Big Decisions

I'm really quite bad at decisions. It is the inner commitment-phobe. The one that doesn't like options getting shut off, doors being closed, opportunities being missed. I hate decisions. I like having choices.

I got offered a job opportunity at The Boy Factory last week. It wouldn't make me a permanent employee (yet), but it would make me a fairly permanent fixture at the Factory for at least the next 6 years (if I wanted it). I agonised over it all over the weekend. Questions raised of what I want to do with my future, where do I want to be...

The problems with living in West Bubblefuck don't really extent much beyond the fact that I really find it difficult to live with my parents. Sure the cinema is rubbish, the theatre is only starting to take off now and there are some pretty decent cafes. I have actually found some new friends (sounds so lame, right?) and am feeling like I am connecting to the community a bit with the Mighty U13s.

And there isn't really anywhere else I would rather be. I don't really want to live in Sydney. I can't get a job in Newcastle - because that is where every other bugger wants to work. The other coastal centres where I have mates seem to have withered on the friendship vine or they are ab out to leave themseleves.

So I decided to stay. I am the Year Coordinator for the Class of 2015. And the people high up in the Boy Factory have promised to find me almost permanent work for that time.

The Hardest Thing I Had To Do All Weekend

As far as I am concerned, there is Only One Radio Station. Triple J.

I have always hated ads. No, wait, let me qualify that. I have always hated the kinds of ads that are not clever, not witty, not trying to achieve any other purpose than the lowest common denominator, that being the highest possible profit. The shouty, the repetetive, the badly scripted or poorly acted ads make me want to vomit and stab something at the same time. Preferably stab something with my vomit, just to be efficient. (wow. that is really gross. apologies.)

Every year, JJJ have a music poll to determine the best song of the previous 12 months. It started in 1989 as a "What is the best song of all time?" kinda poll. Joy Division, Love Will Tear Us Apart. The list is here The next year's list looked alarmingly similar. And in 1991 Kurt and the Seattle fellas knocked The Div off #1. (They still came 2nd though, as can be seen here.) And from 1993 they have had a Hottest Song Of The Current year kinda thing happening. As the years have gone by, what with the advent of the internet etc, the process has become larger, more homogeonised and generally caused a great deal of controversy. 1998, the black year, the year that shall not speak its name (mostly because years don't say anything at all).

The playing of the Hottest 100 on Australia Day has become a cultural tradition - a way for the now generation to ignore the Invasion Day conundrum, and set about doing what Australians do best on public holidays - get pissed and hedonistic.

Baydo's "bucks" barbeque, the day before the wedding day, was more of a family cricket/barbie/hottest 100 party in Cathie. Simon has a notorious party which I am still yet to make it to in Clovelly. I have in the last few years, tended to sit around with my bro in the air conditioning in the lounge room listening and taking bets on the top ten.

And every few years (this year is 20 years since year 1) the wise musical folks at the Js have another Hottest 100 of All Time to test the Musical waters of the Australian Youf. Voting has been open for about 6 weeks. And it closed about 12 minutes ago (gah! I should go to bed!).

I have, in true Danne style, been pontificating and procrastinating on the voting in this poll. The concept of choosing but 1o songs to represent me, my musical democratic vote, reflective of what I listen to, what I believe is good art and who I am as a person. Yes, I probably take it way too seriously. But I have been listening to this station since 1994, I feel like I have invested a large chunk of my adolescence into this radio network and it informs who I am as a human being. (did I mention I know I am taking this way too seriously?)

I sat down tonight to nut out my list. It was a little bit hellish. And yes, I know there are people who are accidentally slamming their octagenarian father's thumbs into car doors on the way back from doctors appointments (get my capacity for guilt from my mother) and I know there are people who have to start full time work with a completely inappropriate new boss, and I know there are people who have just found at that their recent ex has knocked up his new missus, and I know there are kids who I will teach tomorrow that have to deal with abuse, and hearing impairments, and attention defecit disorders. But for tonight... for tonight, this was the most pressing and most plaguing issue of the moment.

The first short list was 121 songs long.
So I culled. All the songs that I just Liked.
The second short list was 42.
And the third was 31.

At 22 I culled Queen & David Bowie, The Beatles, Jeff Buckley and Rage Against the Machine.

