The Thousands

BEHJK MNOR! That's not just gobbledigook. That's us saying 'Hi! We're here!' This week we're watching boxes of films, skating to exhibitions, listening to boy wonders in our bedrooms, feeling confused about mystery cafes, patiently baking gingerbread, cutting down trees and attending Christmas shows and parties. Festive, huh?

Cover photo by Tanya Brain. Hit us with your best shot! Send yours to daniel@rightanglestudio.com.au.

Someone dug up Jack Kerouac’s unpublished first novel, bundled it up with Kerouac miscellany and sent it to the printers. It’s called The Sea is My Brother and it follows two Kerouac-ish men who go on a Kerouac-ish adventure. This time, it’s on a boat!

You know exactly what you’re getting into here: drink, smoke, sex, jazz, pretentious conversations and unusually close male friendships. Feel free to substitute On The Road’s free spirit Dean Moriarty for free spirit Wesley Martin; his man-crush sidekick Sal Paradise for man-crush sidekick Bill Everhart. But the content hardly matters here. Kerouac’s draw card is the jazzy energy that bubbles underneath his sentences. There is enough verve here to enliven the otherwise turgid debates about socialism and fascism, idealism and realism. I think it has something to do with the liberal use of commas.

While The Sea is My Brother still hums with Kerouac’s syncopated prose, it comes across as sloppy - the literary equivalent of a demo tape. The rhythm is there but Kerouac occasionally hits a wrong note, straying off key with spots of dag and pretense. See it as a milestone in the life of an author who eventually matured and went on to write more or less the same shit.

Boy genius of 2011 James Blake released his fourth EP Enough Thunder last week. This is not just a big moment in my tiny universe, but for overly sentimental, wistful youths all over the world. Not to mention in the music world itself, as this first release following Blake's debut album has been holding the hype machine ransom to a huge sum.

Enough Thunder is six tracks long - this is a large EP by usual standards. While we've been waiting, Blake has been making. Making and touring, which makes this EP all the more incredible. The opening track, 'Once We All Agree,' ensures that no one is left underestimating the boy's natural talent as both a vocalist and a producer.

Two misfits 'Falls Creek Boys Choir', the collaborative single with Bon Iver, and the Joni Mitchell cover 'A Case of You', are perhaps the weaker points of the EP - but only because the bubble created by the other tracks is as sparse and gripping as ever. Here, there is one loud moment, not dissimilar to the mesmerising peaks of 'I Never Learnt to Share'. Yet Enough Thunder lends itself to Blake's vocals and the leniency he has given to a sparser yet more traditionally glitchy sound. There is no post-album letdown here, and the boy, yet again, has me captive in my bedroom with my headphones on.

I've always made Christmas presents. Mostly because I'm always broke but also because I hate shopping. This year (to save me from tears) I'm making gingerbread houses. Gingerbread houses have been around for ages as a European winter treat, sold at Christmas markets across Germany and built into amazing gingerbread cities in Norway.

Those beautiful Norwegian houses are made out of a boiled and baked dough and can't really be eaten, so don't be intimidated by Nordic sculptural prowess. A good (edible) gingerbread house is easy to make with a little patience, strong icing and lots of decorations. Make a small house if it's your first – Norway can wait for next year.

To make a gingerbread house you will need:
- A good gingerbread biscuit recipe and ingredients
- Skewers string and cardboard for structural support
- Decorations. Glace cherries, mini M&M's, nuts, food dye, chocolate, sprinkles, liquorice allsorts, pretzels (anything edible, little and cute will work)
- A nice flat plate to put it on (a square of cardboard covered in wrapping paper works nice  too)
- Zen-like patience

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With the success of Shut Up Little Man, which screened at Sundance, Sheffield and Edinburgh, Closer Productions now know what the jackpot looks like and they hit it pretty hard. Their newly released box set contains five beauties which demonstrate that as much as we all love to say 'Australian cinema is down the gurgle-hole,' we must choose our examples carefully.

The documentary The Mystery of Flying Kicks is one of the best-made documentaries I have seen in a while. The phenomenon of the sneakers dangling over the powerline is questioned and interpreted by folk all over the world – the filmmakers set up a hotline which they invited people to call and leave messages about dangling shoes on. The result? A sweet celebration of a worldwide mystery which every knows of but no one understands.

My Last Ten Hours With You, directed by the talented Sophie Hyde, is the story of two lovers, Jeremy and Mark, who are spending their last night together before parting ways early in the morning. Remembering, fighting, loving – the short film is a bittersweet tribute to the fleeting moments that meant more than we ever realised.

