The Thousands

Woweee! How did this happen it's basically 2012. Scroll down for our Christmas checklist: gift guide, tree, bicycle wine rack, plastic surgery, massive wieners. Special thanks go to our work experience student Lenny, who has been itching to send us this link since last Friday. Lenny will be available to hire in 2014. But not if we hire him first.

Cover image by Nick Found. Be deadly like Nick! Send covershots to melbourne.photo@thethousands.com.au.

Made up of past and present members of Boomgates, Teen Archer, Infinite Void and the Diamond Sea, the Melbourne punk pedigree runs deep in Deep Heat. But their debut EP Low Lights isn't just a punk record. Sure you can hear hints of Sleater Kinney, Sonic Youth and sons of the Pacific northwest the Wipers but Jacquie, Gus, Katie and Alicia also mix some garage and '90s pop into the harder-edged melody and guitar.

From the opening 'Green Box' the album is driven by the three-way shout and response vocals with the hoarseness of Gus matched with the more melodic Jacqui and Alicia. Check 'Negative Thought', where it sounds like Gus is blowing his vocal chords to bits. I caught the band at a small house party a while ago where Gus indeed did just that - and although he cant speak/sing Danish it was at the same party that the band's energy and guitar sound reminded me of Danish punks Cola Freaks.

The eight songs have been mixed and recorded by Plutonic Lab (one half of revered Melbourne hip hop duo Muph and Plutonic) and, while thankfully there are no 'beats', the driving and propulsive buzz of the percussion and bass is win win.

Disclaimer: I have a Pipi crush. Ever since an ex-boyf’s mum gave me one of her books, I have been in love with the work and quirk of Pipilotti Rist. Pipi is a Swiss video artist famous for her screen works and installations featuring languid, techno-coloured landscapes, nubile nymphs and hypnotic soundtracks. In the '80s and '90s she was in an all-girl band called Les Reines Prochaines and her favourite number is 54.

Before the digital revolution, bullet-time and the Matrix, there was Pipi – messing with the space-time continuum and the medium of VHS, singing a chipmunk rendition of The Beatle’s 'Happiness is a Warm Gun'. Her 1986 'I’m Not the Girl Who Misses Much' was a seminal, proto-MTV generation piece o’ work, all blurry titties, analogue effects and grrrrl power.

If you like happiness, the colours pink, blue, yellow, red, orange and green and you have a heartbeat – do NOT go and see New Years Eve (the movie)! Instead, get a goodly dose of screen-based ‘pleasure principle’ at the first major Pipi-art survey in Australia, featuring a new commission that’s almost certain to technicolour your retinas. Lay back, bask in the big screens, let the pixels wash over and get erogenous.

IMAGES: Pipilotti Rist, Gravity be My Friend / Pipilotti Rist, I Couldn’t Agree with you More

If you've read complex academic writing and thought, "This wouldn't bore me to tears if instead of abstract theoretical concepts it was densely packed with emo boys, all-male incest, French pop culture, high art, cannibalism, and Manga," you've basically envisioned The Marbled Swarm.

Dennis Cooper has obsessed over a number of these topics in the past; to me, it feels like Swarm picks up where the final in his George Miles cycle - Period - left off, exploring similar themes but with the opposite approach to that book's stark minimalism.

The titular 'Swarm' is what our narrator calls his prose, an elaborate mix of double-negatives, innuendo, and abutting analogies that jumps back and forth chronologically. It's super confusing, and some will say incomprehensible, but that's part of the point. How we process reality, construct a fantasy, and develop our sexual preferences or (ahem) personal taste (cannibalism!), is all in our heads - and often equally complicated.

Like recommending Mysterious Skin, Happiness, or Gummo, there's a handful of traumatic scenes, but I reckon they're worth weathering for this excellent read. Set in Cooper's adopted home of France, Swarm weaves through magic tricks, secret passages, doppelgangers, and elaborate make-believe with the creeping horror of Luna Park, the narrative subjectivity of The Usual Suspects, and a gripping sensationalism that's quintessentially Cooper.

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.

Frankie and Swiss is a boutique textile company specialising in small runs of natural-fibre fabrics custom made in Australia. Sisters Michelle and Jacqui have enlisted the services of Florence - a comely two-tonne stainless steel digital textile printing machine - to help interesting people print their own designs on fabric. People other than Karl Lagerfeld or Spotlight. One of the greatest things about Frankie and Swiss is there are no minimums! One-offs and one-pieces are are not frowned upon. You could print a teepee or some spaghetti and Florence would still be okay with it.

