The War on Tomatoes - Round One

According to Uncle Wiki, a common tomato disease is the ‘tobacco mosaic virus’, and ‘for this reason smoking or use of tobacco products are discouraged around tomatoes’. Thus, for my first strike against The Bright Red Menace, I decided to see how it would stand up to being skewered by a flaming, tobacco-filled cigar. Admittedly, the fact that I’d chosen a small, flimsy $3.50 cigar perhaps did not suggest that I had the level of commitment to the cause that I should have – however, not being a smoker I wasn’t sure that I would be able to get the thing lighted in the first place.

As it turned out, my main difficulty with the whole lighting-the-stoogie process was getting my cheapo Bic lighter to flame on – once I’d mastered that I was puffing away like a Cuban playboy. The tomato trembled, knowing that it was mere moments away from having a fiery stick poked up its rear. Mere moments, did I say? By gum, cigars take a long time to smoke! I suppose I could have just taken a couple of puffs and then let the tomato have what was coming to it, but I wanted to get most of my 350 cents worth here.



My first clue that my plan may not have been the Machiavellian scheme I imagined it to be came when, halfway through my cigar, I pressed it to the tomato’s pudgy exterior, and the end-third of it crumpled into ash. Perhaps if I spread the ash around, my red nemesis’ outer layers would wither away… but this too proved futile. Slightly perturbed, I determined to smoke my weapon of choice for a bit longer and then run it through that bastard like a needle through an eyeball. Alas, the tomato proved its capabilities of doubling as a red, round ashtray and my cigar crumpled faster than my car’s rear bumper bar.



As a last desperate measure I decided to stick the tomato in the crisper for a couple of days and hope that somehow the tobacco would erode it given time. No, it did not. When I took the tomato it was as healthy as ever, only with a sprinkling of well-preserved tobacco on the top to improve its flavour. Disgusted, I dumped the thing in its only rightful home – the garbage. This round was lost, but the result would be different next time…



Tomatoes: 1, Me: 0.

The Wooden Finger Year in Music: Part One

HOWLING BELLS V THE TEMPER TRAP

Hometown

Howling Bells: Sydney, now based in London
The Temper Trap: Melbourne
Winner: The Temper Trap

Hit single

Howling Bells: ‘Into The Chaos’ – played on indie radio stations and nowhere else
The Temper Trap: ‘Sweet Disposition’ – played everywhere, including twice in the movie (500) Days of Summer
Winner: The Temper Trap

Lead singer

Howling Bells: The sexy, elfin-like Juanita Stein
The Temper Trap: The exotic but unpronounceable Dougy Mandagi
Winner: Howling Bells

Album title

Howling Bells: The awesome and enticing ‘Radio Wars’
The Temper Trap: The vague and underwhelming ‘Conditions’
Winner: Howling Bells

CD package

Howling Bells: Hardcover booklet with brightly coloured band shots
The Temper Trap: Flip-cover package with fuzzy shots of… what exactly?
Winner: Howling Bells

Festival presence in their homeland

Howling Bells: V Festival
The Temper Trap: V Festival, Falls Festival and Big Day Out – doesn’t get much bigger than that
Winner: The Temper Trap

Er... the music?

Howling Bells: Lush with a hint of brooding
The Temper Trap: Broody with a hint of lushness
Winner: Much of a muchness

Verdict: 3-all - it's a tie, folks!

THE VAMPIRE WEEKEND AWARD FOR THE ARTIST WHO I REALLY QUITE LIKE BUT WHO STILL SHITS ME IN SOME WAY

With her bright red hair and thin pale limbs, Florence Welch (title character of UK band Florence and the Machine) is hard to scrape your eyes off, particularly when she’s flailing about like some mystic earth nymph (see picture below). And no doubt the girl can sing and her debut album, ‘Lungs’, which won the Critics Choice award at the BRITS, is a pleasure to listen to. But (to riff on Mike Skinner) my god does she know she is one of the beautiful people. I’ve hardly seen a shot of her in which she isn’t striking some form of melodramatic pose, the liner notes to her album being a good example. Similarly, her songs feel a little overproduced – even top tracks such as ‘Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)’ can not go two lines without the choral voices chiming in and trying to whisk us off to some enchanting fantasyland (where if Midas is king then I’m betting Florence is a regal personage of some sort). Yes, I would take her over the hordes of unimaginative pop strumpets any day of the week, but she’s young, she’s pretty, the indie media drool over her and she laps it up… damn her to hell…



THE TOP FIVE LINES FROM THE LATEST FUTURE OF THE LEFT ALBUM

5. if I eat what i fuck and i fuck what i eat am i worthy? (I AM CIVIL SERVICE)
4. slight bowel movements preceded the bloodless coup (THROWING BRICKS AT TRAINS)
3. call me anna, velociraptor, excuse my manner, I'm having such a bad day (YIN/POST-YIN).
2. lapsed catholics are the worst, it's part of who they were, and who they'll be again (LAPSED CATHOLICS)
1. yeah sure, satan rules, but that doesn't mean i can't be practical (YOU NEED SATAN MORE THAN HE NEEDS YOU)

British '70s Singer-Songwriters Are Rising From The Dead...

