The Thousands

Not to get too cosmic on you but tomorrow is 11.11.11 AND a Friday. It's a perfect time to get Caligulan since the world might pop, and - preempting that - you might want to reflect a little. Is it also a chance for reinvention, a moment to get lost, to put a new perspective on stuff? Probably not. It's probably just time to stick the internet on your face and party hard.

Cover shot a classic Maja Baska. Be immense like Maja and send your cover shots to alex@rightanglestudio.com.au.

For the last few weeks I've been nobody's friend. Dates, phone calls, emergencies and duties have all been met with the begrudging half-interest of an underachieving teenager. I left the iron on all day THREE TIMES and I can't state with any certainty that my cat is still alive.

This is 100% Murakami's fault; he and his incredibly long, incredibly good novel, 1Q84. It's possible that he uses the term 'ripe breasts' a little too liberally for anyone's liking, and it's also possible that his editors were too intimidated by his fame to cut the prose where they should have, but who cares when he can invoke a world that's so absorbing and bonkers at the same time?

It's a tale of love that has elements of both magic realism and hard-boiled crime. The story involves a literary heist, a cult, sexual abuse, revenge, levitating clocks, exploding dogs, and a group called the "Little People" who emerge through the mouth of a dead goat. It also has all the Murakami tropes his fans know and love - parallel narratives, music references, intricately detailed descriptions of food preparation, and the notion that love is a matter of fate.

Some unkind critics have dubbed it a 'shaggy dog story' as it’s a substantial read without a strong 'point' or neat ending, but there’s a whole lot of satisfaction to be found just by getting lost in this dreamy book’s push and pull. Murakami himself has said, “When you read a good story, you just keep reading” and as my poor, half-starved cat can attest, if you pick this book up, that’s exactly what you’ll do.

Some meditation experiences are fronted by a chump who thinks he can coax you into saying "Ohm" for an hour because he's decked out in fisherman pants. DIY meditation is about channelling self-improvised concentration, from the inside out. The only exterior should be sound and that's why music is key.

Siberia and New Planes have released a meditation sound track on cassette, the sides A and B representing the duality of life - the Ying and Yang. Fifteen tracks melt from deep to high pitched electronic drones, to overlaid samples, to tribal chimes, to field recordings and a focus on rhythm, heartbeats and breathing. The result is an ambient soundscape, where essential calm planes throughout. Bass-heavy, dub-ish 'Slip Time' by Young Magic is not your average musing, syncopated and slow. Whereas Quiet Evenings' 'Breeze' is light and airy - exactly what’s expected and that’s not a bad thing. A definite sound-summit is the Erik Omen offering 'Tneibma'. A very simple and quiet track, super-spacious and beautiful - as is Hochman’s 'Natural Cover'. Either could be put on repeat for an hour to get the same thoughtful effect.

There are so many people involved in this one - Daniel Stricker, Erik Omen, Hi God People, Jonathan Hochman (Holy Balm), Deep Magic (Sun Araw), The School of Radiant Living, Deep Magic, Rites Wild, Young Magic, Bum Creek, FORCES, the list goes on. Synchronised to launch with this beauty, the cassette draws upon a peaceful li'l community happening around us, with people exhibiting their own sounds to guide others.

The blue-and-white palette of Private Island reads like Delftware and like Santorini, and that's as good a place as any to find your way into it. A needlepoint-embroidered patchwork quilt, some watercolour and acrylic paintings provide the ground for Grogan's tribe of Haringly loose-limbed and hairily classical-featured men to enact our culturally necessitated interconnectedness, seen through his understanding of islands as 'places of sanctuary and peace, though at the same time they can be places of isolation and detention'. These are people on holidays and people in relationships, whether they want to be or not.

It is the 'no man is an island' thing, even where the posited community is not one that is necessarily enthusiastic about so being. There is a lot of sex and blame and self-interest, all of which are largely treated as self-gratifying mechanisms, but because we need other people to be able to do those things the solipsistic is also, paradoxically, the social. Through the rawness of the desires expressed, there is also a sense of intimacy. Closeness is created by the personal and temporal investiture of the artist in the intricacy of Grogan's techniques and his declared use of autobiographical material to constitute social commentary. Go meditate on this emergent occasion, John Donne.

