Zine Day

On Saturday, did some zine-making over at magnation in King Street. Bird In The Hand Zine Shop organised it, and Bettie Brimstone plus friends hosted. The first act of my completely solo weekend went swimmingly. Everyone was friendly and there were no glue hogs or scissor hogs. (These used to cause me panic attacks as a kindergartener.) Some poor artist-in-crisis had dumped armfuls of arty goodness outside for collection, and quick-thining Bettie Brimstone brought it along. There was a giant ruby red manual typewriter with a dodgy ribbon that kept dislodging. But it was gorgeous! Typing on a manual typewriter is one of the most soothing motions. The punching keys noise is rhythmically uneven but everyone at the table agreed it was conducive to the ‘creative process’ or something. We sat in air-con. Suffice to say I was there pretty much the entire day.

Made the very first With Extra Pulp zine! It’s called “Characters for your next novel” and it’s filled with random type-written passages, torn out pages from my Moleskine diary and exquisitely pretty paper that some poor artist chucked out (along with their hopes and dreams). You could win it, if you enter my Blogiversary competition.

A Book Launch and then Amanda F***ing Palmer

Kinokuniya Bookshop hosted the launch for Solace & Grief, the debut novel by YA author Foz Meadows. I got a copy signed and told Foz I was her ‘Twitter-stalker” (most people get all weird around famous actors/musicians. I get stage fright around authors.) But she still signed my book. And got the spelling of my name right in the FIRST GO. Scott Westerfield MC’d. Just a quick question to any authors who may be reading this: Do you find it weird when someone comes to your launch by themselves? I’m curious.

Anyway. So some girls gave Foz a large yellow capscicum. And then I felt bad for not bringing along a garden vegetable. So after getting my book signed I left. Solace & Grief is about a teenage girl named Solace living in foster care who, as it turns out, is a vampire. She meets a faceless man and subsequently realises she can’t keep hiding what she is. Oh, and there’s some sort of strange underworld beneath Sydney’s Hyde Park. Urban fantasy Aus style.

My solo weekend wasn’t over yet. Amanda Palmer rocked the Opera House. She was accompanied in part by Lance on the marimba (plus four other instruments) and a rocking string quartet. But back to Amanda. She is hilarious. And talks to the audience. A lot. She completely fucks up her final song. (Everyone got their lighters out, old school style, and it made her laugh.) She plays an impromptu, slightly disturbing song with her support act, Mikelangelo, on vocals. She does a cover of John Cage’s 4′33″ and more than half the audience has no idea what the hell is going on. She has a gorgeous gothic half-skirt (as in, there’s no front half), that she arranges carefully on the piano stool. But she gets stuck every time she has to stand up. She pulls up random audience members (one of which has her own ukelele) and a man who has an iPhone, but when it doesn’t work she gives it back and lets him sit on stage watching and filming the whole thing from the freaking prime seat.

She opens with my favourite song, Astronaut. And finally succumbs to audience pleas at the end for Oasis. She sings a song about how her burning hatred for Vegemite. “I cannot hold a man this close who spreads this cancer on his toast. It’s the Vegemite or me.” She also refers to it as ‘foul death-paste’ as well as..oh just watch this video. She seems to think everyone in Australia loves Vegemite. The audience sets her straight.

Amanda encores, as per the usual standard. She plays NIN’s Hurt followed by a few more songs.

She answers questions from the audience and deftly fended off the stalker-ish girls. She flashes us her $9 Aussie flag undies, which were purchased in Adelaide airport. She laments about not being able to be with her fiance, Neil Gaiman, who is at the Oscars right this very second. But she assures us that she loves us. She spills her red wine all over her copy of her book “Who Killed Amanda Palmer” just as she is plugging it. She plays the Opera House Grand Piano with her FOOT.

The audience are hilarious hecklers. They really love her. (And one guy really loved Pokemon, as 4′33″ revealed). She doesn’t play Leeds United, another of my favourite songs, but it’s forgivable. She is an amazing performer and being engaged to Neil Gaiman has just made her even awesomer (if that were even possible). Amanda is so public about her life it scares me slightly. I’m surprised she hasn’t been kidnapped or something during her Australian tour. My fears of going by myself were unfounded. When you watch Amanda perform it’s like you’re the only one in the room. And the wooshes of crowd cheering and laughing are just part of the background noise. She’s a gothy, punky, scary woman who is brilliant.

