The Book I'm Drinking

Nothing to see here.

2011-01-11T21:33:00.001-08:00

Hello friends!

If you're missing the shennanigans that went on here, why don't you check out this monstrosity:

The Spontaneity Review.

Would love to see you there.

Cheers

Patrick

Noodle maverick

2010-10-21T20:37:00.000-07:00

As befits our new trendy inner-city lifestyles, we've been wandering around to various cultural events, including the Night Noodle Markets at Hyde Park, as part of some sort of international food festival. Is it just me that thinks the Night Noodle Markets are an awesome name for a gay bar? I think it might be,

After lining up for an hour for some Malaysian cuisine, I'm happy to say the food didn't disappoint. However, after grabbing my delicious plate, we went in search of a bottle of wine. Now I have the somewhat erroneous belief (I originally wrote that as "a somewhat erogenous belief) that I am a wine maverick - a rebel who spits on the rules and drives his motorbike over the trite laws of "wine matching".

Wrong kind of maverick.

Namely, that despite the age old belief that you drink Sauvignon Blanc with seafood, sometimes I'll flip right out and drink a spicy Shiraz with my flounder and octopus salad. Yeah. Fear me.

To my horror, however, I have to set aside my punk vigneron's garb and settle in the lounge chair of conformity, because I find myself naturally matching wines and foods. It's become instinctive. For example, at a lovely Turkish restaurant on Enmore road, I had a bottle of the Logan's Gewurztraminer, and nearly died and went to complementary heaven.

So with my truly spectacular bowl of Malaysian curry, I could only think one thing: Riesling. Some tart citrus and fresh minerals belonged with this meal. It was so perfect, that I started to believe that the tale of Cinderella was actually derived from this very meal before me: just replace Prince Charming with a bowl of curry and the glass slipper with a bottle of Riesling. Elementary.

But what did we discover? That the CHEAPEST bottle of wine is $40. And it's Brown Brothers. You've heard me mention the travesty that is Brown Brothers before, i'm sure of it. What a ridiculous state of affairs for a fucking food festival. Good food NEEDS good wine, it's a fucking law of nature. I sound angry now, I know. But at the time, I couldn't even muster this sense of outrage. Imagine it's Christmas morning, and little Timmy comes running down the stairs, his fat little cheeks rosy with anticipation and excitement. For weeks now he's been eyeing off the enormous package that's been sitting under the tree, with his name written on the card. What could it be? Perhaps some kind of motorised jeep toy monstrosity, or lego, or a horse! He just doesn't know. With trembling hands, under the benevolent eyes of his smiling, placid, cow-like parents, he unwraps the ribbon, and then tears off the paper! What could he possibly have been given for Christmas?
That's right. It's brain cancer. And he's going to die in two weeks.
Imagine his face. Now imagine his fat pre-teen face morphing into my cheekboned travesty of a visage, but KEEP the look of dumb disappointment and betrayal.
That was my face at the Noodle Markets.

Review: Gig by Simon Armitage

2010-09-29T19:51:00.000-07:00

I used to be in a poetry boyband, called the "Bracket Creeps". We travelled around Australia and performed parodic comedy verse, wearing purple suits and alter-ego's. My name was Tad Bracket. Like all boy bands, we broke up badly and separated to nurse our respective addictions and grudges.

So when I read Armitage's series of short recollections about the juxtaposition and confluence that rock music has had with his poetry career, I found myself both intrigued... and empathic. Simon Armitage is quite a big deal for a poet, mostly in the UK. I couldn't think of a single Australian poet who has enjoyed the low level of fame that he has. His verse is good, but I'm not a huge fan. His autobiographical prose, however, is both expertly crafted and moving. It is funny and warm, with that feeling you get where you're drinking a beer and someone is telling you some really fantastic stories.

I also found myself thinking hard about music and its effect on artists. I've really never met an artist in any field, who isn't fiercely in love with music. In many ways, 'Gig' is a homage to music and the effect it has had on Armitage's life. I also felt as if the author is trying to work out exactly why he never made music his career, and ended up a poet. It goes all the way back to a divergence, a splitting of destinies. It is interesting that he never speaks with the reverence and intelligence about poets, as he does about musicians. But then again, this isn't what the book is about.

I can't play musical instruments. Once in high-school, I was sent to the principal's office by the music teacher, who thought I was mocking her with my attempts to play the guitar. I believe I have a decent singing voice, but I've never really tried it out. When I was a child, my voice was apparently nice enough that I may have been gelded in rural Italy. I once starred in 'A Christmas Carol' as Tiny Tim or whatever, the little crippled boy. I sang Eric Clapton's "Tears in heaven". That one experience put me off Clapton's solo work for decades, despite an early love of Cream.
Despite all this, I somehow still decide every few months, that I should learn an instrument. My latest yearn was for the accordion, which persisted long enough for me to look at prices on ebay. But in the end, I never really follow it through, because music has always been a very private thing for me. It's blissing out on 5am train-trips to work, listening to Beirut's 'Nantes', it's bopping along to Ziggy Stardust while I write comedy and it's singing the 'stones while washing up, loud enough to have my awful neighbours start screaming back. Yeah, i'm rock and roll. Domestic hygiene = Street Fighting Man.

Sexy Tales of Paleontology - Opening this week

2010-09-12T20:14:00.000-07:00

Sexy Tales is opening THIS WEEK. ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

ARGHHHHHHH.... No it's going fine. Brilliant.
So amazingly proud of the cast and crew, everyone is working their little theatre butts offs, to somehow get this ridiculous lumbering quirk-mole of a play off the ground.

That said, book tickets and see show times and dates: here.
Come opening night, we'll have a grand time. That's just a few days away, on the 16th!

The Sydney Fringe is really exciting- already I have seen the theatre phenomenon, Stories from the 428 at Sidetrack Theatre. Very good. I'm also looking forward to Zetland at the same theatre, by Jasper Marlow. And my fellow Boiler Roomies, notably Combat Fatigue by Alison Rooke and The Hideous Demise of Detective Slate by Alli Sebastian Wolf.

Go on, wallow in it!

Sexy Tales of Paleontology - sneak preview

2010-09-02T04:31:00.000-07:00

Time before the Sydney Fringe is rapidly diminishing like a chocolate boat sailing into a sauna. Therefore have a sneak peak at my play, Sexy Tales of Paleontology.

Joss Whedon's "Dark Place"

2010-08-30T19:27:00.000-07:00

Not to be confused with:

On Sunday I had the pleasure of seeing Joss Whedon, the creator of such fantastic shows as "Buffy", "Firefly" and "Dollhouse", speak at the Opera House. I'm a huge fan of Joss - he's the name on the tip of my tongue when I talk about redeeming television. I was prepared to be amused and interested - that seemed a safe bet to me. What I wasn't quite as ready for, was to be so intellectually provoked. I've been reviewing my own writing practices at greater depth than I have for quite a while.

After Firefly was cancelled, Joss learnt the true meaning of 'grief'. Might sound melodramatic, but I understand.

Much of what Joss talked about was how he writes from a "dark place", something he was able to categorise in a conversation with Stephen Sondheim. Sondheim says he always writes yearning. Joss, after originally giving the answer 'adolescent girls with super-powers', realised all his writing is about helplessness.

It's fascinating to be able to have a look at his work, and pluck that out. I've always responded very strongly to the comedic element in his shows - it's what keeps it strong and supple.

It's hard to turn that kind of microscope back on myself - probably because I focus so much on the comedy I write. What's my dark place? Do I have one?

I didn't put Garth Marenghi at the start of this post simply because of a hilarious name comparison. No sirree. If you haven't watched it, it's a hilarious comedy hospital/sci-fi spoof from the UK. It's damn funny. It's comedy. I also find Buffy hilarious, but the genres are very very different. But the writer of Garth Marenghi - where does his writing come from? Is it a simple need to entertain? (I have that in me) or is it some kind of statement on absurdism, nihilism, existentialism. Does it rate less than Buffy? Do we judge writers on their dark place?

What if my dark place is really just a shadowy grotto, populated by cartoon animals?

Well, I asked a lot of questions today, in an annoying, segmented kind of post.

*Puts hands in pockets and walks away whistling*

I learnt a bunch about writing from Buffy. First lesson, consequence. Watch it, and see. Also, vampires.

Don't judge me by my cover

2010-08-25T01:30:00.000-07:00

No, this is not a feel good, motivational teen post catered towards the unfortunate looking. But if you are reading, chin up, ugmo's. High waisted pants are in!

One of the burdens of my job as a literary icon, is that i'm naturally under a lot of scrutiny for my tastes. People see me on the streets and whatever book is clasped under my pale, skeletal arm, suddenly becomes the talk of the town. In that vein, i'm totally going to bring back opium balls into fashion.

So you can imagine my mortification when I started carrying this book around.

I realised that if it was just the bear, I would have been fine. Bears are great. If it was the bear and the insipid protagonist ab, you could be forgiven for assuming it's a rip roaring fantasy buddy story. But its the combination of bear, ab and BUSTY IRISH LASS that throws this into the realms of embarrassment.
The shame is that the book is by one of my favourite fantasy authors, David Farland. The upside is that the book itself screams "FIRST BOOK" and has all the dripping hallmarks of a new fantasy author. You know the whole "show, don't tell" rule? He tries to circumvent that by these "teaching robots" that characters habitually wear, which "download" information into them. It doesn't work.

So if that's not enough, then what about my experience with this book:

"But Jim Crace isn't embarrassing? He's a fantastic writer! That's good literature!" SHUT UP YOU WERE NEVER THERE FOR ME WHEN I WAS GROWING UP.

No what happened, is what I call the New Zealand factor. As I'm reading it, smug in my knowledge that my book was A. Set in Europe and B. Full of large words, a bunch of schoolgirls on the train start whispering to each other, at decibels that would make dogs cry into their cups. I had managed to put in my ipod headphones and forget to turn on the music, because I'm a motivated person.

"Omg, is that guy reading a book called sex?"
"Omg he is. That's so embarrassing."

They were right. It was. And I never read again.

Splendour in the Grass

2010-08-04T19:09:00.000-07:00

Splendour in the Grass
What though the radiance
which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass,
of glory in the flower,
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
-- William Wordsworth

Let's get one thing straight. I'm a big geek for ampitheatres. It's not something I get to wax lyrical about in my day to day life- but I really, really love ampitheatres. Why? You say, dropping your fragrant pipe onto your jodpurs. Well, it's the drama of it all, the theatrical history. The natural projection. I've seen some amazing ampitheatres in my travels. Good times.

So imagine my glee when I discover the main stage at Splendour in the Grass musical festival in Woodford QLD is a giant, natural ampitheatre. It was ten glees.
My main trepidation about a three day camping festival was that I'd get tired and grumpy. Because I'm an old man, obviously. But having the option to lounge around in the natural splendour of a grassy ampitheatre, sure did make my music festival experience laid back and enjoyable. (By the third day, the ampitheatre was no longer grassy or sunny. It was packed dirt and bogan cans)

It was absolutely stunning to have this enormous space convey perfect sound, even when you were far up the back of the hill. Plus, due to the fact that the ampitheatre incorporates an entire hillside, you could pack in most of the 30 000 festival goers for the big acts like The Strokes and the Pixies. I mean, this did mean I spent a lot of time listening to bogan conversations, but that was pretty fun.

Dude, your hat looks like a scrotum.

But nothing prepared me for the wonder of the second night. As night fell, we wandered into the ampitheatre. There was an amazing art installation, where two faces were projected onto trees. They would slowly move and blink their eyes, and because of the shape of the tree, seemed to have true 3d contour. I saw a large group of stoned people wandering in, and one girl stop and slowly say
"Woah... I think the face in the tree just winked at me..."
There was silence for a while, and then another girl freaked out and said "THERE ARE FACES IN THE TREES?"

We were on our way to see Florence and the Machine, who I was probably the most excited about the entire festival. It was the largest audience I had seen yet, the entire ampitheatre ringed from hill to hill. The sun went down as we waited, and a giant black billowing curtain was drawn across the stage. Suddenly, it swept back, to reveal Florence garbed in a long white pagan robe, drumming with what I could only assume was a magic wand. Or a drumstick.

I was transported and enthralled. It was mystical and mysterious. As the gig wore on, with this enchantress, siren and goddess holding forth from an ampitheatre, I was struck with an idea. Nay, more than an idea. Knowledge. Faith.
Florence was most likely an ancient Greek Goddess, perhaps one of the muses, come to play amongst mortals again. There was a compelling tribal rhythm to her music, something that spoke of eons past. And the chilling finality in 'My Boy Builds Coffins' when she pointed to people in the audience, promising them coffins as well. Ohhhhh I was overcome.

Then I started to worry. In most myths, tempting singing women were usually bad signs. They were often there to wreck your ships on the rocks, or to turn your crew mates into pigs. But then I remembered I didn't have a ship, and I stopped worrying. Patriarchal bullshit. Ships are just giant penis symbols anyway. Full of seamen. Furthermore, I realised this was a deity I could get behind. No more of the stale, echoing hymns in church. This goddess had a set of lungs that would set the nations ablaze. I wouldn't be surprised if she actually feeds off applause in some supernatural, metaphysical way, and she is travelling around the world swelling with power in order to challenge Jesus for his celestial throne. I'm just saying, if it does happen, remember where you read it first. Mark my words...

So in conclusion, all hail Florence.

Oh and I did some wine related stuff too. I went to the overpriced "Mo-Rockin Wine Bar" for a lacklustre glass of Trout Valley Sauvignon Blanc. We squatted in a ditch to drink it.

And we saw the Vines! Get it, get it? Yeah. They smashed things up and made me kinda depressed.

Join me next week for my compelling treatise on why Mumford and Sons are actually the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and Laura Marling some kind of Dryad. All mythological, all the time, here at the Book I'm Drinking.

Follow Friday

2010-07-22T18:12:00.000-07:00

Twitter does has this great thing, where you suggest people look at other things.
Have decided I'll have a crack at it here.

First off- Twitter! If you crave, nay, need more inane commentary on the state of my hair, then you should follow me on twitter. The account is "bookimdrinking" and I can't recommend it highly enough. I'm incapable. If you want the latest, groundbreaking news of my play 'Sexy Tales of Paleontology' written with 'Book i'm Drinking' regulars Daniel East and Bridget Lutherborrow, then you should follow "ofPaleontology" on Twitter also. There are quotes and risque pictures of Mathew McConaughey.

Let's get some order into things here:
Many of these blogs and things can be found in my links sidebar, but as a Google Reader user myself, I never look at the actual page of blogs anymore. Ahoy!

Blogs:

Literary Minded- Angela Meyers is the book blog Queen of the internet. Seriously. For smart, interesting and witty reviews, articles and the who's who and what's what of the Australian literary scene, go no further.

Ryan Paine- For an interesting window into youth literature and publishing, he's the man with the answers to the questions that I forgot.

Heathen Scripture- Geoff Lemon, brilliant Australian poet who is currently touring around the South America's. This is how you write a travel blog, people. Hell, this is how you write.

The Great Affairs- Daniel East and Lara Williams are in Korea. FIND OUT WHY.

Augusta Supple- If theatre's your thing, then Gus Supple has all the inside information. She's like a spy, who for some reason is publicising all her findings.

Van Badham- Playwright extroadinaire, Van Badham is releasing a book in September. Here we get a birds eye view on the novel writing process. A weird, internet bird.

The Smell of Books- Joel Blacklock keeps us up to date on those scary new E-book things that are clomping towards us on merciless steel legs. Damn you Skynet!

Semenbeard the pirate- Bridget Lutherborrow is very funny and has a Tumblr where she expels that comedy into pictures.

[parenthetical elements] - Sally Evans is a poet, literary theorist and heart breaker. She's inside your literature, decongesting them. Lulz.

So yeah, now you should NEVER BE BORED AGAIN. I could do more... but linking is time consuming and fiddly.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr just summoned a demon

2010-07-22T03:28:00.001-07:00

I have a cold. I'm not good with illness, I am not a stoic person. I stink of garlic and am wearing my 'nostalgic tracksuit collection'- old, disgusting relics of clothes from the 90's that I wear whilst sick. They've probably never been washed either.
The best thing I can do is find something mindless and repetitive, and keep doing it until the phlegm stops flowing.

As I've just come off a massive fantasy binge (about twenty titles all up) I found myself lacking in the reading department. So I decided to dust off the old 90's RPG games, and immerse myself in one of them. And the clear winner is Baldur's Gate 2, Shadows of Amn.

For those of you who haven't played this, it's truly a remarkable game, which actually has a compelling and exciting plot. Furthermore, while there is a critical thread you must follow, the game is so multi-layered and expansive, that it's impossible to play it all in one go. A lot of this has to do with the 'party' you create- basically you discover different characters throughout the game, and you let them join you and you all go and kill things.

Jaheira. If you need a shrill, disapproving and nagging druid to help you fight evil, she's the right choice for you. She's kinda like the fantasy version of a vegan-nazi.

However, I have played this quite a few times now. Many, many times, so I find myself putting a little bit of an extra spin into things. My last party I played with was quite memorable, because I decided I'd be ABSOLUTELY EVIL. It's very hard to spin the game this way- most often you end up doing lots of really noble things for money, rather than for the goodness of it. But I persevered and came away quite surprised and sickened by it all.

I played a necromancer called Pablo Neruda. Yeah, I don't know why. Sometime around the middle of the game, I was strutting around in a suit of human skin, fighting against the law throughout the streets of Athatkla, and getting thoroughly trounced. My henchmen were either dead, confused, or in the case of my dark elf girlfriend "Viconia" turned to stone. I was running away in my little boots of haste, desperately trying to find some way to heal myself, being completely out of potions and the like. All these Cowled wizards and guardsmen thundered behind me, fireballs exploding, people screaming and wandering aimlessly (my reputation was so bad by this point, that I couldn't go into civilised areas without people trying to arrest me) and I was having a great time. I started cackling in an evil, Pablo Neruda way. I got hit by some more arrows. I had the comparative health left of a gerbil. So, in my desperation, I went into a random house, hoping it would be full of doctors or something. Instead there were two children. So I cast "Drain Life" on them, killing them and restoring my health. Utterly evil. Damn fine poet though.

So despite how fun that was, I've been absently thinking, for the past year or so, about my moral responsibilities. Somewhere, in the realms of imagination, a complete and utter fiend named Pablo Neruda has been created by me. This worries me. What if when I die, I turn up in a world, ruthlessly terrified by my own selfish creation?

Thus, come KURT VONNEGUT JR, to the rescue. My new party is filled with irritatingly good clerics and paladins, who have long, windy discussions about how great it is to do good things. KURT VONNEGUT JR, accidentally written in caps, is a wild mage and captain of the do-gooder squad. Vonnegut, I've always felt, has some fairly wacky, but deeply felt morals. Thus a wild mage, who casts spells which often have completely random consequences. For example, casting fireball at a group of kobolds, he accidentally transmogrifies himself into a woman. So far the best party was while battling a bunch of slavers, I accidentally summoned a demon which rampaged around killing everybody in the party. Thus, I am making amends by introducing a force of good (if somewhat unpredictable) to offset Pablo Neruda. Maybe, somewhere outside the rigid strictures of the game, they will meet and fight. Ethically I want KURT VONNEGUT JR to win, but in my heart, I know Pablo Neruda will still be lurking somewhere, powerful, omniscient and overall, Chilean.

KURT VONNEGUT JR confronts his harshest critics.

Hoarding.

2010-07-15T19:18:00.000-07:00

You know what my problem is? I'm a hoarder. I mean, I have other problems as well, many urinary in nature, but I have my other blogs to get that off my chest (www.mypeesmellslikedespair.blogspot.com).

Back to the hoarding. I hoard books like i'm a nerdy dragon, sitting on a pile of literary gold. Likewise, my attitude towards blogging has been to save up experiences and then let them all out in one giant, multi-faceted post. The issue I have with this, is because of the sheer speed in which I read, I miss out dozens of books a month because it would be strange to put them together. For example, over July I have read- Frank Moorhouse's "Futility and other animals", Etgar Keret's "The bus driver who wanted to be God" and "Gaza blues" , Kazuo Ishiguro's "A pale view of hills", and Hemingway's "Fiesta". Every single one of these books deserves to be written about, yet I decided maybe I should do a combined post about short story collections (which three of those are). But what about Hemingway!

A while ago, a friend gave me some books to review, which I never got around to reviewing, due to the fact that I decided I'd do a combined post on Australian literature. Enough is enough!

From now on, I'm going to do my darndest to focus on the little guy, to give a bit of face-time to each book. I'm not saying I won't hoard ideas- I will. But this will mean more regular updates, I won't forget as much (for example I have NO RECOLLECTION of what I read in June), and we will all grow as people. I'll also try to do this with wines... but that's a lot harder. I mean, can I really leave a dinner table in between bottles and update? No.

So- to make good on that promise.

Frank Moorhouse Futility and other animals.

Frank Moorhouse just may be my favourite Australian writer. His short stories are generally brilliant and funny. This is the third collection of his that I have read, and definitely my favourite. How it differs from the others, is that each of these short stories are loosely connected narratives, twined around the same few characters and situations.

What got me was the degree of kinship I felt with his characters, who were dispossessed youth in the 1970's. It's nice to know that not much has really changed since then, except for social media and 3d cinema.

The stories are definitely character driven- I couldn't really name much that actually 'happens'. Yet, the danger in such situations is that the arrogant, self obsessed and unlikeable characters actually turn you off the book, which has happened to me several times. Not so much in this, where Moorhouse's clever writing and ever present wit keeps you enthralled.

Just after I finished the book, I had to caption a movie for the ABC 'Monkey Grip' which is based on a 1970's book by Helen Garner. The movie starred a young Noni Hazlehurst, acting in much the same way as characters in "Futility and other animals". Her character, however, I felt none of the same kinship with. That's not to say it wasn't well acted, just that I felt no relation to it. Or it could have been that I was forced to write every word she said within a limited caption time frame. Or that I got weirded out watching her have sex with Colin Friels a lot. Young Noni is definitely a fox, but I grew up watching her on Playschool. I didn't want to think about going through the oval window at that moment.

I was lucky enough to see Frank Moorhouse speak at the This Is Not Art festival in Newcastle, as he was the keynote speaker.
He gave an intelligent and provoking speech on writing and the culture of censorship growing in Australia. It was around the same time as the Bill Henson scandal, so obviously at the forefront of peoples minds.

Next step: read his giant novels.

Ladies and the Tramp

2010-07-04T17:57:00.000-07:00

I was going to go with 'Beauties and the Beast' but it reminds me of a terrible show, and I'm way too pretty. On my recent trip to the Southern Highlands in NSW, I guided a large, rambunctious and delightful group around the wine region.

For a while now, whilst drunk usually, I've been banging on about the purpose of this blog - namely to make wine accessible to the people. 'Bringing wine to the people", I usually mutter, gesticulating wildly with my glass at the cringing table of people I've just met. But in reality, it's very hard for me to make the uninitiated sample different wines - whether from time, price or sheer obduracy.

So when I was asked to squire some people around, many of whom didn't particularly like wine, or had never gone wine tasting, I was delighted. I'll bring the people to the wine! I just didn't realise how many people there actually were.

Cellar doors are like snowflakes - they are all different, and mostly delicious. So for the first stop on our tour, I chose a winery I'd been to before, namely Joadja. My reasoning was thus - they have a beautiful set up with basically everything you want from a winery. You are able to wander through the vats and barrels, stroll around the very pretty pastoral grounds and play with the gorgeous old wine dog. Their wines are very cheap for such amazing flavours, and they focus on interesting and exciting varietals. I was particularly interested in getting my hands on some more of their reserve Malbec.

But I was nervous. There were ten of us in the group, which is a fairly terrifying swarm to inflict on any winery. Add to the fact that we are young and strange looking, clearly uni -esque in nature. (Well they were... i'm old and graduated now.) I was worried that the wineries would think we were on an elaborate quest for free booze, drink the place up, smash some tables, not buy a thing and then drive off into the sunset like hooligans. It's usually kosher to book ahead with large groups, but I didn't have the time.

Turns out my fears were groundless in both places we visited. The gentleman at Joadja was friendly and good humoured, and quite happy to discuss the wines with us. Of particular interest was the Cabernet/ Sangiovese which is all the rage in Europe at the moment. He was very enthused about getting us up to date with the latest wine trends and lingo. We found out this wine is apparently called the 'Super Tuscan'. Yeah.

From there we went to Tertini wines, only a short while away. I've been looking forward to visiting this winery for a long time, ever since I read Daniel East's word-licking of it in his article.

Tertini is an absolutely stunning cellar door, which fully capitalises on the 'old wine barrels form our decor' theory. It already had a bunch of people in it, so I fully expected to be sent away. To my surprise, the two proprietors were extraordinarily welcoming and friendly. The group felt comfortable in asking all sorts of questions - from interesting tidbits like the makings of rose', to the mortifying request of "can we take all the leftover wine in the spittoon home". It was noted that it wasn't much different to the ending of a game of Kings, and probably tastes a hell of a lot better because at least it's all wine.

Tertini is a multiple award winning winery - for very good reason. Their wines are consistently good over their entire range. From deliciously tart Riesling to earthy Pinot Noir, each wine was exemplary. More importantly to me, was that in very good humour we were given the biography on each wine. Just interesting facts, snippets of information. Often when younger people go into wineries, people don't bother to engage us in conversation.

Furthermore, Linda Lambrechts, one of the proprietors, took us in hand and took the time to provide some elementary tasting notes. From some of the pamphlets I picked up, it turns out she is a remarkably well educated wine writer and teacher. She enthusiastically asked what we could taste or smell in the wines - turning it into a full experience which I think was very enjoyable. I think everyone else did as well, but I'm not a mind reader.

One of the wines which we were able to taste was the 'Arneis', a white wine varietal which is only grown in a handful of places around the world. The whole thing about Arneis is that it's an incredibly tempestuous and uncontrollable grape. The look of fear and respect that comes across peoples faces can hardly be described. Despite the problems with Arneis - of which there are apparently many, their example is absolutely delicious. Kind of like a softer Gewurztraminer, with none of the sickly sweetness. I would have bought it, except I'd been promising myself that I'd buy and cellar the next good Riesling I tasted.

As we speak I'm drinking the Tertini 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon. The highlands can have difficulties maturing Cab Sav and Shiraz grapes, but when it does happen it's fairly spectacular. This is a winter wine, with a lovely aromatic cigar box smell, and delicious cherry flavours. That whole cigar box aroma thing was baffling to me for so long, but once you have it pointed out, it makes so much sense. It helps that in my last job I had to stock the cigar section... smells like that.

Tip: Never say "mmm, this wine is so... macrobiotic" at a dinner party.

So all in all, a wonderful experience. I believe me and Bridget drank a Joadja Cab/Sangiovese and a Tertini Pinot Noir that very night, and had an excellent night.

Audition notice

2010-06-27T19:51:00.000-07:00

Who and What?

Sexy Tales of Paleontology, written by Patrick Lenton with Daniel East and Bridget Lutherborrow & directed by Anne-Maree Magi, and Combat Fatigue, written by Alison Rooke & directed by Ian Zammit are two new Australian plays currently seeking casts for their premieres at The Boiler Room, The Factory Theatre, Marrackville, as part of The Sydney Fringe Festival 10 – 26 September 2010.

Sexy Tales of Paleontology has everything you could possibly want: science, evil corporations and a lumberjack! When a group of scientists are taken over by an un-self-consciously evil corporation, a clash of ethics and robots ensue. Expect hysterical geologists in pit fights with paleontologists, flamboyant glam-pop mercenaries breaking out in song and the world's worst narrator. Cast includes male and female roles ranging from 18 – 40yrs.

Combat Fatigue is the story of a pair of gallery owners in Sydney’s inner west, childhood sweethearts whose love has gone wrong. During the lull of passion in Sam and Pippa’s relationship, Pippa accidentally gains hold of a letter from a man on death row. Something is stoked in her deep-seeded feelings, and she writes back to him, beginning a chain of letters with the eloquent & dangerous murderer. Sam’s suspicions about Pippa’s growing distance reveal the growing attachment with death row inmate, the latest test in their relationship. Cast includes female role early 30’s and male role 40’s-50’s; additional roles to be advised.

When and Where?
Date: Sunday 4th July, 2010
Time: 9am – 5pm
Location: Studio 14, Fraser Studios, 10-14 Kensington Street, Chippendale

How?
Prepare a 1-2 minute audition piece then to book an audition time please email Auditions Co-ordinator Tanya Veselcic at:
boilerroomauditions@gmail.com
And please attach your CV and Headshot.

