On Defecating Bricks

The action on Facebook tonight: Various friends bemoan the arrival of tomorrow's ATAR scores - the set of numbers that will determine, at least in the immediate future, our career pathways. One warns customers to be prepared for a cantankerous checkout chick while others look into the ether for help on receiving the most "efficient" mode of getting their scores (a surprising, if not unexpected, comment regarding the Nazis was made on one such status).

The culmination of the various portion of 13 years of industrious work - or lack thereof - will become tangible tomorrow. Some may have put in the effort for the 2 years - the technical duration of the VCE but it is possible to stretch it out to 3 - others just the one year and some may have only known good study habits for 6 months. On a personal level, I felt I could have worked harder for the first half of this year before I clamped down for the November exams. This was especially the case when I had already achieved a study score in the top 3.5% of the state for Literature last year.

Whatever situation a student finds themselves in, there needs to be a check-in not with hysteria but with reality. The whole reason that we are subjected to this method of evaluation is that all parties concerned with our education - employers, tertiary institutions, the VCAA, our peers and, most importantly, our own egos - can determine just where we stand. I've heard that, apparently, fellow tortured students in Britain receive only end-of-year grade markings, and their relative worth to universities is determined by extracurricular activities. It's a noble idea, but I've come to believe that statistical moderation is far superior to this sort of contextual determination. At the end of the day, your volunteering at the local soup kitchen for a couple of hours each week has no bearing on how successful you will be in completing your Juris Doctor with honours.

Of course, some will feel disappointment. It's a natural part of the whole scholastic cycle. I can write this with some ease as I have been provisionally offered to study a Bachelor of Communication (Media) at RMIT. I would say to those people that your response to the setback defines you more as a person than the setback itself ever does. There is a beautiful short story by Isaac Asimov - and I'll be darned if I can remember the name of it - that exposes final exams in the future - which are roughly analogous to the importance of my exams for future success on steroids on methamphetamines. The crux of the story is that he seemingly fails all his exams - only in the last paragraph is his result revealed to be special enough to be deemed an educator and smarter than most other people. The whole point is that while it sounds clichéd, it might just be good advice to follow the wisdom of The Rolling Stones - "You can't always get what you want, but you find sometimes that you might just get what you need".

Anyway, I'm off now to watch "Peep Show", possibly one of the funniest shows I have ever seen. I hope to sleep well, and wake up nice and late so I don't stress too much about receiving the SMS with my ATAR score - a score that will influence quite heavily my immediate future. I hope I do well and I hope that you, dear reader, can be satisfied with such an epochal set of numbers 

"The Fonz of the Eighteenth Century"

Well, I'm back from my little sabbatical, but I don't think cramming for my Year 12 exams - since July! - was any kind of break. Anywho, published hereunder - I always wanted to use that word - is my second piece in this year's edition of the Emmanuel College Literary Journal, a small prècis of whom a friend of mine considers to be the "Fonz of the Eighteenth Century" and general meme superstar, Joseph Ducruex.

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After consulting with my Design Editor, Troy Torcasio, about the front cover that should be used for the second edition of the Literary Journal , I suggested a reference to current Internetz culture, viz. the Joseph Ducreux meme. (Okay, there was no suggestion at all; it was actually me exercising arbitrary power in a sign of my becoming mad with power, or the low-fat sugar-free version that comes in the position I hold). Before anyone invokes Rule 1, I offer the following: we must subscribe to the doctrine of Wikipedia, where all human knowledge is available for all. Anywho, the point is that Mr. Torcasio, upon seeing the infamous self-portrait (“Portrait of an artist in the guise of a joker”, left), described him as being “the Fonz of the eighteenth century”. At first I thought it was an interpretation based in the plane of imagination, but as I will prove – eventually – it may be that this is a concept grounded a little more in reality.       

Born in Nancy, to the northeast of Paris, on June 26, 1735, Ducreux trained with his father – also a painter – before moving to the City of Light in 1760. There, he studied portraiture under the tutelage of Maurice-Quentin de la Tour.