This is my favourite song of hers.

Lovely present and future readers of With Extra Pulp, It has been exactly one year since I began the treacherous and harrowing journey into the blogosphere. I’ve had many blogs since I discovered LiveJournal as a naive and, well, let’s face it, angsty fifteen-year-old, but this one lasted the longest. It’s my favourite.

To celebrate my One Year Blogiversary, I’m hosting a totally rad giveaway. It’s international, because well, I have too many Yanky-doodle and Pommy-licious readers to ignore. (Plus, according to GetClicky, some Google-strays from Sweden, Belgium and Spain. Rad.)

Prizes were picked based on books I read in 2009 that I loved, and zines, because not many people seemed to know what these are. Aaaaand, just because I love to pimp out Aussie lit journals, each prize pack will also contain an excellent new um, Aussie lit journal. The awesome folks from Kill Your Darlings have kindly sponsored this leg of the booty (Thanks Kill Your Darlings team!)

Awesomundo Prize Pack No. 1: Superheroes and Their Tight Tight Pants.

1 x Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman

1 x Deadpool comic

1 x First Issue of Kill Your Darlings

As you all know, superheroes and supervillains are so cool it’s hard to find the words to describe just how cool. Soon I will be invincible looks like it was meant to be a comic book, but it’s not. It’s an entertaining novel. About superheroes. Me likey.

Deadpool goes in here because, um, I heart Deadpool. He’s such a smartarse. And compares himself to Ryan Reynolds (which is hilarious, if anyone saw a little movie called Wolverine: X-Men Origins). And then later, he teams up with Cable and they get some great banter going. So yep, you get a copy of an issue of Deadpool. Which one? You’ll have to wait and see.

Awesomundo Prize Pack No. 2: Dirty Stinkin’ Beats

1 x Howl by Allen Ginsberg

a few x Zines from Sticky

1 x Kill Your Darlings

I get made fun of for my *cough*small*cough* obsession with the Beat Generation. You can all shut your faces now, because I’m giving away a free copy of Ginsberg’s Howl and other poems. Put it on your bookshelf or next to your bed. It should impress potential lovers and friends (well, potential lovers and friends with street cred). Or you could, I dunno, read it.

This prize also includes a selection of zines from the Sticky Institute Zine Fair. Don’t think of it as second-hand. Think of it as “personally handpicked for this special prize by the ever so tasteful Elena”. Now, doesn’t that sound much better?

Awesomundo Prize Pack No. 3: Aussie. Sort of.

1 x Romeo of the Underworld by Veny Armanno

1 x handmade zine

1 x Kill Your Darlings

This one’s a little different from the others. I’ve picked one of my favourite reads of 2009, by one of my absolute favourite writers, who happens to be Sicilian-Australian. Romeo of the Underworld by Venero Armanno. This book holds fond memories for me. I bought it on a family trip to Maleny last year from a gorgeous bookshop that could’ve been straight out of a European film, with its wooden floorboards, and its lingering smell of toast. Except it was in Queensland wine country. So it is second hand, but in excellent condition (no doggy ears or post-it rips. Yippee).

And, because I’m sticking with the theme of this particular prize pack, you could also win a HAND MADE ZINE by yours truly. zomgwtfbbq. I’m only ‘sort of’ Australian (born overseas). Okay some people might feel like they’re getting ripped off with this last prize pack. It’s self-indulgent and self-congratulatory and not a little uppity. Why the hell would you want my battered and read book (I mean battered emotionally, not physically)? Why the effing hell would you want a crappy handmade zine by yours truly, the epitome of artistically-challenged? Because this particular prize has HEART. And HEART is the thing that wins Oscars and makes people cry and spreads the love. Gush time over. It’s not that bad a prize. Please don’t cry if you win this. It would suck big time.

Boring stuff, aka The Rules:

• Leave a comment answering the following question

Would you rather be

a) A half-titanium cyborg with intimacy issues?

b) a grizzly-faced poet whose words land him in court?

c) caught in a messy love triangle with your mate, a beautiful woman, and your Sicilian temper?

And then tell us why.

