TMACTION

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These are the two shows that genuinely surprised me over summer. Here’s the trailer for The Bisexual. I’d post the one for Loudermilk but It doesn’t do it justice. Just imagine There’s Something About Mary but with mean drunks.

Desiree Akhavan is a revelation.

Her twitter feed led me to this hilarious thread.

My favourite has to be number 13.

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How about a shopping list for the top ten Japanese Trinkets? Maybe these can fill the emptiness inside you.

Number 10: Seiko Spirit Smart Watch SCED035   Designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro for Aliens 1986. $3084.

Number 9: Transformers G1 Pretender Doubleheader $283.27 Complete W/Instructions 1989 Hasbro

Clearly a whitewashed rip off of The Thing with Two Heads.

Number 8: Mamiya Pistol Camera. $21,573.97

CameraWiki:

The demand from the police forces was made more pressing after the "bloody May Day incident" (血のメーデー事件), a clash between Tokyo protesters and policemen on May Day 1952, where two people were killed and more than 740 were injured. It is said that various policemen were injured while taking photographs of the protesters: with their eye on the viewfinder they could not see their opponents. As a result, the Japanese police wanted a camera which would be easy to aim without raising it to the eye, and a pistol-shaped camera was considered ideal because the policemen are supposedly good at gun handling.

Number 7: Takara Tomy Panda's ana Kan-Cho Action Figures (Complete Set 6 Piece Set) $73.98 If you like you can learn a bit more about the potentially lethal cultural phenomenon.

Number 6: A GZero Sumo Robot. (Unassembled) $2,811

Number 5: 69th Yokozuna Sumo Wrestler Hakuho Tegata Hand Stamp & Autograph Card. $490

Sumo get the job done. David Sedaris could learn a thing or two from this technique.

Number 4: Okamoto's AGNI Hutte Wood Stove. $5023 This may not fit in your carry on.

Number 3: Kanna Donryu 65mm Competition Planing Tool. $510

Number 2: Aikuchi Katana Sword by Marc Newson. $417,825. Even the box is kind of nice.

And Number 1: The Uni Kuru Toga Self Sharpening Mechanical Pencil. $4.98 from Officeworks.

This video shows you how it works.

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This is my vote for the album of the year 2018.

What an achievement this song is! There’s so much going on in it, despite that all we learn from the words is that Bob went on a three day bender and that he feels alright. 

Five years ago he made this face when presented with a cake on his 75th birthday.

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This James Jean’s oil painting for the Mother! poster.  He made posters for three of this year’s biggest films.

Arronofsky says that you can read the piece as a biblical allegory about the destruction of the environment.  That was a surprise to me as all I saw was a pretty straightforward depiction of the hustle and bustle that goes on day to day in any Melbourne share house.

The day Jennifer Lawrence was born a cool Russian singer named Victor Tsoi died. This is a link to his best music video. There is a film about him called Leto showing at Cannes right now.

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Fritz Haber Sketched in 1911 by W. Luntz.

We Like Things Simple By Dave Trott, 18th April 2018

Fritz Haber was a German Jew. He wanted to be a good German so he converted to Christianity. At University, between 1894 and 1911, he invented the Haber-Bosch process. In 1919 he received the Nobel Prize for it. The Haber-Bosch process is now responsible for feeding half the people on the planet. Crops depend on nitrogen as a fertilizer, but worldwide supplies of nitrogen are limited. This could have meant billions of people starving because they couldn’t be fed. But Fritz Haber invented a method of extracting nitrogen from the atmosphere, it’s been described as “making bread from air”. Today we manufacture 100 million tons of nitrogen a year by his process. It is accepted as the greatest scientific discovery of the twentieth century. Haber’s method makes it possible to feed half the planet, several billion people who would otherwise starve to death. We like things simple, so Fritz Haber will be remembered as the man who saved billions of lives, right? But wait a minute, Fritz Haber is also the man who invented poison gas. In 1915, at Ypres, he released a heavier-than-air gas which drifted towards the British lines. Being heavier-than-air it sank down into the trenches. Men began to bloat, and choke, and drown as their lungs filled with their own blood. They didn’t run because no one had ever seen anything like it before. By the end of that first attack, five thousand were dead. By the end of the war, ninety thousand were dead from gas attacks. Fritz Haber was delighted, he was promoted to captain and held a party at his house in Germany to celebrate. But his wife wasn’t so delighted. She was also a professor of chemistry, but she believed it should only be used for the good of mankind. During the party, she took Fritz Haber’s service pistol into the garden and shot herself. Haber didn’t stay for her funeral, he went straight back to his unit. He saw chemistry differently, his motto was “In peacetime, one serves humanity. In war, one serves one’s country.” And that is how he lived his life, in service to his country. So how grateful was his country? In 1933 the Nazis came to power in Germany. Haber was the Director of The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical and Electrochemistry. One day he was prevented from entering the Institute by the porter. The porter held up his hand and said “The Jew, Haber, may not enter the Institute”. That was how his country showed its gratitude. Fritz Haber escaped from Germany and became a professor at Cambridge. But the teaching staff there had friends who died in gas attacks, they shunned him as someone who had perverted the higher aims of science. Haber eventually died alone and friendless in Switzerland. So do we remember him as the man who saved life, or the man who helped destroy it? We like things simple, but Haber is an example of the difficulty of this. Certainly Haber was a genius, but that doesn’t always have good results. One of the chemicals he developed was the pesticide Zyklon. This gas was modified and used in Nazi death camps. It was used on Haber’s uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces, neighbours and friends. The products of Fritz Haber’s life could not be more contradictory. Life isn’t always as simple as we would like it.

