Conversations With Josh
Josh has got an open mic at the Herd tomorrow for what down here we call Cup Eve. The Cup in question being the Melbourne Cup, a horse race carnival that’s been an institution in Australia for over a hundred years. It’s the first Tuesday in November, so it’s gonna be on Election Day for the US as well. It’s a holiday here. We have a day off for a horse race. Anyway, Josh said he’s gonna do an old song I’ve never heard before, a song that was inspired by a girl he had a crush on many years ago. In fact, she’s the one he had been sort-of cyber-stalking recently and had considered re-connecting with. I plan on being there, so can’t wait to hear it. He also plans on doing another cover, but he wouldn’t tell me what it would be.
I mentioned the recent Baseball World Series that was won by the Dodgers against the Yankees. I asked Josh if he’d ever played a sport and he said some cricket, plus relay sprint. He then regaled me with the story of his Under 16s relay squad and how they lost the finals because of one little slip-up. They would usually say the word ‘go’ when the changeover was being made, but the team leader decided for this time to change it to ‘Jack’. This confused the runners and so on the final changeover, when they were winning, someone forgot the changed word which resulted in the dropping of the baton and they lost. Josh was still clearly angsty about the incident, as you usually are with these childhood memories. They stick in the mind. I liked the story. I told Josh I think it would make a nice short story, like The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, the Alan Sillitoe story. I even suggested a title: We Don’t Know Jack.
When we got in my car to take him home the song on my cd player was Mashed Potato by Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs from the Australian Pop of the Sixties album I’m listening to. This is one of the silliest songs ever recorded and is mentioned in the Music Goes Round My Head. Here’s author David Johnston on the song: ‘…sounded like a pre-Thorpe Aztecs instrumental saved for, but not necessarily saved by, the frequent and irritating repetition throughout of the title words followed by ‘yeah!’. It was not one of Billy’ greatest vocal achievements…’ It’s one of those songs that, once you’ve heard it, you don’t ever need to hear it again. Bloody mashed potato yeah over and over, then there’s a brief respite with a guitar solo and then it starts again for a whole freaking 2.30 minutes. It could be half that and would still be too long. The thing is, the damn song is catchy. Josh laughed at me when, back at his house on the veranda, I was still singing it, stuck in that stupid earworm.
 Visited Graeme’s grave after seeing Josh. It’s a little plot away from the main part of the cemetery and looks rather isolated. The cross is more a nod to his wife’s beliefs than his. I had a brief conversation with him. I said, ‘Hey Graeme, how you been?’ He just replied, ‘Dead.’ Very deadpan he was too, appropriately enough. Yep, that’s something he would say. I last saw him alive in March this year. Then there was the brief viewing at the funeral. And here he is. Kinda makes ya think, don’t it? After the visit I sat in the car in the carpark and read a bit of The Music Goes Round My Head. It was a quiet sunny day and I was in shade and it was nice. I then read some more of the Maison Ikkoku manga. Godai has left the place because of a rumour that Kyoko, the beautiful house manager he loves, is getting married to tennis coach Mitaka. He moves into a seedy apartment above a pachinko parlor but then has to contend with the previous tenants, an opportunistic deadbeat couple, who refuse to leave and instead exploit his good nature. Meanwhile, Kyoko and the other tenants of Maison Ikkoku speculate about Godai’s whereabouts, wondering if he’ll ever return – because, of course, the rumour was only that (though Godai didn’t know that). Kyoko in particular feels enormous guilt. Mangaka Rumiko Takahashi escalates the situation to wonderfully absurd heights before Godai makes a very undignified return to his apartment at Maison Ikkoku. As usual, I’m loving this, even though sometimes I think Rumiko’s art in this title is a little sketchy.I finished my Maison Ikkoku manga today. There was a terrific story called Reeled With a Kiss about side character Akemi, the somewhat slutty resident of apartment 6. She gets dropped by her boyfriend and comes home blind drunk. It is up to Godai and Kyoko the manager to get her up the stairs and to bed. During all this Akemi wakes up and in her delirium thinks Godai’s her boyfriend and kisses him – right in front of Kyoko. Then when Kyoko comes forward to admonish her she kisses her too – right in front of Godai! It’s an amazing scene. Watching on as the two women kiss, Godai has a nose bleed – that sly Japanese code for erection/orgasm. The experience sets both Godai and Kyoko off on a quest for more kissage, which is mostly thwarted, until they inadvertently lock lips with each other at the story’s end. Will this push their relationship forward, or will things revert back to the same as usual? Either way, it’s a rare moment of satisfaction and release for both characters in this Rumic World where such things almost never happen.  