1957 was a big year for Kerouac. “On The Road” was published and his path to overrated iconic American writer was set in motion. He also wrote a play. Which got lost for some reason. It was published in full for the first time in 2005, printed with all its original mistakes and intentional misspellings.

So my cynicism should be held in reserve on the point that the pullout quote on the back of a book was from Kerouac himself describing it. After all, how could any famous critics sum it up in a sentence when it was never published?  Oh but wait, what exactly did he say?

One thing sure: it is now a real play, an original play, a comedy but with overtones of sadness and with some pretty fine spontaneous speeches that are as good as [Clifford] Odets.

This was from a letter Kerouac wrote to his agent upon its completion.

The introduction, by hardcore Kerouacite A.M. Homes, compares the play to the likes of Clifford Odets, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. She makes you all hyped up and excited to read this (after all, it’s a LOST PLAY that has been hidden for 50 years), and well, it’s Kerouac. Always interesting to see something that was rejected repeatedly and then sentenced to gather dust on a shelf somewhere by the request of the agent.

Three acts. Act I, a couple of guys, Buck and Jule, getting drunk in a cheap kitchen, having conversations that can only be had in a state of inebriation. Milo joins. They discuss racing and gambling techniques.

Act II. They go to the races. More talk about gambling and also luck. Milo likes to gamble. Oh and some stuff about Dante’s mystical number.

Act III. Buck and Irwin discuss spirituality with a man of the cloth, called Bishop. Bishop says, “the Bodhisattva stages, as you well know, being a Buddhist, or having read about it, involves Dhristi….which is a spiritual patience … We must no expect the Grace of God so soon in a stage of im-patience you see. Is needed, and also is needed Saha, zeal vitale.”

(sic times a million. p97.)

And then Bishop twists his body to demonstrate the movement we need to do in order to find God. Irwin finds it all very exciting: “Ooh you twisted like a snake just then.”

It’s a play that isn’t a play. Or it is, but it’s a Kerouac play. Which means the characters are real and gritty, but so real that they mimic people we know in real life, the mundane, self-important, umm, wankers, who drink a lot and then say a lot of things they think are really important.

I refuse to buy into the gushing that surrounded this play’s release. That being said, the elements of male friendship in the play (I want to call it mateship but that seems an exclusively Aussie term) are strongly reminiscent of Kerouac’s writing, and sort of serve as an anchor, or comfort, when you read this and get lost in the thin conversations and complete and utter lack of plot.

The third act, with the most substance, turned into a 1959 film called “Pull My Daisy”, and starred Allen Ginsberg as himself, as well as Gregory Corso and of course narrated by Kerouac himself. (Anyone find this film, send it over, I’m mighty curious.)

I don’t hate the guy by any means. But if you read the Guardian article I linked to above, you’ll read that his literary estate is seemingly pumping out these ‘lost works’ regularly, and with most writers, Kerouac most ardently included, sometimes there’s a reason this stuff wasn’t published.

A lot of cool things started happening since I started this blog. One of them was that people have started sending me their zines. FOR FREE! This makes me smile. And want to share my shiny new reading material with you. :)

“the tales of the Crow and the Bean” by Crow and Bean

“the tales of the Crow and the Bean” was technically not sent to me for free, seeings as I BOUGHT it at the Sticky Institute Zine Fair earlier this year. Crow and Bean are a couple of charming girls ( one, maybe both of them still in high school) who wrote a zine containing a story called The legend of Roberto Contadoor, the sad tale of a Hunchback of Notre Dame-type disfigured man who is shunned from his village and feared by its inhabitants:

“Roberto was shunned: women attempted to muffle their screams when they caught a glimpse of his face, children laughed and taunted, and the priest would no longer care for him, he said that every time he looked at the black holes were Roberto’s eyes used to be, he saw the devil.”

In their simple but powerful words, Crow and Bean create a world that could have been a Disney movie, but instead is cruel and full of revenge and fire, not served cold as you may have imagined (Roberto’s disfigurement occurred as a result as of suddenly catching on fire as a child).

