Deadbeats

Oh YES!!!

Posted by The Powers That Be, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 at 2:02 pm, EST

Coments (5)

Categories: Anorakism, Doctor Who

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Never Could Stand That Dog

Posted by The Powers That Be, Thursday, 26 October 2006 at 9:39 am, EDT

It is infinitely probable that nobody other than HLoF and I give a tinker’s shit about this but what the hell. Just stumbled on this forthcoming boxset from Mad Tom O’the Waits. Apparently it collects 24 rare and 30 unreleased tracks from over the years. Predictably enough Waits describes it best on the Anti website:

When I was small I always thought that songwriters sat alone at upright pianos in cramped smoky little rooms with a bottle and an ashtray and everything came in the window blew through them and came out of the piano as a song… and in a weird way that is exactly what happens.

What’s Orphans? I don’t know. Orphans is a dead-end kid driving a coffin with big tires across the Ohio River wearing welding goggles and a wife beater with a lit firecracker in his ear.

At the center of this record is my voice. I try my best to chug, stomp, weep, whisper, moan, wheeze, scat, blurt, rage, whine, and seduce. With my voice, I can sound like a girl, the boogieman, a Theremin, a cherry bomb, a clown, a doctor, a murderer… I can be tribal. Ironic. Or disturbed. My voice is really my instrument.

Kathleen and I wanted the record to be like emptying our pockets on the table after an evening of gambling, burglary, and cow tipping. We enjoy strange couplings, that’s how we got together. We wanted Orphans to be like a shortwave radio show where the past is sequenced with the future, consisting of things you find on the ground, in this world and no world, or maybe the next world. Whatever you imagine that to be.

If a record really works at all, it should be made like a homemade doll with tinsel for hair and seashells for ears stuffed with candy and money. Or like a good woman’s purse with a Swiss Army Knife and a snake bite kit.

Orphans contains songs for all occasions. Some of the songs were written in turmoil and recorded at night in a moving car, others were written in hotel rooms and recorded in Hollywood during big conflamas. That’s when conflict weds drama. At any rate these are the ones that survived the flood and were rescued from the branches of trees after the water’s retreat.

Gathering all this material together was like rounding up chickens at the beach. It’s not like you go into vault and check out what you need. Most of it was lost or buried under the house. Some of the tapes I had to pay ransom for to a plumber in Russia. You fall into the vat. We started to write just to climb out of the vat. Then you start listening and sorting and start writing in response to what you hear. And more recording. And then you get bit by a spider, go down the gopher hole, and make a whole different record. That was the process pretty much the last three years.

Then we met Karl Derfler, a wizard engineer who works at Bay Side Studios in Richmond, CA, in the science fiction part of town. A battlefield medic, he did a Lazarus on a number of the songs and recorded all the new material.

On Orphans there is a mambo about a convict who breaks out of jail with a fishbone, a gospel train song about Charlie Whitman and John Wilkes Boothe, a delta blues about a disturbing neighbor, a spoken word piece about a woman who was struck by lightening, an 18^th century Scottish madrigal about murderous sibling rivalry, an American backwoods a cappella about a hanging. Even a song by Jack Kerouac and a spiritual with my own personal petition to the Lord with prayer… There’s even a show tune about an old altar boy and a rockabilly song about a young man who’s begging to be lied to.

I think you will find more singing and dancing here than usual. But I hope fans of more growling, more warbling, more barking, more screeching won’t be disappointed either.

In an attempt to shoehorn some relevance to all of this and writing… erm… I listen to him a lot while working and he features as a recurring character in The Organisation.

Good enough.

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Categories: Anorakism, General, Music, The Organization, drink drink and more drink, magic, writing

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There’s Aliens for You

Posted by The Powers That Be, Tuesday, 24 October 2006 at 12:16 pm, EDT

And there we have it. Well, there the UK has it anyway (although as it’s co-funded by C.B.C., no doubt our token colonial will have it on his maple leaf shaped screen soon enough; ignoring the fact that, with the rife torrent network anyone in the world with a broadband connection — say someone in Spain… ahem — can now watch whatever television their browser favours). So, what do we think?

