a weird ASMR trip, I didn't think too much about what it might be. I got to the venue, which was the basement of the North Melbourne Town Hall. A gentleman stood by a door. I said I'd come to see Confetti. Silently, he nodded, directed me to a series of instructions written on the door (entry by donation, you may have to wait, etc) and then beckoned me to place some money in a small box. I took out my coin purse and emptied several dollars (and, accidentally, a button that had come off my shirt that week) into it. I was given a balloon to hold and ushered to a seat.

While waiting I noticed that no one else had come on their own (I'd come to North Melbourne for the DC3 show, and my wife judges herself - as a foreigner - too culturally remote from Australian satire). I twiddled my balloon and watched as others went through the door before me. There seemed to be a lot of shrieking involved behind the door. I noticed that there was simultaneously another show in the basement (this one) which looked more like what I had expected of Confetti. It looked calming and fun. Meanwhile a ten-year-old boy was emerging from the Confetti door doing an comic impression of someone who had just seen more than they'd ever expected to.

I was collected. The aforementioned gentleman and his colleague took my bag and coat, stood me in place, directed me to knock on the door, and then pushed me through. The following took about sixty seconds and a lot of the impressions were fleeting:

• Two women pulled me into an underlit room entirely wallpapered with reflective prismatic stuff.
• Dancing Queen was playing on a stereo, a glitterball was turning, they were shouting with excitement at my having arrived.
• They made me dance with them. Made me!
• In the indoor twilight, under the influence of ABBA, I was invited to down a shot of vodka, port, or something non-alcoholic. (Vodka.)
• One woman gave me a stick and the other climbed up on a chair, holding out a piñata. I was allowed three tries to burst the piñata. (At this point I had forgotten I was a six-foot tall man in my thirties, and I swung a little bit too hard in my eagerness, slightly unbalancing the momentarily-worried-looking lady on the chair. I suddenly remembered I was not at my own sixth birthday party, and took two very mild pokes at the piñata to no further effect.) My failure was applauded with cheers and confetti.
• I had to blow out a candle on a cake. There was more dancing. The music had somehow changed to Xanadu. The lights changed and everything was dark, except for weird fluorescent shapes which suddenly appeared on the women's dresses as they shimmied "for you, Xanadu" to me, kissed me on the cheeks and kicked me out the door.

Whereupon the two gentlemen straight-facedly handed my bag and coat back and nodded a curt goodbye.

It was hard to top that; nonetheless, the main attraction of the evening was still to come.

THE DC3 - MODERN UNCONSCIOUSNESS

I got into TISM when I was 19. "Whatareya?" had just come out and it was a work of genius. I bought the album "www.tism.wanker.com" and it was twelve works of genius. It came not with a hidden track, but literally with a hidden CD. It was an education for me in really delivering to an audience, of playing with expectations. TISM were a band. They were often described as an anti-band, or even "about a band", which gets close to what they were. Being an anti-band, they often attracted anti-fans, which I'm not sure is a concept that translates to people who are fans of regular bands. Because the members of TISM were clearly false personae, they adhered to a made-up, abstruse, and ever-changing philosophy. It was all nonsense, but great fun. Back in 1998, TISM were touring Australia and NZ, and lead singer Humphrey B Flaubert regularly posted wry, amusing updates on the forum on the album's website. This was my first year in uni, so you can imagine what a potent Bachelor of Arts cocktail of influence I was under. I loved the whole idea of TISM, and there was a great satisfaction in getting to know them more than ten years after their career had started. In about nine months, I had hoovered their decade-long oeuvre. But I had never got the message: TISM fans were supposed to hate TISM. It was supposedly a terrible mask-removal for Humphrey to post on the forum as if he was a real person who had dressed up in a balaclava and played a rock show. Certain of the fans criticised the band for failing to criticise the fans. I never paid an ounce of attention to this - Humphrey was my hero in those dying days when I was still young enough to have heroes.