Korean food and Grant Burge wine- Article by Daniel East

2010-06-18T20:04:00.000-07:00

“One sign may hide another”
Notes taken on Korean food, the Infinite Canvas and Australian wine abroad

The Infinite Canvas
Do you suddenly find yourself with lots of time online but the local server has blocked Facebook from your interwebs? What do you do? PLEASE TELL ME. I'm running out of ideas. The entirety of man's assorted knowledge at my fingertips and all I end up doing is going onto youtube watching clips from 'Whose line is it anyway?' and listening to Neil Young songs (including an awesome twenty minute jam Neil does with Phish on “Down by the River”.) That, and going to TED.com.
TED.com is a free online streaming lecture site, with about four years of backlogged lectures, performances and comic 'displays'. (I noted with irony one day that with all this wealth of knowledge at my disposal I spent the day watching mathemagicians. Cue the Simpsons: “That's because, it's a magic seven.) But I also found an incredible speaker called Scott McCloud.

Scott McCloud, gathering moisture.

An icon of the comics industry, Scott McCloud is best known for his essays and critiquing of the comic medium. His website, scottmccloud.com features praise from such luminaries as Alan Moore, Frank Miller and Matt Groening.
His concept of an 'infinite canvas' is perhaps best explained by the lecture he delivers on TED.com, a highly recommended watch for those even slightly interested in the comic medium. In short, he argues that the 'comic' medium (as a storytelling device utilising pictures and sometimes text) has existed for quite some time, and furthermore the advent of the printed page drastically altered the way the comic was structurally composed. Our notions of time, sequence and chronology can all be read in the progression of the comic through space from left to right and then top to bottom. What McCloud argues for is a new form for the comic now that it is finally released from the strictures of the page. An argument backed up by the excellent comic available on his website, “The Right Number”.
But despite this lavish praise, McCloud's argument is not as convincing as he seems it to be. The concept of a beloved form being restricted by its formal limitations is one that is inherently broken – formal limitations accentuate a medium's originality. For whatever reason, the impediments placed on human endeavour inevitably produce results in exponential proportion to the restrictions first enforced. What is the majesty of the Catholic church if not the result of a systematic repression of man's natural desires? What is the profound archive of the internet if not a direct reaction to man's growing fear that he may not be able to secure and preserve his legacy?
Online comics have many avenues of stylistic expression and formal experimentation, but they are limited to superficial modifications unless they change the nature of the stories they tell. And since all stories are about wanting to off your dad and get it on with your mum, it's unlikely flash will revolutionise the whole 'picture and text' thing.

Korean Food
Take the deepsea angler. You've never eaten one, have you? Of course not, don't be ridiculous. They live in the deepest parts of the sea; their black, lumpen bodies good only for waddling under rocks and pouncing on prey stupid enough to wander blearily into their cavernous maw. And it doesn't get much better when they are dragged to the surface – for when the angler is prepared for the plate it is gutted and pressed flat, its massive head squished into a nightmarish mask of gelatinous skin and protruding bones. Bug-eyed monsters with translucent teeth an inch long, they are the marine equivalent of Terri Hatcher.
So naturally, looking for seafood in Yeosu my companions and I went to a restaurant that took on this ontological nightmare as their house speciality – why not? If these fine people are brave enough to cook this ghastly apparition then surely they must know something about life – about fear or death or madness – that I can absorb through my meal and ponder long into the night.
Also, I was quite keen to sit down and drink my Riesling which was getting warm. Dangerously warm.

Korean Wine
Wine in Korea is like a well dressed man in a wheelchair. You're worried that you're overcompensating for context – like, is he actually well dressed or does he simply look good for a guy in a wheelchair? Is the wine good, or good for Korea?
For the waeguks back home, let me elaborate – Korea is a nation with a proud drinking culture, plenty of grapes but no wine to speak of. The drinks here drunk are maekchu (beer), makolli (rice wine) and soju (rice spirit). The makolli takes a little getting used to, the soju is like watered down vodka (but cheap) and the local beer fucking close to water (to use the punchline from the old Python gag). Import tariffs are pretty disgusting so for imported stuff you're always looking at a premium – though I have found an interesting loophole. While an imported bottle of rum is 25 000 Won (equivalent $25 Aus) there is not much awareness of the nature of the stuff inside. Thus, any spirit that is not whiskey will be at a benchmark price. Bacardi 151 (a 75.5% rum sold with a flammable warning on the side) is the same price as a bottle of Captain Morgan's Emetic-brand Pigswill. Which pretty much ensures any children I have will be born stunted, middle-aged gnomes.
But to return to the wine subject – with these inflated prices, and the relative cheap-ness of other Korean products, a kaibosh has been issued on any wine-drinking sorties. Also, the wine list of any supermarket is as international as the STDs of a Balinese prostitute (Ha! Oppressed.) And who knows anything about South African wine? No one, that's who. Maybe South Africans, but do you know anyone from South Africa? And do you ask them about terroir or lions?
Yeah, me too.

Grant Burge?
So imagine my surprise not just to find a good Australian winemaker represented amongst the Penfolds and Lindemans, but a label I have not tried before! I was quite tempted to buy the beautifully designed Moscato I'd tried before (see Bridget's article) but thought, fuck it, I need to know. I need to experience … Mariage.
It was another outstanding display by the wine giant we know in this realm as Grant Burge – despite the Riesling being put in a tough corner (warm and skolled from tumblers) there were floral elements that balanced the citrusiness one would usually expect from a Riesling, and there was a good acid balance too – none of that “I just drank vinegar” aftersuck. Which went perfectly with the fish, which was goddawful.
The dish we ate is called “agwitchim” which is Korean for “gelatinous afterbirth and chilli sprouts” (or more literally, “steamed spicy angler fish”) and it was bad not for the reasons you'd expect. The flesh of the fish was actually quite delicious – of a consistency and richness which I have problems likening to anything I've tried before. The problem is there was very little flesh on the creature, which was gutted and hacked into quarters before being buried in half a kilo of salty, chilli drowned sprouts. The majority of the meal was spent poking and pulling the black, jelly-like skin only to reveal bones and fins and guts and numerous childhood nightmares. So I thought, what the fuck, maybe you're supposed to eat the skin right? There sure is a lot of it.
I WAS HORRIBLY WRONG. NEVER EAT THE SKIN.

Notes taken on
So what am I driving at here? Well, I had to look hard but I finally found some good Australian wine in Korea for cheap. And similarly, I had to really dig through that awful fish until I found something worth eating, but I found it eventually. See my relationship to the internet and Scott McCloud. 'The Right Number' is a great comic, and one of those discoveries that will stay with me for awhile. And better yet, a link I'm glad to share with you all.
So until next time, eat well and drink better.

East.

(for more work on the infinite canvas check out http://infinitecanvas.appjet.net/)
(and with thanks to Kenneth Koch for the title)

Daniel East has a serious problem with justice. Like, seriously.

Talking as good as you write

2010-06-11T03:02:00.000-07:00

I was talking to my new co-worker the other night, who happens to be Canadian, and I immediately did that annoying thing where I search my brain for authors of that nationality. The first one I came up with was Thomas King, whose book Green Grass, Running Water I studied in a class about post-colonialism. Babbling away happily, I recommended the book and then found myself trying to justify why I liked it. And I couldn't. Not because it's a bad book- it's fantastic. But the reason I love Thomas King to distraction, actually comes from his presentation speech at the Massey Lectures, 'The truth about stories: a native narrative.'

In these lectures, which are quite easy to download, floating around the internet as they are, King basically talks about the traditions of oral storytelling, the telling of tales. Much of the lecture is based around the native tradition and experience, but in a wider sense he forces the listener to draw links between contemporary literature and its roots.

In the lecture he says: "The truth about stories is that that’s all we are."

As lovely as the sentiment is, it gave me a rather obvious, yet important epiphany about writing. Wow. They're stories. It's sometimes easy to forget, once you've waded neck deep into motifs and post-modern theory, that the very heart of the thing lies a story. Maybe I'm an idiot for somehow forgetting that along the way, but since then i've held it close to my heart like a pacemaker. And it was years ago. I don't know why I'm going to such lengths to defend myself, when I'm the one who brought it up. I could have just updated in my usual wine-soaked irrelevancies.

But the amazing thing about King' lectures, is not just their amazing content, but also the beautiful way in which they are presented. They are spoken in a deeply humorous, gently charismatic and spellbindingly measured way. He manages to tell stories that help illuminate his lessons into how to tell stories. Yup, read that sentence again and marvel at the brilliance of it.

Green Grass Running Water mixes a traditional type of story, full of the modes and types of the genre, with a contemporary setting and sensibility. The humour that accompanies all his work seems inevitable in some sense, as if the story would be incapable of being told without it. I appreciate that. There seems to be something important being said about comedy... that if I was a better person, I'd articulate.

I am a better person. Woooo.

I started thinking about the authors I like who are both brilliant writers, and amazing public speakers. Of course Kurt Vonnegut straddles that list like a mighty, bowlegged king. The brilliant part of Vonnegut's speechifying, was that he regularly released his speeches in written compilations, such as one of his last works 'A man without a country'. I can only wish I'd been able to see him speak when he was alive. Given how much inspiration I garner from the written down copies, I can only assume I would have blacked out or joined a nunnery or something. Who knows.

The strange thing about Vonnegut is that as time wore on, the line between his speeches and his novels started to blur. Timequake, for example, had all the elements of a novel, mixed with a whole bunch of Vonnegut rants. It's the equivalent of Vonnegut turning to the camera in the middle of an action scene, and beginning to address the audience with his own thoughts. Which is weird, considering it's ALL his thoughts when you think about it. Of course he gets away with it, as i'm fairly sure that he could write his own name and be brilliant.

It's like his works shed all the fat and dross (fat and dross I still really love) and the core was just a friendly, amiable Vonnegut sitting with you in a fromagerie and telling you some really good yarns about what he believes in and why he thinks certain things. It's all very funny and pointed, and does without the marionettes of literary characters, tropes and plots.

Or is it because, as Vonnegut claims, he said everything he needed to say in Slaughterhouse 5?

I don't know. I have no answers today, just a comment about speaking and writing. Personally I do all my writing while muttering and gibbering at the computer.

Imma leave you with a quote:

"If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something."

-- Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Alanis Morisette must be rolling in her grave

2010-06-01T19:42:00.001-07:00

It's the irony, you see? For the better part of May, the world has held their breath in anticipation of the latest poorly conceived wine/book fusion post from 'The Book I'm Drinking'. But as the month wore interminably on, peoples faces and hopes fell, and in front of harshly glowing computer screens all around the world, people screamed "Damn you Patrick Lenton".

For how could they possibly continue reading or drinking without my pert and unhelpful suggestions?

But did people ever stop and consider MY part of this horrible situation, what situation could have befallen me? Your humble blog King? Perhaps I just lost a leg to gangrene, after floating for weeks in the South Pacific, without even a single showtune to cheer me up? Or a coalition of other, more useful bloggers got together and kicked me off the internet, Bill Gates laughing all the while?

But no- see none of those are ironic enough. What happened, people, is that in the course of my writing schedule (busy busy busy at the moment) an entire glass of red wine was spilt onto my lap top, thus destroying it entirely. Only now have I been able to replace it.

Yup, irony. The only way the irony could be expanded upon is if, say, Allen Ginsberg was the one to do the spilling. Or if my combined bookshelf/wine rack fell on the computer. Or gained sentience, dated the computer for three blissful years and then left it for some form of whitegood, breaking its heart and internal memory.

Don't you think.

So what have I been doing in my time away- well I have a job, a new play coming up in the Sydney Fringe, a robotic arm. But more pertinently, I've read a spree of great books, drunk some mediocre wine and travelled the Southern Highlands wine region.

But you know... that's all in the past.

What's got me excited right now? What's new and relevant in the world of drinking and literature. Drinking red wine is just so fitting at the moment. Yup. That's all I have. Stay tuned, to the new, improved, 90% less red wine destroying the memory 'The Book I'm Drinking'.

Wines that look like things! - another guest post by Bridget Lutherborrow

2010-05-08T16:57:00.000-07:00

I know I tricked you into thinking I was on a quest for cleanskins, but HA! (as the Ancient Greeks would say - or maybe not). As all great quests, this one has come upon a wild tangent. Woah – look at it go! I guess this is like a stoner’s tangent, because it stems from my first entry on cleanskins rather than moving somehow chronologically.... does that make sense? It’s like when the conversation has moved on, but then someone gets distracted trying to remember what you were talking about five minutes ago and when you finally remember the conversation branches off from that point again. It’s like a tributary of conversation! A tribusation! Anyway. The point is that I wanted to look at wines and compare the experience of the wine with the visual. In the cleanskin challenge I am trying to distance the wine form any image, but in this instance, I want to see if a label says anything about a wine, or, if I am missing out on some nice wines because they have really stupid labels.

Take for instance, Jim Barry’s Cover Drive Cabernet Sauvignon. The first thing I think when I see the bottle is: “man, cricket is boring, why would you put a picture of a cricketer on a bottle of wine? I don’t want cricket wine.” The second thing I think is: “that’s kinda pretty though, despite the cricket connotation I appreciate the aesthetic, but I’m still not sure I can drink cricket wine”. I’ve seen this wine around a lot, and although I have always found it kinda charming, I really couldn’t bring myself to ever try it. It’s like a person you’ve seen around at parties that you never really talk to because you assume you have nothing in common. I never thought me and The Cover Drive would really get along, so why bother. But actually, this wine was quite delightful when I drank it the other night. I made an unexpected friend. It tasted of blackberries. Also, I quite adore the way the bottle is decorated, it’s so simple and the picture has a great texture and colour scheme, like an old photograph or a watercolour or a photograph of a watercolour! Actually the panel on the front of the bottle sort of looks like a tarot card.

I’m still finding it hard to get past the cricket. I guess it feels stuffy to me. I like my wine labels whimsical, or classy, or just well laid-out. I don’t like goofy cartoons or cricket or whacky fonts… maybe quirky cartoons and maybe tennis or something would be more appealing... or croquet? If this was a man playing croquet I would totally go for it! He kinda even stands like a man playing croquet. Like: wooooosh, I’m swinging the bat/club quite broadly, but without much force. Look at me pause at the top of the swing to survey my progress, just look.

And so, here we are. Maybe I should buy some more wines with interesting labels and maybe I should have spent more time discussing how the wine tasted and less time on analogies. Frankly I probably use the word “maybe” too often and possibly the word “probably” just as often. Next up: a $2.99 cleanskin chardonnay. I’m afraid stooping to the $2.99 bottle has taken it too far. I may have crossed a line. What will our intrepid hero do? Drink more wine? Probably.

Bridget Lutherborrow cannot stop talking about her giant teacup, or squealing at puppies when she sees them on the street, or writing about birds, or drawing scales on things, or making lists. Send help!

Review: When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro

2010-04-19T21:40:00.000-07:00

This book made me mad. I don’t know whether or not I was going to wake up grouchy anyway- being unemployed and running out of money means that my moods are fairly swingtastic anyway. But finishing this book just got me annoyed. Not even in a decisive “fuck me, but I hate that book. Ooooh imma write a letter to the government” kind of way. More in this deeply unfulfilled, strongly confused way. My first thought was to look up some form of review on the internet, find out if I’m missing some basic sub-texts, overlooking a key theme that binds it all together like some kind of profound mortar. Then I thought- fuck that. I’m practically a literature ninja, possessed of excessive reading skills- at least that’s what I put on my resume. Basically I’m willing to stick with my first impression, and go from there.
When We Were Orphans tells the tale of Christopher Banks, a London detective in the 1930’s. Much of the books chronicles his meanderings through high society, meeting mysterious and banal characters in equal measure. Only the lightest touches are even mentioned of his actual detective work. Obviously Ishiguro made the decision early on to separate this from the crime genre- which despite being an interesting move, is at times unbearably frustrating. However for the early half of the book, I found myself interested rather than repelled by this- as if each tease was a promise of something better to come. I suppose I was still following the conventions of the crime genre- keeping notes of small clues, putting significance on all the interactions, as if all will be revealed. However while I was obviously wrong in putting that form of significance on the events, i’m still left in the dark as to why half the book even occurred- what basic plot points did it progress?

The rest of the book is centered around Banks childhood in Shanghai, and the events that lead to the disappearance of his mother and father. This is the one concession made to genre- it is treated as a mystery, and the adult Banks journeys back to Shanghai to solve it. However, the ‘detective work’ that is done, is a surreal journey through war torn hovels, where characters met from the past and present are never quite as they seem, and guide Bank’s from one insignificant place to another. When an effort is finally made to ‘wrap things up’ it all seems so unreal and implausible, that you have to wonder if the book will make one final twist and reveal it was the matrix all along, or David Lynch will burst from the pages of the book, laughing maniacally and vomiting unicorns.

Basically my criticism is that I never got a concrete feeling of what the novel was trying to achieve. Everything shifted beneath my literary gaze, and shimmered like mirages. However I did finish the book- remember that. Line by line, it was beautifully composed. The characters were actually compelling and well built. I felt a remarkable kinship to the 1930’s- it didn’t feel unnaturally sepia toned to me. And my favourite part of the entire story was the way WW2 built on the horizon like a storm cloud, referenced only through the most oblique oracular statements, from people who seemed to chew on the Britishisms of ‘old chap, old boy and old crocodilia etc’.

Maybe I’m overthinking things- maybe it did all finish in a fairly linear way, and there was no overt mysteries beyond what the plot set out. Maybe I was just underwhelmed and looked for more. Because the way it all ends is just that- underwhelming. Maybe this is a rare form of literary hangover- I just finished in quick succession Yann Martel’s Life of Pi and Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, which were both sublimely wonderful books.

SPARKLING RED WINE AND WHY YOU'RE NOT DRINKING IT: A DIALOGUE- Guest post by Daniel East

2010-04-09T20:34:00.000-07:00

WHO ARE YOU, AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN MY HOME?

I remember my first glass of sparkling red wine – at first the concept seemed an inexcusable affront to the very nature of class and dignity. Red wine was serious, gorgeous, beautiful. You'd no more “carbonate” red wine than you would put a tasty drum beat over the top of a Chopin nocturne. But you see, that's where I made my mistake. Chances are if you put a brilliant DJ in a room with a mazurka and his album collection, you'd get something really fantastic. Not BETTER than the original music, but simply DIFFERENT than the piece you had before. Certainly better to dance to at parties and maybe, with a skilful touch, more complex than the song you had to begin with.
The man feeding me the red that night was a friend of a friend – and this pierced-lip companion (who later that night asked me if I was hitting on him. I wasn't, but I was transfixed by the three inch spike dangling from his chin) informed me it should be okay as he swiped it from his dad's fridge. I was sceptical.
Then I found out his father was a high-profile Sydney barrister (money = choice = good) and then I was quite keen to open it up. The rich, smoky effervescence that I was subjected to literally tore my head off my shoulders and punted it down the hall. This was great red wine, but wasn't heavy or warm, or possessed of an extreme self-importance. It wasn't cheap, or tawdry, in fact it had a complexity of flavour and character that I had never imagined before. Do you know that beautiful lingering taste truly phenomenal reds have? Like the rich chocolatey dreams of Diane? Imagine that, but with bubbles. Bubbles made of desire and cast in brass filigree.

Have I ever looked back since that fateful day? Several times. As I back out of my driveway. To buy more sparkling reds.

SO WHY AM I NOT DRINKING IT NOW?

The problem with sparkling reds is primarily a problem with wine drinkers – those who haven't tried sparkling reds assume they are lolly water or are put off by the very concept. Between the faux-connosieur and the ignorant, a massive amount of sparkling red is not being drunk. Which is a dangerous and worrisome trend.
Sparkling red wine is not just a fanciful modern notion. Since the beginning of bottle fermentation (the so-called methode champoignoise – not the methode Dubomarchais – which I accidentally called it once) people have been slapping CO2 into good red wine.
The first thing you've got to understand is the huge amount of variety in your so called sparkling wine in the first place. Between frizzantes and moscatos (super sweet, just fizzy) to your bruts and cuvees ('proper' champagne, generally bitter and very fizzy) there exist a universe of flavours – if you venture beyond your franchise bottleshops to the privately owned wine cellars scattered around you'll find an incredible array of Australian produced wines that will, as Michael Jackson put it, rock your world.
However more worrying are the Australian winemakers who, refusing to listen to the public, or reason, or the sound of their bank budgets plummeting, insist on making fantastic sparkling red wine. The entire country will soon teeter on the brink of a wave of bubbling Barbera, of carbonated Charmborcin. But what can you do to help?

WHAT IS THIS WONDERFUL STUFF IN MY MOUTH?

The only thing we really need to separate as chaff from the wheat is the super-sweet lolly water that might put you off the stuff in the first place. A quick check that should work for all bottles of sparkling – check the label. Does it tell you what the grape varieties are? No? PUT IT DOWN! It's probably a bomb or something. Doesn't matter if you know what the grapes are (I still have no idea what Pinot Meunier is) it's just important that they want to tell you what they are.
Beyond that, it's probably the price. The whole reason people like myself go to cellar doors is to drink free wine... I mean, find good labels. When you find a good label, and it's cheap, you can buy it again and drink it with friends, who in turn go buy this wine for cheap. Everyone wins. But until you have a chance to do this, you're stuck with the old fashioned “price as denotative value” systemic relationship.
Look, I hate denotative value as much as the next guy (maybe more so) but you just won't know what's available until you're willing to throw some cash around. Come on! What else are you going to spend it on? Clothes? Food for your children? Pah. You disgust me. You and your luxurious, bourgeoisie “children”.

WILL YOU START TALKING ABOUT SPARKLING REDS ALREADY?

The first thing to understand is the composition of the wine itself. A sparkling red will be a very different beast to a sparkling vintage cabernet sauvignon. The first should be very fruity, fresh, and with bubbles something like a crisp, tart lemonade. The latter will be a richer, almost creamier affair that will linger in your mouth much longer than the bubbles ever would.
The reason? Well, the 'vintage' Cab Sav is exactly that – aged. So the complexity of the flavours in the bottle are deeper than a bright young Shiraz just off the vine and looking to party. It's essentially the difference between lager and ale – the first, the lager, the non-vintage sparkling red, is here to refresh you, whisper sweet nothings and leave you. The other, the ale, the sparkling cabernet sauvignon, is here to abuse every sanctimonious relationship you've ever had with ropes and whips and hot wax and you will love. Every. Second of it.

THERE'S NOT MUCH TIME THEN?

No, not really. If you're willing to throw yourself in at the deep end there's a spectacular bottle of Sparkling Cabernet on offer by Balnaves of Coonawarra – this is a bottle of wine so good it will erase your beloved childhood memories. Remember Timmy, your best friend from year three? Who gave you conjunctivitis on the swings? NOT ANYMORE!
Also from the Coonawarra is the 2006 Sparkling Merlot by Hollick – a fantastic example of lingering mouthfeel and when compared to the Balnaves, a really interesting comparison of how different the red varieties are when converted to effervescence. YUM!
At the other end of the scale, the Leconfield 'Syn' is a good example of the 'lager-style' sparkling red. Fresh, fun, possibly wearing a summery dress, this is a good bottle to take to an awkward social situation – because everyone's going to want to drink it and thus, be sociable. And if they don't drink it those people are lame and you should just get stupid and tell Aunt Mabel her face looks like it melted in the tanning machine.
A bottle I'm going to courteously pan is the Seppelt's “Original Sparkling Shiraz”. First of all, Seppelt's is owned by Foster's now, so no one gets hurt when you pan them, and also because the wine is so middle of the road it's basically a dangerous pedestrian. Neither sweet or lingering, it's kind of like a steak but not in the good way. When I visited the cellar door however I was able to try their Grampian's Sparkling Shiraz, which is overpriced but very yummy.

PLEASE GO NOW, AND NEVER RETURN

Very well. But before I do I would like to point out the object of this lesson (which, I believe, is becoming my inimical fashion). The point is not to take this whole wine malarkey too seriously.
For me, wine was at first a way of displaying class and sophistication. Not entirely you understand, but definitely at some subconscious level – but with time it became an obsession, and the class elements dropped away. Like a rotting cocoon from off the wonderous new apertures of a drunken butterfly. The whole terminology, the whole methodology of wine pertains to the struggle of satisfaction, not perfection.
Which means you can look a little silly at times. Which means you should admit to liking something, even if it is called “Shizzaz” and has a picture of a polar bear humping a firework on the front of it. This way you'll only ever look like a passionate idiot, rather than a pretentious dolt.
So keep an open mind and a keen eye, keep drinking, you'll hear from me again soon.

East.

Daniel East recently moved to Korea! Many of his friends assumed he would be sold into white slavery, but I very firmly rebutted them. I said, "How dare you say that- East has absolutely no marketable skills, that's patently ridiculous." I'm a good friend. East is a good writer.

Things in fours- Guest post by Bridget Lutherborrow

2010-04-01T02:38:00.000-07:00

I was going to start by saying that things come in threes. But when it comes down to it, things have happened this time in a four. I will not say good things come in fours (or threes) because my latest venture into the wild world of “wine gambling”- cleanskins, has offered varied results. All in all, as an average, the four wines were average - by which I mean that one was quite tasty, one pretty good, one predictably gross and one a foul beast from the depths of liquid hell (boo!).

The tasting of these fours wines occurred sporadically over a month, so I do not consider that I will stand by my statements. However, they are a fairly good indication of what you might like to try if you are low on funds and wishing to drink things out of a bottle like the classy motherfucker you are.

We’ll start with the bad news: my first red cleanskin. This wine is also the first cleanskin I’ve bought from somewhere other than Dan Murphy’s. I got it at Woolies in Wollongong. Actually it’s open on my dining table right now. It’s a 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon (SM55) from South Eastern Australia. It smells like pepper and alcohol. It tastes like alcohol and pepper. I left it out for an hour and it has already turned vinegary. I was instinctively more wary of red cleanskins, maybe because I prefer white goon to red goon, which is probably because the higher alcohol content of red wine makes the bad stuff so much harder to drink. That said, last night I had some terrible white wine the colour of urine that cost more for one glass than this entire bottle (which was about $5).

Getting slightly cheaper and quite a bit better was a 2009 Chardonnay (DM2) also from South Eastern Australia. I actually used this for cooking (or maybe I just intended to, because I can’t remember what exactly I made). There is still a little left in our fridge. I just got it out to try again and it is still okay after several weeks open in the fridge. Patrick is sitting in his underpants, drinking a bit of it from a tumbler etched with wolves and exclaiming things like “vanilla!” and “green apple!” It’s a decent enough wine for about $4. I would probably pay double that for a wine of this quality and there are plenty of Chardonnays in the $10-$20 range which aren’t as good. This was probably the second best wine of the four, possibly even the best.

I’ve realized I’m telling this story in reverse chronological order. It’s time for the wines I drank a month ago in Victor Harbour. The ones I don’t quite remember. Probably the stupidest wine I bought was a sparkling pink from Dan Murphy’s, the reserve NV sparkling pink to be exact. It was pretty similar to Pink, and for $7 fairly pricey in the land of cleanskins. I don’t know why I bought this – for fun? In the forest of blandly labeled wines I think I was unusually drawn the stupid pink colour of the thing.

Our last wine (although the first one drunk) is a private bin Sauvignon Blanc (2009) from the Marlborough region of New Zealand. We drank this at the end of two exhausting days of driving, along with the sparkling pink, but this wine was by far the superior. I’m going to have to go out and buy some more before I can finish this properly as I can’t remember what it tasted like.

[Four hours later]

Okay. Upon further inspection this wine has flavours of passion fruit and gooseberry, fairly acidic, but mostly in a nice way. This one is totally worth the $8 I paid for it! Once again, there are far worse wines in far higher price brackets. If you are poor and like tropical punch, buy this! This wine surpasses its label. Or to put it another way: “This is the wine Napoleon would have drunk, if he were a bit strapped, and if he couldn’t get anything else.” (Black Books, s.3, ep.6)

Here is a visual aid to summarise:

THROWN INTO THE DEEP END AND LICKING MY WAY OUT

2010-03-23T17:46:00.000-07:00

“Put 7 winemakers in a room and get 12 opinions”

Last night I was able to watch this truism in all its glory. In the beautiful courtyard of Raidis winery in the Coonawarra, with grape vines clambering on trellises above our heads, I took part in my very first ‘blind tasting’.

The premise is simple- twelves bottles of wine covered and unrecognizable were numbered and placed before us. However in this case, we had some late arrivals of wine who upped the number to fourteen, but confused the system admirably by numbering themselves ‘zero mark one’ and ‘zero mark two’. Then a glass was poured for each participant, who then had to identify what type of wine it was, where it came from and how old it was.

