a womb with a view

a year or so ago brother (and wife) were going through the ante-natal circus of ultrasounds, lamaze exercises, and launch procedures. the more bizarre episodes he's pass on to me. like the time he was asked what he wanted to do with the placenta. he was told "some of the patients like to take the placenta home. some couples prefer to bury the placenta in their backyards. one couple chose to freeze theirs." in the neo-natal ward the hospital issued all sorts of warnings against visitors commenting on the appearance of the other babies. so i had to leave all my "reject shop" jokes at home.

it's hard, thankless work

trying to civilize this new cat which has been living like a new-age traveller (i.e. feral) since it was abandoned. naturally it doesn't get on with the incumbent cat, which was also previously abandoned (beginning to see a pattern here). am tempted to call them "shi'ia" and "sunni" as they hate each other. as only girls can?

thanks for suggestions but am calling it "coco", on account of its chocolate colour and the fact that all femmes love upscale fashion labels. though for a minute there was tempted to call it "jolson".

what is with

the guy on the train who pulls a rising-sun headband out of his briefcase, ties it around his head, and makes a series of bruce lee-like noises, before tackling the sudoku puzzle in his morning newspaper?

naturally he is caucasian.

spooky

it's a habit of mine whenever i buy a book to scribble my name, the season, and the year on the flyleaf. just as an aide-mémoire, you understand. helps me to remember when, and possibly where, i first read the book in q. so tonight i was poking around in jonathan fenby's "on the brink: the trouble with france"—a contemporary survey of french life—which i thought i'd read 2 years ago. tops. nope. winter, 1999 it was. where did all the time go?

still agog at the hathaway biog

it's a bit like me flying all the way to england, driving past london (nothing to see there), so i can enjoy the delights of skegnes.

feminism has a knack

of looking at things from the wrong end of the telescope. so it's only natural that germaine greer has brushed off william shakespeare and chosen to write a biography about his wife, anne hathaway, instead. (a subject which is of no interest to anybody.)

i won't be wasting my time reading it. but hopefully it's full of details about anne's frustrations at being taken for granted, her efforts to get their 3 girls into good schools, and her attempts to get william to do more around the house.

for an encore maybe greer's next book will be about emily dickinson's cat or collette's milkman.

best comment so far

to my michael bolton remarks:

"you are a total arse!! no wonder you're still single at 30!! i bet you still live with your mummy and daddy dont you? and i bet she brought you up on singers like max bygraves and bernard breslaw? have you no shame?? arse!!"

terrific stuff. unfortunately the author is anonymous, which rather spoils the fun. but is understandable under the circs. it must be a terrible secret to carry around being a michael bolton fan. how does she manage? what must her friends think?

take a bow

recently in "the times", english director ken russell adumbrated a list of actresses whose personalities or performances have wowed him. unfortunately his list includes glenda jackson, so it's daft. nevermind. here are some of my favourites:

garbo in "camille" (no one photographed so well).
paulette godard in "modern times" (gorgeous).
louise brooks in "diary of a lost girl" (love the bob).
catherine zeta-jones in "chicago" (again, the jazz-age bob).
diana lynn in "the miracle of morgan's creek" (sassy).
myrna loy in "the thin man" (for the way she drinks martinis).
angela lansbury in "gaslight" (a wonderfully vile cockney upstart).
elizabeth taylor in "who's afraid of virginia woolf?" (bravura performance).
miranda richardson in "dance with a stranger" (terrific character acting).
christina ricci in "the opposite of sex" (funny).
barbara bel geddes in "vertigo" (the best thing in it).
judith anderson in "rebecca" (creepy).
bette davis in "all about eve" (the best melodramatist of them all).
jean arthur in "a foreign affair" (hilarious when painting her face).
ella raines in "the strange affair of uncle harry" (looks great in a suit).
jean seberg in "breathless" (très cool).
katherine hepburn in "stage door" (especially when making fun of her bryn mawr backgroud).
grace kelly in "to catch a thief" (glamorama).
barbara stanwyck in "the lady eve" (always 3 steps ahead of henry fonda).
geraldine page in "interiors" (frosty good taste).
kirsten dunst in "bring it on" (for that deranged perkiness).
the entire cast of "the women".

that's all i can think of off the top of my head. i'm sure there are others.

ps. also the boiler-suited unionist in "the man in the white suit" who tells alec guinness "tea break—we fought for it!"

bring back

h r pufnstuf.

