$ Money $

Getting tired of the Financial Crisis in the media yet? I’m not. How to downgrade your holiday in the Maldives to scummy old Fiji. Finding cut-price designer jeans in the wilds of Preston and other dangerous suburbs. Keeping your old telly and set-top box in lieu of that upgrade to the plasma that you really really need. How to catch public transport with the proleteriat, or, as a last resort, put shoes on and walk using your own feet and other daring recession strategies. Give me a fucking break (that last one was mine).

How can I put this delicately? I will not try. It’s hard not to read this without a certain amount of scorn.

For years I’ve watched everyone moving forwards; working their way through successful careers, buying houses, new cars and more stuff to put in their new houses, getting together, getting married and having babies. Meanwhile, I’ve been enduring an assortment of interesting housemates, freezing cold rental properties, living on Sardine Surprise, scuttling crab-wise around different careers and bosses and Centrelink queues and half-arsed non-relationships.

I know, o middle-class crisis. But I will not lie, the chasm between me and my nearest and dearest has been wearying at times.

Now the world as we know it (and by that I mean the western world) has been heading into a steady decline over the past year or so. The reasons for this may be diverse, but one of the main ones has been people living beyond their means. Jobs are being cut, businesses scaled back and shops are emptying out. There was even a heartbreaking article in the paper yesterday about the empty shops down at Docklands, and how it was really quite a nice spot despite the great white elephant hovering over the skyline. MY HEART IT BLEEDS. Think of all the homeless kids out there, the sick, the marginalised! All they really want is a place they can shop outdoors with a nice view of other people’s yachts, where they can have a skinny latte while the wife tries on shoes (and indulge the silly old thing), yes?

So in an all of this, one would imagine the really small-time operators like old Boo are going to have a ghastly time of it. Not so. For the first time in, I don’t know how long, I’m doing all right. Weird, eh? I swear to you, I am no carpetbagger. I work with things that go tweet. Other low-rent individuals have reported the same. We feel we are ‘under the radar’.

Things are going so well that even my excellent business mentor Robyn is on my case. She was booming at me the other day that with all the excitement going on I really ought to look into getting a financial advisor sharpish. So I can plan for my future. What is this ‘future’ she speaks of. Until recently, such a thing did not exist!

What I have noticed is interesting: the minute you start making a buck, everyone starts clamouring around you like you’re made of Turkish Delight and just took a bath in icing sugar. I don’t mean as in borrowing a fiver or drinking all your 15-year-old Scotch, I mean people see your promise! They want to ‘get me sorted’ and ‘move to the next stage’. A friend wants me to buy a car! What, and why? When you have Oliver Reed, you don’t want for much more.

Maybe it’s just the stars – they’re in alignment at the moment. I checked my horoscope, and it said that this month I would be realising something I’d never realised before. Ho! My arse is too big for these jeans, perhaps. I think I’ve realised that some money does make a difference. It really does. After shouting for much of my adult life: tra la u r fools, money don’t buy you happiness, the tables have turned. And it’s odd – I don’t feel any bizarre hankering for consumables, but I am excited about, well, the promise. There are many more possibilities stretching in front of me (just don’t ask me what).

Starting with the house. I know that domesticity doesn’t make for a fascinating blog post, but it’s too bad, you’re on my turf now. My house is a dream. It’s like I’ve moved to a totally new place – one that I’m no longer embarrassed to invite people over. It’s pretty much the house I imagined I’d live in when I was little, sans the older man and the fire-engine red front door. There are paintings on the walls and little things I’ve picked up on my travels. Faded brocade, books and old rugs. It’s a pity it took me nearly four years living here to realise it. These days I like to just walk from one room to the other. Then back into the kitchen. Then leave a pile of papers in the living room. And throw my slippers into the hall. More often than not, this all happens in the nude. For me, that is the definition of luxury.

The other night, I went out with my dear friend, the A-Zee. For the first time in forever, I did not worry about the cost. We found a booth at the Toff in Town, and dined hugely on various cheese-related items. Nice wine was involved. Few people were there – they must have all been knitting wine chillers for their Grange and boiling up the last pitiful leftovers from The Essential Ingredient. As we made our way to the band room, the waitress took our drinks and found us a good spot in the middle. We enjoyed a local band, Redfish Bluegrass, and enjoyed the fine sights and sounds of fine gentlemen lost in the fine music of the 1920s. We felt like kings.

