The Thousands

"There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist," said Mark Twain, born 176 years ago as of yesterday. He would later add, "Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it." So don't listen to Mark Twain. What a bum out. Listen to Kurt Vile, who trusts his friends not to draw a dick on his face. And Donny Benet, who gives hope the young bald men of Australia. And Matt Hurst, who delegated a chapter of his book to the Victoria Police Cycle Unit.

Covershot by Jemimah Gray. Be deadly like Jemimah! Send covers to melbourne.photo@thethousands.com.au.

‘Casual’ is a relative term. I consider my bike riding ‘habit’ casual for the simple fact that I don’t wear Lycra, but to the 4WD that side-swiped me on my way to write this here review I am probably a fanatic, occupying the road in an effort to destroy the petroleum industry. It’s a matter of perspective.

All this is simply a way of saying that Matt Hurst’s new book The Casual Cyclist’s Guide is the guide to own if you don’t know whether or not owning a book on cycling pushes you out of the casual category and into the serious. You want to get the most out of your velocipede without appearing to care to do so, and herein lie the insider tips that will make your life on the road all the more enjoyable.

Want to know the secret routes to avoid Melbourne’s worst streets? Matt’s got it covered. How about a bike tour of the best gallery openings for a boozy Thursday night? Well here are some maps, dummy. Fancy a sake crawl? You get the picture.

Along with the routes and tips a cavalcade of stars contribute anecdotes and asides, including pieces by The Thousands’ very own Jeremy Wortsman, Penny Modra, Max Olijnyk and Oslo Davis, as well as the Victoria Police Cycle Unit. There’s also a history section that reads more or less like a list of archaic words for the bike from yesteryear. My favourites are the hobbyhorse and the boneshaker. Makes the fixie seem entirely sensible.

Graphic design luminaries from either side of the pond Luke Wood (NZ) and Stuart Geddes (Collingwood) are both aces at making shit look good with the computer. It makes sense that these guys (and many more like them) have become obsessed “reconnecting their heads with their hands” by building and riding vintage motorbikes. They’re all about hunting down parts, talking to old men in sheds, piecing it together, making it work.

Head Full of Snakes is like the bridge between their two worlds. It’s a carefully crafted deluxe fanzine of sorts, printed using the riso on pulpy, rough paper. It looks lovely. Within its 108 pages, HFoS delves into all kinds of interesting cul-de-sacs of motorcycle culture - like a sweet photo essay of salt flat racers by Tobias Titz, an interview with John Taylor-Leigh (secretary of New Zealand's Norton Owners Club), Jason Crombie's story about his Dad's long lost petrol head brothers, and a comic strip called 'Biker Wolves' that is as awesome as it sounds. There’s even a flexidisc insert, with a four-and-a-half-minute cover of Richard Thompson's '1952 Vincent Black Lightning', which is actually a recording of Paul Elliman riding a 1952 Vincent Black Lightning for four and a half minutes.

As awesome as it looks, it’s all about the stoke that these pages amplify. HFoS makes me excited, even if I still have no intention of ever riding a motorcycle. It is a vessel of enthusiasm, it makes me want to do something and that’s one of the best things that a thing can be.

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

If an angle is the soul of wit then "Japan you so crazy" is a straight line. And if a straight line is a road then sometimes you have to take the road more travelled. Because goddamnit Japan, you so crazy.

Yoshimasa Ishibashi's Milocrorze is an anthology film of sorts with Takayuki Yamada (of Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins) in multiple roles. Though it can feel more like Eddie Murphy in The Klumps than Alec Guinness in Kind Hearts and Coronets. It features the youth counsellor Besson Kumagai who "can instantly solve problems faced by young men in love" by giving them aggressive, nonsensical advice and breaking into dance routines with hot ladies in bikinis. The story of Tamon begins as a romance with a florist then transforms into a violent, stylised samurai film set in a hyperreal bordello. These vignettes are bookended by the story of Ovreneli Vreneligare, first as a child and later as an adult, hopelessly in love with the ageless, titular Milocrorze.

