so Sunday, when I was on the phone with Margaret Atwood...
So sue me. I was sick. and lazy. so I haven't updated in a while.
However, I bring you exciting news: Christine and I have embarked on a fascinating new career in the world of competitive charades. okay, not really. but I swear, we'd be awesome at it. We'd be raking in the big dough. It's a little known fact that in the heart of every large city lies a multi-tiered, round-robin charade tournament- a charadapalooza, if you will- where one can win tens of dollars. Please, don't be jealous, it's just a gift we were born with.
***
Last week (and into the weekend) I fell into the
Melbourne Writers Festival. It was wonderful. It was held mostly at the Malthouse, a multi-theatre complex. There are so many old buildings, factories, breweries here that were internally refurbished and given new purposes that you get to see the history of the city in layers, just by going out into the street. So inside the Malthouse, the large main theatre looks mostly like what you'd expect a regular theatre to look like. But in the side rooms/venues, you look up into the rafters and see old cranks and shafts and handles - next to speakers and curtains and lights with blue gels.
At this complex, there were about four different programs going on at any given point. In between sessions, the writers from the previous period would go to the bookshop set up on the mezzanine landing, called Reader's Feast. They sat in a row up against the railing of the balcony, gated off from the adoring hoards by little dog show fences. Like patient puppies we'd line up with our new purchases, waiting for our turns to head into the authors' corral row. At some points it was so crowded that a dozen or so writers would be at the little cafe tables in their corral, with fans in front of each, and a line still waiting. We'd end up tripping over the Blah-di-blah Prize Winner for This and the Amazing New Ooh-la-la Writer of That to get to "our" writer, with whom we'd chat for a few moments, and whom we wanted to sign the inside flap of our new favorite book with, "Halley, I know we only spoke for a few moments just now, but your comments on my work have given me new vision. Thank you. Sincerely, Brilliant Writer #24".
There was a bit of pretension, of course, but for the most part that was taken care of by the Aussie writers who were usually quick enough to point it out and make gentle spectacle of it. I went to some great sessions, including one on the prevelence of bullshit in all public dealings called "Your Call is Important to Us", with a funny Canadian woman, ones on satire and politics, on imagination, on stretching reality in fiction. I found new writers to read, which is always exciting. I found interesting vegetarian festival food at one of the cafes set up for the event. I found myself between a wall of books and the arms and bodies reaching for them, snuggled in a literary cocoon, of sorts. I found myself paying four bucks for a small apple juice. It was good apple juice.
One afternoon, I had a couple hours between sessions, so I started to walk back toward home, but right near the Malthouse is the National Gallery. Go-go Gadget free museum. So I spent the time looking at a fashion exhibit on how embroidered flowers have been used since about 1650. At (mostly) Japanese prints and cartoons from the 17th and 18th century, including the ones we're familiar with of the sea scene of large waves crashing, and quiet snow on town buildings. At impressionist painting. At Greek sculpture. At the decorative arts. At Chinese ceramics. I got a cheese and tomato toasted sandwich, fed bites to a magpie and a crow, then went back to the festival.
The tram ride home after the last discussion session took me through part of that arts district and then moves into a busy area of the city. Sunshine covered everything, and I was enjoying the city.
In association with the Writers Festival, the Privacy Commission of Victoria (yes, when their gov't institutes potentially scary invasion-of-privacy codes, they also develop a protective body to act on behalf of the people's welfare), sponsors a series of films on the topic of privacy.
It was held at the Austrlian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), located in Federation Square, where just a crap ton of stuff happens. (at left) This series showed
Rear Window and
Gattaca earlier in the weekend. We went for the final film,
The Handmaid's Tale, based on the Margaret Atwood novel of a near-future dystopia.
film info If you haven't read the book or at least seen the film do it. Now.
The best part of this is that after the film, they had a phone call set up with Margaret Atwood in Edinburgh (where it was 8:15 am). She was interviewed by a jounalist here, who had a soothing speaking voice and was wearing an interesting necklace. Atwood talked about how nothing in the story hadn't actually *been done* before by some government, somewhere. Her recent novel,
Oryx and Crake, is another type of dystopia, based on bioengineering, and the same reality applied - none of the technology or policies were entirely made up. Scary stuff. Atwood was funny and just frickin' brilliant, making interesting political and social points.
So yeah, we're like totally buddies now. While I didn't
actually get to speak with her myself, per se, I think she knew I was there... "Halley, I know the phone interview only lasted fifteen minutes just now, but your presence here has given me new vision for my work. Thank you. Sincerely, Brilliant Writer Margaret Atwood."
Live Nude Girls!
no it's not big brother watching, but I did put on a "word verification" thingamahoosie when you leave a comment. I've gotten a few spam comments. I'm just so popular that people can't help but want to share their secret stock tips and cheap viagra connections with me as comments to the blog.
