Ovary in a jar

On Tuesday, I caught the train out to Clayton, an outer Melbourne suburb, comfortably middle-class and economically boosted by the presence of a major public teaching hospital (Monash Medical Center), and other private health providers. One of those providers, Monash Surgical Private Hospital (MSPH), was my destination.

MSPH is one of those new generation of hospitals which functions less as a hospital in the traditional sense – ie a building with wards where you lie around for days being examined by kindly doctors with stethoscopes and noteboards before and after your surgery – and more like a MacDonalds – where there the objective is fast service and delivering the customer with an operation ‘to go’. This is the modus operandi of the day procedure hospital where no-one waits around: there are no beds, no wards, only operating theatres and recovery rooms. Within a few hours you can expect to have your credit card swiped, your body slapped onto a trolley, knocked out, sliced and diced, shaken awake, then guided carefully towards the exit sign, where you wobble uncertainly away clutching sutures, sick bag and meds. The number of day procedure hospitals has increased exponentially over the last decade or two, following incredible advances in clinical practice and technology. For example, coronary heart disease, which once would have landed you in hospital for days after fairly risky open surgery, can now be treated same-day, with a coronary angioplasty. And another example is the removal of an entire internal organ, say an ovary. The removal of my right ovary, the third part of my reproductive machinery to dangerously malfunction in less than three years, was the reason I was heading out to the Monash clinic for a new (mini) hospital holiday. Again.

Melbourne’s trains are bright, comfortable and relatively efficient. In the forty minutes it took me to get from downtown Melbourne to Clayton, I lent back in my window seat, threw my feet up on the seat opposite and enjoyed the panorama of flat Melbourne suburbia flash by under typical intense Australian blue sky. I liked noticing how the ‘feel’ of each station we passed was different; and that some of the older platforms suggested sleepy outback towns, they were so empty and the wooden fences were fringed with overgrown grass, dappled in creamy sunshine.

I thought again about the web search I had done just before leaving Lisa and Aaron’s that morning. I had gone to E-Bay and typed in “ovary in a jar”. I had wondered with dark curiosity “Do people sell organs left over from operations?” My latest hospital holiday was setting me back thousands in costs and lost income. “You probably couldn’t even get an ingrown toenail removed for $2,000 in the US” my GP, Jeff, had remarked a few days earlier, trying to cheer me up. He was right of course, and this was no minor procedure after all: it was nothing less than a “complicated operative laparoscopy to execute a right salpingo oophorectomy” performed by a leading surgeon in state of the art facilities. I had a huge amount to be grateful for, falling ill in a country with a functioning, high quality affordable health care system, a country where the population pays on average the same rate of tax as US citizens, but who get a much better health deal for that money. If I had been prepared to chew prescription pain-killers for several more weeks, I could even have had the procedure done for free in one of our excellent public hospitals. But I couldn’t wait that long to get back to the States, the private system was the only alternative and it came at a price.

Ok, I knew I couldn’t actually bring myself to sell one of my own body parts, that was really, well, a sick idea. But once the thought entered my head, I pursued it a bit. It was a shiny, rounded, kitschy idea that embraced the pain emanating from my ovarian cyst and my credit card and reduced them into twee, amusing objects inside a snow dome.

The term ‘ovary in a jar’ yielded no results. Nor did ‘body parts in a jar’. A refined search of ‘human organs in a jar’ under the sub-category ‘collectibles’ also yielded nada. I had thought collectibles was the most likely category. There is a macabre collectibles shop in Melbourne called Wunderkammer that has for years been doing a brisk trade selling antique scientific and natural history equipment, medical specimens of various kinds preserved in vintage glass canisters, human bones, wax anatomy sets, grotesque insects pinned in boxes, in short anything old and creepy that could “inspire wonder”. But maybe a contemporary body part didn’t have any historical value, nor was it likely to inspire wonder anymore, even if you could find an original Vegemite jar from the 1930s and whack it in that.

What about the biology junior high school teacher who wanted to grab kids’ attention and interest them in human innards by grossing them out– surely an actual body part in a jar was a good way to do that? Or a graphic visual aid for a sex education teacher? Or a still-life art class? But then I realized that the market for body parts put to educational use was probably unfairly monopolized by corpses. Like many others, I was a registered organ donor, so after my death my bodily parts could be chopped up by a hospital or anatomy class and put to a good use in other people’s bodies or on their shelves. Although I spent a few more minutes googling ‘human ovaries in a jar for sale’, it became apparent that the trade in second hand ovaries from live women was not exactly booming.

