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)
Friday, April 28, 2006
Monday, April 17, 2006
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).
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).
Sunday, March 12, 2006
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
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
Saturday, March 04, 2006
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?
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…)
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
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
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
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.
"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.
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.
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.
Friday, November 25, 2005
Peats Ridge Festival 2005
Benito will be hosting a Poets' Breakfast on Sunday Morning in the Chai Tent at Peat's Ridge Festival (December 9-11), so if you're around...
"Bardfly’s Benito Di Fonzo sloppily hosts the pick of Sydney’s spoken word performance poets, including Token Word’s Citizen Tom, Chicago’s Miles Merrill, as well the lovely Gemnastics, Alana Hicks, Sarah Mae and Ben Ezra (aka Eytan Messiah.)
More importantly there will be an open Slam with crap prizes! This is your chance to show why you are the Jack Kerouac of Glenworth Valley. It’s all in good fun so leave your ego in a small box under the stairs as you change the world with words without even changing your underpants. "
www.peatsridgefestival.com.au
"Bardfly’s Benito Di Fonzo sloppily hosts the pick of Sydney’s spoken word performance poets, including Token Word’s Citizen Tom, Chicago’s Miles Merrill, as well the lovely Gemnastics, Alana Hicks, Sarah Mae and Ben Ezra (aka Eytan Messiah.)
More importantly there will be an open Slam with crap prizes! This is your chance to show why you are the Jack Kerouac of Glenworth Valley. It’s all in good fun so leave your ego in a small box under the stairs as you change the world with words without even changing your underpants. "
www.peatsridgefestival.com.au
more about me
Read another glowing review of Benito's verse novel "Her, Leaving, as the Acid hits, " at http://bluepepper.blogspot.com/2005/11/benito-di-fonzos-her-leaving-as-acid.html
the books still available though www.IndependenceJones.com, www.lulu.com, and certain bookshops including Gleebooks and Better Read Than Dead, Newtown.
the books still available though www.IndependenceJones.com, www.lulu.com, and certain bookshops including Gleebooks and Better Read Than Dead, Newtown.
Monday, October 24, 2005
PR - Restricted Magazine
Benito's latest bag is as Arts Editor of Restricted Magazine. Here's the blurb from www.restrictedmagazine.com
"For every street press magazine that is printed in this world a tree falls in the Amazon, a fairy flaps its wings and a very cute puppy....DIES!!"
Restricted will be a monthly DVD magazine distributed free like any street press, but with the key difference being that you won't have to read.
Just pop it on, sit back, pour yourself a cold one, light up, and watch it.
Each issue will feature live interviews with musicians, actors, filmmakers, writers and other sundry pop culture personalities, as well as the hippest short films and cutting edge music videos.
It will also contain a guide to gigs and venues in Sydney, as well as theatre and film reviews.
Issue One will hit the streets February 1 and will be accompanied by a huge launch party at "Restricted's" warehouse HQ.
It's still early days but we've done some interisting filming with our cutting edge team of Gypsy Journalists and tech crew, including a wacky weekend with the late Vicous Hairy Mary in their latest incarnation as the Circus Monoxide Big Band, as well as the furry freak show that was Madame Lash's birthday performance party at the soon to be defunct Kirk which featured such acts as The Porno Puppets From Prague.
We're lining up some big name for the first issue so keep alert, and possibly a little alarmed.
"For every street press magazine that is printed in this world a tree falls in the Amazon, a fairy flaps its wings and a very cute puppy....DIES!!"
Restricted will be a monthly DVD magazine distributed free like any street press, but with the key difference being that you won't have to read.
Just pop it on, sit back, pour yourself a cold one, light up, and watch it.
Each issue will feature live interviews with musicians, actors, filmmakers, writers and other sundry pop culture personalities, as well as the hippest short films and cutting edge music videos.
It will also contain a guide to gigs and venues in Sydney, as well as theatre and film reviews.
Issue One will hit the streets February 1 and will be accompanied by a huge launch party at "Restricted's" warehouse HQ.
