Article - "Meow Meow"

Hello kitty

Benito di Fonzo

Metro, Sydney Morning Herald. June 30, 2006

Sultry cabaret artist Meow Meow was in London on Monday, New York Tuesday, Los Angeles Wednesday and, on a wet Friday afternoon, she's lying atop a bar in Darlinghurst's Victoria Room sipping Chandon. No wonder she called last week's show in Germany Sequins & Spectacular Jetlag.

When it opens at the Opera House it will be retitled Beyond Glamour: The Absinthe Tour.

"That's a reference to my mental state, clearly, but it conjures up a fabulous image of Toulouse-Lautrec and early French cabaret," purrs Meow in an accent you can't pin down. "My first language was obviously unintelligible, [but] it made sense to me, then off we went into French and German, then English and a little Mandarin."

For her Sydney debut, Meow will team up with pianist Iain Grandage, who she met in Shanghai while working with controversial Chinese transsexual Jin Xing.

"[Xing's] a really interesting woman. She was the best male dancer in China, a kind of superstar, and she was a colonel in the army, as well.

Then she had a sex change."

Meow's show received rave reviews in Melbourne, where The Age's Helen Razer described her as "Diamanda Galas drowned in cherry liqueur".

"This show takes a lot of songs that I absolutely adore," she says. "Really beautiful cabaret songs from the French and German cabaret tradition mixed in with show tunes, horribly deconstructed, I'm afraid, and I mix it with some John Cage and contemporary opera.

"I love that you can use noise and you can reference 15 songs in one song just by passing through the notes, and people have this primeval memory of 1925, 1865 or a primal scream from the slime that means something."

Meow is also working on performance art fellowships in Berlin and New York.

"I'm seen as sequins in the performance art world and [as] razor blades in the cabaret world," she says.

"There's this saying that what turns me on is erotic and what turns you on is pornographic, so for some people the show will be deeply erotic, and for others it will be deeply grotesque, and that's what I like to play with. It's a lot about how [the audience] wants to perceive you; as a superstar or a washed-up diva, a goddess or a has-been."

Meow, also a lawyer, says she may be "wilfully blind" when it comes to any rules the Opera House imposes on her: "I popped my bosom in a glass of red wine [at one show] because there's so many rules about nudity, alcohol and cigarettes and I just think it's so ridiculous. I think it's important to rock people and also to soothe them. You don't want too much of either, otherwise you've got bland, anaesthetised non-thinking. Shatter and soothe, I think, is a good thing."

Punters be warned: there'll be audience participation.

"I think fear is good in the theatre; it's good when you think anything could happen - we're not in a cinema, after all. So it is unpredictable: I could walk offstage, I could fall in love with you, you could fall in love with me. How are you feeling, by the way? In love, clearly."

Her biography says she has no fixed address. Does that mean she'll need somewhere to crash after the show?

"Yes, is that OK? I'm very cuddly.

I leave a trail of sequins and eyelashes, but nothing scary."

Meow Meow: Beyond Glamour
June 30, July 1, 7 & 8, Opera House Studio

Article - Bukowski On Film: Rough Guide (Metro, SMH)

Bukowski blues

June 16, 2006

Metro, Sydney Morning Herald

Translating a drunk who does little to the screen is tough.

Bent Hamer's adaptation of Bukowski's 1975 novel Factotum, starring Matt Dillon as the author's alter-ego Henry "Hank" Chinaski, with Lili Taylor (I Shot Andy Warhol) and Marisa Tomei (My Cousin Vinny) as his alcoholic muses, is one of the better attempts at putting the drunken bard on screen.

Tales Of Ordinary Madness in 1981 was the first and, for many, the best, with Ben Gazzara as a slow, cool, yet still ugly and a little unlikeable anti-hero.

It was followed in 1987 by Barfly, the best known and the one screenplay Bukowski wrote. It featured a mumblingly over-acting Mickey Rourke opposite Faye Dunaway. Bukowski wrote Hollywood about the underwhelming result.

That same year, the one Bukowski film the writer liked was released. The Belgian production Crazy Love, based on his books The Copulating Mermaid of Venice, California, and Ham on Rye, concentrated more on his socially awkward and acne-ridden adolescence.

Last year the critically acclaimed documentary Born into This was released here. It used rare and revealing footage of the famous wino, as well as interviews with Tom Waits, Bono, Sean Penn and some people without yachts. Another Bukowski adaptation, Bring Me Your Love, has recently finished filming.

Factotum sticks to the Bukowski formula: "Went to the bar at the track and got loaded, met this ugly, drunken piece of ass, after we f---ed I felt sick, so I went to the bar at the track ... [etc]"

However, as with Born Into This, Factotum has voice-overs of Bukowski's poems that give some insight into his life as a search for a kind of purity. And that is what appeals to Bukowski's fans.

In common with Gazzara, Dillon is a more believable, blackly comic Hank. Rourke was more caricature yob. Factotum captures the way Bukowski used art to laugh at the absurd meaningless of life, like a drunken lama, without over-idealising or pulling punches.

FACTOTUM

Director Bent Hamer. Stars Matt Dillon, Lili Taylor. Rated M. Screening now.

Article - Mark Lee (Metro, SMH)

The Frail Man

Benito di Fonzo
June 16, 2006

Gallipoli's Mark Lee resurfaces in a new play about "what makes us so insular".

Mark Lee shot to fame as the fresh-faced hero of 1981's Gallipoli. On the eve of a lead role in a new play and his feature directorial debut, I asked where he's been.

"I've had a great 25 years! I've worked in music, theatre, film, and I began to develop as an actor, which I wasn't, to be quite honest with you. I got through Gallipoli on a reasonable looking mug, a lot of enthusiasm and some great people around me, not technique, not any great talent. Because Peter [Weir] and Mel [Gibson] hit the stratosphere after that they always say, 'What happened to you?' With Mel, realistically it was Mad Max 2; with Peter it was probably Witness.

"It was one of those things that turns in your favour, so over the time I've gone back to school. I love doing this, I've found a play I really enjoy."

That play is the Sydney premiere of Anthony Crowley's thriller The Frail Man, in which Lee plays the CEO of Australia's largest IT company, who is pursued by a detective (Jeanette Cronin) in the investigation of the murder of a young Muslim woman.

This story is interwoven with the tale of two runaway convicts.

"The play looks at our roots, our beginnings, what makes us so insular," Lee says. "We came here in pain and degradation and tried to make the landscape anything but what it was; that defines many of the problems we face today, an island nation of Europeans in Asia, and it looks at that using the corporate structure, by looking at the echelons of power and at its zenith how it's manipulated."

Another work that tackles corporate machismo is Lee's feature directorial debut The Bet, which opens at the Sydney Film Festival. In it, Matthew Newtown plays a young stockbroker who makes an ego-filled bet with a wealthy friend (Aden Young) over who can make the most money in 90 days. It then follows the effects of this obsession on his personal life.

"While The Frail Man is a big metaphor for Australia, The Bet is a moral tale set in the corporate world," Lee says. "I had to learn about the stockbroking world, sit with stockbrokers, watch them work. We had to work out a way to keep the veracity but make it visually exciting."

Among the ways Lee and editor Jason Ballantine ( Wolf Creek) achieved that was by ditching the fluoro-blue tones of corporate tales for a warmer look.

Lee moved to directing when he realised there are only so many spots on All Saints you can do. "As you get older if you haven't hit a certain niche your choices are fairly minimal, you find yourself sitting in the same casting agents looking at the same people for a 50-worder going 'this is insane, I've been doing this since 1967.' So I took an overdraft and funded my first short. I found there were certain things I had a knack for."

What made him want to direct The Bet? "I'm now in my late 40s and started directing fairly late and found I loved it. Had I been offered Zombie Nymphomaniacs In Chains 2, would I have taken that? That's the question you ask yourself. As it turned out, this had a wonderfully strong structure."

It's quite a change from the post- Gallipoli years when Lee worked as a labourer. "I did that on and off for nearly nine years. It's nothing special, and it was good; it got me fit, got my head straight. I started doing different roles rather than wallowing. I [also] played in pub bands: the Idle Poor, One Way Ticket, Waterfront. I don't know how good we were but we had a ball."

