Thursday, July 31, 2008

Elly Goodman



Sydney rain storms
I’m English, so I’m pretty used to rain, you don’t get a green and pleasant land without it, but nothing prepared me for the kind of rain that you get here. English rain is very, well, English. It’s subtle, gentle, wet in a way that you don’t even realise it’s wet until you happen to touch your sleeve and then you are soaked through. Australian rain is BIG, it’s undeniably WET, it’s heavy, and it’s totally and utterly awe-inspiring. I love it! It’s like punctuation, dripping commas breaking up the long, sunny sentence making it understandable.

Coffee, Tea or Me
This little (and I mean little) coffee shop on the corner of Crown and Davies Street in Surry Hills is just perfect. The décor is shabby-chic, in the right way, they serve tea in china cups (essential) and the staff are friendly in an English way. That is, they smile (a little), they are polite, friendly and attentive, but they don’t need to know your name. They do, however, remember your favourite drink and they serve it with care and attention. The wait is often long, but unimportant, English people don’t mind waiting, we feel at our most comfortable in a queue (besides, it gives us something to whinge about later). If you are not so keen on waiting, they supply newspapers and magazines in a basket in front of the coffee machine or there are the numerous Polaroids of their four-legged customers gracing the walls to keep you occupied. It feels like a little slice of Europe smack bang in the middle of Surry Hills and for that I am eternally grateful.

Marmite and Challah
Challah is a Jewish bread eaten on the Sabbath. It has a doughy, eggy texture with a thin, glazed crust, usually sprinkled with poppy seeds. It has a slightly sweet taste, which the poppy seeds offset nicely. When combined with butter and a layer of Marmite it becomes manna from heaven! The salty layer of Marmite (the English variety, which is infinitely different to both Aussie marmite and vegemite) and the sweet bread is a combination to set the taste buds leaping for joy. It’s even better if eaten whilst watching trashy Saturday night telly before a night out on the tiles and is offset with a glass of icy cold milk (which also acts a stomach liner for the night ahead).

Kapka Kassabova’s poetry
I don’t get much time to read for pleasure at the moment, so to my delight I had to work on an Australian or New Zealand poem at school. Wandering around a second hand bookstore in Newtown on the search for new world poets I opened up Kapka Kassabova’s book Dismemberment on page 8 and read 'Striving for Lightness'. It pulled me in word by delicious word and I had just been having a conversation about that very topic not moments before, by synchronicity or serendipity I had found myself a New Zealand (via Bulgaria and Scotland) poet for school. I now read her poems in any spare moments I have, usually just before bed and find myself lost with words that could have been written just for me.

Shakespeare
Being an actress, words are my livelihood; other people’s well-chosen, finely crafted words, I say them and bring them to life through me. Shakespeare’s words are the best! They are pre-packed with power and raw energy, sex, breath and heartbeats, shape and texture, taste, smell and colour, all the magic ingredients there on the page, ready for you to just add life. His work is always relevant, always up-to-date and to quote Doctor Who, ‘He is the most human human to have ever lived’.

Elly Goodman is an English actress currently living in Sydney who kindly sent me a list via email. Perhaps you might see her on a stage sometime (or if not, skirting through rainstorms or remembering Elizabethan-era monologues while preparing Marmite on Challah).

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Will Bond



Bruschetta
I made it twice this week – once because we had company and again because I made it so well the first time. It’s not anything new, but it’s one of those magical concoctions that tastes amazing, takes about five minutes to prepare and impresses guests because it looks kinda fancy. Don’t cheap out - use good parmesan and it becomes a revelation.

Diet Coke
From the lower end of the culinary scale, there’s times where approximately 20% of my body weight is this mysterious black drink. Usually on Saturdays.

Ghostface Killah
“Catch the blast of a hype verse, my glock burst, leave in a hearse, I did worse” – the first lines of the opening track from Wu Tang’s classic 1993 album 36 Chambers came from Ghostface and since then he hasn’t stopped. There’s always at least one album of his on my iPod, usually a couple. 15 years on and he’s prolific – three albums in the last 18 months. Who does that?

Vans
I had a brief flirtation with fancy sneakers but then came to my senses. Vans Half Cabs and Chukkas are doing it for me now - they’re simple and comfortable.

Japan
I don't think I'm the first list-contributor to nominate this country. I’m going back to Japan with my girl in October. After my first visit last year I just dream of being there. The people, the food (especially the food), the shopping, the all-you-can-drink karaoke – it’s amazing.

