Phil Brown

Fascinating to meet the author Bret Easton Ellis here in Brisbane the other day. I was his first interview on Australian soil. Actually, we were on a couch at the Stamford Plaza Hotel with no soil in sight. He had arrived that morning on his maiden visit. I must confess that I have never been able to face his book American Psycho, although I did try to watch the movie but didn’t get far. I am very squeamish. But read Less Than Zero finally to prep for the interview and his new book, a kind of sequel, Imperial Bedrooms. Great stuff although the new one is bleak. Bret, however, was not. He was genial, funny and honest and pleased to be in Oz, at last, although he was confused. He told me that when he landed he thought he was still in LA on account of the fact that things looked similar and the climate was the same and the people didn’t look that different. Until they opened their mouths. G’day Bret!

My son Hamish is now officially a chip off the old block. He came home yesterday and asked if, while working on the computer, he could have a cup of tea and a couple of digestive biscuits. “That’s my boy!” I thought as I broke out the Twinings and McVitties. We have both digestives and hob- nobs in the house now though a month or so ago we had a crisis. Digestive biscuits were in short demand and we assumed everyone had discontinued them because they are just too old fashioned. It was most upsetting and we hunted around for supplies. Then, as if by magic, they re-appeared again. My theory is that the Icelandic ash cloud had somehting to do with it since these are British biscuits. Did the flight cancellations hold them up? Perhaps. but I may never know. Meanwhile our regular supplier, Coles, seem to only now stock the chocolate-covered versions which we don’t eat. That’s a bridge too far if you ask me. But our local deli has digestives and hob-nobs galore so out habitual biccies are back on the menu and Hamish is loving them, although I have advised him that they require only a quick dunk, otherwise one may lose half of one’s biscuit and it will turn up later as a soggy lump in the bottom of the cup. This is, no doubt, a life lesson which will prove invalualbe to him in the years ahead.

If you’re a Christian believer with a questioning mind you simply must read God, Actually by the Australian author Roy Williams. He used to be a lawyer but we won’t hold that against him. He is now shaping up to be a major public intellectual and Christian apologist - just the sort of bloke we need to counter Richard Dawkins and his ilk. Militant atheism was getting a pretty free ride in the media until Roy came along with his exhaustively comprehensive, well argued and dare I say rational approach to Christianity and faith. Roy argues his case with a lawyer’s mind and a believer’s faith, giving us a broad historical view as well as a very personal one as well. I read the book  quickly to review it some time ago and was very gratified to find the author had quoted from my review in a second edition of the book which has now been sold offshore and should do well anywhere there are thinking Christians keen on deepening their intellectual understanding of their faith. I grew up reading C.S.Lewis and Malcolm Muggeridge and Roy Williams is as powerful a force for good as those two old favourites. I am now poring over God, Actually again fascinated and inspired by this wonderful book. Jesus has never seemed more real or relevant. Thanks Roy.

Personally I quite like a bit of apocalyptic fare on the big screen. Nothing wrong with the end of the world, as long as it’s fiction and not happening to me. The Book of Eli starring Denzel Washington is the latest in a long line of  flicks about life after a global catastrophe. For me it all started with the 1971 film The Omega Man starring that crazy SOB Charlton Heston, a man who certainly loved his guns, on screen and off. He was holed up in a ruined city after a nuclear holocaust fighting off zombie mutants. In recent years a spate of movies have canvased similar territory - stuff like 28 Days Later, I Am Legend and the harrowing but brilliant The Road starring Viggo Mortensen. Gotta love the Viggster. That was quite a cerebral piece which honoured its literary roots. The Book of Eli is more mainstream fare with a righteous streak. Eli is, after all, a man on a mission from God, like The Blues Brothers. Eli has what may be the world’s last copy of The Bible and a voice told him to travel west with it and he meets some rather unpleasant types along the way and wastes them. In a righteous, God-fearing manner, mind you. Gary Oldman is the bad guy, a corrupt dictator running a small western town of the sort that used to host gun fights in the main street at high noon. It’s entertaining stuff and even funny at times, in its darkish way. Michael Gambon is a hoot as a cannibal farmer and Tom Waits turns up as a shopkeeper dude who is too shifty to trust. And Denzel Washington is excellent and always does a fine job.  I have a feeling howeverthat this is not the last we’ve seen of the end of the world, if that makes sense?