• Tweet* about this giveaway (+3 entries) (include URL in your comment)
• Blog about this giveaway (+6 entries) (include URL in your comment)
• Subscribe to this blog on RSS (+1 entry) (let me know in the comment if you are a subscriber)
• The competition will end on at 11.59pm AEDST (GMT+11) on Friday 19th March.
• Three winners will be selected at random and announced on Monday 22nd March

* Only your first tweet will gain you extra entries. Spamming is lame.

Good luck!

Affirm Press

March 2010

The nineteen seventies were, according to Barry Divola’s narrator Charlie, every shade of brown with the constant soundtrack of cicadas. And there’s nothing particularly glamourous in this collection of short stories. It’s all teenage boy awkwardness and girls with three nipples, high school rock bands and Sunday night youth group. It’s delightfully ordinary.

Each short story is a chapter of Charlie’s adolescence, and while Charlie himself is a little too ‘nice guy’ to really relate to, it’s the people in his life that seem to dictate his experiences, including all the girls he falls in love with. It almost seems as if Charlie is merely the vessel through which the reader gets to travel back to yester-decade.

Now, you may find this hard to believe, but I have never been a teenage boy. So it’s always, always that little bit comforting to read stories where the girl seems to have control over the romantic situation. (A real fiction in my life so far) It’s only through books like these I can begin to formulate ideas of the kinds of thoughts that permeate a boy’s brain. Maybe I should’ve read this when I was a confused teenager. May have even shed a bit of light on the confusing male perspective of relationships.

But I digress. It’s really the music references that really drive home that 70’s mood that permeates throughout. Charlie and his friends lie around in their bedrooms listening to The Best of Bread on vinyl; after much deliberation, Charlie handpicks Harvest by Neil Young as the soundtrack to losing his virginity. And later, his crush on Angie Perrotta intensifies when he learns that she learned to touch type by practising on song lyrics by Elton John, Carol King and Cat Stevens. And whether or not you grew up listening to Cat Stevens or Neil Diamond or America, it’s not an outrageous theme: We all have albums and songs and artists that have shaped our childhood.

In “Small White Triangle”, Charlie sits at youth group daydreaming about his future as a hair metal rock god, and contemplates Rock Star Jesus, the ultimate makeover. In “Nixon”, Charlie’s ignorance of American politics combined with his ability to regurgitate other people’s opinions, cuts him off from second base with touch-typing extraordinaire Angie, who is also opinionated and idealistic. But it’s the final story, “Patience” that is the sweetest culmination of the previous stories. It’s the only story where we get to see Charlie’s impact on someone else’s life, rather than vice versa. Patience is the name of the elderly woman whose place Charlie cleans on Saturdays. She calls him Einstein, he tells her about his current girlfriend. They become better freinds than any of the boys from school. Patience makes an oxymoron out of her name, and is subsequently not a little feisty. She gives him a cat. While many of the short stories in this collection teeter over oddball and drily funny, the last story is just plain sad, in a final, conclusionatory way.

It’s the second book in Affirm Press’s Long Story Shorts series (following Under Stones by Bob Franklin) And if you’re in Sydney, both books are being launched at Gleebooks next Wednesday (17th March).

Michael Chabon is a freakishly awesome writer. And Kavalier and Clay is kinda cool too.

It took me about ten years to get around to reading this book. Mainly because when it was published I was twelve years old and not very sophisti-ma-cated in my reading taste. So it feels slightly redundant to only just now be reviewing the Pulitzer Prize winning novel of epic proportions.

And epic doesn’t only apply to the nearly 700 pages containing said Amazing Adventures. The story itself spans decades, from the moment cousin Joe makes his great Prague-ian escape to New York, with his cousin Sam Clayman, to post-war New York, long after Joe and Sam have gone their separate ways and forged new lives.

I love that it’s about two cousins who take on the world with their Nazi-busting comic creation, The Escapist. I love that it’s based on the guys that created Superman. And I love that it’s tragic and full of metaphors concerning Joe Kavalier’s obsession with magicianship and escape artistry. Joe is enigmatic and distant: Despite the tragedies that befall him one relentlessly, he is difficult to sympathise with. Perhaps due to his stoicism.