“Aeroplanes Exist” by Vijay Khurana

Triple J Lunch presenter Vijay Khurana showed off his multi-talented abilities: dj AND zine-maker! I read “Aeroplanes Exist” and it made me really sad. Not the Eeyore kind of sad, more a quiet, thoughtful kind of sad. It’s filled with plane safety card diagrams and page-long vignettes: a story about “The Mysterious Case of the Coat With Special Powers” and a “Conversation with a Girl on the Slide”, consisting of only dialogue, which begins a little confusingly (something about razor blades and hepatitis-riddled needles hidden in sand), but then turns into something bigger: Do we all try and claim control over things by inflicting pain on those less powerful than us? I would answer a resounding yes, myself (and have a hierarchical family with five kids to prove it if you don’t believe me). “Aeroplanes Exist” feels surprisingly wistful and  lonely, and to be honest I didn’t really understand it. But that’s kinda the awesome thing about zines: As the creator, you have complete control over what and how you’re going to share yourself in these pages, but as a reader, you bring your own circumstances and emotions to your reading. So what doesn’t make sense to me may somehow, spookily, strike a chord within you.

“Something About Dinosaurs” by Chris Grist

My latest zine was from a Brisbane boy by the name of Chris Grist sent me a really awesome Dinozine, titled: “Something about dinosaurs”, about his love of all things dino. He wasn’t just some nerdy monobrowed ‘dinosaur kid’ though.

He makes a giant paper-mache velociraptor head, purchases a totally rad box of raptors, including the coveted Screeching Raptor, and makes dino-shaped hash browns for a New Year’s party one year (a party which was remembered for everything BUT his sad little hash browns). Oh. Well, I guess when I put it like that it does sound kinda nerdy.

But anyone who was roughly between the ages 5 and 12 when Jurassic Park was first released got to witness the best movie at the best possible age to appreciate it. Dinosaurs freaking rule. Also, I accidentally took it to a friend’s 22nd on the weekend, and it got passed around and read and adored by many of my friends.

Woo dinosaurs!

Pan MacMillan

2010

A couple of years ago I was waiting for a Flight Centre group interview to begin. Among the interviewees was a young engineer named Ben who had recently been made redundant. He jokingly lamented that, as a young straight white male, “we don’t get a parade.” And aside from his recent redundancy, I found it difficult to sympathise with him. It wasn’t until I read Fight Club by Chuck Palahnuik that I realised minority groups aren’t the only ones who face soul-crushing trials of everyday life.

In Sam Lipsyte’s The Ask, middle-aged Milo Burke is, in a sentence, a failed artist who now works a dreary white-collar job, obtaining money (in noun form, a “Give”) from wealthy members of society (or “Asks”) whose generous donations fund the university arts program. He is a middle-aged, middle-class, white collar married father whose life has become a passive, flaccid thing. So Milo decides to lose it one day. Unfortunately, the “arrogant, talentless, daddy-damaged waif” he mouths off to happens to be the daughter of one of the university’s donors. Milo is fired for ‘hate-speech’.

But then old college buddy Purdy Stuart enters the picture. He’s loaded. He’s a prick. He wants to deal exclusively with Milo. So Milo is rehired. A second chance. And before Purdy relinquishes his “Give”, Milo is going to need to do a few things for him. Namely, keeping tabs on Purdy’s secret illegitimate son Don, a damaged Iraq war veteran with no legs and serious daddy issues.

As all this is going on, Milo grapples with the complexities of fatherhood and parenting in the modern world, his paranoia about his wife’s infidelity and his general apathy. Well, he doesn’t so much grapple with his apathy but rather lets it wash over him on a daily basis, muting his concerns about his family and failed career as an artist.