Lee's joy in projects such as The Frail Man and The Bet has taken care of any regrets. "I went through a phase. I stupidly once said to a friend that sometimes I feel [ Gallipoli is] an albatross I'd shot and hung round my neck, I was so disgusted with talking about it. He chastised me by saying, 'We should all have such as albatross,' and I went, 'Yeah, fair enough.' "

Romeo and Juliet (Metro, SMH)

Benito Di Fonzo

June 9, 2006 Arts - Entertainment - smh.com.au

What it is about Romeo that stops Juliet ringing Neighbourhood Watch?

Romeo is not the only Italian to stand under a girl's balcony reciting verse, but with lines such as "But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?" you know he's the most infamous. What it is about Romeo that stops her ringing Neighbourhood Watch?

"Obviously, if Juliet was not a virgin and had had a series of abusive relationships behind her I don't think she'd be as responsive to Romeo, [but] there's this beautiful vulnerability and ethereal quality that she sees in him, like he's from another planet," says 23-year-old Chloe Armstrong, who plays the "not yet 14" Juliet in Bell Shakespeare's latest production.
"It's to do with his imagination, sensitivity and impressionability, and as young as she is she sees that straightaway and falls for him."

Romeo is played by Julian Garner, best known as Alex Dimitriadis's gay lover in 1998's Head On. Even armed with poetry, the love between Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet is doomed from the start due to their families' feud, a conflict for which director John Bell saw comparisons in recent events.

"He was thinking we don't really have this sort of fighting in our society," Armstrong says, "and then the Cronulla riots happened. That was the starting point for him. The set has quite a stark urban feel, and the divisions are very clear between the Capulets and Montagues in costume."

Armstrong, who also plays the witch Graymalkin in Romper Stomper director Geoffrey Wright's upcoming film version of Macbeth, saw echoes of her own adolescence in the love-struck Juliet.

"I had moments where something mattered to me so much that I lost all sense of rationale and was arguing along a course that was completely unfathomable, but I was so adamant in my heart that this was right that I couldn't see past it.

"To an outsider's eye it would have seemed that I was being a hysterical rebellious adolescent, but I was just desperate. It's the same for Juliet, she's a girl living with a family who are completely thwarting her whole objective, which is to be with Romeo."

Hence we witness Juliet's journey towards independence as the conflict between her forbidden romance and her family forces her to make some very adult, if ultimately ill-fated, decisions.

"It's quite unusual for a 'not yet 14'-year-old to be quite so free-thinking," she says. "She becomes her own agent. A big part of Juliet for me is her autonomy, which she discovers, and asserts. It's really cool that it was written so long ago by a man who gives this young girl this incredible initiative."

She is aided by Friar Lawrence (Philip Dodd), who secretly marries the couple before Romeo's enforced exile for the murder of Juliet's cousin. Later, after learning of Juliet's decision to commit suicide to avoid an arranged marriage, the Friar gives her a drug that will help her fake her own death. What would the Department of Community Services say?
"In retrospect you can go 'Oh Jesus, that was a bit rash, perhaps I should have called Lifeline'," Armstrong says. "He's impulsive, but he means well."
Ultimately, love brings an end to the ancient feud, if a little late for our lovers. Juliet might have been better off calling the cops when some boy from the wrong part of town turned up. Yet love, like poetry, is at it's best when blind.

Armstrong says: "To think that adults need two young people to kill themselves to see how stupid their feud is. As she says, 'my only love sprung from my only hate', which is imposed on her, like any sense of racism."

Only in fair Verona, or Cronulla.

(originally appeared in Sydney Morning Herald, Metro, 9/6/06)

Article - Request Programme (Metro, SMH)

"What's My Line Again?"

IT'S NOT HARD TO FLUFF YOUR LINES WHEN THERE AREN'T ANY.

BENITO DI FONZO REPORTS ON A WACKY STC PRODUCTION.

In January Sydney Theatre Company's "Wharf2LOUD" attempted to live up to it’s manifesto of creating interesting cutting edge theatre by staging a play without punctuation (Dissident, Goes Without Saying), now they take it one step further with "Request Programme," a play without any dialogue whatsoever.

Metro asked Wharf2LOUD Director Brendan Cowell if there's something wrong with his grammar-check.

"We're trying to guarantee our audience a new theatrical experience every time they come here, and we can guarantee that nobody has ever seen anything like this before; it goes for one hour, it's got one woman in it, and she doesn't say a thing, and it's absolutely compelling."

Brendan discovered the play, written in the 70s by Bavaria's leading playwright Franz Xaver Kroetz, while in Berlin in 2003.

"I saw a production of it and immediately began to build one in my head because I thought this was one of the most chilling evenings I'd ever had in the theatre, I was really shaken up after it. But I also thought they got it a little bit wrong. Then I started thinking about it in context of Sydney."

Hence Kroetz's Bavarian heroine has become Ms Emma Swift, and the stage now an Edgecliff flat. She never says anything, but she does everything a women living alone might do, including go to the toilet, use 'feminine deodorant,' and, most importantly, listen to her favourite radio request programme.

"There's three characters in the play; her, her flat, and the radio programme,” Cowell says. “They feed off each other. I don't think [the play's] ever been so pertinent - we're getting so brilliant at being on our own, we all live in these one bedroom apartments right next to each other with our own little lives, "

Emma is portrayed by Suzi Dougherty in her first one woman show.

"In Germany every leading female actor wants to play this role, that's why it's performed so much,” Dougherty says. “It's the kind of play you could see a few times and get different things out of."

Dougherty’s challenge is to flesh out the character solely through her actions.

"It's about the ordinary,” she says. “The sum of the ordinary actions equals the extraordinary event that happens."

Extraordinary, says Cowell, because on this day something is different.

"Tonight she's holding herself up against a few things, which is a potentially dangerous thing to do."

Kroetz intended the audience discover something of themselves through Emma's un-self-conscious actions.

"When you're on your own you behave in a more primitive fashion,” Cowell says. “We're like animals when we're on our own - we feed ourselves, we shit, we listen. You start projecting your own emotions, fragilities and neuroses onto [Emma], that's the genius of the play: it's about us."

Kroetz's extreme-realist plays have caused controversy before. In 1970 when a Munich theatre was put under police protection after violent audience reactions to Stubborn and Working At Home which featured masturbation, attempted abortion and a child murder on stage. Three years later he was Germany's most produced living playwright.

The radio request programme of the title is based upon "Your Request," a Bavarian "Love Song Dedications" of the 70s, currently being updated and localised by Cowell and Sound Designer Basil Hogios.

Hogios: "We had discussions about the whole series of songs mapping the story, having highs and lows."

"They're all love songs," explains Cowell as a Leonard Cohen number floats across the rehearsal studio.

No Slayer then?

"I did suggest some Iron Maiden," says Hogios.

Perhaps a Leonard Cohen cover of Maiden?

"We do have an interesting cover," says Cowell.

Hogios: "We can't mention it yet, but it's a cover of a famous Australian song by a female and turned into a love ballad."

Finally, Mariah Carey's Khe Sahn - only to be played when nobody's watching.

#

(originally appeared in Sydney Morning Herald, May 26 2006.)

Gypsy Journalism - TINA 2001

Here's an ancient piece of mine that I rediscovered recently... most unprofessional and all... (i.e. I'm in the article, but it always tickled my fancy...)

It was originally published in 2001 in the now defunct Sydney street magazine "Revolver" (which had morphed out of "Beat" and later became "The Brag")

"The Write Stuff"

This Is Not Art and The National Young Writers' Festival make for a unique Newcastle adventure.

By Benito Di Fonzo

The ‘National Young Writers’ Festival’ (NYWF) has given the former steel town of Newcastle a fine local tradition. That of writers from Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Ballarat, Brisbane and all points in between swilling beer, bourbon and hash cookies as fast as they can scam them, whilst their ‘compoetriates’ rant black rivers of cynicism or blow Utopian hope-bubbles from the stage and street. It’s a great feeling for a two-bit wordsmith like myself, trying to cash in on everything from ethnic stereotyping to performance poetry, to find that all over Australia there are like minded merry pranksters.

At times it feels as if, for one week a year, Newcastle becomes Newtown by the sea, with a healthy dose of Fitzroy and St Kilda thrown in. Electro-ferals and day-glow turntablists share the town with bad-shirted poets, hip-hopping revolutionaries, confused short film makers, pissed street press, and the just plain ‘lost.’ This is because NYWF falls under the umbrella of the ‘This Is Not Art’ Festival, which also includes ‘The National Student Media Conference, ‘’ Sound Summit,’ and ‘Electrofringe.’

