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Neil Gaiman’s American Gods is the most enjoyable piece of fiction I have read for a long time. I read Good Omens (co-written with Terry Pratchett) many years ago, and I have occasionally read his blog, but it’s funny that it’s taken me this long to make the time to sit down and read one of his books. I guess that I’ve only got about fifteen years worth of material to catch up on now.

I think that part of the reason I like this book is the vein of Norse mythology that runs through it…but, mostly, it’s just because it’s a damn fine read.

A snippet that in no way represents the book as a whole, but which I thought was cute follows…

Still, there was a tale he had read once, long ago, as a small boy: the story of a traveller who had slipped down a cliff, with man-eating tigers above him and a lethal fall below him, who managed to stop his fall halfway down the side of the cliff, holding on for dear life. There was a clump of strawberries beside him, and certain death above him and below. What should he do? went the question.
And the reply was, Eat the strawberries.

My favourite quote from Collapse - How societies choose to fail or survive…

I have often asked myself, “what did the Easter Islander who cut down the last palm tree say while he was doing it?” Like modern loggers, did he shout “Jobs, not trees!”? Or: “Technology will solve our problems, never fear, we’ll find a substitute for wood”? Or: “We don’t have proof that there aren’t palms somewhere else on Easter, we need more research, your proposed ban on logging is premature and driven by fear-mongering”?
[page 114]

The Beasts of Bourbon (best band name ever) did two shows in Melbourne and Sydney to promote their new live album “Low Life” before heading over to Spain. I was lucky enough (and for once this expression is meaningful, rather than being padding) to see their Melbourne show at the Hi-Fi Bar with Bird Blobs (worst band name ever) and SixFootHick (their web-searchabililty is forever doomed; is it SixFootHick? SixFtHick? 6FootHick? “Six Foot Hick”? “Six Ft Hick”? or “6 Foot Hick”?) .

It was a slightly older crowd at the Hi-Fi bar…as you would probably expect for a band that found most of its popularity in the late eighties, and there were a couple of almost-famous faces in the audience (is Jimmy Barnes stalking me?).

Bird Blobs played first. I’ve seen them play twice now and I don’t think I am any closer to understanding what they are trying to do. They were hard to listen to. The small number of people who had arrived early enough to see the first band seemed to agree with me, standing well back from the stage with their arms crossed.

The venue had filled up all the way to the stage by the time SixFootHick arrived. Generally “they’re great live” is a secret code that means “their music isn’t very good, but they jump around a lot on stage”. Fortunately this doesn’t apply to SixFootHick; the Corbet brothers might put on an…uh…energetic live performance, but the songs were great too.

The Beasts of Bourbon delivered everything you would expect of an all-star band. I’m not really old enough to remember what songs were popular when they were originally released, but they played most of my favourites (except for Psycho), with crowd highlights being Chase the Dragon Let’s Get Funky and Hard for You. Getting the chance to see a great band that I thought had gone forever was kind of like being able to see The Stooges or the Sex Pistols play (except better because the members weren’t old and fat).

I just picked up a copy of Affluenza (by Clive Hamilton and Richard Denniss) after hearing a review on Tony Biggs’ radio show. I am sure that everyone who buys a copy has a moment of cognitive dissonance when they realise the inherent contradiction in buying a book on the problems of unnecessary consumption.

So far it is proving an easy read; interesting and informative without being overly academic. My favourite paragraph so far has been:

The Olsen sisters, who visited Australia in 2003, became famous as cute 5-year old twins in a US sitcom before growing into pouting teenage entrepreneurs promoting sexy lingerie, including matching padded bras and panties to their 6- to 12-year old fans. If adults who are sexually attracted to children are called paedophiles, what do we call adults who set out to make chidren sexually attractive? Advertising executives.

Update: The book is finished, and I enjoyed it immensely. Here are three quotes that I thought were worth underlining (apologies to whoever I lend my copy of the book to next).