...and selling real estate.

I Want To Be Offended

Ever had a case where your idea of what a band should be like is somewhat different from the reality? I think I'm experiencing that with Reading's electro-pop artists Does It Offend You, Yeah? I blame the album artwork... I saw the dripping letters on the cover and the song titles such as 'Dawn of the Dead' and 'Being Bad Feels Pretty Good' on the back (both awesome tracks by the way) and thought that this was something resembling a cult complete with mission statement ('Does it OFFEND YOU, YEAH?!!!') Actually, that impression was probably only fully formed when I heard the first two tracks ('Battle Royale' and 'With A Heavy Heart (I Regret To Inform You'), which brought to mind the image of a cavernous pit of a venue filled with jumping, sweating bodies raising their fists and middle fingers to the conventional world above.



I think my first source of disillusionment was when I found that the seemingly venomous band title was not anything like a mission statement at all, as synth player Dan Coop recalls:

Everybody thinks the name is some kind of statement but it's a quote from David Brent in an episode of The Office. "When me and James Rushent first started writing music together we decided to put it up on MySpace. We needed a name to put as our profile name so just put what was the first thing that was said on TV, we switched it on and Ricky Gervais said "Does it offend you, yeah? My drinking?" so we just went with that. No thought went into it whatsoever.

So much for the revolution... But I held high hopes for when they recently played in Melbourne - perhaps I would still have my cavernous pit of raised fists and middle fingers after all. This illusion quickly began to dissipate when I first turned up at the venue and it appeared that nobody else over the age of 20 liked this band (or wasn't willing to go out and see them on a 'school night'). And then there was the band itself - I don't know... the vocals didn't seem to have the same bite as they do on record (even during the poppy songs)... I mean they were probably really good, actually they were probably better than most bands I'll ever see, but I was after transcendence goddammit! Or at the least to feel somewhat dirty. All I got was "does it offend you, perhaps?" Which was not the band's fault at all - if anything, blame their album designers...

In Appreciation of Ringo

Last week I bought 'The Beatles: Rock Band' for Wii and have subsequently spent about as long as you can singing into a ditzy little microphone and noodling around on a plastic bass without the aid of serious drugs. For someone who thought he'd been singing along fine to the Beatles for years, the game has been a revelation: turns out that the part in 'Back in the USSR' about Moscow girls really knocking Paul out is a lot harder to sing correctly than I thought, and that there are lilting words all over their back catalogue.



But the impression that's died hardest over the past few days is the one I had that basically any clod could sing Ringo's songs. I first noticed it when I tried 'Yellow Submarine' - surely an easy kiddies' ditty - and ran into a few spots of bother. But my ineptitude was really hammered home when I confidently launched into my rendition of 'With a Little Help of My Friends' only to find that Ringo was singing so low that I struggled to hit every third note. After a couple of verses of frustration and bewilderment I was relieved to hear the others chime in with 'Do you neeeeeeed an-y-bo-dy?' only to completely falter with Ringo's response that he just needs somebody to love. And on it went until the end, because this was the easy level and the 'no-fail' mode, which prevents the song from stopping no matter how god-awful you are, was automatically on. I have since tried 'Boys' (from the Beatles' first album) and put in a vaguely passable effort. I'm too afraid to try 'Octopus's Garden' yet.

So I dip my pink hat to you, Mr Starkey. Obviously, despite all my impressions to the contrary, you brought something to the Beatles that was difficult to match.

The Wooden Finger AFL All-Australian Team 2009

Not surprisingly, I predict that the team will be dominated by Saints and Cats this year, with those teams accounting for half the spots. Both of them won a hell of a lot of games, and as I showed in my very first post the selectors reward that.

If I'm right President Eddie should be reasonably happy as well, with three Magpies getting a guernsey, although I still think he will be spewing if Brownlow fancy Dane Swan misses the starting 18. For some reason, Swan is named as a forward in the preliminary squad, and while he may well end up on a half-forward flank I think he will actually end up as a victim of his own versatility and be relegated to the bench. Of the small forwards Chapman has to get in, and despite Johnson's recent injuries he should also have done enough, and I think that the selectors will be keen to reward Stephen Milne for his shift to a more defensive focus (i.e. being bothered to tackle) over the past year.

I've also left Fevola out of my forward line, even though he was the leading goalkicker. Frankly the guy only did anything every second or third game (I know - I had the misfortune of having him in my SuperCoach team). JB of Brisbane has been far more consistent and a more valuable presence for his team, and Goodes was awesome over the latter stretch of the year.

