go it alone/beck

I invested in Beck's new album 'Guero' last week and I've barely stopped listening to it. 'Go It Alone' is a nicely groovy piece of work and it has been stuck in my head and it is playing again right now. Handclaps are great.

I took my nervous, excited, anxious sister to the airport early this morning to get her on her flight to Auckland, New Zealand. She'll be there for a couple of weeks, including her birthday, and will be - with any luck - having the time of her life. Bless her, she hasn't had a holiday in years. I think she's been working six days a week for about seven years straight. A holiday is required. The trip has further significance. A man is in the picture. Could he be the one? One thing that would make me the happiest is to see Carly happy. Send out the good vibes. She's riding the wave...



It also turned out her flight was delayed two hours out of Dubai. So what do you do in an airport to whittle the time away a little faster? Buy expensive yet not-quite-right tasting coffee (speaking from experience)? Window shop in duty free? Buy a trashy magazine so you can do the puzzles? All quite legitimate airport pastimes I guess. What was our choice? People watching at the Arrivals Gate! So we silently greeted a couple of flights from Tokyo and one from LA, almost crying a number of times. It always seemed to be when the older mothers and daughters saw each other and got teary, or when kids saw their mum or dad come through the doors and got sooooo excited. We were blubbing. It was fantastic.

Heather Powazek Champ... another woman I admire.

Happy Easter.

glamorous indie rock & roll/the killers

I borrowed 'Hot Fuss' by the Killers. I didn't like their song 'Somebody Told Me' when I heard it. I gave the record a listen anyway. Then another listen. Then another. Now I can't stop listening to it. When I read the title 'Glamorous Indie Rock & Roll' I immediately thought of Sebadoh's spazzed out song 'Just Gimme Indie Rock' that opens up their record 'Rockin' the Forest'. I like this Killers' song because it says 'it's indie rock and roll for me... it's all I need.' Let's face it, I'm an indie rock girl from way back. Though, I still love my Dusty Springfield and ABBA.

The End of Poverty : a great article I've recently read that I've been wanting to read for some time and now it exists.

love and evil (explore mix)/jean jacques smoothie

This song is so lovely and it is totally under my skin. Electronic-ey, dub-ey with a great acoustic guitar intertwined. A beautiful rich voice singing a great refrain that I've had stuck in my head the last few days: 'we don't want to know one thing about evil, we only want to know about love.' It doesn't take much for a song to get under my skin. It's the little things with me. Then I just need to hear it again and again. (Yes, I am a filthy junkie.) It is a remix of a John Martyn song. It's kind of cool and unusual to hear one of his songs like this. He's pretty groovy anyway, but the electronic embellishments compliment it nicely.

This song is on a compilation called Acoustic 2, which is one of three double CD compilations sent to me by my work's supplier of drill bits for Christmas last year. There is some fantastic music on these CD's. I know who chose these CD's for me too. A very cool guy I used to talk to a lot who used to send me photos of him walking in the Lakes District with his chocolate labrador, Archie. I know it was him because the music on these CD's is not your run-of-the-mill mainstream music. I love that about them. The cool guy with the great musical taste and the chocolate labrador named Archie has been working in New York for the last three months. He said he would send me photos. I know he is very busy.

This is officially my favourite place on the internet www.photoblogs.org

Tina Fey... another woman I admire.

roseability/idlewild

Idlewild are an awesome little Scottish band that I adore. I went to see them play in 2003 I think it was (maybe even almost to the month) and they played at the Zoo and it was hot and it was loud and they were just soooo fantastic... and Scottish. Me and accents. This song is the first I heard of theirs and I was immediately a fan based purely on the guitar sound and Roddy's voice and the fact that they say Gertrude Stein's name a million times. It's just a nice turn out that I love all their other songs too. Ooh, I've just checked out their website and they have a new album out!

Today I spent with my sister. It was a day where I was happy to do anything and just be with her. We went looking for clothes and tried things on, we both had lists of things we were looking for. My list included make up and black nail polish so that I can be a rock star on the weekend. Both of which I found. Now to work out how make up works.

We visited her work and drank yummy coffee and laughed with three of the lovely people who work for her there. One has an infectious laugh and is very good at stories. One always has really funky earrings that she says she often tinkers with, adding dangles from one pair to the design of another. The last is a nice boy who I find very cute and sweet who makes my sister laugh and be silly and all this makes her enjoy her job a lot more than she used to.

