We made this anti-viral film for Cascade’s First Harvest ale at Clemenger BBDO Melbourne. The beer is made from specially developed hops and limited to 5000 cases. So the hops are limited edition and the beer is limited edition. So we made a limited edition film. It’s limited to 5000 views. Get in quick. 

We made a video for my band’s latest single using a 99 cent iPhone app, a scalpel and a bottle of scotch. It was worth every cent. 

I’m finishing up on the 3RRR Breakfasters program this week, which has me getting all misty. So I thought I’d post some of my favourite moments from the show. 

On a recent vacation to Bali, my girlfriend Amanda and I did a cooking class. It was great fun! On arriving home, I wanted to recreate the meals for Amanda, but found some of the ingredients difficult to get my hands on. So I have adapted them to keep the relaxed, fragrant, island flavors and carefree glow of holiday love, using things you can find at home. :-)
 
Corn Fritters:
This is an easy little appetizer with some easy to get ingredients to get you started.

Ingredients:
Rice flour
Sweet corn kernels
Scallions or green onions
Ground cumin
Cilantro
Grapeseed or canola oil

Whatever corn or flour you’ve got is fine. Regular onions are ok too, but you’re best to brown them slightly before you stir them in. It really has a fresher zing with cilantro though! 
 
Method:
Mix all of the ingredients in a bowl and add water until it’s a thick paste. Heat the oil and ladle spoonfuls into the oil. You might get a few little burns if the oil splashes. Concentrate on the pain. It focuses you. 
 
Fragrant fish satay sticks
Satay is a really fun entrée or party food! In this case it’s really light, fresh fish on a bamboo skewer. It’s great for a party, or for sharing, or even eating alone! Alone. 

Ingredients:
Finely ground hake fish or similar firm white fish
Galangal
Shredded ginger
Cilantro seeds
Cilantro root
Trassi (fermented shrimp paste)
Grated palm sugar
Pandan leaf
 
To make at home, substitute monkfish for something similar, like meatballs. If galangal (a fragrant root) is unavailable, substitute for meatballs. Instead of shredded ginger, be crafty. Use meatballs instead. Fermented shrimp paste can be hard to come by in American grocery stores, so try using meatballs instead. Pandan leaf is a fragrant leaf used to flavor everything from desserts to satay sauce. If you can’t find it, try using twigs from the plants that died when Amanda left.
 
Method:
Get a large, ceramic bowl. Smash it on the counter. Rub the ingredients into your face and eyes. Walk into the snow in your pajamas, crying softly.
 
 
Satay Sauce:
This goes really well with the satay skewers, but you can also eat it as a dip, or as a simple dressing on steamed vegetables. The Indonesians call this dish ‘Gado Gado’. I had trouble pronouncing that! Amanda laughed. 
 
Ingredients:
Candle nuts
Galangal
Ginger 
Fermented Shrimp Past
Cilantro root
Ground Cumin
Fresh Turmeric
Fresh, hot chilli
 
Candle nuts! Wow I’d never even heard of these. Regular peanuts will do. The lady that took the class said you can even use peanut butter if you can’t find it. As far as chilli goes, you should be able to find fresh chilli at the local farmer’s market the two of you used to go to. Or just use hot sauce. Hotter the better. 
 
Method:
Lay in the foetal position and gently hug the ingredients. The warmth of the chilli getting into your eyes and groin will distract you from the pain of loneliness.
 
Sticky Coconut Rice
What a quirky dessert! It’s a sweet rice pudding, but it’s black. Black was our favorite Pearl Jam song.
 
Ingredients:
Wild Black Rice
Fresh coconut milk
Grated palm sugar
Pandan leaf
Grated coconut
 
Again, there’s no reason to be put off by some of the more exotic ingredients. If you can’t find Wild Black Rice, just use a handful of sand that you gathered from the beach and put in a paper bag. You lit a candle in the bag, making it into a lantern. You looked into each other’s eyes and you said ‘Just as this flame burns, my love for you burns bright and true.’ She looked away and you thought she was distracted by a passing villager. You ignored it and held her softly. You felt her tremble slightly.
 
Method:
Stir the rice/sand over a low heat with the coconut milk and sugar until it is softened. Turn up the flame. Let it burn. Let it all burn. Sit by yourself at that huge table. Scream AMANDA! AMANDA! until the police come.