By strictly enforcing Australian-made, Frankie and Swiss support local makers and artisans - such as Dawn Tan, who turned to Frankie and Swiss to print her infamous meat pillowcases on fluffy soft organic cotton. Dawn says, "they can be used not only as a pillowcase, but also as a VERY decadent Ham bag if one wishes." Christmas = TICK (except for vegetarians.)

Frankie and Swiss also encourage collaboration. This is what the Leaf series is all about. No, I am not talking about put-a-leaf-on-it designs your mum would like. I am taking about Limited Edition Art Fabrics, created in collaboration with Australian designers and artists who work across a range of mediums. Your eyes here because the first project will launch early next year.

There is great joy in giving people gifts when the gift you give them just nails gift giving to the wall hard. It's now ten days out from doomsday. That's enough time to get a gift that kills it but not really enough time to browse around. We help. Our annual Christmas shopping/gift guide tackles Christmas shopping hell by breaking things into gift categories; homewares, books and music, clothing and accessories, and miscellaneous things you can give anyone. And we've stuck to a budget of up to $80.

With the whole Occupy Christmas thing going on, we also thought it important to focus solely on bricks and mortar stores. So once we settled on a real world store, Penny sent a two-man crack team in to snoop around for the best gifts, take a photo and see how easily they can be stuffed into your average sized Christmas stocking. The result is books! Ceramic bowls! Socks! Body products! All photographed and price listed for you.  read more

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.

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 Lions Club Xmas Tree Farm. My family has been in the business of going to the Xmas Tree 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 Xmas 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 Xmas.

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.

There’s one born every minute. Brand new cafes with passable to great coffee/food, store bought design, a gimmick or two, a couple of beardy baristas and a line out the door on day one. But Patricia have made it their point of difference to cut out the bullshit.

Sure, the coffee is outstanding - roasted by Seven Seeds with a few cameos here and there and presided over by the company’s former frontman (proud parent of Patricia) Bowen Holden - but it only comes in one size (7oz) and two colours (black or white) with a few obvious exceptions/embellishments. And the interior is slick - perpetrated by Foolscap and Beyond the Pixels. As for food, there ain’t none but for a few morsels - pastries, donuts and the like. Nor are there any seats. Yep, ‘standing room only’, as the mosaic on the threshold states.

And while there are plenty of other things these guys are doing to keep you interested, it’s what they’re not that makes this place as refreshing as their built-in soda fountain.

There's so much to tell you about these massive wieners I don't know where to start. As soon as Dave Brennan and Liam Magee opened their hot dog stand I started to worry that the puns would run out, but have a look at their Twitter. Last night Dave was posting new gems such as, "There's nothing quite like sitting in the sun with a massive wiener in ur hand..." and even, "Do you think they'd let our massive wieners through customs?" Today while I was standing at the counter a rich looking baldie drove by in a 4WD with three kids in the back and shouted, "Look at those MASSIVE WIENERS!" I believe what we are seeing here is gift to the world of comedy.

Now. On to business. Dave and Liam don't do things by halves. Their standard wiener is a foot-long hot dog. They make size concessions for snacks, though: the 6-inch 'Average Joe' and the 3-inch 'Little Pecker'. At the moment the menu includes the classic wiener, the kraut wiener, the pickle wiener, the vegan-friendly (soy) wiener and the chilli wiener - all served with ketchup and American mustard (apart from the chilli, which has beef and bean chilli sauce). They are not sagging on the beverages either: Mexican Coke, ginger beer and, for a limited time, the Sunny Boys they bought at Campbells Cash and Carry. Also, Dave has a bus driver’s license so look out for some massive wieners on the road this summer.

Clothes for sale, ladies! Are we done here? For three days, Cavallero’s new upstairs bar will be filled with cut-price clothes from above., TV, Estelle Deve, Young Hunting and OTT by Lia T. If you like the clothes, you buy them (cash only) and then you wear them on your body. This protects you from sun, wind and rain and makes you look good at the same time. Ladies I don’t really know what else you need from me here.

Dagmar Rousset are closing down. Which is incredibly sad because a) they are the best, b) it's a sign that even the best of the best Melbourne retailers are feeling it and c) what the fuck are we going to write about in our GOODs section when they're gone? To celebrate this shooting star, Dagmar are throwing a party. Dress code is 'intergalactic zeal'.

