Sun, 30 Mar: Weekly Review 55

Had a listen to my Hot Boppin’ Girls Vol 6 album. Such an enjoyable old rockabilly album. The music is reminding me of those Sus record dirty ditties, but these songs are much more cleancut. But there’s still something sexy about a lot of them. Pass Around the Apples by Bonnie Prater is all about a babe wanting more loving from her man but he won’t give it to her. He’d prefer to just sit and watch TV. So she hankers for the time of the old Bible and Eden when ‘the women were women and the men were men’ and they passed around the apple thanks to the snake. Those Fifties women, they were so horny…

Played more Space Colony deep into the night. I was on a planet overrun by plants and was having a hard time controlling them. One particular nasty variety called spine weed kept destroying the bridge and ending the game and no matter how I tried to destroy them I never had enough funds to beat them. The only way to win is to cheat by using the shift/alt/o cheat for more cash, which is what I’ll do next time.

Had a mammoth session of Space Colony and finally defeated those fucking plants on that planet. I used the cash cheat to do it though. It was very satisfying watching the last ones being destroyed by my cluster bombs. Once I’ve cleared all the vegetation I guess we’ll be turning this planet into a tourist centre. What else is there to do?

More Conversations With Josh

Watched A Complete Unknown again with Josh at the Healesville cinema after work in the library. He was in a surprisingly garrulous mood. He told me about when he went to the Big Day Out when Smashing Pumpkins headlined. But he didn’t see them, he saw TISM instead. The TISM guys said to the crowd what the fuck are you doing being here, not there? Have to say, if it’d been me, I’d have seen the Pumpkins. We both missed seeing Nirvana. Josh said he’d seen a clip of them at some festival and Kurt started off with Boston‘s More Than a Feeling – a nod to how Teen Spirit sounds a bit like it. I told him about seeing Dylan at the Rod Laver a few years ago. He was playing piano instead of guitar because of his arthritis. This reminded Josh of the time his Going Away Party bandmate Drew tried playing keyboard at a gig coz he’d hurt his hand in a car crash. He said he saw Dylan once with his dad at the Palais but neither enjoyed it. I told him a bit about my day at work at the library just behind the cinema. My colleague Rose, who comes from a business background, mentioned how amazed she still is that we get 45 minutes for lunch. This apparently doesn’t happen in the business world. This reminded Josh of when he used to work in the cafe where we first met and he was contracted to that Sorrino Rosso agency, which only allowed him 15 minutes for lunch. I told him about how I once answered the phone at a library and I got Rosso herself on the line. I joked I should have told her how Josh isn’t with her bastard agency anymore, he’s got his freedom on the NDIS now. And what sort of name was that anyway?

Second time around the movie was a good time. Much of the dialogue is still shockingly hard to decipher, especially Chalomet’s Dylan. I want to watch the film next time with subtitles. I was a bit disappointed with the cinema, to say the least. It had this annoying feature where there were stage lights mounted above the screen and they obscured the top of the screen. The seats were pretty uncomfortable and the cinema didn’t have much of that old time town hall atmosphere, having been refurbished. But yeah, the movie and company was good. It wasn’t a bad way to finish off a working day.

My brain has that Nmixx song High Horse stuck on repeat. I mentioned this to my colleague Amy at work today by way of chatting about Kpop, because she’s one of my rare Kpop fan acquaintances. She seems to be into Exo and other boy bands at the moment. I told her about how Twice will be playing at Lollapalooza this year, which mildly impressed her. She’s more a Blackpink fan, mind. Oh how I miss my K-pop library buddy, Archer. The conversations we would have…

Saw some scary footage on the news and Twitter/X today of a guy on motorbike being swallowed up by a deep sinkhole in Korea. Man it looked hairy. There was a car in front of him that only made it out of there, as though the sinkhole had spit it out. But the poor bike rider, he went down, and his body wasn’t found for a whole day. He would have drowned or suffocated as his bike dragged him down into that muck. Eeek, what a way to go!

It was my birthday. I turned 64. So I played When I’m Sixty Four by The Beatles, as you do. I remember that song when I was a kid. It seemed such an old age, and here I am. But the song makes it sound like the guy’s turned 74. 64’s not what it used to be.

In my birthday entry from last year I mentioned I share a birthdate with that amazing artist Lady Gaga. It turns out we also share some personality traits. Like me, she’s an INFJ – or at least according to social media. It’s hard to fathom her being an ‘I’ not an ‘E’. But yeah, same birthdate, same personality type. We should definitely hang out.

Went to Lui’s. He gave me a bunch of cds and dvds he was giving away. Made a great Birthday present. So much good stuff including a bunch of Bob Dylans. Check out the pics for the content. Then we watched some interesting political videos. A couple of episodes of If You’re Listening by Matt Bevan, covering ‘Putin’s Dream’ and ‘Why France Never Trusted Trump’ that were good food for thought. Then there was a vidcast of Nate Hagen’s the Great Simplification that featured tech wiz Audrey Tang, a Taiwanese person. His (their?) analysis of IT and its possible positive uses was mind-blowing. I liked his concept of ‘pre-bunking’ (as opposed to de-bunking). It was a good night of chat, pizza, TV and unexpected presents.