I know that Thomson The Design — my frequent sounding board in matters Who related — has his reservations, but the general feeling here in Casa Deadbeats was that we have another interesting show to occupy us for the next few months. It wasn’t perfect of course, no show is from the word go in my experience. It takes time for a cast of characters to build into something we care about. Let’s not forget quite how… fine Doctor Who seemed when its first episode screened a couple of years back. Impressive, yes but nothing compared to what was to come. There seems to me a huge amount of potential to Torchwood, some nice dialogue, rounded characters and a premise that opens up storytelling possibilities with consummate ease.

The second episode was a little hampered by its sex driven plot — Bruve felt the ‘lesbian snogging’ gratuitous, we boys refused to comment; although the wanking club owner was televisual gold on our sofa, three boys of varied ages laughing like drains — and showed that Chris Chibnall has a good ear for voices, which is always the most important thing in my book.

I interviewed Chris for the LOM book and we talked of Torchwood (he’s more involved story-wise than Russel T. Davies in many ways) and I was convinced then that the show would be in safe hands. His enthusiasm and understanding of TV drama with a fantastical edge was unerring and a splendid, anorak-y conversation was had.

Let’s just hope it’s successful because, not only will it provide another interesting diversion for a Sunday night it’s also another step towards getting genre television thriving again here in the UK — and Matthew Graham is being no slouch in this department either, his recently announced Life On Mars sequel being only the tip of this man’s fantastical iceberg.

It’s getting to the point that a resolute fantasist may have places to tell the stories he likes and get paid doing it.

Beats the shit out of writing for Casualty.

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Categories: Anorakism, Deadbeat, Debruvio, Doctor Who, Life On Mars, Spain, TV writer man, publishing, torchwood, writing

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Bitterness Cutaway

Posted by The Powers That Be, Tuesday, 13 June 2006 at 7:57 pm, EDT

Most upset. That little snot William Grantham (aged 9) won the Blue Peter “Design a Doctor Who Monster” Competition, the grand prize being the realization of his design into the series. Here it is, Peter Kay as ‘The Abzorbaloff‘ due to air next Saturday in the episode titled “Love and Monsters“.

It was a bloody fix I tell you. I had the competition nailed. My creation, a handsome young actor/writer who sought world domination by repeatedly attacking Billie Piper with his cock would have been a major asset to the pantheon of monstrous creations the series has birthed over its 43 years. Someone must have bribed that Scot Git Tennant not to pick it, it was blatantly the best entry and I would have happily played the part myself to save on budget.

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Categories: Anorakism, Doctor Who, TV writer man, You're Wrong, attacking Billie Piper with my cock, horror

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Velvet Goldmine

Posted by The Powers That Be, Monday, 15 November 2004 at 3:33 am, EST

There’s something coming to Stockton.

The residents feel it, a genetically wired race memory of foreign intrusion, the hackles on the back of their neck raising even as the family dog lifts its head to a Northern night sky and begins to howl. Within hours they’re herding the children into the back of the Mondeo and making for the safety of the hills. By Friday night the streets are empty but for the occasional lonely piece of gutter trash spiralling its way in the lamplight, uncertain of where to go.

They’re here.

And they’re wearing scarves.

The last time I had the decency to spice this column up a bit by travelling away and becoming your roving anorak I was in Perth, Australia. This time the journey was only slightly shorter but the destination a tad less glamorous.

I’m in Teesside.

They speak less English here than in Australia.

Ooh, but that was unnecessarily cruel.

The reason I’ve brought my cultured tones to the land of the elongated vowel? I’m wearing my anorak even tighter than normal. I’m here for a Doctor Who convention.

Time to put my time honoured anorakism principles to the test then.

I’m cheating of course, I pretty much know what to expect, my hymen of convention respectability having been well and truly breached about five years ago (in Coventry; it was surprisingly gentle with me but did leave me with a funny taste in my mouth and a curt letter on my pillow).

