James Waites

Life’s a gamble - and not many people know this as well as next-gen illusionist and card sharp James Galea. This smart and agreeable gentleman tossed away the old cape and exotic lady-helper many years ago - I don’t think he ever went there - and instead has come up with a whole new way of presenting his array of dazzling skills You might even seen him in Las Vegas when you were there, or you might ahve caught up with his recent tour of I Hate Rabbits (Galea is progressively ‘anti-rabbbit’). In Lying Cheating Bastard - Galea has taken a quantum leap from the classic ‘art-of-illusion’ style of performance to embedding his tricks into a fascinating and delightful noir crime thriller of a one-person drama. Lying Cheating Bastard is deceptively simple, neatly conceived, engaging, excellently crafted - and an enormous amount of fun. You might have seen Galea on Kerry-Anne Kennelly’s Morning Show (I know you watch too). But since the culture of Rugby League is in its death throws, I thought it might be nostalgic to witness Galea in top form on Chanel No 9’s fragrant The Footy Show.

You might  have even seen him in Las Vegas or performing his tricks on his recent tour of I Hate Rabbits. But you will have never seen Galea like this. In Lying Cheating Bastard - Galea has taken a quantum leap from the classic ‘art-of-illusion’ style of performance to embedding his tricks into a noir crime thriller. The show is simple, neat, engaging, excellently crafted - and an enormous amount of fun.

Galea has co-created this new show from the ground up with engenue writer-director Nicholas Hammond (see right). I did a cruel thing and sat next to young Hammond last night - not something a reviewer is meant to do. But heck - Hammond introduced me to Galea over a year ago and I have been following this progress of this project with interest ever since.

So what’s this show about? In a recent AAP newswire report Alison Braithwaite reported:

“As a child James Galea had his sights set on acting or music, but when his parents disapproved he turned to his back-up plan: magic. While his friends were out enjoying their teenage years, Galea sat in his Sydney bedroom learning how to be a card shark.

“I practised eight hours a day - I didn’t have much of a life when I was a young guy,” Galea, 27, told AAP. “All my friends were going out partying, getting drunk and having fun, and I was sitting in a room with a deck of playing cards.” His unconventional career plan might have horrified some parents, but Galea found a successful living as a magician, performing on television and his own live shows. Now his early experiences have formed the inspiration for a play, Lying Cheating Bastard, which is based on the man who taught him everything he knows.

“I was 14 years old … and I met this guy, who took me under his wing and started teaching me all these things,” Galea said. “I only found out a couple of years ago the guy who taught me was a professional con man.”

Hammond - debuting as a director - has listened to Galea’s fascinating life story and built an enhanced dramatic version out of it for our pleasure. Unlike real life, Galea - as Jimmy ‘The Cricket’ Garcia - gets caught up in his teacher’s shady activities. The stakes escalate and - well - you will just have to see the show to see how it all turns out. It’s a classically-structured piece of dramatic writing, very well formed, and it is impossible not to get drawn into the drama as well as gasp at the display of skills.

it is such a neat idea - which is why I have followed this project with such interest since I first heard about it. And had little doubt it was going to engage at some level. Well it’s better than that. Though please don’t let me ‘over-sell’. This is a small-scale gig, if a lot of fun and lovingly shaped. It enjoyed an out-of-town try-out recently in Lismore and is booked for extensive regional tour next year. The point to relish is that, for all his experience on stage, this is Galea’s first encounter with ‘character’ acting and dramatic shape.

As a debutante, Galea arrived on stage last night in full command, though his confidence/concentration did slip now and again through this first night. I can’t imagine it will take many shows for him to seize total comm - and he was certainly back in control by the last scene which is really quite  fireworks display of skill. It is easy to forget that the the card tricks on display are difficult and all the more so when distracted by the demands of story, character, and unexpected interventions from an excited audience. Galea admitted to me after the show that the card acts are a lot more difficult in the context of this form of rendition.