When George Fuechsel coined the truism "garbage in, garbage out" he could hardly have anticipated the age of Naysayer and Gilsun. It's not only the laws of computing they violate. Their pop cultural denominator is set so low that they truly can divide by zero. Divide it into tiny pieces and project it on gigantic screens. Divide your legs into a series of independent movements commonly referred to as dancing. A beautiful marriage of the audio and visual. Because I believe that marriage is between an audio and a visual, not and audio and an audio (or the inverse). They're working with two senses, bub. Though I hear they smell great too. Watch Volume 1 of NGTV and catch the fever and don't worry it's not an actual fever.

It's appropriate that Tim Sweeney is playing around Christmas. Right now Jesus is about the only person that Tim Sweeney hasn't had on his radio show Beats in Space. That guy probably has good taste in music. Good taste for a made-up person anyway. Or maybe Tim Sweeney *is* Jesus. In either case you are buying a ticket. You don't want to make Jesus cry do you? Or maybe you do. Jesus's tears taste of maple-smoked bacon and the dreams of children. See how essential this gig is? I can fill it with absolute tripe and it doesn't matter. You've probably even stopped reading. Which is why I can tell you I had sex with your bed when you were at work yesterday. Not in your bed, with your bed.

Jaff is being very coy, very low key about the official launch of his new basement dive The Liberty Social. "It's just a small, no frills bar/boozer... It's simply just a hang out," he says. But isn't that what everybody wants? I mean, that's the premise for Cheers and I defy anyone to say they haven't fondly imagined sinking a few brewskis with Norm. One thing he's right about is that it is small. Best get there early. Lock in begins at four. Hangovers begin the next day. The band room begins at a unspecified time in the future.

Let's break it down into 'Layman Terms'. If you make a 'Cameo' to this show at the Curtin on Saturday night you will have 'Nothing' to lose and 'Everything' to gain. Basically it would be a really 'Bright Idea'. Okay enough of the bullshit grade five English writing assignment. Get to this show no matter. It includes the mighty Boomgates returning to the Curtin, which they sold out earlier in the year. If you have seen them perform you will know what I mean when I say this is a 'must go' show, even before you look at the supports. But check em out: Bitch Prefect, Sean Bailey and the dark folk of Lakes and Eddy Current Suppression Ring's Brad Barry stepping out on his own.

Do you think Flying Nun bands ever get sick of the press mentioning Kurt Cobain was into their scene? Probably. Anyway so the story goes Kurt loved Axemen so much after a trip to New Zealand he systematically hunted down every one of their releases (which wouldn’t have been easy considering Axmen were shambolic hippy types who released stuff sporadically). Wednesday at the Tote will be Melbourne’s last ever chance to see them play (unless they reform again). It’s also Circle Pit’s only Melbourne show for the year, the last stop on Mad Nanna’s national tour. There’ll be support from ‘Australia's best militant vegan hardcore band’ xNoBBQx, The Satanic Rockers, and Nth Wheel DJs.

Until now there have been only two kinds of wine racks: The oak wood kind your dad bought after watching Sideways. And the novelty kind, where the wine bottle morphs into a phallus (cue Italian waiter statue trying to carry his larger-than-life Pinot). No one had even considered the plight of cyclists. Cyclists who are trying to fulfill their dinner guest duties, riding down Sydney Road like a Vin Diesel wannabe with one hand steering the bike, the other carrying a bottle of vino. It took so long to remedy this OH&S nightmare, but finally the solution is here: The Bicycle Wine Rack.

This new wine rack genus is hand made in Montreal by Oopsmark and, if you value living, it's the only way you can safely transport wine while cycling. It attaches to any 1" bike frame, securely clamps closed with an antique brass fastener and can adjust to fit various 3" bottles. You'd expect such a creation to look similar to the head gear contraption you wore in year seven, but instead it's made of olive oil-treated vegetable-tanned leather. The same ingredients Jerry Hall lathered onto her pregnant stomach in the '80s - so you know, it will age beautifully.

And guess what you peddlers? Our favourite Australian online bike accessories shop CycleStyle is their newest stockist. Order one here! Or try your luck as follows. Thanks to CycleStyle we have one bicycle wine rack to give away. To enter, just answer the following question.