The Ask is yet another modern example of literature championing the depressive state of white middle-class males, and is a little less Fight Club, but a little more Jonathan Franzen (whose protagonist in Strong Motions operated in a similar realm of deadpan humour to Milo Burke).  But Lipsyte’s novel seems to find that right balance of humour and self-deprecation. Staff lunchroom conversations reveal Milo’s bitterness: “Blood sausage, anyone?” (he says, on a potential Ask who works in military catering). Milo retaliates to being called a martyr: “A martyr has to give a shit.”

Milo’s colleague Llewellyn responds, “Get over yourself, Milo. You’re a sad man. A born wanker. You were born into the House of Wanker. You’re a berk, and you probably think I’m just saying your last name.” Milo’s inner monologue then speculates Llewellyn had “lifted most of his lingo from the British editions of American men’s magazines.”

Milo’s cynicism and disdain for his workplace, and contemporary America in general, makes him all the more likeable. He also employs the use of creative cursing, at one point calling his mother, to her face, a “spiderc***”.

But a strong character in the loveable loser is not the only reason The Ask works. Lipsyte is full of quips and snappy dialogue. Colleague Horace lectures Milo (Yes this is a common occurrence in Milo’s life),

I don’t sit around dreaming of a parallel universe where everybody’s speaking about my artistic vision in hushed voices on public radio and I’m home in my Brooklyn brownstone half listening while my young assistant with the bee-stung lips and gesso-smeared wifebeater gives me a world-class perineum-polishing with her chrome-studded tongue. No, I concentrate on the mission of this office and the mission of the arts at this university. (p131)

And Milo’s reminiscence of his college days evokes a similarly twisted humour:

Women in tight slacks charged past to the subway, supple organic forms supplemented with technological grafts– earphones, telephones, wraparound shades. I watched them and recalled those cyborg liberation essays from the postmodern feminism class I took in college. I’d run home after every lecture, jerk off on my futon in a fever dream of blinking vaginas. (p79)

The pathetic protagonist who is failing at life is not a new character in modern literature, but Lipsyte manages to inject into him a resigned yet light-hearted humour. Milo is not unredeemable, and his story finds epiphany, resolution, and a moving forward, of sorts. There is a touch of the sweet, with his relationship with kindergarten-aged son Bernie, but these are released in small doses, so the reader never feels like Milo’s life is completely on track.

Anne: the first character I ever found myself in. I wished so damn hard for red hair.

You might think you have an eclectic reading taste. Maybe you do. I don’t know you, I’m just a schmuck who makes small observations and then turns them into general statements about the nature of reading.

But, really, when it comes down to it, you are what you read.

There will always be certain stories, certain struggles and certain characters that you feel drawn to, consciously or subconsciously; willingly or unwillingly.

Sure, reading will help shape who you are, will open you up to experiences you never imagined yourself to have in real life, but I wonder, are you shaping yourself by seeking out these books in the first place? Do you know where you stand when it comes to personal morals because of all the comic books you read as a child/teen/adult, or were you drawn to caped heroes and masked villains because they spoke to something inside you, and confirmed what you already know to be true?

If you literally became what you read, who would you be?

I would be:

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

A man

Sometimes female

(Stupidly, not nobly) starving for my art

Abusing others, sometimes as a defence against my own dark insides, sometimes because I’m unapologetically cruel by nature

Confused about my sexuality

Rebelling against whomever I need to, in order to feel important

Eternally despondent about the monochrome drone my life has become, masking this with a depressingly funny black humour that only appeals to others in a similar situation

Constantly struggling between the good and evil parts that make up my character

Always in a class struggle against the world, when really I’m struggling against myself

Full of romanticised ideals about life and love and yet deathly afraid to reach out to achieve these

Impossibly eloquent

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

And that’s just based on the literature I’ve found myself reading over the last few years. Has anybody else found out strange things about themselves through examining their reading choices?

