The Thousands

Even if you are the type of  twenty year old fuddy duddy that spends most of their days inside playing old showtunes on an untuned piano, you will find plenty of good reasons this week to revisit those days of being young and wild: hang loose and embrace the helter skelter.

Covershot by Sergey Kostromin. Play it like Sergey! Email us your best cover shot.

Just so you know, Christmas is less about painfully forced family rituals and more about filling a bloated post festive lunch paunch with beer until you’re pissed, then passed out on a floor you won’t recognise in the morning. The guys at Dada Records get it, thus capturing the true spirit of Jesus’ birthday with the ‘Batman Smells’ compilation. It features a bunch of local bands performing their versions of the good ol’ Xmas carol, plus some other random shit.

Dirty psych-blues duo Allbrook Avery have their version of ‘O Christmas Tree’ that involves repeating the title over and over again above a fuzzed-out racket. A brilliantly unquiet version of ‘Silent Night’ comes from trash-punk bogans Frozen Ocean, while the only thing ‘Christmassy’ about prog-noise oufit Water Temple’s song ‘Christmas in Hellis’ is its name. Then there’s bands like Golden Staph and Kurbist Gong Band doing songs that are off-topic but for them familiar, while Pauline Manson wins the prize for telling it like it is in opener: “Christmas time is here, someone get me a beer.” That’s the spirit.

It’s true. Life as a cyclist changes you. I’m not going to get all preach-y about being a better person but as a socially aware cyclist - nay, philanthropist - myself, I can tell you we’re healthier, fitter, smarter and way more coordinated than the rest of you. Not to mention the fact we’re reducing our own carbon emissions and saving the f**king planet!

The writers at Boneshaker Magazine are cyclists too and they’ve got their own publication to prove it. It covers everything from the history of bike polo to the CMWC (that’s Cycle Messenger World Championships for the plebs), plus a moving account by a writer who didn’t change his bike tyre when he should have. There are breathtaking photos from a cycling trip through Central Asia, as well as the shock revelation by Gambian freestyle riders that they like their bikes more than football. And if that doesn’t make you want to jump the next saddle and ride it, then you don’t have a soul.

Most creatives don’t enjoy the idea of the wider public looking closely at something they haven’t finished yet. It takes bravery to fling open the doors of your working space and let people cast their beady, judgmental eyes on work that is incomplete. But there is also a lot of art theory centered around notions of deconstruction - theory that argues the execution of a project is witnessed in the undertaking of the artistic process itself. Open studios and corresponding artist discussions, like those PICA has done regularly for many years, give us the rare opportunity to appreciate and explore the idea that the art product is not necessarily the end product.

This time around, the artists will discuss their residencies with Melbourne-based critic Lauren Brown. Tom Penney is granting us a temporary passport to explore and be amused by 'Friend World'. Penney has been working in PICA’s Clock Tower Studio, utilising digital and 3D software to construct a sardonic mimicry of the Perth community with both sculpture and super-sized screens as his mediums. In Studio One, Abdul Abdullah, Casey Ayres and Nathan Beard have been developing a project that will premiere at the 2012 Next Wave Festival: 'The Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere' sees these three musketeers delve into mixed race identities, via an installation where they will create an ‘embassy’ space for a fictional pan-Asian empire (you can help fund it here).They, too, slide open the silk screen doors of their studio tonight (take your shoes off on the way in).

“I don't care what anybody says, writing your name on something isn't art."

That's my dad talking about graffiti, steadfast in his opinions despite it being a full four years ago that Banksy sold a piece for £288,000. Bear in mind, this is the same dad who thinks Shakespeare was the only decent playwright, the novel was perfected by Tolstoy and that music reached its creative zenith around the time of Led Zeppelin IV.

My dad will likely not be visiting the new exhibition at Hole in the Wall, but you should.  Featuring the work of two Brisbane artists, the infamous Sofles and tagger-cum-muralist Fintan Magee, the show blends the heady themes of traditional art with the flash and finesse of graffiti culture. And as a special bonus, the folks at Hole in the Wall are throwing a party this Sunday to celebrate the launch of Magee and Sofles' contribution to the Fremantle street art commons, the Point Place mural.

The last invitation I got to an engagement party was designed by a BBoy. It demonstrated a level of design skill that could only come from someone whose aesthetic sense had been generously enhanced by extended exposure to spray cans and good sneakers.

We can’t all have immaculate style: for the rest of us sans serif bozos and grapheme gumbies there's the ladies of floral leisure at Studio Bomba – two women who love fonts enough to name a printing press (theirs is called ‘Herbert’),  and who know how to yoyo with a gocco.

‘But I'm not getting married!!’, we hear you say, ‘I have no need for graphically designed wedding booklets!’. Us neither pal, but if single people need anything we need perfect stationery so we can write to our friends about how lonely we are, espresso cups that come in single file, and cameras wrapped in bunny wool to document a solitary existence (link provided so the feminist readers don't have to google ‘bunny cam’). If you're still in need of some ligature therapy after a visit to the studio, tag a bus and dob yourself in. It’s a great way to earn extra coin to spend on porcelain collared dogs for your own Christmas stocking.

For those who ride them, a bike is never just a bike. It’s a symbol of self-reliance and freedom, it’s a nod to their progressive views and it’s an item to cherish, fetishise and show-off. Flying Machine bicycle design studio realises the manifold roles of the modern bicycle and reflects them in their designs. As such, if you see a Sexy Bicycle or a Base Urban (Flying Machine’s two boutique, in-house bicycle brands) gliding down the road, chances are they’ll be modern, sleek, utilitarian, minimal and chock full of innovation.