In earlier times, when wealthy people made decisions to live beyond their means, their financial difficulties attracted little public sympathy…Today, though, newspapers, commentators and political leaders speak as though the imagined financial difficulties of the wealthy are the result of hard times rather than inflated expectations…The real concerns of yesterday’s poor have become the imaged concerns of today’s rich. Struggle Street, it seems, has become crowded; the trouble is the new residents want to build McMansions there.

The “reduce, re-use, recycle” mantra has been widely adopted, yet all the effort has gone into the “recycling” and “re-use” messages and none into the reduce message. Reducing consumption is bad for retailers, of course. And it can even be argued that the availability of recycling bins makes it easier for some people to consume wastefully.

Increasingly, Australians go shopping for the thrill of the purchase, rather than for the anticipated pleasure to be gained from owning or using something. As one marketing strategist puts it, “We are beyond satisfying basic demands and we have moved to a tertiary level where consumption becomes leisure.”

One of the things I wondered about when I picked up this book was whether I was part of a demographic with predictable consumption patterns that was simply being marketed to. I read Adbusters, consume independent music and other media, and I’ve bought at least one other book in the last year that espouses anti-consumption ideas. Hamilton and Dennis are one step ahead of me…

The marketing industry will seize on any social trend and try to exploit it to sell more products, and it is not shy about trying to turn anticonsumption trends into their opposite. For marketers, conscious consumers are just another demographic whose psychology must be dissected in order to know how best to get them to spend against their judgement.

Chapter 9 devotes considerable space to surveys that show that people want to spend less time working and consuming and more time building relationships with friends and family.

I’m a little unsure whether this is a valid conclusion. There is a big difference between what people say they want and what they really want. Actions indicate values better than words do. Exit polls in the United States said that very few people voted for Bush, who then went on to win an overwhelming victory. If you were being surveyed and were asked if you would prefer to spend an extra half hour per day with your family or be able to buy a new car, no one is going to say that they would prefer the car. The authors acknowledge the contradiction.

The responses to the various surveys discussed here show a large proportion of Australians believe that they do not have enough money and that society places too much emphasis on money and material goods. This suggests a disjunction between people’s immediate assessment of their own financial position…and their recognition that society in general is too materialistic and motivated by money instead of “the things that really matter”.

I had two minor nit-picks with this book.

1. At one point the authors claim that the average Australian full-time worker has a disposable income of around $50k. It should be gross income. There is a big difference.

2. When making the point that materialism is harmful to children, but “the response of governments and the advertising industry is to suggest that parents take more individual responsibility for what their children are exposed to”, the authors use the example of Internet pornography to demonstrate that both sides of government put the commercial interests of industry (in this case, Internet Service Providers) ahead of the wishes of the people (page 148).

While the overall point may be valid, the example is not. The government wisely chose not to mandate a form of Internet censorship that would be costly to implement, ineffective at blocking all pornographic content, and would have a high incidence of websites being blocked incorrectly (such as sex education websites).

The survey the authors quote, showing that 93 per cent of parents of teenagers want governments to require Internet service Providers to filter content, missed the point that some ISPs offer content filtering as an option already and parents are free to purchase Net Nanny if they are unwilling to switch ISPs.

If anything, this is a better example of middle-class welfare. 93 percent of parents of teenagers (who are rich enough to own a computer) want all Australian Internet users to share the costs of their content filtering software, whether they use it or not.

Aside from these two minor nit-picks, Affluenza has been an enjoyable and educational read. I would highly recommend this book to anyone ready to jump off the excess consumption train, or who just wants to re-evaluate their spending patterns and priorities.

Review sometime soon…

The Tote is a grimy pub in a grimy inner-Melbourne suburb. It’s dark and smoky, and the carpets are definitely sticky. How appropriate then, that it is the focal point of Melbourne’s vibrant rock scene which, in case you missed all the hoo-ha, is the best in the world. Just in case you forget this fact, they’ve plastered the walls with signed and mounted posters from some of the best bands of the eighties and nineties - from the Exploding White Mice to the Fireballs.