I ended up with the list below. By all means it is not exhaustive. In fact, the greatest artists of the last 3 generations are not really represented. It is not The Hottest Artists of All Time. Enough of the excuses.

You Am I - Purple Sneakers

This song is what I listed as #1, mostly because I started with You Am I, and culled it down to The Sneaks from 5 songs. The reason that I listed on the site was something trite about the song being representative of Sydney and its sound, of growing up in the 1990s, and of the beginning of the rennaissance on Australian music. Plus, Tim Rogers is a beautiful tortured soul who can spin and lyric and lick like a master weaver. I wish I was him.

Bloc Party - I Still Remember

Previous posts have alluded to the joys of this song on the road. This whole album is a killer for roadtrips to the city, and even though it came out well after I was in London, the sounds of his voice are woven into my memories of Kilburn and West Hampstead and Finchley road. Plus it is a song that makes me lament lost love with a smile on my face.

Bob Dylan - Subterranean Homesick Blues

I got my love of music from my folks, and I specifically got my love of raspy Bob from my dad. This jangly spangly number with the iconic placard video clip is the one that I loves best from Dylan.

The Cure - Friday I'm in Love
Vid here
Remember Vidiot? Music quiz show on ABC in the 90s. They played the clip from this song as the basis of a series of questions, and I fell in love with Robert Smith and his smeary lipstick. Yeah, the upbeat nature of this track doesn't really reflect the back catalogue of The Cure, but I love it anyway. I also love the tshirt of this song, and am desperate for it to be reprinted so I can purchase and wear pictoral representations of its repetetive but sweet lyrics.

Damien Rice - Cannonball

This song is Dublin and Derry and Belfast. It's internet radio at the casting studios in London. It's belting out drunkenly in the flat in Bondi. It's the very damaged songwriter who doesn't greet his audience at The Enmore, and sings like his sould is written into the notes of the tune. Yeah, it's soppy and bordering on emo, but I love it. (warning: there is poo shots in this clip)

Franz Ferdinand - Take Me Out
Vid here
If I was to make a list of top 10 things that make me smile no matter what, the tempo change at the beginning of this song would make the list (along with peeling the top off the butter... there, we're up to 2 already!). Alex and the gang were the subject of my wee bro's music viva voce - that is he talked about the theory of how post-punk is an amalgamation of punk riffs and disco beats. Me, I wanted to hear about how these two disperate subcultures from the 1970s could possibly be married into music in the new millenium, but apparently that wasn't the point. Another artist that is bound up in memories of London. But also gave a belting set at the Enmore a few years ago, and it was difficult to narrow the choice down to just one FF track. TMO is lucky (lucky lucky you're so lucky!!). Also, a very Scottish band. In no way are they Aussie. Just to be clear.

Machine Gun Fellatio - Unsent Letter

I didn't know who sung this haunting song for a long time. And then Love is a four letter word came out (previously swooned about), and Pinky Beecroft was involved in the killer soundtrack of that show. This song is about lamenting and confusion and the twisting of truth in the mouth and the brain and the lack of reality that exists in human interaction. Plus it reminds me that I have about a million unsent letters. Most of those are also unwritten too.

Paul Kelly - To Her Door

I've seen Paul play about half a dozen times - twice in the UK, and a few times in Tamworth. He is Australia's most brilliant song writer, even if his voice is too nasal, too ocker, too Aussie. An antipodean answer to Bob Dylan. This is a 3 minute narrative about the inception, destruction and resurrection of a relationship, of a family and of a man. It explores domestic violence, unemployment, alcoholism... Plus there is a swearword in it. I love a good curse in a love song.

Pearl Jam - Better Man

Representing the slick of grunge that runs through the veins of every person who was a teenager in the 90s. Nirvana won this poll the last 2 times it was run, and I don't know what the odds are, but I think they will do well again this year. I was always more of an Eddie girl than a Kurt chick. He is more mellow and his grungy angst was actually more for show than Kurt's messy ways - he named his daughter Francis Jellybean, I mean seriously! (this is not to mention the addictions, the suicide or the marriage to Courtney Love). And sure, Vedder's voice might resemble something of a tryhard layer on the mike, or a need to drink less dairy to deal with the mucusy membrane (ew, Danne, gross!) but Pearl Jam were really my grunge band of choice at the time when it was flannos and long dirty hair and torn jeans.