It's still early days but we've done some interisting filming with our cutting edge team of Gypsy Journalists and tech crew, including a wacky weekend with the late Vicous Hairy Mary in their latest incarnation as the Circus Monoxide Big Band, as well as the furry freak show that was Madame Lash's birthday performance party at the soon to be defunct Kirk which featured such acts as The Porno Puppets From Prague.
We're lining up some big name for the first issue so keep alert, and possibly a little alarmed.
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
rant - in my dream 1,004
So this ex-girlfriend and I are travelling across America on this extra long bus with ironing-board like beds in them…
…the old woman in the bed below is still angry because, in an earlier part of the dream, a friend of ours attacked her with an ice cream. This attack evoked a stronger reaction from the authorities than anyone was expecting, so she went into hiding in the desert on a camel with my Aunt Marie.
So, we’re on the bus with ironing-board beds which are far more comfortable than you’d expect – it’s two to an ironing board you see, and somehow it fits my ex and me…
…anyway, there’s this other Australian on board. He’s a young guy, maybe twenty, with a Prince Charming bowl cut and a Nirvana t-shirt. He may even be that runaway whose mother threw a garbage bin through our window and was later using undergrad Black Magik (stolen locks of hair, etc.) to stalk Julia-who-lived-under-the-stairs in our place in Balmain in the early 90s, but possibly not.
Either way, in this dream he’s an aspiring MC, but the Cali locals, whilst quite encouraging at first in that surprising way that Americans often seem to be, are finally less than impressed with his talents, as are we. He continues regardless, while the driver calls a stop and all split to the loo or the local diner.
Meanwhile, I’m suddenly back in Oz.
I’m watching a documentary about music and movie stars who have said at times they’d like to move to Australia and, despite the fact that none of those caught on film, including Johnny Cash, Eartha Kit, and that actress from that show with the single-mum black nurse (Julia?), had carried out their threat (the latter two had secretly had affairs and even fallen pregnant here) I was employed by the government to encourage a more famous level of migration, like a kind of Hollywood brain drain to the Northern Beaches or something… whatever.
I was against it personally, though I was more than happy to take DIMIA’s dirty money. Nonetheless I was doing little in the way of encouragement, partly out of opposition, particularly since no one had told me how to encourage movie stars to move to Australia as yet, but mostly because I was too busy lazing around the beach myself to do anything but analyse my dreams…
…then I was body surfing on a cliché picture postcard Sydney beach, like an idealised blend of every holiday in Avoca combined with an somehow idealised and clean Coogee, Bronte and Tamarama blend.
I dizzily stop body-surfing after being mildly dumped a few times as the waves this day are really quite enormous. Then I’m at the shop attempting to purchase something I know only as ‘Breakfast Bubble Gum,’ to which they keep offering me cans of Coca Cola, whilst I convince someone whose brother’s life I apparently saved as some point to pay for. Then End… of What I Can Remember.
Suggestions?
…the old woman in the bed below is still angry because, in an earlier part of the dream, a friend of ours attacked her with an ice cream. This attack evoked a stronger reaction from the authorities than anyone was expecting, so she went into hiding in the desert on a camel with my Aunt Marie.
So, we’re on the bus with ironing-board beds which are far more comfortable than you’d expect – it’s two to an ironing board you see, and somehow it fits my ex and me…
…anyway, there’s this other Australian on board. He’s a young guy, maybe twenty, with a Prince Charming bowl cut and a Nirvana t-shirt. He may even be that runaway whose mother threw a garbage bin through our window and was later using undergrad Black Magik (stolen locks of hair, etc.) to stalk Julia-who-lived-under-the-stairs in our place in Balmain in the early 90s, but possibly not.
Either way, in this dream he’s an aspiring MC, but the Cali locals, whilst quite encouraging at first in that surprising way that Americans often seem to be, are finally less than impressed with his talents, as are we. He continues regardless, while the driver calls a stop and all split to the loo or the local diner.
Meanwhile, I’m suddenly back in Oz.
I’m watching a documentary about music and movie stars who have said at times they’d like to move to Australia and, despite the fact that none of those caught on film, including Johnny Cash, Eartha Kit, and that actress from that show with the single-mum black nurse (Julia?), had carried out their threat (the latter two had secretly had affairs and even fallen pregnant here) I was employed by the government to encourage a more famous level of migration, like a kind of Hollywood brain drain to the Northern Beaches or something… whatever.