Around the long table sat a veritable court of Coonawarra wine royalty, people involved in one way or another with the wine industry. Masterminded by our host Dru Reschke of Koonara wines, who has flown us all the way to Penola SA to squire us around the region, this ‘blind tasting’ seemed the quickest way to throw us into the deep end of wine appreciation.

Understandably I was slightly nervous- here were people who have devoted their lives to the production and love of wine. And here I was- self professed enthusiast, haphazard wine writer, full-time spaz. If these people have established a meaningful, lifelong relationship with with world of wine, then I’m the creepy stalker up the tree and across the road.

But as the tasting settled in, I found that my guesses weren’t entirely wrong. The one clue we had to help us was that the only varieties would be shiraz and cabernet sauvignon. The trick, like in everything with wine, is about isolating something within the wine. Whenever people get all ‘I don’t understand wine, it’s too tricky, i’m just a simple farmer with a goat and three mussels to feed, don’t come out here with your big city notions and shiny hats’ I just reiterate the one shiny and simple rule of wine. Find what you like. That’s really all you need. Then you try to work out why you like it- are you attracted to soft tannins, or big fruits. Woah, slow down cowboy, what the fuck are either of those things. Let’s simplify again, padre. Do you like the sweetness? What exists inside the sweet flavour? Can you identify a fruit? Start literally with the most basic of premises and tastes.

As I was sitting there, admittedly tipsy, I suddenly wondered if other industries had such passion and enthusiasm in their products. Do bakers all sit around, perhaps in the early dawn, sipping thick yeasty beers and blind tasting a sample of breads? Somehow I don’t think it would be quite as interesting. “Oh, oh, i’m tasting something a little... rye-ish.” Silence. “It’s rye bread.” All unintentional offense to bakers aside, the basic premise does actually apply. Ask yourself if you can differentiate between rye bread and apricot loaf, and you have the starts to appreciating wine already inside you. If the gods hadn’t meant us to drink wine, they wouldn’t have given us tongues. Think about that!

Throughout the night I found my confidence in my abilities waxing and waning dramatically. If I stopped concentrating, I’d get it wrong. If I concentrated too hard, I’d over-think it and get it wrong. I’d say all up I got about three wines right. However, while I may have ranked myself badly that night, it wasn’t until the next day where I noticed my powers had increased.

This crash course into taste appreciation (because if I call it ‘wine appreciation’ it sounds esoteric and far more complicated than it actually is) has sharpened my tongue. I appreciate it as some form of weapon, which before I wielded clumsily like a club made from the back of a chair. Now i’d say it’s closer to a morningstar- swinging wildly between brutal efficiency and missing completely. Dru Reschke’s tasting tongue is closer to a rapier, slicing through the wine like quicksilver. However my morningstar tongue is a lot of fun, repeatedly hitting certain flavours I was unable to appreciate in wines is an eye-opening and wildly enjoyable experience. We did a bunch of Coonawarra chardonnays, and I found myself smiting the vanilla and butterscotch flavours, the creamy textures and even some unforeseen fruits- such as pineapple?

I recommend that next time you buy some wine, buy two bottles, two varieties, and get somebody else to pour them for you. Try to differentiate- try to identify. It’s a harmlessly simple exercise, but one that will shove you down the road to greater enjoyment of wine.

An accurate representation of wine tasting.

The big red- traversing the Coonawarra

2010-03-23T05:22:00.000-07:00

There is red dirt covering my shoes, and underneath my fingernails. I’m in a vineyard, sucking on a small, tart Cabernet Sauvignon grape. I’m told to chew on the skin, until it becomes gritty and sour- this is the tannin you find in those wines, the sour acidic taste that can alternately provide a refreshing contrast with the sweet fruits or make your tongue curdle.

Have I become some form of farmer? Ready to leave the big lights and seedy alleys of the city behind me? And what’s with this red dust business? Is it a vineyard on Mars?

No- I am in the Coonawarra wine region in South Australia, with my comrades Daniel East and Lara Williams. We have been flown in like poorly conceived disaster relief by the rock’n’roll owner of Koonara wines, Dru Reschke. It is like a fantasy weekend for amateur wine writers- personally guided around the region by both an expert in the field, practitioner and downright nice person.

The trip was about breaking down the fourth wall for me. No longer could I regard wine as something that magically appears in a bottle, transfers to a glass, and disappears into my mouth forever. Instead, as we were walked through vineyards, shown the fermenting vats of wine in the wineries and introduced to winemakers, I had to consider the beginnings of the process.

While much of what we learnt dealt with the intricacies of sugar levels and yeast additions, what I actually remembered impressed me with the realization that creating wine is not only a scientific process, but also an artistic one. The element of taste and choice that the winemaker puts into his wine goes beyond formula and into preference and intuition.

And the wine. Oh my god the wine. We were spirited from one winery to the next in a whirlwind of only the most choice wines. From deep vanilla and cream chardonnays to the most mind numbingly good reds. This is cabernet country, the big ‘king of the grapes’ reigning supreme. But you can’t overlook the peppery shiraz, or even the white varieties like riesling.

The standouts have to begin with Koonara itself. The 2004 Ambriel’s gift Cabernet Sauvignon is like some form of archetype of what a perfect cab sav should be. The blueberry tones, Dru tells us, are what makes it special, and what you should search for. We left a glass of it out over night, and it still drank beautifully the next morning. But what’s exciting about Koonara is the high level that stretches across all their wines. Also, the cellar door has a huge wine and food based homewares section. And keep an eye out for Buster the wine dog. So goddamn cute.

Redman’s is a must, as they have a kind of single mindedness to their wine that you have to respect. They only produce Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz and a Cabernet Merlot blend. All are lovely, and the cellar door gives you the chance to vertical taste across a number of years.

Raidis winery are the new kids on the lot, with only three wines being grown at the moment, a Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling and Cabernet Sauvignon. They stress that the Cabernet vines are older than the winery however. I also believe they have the best Sauvignon Blanc in the entire region, called 'The Pup'. What is it with cute dogs in this area? I'm not complaining. Well worth checking out, and perhaps sticking around to chat for a few hours while drinking the awesome wine, because they are a friendly bunch of people.

The sparkling red at Balnaves, the Chardonnay at Parkers. The list of the exceptional grows and grows because we were lucky enough to be pointed in their directions. However I won’t keep writing, because I won’t be able to finish. Next I have an article about some of the specifics of the journey, including the blind tasting I undertook which was amazing.

Stories from the 428

2010-03-18T16:28:00.000-07:00

Have you ever been on a bus? Also known as the 'Inner-City Land Ferries' these rectangular dream boats spew forth from the bus depots in the sky and into our dreams. If I went back in time, to, let's say the Roman Empire, and I tried to explain the concept of a large mechanised carriage which exists only to ferry citizens to different parts of the city, then I would most likely fail. This would be because I don't speak ancient Roman. But buses aren't just concepts that are difficult to explain to hypothetical anachronisms- no sir. Because buses can also be cruel, dank, school-children ridden hell holes. I'll never forget the day Scott Cunningham threw my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle out the window of the school bus, and the bus driver wouldn't stop so I could get it. I believe it may have been Donatello.

Theatre visionary Augusta Supple is well aware of the vast dichotomies inherent in the bus, and has gathered a crack team of writers, directors and actors to put on a show called 'Stories from the 428'.

As one of the writers lucky enough to be included in this fantastic scheme, I can really only focus on the writing angle at this point. The 428 runs from Circular Quay, through Newtown, past Marrickville (where Sidetrack Theatre lives, the venue for this fantastic play) and ends up in Canterbury. All the writers were asked to take two bus trips along that route, and to create two corresponding scripts immediately afterwards. We were given no constraints apart from time (ten minutes all up) and were free to create anything. Rarely are you given the opportunity to unleash you creativity so flagrantly. Some people, especially the experienced public transport users tend to raise an eyebrow at the idea of being inspired by such pedestrian situations. However our first bus trip was a riot of overheard conversations, bizarre text messages (yeah, writers are little more than spies) and public domestics. And while our second trip was much less eventful, it inspired me to write a piece about the frustratingly boring parts of public transport- the waiting, the long trips, the breakdowns.

I don't drive- I have my full license, but I've always considered cars to be dangerous money pits. Due to my locale, I end up being a train user far more than buses, but the situations surely correspond. While travelling to the first script meeting for this project, I got on the train to be greeted by the bombastic greeting of "It's Patrick Lenton" from a good friend of mine who I haven't seen in a while. I'd like to point out that she didn't yell or screech, and barely raised her voice above acceptable greeting levels. Anyway, about 12-15 High School kids in the carriage decided to echo her, saying "oooooooh, Patrick Leeeenton". So this is what it feels like to be famous.

This is an exciting project. Everyone involved are exciting, passionate and talented people. I've read many of the scripts in their first draft stage, and I can honestly say I haven't been disappointed, or even faintly dismissive of a single one. This is the first writing collaboration that I've been involved in where I can honestly say I'm looking forward to seeing the other writers as much or even more than my own script performed. Narcissistic, yet true.

The first weeks begins on the 24th of March. It will feature the work of eight writers. The second week begins 31st of March, and will include the other eight writers. I am in the second week, yet I strongly urge you to see both weeks. Apparently the situations each week was exposed to (each week writers travelled on the bus together) differ fairly dramatically, and the very tone and theme of the show differens from week to week.

For more information have a look at:

http://storiesfromthe428.com
and my favourite theatre blogger
http://augustasupple.com

The Vale!

2010-03-05T23:10:00.001-08:00

For time immemorial, people have quested. Knights searching for the grail, Pilgrims for a God. Little Jimmy for a peanut sandwich or that drunk guy for a urinal/wife. And I'm here today to tell you about my own quest, a beautiful yet dangerous search for something exquisite, above all something new! And that, my friend, is wine.

If you search hard enough, I think you can find a little wine in all of us. Despite the wisdom inherent in this, I decided to ignore that, and instead drive over three heart-stopping states, over two back-breaking and mind-numbing days into a place of magic and legend known as The McLaren Vale.

What did I know about the McLaren Vale? Almost nothing. I knew it was in South Australia, and I knew i'd picked up some very decent reds from the region. But here's where we get to the nub of this blog- I don't really know much. I created it to share my experiences and the few tidbits of knowledge that I do pick up. So in that vein, follow me on my amazing quest through the veil and into the Vale. (It took me like three months to come up with a line that good.)

1. Gemtree

A suitably fantasy-esque name for the first stop in my wine quest- and remarkably the winery was actually a giant hollowed tree covered in all manners of gems. That was a lie, but they have a wine they call 'Cadenzia' which is a blend of shiraz, tempranillo and grenache. What a fairytale wine! Truly an amazing experience. All through the Vale I was struck at the bold and delicious ways in which grenache is used in blends. Utterly drinkable. (Utterly drinkable? As opposed to what exactly- gravel or perhaps a bird? Mmm, the pelican and gravel shake was utterly un-drinkable)

2. Wirra-Wirra

A giant bird? A tribal shaman of subtle and violent power? Or an extremely competent winery? I'll let you decide if you follow in my footsteps. Hint: If you do see a giant bird, don't ask it for wine. They never share. All the wine at Wirra-Wirra was, as I said before, at an equal and high level of competency. As I was gunning for the new and the unique as part of my winey vows, I focused on some of their weird white varietals like the savignin. Unfortunately it was kinda like a bland sauvignon-blanc. However Bridget bought their Scrubby Rise red blend, which was a mix of shiraz, cabernet and petite verdot. When we drank it later, it proved to be extremely yummy, and of excellent price value. $15 cellar door, $11 Dan Murphy's.

3. Pertaringa

If you have decided, perhaps after reading a few lines of my persuasive prose, that wine is your new passion- then the first think you have to do is go to a winery. "But why?" I hear you scream, convulsing all over the floor, your jar of pickles splashing violently over the drapes. "Why can't I just sit at home watching Law and Order and drinking sadly from my convenient bottle shop wine? WHY?". The answer is quite simple- wineries are a new and exciting, and unique experience. Pertaringa exemplified everything I love about wine tasting, The wines were simply amazing, the prices were great and the staff we had, a very friendly chap named Ashey, was incredibly informative and chatty. I bought their 'Over the Top' Shiraz, one of their premium wines. An amazing shiraz, which I plan to cellar. And for a premium wine, it was very cheap, being on $40 dollars. You can expect most bigger wineries in the same area to charge $20 dollars more for the same kind of range- yet I don't think they could compete with just how good this wine is. You can totally tell how unemployed I am at the moment- there is a distinct whiff of poverty on my amazing quest. So it goes.

4. D'arenburg

Things are getting blurry for our intrepid hero, the sheer amount of wine pulsing through his body causing him to forget certain details. But D'arenburg make wines of which I have already sampled fairly extensively, so I wasn't overly surprised by what I tasted. For a larger winery, filled with many, many German tourists, everything moved along quickly and cheerily. A lot of awesome, cheaper wines for the taking. Also make sure you check out the back of the labels- they really put a lot of creativity into their names and the 'reasons' behind them. Sometimes when you're on a quest, you discover that you love something just as much as you always knew you did. You just don't read about those quests quite so much- not overly dramatic, you know?

5. Coriole

Another lovely little winery, probably gets the award for prettiest place. I was really enamoured with the sangiovese shiraz blend. You may be noticing that an extreme love for blends might be the result of my wine quest. You might be right.

6. Mt Jagged

Most dramatic name. Most dramatic savings. What a perfect place to end my quest. There I stumbled, bleeding red wine from my eyes, up the broken shards of Mt Jagged, searching, hoping for the one thing that will make my quest exceptional. And there it was- $6 bottles of sauvignon/semillon/chardonnay blend. Why so cheap? Because of a label mishap which meant they had to sell their exceptional, James Halliday rated 91 bottles of wine for $80 a case. There it was, my holy grail. All their wine was fantastic, including the first sparkling red I've ever enjoyed and the best chardonnay I had in the entire area. And once again, really friendly and enjoyable people. Not actually in the McLaren Vale central, but about 15 minutes out from Victor Harbour where we were staying. I have no idea whether they get more or less traffic from being less central- you are rather spoiled for choice in the great Vale hub, and are more likely to miss on certain places. Mt Jagged is on a fairly touristy road, so could end up getting more spontaneous drop- ins.

Explaining wine to aliens- guest post by Daniel East

2010-02-22T16:33:00.000-08:00

If I had to explain wine to an alien, who had abducted me in my sleep and was speeding me through the cosmos to the glittering menagerie on his home planet, I would start by saying that wine is a lot like light.
The alien, his long, silver body like running water would say, “Do you mean you can see by it?”
To which I would say no – that wine is like light because it can be warming and joyful – that sometimes to drink wine is like seeing the sunset; and at other times it is like returning home from work to eat lunch on your porch because a lovely seabreeze is moving there; and that all wine, if you drink enough of it, is like playing running games with friends in a cool field at evening.

The alien would not get it. He would say, “I don’t get it,” and wiggle his fern-like antennae.
Thinking, I would stand up from the purple divan and begin to pace the cold floor of his spaceship barefoot. The alien would say, “don’t go getting any funny ideas now,” to which I would reply:
“When I was home I was always getting funny ideas. So if you want me to live like a human you have to let me go around getting funny ideas.”
There’d be a moment of silence in which a nebula would luxuriate past like a purple limousine. The alien would say, “You know what I mean. Don’t go trying to escape. There’s nowhere you can get to.”
Ignoring him, I’d say that wine was like going back to when you were young and playing games. You see, when you were young everything was about making up rules and then breaking those rules and then you’d make up some more because that’s what your parents did except their rules were no fun. With wine someone will say, “I can taste passionfruit,” and even though you know there’s no possible way that the wine could have passionfruit in it you taste it and you say, “Oh yeah.” Other type of people go, “hmm, more like watermelon,” because they’re not quite disagreeing with you and sometimes you have to say, “No, I don’t taste any passionfruit in here at all.”
“And that’s the game? To taste things that are imagined?” The alien would ask.
And I’d say no, that wine is like those games from your childhood because the aim was to imagine things. No scientist on our earth could ever draw a diagram of how complex the scent of wine was, so to us it was like magic.
“I could draw you a diagram of what wine looks like,” the alien would say, “if I knew what it was. People from my planet know what everything looks like. That’s why we have to travel for so long to find new things to look at and see. All the things in our galaxy are known to us. I could draw and explain everything I have ever seen. All the good things and all the bad.”
And I’d say that might make my people very sad, and if it wasn’t for forgetting and remembering humans might be like that too.
“What is forgetting and remembering?” The alien would ask. “How do you do it?”
With wine, I’d reply. With wine you could see things that weren’t there and not see things that were. With wine you’d say things you shouldn’t but were truer than the things you should say, that you usually say. With wine you were changed but you stayed the same. With wine you were made happy though you might not be. With wine you felt loved even if you weren’t.
“By who?” The alien would ask.
I would shrug. It wouldn’t matter. Maybe you would just feel loved by yourself.
“You can’t fool me.” The alien would say. “You will say that we should return to your planet so I can see this wine. That if I was interested in your planet that I should see this thing. But I cannot turn around. That is not how these ships work.”
On the contrary I would reply. Because I have tasted wine I am open to the world, to the new. Wine is a game that opens your senses to everything in the world. Everything is on the palate, everything and everyone are constructions of the wine. They either taste good, or they don’t. But they are all worth seeing. So in fact I long to see your beautiful planet and the beautiful people who live there. And if I am sad that I am not home, that I will have no more wine, then I am also happy, for wine has made it possible for two things to be true at once.

Besides, I’d say. It is not wine that I will miss the most.
“You will not miss wine the most? After all you have said of it?”
Indeed, I’d reply. No, wine is simply a way of looking at the world. But whiskey, ah, that I will miss deeply with every passing day.
“And what is whiskey then?” The alien would ask.
And such would I pass my time en-route to the alien’s world.

Daniel East was sent back in time to stop himself from wasting all that time trying to work out how to time-travel. His favourite wine is ALL OF IT.

The Great Cleanskin Experiment - a guest post by Bridget Lutherborrow

2010-02-16T23:59:00.000-08:00

I can’t help myself. I judge books by their covers. My bookshelf displays tomes of shimmering spines and covers that unfurl into lotus flowers or legionnaire’s hats. One book is stuck together with magnets and this is completely true.

Exibit A - a colourful book that I own.

As guilty as I am of judging books by their covers, I am even more despicably shallow when it comes to wine. My decisions on what bottle to take home are made by judging prettiness levels against price.
Take this Grant Burge Moscato for instance. Preeeetty...

That’s why I’ve decided to throw caution (and aesthetics) to the wind!!! (Whooooosh). I have a new life long mission and that mission is to sample as many cleanskins as I can in an attempt to distance myself from the nasty habit of judging wines by their labels. Cleanskins are a wonderful mystery, because they could contain grapes from practically anywhere. Top and medium budget wines which have high yields are often siphoned into cleanskins. It would be nice to find some decent budget wine and to share this information so that people no longer have to suffer in their Kaiser Stǖhl.

I had the epiphany while contemplating various boozes in Dan Murphy’s. Loitering around in the cleanskins I considered the Riesling. The bottle tapers more gradually at the top, which I like, but I thought better of it. Then I picked up the Semillon Sauvignon Blanc BB9 reserve 2009 – a perfectly bland bottle of dark greenish glass with the standard shape. Honestly, I am completely hopeless at this and had to restrain myself from opting for the slightly lighter coloured bottle of the straight sauv blanc.

In the end I was glad I had resisted my various shiny temptations. This wine is quite delicious for $5. It’s better than some wines in the $10-$15 range. It tasted of generic fruits and was un-offensive.

Stay tuned for my next venture into the wild world of cleanskins.

Bridget Lutherborrow is scatter-brained and too specific. She writes short stories and poetry and has degrees in Creative Writing and Communications. She eats dinosaurs for breakfast.

Optimism

2010-02-03T21:55:00.000-08:00

I've always claimed to be an optimist. How does this manifest in my daily life? Perhaps by me running around saying 'I'm an optimist, I'm an optimist.' I seem to be optimistic about my own optimism. In one of the utterly banal conversations that seem to grow like tedious flowers in my workplace, people shared there own answers on whether or not they are optimists. Everybody said yes. As we stood in the retail hellhole, cogs in the great capitalist machine, one of my co-workers said
"I believe you can do anything if you put your mind to it".
I had to wonder if she'd started.

This conversation got me wondering if perhaps I was a realist with optimistic pretensions. What exactly was I optimistic about? I believe that good things can happen, certainly, but that even despite your best intentions you could end up with a harpoon in your eye. It's true, it could just happen. It isn't likely, but how exactly are you going to stop it randomly happening?
I needed to get some definitions on this subject that only my old war buddy, the Dictionary could provide.

optimism |ˈäptəˌmizəm|
noun
1 hopefulness and confidence about the future or the successful outcome of something : the talks had been amicable, and there were grounds for optimism.
2 Philosophy the doctrine, esp. as set forth by Leibniz, that this world is the best of all possible worlds.
• the belief that good must ultimately prevail over evil in the universe.

Nup.
I have discovered I am fairly jealous of optimists- that's a nice state of mind to be in. I'm jealous of them like I'm envious of people on morphine drips.

Who are some of the worlds great optimists? Here's my top three:

The Pope and his Optimismobile- I mean, what happens if he's wrong? Scenario, Pope turns up in heaven, is greeted by 8 ft Lady Buddha. Boy is his face red!

Marx and Engels: These two beautiful optimists were so optimistic about human nature. Pity about that whole Russian thing.

So what the hell is my point? Perhaps I'm testing you- is there a light at the end of this blog tunnel? Yes. Because I've recently started doing something ridiculously optimistic. Something that forces me to look into the future and say
"Yes, not only will I be alive and kicking, but things will be better". Have I embraced a faith perhaps? Of a sort.

I've been laying down wine to age. Some of you may remember my Christmas gift of a wine fridge. As wine related paraphernalia goes, this is pretty much the crown of my collection. But it wasn't until I've started buying wine with the express purpose of putting in said fridge that I realised how much it's all about blind optimism and faith. I was enquiring about buying a half-case of the Penfolds 389 Cab-Shiraz blend (2004) for the fridge. When I asked how long I'd be looking at ageing it, I discovered I would be safe from 10-15 years. I have to assume that I'm both alive and in possession of electricity for this wild gamble to pay off. It was more this thought than the ridiculous expense that drove me off. (Nah, it was the money.)

Last week I went to the Southern Highlands and managed to drop into the Joadja winery, that Daniel East mentioned in his article 'Living in the Shadow of Tomorrow'. As East wrote about Joadja:

2. Joadja Winery in Berrima.
Joadja might come runner up to St. Maur (and arguably, Tertini) in terms of pure awesome wine-making, but is a better stop for those interested in local colour/history (Joadja was the first vineyard established in the area and has an interesting cellar door) or for those who might have a taste for the novel and unique. Not only does it boast a superlative ‘Brambelini Liqueur’ (a magic-berry liqueur that TASTES LIKE BERRIES – one for the books) but some very interesting varietals – a blend of Botrytis and un- Botrytis Sauvignon Blanc (elegant and sweet like a debutante dress) a delicious Malbec (my favourite red from the area, rich and fruit-driven, available in both reserve and in a Cab/Merlot/Malbec blend) and one of the best ports (a Tawny) the area has to offer. Prices range from $17 (for the Rosé) to $32 (for the port). Small vineyard, only available in the area. A must see. I don’t remember if it had a wine dog (-10 points?)

It did have a wine dog, a beautiful old friendly thing. Anyway, I was so impressed with the Malbec, I asked how it would go with some age. This one, the incredibly helpful lady told me, would age beautifully for around five years. Much better! Or is it? Not that I could afford more than one bottle at that point- which I've dutifully drunk already. It really is something special. It's just that five years is such a long time- i'll be so old! And every single day until then is a day where I can't drink all this wine. Just a ridiculous notion.

It reminds me of all the Time-Capsules we had to do in primary school. We'd put letters and bits of art into a container and bury them out in the bush behind the school. Apparently that bush got severely burnt almost a decade ago in some big bushfires, and I have this image of firemen stepping over the brittle remains of thousands of time capsules. Anyway, I got really into those things, and decided to go all extra-curricular and make my own. I have no idea where any of them would be now (except for a few in the Middle East). I do remember a much younger version of myself finding an even YOUNGER me's time capsule in our old family house. My dad had just dug up half the garden to put in a fountain, and rather bemusedly handed me a dirty icecream container with two He-Man action figures in it. I went and buried them elsewhere- I'm pretty excited about archaeologists discovering them in the future. One of them is half man, half leech. His name was, wait for it, Leechman.

I went to Sutherland Library the other day, which me and my sister used to spent hours every day after high school, waiting for our mum to pick us up. There was this flagstone outside which you could lift up. I don't remember why, but we used to leave notes for each other under it.

Curious, and with all these thoughts of the future, time capsules and optimism, I went over to it and tried to lift it up. It had been concreted firmly down again.

Some form of allegory? Only time will tell.

Please Kill Me

2010-01-17T02:02:00.000-08:00

I don't read non-fiction much. The capacity for fiction to send me on giant birds of imagination usually outweighs the petty facts and interests of the real world. But every so often you find a veritable condor of non-fiction . Please Kill Me by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain is a Bald-Eagle. Utterly captivating, powerful and criminally interesting. 'The Uncensored Oral History of Punk' basically consists of snippets of conversations and interviews from movers and shakers, hangers on and journalists from the very conception of punk to its dying days.

Beginning in 1965 with the Velvet Underground, the so called 'godfathers of punk' the book starts with the pre-cursors and inspirations to what would later turn into the iconic movement. This is a must have for any music lover, even if you can't stand punk. If you like Rock'n'Roll of any sort, then you will just have a ball. This doesn't simply focus on the big names of Punk, such as the Sex Pistols, but delves into side bands and other artists that helped formulate the era.

So much of this book is ridiculously exciting for me, due to the fact I love the music. If you've seen my photos, you'll agree that I don't look anything like the be-pierced, ripped shirted and mohawked punks of 1970's England and more like an Oscar Wilde tribute band, so it seems strange for me to identify with this music.

But this book tells a different story to what seems to be the stereotype today. The New York school of 'punk' came from a place of fierce individualism, of doing something personal and different. Spawning from the art scene of the time, The Velvet Underground set the pace for an intellectual choice in music. The bands that proceeded afterwards differed wildly in style, sometimes focusing on charismatic performance like Iggy Pop or shockingly new ways of presenting music like the flamboyant New York Dolls. It's not until the 1970's that we start getting the short, boppy, downright hilarious songs from people like The Ramones, Blondie and Television.

A split occurs when the London scene beins, as the books quotes "What New York defined, London refined" taking the style and idea of the New York music, and funneling it into something a lot flashier. The rage of English punk and its horrible scene defines it to us today, yet is so different from what it was based from. Sociologically, this can be linked to Thatcher's working class England and all that entailed. Another reason can be linked to old Malcolm McLaren, who despite being involved with the New York scene for a long time, was always interested in politicising punk beyond what many felt it should. Plus his ideas of 'branding' a movement or a scene, led the cliched look, and is the real beginning for the emo's and scenesters that plague the label of punk today.

I feel that I can identify quite adequately with everything about punk and its attitude before it reaches the shores of England. That said, I still love a lot of that music, rather than its label. The Clash for example- Guns of Brixton, one of the best songs ever. But political? Yes. Wussy? A little. The Clash were scarcely revolutionary, Anyway.

I read this book again because John Cale came to town as part of the Sydney Festival. John Cale was in the Velvet Underground with Lou Reed and Mau Tucker, and has had a long running solo career. He also produced iconic albums like Nico's 'Chelsea Girls' and Iggy and the Stooges 'Raw Power'. (I think.)

I unfortunately had to miss his keynote address, but my sister Julia (who got me my free ticket to the show itself, thus earning herself like 158 awesome points) managed to catch it, and summarised it as 'holiday snaps of John Cale's life'. It seems so strange to consider a lifetime of experience with people who have since passed into the realm of legend. The amount of amazing personalities who never made it as far as John Cale is quite boggling. In fact the end of Please Kill Me is more than a little depressing. All the vibrant, larger than life stars that we have followed, dying in the most undignified and depraved ways. A few of the worst- Lester Bangs drinking too many jars of cough syrup, fat Nico falling off her bike and expiring of sunstroke, Johnny Thunders heroin addiction turning him into a mottled yellow leper skeleton. Great, inspiring stuff.