broken blossoms

the great thing about cameillias: the flowers look just as good after they've fallen as they do on the tree. makes the best kind of carpet.

the resignation of alberto gonzales

is welcome news. he wasn't inept (like janet reno). he simply wasn't qualified for the post. his defence of executive privilege was expedient (anyone could see that), but necessary under the circs. if it was up to barbara boxer terrorists wouldn't be stowed at gitmo, they'd be given suites at the waldorf-astoria instead. with fabulous views. that's no way to fight a war.

the 7 culinary atrocities

1. rice pudding
2. spotted dick
3. toad in the hole
4. jellied eels
5. haggis
6. irish stew
7. bread and butter pudding

pillowtalk doesn't get much better

than the time nelson muntz (after his first kiss with lisa) says "say, that was pretty rockin'!"

the real people's princess

(look she's on her hols.)

whereas diana spencer was chosen by the palace to be a princess—a gift from above, so to speak—jade was chosen by the english people themselves. no one forced them to. they made her rich and famous. and why not? she is modern britain. this is the jade age.

i would never eat spotted dick

or any dessert named after a venereal disease.

fresh-baked aliens

the moon this morning was enormous and orange, as if the aliens had accidentally left the oven light on. lunar eclipse tonight.

i'm sure that quack atkins

got the idea for his crazy diet from his cat. all they eat is protein.

"warning! danger!"

as the robot on "lost in space" would say. alcoholic drinks are like venomous sea creatures (this scorpion fish here). the most alluring, brightly coloured ones—breezers and such—are often the most dangerous. very toxic. don't touch 'em.

cruel and unusual

did anyone see michael bolton slaughter the frank sinatra/nelson riddle arrangement of "that's life" on the dame edna show? at least edna made up for it by being incredibly rude about bolton's singing, such as it is (mischa barton and sigourney weaver, more accustomed to celebrity fawning, couldn't believe their ears). apparently bolton has a whole album of bowlderized sinatra ready to go. i guess it's up to that sweaty army of fat, ugly women who make up his fanbase whether the thing flies or not. personally, i didn't think anyone could sing the jazz standards worse than rod stewart. i was mistaken. anything rod can do bolton can do worse. it's like gerard manley hopkins said, "no worse—there is none".

relentlessly sunny

although august is the coldest month of the year (usually), yesterday was so warm i spent most of the afternoon clumping around in crocs. maybe i should send china a gift box, thanking them for spewing those toasty carbon parcticles into the firmament?

something amusing from jeremy clarkson

"australia is where you go when you’ve made a mess of everything. that’s why the 1.3 million brits who live there are known as whingeing poms. because they’re all failures." (the times, 26 august, 2007)

funny and almost true. they're not all failures. they're just all from the north. or is that the same thing?

what's to like?

one of the good things about melbourne—apart from the cafés, the trams, and the fact it's not sydney—are its trees. especially in the posh suburbs. elms, oaks, planes, cameillas, azaleas. but most of all: magnolias. which are in season right now. like mine. it sounds silly to say, but that tree has much more class than me. it's prettier too.

ps. and silver birches.

excesses

wikipedia (stupid stupid name that) even has an entry for "purple nurple".

if i was a woman

and i was writing soupy romances for a living under a nom-de-plume, i'd probably call myself "penny dreadful". or "maud lynn".

when i was just a little goy

every
saturday
my parents took me
to the zoo.
yes,
i guess
i was lucky, really,
to have
a traditional zooish
upbringing.

a&v is right

boo is too strong a criticism for "amélie". it was a little too cute. though i liked the intrepid gnome.

box-office buzz

saw "amélie". nice. not marvellous. just nice. boo: it's self-conscious quirkiness/oddness. yay: the sepia-looking cinematography, audrey's hair and clumpy shoes. (now you know why i don't write reviews for "film comment".)

amusing

click to enlarge.

things just got interesting

the nebbish federal opposition leader, kevin rudd (previously profiled here), is the talk of the town today for going to a new york strip club (sorry, "exclusive gentleman's club"). this kind of thing would normally be received with boos in america and cheers in france. it isn't the shabbiness of the thing which offends, but the lame excuse offered in justification. "i'd been drinking," he squeaked in extenuation.

am curious to see how this goes with the electorate. does this make him more interesting or more common? what will the puritanical left (women mostly) make of it?

i'm expecting a gigantic sniff of indifference.

i still remember how speedily feminists changed out of their principles, put on some makeup and a racy outfit, and rallied to bill clinton during his sexual harassment trials. that was awfully funny.