So, my plan to meet Robyn in person sort of failed, but she kindly answered my questions about what it’s like to be the matriarch of one my favourite families on television. Read on for my interview with the gorgeous and talented Robyn Malcolm. Soon we will be claiming her as our own as per the usual standard of New Zealand import talent. ;)

Hi Robyn! First of all thank you for this interview, I see you were (maybe still are?) in Sydney recently, have you been enjoying it?
I’m still here. I’ve moved here and am looking for work.

And, congratulations, you’ve been nominated as New Zealand’s Sexiest Woman again (and have won the last two years), have you gotten used to this by now? Or is it a surprise every time?
Just found out that I’ve won again! Along with best actress. Its being announced on Friday so need to be shshsh till then. It’s a surprise everytime, especially as I get older. It’s a nice surprise though.. means that Kiwis at least don’t buy into what’s touted in the media “just out of her teens plastic image” as the pinnacle of sexy. I’m happy about what that says about us.
(Note from W.E.P: Robyn was announced as the winner a couple of weeks ago)

You’ve had an extensive theatre career in New Zealand, did you always want to move into television/film? And do you have a preference out of the two?
When I went to Toi Whakaari ( The New Zealand Drama School), all I wanted to do was work full time as a Shakespeare performer. Everything I did was aimed at that. I never saw myself as a screen animal at all. Funny the circuitous road life takes! I’m not where I thought I’d end up but I love it all the same. As far as one vs the other: I do love screen and theatre equally but for differing reasons as they are massively different experiences and disciplines. But as long as the script is good and the people on the job fun its all a total joy and I feel really lucky to be doing it.

Outrageous Fortune’s success seems to stem from it’s combination of clever writing and a stellar cast. As an actress, how important is the script, and do you think an incredibly skilled actor could make a terrible script work, or vice versa?
The script is everything. Completely everything. It is not the end, but absolutely the irreplaceable beginning. Rachel Lang and James Griffen wrote a world, external and internal, which we then responded to. The script hooks into the imagination of the actors and from there the magic starts. But if the script is no good, it doesn’t matter how great the actors are, the project will sink. But, also on the other hand, if the actors had not been cast well and the direction and production team not chosen well then it wouldn’t have sung in the way it has. Sometimes it’s just everything lining up and magic happening.

What do you think attributes to the show’s popularity?
Family, Love, fallibility, comedy and drama buttressed up next to each other. These people are real, bungling through life, trying to do the right thing and buggering it up. They are driven by love, not by being “right”, and they never apologise for themselves or ingratiate themselves to anyone. I think the Wests are often how we would like to be but can’t because we are all so desperate to be liked! I think in NZ particularly the show’s runaway success has been about the fact that NZers have fallen in love with themselves through these characters. For so long we have either played stuff from other countries: American shows about fake heroes doing things we can never really relate to, or we have tried to copy those shows ourselves unsuccessfully. Neither has really grabbed Kiwis in the way Outrageous Fortune has.

The American version, Scoundrels, is the second adaptation to be piloted, after the first, Good Behavior, was dropped. But New Zealand comedy is so unique: Kiwis are excellent at finding humour in the politically incorrect, and never really take themselves to seriously. Do you think this could work in a different culture?
I honestly have no idea! I understand the cast to be excellent. If they take James and Rachel’s scripts and adapt them truthfully into the American culture then there is no reason why it shouldn’t work. I understand also that because its ABC/Disney the bad language, sex, nudity, politically incorrect content and less “moral” stories will be cut or reworked.. (Personally the digital sex scene between Van and Aurora was a highlight for me so I’d be sorry to see that go!) However if they can still keep the essence of these things then it can still work of course. I do find it strange with American Television particularly that a high level of violence is acceptable but sex and the odd bad word is a no no. But Good luck to them! As they say: “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”.