Twice Mina’s birthday today. She posted her Mina-log In Milano on Youtube and I watched it. She was there for the Fendi fashion show, which she’s a representative for. Like Mina herself it was very chill. She wandered around the city back streets with her manager unnie and bodyguard before the show, eating snacks and enjoying the scenery. When she had some tiramisu gelato she did a little dance of happiness, which we all loved. While being styled before the show the manager unnie asked her about how she maintains her weight. She replied basically she doesn’t eat much (nor cook!), but when she does it simply doesn’t stick because of her idol routine, which presumably includes some exercise. She confessed two meals a day was a big deal for her. Manager unnie said that’s normal for most people. Being away from the other members it was the most real I’ve ever seen Mina be. She came off as chill, elegant, a little pampered, but mostly adorable. I liked her cute pout when she discovered a shop she wanted to enter was closed. Happy Birthday my little ball of sunshine.

Read some more chapters from my Steely Dan magazine. One was a review of The Royal Scam. It mentioned how the song The Fez was basically a metaphor for a condom (‘ain’t never gonna do it without the fez on’). Why had I never noticed that obvious metaphor staring me in the face? The song Everything You Did has a line about the Eagles that comes from Walter Becker’s life. His girlfriend was a fan and he’d had her turn up their music during an argument to stop the neighbours hearing.

I’m still reading the book about Murakami. I’ve been thinking about giving it a miss because so much of it’s about what his editors, translators and publicists did to get him published and popular, but it’s actually interesting. You get a real insight into the machinations of the New York publishing industry, their practices, biases and aims.

I borrowed the Murakami novel Hard Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World. It was in response to reading that other book about Murakami which mentioned the novel. I had thought I would read Norwegian Wood, but that’s more a romance novel, and Hard Boiled is more an experimental science fiction novel – much more in my ballpark. There are two storylines going, each reflected in the double title. The blurb used a word that really triggers me and had me wondering if I’ll like Murakami’s stuff. It was ‘post modern’. This basically means pretentious anything goes wankery to me. The story line certainly suggest post modern malarky at play, but I started reading it, and while I find him too descriptive, I’ll stick with it for now.

Started working on my second Paper Theatre, this one with a Urusei Yatsura theme. I bought this way back during my Japan trip, so it’s taken a while to get to. It’s very enjoyable tearing the pieces off from the perforated paper frames then gluing them onto the paper boards. Some music in the background, very chill, very peaceful.

Finished doing my Urusei Yatsura paper theatre. It was a lot easier to do than the first one – building on experience. It looks good. I had such a nice time doing it out on the veranda in the sunshine, listening to chill music and drinking a vodka. Reminded me of the day I bought it in that little shop in Akihabara.

As the paper theatre put my mind on Urusei I decided to watch another one of the films. This time it was the fourth one, Lum the Forever. It was another amazing surreal piece of cinema, this time reminding me of the second film, Beautiful Dreamer. I believe it was meant to be the finale film to cap off the completion of the tv series. But two more films were made after it.

Watched Lum the Forever again because I needed to and didn’t grasp it all first time around. After reading some reviews on Letterboxd (almost all were glowing) and the rewatch I think I’ve got it. The story is basically about a magical old sakura tree that has its roots deeply connected to the town of Tomaboki, where Lum and Ataru live. It is near death, and when Ataru chops it down during a film shoot directed by Megane its ‘essence’ spills out and spreads a hallucinogenic vapour that causes the townfolk to dream. Much of the film from then on shows us some of these dreams, especially Mendo’s and Shinobu’s. Lum seems to be affected differently. She loses her horns and isn’t able to fly or project electricity (much to Ataru’s delight). She is drawn to the deep pool that was caused when the tree died and sinks down into it. At the bottom of the pool she seems to commune with the root of the old tree, which tells her it contains the memories of all the people of the town. It seems, when it lived, it housed the body of an Oni spirit just like the one Lum recently played in Megane’s film and Lum has become connected to it. It takes back its memories and Lum is restored and leaves the pool and reunites with Ataru and the townspeople. This summary leaves out so much but hopefully gives an idea of the poetry and thought that went into the film. As a farewell to the show it’s beautiful. I gave it four stars on Letterboxd, but maybe I should give it more.

Watched the second ep of the latest Time To Twice, the Rank Battle. It was complete chaos as all the appearing members (Sana and Dahyun were still away, but their hamster and tofu avatars were present) fought it out for pole position in Room Number One. It was, as always, a good time. At the end of the episode Tzuyu was in Room One, with Nayeon relegated to Room Nine. An interesting addition in this series is every member has been given a rubiks cube to play with. Some of them have taken to solving it with gusto, and I think Chaeyoung is looking to cheat it by pulling it apart and putting it back together again. I wonder if this will pay off?