I had a conversation with Mel, a colleague at work today about anime and manga. I mentioned I have all of the Urusei Yatsura mangas except Volume 16, and she suggested, no, exhorted me to track down that volume. This was because she had also had a final volume of a series she was looking for, but she took too long and the volume became unavailable. In the end she could only track down a different version of the series. She didn’t want the same thing happen to me that had happened to her, bless her. I took the advice to heart, and so tonight I put in an order for volume 16 with Booktopia. Soon I will have the peace of mind my colleague Mel missed out on.I saw in the library today that Paris Hilton has her own Autobiography out. Can’t say I’d ever want to read that, but I do wonder if she writes about the South Park episode she was in. |  Today marks one year since I went to the Twice concert at Marvel Stadium in Melbourne. I’d seen them earlier at Rod Laver Arena and I enjoyed that concert more. The problem with the Marvel Stadium gig was my seat was to the side of the stage and so I hardly saw the group at all, except for their image on the large screens. Also, the stadium was not full – the entire top rows looking empty and forlorn. It made me feel bad for the girls. But they performed well, as if they were playing to a packed arena. I met my work colleague, Archer, before the concert. He was sitting further back but straight in front of the stage. He brought his girlfriend with him. Archer was my Kpop buddy while he was in the library system. We would talk non-stop about Kpop whenever we met. Sadly, he left to pursue work in a book store. It was a bittersweet concert. When they performed the song Perfect World near the end I couldn’t help but take it personal. It’s a put down song, with one line going, ‘I just want to be far away.’ I’m sure it wasn’t meant as a personal slight on the Melbourne crowd but, after this, I wonder if they’ll ever come back. Was in JB today and they had a copy of the new Kinks compilation, The Journey. It’s a strange collection, split into themes that are supposed to tell the story of the ‘journey’. Normally I like this sort of thing. It’s a bit like what Choujimi did with his Youtube video I mentioned earlier. But I don’t love the way this one’s been done. For starters, it’s not what you’d call a Best of collection. Some of their best songs are there, like Waterloo Sunset and Days, but then there’s also It’s Too Late and Wait Till the Summer Comes Along, which are no one’s idea of the best of the Kinks. They seem to have been included because they fit the themes. This was Part One. I’ve also seen the playlist for Part Two on Spotify, and it’s no more coherent. Lots of great songs though. I guess together they make up a good Best Of, but you’ve gotta be selective and a bit of a fan already to enjoy it (or want to buy it). For the moment, I think I’ll pass.Today marks one year since I did my trip to Japan. I remember I had a dream that morning that I’d woke up too late and missed my plane. Then I woke up for real and saw I had plenty of time, which was a relief. Glenys drove me to the station and I took the train, then the Skybus in to the airport. Man, what a day! What a looong day. I didn’t sleep again till over 24 hours when I got to Japan. Oh the memories. It was election day in the US, and we all know now who won. All I can say is, let the Trump shitfuckery begin! I wonder if his Presidency will play out the way it did in that film The Civil War.  |
In the evening, after work, I went to the latest open mic at the Herd in Healesville to see my mate Josh play. One of my work colleagues, Rose, was there too, sitting at the muso’s table where I always join Josh. Wearing his Pink Floyd t-short, he opened the show, which was a good way to start. He did his crowd favourite, Bogan Rhapsody. If you haven’t heard it you should. Hear it here. He then did an old song he told the crowd he hadn’t done at the Herd before. It was Rainbow, uh, something, the song I mentioned in the last Conversation With Josh that was about the girl he had a crush on. It started off quiet, then near the end Josh let loose with some full-bodied singing which really lifted the song. It occurred to me that he’s good at that – putting dynamics into a song. He finished with a cover of the Boomtown Rats’ I Don’t Like Mondays, one of his favourites. Drummer Isak moved to piano to accompany him. Josh sang well, and when the chorus hit we all sang ‘tell me why’, with Isak playing some nice runs on the piano. It was an enjoyable performance and great way to finish the set.