Back at her place we decided to go wandering aimlessly through the streets of West End. I like West End. Lots to photograph. Gorgeous little old houses with kids playing on the ramshackle verandahs out the front. People riding their bikes with their shopping hanging off the handle bars. A relaxed feeling in the atmosphere, charged now and then by a political stencil on the footpath or on the wall. Here is one that bemused me the most today, I believe it says 'ONLY NAZIS DRINK BOOST JUICE'...



I can hear Patsy from Ab Fab resounding in my head:

"... yes ... but is it ART, Eddie?"

johnny appleseed/joe strummer & the mescaleros

I am having trouble remembering a time that I haven't known and loved this song. I just checked and the album 'Global A Go-Go' came out in 2001, so maybe since then... damn those details that ruin my romanticisms. The song has a flow and energy that I don't think I will ever tire of. I'm not quite sure what the song is about and I don't want to analyse it, but I'm convinced there is a political element to it. I also really love the background 'hey's' and 'ho's' that scream out during the chorus. It also makes me think very fondly of the morning after my 'Rock Star Pajama Party' when the album was playing while we played Snakes and Ladders on my beautiful custom made picnic blanket and ate pancakes and my walls were covered in alfoil stars and pictures of bands and musicians galore. I've just decided I should try and find out more about Joe Strummer and maybe even get some music by the Clash... I know that I love their song 'Police and Thieves' which is on 'The Royal Tenenbaums' soundtrack.

Things I often daydream about doing:

~ Making a film
(I'm particularly good at this daydream lately ever since playing with Windows Movie Maker for a farewell movie for a work friend and it often occurs when I'm listening to music and a song comes on and I think 'oooh, good song for my film soundtrack... what could be happening in my film while this song is playing...')

~ Owning and running a record store
(a perpetual daydream that sees my record store as a mix between the Big Star I pretty much lived in during some of my most favourite years of my life in Adelaide (which used to be in the same little complex as my bank, so I'd get paid for my part time job, take the money out, buy more music... I was a filthy junkie... and I would love for the very hirsute and laid back fellow who worked there to work for me too) and Championship Vinyl from the film 'High Fidelity' - which also means that Jack Black would work for me - and my friends would always be in there picking the music that is playing...)

~ Owning and running a book shop
(another perpetual daydream that sees itself not unlike the bookshop in 'Black Books' minus Bernard and the obvious disorganisation and general uncleanliness but including the charm of being a pokey little bookshop and also closely modelled on 'Bent Books' in West End now that I've fallen in love with that one)

~ Photographing every person I see
(another daydream that burbles to the surface of my daydream puddle every so often because I LOVE faces and I want to remember them all and see every wonderful thing about them and then maybe I would talk to and meet more people because I would start by asking if I could take their picture and then maybe talk some more and find out about their lives which I also love hearing about, peoples lives)

~ Doing 'front of house' for my sister's Bed and Breakfast
(a daydream that has the most chance of becoming a reality as I believe it is a real dream of hers and I would work for her in a flash and we would meet lots of interesting people and I would get to take their photos and find out about their lives and choose the music that plays in the place and, well, I just think it would be fabulous)

I just watched a film that was a childhood favourite, so much so that my Mum pre-ordered it for my sister and I and sent it down to us from Darwin...'The Dark Crystal'. It brought back such great feelings.

Now I want to have a video night with all my favourite childhood films, like 'Bedknobs and Broomsticks', 'Freaky Friday', 'The Phantom Tollbooth', 'The Sword in the Stone', 'To Be Or Not To Be', 'Mary Poppins'...

evolve/ani difranco

I think that Ani DiFranco is fabulous. 'Evolve' is just one of what seems like a BILLION great songs of hers. Though it is the one I am singing along to right now. Righteous Babe indeed (check out her website, she visited Burma and Thailand last year with Damien Rice as part of the US Campaign for Burma) and seeing as it is International Women's Day I thought it might be a nice excercise to make a random list of women, alive or dead, that I admire for whatever reason. The women in my family and my friends are an absolute given.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, Kathleen Hanna, Arundhati Roy, Margaret Cho, Jane Goodall, Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French, Kim Deal, Joni Mitchell, Virginia Woolf, Diane Arbus, Nina Simone, Lily Brett, Mother Teresa, Gertrude Stein, Emma Thompson, Janet Frame, Patti Smith, Aung San Suu Kyi, Helen Prejean, Cate Blanchett, Billie Holiday, Lily Tomlin, Germaine Greer... I know there are soooo many more but I can hear the cogs in my brain clunking and whirring in order to think of them so this may have to be an ongoing list.