As I got off at Clayton station, and made the short walk up the hill to MSPH, it became apparent, however, that the trade in manipulating ovaries and sperm from living humans was thriving. The hospital’s biggest money spinner was IVF and related gynecology, and the footpath leading up to the entranceway was dominated by wide-eyed women with puffed bellies of various sizes bulging out of their track suits and loose dresses. As I made my way past them into the air-conditioned reception area, I noted the irony that the same facility that could give you a take-away embryo, could also take away your capacity to breed, all within the convenient space of a day.

Lose weight now, ask me how!

I’m writing this on Friday, the first day I’ve been able to get out of bed for a sustained period. I’m now at the dining room table two feet away from what, since Tuesday night, has been my infantile sensory world. Lying on the right of my couch-bed is my current toy, Levitt and Dubner’s provocative classic ‘Freakonomics’, next to a half –full packet of jellybeans and a water bottle. To the left of my pillow, on a little stand, is a brightly arranged display of painkillers, a veritable lunch box of opiate derived delicacies ingested in various combinations at ritual intervals. Over the last few days I have been able to reach these necessities with no movement of the abdomen at all. Lying quite still, I have just been moving my arms up and down to get what I need, just like a sea anemone whose greater bulk is riveted to the ocean floor, but whose tendrils wave freely groping for nutrients.

When I have needed to get up, I have flailed and writhed like a grub in slow motion for up to two minutes at a time, until I have finally managed to get my feet on the floor, then willed the rest of the torso semi-upright. Then I’ve lurched uncertainly like a cartoon buzzard the few feet to the bathroom, then lurched back to the cot again where the whole process has to be executed in reverse. Its times like these one is so grateful not to be a international superstar; if I were, there could be a dozen paparazzi hanging from the trees across the road in Fitzroy Gardens with telephoto lenses trained through the windows onto my undignified movements. Then fuzzy pictures of my swollen torso flailing in my K-Mart pajamas would appear on the front pages of women’s magazines, underscored by accusatory captions like ‘Grub!” and “Buzzard!”. (Then again, if I were an international celebrity, I suppose I’d have a buffed butler/ personal trainer who I’d summon with a bell and who would gently sweep me up, clasp me to his massive pecs and deliver me to the toilet.)

I do have a picture I might be able to sell to New Idea or Marie Claire though, and that is just how much weight you can lose living primarily off a pain-killer diet for several weeks. Almost 5 kilograms (10 pounds) apparently! A fact I discovered when I was weighed at the hospital as part of the admissions process and the LED registered 44kgs (97 pounds). The bathroom basin and towel in the picture below have been added to give you a sense of scale. This is a pre-admission picture, however; theres no way I’m letting anyone, including me, take a picture of myself post-op. No way. My buzzard period must remain shrouded in visual mystery.

The stunning results of the analgesic diet!

As anyone who has got this far in this post would probably agree, medical problems are dull. Clearly, however, this surgery will take many weeks to recover from. How then to put a period of confinement and convalescence to best use? Perhaps, like Proust, I will pen my masterpiece, my very own A La Recherche du Temps Perdu, with the excised ovary replacing the tea-dipped madeleine, but everything else more or less analogous in historical sweep and poignancy. Or maybe I’ll get back to comic book writing again – Aaron, with whom I am currently lodging, is after all the graphic genius who illustrated our subversive and highly irregular comic Pigeon Coup for many years. And after reading Nicki Greenberg’s superb graphic novel, her take on The Great Gatsby , followed by Dr Doris Haggis-on-Whey’s (Dave Eggers) equally brilliant Giraffes? Giraffes! , I certainly do not lack recent inspiration.

I’ll think of something. Meanwhile, its time to be driven to the doctor’s to get my stitches out, followed by some serious grubbing back into bed.

Location, location, location

Books read since leaving Pittsburgh for Melbourne (Australia) a month ago:

Niall Ferguson: The Ascent of Money
Carrie Fisher: Wishful Drinking
Norman Doige: The Brain That Changes Itself
Don Watson: American Journeys
Augusten Burroughs: You Better Not Cry
Dava Sobel; Longitude

All of these are extremely good books. However, only one of them has delivered a handful of lines that continue to lap through my brain, like the headlines that scroll leisurely but insistently under syndicated world news stories. And these lines have become my internal teletype because I consider them as providing expert, objective commentary on a personal news story, a brand new, high tension personal mini-drama that has been unfolding for the last 6 weeks.

