I want to be alone (at the movies)

Going to the movies by myself is one of the things I really love to do.

It hasn't always been this way. The first time I went to the movies alone was only a couple of years ago. I can't even remember what film I saw. I do remember feeling incredibly self-conscious and convinced that everyone was staring at me, wondering why I hadn't brought along a friend or a boyfriend. I kept remembering a story my sister had told me about when she went to the movies by herself and this group came up to her, asked if she was saving the seat next to her for someone else and she had to respond that, no, actually she wasn't waiting for anyone.

For anyone who doesn't make a habit if going to movies solo it's hard to explain why it feels so nice. I like seeing movies with other people too, it's just that there's something super-indulgent about doing it alone, particularly because it's often at slightly odd hours of the day: like a Sunday afternoon as opposed to a Saturday night or in the middle of a working day - one of my favourite pastimes when I have a day off from work. There's something good, too, about feeling completely autonomous, that makes it more enjoyable. If I think a movie's shit I can walk out. I don't have to worry about whether the person I'm with is enjoying the movie and laughing in the same places I am. I don't have to discuss the movie or offer an opinion after it's over. I can just enjoy it (or not), think about it (or not) and then get on with my day or night.

With all that in mind it occured to me yesterday while I sat in one of the cinema as Luna Leederville watching Barney's Version, that there is a right and a wrong way to go to a movie alone.

1. Don't get there too early. Nothing will make you feel more self-conscious than sitting by yourself in a cinema for 15 minutes before the film starts, especially as the cinema starts to fill up around you with couples and groups of friends. You will be convinced everyone is staring at you and depending on how weird and uncomfortable you look, you may be right.

2. Don't get there too late. I arrived late for a solo screening of Let Me In, a remaked of Let the Right One In. It had been a sudden decision to go (I was in Leederville, it started to rain) and so by the time I entered the cinema the credits had already started. Unfortunately the credits were really really dark and I couldn't see A THING. I had to feel my way to a chair only to realise as the room gradually lightened that I was sitting... almost on top of of the cinema's only other (male) occupant, who presumably thought I was some kind of weird sexual predator.

3. Look nice. I always check out other people who are at the movies by themselves, whether I'm there solo or not. Rightly or not I have a tendency to group them automatically into two classes: people who enjoy seeing movies by themselves and people who have no choice but to see movies by themselves. Generally speaking the former look respectable, well-adjusted and don't have weird stains on their pants. They also look like they might have taken a shower in the last week or so.

4. Don't see Barney's Version. Seriously. Scott Speedman is insanely hot and charming, Paul Giametti is good and Dustin Hoffman is excellent but the last movie I saw with this much forced mawkishness was Forrest Gump. And I really didn't care much for Forrest Gump.

One of my favourite (long) quotes from one of my favourite (longish) books ahead of a long, long weekend

"There are blonde and blondes and it is almost a joke word nowadays. All blondes have their points, except perhaps the metallic ones who are as blonde as a Zulu under the bleach and as to disposition as soft as a sidewalk.

"There is the small cute blonde who cheeps and twitters, and the big statuesque blonde who straight-arms you with an ice-blue glare. There is the blonde who gives you the up-from-under look and smells lovely and shimmers and hangs on your arm and is always very, very tired when you take her home. She makes that helpless gesture and has that goddamned headache and you would like to slug her except that you found about the headache before you invested too much time and money and hope in her. Because the headache will always be there, a weapon that never wears out and is as deadly as the bravo’s rapier or Lucrezia’s poison vial.

"There is the soft and willing alcoholic blonde who doesn’t care what she wears as long as it is mink or where she goes as long as it is the Starlight Roof and there is plenty of dry champagne.

"There is the small perky blonde who is a little pale and wants to pay her own way and is full of sunshine and common sense and knows judo from the ground up and can toss a truck driver over her shoulder without missing more than one sentence out of the editorial in the Saturday Review.

"There is the pale, pale blonde with anemia of some non-fatal but incurable type. She very languid and very shadowy and she speaks softly out of nowhere and you can’t lay a finger on her because in the first place you don’t want to and in the second place she is reading the Wasteland or Dante in the original, or Kafka or Kierkegaard or studying Provencal. She adores music and when the New York Philharmonic is playing Hindesmith she can tell you which one of the six bass viols came in a quarter of a beat too late. I hear Toscanini can also. That makes two of them.

