haiku: kyoko-chi reflects

golden pavilion

sweeping snow-flaked garden crone

kyoko-chi reflects

street signs

assuming that a pair of nikes hanging from the wire on a street corner is implicitly understood in subculture speak as the territorial markings of a local drug dealer: what does it mean when an alarm clock is added?

hybristophiles

a few fab punk monks braved the trek into the wilderness with me on the weekend to make a film in the international 48HR film project [28HRFP]. packed into two cars we disappeared bushward into the night after being assigned a genre, line of dialogue, a character & prop to integrate into a film to be entirely created from friday to sunday within an exact controlled time-frame.

genre = film de femme

object = torch

character = jemma gordon, a writer

line of dialogue = "one of these days you're going to realise i'm right".

kudos to ky, felix, michael, mischa, davey, andrew & cat for coping with the extreme elements which we endured, not least the inconstant weather compounded by dealing with an evil director/producer spiralling between crushed spine pain [a tree fell on me while we were location scouting] resulting in "...several wedge compression fractures with greater than 25% height loss anteriorly in the mid to lower thoracic spine. no definite repulsion of fragments is seen" and an opiate induced other worldly state. good times.

to try to make myself feel better & to ensure everyone suffered for the art, i made sure that everyone else shared the misery [but not the codeine] & tried as best i could to turn the project into another faux snuff movie. sadly it looks like both ky & davey will recover from their hypothermia. cat too didn't seem to mind enduring the tortuous conditions but then she didn't vomit all over herself. this begs the question will they all return for a third film...

the proof as they say is in the pudding. a kind of red-blooded guide to newly weds. a marriage manual of sorts. watch this space for screening news. 48HRFP films will screen at paddo RSL wednesday october 07. also the director's cut film inspired by the 48HRFP will screen at KINO this coming monday.

brokeback monk

went on what we call a location reccie yesterday for pending film project with some of the boys [mischa, felix & michael]. we stayed in the bush overnight chasing the debri of the infamous sydney sandstorm before us.

stopping at a local country pub when we were on the brink of reaching our destination, the bartender told us that the hailstones which had followed the sandstorm had been the size of tennis balls & had knocked her garden frolicking puppy unconscious. she watched helplessly behind the safety of closed doors watching her car window screen smashed as her puppy lay being pelted by relentless rocks of ice [apparently it scrubbed up good since! um, OK...].

in the wake of the storm we hurried off to our mountain retreat and sat out the rain as it moistened our late night post-apocolyptic outdoor BBQ battle with the giant rats. stephen king would have had nightmares if faced with what we encountered on arrival.

using a large tin from the pantry to soften a rusty generator lock we were overwhelmed by the incredible stomach ripping stench which permeated from my cold pressed organic olive oil tin which had had the plastic lid chewed off by possibly man-sized rodents judging by the size of their souvenir shit & trail of destruction. seems they love plastic. en masse. to our horror we realised that they'd made it in... but not out. of. the. tin. coles might not be promoting our new line of anti-pasto rotting rat anytime soon but the aroma was well pungent enough to compete with some of the riper cheeses i've had the privilege to experience in france. one thing with all that quality oil, them bush mice certainly don't squeak anymore.

chasing deadlines we flew [as best one can in erm, questionably roadworthy truck] today back to the city to be further impeded by more fallen trees. somehow this one pictured above managed to literally break my back even though it had already fallen. it fell a second time once we moved it off the road. unfortunately on me. still it wasn't enough to hold me back from a free lunch in the city [review to come].

now amidst 48 hour film prep and a bunch of other stuff i have vertebrate x-rays etc to schedule tomorrow after being diagnosed with two possible broken vertebrates after the wine at the quay failed to hit the right spot.

so... if you ever want to visit us up in the mountains at the punk monk cabin & you want a free lunch, just ask for the jus de BBQ rodent & we'll oil up the barbie for you. just don't ask me to move any kamikaze trees. i only deal in rats.

[pix by punk monk felix pflieger]

post-apocalyptic skies

september 23, 2009. NSW. a red haze consumes NSW, australia. a great day for my camera to die...