Aside from the odd interview for 2SER’s ‘Poetic Off-Licence’ (6pm Tues), I had earned my free bed by volunteering to MC the Saturday Night Cabaret Spectacular. Or something like that. As far as I knew the rest of the weekend could be devoted to ‘finding myself’ as it were. However, NYWF is a strange animal. A kind of drug fucked octopus in a vat of Kent Old. Hence, no sooner had I found Newcastle, found my Hotel, found my old muso buddy Philasophigas, found the Hunter Hotel, and found a likely seminar to attend, than that strange beast’s tentacles sprung maliciously out in the form of Australia’s most violent poet - Melbourne’s Phil Doyle.

Phil Doyle earned his reputation when he pulled a Bowie knife at the first NYWF. At the time it made the papers and got the event some free publicity. Phil Doyle handed me an article he had published in ‘Overland’ criticising NYWF, with particular venom pointed at “the Sydney poets” who were accused of committing what is considered a grave crime in Melbourne. We had made poetry entertaining. I was to defend the charge. Luckily, Philasophigas had bought half a bottle of bourbon off a guy in the street whilst asking directions to the nearest chemist. He left me with the bottle as he was off to see something ‘electrofringy.’ I poured myself a little poets’ courage, studied the article, and vehemently defended the charges. Sydney poets entertaining? Ludicrous!

There were a lot of other laid back yet informative events to attend between drinks. Highlights included Linda Jaivan talking about how to write sexy text, AJ Rochester on comedy writing, and of course the afore mentioned Cabaret night. For the sake of the Melburnians I tried not to be overly entertaining. In the end, failure is it’s own reward.

Of course, come Sunday the brutal reality of being in Newcastle on Grand Final night hit us like a bad simile. The afternoon went eerily quiet as several poets followed local boy and organiser Marcus Westbury’s advice and donned blue and red clothing. There was a sigh of relief when the local team won their little football game.

As a writer, I probably learnt more about humanity on that night than at any seminar, as I wandered through a cross between a kind of footy-yob Reclaim The Streets, and the Star Hotel riots.

“This is what football’s about” said one delirious Novocastrian as he passed me a beer in the street before climbing a traffic light so as to jump into a mosh pit of locals from the roof of the Great Northern Hotel. Now that, I thought, is art.

(originally published in ‘Revolver’ 8^th Oct. 2oo1.)

Article - Losing Louie.

Grin reaper

By Benito di Fonzo. Metro, SMH. May 12, 2006

Death is very much a laughing matter for playwright Simon Mendes da Costa.

There's nothing Simon Mendes da Costa likes more than a good funeral.

"I've been to a number of funerals and I had a lot better time than I had at weddings," he says. "It's just a much more real experience."

The 48-year-old Londoner, who was nominated most promising playwright in London's Evening Standard Awards, is here to oversee the Australian premiere of his black comedy Losing Louie.

The play moves between the licentious adventures of Louis (Christopher Tomkinson) and his funeral 50 years later, where rivalries emerge between bitter eldest son Tony (George Spartels) and his wealthy younger sibling Reggie (Andrew McFarlane). Tony is backed by his wife Sheila (Amanda Muggleton).

Various family skeletons also rattle out of the bedroom closet.

"Families hold secrets within them, and those secrets, if unexorcised, fester as cancers," Mendes da Costa says.

He decided on the setting after the funeral of his grandmother.

"It was just the most fantastic day because it was a celebration of her life," he says. "People got drunk, people laughed, people told stories. So I thought I'll set it around a funeral, but I'm not going to tell it in a dark painful manner. When I was an actor I was always taught you should never say a sad line sadly, you always fight against what the line says."

Like the old blues maxim: sing a sad song happy and a happy song sad?

"Exactly. I think if you are overly heavy you can alienate an audience. It seems as soon as you put a number of people in a room, within a very short period of time, people are trying to be funny."

Director Andrew Doyle agrees.

"When people are in really tight situations that are incredibly sad or stressful the first thing they do is crack a joke," he says. "I know as Australians we do, and sometimes quite incorrectly."

Losing Louie is not autobiographical, but Mendes da Costa did use elements of his Portuguese-Jewish background and relationship with his father.

"On the surface we had the most fantastic relationship, but under the surface I don't think we did," he says. "We do now. I feel, in a sense, writing the play exorcised certain things for me. You don't write unless it's poignant."

Losing Louie is only Mendes da Costa's second play. He penned his first at 42 after several careers including civil engineer, real estate agent, computer programmer and actor.

"I've moved careers because I've been looking to improve my social life. I went along to an evening acting class because I wanted to meet some nice women, and I did, but while I was there I got the acting bug. After a while I thought, 'Let's join another group.'

"I knew someone in a writers' group and I popped along. After three weeks they said, 'What have you got for us to read?' And I said, 'Do I need to have something?' And they said, 'Well, it is a writers' group.' I brought [some writing] in the next week expecting them to laugh and they didn't so I continued writing."

Losing Louis broke Hampstead Theatre's box-office record before playing London's West End.

Da Costa feels his varied past has informed his writing.

"The play has an element of structure I realise has been informed by those years as a computer programmer."

Perhaps more importantly - how is his social life?

"Computer programmer was the nadir. From that you had to go somewhere to improve your social life, and now it's fantastic. Though actually

I'm a bit worried that ultimately playwrights should become a bit insular."

No problem - there are still a few jobs he hasn't tried.

(this article originally appeared in Metro in The Sydney Morning Herald and at
http://www.smh.com.au/news/arts/grin-reaper/2006/05/10/1146940615781.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1)

LOSING LOUIE
Until June 24, Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli, 9929 0644, $36-$59.

Rant - “Groper,” or “The Day My Life Was Saved By A Blue Fish that May Have Been A Ghost.”

I could have kissed Old Bluey as he swam under me like a blue Labrador of the sea. He was the second Groper I’d seen that day, and together they saved me.

I’d come to the sea to die. Well, not necessarily, but it was that kind of day if you like: the waves looking just a little too inviting, the rocks not as hard after a red wine lunch. Diving in to oblivion is the sort of thought that floats through your brain as you cross from Coogee to Gordon’s Bay on a certain kind of day.

You see, I’d received, a few hours earlier, the latest in a blitz of rejection slips. The most recent wasn’t even on paper, but rather a form email. It appeared that my detractors were getting lax in their rejection of me.

The odd rejection slip is one thing – all part of the game of being a writer really. However, in the last few weeks I’d had my latest play rejected three times, and now a poetry collective that had embraced me in the past had suddenly betrayed me over what I considered to be some of my best work ever.

Sure, it was written in ‘Jabbernoir’ - a new literary language a friend and I had invented whilst drinking dry white one summer night, but at the time it felt like the best of me, let alone the other dross that passed over their collective editorial desks. Not that I was bitter, just angry. Angry enough to kick the cat, swear at the light globe, and punch out a few of the cupboards in the kitchen. Angry enough to start drinking at midday.

I hit the cooking wine harder than a Mac truck making roadkill jerky. Then I ate all the food in the fridge, made a few abusive prank phone calls to friends, and then, as the goon started to go the way of my former friendships and writing career, thought ‘frig it, let’s hit the beach.’ It was either that or get a plane down to Melbourne to catch and kill my own editors, which, seeing as I’d just returned from there, was outside of my present budget and patience.

At one point, while drinking, I’d also begun to write said editors a letter. It went:

How dare you, you pustule of syphilitic cretins, you amalgamation of unnatural disasters. Why, you back-stabbing cat molesters wouldn’t know art if it grabbed you by the neck, pants’d you all, and then plugged you up the garden path with a rabidly lubricated Tabasco-soaked Renoir.

You seem to inelegantly forget that I am more than familiar with the quality of work in your anthologies, having deigned to appear in them, and at one point lowering myself to the level of performing at a launch along with the overrated retards that you generally publish. I can therefore say honestly that you know as well as I, if nothing else - which is entirely possible with the intense brain affliction from which you and your fellow editors obviously suffer - that my submission was by far the greatest work ever to cross the cliché-ridden desk of your undoubtedly homely receptionist, whose decision to resist your unwholesome advances has driven you to the alcohol and aeroplane glue abuse that could be the only explanation for your decision today.