The lines are from Carrie Fisher’s ‘Wishful Drinking’. Carrie’s autobiography is a slender book, a supremely funny, abbreviated account of her transition from Hollywood child (as the offspring of Hollywood heartthrob Debbie Reynolds and ’50s crooner Eddie Fisher) to a Hollywood star herself – Princess Leia of Star Wars fame. At the height of her movie fame, Carrie married (then divorced) another star – late ’60s/ early ’70s folk idol Paul Simon. Now her most recent celebrity status rests on her lifelong demons – bipolar disorder (manic depression as it was once known) and alcoholism. She writes about these problems and sells lots of books; she has a stand-up comedy routine based on the havoc they have wreaked on her life; and she is even featured in psychiatric textbooks as a famous bipolar ‘case’.

Whats fascinating about Carrie’s writing (and Augusten Borroughs’ for that matter) is that she can make you chortle at the most God Awful Things. This is someone who at time of writing has just gone through 3 weeks of electro convulsive therapy, the treatment of last resort for people with incurable clinical depression, with the net result of losing rather a lot of her memory. This is someone who, when she veers into sadness, experiences no ordinary sadness, rather her emotional intensity:

“(Is) what revs up the motor of misery, guns the engine of an unpleasant experience, filling it with rocket fuel and blasting into a place in the stratosphere that is so-near to something like suicidal tendency – a place where the wish to continue living in this painful place is all but completely absent.”

Does that sound familiar to anyone? If it does, then you will fully admire this woman’s determination to triumph over her afflictions through poking her tongue out, show who’s boss through relentless acerbic wit. And the secret to being the wryly smiling, lash holding madam of your own f**ked up emotional life? Carrie explains that something happens and lets say “maybe its tragic, even a little bit shocking. Then time passes and you go to the funny slant, and now that very same thing can no longer do you any harm. So what we’re really talking about then is: location, location, location.”

Its that phrase “location, location, location” that has been my personal Times Square news ticker for the last month and a half. And that is because I started to experience acute stomache pains just before leaving Pittsburgh. And these pains have continued, more or less unabatedly, for the duration of my Australian visit, finally forcing me to cancel my flight back to the States last weekend, the day before I was due to drag my bags out to Tullamarine airport, loaded with yobbo hats, stubbie holders, boomerangs made in China and other fine examples of Aussie kitsch for the folks back home in the ‘Burgh. I have been waiting for my mind to stop wringing its neuronal hands (wow, what a great image), snap itself out of the shock of yet another health crisis (3rd in less than 3 years), and get to that location where everything feels safe again – the funny side. And today I hope I’ve finally arrived.

The view from the pain-killer balloon ride

Health problems are incredibly dull. Who wants to read about someone’s battle with illness or list of surgical procedures? Well, some people I guess, but not me. So let me get the facts so far out of the way quickly so I can move onto the much more satisfying practice of riffing on ideas and amusing myself (if no-one else) with assorted observations.

Meanwhile, here are some reflections upon my breaking news story:

Severe pain doesn’t ennoble you. It turns you into the most self-absorbed person imaginable. Untold suffering in Haiti? Massachusetts lost to the GOP? Whatever. All that matters to my brain is the spot next to my right hip and that night’s prospects of being able to sleep.

That is, until the heavy duty analgesics kick in. Then, PUFF! the dragging weight of my body drops away and my consciousness expands dramatically like an air balloon. From this lovely floating height, I notice there is a by-election coming up in Altona and decide eagerly that I must help The Greens staff booths again. I see Devendra Banhart is playing at Billboard next Wednesday and I decide I really want to go.

And most importantly I see – with crystal clarity – the never ending parade of human kindness of which I am a massive beneficiary. Tash immediately by my side, at Bar Open in Brunswick St, for post-diagnosis debriefing and alcohol supported cheer-ups. Aaron and Lisa uncomplainingly letting me stay on their couch, feeding me and providing nightly DVD distractions as they try and pack up around me for their move to NYC less than a month away. My bro, Kim, ratting through the TS bookshop looking for books on alternative treatments for my condition. Nick just giving me his second hand Volvo, bought only two weeks ago, to drive around for the duration of my stay. Kerry asking me to come down and recuperate, post-op, at her beach-side house. Lucy buying me tickets to Banhart. My doctor frantically ringing around, ‘grovelling’ as he put it, trying to find a specialist to see me as soon as possible. The list goes on.

And I see the advantages of missing out on a grey Pittsburgh winter in favor of yet another summer in Melbourne, appreciating like a tourist now, the groovy bars, the amazing food, the relaxed lifestyle and bounty of good live venues.

So my final observation is this: surely the question is not ‘why do some people become addicted to opiates?’ but ‘why isn’t everyone wanting to clamber into the pain-killer balloon?’. You can circle your life in ’80s days, largess is no effort at all, and everything gleams with a calm and fascinating goodness that most of us haven’t noticed for a long, long time.

Have you seen Xerxes?

