Transformations are one thing, but turning a white tiled, white walled cutting room floor-esque environment into somewhere that feels like your grandmothers house in the mountains is another.

Leah and her besties (her boyfriend Jamie and her Dad) have hit the proverbial nail on the head and created their own home away from home at The Happy Cabin, featuring Leah’s favourite design knick knacks, independent fashion designers and Etsy side of crafty objects from all around the world. After spending a year absorbing all the small things in London, Leah’s come back to Brisbane to start an eclectic store filled with the loves of her life.

The charm of the place is that it values smaller designers. Whether you’re after bed sheets that look like they’ve got a dog asleep on them (living in an apartment can be harsh, right?), your Hansel From Basel socks, girls labels like Pinclove (we love their smart shirts) or guys clothes by Mr. Simple, The Happy Cabin are happy to provide.

They also stock Depeapa bags, Blackbird and the Owl purses, Papinelle sleepwear and Field Notes notebooks for all you regular Keruoacs. We’re sure there’s more to come – and watch out for stuff happening in the side space. The Happy Cabin is a great curation of consumable objects by a very optimistic lady, and we’re happy about this.

The government’s going to need to start running another anti-ice campaign because the pictured monstrosity can cause serious danger. After flooring Taiwan with more than 100 stores there, now it’s Brisbane’s turn to feel the brain freeze wrath of Meet Fresh.

Dessert is what Meet Fresh is about. Dessert for brunch, lunch, dinner… and supper. There are endless options to choose from so you definitely can linger all day over some A-Pop and pearls, seeds, beans… Adding all of this to staples like ice-cream may sound scary and if you heard about this much hyped place and its forty minute queue on opening weekend there have probably been mixed reports. IMO the desserts here are more subjective, rather than hit and miss, or plain old weird as the person accompanying me suggested. Sweet potato and barley in your dessert may take a little getting used to for some round eyes, but tofu pudding and their famous homemade taro pudding definitely shouldn’t.

Avoiding a brain freeze is possible as you do get to choose from both cold and hot desserts but all in all, just remember what your parents warned you, kiddies. ‘Everything in moderation’ and you should get out of here just fine.

Apparently there’s a great deal of pleasure in looking (thank you, Ms. Mulvey), but it probably depends on what you’re looking at. Obviously World Press Photo is going to pip your cousin-in-law’s endless Instagrams of their bratty kids at the post in the endorphin-rush stakes. After having a quick flick through the images on their website, I can happily report back to you that the show should more than satisfy the most substantial appetite for the spectacle (cheers, Mr. Debord).

Besides the obligatory serious documentation of war/politics/natural disasters, there’s some worthwhile weird stuff too. Like the kitschy Sochi Singers entertaining restaurant patrons in Russia. Or happy snaps of a cleansing ritual in Kazakhstan, where a shaman pours blood from a lamb over a half-naked family crouching in a hole.

Even though there’s something a bit perverse about the voyeuristic implications here, somehow looking at the photos made me feel like a better human for understanding more about mankind and provoked satisfying feelings of empathy. Head along and you might even learn something – “broaden your horizons” or whatever. Case in point: did you know that Dakar, in Senegal, has a fashion week? Now we know.

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.

Attending a gathering for the promise of inspiration from like-minded individuals might sound a little cult-like, but this event is an alien god-free zone. Brisbane Indesign is a festival for designers to network, swap ideas, share projects and generally love up on each other.

The opening ceremony of sorts is Thursday’s Up Late In Design, a street party for designers and design-lovers. There’ll be architect-designed pop-up bars and cafes, public art installations and displays of local designer wares that will get you both inspired and jealous.

Even though Friday is full of VIP fine-I-didn’t-want-to-go-anyway invitation-only events, Saturday’s where it’s at. Hop on one of the shuttle buses doing loops of the city’s fanciest studios and galleries and act like an undercover agent gathering intelligence. As you drive around like oldies on a coach tour, there’ll be plenty of ways to stay entertained. Check out the installations, talks and festival-specific collaborations or start some bus games with your new designer friends, like ‘Spot the PC User’.

You can join the shuttle tour from any location, so get your eyes on the event handbook for lists of participating showrooms and bus loop maps. You’ll look like a tourist in your own city, but you’ll be in the company of Brisbane’s most creative. This is a design circle-jerk.

There are a couple of things I like being hit in the face with. One of those things is the smell when I walked into Bread and Butter, the new general store on Riding Road in Bulimba: a mix of freshly lacquered wood, crusty bread and hessian bags. Another thing? Crowbars. Kidding! I can’t actually think of anything else.

Bread and Butter is an interesting new addition for Brother Espresso. Instead of adding another standard coffee shop, the kind that has been springing up in different locations around Brisbane on a near-daily basis recently, Brother have opted for something new. This delightful, old-school, locally-sourced general store is right next to Brother Espresso’s Bulimba café – a combination that makes for a delicious Sunday morning.