Now I realise my last sentence may have come off sounding like a who’s who of vacuous design buzzwords so I’ll give some examples. For the modern/sleek design angle look no further than Sexy Bicycles’ 'Pulse', which combines the latest in fixed-gear style with fluid racing lines well-suited to a velodrome to create a monster of modernism. Flying Machine’s use of towards hub gears rather than the standard derailleur set-up ties in with both their love of minimalism (all the sprockets hidden away) and their utilitarian design philosophy (internal hub gears are more efficient, last longer and require less maintenance). When I talk about innovation, the Base Urban RD1.0 is what I'm thinking of: carbon belt drive, gear shifter built into the brake handle, disc brakes – it’s a bike technophile’s wet dream.

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.

Waking up every morning to the same routine did bad things for Bill Murray’s sanity (God only knows why – the man got to hang with Andie McDowell: superbabe). But perhaps he would be singing a different tune had he been able to indulge in some damn fine cawfee and perhaps a scene-stealing muffin before realising that things were getting predictable.

Local lad Laurence Greenfield decided to gut and pretty up the old Swanbourne newsagency into a hole-in-the-wall cafe serving some of the best coffee and baked goods going around (especially since Hot Rob ditched his old digs and became firmly ensconced at Little Willy's). Mornings have never been so good since Laurence and his forearms at The Daily Espresso Bar (s)tamped themselves as the best kind of predictable.

My grandparents did that terrible thing that most whitetops and silver foxes do at some inconvenient point: they died. It took me a while, but I recently realised that even though losing something I could never get back completely sucked, I still had options: the DIY Grandparent. Unlike pretty much every other option on a weekend, a DIY Nana or Gramps visit is free, is unlikely to result in a hangover, and makes the gooey bits inside you magically glow. Big call, but I know from experience.

I'm not talking about old people in an Adam Sandler isn't-it-funny-when-old-people-talk-about-sex way, but old people on their own terms. If you like Leicas, they've got albums full of photos actually taken of other people, with no forearms reaching out from the lens. If you're trying to impress an English-majoring love interest you can sharpen your vocabulary skills in a non-ironic game of Scrabble. If you're lonely, chances are the widow up the street is too. And she probably doesn't even have the internet.

If your street is widow-less, you could try a website hook-up service, like Adopt A Pensioner, or ring up your local nursing home and see if anyone hasn't had a visitor in a while. Another great option is muscling in on a friend's neglected oldies. Friends who play in bands are definitely a first port of call, as their mid afternoon jams leave nana free for you to swing by and make her day. Try any relative of anyone playing at Dada's Xmas Party.

I can't even count the number of half-completed journals sitting in boxes under my bed, just waiting to embarrass me when somebody thumbs through them after I die unexpectedly in a freak snowmobile accident. But not everyone's journals are cause for enduring posthumous shame. Mark Parfitt's Anyday Now is "an investigation of growing barley, developing great abs and finding the overland route across the promised land of Australia." It takes the form of a deconstructed journal and comes with a book written and designed by the mad awesome OK Gallery gang: Jamie Macchiusi and Gemma Weston.

The medical profession doesn't have the best track record when it comes to forays into music, Dr. Octagon excepted, of course. Thankfully Joshua Bowyer and Jamie Kuzich, better known by their collaborative nom de tune Anton Franc, haven't let their medical schooling get in the way of their musical education. The launch of their debut EP will feature a dreamy pop performance from the duo themselves with support from Rae and Seven Weapons and absolutely no cringe-worthy raps about prescription blood thinners.

So it's no secret santa that Dada's garage is the guiding star at the very top of the tannenbaum of places to watch bands in our fair city. Dada's Xmas Party is blitzen the back streets again thanks to heartthrobs Allbrook Avery, lake monger lovers The Gulls, cordial swillers Frozen Ocean, and pretty much every other band you'd want haling your sleigh or donkey to chimneys or stables on Saturday arvo. Golden Staph! SmRTs! Clean Living! Mental Powers. If you have any gold, bring some along to swap for chips, ice-cream sandwiches or one of the pointy stocking fillers on offer.

While I only saw Golden Staph a couple of times before they went on hiatus, I recall their shows as frenetic whirlwinds of purified punk spirit. When I said as much to Amber, lead singer of GS, she responded with something along the lines of "we’ll probably be terrible now". Quality-wise, their show to 'launch' their LP (which has only been floating around for about eight months now) will most likely fall somewhere in the middle of my rosy recollections and Amber’s self-depreciation, but I’ll be keen to find out who is closer.

'Play' is the latest theme for Voiceworks, the literary journal for under 25s. Which is perfect, as writers are often criticised for simply 'playing with themselves'. Well, who else can a writer play with? You, the prospective reader! And how can you participate? By picking up a copy of the new magazine at the West Coast launch where Caroline J. Dale, hip hop maestro David Vincent Smith, and literary wonderboy Steven J. Finch (among others) will perform. Hosted by comedian Libby Klysz, this is one night where words and ideas become games and puzzles for both writers and readers alike.

The idea of Real to Reel is simple. Get some of Perth's best bands to play in a converted shopfront in the city and record the result for distribution on the web. In practice, it works like some idealised version of the music industry, one where bands relate to their audiences directly using their faces and the internet and the A&R dudes and middle managers of the record companies are left out of the loop. This year perth, Golden Staph, Runner and others will be sticking it to the man D.I.Y. style from an abandoned Angus & Robertson. We can only hope Sony goes the same way as that company.

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 William Street 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.