I know by now to expect a smattering of costumed attendees, their ability to hold conversation frequently proportionate to the florid-ity of their waistcoats. Why, a few hours ago I had the life changing sight of watching a faux Tom Baker make out with an equally faux Peter Davison within the shadows of an hotel bar, a thrashing and sighing mess of curly hair and striped cricket trouser, I look forward to the result nine months down the line. I am in no doubt that it will be stitched into a suitable costume the minute the umbilical is cut and I shall make its acquaintance this time next year.

Previous conventions offered many a child in costume but usually with the equally pleasurable sight of a bored parent trailing behind it (the look on its face being, at best, bemusement; at worst utter arse-shattering fear; as if their offspring has just revealed a new found love of sexual perversion and they really have to attend the golden shower panel after lunch). This time though, it’s in reverse, fan parents helping to keep national bullying statistics high by calling their child Romana and forcing them to wear hand stitched frock coats in social situations. This will no doubt turn out to be deeply character building and, hating kids anyway, I’m disinclined to worry; let the fuckers deal with it in counselling later. I had the shit beaten out of me at school and it never did me any harm.

(I spent thirty pounds this weekend on a four-foot inflatable dalek, feel free to disagree with the above statement.)

Still, it’s all in the name of good clean fun. Don’t let my naturally dry and scathing manner lead you to believe otherwise.

Thanks to the gentle tutelage of the Dalek Builder’s Guild, I now have an overriding fondness for the words ‘hemisphere’ and ‘dome’; thanks to Gary Russell I now dream of skiing down women’s breasts; thanks to Conrad Westmaas, I jealously fear Nick Brigg’s sense of humour to be darker and more twisted than my own — this remains unproven, you understand, I will want some form of officially governed test before relinquishing my reputation; thanks to Doug ‘Finch’ Inman, I’ll probably spend the next few days crippled with mucoid head death.

Swings and roundabouts then.

The hotel staff have been as baffled as usual, no doubt crying themselves to sleep nightly for having neither the foresight nor option to have booked this weekend off work. The management however, are overjoyed to realise that if there’s one unifying factor amongst Doctor Who fans it’s their capacity for drink. Fortunes have been made this weekend even as fan’s bank balance’s have taken a good and solid shafting.

(Hmm… I just pictured ‘Tom’ and ‘Peter’ again, the continued use of analogy may have to be carefully monitored.)

There is, predictably, a resounding lack of comprehension from the few residents brave enough to stay within the town, perceived notions of fandom leading them to nail garlic at their windows and crosses on their doors (with one notable exception, a taxi driver who, having heard Kate O’Mara had been present proceeded to outline quite how enthused he was at the notion of ‘giving her one’ - had I had the chance to put his offer forward I would have been only too glad; if his performance is as enthusiastic as his chat she would have been bandy for a week with her eyes turned a subtle pastel colour.) There is, as with every cliché, a degree of truth to their view of us. Yes I’ve been surrounded by the hollow and the lonely, the twisted and the bizarre, the obsessional and the demented but you know what? They surround me every day, due to one single inalienable factor.

We’re all only human.

And, as in all gatherings of a suitable number there have been the usual diversifications, for every Tom Baker wig there has been a product-spiked coiffure of gay glam. For every velvet clad whisperer there was the loud drunken roar of a t-shirt and jeans leaning on a bar.

So sit there and mock from a distance by all means but I’m always going to win. Do you know why? Because when I feel that twinge of being the outsider, begin to question my thoughts, desires, taste, when I get that brittle fear of being ‘not we’. Or, heaven forbid, just fancy a bit of a laugh. Well…

I’ve got somewhere to go.

You’ll know where to find me, I’m the giggling fool in the corner, smoking up a fury and watching a man that has become Pat Troughton for the weekend dry-hump his wife in her Cyberman Costume.

Either that or I’ll be chilling in the bar with the usual wonderful mix of society. There’ll be plenty of us, Indulging in our usual joyful obsession, our passion.

Where will you be?

G.

Spread the love, it’s good for your skin.