Anyway, John Cale didn't die. He performed at the Enmore last night. The man himself is a timeline of music- his songs seemed to range from stadium rock to twenty minute long Pink Floyd-esque droning. The two Velvet songs he played 'I'm waiting for the man' and 'Femme Fatale' were clearly his own works of art, and not simply 'old favourites'. 'I'm waiting for the man' is definitely one of my favourite Velvet Underground songs, so that was the highlight of the concert for me. I've heard reports that 'Femme Fatale' was written by Lou Reed about Nico, or that it was written about the overhyped Edie Sedgewick on Andy Warhol's request. Regardless, while I sat there listening to Cale's version, thinking about the historical ramifications of the song, remembering Cale and Lou Reed's legendary rivalry, or the train wreck that was Cale's relationship with the Stooges, this became the most enthralling part of the show for me. The story of the punk movement, and the 1960's art scene, punctuated by epic real life characters is just as exciting and engrossing as any fiction. Maybe more, because I have to wonder if a few decades after now, people look back on the time I lived in as a wonderful story. It doesn't seem like it possibly could be.

I love the music and the story, yet I also wonder if I would have had the stamina or personality to be involved in it all at the time? Probably not, which is why I'm happy to approach it from this perspective- a fan and a reviewer, possibly a scholar.

Anyway, I'll leave you with my top five punk songs:

1. Search and Destroy- Iggy and the Stooges
2. Guns of Brixton- The Clash
3. 53rd and 3rd- The Ramones
4. Holiday in Cambodia- Dead Kennedy's
5. I'm Waiting for the man- The Velvet Underground

And here's Iggy Pop. He's my favourite.

Choose your own adventure- post by Robert Beazley

2010-01-10T16:52:00.000-08:00

I know a lovely girl by the name of Alisha, who really hates video games. She likes drinking milk, eating pizza and playing Oz-Tag. We ride bikes to work together.

Alisha works as the admin girl in an IT department full of geeks who play a lot of games, and consequently talk about games a lot. At lunchtime or on work outings, I see her eyes glaze over whenever the topic of video games comes up. Personally, I don’t understand why she hates games so much. I thought about it for a long time, and while I didn’t come up with any answers, it got me thinking about something I don’t really have any interest in – books.

Now, I don’t hate books. I just have no interest in reading. I’ve read books in the past and enjoyed them but none have ever got me sucked in enough to want to go out and read another book. Well, maybe Ice Station – that was awesome. I’m not sure why I never got sucked in to reading, though my short attention span and need for instant gratification perhaps meant I was more suited to the pretty pictures and interactivity of games.

While I was thinking about Alisha and games and books and killer whales, I realised that the reason I played a lot games was to experience the story of the characters and universe that the developers had created. The next thing I thought was “why not just read a book then?” Game narrative has traditionally been – for the most part – simplistic, generally unimaginative and much of the time an afterthought to explain the different areas that game avatars traverse.

Books allow authors to tell much more elaborate stories. Like movies, the story is almost always about someone other than you. Games do this too; most are about a main character like Sonic the Hedgehog (who is going through his own personal hell right now) or Altair from Assassin’s Creed. These games are great. However – what I get the most enjoyment from is when the story is about me. Even better is when I get to create the story, when it is my decisions that allow me to experience the game in a different way to everyone else.

Fallout 3 is one of those games.

It tells the story of a Lone Wanderer (you) who leaves a sealed bunker 200 odd years after nuclear war brought about the end of the world. Having grown up in the “vault”, as it is called, you have no idea about what is outside and are required to fend for yourself in a world where society has completely collapsed. The lack of any sort of law and order means that pretty much everyone has gone bat shit insane. The unpredictability of many of the characters helps to make the game that much more memorable.

I was talking about it at lunchtime with my friends, when one of them asked how to do a certain quest about exterminating fire-breathing ants. She’d only played for a few hours, and I’d never come across the place or the quest that she was talking about, despite playing for more than 40 hours! Fallout is so cleverly designed that you really feel like you are living in the world, coming across “quests” and encounters that aren’t just the usual “go here, get that, come back” quests that you so often see in games. They deal with interactions with people, difficult choices, and things that feel like they could be part of everyday life in a post apocalyptic wasteland. The funny part is that the main story quest is fairly ordinary, and only took me about 10 out of the 60 odd hours I spent playing the game to complete.

It’s strange that the side quests and choices that you are able to make in them are the largest and most interesting part of the game. I think it is the presence of these quests that allow you to really get into the world and genuinely feel like you are the “Lone Wanderer” character that you play. I think it is fantastic that you could ignore the main story altogether and go off and make your own adventure out of just exploring the wasteland and encountering the different characters in the Fallout universe. The game has its flaws, but the ambition and execution allows you to see past them and tell your own story in a world that has obviously been created by a team of immensely creative and talented people.

Everyone should play this game – except maybe Alisha. Fallout 3 is like a massive choose your own adventure novel, and it is absolutely brilliant. I’m still not done with it, but when I am, I’m sure I’ll remember it with the same enthusiasm as games like Myth, Panzer Dragoon, Skies of Arcadia and Neverwinter Nights.

So, Alisha, thankyou for hating games and getting me thinking about what can set them apart from books and film and reminding me why I enjoy them so much.

By the way, if you’d like to buy Fallout 3, I’d recommend getting it from Play-Asia for cheap.

Robert Beazley loves the bit in Icestation where the SAS and the FBI fight against the giant mutated walruses and the Girl Guides.

Two Thousand and... Wine?

2010-01-08T00:00:00.000-08:00

One of the worst things I have to deal with, is my awful memory. I think. Trying to remember the beginning of this year is a blurry montage that goes something like: wine, work, wine, book, hangover, people, book, zombie horde.
In aid of curing my minor amnesia, I'm going to conduct a list of TEN THINGS WHICH MADE 2009 GREAT. Obviously this is going to be themed.

TEN THINGS WHICH MADE 2009 GREAT

1. Grant Burge.

When I think of all the wine I drank this year, one name stands proudly above the rest. Grant Burge, wine maker, heart palpitator, all round hero. Between the entry level goodness of the 2006 Sauvignon Blanc Semillon to the awe inspiring divinity of his Holy Trinity red blend, I haven't had a single bad experience from this man. I mean, his new range of cheap cheap under ten dollar wines aren't exciting. But for that price, what is? Thankyou Grant Burge, thankyou.

2. Haruki Murakami

I didn't read a great deal of Murakami this year. But I did discover him. The sight of his substantial canon, loitering sexily around the book shelves fills me with something close to sexual lust. Ok, exactly sexual lust. I have deliberately withheld buying all his books in an orgasmic spending spree, in order to prolong the pleasure. Literary Tantric sex, baby.

3. Steven Erikson

I have never ever spent so long reading anything. This series is absolutely epic. And I like my fantasy epic. So much of 2009 was spent reading these books, they would have an automatic place in this list even if they didn't rock hardcore. And they rock hardcore. The Malazan Book of the Fallen is the actual series I'm referring to by the way. How to explain the plot of something this huge, this all encompassing? Well it would be easier with less Chardonnay in my blood stream, so I just won't. Ka ching!

4. Villa Maria Sauvignon Blanc

What a feisty, fruity drop of wine. If this was a lovely lady, it would be great at parties, excellent conversation and a fresh fashion sense. Not to mention an intoxicating aroma! As if this wasn't great, she's dirt cheap! And from New Zealand. Weird.

5. Michael Chabon

Yeah, I read a bunch of Chabon this year. His novels, his short stories- all spectacular. All the more impressive for a giant stone man on a horse. Et tu Brutus? (That means 'well done')

6. Cormac McCarthy

The Road was by far the best book I read this year. Sometimes after I finish a book, I get this chill travel over my body, goosebumps bristling. It's this immediate, visceral effect from an excellent book. I finished The Road, put it down and waited for the tingles to start. They never arrived, and I sat staring at the wall for about an hour, before shaking my head and mournfully cleaning the kitchen.

7. George R.R. Martin

Technically a re-read of his entire 'A Song of Ice and Fire' series (except he hasn't finished it yet). Yet I've never read it as an epic block. Really screws with your head it does. You start to think that nothing ever goes right, ugly Dwarfs deserve the love of their whores, and that maybe you'd have a shot at being King. Everyone else has. Oh man. I miss the Knight of Flowers.

8. Xena

9. e.e.cummings

Wins the award for the only poetry I actually read this year. Yeah, I needed a break. I was distinctly anti-poetry. Still, cummings is just beautiful, and I like to read him spontaneously.

10. Me

Or more specifically, this blog. 2009 was sometimes aimless, horrible and depressing, and this blog was made in a quest for purpose and legitimacy in my life. I really have no idea if that's been achieved, but I certainly enjoyed pretending to write articles. I liked it when I made up stuff instead of being serious.

DECEMBER CLIMAX!

2009-12-25T01:27:00.000-08:00

Happy December Climax everybody!

I am overstuffed. I am a wine receptacle. I am more seafood than man. This, my friends, is the true meaning of December Surprise.

First I would like to wish you all a happy festive season. Second, thank you all for reading my blog. It hasn't been easy at times- for you I mean. I probably wouldn't have read it. I think it's been a pretty amazing 12 days of December Surprise, and I'd like to throw out a big thankyou to all my guest bloggers who answered the call and wrote such stupendous articles for me. Let's have a recap:

THE 12 DAYS OF DECEMBER SURPRISE

On the first day my girlfriends parents gave to me: six warrantied wineglasses.

On the second day, my true love gave to me Nigella Lawson.

On the third day of December Surprise, I did a REALLY CRAPPY POST.

On the fourth day of December Surprise, Julia Lenton gave to me a KINGDOM OF FEAR

On the fifth day, a copious amount of wine gave to me a literary hangover.

On the sixth day, Daniel Willis gave to me porter, and an action packed firefight in Tunisia.

On the seventh day of December Surprise, Bridget Lutherborrow (my true love) gave to me Dave Eggers and Hurricane Katrina.

On the eight day, Robert Beazley gave me an elaborate metaphor about computer games and wives.

On the ninth day, I experienced a Zombie apocalypse masterminded by Enid Blyton.

On the tenth day, Daniel East gave to me a well worded tale of love, loss, Hunter Thompson and the Southern Highlands.

On the eleventh day, I wrote a fairly sparse anecdote about reading books.

AND ON THE 12th DAY, I WRAPPED IT ALL UP AND STOPPED SPAMMING YOUR EMAILS.

It's been great, and I think this blog is really taking a great new direction. Regardless, I won't bother you again till next year.

But let's talk about my Christmas, through the power of images.

For my family, I bought a case of the Roche Tallawanta Shiraz, 2007. This is a Hunter Valley wine, and still has the dried dustbowl taste in the vaguely dried out grapes, but has a beautiful rounded mouthfeel. It's quite spectacular, and has a pink meniscus. I could almost taste raisins. We'll be opening one of these bottles every Christmas from now on.

This is the WINE FRIDGE a conglomeration of my family bought me. This was a huge surprise, and is even more amazing considering I'd bought some wine specifically to cellar recently. I must have known subconsciously. It all begins now my friends... complete degeneration into wine fiend. Also I'm aware the photo is sideways... it's because of art.

I also received some great books, pens and chocolates. I'll review those later.
It was a wonderful day, and I can only hope yours was fantastic as well.

I have to go and sleep now, and possibly never eat again.

December Surprise Eve

2009-12-24T02:56:00.000-08:00

Just a short one tonight. Have to get my beauty sleep to festive it up tomorrow.

I've had some fairly inappropriate Christmas reading material before. One year in particular sticks out (except I've forgotten precisely what year that is). I'd managed to get my hands on Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves, and found myself completely entranced. I read late into the night of Christmas Eve, and then couldn't sleep.

For those that haven't read it, House of Leaves is a spooky post-modern meta-narrative that documents a supposedly real documentary about a house that defies the laws of space and measurement. Yeah, you just have to read it. It really deserves an entire review, and from me, a re-reading. But what I can safely talk about, is my reaction on that fateful Christmas Day.

Despite all the merriment, liberal alcohol and several slaughtered animals, all I could think about were cupboards that didn't quite fit, and hallways that measured longer on the outside of the house. Somewhere in the middle of lunch, I went downstairs to the toilet, took the book in and disappeared for close to an hour. That's right, the book is so good I faked diarrhoea. It's a genuinely scary book, and was made somehow even more sinister by the fact I was sneaking away from all the merriment to read it. I felt a bit Gollumish.

Anyway, this Christmas I'm re-reading Raymond Carver's short story collection Will you please be quiet, please.

Ian McEwan says all there really is to say: "Raymond Carver's terse, gloomily funny short stories are a delight." And it's true, they are a delight. But they are also just... disturbing. Many of his plots go nowhere, or deliberately spin the reader in a circle, before finishing on a complete tangent. And some just make me uncomfortable. But most are great. A particular favourite of mine is his story 'The Father'. This one just tickles my fancy, and ends on one of the strangest notes I've ever come across.
But my point is- not particularly Christmas in tone. Well not to the naked eye. But what it does discuss are the realities of people, very often in family units. And while it doesn't glorify, or celebrate this in particular, it does highlight the particular eccentricities and banalities that are a family. And for me that's what Christmas is about. This tendency to over hype the festive season into a time of unremitting goodwill and cheer is a little unrealistic. But I do like the traditions, and the chance to enjoy all the people important in my life- eccentric and completely dog boring.

LIVING IN THE SHADOW OF TOMORROW – Disease disguised as Sanctuary: Guest post by Daniel East

2009-12-22T21:50:00.000-08:00

How often I find myself alone ... Seeking Expertise ... One for the Doctor ... Easier reportage on the Southern Highlands ... One more cup of Coffee for the road ...

I had thought myself an expert on the vineyards of the Southern Highlands. If one was to browse the Winter 09 Southern Highlands Visitor Guide and peruse the list of cellar doors found within, and had happened to remark off-handedly, “Why, I did not know there were so many wineries in the Southern Highlands!” There once was a time I would have brandished my balloon of pinot noir with an arrogant harrumph, turn to you and say:
“Yes, but only a few are really worth going to. And really, the map there covers quite a large area. It’d take all day just to drive to them all!” And reaching over, my eyes crossed and blood-shot, I would snatch the guide from your trembling hands and with confidence, stab my finger into the page saying: “Here. Here and (giving my eyes a second to refocus) here. That is were you need to go, I assure you.”
“How handsome of you to say so,” you’d reply, swooningly, but you’d be wrong. DEAD WRONG!

Last Thursday, killing a few hours in Circular Quay, I happened onto a little store called ‘Wine Odyssey’. It’s a restaurant/cellar door that specialises in selling wines from smaller vineyards throughout Australia. And what should I find there but two labels from the Southern Highlands (Tertini and Cuttaway Hill) that I had not even heard of – and one vineyard (Cuttaway Hill) is, in fact, not even on the listing for the Winter 09 Southern Highlands Visitor Guide.
“Damn you Winter 09 Southern Highlands Visitor Guide!” I bellowed. “Damn you!”, and with this, threw myself bodily into a French patisserie.
You see, everyone wants to seem like an expert, but no one wants to be an expert. For one, it takes too long, and turns you into that weedy guy with damp palms, who sits undistinguished in strangers’ homes nursing his beer til 11pm when I spring from my seat, prowling corridors for unattended women. He for whom his friends say, “Daniel? He’s nice. Just don’t mention Mornington Peninsula merlots” with ‘Mornington Peninsula merlots’ here indicating any particular field of interest.
It is the disease of faux-expertise and it has everything to do with authority. He who has it makes it, and he who doesn’t have it has to shut the fuck up. And nowhere is the disease of faux-expertise more insidious than in fields of interest that coincide with social pretension. Wine is one. Another is the work of Doctor Hunter S. Thompson, Field Marshal of Gonzo Journalism, lately deceased. It seems the good doctor’s work has recently been overtaken by a wave of arts-grad De Quincey’s who all arrive at the vision of the doctor as some sort of drug-taking maniac-messiah; the last of a wild breed who are, to use his own phrasing, “too weird to live, too rare to die”. Gilliam’s film (and Depp’s portrayal) seem to have reignited interest in this supposed wunderkind who lived long enough to see his genius subside and rise again, stencilled in the notebooks of another wild-eyed and off-topic generation.

But this belief is a half-gallon hat a gallon and a half full of bullshit. The doctor was an incredibly gifted journalist whose strengths (and flaws) as a writer often seem overshadowed by his connection to an era of which he remains the finest critic.
Which leads me back to my analogy at the start of this article – that of myself perched precariously on the edge of a sofa spouting desperate bullshit. The problem of being an expert is not having an opinion, but the egotistical need to not have one’s opinions challenged. The inherent problem of the teleology of speech. You’d think you’d learn at some point NOT to arrive at conclusions, to bookmark opinions with qualifiers. And I guess you do – but it’s an iterative process.
I began this article in response to a conversation Pat and I had about wine regions in general. Earlier in the year I visited the Hunter Valley, the second visit of my life, and I have to admit, I tried a lot of wine. After my second day of push-biking and tasting I remember leaving the Peterson’s champagne house laughing – just cackling, completely alone, swerving my hire bike over the two-lane blacktop.

The article would be a salute to this hedonism and a summary of the Hunter’s fine wineries – but a cursory inspection of the Hunter Valley Wine Country Visitors Guide 08 reveals an index page of cellar door tastings in 7 point font, running that gamut from Adina Vineyard through to Yarraman Estate. 70+ vineyards in all. To typify them would be to make so many exclusions that there would be no central rule – and I am not a man to make generalisations, generally. But the Southern Highlands? There were 14 vineyards in the guide! I was going out with a woman who’d worked the vines, who had lived there most her life. She could give me the low-down, the skinny, the 411 and the how’s-your-father. Dammit man, I could be AN EXPERT! But if only I’d tried a little harder before running my goddamn mouth.

It’s the same with Hunter. It’s not hard to get a good overview of the man’s career. I had read Hell’s Angels and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but until I read his compilation The Great Shark Hunt I don’t think I really had a good indication of why he became so well known. Yes. He ‘invented’ Gonzo journalism, but this stylistic device ham-strings some of his articles – after awhile you’re like, right, thanks doc, can you just give me the story now? When it works, there’s nothing like it. When it lags, it seems a little half-baked and phoned-in. I’d rave about how good Thompson was but until The Great Shark Hunt I had no idea WHY. The best way I can explain it in overview is by referencing Tom Wolfe’s comments in The New Journalism:
“Hunter Thompson’s career as a ‘Gonzo Journalist’ began after he wrote his first book, The Hell’s Angels, a Strange and Terrible Saga. Infuriated because Playboy wouldn’t run a story they had commissioned him to do on Jean-Claude Killy’s career as a celebrity huckster for Chevrolet, Thompson rewrote the story for Warren Hickle’s Scanlan’s Monthly, throwing in his hassle with Playboy as part of the saga. The upshot was a manic, high adrenal first-person style in which Thompson’s emotions continually dominate the story. This approach seldom grates in Thompson’s hands, probably because Thompson, for all his surface ferocity, usually casts himself as a frantic loser, inept and half-psychotic, somewhat after the matter of Celine.” (1990, pg 195)

And aren’t we all, in a way, somewhat after the matter of Celine? Though really, what The Great Shark Hunt made me appreciate is that when the doctor found a great story he covered it with a clean, precise journalese and without recourse to the excessive gonzo journalism for which he is renowned. I had never heard of the famous skier Jean-Claude Killy, but Thompson’s article “The Temptations of Jean-Claude Killy” is one of the best pieces of prose I’ve ever read. It takes the classic, clean lines of objective reportage and combines it with the wit and insight of the Doctor’s peerless nose for detail.
Which is more than I can say about my reportage on Southern Highlands Wines. But allowing that I am no expert, if I may be permitted, endulged even, I’d typify the Southern Highlands area as such:
a geographically massive, slow developing cold-climate wine region, with nearly all of the fruit grown locally. There are very few wine makers operating in the region, and fewer facilities for wine production. Technically, there are only a few wineries and many more vignerons. A good deal of the wineries don’t have cellar doors and fewer are importing or exporting. Yet.
As for the styles, the region seems to favour the classic white varieties (Chardonnay, Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc) and depending on the vineyard, pull these styles off admirably. When it comes to the reds most vineyards favour the Burghundy Pinot Noir style – that being spicy running to pepper with a very thin mouthfeel and dry and acid on the back of your tongue. If you want a rich, fruit-driven red go to a big cellar door and ask if their Cabernet is grown locally. If it is, it’s probably worth a miss.

The area seems to be so slowly adapting to the cellar door culture not because of a lack of tourism (the main street of Bowral is choked by cafes) but by local council’s lethargy, whose financial interests seem more comfortable with old cattle money. If you happen to track down the ungraded road to Diamond Creek estate you can see what I mean – massive brick homesteads perched in the scrub, as steadfast and stolid as the generations who have surely inherited these mansions from their bull-necked uncles and aunts.
To whit – one cellar door employee informed me that the Southern Highlands area was the last place in the state to receive the ‘wine trail’ road markers, effectively rendering the market invisible to any but locals. The oldest established vineyard is Joadja, and that was 25 years ago. Most of the wineries were only beginning to be established 17 years ago. And that’s not long in the lifespan of a vineyard. But let’s wrap this shit up, shall we?

What can the punter expect of Southern Highland wines?
As previously stated, a cold climate region offering a classic assortment of good whites and dry reds. There’s a lot of smaller vineyards probably not worth your time except for the conversation. Also expect a lot of Botrytis as the area is very wet (ie – good for rot) and most places will offer Rosé. Good god I hate Rosé like I hate weasels in my anus. There was only one standout Rosé in the whole area, and that is currently tasting at Howard’s Lane and the thing’s not a standard Rosé at all (very warm and spicey but not too sweet – sort of a cowardly shiraz. There’s also a style called ‘Fumé’ which I’d never tried before – a style of wine fermentation that produces low alcohol/very sweet wines. When you can find a port, it’s pretty bloody good, but not many places offer them. Not too many bubblies either – and none of that lovely sparkling shiraz I dug so much in the Hunter (though I know Patrick hates those so showing – there’s no accounting for taste).

What places would you recommend?
When I first wrote this section a week ago I gave a simple top three and one honourable mention. I am now glad to say after visiting the area I can supply the touring drunk with some better information. As a result of the 19th of December I have added an equal second and replaced the winner of third spot. Keeping in truck with my overall laziness I have downgraded the original third to an ‘honourable mention’ because YOU NEED TO KNOW THESE THINGS I KNOW! Dammit man, I didn’t drink all that free wine for nothing.

1. St. Maur’s Estate in Sutton Forest.
Simply the best Chardonnay I can remember tasting. Period. This beautiful cellar door is run by a lovely old Italian man, with artwork done by his son on the walls. Everything on tasting is superb, though the list is a little short. No ports, sparkling or dessert wines, just the best wine in the Southern Highlands. If you’re still not convinced, the biggest vendor of St. Maur’s Estate is Rockpool in the Quay. Yeah. The prices range from $13 to $24 a bottle which is, quite frankly, upsetting considering what you’d be willing to pay. When Lara and I went there was no wine dog (-10 points) but some chickens were playing in the shadow of the water tank (+3). And I think there were goats (+2). Must see.

2. Tertini Wines in Berrima
Tertini, late addition to the list, gets immediate points for being one of the best examples of perfect cellar door set up. Sells gourmet Italian cheeses, coffee, dedicated cellar door and currently has (for your visiting pleasure) a gorgeous German Shepherd just out of the puppy stage (+12 points). For god’s sake grab a bottle of their 2005 Riesling before it slips out of consciousness forever. They also offer a cabernet/merlot with most of the cabernet fruit bought from a parcel in SA. It’s a truly gorgeous red, very different from what the rest of the area offers. They also offer an extremely rare Italian white called an Arneis – which for the connoisseur or curious George, should rate high on the “ooh how interesting” o-meter. It’s not on tasting now, and might not ever be, but if I had money to throw around I’d give it a look. Bit pricey for the area, starting at $20 for the bog-standard Rosé and quickly getting around the $30 mark for most everything else. Worth it but.

2. Joadja Winery in Berrima.
Joadja might come runner up to St. Maur (and arguably, Tertini) in terms of pure awesome wine-making, but is a better stop for those interested in local colour/history (Joadja was the first vineyard established in the area and has an interesting cellar door) or for those who might have a taste for the novel and unique. Not only does it boast a superlative ‘Brambelini Liqueur’ (a magic-berry liqueur that TASTES LIKE BERRIES – one for the books) but some very interesting varietals – a blend of Botrytis and un- Botrytis Sauvignon Blanc (elegant and sweet like a debutante dress) a delicious Malbec (my favourite red from the area, rich and fruit-driven, available in both reserve and in a Cab/Merlot/Malbec blend) and one of the best ports (a Tawny) the area has to offer. Prices range from $17 (for the Rosé) to $32 (for the port). Small vineyard, only available in the area. A must see. I don’t remember if it had a wine dog (-10 points?)

3. Centennial Vineyards, Bowral
I was so happy I could bump SHW out of my top three but I really did need to have one of the larger, ‘commercial’ vineyards in the top three (yes, four) to represent how the rest does it. SHW though was just so fucking competent though. As if the wines were voted in by commission or senate enquiry. Centennial gains points for not pulling that ‘open air cellar door and restaurant’ bullshit by having its large restaurant in a separate building adjacent. Centennial has a whole bunch of really compelling styles and varietals – including some magnificent Rieslings, four sparklings, a Tempranillo, Barbera and straight Viognier with a lot of the red consisting of fruit sourced from Orange. They also have an interesting white called a Savagnin which is also worth your time. Actually, I’ve changed my mind. SHW can go to hell. They don’t get a favourable mention anymore. Go to Centennial if you’re not bored with life.

Special mention goes to the Marist Brothers Estate in Bowral. Apparently Marist Brothers is some kind of low-grade cult, or something, and I was served by some kind of religious type (who was very nice) but besides those above, this was one of the only vineyards that had a red that stood out from the horrible bell curve, and also has a brandy-spirit port that is very yummy. (Funny story – apparently distilling your own brandy spirit is illegal in this state and when I told the deacon/shaman that I had tried a brandy-spirit port in NSW before, he seemed very surprised. Apparently they had to work very hard to find a way of doing it). They had bikkies and cheese when I went (+5 points), no wine dog (-10 points) but herds of wandering cows and a massive pen of ducks and geese (+15 points). Open only on weekends.

Other pieces of interesting data I’ve discovered?
Well, I can’t review Cuttaway Hill because they have no cellar door. A quite reasonable but otherwise indistinct cellar door called Boussada has recently shut down and a highly recommended cellar door called St. Deryck’s Wood has also shut down. Furthermore, the cellar door ‘Blue Metal’ seems to exist in a localised time/space quantum field so if you do find it, don’t go in unless you’re well versed in your Doctor Who monster-mythos (which boils down to – run away, constantly).

Final Thoughts?
I guess this whole experience has been a well-timed blow to the ego. I think my recommendations are worthwhile, and the notes I’ve made on the region not entirely contradictable. But as a critic, or even just someone interested in a certain field, you’ve got to keep a keen olfactory awareness for the recognisable stink of bullshit. Particularly your own.
I’m saying avoid investing in the cult of personality. And never trust your sources until you’ve confirmed them. With regards to wine, all I ever learn is quickly eclipsed by a contrary fact. With regards to the doctor, I feel too many people are invested in the cult of personality that has sprung up around the doctor. I have to admit that I was one of them.
It’s because we want to talk about that which we love. And I guess so many of us find it easier to rattle off opinions than to share our more basic, naked passion for a subject. The problem isn’t that we don’t invest in an idea because we don’t have our own, it’s just that our speech tends to gather everything in, to reap from the particular the general, to convert from what was to what is.
So I will take my leave upon mention of this profound absurdity, before I embarrass myself further. Good night and good luck to all of you upon your many varied and winding trails.

East.
I don't know what you heard about East... but don't trust him. Just... don't.

Enid Blyton's Apocalypse

2009-12-22T03:08:00.001-08:00

I think a lot about zombie apocalypses. Apocalypsi? I have plans, I have theories. I recently joined a Facebook group called 'In case of Zombie invasion let's meet at Bunnings Warehouse'. But I have begun to understand that it's not the zombies themselves that get my imagination firing. Instead I think it's the idea of the complete anarchic breakdown of society that seems to accompany the zombie swarms, which intrigues me.