I was against it personally, though I was more than happy to take DIMIA’s dirty money. Nonetheless I was doing little in the way of encouragement, partly out of opposition, particularly since no one had told me how to encourage movie stars to move to Australia as yet, but mostly because I was too busy lazing around the beach myself to do anything but analyse my dreams…
…then I was body surfing on a cliché picture postcard Sydney beach, like an idealised blend of every holiday in Avoca combined with an somehow idealised and clean Coogee, Bronte and Tamarama blend.
I dizzily stop body-surfing after being mildly dumped a few times as the waves this day are really quite enormous. Then I’m at the shop attempting to purchase something I know only as ‘Breakfast Bubble Gum,’ to which they keep offering me cans of Coca Cola, whilst I convince someone whose brother’s life I apparently saved as some point to pay for. Then End… of What I Can Remember.
Suggestions?
Friday, October 07, 2005
Rant - In My Dream 1,003.
So in my dream I’m dreaming I’m an old woman. The old woman is dreaming that she’s an even older woman. Who herself is dreaming she’s an Irish Italian failed writer in Sydney. I’m not sure who’s most disappointed; me, the old woman, or the older woman, but whatever.
In this dream I’m a terrorist, or at least I help terrorists, or at least somebody thinks I do or am, or something like that. I get caught anyway, though I’m not sure what for, possibly helping someone escape. Someone who's a terrorist, or at least somebody who helps terrorists, or at least who somebody thinks helps terrorists, etc.
Anyway, my colleagues and I, who at this point are all female, and in their late twenties, and wearing khaki camouflage jumpsuits like me, are chased through some sandy ruins. Myself and one other escape, and find a portal into some kind of suburbia, where we think we’ll be safe. But we’re wrong. Suburbia, or at least this manifestation of it, has SWAT team cops on every corner, as well as be-suited ASIO agents. There’s no escape, so we just wander through them and happily accept our fate.
Now we’re in a Balinese courtroom, awaiting trial, except there doesn’t seem to be any security guards around. We just politely wait, never considering escape. It all really hits me when I go to the bathroom. It unisexual, and the uneven floor is filled with many undoored loopy layers of long, rivering urinals, like it was designed by M.C. Escher and Gaudi. There’s a woman casually sitting on one toilet bowl/loopy blue ceramic trough thingy, and an elderly Indonesian rice farmer straining against a corner, in need of a little fibre obviously. My biggest concern is if this is what the courtroom loos are like then how weird are the urinals in the actual prison going to be?
Did I mention that, in my dream, I’m eating the pines from a pine tree? No? It’s a week before Xmas, and all is quite loud. They’ve just set up the pine tree in the mental hospital on a Greek island where I’m incarcerated, and I’m explaining that it’s an old Greek custom to eat the pine leaves, though secretly we’re cheating and eating store-bought pines which we gathered before the shops all closed, us canny bastards us.
So, in this dream, in short, I’ve been committed because I’m madder even than Greeks, and perhaps for my involvement in sexy terrorist fantasies, or perhaps for eating pine leaves in Gaudi’s Balinese urinal, or perhaps because, like all reality, I’m just a character in an old woman’s bad dream… whatever.
In this dream I’m a terrorist, or at least I help terrorists, or at least somebody thinks I do or am, or something like that. I get caught anyway, though I’m not sure what for, possibly helping someone escape. Someone who's a terrorist, or at least somebody who helps terrorists, or at least who somebody thinks helps terrorists, etc.
Anyway, my colleagues and I, who at this point are all female, and in their late twenties, and wearing khaki camouflage jumpsuits like me, are chased through some sandy ruins. Myself and one other escape, and find a portal into some kind of suburbia, where we think we’ll be safe. But we’re wrong. Suburbia, or at least this manifestation of it, has SWAT team cops on every corner, as well as be-suited ASIO agents. There’s no escape, so we just wander through them and happily accept our fate.