On this particular night, I was at The Tote to see The Onyas‘ last show for the forseeable future, with the drummer touring with The Casanovas and the other members busy playing with The Egos and running Dropkick records. Also playing were former Revelators guitarist and now one-man band John Schooley from Texas, local act the Lords of Gravity, and Man’s Ruin Burlesque troupe, who were performing between sets.

The Lords of Gravity played a pleasing set of Australian-influenced garage-flavoured retro rock. Note that their photo (above) perfectly captures the feel of The Tote, all other photos were taken with flash so they end up looking far too clean and well-lit. For more authentic experience, read the rest of this entry while wearing dark glasses and blow some cigarette smoke towards your monitor.

John Schooley played a foot-stompingly good set, and his clean-cut good looks made him popular with the ladies…

Burlesque is taking off (sorry) in Melbourne right now (or at least that’s the story that’s going round at the moment) with the Town Bikes, the Voodoo Trash Dolls and Man’s Ruin Burlesque (guys, build a website, quick) doing shows frequently. Some unscrupulous promoters have even been promoting events as a “burlesque extravaganza” and then delivering a strip-show instead. It’s like getting Linda Lovelace when you were really hoping for Betty Page.

Man’s Ruin performed two 3-minute acts. Their show was more cute than sexy; the sort of thing you could take your mother to…if you were the sort of person who goes to pubs with your mum.

The last time I saw the Onyas was an intimate show at the Town Hall Hotel…perhaps a little too intimate; there was no stage and the audience was so densly packed that they were practically standing nose to nose with the band. If you wanted a beer, you had to squeeze between the band members and their mike stands to get to the bar, and I’m sure that the portion of the crowd directly in front of Macka had an “oh fuck” moment when his shirt came off and they realised that they were just a little too close to his bare sweaty flesh.

They were playing to a full house again, but this time the band/audience barrier was comfortably maintained by stage and foldbacks; which was good because, sure enough, the shirt came off again before the first song. The Onyas played their usual chaotic and messy set (which is what everyone was there to see), covering the favourites from Get Shitfaced with The Onyas, Six!, and Heterospective.

They finished the night with an unrehearsed jam with Schooley. It went on just a little too long, and I got the impression that The Onyas were waiting for him to hurry up and finish so that they could get to the bar.

I’ll be looking forward to their next show…whenever that happens.

Coming home from work on the St Kilda Road tram, it was a pleasant surprise to find Dallas Crane kicking off a free set in Federation Square. The Samsung Torch Relay Nominations for the 2006 Olympic Games had been held there that morning, and there was still an ice sculpture and a large ramp covered in artificial snow that children were sliding down on large inflatable rings.

It was a chilly night, and I wasn’t feeling (or looking) very “rock”, wearing business clothes and with a copy of the Financial Review poking out of my bag. There was a large audience, loosely packed to take advantage of the slightly sloped paving down to the stage. Wandering into the throng, I noticed Jimmy Barnes and Wally Meanie - although I would probably be more surprised not to see Wally at a rock gig.

Dallas Crane played a solid and enjoyable one-hour set, covering tracks from their two previous albums as well as a new single, Sit on My Knee, sung as a duet with Jimmy Barnes (which explained why he was in the audience) and appearing on his Double Happiness album.

I had slightly mixed feelings about this. Sit on My Knee has always been my favourite Dallas Crane track. Seeing them play for the first time at Meredith in 1998 when the only songs I knew were Sit on My Knee and the Andre Williams track they used to play is still a music festival highlight. Jimmy Barnes isn’t exactly “Mr. Musical Credibility”, but maybe this will help Dallas Crane finally get airplay on the Austereo network. They deserve mainstream success.

While the crowd grew during the show (despite the cold), and there were lots of heads nodding and feet tapping along to Dallas Crane’s back catalogue, the crowd favourite seemed to be their cover of AC/DC’s Whole Lotta Rosie. Hopefully we’ll see the same response to Sit on My Knee once the single gets commercial airplay.