Inaugural twitch

Hell’s bells. There is the most spectacularly blogworthy material at my new work, and would you believe I cannot write about it. My professional ethics (such as they are) prevent me from saying what it involves, but let me tell you this: the ratio of birdwatchers to regular people is very high.


This week I was invited to my first twitch. I imagined twitching to be some sort of Baden-Powellish kind of expedition, with khaki tents, sturdy hiking boots, sextants, solar topees and armies of attendants bearing sundowners and ostrich feather fans, but apparently it is possible to engage in a twitch in one’s lunchtime.

All we needed were some ‘bins’* and a good pair of walking shoes (see post below). As we approached Flagstaff Gardens, a number of birdos were observed clustering around the trunk of an oak tree and peering upwards. Hands pointed towards the foliage and lenses flashed. They looked like what you’d expect birdwatchers to look like. One gentleman was bearded and gripped a colossal lens.

This Powerful Owl was spotted a couple of years ago in the Flagstaff Gardens. She comes back regularly to feast on possums in the inner city, and when we saw her, she was clutching one in her gigantic talons. Its poor dead tail was hanging down like a sock.

It was quite a sight! The Powerful Owl is a monster. You could imagine her carrying off small children. She had flat yellow eyes and a massive head that swivelled about independent of the body. It was pretty windy on the day, and she swayed a bit with the tree while her feathers fluffed around her. It didn’t bother her too much – she kept a good grip on that possum. I found a picture of a Powerful Owl holding a decapitated possum, but it’s too gruesome to post; the pic of Bill Oddie will have to suffice.

Sigh. I would like to say ‘watch this space’ for more bird tales, but I cannot.

*Binoculars. Get thee with the lingo.

The pointy birds are pointy pointy

Some women don’t leave the house without a dusting of foundation. Makes 'em feel ‘right’. Others like to make everyone late for a dinner booking as they have to straighten every last hair on their head to a mathematical precision using a blow-dryer, hot tongs and a spirit level.

Personally, I feel a bit NQR without a pointy toe.

In this way, I’m very girly-girl. I will spend any amount of cash on nice shoes, days discussing them and hours designing them in my head. The only difference being that there is only one shoe shop in the world that makes me behave in such a fluttery fashion, and that is Rocco’s. He is an old bloke who has devoted his life to creating hand-made pointy wondrousness in all the colours of the rainbow.

This month I spent a fortune on three new pairs. But I prodded a local economy with Rudd’s popularity money, so I am awesome. I like a comfy lace-up winkle-picker, as they make my chicken legs look even thinner and make my feet look much bigger and longer. In that way, I am not so girly-girl.

The red pair in the middle (pictured above) I have had made to replace the old shoes I’ve been wearing since I was a teenager. In all that time I’ve only had ‘em resoled once. Rocco (and now his son) knows how to make a proper shoe. When I was about fifteen, I would sport said winkle-pickers with black jeans and a scruffy jumper with the hole in the cuff I could stick my thumb through. I still wear that exact same outfit right now. Of all the insanity she was wont to blurt, Coco Chanel was right about one thing: why buggerise around with the classics?

I thought that after 19 years it was time to give the beautiful red shoes the hint, although like most Gen Y’s they showed some resistance to the idea and hung around a while longer to finish the last of the milk, mooch off my Internet and slam doors. I had to decide what to do with these old warhorses, and after considering ‘burial at sea’ thought this crafty solution fit the bill:

The last thing you need is a witness when you’re quietly potting your old winkle-pickers in the privacy of your own backyard, but this weekend my medlar-picking neighbours observed me filling them with rooster poo and gently poking drainage holes in them with a meat skewer. A fitting end.

In a final note: Devo has announced the release of their first studio album since 1990 (Smooth Noodle Maps), and released quite a spiffing single Don’t Shoot (I’m a Man).

That’s nineteen years to the minute. Coincidence? I think not.

What did you do with your stimulus package?

