In recent memory, the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts has presented us with inflatable bouncy chambers, smoking benches, cheerleaders and live bacteria.  Eventually, even the culinary arts got a foot in the door with the Nadegata Instant Party’s art project come social experiment come cafe Yellow Cake Street.

The latter reminded us, amongst other things, that it’s pretty great to pair you art-viewing experience with a treat-tasting experience. The Nadegata Instant Party returned to Japan, but their departure fortuitously coincided with whiz kids Brian and Connor’s dreams of opening a bar. And so PICA’s watering hole – a one-time Cultural Centre haunt – was born anew.

The bar now boasts a remarkable range of art-themed cocktails, from the ‘Triptych #1′ to the ‘Spoonbridge’ and the ‘Fauve.’ The ancient arts of coffee preparation and cuisine are well represented, with hot Toby’s Estate brew and extensive breakfast and lunch menus. The bar still serves as a visual art space, too, with work selected by PICA lining the walls in a gallery-within-a-gallery effort that would make Xzibit‘s corn rows stand on end. It’s all too easy to neglect your taste buds when venturing out on art excursions. PICA Bar is the ideal stopover for those of us whose bellies are as big as our eyes.

Ex-Snowman Joe McKee has had a rough couple of years. Down one band and looking for answers, he’s spent the better part of the last few years sorting himself out and writing some songs of his own. His first solo album since the break-up of his long time band, Burning Boy is the fruit of that labour.

It plays a perfect follow-up to Snowman’s swansong Absence, where themes of homesickness and nostalgia give way to tracks that see McKee coming home from London and re-evaluating what it is that matters. These are dreamy songs lamenting the cruel joke of hindsight in tracks like ‘Golden Guilt’, as well as barefaced references to an idealised past in the Perth suburb of Kalamunda, with its view of the darling scarp in ‘Darling Hills’.

Recorded in Perth with local producer Dave Parkin, the likes of Schvendes’ Tristan Parr and Rachael Dease make appearances for strings and canned laughter in ‘Lunar Sea’. There’s a strong element of groggy looks back to the Australian bush land, peppered with London’s misty mornings in songs of a Grizzly Bear vibe. If you’ve ever needed proof that being down can be lovely, then Burning Boy is it.

It’s easy to let the minor Oscars pass by – hey, bless the winners, but the Academy Award for Best Sound Mixing kinda taps a niche demographic. Sadly though, year after year, the Oscar-nominated short films end up slipping away brutally under-rated. Lucky for us, Matt at 1Up has got his mitts on 2012′s Academy Award nominated short films, and he’s giving them a run in June.

For the scrubs, five films were nominated in total: Pentecost sums up how most kids feel about Sunday school by juxtaposing a young boy’s football preoccupation with his church service. Raju explores the hangover of colonialism as a German couple try to adopt a child in Mumbai, and The Shore draws bleak comedy out of friendship and distance in North Ireland. Time Freak tries to show what would happen if you gave a neurotic a time machine: it’s well thought-through, but the acting is rather scrappy. Tuba Atlantic is arguably the best film of the pack; it’s loosely about a dying Norwegian, an angel, a machine-gun, a flock of seagulls and a giant tuba. Grab some kool-aid and milk duds from Matt’s candy stash and enjoy the show.

Here’s another weirdly specific German word with an umlaut to file next to künstlerroman (look it up, Dedalus). Rückenfigur, a contemplative figure with their back turned in a landscape. Usually dwarfed by his or her surroundings, the Rückenfigur is closely associated with the work of German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, who used the figures as viewer surrogates, encouraging them to place themselves in the painting and thereby enhancing the experience of the landscape’s sublimity.

Though still beautiful, Melbourne-based artist David-Ashley Kerr’s photographs use the device to inquire “into the visualisation of place, in the context of Australian cultural identity and its relationship to physical environment.” There’s a playful ambiguity in the tiny specks of humanity lost in his large-format photographs. A lifeguard caught adrift in a seemingly waterless environment, what could be a parking inspector lost in a desert landscape.

I can’t remember whether we are meant to like sublimity at the moment because I lost Jerry Saltz’s phone number. So if we are, they are. If we’re not, they’re not.