And if I hadn’t been in a hyper-aware state, I might not have noticed the ‘Missing Cat’ notice pinned on the wall opposite the tram stop, as I waited to catch a tram up Brunswick St to see my acupuncturist last Thursday. After a few minutes of standing and looking vacantly at the the flapping piece of paper, I finally registered that, underneath the compulsory cutie pie picture of missing puss, there seemed to be an unusually long screed of text. Very long – taking up a whole page in fact. I stepped closer and began to read. I was not disappointed – the notice ‘Have you seen Xerxes?’ turned out to be one of those random acts of beautiful pranks that put a smile on your face for the rest of the day. Here is the notice – hope you can read it OK.

Till next blog, when I will hopefully know how long my latest hospital holiday is likely to last…

Have you seen Xerxes?

Car acting

There are currently three major features being shot in Pittsburgh: The Next Three Days, a murder mystery starring Russell Crowe; Love and Other Drugs, a comedy starring Jake Gyllenhall and Anne Hathaway (both of Brokeback Mountain fame); and Unstoppable, an action flick starring Denzel Washington. This means that every unemployed actor (if that is not a tautology) in the region, and everyone else with too much time on their hands, now appears to be working as an extra on one of these films.

After my boot-camp experience of working on the mixed marshall arts biffo flick Warrior, I was wary of taking up extra’s work again. But sheer curiosity – combined with the invisible hand of the market feeling around rudely inside my pocket – goaded me into signing up for yet more adventures on the movie set.

I was called into my first day with the The Next Three Days last week. At daybreak, I drove to the Pittsburgh Zoo carpark, the gathering point for crew and extras. After signing in, I hovered around the trailers for a while with about dozen other extras, sipping coffee and eating egg muffins, waiting for instructions. Finally, it became clear that what was required for the day was not human thespian talent but car acting.

There were two cut away scenes which required traffic innocently chugging along as the get-away (stunt) car took off. Could Chuck (my anthropomorphized Hyundai hatchback) handle himself under that kind of pressure? I’d soon find out.

We all drove in convoy first to an Aspinwall strip mall, and spent a couple of hours waiting for whatever it is you are waiting for on a movie set as PAs run around shouting ‘copy!’ into their walkie-talkies. Eventually, a police car moved importantly onto the road and stopped traffic. Watching carefully for our signals, the cars took off, one by one and zipped along the bitumen for about half a minute, then turned around and came right back for reshoots. We did this about half a dozen times, and I am proud to report that Chuck remained in character the whole time.

By late morning, we had nailed that scene and it was then off in convoy to Spring Hill to perform a similar scene, only involving hills. However, before we could begin a new bout of car acting, we were whisked off to lunch at the riverfront Atria‘s restaurant, part of the gleaming Pirates stadium complex. This is more like it, I thought, as after lunch I walked off my enormous salad, strolling in the brilliant autumn sunshine along the banks of the Allegheny. I could easily handle being a stage mom to Chuck, and enjoy a comfortable future basking in the reflected glory and paychecks of my movie star vehicle.

Then it was back to Spring Hill, but this time there were too many cars and not enough roles. I spent a few hours sunning myself, wandering around the view-saturated streets and chewing the fat with a couple of PAs while Chuck got a much deserved rest. We were dismissed late afternoon – in marked contrast to Warrior, where you were lucky if you were relieved of screaming duties before 10.00pm.

Bumping into Russell Crowe

My next call-in early this week was back to more familiar territory. Turning up at 6.00am and ushered into ‘the holding pen’ – the usually cramped, unlit place where extras mill around for hours waiting to be called to ‘act’ for a few seconds. The location was the old children’s hospital in Oakland and we were holed up in what for all I know could have been a former operating theater or artificial limb dispensary. I was cast as a nurse and issued with a set of scrubs about three sizes too big for me. I sat at a table along with a tall beautiful African American woman whose last role had been performing in a “truly terrible” basketball-babe flick in LA: across from me sat an African American middle aged man who lost no time in telling me he was a Minister and urged me to look up his website to get some good tips on how to live. We sipped our coffees and everyone except me ate donuts.

Happily, all Chuck’s training the previous week was not to go astray; after a couple of hours PAs came around looking for people to park their cars on set. I thrust my hand up and eagerly went off to collect Chuck. I situated him in full radiance of the movie lights where he remained all day, taking in all the attention like a true pro.

Finally, ‘patients’ and ‘medical staff’ were called on set – the entry to the emergency department waiting room. For the first set up, I had to walk from one end of the room to the other, lean over the desk and ask the triage nurse something. Thanks to years of walking around rooms, I knew how to do this without any coaching and the scene went off without a hitch.