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Rem Directed by Tomas Koolhaas.

Tomas: Hey Dad what’s up? Rem: Oh nothing. Tomas: Hey do you think I could make a documentary about your work, all the buildings n that. Rem: Look into my eyes son. Tomas: Ok. Rem: Do I look like I want you to make a documentary about me? Tomas: You just look really tired. Rem: (Squeezes the bridge of his nose and rubs his eyes) Tomas: Anyway, how much do you know about parkour?

Available now on Vimeo and iTunes.

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Tommy Lewis RIP (25 August 1958 – 11 May 2018)

Heartbroken at the news about Tommy Lewis. Too soon. Too young. Too sad. A man so full of life. So full of talent. In so many areas. So many obstacles in his way that he just leapt over and raced forward to make the absolute most of himself. Actor, musician, family man, community leader and a Comedia Del Arte afficionado. A man to whom | owe a great personal debt and whom I dearly love and will greatly miss. I send his family sincere condolences as I know they will feel his loss deeply as will I and all of my family.

—Fred Schepisi

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La Permission or The Story of a Three Day Pass Written/directed/music by Melvin Van Peebles

‘Since what I want is the Man’s foot out of our collective asses, why not make the film about a brother getting the Man’s foot out of his ass. That was going to be the thing.’

—Melvin Van Peebles

In case you were wondering, this is how you should dance.

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Big Mama's & Papa's Pizzeria Host Audition 10 of 28 Featuring Ralph Lucas.

This dude shifts gears with a terrific agility.  I can’t believe the producers chose not to provide wine.

This was one of the videos featured in Nathan Fielder and Kyle Mooney’s Youtube Treasures live show. (There’s also a part 2, could the coffin one be real??) Some strange folks out there. Melbourne local R.A.E.D was lucky enough to make the cut. Well done.

The other one I really liked was Bobby VIG.

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Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, 1975 Photo by Steve Schapiro

From his book Taxi Driver.  At 8KG and £900 it’s perfect for any flight or to read on the beach.

Martin Scorsese 2018:

“It can all be summed up in the word that’s being used now: content. All movie images are lumped together. You’ve got a picture, you’ve got a TV episode, a new trailer, you’ve got a how-to video on a coffee-maker, you’ve got a Super Bowl commercial, you’ve got ‘Lawrence of Arabia,’ it’s all the same. They can also turn a picture off and go straight to the next piece of content. If there’s no sense of value tied to a given movie, of course, it can be sampled in bits and pieces and just forgotten.”

“The horrible idea they reinforce that every picture, every image is there to be instantly judged and dismissed without giving audiences time to see it. Time to see it, maybe ruminate and maybe make a decision for themselves. So the great 20th-century art form, the American art form, is reduced to content. ”

Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.

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Gurrumul Directed by Paul Damien Williams

I try throw not the word masterpiece around too much. It is usually reserved for Kieslowski films, Kenny Pittock sculptures, Dave Chappelle anything and Italian wood fired Diavolas.

Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu’s final album Djarimirri (Child of the Rainbow) is a masterpiece.

BBC:

Hailing from tiny Elcho Island, 500km (310 miles) east of Darwin, Yunupingu was born blind, yet never learned Braille or used a walking aid. He taught himself to play a toy piano and piano-accordion before he was four. At five, the left-hander picked up a conventional right-handed guitar, and taught himself to play it "upside-down", which was how he would play throughout his life.

Spotify Link

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Le Monde est a Toi Directed by Romain Gavras.

I have given up on watching movie trailers, they suck and they spoil the movie. In Jerry Seinfeld voice: AND what’s with the 3 and a half second mini trailer at the start of the trailer itself?

Unless like this, they’re short and they don’t give away story.

Another film that looks pretty good. Paul Schrader’s First Reformed.  (I watched this one before I officially quit watching trailers)

I can see the pitch now. The sexy disenfranchised Ethan Hawke levitating priest movie you didn’t know you wanted.

The other one I liked the look of is Matteo Garrone’s Dogman

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Designer Jeremy Landman did excellent things with Font Bureau’s Titling Gothic FB in Errol Morris’ new Netflix project Wormwood.

Its’ slow to get going but it’s worth it in the end. Maybe it would have worked better in feature form?

I read an article about what happens when Blind people take LSD. They spoke to a 70 year old man whose code name is Blue Pentagon:

During my psychedelic experiences, whenever I listened to music, I felt as if I was immersed in the most beautiful waterfall ever. The episode of the waterfall was the nearest I ever came to experiencing anything like synesthesia.