Wish I could pull of leopard print as well as Robyn -_-

I personally think Australian television has a lot to learn from New Zealand. What do you think?
Well thank you! Are you sure you want to go public with that?? Every-time I go through the Australian International Airport I do hear that “ Hey it’s Mrs West! Why is the best thing on our screens a Kiwi show??!!”  I’ve not seen enough Aussie telly of late to compare, but I guess the things that NZ are doing at the moment are about script, authenticity, not style over content, originality etc. I loved “Sea Change” and I thought Wildside looked like a great cop show from the little I saw. “Underbelly” has been bringing in the audiences, and I’ve seen some of East West 101 which I thought was great too. “Cloud Street” is in production at the moment which is very exciting. I’m not really in a position to make a judgement I think!
(Note from W.E.P: Seachange= awesome)

Can you share with us what it is you love most about acting?
It’s playing with the human experience, with the experience of being human. I love it as an art form because its about telling stories, offering up human experience in a way that will hopefully take people out of their own lives for a moment, in order that they can reflect on them later. Also,(to be less of a wanker about it) making people laugh and cry collectively is a blast!

Your OF character Cheryl is quite the hard-arse. I recall in an earlier interview, you mentioned that you didn’t have a lot in common with her. Have you learned anything from playing her these past 5-6 years?
I have learnt that perfect is boring, life is equal pain and joy, that mistakes are necessary, the future unknown, that love is everything, forgiveness underrated and that sometimes you just gotta have a rum and coke and a laugh. And it begins and ends with your kids (until they tell you to fuck off!).

For a character who is so deeply flawed (she’s stubborn, a bit impulsive and can get quite hot-headed) she is still so loved, by her family and the audience alike. How do you do it?
I dunno! I think perhaps people recognise all of the above in themselves. I go into bat for her passionately because I love her as a character, I love what she represents. I think also perhaps by always allowing her to be vulnerable from time to time… letting the audience in. Also, I think Antipodean audiences respond to the “battler”.

Do have a favourite scene or episode from Outrageous Fortune?
I love the “negotiation” scene between Cheryl and Draska, season 3 I think.. ( or maybe it was 2).. I uploaded it onto my Facebook page I loved it so much..Great line “Root bag’s Ok tho aye..”

It seems every 5 minutes a new rumour has popped up that you’re leaving the show. Does this get frustrating? Do you want to quash the latest one, or is that going to give too much away about season 6?
Lips are sealed!!

I know season five ended on possibly one of the most insane cliffhangers we’ve ever seen,  can you tell us anything about season six without giving anything away?
As usual, it’s not what you expect, but then that’s the fun of it.

To be or not to be– that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles…

etcetera. There’s a vomit-inducing rendition of this soliloquy in Billy Madison but let’s put that out of our minds while I tell you all about one of my favourite television shows.You know, out of all the benefits and fun doozies that accompany blogging as a hobby, the one thing I’ve failed to ever mention is the complete and utter control you have to post whatever the freaking hell you want. So, even though each episode takes its title from a line of Shakespeare, there’s nothing particularly literary about this post and there’s nothing you can do about it. ^_^

Outrageous Fortune.

The West family are a paradox: Famed career criminals headed by Wolfgang West, son of legendary safe-cracker Ted West, they have no class and the word trashy comes to mind time and time again. Apart from a dingy ‘West code’ that they each seem to break (“Wests never dob” etc), this is a family that comprises  a well-meaning but short-tempered mother, Cheryl; Van, a loveably dim-witted 20-something year old (slowed down in his mental faculties after locking himself in a freezer as a child); his twin, Jethro, a smarmy, school-smart barrister who doesn’t like to get his hands dirty; Pascalle, possibly one of the most endearing versions of a blonde, if-Rachel-Hunter-became-a-stripper, naive bimbo; the youngest, Loretta, 15 at the start of the series, she is by far the cleverest and cunningest of them all (except for getting knocked up a couple of seasons down the track); Ted, father of Wolf, the inappropriate granddad and well, just an allround cool old man. Plus family/associates, enemies.