Will Bond has a heatseeking ability to find the most judicious beats for your dancefloor. You can check out his bullseye musical precision when he runs Favela Rock. You can also get all mouseclicky with the Opulent magazine blog where Will tracks his thoughts on everything from R Kelly to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Menu-wise, he's also managed to conquer gozleme, tapas and vegan cheesecake, which is pretty impressive.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Beth Taylor



Bread tags
They restore my faith in humanity on a daily basis: they're equal parts beauty and functionality. In an attempt to pay homage to them, I've made jewellery, cards, CD covers, magnets and wedding invitations with them. My latest project was to see if I could gather together a calendar year's worth of the suckers, but sadly I've got six missing dates. Grrrr! If they ever stop making them at least I will have my collection to comfort me.

This American Life
My partner Jeff had been telling me how much I'd like the weekly radio show This American Life for years and a few months ago I finally discovered what he was on about. Their funny, touching, fascinating stories on varied themes make me feel in touch with the world in a way I'd never expected. My favourite stories include the tale of the truth-challenged man behind cryonics, Jerry Springer's surprising life before TV and the unbelievable goings-on in the Rubber Room of the New York City Board of Education building (purgatory for teachers who are suspected of having done wrong). You can download podcasts of their episodes free for the week after they broadcast.



Blurb
We just made a book from photos we took while we were travelling last year and now I'm seriously hooked! This site allows you to make 'profesh' looking books of photos, blog posts, recipes etc.



Drying washing on the line
Hanging out the washing is the closest I get to a meditative state. I find it's the best mind de-clutterer. We've just come back from living in Vancouver, Canada, where they don't even bother having outdoor washing lines because rain is such a permanent fixture. I can't get over how good it is to be able to dry washing on the line back here, even in the middle of winter!

Sydney
It's funny how I had reduced Sydney down to its stereotypes while we were away: the Harbour Bridge, shiny buildings, traffic congestion... Now that we're back I'm seeing the city with a fresh appreciation: ABC 702 AM radio, winter sunshine, Sydney Biennale, Underbelly Arts Festival, seeing people you know walking down the street, public transport that's not as bad as I remembered it, reformed licensing laws for live music and my favourite chow-down haunts: Sea Bay, Bodhi yum cha and Alfalfa House.

Beth Taylor is someone who could give you a real long answer if you innocently asked her at a party, "what do you do?"

She's an award-winning filmmaker who has made documentaries on everything from playground swings to the everyday impact of terrorism to missing out on motherhood. She is also a crucial instrument-juggling member of The Desks when they play live. She makes jewellery out of bread tags and makes wry, original and warming comments about ordinary things no one has ever noticed before. In front of her camera, she turns things that normally disappear into background wallpaper of everyday life and makes them stand out in a beautiful way (as you can see from her photos above).

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Jessica Sutton



The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
Dare I call this my favourite book? Regardless, it’s one of very few I have re-read and happens to be the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winner. The story is set in 1930s New York, following the lives of two young Jewish cousins as they create a comic book empire. A beautiful plot, at times heartbreaking, a must read for comic book fans, artists and lovers of contemporary American fiction.

Print Gocco
Gocco (プリントゴッコ, Purinto Gokko, "Print Gocco") is a self-contained compact color printing system invented in 1977 by Noboru Hayama. Gocco became immensely popular in Japan and it is estimated that one-third of Japanese households own a Print Gocco system.’ - www.wikipedia.org.
I use mine to print business cards, postcards, and tags for my business, but you can use it for pretty much anything. It’s my own personal screenprinting lab in a box and I love it and you can’t have it.

Copic Markers
Another Japanese favourite of mine. They are my alternative to the now defunct Pantone colour system and come in 322 colours. They’ll cost you though, I can only afford one a week. Really great for design work, comics or just colouring in. The reason they are awesome is they don’t go all streaky and gross on paper, rather making a nice area of flat colour.

Pipsqueak Cider by Little Creatures Brewery
I really just love cider, it’s like a grown up apple juice. Pipsqueak is made from locally sourced apples, and I first noticed it because of the name. Very light and not too sweet. Best of all, no one will know you’re not drinking beer.

Papercraft
I am really excited about trend in design towards a more cut paper aesthetic. Design is moving away from being all done on computer and now incorporates paper, 3D collage and sculpture. I have been coveting a book called TACTILE – High Touch Visuals, which is all about this change. I’ve started designing without using Photoshop at all!

Jessica Sutton came up with Crafternoon one cold Canadian winter (are there any other kind?) in 2005, when the Sydneysider was whiling away in Northern Alberta. First off there were sock puppets, vinyl pencil cases and wallets, now Crafternoon’s ever-growing menagerie includes a large range of none-too-rowdy creatures and colourful things. Like those Canadian snowflakes, no two items are the same. Most are made of recycled fabric and pre-loved clothing.

Jessica has also teamed up with Sydney fashion retailer Incu, the Red Door Gallery in Edinburgh, UK, and is currently working on an exciting exhibition for a new gallery opening in Brooklyn, NY, later this year. I hope it involves cool markers and paper art.

