Author Jeff Lindsay is a big American – big features, big voice, nothing particularly subtle about him. With more than a passing resemblance to actor Stacy Keach, he’d probably have been typecast as a tough, world-weary cop, if his acting career had ever taken off (he scored a cameo as a policeman in season three of Dexter – “the first six-line actor ever with his own trailer"). His wife, Hilary (Ernest Hemingway’s niece), is imposing in her own way – smaller in stature, but with a demeanour that says she’s seen and heard it all before. Occasionally, she breaks into a cackle over something Jeff has said, though the joke isn’t immediately obvious, and it’s soon clear that, though looking at me, Jeff Lindsay is actually talking to her. They’re a tight unit, and one gets the impression that in their bad books would not be a good place to be. He is, after all, the creator of Dexter, the one-man manifesto on vigilante justice. 

Continue reading 'Jeff Lindsay: portrait of a serial writer'

While commentators stroke their chins clean off in an effort to ‘make sense’ of “Dickigate”, needlessly taking sides in affairs of the heart that clearly belong to others, an important lesson in the sexual realities of the 21st century is once again being obscured. It doesn’t matter that the girl in question is young (she’s of age and consenting) or that she might be fragile and in need of help (I don’t recall such sympathetic journalistic therapy being offered pro bono in the case of Corey Worthington, an obviously troubled 15-year-old kid who the national media crucified as a “moron” and an “idiot” back in 2008, and continue to humiliate to this day), because the lesson she should be encouraged to learn now is the same one from which women of all ages just can’t seem graduate, be they teens, twenty-somethings or middle-aged divorcees. It’s a lesson that should be taught in schools, preached from pulpits, magnetically pinned to fridges and relentlessly repeated by a caring media. It goes something like this: 

Continue reading 'The only lesson from “Dickigate” that matters'

Last night, I relented to the implorations of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and almost the entire fraternity of movie critics by going to see The King’s Speech. I am writing this today as both a message in a bottle and a warning, for while I do feel awfully lonely at present, I wouldn’t wish for anyone else to join me in making such a lamentable mistake. 

Continue reading 'The critics are wrong: The King’s Speech s-s-sucks'

On the weekend just passed, a family fun day – The Kid’s Day Out – was held at that sink of misery, the Homebush Stadium (I believe this arena has a corporate title, but, being that the corporation in question hasn’t paid me to advertise their business, it’s Homebush Stadium to me). Judging by some of the comments on the organiser’s Facebook page, the event was, for many, a day in Dante’s Inferno, complaints raging at everything from dangerous rides to the cruelty metered out by our nearest star. But the central grievance focussed on a certain choice of words in the event’s advertising, one that raises questions about why we bother having courts that prosecute for petty theft. 

Continue reading 'Access to this blog is free'

The occasional lists of “best albums of all time”, compiled by Rolling Stone and the like, routinely neglect a class of album that formed the bedrock of many a musical education. The K-Tel compilation albums of the 1970s were the product of a licensing deal between the notorious “as seen on TV” marketing giant and the record companies, the discs serving as artist samplers while providing a reason for K-Tel’s Record Selector. Of course, few of us who were kids in the 70s actually went out and purchased albums by the artists featured – $6.99 was an impossible sum to raise, let alone part with – and so were content to wait for the compilations to roll our way each birthday and xmas, our lofty opinions on the life and work of this artist or that often informed entirely by a single track cherrypicked for inclusion on these little musical smorgasbords, which were such great value (usually around 20 tracks for a few dollars less than your average charting album) that they often made up the bulk of most kids’ record collections. The record companies ultimately saw sense in cutting out the middle man and releasing compilations of their own (some of which feature below), but we still called them “K-Tel albums”, shorthand for “this is not really art”. I think I owned most of them - still own some - but today they’re pretty unobtainable. Here, belatedly, are the reviews they deserved. 

Continue reading 'Those “K-Tel albums” of the 70s'

Some time last year, Vera believes, her husband was kidnapped and executed, his lifeless body now dwelling beneath the lawn outside her window – she could probably find the exact spot, she says, if only she weren’t so bedridden. Meanwhile, an impostor has taken her good husband’s place by her bedside, where he now sits patiently, day and night, in wait for her affections. She’s not sure if it’s this man who dispatched the love of her life, or whether others did the dirty work for him, but he is responsible, there’s no doubt of that, and he now waits to reap the benefits. Most days, she just lies there and says little – she’s polite, even cheery at times, so as not to betray her suspicions to him – but sometimes it has been all she can do to not shout at him to go away. Her husband was devoted to her.

Continue reading 'A lost love story'

Brrp...brrp. Brrp...brrp…
“Hello?”
“"Hello."
“Who’s this?”
“It’s the National Heart Foundation in conjunction with the Cancer Council.”
“Oh, right. What time is it?”
“It’s 7.30.”
“Morning or night?”
“Morning. We’re just giving you a friendly wake up call.”
“Aw, Jesus $#@%ing wept...”