"you got my avatar pregnant!"

i won't start taking the "second life" phenom seriously until someone successfully prosecutes a cyber paternity suit, and a judge orders maintenance payments (in real money).

what we always suspected

reigning miss sunderland, carly auld, eschews diplomatic niceties and tells it straight: "it's every girl's dream to be a wag. all girls look up to them and follow in their footsteps." you go girl.

ali don't surf

great moments in western civilization

a winston churchill story (as told by stephen fry on the parkinson show). was during his post-war premiership. february. the depths of an english winter. early one sunday morning a private secretary bustled in announcing big troub.

"what?" asked churchill, still half asleep, "we haven't lost another african possession?"

"no, prime minister."

"that's a relief."

"one of the guards—an officer, coldstream i believe—was arrested last night on hamstead heath for, ah, gross indecency with another fellow. it's sure to be foremost in today's 'news of the world'."

"i see." long pause. "cold last night, wasn't it?"

"coldest february night in 27 years, prime minister."

another long silence. and then churchill with sudden vehemence, "makes you proud to be british!"

well, sort of...

rosalind russell in "what a woman"

"everything went black, and suddenly i'm a bride to be."

yesterday

i ate a pinecone just like this.

"let's never see each other again,"

is what the oral surgeon said after my post-operative consultation today. (suits me.) he also said the hole in my jaw will grow back in 6 weeks, the swelling will subside in 4 weeks, and the pain will abscond in 3 weeks.

because you can't eat fruit toast every night

(trust me, i've tried.) so tonight i made char-grilled chicken breast with gnocchi, shallots, broccoli, and fresh herbs in a white wine and tomato-pesto sauce. dessert was mandarins.

pugin? never heard of him

it's one of the curious things about melbourne. aside from the trams, and the elm trees, it's most characteristic feature is the abundance of gothic revival architecture. especially the churches. one person is wholly responsible for this cult of 'pointed' architecture in the second half of the 19th century: augustus welby northmore pugin. (though, of course, he's more justly famous as one of the co-designers of the palace of westminster.) still, no one is melbourne would know who pugin was. bless our history teachers for that. but i'm reminded of him by the publication of a new biography "god's architect: pugin and building of romantic britain". let's hope it leads to a gothic re-revival. because the fascist banalities of le corbusier and mies van der rohe are so dreary.

early sorrow

it was the best of easters, it was the worst of easters. i was ten. i got the biggest egg i'd ever had. it was the size of a football. it was carob. the end.

incredibly tardy

long, long after everyone else has seen it, i finally caught "the incredibles" on tv last night. brilliantly animated and directed. and mostly free of the sickly "find yourself" schmaltz of "nemo". but the best thing in it, by far, is edna e mode. she's a showstopper.

a brilliant voice

extracts from the superb lonely 80s girl diary "my fat, mad teenage diary" are available on the guardian (click here for link). this is the best writing i've come across in a long time: funny, sad, mordant, honest, and gloriously english. here are some of my favourite moments:

"everyone was wearing 'the queen is dead' t-shirts and there are a whole load of people going to the smiths gig (which won't happen). mum refused to give me £12, just in case it is true, which shows she knows nothing about music and doesn't care about me. if everyone comes into school tomorrow holding flowers and talking about the night the smiths reformed, i am bloody running away."

"chloe is pregnant! can you believe it? she has had to leave school and everything. she told me in the sixth-form toilets as she was sitting on a windowsill downing a twix, like it was the most normal thing in the world."

"where do I keep this diary? it's not safe at home or in the locker at school. there's already shit in it that if anyone else saw i would die. just going to have to put it under the mattress and hope. there's no privacy—there's no place to go in the fascist state of mum."

"probably the worst day of this already crap, crap life in a long, long time… came home and went to bed at about six o'clock. been here ever since."

"just been to the doctor's. bethany got a right grilling! she thought they would just give her the pills, but the doctor wanted to know how many partners she has had, how old her current partner is and how many sexual partners he has had. the doctor suggested the barrier method may be better. i had to ask what that was—he means johnnies. bethany then told him that she hadn't used condoms before and he told her to practise on a banana! hello!!!! what do these people think we are?? he gave her the pill in the end with a huge lecture about aids and sexually transmitted diseases. like there is aids in stamford. come on—it's lincolnshire. we only got the wheel 50 years ago."