The x-factor to this show is the depth of the story. Anyone who has been close to serious gambling knows what tragedy it can lead to. And any card shark is a brilliant psychologist and deft manipulator of other people’s weaknesses. The script explores this territory in a way that never distracts from the thrill of the chase. Suffice it to say, Jimmy ‘The Cricket’ doesn’t get it all his own way. Even if, in the end - as is right for the genre - he comes out on top.

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Lying Cheatng Bastard plays The Old Fitzroy Hotel until 25 July

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Hiya boys and girls, transgenders and fellow Martians! I am back – on my bike! Wot a phAT TRIP!! I hope u kids have had a nice collage break – pumped up and at it and ready 2 go – again. Before we went n hols I woz feeling like this!

Much better now! make yrself un cafe…

pleeze enjoy woteva madnesses follow……

x

I’ve got complaints about my silence. Okay. But I need a break to go earn some money and wash-up etc…

So I will drop in stories when I can from other ’sauces’ - just to make up for the time and effort you have gone to dropping so randomly into my site while I am in jail/hospital/ rehab/Bali (or all of the above!) or have I been hooded and Gitmoed? - that is another possibility…

Marion Scrymgour just changed black politics forever

FRIDAY 5 JUN 2009

Chris Graham writes:

In politics you can justify almost anything. But being an Aboriginal member of the Labor or Liberal Party is no longer one of them.

At least, that’s the case in the Northern Territory, and it’s all thanks to Marion Scrymgour, the former NT Deputy Chief Minister who yesterday walked away from the Labor Party and, in the process, changed the face of black politics in this country forever.

Scrymgour will now serve out her term as an Independent for the seat of Arafura. And there’s not a damn thing Labor, infamous for drowning “rats” that desert the sinking ship, can do about it.

Until yesterday, Labor held 13 of the NT parliament’s 25 seats, the minimum number to govern in its own right. Today, it must negotiate with one of two independents to retain power: Gerry Wood, a former deputy speaker of parliament who was screwed out of the job by Labor, and, of course, Marion Scrymgour.

In politics, you reap what you sow. Scrymgour’s desertion has left NT Labor Chief Minister Paul Henderson so powerless, so impotent that this morning he was reduced to issuing a flapping press release headlined, “STRONG STABLE GOVERNMENT CONTINUES”.

Sure it does. Just not in the NT. Up there, government is paralysed. Pure and simple. And note to Paul: writing the headline in capitals doesn’t make it any more convincing.

Scrymgour by all reports is taking no comfort in her “betrayal”. It has been a gut-wrenching, distressing period of her life. Regardless, it’s being celebrated around black Australia. Press releases are pouring in from black institutions all over the nation offering their support and admiration. I’ve never even heard of some of the organisations.

Scrymgour’s resignation came about two months too late. As Minister for Education, she presided over the axing of bi-lingual education in NT schools, a no-brainer policy which has outraged Aboriginal people around the country. A wealth of international research shows that it’s vital young Aboriginal children learn in both their native tongue and English. But that’s another story for another day.

The issue at hand here is the latest Labor treachery that tipped Scrymgour over the edge — her party’s recently announced “Homelands policy”.

There’s not much difference, morally at least, in this stinking albatross of a policy and Labor’s bi-lingual betrayal. Again, a wealth of international (and in this case local) research shows that Aboriginal people “living on country” — that is on their remote outstations — are much healthier than Aboriginal people who live in larger cities and towns.

So why would Labor withdraw future support for homelands? Because in the short-term it’s the more expensive option, even though in the long-term it’s obviously the cheapest (not to mention the most moral). In the Territory, you don’t win government by being moral, nor by spending money on the blacks. That’s how you lose government.

And therein lies the quandary not just for Labor, but for the CLP as well.

From this point forward, that doesn’t matter anymore. Everything has changed. It might not be politically popular to afford black people equal rights and equal access, but it’s what you’ll have to do if you want to win office.

