Shpil, Balalaika, Shpil!

For Digger and Roni - freilich zol zayn.
xxx

Happy Carnival Day!

A shout out to Mr P and our pals - Risa, Dustin, Madeline, Cyn and Dash amongst them - and all other souls brave enough to face the crowds to fight for our (collective, inalienable) right to part-ay ...

all the way from this northeasterly couch, lazily dotted by the speckled sunlight, with The Street's Dry Your Eyes Mate quietly, LDNly, emoting in the background,

happier, she wrote, than I've been in days.

Happy Carnival, y'all, no matter where you are and what floats your proverbial. Different strokes for drummond folks, vive la difference, yadda*

(*to the power of 3)

Last Night I Watched "27 Dresses" ...

... (the last hour of it, anyway) and realised why suicide is triggering for me.

I'm not sure how, or indeed if , the two are related.

My Cousin

I just got in to London this morning to find out that my cousin died last week. He was 32.

I haven't seen him for years - that branch of the tree became frail and withered. He was orphaned in a way, years ago: his mum died and his dad may as well have as far as he any use he has ever been to any of his four kids. How any woman can love a man who abandons/ wilfully fucks up his kids is beyond me. He will apparently not be at his son's funeral/memorial. I feel I now want to free him of the burden of schlepping out to my wedding later this year. But what would my dad want?

Yeah. The irony is my cousin's dad (let's call him "Shit Dad") is the brother of my late (as in dead, not tardy) father (aka as "Best Dad Who Ever Lived"TM). Or is that not irony? Bloody Alanis.

RIP B. I am so sorry that I didn't reach across broken adult messiness and try and maintain a relationship with you and my other cousins. I am sorry that that generation was so fucked and that you are yet another casualty of all that preceded you; the sins of the fathers and all that. My heart aches for old memories and what seemed like simpler times but probably weren't so idyllic for the adult characters in the piece. Whatever G-d you ended up following - your mother's Catholic or dad's Jewish - or indeed none at all, may She/He/It/Something bring you peace. And lots of love from your cousin who wishes she had have done ... something. It is making me a bit sick that I believe myself to be this "right on" community-minded person ("I give to charities and I am soooo great!") and yet I don't know most of my relatives because I've at worst bought into, at best not challenged narratives of inane, insane family feuds, fracas and fuck-ups.

xxx

23:50 Sleeper To Scotland

Tonight we are taking a sleeper train (which I have of course already over-romanticised a la Murder on the Orient Express when it will doubtlessly be more On The Buses on rails)

... from London --
Sunny, 29 degrees

... to Edinburgh --
Windy, Rainy, 20 degrees, which, granted,doesn't sound so bad but definitely a trade down in this current ... uh ... climate (climatic, not economic)

But it will be so worth it!, even from this sun-starved Antipodean perspective: Mr P's cousin is getting married in a Scottish castle (how very Madonna!, given that neither he nor his partner hail from that particular neck o' woods) on the weekend, so we have cleverly shoehorned in what is sure to be a very hectic day/ night at the Edinburgh festival. I've been once before, in 2004, when I was but a tourist in this hemisphere. I took the bus from Golders Green station (big mistake! It was a Friday night and before we'd even begun our journey, a drunk Amereican girl threw up all over herself and her co-passenger behind me and then proceeded to apologise for it for the next twelve long, stench-filled hours!) to meet my friend Kobi, also visiting the British Isles from Melbourne. We crashed on her friend's friend's friend's (to the power of ten) couch and tried to make our pennies stretch from alcohol to food to entertainment. This time - as is much of life AMP (After Mr Plog: The Era) is much more adult and organised. He even - gasp! - prebooked shows! Don't you just stand in the Pleasance Courtyard and get swayed by the loudest spruiker?!

Will check in from the road, inner-net excess permitting ...

Anarchy In The UK

On Sunday I went along to a radical ramble in SE1.