	Read: Bernice Summerfield Novels - Various At the time of writing there is a whorish offer of all six paperbacks for a tenner which inclines me to believe these fine books didn’t sell half as well as they had a right to. Big Finish’s entire Benny Summerfield output (books and audio dramas) has been a joy no doubt overlooked by many fans. Put it this way: As an actor and writer I would be just as, if not more, enthused at the notion of working on the series as their Doctor Who range. Let fellow anoraks comprehend the weight of that compliment and then spend their money. Lisa Bowerman gives Aural pleasure and I intend to write such on the walls of as many public conveniences as the ink in my marker pen will allow.
	Listen: Arrangements for War - Paul Sutton To prove Owen wrong and Gary right. A fine and rich play that manages to convey drama, time and emotion that belies the odd bad review it has received as the witterings of dribblers. An audio with a genuine and affecting sense of scope.
	Watch: Big Finish Talks Back - Paul McGann A superb DVD that captures the bizarre contradiction of this fine actor, a man who is as intense as he is calm, usually both at the same time. Witty, perceptive and with a career filled with just the sort of stories that make a DVD (or, indeed, a Convention Panel) fly by. Also features an interview with McGann joined by India Fisher (his co-star in the Big Finish dramas). At which point he becomes, well… A flirt frankly.

Note: This column is respectfully dedicated to Dean’s mentals, Kim’s tits, Lee’s Nurses and Gary’s cows.
Baker Scarf: Lee Thompson, scholar, gent and dedicated follower of fashion.
Excess Perversion: Model’s own
Photo’s taken by Guy Adams & Phil Jarrett.

Brought to you with an unapologetic bias towards the output of Big Finish, having found, much to my shame, that ‘artistic director’ Gary Russell is a far finer chap than I had expected him to be.

(Unless, of course, he should happen to read this, in which case he’s a 100%, satisfaction guaranteed, fur-lined, ocean going, G-List Celebrity free-loader. No sense in swelling the man’s head.)

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Categories: Anorakism, Doctor Who, drink drink and more drink

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The Prodigal Anorak

Posted by The Powers That Be, Wednesday, 20 October 2004 at 2:00 pm, EDT

Hmm… The word regular does tend to suggest (though not strictly grammatically) frequent. Which comes across as something of a fat-arsed lie when you consider the previous archived entry to this was written nigh on a year ago. Let me be clear then, the other entries were all written for the now defunct apocryphobia site and have been dumped here as this is my new home.

Got that? Happy? Fine.

And what a new home it is, flash in more ways than one. A touch empty here and there for now of course but given that this is a new site devoted almost entirely to my planned writing work that is only to be expected. The emphasis would be on the word planned.

Writing is even vaguer than acting you see, at any given time it would be true to say I have all manner of projects on the go (current count: one new novel, one reissued one, a short story collection, a novella, an on-line serial and several short stories) but due to the relative dearth of functioning markets in the ghettoised genre of writing there are many hurdles yet to leap.

The field has changed a lot over the last few years. What was once labelled small press would perhaps now be better thought of as “independent” press with many small scale publishers producing quality genre books by established authors (Ramsey Campbell and Simon Clark at PS Publishing, Christopher Fowler at Telos just to name a few examples). The true home of the old fashioned small press with its long lists of unknowns and bubbling unders has now moved to a handful of magazines and, more tellingly, a heroic quantity of websites.

This is of course no great surprise, on-line publishing is cheap and allows one to take risks that print publishing does not. Readers now expect a quality from printed matter that is financially awkward to provide.

Not that some aren’t giving it a fair go, The Third Alternative is certainly the most ‘news-stand’ example, a bi-monthly fiction magazine that deals with dark fantasy and horror - albeit with a sensibility that blurs the line of genre with mainstream fiction. For pure horror The Horror Express is flying an attractive flag with the addition of at least one ‘named’ author in their stable (Graham Masterton, Shaun Hutson, Simon Clark and Guy N. Smith have all featured) but with the rest of the magazine dealing with the less familiar (me included, my story ‘Mother’s Boy’ will be appearing in a forthcoming issue - not that this biases me of course…!) it can truly be said to offer a nice glossy playground for newer authors.

What’s that you say? Money?

Ha. Ha. Ha.

Still, nothing new in that. There are paying markets but nobody’s going to be retiring on the money earned from them just yet.