I will write a short review of this book just as soon as I figure out who has my copy.

It’s been a few (well…maybe six) months since I read Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, and even longer since it was published in 2003, but it still seems to be popular train reading and I am sure it experienced another surge in sales over Christmas. Every Australian needs a book to read at the beach this summer – preferably one where the author’s name is larger than the title.

I received “the Code” as a gift last Christmas and it sat on my bookshelf for six months before I set aside my intellectual snobbery and deigned to read the first page.

Once I got started, I found that it was a quick and enjoyable read, powering through it in two nights, and only managed to successfully predict about half of the plot twists and puzzles. I would recommend this book to anyone who is looking for some light fiction that they don’t want to take too seriously (as opposed to all the light fiction that people analyse thoroughly?).

My one real concern with this book is how the author has presented his work as fiction set in the real world. Where places are reproduced faithfully and historical background is all true. When my brain is in a state of suspended disbelief, how much of this dubious “historical fact” is polluting my store of general knowledge? Am I going to be caught spouting some interesting, but completely untrue, titbit to a real historian at a party? Are people going to subject me to half-remembered factoids about Da Vinci coming, ultimately, from the highly speculative book that Brown culled his Da Vinci background from?

As background colour, Brown’s characters travel through “the heavily forested park known as the Bois de Boulogne…a purgatory for freaks and fetishists”. Sounds kind of interesting…I wonder if it is true. Five minutes with Google suggests that Brown is not so much guilty of untruth, but rather of massive exaggeration.

The second of Brown’s factoids I decided to follow up were the claim that Da Vinci invented public key cryptography.

“Da Vinci had been a cryptography pioneer, Sophie know, although he was seldom given credit. Sophie’s university instructors, while presenting computer encryption methods for securing data, praised modern cryptologists like Zimmerman and Schneier but failed to mention that it was Leonardo who had invented one of the first rudimentary forms of public key encryption centuries ago. Sophie’s grandfather, of course, had been the one to tell her all about that.”

My bullshit detector was going off wildly when I read this, and there is no way I can see for this one to be true. Others have assumed that Brown is referring to a “a tube with lettered dials” that is used later in the story, where the correct code must be entered or opening the tube will destroy the message inside. This has nothing to do with public keys.

Others have dissected the facts in The Da Vinci Code more thoroughly and certainly more convincingly than I have. Treat it as the light holiday reading it is, and try to ignore the author’s aspirations to be seen as someone who writes “serious” novels (garnished with gunfights and explosions).

A free show in the Espy front bar on a Wednesday night doesn’t generally place a band too high in the “my band is bigger than your band” pecking order, but different rules must apply a couple of days before New Years Eve. ARIA nominees and JJJ darlings Butterfingers were in Melbourne all the way from Brisbane. This was an Event…at least according to the teenage girls eyeing off the Butterfingers posters, and no doubt wondering if they would get in trouble if they liberated one from the wall.

Playing first were Eftposse, memorable only for having a name they will come to regret, and playing a Doors cover. The members were obviously musically talented but the music was not suited to a noisy pub venue. They got a big thumbs down from me.

De Jah Groove were basically a reggae party band. All their songs seemed to be about drinking beer in the sun. I’m not sure what they do for the other 10 months of the year when Melbourne isn’t warm and sunny. De Jah Groove managed to get the crowd moving, and I am sure that their songs inspired people to keep the bar staff busy.

Butterfingers played a tight and professional show, covering all the songs from the current album, a song from a previous EP and two new songs. Crowd favourites were (predictably) Everytime, Yo Mama, and I Love Work.

Even though all four members were playing live instruments, most of the songs were played the same way they sound on the album as so many of the songs rely on samples and effects from a backing track. This is a good thing in my book. The first time I see a band I like to hear exactly what I expect. They can save the “I’m sick of playing this song every night” polka version of their hit song for the next time I see them play.

I would definitely see this band play live again, and I’m curious to see how their next single sounds on the radio…oh, and I think my girlfriend is a Butterfingers fan now.