Thanks for your first 6 weeks with us. This is something we do with everyone new, so take a seat and let’s get started.   Don’t worry about the clip-board, it’s just a few notes I’ve been jotting down over the journey. Helps me keep these meetings focused.   Firstly, your attitude has been mentioned from time to time. Visitors in particular find you charming and ready with a smile. That’s great. That’s what we strive for here and that’s why we’re fast approaching the number 3 family in the tri-state area. But it’s not enough to think of visitors. We’re important too. And frankly, we’re not seeing a lot of this sunny disposition. Oh sure, there’s a smile here and there but it’s more often than not followed by some…unpleasantness. This is something we can work on. But hey, that’s why I’m here.   Are you with me Walt? Walt? That’s a ceiling fan. Look at me. Ok.   We also should talk about, how do we put this…timelines. Now where you came from, it’s quite likely you did things differently. That’s ok. In a lot of ways we like that. But if we’re going to put some time into your training, we need you to at least make an attempt to work to our timings. 3 am is not the time to be giggling at the squeaky horse. I like your work with the horse. I do. It’s why we brought you on board. But there is a time and a place.   Ok. Ok don’t cry. This is positive.   I know you won’t be surprised to know there are certain…expectations that certain stakeholders have. Important stakeholders. Kathy for instance – you remember Kathy, right? Wealthy, childless Kathy? Anyway, she wrote ‘If you’re half as gorgeous as your mommy, you’re going to be a heartbreaker’. Well, I know it was an optimistic goal, but I have to be honest with you. You’re not there yet. There’s the blotchiness. There’s that discoloration above your right eye. There’s the crust of vomit on your chin.   And Bill – you remember Bill, right? Famously generous around birthday and graduation time? He wrote, ‘We know you are going to grow into a fine young man’. Now I’m not saying you won’t. All I’m saying is that after 6 weeks, we’re seeing scant evidence of it. And I’m not sure if you know how our funding structure works here, Walt. I know it’s not your department. But let’s just say that since the unfortunate incident at the track, we haven’t got a lot of what we’d call ‘cash flow’, or, you know, ‘money’. So stakeholders are as important to you as they are to me. Possibly more so, as we head into flu season.   I’ve also had feedback from ‘Aunt’ Jean Freidberg that you excreted onto her through your diaper and grow-suit. We’ve all wanted to do it, but the fact is, our margins are wafer thin. We can’t get away with that kind of thing. So we’ll work on rectifying that. I think if we put in the work and apply the right principles, we can get you shitting vaguely away from people by the March quarter. If that feels too fast, you tell me.   Having said all that, I have some good newsfor you. We’ve decided to keep you on. We see some potential. There’s a certain glint in the eye that sets you apart as very ‘us’. Something we can work with. Mould. Also, we’re legally obliged to keep you. You see? That’s better. That’s the smile we like to…oh. Right.

This opinion piece on the Drum generated quite a bit of discussion. I also learnt a lot about myself. Apparently I am in the pocket of the pokies lobby. Good to know.

Dear diary,

I hope I get through this entry as I’m not long for this world. I fear I have dropsy, which I likely contracted from an all-night sleep-out for the release of Pearl Jam’s new opera, Vitalogy at the Ye Virgin Megastore. Mama and papa wouldn’t give me the thruppence it cost, so I had to take my lute along and perform in the manner of a minstrel for coins. Happily, coins rained upon me, as skin flakes from Hubert, the local leper. I purchased the compendium and was on my way. Unfortunately, it’s not as good as their previous operas. Also, the fever has reached my lungs.

Benjamin

An article on the ABC Drum website where I get on my high horse about some particularly odious travel writing in The Age. 

Yes, this is a Jimmy Buffett tattoo. That is all. 

I had occasion to chat with National Treasure™ Thomas Kenneally this morning about his latest historical tome ‘Australians: Eureka to the Diggers’. It’s the second volume (a third is coming) in a series of historical studies not of Australia, but of the people who made it. It’s an interesting device, and it works. It works not just because Keneally can write a bit, or that he researches meticulously and treats each historical figure as a character, not just a name on a plaque.

It works because of the fascinating, multi-tasking nature of our forebears. Very rarely do they just have one story. Their lives weave in and out of various narratives.

Like Plorn Dickens. Plorn seems to have been the idiot son of Charles Dickens, sent to the colonies at 16 to toughen up and stay out of his father’s way. He lost most of the family fortune in a drought, became a member of NSW parliament, got obsessed with rabbits and ended up a fairly successful businessman in Melbourne.

Or Tom Wills. He was a wealthy kid, sent to the Rugby school, the son of a pastoralist. The same pastoralist who was massacred at Cullin La Ringo in Queensland, after Tom went out for supplies. Tom was also a handy cricketer, who had the idea of devising a local code of football to keep the cricketers fit through winter. He later organised the tour of indigenous cricketers to England in 1888 – the first representative Australian sports team to tour internationally.

But you have to stop and think that in 1880, there were 2.8 Million (white) people in Australia. That’s slightly more than the population of Brisbane.

Of course Wills did all of those things. There wasn’t anyone else to do it.

It’s the same way that my 60-something parents would watch TV and say ‘Oh yeah, Jim’s Mowing…went to uni with him,’ ‘Captain Snooze…yep, he was in your uncle’s grade’ or ‘Icehouse, sure I used to babysit the bass player.’  Of course they knew all of those people. In 1956, while my dad was at primary school with Captain Snooze, the population of Melbourne was 1.5 million. Roughly half of what it is now.  Australia was small. Sure, it was small because we excluded most of the world’s immigrants and decimated the indigenous population.

I’m all for a big Australia. I’m all for letting in people of all cultures, however the fuck they get here. But I sometimes wish I had grown up in a smaller country. When there wasn’t so much traffic, or congestion, or competition to be a notable character. Sometimes it just feels crowded out there.