Having just finished Summertime by JM Coetzee I am left wondering about my reading patterns. I have many fine books on my stack, many worthy tomes that i find utterly impenetrable. Oh they are wise and well-written but the only stuff I really want to read is by grumpy old buggers like Coetzee, world-weary males whose view of the world is jaded but not entirely cynical. I don’t want bouyant, optomistic fiction, nor do I crave deeply emotional  stuff of the sort chicks like to read. The Road by Cormac McCarthy was another cracker I read recently  and that wasn’t excatly a laugh. The question is, what next? I may have to dip into my private stock of literary grumps: Hemingway or Graham Greene or an old Somerset Maugham, perhaps. Then there’s the new McEwan, Solar, when my wife is finished with it. He does a fine line in burnt-out-husks struggling in middle age and somehow that sort of literary fare is, I find, comforting. Or I might turn to some T.S. Eliot if I’m really desperate, with a smidge of Larkin to boot. JOY.

And I mean that in the nicest possible way. We have one, a little ball of loveable fluff called Sarge. He is a Maltese Shih Tzu …careful how you pronounce that. Someone said to me that they wouldn’t have a dog that had shit in its name but let’s face it, when you get a dog shit goes with the territory. Life has been turned upside down but when you get home in the afternoon and see that little forlorn face, full of hope and longing for a cuddle all is forgiven. Until 5am the next morning when then yapping begins. At least he’s a small dog I couldn’t cope with a bigger one and I have seen the movie Marley & Me  so I know that would have been a nightmare. Our wee hound is enough for us, as if we didn’t have enough stress in our lives.  If life is complicated get a dog and watch it get more complicated.

I’m onto my third batch of rum balls in a month (eating them not making them) and I am feeling guilty as hell. I just can’t stop eating the suckers having been given copious amounts of them over the festive season. I have developed something of a rum ball dependency. I know I shouldn’t be eating them but I just can’t help it. Trouble is they make me feel good. In fact over the festive season my dietary indiscretions have been legion and yet,  I have never felt better. Towards the end of the year I was being abstemious at work, eating light lunches, small meals often, gluten free muesli bars - I even gave up coffee for a few days. Then, come the holidays,  I let myself go completely and ate whatever took my fancy: meat pies, ice cream, doughnuts, coffee and ended up feeling great. What’s with that? Now I’m back at work I am trying to be good but at home I know there is still a small stash of rum balls in the fridge to get me through the night. Don’t know what I’ll do when they run out … things could get desperate …  you wouldn’t happen to have any rum balls on you, would you?

Listen up, all you pesky viagra salespersons and purveyors of penis enlargment therapies. You too all you malodorous Russian call girls and wannabe western brides. And you Chinese herbalists and Nigerian scam artists. Get offa my cloud! This is a blog not a marketplace for you to come to so you can flog your dubious, ludicrous wares. Get out of my face! Get a life! Go peddle elsewhere and stop your inane and irrelevent comments on my blog! If anyone is going to make irrelevant comments it will be me? OK? Good. Glad that’s settled.

Just saw the digitally remastered version of the classic 1971 Aussie film Wake in Fright. Wow! It’s Brilliant! No film captures better the horror of the Outback ethos. People in the bush are friendly, open and wonderful? Right? Wrong. They can also be racist, vile, uncouth and alcohol-fuelled. This film captures the ugly side of the Outback idyll. It’s based on Kenneth Cook’s brilliant novel of the same name which has just been re-released by Text Publishing. Get yourself a copy and then go see the film. That will make you think again about life beyond the Black Stump in this wide brown land with the green bits around the edge.

Saw the Paris Opera Ballet last night: stupendous, magnificent, extraordinary … and very long. Three hours was stretching the friendship but I guess it’s all good for French-Australian cultural relations. Never mind about the malodourous Frenchman sitting next to me, halitosis and all. And why did he have to hog the arm rest throughout the whole show? That ain’t etiquette, is it? If he had screamed “Bravo!” one more time I would have throttled him, although my hands may not have fitted around that sweaty neck. But hey, I did enjoy myself, really I did and the sets were magnificent, particulartly the elephant, although my favourite bit was when one of the poor unfortunate under-fed ballerinas dropped the stuffed bird she was holding, turning an exquisite routine into a ballet version of Monty Python’s dead parrot sketch. “He’s bleeding snuffed it!” Remember that? What a hoot. I thought of this and much more while I waited for the ballet to finish and as usual I wasn’t stingy when it came to the applause because I’m always so glad when a show is over. I stayed up until well after midnight basking in the afterglow.