Recently I've read two books which have been both fascinating and terrifying. Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road' which I've already talked about in another post, and Dave Egger's 'Zeitoun', which guest blogger Bridget Lutherborrow wrote a fantastic article about. In both these books, there has been a post-apocalyptic situation. The grim ash covered vision of the future in 'The Road' and the all too real recount of Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 'Zeitoun'. Each story, so very different in many ways, made me have an identical reaction: stockpile canned goods.

And that's where the fear really starts. I'm a writer. I have no real skills, affinities, learning, natural athleticism, stoicism, courage or even purity of heart to help me thrive in a post- apocalyptic world. If we were left without power and water, left to scavenge food from the land and the burnt out husks of supermarkets, there's no reason I can think of that I would stay alive. What I'm saying is, from a writers perspective, I'm not a protagonist. I'm not even a long running side character. I'd be a useless drain on resources, or perhaps some sort of hysterical guy who might get killed in an extremely gory/funny way.

PROTAGONIST JONES: Quick, grab the cans of sweet chilli tuna. We can live off those for months.

JILL: I think I can hear zombies coming through the dairy section! We have to escape.

PROTAGONIST: Ok run- wait, where's Patrick?

SMITHFIELD: Why, last I saw him, he was inspecting the pasta?

PROTAGONIST JONES: The fool, those are empty carbs!

PATRICK: Hello chums! I've managed to gather a fairly substantial amount of angel hair, and a few lasagne sheets... [RIPPING AND TEARING SOUND] OH NO THE ZOMBIE IS IN MY COLON... GAHH... ACHHH

PROTAGONIST JONES: NOOOOOO PATRICK [BAM. CHICK CHICK. Zombie explodes from gun wounds]

SMITHFIELD: (sobbing) why do all the beautiful ones have to die?

Yeah. Smithfield is totally gay for me. Anyway, my point is that I suck. And this triggered a long forgotten memory (wait, is that even possible. A forgotten memory?) of one of my favourite books as a child. I grew up on a swathe of Enid Blyton books. The Famous Five, The Adventure series. But never the Secret Seven. Those guys were lame. But my all time most loved was 'The Secret Island'. In this book, four kids (Mike, Nora, Peggy and Jack) run away from their horrible guardian's home (their parents 'The Captain' and 'Mother' respectively, built an aeroplane and got lost in it two years ago) and hide out on this tiny island in a lake, somewhere in rural England.

I loved this book. Even though I realise now that such Islands must be few and far between, I always thought it was a plausible recourse to consider. Not that I ever really considered running away from home, but I did really, really hate maths, and was quite convinced I'd have to do something dire one day when I proved I was completely incapable of doing it. (That was called 'Creative Writing' at Uni) The best part of the book, is what the kids- aged from around 10 to 13- do to survive. They build a house by lashing willow trees together, which because of the nature of willows, continues to grow. They build a larder in a cave. They swim some chickens and a cow to the island. Much of the build of the plot comes from evading the searchers for them and casual day trippers to the not-so secluded island.

But even in Enid Blyton, my conundrum continues. Mike is the oldest, brother to Nora and Peggy. He is clearly the leader of this little venture, organising the kids into a tight knit unit, capable of all manner of feats. He is useful. Jack is the general go-to guy. He is not related to the others, generally being described as 'scruffy' and having no shoes. Clearly lower class. But along with the poverty, comes all manner of useful skills, like knowing that cows can swim, and where to find wild strawberries and the like. Clearly very useful. Peggy is the youngest, and while not quite as annoying as some of the other Blyton characters that are similar to her (Ann from Famous Five, I'm looking at you) she is clearly timid and scared and requires looking after. However, she cooks, cleans and makes cheese. Useful. Nora however, complains a lot. She is lazy. She has no skills. She made some noise, and got the daytrippers investigating. I think Jack may have made a woodhen noise to cover it up (but that could be completely made up. I remember a lot of Blyton storylines as one big melange of childish hi-jinks). She is really not useful.

I am Nora.

So in conclusion, in case of apocalypse, find some friends with useful skills. Excellent riflemanship, an acute knowledge of bio-chemisty or perhaps the occult. Super-strength. But definitely not clear and well worded prose. I'll slow you down.

Here is my post where I talk about the game Braid, and games in general- Guest post by Robert Beazley

2009-12-20T22:17:00.000-08:00

I feel a bit strange writing a piece for a blog about books and wine, as I haven’t read a book for probably more than ten years and I don’t really drink wine. I’m going to talk about video games instead.

Games are like girlfriends. They are expensive, time consuming and generally don’t age all that well. As you get older you can afford to keep more of them. It’s rare that you really find a keeper, one that you can spend a long time with. But when you do it’s incredibly satisfying and you can find yourself buying all sorts of peripherals for it (the metaphorical engagement ring). The thing is, with video games you will never be able to find “the one” – the one game that you will be playing for the rest of your life. It’s a good thing too, because games aren’t alive and don’t love you back.

I’ve had some game girlfriends over the years (maybe it should be “gamefriends”) but eventually they all got too old and didn’t keep me satisfied anymore, and so were replaced with newer, younger games with prettier graphics and interesting new gameplay mechanics. As I’ve gotten older, my game relationships have gotten progressively shorter as my inflated wallet means that I can afford jump from one game to the next without ever worrying about being alone (without any games, I mean).

One interesting development that has come about with the improved bandwidth available on the Internet is a thing called “digital distribution”. Traditionally, when you wanted a new game you’d go to a shop and buy a box with a disc and you’d go home and play it. With digital distribution, you enter your credit card details and the Internet fairies deliver the game straight to your console or computer and you can play it without ever leaving your seat. The cool thing about digital distribution is that the reduced costs have meant that developers can experiment with games and try things that would never have made it to the shops. There are a heap of awesome games that have come about this way – Shadow Complex, Castle Crashers, Battlefield 1943 – but I want to talk about one in particular, called Braid.

Braid tells the story of a man who struggles with relationships, so I’m going to try and describe it in a similar way. Imagine that you’re happily married to a lovely girl and you get sent to some sort of work conference, somewhere nice, probably near the beach. When you arrive you meet this beautiful young lady who reminds you of a girl that you loved in high school (who is now an old, wrinkly heroin addict). She takes an immediate interest in you and the two of you spend a few days together having a wonderful time. This girl is like the girl from school, only younger, better looking and smarter but with all the same qualities you found attractive all those years ago. Then, in the blink of an eye, the conference is over and she is gone. You have fond memories, but that’s all, and you’ll probably never see her again.

If you can still follow me – Braid immediately reminds you of the games you played when you were younger, but is improved in almost every way. It has new ideas in the way it presents puzzles based on time manipulation, with beautiful graphics and music. When it comes to games, you should never go back, and Braid allows you to relive those memories without spoiling them. By today’s standards, its short though, and once you’ve played through it once, it’s unlikely you’ll go back.

Allow me to illustrate:
Braid – the young pretty girl at the conference.

Sonic- the girl you loved who grew up to be an old boiler.

It’s probably not a fair comparison, since Sonic is a straight up platformer and Braid is a puzzle platformer with fun time manipulation mechanics but it is a good illustration of how games have evolved. I personally love these little indie games. They are a bit like extra marital affairs though - they are usually short, and most of them end badly (that is, they are terrible). The odd gem gets through though and these are definitely worth the $15 for the five or so hour experience.
Beazley is coming right at you.

The levee's breach - A guest post by Bridget Lutherborrow

2009-12-20T01:46:00.000-08:00

I’ve always appreciated the work of Dave Eggers far more in its shorter forms. Since I first read Short Short Stories from the pocket penguin collection it’s been his microfictions and short stories that have most captivated me.

Although I wrote a "mini-thesis" on A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius it was stories like 'What the Water Feels Like to the Fishes' and 'How Long it Took' that I read again and again. Although What is the What still takes up a hefty space on my bookshelf and although the opening scenes still stick with me, I never even made it halfway though the book. It must be said that I am a terribly slow reader and have the attention span of a Jack Russel puppy. For this reason there are an increasing number of books that I have had to abandon in favour of more pressing issues, but I do love literature and I have not abandoned Eggers’ novels altogether.

This year for my birthday Patrick gave me a very pretty book, Dave Egger’s latest novel, Zeitoun:

Zeitoun tells the story of Abdulrahman Zeitoun a Syrian-born Muslim who makes the decision to stay in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. The cover art is very simple, but lovely and suits the insides perfectly. The prose is… efficient, but in a calm way. There is very little of Eggers’ personality in the text, which I appreciate: the writer doesn’t get in the way of a good story. Unlike many of Eggers’ other novels, the chronology is fairly easy to understand thanks to a simple structural technique. The story is told day-by-day from August 26 to September 29, 2005. There are sub-headings (yay!), so you don’t come back all disoriented from a flashback unable to get your bearings. There’s a craftsmanship to this book, which isn’t always present in Eggers’ writing and makes it really easy to read. There’s not much of the plot I can discuss without giving it away. You’ll spend the first half of the book waiting around for the hurricane and after that enjoy a stint of flooded-city canoeing. Around this time you’ll realise there’s a large chunk of the book to go and a less-foreshadowed plot to come. This is just my train of thought during reading, because I’m not so much of a “hey, I wonder what’s gonna happen” kinda girl and more of a “hey, something’s gonna happen” kind of girl. Anyway, this less-foreshadowed part is essentially what the book is all about, but the first half is entirely necessary and so smoothly narrated that it entirely washed over me before I knew it.

My favourite parts of the book are to do with Abdulrahman’s upbringing and his family in Syria. The flashbacks to moonlit fishing adventures and his elder brother the champion swimmer are some of the more poetic scenes. The family’s relationship to the sea is a strong presence in the book and is one of the only traces of the author’s hand in shaping a story from real events. The funniest character by far is Abdulrahman’s brother Ahmad, who writes hilarious letters to various American organisations and authorities throughout the second half of the book.

This is a book full of issues, none of them to be taken lightly, but they are not exploited or dealt with in cliché. Just as the writer stays out of the story’s way, so he ensures the issues of the book do not take over. The only down point is the end of the story, which gets a little clumsy in tying up loose ends. It reminds me of the end of The Lord of the Rings, where everyone is running around Hobbiton and it’s all Sharkey this and Rosie Cotton that and oh how about those grey havens.... But really, this is to be expected. In the aftermath of such a story, in the aftermath of Katrina, there is so much to resolve. For the reader’s sake and for the Zeitoun family I think the book needs to explain everything it can. There’s a lot to seek closure for.

Bridget Lutherborrow is scatter-brained and too specific. She writes short stories and poetry and has degrees in Creative Writing and Communications. Her feet turn purple too quickly in the cold. She eats dinosaurs for breakfast.

Porter - the Working Man's Thinking: A guest post by Daniel Willis

2009-12-18T19:07:00.000-08:00

My grandfather was a butcher. I have vivid memories as a child of watching him cut up the christmas ham in delicious ritual sacrifice. Whenever I saw other people sharpen knives on a steel, you'd hear a horrible grinding scrape, but when Pop did it all you got was a humming whsk-whsk-whsk sound. People who have spent their lives working with their hands tend to project a calmness when doing the familiar, a surety that relaxes you just by watching them. Every few years I try to master this skill myself, and I guess I'm not bad at it by now, but I can never make that sound that butchers make, the whsk-whsk-whsk.

In a similar vein, some people are dark beer people. I'm not saying that to offer any psuedo-wisdom or even to make any particular sense. It's just that whenever I've met another person who is a dark beer person there's a level of acknowledgement, a crinkling of eyebrows maybe and a wry smile to indicate that there is common ground beneath us. One of my all-time favourite dark beers is Porter.

Porter isn't very common in this country, which I find pretty funny as it's probably one of the best fits for Australians. It's a relatively historical style of beer (by beer standards), which started out in the early 1700s, was huge by a century later, practically died out for the next century after that and was resurrected Jesus-style in the late 70s. In other words, it's got legs. Originally it was mostly drunk in London, so you might see some traditional versions referred to as "London Porter". This becomes a bleedingly obvious choice when you know that at the time it was also usually drunk by porters (hence the name).

But this is what makes it interesting. Porters were working class: they were rough, they did manual labour, and they were mostly drunken layabouts. The beer they drank reflected this - it's brewed from dark malts; it's heavy, earthy and grimy with charcoal. Modern porter is almost a light and refined affair by comparison, but through the pillowy head and smooth chocolate you can taste that original dirt, kind of like a miner getting off-shift and pissing in your loungeroom. If it helps the understanding process, stout is actually a form of porter - a rougher heavier version - and used to be called "stout porter" before our ancestors got lazy and shortened it on the ship over here**.

Bottom line is though, porter to me fulfils a spiritual as well as refreshment function. Many of us work jobs which chain us to a desk or behind a computer, and I find that this saturation in the abstract is ultimately damaging. Often I will sit on a bench at a busy train station and just watch people come and go in a rush, eyes looking inwards. I can't help but feel that their lives and mine are consumed by remoteness, by outlook calendars, instant messaging and KPIs. There's no grounding, no reality there. Sometimes I get consumed by doubt. I'll look at the face in the mirror come morning and seriously question if I'm even there, if I'm not some fiction accidentally birthed by my abandoned facebook farmhouse.

Where the connection is restored is in my workshop at home, and I become human again in the gradual planing of a length of red-gum. The simple pleasure of the rhythms I make, the rough feel of the timber, the dark woody smell that hangs in the air and comforts me. I think of my grandfather sometimes with the flash of his knife on the butcher's steel and I channel that easy surety. To me that is the spirit of porter and the men who drank it - in this place where I quietly toil, I know I am myself.

Porter is a fantastic beer and James Squire makes a fine one. You can buy a 6-pack at any decent bottle-o for about 18-19 bucks and if you're an appreciator of heaven's liquor, it's a decision well worth it. Go forth, drinkers, and dream.

*This is actually a shot I took from a scanned copy of Walker Remodelled: A new critical pronouncing dictionary of the English language by John Walker & Benjamin Humphrey Smart. It's fantastic on a number of levels. First, despite the fact that it was published in 1836, it's still extremely readable and occasionally quite funny. Second, the description of alcohol is perfect. It not only is brilliantly concise, the fact that the word previously meant "any thing reduced to impalpable powder" sums up everything I'm trying to say. In fact I shouldn't have written the rest, just posted the picture.

** My theory is that this is the same laziness that compels Australians to shorten everything and add a random vowel for plausibility. Maybe they were exhausted from drunken fornication/syphilis.

Willis is a tree. A strange, terrible tree. He may be unsafe to play around.

The literary hangover

2009-12-18T02:02:00.000-08:00

It feels relevant for me to introduce you to the concept of 'the literary hangover' while I am, in fact, hungover like a dead mule. Work function at the Opera Point Marquee- surprisingly stunning location, the Harbour Bridge looming over the surroundings, eerily silent lightning flashing around it. My work colleagues, who apparently when stripped of our vomit yellow uniforms, feel the need to dress in shoes as tall as hens, and dresses that look like looted plumage. Did I have a good time? I enjoyed the novelty of it all, for sure, and obviously enjoyed talking to my friends. And the free booze flowed like water in a country that doesn't suffer from such harsh water restrictions like we do- Norway or perhaps Finland. Was the booze any good? I drank a glass of the sparkling wine, which had a strange soda water feel to it, in both taste and constitution. I then stuck to the Sauvignon Blanc, which got less heinous as the night wore on. And the night wore on, and in a party that lasted for four hours, with such liberal amounts of booze, it quickly turned to dancing. Now I don't mind a drunken strut around the dance floor- I think my dancing style is reminiscent of a stork searching for food. But these people seemed to be 'getting down' in a manner I thought only occurred in video clips. I wouldn't be surprised if several women got pregnant with dance babies. Anyway, the moral of this story, was that I ended up avoiding that pit of grinding, and wandered its fringes. This is when I met Jerry. Jerry and I had come into contact a few times earlier that night, as he topped up my wine glass. However, now that I was on this constant, nomadic wander throughout the party, it seemed Jerry actually lived in my shadow. I would pass a polite word with a Clinique representative, turn around and Jerry would be there. I'd go into the cubicles- he would melt out of the shadows, bottle ready. If you've missed the sub-text, Jerry was one of the wait staff, and also I had no idea of his real name. But by 10.30, I'd decided his name had to be Jerry, and as he topped me up yet again, I'd say "cheers Jerry" tipping my full glass at him, smiling roguishly.

So, I'm hungover.

But strangely enough, I'm also suffering a literary hangover, of quite a vicious sort, and the two are going hand in hand. What's a literary hangover, Patrick, you've kept us waiting for ages. Literally paragraphs! Well, I'll tell you now, it's not from reading too much. Not so much overindulgence, but rather just feeling rather... tender.

How to explain. I read Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road' a few days ago, and was absolutely blown away. A haunting narrative of a father and son travelling through post-apocalyptic America, it combines both stunning prose with a disarmingly simple and ingenious story. The book is broken into little pseudo- vignettes. Tiny, tightly written paragraphs which are so engrossing and tersely narrated, that it's almost impossible to put the book down. I was able to draw out the experience (I could have read it all on the train home) by letting myself get overcome by anxiety. This book is stressful, and certain aspects of the plot (the one bullet gun for example) are brilliant techniques for achieving suspense.

So I finish the book, and give myself my traditional night of respect. (I believe that if I finish a book, I have to wait at least one night before beginning a new one, in order for me to think it over, absorb it. Plus I had this awful experience where I finished 'The Great Gatsby' and began 'Moby Dick' immediately after. Whenever I think of either Moby Dick, all the whales have monocles now.) But the next day, I start looking through my excessive reading list... worthy titles, many worthy titles. Yet the idea of starting something new, just makes me feel kinda ill. I'm not ready. I'll be let down. What can follow such a brilliant experience as 'The Road'?

The answer isthat nothing really should. I mean, you could try to pick out something you know is AWESOME, and have it waiting. This is called 'literary hair of the dog'. It can sometimes work. But often, it will just make you sicker in the end. What's going to follow TWO incredibly awesome books? You've just doubled your pain. I used to be quite a fan of the old hangover glass of champagne and orange juice, until it began making my ears really hot. Sounds small, but I mean really hot.

What do I do, what do I read next? I hear you groan, picking feebly at the literary goodies in front of you, your eyes bloodshot and your hands shaking after a particularly stunning read by Marquez or perhaps Vonnegut. You need the literary equivalent of hangover food. You can't eat sushi- you need a greasy burger, or Mi Goreng noodles perhaps.

For me, the answer is Simon R. Green. His books are rip-rollicking adventures involving zombies, swords, genre subversion's and absolutely fantastic plots. I'm going to clarify that in no way do I think he's a sub-standard writer. When it comes to fantasy, this guy is the king. Absolutely brilliant. For beginners interested, check out his 'Hawk and Fisher' books. Written in individual, pulp like paperbacks, they are a joy to read. And balm for a literary hangover. Perhaps Fantasy isn't for you- maybe it's those old teenage Sci-fi books, or romance, or some kind of Mathew Reilly adventure novel. (I used to be quite partial to Clive Cussler novels in this situation. I also used to believe sweet chilli shapes could cure my hangover. I outgrew both these notions.)

Whatever the case may be, just don't despair. The literary hangover is a time for peace and quiet reflection.

Kingdom of Fear- Guest post by Julia Lenton

2009-12-16T21:59:00.000-08:00

Just after four in the morning is a good time to finish a book by Hunter S. Thompson. If you haven’t been able to sleep and the faint cloud of a cheap wine hangover is beginning to gather in the fuzzy cracks of your head, you get the feeling that this might be about a 10th of what the Dr felt some of the time. But then again he would have been awake for days instead of hours and would be somehow thriving on a bizarre cocktail of dope, opium and pills.

I just finished the famous gonzo journalist’s autobiography, Kingdom of Fear. Autobiography is a loose term here – basically it’s not like one of his books because he talks purely about his life. Although, since Thompson is famous for getting into the stories he’s writing, you could kind of say that’s a characteristic of his very work anyway. Regardless, he calls this one an autobiography, or his publisher told him to, and he wrote it about himself so let’s run with it.

It’s not chronological in any sense which is the main subversion to the genre so in true Thompson style you’re left wondering whether what’s left out is possibly more important than what he chooses to say. It’s harder to leave gaps in personal history when there’s a clear jump between 1986 and 1990 but when weaving nonchalantly through different decades, presidents and iterations of the American Dream, Thompson succeeds in handpicking a bunch of bizarre and amazing stories. Of course there’s an unspoken but uneasy relationship with the notion of truth present in all of Hunter’s work, but this just seems a reflection of his very life and the chemicals in it.

Thompson is not the only famous one in his book – Jack Nicholson has a cameo and Johnny Depp makes a couple too. There are also a bunch of sex workers, sheriffs, judges and fat businessmen who from time to time interrupt Thompson’s existence as a gun-toting, fast car driving dope fiend on the outskirts of a law-driven society.

It’s difficult not to love and admire Hunter S Thompson. The man must have consumed more drugs, drank more alcohol, driven faster cars and escaped the law more times than the current cast of Home and Away put together. How he managed to live for as long as he did (let’s try and ignore the fact that he killed himself) is a freaking marvel. And how he managed to do and write and say what he did while living one long drug trip of a life is unfathomable. Because at the core of Hunter S Thompson’s life and work are the contributions he made to journalism and writing in general. He helped to tear up archaic ideas about style, genre and the laughable falsity of objectivity by just writing about life, politics and society the way he saw it. Did I mention I love him? This started off as something about a book I read the other day, I think.

‘Tis the season, so here’s what Hunter has to say about Christmas in New York:

“It was always a time of angst and failure and turmoil. Nobody ever seemed to have any money on Christmas. Even rich people were broke and jabbering frantically on their telephones about Santa Claus and suicide or joining a church with no rules… The snow was clean and pretty for the first twenty or thirty minutes around dawn, but after that it was churned into filthy mush by drunken cabbies and garbage compactors and shitting dogs.”

Kingdom of Fear is probably best served with opium and hookers but I drank it with a range of bad wine which doesn’t deserve to be mentioned by label because “crisp dry white” and “Semillon Sauvignon Blanc” are just words that do not describe what’s inside the goon bag.

I’m Patrick Lenton’s little sister who does appreciate good wine when it’s given to her but will also drink a $5 cleanskin/whatever’s on the tab at a play opening. Sometimes I stand for wine for wine’s sake and I can’t sleep at the moment which means I read more books. I plan to add an extra classy touch to the blog. It was nice to meet you.

Julia Lenton has produced comedy and theatre in a multitude of venues. She has almost completed a Bachelor of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney. Her published articles can be found in Honi Soit, The Bull and Anyone can whistle

December Surprise Day 3

2009-12-16T02:23:00.000-08:00

On the third day of December Surprise, my true love gave to me:

We ate salmon sushi which paired nicely with the Tyrrell's Old Winery Semillon 2009. I really think the acid and citrus flavours complimented the saltiness of the soy and the raw salmon flavour. We also had roasted pumpkin and tofu sushi, which I really wanted to pair with a Gewurztraminer, but had to settle for the Old Winery Traminer Riesling. I'm not sure that this was a 'match' but it seemed to suffice. In rom-com terms, it's like the good looking stranger you go on a date with, realise you could have a great connection with, but makes you realise all the more that you are actually in love with Hugh Grant, and should meet him at the airport post haste.

I have my work Christmas party at the Opera House tomorrow night, so i'll keep on updating. Live from the Opera House! Actually probably not.

December Surprise Day 2- With TV's NIGELLA!

2009-12-15T02:23:00.001-08:00

Everybody just loves the festive season. Unless you're some kind of terrorist or perhaps a manatee, it's a time of love, giving, receiving and then giving just a little bit more. Oh my. So I'm going to share a little tradition in my sexy household that I've passed on to a good third of my man harem.

NIGELLA'S SPECIAL DECEMBER SURPRISE COCKTAIL
or "SURPRISE COCK"

STEP 1:

Chambord Liqueur is a delectable sweet raspberry flavour. Raspberry is best known as the most erotic of the fruits. Raspberry gets around if you know what I mean. But in a classy way. So get your champagne flute, pour in about two spoonfuls.

STEP 2:

The absolute essential for this sensually simple silly season cocktail is a lovely bottle of sparkling wine. I just love a good sparkling wine, it's almost like a colonic for your tongue. I'm using the Grant Burge Pinot Noir Chardonnay, which is just a gorgeous drop. Add that to your already poured Chambord.

STEP 3:

Just sit back and enjoy! And then defuse the carefully hidden explosive I put in your left shoe. That's right, in the heel. "But I'm wearing sneakers" I hear you say, "You couldn't possibly fit anything in that wafer thin layer of rubber". But I have Joey Protestor, I have.

For more festive themed recipes for you and your family to enjoy, check out my latest book "I'm going to kill all of you by Easter" in stores near you. Some of my favourites include the deadly 'Eggbog' and the classic 'Nut Maul'. Watch out, it packs quite a punch!

The first day of December Surprise

2009-12-14T03:14:00.000-08:00

Instead of a useless partridge in a pear tree, Bridget's parents gave me a box of Royal Doulton wineglasses.

Last Christmas, Bridget gave me some wine glasses. Now we have very few of these left. The most amazing thing about these new glasses is that they have a two year warranty from David Jones. So if we break any, we just get a new one! This means we can start having more of our violent drunk friends over.

Notice our delightful December Surprise tree?

Anyway, there will be a new post every day until Christmas. Or December Surprise I suppose, I'm getting confused.
As Jesus says, Peace Out.

Review: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

2009-12-09T00:03:00.000-08:00

In the same way, the writer shapes his story, flecked like river clay with the grit of experience and rank with the smell of human life, heedless of the danger to himself, eager to show his powers, to celebrate his mastery, to bring into being a little world that, like God’s, is at once terribly imperfect and filled with astonishing life.
-- The Recipe For Life, Michael Chabon

Winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction,The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is undoubtedly an amazing work of art. Michael Chabon has created an epic which has managed to steal a position in my coveted Top Ten favourite novels. I haven't officially updated this list for quite a few years now, so I shudder to think what got bumped off. Then again, I upgraded Steph to my top 5 favourite people recently, bumping off my dad. Sorry Dad.

On that note, I fully concede I'm in post-coital mode after finishing the book yesterday, and may need a second reading to properly place it. But the book is so good I think it's in my Top Five.

Kavalier and Clay is set in New York, in the periods during and surrounding WW2. This period coincides precisely with the so-called Golden Age of Comics, going through the start of the Superman craze. Our two protagonists, Sammy Clayman and Joe Kavalier break into the comic business early on, following the rise and decline of the bam,sock, pow superhero.Both of Jewish descent, the rise of Nazi Germany looms in the background of the story Kavalier managed to escape Prague before the worst of the Nazi occupancy, but works towards the ultimate goal of somehow making enough money to get the rest of his family to America.

The comic they create is 'The Escapist' a superhero based on Harry Houdini, as well as some of the more regular superheroes like Captain America. The Escapist spends each of his comic books fighting Nazi's, an imaginary war that Joe becomes obsessed with the longer he is unsuccessful in freeing his family.

The plot spans the heady pioneering days of the dawn of comics, right through the actual span of the war. It's no mean feat that Chabon manages to compress so much time into the space of the novel. While quite a large book, I never felt it to be truly monstrous, and the passage of time seemed flawless and natural. I even felt nostalgia for characters that had only been in their prime only a day earlier for me. Oh man, Tracy Bacon was so great. I loved him.

Honestly, this book has everything. Humour, adventure, drama and real sorrow. Yet despite what can only be termed high drama occuring in the last moments of the story, I still felt uplifted and optimistic.

While not a huge comic reader myself, I still identified strongly with the theme of escapism that drives this book. For me it was mostly fantasy novels in my teens that I used to that effect. Although, I had a long run with Marvel's X-Men titles.

But as a writer, the way Chabon explores artistic creation really caught my fancy. Linked in with the mythology of the 'Golem', the metaphor was mostly used to parallel the superhero. But Chabon's relationship with his own novel is also explored. Check out his essay 'The Recipe for Life' which I quoted at the beginning. It's a short, but intensely interesting read.

I really love Chabon, and was really impressed by his other works. (Although I haven't read Mysteries of Pittsburgh yet) But I really agree that this is his Magnum Opus.

Review: Where the Wild Things are - The Film

2009-12-04T16:48:00.000-08:00

It feels nice to be so immensely excited and pleased after writing such a damning review yesterday. But where the novel slips, the film Where the Wild Things are directed by Spike Jonze and co-written by Jonze and Dave Eggers is an absolute triumph.

Yes, I really felt the need to rush out and see the movie last night, so distressed was I about disliking the novel.

The basic concept of the story hasn't changed. Max is a nine year old boy, who after fighting with his mother and sister, runs from his home and ends up on the island of the Wild Thing's, big old horned animal things. They make him their King, in order for Max to fix everything on the island.