YES!

this weekend sat/sun/mon is a hellishly packed fun time for us punk monks. we're essentially in three places almost at once: with three different major events sucking us up in space & time.

with ALGAE RHYTHM 0:05 [portals curated by clare & alex] looming on the not so distant horizon, a small sexy psychedelic 70s fundraiser party starring kate, alex, davey & the something for porno DJ crew in conjunction with marshmallow productions at sydney film school for pending ALUMNI film production "kelly's blues", we have our hands full without throwing an international 48 hour film challenge into the mix. but we are.

the 48 hour film project kicks off this friday: with a plump handful of the remaining talented punk monk tribe [ky, dermot, felix, michael, davey, mischa, andrew & dan] i'll be writing, shooting, editing a film within that timeframe in the hope to vie off against the best hardened fast & furious filmmakers to represent sydney at the 48 hour film project's filmapalooza - the international screening & awards show in LA early 2010.

what else is there to do in a weekend we ask you?

[pic: punk monk michael prechtl, poster: felix pflieger]

liquid light show launch

friday evening last. the hopetoun. kate & alex bring the wonder of the punk monk propaganda psychochemical experience as first experienced at their curated ALGAE RHYTHM 0:02 in the final days of the warehouse.

the first of many future collaborations with sydney band, hailer & the launch of the liquid light show event calendar outside of the confines of our own studio run walls... needless to say it was a huge alchemic success.

fellow punk monks; clare, felix & michael were there to soak up the iridescent matmos & record the experience for all posterity long after i disappeared into the night.

pix by punk monk, michael prechtl.

burning bridges

today a small handful of my drinking buddies ran the blackmores running festival's flagship event, the sunday telegraph body + soul bridge run [doesn't sponsorship make for un-succinct copy?]. in what became blistering conditions friends & flesh cats; ky, raen, & andrew with only extensive beer/wine/whisky arm training joined 33, 000 others & um, decided to subject our bodies to an altogether different kind of abuse. 9kms is an excellent cure-all hangover technique. i think it's called pain transference.

with firmly strapped feet, i joined them in the ultimate asthma attack impersonation to survive the completer finisher ranks on the harbour foreshore opposite the opera house after starting on the other side & running over the closed off sydney harbour bridge.

the crown in the jewel of the running races was the sydney marathon [42kms] which appeared to feature peeps of notably higher fitness calibre to ourselves with slightly more rounded training regimes. the marathon was taken out by winning kenyan runner julius seurei in a time of 2 hours, 17 minutes and seven seconds. that's um, 1km in 3.18 minutes... quite a lengthy sprint. as a reality check we ran 9kms in around an hour in a fast fashionably paced "yog", something between an uphill crawl/downhill jog [you saw it here first -- wait for it to go viral].

on completion, after subjecting the god-sent three minute angels to our toxic sweat [lucky them, apologies to your colleagues clare], & following the repeated beration by the woman in the corporate sunday tele tent who put seinfeld's soup nazi to shame taking pride of sausage sizzle catering to new hedonistic over-possesive heights: we did what had to be done when permanently denied the juice we desperately craved... we went & drank more beer. apparently there's a half marathon coming up. we do have our training to consider after all.

pix by punk monk michael prechtl

haiku: your absent silhouette

day's negative space

art definition equals

your absent silhouette

golden showering j*zz

rained down upon in a succulent stream of slow jazz i found myself glued to the furthest corner station once more at 505 this week with the most recent additions to the punk monk tribe: davey, felix, and michael. redefining the art of chill.

entertained by the melodic tunes of debut act, the casey golden trio the very talented casey on piano led his band through a rhythmic journey which in my tired state had me floating somewhere between a three-toed sloth framed babbling brook on a summer's day & the welcome fish-eyed grime of a sexual encounter in a back street hong kong alley in shades of wong kar wai. polarised but symbiotic at the same time.

what this essentially constitutes is a languid lounge evening in, out. win.