It comes as no surprise that Ishibasi's directorial background is in advertisements and television sketch comedies. The film can feel like it was made by a lovelorn meth addict who has just completed a course in After Effects. This isn't always to its detriment. A sword fighting sequence in the brothel, though perhaps overlong, is strikingly imaginative. Like the Crazy 88 sequence in Kill Bill Vol. 1 played out in one slow motion, horizontal tracking shot.

Like so many Japanese films it can leave you confused whether it just seems crazy because you don't possess the required cultural context or whether it is, indeed, that crazy. I'll let you make that call.

Donny Benet. His legendary backstory precedes him. We've heard about his father, the Italian disco accordionist who's worked with Giorgio Moroder, and we've heard of Donny's regular gig at the Scalabrini Retirement Village. We've heard of his stint in Las Vegas hotel lobbies, and we've heard of Donnyland Studios.

But we've also heard Don't Hold Back, and felt encouraged by his smooth disco message. The music scene is a better and gladder place for his amazing bass and synth skills, his crisp white suits and his happy grin.

Most lately the Internet is going crazy for his new video clip, 'Sophisticated Lover'. It features the Knight Rider car, excellent outfits, and a guy who so resembles Donny the Internet thought it was finally getting to meet his famous father.

What was it like driving the Knight Rider car? Did you actually get to drive it?

(laughs) It had no brakes. Halfway through the day the brakes failed, and I had to drive around Melbourne peak hour in a Knight Rider with no brakes. So, that was pretty scary.

Oh my God that's like a real Knight Rider mission! Or something...

Yeah (laughs) and actually everyone kept on trying to drag race me at the traffic lights, but the Knight Rider car was really slow. read more

These are beautiful bags as with everything at Mr Kitly. The multi-purpose cinch-top bucket bag and the tote are hand made from a combination of brass trimmings, leather straps and pulls, and handwoven 100% cotton brocaded fabric by Proud Mary. And why wouldn't she be. I'd be proud to have that soft salmon, grey etch or black and white cinch hitting my hip.

And if you do find yourself with a Proud Mary cinch on your hip you should know that's a bonafide piece of social entrepreneurship you've got there. They're solving the world's big problems using entrepreneurship skills. So it's about changing stuff with commercially viable good stuff, not in that hippie protest kind of way. Hand made in Guatemala, Proud Mary is opening up new markets and building economies. They're also redefining the problem of the pom pom by somehow managing to pull off the pom pom.

Pop up shops. When will the pop ups stop? Even Tyler the Creator has one. So when Lucy Feagins of The Design Files decided to take her blog to the third dimension she knew she had to do something different. The result: The Design Files Open House - a partnership with The Project Agency's Esther Navarro-Orejon. Lucy and Esther have refitted a Fitzroy house with locally made furniture, artworks, homewares, textiles and accessories and EVERY. SINGLE. THING. IS. FOR. SALE.

It's open from today (Thursday) at 10am until Sunday at 5pm. But if you think you're going to be able to just stroll in like Ricky Swallow at a Californian trinket bazaar you'd better think again. Design Files readers are faster at shopping than you. So you must be strategic. That is why I painstakingly hand drew you a map of where to find the best things in the house before anyone else.

Sure I was kinda inspired by Alcatraz’s guided tours, but deep down I only want the best for you (and your interiors). Click through for a 16-step guided tour and strategy. read more

We all have those moments when we think, sure, there are a million great things on tonight but fuck it, I'm just going to go home and take off my pants. Removing yourself from social interaction can only last so long, usually until you have to go to work the next day or you run out of peanut butter and/or episodes of Breaking Bad.

For over a million people in Japan, this home-bound social avoidance can go on for decades! Hikikomori - or 'shut-in syndrome' - is an acute personality disorder resembling post-traumatic stress but with symptoms unique to the Japanese environment. After experiencing a social trauma, hikikomori confine themselves to their bedrooms for days, months and - in extreme cases - years on end, existing on a diet of anime, manga, gemu (video games), online chats and forums, surviving only through their almost parasitic dependence on their parents.