I was just blown away by everything in the film, from the soundtrack which was an integral part, to the stunning filmography and visuals. I probably could have enjoyed myself just on that level- certain scenes were rendered jaw dropping simply because of these techniques, rather than any particular importance in plot.

The acting was superb, the guy who played Max particularly impressive. Oh wow, it's been bugging me, because he seemed so familiar, and I don't really know many famous nine year olds. But he was in Rian Johnson's The Brothers Bloom as well, which is a spectacular film.

But it was in the coherance of plot that I was most impressed and relieved. Every character in this film was well-rounded and compelling, the Wild Things especially exciting in their complexity. And the film clearly travelled along a narrative track, which perhaps wasn't too hard to predict, but was structured and gratifying. The feeling of 'things happening randomly' that I had in the novel was pretty much non-existant in the film, as Max clearly struggles with his problems on the island at the same time as the overlying issue of his home life is being considered.

And this film is very funny. I laughed a lot. Oh man, I can't give away which parts I thought were the funniest, but there were some absolutely hilarious parts. How about this, go see the movie, then come over to my place, i'll open a bottle of something and we can discuss it then.

I've also had reports of people finding it a little cheesy, with parts clearly designated to be "emotional". Lots of people tell me they cried. I have to say, I was touched and moved the entire time, but felt no particular crying urge. Maybe i'm awesomely tough? But I do admit, that as Bridget puts it, the last scene had an 'airport' feel to it. Ready for the big goodbye and all that. I was fine, but if Hugh Grant had shown up and married somebody, I would have fucking lost it.

So i'm left feeling really good about that, and also much better about being mean to Dave Eggers. The film is so great, I feel we can kiss and make up.
Ok, so i just thought to myself "I'll photoshop a photo of me and Dave Eggers hugging" and spent a really long time looking for a photo of him.
Then I realised I don't have, or know how to use photoshop. Then I tried to use paint. Now I have this really creepy photo of me inside his head. Enjoy.

EGGERS: "I just had an idea. A flamboyant drunk who writes a blog. Oh wait, that's stupid. Maybe he has goats legs..."

So yeah, I give the film 9/10 stars.

Review: 'The Wild Things' by Dave Eggers

2009-12-03T17:39:00.000-08:00

Remember how excited I was when I was given 'The Wild Things' for my birthday? It was a simpler time- I was younger, optimistic. I could enjoy the book purely on the level of it being a furry knick-knack by Dave Eggers. I was a fool.

This novel is based on the popular children's book 'Where the wild things are' by Maurice Sendak, but by a rather circuitous route. Egger's was first approached by Spike Jonze to write a screenplay adaptation, which will be on cinemas very soon. In fact, may already be there. It was only after the screenplay was completed, that Maurice Sendak suggested writing a novel based of it.

To my view, this strange, multi-layered levels of adaptation adds to why this novel just doesn't really work. As much as I hate to speak a word against Mr Eggers, who is a bit of a hero to me, he has unfortunately created a very bad novel. I honestly think the problem lies in intention. Sendak had a children's book in mind- and created an amazing one. Jonze and Egger's screenplay was very much about NOT being a children's movie, and rather an exploration of a child character. I've yet to see the film, so I don't know how well this is accomplished. Egger's novel... well I'm not entirely sure what it was meant to accomplish, why it was a story that needed telling, separate to the other two mediums.

Dave Egger's writes in the acknowledgements:

If you've seen the movie, you will notice that the story here hews closely to the movie in many places, and departs in others. When sitting down to write this book, I thought at first that I would more or less transcribe the movie. But along the way, while getting lost, Max-like, in the thicket of the plot, I found other pathways into and out of the island, and generally added my own interpretations to the story of Max. The children's book Max is, after all, a version of Maurice, and the movie Max is a version of Spike. The Max of this book, then, is some combinations of Maurice's Max, Spikes Max, and the Max of my own boyhood.

Child protagonists are hard to write. Max in this book is around nine years old, and Egger's makes a sincere effort at never aging his character. This is achieved, but still creates a frustrating point of view. A novel creates a window into a characters motivations that are more intimate than a film. By sticking to the random chaos of a child's motives, we are left with a main character that spends an entire book energetically doing things and never really knowing why. In true childlike behaviour, we spend a lot of time 'feeling' the consequences, why they made him angry/sad/happy, but this is never truly compelling. In short, I feel the novel was an unsuitable vehicle for this kind of character.

But why did I really dislike this novel? There was a frenetic energy to it, that seemed like it was really leading somewhere. By far the strongest part of the book was the opening scenes, before the island of the Wild Things. But even this was drawn out, creating a scene of domestic unrest that could have been easily intimated by a highlighted scene. By the time Max is on the island, the energy makes the entire midsection of the novel turn into little more than a fast paced description of things happening. The two most human-like characters of the Wild Thing's, Carol and Katherine, are so close to being developed, but continually skipped over. The tension between Carol and Katherine constantly present, but never dealt with. And finally, by the time Max finishes with his wild time on the island, there is a sense that nothing has really changed... at all. Max goes back to his home, where no time has passed, and seems to have learned nothing.

Of course, Egger's is an experienced and talented writer, so the book is not just a jumble of flaws. His descriptive prose is both beautiful and succinct for most of the book. And the touches of humour and emotion were delicately done. Plus, the book is going to be on display with many of my McSweeney's and other excellent publications just because it looks so nice.

4/10 stars.

DECEMBER SURPRISE!!!!

2009-12-01T02:10:00.000-08:00

HO HO HO

In an avidly non-denominational kinda way, I get really excited about the Christmas period. Or as I like to call it, the drinking season! We all love to gather around a roaring fire, drinking mulled wine, waiting for Santa to land the helicopter with the latest round of wounded soldiers. C'mon Hawkeye, we've got soldiers to stitch up! Do you remember the time we stole Houlihan's support garmets and caught fish with them?

Except that's not true, as I live in both the steamy Southern Hemisphere and not in the long running TV series M*A*S*H.

On a side note, my old school song was to the tune of the opening credits of M*A*S*H. Which was a song called 'Suicide is Painless'. Yeah, great motto there highschool.

"Cronulla High school yes i know, is this the place we learn and grow"

So what was I saying. Oh yes, Christmas.

Here at 'The Book I'm Drinking' we cater equally for those who believe in Santa Claus and his icy kingdom, athiests, agnostics, Cruisian's and all those other ones. So instead of 'Christmas', we're having an enormous festive festival we're calling DECEMBER SURPRISE!

So get ready for all sorts of fantastic December Surprise events. This is going to be a big month, with guest spots, interviews, robots, pantomimes and other surprises that I can't truly guarantee will happen, cause i'm flying by the seat of my pants folks.

But to get the ball rolling, I need volunteers for...

THE 12 DAYS OF DECEMBER SURPRISE

Much like the popular carol, i'd like people to volunteer articles to fit in for TWELVE AWESOME DAYS OF DECEMBER SURPRISE. They can be whatever you want. Wine, literature, toasters- you name it. It just has to have some sort of festive aspect. That can be as ephemeral as 'festive spirit' to as gruesomely real as Santa's decapitated head. So, email me now with pitches for your idea for one of THE 12 DAYS OF DECEMBER SURPRISE.
Ps, i bags the last day, in which traditionally one would have the partridge in the pear tree.

The spirit of December Surprise is symbolised in this shot. Man screeching at bird, while Jesus looks on with a gaze as hard as stone. Buddha chuckling away.

So folks, send those submissions in. I'd really love some people that I don't actually know to send me something. Don't worry- quality isn't an issue!

I leave you now with a classic December Surprise carol-
Lou Reed's 'Satellite of Love'

Bom bom bom.

The Hunter becomes the Hunted

2009-11-27T16:14:00.000-08:00

Considering my last post was all literature, this post is all wine baby. You know, on an aside, i've realised how ridiculous the very concept of this blog actually is. This obscene melding of wine, books and sporadic comedic stylings: in blogging terms it's almost like i've given myself a handicap. It's very likely that 1/3 of my readers hate the other 2/3 of what I blog about. Or have I created a tiny niche market, for cackling, drunk bibliophiles? Still, I suppose it is representative of me and my interests, so i'm just going to have to make it work. Plus, it could have been even more Frankenstein's monster if I included even more of my passions and hobbies, such as Ancient Roman architecture. The Book I'm Drinking- in an Aquaduct! In that light, i'm proud to announce the launch of yet another blog, this one dealing with my love of puppies and fashion called The Dog i'm Wearing.

THE HUNTER BECOMES THE HUNTED
-The Travel Diaries of Dr. Horation Kensington, Wine Explorer, Casual Alcoholic
Edition 3

(Editors Note: One of the only surviving images of Dr Kensington. While this may look like a silhouette, resulting from poor photography, rest assured it is his natural colouring, which is quite normal for a man born from the union of a milkmaid from Leeds and a being of pure shadow named Sharkanathata the Cold.)

After the debacle in the Arctic (See: "The Travel Diaries" edition 2 'Eskimo's don't make wine, they drink fermented Elephant Seal") I set out to the infamous 'Hunter Valley' in search of the famed Semillon and Shiraz it is so well known for. Semillon is one of the few white wines really worth aging, so I knew there would be some spectacular samples loitering around this region. As to their Shiraz, I was ready to be surprised.

The first place we visited in the blasted, fire baked hell hole known as the Hunter was the Peterson House, renowned for its Sparkling Wines. After the incessant unwelcome touchings of the suns virulent and multiple fingers, a chilled cuvee was most welcome. With my natural charm and knives, I was able to try a 1998 Pinot Chardonnay Viognier, which unto this very day (a week later - ed.) Is the finest example of sparkling wine or even champagne I have ever had.

Next step, Tempus Two winery. A magnificent building, reminiscent of the great god of war, Tempus, in whose honour it was constructed.

The most interesting part of the Tempus Two experience, is the sheer number of exciting and original varietals. Standouts include the subtle Aranel, the floral Gewurztraminer, pruney tempranillo and clean toilets. Also available from this cellar door for tastings are the Roche wines. I bought a dozen of the Roche Tallawanta Shiraz 2007, which were my favourites shiraz of the entire trip (In the interest of linearity, it is believed Kensington returned to Tempus Two at the end of this trip to make this purchase - ed.). Hunter Valley shiraz are very savoury, usually with white pepper notes and regimented tannins, not very noticeable fruits. The term given to this taste is 'Horse leather' colloquially, and it certainly tastes like that. I'm not an enormous fan, but one can certainly see oneself consuming it with food, rather than as a standalone. Regardless, it was the much spicier and bolder Tallawanta that won me over.

Brokenwood winery exhibited some truly stunning young semillons, tart and citrusy. Also, i met a young vine nymph and immediately took her as my bride.

(There is no record of Kensington every actually marrying anyone during this trip, and may actually be a euphemism for slavery - ed.)

Arrowfields wines were a favourite amongst many of my entourage, their Rose' being a crowd favourite. However I cannot stand the stuff myself, and was quite happy to let my underlings take it. The true winner from Arrowfields for me was the 2005 Cabernet Merlot. A must have for any red drinker.

Tyrrells wines rank as my favourite, due mostly to the fantastic professionalism of the tasting staff there. In the moment upon visiting, with the ever present suffocating heat, not only was there an influx of close to forty visitors at once, but also a zombie horde assaulted the estate. Despite these irritations, our host, a charmingly pierced man of whose name I forgot, managed to put on an enlightening and enjoyable vertical tasting of their semillion's and then their shiraz. The 1998 Vat 1 Semillon was an eye opener, the complete transfiguration of taste from the early semillons into this golden idol of a wine was the highlight of the trip. I picked up a 2002, of the same type, which is clearly mid-life and lacks the exuberance of the early wines and the subtlety of the later. The shiraz really drove home the whole 'horseleather' scenario, as the fellow sneakily inserted a barossa into the mix which I had raptures over.

(Editors note: At this point, the manuscript breaks off, possibly indicating a gap in time of over a day. This can be conjectured to the sorcerous duel that took place between him and Baron Vine Face, a local wine themed man of adventure who took a disliking to Dr Kensington and his excessive urination on the Baron's horse. When the manuscript continues, it is thought that Kensington is troubled by the escape of the Baron or perhaps the thousands of civilian casualties resulting from their fracas.)

Nothing tops off a massacre like an exciting concert from the ancient troubadours, the B-52's! A spectacular event, despite the enormous array of bogans infesting the grounds of Bimbadgen estate.

And the Bimbadgen Estate Sparkling Semillon is a absolute triumph.
I leave you now with these immortal words:

"It wasn't a rock- it was a rock lobster".

Yours in Absurdity
Dr. Horatio Kensington, Wine Squire.

SmallRoom- Interview with Bryan Whalen

2009-11-21T21:56:00.000-08:00

In the first of what I hope will be a long-running and successful series of interviews, I interview Bryan Whalen, the editor-in-chief of SmallRoom magazine. Next week: The Pope! (TBA)

Bryan Whalen is an American permanently traveling through Australia. His fiction has been published in Voiceworks and Wet Ink and is due out next March in The Lifted Brow. 2010 will see him commence a Creative Writing PhD at the University of Adeliade, where he will continue to edit SmallRoom: a poster magazine.

Give us a general introduction to the concept of SmallRoom. What is it? Why is it? What motivated you to create it? Where did it come from? If you had to market it like a new car, how would you go about this?

SmallRoom is a poster: a two sided, A1-sized poster covered in original artwork and literature. Issue One is folded down so it looks like a regular slice of A4 paper; as you unfold the mag, the designs on each side emerge; your eye is drawn in by the art; then it finds the words; then you’re reading. And since the stories are terrific, you keep reading. That’s essentially the concept: to draw the reader in visually, to capture them intellectually, and to stimulate with the perfect interplay between art and words.

Why? Because we want to capture people and put them in our little box. We want to capture the lit kids and art genies, geriatrics at coffee shop and teeny-boppers visiting galleries for the first time. We want SmallRoom in the hands of aliens. We want it to be for everyone without pandering to anyone. Why? Because art is to be enjoyed. Because the Gold Coast isn’t all crap, and neither is Australia. This city, this country is full of talented artitsts. SmallRoom is an opportunity for them to fan their feathers.

SmallRoom came from a deep-seeded interest in print, business and art. I’ve always wanted to create a magazine and was back in Australia from the US last March; back again on the Gold Coast, talking with a good friend of mine over dinner. I mentioned that I’d like to start a mag, that I’ve always wanted to. That friend was Jesse McCormack: the guest designer of Issue One and the Art Editor of Small Room. He mentioned that he had this idea about a poster covered in original artwork and sold in limited edition. We decided to combine the ideas: combine the art and lit; then the idea was shelved because, obviously, to print 1000 posters you need money. I’m on a tourist visa at the moment. My bank account is bust and Jesse is more broke than me. So starting the project was impossible without a sponsor. Enter the Gold Coast City Council. My friend, Jolie Hertzberg, who runs a production company called Lovebeats, received a Regional Arts Development Fund to record Gold Coast artists and compile them onto a CD. I asked her how she got the grant and she told me. I filled one out on behalf of the Small Room Writers Collective—a group from Griffith University that I was involved with, with writers like Chris Somerville, Laura Middlebrook and Daniel Walker—and a few months later the money was being transferred our way. Essentially, this project could never have come about without millions of helping hands, including Mr. Lenton (my interviewer), who has supported this idea since I contacted him –what? a year and a half ago?—after reading his work in Best Australian Short Stories.

What have been some of the trials involved in setting up a publication like this?

Definitely the timeline. We planned to have Issue One out a month ago. But it took awhile for submissions to roll in; plus Jesse’s work took ages because he drew everything and this poster is huge. It looks so good, but the timeline is still bunk. I’m leaving for the US a day after the Launch to visit my family for a few months and Jesse will be taking over the distribution while I’m away. March of next year, around about when Issue Two will be coming out, I’ll be moving down to Adelaide to begin a Creative Writing PhD at the University. Jesse will stay up in Brisbane, taking care of distribution and organizing design while I’m down into Adelaide and Melbourne, doing the same thing but spreading SmallRoom to the other capital cities. We’d like it to keep spreading, slowly, across the country, like cane toads or something. Anyway, yeah, the timeline has been ridiculous. We also need everybody who is the slightest bit interested to spread the word to other writers and artists. Each Issue, Jesse, who designed Issue One, will choose the designer. We need more submissions. We need quality, like everyone else: microfictions 1000 words or less, poetry, artwork. We basically will continue to pay industry rates: $100 for fiction, $50 for poetry; guest Designers are paid a large lump sum because they’re doing heaps of work, etcetera.

Another problem we ran into was perfectly integrating the Literature and Art. Jesse did it and did it well. But we need to plan out Issue Two much more and rely a lot less on luck.

Where can the adoring hordes get a copy of SmallRoom?

Outside of Southern Queensland, folks can pick up SmallRoom online at SmallRoom.com If you are in or around Brisbane, Gold Coast, or Byron Bay, have a look at our website for where we’re stocked. Avid Reader has been a huge support. In the end there will only be about 15 stockists—high-end coffee shops, art galleries and bookstores. We’re open to anything, though. If you want to stock us, let us know. We’d love to get out magazine down to Tasmania and Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, New York. We just need contacts and a little bit of trust.

A very thematic night- Guest blog by Samira Lloyd

2009-11-11T21:47:00.000-08:00

I have a tale to tell you, oh blog readers. A tale of rebellion and heart break, of great books and drinking alone in the park. A tale for the ages. A tale it could be said that is too grand for your average dog and belongs alone to humanity (thus turning man from ape to monkey and confusing my metaphor considerably!) My tale begins in the windy recesses of time. It was September. OR quite possibly August. But there is one thing we can be sure of, it was not THIS month. Anyway, on this chill day in September (or August) I found myself traversing the winding mountain way to visit my maternal figure carried forth by bus. Said bus is a remarkably unpleasant place, it hosts insane people on a regular basis (the doomsday Jesus guy was a fun example of this, he barked at me) odiously odorous people are another of it's specialities and it is the fond home and instigator of my regular bouts of carsickness. Ah, bus. Now, with these many qualities combined it behooves me, the regular traveler, to try to pass the time aboard it in as painless a manner as possible. This usually involves turning my iPod on full blast and considering the meaning of life intently for 1 hour 40 minutes (or you know, what I'll have for dinner). Imagine my dismay then on this occasion when I was informed that my iPod was too loud and to turn it down. (I have since discovered the way to make it block everyone else's noise where it doesn't accost their ears but I didn't know the trick then) being on this day rather hormonal I was overcome by feelings of shame (I didn't know it was so loud outside my own head!) and rebellion! (how dare you make me turn my own music down, what am I meant to listen to? Your ABBA tape for nearly two hours?!?!) and so, logically, I got off the bus before my stop.

Of course my logic may have contained a flaw. Specifically that I wasn't home yet and certain maternal figures were not in the mood to pick me up from Bowral. A compromise was reached, I would eat dinner and watch a movie in Bowral and THEN get picked up. Genius, no? However, my ruffled spirit still would not calm, and so with this blog firmly in mind, I decided to get back at that bossy bus driver by buying a bottle of wine and drinking it alone in a park. That'll show him!! I would like to tell you exactly what wine I bought but those winds of time have swept it clean from my head, let us just say it was a moscato and it was $5.95. The label (which mentioned something about a river or multiple rivers, possibly in conjunction with the brand name/title) told me it was pleasant to drink with cheese or desert and being ever obedient I promptly entered the supermarket and bought baby bell cheese, Lindt milk chocolate and strawberries. I was stopped by a bag checker on my exit, this upping my sense of rebellion. I then took my very exciting picnic to the park. Why the park I hear you ask? Well, quite simple. I feel sad that I never drank in the park in high school, home of illicit underage sex (that of my friends', not me sadly) and though I had no hooligan style company, I decided to rectify it then and there. Also there was nowhere else to go. So anyway, back to my wine experience. I was careful to blend the wine with the food in a pleasant fashion. A bite of cheese, a sip of wine. The wine tasted like wine, quite sweet with that nice nail polish aftertaste I love so much. A bite of chocolate, a strawberry, a sip of wine. The wine still tasted like wine, but tastier! A bite, a sip, this was some bloody good wine. After I was satisfied I decided to take some notes for this very blog. Here is an extract from my notes:

“This is possibly the snobbiest thing I've ever done in the most bogan manner imaginable. Are those white trees ghosts? Are those the demon flames of the apocalypse!? Ah! Creepy old bent man! Oh no, that's just a tree. Did someone put a hallucinogen in my wine? All in all? Mighty good wine, highly rec --- wooh! Gazebo! I'm totally tipsy! Shh! Don't tell mum! (Or the Bus Driver!!) (Or the Librarian!!!) (I'm near the library...)”

Also, I have to agree with those people who have said my handwriting it unreadable, I seem to have described the wine as “complements”.

A picture of me drinking in the park!

So in conclusion, I would describe this wine as “adequate”. I've had nicer, I've had far worse and my drunkenness was mainly pleasant. See, secretly this is how I judge a vintage. If I got emotional and teary or did embarrassing things after drinking it, it was a bad wine. If I was filled with a sense of wellbeing and love for the world, gee that was a great wine! And with these criteria again I would say “adequate” My emotions were not perfection but I didn't go cry in a toilet so we're all good.

The Book.

Ah the book.

The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins.

What can I say? Bloody great young adult book! As with the above anecdote, themes of rebellion wove their way throughout this book but I feel no shame when I say that they did so with far more power and affect. I was introduced to this book through the blog of an American tween writer that I read. She reviewed it and said it was spectacular, so I thought I would try it, doubtfully. And it was so good! It has been years since a book absorbed me as completely as this one did!

The basic outline: Dystopic future society. Twelve districts ring a central city, The Capitol, and are subjugated to it, forced to send the majority of their produce to it and live in poverty. But far worse for them, every year, every child between the ages of 12 and 18 are subjected to the reaping where one girl and one boy from each district is chosen by lottery and sent to the city for the Hunger Games. The Hunger Games is a reality TV show broadcast live to the world where the object is to kill the other players and the last person living is the winner and gets to live a life of luxury and ease in their home district after.

It sounds very didactic and there are certainly elements of it. There is the obvious correlations between our society and theirs, judging of both materialism and reality TV by the author. But hey, I'm totally cool with judgments passed on reality TV! And it is so fun! Aside from the high action- adventure quotient which is great, it is the characters and their relationships and emotions that make me love the book. I really enjoyed Katniss, the main character, because she was definitely a flawed character, but – and I think this is rare – not in a way that made me want to strangle her. Her flaws were completely understandable and I felt for her. More importantly the journey she takes throughout the book naturally forces her to confront some of those flaws but again, not in an annoying Enid Blyton type way. More like, the events of the book are such that things that Katniss was previously able to ignore or accept – even though we the reader did not want her to accept these things – forced her to finally face up to them and ultimately fight against them. This was done with such finesse that I was blown away when I really sat down and looked at how it was done. Also her relationship with Rue was just perfect to my eyes. One thing I found very impressive that Collins did only once: She had a significant event happen (Rue song) which the audience knew was significant but not why. She then, later in the novel, was able to set up the significance and desire for the event even though it had already happened. I mean I was literally sitting there during the setting up going “Oh! I hope that happens! Oh, hang on. That ALREADY HAPPENED! With Rue! That was so beautiful!!” * sniff * * tear *

I'm not sure that too many repeats of that technique would be good but one was definitely interesting!

Of course there were flaws to the novel. Some comments about the capitol people and their lifestyles were a little too obviously related to contemporary issues, but hey, it is a teen book. Also there were more than a few moments where the science fiction element was quite cheesy, the mutts (short for muttation) spring to mind. But yes, all in all I'd have to say ... 8/10

Samira Lloyd is a reprehensible exhibitionist and a licenced salamander catcher. She's not really sure you need a licence for that, but you might! She also writes things sometimes. She has been published in Voiceworks Magazine and TIDE anthology.

The Hype!

2009-11-03T00:34:00.000-08:00

You get to a certain age where a healthy amount of skepticism follows you around like a big green floating hat. And if there’s one situation in which my skepticism hats bobs into view, it’s when things get a big dose of the hype. We’re a culture inundated with hype- and hype based marketing. So it’s no wonder we get a bit tired of it. But I’m here, ladies and gentlemen, to tell you how drastically my world view has changed. Read on in growing shock and awe people, because the scales have been blasted from my eyes with laser beams of truth.

It all began with Tarantino’s latest movie ‘Inglorious Basterds’. Now I like Tarantino, specifically the Kill Bill’s were my movies of choice. But when my friends saw ‘basterds’ and shook their heads, puffed their cheeks out, repeatedly muttering ‘awesome’ under their breaths, I decided it was just hype. I have some friends who not only embrace hyperbole, but give it a big face lick. So whenever I’m told something is ‘life changing’ by them, I take it with enough grains of salt to depopulate a retirement home.
But it was a fantastic movie. It changed my concept of film as an artistic medium, so much so that I looked at dozens of other films and suddenly realized why there were lacking. The scenes were, on a whole, so long but treated with such amazing care that it felt like a completely different experience to the epileptic montage flicks of modern Hollywood. Loved it. The Hype… was right.

My next run in with the three legged diarrheic monkey named ‘hype’ comes from the latest trend in wine. You can bet that when four middle aged women with streaks in their hair and subtle botox are buying wine, it’s a Sauvignon- Blanc from the Marlborough region in New Zealand. Now why does this annoy me? Because Australia has some spectacular Sauvignon Blanc’s in our repertoire. The Shaw and Smith just might be the best white I’ve ever had. So when these people blindly dismiss everything else that isn’t currently the big thing, I get upset. I mentioned earlier my hatred for Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc, from the before mentioned region in New Zealand. I find it bland and minerally. So, I really railed against this hype.
But then I had the Villa Maria 2008 Sauvignon Blanc. Good god. The taste itself is like a fruit explosion, deliciously tart and passion fruited. That alone would be worth the rave review- but after you pour it (yes, I’m assuming you all run out and buy wine after I talk about it. Fallacy? Well, don’t burst my fragile bubble of pretence) after you pour it into your glass, take a moment to really smell it. The fragrance is unbelievable, rich and potent.
The hype 2, Patrick 0.

Suddenly the world seemed a strange place, this layer of protective sarcasm pierced to the bone. What would happen next? Well, the movie District 9 is distinctly raved about to me, so I bite the bullet and see it. Ridiculously great. Science- fiction making social commentary. And exploding people! What will they think of next?

Hype 3.

My day to day life completely changed. I had to experience all these things I’d been missing out on. I had to believe in the hype! I took off my floating green hat, and put on a flashy pair of rose tinted glasses. Classic rayband style!
Soon I was watching Masterchef and Australian Idol- I’m not sure why it’s great, but I think it’s the constant, if irrational theory I have that the producers will release live panthers into the various sets as part of the competition.
‘I’M BEING DEVOURED BY THE MYSTERY INGREDIENT’.

Oh and in other news, due to the most over-hyped show of this year “Glee” I’m now not just a fan, but a bona-fide singing and dancing high school boy! Yes, I’ve regressed in time- I love that show so much.

Yup, it’s a fantastic world out there, and that’s no hype! Or is it?

But there is one hype occurring at the moment that is so obnoxious, I just had to give it a go. That’s right- Jesus!

Oh, with that many banners and such a sensitive ad campaign, I had to discover for myself just what all the fuss was about. Now, if there are any Jesus worshippers amongst my readers, or “Christians” (named after Christi, a sexy pope from Grafton who started the whole ‘church’ phenomena) then forgive me if I get any details wrong. I’m still a new “worshipper” of our undead lord. Jesus, I’ve discovered from my research is a ten foot tall baby who exploded from the womb of a prostitute, fully grown and bearded. There is a playful sense of irony in the teachings of Christianity, really shown by the name given to this horrific birthing ‘The Immaculate Conception’ they call it, cheeky scamps. But it’s not just his gory calving that the Christian’s deem wonderful, but actually Jesus was a fantastic illusionist in the caliber of David Copperfield, Siegfried and to a lesser extent, Roy. Oh he used to amaze and astound those ancient Jew’s with all sorts of tricks and fancies like walking on water, turning water into wine and peeing farther than the largest ox. This was very well received, as it helped distract them from all the persecution and rape they were getting from the Roman’s. But the tale grows slightly more tragic, when attempting his greatest trick yet, he died. That’s right, in a spectacle unknown to pre-industrial civilization, Jesus strung himself and thirteen criminals on crucifixes, claiming to be able to free himself, and them, by dawn. Then he nailed his hands and feet to the crucifixes, and claiming even that was too easy, had a sexy assistant drive a spear into his side. People watched in awe as he struggled against overwhelming pain, drowning in his own fluids and taunting by a fat kid named Pontius who had always been a bad egg. By the time people realized Jesus wasn’t going to magic himself out of this one, it was too late. They buried him in a cave, and he was never heard of again. However Christian’s honor his memory by going to Church, which is symbolic because it’s almost impossible to escape. They also wear crucifixes around their necks, which they believe will get them out a sticky situations if they chant ‘There’s no place like home’ three times, which is colloquially termed ‘The Holy Trinity’.
Since I’ve been a card carrying “Christian” I managed to escape a mafia drug lord with rabies, all through my faith in the Lord Jesus and Saint Houdini.

