Author results: Oslo Davis
Roasters' Week
When I was a Christian, Mum would always invite a bunch of families back to our place after Sunday night worship for cups of International Roast. We had a humongous tin that lasted for most of the eighties, miraculously never losing its flavour. Ahh, it was the best of times.
The Roasters' Week program, despite its title, has no mention of that classic cuppa.
Voiceworks, 'The Words We Found'
I have a fear of literary anthologies. Just like a boardroom table full of strippers, there's always going to be some duds that make you feel queasy. Hence, I approached Voiceworks' new anthology The Words We Found with trepidation.
Voiceworks is a local quarterly magazine produced for, and by, people under 25, and this year marks its twenty first birthday.
Sound Machine
Once when I was a Christian I found myself standing in a church pew behind an old lady who released a neat little fart. It was mid-hymn so no one except me and her knew what had passed. Like a pro, the lady gave no physical acknowledgement of her brazen act, and I remember thinking at the time how impressed I was with her nonchalance.
ACCA's annual book sale
Hey art galleries: get rid of your art and just sell merch. It's what the people want. More monograms on Mike Parr, more Barbara Kruger fridge magnets saying "Grant Denyer is a big bowl of wrong!", more mock-Hockney fashion spectacles you can stamp on, more souvenir cans of real Warhol soup you can explode in a campfire, and more jumbo-sized John Brack pencils you can reverse over in your Hummer.
Asterios Polyp
It took David Mazzucchelli ten years to make Asterios Polyp. I got through it within an hour. But what an hour! Asterios Polyp is the latest Great American Graphic Novel; it will win Pulitzers and National Book Awards and get people rabbitting on again about how graphic novels have grown up, can tell stories like no other medium, should finally get respect, blah blah blah.
Monster Men: Bureiko Lullaby
Monster Men is Japanese manga gone septic. Sex with foetuses still in their wombs. Nun rape. A mutated sperm who has daddy issues. Takeshi Nemoto's Monster Men: Bureiko Lullaby, is a squalid cartoon collection, finally translated into English.
The book's central tale takes in the life of a transvestite sperm who, after being ejaculated to life by a masturbating sailor off the deck of a ship into the nuclear burn of an A-bomb test, embarks on a Henry Miller-esque voyage of discovery.
Buddha Machine II
The Buddha Machine II is the second generation of a Marlboro Lights-sized plastic box that plays pre-recorded electronic music. Pitchfork gave it 8.2 and the New York Times called it 'beautifully useless'. It has a on/off switch, a plug for your headphones, a tempo dial and a speaker, and comes in different colours (mine is lime).
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