The music of Bach’s third Brandenburg concerto brought on the waterfall effect. I could hear violins playing in my soul and found myself having a one hour long monologue using different tones of voices. I remember they sounded extremely unique! LSD gave everything ‘height’

…The waterfall experience was limited to one specific piece of music: Bach’s Brandenburg concerto number 3. It was almost tactile, but it was so outside my normal parameters of experience that it was the only way I could express it.

I felt like I was in a fairyland, in a surreal reality where everything I touched was extremely velvety, almost as if it had a very soft patina on top. Sometimes I could not clench my hands as tight as I wanted to, or maybe I did and did not realise.

Once I took acid and marijuana at the same time and I wanted to feel everyone’s faces so that I could tell each person what I thought of them just by touching their faces. It was a very strange experience as their skin felt so soft, but their eyes, noses and mouths were in some way distorted.

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Dean Allen at MoMA, New York, 1987.  Photo: Kathy Slade.

I don’t know much about this Dean Allen character, except that he was an early blogger and he died early this year. I’ve been going through his old stuff. This little post/poem/item/thingo is a stand out.

HOW TO COOK SOUP

First, you need some water. Fuse two hydrogen with one oxygen and repeat until you have enough. While the water is heating, raise some cattle. Pay a man with grim eyes to do the slaughtering, preferably while you are away. Roast the bones, then add to the water. Go away again. Come back once in awhile to skim. When the bones begin to float, lash together into booms and tow up the coast. Reduce. Keep reducing. When you think you have reduced enough, reduce some more. Raise some barley. When the broth coats the back of a spoon and light cannot escape it, you are nearly there. Pause to mop your brow as you harvest the barley. Search in vain for a cloud in the sky. Soak the barley overnight (you will need more water here), then add to the broth. When, out of the blue, you remember the first person you truly loved, the soup is ready. Serve.

What a recipe.

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Senior citizens in Japan are going on wonderful, calm, lovely shoplifting sprees with aim of getting sent to the big house to enjoy their wonderful, calm, lovely prison workplaces.

Ms. N, 80 Has stolen a paperback, croquettes, a hand fan Third term, sentenced to three years, two months Has a husband, two sons, and six grandchildren

“I was alone every day and feeling very lonely. My husband gave me a lot of money, and people always told me how lucky I was, but money wasn’t what I wanted. It didn’t make me happy at all.

“The first time I shoplifted was about 13 years ago. I wandered into a bookstore in town and stole a paperback novel. I was caught, taken to a police station, and questioned by the sweetest police officer. He was so kind. He listened to everything I wanted to say. I felt I was being heard for the first time in my life. In the end, he gently tapped on my shoulder and said, ‘I understand you were lonely, but don’t do this again.’ 

“I can’t tell you how much I enjoy working in the prison factory. The other day, when I was complimented on how efficient and meticulous I was, I grasped the joy of working. I regret that I never worked. My life would have been different.  

“I enjoy my life in prison more. There are always people around, and I don’t feel lonely here. When I got out the second time, I promised that I wouldn’t go back. But when I was out, I couldn’t help feeling nostalgic.”

Bloomberg has the story.

In other Japan notices:

Do you need a toilet related addition to your instagram? Something that will remind you of a simpler time? and toilets? Something that will eventually overstay it’s welcome on your feed and you’ll unfollow it in an exasperated, triumphant motion, the words ‘that takes care of that’ / ‘back to whence you came!’ sneaking past your lips one Tuesday morning—on the toilet.  Toilets a go go profiles the art and wisdom of the Tokyo dunny scene. Give it a chance.

Also fantastic IG news just in, if you are sick of IG ads, you should just log out, delete your account, delete the app, throw out your phone and enrol in that paper mache course. No but really, if you install 1Blocker on your phone and cruise IG on Safari you get zero ads and it functions basically the same.... How did I not realise this?

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Before Tinder folks loved to hand out ‘Acquaintance Cards’. Some have aged worse than others. There’s a lot of talk of the devil and being a great match due to being ‘the same complexion’

The perfect musican companion is Gil Gillette’s The Road to Satanville.

This is from the Mississippi Records Cassette compilation, number 81 entitled Dark Summer. Still avaiable for download! It has a sick version of Tainted Love and i love Ethiopian Serenade.

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Rachel Whiteread Untitled (One Hundred Spaces) 1995, resin, various dimensions, Pinault Collection Photo: Tate (Seraphina Neville and Mark Heathcote)

The recent episode of BBC Imagine - Rachel Whiteread: Ghosts in the Room is a must watch. Especially if you’re like me and knew nothing of her work.

You might have to be a bit creative to watch it, either change your zone to the UK to watch it on BBC iPlayer or find it elsewhere online. 

It has the most beautiful ambient music that took me forever to track down. Maybe don’t listen to it until you’ve seen the documentary though.

It’s Tractatus by Tibor Szemzo. You can watch him perform it live here.

See also the 1993 documentary House.