Saturday, July 5, 2008

James d'Apice (Peach)



My fiancée
I’m engaged. Yeah, being engaged is great. You’re single? Ooooh, sucks for you. You’ve probably got lots of other fulfilling interests though, right? Really, deeply fulfilling ones? Interests that tuck you in at night and tell you everything’s going to be alright? Interests that bake you cookies just to say, “I’m thinking of you”? Being engaged is great.*

* = most engaged people are smug caricatures. I’m one of them. Sorry.

Tripe and spicy beef wonton soup noodles from Happy Chef in Sussex St, Chinatown
It’s true: tripe is land seafood. Seafood on land! It has a subtle (slightly poo-ey) flavour combined with a challenging, mouth-filling chew. Seriously, tripe is basically octopus; just cheaper. And what better way to enjoy it than in a soup this perfect? I once went to a Happy Chef that was not the one in the Sussex Street food court and the soup was not as good. Nor were the portions as generous.

I have mine with egg noodles. It’s called “number eighteen, with egg noodles (please)”.

Saggy Greens
I play cricket for the Saggy Greens. Last season – for the whole season – I scored no runs, took no wickets, bowled no overs, effected no run outs, and took no catches. I still got to go to the end of season dinner, though. In our team we have (awesome) photographers, (awesome) IT people (whose job I don’t fully understand), (awesome) artists, rappers (one awesome and one OK), people who work for Macquarie Bank (doing something), music teachers, and more. We’re like the United Colours of Bennetton, career-wise. Sometimes we win games. Then, we drink. Sometimes we lose. We don’t always drink then; we tend to just go home. When we draw, we also drink.

My longneck stubby holder
I’ve always wanted one. I now have one. I bought it from Liquorland in Erina Fair on the Central Coast of New South Wales for two dollars and ninety-five cents (Australian). Drinking longnecks at a party out of a stubby holder makes you feel pretty staunch. I would know, for I have a longneck stubby holder. People sometimes say, “hey that’s pretty cool.” I nod in reply. It is pretty cool.

Large, dark, skim hot chocolates from the Lindt Café
Although they recently changed their loyalty ‘stamp card’ reward, I still regularly get a hot chocolate from the Lindt Cafe. The old reward was two small chocolates (cost: one dollar each). The new reward is one ‘Delice’ macaroon (cost: one dollar and ninety-five cents each). Despite the comparable monetary value, I preferred getting two small chocolates.

I accumulate loyalty ‘stamp card’ points fairly quickly as I work nearby. My job is kind of like a ‘hyper junior’ solicitor (I’m not a real solicitor until I finish this totally pissweak course and am admitted) so – because there’s nothing on the line – I can just wander off sometimes. Also: I get ‘orders’ from my colleagues for coffees and hot chocolates. This helps me accumulate loyalty ‘stamp card’ points even faster.

I drink skim milk because I’m 19% body fat. I drink dark chocolate because it tastes better.

James/Peach is a battle-winning MC who also happens to have a law degree and a love of food and manly drinks like port. I love that he drops rhymes about his grill pan and the killer combination that is popcorn and cola. He used to co-host Arvos with Shag and now the airwaves feel less sharp, funny and memorable without him. He's collaborated with Mailer Daemon and Catcall and has a cloud-rumbling baritone that is kinda serious, kind and bad-ass at the same time.

Friday, July 4, 2008

Jonathan Vandenberg



Lie Down in the Light, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy
Another grower from the king of alt.alt.country. See him live if you get the chance.

Campos Coffee
I recommend going to A Little on the Side to get it, the barista is great and the wait is non-existent.

Dark Chocolate and Raspberry Muffins
Bourke Street Bakery's perfect end to an early morning bike ride.
633 Bourke St, Surry Hills 2010 NSW (02) 9699 1011

Bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com
The snob rips apart cycle culture every weekday morning. Bitterness served with a side of goose cheese.

Books on Fire: The Destruction of Libraries throughout History, Lucien X. Polstron.
The author's name borders on the ludicrous, but he knows his stuff about the great information depositories of yore.

Jonathan Vandenberg is mega-savvy when it books, food and the very blokey film Glengarry Glen Ross. He's the sort of guy who can convince you that a book that you think you hate is actually worth reconsidering (and then turns out to be totally right! Cf. And Then We Came To The End.) He also makes a mean midnight crepe and wants David Bazan to come to Australia.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

David Nichols



Old newspapers from the Yorke Peninsula
Yorke Peninsula is one of South Australia’s tendrils, a couple of hours from Adelaide before you’re in the heart of it, if it has a heart. Don’t confuse it with Cape York Peninsula. Known a hundred years ago as the Cornwall of the south or similar (because, like Cornwall, it was a mining hub and, also like Cornwall, it had a lot of Cornish people in it, drawn by the mining). I have only been there the once and it was golden, sturdy, sparse and clear, Edithburgh a tiny former port town, Port Victoria tinier and also a former port town.