"And lastly there is the gorgeous show piece who will outlast three kingpin racketeers and then marry a couple of millionaires at a million a head and end up with a pale rose villa at Cap d’Antibes, and Alfa Romeo town car complete with pilot and co-pilot, and a stable of shopworn aristocrats, all of whom she will treat with the affectionate absentmindedness of an elderly duke saying good night to his butler."

(Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye)

Token Smokin' Hottie: Sufjan Stevens

It's tough to like religious people. I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be a shit about it and I know that sounds really stupid and bigoted but it's true: I look down on religious people the same way I look down on people who are racist, rude or don't understand the difference between "your" and "you're". I just think it's so... silly. And, yes, there are exceptions like Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene - both heroes to me - but they are the exception that makes the rule, not proof that believing in a ficticious character is a wise lifestyle choice. I have religious or semi-religious friends and family but I still view faith as a black mark against someone's character - something to be endured because I like them enough to overlook this flaw.

As with many, many things, however, this theory becomes a little... shall we say elastic when it comes to boys I fancy. Much like the way I have overlooked some pretty terrible things in the past purely in order to get into someone's pants ("Your dream is to one day hunt wolves in the wild? Mine too, I'm totally into that" - wish I was kidding).

Belle and Sebastian's Stuart Murdoch, for instance, is near the top of a list tentatively titled Boys I Would Shag In A HeartBeat Without A Second Thought For the Consequences. It's not so strange because Stuart is cute as a button and I love his music. And yet be believes in God! And sometimes sings about it! Ew.

Which brings us to Sufjan Stveens, who also... appears to believe in God and sings about it! Kind of a lot! Fortunately Sufjan is also blessed with the kind of bone structure that makes me want to tear down walls, the kind of skin you could lick endlessly, an undeniably special voice and the sort of skinny-boy frame against which I have no defences.

I'm not saying I would embrace the faith if Sufjan asked me to run away and be his bride. What I AM saying is that I would happily hole up with him in a hotel and either let him try to convert me or suck it up and pretend to share his beliefs if it got me what I wanted. Which is, of course, him. It's like telling someone you love them in the hope that they might have sex with you. Real classy like.

"Of course, Sufjan," I'd say as I tore the buttons right off his shirt, "I definitely understand where you're coming from. I too feel that there just has to be something out there greater than us."

"Really?" he'd ask, struggling with the weird clasp of my pants. "You're not just saying that."

"I mean it, Suffy" I'd say - assuming he'd let me call him Suffy, which maybe he wouldn't - "I have been touched by the Holy Spirit. And now by you."

Greedy

Recently I had cause to ask a good friend for advice about a problem in my life that had been troubling me.

I laid it all out for him pretty honestly and asked for his advice about how I should handle the situation. I was hoping for something like, well, whatever the opposite of tough love is. I wanted him to pat me on the head and say something like "don't worry so much", "nobody's perfect" or "it'll all work out, you silly sausage."

Instead he surprised me. His response, distinctly unsugarcoated went something like this: "Don't be so fucking greedy." He might not have said the "fucking" part but I think it was definitely implied.

I'd never thought of myself as greedy before. It sounds like such an unappealing way to describe anyone, suggesting a lack of self control that made me think of an obese middle-aged woman stuffing buns into her gob, one after the other after the other after the other while new rolls of fat form on her thighs and drip down the sides of her body. And yet the more I thought about it the more I realised that greedy is exactly how I would - or should - describe myself. Like a typical bloody Generation Y-er I want everything and I want it all the time. Immediately. I want to be able to write books and yet I also want the money that comes from a day job of writing stuff I'm not, let's be honest, exactly passionate about. I want to look good in a slutty dress but I also want to eat those hot chips and have that second glass of wine. I want all the lovely security and fun that comes from my delightful long term relationship but I also lust after random boys on the street like some sex-crazed teenager.

My friend's advice, to stop being so greedy, should have made me feel like shit, probably. But instead it cheered me up. Thinking about it I can see that I've always bordered on greedy when it comes to food and alcohol, for instance. But because I don't want to be fat or become an alcoholic I fight against my impulse to gorge on both and there's something weirdly comforting about the potential for applying this same moderation to the rest of my life. If I can't have it all (say the chips and the wine) then I need to decide what I want more (uh, do you need to ask?).