Characters and sitcom writing

As a writer, I’ve tried a number of different formats with varying degrees of success. When I started writing at Uni, it was short animated films and the odd comic strip. I moved onto short opinion pieces, then travel articles, features on brides (urgh), the jewellery industry (so me) and the menopausal (woww), while still writing this blogge throughout. Not to mention the occasional song, a half-finished travel book, a concept for a lo-budget travel guide, a hillarious romance novel etc etc etc.

Although people like to pester me about these (‘Whatever happened to that blah you were writing about the blah?’), I don’t consider any of my semi-digested works to be a time wasted or even on the discard pile – they'll all lead somewhere, eventually. As Michael Palin once sang: every sperm is sacred.

It’s taken a long time to realise what I am good at and what I can't do for toffee. On politics, economics and current affairs I am about as useful to society as Gwyneth Paltrow is to the ‘inner aspect'. On some literature, comics, films and general ribaldry, I am on firmer ground.

As an animator, and even when I drew comic strips, they were always character-driven. I always saw this as a failing (I might have to do a post one day on ‘Tartan Monster’, ‘Space Sisters’, ‘RRRR’ and ‘Those Wacky Funsters’, comic strips of old). Animators love doing this – they draw up a detailed model sheet, depicting their character from 100 different angles. If it's female it has the same dimensions as either a sex doll or a child. Everyone in the studio clusters around saying woah rad to the power of sick bro. Then they start hunting around for a writer to 'flesh out their ideas'. Thus a show is born.

More recently I have begun to see this as my strength. I have a feeling short format, character-driven stuff is where my niche sits. In writing, you test the boundaries of your characters using the following approach:

1. Throw things at him/her
2. Get your protagonist into a tree
3. Get him/her down

I’m self-taught and have never encountered any of this stuff before. But as suspected, this whole malarkey is going to take a lot longer than expected. I had a great idea – I had some characters – I had a synopsis – I charged off into the night and began to write Episode 1, Scene 1.

Wrong!

According to all sources, this is the first mistake greenhorns make. Nothing kills off humour like starting at the start and ending at the end. So I went back to the drawing board. I’ve been watching a lot of stand-up and comedy shows lately, what with having not much work on. And for the first time in years having more than two cents to rub together to see some of the comedy festival.

Shows like Nathan Barley are fantastic but dark dark dark to the core. Same with Snuff Box, but with an all-singing factor. Anything with an edge and a bit of British surrealism works for me. Graham Linehan (The IT Crowd, Black Books) is probably one of my favourite TV writers, and unlike a lot of comedy writers he’s free and easy with his advice and quite transparent about his working methods. Daggy as it is, The IT Crowd has to be one of my favourite sitcoms. It's beautifully written and the plot is driven by the characters playing off each other, rather than the other way round (while all that is said, the show would be nought without the input from lead actors – they're utterly fab in it).

<==You can guess what I think about this gentleman, Richard Ayoade

Writer Robin Kelly, has some useful stuff on his website about character, plot, structure and how to approach sitcoms in general. I've always been averse to the wee 'exercises' you get in short courses and books on writing. It always seemed to be more fluff in the way of sitting down and actually doing something.

Kelly puts forward Beeb writer Matthew Carless' list of questions to ask about your characters, which I've found really helpful. None of this may appear in the actual show, but all of it is supposed to flesh out your characters and make them start to tick:

1. Describe your character's physical appearance. How does he or she dress?
2. Describe your character's childhood in terms of family relationships, relationships with the key people in his or her youth, lifestyle whilst growing up and education.
3. Describe the character's current relationship with family, friends and other key people.
4. Describe the character's romantic life and his or her moral beliefs.
5. What is the character's occupation, and summarise the relationship he or she has with the boss and work colleagues and the character's attitude towards the job.
6. Describe the character's non-work activities in terms of hobbies, eating and drinking habits, favourite television shows or films, and favourite locations.
7. Describe the character's philosophy on life.
8. Sum up the main aspects of the character's personality. How is s/he larger than life (or "comically heightened") yet still rooted in reality, thus remaining believable?
9. What is this character's main comic flaw? How is it related to the stories you will give the character and how does it get him/her into hot water in individual episodes and in the long term?
10. Summarise the character's relationship to the other major characters in the script/series. Outline the potential for comic clashes between personalities and what will make these relationships funny.
11. What is the character's lifetime goal or ambition and why does s/he want to achieve it?
12. What would your character do if he or she won the lottery?

