The Thousands

This week's magic potion recipe: 1 secret bird, 6 bike polo mallets, 2 of Kurt Vile's body parts, 2 dots from a Kusama artwork and some Australiana for good measure.

This weeks covershot comes courtesy of Joe Nigel Coleman. Be a total champ like Joe by sending us your covershots and funny jokes. Only photos with attached funny jokes accepted.

There’s much to hate about Gus Van Sant’s cancer weepie for the Frankie set, but I’ve only got 200 words here. Better spend them unpicking why, even though I have form despising manipulatively twee films, I didn’t mind this one. Indeed, it seems arbitrary to adore the similarly pretentious teen lovers in Submarine but disdain the doomed affair of morbid Enoch (Henry ‘Son Of Dennis’ Hopper) and terminally ill Annabel (Mia Wasikowska). Might the differences just be down to aesthetics – Alex Turner or Sufjan Stevens? Bobs and duffel coats or pixie cuts and op-shop finery? Twilit Welsh beaches or autumnal Portland woods? Depressive, dorky dad Noah Taylor or wise ghost kamikaze pilot Ryo Kase?

Restless lacks the uneasy mood that pervades Van Sant’s Elephant and Paranoid Park, and has very little original to say. But I found its obviousness – Annabel’s saintly demise restores Enoch’s joie de vivre – strangely refreshing. Many alt-romances fall over themselves to impress audiences with their totes-adorbz characters and quotably allusive dialogue. But Restless casts its audience as detached, indulgent observers. Rather than catharsis, it offers a more modestly poignant treat: watching young characters believe they’re the first to feel time-worn emotions.

Before he landed a job travelling the world playing music Kurt Vile drove a forklift at a brewery. There is still a bit of that forklift driver in Vile. You can hear it both in his songs and his phone manner. Loose, easy and free of bullshit. With a nod to classic rock, acoustic folk and a touch of psych, his music - like his conversation - is warm and familiar.

In a time of auto tunes and Nicki Minaj it's nice to hear an album with a few tics. The small cracks in his voice and the occasional mis-cued strum makes Kurt and his music all that more personable. Vile is a great songwriter but as a person he comes across as a regular guy. Yeah he's a new father but he's still the kind of guy who can pass out on a couch at a party with cupcake wrappers on his chest and people striking goofy poses next to him.

To say The Thousands are excited to be presenting Kurt Vile and the Violators on their debut Australian tour would be more than an understatement. With two extra shows announced in Sydney and Melbourne and a Friday night sunset spot at Meredith, this is going to be a pretty special tour. On the eve of his arrival I had a chat with him about fatherhood, his music, Springsteen and J Mascis.

What are your expectations of Meredith?

I've heard about it from touring a bunch recently. There seems to be a lot of Australians in Berlin for some reason and they have all been telling me about it. I mention that I'm playing Meredith and they immediately get homesick (ha). But any festival that has Grinderman and Mudhoney is going to be cool. You know it's not just going to be some indie fest. read more

Five years ago in Brisbane: your friends probably hadn't moved to Melbourne yet, The Thousands Brisbane was talking about coming into fruition, the New Farm River Walk was a really good place to ride your bike or take a walk, Ai Wei Wei hadn't been arrested, and GoMA was unveiled, opening with the fifth incarnation of the Asia Pacific Triennial. Now, not to get sentimental or anything, but Tsuyoshi Ozawa's futon mountain really did incite some hilarity, we all fell in love with Ai Wei Wei (again) and escaping the forked tongue of Brisbane summer into the cool air of GoMA was really just the only thing to do.

Five years later, the gallery is celebrating with flair and an exhibition program to match. There's Yayoi Kusama's 'Look Now, See Forever', (the lady who's obsessed with dots and infinity), the Matisse drawing exhibition, five years' worth of Australian Indigenous art, the James C Sourris AM Collection, which features ten years' worth of contemporary Australian art, and an amazing installation by Perth's Pip And Pop called 'We Miss You Magic Land'.

