Wondering Around Wandering

Mike Perry is one of my favourites, so I jumped at the chance to support his new kickstarter project Wondering Around Wandering. The Brooklyn based artist is hoping to fund a three month free community space and gallery, where he'll hold open workshops, discussions and screenings - you really need to watch the video to get the whole idea. Plus the video features two of the cutest dogs ever (they killed me!)

Slime Square

This has been added to my 'Books I Want' list: The Forty-Deuce: The Times Square Photographs of Bill Butterworth, 1983-1984.

I love anything to do with New York in the eighties. I know that in reality it would have been pretty sleazy and grimy back then, but that just adds to the nostalgic glamour! Street photographer Bill Butterworth captures the characters of Times Square in gritty old school New York (including a young Vincent Gallo). It's a pretty seedy underbelly, but his subjects are shown in a positive way, instead of focusing on what is most likely some pretty depressing realities. The book features quite a few boob shots that I've chosen not to share here - sorry pervs! You can see them, and more over here instead.

The Architect and the Painter

I saw this wonderful film at acmi on the weekend. I must admit I knew next to nothing about Charles and Ray Eames before I heard about this, and it turns out they were a married couple, who did so much more than design furniture! Ray Eames is particularly inspiring to me. She started her career as a painter and studied with Hans Hoffman, and it was her amazing eye and instinct for colour and styling that really elevated the Eames's visual output. The documentary notes that as the female half of the couple her importance was often overlooked. I think that good design and styling is something that when done really well, you shouldn't even notice, so I can see how this, aswell as being a woman in the fifties meant that Ray's involvement was unfairly overlooked.

One of my favourite parts in the documentary was a story told by a guest at one of the Eames's dinner parties, where Ray served a 'visual dessert' of beautifully arranged bowls of flowers. Mr Meet-Cute was nudging me in the side as the guest described how angry he was as he'd been saving his appetite expecting something delicious. I have a rep for being a bit of a greedy guts, so that is no doubt the kind of uncool behaviour I would be guilty of - whining about no dessert!

March-May Books

There are a lot of books out there that I would like to read, so at the start of the year I set myself a pretty realistic goal of reading at least two books a month. All was going well for the first couple of months (you can read my earlier post on January-February's reading efforts here), but then along came Haruki Murakami's 1Q84 - a mammoth of a book, which I carried around with me for over a month, because that's how long it took me to read, and because I needed to have it with me at all times in case an opportunity to read a desperate few pages came up. I may have ended up a bit moany about how long I was carting this thing round, because I offered it to a friend to read and she declined due to the bad impression I'd given her of my time with it. I feel bad about that because it was actually great to read such a long book for a change. You really get into the brain of the thing, and grow so familiar with the characters. Not gonna lie, it is a weird tale, but I loved Tengo and Aomame, the main characters of the book.

I also ploughed through The Hunger Games trilogy, which after 1Q84, was a breath of fresh, large type set air. And the books were so light to carry round! While I was reading I was pretty preoccupied with who I would cast in the next films, especially the role of Finnick Odair. My dream for this part is a young Jude Law, but that's not going to happen and I can't think of any actors at the appropriate age that would do. Any ideas?

I also read The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes, which was for my Book Club. It's hard to squeeze those book club books into my new reading schedule, but this one was fairly slim so I made it! This was an excellent book club choice actually, easy to read, and lots of discussion points. Highly recommended book club fodder!

Winter Weekend

It's well and truly Winter round here now. We just had a long weekend, so it was three whole days off of Wintery good times! I took these photos after seeing Prometheus at Imax in the Carlton Gardens. It seems like everyone went to see that this weekend.

Weekend in Sydney

I went up to Sydney last weekend and had the best time! You hear a lot of Melbourne vs Sydney banter round these parts, and even though my heart belongs to Melbourne, I always have fun in Sydney. Even when it rains the whole time!

Messina Gelato in Sydney make the most amazing gelato, I'm obsessed with it. It's probably just as well I haven't found gelato this good in Melbourne, as it would be disastrous for my waistline.