This is the snotty strychnine-soaked coke straw that breaks this saint of a camel’s back over the barrel that I’ll soon pack your rat arse in before sending it sailing into Hades.

I hope you drown in your dead Aunt’s oily rot fluids. May all your generations be forcibly circumcised at thirty-four by a drunken moil with a rusty spork. May the kitty litter of your existence be forever soiled with the effluence of your lack of transparent indecision, pricks.

And while we’re at it, what’s with “this may not be a reflection on the quality of your work” crap? It ain’t exactly an endorsement of my work is it, you nit-riddled dicks?

You “regret” that my work has not been selected. Regret, regret? I’ll give you something to regret shit head.

I think I can say without fear of hyperbole that not since Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia and bloody purges thereafter has such a display of fascistic injustice ever been… etc.

Luckily, for the future of my career, I decided I could never send it. Instead I would hit the beach.

The seashore is the best thing about living in Sydney, and this had been driven home to me the week before in Melbourne, when I’d attempted to go for a swim in that sickly and sad excuse for a beach known as St. Kilda. As I’d floated above the turgid green lifeless sea of Port Phillip Bay, the stench of death floating across the water, I earned a new respect for the eastern suburbs of Sydney.

I should point out here that the anger I was venting wasn’t really at the editors, producers and theatre directors from whose inner clique I’d been so recently rejected, but rather at I, myself, me, the sad excuse for an upright mammal that I was.

You see, at a certain point, after a certain number of rejection slips, over a certain number of years, you begin to consider that perhaps you’re just shit. Sure, I’d had my successes – countless performances or pieces and plays, including two at the Sydney Opera House, but today that all retreated from memory - as far as I was concerned, my entire life, from the moment I tore through the wall of Mrs Di Fonzo’s womb in the method of Julius Caesar, to the point at which I just drained that last drop of cooking goon from the baggy, had been nought but a litany of failures.

All I could see was the possibility that I was shit. At what point, however, does the artist concede that ‘this isn’t just a bad patch, this is incompetence, idiot!’? One more rejection? Four? Why not now and be done with it? Give in and, like the smoking ads say, just quit.

Okay then, let’s just say you’ve rung the Quit Line in your head, they’ve sent the package, and you’re over it, then what? Get a job in a bank? In a factory? Forget it, that was what I’d been running from my whole life – the fear that I would end up passing my life in one of the factories that lined the top of my childhood street like orange bricked pit-bulls, with their sad procession of labourers filing in and out of them all afternoon and morning, my Old Man included. I remember when I finished High School and was informed by my father that he’d lined me up an apprenticeship.

“You could be a boiler maker, just like me,” he said proudly in his deep Abruzzian accent as he puffed on a ‘Dunny-Hill.’

With the cruel coldness of adolescence I bitterly replied, “I’d rather have bowel cancer,” then moved to the inner-city.

I think he’s forgiven me, but my fear of the factory floor still persists.

“You’re never too old to end up there,” a flatmate once jokingly said. Little did he know how much I still believed it. So upon giving up as a writer, what then?

It was true that I still saw death as a better option than the factory, and with these nihilist nouns bouncing around my head I knew there was now no option but to return to the sea.

The sea, I knew from experience, would save me. I’d like to believe that it’s just for times such as this that the ocean exists, but that would too conceited, even for me. But on such a day a Sydneysider instinctively knows to wipe the tears from his thighs and jump into the invigorating and fish-filled waters off Gordon’s Bay, like a return to the salty womb, sans scissors.

So it was that on the last afternoon of Daylight Savings I wandered down from my Alexandria hovel, on to the 370 to Coogee, then across the cliffs toward the chip-crisp and baby blue sea. It’s a bit of a trot, but sweating’s all part of the cure you see.

Before long I was in the ocean, the cool brine making me feel sane again as I floated above that alien landscape of shells, cliffs, thick black-green seaweed and schools of fat fish. Then I saw my first Blue Groper of the day.

For those not familiar with this angel of fishes I should explain. The Blue Groper is like a fish made out of those soft rubbery night-lights you had as a child, glowing a cosy blue hue, two to three feet long - though legend has it they can grow up to 160cm or five feet - with the white teeth and reassuring temperament of a blind man’s sun-golden Labrador. I dare anyone to find me a friendlier fish, and don’t give me this ‘dolphin’ shit because basically they’re just tarts, not to mention mammals.

The way to play with a Groper, these friendly blue ghosts that haunt Clovelly Beach and Gordon’s Bay, is to swim slowly a few feet above them, occasionally diving down to overturn a rock that hasn’t been moved in years, so as to display its feast of shelled fish underneath, which the Groper will happily eat with many a ‘clumpsh, flcrumplesh’ of his large, loose, smiling jaw.

As I watched the big blue sea Labrador crunch its mouth at me I felt as though I was in another world, already dead in a sense, but more importantly, in a world without factories.

I noticed the Groper uncharacteristically had a familiar with it – a little orange-finned number with a plump body and dark physique: perhaps its sidekick. Then, out from under a nearby underwater cliff face, a large blue figure appeared. It was another Groper. Big Old Bluey: the most ancient of his breed. There were fears for some time that he’d been speared, after some dickhead climbed out of the water at Clovelly with a big blue angel wriggling to death on the end of his phallic spear, ignoring the trail of abuse from locals as he threw the fallen blue angel into the boot and drove back to wherever he lived his guilty existence.

But some time after that Old Bluey was sighted again. All seemed well in the universe until there were more rumours that the old fella had just died of old age, despite the fact they live almost as long as humans.

Either way, dead or alive, here was Old Bluey appearing to me like a friendly ghost, gracing me with his presence on a day when I very much needed it.

So I floated around with the two Gropers and their orange-finned friend as if real life had somehow segued into a series of children’s animated features, and my strange little life in Sydney didn’t seem so bad. Not as long as the Gropers were with me.

After an hour I climbed back up to my rock, and saw that the sun was starting to sink. I decided to have one more dip with the Gropers and their orange-finned friend before the approach of serious winter.

#
(NB: to see said fish click on story title)

Article - The Illusion (Metro, SMH)

By Benito di Fonzo

God from The Matrix and Phil Scott update a 17th-century French tragicomedy.

In what seems a kung-fu twist, Damien Millar explains how proud he is to be directing Helmut Bakaitis, the man who taught him directing at NIDA.

"He's got this incredible presence and voice," Millar says. "He played God [The Architect] in The Matrix for a reason."

Because God wasn't available?

"I guess so, and Laurence Olivier's dead." Charlton Heston is still alive.

"Yes, you're right."

Millar is directing his old master in Pierre Corneille's 17th-century tragicomedy L'Illusion Comique, adapted by American playwright Tony Kushner (Angels In America) and retitled The Illusion.

It tells the story of Pridament, played by comic stalwart Phil Scott of The Gillies Report and the STC's Wharf Revue. We follow Pridament on his search for his lost son (Yure Covich).

Scott, who is also collaborating on the score, Sonic Illusions, with DJ Soup, was approached after scoring last year's Relaxed and Comfortable group's production of Cloud Nine.

"It's such a vibrant company," Scott says. "They're all on the same wavelength, which is hard to find, and they have this 'go for it' attitude in everything they do. I thought I better work more with these guys, and then Damien said there's a role for you if you can fit it in to your busy schedule, so I went to Centrelink and organised that."

Perhaps he can claim it as Work For The Dole?

Millar: "At least that way they'd be paid for what they're doing; they're doing it for love, the poor bastards."

Pridament's quest brings him to the otherworldly cave of a magician, played by Zoe Houghton.

"The magician is usually played by a crusty 70-year-old man," Millar says, "but we've got a young woman in that role."

Scott: "There's something about the female of the species being able to tap into that spiritual psychic realm a lot better than men can. The Earth Mother and all that."

The magician uses her specially equipped cave to enlighten Pridament through three blackly comic illusions, one of which features the skills of Kyle Rowling, who choreographed the fight scenes in Star Wars: Episode II and III.

"Kyle's a fantastic physical artist, he can tell emotional stories through violence," Millar says.

"We're going from 17th-century France to modern-day Australia, so why not have a big swashbuckling moment in there?"

