The Thousands

Welcome back dudels! Happy mid-January. Half of you are probably still on holiday, but are you living on the edge? Do they speak your language? You're in France! Nice house. Or maybe you're in the office in which case here's lunch planned, and here's your ears planned.

OR: you're smart enough to be going down to MONA FOMA, in which case hit up our Hobart Select guide. Brian Ritchie can tell you all about it.

Cover 'snap' (!) by Rohan Willard. Ask him about tortoises in hotel lobbies here. Send us your pics! All of them! Send 'em to alex@rightanglestudio.com.au.

Publishers of Tell Mum Everything Is OK, Editions FP&CF, call it a "participative fanzine." That's only slightly less true of issue #5, the most recent, in which they offer a (delightfully sincere) caveat justifying their decision to directly solicit some outside photographers for the first time. The result is consistent with previous issues, which were submissions only: this is a collection of images representing contemporary photography, packaged into a lovely-to-hold 140g-paper fanzine.

'Contemporary' photography, as a label, is now perhaps as useful as describing 'electronic' music or 'modern' art. In this case, it refers to images possessing an understated je ne sais quoi: teenagers in an arcade, coiling liquids, refractions in a glass, landscapes, a drying watermelon. Beyond proving that a picture is worth a 1000 words, these banal descriptions highlight that these aren't images of obvious poignance, or grandiose artistic vision. Similarly, they're not chasing lo-fi titillation. The collective, open nature of the project means that despite a clutchable theme, individual photographers will appeal to some more than others. Editions FP&CF link every photographer from every issue on their site, meaning you can explore further.

Tell Mum Everything Is OK is, ultimately, moments. And that makes them relatable. Sometimes, it seems to say, the completely ordinary is just spot on.

Christmas morning, my mum yelled into the kitchen, "who's Saul Bass?" I fumbled a response, followed by an envious, "did you get Dad a book on Saul Bass?"

The reason I had a hard time explaining who Saul Bass is would be the same reason why my mum would buy a book about a guy she knew nothing about for another guy (my dad) who knew nothing about him. Simply calling Bass 'a graphic designer' sells short his involvement in so many amazing images, both static and moving, of the 20th Century.
Saul Bass: A Life In Film & Design is surprisingly the first book on Bass. A coffee table tome of substantial size, it includes a jizillion images of his lesser known works alongside his unforgettable images; poster art for The Shining; promotional art and title sequences for Vertigo, The Man With The Golden Arm, the original Ocean's Eleven, the remake of Cape Fear, and It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World, and logos for United Airlines , Warner Communications , and Girls Scouts, among many, many more.

You will want to live in this book. Saul's designs are warm, familiar, and timeless. It's a testament to his mass appeal that three people as diverse as my mum, my dad, and me, would all geek out over him.

Who listens to an album sequentially, keenly listening to one track after another? Considering that a dizzying playlist can be compiled with a one deft movement of an index finger there can’t be many of you. However, rather than just relying solely on your own taste to guide your mishmash listening experiences, sometimes it’s refreshing to lead your ears down the garden path via someone else’s record collection. Tako’s recent mix for Red Light Radio is one such twisty adventure.

Originally broadcast out of a shop in Amsterdam’s red light district, Tako’s mix is a 3.5 hour excursion in 70s boogie, 80s electro-funk, folk, psyche, and straight up weird electronics. Highlights include Minnie Ripperton's heavily sampled ‘Lovin You’, some crazy private-press afro from a 5 year old kid called Francis the Great, and the bootylicious disco of Made in the USA’s ‘Shake Your Body’.

Although 3.5 hours is an almighty undertaking, this is the mix’s greatest strength: rather than dragging out, you quickly become lost in a seafood basket of unknown music. Particularly seeing this is the week where most you poor souls will be returning to the orifice (aka office), this mix will help you pass the long hours ahead.

The first release for Brisbane-based Lost Race Records comes in the form of a split 7”, featuring the dream-pop of Nite Fields and the more experimental-pop leaning Happy New Year.

Brisbane four-piece Nite Fields give us a straightforward tune, a sort of shoegaze/garage hybrid, somewhat like Slowdive, if that helps. It’s simple and unwavering to the point that it sounds like a condensed jam in which the members were daydreaming in tropical fields of the remote far north – what goes on tour, comes out on this record. It’s languid and repetitive, and the vocals give you the notion that you might have put it on at the wrong speed.