I liked the woman Claire, who came up next. I’ve seen her before. She has a really clear, melodic voice. Very strong, very stable. Her set had mainly been on guitar, but she finished with a Lady Gaga song on piano. Other performers and other covers followed, including silverchair’s Tomorrow, INXS’s Never Tear Us Apart and some I didn’t know, but the crowd knew. The best was the last song I heard before I left. It was Creedence’s Have You Ever Seen the Rain, performed by Tom, a middle-aged guy who has way too much hair, in my opinion. He should give some to me! It was a passable version, and I couldn’t help thinking that I know the bass line to that song. I was mentally fingering the bass parts while the performance went on. It was a good night. I spent way too much money on booze and food, but that’s the way it goes.
| The Labour government here has introduced a bill, called ‘the disinformation bill’, to ban kids 16 or younger from accessing social media. Yeah, good luck with enforcing that! As I’m older than 16 I was checking it out today, namely Twitter, and there’s some funny tweets about how ‘Trump cheated’. Even CBS News in the US has taken it up. I don’t know if it’s a conspiracy or real, but either way, I’m here for it. It’s said that something like 20 million votes weren’t counted or went missing during the election. Lots of people are saying their votes were denied for various reasons. Maybe Kamala should demand a recount. But can she do that now that she’s already conceded? It would be hilarious seeing Trump get a taste of his own medicine. I listened to the new Aespa album, Whiplash, and the new Misamo, called Haute Couture on Spotify while driving the van today. I just got notified last night that my orders for both albums are now available at K-pop Time. Whiplash has songs on it called Pink Hoodie and Kill It, which thematically is a long way from the grander narratives of Life’s Too Short or Dreams Come True. But a couple of songs, namely the last two, Flowers and Just Another Girl, impress already. The Misamo has ten tracks including solo songs from each member. Mina’s one, Misty, sounds good, but does remind me a bit of Marshmallow from the first album. The much anticipated Momo solo song, Money In My Pocket, doesn’t disappoint as she’s using her deep Momo voice as I’d hoped. The Sana song, Mirage, hasn’t really registered yet, though she sings some nice high notes. The main issue I have with the album at the moment is the fact that the physical album will not be the ten track digital album I listened to today. The copy I’m getting, the Mina version, will have seven tracks plus only Mina’s solo song. And it’s the same for the other two members’ versions. If I want the other two solo songs I have to buy both Momo and Sana’s versions. Bummer. Bloody mercenary Capitalism. But I’m actually considering it.  I read a brief chapter from my library copy of Shakespeare’s The Tempest called Understanding Shakespeare’s Language by David Scott Kastan. It gave some good hints about why Shakespeare can be difficult and how to read his sometimes coded language. One clue is the words that meant something different in Shakespeare’s day than they do in ours. One example given was the word ‘let’, as in Hamlet’s ‘I’ll make a ghost of him who lets me’. The word here in fact means ‘hinder’. Then there’s the many new, often complicated words Shakespeare either coined himself or picked up on the streets of London, such as ‘incarnadine’ from Macbeth. So many amazing new words, like ‘countless’, ‘fashionable’ and ‘assassination’ – but some of which never caught on, like ‘facinorous’ and ‘encountment’. Most of all, it’s the density of Shakespeare’s language that can baffle us. He is often writing for multiple effects, his words being “knit into even denser metaphorical constellations to reveal something about the speaker (which often the speaker does not know)”. Then there’s his combining of verse and prose which is done, again, for various effects (it’s thought about 70 percent of the lines are in verse). For example, he often gives his more high-born characters lines of verse to suggest their high station, using it as a social marker so that lower class characters speak in prose, often for comic effect. It was a good intro to Shakespeare’s language, and no doubt could have been expanded to include even more points of how he used it and how it challenges us, but I’ll leave it there. I took a photo of the notice in my library about some children’s books we are not allowed to take with us on the van run. This is because parents have complained about them. Check them out. Don’t they look dangerous? I don’t know who made the decision but I’d like to contest it. Surely if parents don’t want their children exposed to some of this they simply don’t have to choose to borrow those books. We should at least be giving parents and their children a chance to choose, instead of censoring their potential choices. Yes, I’m happy to weaponize that Liberal weasel word of choice for my own ends. Turn it back on those bastards. They don’t get to tell us what to read, Fascists. I was looking at books in an op shop today and came across one called Muddle Earth in the children’s section. Yes, it’s a send-up of Lord of the Rings. It reminded me of an old book I bought and read many years ago. It was a short tome called Bored of the Rings, written by the National Lampoon guys. I recall it being a short tome because the characters in the story literally got bored with taking the Ring to Mordor and so dropped it in some lake (or something) figuring Sauron wouldn’t