B: Sam Gilbert, Brian Lake, Nick Maxwell
HB: Brendon Goddard, Matthew Scarlett, Simon Goodwin
C: Leigh Montagna, Joel Selwood, Nick Dal Santo
HF: Paul Chapman, Nick Riewoldt (c), Steve Johnson
F: Adam Goodes, Jonathan Brown (vc), Stephen Milne
R: Aaron Sandilands, Chris Judd, Gary Ablett
I: Dane Swan, Matthew Boyd, Leon Davis, Mitch Clark

The Finger Points Outwards No.21/ Ten Great Marvel Covers

What? Another comics-related post? Bear with me.. as part of its 70th anniversary celebrations, Marvel Comics has compiled a list of its Top 70 covers, based on reader votes. You can view all 70 here:

Marvel's Top 70 covers ever!

Naturally I started thinking about which were my favourites. I'll spare you a little by only giving you my top 10, but hopefully you'll agree that these are all pretty damn cool (in a geeky sort of way).

Ode to Starbuck

I recently watched the final episodes of the very excellent sci-fi series 'Battlestar Galactica', and while I was a little disappointed by the identity of the final Cylon I thought the ending was pretty satisfying overall. Another thing I was initially a little disappointed about was the final fate of perhaps my favourite character in the series - the ever-unpredictable Starbuck. (I have since reminded myself that TV characters, if they are to seem true-to-life, can't always do what you want them to.) Nevertheless, I felt inspired to explain what it is that fascinated me about Galactica's 'trouble child' - and if that's not enough, I've done it in verse! Enjoy:



O Kara Thrace, I don’t know whether
You really are ‘best pilot ever’
But wait five drinks – I’ll believe you are
As your eyes glint over your cigar
You would bait a colonel just for fun
Do you think now you have at last won
Those fans who thought they would never see
Rough-and-tumble Starbuck jump for glee?
But I think perhaps I liked you best
When we saw how your pad was a mess
Random paintings on the landlord’s wall
(Then ‘destiny’ went and spoiled it all)
Some say you’re too liberal with yourself
I’d say you’re confused above all else
Lee’s for you, but fate gets in the way
And you love Sam too – he’ll always stay
And though nobody can read your head
And half the crew wish you’d just stay dead
And while it seems you don’t give a frak
Who else could bring the Fleet safely back?

Graphic Novels That You Would Like If You Weren't Too Chicken To Read Them - 'Weapon X'

Barry Windsor-Smith explained: “I was just fiddling around, trying to think of some character in the Marvel Universe who didn’t wholly offend me. I thought of Logan as a sort of Everyman type. He was closer to some kind of hero/anti-hero-type person for me, and I thought perhaps I could do something with this guy with spikes coming out of his hands.” [1]



The result was one of the most unusual, yet down-to-earth, of all Marvel epics – the one hundred and twenty page ‘origin’ of Wolverine, ‘Weapon X’. The story – if such a term applies here – recounts Logan’s unwilling participation in the Weapon X experiments. The first half deals with his captors’ attempts to strip away his humanity and transform him into the perfect killing machine. Then, in the second half, Logan breaks loose, and he’s not at all happy about what has been done to him.



What made ‘Weapon X’ stand out, however, was the manner in which it was told, which was very much unlike most Marvel comics of the time, although its techniques are more evident today. First, while ‘Weapon X’ is about Logan, he is hardly present in the narrative at all; instead, the narrative is given from the point of view of the three main technicians on the Weapon X project – the insidious megalomaniac known as the Professor, and his less willing conspirators Dr Cornelius and a young woman called Hines. The result is a tension between the narrators’ attempts to objectify our hero – essentially treating him as some strange type of fleshy material on which to conduct their experiments – and the knowledge that, underneath all the probes and hi-tech equipment, is a man who is having his soul ripped out. Second, what narrative exists is relatively sparse, leaving clues for the reader to follow but also requiring the reader to do much of their own interpretation. Third, the action, apart from an absence of capes and tights, is unusually bloody and brutal for a Marvel comic, with Logan and his new-found claws slicing and skewering whole teams of guards, before proceeding to hack off his creator’s limbs.



Despite the violence (or maybe in part because of it), ‘Weapon X’ is beautifully drawn, finding a sense of poetry in the primal yet efficient manner in which Logan dispatches his jailers. Windsor-Smith wrote, drew and coloured the entire story (including the wonderful covers), and the care and mastery with which he renders his tale makes me wish that we could see this approach in mainstream comics more often. It is close to the hippest thing that Marvel has ever produced; a story about a superhero that is almost completely removed from the superhero genre. But in the end it’s primarily about a man and his struggles, both physical and psychological, and if done right that can work in any genre.


[1] 'The Road To Rune', Wizard #28)