MAN ABOUT TOWN

I wrote this piece in early 2020 on spec for the editor of the travel section of a nameless newspaper, having visited Ireland for the second time the previous year. Of course, shortly after I submitted it, COVID hit, and the editor said she could no longer publish it despite her liking for the piece. So, here it is on my blog - my first blog post since 2017! ***  Low clouds are rolling down the mountainside towards Teelin Harbour, where the River Glen meets the choppy waters of Donegal Bay. Outside, a chill wind is blowing but in the front bar of the Rusty Mackerel in County Donegal, the Guinness and the craic are flowing and it feels like the most welcoming pub in the world. Located in remote north-west Ireland, Teelin scarcely seems to qualify as a village. There’s no church that I can see, not even a shop; just the pub, an Irish language college, and a cluster of houses scattered along the road leading to the harbour. Wild fuchsias bloom along the road’s edge; in the green fi...

I've just discovered that the pilot episode of UK series Being Human is online again, after having been taken down for a while. I first wrote about it back in the dim dark past of 2008 , when I said it should appeal to 'anyone who's A) ever lived in a share household, B) wants to know what out gay actor Russell Tovey (Rudge in the film of The History Boys , and Midshipman Frame in Doctor Who: Voyage of the Damned ) is up to, career-wise, and C) like myself enjoys sinking their teeth into genre shows with a supernatural bent.' Here it is again for your viewing pleasure:

I wonder if it's time to start blogging again?

I've lived in Fitzroy for 14 years, and long before I moved here spent some formative moment in its pubs and terrace houses. I have an unpublished novel that set's in Fitzroy in the 1940s (originally it was set in the 1950s but I've realised it was the wrong period). I love this suburb, even as it changes before my eyes, which is why I love articles and photographs and stories of its past.   From the Herald-Sun , here's a series of images of the old inner city slums that once characterised much of Fitzroy. And from The Age just yesterday, here's an article about a photographer who was documenting the vanishing post-war Fitzroy culture in 1973-74.  Happy reading. And maybe allow Dan Sultan to provide you with a soundtrack?

Poor, much ignored blog: the least I could do is update you with a list of all my Age reviews from this year's Melbourne International Comedy Festival, so that they're all easily accessible in the one place. Here you go: The Tim Vine Chat Show A dad joke generator turned up to 11, the prop-swinging, pun-slinging UK comedian Tim Vine takes the Parkinson route in this entertaining but unchallenging show, in which interviews with audience members become the inspiration for more quick-witted quips drawn from his encyclopaedic memory. Read full review here. Adrienne Truscott's Asking for It: A One-Lady Rape About Comedy Starring Her Pussy and Little Else! Fallacies about consent and startling lessons concerning the birds and the bees – or more specifically, ducks and gerbils – are provocatively and intelligently explored in this debut stand-up show from US cabaret artist and acrobat Adrienne Truscott. Read full review here. Geraldine Quinn's MDMA: Mo...

The long-awaited film adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s ground-breaking novel presents the perfect opportunity to re-examine the lives of the Beat Generation, writes Richard Watts. It’s not hyperbole to say that the Beat Generation – a small coterie of writers who met up in New York City in the spring of 1944 – changed the world. Without their individual quests for personal freedoms – a quest for sex and drugs before there was rock and roll; a quest which spawned the western world’s first counter-culture, the beatniks – the hippy movement of the Sixties would never have happened, and punk would have been a quiet snarl rather than a global reaction. Of all the Beat Generation writers, Jack Kerouac, author of the autobiographical beatnik bible, On the Road , is unequivocally the most famous. Born in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1922, to working class French-Canadian parents, Kerouac aspired to be a writer from a young age, though he was also a keen football player. Indeed, it ...

Nope, I'm not dead. It's just that between Facebook, Twitter and writing for artsHub, I don't have a lot to say here any more. Consider this blog on indefinite hiatus - though perhaps I'll return to it as a repository of all my reviews in time; or maybe even once again an online journal in which I write frankly and happily about everything and everyone I'm doing. Ah, those were the days...

Co-founded in 1984 by former accordionist, stilt-walker and fire-eater Guy Laliberté (whose personal wealth is now estimated at US $2.6 billion, according to Forbes Magazine ), Cirque du Soleil is a globally successful entertainment brand, with an estimated annual income exceeding US $810 million thanks in part to popular touring productions such as OVO , which opened in Melbourne last night. Based purely on the skill level of its participants, OVO – a fantastical, anthropomorphised view of the insect world; Microcosmos with acrobats – is spectacular in the extreme. However it is also strangely passionless, a garish spectacle over-produced to within an inch of its life and almost entirely lacking in emotion and drama... Read the full review over at artsHub .