German is easier than you think. Observe:

- Ws sound like Vs and Vs sound like Fs.
- IE sounds like EE (wiener schnitzel), EI sounds like EYE (Einstein).
- Er / sie / es = he / she / it, wo / was / wie = where / what / why, ist / sind / war = is / are / was.
- The second word in a sentence is always a verb (even if it sounds backwards). Remember that words like “is” and “have” are verbs too, y’know.
- Ignore all that der / die / das “gender” rubbish. You’re post-gender. If you’re confronted with a real-life native German just guess and when you’re wrong they’ll think you’re funny / cute.
- Effed if I know how future tense works, but who cares about the future. You’re not actually German.
- The rest is just vocabulary and Hogans Heroes and The Great Escape (or The Dirty Dozen if you’re a war criminal).
- Fancy conjunctions like because (weil) and but (aber) send the second verb to the end of the sentence.

Seriously, that’s pretty much it. Exercises:

Ich bin fett, weil ich Wiener Schnitzel esse. I am fat because I wiener schnitzel eat.
Der is ein Schnauser in mein Liederhosen. There is a dog in my pants.
Ich bin in ein sehr unbequemer Platz. I am in a very uncomfortable place.
In die Rückseite ein VW? In the back of an economy sized car?

And the Lord looked down on the sons of men and said, “Let there be more greyhounds on pants. Chinos, in particular.”

And Jesen listened, and the Lord saw that the greyhound print chinos were good and instructed Comeback Kid to waive the shipping fees so that the sons of men may cover their shame cheaply. And He also specified that they should be available in classic khaki and forest green, and bare the likenesses of over fifty famous greyhounds. Spot them all!

Now, let us pay.

Andrew Morgan runs People’s Potential Unlimited (PPU), the Washington DC label that discovers and reissues some of the weirdest and most insane ultra-rare boogie, funk and soul from the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. His latest gem/find is Uku Kuut. Not a lot is known about Uku. He was born in the Soviet Union and raised in Sweden and Santa Monica. When Morgan tracked him down he was recording and producing music in Tallinn, Estonia. As an 11 year old he performed as a vocalist alongside some of Estonia’s top jazz musicians and his mother is legendary Estonian singer Marju Kuut.

On Visions of Estonia, Uku produces a mad blend of funk and soft jazz. Written and recorded at his home studios in Los Angeles and Stockholm between 1982 and 1989, the album matches left-field beats with lost ’80s boogie groove. All recorded on domestic and Soviet electronic gear. Songs such as ‘Real Love‘ and ‘Secret Dream‘ sound like they could accompany the outro of an ’80s morning television program. The closing ‘Right or Wrong’, with its strutting boogie and crooning vocals, proves that while some get ready to bag out the Eurovision song contest not all Eastern Euro songs are lame.

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.

Previously, they’ve done some pretty cray things with paper, and put Ollie Henderson in basically the best two-piece trackie ever. August Street is Ainsley Hansen (ex Socialight and Uscari); it’s also a place in Birdwood, South Australia, and now the label, not the street, has gone done become an e’shop.

The current range is Navajo Dreaming and while you’ll probably cream for the Aztec happy pants and the tuxedo jacket made of totem dreams, this new online postcode is also an exercise in patience and bookmarking. Cos the upcoming Summer 2012 featuring Ollie in some sports-suit wonders and a Nike cap has got it on lock, and Spring featuring Krystal Glynn (styled by some Sydney bloggers and Navajo model Rachel Rutt) ain’t too shabby-looking either. From what we’ve peeped there’s ample velvet and a functional jumpsuit. E’xcellent.

It’s the question on everyone’s mind: if a jazz band and the motley amalgamation of all things rock n roll met head to head in a soccer match, who would win? Now in its third year, the Crustacean Cup attempt an answer to that most burning of questions. Featuring a round robin of teams that include teams Mictacea, Crabs FC and The Rock Lobsters, plus new addition, the WA Youth Jazz Orchestra’s The Able Seamen, expect a throwdown like you’ve never seen before.

Playing at Russell Square and featuring mid-play performances from a raft of local talent including Astral Travel, smRts, and many more, ever-dependable RTR presenter and local compère of all things, Peter Barr, will make sure you make a day of it, along with the NRG cheer squad. La Cucaracha tacos and Gift of Taste Polish donuts available, or raise it up a notch and bring a packed picnic. You can bet that one genre proves itself in better shape than the other, while enjoying a Sunday afternoon that trumps all other Sunday afternoons. Not to be missed.