Along the way we also encounter other larger-than-life characters such as Matamore (Thomas Campbell), who Millar describes as "a completely insane lunatic". As opposed to a completely sane lunatic?

"He's really one of the most outrageous characters ever written," Millar says. "He's full of grandiose nonsense. He pretends to believe that the Queen of Iceland is chasing him on her sled, because in his brain Iceland means 'land of ice'."

Sounds like a crystal meth addict.

"Worse," Millar says, "even more delusional. A crystal meth addict with military pretensions. He's a literal lunatic - he's obsessed with the moon."

No wonder that Corneille, who went on to write Le Cid, was criticised by the French establishment when he first presented the work in the 17th century.

"Corneille got in trouble for mixing comedy and tragedy," Millar says.

"You weren't supposed to do that. It reads like Shakespeare now. In some respects it's that mixture of poetry and drama that you just don't get in modern plays at the moment."

It was this otherworldliness that first attracted Millar to the play.

"It has such a sense of magic, it was such an ambitious work that I was surprised it hadn't been snatched up by one of the big companies," Millar says.

Scott looks perturbed. "I thought you were just looking for a vehicle for me - wasn't that the point?"

(this article originally appeared in the Metro liftout of The Sydney Morning Herald on April 28, 2006 and at www.smh.com.au at http://www.smh.com.au/news/arts-reviews/the-illusion/2006/04/28/1145861517226.html)

Article - Trivia (Metro, SMH, 13/4/06)

"Trivial Pursuit"
By Benito Di Fonzo

Who'd have thought pub trivia was Australia's answer to Sex and the City?

"Every quizmaster knows if you show weakness to a quiz crowd they'll turn on you," says playwright Stephen Vagg. "It becomes chaos. I've seen it happen, people arguing over answers."

Such a moment occurs in Vagg's new play, Trivia, when the authority of quizmaster Terry (Vincent Parfitt) is challenged by Gary (Ryan Hayward), one of a group of 30-something expat Brisbanites who gather in a Darlinghurst pub over four weeks to win a $10,000 trivia challenge.

"Gary's one of those people who like showing off their knowledge," says director Adam Gelin.
"But look what you're showing off. These are not important things. Yet there's something impressive about a person who can spout out who starred in [cult '80s film] The Goonies."

Like Gary, Vagg quit his job as a lawyer in Brisbane to study writing in Sydney. Since he completed a scriptwriting degree at the Australian Film Television and Radio School, his play, All My Friends are Leaving Brisbane, has been made into a feature film, and his AWGIE-nominated Friday Night Drinks has been performed in Britain.

Vagg has since turned his attention to the patrons of pub trivia nights.

"I'm sure trivia nights weren't that popular 10 years ago," he says.

"They're everywhere now.

"Maybe it's a generation X thing, a backlash against the boomers because they always thought about big issues such as war and apartheid. Maybe a lot of us grew up and thought, 'What a wank. I'd rather be into Star Wars trivia.' The boomers have got the Beatles and we've got Britney."

Gelin's theory is less controversial.

"Trivia gives you the structure that you're looking for, for the evening," the director says. "You know when it begins, you know when it ends and you know what happens in the middle.

"In a life where you're supposed to be doing stuff all the time, if you're not working then you should be doing sport or something to improve your life. Trivia nights will give you the excuse that you're doing something, even though it's not really doing anything."

For Gary, his girlfriend Michaela (Emma Grant), her ex, Ben (Randall Mettam), and confidante A.J. (Fiona Butler), as well as Aram (David Francis) and a flow of former lovers and "f--- buddies" (all played by 2005 Short & Sweet festival winner Sara Browne), Terry's trivia night becomes a means of creating a social network without all the complications of having to think of something to say.

"It's about a group of Brisbane expats living in Sydney because that's what I was," Vagg says.

"Michaela wants to get a trivia team together because she doesn't have many friends. People imagine that when you're single in Sydney it's all going to be like Sex in the City."

But isn't that set in New York?

"Well, The Secret Life of Us then."

That's set in Melbourne, isn't it? Maybe you mean Love My Way.

"No," Vagg says, "they've got kids."

So, trivia becomes the characters' excuse to socialise, as opposed to just sitting in a pub drinking, "which is more sad," Gelin says. "And I think what's sadder than that is sitting at home watching TV. At least they're getting out there and interacting with people."

Despite being drawn together by social isolation, the team members decide they want to win the $10,000 prize, and as we follow their stories we also follow the team's progress.

"Trivia has that appeal of sport," Vagg says. "Except trivia's a sport in which you can play and drink beer and eat Twisties at the same time. And you don't have to be in any sort of shape, as you can usually tell when you go to a trivia night."

But Vagg stresses the play doesn't intend to diss trivia patrons: "Trivia nights can be a lot of fun. Most people do have an accumulation of totally useless knowledge which serves no purpose except for trivia competitions, or writing plays about them."

TRIVIAApril 20 to May 13, 8pm, Newtown Theatre, corner King and Bray Streets, 1300 306 776, $18-$25 (Tuesdays, pay what you can).

Article - Hip-Hop 4 Dumeez (Metro, SMH, 10/3/06)

Everything you didn't want to know about hip-hop will not be explained to you.

by Benito Di Fonzo (Metro, SMH, 10/3/06)

Hip-hop-lomat Bushman has been to former porn cinema the Hub before.

"He was in the pictures they were showing there," says his sidekick Vowel Movement, who along with Bushman will be "aducating" Australians in hip-hop there.

"That was my previous employment," Bushman says. "I was known for having the least endurance. Of all the people who had been in pornography, no one had ever seen anyone go as short as me."

This journey, however, is to bring to Sydney the show Hip-Hop 4 Dummeez, a hit at two festivals in their Canadian homeland, Montreal's Just for Laughs and the Ottawa Fringe Festival. It runs as part of the Cracker comedy festival.

Set out like a special-edition DVD, complete with extras and deleted scenes, Hip-Hop attempts to explain the fine points of the form to a mainstream audience.

Bushman: "You may learn something, but that will only be in spite of the jokes."

Vowel: "You'll probably forget things."

Bushman: "You will watch our show and you will come out knowing less things, not only about hip-hop, but about your own self."

Vowel: "It's like a weekend smoking weed straight. That's how you'll walk out of there after 60 minutes."

The duo created the show with Jerome Sable, a fellow member of Canadian hip-hop collective the Grafenberg All-Stars, who took their name from the doctor who "discovered" the G spot.

"We has found the G spot of hip-hop and we tickle it, ever so gently," Bushman says.

What advice can they offer readers who want to fake being "fly"?

Bushman: "One thing that's very important is that he's gotta wear some bling. It's like five-necklace minimum, five-ring minimum. If you go under that, it's a faux pas."

Vowel: "It's also important that he apply the linguistic phenomenon of Pizig Lizatin, which is the hip-hop appropriation of language through adding an 'iz' to absolutely anything. Also, if he's referring to where he's from, he'll want to take the first letter from his hometown and dot it or spot it ..."

Bushman: "... or vill it or kill it or town it or down it."

Vowel: "Sydney would then be the S Spot, or S-Town."

If you were from Mosman, then, you'd call it Mo-Town?

"Or Mo-Money-Town," Vowel says.

How should one address a lady?

Bushman: "You can call her a bitch, a ho. If she's a hip-hop girl she'll understand it's a positive thing."

Vowel: "Yeah. If you say, 'I really respect the line of work you're in, bitch,' that works."

Bushman: "You got to visualise cool waves while saying that."

The characters of Bushman and Vowel Movement have known one another since primary school.

Vowel: "We used to rhyme words together, like jelly and -"

Bushman: "Belly."

Vowel: "And K .Y. jelly."

Bushman: "With gay man's belly."

Vowel: "We passed that in class."

Bushman: "Well, the rhyme, that is. We is a couple of geezers, but we is not a 'couple'. I mean, off the record, there is times when I like a snuggle on the road, but that is not to be put in the article."

Do they think other hip-hop artists are as close as these two - such as, say, 50 Cent and Eminem?

Vowel: "I don't think there's any real emotional bond [between them], just raw sex. But when it comes to Eminem and [producer] Dr Dre, I think there is definitely like a strange, father-son kind of Amsterdam experience."

Can hip-hop change people's lives?

Bushman: "Definitely - for the worse."

Vowel: "We are parasites on the face of this earth and we are here to spread our disease."