Eugenia Lim is a video and cross-media artist who uses her practice to question themes of identity, cultural stereotypes, mythology and race. Her latest body of work, Oasis, draws on the Hikikomori phenomenon. Through a series of light boxes, videos and installations in which she is her own subject, Lim evokes the cave-like bedroom pillow fortress of the troubled Japanese recluse, referencing the Shintu myth of Amaterasu, the sun goddess who locked herself in a cave and caused the earth to descend into darkness.

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.

I feel bad for farming types, forced to advertise eggs and organic onions on highway letterboxes. Because a) I have poor hand/eye coordination and stopping is difficult and b) everyone knows they are probably serial killers… Everyone but my friend Geeta, that is. Geeta particularly likes buying honey from out-of-towners and will travel.

But why leave home when you can just install 30,000 bees in your own backyard?

So, Geeta and I went to a beekeeping workshop at CERES. I was there to learn about safety and hives among a group of like-minded individuals. She was there to pick up. It was win-win. Bee/honey enthusiast Lyndon Fenlon of Bee Sustainable fame took us, along with the other dummies, through the basics. We learnt everything from setting up a hive and maintaining it to the wonders of swarms and how to keep them in check. The day included donning beekeeping paraphernalia, extracting some of the sweet stuff and taking it home in a jar to eat in front of friends (because that’s how I roll). That, and Geeta met someone nice.

Note: The next workshop is this Sunday! The same day as Triple R's annual BBQ day broadcast from CERES.

There was a time when adding a splash of milk to her liquorice leaves was the height of liquid indulgence for Hannah Dupree but past guilty pleasures are giving way to far more sophisticated hedonistic habits as she opens Storm in a Teacup - a bar and retail shop dedicated to making special tea its specialty.

In the drastically made-over ex-Trippy Taco site, the bar serves everything from old faithful Earl Greys and English Breakfasts to Oriental Beauty Oolongs and heirloom herbals to home-made bubble cups and cocktails – as well as plenty of the above to take home and brew your own. There are even a couple of filter coffee options thanks to Five Senses for those unwilling caffeine converts.

Hannah got into tea after having a baby five years ago and has been slurping and researching ever since – a steep learning curve given the drink is over four thousand years old. And while such a highbrow approach to a seemingly simple beverage might seem intimidating, Hannah and her team are here to educate not dictate so they won’t look at you sideways if you fancy a bit of milk and a sugar or two.

I have no angle for Twenty & Six Espresso. The last café I wrote up was grungy, slapdash and slightly illegal; it had crates, it was a little bit dangerous, it practically wrote itself. Twenty & Six has crates too but they’re nice crates. Madja – who runs the place with her ex-graphic designer partner Nedim – used to be an interior designer. She’s responsible for the nice crates. She’s also responsible for open spaces, clean look, classy cups imported in from Croatia and (my personal favourite) the quirky glasses that look like crumpled plastic. It’s very inviting but it’s not exactly an angle.

In the not too distant future they’re planning to convert their bluestone cellar into a subterranean serving zone. When that happens, it’ll be the North Melbourne café with the awesome subterranean serving zone / potential bomb shelter. Until it does Twenty & Six Espresso will just have to known as a North Melbourne café that has great coffee, lovely staff and is far enough away from Errol Street to be a little bit of a secret.

I will say this though: they served me an Indonesian hot cocoa drink that’s was so good I gulped it down on a 30 degree day and their pizza (fior di latte, goats cheese, roasted red capsicum and sremska sausage) was so good both me an old Italian-looking dude named Alfonso sitting near me gave it the thumbs up.