After Wolf is given 4 years for his latest offence, Cheryl decides that the Wests are going to give up the crime business. This happens in the first episode, and sets up for the next five seasons of a family of criminals trying to make an honest living. Herein lies the first clue in the show’s appeal. We love to watch humans try and fail. Not only is it a moral pat on the back for ourselves, but throughout the course of the show, we become so attached to these characters that when they do really succeed we are proud of them, and when they inevitably fall of the wagon, we’re disappointed and strangely enraptured by the consequences, whether it’s a teenage Loretta running her own pirate DVD business, Cheryl playing with dodgy tax dealings for ‘bonuses’ in her lingerie company, or Jethro helping his father and associates pull of one of the most dangerous robberies imaginable (see season 2)

The characters are real people, and each of them take turns going against everything we thought we knew about them. Just when we think Loretta is an icy, independent young woman, we see her totally crushed by the first and possibly only man she ever loves. Pascalle’s words of wisdom are far and few between, but shock every time.

While Wolf and Cheryl’s marriage doesn’t take long to break down, and Wolf becomes an intermittent character throughout the series, we see glimpses of their formerly great love affair every time he bursts back into the picture. He’s a prick, a control freak, and full of a nasty temper. But does everything ‘for his family’ (and whether this is genuine, or part of his own delusion, is really left to the viewer to interpret). Cheryl’s following relationship with Detective Sergeant Wayne Judd seems to give her everything she missed out on with Wolf, but this comes with its own set of problems that the emotionally stunted Cheryl needs to deal with.

But of course, there are other reasons to watch this show:

- Eye candy galore: Nearly all the actors are seriously droolworthy

- And you’ve got the shirtless men and sexy scenes to show them off

- Loretta alone is reason enough to watch. You’ll feel so smart picking up all her movie references

- People have told me this is a trashy show. I would argue that the show is ABOUT trashy people but isn’t trashy in itself. In fact, expertly written scripts form the basis of it all.

- It balances the humour and drama almost perfectly.

Why am I telling you all this? Because I got to interview the woman who plays Cheryl West, Robyn Malcolm (!) and will be posting that shortly.

This insanely busy week has left me with little time to write quality posts. So indulge in a little laziness with me while I borrow a meme from Ryan at Wordsmithonia:

It’s called What I Do and Do Not Like.

The rules are really simple, all you have to do is fill in the blanks after each bold word and tag 3 of your friends.

I like watching people fall over.
I like overhearing funny conversations.
I like feeling like the day is going to return some of the joy it stole from me yesterday.
I like watching movies starring Jeff Goldblum.
I like wandering through the town.
I like punching the shit out of manual typewriter keys.
I like when people ask me for help.
I like when people listen to me after asking for my help.
I like getting an idea in my head and being able to put it on paper before it floats away.
I like listening to Hunky Dory over and over again at top volume
I like eating Malaysian food that tastes like Malaysian food.
I like the vibration this chair makes as it squeaks as I lean back in it.

I love to talk to myself.

Today involved much overestimation of time.

I hate when the day steals things from me.
I hate not being a descriptive writer.
I hate when people ask me what I write.
I hate that my best dance moves are the ones that only work when I’m by myself.
I hate hating everything I do.
I hate waiting.

I (secretly) like something that is definitely not being shared on here. ;)

I love the thing I secretly like.

Sorry I couldn’t get this to you guys sooner. I drew the winners randomly using random.org and…

The winner of Superheroes and Their Tight Tight Pants is

Phill from Toothsoup Woooooo

The winner of Dirty Stink’ Beats is

Siobhan from Typical Tunes

and the winner of Aussie. Sort of. is Jade R., a blogless yet loyal reader of With Extra Pulp.

Congrats and thanks everyone who entered and retweeted etc. If the winners could please email me their addresses and I’ll get the prizes out post haste. And huge thanks to Kill Your Darlings for sponsoring this. I hope you guys enjoy your prizes! Happy Birthday to meeeeeee tra la laaaa

Firstly, I have to say I loved the subtitle of this book: “A realist novel of apprentice gangsters”. It pre-empts the hyper-realism that forms Pasolini’s gritty, dirty, dusty, vulgar city of Rome, plagued by young male hooligans, whores, and dangerous levels apathy.