Should people take shots, then, before the show?

Bushman: "That would be wise. Unless you want me living in your stomach for the next six months."

(originally appeared in Metro in The Sydney Morning Herald, 10/03/06) http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2006/03/10/1141701667417.html

Rant - Bardflys Disclaimer.

Bardflys would like to point out that this night may contain adult themes. It may contains the words ‘clit,’ ‘nipple,’ and ‘writhing xylophone’ but only in context.

It may contain, whole or in portion, the phrases ‘excellent crevice,’ ‘liquid nails,’ or ‘naked naughty nuns wetly whipping with bicycle pumps above the Mandraxed stallion of my quivering…’ etc.

All of which will be entirely appropriate in the setting of the particular poem, be it an Austrian castle brimming with busty wenches straddling steins so over-overflowing with amyl and Bavarian ales that eventually they can do nought but bubble seductively down the snow white valley of their ever-wobbling pink peaked… etc

Or be it just a normal suburban kitchen in which a happy housewife is preparing a family meal, before suddenly succumbing to some strange primal urge to engage in congress with a legume and a blender in three speeds, whilst baking crystal meth and chanting the Qu’ran backwards as she softly bastes her black areolad and petticoat clad bust with chocolate icing, ‘100’s & 1000’s’ and LSD before… etc.

Which in itself will be the opinion not of the author, but rather the voice of the fictional character themselves, be they a handsome and softly self-deprecating playwright, whose failed journey through life represents a blackly comic analogy of the powerless of man in an amoral universe that even the most hard-hearted can empathise with, unless they’re complete bunts.

Or be they a stunning young Sicilian duchess discovering her dawning sexuality as she decadently explores the peasantry of Renaissance France accompanied by her bevy of hormone hungry maids and the unbridled lust of an eight-limbed alien named ‘Zartor the Libidinous’ whose strange and ever horny race alone in the universe has the ability… etc.

None of which will be a reflection of the opinions of the venue, the organisers, their families, the way they were raised, or anything they might have done with their second cousin in the kitchen, and any complaints about which can be emailed to benitodifonzo@hotmail.com with a full description of the offending scene, highlighting any smutty words, drug references, and un-simulated sex acts involving three yaks and an acrobat in the catacombs of Vatican City.

Because after all, at it's core, it's a family show.

Are there any Questions?

Fiction - The Bardflys – A Brief Ancient History. (aka The Di Fonzo Code)

Somewhere in the darkness of time, between the cooling of the earth and the invention of Germans, a group of rough hewn individuals, some drunk on fermented fruits and grains, stood in the corner of a cave and told strangely hyperbolic and extravagant tales of hunting, drinking and dealing with Centrelink. These stories became known as Performance Poems, and the people who told them were referred to as The Long Term Unemployed.

One group in particular, who were known as The Bardflys, cave-hopped far and wide in search of a free meal. Their tales of woe and heroism, self-deprecation and debauchery, were renowned across the Earth and earned them many a $5 steak and punch in the bollocks.

The bloodline of The Bardflys is carried on today, as is evidenced in the body of work sometimes referred as The Di Fonzo Code; a group of poems, plays and anecdotes of half forgotten ambition that, many scholars swear, bear in them, somewhere beneath the scatological cheap laughs and self deprecating bad grammar, secrets of epic failure unknown to The Illuminati, The Masons, The Mansons or even The Australian Labour Party.

Many of the early Bardflys played difficult rooms in the Western Suburbs of The Middle East, which was not always the utopia of peace and harmony that it is today. These pioneering poets were cruelly tortured, and even in the case of a nice young Jewish boy by the name of Jesus who discovered some people just couldn’t take a joke, were nailed to giant paddlepop sticks for their blackly comic satirical sermons. None of which deterred them from their craft, as they were obviously idiots.

During Europe’s Dark Ages the Bardflys couch-hopped Asia, leaving behind as their legacy Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and two-minute noodles, before re-emerging in Venice where they catalysed an artistic and social movement known today as The Renaissance, which reached its glorious apogee with the invention of the steam-driven vibrator.

Throughout time, on this planet and others, members of the Bardfly bloodline, such as Shakespeare, Da Vinci, Lorenzo De Medici, Lao Tzu, Marlowe, Baudelaire, Poe, Dylan (Thomas and Bob), Ginsberg, Kerouac, Bruce, Ivan Milat, Bukowski and others have carried on the tradition of bumming $5 steaks through performing their half baked poems, plays and other assorted pieces of savagely obvious self-pity for the delectation of a discerning, and often quite mad, public.

The British invasion of Terra Australis brought with it parasites, rats, and convicts who carried the Bardflys bloodline. This has been evidenced by Lawson, who gave his life for our sins in the Bardfly methode traditionale of passing out in a drunken stupor on a Hyde Park bench, as well as Patterson, Humphreys, Hope and others. Though of course not Les Murray who is, as everyone knows, of the bloodline of Shape Shifting Reptiles who must drink the blood of Aryan babies to keep mammalian form, but I digest…

In the latter years of the 20th Century an ancient Bardfly known as Homer in the Greek Islands where his piece The Iliad earned him so many bevies that he is traditionally thought to be blind, did emerge in the Great Southern Land and, under the pseudonym Phil Frea began, along with a fellow from a clan of violent Scottish cannibal dwarves named Dumbly, began a gig at the ancient and revered Hopetoun Hotel (for the price of a pig and a comely wench), which then moved to The Sando, where they were joined by Chicago Bardfly Phil Norton and Australia’s premiere African-American-Italian poet Miles Merrill, before moving to a serendipitous little Glebe abode known as The Friend In Hand where it was once more co-hosted by one of the pure line of Di Fonzos, as tradition demands.

After escaping to Sydney from a Siberian gulag where he was imprisoned for defecating upon the mummified corpse of Lenin whilst singing The Internationale backwards, former Transylvanian rat-butcher and KGB double-agent ‘Vlad The Pale’ brought us the misspelt splendour of Bardflys.com, which many have sited as the catalyst of the dot.com collapse.

After six years in the seventh ring of Glebe the Bardflys took a break to de-tox and investigate ever more cunning methods of self-unemployment, before re-emerging in the salubriously moth-eaten surrounds of Doris’s Hotel Hollywood, (which is not actually in Hollywood, but Surry Hills) where it will reign for a thousand years… or just go belly up like the last gig did... whatever.

(to be continued…)

PR - Bardflys Returns (like a dog to it's own vomit)

PRESS RELEASE (Me Let Me Go)

Bardflys Returns!

WHAT? Bardflys spoken word & poetry night.

WHERE? Hotel Hollywood.

WHEN? Tuesday March 7th, 8pm

HOW? 2 Foster St. Surry Hills. (5 min walk form Central.)

HOW MUCH? $ 5 (we must be crazy, that’s an order.)

Yes, Sydney’s longest running performance poetry gig BARDFLYS is returning to grace (and disgrace) the stage of it’s new home – HOTEL HOLLYWOOD, first Tuesday of each month, with Tuesday March 7th being it’s official re-opening.

For over a decade Bardflys (http://www.bardflys.com/) has manifested itself as Sydney’s premiere spoken word and poetry night. Beginning at Surry Hills’ Hopetoun Hotel back in 1788, Bardflys was finally induced, by a large beer ryder, to shift to the Sandringham Hotel, Newtown, before being poached by The Friend In Hand Hotel, Glebe, for a glorious seven-year residency. Sadly Bardflys was shut down last year by the brutal jackboot tactics of the Fascist Howard Government (not, as reported, by the laziness of it’s co-ordinators) Yet ever bold and brazen and ready to keep it real and take it too the man, Bardflys now shifts shop to the olde worlde glamour and mothballed magic of Hotel Hollywood (http://www.hotelhollywood.com.au/)

Co-hosted by TUG DUMBLY (ABC 702, Radio National, Long Bay) and BENITO DI FONZO (serial masturbator and child strangler), the night will feature the Bardfly’s House Band, led by bass wunderkind John Maddox (Gauche, Mr. Bamboo), and a bunch of the finest spoken-word artisans, poets, comics, bullshit artists, satirists, scammers and musicians this side of Dubbo, as well as from around the rest of the world. Oh yeah, and all culminating in Australia’s longest running and most dangerous open-section SLAM! (Please leave your ego in the toilet).