I don’t imagine for one minute that things will improve overnight for black Territorians. But irrefutably Scrymgour has re-shaped the political landscape in one of the most desperate regions of this country.

Aboriginal people now hold the cards, not to mention the balance of power. Indeed, they have for some time, but have either not realized it or been too scared to accept it.

Aboriginal Territorians make up almost 30 percent of the population in the NT, and their birth rate is about 60 percent higher than the white population. That sort of voting base (now, and into the future) can make a government and break it as well.

The NT is the only jurisdiction in Australia where Aboriginal people have any realistic chance of flexing any significant political muscle. Yet over the last 30 years, black Territorians have still been repeatedly screwed by the NT parliament.

Under the CLP and Labor, Aboriginal communities have been starved of housing, education and health funding. They’ve missed out on any significant investment in their towns, save for communities that have appeal to white tourists.

The fifth largest town in the NT (Wadeye) has no road access five months of the year (it’s cut off in the wet season). It only recently got a high school, despite having a school-aged population of more than 1,000 kids.

This sort of criminal government neglect could only be inflicted on an Aboriginal community in Australia. And it’s not just the starving of resources, politically, Aboriginal people have been fodder for generations of the Territory’s Labor and Liberal politicians desperate to curry favour with the redneck masses. What better way than to beat up on the blacks?

In the late 1990s, then CLP Chief Minister Shane Stone publicly called on Territorians to “monster and stomp on” homeless Aboriginal people. That was shortly before he described Australian of the Year Galarrwuy Yunupingu as “just another whinging, whining, carping black”.

His predecessor, Paul Everingham told media that Aboriginal people would still be “bashing their babies heads in with rocks” if the white man hadn’t arrived. And that was the just the CLP.

At almost every election they’ve fought, the CLP has played the race card. Over to Labor, where Clare Martin in the first hour of her first ever re-election campaign as Chief Minister promised to lock up Aboriginal people who begged for money.

The Australian political process  — both in the provision of resources and the promotion of its citizens has failed Aboriginal people miserably, in particular in the Territory. Since 1974, 13 Aboriginal people have been elected to the NT parliament through the two-party process, and yet despite all these atrocities, we still feign faith in the process.

Exactly which part of “This sh-t ain’t working?” aren’t we getting?

So it’s time. There are currently five black faces in NT parliament — Scrymgour, Malarndirri McCarthy, Alison Anderson and Karl Hampton for Labor, and Adam Giles for the Country Liberals.

The question now becomes who else will follow Scrymgour’s lead?

McCarthy, the member for the neighbouring seat of Arnhem, is close to Scrymgour and built of the same stuff. She has defied her party in the past on issues like the McArthur River Mine. Her cultural ties are as strong as they come.

Karl Hampton is no shrinking violet, neither is Alison Anderson. Giles is an impressive young leader. So it’s time to join forces, either as a new black party, or as a loose coalition of independents.

Combined, the “NT Black Five” have an historic opportunity to change not just governance in the NT, but the Australian political process forever.

Can you imagine a jurisdiction in Australia where Aboriginal people have a chance not just for a seat at the table, but for a seat at the table as equals? Can you imagine a parliament in Australia where people can win more than just concessions?

The question is, do the black elected members of parliament have the courage to turn a political process on its head which has kept them and their families down for generations, a process which still to this day treats them like dogs and human detritus?

They well have sworn an oath to a political party, but if it requires them to abandon their own, to turn their backs on the ancestors who fought and died so that future generations might enjoy at least some of the rights other Australians hold dear, then it hardly seems an oath worthy of keeping.

It’s an exciting time for black politics in Australia. The genie is out of the bottle and her name is Marion Scrymgour.

Chris Graham is editor of the National Indigenous Times

from: SQUATTER WEEKLY EDITION : 10 June 2009

Here is a link to Scrymour’s official  ALP Website

I know you are all missing me - so thought I would give you a liitle holiday treat

from my pal

Ljupco Petreski

NOW I HAVE GOT YOUR ATTENTION…….