I watched 'American Splendor' last night (I find it quite difficult to spell 'splendour' without the 'u' but I can get over it... I think...) and it was really good. I don't think I've seen a film quite like it before in the way that it was constructed. I thoroughly enjoyed the texture and light of it immensely, which I guess would have something to do with the cinematographer. Harvey Pekar, the comic writer who the film is based on and features, is so down on things. He admits his outlook is all doom and gloom and I really don't think he ever tried or tries to be positive (though it may just be his disposition and it is actual impossible for him) and yet, to be quite honest, I found that I really liked him. The man made light of his own life in his writing (all illustrations of his stories were done by comic artists) and his writing was real and gritty and sarcastic and witty. Aha! Sarcasm. That's it. Gets me every time. Truly worth a look see and I may even watch it again before I have to return it.

what katie did/the libertines

'shoop shoop, shoop de lang a lang... shoop shoop, shoop de lang a lang...'

I love the Libertines. Their songs sound like they could fall over and out of tune at any moment but they always manage to keep it together. The guitar sounds are so great. The two of them singing all over the place is fantastic too. Did I say that I love them? Pity they broke up and pity they are such rock 'n' roll cliches...

now that was just mean.

I've started reading 'The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying' by Sogyal Rinpoche again. I love this book. Everything about it just clicks with me on a very basic level. It also contains some of my favourite quotes, in particular this one from Albert Einstein:

'A human being is a part of a whole, called by us the "Universe", a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.'

If only I could make that run in my mind all of the time.

I've hired some movies this afternoon. There was a brief moment where I thought I would go to see 'Ray' at the cinemas because I know nothing about Ray Charles and I love starting with a clean slate, no preconceptions. Then I figured, whether I go to Balmoral ($7.90 for an adult) or to the cinema nearby ($13.00 for an adult) it is still far better value to just hire four weekly movies for $10.00 from the local video store. So that I did and I'm especially pleased with the selections as they are ALL films I've been dying to see for such a long time:

1. 'Three Colours Blue' by Krzysztof Kieslowski (the first in the 'Three Colours' trilogy and starring the beautiful Juliette Binoche)
2. 'Lost in La Mancha' by Terry Gilliam (the making of a film that never actually got made)
3. 'American Splendor' by Robert Pulcini & Shari Springer Berman (based on the life of comic writer Harvey Pekar)
4. 'Gathering Storm' by Richard Loncraine (based on a pivotal time in the life of Winston Churchill)

I'm soooo looking forward to some interesting viewing.

don't let's start/they might be giants

"No one in the world ever gets what they want and that is beautiful...
Everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is beautiful..."

...from 'Don't Let's Start' by They Might Be Giants. I love those lines.

I recently witnessed the fantastic documentary on They Might Be Giants ('GIGANTIC - A Tale of Two Johns') and I'm just so pleased all over again that they exist. As people, as a band and as the type of people and band they are.

Play some They Might Be Giants every now and then and the evils of the world seem to disappear for a while.

Good shall prevail.

the ballad of daykitty/lou barlow

Lou Barlow is a man and artist I have admired for some years now. Through all his projects, Sebadoh, Sentridoh, Folk Implosion and now simply Lou Barlow. The words he uses, his gorgeous voice and his lo-fi sensibilities. His new album Emoh was recorded at home (which most of his recordings are) and is understatedly beautiful. The last song on the album is called 'The Ballad of Daykitty' and it is kind of like a really sweet kid's song. A little true story of a cat that started showing up at his house and stole his heart (and made his other cat, Hector, very jealous!). There is more to the story but you need to hear the song because it is so sweet and a little funny.

Mr Barlow also has a very cool website, which he updates now and then in his very own handwriting and embellishes the pages with his own artwork and it is just really humble and lovely. He and his wife have just had a baby and he shares their story of the day their little one entered the world on the site. Just sooooo lovely.

So, check it out... www.loobiecore.com

I am feeling a bit bummed tonight as I found out that Sister Helen Prejean, who wrote 'Dead Man Walking', is in Australia at the moment doing a speaking tour in promotion of her new book 'The Death of Innocents - An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions' (www.deathofinnocents.net) and that I missed her talk in Brisbane, which was at City Hall last Friday. I feel really disappointed having missed such a great opportunity to see someone who is a very inspiring human being and human rights campaigner.