October, 2010

Last night, Radio National recorded a captivating conversation on books and gardens, including two of Australia’s best-known gardeners — Stephen Ryan and Michael McCoy, and Terry Smyth — at the Wheelerbarrow Centre. (To be broadcast on the Book Show, Friday 29 October, or download the podcast, or watch the panel on the Wheeler video page [...]

Darko (the Wonder Poodle): Incorrigible Licker, Natural Beauty, Leaper on Laps in a Single Bound, Tap Dancer and Whirling Dervish, Stan‘s Best Friend.

That annoyed feeling you sometimes have when you have an issue with a book review — and there is no way to comment, damned dead-tree media. God forbid every review of a book you like is a cheersquad, but occasionally one smells that the reviewer has (i) overstepped the mark, (ii) is not telling us [...]

I mean, John Cale is 68(!) and he’s got fluoro pink dye in his hair; plus, he’s actually got hair. The concert (because Josh asked) My country friend Josh asked how I liked the John Cale concert. This was last Saturday as part of the Melbourne Festival. I’d been lured there by a fan in [...]

It’s a cool night and leaving the car you walk to St Carthage’s, a small church in leafy Parkville. A smallish group is converging, stamping their feet and turning their heads to the sky. You wait a few minutes until the usher beckons you forward. I hear a muffled thunder as if many people are [...]

Interviewer, posh rounded accent: ‘When you were starting out as a writer you were black, impoverished, homosexual. You must have said to yourself, Gee how disadvantaged can I get?’ (Watch his face animate) James Baldwin, replying: ‘No, I thought I hit the jackpot!’ (Audience laughter)  ‘It’s so outrageous you could not go any further, you [...]

Embedded within the thriving arts community called Advertising (the denizens look super cool), a refurbished old warehouse in Melbourne’s Richmond is the brand new space of a newish gallery, Block Projects. Their very basic old website is also in need of renovation (a little clue to how they’ve made ends meet over the last — [...]

Joan Sutherland, opera singer, born 7 November 1926; died 10 October 2010 The Celebrity Demise effect Unfortunate old joke: ‘I heard he died last night.’…’But I didn’t even know he was sick.’ Tony Curtis. Walter Cronkite. Er, Don Lane. A great fame is like an immortality, making static the old and famous while the rest [...]

I was lurking about Slog where I stumbled across this item from earlier today/yesterday: Someone Is Writing a Novel Right Now It started this (yesterday) morning in Seattle. As I watch Stacey Levine has typed out a bit of Chapter 6: Alexis waited for Linda, who had texted her as soon as Alexis had switched [...]

‘Shut up and look.’ — Hamlet’s sister ‘What shall we do, what shall we do with all this useless beauty?’ — Elvis Costello +++ +++