Powderfinger - My Kinda Scene
Vid here
Another of the Great Australian Rock Bands, they make consistently perfect music, and always have. I love seeing them live - they played at the first gig I ever went to - Crowded House's Farewell to The World (along with my other 2 favourite bands at the time, You Am I and Custard). Their gigs are always phenomenal. Bernard Fanning and his multitonal voice makes me want to cry and squeal and dance and shake my long red hair all over my eyes (maybe he is the reason I went ranga...?). Odyessy #5 is a brilliant album. This one is not wound up in memories of London, but memories of before London - of the halcyon days of Astolat and Moonlight Cinema and giant house parties with the beer in the clam shell paddle pool.

More like Stagnation Street

I have finally finished reading Revolutionary Road. Still haven't seen the flick, and really the only reason that I bought the book was the fabulous cover art.

Apparently this is the greatest novel written about the death of the American Dream. (according to the Daily Tele pull out on the published website, so yeah... grain of salt). And it may well be the greatest novel of that type. Except for the fact that I don't much like reading stories about the death of the American Dream.

Frank & April Wheeler are in a fairly loveless marriage in the doldrums of suburbia, being Baby Boomers going against their parents (what is left of them) and trying to fight against the restrictive conventional lifestyle perameters that they are pretending they haven't constructed for themselves. April resents the career as an actress that she never had, and Frank riles against his boring office job, all the while not actually being capable of defining what it is that he would rather be doing.

The antagonistic relationship between the Wheelers is the kind of relationship that makes me feel warm and fuzzy on the inside with the knowledge that I am single. While most of the novel is written from the perspective of Frank, his interpretations of his wife's words and actions is so repulsive and repugnant. I don't know whether it entirely reflects Richard Yates' opionion of women, or whether it is the character alone speaking. Frank's obsession with the concept of what it is to be a man is near nauseating. But again, probably an accurate representation of the post-industrialist schism of identity and masculinity.

The plot follows the actions over the course of the year, flashing back to the reasons the couple are so maladjusted, back to childhood abandonment and involvement in war. As though it was some kind of explanation for screeching arguments, for sexual infidelity, for abhorent treatment of their parochial neighbours. Generally the characters in this novel behave in despicable ways.

As a general rule (d0 most other people have rules about what text types they like their protagonists to lean on the side of good or evil??) I love a play that has a slightly evil hero. I particularly love to work on plays where the good guys are actually downright bastards (see The Women or Sexual Perversity in Chicago). But when I read a novel, when there is a character in my psyche, as there has to be in a novel, when there is a Frank or April Wheeler rattling around in my imagination,, making me identify with them, I like my central characters to be pretty darn good. Not flawless. Not perfectionists. Slightly flawed is fine, but I have to like them.

I didn't find RR as depressing as I thought I would. It wasn't as confronting or as special or even as engaging as I had hoped - what with all the "masterpiece" hype I had read about it. Reading Rev Rd became more of a chore than I like my rec reading to be. And again, Yates' imagery is great, and his obsession with descriptions of lips is simultaneously engaging and annoying. But it didn't make me want to run out and rent Rev Rd, despite the fact that I love a good fifties frock in a film.

The World Game

I love sport. For some reason, I got all the sport loving genes, and my little bro got none. At all.

I love to watch sport, to play sport (but only with a round ball), to talk shit about sport (and attempt to keep up with the sport-shit-talking athletes that are my friends).

And while I think that Australia, and more specifically The Boy Factory, puts too much credence on Sport in general, I do think it is important. It is a pretty amazing feature of our culture. A unifying force in a community. Sport has the ability to create a sense of Belonging (there's that word again...), a sense of family, a sense of common purpose. And yes, it is a crutch that we as a young nation lean upon too heavily to define ourselves. And yes, there are many other facets of our culture and our community that deserve as much or more airplay than sport does.

But I still love it.

And the game I think I love the most, is the Real Football. The one you play with your feet. The World Game. Soccer.

I was once a Sweeper for the Avalon Open Womens seconds team (and later played this for Baxter College girlies). I have never had a huge amount of pace, or ball skill. But I like to think I made up for this in determination to defend - which I can't seem to summon in attack (turns out I work better under conditions of desperation) - and my ample voice - and ability to boss people around.