This “underbelly of La Dolce Vita” provides the main reason people compare its author, filmmaker Pasolini, to his more romantic counterpart, Fellini. This alternate (and more realistic) Rome is explored through the young boy, Tomasso, a slum-dwelling teen whose circumstance and friends are below his potential. A boy who is just as much an idiot as anyone, who forms great and blind designs about love and lust, especially when the naive and dimple-thighed Irene catches his attention.

The boys in Pasolini’s Rome could easily be victims of circumstance: youths who have lost all connection to their community and have no loyalty to their town, leaving them free to abuse its citizens, conduct violent outbursts against police, steal, and well you get the idea. But Pasolini makes no excuse for the boys. And they are GROSS. The one nicknamed Shitter was named as such for reasons I’m not even going to mention. Bad eggs all around.

The plot doesn’t careen from one mishap to the next. Yes there is a massive bar fight in which essentially an entire suburb takes on the local police and lose. And Tomasso’s homosexuality emerges in different ways as he grapples with the confusion and secrecy of it all. Poor Irene. But there are also long moments in between the action, where nothing happens except that you’re given the opportunity to relish in the hot and dry atmosphere, the inane conversations and general skullduggery. Against the political backdrop of fascist Italy, Tomasso finds refuge in the communist party and searches for himself and escapes what he can. More things happen, and eventually it all ends.

Despite everything, there’s something romantic in this story. It’s the raw edges, the unkemptness, the secrets and the political undertones. What it is about will mean something different to each person who reads it.

Oh and good luck finding it. I was lucky enough to pick up a $5 copy from a second-hand bookshop. The English translation is now out of print apparently, but not completely unfindable.

PS: Announcing competition winners tomorrow. Stay tuned!

The Long Story Shorts collection by Affirm Press (all two titles so far) were launched at Gleebooks last night, hosted by James Valentine.

Could tell you about comedian Bob Franklin’s hee-larious stand-up bookspeak chat with the audience about his book Under Stones. Could tell you about the ease and banter with which James Valentine and Barry Divola discussed, “in conversation”, the nostalgia of the 1970s, and how no matter what decade we grow up in, the music of our adolescence is always important to us.

Could tell you about the audience finding Bob Franklin h, but then minutes later becoming enraptured, travelling back through time through Barry’s musical nostalgia trip. Or Could tell you that as far as book launches go, this one was by far NOT a snooze (with the aid of a beer or two, of course).

Then again, I could tell you about:

The after-party/dinner that I crashed. Again. This is getting to be a terrible and expensive fabulously excellent habit. Is the term ‘gonzo’ still thrown about these days? Kidding, kidding!

A brief chat with James Valentine, who had some interesting things to say about film reviewing and the influential role PR plays in reviews. Yikes-ful is the word that comes to mind.

Drinking lots of wine, and learning that there is an art to self-deprecation and apparently I haven’t quite mastered it. As per usual, completely lost my filtering system and talked way too much and pretended to know what the hell I was talking about, which is always just great.

Had my glasses lenses cleaned by comedian George McEncroe who in the end could not stand having to look at the smudges and scratches. Sorry George. She also chastised me for not having friends and then in the same breath congratulated me for moving to a new city on my own. Simultaneously feeling ashamed and flattered is confusing and exhausting. We also bitched about boring-town-Brisbane, which is always fun.

Ate nachos. NACHOS.

Aaaaand most importantly got some kick-up-the-arse advice about getting rid of the ‘aspiring’ part of my writer profession. The common themes were:

- Write shit for free. Well, not shit. Write good things.

- Expect and embrace rejection.

- I might just be the only person in the world who thinks I can write.

We hear it over and over again from people. Well, not the last point. That was new. But like I said, it was just kick-up-the-arse time for Ms Pulp. Now please excuse me while I nurse this ever so mild St Paddy’s Day headache and prepare for a torturous run this afternoon.