November 2009
2 posts
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One Little Piggy Went To Market... And Became a...
Written by Jennifer Blake
On a Sunday morning in Marrickville, a trip down Addison Road would see a usually primarily empty lot transformed into a bustling market. Hippies and yuppies and puppies wander through, clutching string bags and green bags and canvas trolleys. Women marvel over rainbow silverbeet, men salivate over honey-cured bacon and children dance to off-key jazz. Couples and...
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The Other Middle East
Sarah Whyte takes a trip and looks at the fate of the Sydney Independent Music Scene.
Last Friday I went to The Middle East. It took me forty minutes to get there and I was met by two burly men upon arriving, having to show identification and my pre-arranged ticket. A little hesitant, I continued to walk on, only to be greeted by the melodious harmonies of mandolins, banjos, flutes and voices...
October 2009
19 posts
2 tags
To cliches as proverbial as the cats pyjamas →
There are certain times when other opinion writers say it so perfectly there is little to add. Here is a link to James Parker’s brilliant ode to the cliche. Enjoy procrastinating with this one.
Don’t forget to read the comments, 58-Dan is the reason reader comments were invented.
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Push up! Your body next to mine...
Is it hard to imagine a place less feminised, several years ago, than the community gym. Pictures of muscle tees and bulging veins dominated advertising. The only females were lycra-clad, equally bulging muscle women, a portrayal of the 80s ‘power woman’ perhaps equally repulsive to men and women.
This is no doubt what spawned the avalanche of ‘female gyms’ franchised from the USA, with...
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We hereby elect to ... Mind that starfish!
Written by Jennifer Blake
Yesterday the full cabinet of the Maldives first democratically elected government held a meeting six metres underwater. The unusual cabinet meeting took place in a bid to draw the attention of the world to the probable effects of climate change - impacts that will be felt in countries like the Maldives far faster than in the developing world.
80% of the...
Excuse me miss...
Hi! Hello There! Got a sec? I just wanted to talk to you about whalehunting/climate change/cancer/wariniraq/gaymarriage/childhunger - insert worthy cause here. Its the classic form of (legal) street solicitation. Abnormally happy people in bright shirts catch your eye, beg you to stop, and then deliver a heartstring-pulling spiel which inevitably has you thinking ‘Yes, I probably can...
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We are a Mag Nation
Written by Jennifer Blake
Meandering down King St post-gym and pre-dinner I was delighted to peek into paper-covered windows heralding the arrival of a new store onto the artsy strip - the magazine powerhouse Mag Nation. With three stores in New Zealand and two in Melbourne, it’s about time Sydney-siders got a taste of freight journalism.
Mag Nation stocks over 4000 titles of...
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Attack by sea!!
Written by Jennifer Blake
So Australia finds itself once again the victim of a vicious attack on our maritime borders by … asylum seekers: men, women and children who pay enormous sums of money to people racketeers to make a dangerous journey by sea; in order to reach the ‘boundless plains’ of Australia. ‘Queue jumpers’, ‘boat people’, ‘others’, ‘illegals’ … anything but humans, or, heaven...
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Do You Like Cats?
Written by Theodora Chan
I walked down the rain-spattered streets of Newtown last Friday, making my way to the Vanguard. Famous for being one of Sydney’s best indie music venues, the Vanguard that night was hosting Sydney-based band “I Like Cats”.
Supporting the lyrical veterans of “Junglehammer”, the boys of “I Like Cats” certainly knew how to hold their own. The five piece band, which...
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Peace Prize for a President
Previous winners of the Nobel Peace Prize:
1906 - Theodore Roosevelt: helped to end the Russo-Japanese war and provided the International Criminal Court at the Hague with its very first case.
1919 - Woodrow Wilson: Laboured to set up the League of Nations, the first international body for diplomacy
(Aside: Did you know the peace prize wasn’t awarded between 1939-43, the first five years of...
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Go Font Yourself
So a fun fact about fonts: The word’s etymology is derived from ‘fondue’, and not, in fact, from fountain as I might have imagined. Fondue, of course, having no deeper meaning than “something that has been melted”. Think of the old days, when choosing a ‘font’ for publishing involved casting molten metal into a typeface.
Yes, I didn’t know that...