However, the next scene required the hero, Russell Crowe, to come running full tilt into the ER and push past a couple of medical staff. I was selected to be one the nurses between which Crowe would barrel. As neither myself nor my fellow nurse had any experience being bumped into by a fast moving Hollywood star, we had to discuss the scene with the director, get our blocking right and rehearse with Russell.

As we were talking with the director, Crowe looked at me with some surprise and remarked “I know that accent! Where are you from?”. We shook hands and exchanged a few brief friendly words – but sadly there was not enough time for me to suggest to Russell that if he was looking for really steady vehicle to park in the background of any of his future movies that I had just the car for him.

The first take was good – Russell careened between myself and the other nurse and shouldered me out of the way with much energy. However, the director wanted the star to move slower, and slightly more to the right. His shoving was fine though. My ability to look surprised and annoyed at my fellow countryman’s hospital hurtle was “good”. After several takes, it was a wrap and it was back to the holding pen.

For a few minutes, I was the star of the holding pen, as my fellow nurse recounted the scene to the extras who had not been needed on set, and verified, to admiring eyes, that I had indeed “been shoved out of the way by Russell Crowe!”.

The rest of the afternoon was without any further excitement. Later in the evening Chuck and I made our way back to Lawrenceville, tired but happy that we had both done our small bit in creating that special Hollywood movie magic.

Update on my pending engagement

Thanks for the comments and flood of emails supporting my forthcoming engagement with international heartthrob Chris Isaak. As I suspected, the weight of world public opinion is firmly on my side here, and all I have to do really is just wait for the inevitable. Not only that, but this bit of spam found its way into my contact form submission with 24 hours of my post:

“You made some good points there. I did a search on the topic and found most people will agree with your blog.”

Precisely! And the freaky correspondences between Chris’s life and mine continue: I just found out that Chris was interviewed by the same ABC radio announcer in the exactly the same studio that I was interviewed in just before I left Australia, a mere two years before me. How about that?? We were that close to actually meeting.

Meanwhile, like any bride to be, I find my mind drifting quite frequently to the question of what I should wear. I’ve known women who have spent at least a year carefully pondering every aspect of this life-changing question and I think I will be no exception. Any suggestions as to what could be an appropriate nuptial look for me – keeping in mind the likely Vanity Fair spread – gratefully received!

And the Glee Club zombie mini-documentary continues to take shape, including a shoot at the wonderful Brillo Box on Sunday night, starring myself and A.T Vish thrashing around on stage in our very best gothic outfits. Sound and vision will, I hope, finally be ready by the next post…

A match, surely, made in heaven

Here are 10 reasons why Chris Isaak should marry me:

1. He writes songs about love and heartache (mostly heartache); I write songs about love and heartache (mostly heartache)

2. Hes a major international celebrity; I am (according to the US Department of Immigration) an ‘extraordinary alien’

3. He has matinee idol good looks; I photograph well in the right light with the right make-up

4. His tracks have melt your heart, state of the art production values; my tracks would have melt your heart state of the art production values if I had the money

5. He recently toured Australia; I used to live there

6. He has his own syndicated music TV show where he interviews world famous musicians; I have my own new podcast and ABC radio spot where I interview obscure musicians

7. He has an immaculately stylized neo-50s western/ rockabilly heartthrob image; I have an immaculately stylized neo-60s jilted bride image

8. Chris has millions of fans around the world, many of whom subscribe to his site and blog about him; I also have a website and sometimes people comment on my blogs

9. Chris is not, and has never been, married; I am not, and have never been, married

10. Chris has released 13 albums; I have released 11 and am working on the 12th.

How freaky are all those correspondences?? I think its pretty clear destiny is at work here.

In fact the argument for a marriage is so compelling, I find myself skipping the minor details of how we might actually meet, fall in love etc and going straight to the critical moment of the actual proposal.

How/ where might this take place? What would I prefer – a whispered intimate confession or a passionate public announcement – like how Johnny Cash proposed on stage to June Carter in 1968 during a live performance in Ontario? I think on balance I’d prefer the latter because Chris would find it difficult to back out on it later, you know, saying he’d been drinking or whatever and didn’t really mean it. If there were thousands of witnesses, I don’t think Chris could jilt me without losing a few CD sales. I think his fans would, on the whole, be disappointed in him. But he’s a man, after all, and after so many decades as a touring loner, you’d have to expect a bit of fear about settling down, so an on-stage or live-on-TV marriage proposal could give me the emotional insurance I need.

And then the next most important thing to consider: what music to play just before the wedding vows? Do we play one of his tracks, or do we play one of mine? Or a medley? I think the obvious solution here is for us to write a track together about our love for each other and total undying commitment, which, if we get the right producer, could then be turned into a hit, proceeds from which could then finance our Virgin Islands honeymoon.