Thankyou hype! I honestly can’t hype up hype enough!

Keep an eye on this space viewers, we have an action packed month ahead of us. Two screamingly traumatic guest articles, perhaps a secret event and my journey into the Hunter Valley to see the B-52’s.

Ps. Here’s a little bit of private hype, Bridget bought me for my birthday (although it only just arrived) this limited edited copy of Dave Egger's 'The Wild Things' of which a movie of the same name shall be arriving soon. It's loosely based on Maurice Sendak's illustrated childrens book "Where the Wild things are".

Note that the cover is real fur! Well, fake fur, but you know. It's furry.

A very sexy timeline

2009-10-07T17:23:00.000-07:00

So much has been happening that i've been forced to turn to my old friend 'chronology' for a helping hand. Well, Chronology you old drunk, do your magic.

21.9.09
-- Twas my birthday, and to celebrate we had an large party down in the Wollongong. What wine was I drinking, I hear you ask? Well- none. I was drinking Corona beers, with a slice of lime in them. Did I jump the gun, thinking that a few days of warmish weather signalled the sweaty days of summer? Yes. Was it worthy of Corona's that night? No. It was windy and cold, much like the rest of this spring has been. How old did I turn? Let's just say that not only can I remember the Industrial Revolution... I actually am the Industrial Revolution.

1881
-- The Industrial Revolution is born, striding throughout rural England like a plow through kittens.

October 1-5
- The Book I'm Drinking heads up to Newcastle for TINA or 'This is not Art', which hosts the annual 'National Young Writer's Festival'. Now here's where this post gets revelevant, people. Deadly relevant. As a literary blogger, I believe it is not only my right, but also my duty to head to literary events. Awesome. Let's get started.

Newcastle is a crumbling ruin of a city, where 2/3 buildings are boarded up and disused. TINA was created by the government when they decided Newcastle was the perfect place to put the excess of Indie kids.
This is my fourth year at TINA, and every time has been a wild and unique experience. For example, not having shingles is one of the high points of this year. Another critical difference, is that this year I did not go as a participator, like all of my former journeys. This year I went purely to observe, like the cold and clinical blogger I am. Previously I have performed at TINA as part of 'The Bracket Creeps' Australia's only Poetry Boyband, obviously way before we lost Lachie in the mountains, and also with the 'Common Cold Poetry Collective'.

We lived in a tent, like rich savages while we were there. It was very cold and wet. We later got rained out of our tent, as it filled with water. We also helped construct a yurt! A bona-fide yurt, with real yurtlings inside. This year, was very cold and wet. That is my journalistic opinion, and cannot be refuted. I cannot be bothered going into much more detail, because i'm tired now, but here's some things we did. In dot points!

*The Great Gatsby Ball- fantastic music, really great standard of dress, however the new Festival Club had to kick out people due to capacity, which sucked. I personally enjoyed last years Festival club much more.

*Totoro's Tea House- run by my friends Maddy and Natalie, we spent much time at this venue. It's great, and if you are in Newcastle anytime soon, you should stop by. It's in the Hunter st Mall.

*Drinking terrible goon- in my professional opinion, this particular... ahem, vintage, tasted like sour cherries and aborted grapes. It carried a tinge of the plastic water bottle that it was stored in, which lingered on the back of your tongue, like a cancer.

*Weird arty things- What's TINA about if not the weird arty things?

We saw this vaudeville kinda thing called 'Shirley' and then THE WORST anarchist band in the world. I wish I could remember their name... oh man, if they are the face of anarchy, then anarchy is ineffectual and peppy. We saw nude people and were allowed to draw them. Popped into Staple Manor and saw zines in motion. One of the cool things about this event is you just wander around and feel welcome most anyplace where people are.

*Zine Fair- big event on the sunday, all sorts of publications from stapled together bits of detritus to proper magazines, it's always worth checking out. I managed to pick up a copy of the new Voiceworks magazine 'Fluid' which has a story from me in it. Check it out yall, it's a really nice issue. I also picked up Harvest Magazine, and an issue of 'The Lifted Brow'. All exciting, Australian literature.

7.10.09
-- Opening of Brand Spanking New week 2. Went and saw this last night. Excellent night of theatre, even if my own play wasn't actually involved, i'd still recommend it. It's on for another three nights at the New Theatre. Brilliant.

21.13.1100

-- Escaped from the robot zombies. Will send myself back in time to stop the past me from gluing that toaster to that corpse.

Whiskey Man and the Rabid Wonder Dog

2009-09-24T00:06:00.000-07:00

In a world of moral insecurities and ethical quagmires, only one superhero has the power to stand up relatively straight. Introducing Whiskey Man, the burning sensation in the throat of crime, backed up by his frothingly loyal mutt 'The Rabid Wonder Dog' better known as 'Ol' Ballsack'. In a startling candid interview at his downtown hovel, Whiskey Man tells 'The Book I'm Drinking' a little bit about the man behind the mask.

WHISKEYMAN: I VOMITED ON MY FACE

Ok! Join us next week for yet another in our line of piercing interviews that the critics are calling "Surreal and Uncomfortable".

In other news, gentle viewers.

I have a play in week two of 'Brand Spanking New' called The Bermuda Love Triangle, directed by the wonderful Augusta Supple. This is my second year in this festival, and i'm absurdly lucky to have another run, and even luckier to get to work with such an amazing director. Gus is also the Artistic Coordinator of the festival, and is somehow juggling all her responsibilities. Also, hilariously, my sister Julia is the assistant production manager. Me and Julia are going to form some sort of theatre cabal and take it over from the inside.
Anyway, come and see my play. It's an absurd comedy about television gurus, scientists and people who play with trains.
It runs from 7-10th October at the New Theatre in Newtown. You can book tickets at www.mca-tix.com.au

How to smoke weed and read science fiction- A guest spot by Molly

2009-09-04T17:29:00.000-07:00

I’ve been a fan of Patrick since I first heard stories of his crazy writing and bizarre antics way back in 2003. When I saw he had a blog detailing his mad exploits, I sought it out and giggled along at his adventures in combining boozing with the written word. It is a mixture, that while not always successful (its hard to read when the letters sway in a drunken lilt all over the page) is frequently hilarious.
I am a fan of reading myself. And blogging. Not so much wine. My dislike of wine dates back to the year 2000, when I drank two litres of cask wine with my very first boyfriend, proceeded to get very ill and almost choked to death on my own vomit. Now the mere smell of wine makes my stomach churn a little. I avoid it. I’m more of a Mojito kind of girl, but rarely am I in the position to muddle mint leaves in a glass with rum and lime juice while perusing my latest fictional find. I’m just not that organised.
I am a fan, however, of intoxicants of a more, shall we say… dubious legality.
Having spent my formative years fogged in a marijuana-induced stupor wherein I had many awesome adventures then promptly forgot all about them, I tend to err on the side of moderation these days. But occasionally there is nothing I like more than to fire up my vaporiser, insert a pinch of the demon weed into the nozzle, suck the delicious herb-flavoured steam that issues forth and settle in the bathtub with a good book.
On a recent trip to the Salvation Army’s branch in my area, I found a little book with a one-dollar price tag. I read the back cover, and it seemed like an interesting story, so I plucked a gold coin from my pocket and took my book home. I suckled the vaporiser for a while like an infant at its mother’s breast, ran a bath and immersed myself in the warm water, foggy and comfortable. I opened the book and began the story, unawares that my mind was about to be blown.
That book was Neal Stephenson’s ‘The Diamond Age (Or A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer)’, and I was totally unprepared for it’s sheer awesomeness.

Neal Stephenson- Bald and Beardy

This was my first foray into cyberpunk fiction. I had never even heard of Mr Stephenson, save as a pop-cultural reference in other books. I was unprepared for the intricate and amazing future he would imagine in this fucking mind-expanding novel.
The Diamond Age is set in future Shanghai, in a world where land-boundaries are kaput and people divide themselves into ‘Phyles’ or tribes based on religious, moral or ethnic differences. Central to this story is the Neo-Victorian Phyle, whose inhabitants adhere to a strict moral code, a throwback to an idealised Victorian age. The world is ruled by nanotechnology, where anything and everything is created molecule by molecule in matter compilers that draw on the Feed, fed by the Source, which is strictly controlled by the powers-that-be.
What really struck me about the Diamond Age was how invested I became in the central character, Nell, a poor tribeless girl whose path we follow from early childhood into adulthood. As she is taught by her illicit copy of the Primer, a creation of one of the Neo Victorians to educate select young Victorian ladies in the ways of technology, self-reliance and subversiveness, you are swept up in her development from ignorant child to remarkable young lady.
Even if I hadn’t been blasted ten ways from sideways, I still would have been completely blown away by the sheer magnitude of Stephenson’s vision. There is just so much more to this book than I can ever hope to mention here, more perhaps than I can ever even hope to understand. I read til my bath water went cold, then emerged from the tub and continued to devour the novel late into the night and the next day until it was spent.
I have discovered through further reading that Stephenson likes to end his stories where its least expected, leaving you always wanting more, but don’t let this dissuade you. Fire up a fatty J sometime and immerse yourself in a mad, brilliantly imagined and utterly complex future. You won’t be sorry.

Molly is a weird looking nine-to-fiver from the depths of suburbia. She spends too much time imagining bizarre landscapes and exploring them in her head when she should probably be working. Lately she cant stop writing about the end of the world, which is simultaneously unsettling and awesome.

In Vino Veritas

2009-08-26T18:40:00.000-07:00

Hello Manderlys

Today i'm going to interview this pile of books that recently arrived on my doorstep.

AMAZON ORDER: Thankyou for having me Patrick

PATRICK: No... no... thank you for coming. This is most... delicious

AMAZON ORDER: It's a pleasure.

PATRICK: Yes it is.

AMAZON ORDER: Would you like me to unpack myself perhaps?

PATRICK: Do it slowly. So i can watch

AMAZON ORDER: Would you like me to uhh, describe my contents

PATRICK: There's no need. I'll discover them all soon

AMAZON ORDER: Oh. Good.

PATRICK: You are a... big package aren't you.

AMAZON ORDER: Heh. Heh. All the better to fill me up with books

PATRICK: Fill me up with books!

AMAZON ORDER: I'm uncomfortable.

PATRICK: (Saliva leaks from his mouth, as his intrusive
hands stroke the spines of the shiny new books,
lifting the pages delicately)

AMAZON ORDER: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. I didn't sign up for this.

I'm smack in the middle of re-reading George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones saga. This is a highly enjoyable pursuit, which i have put off for a while now, in order to draw out the pleasure. An epic tale of kingdoms rivven by civil war and intrigue, this story while sounding similar to others, is amazingly different. How to describe just what makes this series so amazingly good, and so different from any other fantasy writer? Is it the dark, gritty violence? The terrible, oh so believable yet awful characters? The utterly insane level of history and story to this world, beyond anything the so called 'world makers' like Jordan or Edding's could ever concieve of?

Well partially. But what makes these books utterly riveting is Martin's utterly ruthless approach to plot development. In most fantasy books, you have clear protagonists. People who are invulnerable by the sheer fact that the book is either about them, or from their point of view. A Game of Thrones is from a multi-narrative point of view, each chapter set in first person from one of the myriad of characters and players. Yet, if this was conventional, you would have your favourites. People you are sure need to fulfill a narrative arc. Yet you will learn, shockingly and dramatically that nobody is sacred, that even the most beloved and innocent character can die.

Another thing i love is the attention to the staples of medieval pageantry and heraldry. I loved all that shit as a kid, the shields and the castles and the Knights and the great Houses- and these books make use of that. Of course, it totally isn't innocent and lovely. In this series most Knights are spectacular to look at, full of honour, and really into the raping.
That said, i have a total man-crush on the Knight of Flowers. Read it, discover why.

While reading these, i had the thought- holy crap, 'The Book I'm Drinking' needs a coat- of-arms and a house motto. And then i remembered this-

This amusing little sigil is the coat of arms for the glorious House of Drunkledore. Me and Anna came up with this many years ago during the middle years of the Harry Potter phenomenon. The conversation was vaguely centred around how if we were in Hogwart's, the sorting hat would invent a new house just for us problem drinkers, known as Drunkledore.

As you can see, we even have a motto- In Vino Veritas: In wine there is truth.

Speaking of wine, the Peter Lehmann Eden Valley Riesling 2007 has been a staple in my fridge for a while now, being cheap as shit (umm, why am i buying shit?) at around $12 AUS. I saw that it had been voted as number 1 in the top ten quaffing wines of 2008. Go me. Go cheap wine. Go Drunkledore.

“You gave me your heart, passed from your mouth to mine” Guest Contributer, Sally Evans!

2009-08-07T21:52:00.000-07:00

Voyager Estate Semillon Sauvignon Blanc 2006 and Jane Gibian’s ‘Ardent’.
With our very first guest blogger, Sally Evans.

Wine and books, books and wine. I mostly never get the chance to combine them. And so, much like a lonely man writing a letter to Penthouse, I’d like to share with you my experiences in this unfamiliar territory. Now, vis-à-vis the Bacchic fluids, I’m little more than an enthusiastic amateur. Mouthfeel makes me think of that furry thing your teeth do when you’re hungover, and ‘legs’ are little more than a body part or a dodgy ZZ Top song. However, one thing I can offer to this blog is a poetical perspective on literature – Patrick’s all about the novel (despite his ventures into the sordid world of the poetry boyband), but leaves the poetry side sorely underrepresented.

But let’s start with the wine. After all, that’s what I did.

The Voyager Estate Semillon Sauvignon Blanc is, according to the bottle, a “fresh and lively” white with “good weight and structure, displaying an abundance of citrus, passionfruit, guava, and lemon pith characters”. Being an amateur, I did not read this before opening the bottle. It’s from the Margaret River. I have no idea what the characteristics of a Margaret River white might be. It does NOT have a Prussian double-headed eagle on the label – it is in fact a stem of roses. This is how unprepared I was for this wine. All I had was enthusiasm and a vaguely-understood wine-snob vocabulary.

On first taste, the most notable thing about this wine was that it is rather heavy-bodied for a white, especially for a sem sav blanc. It retains the initial savoury crispness that I associate with the blend (some weird cucumber-capsicum freshness on first taste, shared by many cabernet sauvignons) but is far richer. More complex perhaps. I’m an amateur but I assume this is a result of the wine’s age. A three-year-old white being sold commercially is getting to the end of its life, which also explains the most important quality of this wine – the $5 reduction given by my local Liquorland.

As far as the more complex levels of flavour go, I’m no expert. Put simply, it tasted like wine. However, there was something discernably fruity – my first guess was lychee, but the bottle claims passionfruit and this makes more sense, lychee being almost sickly sweet, and passionfruit generally being more tart. Once I let it breath, the early savouriness was mostly replaced by this passionfruitiness, sweeter, less acidic perhaps.

All that said, though, the wine’s finish is probably its high point – all early crispness mellows out to a round honeyed richness, especially when I made an effort to slow down and drink to savour. It’s not a dessert wine by any means, nor particularly sweet, but it is full-bodied and as such I’d recommend drinking it as an accompaniment to post-dinner cheeses. Much of the complexity is lost when drinking this wine with a meal. I’m to blame for that, though, because I chose to buy white wine to drink with chicken cacciatore.

My first glass, however, was consumed with the necessary respect and solemnity, in the fading dusk in my flat, reading poetry. As an honours student trying to compose a sizeable collection of poetry, I’m always on the lookout for new influences. In particular, I want to find someone – a published, successful someone – whose poetry is in some measure similar to mine, just to prove that my work might one day find a readership. It was a while ago that my supervisor, Alan Wearne, mentioned the name of Jane Gibian – Australian, female, young and published. But I only just got my hands on her latest collection, ‘Ardent’, published by Giramondo.

Jane Gibian, it turns out, is the kind of poet I would be if I had 70% more poetry. Her poems are longer and denser than mine, which is not difficult, but her imagery is nonetheless exquisite and lightly-handled. Her language is masterful and careful, and I was hard-pressed to find anything that I would have done differently – mostly, I was awed by her ability to take ‘larger’ subjects than I ever manage and maintain the economy of language.

The other amazing thing about Jane (my new friend Jane) is that, in a number of cases, I found lines in her work that were eerily similar to lines of my own. Now, perhaps to other people this wouldn’t be apparent. But I got the (brief, possibly wine-and-dusk-fuelled) sensation that Gibian and I were ghosts of one another – finding the same things to evoke, creating the same world. Perhaps an outside observer would think we’d experienced similar things – which may or may not be true, but has no significant impact on the reading of poetry anyway.

Take for example:

“In the kitchen the cutlery
bickers amongst itself
in the second drawer”

and:

“Knives clatter
and argue
in the drawer.”

The first is from Jane Gibian’s ‘Almost Shy’ (which might be the poem of hers that I most envy). The second is from my ‘Breakfast’.

And again:

“…the change
of the seasons.
Heads back
we gaped the scent…”

and:

“… we began
smelling the decline of winter
around then…”

The first from my ‘Burrow’, the second from Jane’s ‘Above’. ‘Burrow’ also has resonances of an earlier poem of mine. She’s a passionate practitioner of the haiku, as I am (though my work with the form has dropped off recently). One of her ‘twelve haiku’ manages to invoke, in eight words, the loneliness and longing attached to a lover’s left-behind wristwatch – something it took me an entire microfiction to convey without half the emotional impact. The similarities were eerie. Momentarily, I was left feeling that she is me – my spooky, separated-at-birth, poetical sibling.

Gibian is, in all cases, a better poet than I am – I don’t think I can fool anyone into believing otherwise. However, to quote the jacket of ‘Ardent’, her poems “throw a sharp focus on, and draw maximum resonance from, small or fleeting details”, and that’s what I hope I can achieve with my work as well. Did it suit the wine? Well, sure – the white was crisp but surprisingly full-bodied, like the poetry. I would recommend both, and believe both would benefit from being revisited. Also, since this is ‘The Book I’m Drinking’ and there are standards I must maintain, I feel I should mention that there were dragons. Dragons and a quest, and some monkeys on an island, and an obscure celebrity, for argument’s sake we’ll say Jennifer Garner, and maybe she’s wearing aviation goggles because she crash-landed on the island and now she needs to train the monkeys to spot-weld the cabin of her Cessna. But that’s not what’s important. What’s important is this: the wine cost $19 from Wollongong Liquorland, and the book of poetry can be bought from Giramondo for $22, and no one has to teach monkeys to weld.

Sally Evans is an offbeat aesthete, a literary masochist and a poetic insomniac. She drinks wine when she should be writing - and occasionally writes when she should be drinking.

(Well, wasn't that a whirlwind! I was really cheering for those two crazy lovebirds, and sure enough, they made it into the big league by the end of the movie. And not to mention Benny the loveable deathape! Not to mention indeed...
Many thanks to Sally for her excellent article, as first ever guest contributer she wins a fabulous prize. The prize is a bottle of wine of my choosing. But it comes with a curse. She must drink it with me. Do you want to win a fabulous double edged prize? Well, perhaps there's a runner up for the second guest contributer to 'The Book I'm Drinking'? If you're interested, simply email me at patricklenton@gmail.com.)

5 Awesome Things

2009-08-03T23:44:00.000-07:00

1. Jews:

In rapid succession i have been bombarded by tales of Jews and their Jewing. First i read Everything is Illuminated by Jonothan Safran Foer. Now i've been told there's a fairly shitty movie of this, but hey, that's not my game. I enjoyed this book, really respecting the broad nature of crossover between the present, almost comedic nature of the quest and the surreal and tragic tale of the past. The plot revolves around our young narrator, and author (what is it with first time authors and putting themselves in their own books? I don't think i could do it.) going on a journey to Ukraine to track down the woman who saved his grandfather from Nazi extermination. We are told the embroidered version of a Jewish town from its inception to its destruction at the same time. Now, i feel like some of the story could have been cut for consistency, but was mostly deleriously happy with everything that occurred. Even the farcical nature of the Ukraine quest, with the farting dog and the grumpy dad- if you ever get a little sick of this, rest assured you are redeemed in a heart stopping and poignant manner by our hero, the author. My biggest, and prolably only qualm, is the character of Alex. Much translation based humour is centred on him- but did anybody else get uncomfortably reminded of Borat? I did.
My second book is Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemans Union. I haven't actually finished this yet, but that's a mark of how god damn much i'm enjoying it. I'm actually giving myself the task of putting it down after i finish a chapter or two. Also, i'm not reading much at work these days cause of my little lunchtime chats with a bunch of Beauty Assistants i've befriended. Anyway, unless Chabon commits a dramatic seppuku towards the end, this is one of my favourite books. But i trust you Chabon, you've never let me down! I read through two compilations of his short stories and just loved them. This book is hilarious, actually eliciting chuckles from me. Guffaws even. The wordplay- genius, the dialogue so good that i imagine this on the stage, or at least the big screen.
A film noir plot, a dead Yiddish man in a seedy hotel, a down on his luck cop, a hardass inspector- but with amazing literary growths from the seed of conventions. For an alcoholic, chain smoking, cynical protagonist, who even the hard bitten heroes of hard boiled cinema would probably give pocket change too, he is remarkably loveable. And no aspect of plot is sacrificed for lofty literary ambition (COUGH ZUSAK COUGH). Yeah. I'll leave it there.

2. BEING THE BIGGEST GEEK IN THE WORLD
I mean... chess. Yeah. playing chess...

3. Blends.
Amongst the notaries of the wine world that i have consumed recently, standouts would have to be an exploration into the world of blends. The highlight of this foray is the Henschke Keyneton Estate Euphonium, 2005 Barossa. This delicious wine is a Shiraz Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot Cabernet Franc. Yeah, wanna add anything else into that? Now i had a bit of a lesson in blends recently, after both a snooty Frenchman and a stuck up American rejected my suggestion of Shiraz Cabernet blends (which i happen to love) with a kind of high handed dismissiveness suitable to some kind of stupid Emperor. Turns out, that in both these countries (France and Fake Cheese, Ohio) a 'blend' brings a connotation of bargain bin wines, as what winemakers are in the habit of doing, is mixing (or blending) the last of a years grapes with those of the next, thus making a large batch of substandard wine, with no year to call it's own. As both Fake Cheese and France are also proscribed by law as to the amount of each variety of grape they can grow per year (don't ask me why. I didn't get that far. Remember i'm supposed to be working when i learn all this stuff) they don't have the leave or the inclination to experiment as much as Australian winemakers can. It's only in recent years that wines like our Shiraz Cabernets have gained international prestige and envy.
Another beautiful blend is the Wirra Wirra Churck block, 2007 McLaren Vale. I have turned my eye

upon the peaceful Vale of the McLaren people, as their red wines have continually delighted me.

But you know why i recommend (and will buy) this wine continually and dementedly? Why, it's low low prices. That's right Sheral-dine, for around $20 AUS you can get a bottle of this sterling blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz and Merlot. Smooth, emminently drinkable, with light tannins. What's that Sheral-dine? You're completely right- you can pick it up cheaper in most garden variety, and garden based bottleshops for cheaper than in Duty Free. Why's that Sheral-dine? Umm. No, it's not a Zionist conspiracy... you're kinda fired now. You can go and host a new show with radio's retard, Kyle Sandilands.

4. Euphoniums.
So, this is a Euphonium.

Did you know winemakers worship the Euphonium? Completely true.

5. Learning
I just love it. Even though my job is shithouse to the max, and i have to get up at
4am to get there, at least i can learn things. Like what a bordeaux style red is! Low alcohol content, something in the cabernet sauvignon, merlot or petit franc school of grape. I also learnt something about single malts from a remarkably friendly customer the other day. Not my thing, but i may give it a try one day.

Packed with adventure: A sausage full of excitement!

2009-07-10T21:04:00.000-07:00

Gentle brewers, if we are to continue this relationship, there is something you need to know about me. Due to some funky health issues in my past, i have been gifted with the constitution of a Victorian era aristocrat named Collin. This, amongst other things, means that as i hobble around my manor on my sticks, waiting for my next leeching, i catch fun old-timey diseases like shingles and the mumps! (Shingles hurt so bad, i still have SCARS. Scars that periodically ignite with phantom nerve pain! Oh it's a whacky world). Anyway, my point is, that i am currently convalescent with the flu. It's not swine flu, and it's not typhus, but it did make me dizzy and fall over on Wolli Creek station, and i am now Collin the Victorian era aristocrat/snot lord. And why is this my point, i here you say? Well, i've forgotten. Oh yes- so i haven't been drinking much wine. Cause of the protracted illness. So no wine in today's issue. Or i could talk about some wine from the past i suppose. Folks- i have a problem. So much wine. The doctors are saying red wine is good for you, but that's patently not true, because if so, i would be some sort of superhuman health machine, knocking down buildings with my terrifying vitality.

But today i felt like a brief stroll through jingoistic Sutherland might be in order, as i really haven't left this lounge in days. I went to get more fruit, for the health. And on the way i remembered that it was the Lifeline book fair, on at the Entertainment Centre, and i got a bit of a hot flush. Not only is literature being injected deep into the heart of the Shire, but i get to partake. Long story short, i got many books and am now ridiculously exhausted but happy. And fruitful. Who the fuck gets tired from walking ten minutes down the street? Why couldn't i have had one of those flu's that makes you happy and gives you energy and productive enthusiasm. Blah.

So one thing i have been doing a lot of, is reading. When i get ill, i usually seek out a nice long fantasy epic. So imagine my exuberance when i find the first book in a new series by James Barclay. James Barclay wrote the bestselling 'Chronicles of the Raven' and 'Legends of the Raven' series. Action packed, heroic fantasy about a group of aging mercenaries named 'The Raven' who repeatedly save their world from all manner of terrible perils, including dragons, demon dimensions, scheming colleges of magic, marauding barbarian continents, an elf focused plague, a tiny girl who makes tornadoes happen. Which they defeat all by the strength of their Code and snappy witticisms. I really enjoy those books, they are rollicking good fun, excellent plot, great writing (especially much of the dialogue). I liken them to a really excellent adventure movie. The descriptions are very cinematic, and the highlights are always the battles- which are frequent. But Barclay excels at staging the conflicts in new and vivid places.

The reason i'm giving these books such an excellent word licking, is because they contrast so grimly with this new book of his 'Cry of the Newborn' first in 'The Ascendants of the Estorea' series. I found this book, quite frankly, to be slow. And i read fast. I'm not boasting when i say that i can read your average novel in a day, if given sufficient time and inclination. I actually don't think this is a good thing, because it means a) I need more books b) When i enjoy a book, i speed through it c) the details fade from my brain quicker. That's why if you ask me certain details about a lot of books, i come up blank. General plot of 'The Information' by Martin Amis? Sure. Characters? Nope.

Jesus Christ, segue much? Anyway, this book is slow. I got literally halfway through this massive tome of a thing, before i actually felt anything interesting happened. The rest of it was all 'tralalala we are four children growing up with unnatural powers. Oh, what's that? The author seems to be rather heavy handedly hinting that one of us is a sociopath! Oh and also, we're in a giant Empire that seems to be expanding beyond what we can safely consume. Maybe if we keep invading, we'll bite more than we can chew! Woops, now our armies are defeated.'
I'm gonna stop there. The sarcasm was fogging up my screen. Anyway. The action then comes fast and thick- but monotonous. After a while, i wasn't exactly sure where all these battles were happening. But for the most part they were ok- but nothing compared to his other work.
Characterwise, mostly everyone was undeveloped. Except Paul Jhered, a Tax Collector who seems to be the hero of this piece. For some unexplained reason, tax collectors are also elite fighters in this society. Fair enough. He was a good character.
So, in conclusion, i was very disapointed with this book. Will i read the sequel? Yes, because Barclay has given me so much. And also, i hated so many of the main characters in the first book, and i hope they may be killed off.