palm sunday

...for christians celebrates the triumphal entry of jesus christ into jerusalem the week before his apparent death & resurrection. his passion [thanks to mel gibson for making this concept painfully but pleasurably accessible to non-catholic disciples like myself].

recorded in the canonical gospels mark 11:1-11, matthew 21:1-11, luke 19:28-44, and john 12:12-19 all accounts describe the crossing of the jesus path with palms branches as he entered the city.

as a non-christian but an avid student of world religion & philosophy, palm sunday means something altogether different to me.

unrestricted to the easter cusp, my religious experience comes in varietal twilight shades as the magic hour melts into high contrasting shadows of night soothed by ambient sounds of the soft seatide as it laps onto seagull silhouette'd sand. the sun hypnotically pulses bleeding light into the horizon. day in, day out. yet another version of the golden gate.

palm beach. sunday.

haiku: morning bird heralds

morning bird heralds

our luxuriant night's end

in traffic again

D. ray white is my daddy

and i love my daddy, till the day i die...

white lightnin' is the shadowy filtered monochromatic biopic of dancing outlaw, jesco white. created by first time feature director dominic murphy, the film is as abruptly brutal as it is brilliant as it is beautiful.

the closing night film at this year's sydney underground film festival, it continued to enrapture a stoic audience as its implied violence had the strongest stomachs & eyes wincing whilst remaining hypnotically steadfast on the screen accompanied by the entrancing beat of the banjo & famed appalachian feet of the psycho hillbilly from lynchian hell.

with demons hot on his toe-tapping heels the fictional account of real life career criminal jesco white is probably not the tourist grabbing PR campaign west virginia will be producing anytime soon. the darkest elements & clichés of psycho white trash is pushed multiple stops within an exaggerated but bleakly sellable inch of itself. a real life horror story which makes stereotypical pulp cinema like wes craven's, the hills have eyes & hillbilly horror look like name-brand pussy fodder for spoilt kitty-litter dependent siamese whilst rewriting the hitchcock's psycho shower scene. refocus eyes. stay away from needles. moonshine bottles. and gas.

with similarly rose-colour stripped shades to harmony korine's [gummo, kids] harsh graphic riposte themes, there's a wonderful narrative curve which provides more than cheap shock value, especially considering visible screen violence is actually minimal, the implication is extreme. the story is delivered with sensitivity & panache.

edward hogg's rendition of the renegade protaganist is mesmerising. carrie fisher's supporting role as older lover cilla is odd but works well depicting both the ostrasization & variable realty perception of both polarized identities.

the religious epiphanies in this film are enough to either inspire martyrdom or life long atheism. with production design which elevated these moments to moments of visionary elevation, white lightnin' s end is as chilling & poetic in an iconographic fashion that it made me feel all angelina jolie. first i just need to work on my dance steps.

[thanks to the ever gracious interwebs for providing pix. i ♥ you]

and now for the real thang...

bleached beach painters

saturday avo. bondi beach. number 12.

three intrepid adventurers raen, claire & myself assailed dear friends; francois & marianne's over the weekend to transform their new 1940s pad from ugly duckling to beautiful swan with paintbrushes & chisels firmly in hand.

with the invaluable aid of julien, the saw wielding wonderboy & under the inimitable direction of the expectant overseer marianne: grill rendering was, um, resculpted, a ladder was beautifully painted rather than walls, a fab new brown paper bag hat trend was set, a bathroom ceiling was miraculously created, orange nectar from the gods/shop down the bottom of the road was quaffed & i somehow ended up looking like i'd been at a face painting carnivale...

time happily sucked us up into a vortex & we also managed to miss the premiere of another friend, ben ferris's feature film penelope at the sydney underground film festival but managed to [just] make it in time to see our own two films [chick addict & salome's picnic] play in the following session... before engaging in that err, stimulating ass-talking scene in pink flamingos.

we missed the midnight session of porn dogs [but love the website] after an epic three session run, but befriended greg blatman, the director & his lovely wife [who was almost a willing victim to an alien pink abduction]. congratulations on winning SUFF's "most taboo" award. greg won't be introduced to my furry felines anytime soon... fluffers they are not.