I AM TAKING A MONTH FOR REST AND REPAIR - SEE YOU HERE AGAIN @ 1ST JULY 2009

(for more details please go to previous story)

BESTEST JAMES

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The end of an era! And no doubt the beginning of a new one for both Neil Armfield; and Company B, the Belvoir Street-based theatre company Armfield has been leading for the past 15 years. The time has come and the timing is good. Armfield will concentrate on an international career, and a new generation take up the artistic directorship of Sydney’s ‘other’ theatre. The new players at the Sydney Theatre Company have settled in, and the impact of a younger crowd at the helm is already palpable. While this time the process of selection will be ‘open’, I would be very surprised if we do not see a generational shift here too. Did I hear correctly that the job might go to more than one person? It might be a good idea. But let’s look at that and other ideas about this job opportunity in a few months time. More importantly, also take a look back over what Armfield has achieved as a director and for this company - over the past quarter of a century!

I have some news of my own but just quickly before I get to that. I caught up with a few productions around Sydney over the past week: The Call – Griffin at the Stables; Let The Sunshine – Ensemble; and My Name Is Rachel Corrie – Seymour Centre. All were worth the visit.

Rachel Corrie, astutely directed by Shannon Murphy, features an impressive solo performance (a 70-minute soliloquy) from Belinda Bromilow as the 23-year-old peace activist who was crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer in 2003. This production attracted much praise when it played at Belvoir Downstairs last year. It’s an elegant and unexpectedly calm work - for what is essentially a fierce subject. And all the more powerful for that. This calmness comes from Corrie herself as the script has been carved out of the activist’s own letters and diaries.

My Name Is Rachel Corrie (28 May – 20 June) is the first in this year’s Bite Season. One could almost call it Second Bite – as this niftily conceived season brings back three of the most successful independent productions seen in Sydney last year. The second play, Bondi Dreaming by Sam Atwell, takes up the subject of a bunch of young Aussie fellas stuck in an overseas jail after getting busted for trying to smuggle drugs. It opens mid-September. And the third work, LOVEBites by Peter Rutherford and James Millar, was another big hit from last year, this time with a musical bent. It pens early November. So there you are, if you don’t have time to see every independent gig, here’s a way of catching with some of the recent best.

In The Call, writer Patricia Cornelius also explores the ‘politicisation’ of an individual (as in Rachel Corrie), but here approach could not be more different. Directed by Lee Lewis, here the focus is in small group of young Australians leading typically, and increasingly, meaningless lives; out of which emerges one character who, in the closing scene, who believes he has found what’s missing in the Islamic faith. Where he goes for here is difficult to know bit, given the amount of violence he has experienced so far, he could swing either way. Terrorism is a possibility. I did not think this play was a well written as one presented (a staged reading) Hobart a few months back  - The Berry Man - as part of this year’s Ten Days On The Island festival. And while there are strong performances from Josh McConville, Hazem Shammas, Sarah Becker and Chris Ryan, the on-stage atmosphere is a little too hysterical for me at times.

There is an increasing tendency for actors to turn to what I can only call ‘literalism’ when dealing with violence on stage. Corrie is refreshingly different. But how many times is anger expressed literally: instead of ‘acting shouting’ actors ’shout’. There is no skill or art in this; and it is horrible for those sitting in the audience. Especially in the small venues where this racket usually takes place. Cornelius herself is a bit on the ‘literal’ side. She throws in so many expletives into her otherwise ‘realist’ dialogue, one sometimes loses touch with where the story is meant to be going. Not just a night full of yelling - but, luminously, a night of yelling swear words. Overall, I found this production ugly and not particularly insightful. That said, I don’t blame the actors.