I think I should start compiling the guest-list now, because its important to get the numbers right and popular Cape Cod wedding venues are booked way in advance, so I am told. So if you agree Chris and I should be husband and wife, and you’d like to come to our wedding, please post a comment to that effect and I will add your name to our guest list.

Twin Peaks echos

The most important thing thats happened to me over the last week or so, as the above musings might suggest, is that I have rediscovered Chris Isaak’s music, after about a 20 year absence from my life.

‘Wicked Game’ was released in 1991, and that album, along with Julee Cruise/ Badalamenti’s ‘Floating into the Night’ formed the soundtrack to my life for a couple of years in the early ’90s. ‘Twin Peaks’ was the thrilling, magical TV soap altar around which myself and Peter (my then partner) and our friends would gather each week. Like thousands of other fans around the world, we would break donuts and coffee together as part of our Special Agent Cooper ritual then lose ourselves in the Lynchian mysteries. Both Cruise and Isaak were featured musicians in that legendary show.

That relationship and those times are long gone. But ‘Wicked Game’ sends me right back there, because music occupies the same timeless zone as love.

I subsequently had the enormous privilege of recording a track with Julee Cruise in 1999. She agreed to do the vocals to a B(if)tek track from our then forthcoming album ’2020′. Sony flew us to New York to shoot a film clip with her and it was a wonderful experience to work, albeit briefly, with one of my Twin Peaks’ idols. But for some reason I forgot all about Chris Isaak for almost twenty years.

Until a couple of weeks ago when ‘Wicked Game’ suddenly emerged, completely unannounced, from my musical memory vaults and started playing itself incessantly in my head. This was followed, a few days later, by my walking into Eon’s fashion boutique in Shadyside, Chris Isaak’s vocals still crooning softly in my mind. As I entered the shop, I rounded the corner and came face to face, to my shock, with Chris Isaak – his image was still on an original faded poster for ‘Wicked Game’ stuck to a central pillar in the shop. The next morning I was woken up to the sounds of Scott and Tanya in the kitchen, Scott remarking, “Hey, this sounds like a great song, do you know it?” as he turned up ‘Wicked Game’ on the radio.

While noting these synchronicities, which always give me little shivers of pleasure, still I gave Isaak no further thought. Until yesterday. I heard a track on WYEP and bent over the radio to turn it up (a rare occurrence). The track featured the refrain ‘You Don’t Cry Like I Do’ and it was a total heart-stopper, catchy, epic, naked. I listened carefully to hear who the artist was and was amazed to hear it was Chris Isaak – whatever happened to him? Is he still producing music this great 20 years later? Five minutes later I had downloaded his most recent album ‘Mr Lucky’ and have not stopped listening to it since. It is a truly wonderful album.

Chris’s website is also one of the best designed band/ musical artist websites I’ve seen and a real pleasure to visit.

Pittsburgh’s Zombie Culture

The next most significant event of my life over the last week was international zombie day which took place last Sunday 11th October. This is a day where zombie film fans all over the world celebrate zombie culture, and apparently the event originated in Pittsburgh in 2006.

Pittsburgh has a rich history of zombie movie production, due in large part to the path-breaking contribution of cult director George Romero, who has shot many movies here including two of the most influential zombie movies of all time – ‘Night of the Living Dead’ (1968) and ‘Dawn of the Dead’ (1978). ‘Dawn of the Dead’, a bleakly satirical depiction of mindless consumerism, was shot in an outer suburb of Pittsburgh called Monroeville, in its local shopping mall.

Tanya, Scott and I (otherwise known as Glee Club Productions) made our way out to Monroeville mall to film over 1400 undead shambling past rows and rows of retail chain shops – blood dripping, eyes hanging, feet dragging, with occasional bursts of moaning (and much barely suppressed grinning). I interviewed many zombies. And last night myself and Al Vish (also known as Carol Blaze, former drummer for The Jilted Brides in our Warhol Museum gig incarnation, and all-round multi-talented rock star ) finished recording our angst-power-pop version of the legendary Roky Erikson track ‘I Walked With a Zombie’.

What are we going to do with all this awesome footage and kick ass zombie dance music? Well, all will be revealed in the next blog post:-) …

G20 in Pittsburgh

My adopted home of Pittsburgh, USA and my recently vacated home town of Melbourne, Australia now have three things in common:

• They have both been voted ‘most livable city’ by various publications and lifestyle monitors.  For the last decade, Melbourne has consistently scored up the very top of The Economist’s assessment of world’s most livable cities (just this year, it lobbed in near the top again, rated number 3, with Vancouver number 1 followed by Vienna).  And in 2007, Pittsburgh was rated the USA’s most livable city, according to a number of publications including ‘Places Rated Almanac’.