The Tote is 30 years old and we are marking the occasion by throwing a party. I know. We have a birthday party planning department! Right and we called Super Wild Horses, Pageants, Pearls and Chook Race. They are now playing. And we are organising a prop box to go next to the stage so in between sets you can dress up and have your photo taken as though you are playing at The Tote. And we organised DJ Maggot and DJ Pork Chop to play. And we organised a free BBQ and will host a cake competition for cakes that have a loose Tote theme and it'll be judged by Hayley from Super Wild Horses and Sticky Fingers Bakery. And it's happening. And you can register for the cake competition here and then our birthday party planning department will be in touch and hold you to your commitment.

Here are six good reasons to get excited about this season’s Rooftop Cinema. First and foremost, ice cream. Real good stuff too, we’re not talking Billabongs that’ve been frozen so long they have an icy crust. Second, Wynona Rider, lot’s of her, in fact an entire week’s worth everyone’s favourite shoplifting, brown-eyed minx. Third, hilarious classics aplenty (Revenge of the Nerds, Don’t tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, you get the idea); forth, Leonardo DiCaprio - watch as his skull expands from a baby-faced heartthrob in Romeo + Juliet to the alarmingly-sized, intense-o-face we all know and love from Inception; fifth, local features and documentaries aplenty (Meredith: A weekend in the County, Autoluminecent: Roland S Howard, you get the idea).

Last but not least, every movie will have an intermission, this is great for people like me who have a bladder the size of a shrivelled raison. It’s also terrific for people wanting to impress their dates with the witty banter they’ve been saving up since opening credits. Opening night will feature plenty of boozy hob-knobbing with a montage-style season highlights reel running in the background.

Oslo Davis has struck upon something novel. Instead of using a pen to create glyphs which are then ordered into 'words' which you use a complex neurological process to decode and derive meaning from (colloquially: 'read') he uses a pen to create representational illustrations of people and objects in two dimensions (colloquially: 'draw'). The lack of lexical decryption required to understand drawings is great if you dedicate a lot of thought to breathing or sitting without falling down.

But drawings aren't only for stupids, no no. We know this because everyone that buys a copy of Oslo's new book Libraryland! is spectacularly intelligent, breathtakingly good looking and possessing of a kind of earthy sexuality that provokes rapturous desire in attractive Ph.D. candidates. It's a whole book dedicated to drawings he made whilst sequestered in the State Library. Drawings of "the Library staff, people walking, talking, looking at art, readings books, tapping away on their laptops, sleeping, ascending and descending stairs - you name it!" Not a word in sight. You can buy the book at the launch and take in some of the original artwork. You may even get to speak to or touch Oslo. Definitely not both.

If you are the kind of person who thinks "you know what I would like to do? Purchase things that other people see fit to discard" the second some frosty lager hits your awaiting lips then, boy oh boy, do I have the event for you. Available for sale: The usual array of bullshit you can wear, carry or throw into the bin the second you get home. But this time in a pub!

If you want to see 4AD's disco-loving avant-pop darlings Gang Gang Dance, as supported by indie-electro locals Forces and presented by Penny Drop, don't dawdle about it - tickets are by all accounts "selling fast" and will be gone before you've strapped your dancing shoes on. Get yr tix here. Did you get them? Okay if not don't worry because Michael Kucyck's organising an afterparty on Thursday at Buffalo Club.

Who is your favourite New Orleans 'sissy bounce' diva? If it ain't Big Freedia (pronounced “Free-da”) yo' need your head checked! For she is the James Brown of 'bounce' - the banging bass heavy call and response music of New Orleans that is, in one word, MENTAL! She is coming to Melbourne to play Meredith but also this amazing side show at the Toff. But check this! From 7pm there will be a bounce 'dance class' that is free to everyone. Learn the ABCs of P-poppin. During the class, discussions about the body movements are explained and people are encouraged to discuss such topics as feminine sexual empowerment, cultural-reciprocation, the implications of the Bounce 'beat' and how it affects individuals personally. This is what they say on ther FB event: “People of ALL genders and all identities are encouraged to participate in the class. The 'pussy' is the focus of the movement, though those without a physical one will be put in touch with their own etheric 'pussy'."

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.