So it's still the same deal, basically, to leave a comment, but now you just have to enter the word you see (where it tells you to type it in). (The automated spammer things can't read it. It takes an actual real live person. And assuming you're an actual real live person, you should be just fine.)
In other excitement, it's sunny and warmish out (60s) and I have a cold. And in case you miss the stock tips spam, here's one for you: buy shares of Kleenex. (Oh, and briefly on the healthcare: doctor visit cost- free. Paid-out-of-pocket prescription cost-$10.90, which is less than 8 bucks American. They had to explain it to me a couple times - What do you mean I won't be getting some huge-ass bill in the mail?)
for only 19.95, this one-time-only special offer
on our three channels right now I have the following options:
1) an infomercial on creating my own phenomenal personal wealth
2) an infomercial on phenomenal skin care products
3) an infomercial on a phenomenal contour mattress sleep system
Yes, the same crap is on at 3 am in Australia, too. A familiar signal that it is time to go to bed.
partly sunny with a chance of you-gotta-be-kidding-me
I've known some funky-ass weather in my life. I'm from Chicago, and I've been living in Boston. My high school stayed open one winter until it was negative 75 (F) windchill and two and a half feet of snow. Then they let us stay home. I'm familiar with swealtering summers with humidity that turns outside into a Native American sweatlodge. Don't like the weather? Wait 5 minutes, it'll change. --- The joke applies to both cities.
And somehow the Melburnian winter is messing with my mind. The past two weeks especially. In general, it'll rain for about five minutes. Then stop. It goes out for a coffee. Chats with its buddy, Windy. Then decides to rain a bit more, spitting all over everything. In between, it'll be sunny. And the day goes on and it's like the rain didn't happen. Like Florida. But colder.
The apartment has an aluminium roof, so you hear the rain. And the wind rattling things against the roof. And then you hear more rain. It's kinda like holding a big soup pot over your head and having someone drop jacks on top of it. Not dangerous, just loud enough that you consider finding Auntie Em and Toto and making a run for the cellar.
So it turned cold. But the thing is, you look out the window and it's bright and sunny. You walk around and the palm trees are still green. The Bird of Paradise flowers are still in bloom. Tropical flowers are attracting bees. It looks like Sunday in the Park with George. But the wind come in gusts and would knock you over. Or maybe just me. And we had days of nonstop rain, coming in sheets. But now it's nice out, and the pretty little birdies are hopping on the pretty little lawns again. And I'm in my ski jacket. (At the same time you'll see people in sandals and t-shirt, others in unzipped hoodies, and then those bundled in matching hat/scarf/glove sets.)
Tonight's bedtime story will be "The Berenstain Bears and the Anachronistic City."
We're lucky that our apt has central heat. A lot of older apts in Melbourne, and Oz in general, don't have it. The winter is generally short enough and mild enough that I suppose people just suck it up and deal with it. That many space heaters can't be safe. Maybe they just figure they look so cute in their knitwear and printed jackets that heating would only hurt the fashion show.
Either way, we've happy to have central heat. And it's very central. One large vent in the center of the apt. I keep my door open during the day, otherwise my room gets freezing when I open the door later on. The warmest part of the apt is on the stairs going up to the big bedroom. The living room by the door to the front balcony gets chilly. We could do an hourly weather forecast for all the different regional temperatures in here.
Next weekend, we'll be on the beaches of the Great Ocean Road. That is, if we successfully negotiate left-side driving...
breaking news: pigs spotted flying over melbourne
I've finally posted a photo album online at shutterfly.
http://aussiehalley.shutterfly.com***You do NOT have to sign up or have a password to look at the pictures. Just click on the photo directly, or click on the blue "view piectures" button. You don't need a password.***
[For those who want the extra little help: after you click on the link above, click on "view pictures" and then click on "Slideshow" at the top of the page (if you want to. you could also click on them individually).]
because everyone loves a stereotype
here's a preview of some photos I should be posting in the next couple days:
the only way I could make it look more "Australian" is if I was modeling an open jar of Vegemite.
blinding me with science...
It is a proven scientific fact that to kill germs, one may use alcohol. Christine had a sore throat the other day. To kill the germs that were causing her sore throat, we decided it would be a good idea to go get some drinks Friday night. All in the name of science, of course.