Five Things I Loved About It:
1. Feeling of doing something mildly subversive. I'm such a middle class pretender!
2. Hearing stories of the past that aren't the Grand Master Narrative kinda "Histories" taught at school (big wars, great men, small peenii).
3. Seeing bits of London I otherwise never see. It's a good day when I leave N19.
4. Recalling for the zillionth time the beats that this city PULSATES. I am an expat in lurrve!
5. I saw Mary Wollstonecraft's house!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Five Things I Loathed About It:
1. I go to these lefty things to feel kinship. I therefore don't fully get how these supposed right-on humanists can justify not mustering even the slightest bit of warmth towards, er, me. But you know what I mean: that holier-than-thou, judgey mcjudgerson type. I kind of think that most radicals regardless of whatever spectrum they sit at share a personality trait, ie, not having much of one. That's why that feminist=humourless trope fucks me off. Maybe Dworkin wasn't much of a smiler but put me in a room with Jo Brand, Germaine Greer, Janeane Garofolo, Gloria Steinem, Tina Fey, Dawn French, Letty Cottin Pogrebin and Margaret Cho and I betcha there'd be laughs a'plenty.
2.The commemorative stone for Percy Shelley. Now obscured by the directives of a Death to Aesthetics! estate. (See pics for travesty)
3.The unshakeable sense that I was a hypocritical middle class JAP because I'm neither a vegan nor a squatter.
4.The fact that these alternative stories which are rich and dynamic have, like their protagonists, been marginalised to the degree that they are rarely shared outside the few that actively seek them out.
5. The utter arrogance/ historical blindness of the guide who felt the need to highlight Wollstonecraft's "contradictions" in that she advocated for women's rights but not for those working women. Way to project your contemporary agenda onto a brave, progressive thinking historical heroine, dude! While you're at it, wanna slam for Martin Luther King jr for not protesting for gay rights or Gandhi for not having a Twitter account?

Hmmmmm. WWGT? (What Would Gandhi Tweet?)

I Swear It's Healthy!

Fuck me! It turns out that expletives are good for you.

This is good news in my household. I live with a man who has the face of a boy bander and the vocabulary of a sailor (a heavy-drinking, heavy-cussing one, not the slightly camp, Donald O'Connoresque type he more closely resembles). I'm no scientist but I'm hoping that if I drop a few f-bombs before my next blow out, I may be able to save a few brain cells/ a liver or two.

Like I said, I'm no scientist.

Mama Plog's Special Delivery

Surprise!!!

Hats for me and April and Taryn and Coren and baby Harry!

Thank You

Creepy Jello

One of my favourite writers at Jezebel, Sadie Stein, reposted this ad from Boing Boing. (I've been enchanted by her blog The Petite Sophisticate - it's worth reading in its entirety, she has such a good eye and good heart.)



The word "dark" doesn't do it justice. I've got chills who have got chills who are multiplying!

"The Big Chill" at The Big Chill

Have you seen the '80s film "The Big Chill" (Kevin Kline, Phoebe Cates, Jeff Goldblum)? It centres on a group of friends going through all this heavy psychoshit over a weekend? Well Team Chill - members of the April and Oscar Send Off posse - had many, many memorable moments but instead of angst and drama, we had crazy giggles, messy debauchery and the bloodiest best. time. evah!!!! In fact, from now on, I shall refer to it as Bestival - 'cos it's the best (fest)ival I've ever been to!

The following videos are a bit dumb. Should I remove them? Vote "yes" or "no" in the comment section.

Mom, Meet Emoticon ...

I think I'm going to call my mum.

From here.

Gather Your Tribe

If there is one area in life that I feel blessed - blessed - better than blessed (sorry, still in stuttermode), as though by some miracle I've been magically placed in the uppermost echelons of beaming, inexplicably bountiful fortune - it is in the realm of friendship. At every stage of my life - from my first social memory (sandpit with Dewi, digging "down" to Cassie in Papua New Guinea) to the last text ("One of the loveliest texts I've ever received ... Love you so much"), no matter where I am, I always find the good 'uns. The realm of the kindred has been very kind to me.

I am, therefore, a most unlikely expatriate. My home, my heart = my Melbourne (co-opted by a bloody campaign, noch!) is where my friends are at. Alas, life led Londonwards and even though the quantity is paltry, comparatively, the stars have shone again, and deigned to befriend me.

So it is with a heavy heart that I have to fare well April and Oscar (and their beautiful wee PB) who collectively make up a massive chunk of my local mishpokha. Ironically the buggers are relocating to my hometown (or is it ironic? Alanis has made us all fearful now!) ... The silver lining is that we are having a send off at the Big Chill this weekend! So it's after midnight, bags are half-packed and fully-strewn and I need to know how Law and Order, Season 18: Episode 2, ends. (You'd think by now I'd have realised with a court-case. Duh!)

May you all chill, supersizedly

Dr P
x

Eat Your Heart Out, Ally McBeal ...

Spotted on the Embankment, Monday July 27th 2009.