I plugged myself into iTunes and whacked down the main points of my characters in two days, no joke. I thought it would take an hour. It was hard, but a fantastic exercise to do, and some weird things popped out. Unlike a lot of sitcoms, I don't fancy my characters being unpleasant or hard to watch, like David Brent or George Costanza. I agree with Graham Linehan on this point. The funniest characters should be agreeable in some way and make you want to keep watching, yet have a sad side to them.

One totally unexpected and embarrassing thing I noticed is that all three main characters are like me, in one way or another. The light and shade of the typical Gemini personality (you call it ‘moody’, I call it ‘high-spirited and interesting’) has been split into three equal parts, all of which bicker and disagree on most points. This makes me, in no particular order:

-A Chinese-Australian designer whose life is a mess
-A gentle, effeminate Austrian architect whom everyone thinks is gay
-A nerdy psychologist who wears an ear cuff and runs a medieval acting troupe

I confess I’d love to draw these characters. I reckon other animators would gather about my desk going cuz u r boom gnarly to the maxx (my imaginary nerds are Kiwi) however cartoon characters who do nothing but yap are a total waste of paper. Think of the trees! So live action they must be. And lots more work I must do.

When the whole world is your umlaut

Yesterday I got my lucky paws on two copies of 'Svensk DAM'. It is always a treat to lay hands on trashy foreign language magazines, the more out of date the better. Despite the fact that glossies follow the same pro forma the world over, it's fun to decipher familiar things through the lens of another language.


The thing that is immediately apparent is the frightening homogeneity of Western culture, from the ideals of beauty and fashion to the sort of place you want to spend your holidays. The anti-ageing ads are the same. Madonna and Kylie Minogue feature. There's a fashion spread of a generic woman sporting an inexpensive jacket, which has been jazzed up in five unappealing ways. A baby-faced chef telling us how to cook. And a woman prancing on some stairs describing how she rebuilt her life after bröstcancer and Dancing with the Stars.

Sweden is one of the furthest places you can get from Australia, yet their trash is virtually identical to our trash. Does that blow anyone's mind? They are literally on the other side of the planet. I have compared it to Woman's Day, a magazine I always peruse when visiting the parental unit. Every page of Woman's Day is totally insane and goes against every one of my feminist principles*, yet I flick through it every time I'm at the olds.

I could have put my queries through Google and Babelfish, but think it far more entertaining to make up my own version of events:

The gloriously-chinned Kronprincessen Victoria features on nearly every page with her personal trainer fiancé Daniel Westling (I like his little Clark Kent-ish visage. What happens when he whips off the glasses?). Often Victoria is juxtaposed with Princess Mary, much in the same way Princess Di and Fergie were back in the day. Are they competing? If they aren't now, I'm certain they will be soon.

Pelé cops a quick feel here with someone described as 'sin drömdejt till slut'. A bit harsh, isn’t it? I wouldn't relish being a dark-skinned person in Sweden – you'd stick out like mad with all these pale, willowy 'blonda bimbons' wafting about. Although if you were Pelé visiting from Brazil I'm sure you could turn the situation to your advantage, something he's clearly doing here with relish.

Andreas Wilson at the right caught my eye, and I had to delve further. What does he do? How come he is so smug? Why does he get dressed in the dark? I can tell you he had something to do with Erik Ponti's film Ondskan. He is dating Nicole Janota (the only brunette in the magazine) and is 28 years old. It's possible he sings, and has done a version of a Supertramp song. Either that or he has them on his iPod. Like all celebrities, he enjoys yoga. He will shortly travel to Thailand with his exotic girlfriend, and I think the last paragraph is the question all readers of Woman's Day are familiar with: "Kommer ni kanske hem med ringar på fingrana?" They're not talking about fingerbanging you dirty sod. I believe they're asking if our bearded hero will pop the question on some palm-fringed beach. Coy Andreas has only this to say on the topic: "Det får vi se!"

