The rock and the cock

Saturday was one of the best days I've had for awhile –

It started with a sleep in and my stating that I was going to do fuck all work around the house. Emma agreed – we’ve been either painting, gardening, installing, renovating, cleaning, fixing, building, or genrally doing shit around the house for close for 3 months and it was getting tiring.

So after crossiants and a relaxed coffee, it was off to the local shops. For the last six months we’ve gotten into a cool shopping rountine; midweek we hit the supermarkets for non-perishables and then off to the local shops for meat/fish/veggies/bread on saturdays. The change came because I’m not keen on the sulfur soaked vacuum sealed meat or 6 month old vegetables you get at the supermarket. Suburban supermarkets on a Wednesday night have a nice calmness about them; apparently empty aisles, bored shelf stockers, lame muzak and garish lighting puts me in a good mood. Also, on saturdays its exciting going into fresh food produce shops and seeing what’s in season, what’s on sale and what looks good; trying to figure out what to make with it all.
“look at those capsicums!”
“Stuffed capsicums!!”
or
“check it tommyruffs for $8 a kilo – we can do prosciutto wrapped tummies, on jasmine rice”
“no tummies with couscous with raw onion”
Ah – we are so easily excited.

After shopping, Emma dropped me off in town where I quickly spotted a rather weedy young man dressed as batman harassing families, telling them about free comic day.

Walking down the narrow stairs to Pulp Fiction Comics, it wasn’t hard to tell how packed it was. PFC Worker Matt exclaimed it had been like that all day. Well, when I say ‘exclaimed’ I mean it was probably the most animated/agitated I’d ever seen Matt, who usually wavers emotionally from nonchalant to slightly bemused. Peter was running the counter that had a line up of at least 10 people. Robin/Robyn was mingling, volunteers Jack and Jesse were directing people and the shelves of free stuff had at least 2 rows of people moshing for position.

I stalked shelves taking advantage of the sale that coincided with the weekend. On Friday it was 15%, Saturday was 20% and Sunday was 25% off the price; this was a progressive sale style which was MY IDEA which I stole from somewhere and told peter whilst he was working at the other comic shop. I grabbed the Rocketo trade, 100 bullets Volumes 8 and 9, Jeffery Brown’s AEIOU and the latest one (I’m guessing it has something to do with relationships), and Mouse Guard 1. Spotting a hole in the freecomic scrum I grabbed the Scott Pilgrim book and the Fantagraphic sampler.

After a chat with various peoples and purchasement of comics I left and headed for JB. I was in a buying mood and grabbed the Speacial edition of (cough mumble) Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the Johnny Cash San Quetin/Folson prison double album and the 3rd season of Northern Exposure. I had intended to get the latest Public Enemy album which I had seen a number of times during the past fortnight, stocked at JB. At least 7 copies in the eye height JB recommends/New release part of the HipHop section. I was slightly apprehensive because the last album sucked and they cancelled their Australian tour but I was also intrigued because it was produced or co-written by Paris. If it’s the same paris I’m thinking of, its pretty cool; I remember in about 1992 getting a tape of a Paris album which was solid, angry and political with juicy fat beats, it was quite good but I think it got swept over by the rising emergence of gangsta rap and the overall commercialization of hiphop (or rap as it was known back then). So it could be cool. But I don’t know because it had moved from the new release section, wasn’t under ‘P’ and no one knew what I was talking about.

Very weird indeed.

Anyway walking down the mall I thought I’s stop back at Pulp Fiction to see if anyone else was moving on to the Grace Emily pub. At this point I discovered my half open fly, so with some interim cover up action I thought I’ll fix that proper when I get to the foyer of pulp, where its private and out of the way. But then I saw Sarah in her Robyn/Robin get up, with Dave and other guy. That’s when I got distracted. We then walked the 1km to the pub, me and sarah upfront and Dave and other guy way behind so they didn’t have to be part of their weird looks and smiles that people give to someone dressed as a superhero.

Though the whole fly thing was resolved when having a beer, Sarah mentioned ‘I don’t want to embarrass you or anything but - your – fly – is – undone’ in that loud whisper you use when you want to keep something lowkey but everyone still can hear.

With my fly up, we all drank. Pizza was delivered and the 30 people who turned up drank and chatted comics and other important stuff. I brought some Sureshots to leave around and explained the concept and talked about Australian comics in general. I also got some interest for a Melbourne roadtrip to the Doujicon small press and comics festival. So that’ll be interesting. Besides it being good, I don’t remember much except for poor Owen Heitmann breaking a frame. But we all then stomped on bubblewrap. At about 9, four us stumbled onto the train and headed home.

Emma had been home, expecting a girlfriend to come over for dinner. She did ring me up at 5 to say that her friend was late and the wine I bought them was really nice and she had already drunk ¾ of the bottle and she was quite drunk and that her friend was late and she really loved me and I had bought nice wine. On hanging up I thought it was going to get messy, this was certified when she called at 8 asking where the Dirty Dancing dvd was.

I got home during the learning to dance montage, and whilst I expected drying toenails, face masks and scattered bottles, it was quite sedate. I excused myself, made myself a panini (that’s fancy Italian for toasted sandwich) fired up the brazier and drank wine outside. I did return for the final dance scene because “nobody puts baby in the corner” is a great movie line and its great fun to watch. Em’s friend left soon after and whilst I cleaned up, Em put on the Superfly soundtrack so we drunkenly danced around to Mr Mayfield because that type of shit is compulsory.

Sunday was fucked and involved only getting 4 hours sleep because I was dehydrated from the alcohol but too stupid to get up and get a drink, I had to drove 150kms to dad’s farm, i lost my petrol cap, I spent 6 hours picking olives which amounted to about 3 buckets which is essentially a waste of time, it rained, it hailed, it was cold, it was windy, I had to shit outside and then when I turned up to the Exeter hotel for the gallery exhibition no one was there.