• They have both played host city to high profile meetings of world political and corporate leaders negotiating on issues of international finance and trade -  in Melbourne the World Economic Forum meeting in 2000 and the G20 meeting in 2006. And in Pittsburgh, the G20 meeting which took place on Thursday and Friday last week.

• They both magnetize the loyalty and frustration of a small Australian musician who regards them both now as ‘home’.

In 2000, I was only one of 10,000 protesters who gathered for three days to highlight issues of fair trade, third world debt relief and ecologically sustainable economic development by blockading access to the (newly built and highly contentious) Crown Casino on the Yarra river where the WEF meeting was to be held.  These issues were not on the agenda of the meeting, but they were, from the protesters point of view, critical to the world’s future.

I had the easiest job of all: I was simply part of the entertainment, on a stage several hundred meters away from where the human barricades were at their thickest.  Along with other musicians, I got to play tunes to help relieve the anxiety and tedium experienced by protesters spending hours and hours sitting around, peacefully waving their placards and occasionally chanting.  Some got up and boogied to my set, and it felt good.  But there was a sense of unease and fear growing, the blockade was being so effective, surely ‘the other side’ was going to try something drastic.

Sure enough, early hours the next morning, mounted police (that means police on great big horses) charged the barricades, batons a-swooping, to clear a path for the delegates.  Police did not have badges displaying their names/ numbers, making it difficult for protesters or legal observers to identify police involved in the illegal activity.  This pattern of unidentified police charging on peaceful protesters continued in bursts throughout the rest of the protests.  Because of the large number of eye-witnesses, including by journalists, even the normally ‘turn a blind eye’ national newspapers such as the Sydney Morning Herald reported legal observers as noting:

“Up to 200 protesters had been injured by police who hit them on the head with batons, trampled them with horses, dragged them by the hair, punched, kicked, elbowed and bitten them and driven at high speed to disperse the crowds…”

There were numerous hospitalizations and serious injuries although, luckily, no deaths.  Two years later, court cases against the Victorian police relating to these incidents were still continuing.  I understand that most of these have been successful ie awarding compensation to the unlawfully assaulted.

After the three days of bloodshed and trauma had finished, the WEF delegates had finished their discussions in Melbourne’s newly legalized gambling emporium and went home. Steve Bracks (the newly elected Labor premier of Victoria) then held a party for the Victorian police and congratulated them on their handling of the protests.  That was the day when I realized that supporting the Australian Labor Party was no longer an option for me.

Fast forward to 2009, and I knew that, based on my personal experience in Melbourne 10 years ago, combined with reports from other cities that had hosted G20, WTO and other similar groupings of world economic leaders, that Pittsburgh was in for a shock.

I was not in Pittsburgh over the G20 summit, as I was In Norfolk, Virginia, otherwise engaged in a very different kind of tussle with folk who were from a completely alien socio-cultural planet (although, thankfully, not on horses with large sticks).  But when I got back last night, I have pieced together what happened based on friend’s accounts and newspaper reports.

Downtown Pittsburgh, where the G20 meetings were being held, was effectively cordoned off for security measures and was a ghost town for the two days.  Many businesses shut, and most colleges here also shut and sent their students away.  There were some marches by protesters on Thursday, approved in advance by the local government, which went on without incident.  Greenpeace gathered in the West End of the City and tried to display a banner with a message about climate change.  Some of them were arrested.

There was one small bunch of protesters, organized by some anarchists and I think also Resistance (International Socialist off-shoot group) who on Thursday gathered in Arsenal Park (in my suburb of Lawrenceville, just a few blocks down from where myself, Tanya and Scott live). They didn’t have a marching permit, but they tried nevertheless to make their way downtown to the David Lawrence convention center where the world honchos were gathered.  Some of them were allegedly pushing a dumpster along the road and some also broke a couple of shop windows along the way. Breaking struggling shop-owners property is inexcusable and causing mayhem on inner city streets is also inexcusable behavior.  Unless of course you are a Steelers fan on the night we won our 6th Super Bowl this year, in which case you can burn couches on the streets, trash cars and run around in packs drunk out of your mind screaming all night and its all in the national interest.

However, the small band (maybe 400 at the most?) of Lawrenceville agitators quickly learned black headbands, banners and dumpsters were no match for equal numbers of armored riot police lobbing tear-gas canisters and rubber bullets.  Many protesters (and unlucky local residents) collapsed from the spray, and there were several arrests.