Old newspapers – I’ve been reading them from the early 1920s and the mid-1940s – from Yorke Peninsula reveal hidden ethnic tensions (it has/had SA’s biggest German population after the Barossa, and this is clearly a subject of interest in the area given various European conflicts), secret scandals, beauty contests, ugly man contests (no joke), wheat and rye prices, civic pride debates, lavatory installation plans, news about new ceilings in reading rooms, and it altogether helps unlock my fascination with self-contained rural pasts in a nation forging its own defined character in the modern world.

Lapsang Souchon
Something about this tea is addictive, probably not the caffeine. I did not drink it for about thirty years after consuming some (with milk, ugh) at the age of roughly 12. Then a compulsion came upon me and I can’t resist. It is far greater than ordinary tea. It is also the one boxed tea bag in the commercially available supermarket range that is often missing, presumably because it is a minority interest (i.e. not because there’s a huge demand). I can’t say this adds to its appeal – in fact it encourages me to try and find another type of tea I like as much, but there doesn’t seem to be one.

The work of artist Mia Schoen
If I ever make it into the history books it will be as a kind of Alice B. Toklas figure to the artist Mia Schoen, whose landscapes – usually in oils – are often intricate, direct and stunning. The artist Mia Schoen works all night on these pictures and, at time of writing, her most recent is a large scale portrait of a half-complete office (?) building at Melbourne’s Docklands. It’s both beautiful and terrifying, like a raging storm.

Kung Fu Panda
I immediately added this to my list of favourite films in between It Happened One Night and some Mike Leigh or other. Mainly because it looks so unbelievably vivid and positively writhes on the big screen. This is Hollywood’s grumpy answer to the concept of content delivery on mobile phone screens: there is so much going on here that it’s a whole world in itself. A world called ‘China’, which I admit is slightly problematic – would I be as accepting of a comparable film set in Australia and filled with the roof with stereotypes, probably not, but that aside, what an epic.

Ginger
So versatile, and it stops you getting nauseous when you travel = magic.

There's that line in The Catcher in The Rye about how good books make you want to ring up the author to talk about it. If you can't get through to the writer, David Nichols is who you want - he can strike up an amazing, surprising conversation with about a good bundle of pages. He also is very spot on with finding books you might like (which, of course, are so quickly adopted as your own favourites that they feel like they were your own self-discoveries). He has written a biography of The Go-Betweens, lots of zines and articles for many magazines. I used to buy The Big Issue just for his column, which sadly ain't in the mag anymore. One day, I hope he resurrects his memoir about writing for 1980s teen mags like Smash Hits, because what I read was so funny and please-can-I-have-some-more-ish. He has also been in lots of Melbourne bands and is an academic too.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Jon Dale



Solo Soli IIIII, Scratch Pet Land
Fantastic set of toy-tronics from the Badoux brothers (who later split into DJ Elephant Power and Sun OK Papi K.O.). As with most Sonig music, it stays within the boundaries of childlike/pleasure-some, as opposed to childish/irritating. Attention to recording materials and process actually reminds me quite a bit of musique concrete, too.

Beyond The Dream Syndicate: Tony Conrad And The Arts After Cage, Branden Wayne Joseph
Excellently written exposition of Conrad's 'position' on the arts. Particularly good sections on the politics of Henry Flynt, etc. and the use of Foucault (genealogy) and Deleuze & Guattari (minor literature) feels relevant, not over-egged. A nice reminder of Conrad's drive to put the cad back into academic. Now I have to read Joseph's book on Anthony McCall.

Optical Sound Films 1971-2007 DVD, Guy Sherwin
I very much appreciate the internal fortitude and singlemindedness of Sherwin's approach to film, his obsession with 'light and time', the fundamentals of the filmic. Works like 'Cycles' are so brutally mainlined.

An Optimist Notes The Dusk, David Grubbs
Due out in September, I've been lucky enough to score a sneak preview, it's his best since The Thicket, I think. David's voice in full bloom and the compositions beautifully spare; there's a new surety to his songwriting. Very good.

Art & Language: various publications
Flicking through these for my research, I'm constantly astounded and impressed by the rigour of the approach, and the great, wily sense of humour behind a lot of the writing. How can you not find Terry Atkinson, Mel Ramsden, Ian Burn etc hilarious? And, typical of the best humour, the work's as serious as your life.

The first time I ever read anything by Jon Dale, it was a review of a ZZ Top concert for a music zine. It was funny, smart and captured that musical crime scene in hyper-vivid detail. All those qualities still fire up his writing - a rarity in the bloated world of music press. He's written for lots of mags, such as The Wire and Uncut and currently is keeping the academic world on its toes.