Black and White
One of the most beautiful things to come out of the internet is the diffusion of cool things that are out of Copyright. The Flickr Commons Collection is one such thing, and Sydney Powerhouse Museum has come to the party by uploading their phenomenal collection.
These three snaps are from the Tyrrell Collection, a beautiful album of shots around Sydney and NSW. Developed from glass plates,...
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The Kindle Swindle: When did books go digital?
Jennifer Blake wonders if she missed something with her nose in a book.
Excuse me, but when did electronic book readers become so popular? Amazon claims to sell 48 digital editions of books for every 100 paper and ink copies. With the Internet abuzz with reports that the “popular” US ‘Kindle’ bookreader will be available internationally for the grand old price of $313, I’m struggling to...
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Brand Spanking New
Tis nice to see the Sydney theatre seen get creative once in a while, and New Theatre is delivering innovative drama in bite sized pieces. 15 writers and 15 directors have teamed up with a veritable power troupe of names in production, composition and stage design to present 15 new short works in what they call a “a bold, brave, poignant, tender and unapologetically funny celebration of...
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Anyone Can Whistle, huh?
Julia Lenton challenges the supposed universal skill of whistling.
At the mention of this blog’s name, my first thought was that this statement is just plain untrue. A certain non-whistling bird confided in me that even the creator of this blog lacks this semi-musical ability. Liar!
Whistling is indeed a skill and it seems that you either have it or you don’t. As a kid, my mother was the only...
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The Wire
There are very few TV shows actually worth your time but The Wire is definitely one of them. While essentially a crime drama it’s really about the complexities of city life and dysfunctional institutionalisation. Each series looks at different aspects of Baltimore, Maryland. The current series showing on ABC2 looks at the drug trade of Baltimore - following seasons examine governance, ports,...
September 2009
19 posts
7 tags
Fake it till you make it... Your virginity, that...
So this belongs in one of those Only-in-China type articles. You know, alongside the full-body umbrella and sock glue. But making the front page of ninemsn.com may well have propelled it into the mainstream. After all, who doesn’t need a fake-your-own-virginity kit? It’s finding its market in Egypt and other parts of the Middle East, apparently, and has scholars and religious leaders...
In Cupboards and Under Stairs - Blank Space
Blank Space Gallery hosts an exhibition from artist Elise Trickey, who has a great name if nothing else. How’s tricks, Trickey? How much fun could you have with that?
Word play aside, from Thursday 1st October to Tuesday 6th October, her pretty collages will be on display at Blank Space Gallery in Surry Hills.
The artist says the works are meant to capture a world of imagination,...
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iSnack 2.0
So according to the Herald, the Blogosphere has already done my work for me. iSnack 2.0??? Really??
Kraft have been running a competition for 3 months to name their new hybrid spread, a combination of vegemite and cream cheese that sounds quite revolting. (Disclaimer: I haven’t actually tried it, and am biased towards Vegemite since Kraft was bought by US Kraft and thus became a...
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Pasta for Pinheads
Take 5 Ingredients…
It’s not hard to make a good pasta, and there’s no excuse for takeaway when a hearty meal this easy takes only minutes.
Put some pasta on the stove.
Grate some good quality parmesan, shred a large handful of rocket, grate a little lemon rind and toss through cooked pasta with a good slug of an infused olive oil - (try steeping dried chillis in olive oil...
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OASIS: The Music...not the drugs, fights or...
Daniel Harris charts the rise and fall of Oasis.
News reports of the final break up never led with: “Oasis, one of the most influential and successful bands of the 90s…” It was always: “Oasis: the band dogged by infighting between the Gallagher brothers for fifteen years…” Presuming he was sober enough to watch the news, seeing such reports must have left Noel Gallagher with the...
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Art and About in Sydney. (First prize to Clover...
Clover Moore must be feeling festive, because come next week the City of Sydney is going a bit crazy for festivals. “Crave” Sydney will be running all through October, celebrating Sydney’s “unmatched” lifestyle.
It’s 30 days of food, comedy, outdoor art, music and apparently even island hopping!!!!
The biggest part of the festival is Art and About, a...
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Red skies herald apocalypse and ... status...
Photo: smh.com.au
This morning taught me more about people’s likely behaviour in the event of the apocalypse than it did about climate change.