I went to plenty of TISM gigs in Sydney and Canberra - once even trekking to Melbourne for the DeRigueurmortis launch gig (eight hours in a bus from Canberra, slept at a friend's house, did some record shopping, saw gig, slept in the North Melbourne Youth Hostel, then eight hours in a bus back to Canberra). I once met Humphrey. It was at the Amnesty International signing tent at Homebake. You joined a big queue in hopes that by the time you got to the front, the band you wanted to see would be in the middle of their 15-minute timeslot for signing. I joined the queue and chatted to this girl from my home town who wanted to get John Butler's autograph. When TISM's timeslot arrived I was miles from the front. Crucially, I also noticed the queue had stopped moving. The people at the front were hoping that Paul Dempsey would lay his hands on their stricken brows or something, and they didn't want to give up their spot to talk to TISM. I excused myself from the conversation and jumped the entire queue. I spoke to Tokin, I didn't try to be funny, just told him that I loved the band's music and it was nice to meet him. Then I noticed that Humphrey was free, and I asked to shake his hand. He seemed a bit pleased with this. I told him his music had changed my life. (It had.) He thanked me and asked my name. He then signed a piece of paper with the words "Hi Ryan, Dear Ryan, Do you like the Beta Band? -Humphrey". I then tried to be funny and it didn't work. In retrospect, I'm glad for that little failure; the character of Humphrey glowered at me like he did at so much besides.

I was living in Japan when TISM played their final gigs. I was living in the UK when Humphrey formed his new band Root!, broke up his new band Root!, started using his real name, Damian Cowell, for a solo album, then formed his newer band the DC3. By the time I moved back to Australia he had finished touring the first DC3 album. All up it was ten years between Damian Cowell gigs for me when I saw the DC3 at the Northcote Social Club in 2012. Since then I've seen a bunch. The launch gigs of the second DC3 album early this year were some of the most joyous experiences I've had at a gig. There are plenty of songs that welcome positivity, which in a way is surprising. That's not the schtick. But then the schtick was only ever a veneer, and I love the positive songs just like I enjoyed Humphrey posting back in the day about some sweet moment of connection with a member of the audience that he felt onstage at the Metro in 1998.

Back in August I saw the DC3 at the Workers Club in Fitzroy. Damian was as sick as a dog, he clearly needed to be at home in bed. I found it a bit confronting, because my dad had died a few months earlier and they both had the same shaped head; my dad had wasted away from an aggressive cancer and weirdly this made me worried about the man onstage. It's a wholly inappropriate way to feel about an artist you admire - concerned for their health - because as much as you can be concerned for anyone's health in general, you don't know this person. I've said hello to him once or twice. Every now and then I see him in the street, as his 9-to-5 job must be based fairly near mine. But that I've listened to his art weekly for the last fifteen years does not create a relationship, just a fan. I keep coming back. I hope he keeps putting stuff out.

"Modern Unconsciousness" was something I wasn't sure would be successful. In summary, it's a concept album performed live onstage. As the DC3's lyrics are often very fast and wordplay-heavy, I wasn't sure how well this would play in keeping a narrative going. Of course, this problem had been foreseen - they played in front of a giant PowerPoint projection which included all the lyrics. Like surtitles at the opera. Totally legitimate. The story is that DC, on the tram to Southern Cross station (as I myself am, every morning) experiences an odd form of enlightenment whereby he is granted access to Modern Unconsciousness, which is half exclusive nightclub, and half extended metaphor for the banality of success as posited by reality TV and celebrity. Almost all of the songs were new to me. ("Indistinguishable" made an appearance, along with revamped versions of "The Book of Job" and "Anakie")

Performancewise, Henri and Douglas anchor the stage with a genial determination not to draw attention to themselves too much. Douglas smiles and Henri doesn't. Damian runs around doing his trademark hold-a-pose every so often. The set was deliberately minimal. Not to give away the ending of the show, but there were only three props and two of them were bananas. They will not be winning a Helpmann Award. It was the best show I've seen for a long time.

I imagine that "Modern Unconsciousness" will form part of the next DC3 album - it's certainly full of excellent stuff: the God monologues, the song "The Invisible Gorilla" - it'd be a shame to never get a chance to hear these again. Maybe it could be the first album released as a PowerPoint file.

Did I say I'm too old to have heroes? Well... I take that back, maybe. And next time I see DC in the street you know what I'll do? I'll politely let him get on with his life without interrupting.

Bonus non-feature: MANDEK PENHA'S RESIDENCY AT THE TOFF IN TOWN

I was desperate to see one of these gigs, after falling in love with the single "Men Teach The Boiz (Gurlz Kiss the Boiz)". (Certain bands I like owe debts to the Residents.) It just didn't happen. Next time, C.E.E., next time.