People rave about this book, but to be honest *hides behind desk*, I just don’t get it. I mean, it’s a marvellous story, and it injects a little humour into those dark days of Hitler and it’s heartbreaking. Maybe it’s because other than them being cousins, I couldn’t really see a relationship between Joe and Sam. They fit together in as much as Joe was a fantastic artist, and Sam was a master storyteller, and together the comics they made were just what the young boys of their generation needed. But that was it. Maybe it’s a male thing – close bonds are defined by what’s not said, rather than what’s said. Also, there was an impression of Sam’s marrying Rosa that felt a little like he was keeping the seat warm, so to speak.

Joe and Sam’s eventual reunion should have been all the more sweeter considering all the years that passed of Joe’s most triumphant disappearing act since he left Prague. But it all felt so matter of fact. Chabon’s beautifully constructed sentences render his writing a separate entity to the story itself. The best writing is the writing that becomes part of the story.

Sentences/paragraphs that sounded pretty impressive:

“His eyes were pink and glittering from the dope, he was thickly covered in a reddish pelt of reindeer fur from his sleeping bag, and he stand more than any human Joe had ever smelled (though there would come worse), as if he had been dipped in some ungodly confection of Camembert and rancid gasoline brewed up in a spit-filled cuspidor.” (p458-9)

Or

“Boyfriend. The word flew into Sammy’s mind and careened blindly around it like a moth while Sammy chased after it with a broom in one hand and a handbook of lepidoptery in the other. It sounded like a wise-crack, acidulous, hard-bitten, italicised.” (p572)

I didn’t hate the book. Far from it. Maybe it was just hyped up too much and I was expecting to be moved by the story. No, it was more like appreciating a party from the outside: You smile along and get that it’s really awesome, but you’re not in there celebrating with everyone. I dunno, that’s a dumb analogy.

There are people out there who love this book: Show yourselves, defend it, tell me how off the mark I was. ^_^

Severus Snape. Gosh, where do I start? The greasy mop of hair? The large hook-like nose? Now some of you may object to this choice, or even to Harry Potter being counted as ‘literary’ but quiet, you. I heart Severus. Especially because we got to find out I was right about him all along. He WAS good. And he loved Lily. It was so sweet and tear-jerking. Also, he died. Nobly. He didn’t WANT to kill Dumbledore, he HAD to. To save Draco. One of those bad on the outside, good on the inside types. It’s a massive turn on. Also, Alan Rickman is sexeh! Best. Voice. Ever. Every time I read a book, I want to turn to page three hundred and ninety-four.

I also delightedly received the Prolific Blogger Award from Mae at Mad Bibliophile. Yay! (and thank you Mae) It’s  a very special award, and even as a whole page dedicated to explaining it. The seven bloggers I’ve chose to award are:

Fresh Ink Books

Lorelei V

Turning The Leaves (a new blog, but already filled with interesting reviews and literary insights)

Tooth Soup

Wordsmithonia (Ryan has given me awards before, but they got lost in my messy blogosphere -Sorry dude! – His blog rocks)

Savidge Reads (who have also started a new PenPals project that I think is quite rad)

Avocado and Lemon – a relatively recently discovered blog, but excellently written, and with some great discussion points on writing and literary events etc.

Okay I’m aware that I’m being a very bad book blogger and haven’t posted a book review in a long time. But last night I saw Spring Awakening at the Sydney Theatre and, well. Yeah.

It wasn’t without its faults. But I’ve been looking up YouTube videos from the American Broadway versions, and have to say, in comparison, the Sydney Theatre production was much less polished (this worked for and against it at different times), and the costumes were pretty awesome. Reminded me of my own Catholic all-girl schooldays when we used to find the private school boys’ uniforms real sexy. *eyes glaze over* Oh, you’re still here? Anyway…

It’s ultimate teen angst (if teenagers broke out into well-choreographed song every so often), but for some reason this didn’t piss me off as much as it usually does. Perhaps because the play it was based on (Spring Awakening by Frank Wedekind) was written in 1891. It effectively reminds us that teenagers have had to deal with sex, getting good grades, and evil grownups since forever.

Wendla’s mother refuses to tell her the truth about where babies come from, out of embarrassment. The consequences are grave and sad. While the girls are dealing with their own problems: sexual and physical abuse, kept complete ignorance of the real world, the boys aren’t much better off: Clowny Moritz has just had is first erotic dream and is utterly petrified of it. He’s also being sabotaged by his teachers, who plot against him in order to keep their school’s pristine reputation.