John Madden’s Nazi-hunting spy thriller recalls the aphorism, “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” The Debt intertwines two stories: a Mossad operation in 1966 East Berlin to arrest the ‘Surgeon of Birkenau’ (a wonderfully malevolent Jesper Christensen); and a postscript, 30 years later, in which the three Israeli agents must finally pay their mission’s ‘debt’.

This narrative’s power depends on conveying lingering guilt and a lasting desire for atonement… but speaking of Atonement, that film had much more convincing casting. It isn’t merely implausible that Sam Worthington somehow morphs into Ciaran Hinds, Marton Csokas into Tom Wilkinson and Jessica Chastain into Helen Mirren – it corrodes The Debt’s crucial relationship between past and present. So, while Mirren is compelling as central character Rachel Singer, Chastain’s scenes don’t seem to inform hers.

The 60s story is more intriguing. Apart from the satisfying Bondian cocktail of guns, scissor holds, subterfuge and sexual tension, the young spies flounder as their cunning captive unerringly probes their weaknesses. Worthington can’t do an Israeli accent at all, but nonetheless he embodies a simultaneous stolidity and vulnerability that makes him both the team’s weakest link and its moral compass.

I know what you’re thinking. Another page ripped off your Far Side desk-calendar, another online shop. Or maybe you were thinking about bagels. But whatever. This is not just another online shop. It IS an online shop, but it has something most others don’t – a conscience!

Final Episode started out like those other guys a year and a bit ago. It had a very nice range of accessories from Pamela Love, Cast of Vices, Jeremy Scott, Julia deVille, Deadly Ponies and more. It even dabbled in feel-good times by donating to a different charity every month, and by sending things to you in the post for free (does it make me a bad person that I prefer that one?)

But then it did a big-assed yawn and got sick of all that. It wanted more. It looked itself in the mirror and thought, but what kind of more? Like most suffering an identity crisis, it then went out and bought a red-hot Porsche. I jest! No, it became a different kind of guy, promoting what it likes to call a ‘public showroom for today’s best independent design’. It has started adding in new designers that aren’t necessarily big names, but do good things, like: Estelle, Serpent & The Swan, Diaz, Man and Recreational.

Most of these are Sydney-based and sustainable. And they get to pick what charity 10% of their sales go to. Plus, FE has Objects and Print projects in the works, collabing with some fa-resh designers (you?). So yeah, it’s same same – but definitely different.

People get tattoos for all sorts of reasons. Lots of them are dumb. A poor choice can sting like a neverending hangover or routinely embarrass like a high school yearbook photo. I think it's best to adopt an approach similar to Marc Jacobs, whose simple explanation for getting SpongeBob permanently etched in his skin was: it makes me happy to look at it, so I want to look at it often.

Tattly make tattoos guaranteed not to cause ongoing grief - they're temporary. Each design comes in a two-pack, so you can wear it out on two separate occasions, or give one to a friend. The idea came about when Tattly's creator swissmiss grew tired of applying "bad clip art" tattoos to her daughter.

Designs are mostly silly, artsy, or kinda cute - from a digital wristwatch whose time display says, 'LATE' to a computer cursor (arrow or hand), to the CMYK color circles and a bastardized Pantone logo. Or for the momentarily mute, the 'yes' hand 'no' hand is a great option.

Tattly = tattoos without the pain; physical or emotional.

There comes a time during a strong drinking session when dinner no longer seems like cheating and instead hits the holy nexus of sensible and desirable. We were at precisely this point when we remembered celebrity bloke Jamie Oliver had opened one of his signature Italian joints on Pitt Street. Italian is a food that can fill a belly. Sorted.

We arrived to a queue out the door. They don't take bookings for parties of fewer than six (this won't change, due to the business model), so turn up and get your beeper, like a pub bistro. Then go anywhere within 250m (we chose Rockpool) and wait for it to pop off - rather than be one of the idiots who stood in the doorway bemoaning the wait.

A big open kitchen and upstairs antipasti bar have been stuck in the old Industrie site. Full with diners, it creates a serious hum. We were seated in the buzz by a man with a gold tooth and serious charm, who walked us through the menu. Here are some lazy adjectives that describe much of said menu: hearty and rustic. It's pretty firmly peasant Italian, though there are spots of zesty exception. A salumi board comes with pickled peppers; amongst the meaty pastas is a light buffalo ricotta ravioli with lemon. The baked mushrooms are a must. Hand made pastas are filling and risottos (crab, truffle) are generously proportioned. The menu is seasonal so it will change.

