Recognisable by its distinctive geometric frontage by Sam Songailo, which in its own way doubles as a work for the show, brand spanking new ARI Fontanelle is hosting one hell of a kick-ass art party featuring no less than 24 KICK ASS ARTISTS. Fontanelle brings you the aptly named expo: The Kick Ass Painting Show.

This is Fontanelle’s second ever exhibition and the premise behind this one is playful and accessible. The Kick Ass Painting Show celebrates the work of contributors and hopes to expand audience perceptions of what constitutes painting as an art form. All exhibiting artists have contributed work that appears active, or is activated by our viewing; transformative or attempting to transform. In the case of Kick Ass, the installation of the artworks stand to further this cause. The works will seem to “speak” to one another and the audience, discussing the expectations placed upon them and how and in what ways these might be achieved. You guys can expect to be wowed by painting that appears otherwise. There’s sculpture as painting, and performance too, unusual installs where ceilings become canvases and images ooze and crawl across gallery walls.

German is easier than you think. Observe:

- Ws sound like Vs and Vs sound like Fs.
- IE sounds like EE (wiener schnitzel), EI sounds like EYE (Einstein).
- Er / sie / es = he / she / it, wo / was / wie = where / what / why, ist / sind / war = is / are / was.
- The second word in a sentence is always a verb (even if it sounds backwards). Remember that words like “is” and “have” are verbs too, y’know.
- Ignore all that der / die / das “gender” rubbish. You’re post-gender. If you’re confronted with a real-life native German just guess and when you’re wrong they’ll think you’re funny / cute.
- Effed if I know how future tense works, but who cares about the future. You’re not actually German.
- The rest is just vocabulary and Hogans Heroes and The Great Escape (or The Dirty Dozen if you’re a war criminal).
- Fancy conjunctions like because (weil) and but (aber) send the second verb to the end of the sentence.

Seriously, that’s pretty much it. Exercises:

Ich bin fett, weil ich Wiener Schnitzel esse. I am fat because I wiener schnitzel eat.
Der is ein Schnauser in mein Liederhosen. There is a dog in my pants.
Ich bin in ein sehr unbequemer Platz. I am in a very uncomfortable place.
In die Rückseite ein VW? In the back of an economy sized car?

And the Lord looked down on the sons of men and said, “Let there be more greyhounds on pants. Chinos, in particular.”

And Jesen listened, and the Lord saw that the greyhound print chinos were good and instructed Comeback Kid to waive the shipping fees so that the sons of men may cover their shame cheaply. And He also specified that they should be available in classic khaki and forest green, and bare the likenesses of over fifty famous greyhounds. Spot them all!

Now, let us pay.

As I was passing Mainline Drive-In at Gepps Cross the other day, I had a flashback. I was four, in my parents’ Volvo, watching Babe: Pig in The City. I was crying hysterically. “Animals shouldn’t talk,” I sobbed, eyes transfixed on the humungous screen in front of me, unable to turn away. It was one of the worst nights of my life.

As the flashback drew to an end, I steered my car back onto the correct side of the road and furrowed my brow. “This place actually still exists?” I thought to myself. “I wonder what it’s like nowadays…”. I called my friends and did some serious pleading. Ten minutes later, I’d managed to convince a group to go with me. The catch? That guy who gave up drinking due to liver problems would be designated driver; the rest of us would be drinking.

Was it legal? Probably not. Was it fun? Goddamn it was, even the guy with the bung liver enjoyed it. We saw Men In Black 3 (FYI, it sucked) but in all honesty, the movie was irrelevant. It’s weird because when you think about it, the drive-in is just a big gravel parking lot with a cinema screen and a hut at the back that sells really expensive ‘food’. It really shouldn’t be fun at all… but it is.

The screen is massive, it’s generally pretty easy to get a good ‘park’, and the ‘Kandy Bar’ and projection room look exactly the same as they did in the 50s. Come to think of it, It’s kind of like being in Grease; but modern day, and a bit bogan.

To sum things up, it’s a trip that’s worth it. Even if the movie sucks, there’s really nothing like sitting on a deckchair in the moonlight, covered in seasoning from Pizza Shapes, drinking wine out of your little sister’s State Swim drink bottle.

Are you indecisive? Does choice cripple you, leaving you quivering in a pile of ambivalence? For me, Devo’s ‘Freedom of Choice‘ is an anthem; their declaration that “freedom from choice is what you want” feels like it was written for me. So when it comes to choosing a nice glass of wine, which I know nothing about except that I like to drink lots of it, I fumble. Luckily the kids behind the bar at Cork Wine Café are mind-readers so there are no decisions to be made, except glass or bottle. I say bottle. The bar staff know all the wines so intimately it’s almost dirty. They also have Authentic Wine Sundays where they open up some natural wines – no additives, often organic, often unpredictable.

The wine menu at Cork Wine Cafe is actually very well laid out. It has helpful groupings of wine varieties and, for those who want everything, you can try three at a time with a tasting of small serves. Speaking of tasting, they also have a little menu of tapas-y things, which, for liquor licensing purposes, can equate to a full meal if you order enough of them. I tried whitebait, chorizo and olives. The homemade olives sit proudly behind the bar in big old jars and are pretty great. Walk in, tell them you’re thirsty and settle in.

Andrew Morgan runs People’s Potential Unlimited (PPU), the Washington DC label that discovers and reissues some of the weirdest and most insane ultra-rare boogie, funk and soul from the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. His latest gem/find is Uku Kuut. Not a lot is known about Uku. He was born in the Soviet Union and raised in Sweden and Santa Monica. When Morgan tracked him down he was recording and producing music in Tallinn, Estonia. As an 11 year old he performed as a vocalist alongside some of Estonia’s top jazz musicians and his mother is legendary Estonian singer Marju Kuut.