One of The Most Disappointing things about moving Back To West Bubblefuck is the fact that there is NO women's soccer comp. And while I always talk about West Bubblefuck being a backward hick town (as, indeed, I am right now), I actually think it is big enough to support at least one division of women's football. (Yes, there is a mixed indoor comp, which reminds me I should try to reconnect with that...).

And in order to get a fix of football in my life, I am the Proud Coach of the Mighty Under 13s, who are actually not doing all that badly considering they haven't played together very long, and they don't play as a team until about half way through the second half. I love my boys, and I love prowling the side line on a sunny winter's day, belowing instructions. Even if it does mean a death to weekends away for duration of the season.

West Bubblefuck, and again, in particular, The Boy Factory, doesn't hold Soccer in the highest of esteem. It is "the pussy sport", "the girly game", "faggot ball". This same level of scorn is only reserved for gAyFL. Not only does it show their small mindedness when it comes to sports of the less ruck-and-maul nature, but it also reveals their less-than-latent sexism and homophobia.

The only other fix is watching the game on tele. And seeing as pay tv is a bit like a dirty word in our house, I can't watch the A League. And bloody Fox poached the World Cup Qualifiers from SBS, thwarting my democratic right to watch my national team play.

They have never been a pretty team to watch. Scrappy and argy-bargy with barely a tenuous hold on the ball everytime it comes their way. But I love them anyway. I missed the Qatar game, mostly because it was after my bed time. And I missed the Bahrain (sp?) one because I was exhausted, it was the middle of Report Hunting Season and our family fleet of cars was so depleted that I couldn't get into town to a pub if I wanted to.

So then we played Japan. The Rivals of the Pacific Rim. And despite the fact that friends to accompany me to the pub are fairly thin on the ground in Tamworth, I was determined to watch it. So I took my dad to the Longyard for an overpriced steak, to sit in front of a flat screen to watch the game.

We were the ONLY ones watching it in the first half. For the first 15 minutes, we couldn't get a picture for more than 2 and a half minutes at a time, interspersed with info screens about faults of smartcards of some bullshit. Faulty Austar smartcards (misnomer, anyone?) would NEVER happen during a Socceroos game. But in backwaters like West Bubblefuck, the chances of watching Your National Team play one of the other biggest teams in Asia (cause we're in Asia, now, didn't you know?) whittle away to zilch. Finally Dad got the ex-student from behind the bar to accost another customer into solving the problem.

And the game was as I expected. Scrappy. Messy. Frustrating. A little bit like watching the Mighty U13s, with the big kicks forward to nobody, and the honeypot bunching. Japan were a better team on the day. Our goals were incredibly lucky, with Timmy Cahill - or as Pim calls him The Phantom, or as my Sidekick Supercoach says "he deserves a lycra suit and a cape and a big S on his chest" - being in the perfect place at the perfect time with the perfect hit.

But then the Japanese goal was similarly lucky.

I went home a happy little soccer fan.

Let's hope tomorrow brings a similarly happy soccer Supercoach!

Snot Factory

One of the nastiest things about being a teacher is being exposed to germy germy children. On top of coughy family and sniffly workmates.

Casa del Levy has been swarming with nasties, seemingly for about 10 weeks now. The Brother, The Father and Myself seem to be passing infections with the athletic precision of the 1st XIII that are so revered at The Boy factory.

The English staff at said Boy Factory has been similarly sharing, almost to a point of proving that Communism can actually work in practise.

This is the 3rd time in about 8 weeks that my own personal Snot Factory has been producing round the clock, quality grade product. I'm pretty much over it. I even had the day off school yesterday.

It is certainly one of the bug bears of the job...

Die Welle

It is not often that the Movie is Better Than The Book. Despite what my students say.

As I've already mentioned, I'm teaching The Wave to Year 10 this term. On top of their graphic novel speeches and our Friday discussion of The Chaser and Satire. They are a top class, and most of them are really mature minded and very intelligent. This unit is about a comparative study between the book and the film.

They didn't much like the book. And quite rightly too. The only thing that really interested me about the book is the subject matter - teacher experiments on his class with the notions of autocracy, to disasterous effects. Plus that whole compulsory obsession with the Holocaust that it seems only English teachers have (or maybe the obsession has just been eeked out of the other teachers (esp the History ones) because of restrictive and prescriptive syllabi that lead to rote learning and other such pedagogical disasters... Oops, got a little ranty there). The novel is not really well written, the characterisations and descriptions are less than engaging and the shifting perspective is beige at best.