Wendla and Melchior (Image from www.springawakeninginaustralia.com.au)

I’m hesitant to get into detail of the plot because you can easily read about it somewhere else. Spring Awakening shows us a world in which school children frolick in the gardens under moonlight, and are curious and get hurt and are betrayed by those who should be caring for them: their parents and teachers. It’s a world in which sex is a complete mystery, and while smart, likeable and radical thinking Melchior (the male protagonist) is somewhat sexually educated, he is still naive and idealistic. His modern thinking becomes the reason for his downfall.

While it has its comic moments at the beginning, the story spirals into darkness: Abuse, suicide, and other themes that I won’t mention (in case it ruins the storyline), but all of these informed by and resulting from the hypocrisy and ‘eyes-shut’ attitudes of the adults and the conservative Christian society at large. Normally, I am easily moved to tears when I watch things. I didn’t have this reaction here, but the grief and indignation at the utter injustice of the situations that arise are no small impact.

It’s a musical, so I should probably mention the songs. The songs are great. Well, most of them. I wasn’t a fan of My Junk, however I loved Wendla’s pleading Mama Who Bore Me, the schoolboys’ Bitch Of Living (spazzy dancing galore), Melchior et al’s Totally Fucked and the finale ensemble song, Song of Purple Summer were beautiful and angsty and rageful. Oh, and I loved Melchior’s All Who’ve Known. So yes, quite a few. It was great to see ‘fucked’ rhymed with ’self-destruct’ in the lyrics: it wasn’t simply a word to fill in syllables.

The musicians were absolutely amazing, particularly the violinist, and while at times the accompaniment was a little too loud, it was still easy to appreciate the arrangement of it all. Occasionally, the singers used handheld microphones, which was possibly necessary, but definitely quite hard on the ears. When you sing with a microphone, your whole projection needs to change, otherwise the over-pronunciation normally required sans mic becomes very spluttery. And for most of it, I was struggling to understand the lyrics, although when the song itself is a pleasure to listen to, this can sometimes be forgivable.

Anyway, the magnetism of Spring Awakening was in its story: sexual repression, coming of age, and the aloneness of those awkward teenage years. There was something very Picnic At Hanging Rock about it all.

(I wonder if plays count for my Literary Lusts…I have my eye on Melchior or Moritz..)

Note: This wasn’t meant to be a proper review, just my thoughts of the night, so apologies for not being tight on acknowledging the right people, if you really want to know, I’m sure you’ll read on elsewhere.

Oh yeah btw this was the book they were all talking about for some reason...

Journalism fail No. 1: Going to author event with intention of blogging about it and not taking a camera.

Journalism fail No. 2: Going gonzo and inviting myself along to post-event dinner; sitting at dinner table with writers and grilling said writers with questions, without means of recording their responses.

But more to the point…

Elena fail No. 1: Introducing myself as a writer, and then fumbling awkwardly when asked what I actually write (still don’t know quite how to answer this one).

Elena fail No. 2: Tagging along unashamedly to dinner at lovely Vietnamese restaurant on King Street and eating a half rice-paper roll.

Elena fail No. 3: Trying to explain the name of this blog without sounding like a wanker.

Elena fail No. 4: Smiling non-stop. (I’m seeking therapy for this.)

Elena fail No. 5: Telling everyone I reviewed Mic Looby’s book last year to make clear I wasn’t just some random tag-along…even though that’s what it was.

But then there was

Elena win No. 1: Meeting Soph from Avocado and Lemon who is very cool and has some fantastic ideas about literary endeavours…

Elena win No. 2: An awesome conversation (and writing advice) from novelist and screenwriter Virginia Duigin.

Elena win No.3: Discovering a new bookshop to stalk. Gosh Newtown, you really know how to spoil a gal for choice.

All in all, I believe I sufficiently made an arse of myself. But at least I learned that I don’t have any desire whatsoever to become a travel writer.

EDIT: Err, reading over this latest post, realised that I’ve given you NO details of the actual event itself.

Mic read an excerpt from his book, exposing the ridiculousness of one of his main characters. He was interviewed by travel writer and soon-to-be-published-author Ben Groundwater, about the horrors ups and downs of travel guidebook writing, and the importance of leaving the best stuff out.

It also turns out Mr Looby sufficiently pissed off enough embittered guidebook writers and guidebook publishers to deem his work a success. Agreed.