Now we’re in a Balinese courtroom, awaiting trial, except there doesn’t seem to be any security guards around. We just politely wait, never considering escape. It all really hits me when I go to the bathroom. It unisexual, and the uneven floor is filled with many undoored loopy layers of long, rivering urinals, like it was designed by M.C. Escher and Gaudi. There’s a woman casually sitting on one toilet bowl/loopy blue ceramic trough thingy, and an elderly Indonesian rice farmer straining against a corner, in need of a little fibre obviously. My biggest concern is if this is what the courtroom loos are like then how weird are the urinals in the actual prison going to be?
Did I mention that, in my dream, I’m eating the pines from a pine tree? No? It’s a week before Xmas, and all is quite loud. They’ve just set up the pine tree in the mental hospital on a Greek island where I’m incarcerated, and I’m explaining that it’s an old Greek custom to eat the pine leaves, though secretly we’re cheating and eating store-bought pines which we gathered before the shops all closed, us canny bastards us.
So, in this dream, in short, I’ve been committed because I’m madder even than Greeks, and perhaps for my involvement in sexy terrorist fantasies, or perhaps for eating pine leaves in Gaudi’s Balinese urinal, or perhaps because, like all reality, I’m just a character in an old woman’s bad dream… whatever.
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
misc. rant at the begining of swimming weather
My new laptop wallpaper is a picture of the Coogee end of Gordon’s Bay; tiny aluminium boats belonging to weekend fisherman rest against planking like tin toys against a skeleton, as a few souls bake on the hot sand below, and the blue ocean laps at their toes, as the high rocks filled with summer’s drunken snorkelers rise up about them. Summer in the shallow city is upon us, and you remember why someone might still live in Sydney.
As the sun bursts through on a Spring Tuesday 9:36am (there are advantages to be an under-employed freelancer) I wonder if it’s warm enough to crack the clear aqua-marine tinge of Whylie’s Baths.
To get there, from my little office on the rim of Sydney Technology Park, Alexandria, or rather ‘the leafy end of Erskineville’ as the real estate agents prefer to say – those same scammers who refer to Redfern as either ‘East Newtown’ or ‘Western Surry Hills,’ and would happily sell you a holiday house in Baghdad by calling it ‘Middle Eastern Tuscany,’ but I digress…
… to get to Gordon’s for me, assuming I can’t convince a pretty driver to come along, it’s a dull half hour or so on the 370, brimming with wrinklie’s on their way to the hospital, UNSW undergrads worried about exams for subjects that will make them unemployable, NIDA kids combing their hair, and bums and artists like me; that Abruzzian peasant blood pushing me to the beach mid week. Why? Because I can, paisan capisce?
At Coogee I must decide – turn right for the crystal of Whylie’s Baths, or left for Gordon’s Bay, or perhaps a little further and I could go greet the Blue Gropers of Clovelly; those fat little Labradors of the sea glowing past and under me serenely, clumping sea anemones as I dive down and turn over rocks for there, flying through the jelly sky of an alien environment, tempted, like Darwin, to devolve back into the sea.
Last summer there was a girl and some friends in Bronte and it was all decided for me… strange nights with drunken musos and poets, skinny dipping and Wild Turkey (surely the world’s most aptly name beverage), till the joggers came by and broke dawn for us.
This year, with an Inner Western amorossa, all bets, and beaches, are on.
It’s coming onto 10am now; is it warm enough weather to be…?
As the sun bursts through on a Spring Tuesday 9:36am (there are advantages to be an under-employed freelancer) I wonder if it’s warm enough to crack the clear aqua-marine tinge of Whylie’s Baths.
To get there, from my little office on the rim of Sydney Technology Park, Alexandria, or rather ‘the leafy end of Erskineville’ as the real estate agents prefer to say – those same scammers who refer to Redfern as either ‘East Newtown’ or ‘Western Surry Hills,’ and would happily sell you a holiday house in Baghdad by calling it ‘Middle Eastern Tuscany,’ but I digress…
… to get to Gordon’s for me, assuming I can’t convince a pretty driver to come along, it’s a dull half hour or so on the 370, brimming with wrinklie’s on their way to the hospital, UNSW undergrads worried about exams for subjects that will make them unemployable, NIDA kids combing their hair, and bums and artists like me; that Abruzzian peasant blood pushing me to the beach mid week. Why? Because I can, paisan capisce?