Much of the reason that this book suffered so badly in my estimation, is not just because of the inevitable comparison it has to 'The Raven' books, but also to what i read immediately before it, namely Steven Erikson's 'Gardens of the Moon' first in his epic 'Tales of the Malazan Book of the Fallen' series. Now when i talk about Barclay's Raven books being like adventure movies- then these are like those on speed. The reader is dumped into a roaring river of plot, and swept along with barely a chance to surface for air. There is the assumption that you will just keep up- which can be a challenge. The plot is full of mysteries and intrigue- which i love in my novels. But everything is going so fast, that you have to wonder "Is that actually a mystery, or did i miss something earlier. Wait, a second, should i know that already?" At one stage, i actually checked the front of the book, half convinced that maybe i'd started at the second book. But, if you have patience, and simply ride along with the plot, you start getting fed more and more information, until you realise exactly where you are. Erikson masterfully keeps you fed with tidbits of plot, making each revelation actually mean something to you. Plotwise, this book is amazing, with enough action and war and dread magic and powerful clashes of god and demi-god and dragon to make even the most cynical fantasy nerd get an eye-twitch. The characters... well, the characters are little more than plot devices, animated to walk around and say the things needed to get more action happening. And there are many characters as well- use the index at the back in case you get a bit lost. But otherwise, i'm a new big fan. Of course, i can't find the second book anywhere, so i'm all frustrated. I ordered them all from Amazon, in a moment of flu-like weakness.

So, i suppose my big lesson has been about fantasy action today. What have we learnt? A lot i suppose. But if you have never read anything remotely fantasy action genred, you are in luck, as a sneak peek of the new 'Where there's a Willis, there's a Way' landed on my desk this morning. (Wtf, did a bird drop it?) And this is the series that packs action with even more action. Pancakes of action.

Where There's a Willis, There's a Way: Episode 2
Hitler me with your best shot!

"I didn't know Berlin had a river full of rapids running through its centre" screamed Iggy Pop, struggling for breath amidst the torrential water, swept along like a rag doll in a tornado.
"Well i was banking on it" growled Corporal Willis, lighting a cigar, the grizzled wreck of a military man riding the rapids like a serene cowboy on an unbroken stallion.
"You mean you planned on getting shot out of the sky and crashing landing in the Rheine?" i asked, incredulous, inflating my portable boogie-board.
"Ever since i set foot in this fascist hell-hole" pointed out Willis, a grin pulling at his scarred face.

EARLIER

The battered spitfire zoomed low over Hitler's massive fortress deep in the heart of Berlin, and General Willis sharped his Thompson rifle with a large machete.
"This way, i don't need to worry about strapping on a bayonet. I can just ram the whole gun into the enemy!"
"That's brilliant, sir!" muttered a bashful Jeff Kennett, staring worshipfully at the defaced gun. Johnny Rotten had strapped bayonets to his face, and pointed them out to Willis.
"Look, now if the Nazi's try to steal my skin, they'll get all cut up"
General Willis, bestowed a fatherly smile upon him. 'The Bear' looked up from the half eaten deer carcass he was devouring, and roared in frustration. His natural instincts wanted to be roaming the forest, not sitting in a tiny single seated fighter-plane. Willis bestowed a fatherly smile upon him.

"Right boys, we ain't in this improbable position for fun and games, we're here because we're the Crack Team, and The Crack Team is the best at what we do, and what we do is win the war, and how are we going to do that? Well, i'm glad you asked- we're going to burn down the Reichstag!" spat Willis.

Jeff Kennett raised a tremulous, shaking hand.
"What is it Jeffy?" asked Willis, disgusted at the former Premier of Victoria's weakness.
"Well, didn't Hitler already burn down the Reichstag?" he spluttered.

"Damnit, that diabolical mastermind, always one step ahead. Fine, change of plan. We're going to land this overburdened aviatory vehicle, and hide out at the Olympic games. Then, when Hitler steps up for his turn at the shot-put, we'll assassinate him!" screeched Willis, reminiscent of a barn owl.

At that moment, the unmistakeable dark clouds of a flak gun puffed through the sky, and Willis screamed at me "Take evasive action, we're being fired at!"
I wanted to tell him that i wasn't actually flying the plane, but by that point, the by-plane was on fire, and the river loomed before us like an elongated liquid snake.

NOW

"Willis, my snuggle bear" purred Anastayo "It seems like the SS have somehow found us. It's almost like somebody just radioed to them and said 'ze crack team are in ze river' But it vasn't me."
The SS ran along the dark shores of the river, their inhuman speed making their spandex clad limbs flash in the gloom. Even over the roaring water, we could hear their harsh, mechanical breathing, as they minimised the distance to us with every second. As one they pounced...

TO BE CONTINUED....

The Casillero del Diabla

2009-06-29T00:28:00.000-07:00

So a few years ago, my girlfriend journeyed to Chile to enjoy their local hikes and kayaking. While she was gallivanting around drinking pisco sours, i decided to drown some of my loneliness in Chilean wine, which i know has an excellent reputation. At the time i bought a bunch of lovely shiraz termed 'Casillero del Diabla' or 'Cellar of the Devil'.

This is an excellent wine. The shiraz starts off quite bitey, but quickly mellows into a spicy wine with dark fruits and a licorice aftertaste. Nice. I drank the wine, and thought highly of it. Meanwhile, in Chile Bridget was negotiating a Patagonian glacier, when a soft, sibilant voice hissed on the biting wind "Casillero del Diabla'. It was a blind Chilean man, ancient and stooped, his rags fluttering, bare feet blue and bleeding on the iced ground. Bridget stopped, staring at this strange apparition. The spooky pensioner repeated himself, pointing a gnarled finger at the buxom beauty.

She paused, and then said "Casillero del Diabla to you too'.

Two years later, we've been invited to go and stay at our friend Samira's place in the Southern Highlands. As i search through my wines, i come across some dusty bottles of 'Casillero del Diabla'. I decide to bring these with me, as i am uneasy in social situations. I mean, i'm polite and old fashioned. Either one.

Soon a shipment of youth assail Samira's house. The Southern Highlands has some great wineries, however we didn't have time to visit them. We plan on doing that soon. However, we did get to visit Berkelouw's Book Barn, which was exciting. Books in a barn? What will they think of next?

That night, a roaring fire blazed, and potatoes were roasted willy-nilly. As we enjoyed the simple pleasures of warmth and not being attacked by robots, i poured us all a glass of the aformentioned red wine. I passed a glass to our friend Carla, who sniffed it and suddenly shrieked, flinging the glass into the flames.

"Aiaiaiaiaiai" she ululated, this is the blood of my peoples arch-enemy!

"I thought law students lived off wine." I said, vaguely offended.

"No, my people. Chileans!" said Carla Velasquez Uzebeaga, (i suddenly remembered her name, which i conceded was quite Chilean). As we spoke, the fire flared and a tall red, horned figure exploded into existence.

"TREMBLE MORTALS, FOR I AM BALMORAL THE DEMON LORD, AND I AM YOUR DOOM"

It was a fairly typical demon, red skinned, fire eyed, winged, tattoo of a happy unicorn boning OJ Simpson- but on its left side its flesh was tattered and stripped to the bone, skeletal features peeking through the gore like a shy baby deer. We all froze in horror, Carla ululating again and charging the demon with a wickedly curved dagger, traditional to lawyers. She burst into flames, and is now pleading her case in heaven. I object, Carla. I object.

Dane, who is quite the amateur thaumaturg, piped up.

"I've never actually heard of any Balmoral... do you perhaps mean Mollecht? Or what about Lucifer? I think Balmoral is a place actually."

Dane burst into flame, and is having fun recognising demons in hell.

"Yeah man, and what's the deal with the messed up skin? You should moisturise that shit or sumfin." said Claire, apparently breakdancing. Balmoral squared his massive shoulders, and then sighed.

"You do not recognise the dread Balmoral? Lord of mouldy testes, dread of lazy nuns everywhere? No? I recieved these injuries in a duel against the archmage Jesus himself! This is after he split loaves and fishes into yet more loaves and fishes. Explosive loaves and fishes! He really thought outside the box, the handsome devil"

We all looked unimpressed, despite the fiery death of two of our friends. It was an excellent wine. The demon sat into the campfire, sobbing slightly. "
You know, everyone forgets about me. Sure, Satan is more evil, Lilith a giant slut. But i'm evil too you know! I bought all those money lenders into that Jew house. Don't you guys remember that?"
Dane, pedantic as a spaniel, shakes his head sadly.

"I'm afraid it didn't make the cut buddy".
Balmoral sighs, then looks confused.
'Didn't i incinerate you?"

Dane continues, thumbing through the bible strapped to his shoes.
"Neither Mathew, Mark, Luke or John mention you. Not to mention Oprah. You just aren't evil enough old boy. You need to get yourself a publicist. Or at least support stem cell research publicly."

"Yeah, you know, i think you're right" roared Balmoral, sparks eddying from his nipples.
"I'm going to send St Peter a strongly worded email, with all my complaints"

We all looked at him with pity.

"Urggh. I mean, i'll send him... a she-male. Yes, not an email, a she-male. Much more evil. Right?"
As we all contemplate that image, suddenly the geriatric Chilean arrives. He is carrying a cheeky sauvignon blanc, in the same Casillero del Diabla series. It is fresh and fruity. We all drink it down, and have an excellent night. Ironically, the sauvignon blanc was made from the blood of Che Guevera, who exploded from the fireplace and fought with Balmoral the demon. In a twist ending, they discussed their differences and competed as a duo on Australia's 'So you think you can dance'.
Turns out massacre isn't a style they recognise.

Where There's a Willis, there's a Way

2009-06-19T05:58:00.000-07:00

So my awesome friend Willis made me a bookcase!!!!

This is entirely awesome, as it can live out in the lounge room with all the people. This brings my bookcases up to three, with one dedicated to ‘classic literature’, another to fantasy and this latest and greatest showcasing my literary fiction. And if that isn’t cool enough, my new wine rack fits onto the bottom shelf!!!!!!!!

The question everybody is asking I suppose, is what the hell is a nuts and mortar fella like Willis doing making bookshelves willy-nilly. Well- every bookshelf helps ease the guilt of all the thousands of deaths on his hands.

I first met Willis on the Russian front during the closing years of World War 2, or as we called it at the time “The Crocodilian Jazz Express”. He was commanding a crack team of allied commandoes- known as ‘The Crack Team’ probably because of a young Iggy Pop supplying the team with copious amounts of crack. Tasked with the infiltration and subsequent explosion of Leningrad, I was a replacement recruit sent over from the motherland.

While having a sneaky bottle of wine with old man Willis, he chuckles as we discuss our first meeting. Easing the pressure on his one remaining leg, he grunts,
“You know, I’m glad they fixed me up after that mortar shell hit me, but I’ll never know why they replaced my last leg with my kidney.”
His leg pulsates in what seems like agreement. Drinking deeply from a bottle of Grant Burge’s Hillcot Merlot, Willis gets a strange unfocused look in his cloudy eyes. Thinking perhaps he is drunk, I surreptitiously ease the bottle away from him.
“Reminds me of a sneaky drop I took from a château after the battle of the bulge. You can taste the black cherries. Always reminds me of thievery and massacre. Remarkable.”
I’d like to say that because of his advanced age, Willis tended to ramble. However his predilection for blather is probably one of the defining causes of the Gallipoli disaster. Perhaps if he had managed to explain ‘don’t run into the Turkish machine guns’ in less than an hour, that would have been a far happier day. Samson and his donkey could have galloped into paradise.
Tiredly, I prod him back onto topic, as his rants about ‘British Nobs’ had run into early morning. I remind him of our first meeting.
“Ahh yes” he grunts, lighting a breadstick and attempting to smoke it. “You were a wet behind the ears recruit, sent into hell”.
I remind him that I was only wet because Iggy Pop and another of the ‘Crack Squad’s’ commandoes, known only as ‘The Bear’ had dunked me in a sub-zero russian river.
“Didn’t kill Rasputin, and didn’t kill you” he grumbles dismissively. “Did you know ‘The Bear’ actually was a black bear that had learned the rudiments of human speech? Hell of a brawler, and a hell of a friend. I’ll never forget the happy look on his furry, snouted face as he chowed down on the belt of grenades that eventually exploded his head.”
Apart from the undead Iggy Pop, we realize that of the six members of the ‘Crack Squad’ that infiltrated Leningrad, we are the only survivors. The bear, destroyed in the line of snack time, Johnny Rotten, shivved by Iggy Pop near the Kremlin, and former premier of Victoria, Jeff Kennett, slain by a 20 foot effigy of Ghaneesh summoned by Leningrad’s surprisingly large Hindu population. That leaves only one ostensible member left, the mysterious Anastayo Vladimich, called affectionately ‘Lady Spyface’ before the shock knowledge that she was indeed, a Russian spy.
“I never could have guessed she was a spy. She was more than just a team mate, she was… something special. A lover. A confidante. Similar to what you had with ‘the bear’.
I retch quietly in the bushes, as Willis continues his nostalgic tirade.
“She was so cute, the way she would make me recite military passwords as we made love, or would stroke my scalp with her poisoned fingernails as we looked over top secret blueprints. You know, Patrick? I loved that woman, and I loved her even as I threw her off that dam. It was a hell of a war, and it required a hell of a man.”
I leave him muttering into his merlot, memories swarming over his ravaged face. Hell of a man indeed.

ps- these wartime shenanigans are obviously tv gold, and I have already thought of an excellent name for the topselling series: ‘Where There’s a Willis, there’s a Way”.

Pursuing excellence like a hungry lion after a herd of terrified gazelles.

2009-06-13T18:45:00.000-07:00

Yes, so i've recently had some excellent experiences in the fields of wine and books. I'm talking life changing here folks, so strap in, pick up your pickles and ride my word mules into excitement.

So last Christmas, my work (Duty free at Sydney Airport) had an excess wine sale for its staff, which was exciting because a) duty free prices b) further discount c) we never get to buy from our own store (by law you have to be entering or leaving the country) and d) having worked in the wine store for so long, i'd been salivating over some of the wines for a LONG time.

I decided i would spent my meager money on just one bottle of wine, rather than a few, because our prices are better for premium wines (our lower to middle range wines are actually priced abominably). There wasn't a huge selection, and what i ended up choosing was the Shadowfax: One Eye Shiraz 2004.

Now intellectually, i know this wine is a cellaring project. That is, it's made to get some years on it. I know this, you know this. But it's also the most expensive wine i've ever bought, so i'm more curious about whether or not there are taste differences immediately noticeable. More on that later.So, why did i choose this wine? Well, i like the packaging. So much wine out there is just godawful to the eye. AND IT'S NOT A BOOK SO I CAN JUDGE IT BY IT'S COVER.
But i can also tell you, the fact that the winery is named 'Shadowfax' was a big deciding factor for me. What can i say, i love The Lord of the Rings. Big time. Oh yeah, Shadowfax was Gandalf's horse.

Now this is doubly amusing, because just three days ago, who should walk through Duty Free but Orlando Bloom and Miranda Kerr. This is amusing because Orlando Bloom is actually better known as:
Legolas. Who in Lord of the rings, the movie, strangely only talks in haiku's.

"The Red Sky at dawn

Means Bloodshed at Morning

Frodo stole a boat"

Anyway, i'm not big with celebrities, i don't go crazy or anything, unlike some of the people i work with. But i got caught out here, because the Qantas staff hustled them right near my counter, like arms distance, and i'm staring at them trying to work out who they are. Like, not even 'who is that celebrity' more like 'did i go to school with that guy?' I only worked it out just about the same time that Mr Bloom casually looked my way, and at that exact instant my brain flashed 'Ohhhh Legolas' and i made a face very similar to this:

Poor guy. Must have been the most terrifying thing to happen to him in Australia. Anyway, later that day i also saw 'Alf' from Home and Away. Shrieked like a little girl i did.

Oooh ooh. But the very best thing that happened to me was back when i think the second season of Australian Biggest loser was on. Bridget was quite into it, so therefore i also watched it like every night (shame). Our workplace would also play in its loop of horror CD the themesong to The Biggest loser which was Shannon Gnoll's (i think i spelt that wrong) song 'Lift'. Anyway, so i'm standing at my counter, staring into space (my counter is situated right at the front where you have to come through security, therefore i see everybody) and i see the US trainer Bob and Jillian come through. Bob and Jillian kinda started the show, and also appear sporadically in the Australian one.

Anyway, so just as they start to walk into the store, the first chords of 'lift' start to play, and i completely space out, thinking that i'd somehow been transported into an episode of 'The Biggest Loser'. So i kinda got dizzy, and then laughed out loud really really loudly, and they looked at me kinda puzzled, then heard the music, and then looked incredibly uncomfortable. It was excellent.

So. Where was I. Yes, so i have this wine. And a few days ago, it was me and Bridget's four year anniversary.

So therefore we drank the wine. And man-oh-war it was awesome. There were these incredibly sweet and tart raspberry flavours, and just overall it felt more complex than most wines i've had. The flavour came in layers, and each taste complemented the other. I also experimented with decanting this bottle, (after having a test run of what it tastes like un-decanted) and that also made a difference. Softened some of the harder, bitter notes. (i'm assuming the 'tannins' but i'm still hazy on tannins).

But yeah, we had an excellent dinner of garlic and chili prawn pizza and a chocolate tart. mmmm.

Have you ever had a reading experience that just makes you fall in love with prose all over again? I have. Namely, my first experience with Vonnegut, Dave Egger's Short Short stories, and Marquez. That's not to say i haven't enjoyed the hell out of other things, even perhaps rating them as amongst my favourite books etc, but with these particular examples, there's a conjunction of time and attitude and writing that just makes the reading experience like falling in love. Like, suddenly i remember why i constantly read.

Well, this just happened again, with Haruki Murakami. I remember in Uni, there was a short story of his in one of our readers. 'Landscape with a flatiron' i think it was called. At the time, i felt like it was well written, but just kinda bland. Didn't wow me.

Anyway, out of ennui, i picked up one of Bridget's compilations of his stories "Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman" and started reading. Shazam! The title story opens it, and is an excellent window in Murakami's prose. I found myself absolutely spellbound. The prose is flawless, the plot balanced. I feel like i could read him forever. And then wonders of wonders, many of the stories are hilarious. I actually could read that compilation again, because there are a large number of stories, and while each is individually compelling, i always raced onto the next one. Off the top of my head, i can remember 'The Ice Man' perfectly. Am i saying it's my favourite? No. I don't think so. It just stuck into my head, and every so often reminds me that it still exists. Murakami has such a broad range in this collection, that i almost feel i couldn't pick. Truly a wonderful, wonderful experience.

As soon as i finished that, i rushed out to 'Better read than dead' in Newtown (Sydney) and picked up a bunch of new books. Among them is 'Kafka on the Shore' by Haruki Murakami which i'm now nearing the end of.

There was a slight adjustment needed coming from his short stories. His novel pace is more measured, so i felt slightly lagging in the beginning. That passed quickly, and swiftly i was drawn into a plot of surprising simplicity on the outside, but amazingly complex the more it develops. Following the tale of Kafka Tamura, a fifteen year old runaway, we discover a world of symbolism and metaphor governing reality. I may be obsessed with magical realism, but hey, there's a whole new study here. I'm not going to give away any more plot, because that's really not my bag, but i will say i utterly loved Nakata, a slightly simple man who can talk to cats who plays the hero in this story. Excellent character. Altogether, my life feels richer having discovered how much i enjoy Murakami, and i feel like a greedy dragon when i consider just how many novels of his i have yet to read. On my shelf looking at me with a beady eye is a collection of short stories which Murakami himself edited called 'Birthday stories'. If you ask me really nice, i'll probably talk about that next post. Which will probably be sooner than this one took. I have three scripts i'm working on at the moment, which is awesome fun, but really keeping me busy.

So, i realised the other day i'm very self possessed in this, and really don't open much out to the readership. Hi! If you would like to drop a comment, please do. Alternately, if you have a wacky tale of wine or books you want to share, consider emailing it to me, (patricklenton@gmail.com)and i'll post it. 'The Book i'm Drinking" now vaguely considering submission.

A one way time gate... into flavour

2009-05-19T00:59:00.000-07:00

In this post I discuss age. I hear a lot of people talking about how they wish they were children again. As if one could go in a ‘time portal’ back into their youths. Personally I wouldn’t. But periodically I indulge in certain activities and pastimes- especially in reading, that young Patrick truly reveled in. But aren’t we, as children, just like a young Riesling? Sure, you can identify the traits that will make a great wine/person- but they are covered almost overwhelmingly with acid. Yep. Children in acid- it’s going to happen one day. I mean, yes, children are fine, and so are young Rieslings for casual drinkings (umm. yeah) but aren’t we more excited to find out how we age, and our acids interact with our fruits? I am.

The Sage of the Exiles by Julian May

Picture this: Earth has been inducted into a Galactic Milieu, a kind of giant space club for different species. What are the pre-requisites? The outbreak of operant mental power amongst great proportions of said species. Operant mental powers basically means telepathy and telekinesis and all that jazz. What are the other species in this Galactic Milieu? Well there’s the Simbiari, these kind of green, phlegm dripping fish people, or the Poltroyan’s, purple leprechauns basically, and the Krondaku, giant space octopuses who love whisky. Let’s not forget the hermaphroditic Gi, who kind of look like Big Bird covered in penises and vulvae and last but not least, the ‘Overlords’ of the whole shebang, the insubstantial Lylmik. What are the benefits for humanity? Increased technological knowhow, thousands of planets to colonize and the complete lack of war, famine, disease and poverty. Nice! What is the catch? Humanity will eventually form a mental ‘unity’ with their alien brothers, in which a mystical mind to mind family is formed. Now that’s almost all the backstory you need to even understand the beginning of the plot. Except- of course, humanity being irksome and weird, a large rebellion formulates, rejecting the Milieu’s governance of humanity, based partly on lack of human will and fear of the indescribable unity. Rebellion eventually becomes led by a breakaway group of operants (only the operants really hold any power in this society, as pretty much everybody is genetically evolving this traits) and becomes kinda sidetracked with this whole eugenics scheme (this whole story is told in May’s ‘Galactic Milieu Trilogy’) they blow up a planet using their minds, get stopped by this dude with no body, actually end up kickstarting humanity into the very ‘Unity’ they so fear, and are roundly defeated. The few remaining remnants of the rebellion are shepherded to France where they go through a one-way time portal back to the Pliocene era (about sixty million years ago I believe).

Now, the time gate is a scientific anomaly with little practical purpose. It can’t be duplicated, isn’t adjustable, and if you go through it, you are stuck in the Pliocene. And the Pliocene is basically really boring, no dinosaurs, and not even early man. Just little monkey things. So it’s really not seen as a big scientific deal, just a curiosity. Until people start going through it. In this big, new, galactic society, there are only a small number of rejects. Most people are very happy. Others get fixed up by the psychic mindhealers, or given useful jobs. Incorrigable criminals are docilated or euthanised. But there the misfits. The people who still hold onto outdated religious beliefs. The perverted. The suicidal, the broken hearted. They decide that a one way gate to an untouched garden of Eden sounds perfect. For years they are smuggled through by Madame Guderian, the widow of the inventor. But later, after she herself goes through, the government takes over and in fact encourage certain miscreants to go through. Although no operants are allowed, and women have to be sterilized.

So, for decades and decades thousands of misfit humans go through the time gate, ready to live out there little fantasies. What I love is that many dress up anachronistically for the occasion, like Vikings or pirates etc. Some go to set themselves up as wine growers in primate burgundy (the time gate is centered in France btw).

But of course, everything gets fuck off weirder, and we discover that Pliocene Earth is actually controlled by a species of aliens, namely the Tanu and their antagonistic cousins the Firvulag. The Tanu are roughly seven foot tall, vaguely golden skinned humanoids. The Firvulag are shape-changing goblins and ogres. What will our intrepid species do next?????

That’s all I’m spoiling, because to continue will give away too many plot points. And the plot is amazing. I’m sorry for spoiling certain parts of the Galactic Milieu trilogy as well, but I was very vague and there is so much more.

So, what do I love so much about these books? Well, I don’t really like sci-fi. But these have a lot of fantasy techniques in them. For example, the Tanu and Firvulag, are also societal misfits, a breakaway group who escaped their own galaxy to continue with their outdated anachronistic battle-religion. So they basically came to Pliocene earth to fight each other in big wars, with swords and shields and shit. Also, just to stir shit up, they have these necklaces which make their latent mind powers become usable (everyone is latent in mind powers to a certain extent). So they also fly around summoning fire and attacking minds and whatnot.
AWESOME. ROLLICKING AWESOME FUN!

This is the order i recommend you read these books in.

And you know what gets me? Julian May knows exactly the appeal this has for us. That’s what these books are kinda about. They encourage you to go into your own time gate, and enjoy things that perhaps as educated, civilized semi-adults, we maybe shouldn’t. But I recommend you do. It’s a kicker of a tale. Some of my favourite characters include Aiken Drum, a human trickster who takes the Pliocene Tanu dominated world by storm with his impudent bravado and enormous metafaculties, or Felice, a psychopathic huntress type figure who ends up CAUSING THE MEDITERRANEAN WITH HER BRAIN. And even Basil, a real unassuming human type, who doesn’t do much in the story, but came back to the Pliocene to climb mountains, because there are Alps which are even double the size of Everest. And the mind powers are fun.
5/5 on the awesome scale.

Folks, I have a confession to make. I drink and read faster than I can blog. So what I’m really giving you, is the books and wines I find interesting enough to write about. Hence a little experiment.

The Riesling effect!

So I like a good white wine. As an amateur wine fiend, with a distinctly uneducated pallet, it’s sometimes easier for me to detect the kind of flavours that I should be looking for in wine with the whites. I have a pretty good handle on lots, but I keep getting very confused with Riesling. Is it sweet, is it floral, is it citrus? What’s going on here?
However when talking to Don the wine guru at work, he mentioned that Rieslings are expressive, which apparently means the taste is defined by its region.

Anyway, I’m going to muddle into things with a comparison of two wines, namely the Brown Brothers Crouchen and Riesling 2008

and the Leuwin Estate Art Series Riesling 2007.

Now, Brown Brothers sells incredibly well in Duty Free, with a high proportion of our Asian customers looking for sweet wine. We sell huge proportions of their Moscato and Dolcetto and Syrah. There other varieties seem to get sold along with them. Now the Crouchen and Riesling just doesn’t seem to get the love. And I for one, wouldn’t know how to sell it. For one thing- What the hell is a crouchen? It sounds like some sort of action.
Ok so when I smell it, I get a kind of sweet pear smell. Also, I think I may have just smelt that ‘mineral’ smell that wines talk about. Or maybe it’s all that quartz in my room. Who knows? Centrifugal.

Now when tasted, damn, that’s sweet. I’m not a huge fan of sweet wines. But this definitely has a sweetness that falls short of dessert wine syrupiness. Instead of jams, the fruit flavours… which is apricot and a bit of peach, taste like dried fruit. Yup, got that kinda dried fruit fruitiness going on. Which is sweet. It is an acidic wine as well, with sweet burst on your tongue, that goes slightly acidic and bitter at the end. It’s the end note that means I can keep drinking this, and not treat it like a liqueur.

Now, according to the internet, crouchen is a variety of Riesling grape, grown predominantly in south Africa and Australia. Interesting! Often called Clare Riesling. I think it’s where the sweet comes from, because other Australian Riesling is less sweet.

Now, I approached Guru Don about this, and he basically laid it all out with the Brown Brothers Riesling. They halt fermentation early to up the sugar level, meaning there is a larger percentage of sugar in the wine. He gave all sorts of percentages and figures. But roughly (and badly remembered) the human palate can taste sweetness at around 4mg of sugar. This wine probably has over double that, at least.

Leuwin Estate. First off, I love the bottle. I recommended this wine to countless customers, based simply off its appearance. But I told them that. I didn’t lie. Let’s keep in mind that this wine is about $15 dollars more than the BB. Upon the smelling, there is a subtle sweet fruit smell. Like quince, says Bridget. I’ll have to take her word. Then the taste. Oh the acid. It’s like having delicious acid thrown into your face. “You know what I do to whores who disobey my rules… Candy? I do this!” (SPLASH) “Oh thankyou, you are the best pimp ever.” And there are lime and lemon flavours predominantly. No sugar. Don (who, let’s face it, supplies all the actual wine learning and knowledge to this blog, which I just regurgitate up with chunks of whimsy) says that an aged premium Riesling, up to ten years, something well made like this, completely changes in flavour. All the strong acids, mellow into lactic acids and mingle with the citruses, making a naturally sweeter and mellower wine. I’m intensely curious! But this wine is still enjoyable to drink now, being more tart than anything else.