It's pretty pedestrian as far as epiphanies go but, meh, it cheered me up. For some bizarre reason it also made me think of a lovely Woody Allen quote, whose origins I forget.

"Can we actually 'know' the universe? My God, it's hard enough finding your way around Chinatown."

P.S: I found this picture just by typing "greed" into google search but in hindsight how fucking creepy does this kid look? Jesus Christ, imagine having THAT claw its way out of your womb?!

Precious snowflakes

I don't often link to other blogs or columns because, you know, you already know what you like but Sam de Brito has written a cracker for the Sydney Morning Herald this week. I'm a big fan of SDB who would be, I think, a shitload of fun to get drunk with. He writes:

Ever thought you're just a little different to the people around you? Maybe just a touch smarter, a tad more "enlightened"; you're sensitive and creative and surely feel and think things other people don't. Well, I reckon it's a delusion, a myth - and this widely-held fantasy of "I'm different" is a smoking crack in the earth that routinely swallows human empathy.

You can read the rest here.

I love fashion because...

... stories like this one, Top Five Red Riding Hood Capes and Dresses, can actually exist. The best part about this story is the "Top Five" bit like Oh My Fucking God there are just so many awesome red riding hood capes out there you're completely spoilt for choice and desperately need a fashion editor to guide you through this sartorial nightmare. Also I totally want one. Sorry.

The Pros and Cons of Living in Perth

PRO: Living in a city that is so small you can randomnly run into a good chum while sitting at a kebab shop in Leederville on a Thursday night.

CON: Living in a city so useless that said kebab shop doesn't even seem embarassed to say the chip fryer's broken and so you can't have any chips. Boo.

Friday... fun?

Because it's Friday and time for an existential crisis here is a brilliant scene from one of my favourite movies, Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters. To give it some context the character Mickey (played by Allen) has recently found out he doesn't have cancer, having thought for awhile that he might. At first he's ecstatic but then later he decides he wants to kill himself because he's decided that life is meaningless. He explains it thusly...

Mickey: No, I'm not dying now, but you know, when I ran out of the hospital I was thrilled because they told me I'm going to be all right. I'm running down the street and it hits me: All right, so I'm not going to go today, but eventually I'm going to be in that position.
Gail: You're just realising this now?
Mickey: No I don't realise it now. I know it all the time but I manage to stick it in the back of my mind because it's a very horrible thing to think about.
Gail: Yeah. What?
Mickey: Can I tell you something? Can I tell you a secret?
Gail: Yes please.
Mickey: A week ago, I bought a rifle.
Gail: No.
Mickey: I went into a store. I bought a rifle. I was gonna... You know, if they told me that I had a tumor, I was going to kill myself. The only thing that mighta stopped me, might've is my parents would be devastated. I would, I would had to shoot them, also, first. And then, I have an aunt and uncle, I would have... you know it would have been a bloodbath.
Gail: Tch, well, you know, eventually it is going to happen to all of us.
Mickey: Yes, but doesn't that ruin everything for you? That makes everything... you know it takes the pleasure out of everything. I mean, you're gonna die, I'm gonna die, the audience is gonna die, the network's gonna - the sponsor. Everything!
Gail: I know, I know, and your hampster.
Mickey: Yes!

For what it's worth he doesn't kill himself. Which is partly why this film is not only one of my favourites films ever but one of the most reassuring films of all time. Forget about reading philsophy or self-help books: for my money Woody Allen does it better.

Faultless logic

Token Smokin' Hottie: Jon Hamm

If you're a regular Mad Men viewer you might recall that Jon Hamm usually spends his time looking like this:

Yum. Lately, however, with Mad Men on a break and not coming back until 2012 Jon has been spending his time looking like this:

I WANT to say he's still a hot piece of arse but... no. Just no. I mean I'd still go there, obviously, but I might consider dimming the lights. And having a few drinks. During.

The moral of the story? Men of the world: how you groom yourself and dress yourself does effect the amount of pussy you can expect to acquire. Please take this onboard.

This is either brilliant or very depressing

So here's a fun fact. Today I learnt how to tell which of my many FASCINATING blog posts over the years have been the most viewed. The winner? This one! Apparently I'm not the only one with a big fat crush.

Sweet Valley High

When I was a youngster my sister was really into the Sweet Valley High series of books. I wanted to read them - the covers alone looked AMAZING - but my Mum said they were too old for me and forced me to read the totally ball-bag spin off, Sweet Valley Twins instead. Lame.

Actually, all that happened was that I snuck the SVH books out of my sister's room and read them in my bedroom, starting with the brilliantly awesome Double Love. Because, yes, I loved a pretty wild and crazy life. In hindsight, I really don't know what Mum was so worried about: Sweet Valley is the lamest, whitest, most genital-free town EVER. Seriously, Elizabeth the 'good twin' is held up to be some kind of perfect perfection despite the fact that she dresses like a grandmother, can't open her mouth without patronising someone and has a weirdly sexless relationship with her beige (probably gay) boyfriend Todd. Admittedly Jessica is... kind of a sociopath, actually, but at least the books acknowledge that she's a selfish tramp, even if she usually manages to come good by the end of most of the books.

Anyway, to celebrate(?) the release of Sweet Valley High Confidential (a book that picks up where the original series left off OMFG), I feel obliged to point you to The Dairi Burger, which has re-read all the SVH books and recapped them for your viewing pleasure.

It's pretty fucking funny. For example, from Deceptions:

Scene 2: Enid Rollins’ pathetic fucking non-Spanish tiled house.

ENID ROLLINS: (answering the phone): Hello?

EW: Enid, omg! What am I going to do? This is SUCH a disaster!

ER: Ok, I’ve cleared my schedule. I’ve canceled visiting my dying grandmother to talk to you.

EW: Oh my gaaaawd! Nicholas is like totally in love with me! And he’s so rich and good-looking! But I am supposed to be in love with my good-looking boyfriend Todd! Two guys are in love with me! Life is SO HARD!

ER: Wow, that IS a huge problem. I mean, forget that I have a drunk father, I once almost killed a kid, and I was born with frizzy brown hair, how can you stand to be you! [puts a gun to her head]

Almost makes me want to track them down for the joy of re-reading them myself. Almost.

My heart is just BREAKING for Chris Brown

I mean can't a dude beat the shit out of his girlfriend's face and not have people ask him about said violent beating two years later? Stay strong, Chris, violent spouses around the world are standing strong behind you on this one.

I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.

I don't know how closely everyone has been following this story out of Sydney showing footage of a fat older kid being bullied by a younger boy. For anyone who hasn't seen it the older kid is being picked on and hit, picked on and hit until he retaliates by picking up his bully and dumping him on the ground. I've been fascinated by the story, in part because it's pretty tough to know how to feel about it.

On the one hand, I genuinely don't think that violence is ever the answer but only breeds more violence blah blah blah. If the younger kid had been badly hurt, which he could easily have been, we'd all be talking about the case in a very different way and the older kid's life would be even more fucked. I know kids who were bullied but I also know kids who were the bullies, and they're not evil people who deserved to die - they were just little shits who didn't know any better and were probably being bullied themselves. I'm sure there are plenty of childhood bullies who didn't come good but the people I know did.

On the other hand I can't help being a little bit delighted by the story, like a lot of other people apparently. I could pretty much watch the footage of the bullied kid picking up his tormentor all day because somehow this little incident seems to have become a flashpoint for something much bigger. It's pretty tough to have any sympathy for the younger boy when you hear the older one talk about how he contemplated suicide as a result of all the teasing that he seems to have suffered for most of his school life. Similarly it's tough not to feel admiration for the victim because he so obviously just took it and took it and took it until he... didn't take it anymore.

For some reason it makes me think of the brilliant film, Network, and its protagonist's mantra: "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore".

It's a pretty shitty lesson for kids to learn but I'm betting that the older kid's situation at school will improve as a result of this incident, in a way that years of asking for help from his parents and teachers has not.

I would love to see someone revisit this story in five years time to talk to both boys about how it shaped their lives, as I'm sure it will.

Best Coverline Ever on the current edition of Australian Vogue

Do Women Really Like Sex?

Things that Do and Do Not Feel Good After Finishing a Brutal Workout at the Gym

DOES FEEL GOOD: The sense that I am getting my fitness back ("back"? Really?) and could maybe run away from a very slow, possibly wounded, predator.

DOES NOT FEEL GOOD: Walking into the (otherwise empty) change room to find a (male) cleaner mopping the floor. Am I seriously expected to take my clothes off in front of this guy or do I just pretend to be super interested in my little locker and the two pairs of shoes within it? Enquiring minds want to know.

Pemberton, I love you, but you're bringing me down

To Pemberton where I spent my weekend watching a load of very skinny boys ride past me very fast on very expensive bikes. To my slight surprise it was great fun (and not only the bit where I got to legitimately spend a day staring at one of my favourite things in the world: skinny boys). It has, however, put me off my One Day plans to watch a stage of the Tour de France because, without the commentators to explain what's happening, it is, to put it mildly, fucking hard to work out what's going on.

My spectator chum, Marnie, and I spent several hours curled up on a handy park bench in what we thought would be an advantageous spot to watch the race. We were half way up a big hill so we got to see the riders dying on their arses on the way up and then moving scary fast on the way down. In between the laps when we saw nobody I re-read Madame Bovary and she read something on her e-reader, shivering in the freezing cold. (And damnit if don't now kinda want an e-reader, having spent so long railing against them).

Anyway, it was all fine when the riders went off in their respective groups at the start but by the time they came around for Lap 2 we had no idea whether the lone riders were completely shit stragglers or amazing riders who had pulled off a one-man breakaway. Should we have clapped or averted our gazes politely? We chose the latter. Adding to the, er, fun, was that several riders got completely lost and would ride by at random times, looking confused. To top it all we managed to miss the finish and didn't realise the race was over until someone cycled up to tell us so. Brilliant.

The best/worst bit of the weekend, though, was our motel - which I won't name here lest I manage to defame ten types of hell out of them.

Clearly I am a massive snob - I must be, I've never stayed in a motel. But the weirdness started with the man at reception ("Just don't leave any sugar out, or the ants will come") and ended with the cleaning lady who performed her duties while wheeling a wheelbarrow. No, I don't know either. Adding insult to injury was that when we went out for breakfast at the Lavender Farm (exactly like it sounds) the next day we discovered they rent out some darling wee cottages with a view of the lake and, yes, the lavender. Opportunity missed.

I guess what I'm saying is that I am already planning my return trip to Pemberton for the Pemberton Classic road race next year. But this time I plan to book ahead at the Lavender Farm. And possibly bring some binoculars. Those skinny boys are worthy of a close up.

A Roasting

A slightly grim article from the Courier Mail about women getting shitter at doing "female" things like roasting an oven, vaccuming and - presumably - taking a beating from one's husband without reporting his sorry arse to the cops. Because the year is 1950.

But I paraphrase. Let's go to the primary source:

BASIC "female" skills are becoming endangered with fewer young women able to iron a shirt, cook a roast chicken or hem a skirt.

Just as more modern men are unable to complete traditional male tasks, new research shows Generation Y women can't do the chores their mothers and grandmothers did daily. Only 51 per cent of women aged under 30 can cook a roast compared with 82 per cent of baby boomers.

Baking lamingtons is a dying art with 20 per cent of Gen Y capable of whipping up the Aussie classic, down from 45 per cent for previous generations

The thing is, as a Gen Y woman myself I have some concerns with the phrase "able to", as in "fewer young women are able to...". Handed a cookbook and a raw chicken I think most Gen Y women would, in fact, be "able to" roast said chicken, even if they haven't done so before. (I'm not a great cook and I can do it, so how hard can it really be?) I think what the survey was probably asking is whether the women would be able to roast a chicken off their own bat, implying that they'd done it so many times it would be a cinch.

Similarly I can bake a good cake or tray of muffins but I've not the slightest idea how to make a lamington. Mostly because I find them to be ultra weak sauce on my list of tasty treats.

But, wait, it's not all bad. Don't sterilise us en masse just yet.

But Gen Y women are taking on other skills.

As well as working full or part-time, they are doing tasks previously done by men.

More than 70 per cent of women under 30 say they often take out the bins, 77 per cent mow the lawn and 70 per cent claim they wash the car.

Phew. Close one.

Fuck me, I'm in love

Could somebody pretty please put me out of my misery and buy me this bag?

Things I think but do not say to people at the gym:

1. Please put on some pants.
2. Please, please stop talking. I cannot run on this treadmill and chat about the state of the education system.
3. Seriously, the pants.