His first big assignment came in 1769 when he was sent to Vienna to paint the wife of the future king, or dauphin, for his appraisal and approval. As those who have studied the French Revolution will know, the marriage of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette caused consternation and even outright anger in the years before the taking of the Bastille and the eventual establishment of the republic. I am not for one unit of time insinuating that Ducreux has some hitherto-unseen blame to take for the loss of a 200-year monarchy, but one wonders of course, if one were to be endowed with Doctor Who-like time travelling powers, (actually, I’ll think I’ll go with Doc “Great Scott” Brown and his wacko DeLorean) what the consequences would be of preventing Ducreux’s passage to Vienna. The response would surely involve the impossibility of one’s current existence, due to one’s accidental murdering of some obscure relative of one...but, as with most things with me, that’s kindling for another fire.

In any case, Ducreux was made premier peintre de la reine (“first painter to the Queen”, for all you Francophobes) for his work, and also became a baron.

As the first heads were being lopped off at the outbreak of the French Revolution, Ducreux travelled to London to produce the last portrait of Louis XVI, left – a gloomy monarch shows little emotion as he is captured in a stiff, collared shirt, far removed from his days of opulence during the ançien regime.

Upon returning to Paris in 1793, Ducreux stayed at the residence of Jacques-Louis David, the de facto painter of the revolution. He died in 1802, on the road between Paris and Saint-Denis, a small northern suburb.

SIGNIFICANCE

Ducreux’s more memorable works call to mind the tronies, or portraits produced during the Dutch Golden Age (the 17^th century) focussing on the face. These illustrations were the caricatures of the day, emphasising distorted facial features in place of reality. Adriaen Brouwer’s “The Bitter Tonic”, right, is emblematic of this genre – the image depicts a plebeian regretting, with a distaste that is almost audible, his choice of refreshment. Similar to his contemporary Rembrandt, Brouwer sought to challenge the limitations of a two-dimensional representation. In Ducreux reviving what was essentially a disestablishmentarian spirit, he rejected the notions of hierarchy pervading the French Academy of Painting and Sculpture – even though he was a commoner he was able to flourish under the patronage of Marie-Antoinette.

So what is the point of Ducreux’s renaissance on the Internet? I was not around when some random started the meme – “ye olde” English imposed on modern pop culture references (the idea of an ancient Frenchman “speaking” outdated English to comment on current culture is actually quite surreal). But if I were to posit an opinion – and this is presupposing a knowledge of Ducreux’s context – it would be that Ducreux’s rebellionism is an outlet for the anonymous to vent their spleen about the jarring and obfuscating nature of current English use, a crime of which I am guilty as much as Kevin Rudd and any communicator of his ilk. By continuing this meme, people are able to tangibly subvert what has become of leitmotif of our political life: the intersection between the politicians that speak and write the almost-meaningless words, the media that report and compartmentalise them and the consumer that digests them – in both the original and reported forms. This subversion takes place because of the frustration that takes place when witnessing this never-ending cycle of political discourse. In a word (yeah, right), Ducreux’s rebirth could be just as important as the Occupy movement that is currently occurring worldwide.           

Raised from the dead to be feted throughout the hallowed pages of the Internet, Joseph Ducreux and his wonderful self-portrait have become, for me at least, an icon for freedom and individualistic joie de vivre. Upon further consideration, it may be that Ducreux’s oeuvre is illustrative of rebellionism, a trait shared by everybody’s favourite 1950s sitcom character (or at least my Design Editor’s) – the Fonz. 

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 Review

"This is the end.../My only friend, the end..."
            - The Doors, "The End"

In the case that you will state your current residential address as "under a rock" in the upcoming census, you will not have realised that the film to end all films (no, seriously, it's the last film in the series) just came out - therefore you should all go out and watch it, making the bosses of Werribee Plaza - oh, and those people that made the film as well, I guess - a bucketload of money.

As Harry Potter 7 Part 2 (I distinctly recall seeing it referred to as Harry Potter 7.5 - or maybe it's just my imagination running away, to quote The Rolling Stones) got underway, I felt a weird parallel with my own drawn-out conclusion to schooling life. Well, without the Death Eaters roaming around (or maybe...nah...) and the Horcruxes to find and the stone guards to defend the school in case of an existential crisis (how cool are they?!!!) and whatnot. But, it is a poignant reminder of how little time I have left.