On Visions of Estonia, Uku produces a mad blend of funk and soft jazz. Written and recorded at his home studios in Los Angeles and Stockholm between 1982 and 1989, the album matches left-field beats with lost ’80s boogie groove. All recorded on domestic and Soviet electronic gear. Songs such as ‘Real Love‘ and ‘Secret Dream‘ sound like they could accompany the outro of an ’80s morning television program. The closing ‘Right or Wrong’, with its strutting boogie and crooning vocals, proves that while some get ready to bag out the Eurovision song contest not all Eastern Euro songs are lame.

Hey, look what Lachy Lang has gone and done. He has made a scarf that looks like some kind of giant jumper sleeve tube that you wrap around your neck and wear as a scarf. Actually, you do not wear it AS a scarf it just IS a scarf – you can’t treat your dog AS a cat and start claiming it to be a cat, it IS a dog. I imagine wearing it would be like having a lightweight, stretched pal following you around, hanging off and around you at every moment of the day. I’m confused too, it’s fine, but I really like this. It’s smart and a bit funny. I think it’s really good. It’s sci-fi, lo-fi, all the fi. Plus, it’s almost winter, we’re all going to need friends and/or scarves, so why not make your friends and scarves the same thing? Lachy Lang has done this.

This scarf comes in grey marl (but soon fuchsia and charcoal grey as well), the default colour for a lanky friend because they are fun only at first until the lanky fun wears off and they just get boring or annoying. However, this scarf won’t ever get boring. How can you be bored when this scarf means you can go to bars all by yourself with this thing on and people will think you have either a particularly affectionate friend, or two particularly affectionate friends with drinks in their other hands wrapped around you all the time? Yeah, you’ll be popular, and you can’t be bored by that. But if that fails to excite, you will be warm, warm is probably better than looking popular, anyway.

Charles Schulz (of Peanuts) famously bought every single Esterbrook Radio #914 pen nib when they heard they were being discontinued. R Crumb won’t fuck with anything but a Rapidograph technical pen. Pencils though? Voices were in unison praising the Eberhard Faber Blackwing 602. Famous users included Vladimir Nabokov, Frank Lloyd Wright, Thomas Wolfe, John Steinbeck, Stephen Sondheim, Igor Stravinsky and Chuck Jones. How many famous people use your favourite pencil? Don’t make me laugh. Even the Blackwing’s motto ‘Half the pressure, twice he speed’ is imposing and sleek in a modernist kind of way.

Then: disaster. Blackwings were discontinued in 1998. I have seen evidence of them selling for upwards of $50 on eBay. An incredibly exhaustive blog sprung up. The streets ran with graphite. People wept. Then: Resurrection. California Cedar Products bought the Blackwing trademark and started manufacturing recreations of the Palomino Blackwing 602 and the Palomino Blackwing. The former for writers, the latter for sketchers – and now available in Australia at NoteMaker. It’s almost impossible to overstate the reverence people have for this pencil. Such fanatical devotion to a writing stick. But, as Ray Eames said, “What works good is better than what looks good, because what works good lasts.” And sometimes what works good can even come back from the dead. It’s the Jesus pencil.

Not just the name of a gloomy band, a revolutionary art school and a a typeface, Bauhaus is also a shop on Rundle Street – and in this incarnation it’s a menagerie of colour and texture. Bauhaus specialises in homewares and accessories, stocking knits and candles and furniture and earrings and necklaces and ceramics and shells and textiles and wood and metals and leathers and fair trade ornaments and rugs and prints and wall hangings and religious iconography and ARE YOU FEELING OVERWHELMED YET? You should be.

It’s near-impossible to exit Bauhaus with empty hands, which makes it dangerous when you’re waiting around to meet people for a film or a drink at the Exeter. $1 rosary rings?! Can’t get enough! It’s a foolproof place to find gifts at any price, with items sourced from all over the world: Denmark via Bolivia, Sweden via Poland, Azerbaijan via Kangaroo Island (hmm) plus plenty of local goodies. Whether gothic pop, German modernism or typophilia is your thing, this version of Bauhaus will satisfy every trinketry or adornment urge you’ve ever had.

As preposterous as it may seem to name a radio show This American Life, it’s a fitting title for a program whose creative, personality driven broadcasts regularly grapple with the contradictions of a nation both trailblazing and conservative, individualistic and conformist, funny and solemn, arrogant and humble.

Started in 1995 in Chicago, This American Life is one of the most popular public radio broadcasts in the country. Hosted by the lovingly dweeby Ira Glass, over the years it has featured everyone from Nick Hornby to Michael Chabon to Spalding Gray and Dave Eggers.

Weird as it may seem to put a radio show on the big screen, this works. It was staged live at a theatre in New York City, and Glass says they endeavored to incorporate stories onstage that would never play on radio (like dance, for instance). The idiosyncratic programming of NPR is easy to poke fun at (like on Parks and Recreation) and there’s a bit of self-reflexive humor herein (courtesy of a short film by Mike Birbiglia).

Like the best of National Public Radio, what makes This American Life – Live! so special are the rich personalities and real-life stories presented. There’s a great reading by much beloved humorist David Sedaris, a terrific story on an anonymous found photo archive, and a heart tugging yet in no way naff humorous story by a blind father. Amongst many other things (I don’t want to spoil anything). This is a perfect way to spend a weekend matinee.