It may come as a surprise for you to hear that I enjoyed David Williamson’s Let the Sunshine, at the Ensemble, a lot more. There is so much noise going on around this writer at the moment – and I don’t particularly care to increase the volume. So just sticking to this play: Let the Sunshine is a very nicely put together play where craft may be conventional, but it is of a high standard.  To say the play fun and enjoyable, does not mean it lacks depth. Not only is Williamson at his wittiest best, but the little ray of sunshine he sees emerging from the ‘idealism of youth’ - is an eternal hope that we all lean on and rightly so.

I could say more about all these three play – and a dozen other subjects currently burning up my mind. But that’s the trouble – I have to take a rest.

Let me put it more formally. Since I live only a stone’s throw from Belvoir Street Theatre, and have been following Armfield’s career since his first production in this venue twenty-five years ago (Upside Down at the Bottom of the World) I feel I must acknowledge my kinship links to the Strawberry Hills Mob and declare it timely to go into a period of ‘mourning. Taking the lead from Warwick Thornton’s Samson and Delilah, I have cut off my hair with a blunt kitchen knife and I am going to bury my head under a blanket for a little while - in honour of the passing of the flame from Big Boss ‘Nana’ Neil to whomever comes next.

Yes, that is a big wank. Okay. But now also happens to be the right time for me - from jameswaites.com - to take a break.

For a little while I just have to stop. The month of May was the first month since I started seven months ago, when my readership has not doubled. If we have reached a plateau here, then all the more timely. I have to go and earn some money. Sort out my Swiss bank accounts etc. I also need to re-engineer some dodgy components of my site.  In particular I want to make feedback from readers easier and more welcoming. And I want to get on top of some new skills that I can apply to the site. I haven’t purchased a new mobile phone that takes fabulous pictures for nothing and my state-of-the-art scanner is also sitting here waiting to be loved.

So kids – I am out of here for a while. Look out for me in early June. When as California’s Governor would say: “I’ll be back!” Bigger and better, I hope…!!!

xxx

xxx

I just got some photos from the opening of the exhibition - Windows On Pain - at Carriageworks so I thought I would ‘re-post’ the story with a few small changes. As I noted a couple of weeks back, I was able to stand in front of the portrait Tom Carment did of me  - called ‘Bashed Critic’ – which he painted after I got mugged on a train. I’ve put it back up mostly to encourage you to come see the show out a Riverside Studios - where it opens on 1 June. And also to show you how good the ‘work’ was that I got done at St Vincents (my new cheeks are made out of my old bum!)

I should admit that I have never personally lived with pain for great stretches of time: my body is more like one of those old cars out the back paddock that’s been trashed by its delinquent owner and his friends, consequently ravaged with faulty parts and dings. So  guess I am more a ‘recreational’ pain sufferer! Anyway, you all know what happened - if not you can do some back reading! Many people liked Tom’s painting, some holding the view that I looked handsomer in the picture than in real life. William Yang, who also had a work of art in the exhibition reckoned I looked like ‘rough trade’. That was a first!

“This picture is inspired by conversations with pain patients, one in particular,
who said she felt like Alice disappearing down the rabbit hole, with the aperture
at the top growing smaller and smaller.

People who live with chronic pain deal very literally with shrinking options in
their lives. If and how I can work, exercise, socialise, travel?  Usual activities
are affected, all subjected to scrutiny: what is possible, what is not?  People
speak frequently about not being able to communicate their pain, wearing a mask.
In this scene Alice has taken a pill that makes her grow and grow, finally
pressing her head against the ceiling to prevent her neck being broken. She is
trapped inside the house of the White Rabbit.  Cramped and desperate though she
is, underneath, Alice’s experience is that reality is constantly being transformed.
Likewise many people move through and with their pain to re-cast reality in
amazing ways with imagination and determination.”Artist

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Anyway, alongside the celebrity adrenalin rush, there had also been  chance for me to write a little bit about pain on the project website: This is what I wrote:

“I was amused by Tom’s timing, and it was great for us to have a ‘work’ excuse to spend some time together. I bought paintings from Tom when he was just starting out - from his second and third exhibitions. They have both withstood the test of time. As have both Tom and I and our friendship.