Oh, and there'll be a million artist talks and lectures where you can learn that Mattise wasn't and Kusama isn't just about pretty pictures. Attributed to 'helping Brisbane turn back its backwater vibe', celebrate GoMA's fifth birthday and look forward to the next five. Leave them a birthday card - Tanya from Pip & Pop made templates for just that reason.

All we seem to do these days is play dead in front of fans, wander aimlessly around air-conditioned shopping malls and talk only about the disgusting weather and nothing else. Sweat has become a styling product. Ice-cream is now a legit meal. It wasn't supposed to be like this! Summer, we ladies are not going to let you defeat us. We're going to be frivolous and free, enjoying cold beers and listening to Real Estate by the pool, and looking attractive in the process! In togs?

Togs! Not those itsy-bitsy ride-up, stringy things. But sturdy, comfy, ride-your-boogie-board-or-your-bike-in togs. There are no nip slips or crack flashes to be found in these high-waisted, Karla Spetic two piece sets. Utilizing the same geometric prints found in the label's 'Porcelain' collection, these bold babies can be easily mixed with other pieces. Hell you could even work the crop top style out and about. Nobody would complain.

Those who dream of running through sprinklers (water-restrictions abiding) these red lace Lover one pieces will ensure your neighbours feel more inclined to join in the fun than shut their blinds.

For the boys, happy days drinking beer in blow up pools are in order when wearing the latest range of shorts from Vanishing Elephant. Trippy prints and hammock-worthy stripes are toned down in muted colours. In togs we trust.

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.

Until recently 'Australiana' was quite a daggy noun. A word that induced visions of gum-nut baby earrings, visiting grandparents in Bundaberg, stinking hot dirt roads, Bob Katter and being made to wear Akubras at school camp. Recently though there's been a shift. An Australiana awakening. Suddenly old Blinky Bill books became retro, akubra hats are on trend and old dirt roads became wearable works of art.

With this new realisation, Everingham & Watson and their collection of rustic wares are quite appealing. Run by two Brisbane ladies with impeccably kitsch and cool taste, Everingham & Watson sell locally made gear with a touch of sentimental Australiana. Items far more useful and a lot less embarrassing than gum-nut baby earrings.

Potato sack handbags to replace your supermarket green bags, primary coloured vintage teapots to continue your Mad Men inspired life, wooden handled brushes to make cleaning just that little bit more stylish. From local artists to vintage furniture and Australian made beauty products, each item has been chosen with a great deal of love, affection and our sunburnt country in mind.

But here's the catch. If you want to get your hands on an Australian made cheese board, you'll have to be in the right place at the right time. Everingham & Watson aren't folk to stand still. Their pop-up store at Woolloongabba will be here for four days only. After that who knows which dusty road they'll be taking?

Blast cassette releases as the epitomy of hipster bullshit all you like. One listen to Secret Birds’ latest release, Moon Clouds Infinite, will make you realise exactly why this is a tape only release. It’s driving music! Preferably for that part of the highway between Tweed Heads and Byron Bay, but any open road is fine.

For the dilettante, Secret Birds is the stage name for the revolving line-up of psych jammers centred around one Damon Black. You know the dude that never forgets his cap? Describing their music as slo-mo-psych, Damon’s latest cassette doesn’t conceptually waver greatly from the Sun Araw and High Wolf influences of his earlier works (or his wah pedal), but this time progresses more organically in a more conjoined manner. The blissed and better Secret Birds are especially apparent with the drumbeats, which now roll as much as they do loop. See what I mean about this being driving music?

New sounds also make themselves apparent with a load of electronic drone instruments that Damon probably picked up in his sometimes Tokyo homeland. There’s even some tanpura on one track. No. Not tempura.

The Hideaway is as inconspicuous as it sounds. A veritable oasis in the desert of broken dreams (by dreams, I mean glass). After spotting this abandoned space, Jimmy, the owner, decided it's time to add some humble fun times to this side of the Valley, where you, dear reader, may eat your cafe fare and sip your soy latte during the day, and drink your liquor with class during the darker hours.