Happy New Year is the work of Eleanor Logan, a former Brisbane punk rocker, now living in New York. Taking a departure from previous, more angry rock n roll, the delicately spaced-out ‘High Sea’, captures you with its layered ambiance and foreshadowed melodies. A humbly sad tune which pleasantly distracts you with subtle dynamics.

Sometimes the holiday season can leaves one's communication skills a little burnt out, so it is interesting and timely that Baden Pailthorpe's Lingua Franca show is one of Firstdraft's January set of exhibitions. These new media works "explore language, translation and misunderstanding" through a strange kind of breaking down and remixing of Nineteen Eighty-Four, using [both] the text of the George Orwell's 1949 novel, and the film adaptation of the eponymous year.

The text of the novel has been run through every language on Google Translate, all the way back through to English again, with the Chinese-whispered results having been tweeted throughout the process and turned into a limited edition book called Eighty-Four Doors (50 copies at $100 each, contact the artist for sales). It's full of flipped meanings, syntactical disorganisation, weird spacing and bits that read straight outta Finnegans Wake, and copies will be sitting fabric-bound and looking ready to have a library call number on its spine on the gallery wall.

They're accompanied by a data visualisation graphic (developed in collaboration with London-based designer/data artist Stefanie Posavec) that traces  each word in the book's first paragraph through its telos-undermining poesy, and a video display that cuts scenes from the film with extracts from the book. read more

Some films really get you in the guts, and for me Young Adult was one. At times bitingly funny and achingly sad, Jason Reitman’s dramedy recalls Bad Teacher in its fearless refusal to make its heroine likeable, and Diablo Cody’s shrewd script explores how we clutch for reassurance when we panic that our salad days are behind us.

Popping Teenage Fanclub in her cassette player and armouring herself with primping and drinking, former high school queen bee and now young adult author Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) returns to her loathed Minnesota hometown to steal back her high school boyfriend Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson), who’s now happily married with a baby. She finds an unexpected kindred spirit in a former classmate, nerdy Matt Freehauf (a terrific Patton Oswalt), who’s wallowing in his own early-’90s heyday for the more understandable reason that a vicious (and mistaken) gay-bashing by local jocks left him terribly crippled. They find a kind of comfortable honesty together.

Despite Mavis’s cruel narcissism, there’s something poignant about watching her realise the withering of her youthful power. But what makes this film both disheartening and admirable is that after everything, Mavis still can’t find a new leaf to turn over.

There's a fine line between collecting and hoarding, and I can't understand why the latter gets such a bad rap. I think hoarding is heaps cool. As long as it's not rubbish or pets, what's the problem?

Our mate Jaz's grandma is a bonafide hoarder, having pretty much kept everything since forever. With the house on the verge of explosion Jaz has opened up her mad little store Shambhu selling on the past possessions of her family - and man, did they have taste. There is one of everything and more of others. Mirrors, suitcases, records, ashtrays, leather shoes, cool stripy dude-shirts, cord everything, denim everything, army-patterned everything, woollen numbers, the odd record player or typewriter, some of the best knick-knacks ever. There's even tiny glass bottles with liquid (could be poison) still in them from the 50s. Some of the stuff in there is completely preserved from its buying date, unopened, instructions and all. Your own personal time-machine.

While super small (I say homely) the stock is constantly turned over, so it's a good one to keep checking in on. If you enjoy spending an hour or so trawling through weird and beautiful bits and pieces that all have an individual story, you're gonna dig Shambhu.

Hello there. Take a seat on the stairs and I’ll tell you a story. Jess Johnson and Dr Kyla McFarlane have made a commemorative project of timely import. “As well as really liking CATS, we share an academic interest in doomsday predictions and associated INTERNET websites.” They have worked with eleven artists to visually extrapolate these universal concerns in the form of a commemorative 2012 calendar (CATS of the Apocalypse).

Contributing artists Tony Garifalakis (13 and Doomsday pictured), Anastasia Klose, Susan Jacobs, COBRA (JPN), Yvonne Todd (NZ), Lou Hubbard, Hannah Tai (Lulu and Hope pictured), The Holy Trinity (TAS, Apocatalypse pictured), Patrick Pound (Found photo pictured), Martin Bell and Lisa Radford have been invited to take part due to their demonstrated love of cats and/or affinity with doom culture.

“Earth’s annihilation will sadly extend to the extinction of our feline friends,” say Jess and Kyla. “As such we think a 2012 CATS calendar commemorating CATS in transformative END-OF-DAYS scenarios would be a fitting send-off for us all.” The calendar has been produced using the finest default calendar template found on the OFFICEWORKS website.