At Coogee I must decide – turn right for the crystal of Whylie’s Baths, or left for Gordon’s Bay, or perhaps a little further and I could go greet the Blue Gropers of Clovelly; those fat little Labradors of the sea glowing past and under me serenely, clumping sea anemones as I dive down and turn over rocks for there, flying through the jelly sky of an alien environment, tempted, like Darwin, to devolve back into the sea.
Last summer there was a girl and some friends in Bronte and it was all decided for me… strange nights with drunken musos and poets, skinny dipping and Wild Turkey (surely the world’s most aptly name beverage), till the joggers came by and broke dawn for us.
This year, with an Inner Western amorossa, all bets, and beaches, are on.
It’s coming onto 10am now; is it warm enough weather to be…?
Saturday, September 10, 2005
Article - The Sydney Idiots Guide to Overload Poetry Festival.
For the last six hours or so you were talking shit, and you’re not sure why. This is what comes to you as you wake on a dirty worn patch of Collingwood carpet. Your tongue is as stale as a hostel mattress, your head as heavy as German bread, your liver a sewer. Somewhere in the night you remember there were poets, poets, more booze and poets.
“There are too many poets in Melbourne” you say to midday, and a body rumbles a fart on the couch.
Welcome to Overload.
Only Melbourne could host a fifteen day spoken word and poetry festival on a budget of next to nothing and with pretty much no promotion. Perth wouldn’t see why, Adelaide would assume, correctly, that it would screw it up, and Brisbane and Tasmania would probably just push it into a corner and pick on it.
As for Sydney, she’d do the sums, add the cost of a new outfit, do a few lines of cheap coke, and ask “so, where exactly is the money in all of this?”
Melbourne didn’t care, Melbourne just did it.
Ok, so it wasn’t the slickest show in the world. The festival had been going for a week when the website (www.overloadpoetry.com) finally got it up. There were no sponsored fly outs, hotel rooms, and Bacardi Festival Clubs or Spiegletents. Just lots of poetry, camaraderie and people living and drinking in the present tense. (You see, it’s a play on words; what I did there… I’ll just get on with it will I?)
It was in this atmosphere that four plucky Sydney poets went up against the Victorians for the Word Wrestling Federation belt. God bless that Melbourne team; they did manage to organise a festival after all, but lets face it – those Sydney kids were slicker, tighter, and had more rhythm than James Brown at a Crystal Meth dealers’ convention, and, in a very Sydney/Melbourne comparison, there was not a piece of paper, or ‘cheat-sheet’ as they’ve been called in the shallow city, to be seen.
As for me, I need my cheat-sheets. Sometimes they don’t even save me, such as when Gemnastics and I attempted the blend of Lewis Carroll and Raymond Chandler we’d write one muggy Chardonnay afternoon in Surry Hillism: “Jabbernoir e Lychee Whine.” The backing track CD, kindly sampled and looped with the permission of those charming “Good Buddha” boys, was the wrong version, and ended prematurely, throwing the brown little bicycle of Gemma’s brain off track.
“Just keep fucking going,” I said away from the one microphone that was briefly working, and she giggled like a schoolgirl on cheap vino.
It was a slick gig kids.
Ah yes, and we all talked about moving to Melbourne, where the weather was milder, the rents cheaper, the people nicer, and better read and the public transport actually existed. Pity that the beaches are more like flat swamps and the beer was so expensive. ($3 for a middy!) Whatever.
You may, at some point find yourself refused entry to Melbourne Writers’ Festival, despite the fact that one of you is on a panel, just because you haven’t slept for a day or so…
“and, Sir, you’re carrying a bottle of whisky.”
“Do you know who I am!”
“No Sir, now if you don’t have a ticket please move back.”
Retched itch.
Yes, you’ll think to yourself, there are too many poets in Melbourne, particularly during Overload, but you’ll like it that way, especially in the early hours on the ground floor of a bar in Chinatown, when they all, for some reason, start break dancing.
