I Feel Love

Note for future DJ gigs: thinking to self “must remember order of songs so I can blog about it later” = HEIGHT of trainspotting lameness!

But anyway Michael was great and you certainly got your money’s worth; I left after about 4 1/2 hours of this set and he was still going. The first couple of hours were hard, Speicher-ish techno, not much I recognised apart from the brief respite of Superpitcher’s remix of MFA’s “The Difference it Makes”. Then after a very brief schaeffel interlude (”Personal Jesus” into “Love is Stronger than Pride” into Superpitcher’s magisterial “Irre”) it was Rex the Dog-ish electro for an hour or so, then a whole mixture of stuff, eg a Closer Musik-esque cover of Kylie’s “Slow”, then Closer Musik themselves with “Maria” (swoon!) and then The Streets’ “Blinded by the Lights” (!!…not sure this actually worked but it was a nice thought).

I had a great time but perhaps it didn’t quite match my (admittedly huge) expectations; possibly I would have liked a few more of Kompakt’s Greatest Hits, or even some more recognisably Cologne sounds–it was a bit more of a straight-up techno/house set than I would have expected. Also the dancefloor was small, crowded and extremely hot (summer finally seems to have hit). But it was fun to see the man himself in the flesh (what a waif of a chap he is!) and I hope he’ll be back this way soon.

A belated welcome back to The Minor Fall, The Major Lift, who has spotted one of the first of what will no doubt turn out to be an, er, I’d better say avalanche, of inappropriate tsumani metaphors. Someone should be keeping track! (I do see that Private Eye has for the time being replaced Warballs with Tsunamiballs.)

Good Lord: another ex-student! Fortunately, Mr Fop seems to be the kind of well-brought-up and above all well-educated young man who is a credit to his erstwhile lecturers. Indeed, I dare say that a starring role could be worked up for a Fop-based character in any future lightly-fictionalised Dead Poets Society-style account of my teaching career, perhaps as the straitlaced Arts/Commerce student who, inspired by my wisdom and glamour, ditched the accounting career and opted for a life of foppery instead. (I don’t know the facts and indeed I have no idea in which capacity I taught Mr Fop, but I imagine the true story is not dissimilar to this.)

I can’t remember who, but one blogger recently suggested that there should be a service set up where people can pitch ideas for books and then get other people to actually write them, with any profits to be shared. I think that’s an ace idea, and in fact I have a pitch not just for a novel, but for an entire new genre. You know how there’s been a spate of novels over recent years purporting to tell the previously “silenced” stories of women associated with famous men, real or fictional–Captain Cook’s wife, Vermeer’s model, Ahab’s wife, most recently Pinkerton’s sister, and so on, there are bloody dozens of them?

Well, hasn’t anyone realised that there’s a men’s movement out there just crying out for similarly compensatory fiction about marginalised men, to fuel their limitless appetite for righteous indignation and ressentiment? When are we going to get to hear the tragic (but ultimately inspiring) stories of Branwell Brontë, or Pierre Curie, or Leonard Woolf, or Denis Thatcher; shouldn’t the world know how they managed to get by in a society that conspired to keep them hidden in the shadows cast by their more famous sisters or wives? Or if you’re looking for examples from fiction–well, admittedly they’re harder to find, since literature about women does tend to have rather a lot of stuff in it about men, but then, are the men treated fairly? Was Wickham really all that bad, or is his caddish reputation just a result of the lack of understanding of the cultural pressures faced by a junior officer in the armed forces during the Regency period? And how about the story of what happened to Nora’s husband after she slammed the door–a single father struggling to raise his children after they’re been abandoned by their “deadbeat mum”?

Any of these novels would be a perfect stocking-filler for pussy-whipped, cuckolded and/or divorced men of all ages, so if anyone wants to get down to the writing, let’s talk profit-share arrangements.

Back from Grogblogging, a fun night and fantastic to finally meet Elanor and Guy (and Marty who is blogless and therefore linkless) as well as Mel, and to exchange brief hellos with various others including the redoubtable Agent FareEvader–discovered that Mel and AFE live on virtually the same street as me! (You could do an organised walking tour of North Melbourne landmarks, taking in their house, then the house where Montana Barbaro was found, then ending up at mine for afternoon tea).

Anyway, well done to the organisers, will definitely look forward to meeting people again (maybe somewhere we can actually hear each other! Er, thanks grandpa.) Oh and in case anyone was wondering, Whitebait and I are not a couple–as you’ll know if you read his blog, he’s blissfully attached elsewhere. Cute, though, isn’t he?

What was I thinking about with my IPod DJ choices, though? Deciding that I couldn’t in all conscience choose the obvious self-promoting Donna Summer number, I went all high concept and selected Siouxsie and the Banshees’ “Dazzle” and Basement Jaxx’s “Cish Cash” (featuring Siouxsie Sioux)–way too indie, I apologise.

OK, see this gorgeous EastEnders site that my friends Sarah and Mark do, where they write a concise and humorous synopsis of each episode? Well, can someone please start doing something similar for Neighbours? I’ll be your best friend! I finish work at 6.45 these days so I haven’t seen an episode this year; result: I have no idea who perished in the Lassiters fire, and I’ve completely missed the return of Paul Robinson!

There’s a drink in it for you at Grogblogging tomorrow night…

(I suppose I could set the VCR, but somehow it seems wrong to tape Neighbours, almost as if it might not actually work, surely it’s a show that can only be watched live…)

On another matter, tonight it was my misfortune to witness on TV a cricket match consisting of two twenty-over innings. I hope Channel Nine never broadcasts this kind of filth again. As if normal one-day cricket isn’t bad enough.

Golly (courtesy of Ausculture).

JESSICA SIMPSON’s father JOE made the singer promise to stay a virgin until she married, during a ceremony when she was twelve.

Simpson sr, who doubles as Jessica’s manager, handed the 24-year-old [I think this means the now 24-year-old] a promise ring and vowed to be the only man in her life until she married.

He explains, “I’m going to tell you how beautiful you are every day. Even when you make a mistake, you are someone special. And I am going to be that person until the day you find a man to do that in my place.”

Jessica – who married NICK LACHEY in October 2002 – then promised she would remain a virgin.

Joe adds,

“What better gift to give her husband? Never touched by another man.”

Mind you, no-one batted an eyelid when at the age of 12 I made a similar promise to my mother. And I’ve kept it to this day!

For God’s sake, how did I not know about THIS??? And more importantly who’s coming with me? (To Honkytonks I mean; with all due respect to psytrance hippies of my acquaintance, I might give the Rainbow Serpent thing a miss.)

Was watching Denys Arcand’s Love and Human Remains this evening on DVD and wondering why it seemed so very dated–apart from the early ’90s haircuts and “Rhythm is a Dancer” on the soundtrack (what a great tune!) and the overall sense of enormous daring about telling a story about GAY people and LESBIANS and omigod even a DOMINATRIX! But really, the one thing that made it seem most irrevocably set in the past was that everyone was forever finding phone boxes (remember them?) and calling people at home and leaving messages on their answering machines because they were out and therefore uncontactable. It was only ten or so years ago but social relations were completely primitive!

How can you single out one name? I’m going to anyway. RIP Troy Broadbridge.