Those with money in cyberspace can breathe a sigh of relief - in the event of the end of the world, people will still be updating their facebook status and tweeting their consternation as red dust envelops the world as we knew it. In fact, an...
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TAG ... you're it!!!
This week has been a huge in the world of social networking: Oprah tweeted about her new figure, a facebook quiz was created titled “Where will Kanye West interrupt you?” and MySpace became even more forgotten (if that’s possible).
But in the midst of all this, nerds at Facebook HQ in Palo Alto, California let their suspenders down as they celebrated a new type of status: the tagging. Simply by...
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A Glimpse Into Life in a Jakartan Rubbish Dump
A short photo essay: Bantar Gebung
On the outskirts of Jakarta is a tip, called Bantar Gebung. It is a sprawling waste heap, one of several beasts this megacity keeps afloat. It is home to four villages and a bustling economy. Pristine white tiles line houses on stilts to lift them out of the refuse below. There is a school, and children pretend to concentrate as the tractors and compactors...
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Live at Manning
Daniel Harris reviews Paul Dempsey, Live at Manning Bar.
*ed’s note: apologies for the double helping of Dempsey love on this blog this week. But he’s awesome. Check him out.
I’ve always liked Manning Bar as a venue, the crowd always seems friendlier (compared to Enmore where I’ve had some shocking crowds) and the set up is ideal, not just a bar that slapped a stage together where...
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Obesity: weighing in...
Recently a lecturer of mine expressed outrage over politicians pronouncing the female body, as it is represented in modelling, as waifishly thin, when all of them, (her words) are so disgustingly fat. She’s a skinnyist.
Everyone has moments of judgement. When forced to squeeze into a train two-seater next to an overweight person, I might have been known to quietly grumble. There’s my barista...
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Paedophiles and Pitchforks
Nothing sparks a moral panic like a paedophile. But the witchhunt for Dennis Ferguson, a 61-yr-old former Queensland resident who has served fourteen years in Federal prison for child sex offences, is bringing out the Molotov cocktails. Revealing a child sex offender is an instant recipe for a mob mentality. Bring forth thy pitchforks!
So that my words won’t be twisted, let me spell it out....
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Busking For Change: Josh Pyke, Phil Jamieson, Tim...
This was a stellar gig. Casual, unpractised, riddled with mistakes, this was two veteran rockers, two newcomers and one talented singer-songwriter whose vision made passionate magic.
Josh Pyke’s fundraiser for the Indigenous Literacy Project was Australian music at its best – raw, honest, fun. By the time Phil Jamieson took the stage, I’d detached my soles from the sticky sticky floors of the...
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Truth in a War Zone: The phenomenon of the 'Combat...
The Combat Journalist (n.) – a journalist who will go to extreme lengths for a story, including walking into open warfare, having clandestine meetings with guerrilla fighters and is passionate about social justice. May not have too much common sense, but does not wear toy lizards around one’s neck, nor have a ditzy smile. Sometimes will wear khaki.
With the release of Balibo this month, it...
Everything is True: Paul Dempsey goes solo
It’s sometimes dangerous when a frontman breaks out their own.
But I am loving Paul Dempsey’s new album! It wasn’t a must-buy album for me, I’ve been eternally disappointed by most of Something For Kate’s offerings. But Dempsey, on his own, is a big step away from the heavy, overladen songs of the latter days of his band’s work. The songs have a rawness missing from SFK’s overproduced drones....
Neil vs Neill: Or, The Sun-Herald Takes a Tabloid...
Congratulations to the Sun-Herald, who cemented their slide into tabloid ‘journalism’ this morning; stalking Kate Neill, the infamous 26-yr-old at the centre of John Della Bosca’s affair scandal last month.
Some enterprising investigative team tracked the Newtown student all the way to Adelaide, where she’s taking time out from the political hailstorm she caused to cosy up with Grandma. And hid...
July 2009
2 posts
The Invitation:
Good afternoon cherubs!!!
Now comes the time to introduce you to a little baby I’ve been working on for the past few weeks, and ask you if you’d be interested in contributing.
I’d like to start a blog. Here’s the blurb:
Everything you ever wanted to find in the one magazine, but couldn’t.
We talk politics, fashion and lifestyle. We do sexuality and religion and poverty. We take pictures and...