Continue reading 'A wake-up call'

Some eagle-eyed viewers might have noticed a novel feature of Anna Bligh’s press conferences lately; a grimacing, gesticulating presence to the immediate left of the Queensland Premier, translating her words into sign language for the deaf. For those of us fortunate enough to have no hearing impairment, it’s as absurdly distracting as a breakdancer at a funeral - so mesmerised am I by the almost Vaudevillian exhibition on screen that I no longer pay much attention to what the Premier is saying. Even the deaf might find it all a trifle unnecessary, considering they surely have access to closed captions, if they bother with TV at all. And, if the Queensland Government’s own information is correct, less than 3000 deaf people in the state use sign language. So what’s this grand demonstration all about? I suspect the answer to that question might be found in the rebounding fortunes of a certain man who might be the next President of the United States. 

Continue reading 'What those sign language interpreters are really saying'

Let’s consider exactly what our laws achieved for us on Saturday night past. On the one hand, we have outcome A: a normal, middle-aged bloke, with a wife and a child and a record with police that’s as white as snow, feeling for at least a few hours like he is in love with the entire world and all its apparatus. On the other hand, we have outcome B: that same normal, middle-aged bloke being plunged into public disgrace and shame, his wife too, their child primed for at least a week of humiliation at the hands of little bitches and bastards at school, a cop rewarded for gross pedantry, a choir of faces like bulldogs sucking nettles at a political press conference and everyone talking monolithic piles of bullshit. That our laws chose for us outcome B - a small epidemic of ugliness and lies over one man perhaps feeling good for a moment - is testament to what a madhouse we live in. 

Continue reading 'When agony triumphs over ecstasy'

While fossicking through old newspapers during my research for Australian Tragic, I came upon so many startling reports of suicide that I began noting down the names and details, with a view to investigating each of them further at some later date. I never did get around to it, and the list has remained in the bottom drawer of my desk ever since, occasionally crying out for my attention like some dungeon full of ghosts with grievances. I publish them today advisedly - those easily disturbed, or who might themselves be prone to the more drastic depths of depression, should certainly read no further than the list of telephone numbers at the bottom of this introduction - but I believe they serve to remind us that suicidal depression is not some unfortunate creation of modern therapy, and that life, with all its barbs and confusions, was not necessarily easier back in “uncomplicated times”. As a wise man once wrote:

They thought their lives insignificant, but, in fact, they instruct us in death, as we shake our heads and wonder why they did it, and know that we must never do the same. Listen to them - one can, in the words of Alan Feuer, “hear their whispers drifting down the hallway: Eat well, drink much, love whatever you can on that side of the pavement. These are things we know.”

• For help or information about suicide prevention, depression and other mental health issues:

Lifeline - 13 11 14 (24-hour help line)

SANE Australia on 1800 18 SANE (7263)
Beyondblue Info Line 1300 22 4636

Continue reading 'Some Suicides'

Everywhere one goes today, one hears the sound of regular people either outraged or bewildered by the leering presence of authority. There are cops with dogs at Newtown Station, making sure nobody’s got any fun in their pockets, faux cops at Sydney’s Luna Park, making sure nobody photographs the children, and uniformed baboons at your local pub, keeping alive the latter-day Aussie tradition that every peaceful night out must feature at least one ridiculous altercation with a bouncer. Just last week, a jog around my local athletics track was interrupted by a council worker, draped, naturally, in the harness of modern beautness, who demanded – I kid you not – that I cease my athletic behaviour lest I wear out the grass for others who might wish to engage in future athletic behaviour. With Australia Day approaching, it’s worth having a quick think about Australia’s apparent love affair with being told what to do. 

Continue reading 'Copland'

Up and running as both a Facebook page and an online petition is a movement dedicated to pressuring the Government to cancel this year’s Australia Day fireworks so as to “direct the allocated funds to victims of the 2011 floods”. So now it’s come to this; not content with having bullied and emotionally blackmailed each other out of our disposable cash, we are now flogging off the experiences of each other’s children in an effort to make ourselves feel – and look – better. What junkies for conspicuous altruism we are! 

Continue reading 'Crackers'

Back in June of 2010, the detention centre at Christmas Island full to bursting, the Federal Government began scouting for locations on the mainland where up to 1000 asylum seekers might be adequately housed. One of the options they discovered was a disused mining camp on the outskirts of a small country town, its empty huts, built to accommodate some just over 500 souls, as near to a perfect partial solution as could be found. The Immigration Department contacted the relevant town Mayor. Then all hell broke loose. 

Continue reading 'The little town that could’ve'

I’m amazed that the likes of Gerry Harvey and Solomon Lew have opened their doors to such jeopardy. Gerry is right when he suggests, as he did to the Sydney Morning Herald this morning, that the reaction to his campaign against online shopping betrays a general public that is nasty and cruel - the general public is indeed nasty and cruel, and that Gerry didn’t know this already beggars belief. Of course, Gerry himself isn’t such a person, and neither am I, but it doesn’t take much work to imagine what such bastards might be inclined to get up to if they begin to think that Gerry is derailing their good fortune. And if he thinks the worst that could happen is a boycott, he’s got another thing coming. 

Continue reading 'The shopper’s mutiny'