Man-who-turns-food-into-words, A.A. Gill said "bad things always happen over dinner and good things always arrive at breakfast". Agreed. No one gets dumped at breakfast, those dirty dishes get done at the evening meal amongst soft furnishings and piped music.

Good things that might arrive at breakfast are many, and coffee and eggs are always welcome. But newly opened Reuben Hills is a defibrillator for cafe menu fatigue. It takes a South American tack, with Baleada - a Honduran tortilla, empanadas and ceviche making appearances, while also venturing North for its namesake, Reuben sandwich. On a less adventurous morning, some items might sound like a dare, such as the 'Dogg's breakfast' of an ice-cream sandwich with salted caramel, and, speaking of, shakes that come in flavours of salted caramel, black sesame, and espresso & wattleseed.

The design is sleek and clean, with pleasing details - natural light comes from the front entrance as well as the rolled-up roller door at the rear, and a semi-circular cutaway in the ceiling reveals the upper level which houses the roastery and associated coffee nerdery (cupping etc).

Having opened on January 1, these guys are ready and willing to bring you good things every day, while (most of) Sydney's eateries take a well-earned rest.

Before we go any further, we've got to enter a verbal contract promising that you'll never leave a trace of rubbish at the place I'm about to try to convince you to hang out at. This verbal contract also states that you're not allowed to go there when I'm bossing out a first date. OK.

When you get to Wattamolla, don't go there. Park in the top car park and take the only trail you see. You'll go past two huge round things, maybe water tanks, ignore them, there's nothing behind them. Keep walking and you'll see natural forming clay and a gapping slice out of the earth, and then... nothing... just yourself on the fringe of a cliff with a huge expanse of ocean, all swelling towards you and crashing against the cliff a looooong way down.

Look around again, you'll see illegitimate ways down. They don't go all the way down, but they go somewhere better. Your own little cave, half safe from sun and completely overlooking the edge of Australia with a view of the end of the world. You'll never feel clearer.

"Who likes short shorts?" asked the Royal Teens in 1957. "Many people likes 'em", answered Flickerfest in 1991, putting on their first screening at Balmain High School. They were right because since then it has grown into Australia's biggest (and only) competitive international short film festival, and the 21st birthday edition runs for ten days. There are many many shorts to like, including 'Best of Australian', 'Best of International', 'Best of Documentary', 'Best of Oscars Shorts', 'Best of Comedy' and 'World of Wacky Animation'.

Since summer finally showed up, how much do you want to look like this? Whether you're into creeping hem lines, maxi skirts, flowing babydolls, mini shorts or more constructed dresses, it'll be on sale at up to 75% off in a spring pallet of rust, pastel pink, electric blue, limey yellow and crisp white. It's worth the bridge climb.

The Jamaican summer of 1966 was unseasonably warm and the energetic ska rhythms of the earlier sounds left the gals and guys hot and bothered after all-night dancing sessions. To combat weariness the beat was sedated to a more relaxed pace and a slower, syncopated rocksteady sound came alive. The precursor to reggae, dancehall, rap, hip-hop, r'n'b and pretty much every other sub-sub-sub-genre in-between can attributed to a warm Summer!? Get "errrrrybody out" and pay homage to all eras at GG's reggae summer special spun by DJ Judgement, Jimmy Sing and Levins.

Sons and Daughters, from the UK, are said to sit somewhere between Cat Power and Smog. Meanwhile, our local supports Songs whisper John Cale and La Monte Young, and the Laurels meet at the intersection of The Velvet Underground, The Saints and Spacemen 3. If that got your attention you should run along to this one.

Colliding Stuart Coupe's Tune Up covers program with Emma Swift's In The Pines twang folk show means an afternoon of free tunes and cheap beers at Petersham Bowlo. The Green Mohair Suits, Caitlin Harnett and James Thomson will be gracing the stage, while you'll be gracing the lawn bowls arena and the super amazing raffle draw. Pretty chill.

FBi searched long and hard for someone NOT emotionally invested in the SMACs. Even local kelp was not wholly disinterested, so the SMAC vote count was entrusted to machines. And they counted really fast! It feels like voting only just closed but the SMACs are next week.

So many people we've loved are represented: Shirlows, Imperial Panda, The Dip, Gallery A.S., Alaska Projects, Wormwood, Youeni Provides, Hoops, Bridie Connell, Claudia O'Doherty, and Musica ... as Hayley said, So Many Amazing C*nts.

The awards night is invite only, so if you didn't try very hard to make a contribution to music, arts, or culture this year you probably haven't been invited. Try harder! Or, we have some tickets to give away...

To enter just answer the following question: