MAN ABOUT TOWN

It's been a busy week, and one that's been both exciting and totally draining. As well as the by-now standard stress of putting out a new issue of MCV - this week with a fabulous cover by Dole Diary - and my weekly radio show on 3RRR , I've also been focussed on the closing night of Q + A (queer + alternative) which took place on Thursday night. Before that, however, there were a couple of arts events I had to attend first... On Wednesday I attended both the media launch and the official opening of Pixar: 20 years of animation exhibition at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. Why both? Well the media launch was a much better time to actually view the work, while the evening's formal affairs was an opportunity for free booze, nibbles and networking (amongst other dignitaries, I had a chat with Richard Moore, the new director of the Melbourne International Film Festival - so hopefully he remembers me come red carpet time when I'm trying to score a quick i...

Want to take a moment to write to dear John Winston Howard and ask him to adopt the recommendations contained in the HREOC report that would amend 58 separate pieces of Australian legislation which currently discriminate against same-sex couples? Feel free!

Played three full quarters in the Community Cup on Sunday at Junction Oval, and actually managed to touch the ball a few times, which is certainly better than my performance last year. Hmm, maybe the personal training sessions I've done the last four weeks are actually starting to pay off... It's even more remarkable given how many intoxicants and other substances I consumed the night before, in a binge that started with 'research' for a feature article on cocktails at Ginger, took in a friend's 50th birthday, the relocated Witness Protection Program Social Club, and ended at Control HQ. Last time I plan an early night before the big game! While the Megahertz put in a valiant effort, we didn't get across the line, but nonetheless a fun day was had by all, as far as I can tell, with about the only injury I know of on our team being a loose tooth in David Bridie's upper jaw. Huge crowd, three streakers, much fun. Ms Fits looked fetching as always, although I ...

It seems that d.u.p has tagged me with another meme. The theme this time is to detail eight things about me that you don't know. Given the tendancy I have to be so frank on this blog, I don't know if there's much left to put out, but I'll try... I was sexually abused by a baby sitter when I was 11 years old. At the time I found it tremendously exciting, as it allowed me to physically express my nascent attraction for the male body, but I no longer view the incident in such a positive light. When I was seven years old I became obsessed with Robin Hood, to the point where I wanted to only wear green, and I made a cardboard reproduction of his gravestone, which I stood at the head of my bed and slept under. Morbid, much? When suffering from bouts of depression, I lose all appetite, to the point where trying to swallow food makes me physically ill. Thankfully I haven't suffered a major bout of depression for seven years. My middle name is Leigh, after Vivian Leigh, who...

Some beautiful work on display last night at Kick Gallery in Northcote, part of the opening night of Northern Exposure 2007 . Now in its third year, the event sees the series of galleries and artist-run-initiatives clustered on High Street host their opening nights simultaneously, resulting in throngs of people swarming from gallery to gallery along the street; a collective stroking of chins and tilting of heads and expressing of opinions. At Kick, artists had been asked to work on two pre-supplied canvases, each approximately 15cm x 15cm in size, with the resulting pieces forming the entire exhibition. From dreamlike landscapes to vivid photographic portraits, richly textured oils to playful cartoons, each of the 14 artists responded in their own way to the brief, resulting in often striking work. Inspired work was also on display at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces , such as that on display upstairs in Studio 18, exploring the poignancy of death and the commercial aspects of the med...

I'm a sucker for a good festival, and being a film fan (as opposed to a cineaste, who is the sort of person who takes their movies far more seriously than I) the annual Melbourne International Film Festival marks a happy time of year for me: despite queuing in the cold, and the inevitable festival flu that seems to do the rounds in the second week! I've just come straight from the launch of MIFF 2007, and am already excited by what the pleasantly scruffy new festival director Richard Moore has in store for us this year. Here are just some of the highlights: For starters, Moore has abandoned the relatively recent tradition of opening and closing the festival with an Australian film; instead of nationalism, he's gone with quality (we hope!). This year's opening night movie is cinematic provocateur Michael Moore's latest, an attack on the US health system, or rather the lack thereof, SICKO ; while the closing night feature is the hard-hitting, autobiographic drama, TH...

"THE 95.1 per cent of callers to the Herald Sun Voteline question can't be wrong. Only 4.9 per cent of callers last Friday said graffiti artists should not go to jail. The reality is something else. It seems graffiti hit squads can come to Melbourne from interstate, get caught and then get off very lightly indeed." So says writer and social commentator Christopher Bantick in his opinion piece, ' Melbourne gets the big spray '. Sorry, Christopher, but since when did mass opinion actually have anything to do with being correct or accurate? Once upon a time 95.1% of people probably would have told you that the reason their cows had died that winter was because of a witch's curse, but would they have been right? Dickhead.

Is it wrong of me to find a wanted killer attractive? I glanced at the cover of the Herald Sun on the way to work this morning, and was slightly disturbed to realise that Hell's Angel gunman Christopher Hudson was actually kind of hot, in a rough trade sort of way. I'm going to hell now, aren't I?

No special reason. Just that I'm stuck at work waiting for proofs to come through of seven more pages of my newspaper, and right now I would rather be anywhere else than here. So yes, Barcelona, eating squid and drinking red wine in a small bar off a cobbled street in the Bari Gotic ; or in Glasgow, getting drunk with Bec and Bob at Sleazy ; or in Dublin, drinking in the atmosphere and the energy of the city, aroused by accents and alert to possibilities; or in Prague, where I haven't been yet; or standing weeping with indescribably joy before Stonehenge, or Machu Picchu , where I've also not yet been; or standing on the windswept southernmost tip of Tierra del Fuego , the land of ice and fire... Or better yet in the arms of a lover, who I haven't met yet, and who I sometimes fear I never will.

Although officially under embargo, seems that Icelandic band Sigur Ros have let the cat out of the bag (in an e-newsletter distributed via their website Eighteen Seconds Before Sunrise ) that they will be performing live at this year's Melbourne International Arts Festival , accompanying the Merce Cunningham dance troupe. That means they'll be playing their 2004 EP Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do live, or I'll eat my hat (a Bogart, don't you know). In related news, I see from the six-month program sent out in recent days by Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces that Jonsi from Sigur Ros will also be exhibiting in the gallery there during MIAF. Woo, I say. And I'll add a Hoo to that statement. Woo-hoo!

Now in its 14th year, the Sacred Heart Mission Community Cup is an annual charity football match between some of Melbourne ’s best musicians – the Espy Rockdogs – and the Megahertz, made up of announcers from community radio stations 3RRR and PBS FM (including the exceptionally unfit author of this very blog). While the degree of skill on display at the game is more laughable than laudable, the annual match is a triumph of community spirit and participation, and raises more than $70,000 annually for St Kilda’s Sacred Heart Mission, which provides vital assistance for people who are homeless or living in poverty. In 2005 the 15 000 at the cup raised an astonishing $104 000 - let's see if we can beat that this year, shall we?! As well as the on-field talent, the off-ground entertainment features live performances by bands including Mach Pelican and The RocKwiz Orchestra, with special guests. Come on down to the Junction Oval, point and laugh at my skinny white legs, hang out with...

It's both surreal and unsettling when your housemate calls you at work at 9am to warn you not to go outside because there's a gunman on the loose . Despite the fact that three people were shot only a couple of blocks away from my office, and one of them has died, it still seems distant, somehow removed from the mundane reality of my day to day life. That said, I suddenly decided to put off going downstairs to get myself a smoothie for brunch...

Finished DJ'ing at a very busy Q + A last night (full house within an hour of opening and a queue that lasted until 1am - the word has got around, it seems...) at 2.30am and got to bed about 3.30am. Then I was up at 8am for work, which means that, even though I didn't get drunk last night, I'm still pretty knackered today. Happily, however, my fuzzy brain was somewhat assuaged when I stepped out the door to see Fitzroy blanketed in a thick fog. The end of the street was invisible; the sharp edges of the world were softened and blurred. Fog always adds an air of mystery to an otherwise prosaic day, for me; it imbues the world with possibility and strangeness, by virtue of transforming the everyday into something temporarily other and interesting. The cold morning air pinched my cheeks like an over-friendly aunt. I exhaled, my breath condensing, becoming one with the fog. I wondered, as I began the 20 minute walk into the city, what strange new joys this day will hold? I pr...

So clearly it's a relatively quiet morning here at the MCV office when the staff are filling in an online quiz to determine which superhero or supervillain we are. I, apparently, am the Joker : "The Clown Prince of Crime. You are a brilliant mastermind but are criminally insane. You love to joke around while accomplishing the task at hand." I can deal with that. Not so sure about my results for the super hero test however, which tells me that I am Hulk - yeah, that's right, the big green guy who smashes things. "You are a wanderer with amazing strength." Hmmmmmm. Why couldn't I have been Spiderman instead? Click here to discover which supervillain you are. Click here to discover which superhero you are. Have fun!

...I looking forward to seeing this film, the teaser poster of which is shown below, and the teaser trailer for which is here , even though it won't be released until December. I Am Legend is based on one of the classic vampire novels of the same name, Richard Matheson's superb apocalyptic thriller from 1954 about the last living man on the Earth, after everyone else on the planet has succumbed to vampirism. Having been badly remade twice before, once as The Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price in the lead; and then as T he Omega Man in 1971 with Charlton 'cold dead hands' Heston. I'm hoping it will be good. Then again, Will Smith has been described as the man who can ruin a good genre picture single-handedly...

After eleven and a half years, my fellow DJs/promoters Helen and Pete and I have decided to wind up our Thursday night club, Q + A (Queer + Alternative). Originally motivated by our need to create a queer space where ourselves and our friends could go to avoid the shitful music and shallow attitudes that - to us at the time - summed up the gay scene, Q + A rapidly proved far more popular than I could ever have imagined. Rather than lasting for a couple of months at best, which was about as much as I dared to hope when we first opened, the club has run for years, proving constantly successful week after week, year after year. From its earliest incarnation at what was then called Wall Street (now the Hi Fi Bar), came into its own when, a couple of months later, we shifted venues, and nights, to Thursdays at the Builders' Arms in Fitzroy. For the next nine years we packed the crowds in every night, with constant queues testimony to the need for a queer club that played the likes of...

Oh dear god this is fucking hilarious - not to mention timely. (courtesy of David Knox's televisual blog www.tvtonight.com.au)

While the mainstream media here in Australia is, understandably, focused on the ghastly accident in Kerang, in central Victoria, in which 11 people have died so far following a train-truck collision at a level crossing, I've found that my thoughts have been focussed on a tragedy that for me feels closer to home despite having happened on the other side of the world. Jonathan Reynolds, a 15-year-old in South Wales, UK, was killed by a train after he laid on the tracks to commit suicide in January 2006 because he had been bullied in school over his sexuality, an inquest heard last week . According to the Times Online , Reynolds had confided to a friend he was gay just weeks earlier. The paper reports: "Moments before he died, Jonathan Reynolds sent harrowing text messages to his family telling that them they were not to blame for what was about to happen. A passer-by saw him holding the mobile as he lay down on the tracks in front of a train travelling at 85mph (136km/h) throug...

A couple of weeks ago I was flattered to be asked to launch a new book of poems, Excess Baggage & Claim , by its co-author, Terry Jaensch , who I've had the pleasure of knowing for several years. Said launch took place tonight, at 45 Downstairs . Last week, over a beer, Terry had told me that he wanted someone who would 'speak to the book' and not just dwell on its gay aspects. I hope I succeeded. *** "I'm delighted and honoured to have been asked to launch Terry Jaensch's and Cyril Wong 's Excess Baggage & Claim here tonight. Like many creative projects, the idea for the book has evolved significantly since 2002, when the idea of first writing about castrai opera singers first arose in Terry's mind. Through a process of artistic alchemy, refinement and collaboration, that idea has given birth to a collection of poetry in which the castrati have metamorphed into a metaphor for the contemporary gay male; while singing, such as at the karaoke ba...

It's Monday morning, and I should be working. I should be blogging about the exhibition opening I attended on Friday night (A Constructed World's idiosyncratically wonderful Increase Your Uncertainty at ACCA), or the somewhat subdued opening night of the play I went to thereafter (Hoy Polloy's production of Irish playwright Conor McPherson's Shining City ). I could blog about the excellent Is Not magazine's second birthday party, which I attended on Saturday night as Miss Libertine , or the fun I had hanging out at Murmur that same evening, celebrating MsKP 's 30th birthday in the company of many excellent bloggers and other peeps. But no. I'm going to blog about the bloke I went home with on Saturday night, instead. So there I am, happily tipsy after a cocktail, an absinthe and a couple of champagnes, leaning against a wall at Miss Libertine, happily surveying the crowd in the courtyard and thinking about nothing in particular, when a drunken brogue mutt...

My comments on the MTC's production of The Pillowman have generated a range of comments, one of which I'll reproduce here, as it generated what was going to be a short response, but which has grown to a length that I think is deserving of an entirely new post. Anonymous said... Valid comments Richard but a little perturbed that you can publicly review a show after only seeing half of it. If you paid for the ticket then I suppose, fair enough but if you were there on a freebie, I'd be inclined to be a little more careful in the way you attack it regardless of where your comments are posted. 2/6/07 14:34 Hello Anonymous 2/6/07, and thank you for helping spark not only a response to your comment, but helping me articulate what this blog is about, and why I do what I do. To whit: Aside from the fact that I saw two-thirds of the production in question, not half, which I feel is more than enough to inform my intellectual and emotional response to th...