I would have joined in but I would have spilt my whisky.
Besides, I was having too much fun watching the domestics, but that’s another story, to be told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Cheers.
http://www.benitodifonzo.bravehost.com/
“There are too many poets in Melbourne” you say to midday, and a body rumbles a fart on the couch.
Welcome to Overload.
Only Melbourne could host a fifteen day spoken word and poetry festival on a budget of next to nothing and with pretty much no promotion. Perth wouldn’t see why, Adelaide would assume, correctly, that it would screw it up, and Brisbane and Tasmania would probably just push it into a corner and pick on it.
As for Sydney, she’d do the sums, add the cost of a new outfit, do a few lines of cheap coke, and ask “so, where exactly is the money in all of this?”
Melbourne didn’t care, Melbourne just did it.
Ok, so it wasn’t the slickest show in the world. The festival had been going for a week when the website (www.overloadpoetry.com) finally got it up. There were no sponsored fly outs, hotel rooms, and Bacardi Festival Clubs or Spiegletents. Just lots of poetry, camaraderie and people living and drinking in the present tense. (You see, it’s a play on words; what I did there… I’ll just get on with it will I?)
It was in this atmosphere that four plucky Sydney poets went up against the Victorians for the Word Wrestling Federation belt. God bless that Melbourne team; they did manage to organise a festival after all, but lets face it – those Sydney kids were slicker, tighter, and had more rhythm than James Brown at a Crystal Meth dealers’ convention, and, in a very Sydney/Melbourne comparison, there was not a piece of paper, or ‘cheat-sheet’ as they’ve been called in the shallow city, to be seen.
As for me, I need my cheat-sheets. Sometimes they don’t even save me, such as when Gemnastics and I attempted the blend of Lewis Carroll and Raymond Chandler we’d write one muggy Chardonnay afternoon in Surry Hillism: “Jabbernoir e Lychee Whine.” The backing track CD, kindly sampled and looped with the permission of those charming “Good Buddha” boys, was the wrong version, and ended prematurely, throwing the brown little bicycle of Gemma’s brain off track.
“Just keep fucking going,” I said away from the one microphone that was briefly working, and she giggled like a schoolgirl on cheap vino.
It was a slick gig kids.
Ah yes, and we all talked about moving to Melbourne, where the weather was milder, the rents cheaper, the people nicer, and better read and the public transport actually existed. Pity that the beaches are more like flat swamps and the beer was so expensive. ($3 for a middy!) Whatever.
You may, at some point find yourself refused entry to Melbourne Writers’ Festival, despite the fact that one of you is on a panel, just because you haven’t slept for a day or so…
“and, Sir, you’re carrying a bottle of whisky.”
“Do you know who I am!”
“No Sir, now if you don’t have a ticket please move back.”
Retched itch.
Yes, you’ll think to yourself, there are too many poets in Melbourne, particularly during Overload, but you’ll like it that way, especially in the early hours on the ground floor of a bar in Chinatown, when they all, for some reason, start break dancing.
I would have joined in but I would have spilt my whisky.
Besides, I was having too much fun watching the domestics, but that’s another story, to be told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Cheers.
http://www.benitodifonzo.bravehost.com/
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
The "Everyday I Write The Book" Dream.
Anyway, so I was somewhere with Sam, she wasn't saying much but she sure did look purty. I was thinking of all the things that I was supposedly doing with my life; finishing plays, finding fables for Czech puppet shows, features as yet unwritten, Bardflys, Post-Grad (UTS vs RMIT?)Melbourne (including subcategories - if/ how to move, how to open Bar di Fonzi's on Brunswick St., etc.)
Suddenly, I found this book. Can't remember the title, but I know it was a hardback with a dusty cover (Dusty Cover; good character name?)
This book, somehow, this book ('this book' should be pronounced as by Christopher Walken in Pulp Fiction saying 'this watch' with all the image evoking grasp of Stanislavski Method,) this book had the answer to all my problems. The solution to everything. The big gig in one big hit. Somehow this imaginary book solved all my problems. It was quite a relief. At last.
Upon waking, and realising that I couldn't remember the title, or any of the contents, I was quite annoyed. My first word of the day rhymed with "You luckety lucky duck," but meant nothing like it.