We went to the Stork, which is a pub/hotel/bottle shop about a block from our apt.
http://www.storkhotel.com/ (You can see the photo on the left is the outside, and the one on the right is inside the bar.) This great blues trio was playing, and the room was smokey, though I never really saw the smoking. Perhaps a haze travels with blues groups. The room is filled with a mix of ages, a mix of locals and travellers. I go up to the end of the bar to order some drinks. The bar is busy, so the bartenders don't come over that second. The older guy sitting there moves over, making room. "Awright, love, you get roight in theh. Hey, bartendeh! This ly-dy he'uh needs a drink!" The guy is shouting over the crowd and music to the other side of the bar, to this baby-faced bartender guy in a red tshirt and massive, long dreads. I'm trying to order drinks and by this time, they're out of what we wanted, so I end up pointing to a case, "give me a red thing and an orange thing, and whatever white wine." So as the slow-ass bartender figures this all out, the older guy, leans over to me, "You know he's a musician, too." wink wink, nudge nudge.
We spent the evening listening to music, enjoying colorful liquids, and scouting the room for Aussie guys for Sarah. There might also have been some drunken dialling. I recall something about Charlie's mom and hip boots... Of course, afterward, we had to buy crap food at 7-11. I ended up with Cheezels, which have about as much real cheese in it as you might guess from the name. So goood.
*****
saw a play a few days ago. one-man show. most of it was good. best part: lip-synching to "sweet transvestite" from Rocky Horror.
NOTES:
-Alyssa was on the phone with me during part of this posting. She made me stop typing because she said I wasn't listening to her. It was true. She says hi.
-In the course of our "ladies who lunch" day out in Prahran (pronounced "puh-ran", not "prah-rahn" - go figure), it was discovered that a one Ms Ali NewYorker knows not of the girlie junior high sleepover. A sleepover has been planned, involving Molly Ringwald movies, nail polish, and prank calling boys. We only know 2 boys, so they might guess...
-Having the Queen Vic Market practically across the street has proved dangerous. We go there all the time, and come home with things like olive tapenades, big fresh focaccia breads, and 3-for-$10 cheese specials.
Episode 78: Fern Gully... the real thing
I'm in my office, avoiding actually getting down to work. Procrastinate? Me? And now you are my tool for doing so. You should feel used. Very used. Maybe you should take a shower or something. You'll feel better then. I promise.
Saturday morning was quite the adventure.
Announcer voice: Previously on Adventures in Halleyland... As we last left our heroes, they were going on a Friday night pub crawl. Deadweight, Scurvy, and Speedy were celebrating the arrival of new roommate, Chilly, along with friends, Ali and Hamish. After hours of inebriation and sketchy-wee-hours-of-the-morning-pizza, our four made their way back to the apt. They would have to be awake and sober in but a few hours to catch the bus out to the Animal Sanctuary. Would Scurvy's hiccups ever stop? Would Chilly have any idea what time zone she's in? Would Speedy be up before dawn for once in her life? Tune in now to find out the answers to these questions, and more, as we rejoin our heroes on their Saturday morning adventure...
Yeah, so we almost didn't make it. I get woken up by Christine, about 15 minutes before we're supposed to leave. She says, "we're not going, okay?" I say okay and turn back over. But I'm up. For some reason, I'm up. So I go out to the living room and everyone else is just hanging out. I'm like, I thought the reason we weren't going is because you were all going back to bed??? No. Just wiped out from the night before and not in the mood to move. So I'm thinking, as long as I'm up, I'm going to go. As I'm getting dressed, I'm thinking I'm going alone, but I get back out to the living room, and everyone is gone and getting dressed. Maybe it was my innate powers of jewish guilting coming through (though not my intention).
If we're going to make it, we have to hustle, because it takes a little while on the tram to get out to campus. Long story a little shorter, we get out of the house a little later than we should've, we get to the tram, there's construction, we power walk up the tram route to find an open stop, we are cruising right along for about 15 minutes until we find one, get on the tram, and eventually get to campus. It is now about 10 minutes after the buses were going to leave, but they always wait a little while, right? It's another 10 minutes to walk from the entrance to the place where the buses are. We get in that area, I see the buses, I say "come on, lets run" and I take off, because no one is standing outside the buses, the engines are on, and these things are going to move any second. Those lazy bitches let me run up ahead and catch the buses. They amble in a few minutes later. Yeah, good idea, let the asthmatic do all the running... (no, I was fine, really. don't send flovent.)
It's about an hour ride to the Healesville Sanctuary. Wonderful place.
http://www.zoo.org.au/visiting.cfm?zoo_id=2 They only have Aussie fauna there. (I'll post pictures soon- including the picture of me with a kangaroo on my head. Kind of.) I got to pet a (baby-bear-cub-looking) wombat, watch sleeping koalas poop, and see a pelican with a very large beak almost eat Christine. And where might one keep a playpus, you ask? Why, in the Platypusary, of course. Yes, the Platypusary. I shit you not.
Platypusary - Where Platypus secrets are revealed