The term ‘value judgement’ popped up a lot, from the author and the audience.

Mic and I anguished briefly about the difficulty of writing a truly funny book, something he seems to have accomplished.

Oh Atticus. I know every girl deep down loves a bad boy. And yes, there is always going to be a part of me that wishes he would just, oh I dunno, get on a motorbike with me and break some speeding laws, maybe hurl a brick at a shop window after midnight. But when it comes down to why this lawyer-man is so damn sexy, it’s all about his honest-to-goodness heart of gold. He’s a loving father (I was going to make a comment about single dads being sexy, but thought I’d hold off on account of him being a widower and all); he is articulate and wise; he stands up for what’s right even though everyone is against him. Plus he happens to be a character out of one of the most beloved books of all time, myself and the rest of the world included. (As a staff-written shelftalker from Better Read Than Dead told me, ‘the only book I was forced to read in high school that I actually loved’.)

Oh Atticus. I almost want to be charged with murder or rape, just to have you defend me. (Oh, was that going too far? Hrmm. Methinks this Literary Lusts meme may be getting slightly creepy. I’d be innocent of course, wrongfully accused because of the colour of my skin…)

What’s your Literary Lust this week? [Btw, what do you think of my new button? It was made by the lovely and talented Rebecca from Just One More Page. She's actually made a few variations, which I've uploaded to flickr for your choosing. Thanks Rebecca for lending us your mad banner-making skillzzz. ^_^]

Also, because my laziness causes me to cram various concepts into one post, here is my vlog about the Sticky Institute Zine Fair I went to during my literary weekend in Melbourne.

I forgot to put it in widescreen. Sorry.
Artists mentioned:

Frankie Pan – Where Did My Sock Go?

Ayano Takeuchi – Audrey & Audrey

Sarah – 1/2 (Sorry hun, couldn’t find any linkity links to share)

Amanda – I <3 Poor Spelling  & Bad Grammar

Daniel Reed – Crumpleton Experiments

Andrei S. Buters – Dead by 30

Dana Maxwell Cooke – Dealing With Post-Human Abilities

While the Wheeler Centre’s Gala Night was technically the reason for my weekend trip, I did manage to sneak in a few more events – A Writers at the Convent session and a wander through the gritty subways for the Sticky Institute Zine Fair. (More on this later!)

The session I attended was called “Not Waving, Laughing”, with Kathy Charles (author of Hollywood Ending), author and newspaper columnist (Modern Guru) Danny Katz, and Brendan Gullifer author of Sold (you can listen to ABC Radio National’s Book Show Review here).

Danny Katz

Canadian-born Danny Katz is incredibly animated, and talked the most out of everyone. He told us about his geologist father, who was captivated by Australian rocks, leading to the family’s emigration to Australia. He had some insights into the typically self-deprecating nature of Jewish humour…apparently, according to Katz, it’s simply a matter of putting yourself lowest, so that a) you can proceed to make fun of everybody else and, perhaps a little sadder, b) so nobody else can put you lower. He told us how one seemingly innocent question into Modern Guru led to his discovery, and subsequent outing, of the hidden world of fountain pen forums (well, not so hidden, this was at the top of my Google search). An enigmatic handful of enthusiasts, from the sounds of it.

Brendan Gullifer

Brendan Gullifer told us about his soul-draining days working in real estate, the inspiration for his novel Sold and the one-eighty when he joined the community effort to save the very building we were sitting in – the Abbotsford Convent.

The convent was initiated by some French nuns, who ran sections of it as a shelter for single mothers, and other sections as a loony bin; residents of the respective houses never crossed paths. So anyway, in true Movie-of-the-week fashion, the council wanted to knock it down to make way for schmoozy apartments. Locals got wind of this, banded together and saved the convent (Gullifer’s version was much more eloquent). It was hard not to gaze out the window at the charming grounds, or around the room at olden-day photos, the mantelpiece in the far wall, and the high ceilings… it made the victory against the evil corporations all that sweeter.