I realise now that the whole point is that the book doesn't actually exist. That I have to write it. Like those films I dreamt of. In a sense we all have to write the book that solves all our problems. Every day we do it.
As Elvis Costello said, "everyday I write the book...." (blah, blah, lah, self help bollocks.)
Ironically, he said using an often misused term, by the time we got it written it's time to shuffle off this mortal coil as it were. Death is a kind of publication... (Blah, blah, blah, arty poetic nihilistic crap.)
Anyway, Sam's dandy pancakes are ready... I can smell them... Salute.
Suddenly, I found this book. Can't remember the title, but I know it was a hardback with a dusty cover (Dusty Cover; good character name?)
This book, somehow, this book ('this book' should be pronounced as by Christopher Walken in Pulp Fiction saying 'this watch' with all the image evoking grasp of Stanislavski Method,) this book had the answer to all my problems. The solution to everything. The big gig in one big hit. Somehow this imaginary book solved all my problems. It was quite a relief. At last.
Upon waking, and realising that I couldn't remember the title, or any of the contents, I was quite annoyed. My first word of the day rhymed with "You luckety lucky duck," but meant nothing like it.
I realise now that the whole point is that the book doesn't actually exist. That I have to write it. Like those films I dreamt of. In a sense we all have to write the book that solves all our problems. Every day we do it.
As Elvis Costello said, "everyday I write the book...." (blah, blah, lah, self help bollocks.)
Ironically, he said using an often misused term, by the time we got it written it's time to shuffle off this mortal coil as it were. Death is a kind of publication... (Blah, blah, blah, arty poetic nihilistic crap.)
Anyway, Sam's dandy pancakes are ready... I can smell them... Salute.
Friday, August 19, 2005
The McGonagall Award for The World's Worst Poet
I have been informed that the world's worst poet ever is The Great McGonagall. I have read his work at www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk and it is truly appalling. I particularly like how he rhymes New Year with... New Year in his classic "'The Tay Bridge Disaster"" which you can go straight too at www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk/poems/pgdisaster.htm
He would travel the UK reciting his woeful work and, due to his reputation as the worst poet in the English language, is still in print today. Now do you see the brilliant of my idea - fame through bad poetry, not good! In our time it's the only way.
Incidentally, McGonagall was also renowned for his truly awful productions of Shakespeare's play, which he would direct as well as play the lead... what a piece of work is this man! Famously, in his production of Hamlet, in which he played the Great Dane, the entire audience had left the theatre before the end of the play.
In acknowledgement of this great man and his achievements, I have decided the Earth's Worst Poet will be awarded with the McGonagall Award.
Discuss.
He would travel the UK reciting his woeful work and, due to his reputation as the worst poet in the English language, is still in print today. Now do you see the brilliant of my idea - fame through bad poetry, not good! In our time it's the only way.
Incidentally, McGonagall was also renowned for his truly awful productions of Shakespeare's play, which he would direct as well as play the lead... what a piece of work is this man! Famously, in his production of Hamlet, in which he played the Great Dane, the entire audience had left the theatre before the end of the play.
In acknowledgement of this great man and his achievements, I have decided the Earth's Worst Poet will be awarded with the McGonagall Award.
Discuss.
Thursday, August 18, 2005
""Benito Di Fonzo's Travelling Search for Australia's Worst Poet""
from an idea that would only emerge one velvet morning on a festival organiser's lounge room floor in melb comes - (drum roll and barking penguins please)
""Benito Di Fonzo's Travelling Search for Australia's Worst Poet"" ,
as part of the larger
""Search for The Earth's Worst Poet.""
with heats around Australia, and eventually the world, with a winner at each crowned that current Master of the ancient art of Malpoesia (trans: bad/sick/evil poetry.)
open sections with invited features of past masters Benito has encountered in his travels.
hosted by guess who...
Who will be crowned the ""Il Duce e Malpoesia"", of the World's Worst Poet?
Who's on board this great hangover idea?
Stay tuned for more deatils.