This box set also contains the beauties Stunt Love, the story of the original stunt couple J.P. McGowan and Helen Holmes, Elephantiasis about a woman and her relationship with all things elephant, and Necessary Games, a gorgeous triptych of dance films. Closer have evolved into a force to be reckoned with, and this set of films explains exactly why.

Both preposterously serious and blackly playful, Pedro Almodóvar’s melodrama explores how trauma and perversion are literally inscribed on the body. Stylistically, it’s an enjoyable blend of Hitchcock and Argento, but above all Almodóvar evokes Georges Franju’s horror classic Eyes Without a Face, in which a mad doctor and his female assistant abduct young women to a country estate to graft new faces onto his hideously disfigured daughter.

Almodóvar suggests suave plastic surgeon Robert Ledgard (Antonio Banderas) is driven by grief, guilt and desire when he invents a transgenic super-skin in memory of his wife, who died after being horribly burnt in a car crash. He recklessly tests it on Vera (Elena Anaya), whom he keeps locked in a room in his mansion outside Toledo, and who, as his loyal housekeeper Marilia (Marisa Paredes) reminds him, looks suspiciously like Robert’s dead wife. But in an audacious twist, Almodóvar reveals another impulse gripping Robert – revenge!

Banderas plays Robert as intensely controlled rather than a gurning Frankenstein figure; only night sweats and eye twitches betray the depravity beneath his skin. Almodóvar has always gloried in the silkiness of flesh; his glossy cinematography and production design offer a luscious echo of Robert’s fascination.

There is a belief in certain realms of society that skateboarding is the degenerate's pastime and should never be deemed more than a faux pas. The reality is that skateboarders are some of the most interesting and creative people in the world, with their influences being evident in the film and art world, amongst others.

André Castelluci is a skateboarder. He’s been doing it ever since the age of thirteen. Somewhere along the line he saved enough money to buy his first camera and started documenting the weekend adventures he and his friends went on, as they flipped, grinded and power-slid their way around the Adelaide CBD and beyond. Over the past year The D.R.E - as he’s referred to by the city’s skate fraternity - has built a healthy portfolio of skateboard photos, capturing some of the scenes' most influential characters in the process.

Adelaide Skateboard Photography is André sharing some of his favourite moments and individuals with the broader community and hopefully dispelling a few of the misconceptions about the people involved, although he probably doesn’t give a shit about the latter. The show opens this Friday at Magazine Gallery and is their last of the year. Think of it as their Christmas present to you, a bunch of dirtbags who ride a piece of wood with wheels that will take them nowhere in life.

For those who ride them, a bike is never just a bike. It’s a symbol of self-reliance and freedom, it’s a nod to their progressive views and it’s an item to cherish, fetishise and show-off. Flying Machine bicycle design studio realises the manifold roles of the modern bicycle and reflects them in their designs. As such, if you see a Sexy Bicycle or a Base Urban (Flying Machine’s two boutique, in-house bicycle brands) gliding down the road, chances are they’ll be modern, sleek, utilitarian, minimal and chock full of innovation.

Now I realise my last sentence may have come off sounding like a who’s who of vacuous design buzzwords so I’ll give some examples. For the modern/sleek design angle look no further than Sexy Bicycles’ 'Pulse', which combines the latest in fixed-gear style with fluid racing lines well-suited to a velodrome to create a monster of modernism. Flying Machine’s use of towards hub gears rather than the standard derailleur set-up ties in with both their love of minimalism (all the sprockets hidden away) and their utilitarian design philosophy (internal hub gears are more efficient, last longer and require less maintenance). When I talk about innovation, the Base Urban RD1.0 is what I'm thinking of: carbon belt drive, gear shifter built into the brake handle, disc brakes – it’s a bike technophile’s wet dream.

About a month ago I was on East Terrace on a Friday night, alone and killing time in the warm summer rain. A cafe seemed to spring out of nowhere, with its outdoor seating scattered around the front, side and back (revolutionary!) and a mess of oil paints and half finished artworks littering the footpath (how 'walking along the Seine'!) It was such a Midnight In Paris moment that I felt sure that the next time I went past, this lamp-lit, wood-trimmed mirage would have disappeared into thin air.

But surprise surprise, it wasn't midnight in Paris but 9pm in Adelaide, and by the time I made it back the Ride and Fall Temperance Lounge was still solidly standing. Hemmingway was nowhere to be seen. There was still something bohemian and confusing about the place, not least beginning with its name. The handwritten menu (of which there only appears to be one copy of for the entire place), the flowers and artworks that decorate the room and the well-meaning but slightly vague staff are a complete antidote to the slick, carefully curated cosmopolitanism of Rundle Street.