Apparently word of the encounter spread to University of Pittsburgh students, and a few hundred gathered in Schenley Plaza, near U of Pitt campus.  As of today (Sunday 27th), most eyewitness accounts claim there were either no, or only a few, protesters.  The rest were just students and general folk who milled around Oakland, Pittsburgh’s groovy university district, on a Friday night.  Nevertheless, the police struck out in force again, with rubber bullets, tear-gas and numerous arrests.  This time they made the mistake of arresting a Pittsburgh Post Gazette journalist, and there were dozens of witnesses who claimed there were no protests, acts of violence, or threats going on -  there were just students suddenly surrounded by police, confusion as they tried to disperse, then they were fired on, then arrested.

However, the good news is that, although some people have been hurt from rubber bullets and tear gas,  it appears there have been no serious injuries in the aftermath of G20.

Whether or not you agree with the issues that the G20 protesters want to highlight (and I don’t agree with all of them, certainly not the Resistance propaganda or the shop vandalizing anarchists), it seems to me a stand needs to be taken on whether or not people in a democracy have the right to gather peacefully in the streets, express their views and not be subject to intimidation and violence.  They may not have a place at the heavily guarded conference table, but do they have a point?  Is the greatest danger to our collective wellbeing the skinny, lost  kid stumbling down Butler St with the ‘I protest everything’ sign, or a bunch of world political leaders who are not acting any where near fast enough on the scientific evidence that the world, in the next 2 years, will enter a point of no return in terms of ecological collapse?

One of the final attributes that Melbourne and Pittsburgh have in common is this: a political paradox that runs through America and Australian political life.  Both our countries pride ourselves on our democratic principles of government and talk a great deal about freedom and individual rights.  But in recent decades both our governments have been quick to curtail those very freedoms – both legislatively (Australia, too, had our own version of the Patriot Act) and in ‘emergency powers’ under the pretext of protecting our ‘democratic way of life’.

I note that Kevin Rudd, Australia’s current Labor Party Prime Minister, was in town and gave a speech to CMU last Wednesday.  From what I can tell, it was the usual bland belching of ALP hack writer rhetoric, saying nothing in particular about everything in general.  Inasmuch as Mr Rudd  made greenwash MacStatements about climate change issues ‘affecting us in the long term’ (is 2 years ‘long term’??), you can be sure he is doing nothing in the here in now to re-direct Australia, as one of the world’s greatest carbon emitters per head of population, to avert our headlong rush into chronic water shortages, continued old growth forest logging, and massive tax subsidies for our coal, uranium and other polluting industries.

So where was I when G20 protesters in my very own newly adopted suburb were performing a kind of subversive ballet with dumpsters in front of the police? (and not just the ‘Mr Roger’s Neighborhood’ type friendly ‘help kids across the road’ local cops, but especially imported military trained Federal troopers who could quell-a-riot-in-Iraq type police?).

Well, I was in sleepy Norfolk, Virginia spending two and a half days at a trade show called the Performing Arts Exchange.  This is an annual conference based in the South where presenters (people who run theaters, festivals and arts institutions) come to shop for shows to buy and present at their venues over the coming twelve months.  I was there with Steve O’Hearn, one of the artistic directors of Squonk Opera, a Pittsburgh based multi-media music troupe. Tanya has been helping Squonk with video projections for several months now.  And about a month ago, Steve and Jackie (the other artistic director of Squonk Opera)  kindly employed me as their part-time Communications Director, to help them with the large number of administrative and marketing tasks that are needed to run a successful, long-running (17 years) troupe such as theirs.

So instead of facing rubber bullets, I was facing booth displays and showcases by other agents and artists anxious to impress presenters with the audience draw of their talent – which consisted mostly of recent Broadway shows, B-grade Broadway show rip-offs (Jersey Men!), has-been bands from the 1970s and ’80s (eg Procol Harum! Nitty Gritty Dirt Band!), regional wind quartets featuring flautist ladies with plunging necklines, guys in checkered suits who juggled ping-pong balls, Rat-Pack tribute shows, Beatles tribute shows, Patsy Cline tribute shows, evenings with Larry Hagman, heart-warming children’s shows featuring C&W cowboys (Comedy and Western!), an electric violinist that does Led Zepelin medleys! the list goes on.

I will save recounting a little more about my time in the heartland of the mid-Atlantic/Western/South, middle American entertainment industry trying to sell Squonk’s high tech visual wizardry set to abstract, progressive rock soundscapes, to the next blog post.  Till then, I should perhaps reflect on the irony that, Norfolk, my haven from G20 confrontations was nothing less than NATO’s global headquarters.  Which makes me wonder: so many great musicals have been borne from past wars, but could we create one from our current internal unrest?