“One year his family joined mine - a large horde at the camping grounds at Yamba. It was the best summer holiday ever: especially when one of the kids found a bottle on the water’s edge with a message in it in verse by me, with burnt edges, revealing the location of possible treasure on a little sand island facing the camping grounds. Tom rowed many of the kids across in his little boat, before they set off following clues we had laid: until they stumbled, sticking out of the earth - ‘THE DEAD MAN’S HAND’

“This was a tarry old glove I had found near an abandoned workshop for repairing small fishing boats. Some of the kids were excited, a couple burst into tears - and warned not to dare dig! What is life without risk? Buried underneath was indeed the promised treasure. A box crammed with glassy jewels and shells, trinkets etc.

“Such moments are what makes life great and all are carried on the wings of community, family, friendship, love and imagination. These moments are what you rely on to get you through hours, days, weeks, months, years of pain. Whether physical or emotional - or both.
“I have had much illness in my life: first given the ‘last rites’ at 6 weeks old. My life story is a litany of poxes, bugs, fevers, wounds and dings; and many stays in hospital - three times in just the last year!

Illness, especially serious illness, alerts your senses to what is good in life: especially those higher human qualities of loving-kindness and compassion. And the gift for laughter.For me - art at it best discovers pure joy - even when it looks into the darkest of subject matter.”

“This photograph was taken in 1980 at a performance piece by Brandon Cavallari
in the small gallery above Exiles Bookshop, now The Bookshop, in Oxford Street, Darlinghurst, and it is part of my documentation of the underground performance scene in Sydney at that time.

The image was published as part of three “journey” works in my book Sydney
Diary 1974 – 1984 and was shown at an exhibition of Sydney Diary in 1984,
so it’s a vintage print. It languished in the “don’t scare the horses” section of
my collection until Windows on Pain put out a request. I had it reframed with
the shattered glass which is a story in itself – getting the framer to shatter
the glass. He couldn’t, so eventually I had to do it myself.” Artist

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Many people liked Tom’s painting, most holding the view that I looked handsomer in the picture in real life. William Yang, who also had a work of art in the exhibition held the impossible view that I looked like ‘rough trade’. Well that was a first even for me, who has very few firsts left!.

One of the paintings in the show I liked was this very simple response to the recent fires in Victoria. I gather the artist lost his studio in the inferno and that his partner has a serious illness. I love the tenderness and solidarity in this image.

I know there are lots of worthy causes out there but I guess what has drawn me into this one is the opportunity it gives us all to just stop for a moment and think about pain. Pain and drama or course go hand in hand – even in comedy where the very best laughter ‘hurts’. While all the great tragedies are, in some sense, studies of pain and/or suffering.

“This work follows the spinal cord through the back with all it transmitting of impulses, energy and stimulus.  It is inspired in part by my own long-term spinal problems since the age of 15 and my fascination with the mechanisms of this structure within us.
Until we experience pain to where it debilitates us, we are unaware of  the incredibly delicate and complex workings of our own bodies. It is  in fact through pain that we become aware of not only the body but also of self, as  it forces us to reform our lives around or with it.” Artist

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Anther subject spoken about on the night is that ‘no one else can ever truly feel another person’s pain’. We can be empathetic - but oain, by its nature, is a very isolating experience. And while the great dramatists take us into the realms of emotional and spiritual pain, it appears visual art comes closest to actually ‘capturing’ individual pain. There were a number of people at the exhibition launch who suffer chronic pain – meaning physical pain, in some instances, which simply never goes away. This can be caused by illness or injury. There  are, we discover, vast numbers of people who suffer pain - in many ways the most vivid outcome of their predicament or diagnosis. The Pain Institute at the Royal North Shore Hospital (where I was put back together after my big fall in 1979), is special in that it is looking - not so much into diseases and illnesses with which pain has an association- but the causes of pain itself. The science of course is increasingly sophisticated - and so along with increase in knowledge about the nature and origins of pain is this new campaign of public awareness.