BARDFLYS re-opening extravaganza will feature the singular talents of Melbourne spoken-word maestro STEVE SMART, as well as the unpackagable performance shenanigans of Newtown’s own COLONEL FUNTASTICO.

BARDFLYS shops at Bi-Lo, and has been featured by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Weekend Australian - so we must be good, see?

For photos and more info see http://www.bardflys.com/ or call
Benito Di Fonzo - 0415 731 974 (http://www.benitodifonzo.bravehost.com/)
Tug Dumbly – 0413 503 027

Poetry - The "Utterly, Butt Naked, What For Reality" Trilogy.

Part One.
"Utterly, But Naked."

Well the bankers had taken over the asylum
and I was still waiting for our ship to hit the fan,
for the shit to hit the shore and leave the sure behind,
unsure of just what the shore is for

As we walk through the streets of debris,
the valley of banality -
the cultural desert were the only thing that grows
are the plastic plants of distraction;
TV’s the size of guilt complexes,
& opiated computer games so hip
that you don’t even need to play them anymore,
just drop your pay-cheque off at your local store
& take their word for it,
while you get back too earning money more, more, more,
which it seemed to me was our state religion.

So I got this job ringing people and hassling them
about the job they were doing ringing people & hassling them
into buying some consumer durable drug or exotic drink
so that they could forget about much how they hated their job
ring people & hassling them
into buying some consumer durable drug or exotic drink,
so that their bosses could ring & hassle my bosses
into hassling my supervisor
into hassling me into hassling you
about the level of harassment you been receiving of late
from the makers of fine consumer durable drugs & exotic harassment,

and round and round and round it’s goes
like the boiling fur in my toilet bowl,
‘cause I couldn’t give a damn if a toilets clean when I’m blue

& in the end it’s just a choice between being scared or being bored;
bound up and bored as a battery hen,
or single and shit scared
as a feral stray cat in a McTuckey Fried Pie factory -

Utterly, but naked.
Utterly butt naked
Utterly butt naked in the beautiful eyes of the world,
Utterly butt naked in the sad taxi cabs of existence,
Utterly butt naked on the 422 to Tempe Tip & Temporal reality,
via Newtown North & Newtonian Physical myths,
Utterly butt naked in the ocean of amore,
Riding the waves out to sea
& leaving the sure behind.

Part Two
"Pub"

So we gave up on sobriety
and dived into the peculiar sea of our local piss hole
where the patrons garbled and yarbled in the pidgin English of Pub;
the soapy beer washing their brains into the guttering around the bar
as steroid raddled dogs ran rabidly after a rubber rabbit on a radio in the air around us

just like the debt of gambling addicts
abusing the invisible bitch of Lady Luck
that they’ve failed to pick up again
but putting another lobster on Race 6 at Dapto today anyway where

“My Embittered Liver hugs the rail against Sweet Escapism”

as they hug the rail in vein around the TAB betting desk
between the bar and the junky blue lit loos

as we sit surrounded by the salty ugh sounds
of the homoerotic violence of rugby
emitted by the pay TV in the corner,
till it’s turned down of an evening only to be replaced
by the post midnight mumbling stumbles and stupid attempts on
any females unfortunate enough to be in the visual perimeter of The Pub

“Where anything can happen, and probably won’t”
says the cynical amphetamine fuelled freak next to me, buying me drinks,
and wishing he could roll a number,
or a number of numbers, of Lebanese Hash,
but he can’t,
even though you can purchase a bag of sad cones
from the yob drinking himself to death with the off duty cops in the corner
who only stop to oil the reams and reams of pokie machines
lined up against the wall like loaded fits
as the patrons garble in the pidgin English of Pub -

the soapy beer oiling their libidos
like the legs of ex-lovers lulling in laughter in the back of their brains
and driving them to drinking games,
till they’re drunk enough to act as stupid and insane
as the school boys they become again.

`Till something goes wrong
and the humidity puts humility on heat
and some drunken punter gives somebody else their fist to eat
“‘cause they were talking like a horse’s hoof, with aspirations Mate!”

and we begin to think that we might be mixing our drinks
a little too untactfully to keeps ourselves intact round here

as my companion hits the pavement like a packet of beer nuts
& begins to scat “Taxi, Taxi, Taxi, Taxi”
like an old snare drum
and I’m thinkin’ that maybe what I need is The Wagon.

Part Three
"What For Reality?"

Well like you do I crawled out of the doona
and gathered up a shadow of my former selves,
bounced a Berocca off the bottom of a glass
& prepared to “take on” once more my intimidating existence.
And then it occurred to me,
what for reality?

What for all this rat race of running around
like a mixed metaphor with it’s head cut off?
Or worse still, waiting around frustrated on hold
for something, who knows what, to happen.

“your call may be placed in a queue,
and you may be slowly tortured by classical muzak
till you learn your lesson and stop ringing us.
Your life may be placed in a meaningless void,
and your calls for help may be unmonitored.
If you don’t wish this to happen, tough.
Your self esteem may be placed in a precarious position
above a vat of boiling innuendo,
if you wish upon a star, press on.
Your sense of place in the universe may be placed in a vice,
& dropped slowly into a bucket of warm nuns
were it will be tortured by Catholic and Capitalist Guilt.
Due to current demands on our operators
you may have to wait as long as six incarnations
for anything bordering on a sense of enlightenment.
Reality doesn’t so much apologise for this inconvenience
as lay in the corner of the room having a quiet chuckle to itself.”

What for all this eat, shit, sleep, eat again?

“give in to temptation: a quarter pound of fresh lard in every
Mc Pig-Fat shake and bake - good on ya Mum, Offal’s the one.
Tar and feather me Colonel with Kentucky battery farm strange fruit McUnidentified Pie
and the Grand Dragon of the Klu Klux Klan’s 11 secret herbs and steroids.”

What for paid employment?

Make money to buy food to have energy to go to work so you can
Make money to buy food to have energy to go to work so you can
Make money to buy food to have energy to go to work so you can
drink and shop till you drop,
no time for art or beatific visions, cause you must
Make money to buy food to have energy to go to work so you can
Make money to buy food to have energy to go to work so you can…

What for money?

“It takes money to make money
money makes the world go money
shut up and do what your money told you
I can’t get by without my money
money knows best
Money, just killed a man;
put a gun against his head, pulled my trigger now he’s money
money put aside for money will money into money
and on Money Street today, Money up five points against Money
so I suggest you money your money on super money till you retire at 60
then money that money straight into a super duper money
till you’re bed bound and have lack of bladder control
then e-money that money into trust no fun money
till you are blind, deaf, senile and coughing up blood.
Then pull your money out of money
and let your money realise your money’s dreams
as you of course will be busy dying.
Which is one thing you can put money on..”

So what for wake up in the morning?
When your dreams are bound to be better
than the day time TV that reality tends to be
Coz’ life’s a pitch
and then you buy it
and everyone in Sydney’s an actor anyway
and all sincerity is these days is something you gotta learn to fake
as you sit there suffering one another’s small talk
then swing back the symphony of sycophancy to
Me, Me, Me!
Before diving once more into the
beer and bullshit laden seas of socialising,
metaphorically pulling people off for fear of getting passed up for promotion

or perhaps netwanking with other stressed out wannabes
in conversations about as captivating as watching
the Weather Channel, or MTV
just so they can help justify your drab existence by
making your film or fucking you,
staging your play and publishing your “poise on us” poetry
till you cum all over the public’s face in a vile volcano of kudos

or am I just being cynical?

Coda.

(am I) Playing the game just as much as the rest of them
licking their bits with my B-Grade wit,
so I can feel superior to the suburban saps that I grew up with
wasting away on the factory floor as we speak.

Well the answer, of course is yes;
I’m just oiling the wheels of wank with my whining,
and wasting more minutes of your precious existence,
and therein lies the irony , sleeping liking a...

So I’ll just shut up now,
cause I’m sure you’ve got some very important shit to get on with.

© Benito Di Fonzo. 2ooo.

Poetry - I’m frightened, and I want my money.

Disclaimer: This piece, like reality, is a work of fiction. Any similarity to persons or corporate entities living, dead or all points in between, is purely poetical.

So I was talking to this girl in a Paddington Hotel. Her name was $12,000 in a long term investment hope to put a deposit on a Darlo terrace by the end of the year.