""Benito Di Fonzo's Travelling Search for Australia's Worst Poet"" ,
as part of the larger
""Search for The Earth's Worst Poet.""
with heats around Australia, and eventually the world, with a winner at each crowned that current Master of the ancient art of Malpoesia (trans: bad/sick/evil poetry.)
open sections with invited features of past masters Benito has encountered in his travels.
hosted by guess who...
Who will be crowned the ""Il Duce e Malpoesia"", of the World's Worst Poet?
Who's on board this great hangover idea?
Stay tuned for more deatils.
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Poetry - The Lonely Planet Guide to Samantha F.
I tried to find The Lonely Planet Guide to Samantha F.
I tried a bookshop on Brunswick St
The State library, and Woolworth’s
They all sent me packing
I searched the Lonely Planet website
But it was almost as if
They’d never heard of you
So I hit a bar
praying to Allah to just make my brain shut up
but it didn’t work
and I just kept imagining
all the detailed maps of your Newtownian torso
that I was missing out on
the full colour guide to your
panda eyes and Mediterranean thighs
a dozen things to do in a single day
Maneuvering your subway
And countless other lists of great spots to see
on the under-explored parts of your pretty person
Not to mention where to sleep,
eat and play on a limited budget
and when I asked the barman
if he knew any facts for the canny traveler
of Irish Sicilian violinists from Inner Western Sydney
he took offence
and attacked me with it
short of breath
I hid in the public library
and asked if they had perhaps
The Complete Idiots Guide To Seducing Samantha F.
“”Piss off pervert,”” said the kindly old spinster at the desk
so I went to a kebab palace and requested
The Beginners Guide to Sam’s Multifaceted Psyche
“”Lamb yeeros or asto thealo re vlaka”’
the search was getting hopeless,
so I bought the burnt baby sheep meat
ripped it apart, and attempted to read it
but once again the old Greco got angry
and I split, my dour hands dripping in tatziki
I was angry now as I stormed across to Footscray
And kicked down the doors to Lonely Planet Head Quarters
Quickly cornering the elderly founder
And demanding an explanation as to why he hadn’t commissioned a guide to you
As I casually threatened him with the remains of my gyros
Eventually he stuttered that
“”Perhaps YOU should write it then?””
before collapsing in a pool of lamb fat and tears
Hence this letter
requesting a visa
to explore the backwaters of your bella figura
you can pick me up from the airport on Monday
don’t forget to bring a couple of beers.
I tried a bookshop on Brunswick St
The State library, and Woolworth’s
They all sent me packing
I searched the Lonely Planet website
But it was almost as if
They’d never heard of you
So I hit a bar
praying to Allah to just make my brain shut up
but it didn’t work
and I just kept imagining
all the detailed maps of your Newtownian torso
that I was missing out on
the full colour guide to your
panda eyes and Mediterranean thighs
a dozen things to do in a single day
Maneuvering your subway
And countless other lists of great spots to see
on the under-explored parts of your pretty person
Not to mention where to sleep,
eat and play on a limited budget
and when I asked the barman
if he knew any facts for the canny traveler
of Irish Sicilian violinists from Inner Western Sydney
he took offence
and attacked me with it
short of breath
I hid in the public library
and asked if they had perhaps
The Complete Idiots Guide To Seducing Samantha F.
“”Piss off pervert,”” said the kindly old spinster at the desk
so I went to a kebab palace and requested
The Beginners Guide to Sam’s Multifaceted Psyche
“”Lamb yeeros or asto thealo re vlaka”’
the search was getting hopeless,
so I bought the burnt baby sheep meat
ripped it apart, and attempted to read it
but once again the old Greco got angry
and I split, my dour hands dripping in tatziki
I was angry now as I stormed across to Footscray
And kicked down the doors to Lonely Planet Head Quarters
Quickly cornering the elderly founder
And demanding an explanation as to why he hadn’t commissioned a guide to you
As I casually threatened him with the remains of my gyros
Eventually he stuttered that
“”Perhaps YOU should write it then?””
before collapsing in a pool of lamb fat and tears
Hence this letter
requesting a visa
to explore the backwaters of your bella figura
you can pick me up from the airport on Monday
don’t forget to bring a couple of beers.
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