Kathy Charles

Kathy Charles seemed one of those accidentally funny types of people, though she really has quite a dark sense of humour: Having travelled back and forth between Australia and LA as a teenager, it seems there is a little bit of Kathy in her book’s protagonist, Hilda. She spoke about her own fascination with the underbelly of Hollywood, specifically, celebrity deaths. Celebrity culture is something I’ve never really comprehended, or wanted to. But hearing Kathy talk about her interest in celebrity culture and celebrity death, I couldn’t help being drawn to it all: The gruesome nature of it, loved (or despised) actors and musicians, stripped of dignity at their most vulnerable moments, such as the silent film star of the 1930s, a womaniser who wanted to commit a grand suicide. His self-stabbing failed and he ended up dying slowly and in excruciating pain, alone in his bathroom. Ummm, this wasn’t one of the laugh-out-loud funny moments, just so you know.

Sticky Zine Fair in Degraves St Subway

Social funtimezzz

I walked out of this session with sore mouth muscles – lots of smiling, and a bit of laughing (it was after all, a session about humour). Also got to catch up with Angela from Literary Minded, who went to more sessions than me. We sat under a tree and took photos of ourselves. I asked her a lot of questions about writing and reviewing, and then vocally cursed the fact that I had not thought to bring a recorder, as it could have made for lovely INTERVIEW banter.

The Sticky Zine Fair

You know what? I’ve just written a mega epic account of a one hour session. So you can all stay patiently tuned while I put together a zine-themed vlog for next time…

(btw, if you’re interested, I interviewed Damian Kulash from OK Go a couple of weeks ago over here).

The line of eager literary Melbournites wrapped around Town Hall and up the hilly street. Vocal fears of an oversold event from fellow ticket-holders were hushed as we swiftly swept up the stairs and into the magnificently glowing building. I love the people that come that come to these sorts of events. They, and the entire hall, buzzed with anticipation of the evening.
It was clear that Saturday night wasn’t simply about celebrating the Wheeler Centre’s new presence in a place that was recently named a “City of Literature” by UNESCO. It was carefully placed on the anniversary of the Apology, paying homage to the oral nature of storytelling from years passed, a commonality shared between the night’s guests as well as the traditional owners of the land.

Each of the speakers were captivating in their own way, and I could go on about this forever, so I’ll simply touch on my highlights.
Cate Kennedy spoke about her grandfather, Bill Kennedy, and his “reckless generosity and fearless charisma”. Through the jokes and the hilariously horrific anecdotes, she didn’t even attempt to hide her admiration for the man. Her storytelling was all the more enjoyable for it.
Shane Maloney stumbled onto the stage, incredulously gaping at his large name on the overhead screen. One of the funnier speakers of the night, he managed to induce every type of laughter from the audience, from the appreciative chuckle, or the surprised laugh, to the breathless bellow or a guilty giggle (particularly at his more self-deprecating jokes). He manipulates silence as a tool of comedy.
John Safran aptly titled his story, “Teachings From My Father: Nothing Is Illuminated”. From his lisp, to his animated voice, to his Art Garfunkel hair, my love for this guy is ever-growing.
Paul Kelly’s short love story about Uncle Bob and Judy was sweet. He finished it in song: The South of Germany. We learned that we are slightly misled through the lyric:

“Seven children I have raised, I love some more than others
The hardest thing to do is to set them free”

They in fact had eight children, but of course, rhythm dictated an extra syllable.

Of course, it’s scientifically impossible for me to get through a dignified evening without sufficiently embarrassing myself.

I was lucky enough to meet up with Mae from Mad Bibliophile afterwards (her post is much better), and as we’re both directionally retarded, it was a while before we met up in front of Town Hall. As I sat on the bench, I became spasmatically excited, watching Shane Maloney walk past with Jennifer Byrne, followed by John Safran and Christos Tsiolkas hopping into respective cabs. I contained myself enough to not run up to each of them begging for a photo for my book blog and instead chose to sit there ringing my hands and cursing aloud at my slow reactionary skills…

So anyways, Mae finds me, and as we’re sitting there, I see Alex Miller walking past.

Me: Psst Mae! Alex Miller is walking past.

Mae: Where? *head swivel* Oh!

*Alex Miller notices us gaping at him as he walks past, barely a metre in front of our seat. He smiles awkwardly*

*We smile back.*

*I die of mortification*

*Mae and I proceed to a bar to drown my embarrassment in vodka cocktails*

Considering this was pretty much the reason I booked a weekend trip to Melbourne, it was an undeniable success.

The weekend was a success, I attended Writers at the Convent and the Sticky Zine Fair. More on this in my next post.