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But in the instance of a delightful young man called Daniel, who was there with his Japanese partner Yasuko, it is simply pain. No amount of poking and prodding by doctors has revealed a cause. But since his sporting teens pain in his legs and lower back has slowly accrued to the point that he is now bound, mostly, to a wheelchair.  Interestingly his favourite work was a sculpture. The one below:

“Pain may be emotional or physical, but whatever form it takes it is usually not immediately visible from the outside.
Pain Shadow is an abstract sculpture, yet has an element of anthropomorphism. The internal contours of pain have taken on a spiky, brutal persona whilst the outward appearance manifests as a fragile vine-like sheath of calm protectiveness.
The internal and external shapes are interrelated with a rhythmic subtlety which recollects the relationship of pain with the sufferer.” Artist

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WHERE TO SEE THE SHOW
Gosford Regional Gallery (Studio Gallery)
36 Webb St, Gosford
20 – 30 May (inclusive)
Opening night Wednesday 20 May – 6.30 pm

“Living Alone depicts a typical Central Coast fibro cottage.  It’s about loneliness
and depression. The occupant may have no partner or family, or could be an
elderly person living out their last years alone in the house.” Artist

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Or for Sydneysiders - you might be heading out that way for something - your best option is:

Riverside Theatres, Parramatta
Church  St, Parramatta
1 – 10 June (inclusive)
Opening night Monday 1 June – 6.30pm
Nathan Hindmarsh (Captain Parramatta Eels) will officially open the show. (Nathan has had a couple of dings so he will know what the show’s about)

“This is painted from a momentary image that stayed with me, seen while
touring various historic buildings for entirely different reasons. Originally a
hospital, I guess the building is now a hostel for young women. Yet the moment
suggested women in need, in pain, going in. Maybe it is a clinic or a respite
haven. The image inspired me to paint (what I think is) a beautiful painting
of a living situation of young women, the complex lattice of life and I guess,
it is October – the jacaranda is blooming again – life beyond pain springs eternal!”

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HOW TO BE INVOLVED

Friday 5 June
Windows on Pain Day
Badge selling across Sydney CBD and beyond All northern NSW and Sydney CBD ANZ bank branches will sell Windows on Pain badges.
120 pharmacies across NSW will also sell badges
Contact Campaign Office on 9926 6375 for box of $4 badges to sell in workplace

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Friday 12 June
Windows on Pain Fundraising Dinner and Auction of Artworks
7pm Art Gallery of NSW, Art Gallery Road, Sydney
Black Tie
Tickets $250 per head
Table of 10 $2500
Corporate Table of 10 $3500

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For more info go to the website: http://www.windowsonpain.org/home.

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A little bit upsetting to walk out of the opening performance of a much anticipated musical to find it is already booked to close: Lil ole Sydney town is getting more like New York/New Jersey bois everyday. Despite the rain everyone tried to be there – and clearly if you weren’t invited no one can remember who you once used to be!! The tiny foyer pre-show to the big Enmore Theatre space was a hive of buzzing air kisses – and note a swine flu masque in sight. Plus the woman must have enjoyed men lining up to take their interval pissoir – for once facilities lacking for men as well as the many demure gels.

Shane Warne the Musical was born in the big shadow of Keating the Musical (born of the yet to be written Holt the Water Ballet) – and after a good early childhood in Melbourne (like Shane) has failed to stand on its own too feet in the world of glitzy international stardom. I know that’s stretching it a bit for the sake of a sustaining simile/conceit, but hey we are talking Melbourne v Sydney here – no holds barred and anything goes. In this version of the story, Sydney is the big smoke and Shane just can’t cut it here. Okay, not a fair answer.