She introduced me to her friend. This, she said, is an apartment in Woolloomooloo, with water views and a company car. She goes out with Sony executive just back from business in Beijing and New York.

He’s friends with just brought out his second top ten CD and touring the States next month but still slum it occasionally so as to keep the street cred intact, they went to school together at Daddy’s a Corporate lawyer but he smoked pot in the sixties and we’re just dabbling in rock n’ roll n’ smack till the inheritance kicks in Private College for Privileged Little Boys. They had some wild times together.

Just then the pungent perfume of her friend approached, and she introduced me as Thirty years old but still on the dole day dreaming idealist failed writer from share house in Marrickville. I tried to smile warmly but got little response from the squeaky clean just a clerk for a multinational conglomerate but I wouldn’t wipe my bum with your BA, you pseudo poetic hipster doofus, if you were the last alcohol addled artist in the universe Smithe III.

Anyway, so we ordered a round of overpriced cocktails, as you do, and they talked about how they’d hated ‘Big Brother’ but you just couldn’t tear yourself away from the screen really could you because I mean ‘Johnny’ and that’s nice but please don’t mention politics because you already bummed a Campari off us and why don’t you just go out and get a proper job so that you can buy you’re own drinks, but on the other hand maybe you’re right, & it’s as hip as Hep. C for us to patronise the arts.

So then walks in I’ve read plenty of Kerouac so I know where it’s at man but really I got a great career in I.T. now and sure, sometimes I find it hard to sleep at night because I’ve got no time or mental energy left to write, but what about when I’m old, and she’d leave me if I was an idealistic idiot like you so I’m always good to hit for a drink Goldberg.

And he was with I’m thin, blonde and bohlemic so I’m going to become the next great Australian Hollywood export if I have to frig every nit that came out of NIDA so I’m really good at pretending I’m interested in your life and beaming a smile as genuine and wide as a Nazi annexing Sudetenland Johnson.

And Benito, that’s a ‘Multicultural’ name isn’t it? You must know Nik Popular Ethnic Stereotype, I just saw his latest ethno-realist happening in Melbourne, “It’s a Wog Way to the Top.” Anyway, my uncle’s just bought a villa in Tuscany and that makes him more Italian than you really doesn’t it, because you can barely afford the bus fare out of here, hmm?

I was riveted to my seat as she explained to me how she’d once met a successful novelist at a three month dance party in an abandoned abattoir in London, and how he’d just bought a piece of dirt near Knightsbridge for six million pounds, and I said really, that’s wonderful and what’s his writing like?

And she said that he’d also bought a farm in California for ten million where they grew bread and wine and it was just like a novel by Steinbeck, or so he told her, and I said really that’s wonderful but what’s his writing like?

And she said that rumour had it that he’d been romantically linked with that transsexual model that won the Eurovision song contest, but was now very happily married to his New Yorican publicist with whom he shared a twelve million dollar Manhattan apartment, and who herself was rumoured to have once had an affair with Michael J. Fux All The Finest Models in Malibu, and isn’t it awful I saw him in Who Give’s A Shit Weekly battering a photographer to death with his son, just like that Sean Pun, I mean he sure can act but who cares now that MacDonna’s dumped him, and I read that Special Sauces closes to her say that their marriage was about as sincere as McHappy Day anyway. Which brings me back to those 11 Secret Herbs & Spice Girls…

And I said yes but are his books any good? And she said that she didn’t know, that she didn’t have time for tomes like that, but that she’d seen an ad for his latest novel in No Idea magazine. It was the third book in a series about a former Navy Seal who had become a well-meaning Southern Lawyer that hunted down strangely literate Serial Killers, and that it had had glowing reviews from Jeffrey Archer.

And they all agreed silently that maybe I wouldn’t be such a drain on the GST if I just wrote books like that? And then my mother walked in and said that they bought stories in The Australian Womens’ Monthly, and why couldn’t I write nice things like that? Some thin watery romance that you can flick through at the gynaecologists and no-one need be ashamed of.

I was about to ask my mother what the fuck she was doing there anyway, but before I had a chance Jamie Packer walked in with a quivering grin and a pair of silicon breasts under each arm, and immediately collapsed in tears and said someone had left his ego out in the rain, and the orange icing was flowing down and growing hard around the Lilliputian sized lights of the latest in mobile phone technology, and that he didn’t think he could make it cause it took so long to fake it and he’d never have that recipe again.

And everybody in the bar placed their arms around him and began to comfort and softly fondle him while I seized the opportunity to quietly rifle through their wallets and packs of cigarettes, before screaming triumphantly, Calm down Packer you poor little entrepreneurial prick, the next shouts on me rich kid!

But it didn’t work, and little Jamie just sobbed and wailed, I’m frightened, and I want my money. I’m scared and I want my money to tuck me into bed at night. I want my money, because I’m scared of things that go bump in my life. I want my money and I don’t care what it costs, I want my money and I don’t care what I might have already lost. I want my money, because I’m dark, and it’s frightened.

Anyway, by now I was so disgusted with the whole affair that I sculled somebody’s beer and just walked right out of there.

Benito Di Fonzo. 2oo1.

Free Preview of "Her, leaving, as the Acid hits."

This is a free sample of the 81 page verse novel "Her, leaving, as the Acid hits." which was first published in 2004 by Independence Jones Guerrilla Press and is available at www.IndependenceJones.com, www.Lulu.com, www.Gleebooks.com.au or from the author who can be contacted by leaving a comment on this blog.

Or for a free MS Word download of this preview go to http://www.lulu.com/items/volume_2/151000/151780/1/preview/acid_preview.doc

Feel free to tell me what you think in the comments section.



Preview Part 1.

Breaking up is Hell
at the best of times,
but on acid
it’s Hell in a burning hat-basket
slowly sinking in a river of
diuretic demon’s semen
whilst being poked
with an ever morphing
pointy stick.

It all began one night
in Newtown,
at the Town Hall Hotel,
somewhere to the left
of the 1990’s.

There was this angry little dwarf
of an evil barman
that jumped from behind
the horse-shoe bar
surrounded by the mouldy mismatched
fake wood panelling
that adorned that pub
in the days before gentrification
and the saccharin lure
of the yuppie dollar.

This evil little dwarf of a barman,
and you’ll understand
why I refer to him as such later,
leaped over the horse-shoe bar
towards my belle of the day;
a recent literature graduate
and aspiring White Witch
by the almost name of Bjeck.

I looked down at the dwarf’s
stubby pink palm
and saw the four
litmus paper squares of acid
littering his jelly-meat flesh,
hoping that through some error
they were just bits of the
torn beer coasters
that littered the
sticky black brown green carpet
around us like dandruff.

Preview Part 2.
….. (20 pages later)….

As my head came down,
the dwarf smiled.
This is not a good sign I thought.

Just then
the bored Samoan bouncer screamed
“last drinks,
move towards the front
now!”

It was 5am
and I had just taken
Bacchus knows what.
I could see this was going to be
a long day.

Preview Part 3. (page 33)

She told me
she was leaving me,
just as the acid peaked.

She just said it in one sentence,
no additions or explanations,
her eyes still
freshly skinned marsupial wide,
her lips clamped shut,
silent,
and at the same time
The Velvet Underground
finished their song again,
and there was that slow clumsy clunk
of the turntable as the stylus
moved back to the beginning.
The track starting again,
“Sunday Morning,
brings the dawning,
I got this feeling
I don’t want to know,”
and Bjeck starred through me,
silently, and

with all the empathy of Hemingway
starring down his prey
and seeing nothing but a
particularly nice new
Homo-erotic trophy.

Meanwhile
I had a road-train full of confusing fears rumbling quickly into my
very nervous system,
but for the song,

it was silent.

You could have heard a pun drop.

Preview Part 4 (page 61)

and that’s where Phil left me
as he bumped into ash covered furniture
and giggled awkwardly
down into his basement,

me
lying on the dirty tiles
of the bathroom floor –
nothing but a hollow ghost
of my former self,

as my girlfriend cavorted somewhere
with a drug dealing dwarf
and his bag of cheap leaf,
and the Velvet Underground
kept whining in the background.
“Sunday Morning,
brings the dawning,
I got this feeling
I don’t want to know.”

Let’s just say
it wasn’t one of the high points
of my existence.

It was then that my friend J. arrived
to take me to Sandor’s funeral.