Products include Collective Dairy gourmet yoghurts, Conscious vegan chocolate, Murchison-Hume cleaning products, and honey on tap from Stradbroke Island. Bread and Butter’s focus on the Sunday essentials (food, drink and something to read), with a couple of lovely organic non-essentials thrown in (hair product and vegan dog food) gives the store that satisfying, hand-picked quality 7-11 makes us yearn for.

If you’re scared you’ll miss Bread and Butter as you drive past the Oxford Street buzz, just look for the enviably charming trademark bicycle in the front window.

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.

The lyrics may be questionable, however his musical arrangements are sublime; the self-proclaimed ‘Disco King’ of Bollywood, Bappi Lahiri, will be playing in Sydney on June 9. In honour of this man’s colourful, dense, and nauseatingly fun compositions it’s time to take a brief trip back through the ages and review one of Lahiri’s many, many, many Bollywood scores.

Calcutta born and bred Lahiri moved to Bombay (see Mumbai) at the age of 19. His first score was featured in the movie Nanha Shakiri in 1973 but his first big hit came with the music he composed for Zakhmee. Alongside R.D. Burman Lahiri is credited with incorporating rock, funk, disco, and electro into traditional Indian song and rhythm structures, often with devastating results. For evidence of this check his (illegal!) adaptation of Herbie Hancock’s ‘Rockit’ for the 1985 film Baadal.

Aaj Kaa M.L.A. is an early 80’s action film Bollywood style. I can’t speak for the movie but Lahiri’s music is a kaleidoscope of Hindi love songs, four to the floor disco, and sweeping orchestral/brass compositions that delight the ears. Heralded by the sound of an insanely loud trumpet  ‘Tirupati Balaji’ is an intense mix of tablas, brass, and operatic singing. ‘Chalo Calcutta’ features a chugging drum machine, Suicidesque bassline, and a strings section that buzzes in and out like a pesky mosquito. ‘Main To Hoon Shree Ram Avtar’ starts off as a rather benign love song, which quickly morphs into cheesy but highly listenable disco sandwich.

As rich, spicy, and intense as Indian cuisine Lahiri’s music is an inspiration for the ear buds. Go and stuff it in!

Nika Danilova is as unstoppable as her music sounds. Zola Jesus, the band she conceived in rural Arizona (where her father hunted) is a constructed shamble of industrial and electronic sounds coupled with Nika’s operatic voice. With influences ranging from Ian Curtis to Michael Gira and Throbbing Gristle, her eclectic tastes are echoed in all of her releases. No biggie, but she’s had a song remixed by David Lynch and has collaborated with the likes of M83 and Orbital. She’s touring her album, Conatus, around Australia this month, and will be playing at Alhambra with Blank Realm and Palindromes. Sarah skyped with Nika who talked about a lack of Christian hate-mail, philosophy, David Lynch and her eagerness to travel across the Nullarbor.

Sarah Werkmeister: I heard on the grapevine that you have some interesting pre-show rituals – can you tell us about them?
Nika Danilova: I don’t really know? Why, what did you hear?

SW: That you request Vitamin C tablets before each show.
ND: Oh, doesn’t everyone? They’re just good when you’re touring. I chew ginger and honey and hot water…

SW: Do you ever get any weird fan/hate mail from Christians?
ND: Not as much as I was expecting. I’m kinda disappointed. Not any actually. I think we’re definitely in a more secular society, which is really good.

SW: This one’s from a reader, Matthew Gray wants to know “is there any chance of a Nick Cave / Zola Jesus supergroup called ‘The Devils Boner’?”
ND: (laughs) Yes. There is. I’m working on it right now, day and night (laughs more). (more…)

Writing fiction about rock music is a very risky business indeed, for every A Visit from The Goon Squad, there’s at least ten books like The Ground Beneath Her Feet that just get it all wrong. Stone Arabia is one of the good ones, throwing up a new slant on the rock star myth.

The book concerns Nik Worth, a musician who once had a shot, y’know, makin it back in the 70s, but has since fallen into obscurity. Despite not having an audience beyond his sister Denise and a few friends, Nik continues to make music obsessively. He creates an elaborate fantasy life for himself through series self-penned fake reviews he calls The Chronicles.  Though Nik has almost no audience, he pretends that each record he makes is pored over by an adoring rock press. Denise is Nik’s most devoted listener and the novel is told mostly through her voice. Denise frets over Nik, while trying to deal with her own life. At various points in the novel she finds herself paralysed by some story or other on the evening news.

I’ll level with you, Stone Arabia is a pretty humourless read with no jokes at all in these pages, well maybe there was one, but it wasn’t funny. It is, however, a pretty powerful meditation on what it means to create art, and the lust for an audience.