Time spent in Ride and Fall has clearly had an effect on me - I've started religiously reading my horoscope and dreaming of a summer spent shut up indoors drinking red wine and painting portraits of my muse. Maybe it's something in the coffee? Or the array of baked goods, smoothies and frappes? In any case, I'm still waiting for Ride and Fall to disappear just as mysteriously as it appeared.

As a flattie-drinking, dress-wearing, bike riding inner-city person, rarely do I have the opportunity to cut down a fir tree and lug it home like a man. This opportunity happens exactly once a year, at the Santa Trees Christmas Tree Farm. My family has been in the business of going to the farm since I was zero. The practice has changed drastically over the years. My mother recalls a time when strapping woods-people would follow you around with a measuring stick and saw. These times are past, and yet the secrets to a successful Christmas Tree Farm heist remain the same.

You will need a car, a trailer and a pair of bone-crushingly strong arms. In the absence of such arms you can substitute many pairs of mail-sorting-ly thin arms. In the absence of a car or a trailer, you are screwed. On arrival you will be issued with a saw. Experienced farmers will B.Y.O. measuring tape, cling wrap and elastic band. When choosing your tree, you want bottom heavy and sprightly on top. You do not want anything cigar shaped unless you live in a teepee or want to ruin Christmas.

After your tree has been chosen, saw the thing down. Immediately cover the raw trunk with the plastic and fix it with the elastic. This stops sap going all over you. Unfortunately it won’t stop the pine needle rash, which is extremely itchy but also incredibly satisfying in a once-a-year outdoor person sort of way.

Besides releasing one of the most beautiful and amazing pop albums of the year, being able to dance like some hot motherflippers, and being two of the sweetest boys on the island, Oscar + Martin can put on a pretty gobsmacking live show. For those who doubt that electronic crossover music translates to the stage, Oscar + Martin are bringing their soulful melodies and RnB beats to the Ed Castle this Saturday night for some dancey times. Supporting are the Daisy Chains, Glisk and Slamagotchi, the glitch-hop wonderkid from Adelaide you all need to get onto quick smart. I'll give you a tip: you wanna feel good, you come to this.

Ah, Metro, you've done it again! Gigs on a summer's Sunday afternoon? Yes please. This show kicks off from 3pm so you better shake off whatever you caught last night and get down to the Hotel Metropolitan because this line-up is a good 'un. What's not to like about Fair Maiden? I mean, she's a babe and she writes beautiful tunes. What's not to like about Weed Capital? Anything Stacey Wilson touches these days is right by us. Guilt Free? That's Xixi Cao playing solo. This is cool, and free.

When you're a kid it's easy to get creeped out by the littlest things. The freaky 'face' a powerpoint makes that is kinda remniscent of The Scream? The postman? Gremlins on TV every goddamn Christmas? Well it's time to face your fears, because Cinematheque is not only screening the 1980s classic, but throwing a party to boot! And they know how to throw a party over at the Mercury. Plus, if you've got the cash to splash, you can sign up for your 2012 membership right now and take advantage of 2011 prices! The gift that actually does keep on giving!

Don’t colour this in. Your steady hand and your deluxe 72-pencil Derwent box set don’t mean jack when it comes to Dylan Martorell’s Possible Worlds 2 Poster Book. Put down the Kingfisher Blue and the Vandyke Brown and let’s just talk. Have you ever put a pencil to a sprawling non-Euclydian migraine or the remnants of an aquatic hallucination? Have your textas ever graced an Arabian bazaar where a sweater-wearing cat peddles fruit, beverages and electronic equipment? I didn’t think so. You’re out of your league.

There’s plenty to look at though (no touch!). The posters belong to a foreign place where animals do as they please, reality and perspective be damned. Bees unwind on swings, bunnies read books about magic and cats mount up and ride on the darndest things. It’s as cute and immaculate as a deftly wrought cupcake. Mind you, there’s something in this cupcake that's making me feel weird and woozy. Also, if you want these posters on your skin, you’re up for a riveting tattoo experience - the hairline details will cramp even the most experienced tattooist’s hand, while the staccato, Morse code patterns will tickle you to the point of chuckles and wee.

Lamington Drive Editions and Sunday Morning Designs have only printed one thousand copies so stick the posters on your wall and, yes, step away from the pencil sharpener. Buy it here now for $35! Or attempt to win one by answering the following question.