find it anyway. A younger version of me would have snapped up Muddle Earth and read it, but I’m over it. Watched the Ozu film, Tokyo Story. Here’s my Letterboxd review: It’s a year ago since I went to Japan, and I miss the place. Seemed a good time to watch an old Japanese film. Ozu’s style is very formal. No pans, everything static and close to the ground. Humble, not flashy. Noriko cries, and I cry too. Wow! I gave it five stars. I think we need to see more films like this. Films that seem to teach empathy and kindness. One reviewer of the film on Letterboxd wrote that, after seeing the film, she went and gave her mother a big hug. | Discovered we were having a book sale in the library I was working at today. I grabbed a copy of the first Mad Max dvd. I saw it a long time ago and have forgotten a lot of the details. I’m interested in seeing how it compares to the other, more over the top sequels. Picked up my new Aespa and Misamo albums from K-pop time. Had a listen (second since yesterday) and found them very enjoyable. The Aespa album, Whiplash, is pretty great (I played it twice, the Misamo only once so far). Those last two tracks, Flowers and Just Another Girl (original  title: Just Another Bitch!) are so good. I’m really liking another, called Flights, Not Feelings, which is also doing the business. While the Aespa album (and their others) seems to be aiming for world domination, Misamo seem to be aiming to win Japanese hearts. It’s much more mellow, and the Haute Couture concept with songs like Runway and New Look are going for class and style rather than high commercial impact. I thought long and hard about what to do about the other two versions for Momo and Sana, and decided I must also get them, and thus placed an order – along with the new Twice release in December, Strategy. I could do a cheap workaround of recording the songs off Spotify on my computer, but in the end it came down to the fact that I wanted to support Momo and Sana as well as Mina. It seems cruel (not to mention mercenary!) of the company to create this competition between the three members by releasing three versions with different bonus tracks on each. I saw a popularity list on Twitter that had Mina’s at #1, with Sana’s at #4 and poor Momo at #8. I want them all to do well, By the way, today is Momo’s birthday. Happy Birthday, my Peach Princess! Here are the cards I gleaned from my albums. I finally got a Ningning card! The packaging for the Aespa album is especially crazy with a big booklet in a bag. The concept is very cyberpunk meets Hellraiser. Seemingly a callback to their Savage concept. Those clip-on fingernails look very awkward and dangerous! For the  Misamo I got the Mina version, which included two Mina cards. In what seems to be a theme with Twice solo albums, she’s draped all over yet another car in the booklet. I like the double-sided ID card I got. Makes me want to collect the ones for Sana and Momo (which I’m gonna, when I collect their albums).I am still reading The Music Goes Round My Head. I’m up to the chapter on the year 1966. An amusing tidbit was the section on the band The In-Sect. They had an album called In-Sect A-Sides. David Johnston the author describes it as either Imaginative or Cringeworthy. I’d go with Imaginative with a side of Hilarious. He also mentions the Judy Stone song Born a Woman. He says basically the same thing about it that I said last week. Great minds think alike. I finished JG Ballard’s The Drought tonight. It follows brilliantly in the surreal vein of his previous book, The Drowned World, and I think in fact it’s better. It’s not a typical disaster novel. Ballard’s not interested in the spectacle of social panic and breakdown, he gives us mostly the aftermath, where the characters are free to reinvent themselves in this new landscape. And what a landscape it is. Dreamlike oceans of desert where thirsty lions prowl, Daliesque vistas of trawlers stranded on sand while razor sharp shadows play off the blighted light. The third act is especially magnificent, with MC Ransom and his ragtag group returning from the ever-disappearing ocean front along the familiar river (now a channel of sand) to their former homes. They know it is a suicidal trip, but each has their reasons for making it. For Ransom, amongst the horrors and wonders he finds at the end of it, there is a kind of peace, as if he has returned to the womb. Watched the first ep of the latest Time To Twice on Youtube. It’s titled The Part-Timers and features the members learning the ropes of work in a busy cafe. They have all been given different tasks, some easier than others. On the easy end is Sana and Jihyo’s task of walking the streets and handing out promotional flyers for the cafe. It’s a laidback job and the two seem to be enjoying it immensely. As they wander the streets they attract an increasingly larger audience of fans lured by their celebrity. Back in the cafe, some of the others have a harder time of it. Shy Mina is struggling with the task of greeting customers and offering food suggestions. Momo, Dahyun and Chaeyoung seem to be stuck on a treadmill of coffee preparation. Tzuyu and Nayeon gamely take orders out to tables, sometimes having difficulty finding where to send them. So far no one’s dropped or spilled anything. Only Jeongyeon seems to thrive in the environment, confidently working the counter. It’s barely controlled chaos (controlled only by the experienced staff helping them). This series is looking a lot like the one JYP had Nmixx doing recently. It seems a little cruel at times, but boy is it entertaining! |