"smiths on. how soon is now? my song. i wish i could say i wrote it. but it's morrissey. it could have been me, though, because it's everything i think. everything. and you're left alone in a room full of twix wrappers shoved in sheets. and he's singing what you are thinking. and that's all."

wonderful stuff. can't wait for the book to come out.

trying the new cat on for size

thankfully the new cat has found something it likes more than brawling—eating. although putting a collar on it was an interesting experience. the cat is unusual. it has black whiskers and black pads on its paws (like it's just been fingerprinted by the police). it also sometimes forgets to retract its tongue. the mobile vet said to keep it inside, in home detention, for 4 weeks before letting it out, lest it do a runner. so i'm giving myself that time to come up with a name for it. it would be so much easier if it was one of those hairless cats. then i'd simply call it "hollywood". so far the names i'm considering are:
tunbridge wells
soccermom (it is a female)
and coco.
the first two are funny but defamatory (what could be more unflattering than the epithet "soccermom"?). coco is apt because it has a black bob and slender legs which reminds me of coco chanel. ultimately it doesn't really matter. as the other cat, cinnamon, has at least a dozen names. my favourites being:
turbulence
whirlwind
wheezy
gassy
hippo
dingus
tumbleweed
fatso
and streaky pants.

answered prayers?

"it was raining men. i thought i was dreaming. i was almost tempted to ask for a date."
said sussex femme, lisa morrison, after a bunch of blown-off-course parachutists landed in her garden.

bored to sobs

even pavarotti must be sick of hearing "nessun dorma" by now. i know i am.

eternal mysteries

why do they make creamed corn? who eats that goop?

a hole in the ether

rather sad to learn that 3mbs, the local classical music station, won't be broadcasting karl haas's "adventures in good music" any more. of course, he died two years ago. but his show's been on air for as long as i can remember listening to classical music. boo. hoo.

why do little kids

like wizzing in the playground sandbox so much?

room for one more?

took delivery of a new (used) cat yesterday. do i have room for it? not really. but like my current cat, this one just turned up, abandoned at someone's door. you know the routine: the cat who came in from the cold. that's one advantage with cats. you don't need to go shopping for them.

this new cat is scary. scary evil. like it just sauntered off the pages of "the master and the margarita". and it's already beaten me up. badly. also beat up the mobile vet. badly. it has a dark face (like willie horton) which naturally suggests criminal proclivities.

now i just have to think of a name for it. so far the best i can do is "tunbridge wells". (it's a girl).

vera duckworth

is no ena sharples.

boo

damn scholarship. i've just found out my biography of goethe is now obsolete. a new, flashier version has just been published. annoying.

how can a spider-pig

cause so much trouble?

melonhead

recovering from surgery to remove two wisdom teeth i now look like dizzy gillespie (minus the trumpet), or a fat-faced al gore (which is worse). not fun. it only hurts when i breathe.

while i was waiting to be wheeled in—and had to consult separately with nurses, anesthetists, surgeons—i wondered how they do things like oral surgery in the moslem world. they probably put the patient in stocks in the village square and get a donkey to kick them in the face until the bad tooth comes out. praise allah.

what happened to

great uncle bulgaria?

if there's any justice in the world

baby suri will be eaten by mountain lions. then maybe parents won't name their children "baby suri" or "hamburger helper".

menu matters

wondering what i'll have for my last meal. maybe a swarm of these.

the curtain falls

it's been a bleak week for showiz. two modest talents, ingmar bergman and michaelangelo antonioni have died. and one genius has gone: charles lane. here he is pictured rough-housing with jimmy stewart in "mr smith goes to washington". thankfully lane has been given the greatest tribute possible; he is the model for the bespectacled, grey-suited, blue-haired lawyer in "the simpsons". that's a far greater honour than any sidewalk star or any academy award. nothing in bergman, antonioni, or any european cinema is as good as the performances lane gave in his 5 or 6 frank capra films. he wins because he's funny. just sublime.

we've had the bodyline series,

last year we had the paki ball-tampering-sulk-and-forfeit series, now it looks like we've got the jellybean series. and england have been involved in all of them. they seem to have all the fun.

from azimov to zarathustra

tonight's episode of "the simpsons" (a spoof of the filler show "24") was brilliant. "excellent," as mr burns would say.

if speed dating

doesn't work, i guess you can always try speed groping.

cat stevens

changed his name to yousef islam. madness. as a name "toilet duck" has more dignity.