After entering the space, one feels as though this is the kind of cult-like cafe you'd find the beats at - exclusive, but not too exclusive, dapper, and somewhere to read your book without being scoffed at during your lunch break. The Hideaway is open night times for post-work readers and drink tipplers alike, and they play good old-timey blues, soul, and mod. The bar staff are nothing but passionate about their jobs, and they stock a good range of craft beers, ciders, spirits, and Byron Bay Coffee for your strong long black. Wear something inconspicuous and no-one will find you there.

The origin stories of polo are numerous. A personal favourite is that soldiers during the Spanish inquisition would cut off the heads of their adversaries and use them as balls, and their swords as mallets. Well that may or may not be fiction but fact is that bike polo in Brisbane is spreading like herpes.

If you want to learn the lack of laws or just watch a game, join the folks from Brisbane Hardcourt Bike Polo. Their growing crew play every Saturday and Sunday at Musgrave Park in South Brisbane from 2pm until sunset, and at the Powerhouse courts on Wednesdays from 3pm. These times can be changed as often as a player's buckled rims so it's best to check the Facebook page or website before coming down.

Here’s a quick how-to if you want to start your own game. Find yourself a basketball court and six people (it’s three on three). Hop on your bike. Pick up your mallet (or get along to one of BHPB's mallet making parties to make one). Get the ball into the other team’s goal. Easy!

It's a very casual setup of teams, once a pile of six mallets is made they're thrown in the air, so wherever your mallet falls that's where you play. You don't need any equipment and there is always someone willing to lend you their mallet and bike. And if you want to get serious about it (like you wouldn’t), go visit the boys at Gear Brisbane. Warning - Bike Polo is contagious.

Forget everything you’ve ever heard by The Cairos. Ignore their Triple J ambitions for a second and listen to this song. Yep! They’ve taken their time but these Brisbane boys have just made the step from good to great and will be playing a graduation show at Lamba to a swelling crowd. Joining them will be Toucan from Sydney, Tourism and Rawr Vanity.

One can’t avoid Mexican stereotypes when talking about the Hola Mexico Film Festival. It is literally filled like a piñata with tacos, moustachioed men, ponchos, Sol beer and border-jumping immigrants. Psych up with some Mariachi music and head on down to Tribal Theatre for the Opening Night Fiesta for Sol, Mad Mex eats and the first film of the festival, Acorazado.

For the experience of a mini festival without the dirt and grass all up in your crannies, Rare Finds 2011 is here. A showcase of up-and-coming local indie bands will perform before blowing up and taking over the airwaves. The music is spread over two stages, and you can even study up on your tunes beforehand with a free 13-track sample download.

The IMA is notorious for hosting one of Brisbane's best cocktail parties, holding the prize for 'most hay at a party' and 'weird arty cocktails that arty types chortle over during the night'. This year, they've got 'sex on the beach' cocktails - what a goldmine for strange minds! Not that we're into innuendo. Current exhibitions include Diana Thater and Tobias Zielony, DJ Swede Tooth and WTEM are playing, and all you need is a year membership (which, is only $25 for students or $50 for those of you employed folk), which both helps the IMA stay alive, and you stay informed. And drink cocktails every Christmas. Prost!

Gang Gang Dance make avant-pop that combines dance elements, disjointed beats and well, some frankly fucked up vocals. It sort of reminds me of putting a Bangkok disco into a blender then composing a record out of the sampled sounds while under the influence of local amphetamine yaba. You can’t call this stuff unoriginal, but you will be if you don’t catch this show. Especially considering Fabulous Diamonds and Anonymeye are supporting.

Among science fiction blog nerds, Star Trek is often credited with the invention of the flip phone and the tablet/iPad. They predicted the future by matching their current technology with human desire, and then some very smart people raided the prop department and turned their ideas into a reality.

What we know is that before you can predict the future, you must understand the present. So, as The Thousands continues to think about how we can make our content more convenient and mobile, we want to understand what mobile means to you. And, that’s what our Mobile Survey is all about.

In the survey there are only 12 multiple-choice questions that are so quick to answer you might even go back in time. We are also dangling the proverbial carrot with an iPad 2 to give away to one lucky survey taker. The draw is random and we’ll announce the winner on Twitter and Facebook next Wednesday. It’s simple, all you need to do is click here.