And last night I watched the film.

The originial incident happened in California, and as such, the book is set in the US. But the film is in Germany. Making this story less about "dictatorships could happen where you are" and more about "dictatorships could still happen in a society that knows they are bad news". The whole question of German guilt is always one I have found fascinating, and the film touches on in, without making it the subject of the story.

Jorgen Vogel is fantastic as Rainer Wenger the teacher who is torn between professionalism, the respect of his stuffy workmates and the connection with his students (hmmm...?). The saturated colours, punk soundtrack and Wenger's fantastic collection of tshirts, combined with the hand held camera work and low budget European beauty give this film edge, character and street cred.

It diverges from the book quite a bit, which is a good thing. The film makers have taken what little character development is in the novel and run with it, creating characters that are annoyingly adolescent and readl.
Plus, it is a waterpolo film - and there aren't many of them about!

The weak ending of the book is completely re-worked to make it 21st century relevant.

So long as I can get my Year 1o "smart" kids to read subtitles, it should be a hit!

Little Ray of

I love independent film. I love a good tale without explosions or CGI with characters that you want to take home and drink tea with them and introduce them to all your friends, and possibly share recipes for brownies. (Don't get me wrong, I also love seeing things blown to bits and pieces, and CGI creatures that look like they could tear off your face with ease). Living in West Bubblefuck limits the opportunities to see these indie gems. And so, with a trip to The Big Smoke, I grabbed the opportunity for a Sunday Arvo trip to The Ritz.

And found this baby.

Sunshine Cleaning is a darkly funny, hilariously sad story with the pointier famous Adams, Amy (as opposed to Rachel Adams, rather than Wednesday Addams) as Rose, a single mum fuddling her way through a start up forensic cleaning business. Emily Blunt is so delicious has the dubious and damaged sister Norah. And she is so much sweeter and realer as the vulnerable dropkick rather than the neurotic twisted roles with slightly British accents that if she doesn't always seem to take, then she has often enough for me to pigeon hole her there. Yes, I'm thinking of The Devil Wears Prada. Of course Alan Arkin is fabulous, as always. And surreptitiously taking the whole show off the table, putting it in his pocket and running off to steal other things too is Jason Spevack. Tiny nosed and freckled with eyes that look like he stole them off either a puppy or a doe. I remembered him from a somewhere (later discovered to be Perfect Catch, the slightly surprisingly OK US remake of Fever Pitch), and his wee gorgeous little charisma is like gravity for your eyes through the whole film.

It is the kind of film that touches on lots of pretty heavy stuff, but doesn't get too weighed down by any of them. Yes, death, grief, hopelessness, shattered dreams, coping without a limb, dealing with high school reunions and the loss of innocence are all pretty chokingly serious notions. And while you are almost wracked with sobs, you start to giggle at something else. The beautiful performances make this story so engaging and beautiful. And the script gives the audience the credit to make decisions for themselves - like we can't really be sure who Oscar's father is. Plus how hilarious is forcing your sibling to fall face first into a stinking rotting blood soaked mattress?

I don't have a sister. Sisterhood is a well trodden film subject - the connection of blood ties and responsibility. In Her Shoes attempted to make me care about the sisterly love (or lack thereof) between a dowdy Toni Collette and an irresponsible Cameron Diaz. And instead it just shat me. The only people I know that managed to like that film (and don't get me wrong, I have nothing against tatty trashy films, I just couldn't even really like this one for what it was) all have a sister. The similarities between this and that film are there.Maybe it is because that was actually a shit film, made by a big studio with no point other than Box Office Cash. Possibly because In Her Shoes was directed by a middle aged man who has never felt a sisterly connection either, whereas Sunshine Cleaning has no such middle-aged man fingerprints on it.

Right throughout the film, I was reminded of Little Miss Sunshine (which I also love love). For more than just the solar link in the title. And Alan Arkin. The lighting, the tone, the je ne say qua (i love my fluent French). But the preview reveals that it is the same producer! (plus it is plastered across the top of the poster...) I guess if the same boss is on 2 films, you might end up with some similarities...