So why after a popular five-month run in Melbourne does the show fail to pull advance sales in Sydders? Don’t know. Maybe coz Shane the man with those amazing fingers - who could curve a ball into leg stump and text at the same time – has been off the media radar now for a little while. You know what our memories are like – Shane who? We’re in the middle of the footy season after all – and what a season!

Can’t be that the sound mix was crap (getting sick of this problem arising with every second show – even on free tix). Can we dump technology and get show biz types to relearn how to ‘fill a room’ all by themselves? If Melba could do it, why can’t Eddie? Much of the wit in the script was lost as a result (the only reason I was there) - and the drumming wasn’t THAT special. But no one not thinking of buying tickets in advance would have been worried about that. So that’s not an answer.

It was definitely all stops out from the cast who really ‘gave it all’ on opening night. But the effort showed: one sensed a lack of confidence in the product – hence the oversell? I guess they were trying to salvage the season. In which case it would have been better to work together: this was a show full of stand-alone performances. Which mostly died as they were born.

Eddies script and his ‘rendition of Shane’ are the highlights of the show. But Eddie Perfect is not the household name in Sydney he is in Melbourne: maybe that’s where it’s come undone.  Not that Shane is too Melbourne – but Eddie is? I saw Iota sitting quietly up the back stalls: I wonder if he thought he could have done a better job. Or at least succeeded in pulling in his rather extensive home-town  fan club. We’re talking ‘away’ v ‘home’ game advantage, I suppose.

And then I just googled just plain ’slut’ and got this one off some American kid’s Myspace page - the caption is all his!

Though I hear Iota is being cast as Reg Reagan (and the slutty fully-lying New Zealand scrag) in Matty Johns the Musical. Which I think is the main reason for Shane Warne not pulling sales. Sending sext messages is small beer these days. We want full mass masturbation scenes of whole football teams for our money this far into 2009. Come on you musicals-makers keep up with the times. Ian Roberts can return to the stage playing himself (as opposed to with himself) even. The token good guy. That diver Mitchum could play his Twinky boyf as Ian wrestles with his conscience - while the rest of the boys wrestle with each other. A hundred pretty actresses in halternecks could play the sperm-soaked dressing-room floor.

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Quite seriously, if the rugby league community could simply face up to the fact that ten guys wanking in a room with one unfortunate woman on the floor is basically a homosexual experience, then life would be a lot happier for all involved.

Courtesy Clive Faro

The one thing I’ve admired about the NRL Footy Show Sydney has been its lack of prejudice towards homosexuality. Though reasons for this have not been analysed. It was much more welcoming to Ian Roberts coming out than the gay press (who criticised him for being so slow about it!). The Footy Show gang also had a great laff about having a Mardi Gras float dedicated to them. And even Matty Johns himself has referred (on the show he swallowed half a Viagra - the other half was dropped by the Chief) to the idea that there is ‘a little bit of gay in everyone’.

The sex industry put it hands up this week and said it was more than happy to organise safe sessions of group sex for the players as a way to unwind and relax after a stiff game in pretty much any town where there is a sports oval. The gay community has been partly to blame in setting itself up as an exclusive sect: I think we need to get back to the early liberationist notion of ‘polymorphous perversity’ where sexuality is not seen as a set of defined boxes (only one of which a person is allowed to tick) and more a spectrum of behaviours along which some find a settled spot and others move along depending on the mood they’re in or the company they are keeping.

It has been fascinating on the gay sex sites since Brokeback and the coming out of Adam Sutton in Australia - many more real life ‘cowboys’ are presenting themselves online. But no footy players per se - though there is a lot of fetishing footy players elsewhere on the net and the broader culture.  If this (just cited) isn’t the gayest site I know - and ALL the subjects are willing participants in their objectification! Come on boys - you’re hurting a lot of women and yourselves at the same time. The bottom line is you just want to fcuk each other….

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