Food-friendly Italian varietals make up the short wine list, which is clearly designed to compliment the meals rather than provide wine types with ammo for an essay.

Sydney copped the full force of international gastronomy with David Chang opening Momofuku Seiobo last week, but Jamie's Italian is the other side of celebrity chefdom: practiced and affordable classics.

It was walking past the Majestic Roller Rink in Petersham that did it: now a forlorn building sitting on New Canterbury Road, a tombstone marking good-times-past, facing the charcoal chicken shop and a future of mediocrity. I vowed to seek out the recreational woolly mammoth in its last known Sydney habitat: Emu Plains.

My romantic vision of gliding around in the hot pink and white skate boots of my childhood shattered upon arrival at the hire desk. Rollerskates come in one colour at Penrith Skatel - bandaid beige. The next reality check came in the form of the rink itself. Bright and hot with exposed insulation, and suffering a distinct lack of mirrorballs and disco tunes. This is the suburban outpost of a near obsolete technology. Yes - the tinny top 40 music is interrupted periodically by announcements over the PA for the attendees of Sharnee's birthday to come to the canteen while the party pies are served.

But we pressed on, two hungover adults jerking around the rink. A few smoother laps in, though far from lords of the rink, we started exchanging goofy smiles. In less than an hour we were vowing we would buy our own skates, storage space be damned! "We'll get really good!"; "Join a roller derby league and coin sassy names!"

Back at home, the high has faded. But I do have a birthday coming up, and parties at Skatel include both cheezels and icecream cake.

Local four-piece Tin Sparrow are launching their single at the recently reno'd Spectrum (remember Spectrum? It remembers you). This new single, 'Hector Myola', with its pleasing name and the Spaghetti Western vibe of the song should fit right in on a hot and heavy Sydney night. Make it feel welcome.

Melbourne's irrepressibly low key, languid rockers Dick Diver come to the small club to launch their latest album New Start Again music. Accompanying them will be new soul upstarts The Harpoons, and Max and Ela from Songs.

Nothing is more suspicious than people who say they actually like going to IKEA. Those warehouses feel like a well-furnished maze for a lab rat (including the 'treat' at the end - hello Swedish meatballs and Daim bars). Here is an alternative: locally made furniture using sustainable formaldehyde-free materials. Evolvex furniture is modular and minimal and they probably have something very practical that you need in your house right now (don't throw out your allen keys just yet, they're flat-packed). A pop-up shop will be taking over District 01 where you can look and touch. There won't be meatballs, but you can buy things by zapping a code with your smartphone so you needn't even sully your soft hands with hard cash.

People who call themselves 'crazy', are often the most middle-of-the-road (anyone remember 'CrAzY BiTcH' bumper stickers on Hyundai Excels in the 90s?), and folks that must loudly declare their sanity are usually fecal-smearin' crazy. So it follows suit that those modestos who go by the name of No Art are actually busting out the seams with arts. The trio are masters of their driving chanting atmospheric pop, bass player Trish makes neckpieces (she'd like to make one for you to win - see below) and guitarist Vivian's been known to write for, ahem, a certain subcultural guide. No Art? More like Mo' Art. They're launching their single 'Foxfire', with support from Dead China Doll and Virgo Rising.

Seriously the only thing that has a shorts-in-da-club count close to a dubstep night at Bar Cenny is Halfway Crooks. We're not asking you to choose, but go to Crooks coz rap in summer is mad.

Besides launching their new AW12 Originals collection with a surprise cheeky Aloe Blacc performance, running a nails comp for the ladies and fluffing around with Noel Gallagher, David Beckham, Ransom and women's Originals schtick lately, Adidas are about to stitch up some more garb this month. Including denim, for which they collaborated with Vice to make this pretty enchanted short film about the range. Pah!

But let's talk about how they snagged (mused?) pink-haired, mega-babe Charlotte Free for their Jeremy Scott collaboration. She's ridiculously incredible, as are the Scott designs. Pandas leaping out of sneakers, safari pants, cartoon clawed tees, sequined cammo AND THAT COLOUR-BLOCKED TRACKSUIT. For the dudes it's slashed leopard jackets, bullet hole tracksuits, bone embellished kicks and winged leather jackets. It's a bit Flintstones meets Marsupilami, and could you want it more? Probably if you had $150 of voucher to help out a bit. Thanks to Adidas, we've got that to give you.

To win it, just answer the following question.