So what’s the trick? Well, seems to me that profile’s the key. That’s certainly my plan anyway. By all means try the best markets possible (the better the market the higher the readership - not absolute fact you understand but logical enough to run with) but the important thing is to get stuff out there. Variety is the key, a bit of print, a bit of web based. Whatever. Mix it up and hope that one reader picks it up, connects and goes hunting for more.

Which is why this site is here. This is the bridge, the library (oh, and while we’re on the subject I do feel I should clarify that any fiction I place here will be of a type that is unpublishable elsewhere - curiosities if you will, pieces that I have fondness for or that I feel offer something of interest while not being so ball breakingly marvellous that I could sell them tomorrow to a pro market - this is the rule of the dollar, say hallelujah publishers want first publishing rights, putting new stuff up here straight away would hamstring them utterly). Hopefully you know this, hopefully you’ve found this site for that very reason. If so then welcome, see what else you can find and let me know.

Spread the love, it’s good for your skin:

	Listen to: Real Gone - Tom Waits Latest album from the broken boy of ‘cubist funk’. Don’t be put off by your first listenings to this puppy, the music (for it is there) will find its way into your head eventually. Truly bizarre, utterly addictive.
	Read: Behind the Mask of the Horror Actor - Doug Bradley The actor behind the pins in the never-ending Hellraiser film series (and long time friend and colleague of Clive Barker) gives a fascinating, historical, literate view of mask acting. Much more than the usual superficial pamphlets on such matters this book goes from the mask’s routes in the Paleolithic right through to the iconic figures of Jason Vorhees, Freddy Krueger and, of course, Pinhead. Genuinely fascinating stuff.
	Watch: Collateral Hmm. Bit of a popular choice for me, defeats the issue of this column a touch, mind you I could insist on tagging To Live and Die in L.A. on there as well same director), that would up the obscurity ante a notch. Still what a movie. Tom Cruise is an actor I used to loathe, judgmentally writing him off as eye candy. I was wrong. Beautifully shot. Beautifully played. A film that oozes class.

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Categories: Anorakism, Music, Published Work, horror, publishing, writing

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Diamonds in the Gutter

Posted by The Powers That Be, Saturday, 11 October 2003 at 2:46 pm, EDT

Last week I discussed my ability to ‘hold forth’ excessively on any number of subjects with particular reference to a night in my old home town where beer was consumed and the air grew thin around me. One of my pub table colleagues that evening was a young man whose knowledge of twentieth century philosophy is matched only by his ability to look decadently austere in varying shades of black; a man I shall refer to as ‘Neil K’ if only to give him a Kafka-esque quality that would most certainly please him.Neil K has aspirations towards academia; paid for being too clever by half (in my rather desultory defamation of his career choice - unquestionably due to the jealous realisation that being a smart arse is a different ability altogether and unlikely to offer me any great financial prospect).

There is no doubting his abilities, the man is genetically wired for tweed jackets, dark wood halls and words longer than my attention span; yet during our long and varied conversations that particular evening (when the poor sod could get a word in of course) something occurred to me: we shared a passion for creativity, yet we looked for it in almost polemically opposite areas; areas we shall define (if only to please Neil K further by adhering to a strict ‘thesis’ framework as well as using the word ‘polemic’ - albeit in a rather tautological fashion) as High Art and Low Art.

Neil K’s bookshelf is beautifully adorned, books of quality and intellect, good books. Samuel Beckett rubs wizened shoulders with Angela Carter, seminal texts prop up decadent volumes of poetry in such a respectable fashion they would make a intellectual come. It shamed me in its respectability.

My bookshelf? Pulp horror sidles up to Ian Fleming and pokes a finger in his eye; children’s classics cower in innocent shock at the images from my collection of books on Italian Thriller movies and Exploitation Cinema in general. Joe R. Lansdale shucks a Texan boot in the direction of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle forcing the venerable doctor to take refuge behind a selection of Spike Milligans and at least one Peter Sellers biography too many. The collection is eclectic, and every one of them dear to my heart, but it is hardly the sign of a ‘High Brow’ reader even before we move on to my wall-filling Doctor Who collection (hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds; the only thing that would store them all is a TARDIS) and several-thousand-strong comic collection.

You know all this I suspect, I wear my tastes on my sleeve; what you may not know, for I scarcely acknowledged it myself, was my utter determination and devotion to, so-called, Low Art. It means more to me to find words that resonate, images that expand, emotions that rush within the pages of these lowly cousins. I love the way that what some would define as ‘trash’ has the subversive ability to sneak up on the literate and out-think the thinkers. There is no expectation (other than to entertain - an ability that cannot be underestimated) amongst the Low Art, no perceived need to prove its cleverness.

I am the anti-academic, unreasonably dismissive of ‘Quality’ literature producing eye-opening prose because, in my rather twisted perception that ’s exactly what it’s being paid to do so what’s so damn clever?

In my ‘recommendations’ at the bottom of these pages I have consistently avoided books of perceived quality - Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One for example, a recent read that utterly blew me away; as black as wet coal in a power cut and funny as an otter in a frock. Yet everyone knows Evelyn Waugh writes good books, they even told you at school, so why should I state the obvious? I just cannot bring myself to do it, I want to offer up the bastard freak mutations of Waugh; tatty denim clad and pierced but packed full of hidden pleasures.

I adore sneaking ‘unworthy’ references to my gutter children into intelligent conversation. A perfect example: “Logic merely allows one to be wrong with authority”, it sounds so ‘clever’ doesn’t it? Sounds like someone ‘academic’ came up with it. It is, of course, a quote from the 1968 Doctor Who story The Wheel in Space written by David Whittaker and the fourth in the series’ history to feature the Cybermen. The line is uttered by dear old Patrick Troughton in his role as the Doctor. I could even tell you the story’s production code if you want (or, if my memory fails me, it’s bound to be in one of the books I’ve got here). It’s tragic, I know that, but look at the title of the page, read my ‘manifesto’ in the archive section… I’m an anorak… A geek… The typical ‘only child’, the consummate fantasist, the adult who still believes in magic.

We ‘bottom-feeders’ of the artistic world (an aquatic allusion for those of you with no books at all), are rather plentiful… just a little quiet about it. It’s acceptable to flaunt one’s intelligence to a degree, to discuss Cartesian philosophy and understand is impressive (if a little pretentious) to think it’s all about natural wells makes you look a tit but you would still have more respect from some than an ability to list the production order of the third series of Blakes 7 or sing the theme tune to Fraggle Rock.

I may not be able to change this attitude but I can, at least, officially state this area a Low Art zone and have the courage of my convictions. Like a closet homosexual I shall ‘out’ myself as a sad bastard and woe betide anyone who doesn’t like it.

G.

As a final point I would like to mention that despite his rather ‘clever’ leanings, ‘Neil K’ has read the previously recommended Arkham Asylum Graphic Novel and liked it. So there’s a hope for ‘outing’ the trash monger yet.

Spread the love, it’s good for your skin:

(Produced with extra trash this week, just for you…)

	Listen to: Escapology [Explicit Lyrics] - Robbie Williams The fact that I include our Robbie in this weeks ‘extra trashy’ edition rather sums up the point. I don’t do ‘pop’, I loathe it and all its banal cheap ways. Yet, against all odds, I really bloody like this album. I know, I know, but try it - anyone who can write about Monkey whores and come up with the classic “Have I gone up in the world, or has the world gone down on me?” has got to be worthy of a little more credit than his previous history (and demographic!) would suggest.
	Read: Blood and Black Lace by Adrian Luther Smith The most wonderful collection of synopses and production information on a host of Italian Giallo movies (literally “Giallo” means ‘Yellow’ the traditional colour of the thriller paperbacks in Italy; much like the orange Penguin livery we have in this country) most of which you have little chance of getting your hands on in this country! Lurid and sensational they range from the seminal work of Mario Bava (director of the title film, Black Sunday, Five Dolls for an August Moon and Lisa and the Devil to name but a few) and my personal favourite Dario Argento (he shall mentioned frequently in these pages, spaghetti fiend and celluloid god that he is) through to the schlock of Lucio Fulci (Never Torture a Duckling - Now that’s a title) and various one hit glories en route. A sub-culture singularly unappreciated over here; you’ve seen what the Italians can do for Westerns (Dollars Trilogy et al) now see them play in their favourite leather glove and dagger sandpit.
	Watch: Frightmare A marvellously gritty shocker with a sixties ‘kitchen sink’ feel about the difficulties of growing up with a cannibalistic mother. From director Pete Walker who also produced the wonderfully lurid House of Whipcord (that had far more to say about Crime and Punishment in its time than a film with this much gratuitous nudity and suspect French accents had a right to) and The Four Dimensions of Greta, ultimately disposable (as far as a seventies soft porn movie shot in 3D can be).

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Categories: Anorakism, Doctor Who

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The Anorak Down Under

Posted by The Powers That Be, Saturday, 6 September 2003 at 2:43 pm, EDT

So, barely two columns in and I’m already travelling the world in order to increase your reading pleasure. No… please don’t thank me, happy to put myself out…

Really.

So… Perth. The most isolated city in the world, and, after Chicago, the second windiest. Hogging a chunk of the Western Australian coastline it seems ignorant of its inferred inhospitality, basking in the ‘winter’ sunshine it wears its wealth and cosmopolitan air with all the smugness of someone who’s damn well earned every cent of its fortunes.

And that’s the point isn’t it rather? My initial impression of a carbon copy America populated by painfully frank Yorkshire men is (while accurate in some ways) barely grazing the surface of it all. This is a nation who have carved themselves a culture and a place to house it all out of a desolate wilderness. An Island that was as potentially hostile as it was large, an island that dwarves ours in every respect. (True, it was already inhabited when they got here and they proceeded to dominate and eradicate the aboriginal population with all of the gusto of… well… of English settlers frankly so let us not get too sanctimonious on that point shall we? Glasshouses and stones spring to mind so maybe we should turn that particular page of history over quickly.) A certain amount of national pride is, therefore, to be expected.

And they have it… in spades. ‘Made in Australia’ emblazons products with all the fierceness of a battle cry. Walk into McDonalds and you’ll find even America’s notorious attempts at culture stamping shoved aside, those bastions of the ‘free-spirit’ such as the Big Mac superceded by the glories of the ‘Oz Burger’ (made with 100% Australian Beef) - presumably making the point that the testicles of Australian Bulls make far better snacks than those of their Yank counterparts; unable and unwilling to test the assertion (there being no Oz Cows in the neighborhood willing to ‘kiss and tell’) I’ll choose to sit on the fence. But the patriotism stands.

There has been much talk of Australian’s dislike of the English, not something I have experienced myself, politeness across the board frankly, but I would have understood it had it been the case. We make a joke of them, a nation of sheep farmers with no history, crass and crude, base. It is an impression that they partly convey if we’re honest, anyone calling cheddar cheese ‘tasty’ rather than ‘mature’ is asking for comeback. But I would hazard that there’s a touch of jealousy inherent in our criticisms, we look down on them as we do all ‘nouveau riche’, wondering how they dare make so much of themselves in so few generations.

But they must be careful, patriotism often leads to jingoism. Already there are a few hints of superiority creeping in, suggestions that not only are they good at what they do but that they do it better than anyone else. Wouldn’t that be an irony, desperate to distance themselves from the ‘Motherland’, they could end up mirroring it more than they would have ever believed. After all it was England having that attitude that put them there in the first place…

G.

Spread the love, it’s good for your skin:

	Listen to: Spirit of the Century - The Blind Boys of Alabama The musical equivalent of gravy. The thick rich sounds of voices matured to the point of ‘extra-tasty’ (if you’ll forgive the Australianism). Blues and gospel stuff that reaches out to non-fans of the genres.
	Read: Watchmen - Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons Slightly clichéd choice really but it had to mentioned sometime. It is easily forgotten in these enlightened times what a ground-breaking work this was. Never had the super hero genre been so successfully speared and laid out as interesting for those with a mental age above 12, an absolute must have for anyone who has even the slightest interest in the world of graphic storytelling.
	Watch: The Big Lebowski [1998] For John Goodman’s ‘World of Pain’ performance and that final joke.

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Categories: Anorakism, Australia

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The Anorak’s Manifesto

Posted by The Powers That Be, Thursday, 28 August 2003 at 7:01 pm, EDT

But what’s it for? The Internet, the world wide web… It saturates, from the child to the anachronistic octogenarian. The entire world is linked via the phone lines, no barriers… no limitations… and faced with this mind buggering field of possibilities what do we do with it? What do we want from the global network?

Shopping and porn.

We could access un-dreamt of libraries of information, grasp cultures as foreign to us as alien life forms… nah… just give us a few cheap C.D.’s and a butcher’s shop of splayed thighs from a battered shack in Ohio (genuine amateurs all!) and we’ll rest happy.

Now, I’m part of the problem… don’t get me wrong; I fritter away my time online just like all the rest. I’m a positive E-Bay junkie… if it wasn’t for financial limitations you’d never get me off the damn thing as I desperately try and fill some bookshelf gap that’s been laughing at me. But it’s a damn shame… I’m the first to admit it. What should have been the greatest meeting of souls, all joined by a modem and the willingness to connect, has descended into yet another wasted opportunity.

Some fly the flag, I’ll not deny, message boards are awash with mixed opinion, people getting together to discuss their varied obsessions. But most of us peer in, voyeur like, shuffle around for awhile; chuckle at the ferocity of it all… then slip out again unheard. It takes a certain type of person to grab this medium with both hands and run with it.

The anorak.

It’s okay, let’s all admit it now. I have a theory you see, it’s not popular, it’s downright loathed by the majority but here we go:

We’re all anoraks.

Told you you wouldn’t like it, you feel the stigma, panic at the inference and before you know it my ears are awash with hasty excuses and justifications. But hear me out. Everyone I know has an overriding passion for something; some medium, sport, hobby or pastime; something they enjoy to a level beyond the call of duty. Something they can quote chapter and verse on, details and facts far beyond basic general knowledge. Think for a minute, think about something important to you… something that thrills you… something that means absolutely bugger all to many others. Got it? I hope so because here’s revelation number two:

Being an anorak is a good thing.

Can you feel the love in this room? Oh yes… to be passionate on a subject, to enjoy anything deeply… In what way could that ever be construed as negative? To be without an anorak, that would be the killer. To be completely and utterly devoid. Dear God give me my hood any day.

So, that’s going to be one of the purposes of this column, to wear the anorak with pride. To take that word back from the cynics and ‘queer-like’ wave the flag with abandon. Do the same, trust me… it feels good. You’re online now; get yourself to a search engine, tap in your poison and find that chat room.

Then talk… what’s the worst thing that could happen?

You connect.

G.

Spread the love, it’s good for your skin:

	Listen to: Statues Their second album filled to the gills with funked up stuff that’s far more addictive than it has any right to be (although feel free to skip past track two - it is unfailingly shite.), not my usual cup of tea but the bugger’s got under my skin.
	Read: Transmetropolitan : Back on the Street by Warren Ellis Graphic novel; like most of the reading matter I’ll be recommending here, ‘conventional’ books need no defender. This is as far away from the public perception of a ‘comic-book’ as you could hope for. Blisteringly witty and painfully precise in its observations of who we are (or what we’re becoming). The first in a series of Transmet graphic collections featuring the ‘adventures’ of Spider Jerusalem; journalist and commentator, think Hunter S. Thompson combine him with Bill Hicks and then cover him in tattoos. Paradox Comics will sell you a copy and post it to you for a price that is so cheap it’s bordering on the whorish.
	Watch: The Ladykillers [1955] One of the greatest films of all time, don’t be put off by its age, it’s class and wit put it head and above many recent pictures. Featuring Alec Guinness, Herbert Lom and Peter Sellers it concerns a gang of criminals who use a little old lady as an unwitting accomplice in a robbery. When she discovers she’s been used she vows to turn herself and the gang in. Trapped in the house with her the gang decide that she has to be killed… but who will do it? Astonishingly black in its humour, brilliantly acted.

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Categories: Anorakism

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