A Luce Affiliation

Jason is a connoisseur of the nap.  However he would never call it a nap. Instead, he has a 'sit-down-rest.'  After a long day at work he will say, "Aah.  I need a sit-down-rest."  And he sits on the couch with a glass of water, staring.  Or watching something mindless on TV. More tiring situations call for a 'lie-down-rest'.  Then, he will lie on the couch with his eyes shut, sometimes curling up on his side.  You see my confusion with actual napping. In the lead up to exams he prepares with 'mental study.'  This is lying on the bed with his eyes shut, gently snoring, next to a textbook. I have a growing appreciation for the sit-down-rest. But my true talent comes from my mother.  She is renowned for falling asleep in any situation that requires her to sit still for more than about 15 minutes.  In the car, on the couch, at the movies. This is a really useful skill for long-haul travel.  On a trip back from LA, Jason took a sleeping pill at a

Quite a narrow street, Perry street has period bluestone speed humps at each intersection.  A peril for speeding fixies and low-riding cars. The north side of the street is mainly old factories. This one was a clothing manufacturer until a few months ago, it's empty now.  The south side of the street has commission housing.  The projects, if you will.  There are some great old places just waiting to be done up.  Other places are falling down.   Or overgrown. There are some lovely trees:  But don't get lost in the desert!  These two never made it out: Beyonce's scouting crew overlooked this gem for her music video.  I Perhaps they didn't realise the street has a full complement of emergency services. Perry street!  A great place to get lost.

Alright, so I fell off the documentary wagon around August, but i've tried to make up for it in the last couple of months.  At the moment I'm scoring 10/12 for my 2013 resolution to watch one documentary each month. Room 237 A documentary about 'The Shining' conspiracy theorists.  The guys are completely wacko, and they miss the art of Kubrick's film in all their theorising. In Bob We Trust Father Bob Maguire with his long-term yid sidekick John Safran.  I loved Bob's fast-paced comic narrative history of Judeo-Christianity, complete with a montage of Christian films. He is extremely intelligent, and he places his faith in the context of a broader history of philosophy and literature. Lygon Street- Si Parla Italiano We watched this on cheap Monday night at the Nova, in a cinema filled with Italians.  So it was an audience-participation piece, really. Stories We Tell Sarah Polley's family talk about her mother, her mother's death and her f

I am fascinated by Slow TV. Particularly its Scandinavian iteration, which shows real-time footage of a mundane, physical activity.  For example, they broadcast 134 hours of footage from a boat sailing up the Norwegian coast, 8 hours of a log fire burning and 5 hours of knitting.  Apparently it is incredibly popular. Its popularity is no surprise to me. When I worked at the Children's Hospital, one of the TV stations was a live stream of the new hospital being built next door.  The patients'  parents loved watching the work site. They would watch the earth-moving equipment digging for hours.  Some parents would give me daily updates on what was happening 'on-site.' I think the key features of this type of slow TV are:  1. lack of narrative 2. lack of commentary.  3. ideally, the viewer's lack of technical knowledge of the task. I don't think it's really 'slow' if the viewer is able to critique the activity.  It seems 'slower' i

So I just spent eight idyllic days in New Zealand's south-west. By idyllic I mean constantly grey, rare glimpses of sun, almost unremittingly bleak but isolated and beautiful. On my second day the rain dumped almost continuously for 24 hours, leading our group to cancel all plans and retire to our beds reading.  What a great day, listening to the rain on the roof and reading a rather odd New Zealand novel called, 'The Scarecrow.' We hiked the Copland track to Welcome Flats, 18km up through the rainforest.  It is so wet in this region that the more experienced hikers didn't carry water bottles- they carried cups to drink from the pristine streams.  Amazing!  The following day some people hiked to Douglas Hut and back.  I hiked only halfway and lay in a meadow reading and napping.  You may notice the pattern emerging.  Nothing enhances a nice reading-nap like a grassy meadow with 3000 metre peaks and waterfalls in every direction.   Other highlights were soaking i