If you stick a tiara on it, it becomes interesting. The obsession with the royals continues in Svensk DAM, and Prince William and Harry, Sarah Ferguson and even Camilla Parker-Bowles rate a mention. No more ridiculous than the Woman's Weekly features on glamorous Queen Noor of Jordan or Princess Sayako of Japan, eh? (I have to admit I luuurve reading about royals in far-flung places. My latest obsession is with Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, the suave 28-year-old King o' Bhutan. He is part Thai matinee idol, part Japanese crooner, ALL ELVIS. I would teach him a thing or two about Aussie women, let me tell you)

Only in Sweden, or The Princess Bride, would newlyweds looks like these two below.

The celebrity fixation figures large, and get this – they're the same celebrities we're subjected to over here. Even in Scandanavia one cannot ever be free of the grotesque parody of girlhood that is Cameron Diaz. In her photo she has wrapped herself around someone called Paul Schulfor, a fotomodelhunken. David Duchovny has checked in to a sex addiction clinic, or behandlingshem för sexmissbrukare. Ghostly Anne Hathaway is snyggingen Josh Lucas. Diane Kruger is a fullständig knock-out.

Food is always a bit repulsive in Woman's Day. It's often concerning 'seven ways with Spam' or 'mince your way through the New Year'. And in this respect, Svensk DAM does not disappoint. What the shit is this. A giant crab stick? With dill gone to seed on the top? The ingredients read 'kungskrabba', 'slanggurka' and 'smör'. What is that white foamy stuff? Did someone salt a snail? Perhaps that is the smör.

The Höstmys article is what the readers of Svensk DAM pay their money for. It's a double page spread of assorted people under the heading 'Kändisarnas bässta tips for Höstmys.' What is this Höstmys? And where was I?

Alexandra Charles holds up a calendar of nudists sitting in a field behind a picnic. She clutches this as if to say 'here! It is self-explanatory, no?' Whether this happens before or after she lounges nude with a silver fox I cannot say, but she will be listening to opera, jazz and Swedish folk music and receiving a 'brasilianskt.'

Were you wondering how Anneli Alhanko would spend her Höstmys? I was. This hovdansare praises her wonderful family, and will be watching a romantisk film. Let's hope she puts her 'fantastisk dotter' to bed first.

Katarina Hultling, sportprofil, will be wearing a 'snygga stretchbyxor and a t-shirt described as 'vit'. As she dons these items, she plans to quaff a glass of red wine and some cashewnötter.

Melker Andersson is a 'mästerkock'. No comment.

After studying this article at some length, I conclude I am no more enlightened about the nature of Höstmys, and deduce it is either romantic or lustful in nature.

In conclusion, Svensk DAM was a rattling good read. There were pictures galore and tips on getting my mörka ringar to ögonskuggor. I had to search hard for any differentiation from Woman's Day, and found two:

Opera is mentioned many many times. Many times. Everyone enjoys listening to it in their down-time. Everyone is either on their way to an opera, coming home from one or planning to attend one in the near future. Princess Mary dropped her handbag at the opera, and 300 thrilling words were devoted to it. This suggests Sweden has a more enriched culture, more than one in which obese people have heart attacks after a particularly exciting six at the cricket and decide to audition for The Biggest Loser.

The social pages at the back are a bit like the ones in 'Tatler'. Swedish notables still like to grasp small children in wheelchairs, plait their pony's mane and procreate, so nothing new there. What is interesting is that no-one is particularly young, good looking or glamorous. It's essentially a bunch of older people in trenchcoats and bejewelled opera capes taken in bad lighting. No-one has double-barrelled names, no-one has too much chest out and no-one looks particularly thrilled to have their picture taken. All look poised, polite and clean.

At last, something that conforms to my ideas of what Swedes should be like. Happy Höstmys!


*Trashy magazines operate from the position that all women will only read about marriage, babies, celebrities, royalty, diets, heath & fitness, posh houses, cosmetics and gossip. It's well documented that the entire point is to sell advertising space and to convince women they shouldn't be happy with their lot. This creates fear, unhappiness and dissatisfaction, which in turn is supposed to incite people to spend more money. Thus the cycle continues. You only realise how insidious these Western ideas of capitalism and femininity are when you get to W. Africa where no-one can afford anything and this stuff doesn't exist.

Pics: All men profiled are called Per, Olle or Claes, and represent the cream of Swedish manhood ==>