...And the movie started. What I actually didn't like about this film is that the expectation surrounding it outweighed its quality. In this day and age, where we can watch people do heinous things with a cup with each other on YouTube and troll classmates for the immediate shock reaction, we don't hold out for the big things anymore. This idea is essentially known among boffins as the decline of social capital and has gained prominence since it was first raised in the 1990s - maybe this film has more to do with our social environment than we think.

But then, why did I see the movie? No, it wasn't to rant and rave about our crumbling society and compare the apparent decline of the West to the fall of the Roman Empire, which is an interesting idea in itself but probably kindling for another fire. I saw it because I was curious, something that mastermind JK Rowling has been able to exploit since she published the first book in 1997. And there probably is a joy in finishing something that you started - something that teachers should tell more to procrastinating students.

This movie is probably one of the few that you can do a Jim Schembri -  a former St. Paul's collegian, I am reliably informed - and give away the ending to a movie but get away with it. Instead, it is worth celebrating the actors that make this film memorable: Alan Rickman, for one, as the severe Professor Snape makes his swansong in a remarkable manner. His performance was emotionally raw and I finally saw his true character. It was sort of like reading Great Expectations by Dickens but finding that it actually wasn't that good - it's nice that the audience sees a new side of a character but it's a bit futile given it's in the final half of a film series totalling about 20 hours. I guess Rowling and Warner Bros. are having the last laugh.

What amounted to a cameo by Professor McGonagall (Maggie Smith) was also enjoyable. She reminded me, in this film especially, of someone who appears to be haughty and aloof but is actually quite caring when the chips are down; it was a nice touch from director David Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves.

Any last word on this film must go to Neville Longbottom (Matthew Lewis). Even as he is tormented by Voldemort - not in a physical sense as per usual, but because of his rather unfortunate name - he is able to justify and vindicate his existence in the most helpful way possible. Imagine walking out of the exams at the end of the year and intuitively knowing that you did all you could and you got what you needed for your career pathway - it's something like that here, except the imagery is more striking.

All in all, a touching film and one that will be remembered for a long time - it may be watched only once or twice at mose by many but that's no reason for studio execs to be dismayed. And if they somehow feel that this hurts the lining of their back pocket, they could always persuade Channel 9 to show the series every couple of months. It's not like they would be increasing its frequency that much, anyway.         

Once Upon a Time in the West

"Go west, young man"
                           - Horace Greeley

Used in an 1865 editorial by the New York Tribune editor and "self-appointed chief of staff of the New York newspaper generals" (according to Wikipedia, but what would they know?) in perhaps another context, it is the quote that came to mind when I had the idea for this post.

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Over the past few years, I have been lucky enough to savour and taste the full gamut of flavours that are the western suburbs. It is this love affair, then, that, like a bipolar Jack, keeps the stroke betwixt my moues of apathy and my wild, passionate sentiments. Who can blame me? The western suburbs is at once a vivacious organism and a slow, dying red giant. Perhaps it would be best to let me explain.

After a busy day biwinning at school (I am the lucky recipient of both tiger blood and Adonis DNA, naturally), I observe the comings and goings of other Western Melburnians while listening to the back catalogues of Talking Heads and The Clash. It seems to me that people born and bred, or just living, this side of the Yarra are imbued with a special sense of optimism, one forged in the fire of adversity. I first came across this thought, believe it not, on election day last year, when I was forced to take a 40-minute bus trip home after Metro decided to fix up some signal box, or something - I don't remember the vagaries. Some people remember their first kiss, others their first solo drive. Weird, neurotic people like me remember irrelevant thoughts. Anywho, I must press on, as I know the ECLJ IT Department will kill me for spoiling their tea binge-drinking days and making them do a scrap of work.

As I was saying, optimism. Ah yes! Whether it be in the store retailer who knows anyone in their semi-sane mind will not purchase their wares but keeps en garde looking for customers, or in the ex-druggie pleading with the bus driver that he has no change/lost his wallet &c, it is heartwarming to see that the "little Aussie battler" still lives, long after Ernie Siegley passed on. As the days become cooler, as the nights become longer, there is a fire, an intensity in people's eyes that shows their conviction, their desire (perhaps a common trait among all of us) to make a good thing better - from the anonymous man who runs the awesome donut van next to Footscray Station to the various administrators of sport in the West who wake up before the cock crows for a pure love of the game. As a general rule, perhaps, I have found, in my own dealings, that people on this side of the Yarra just seem more genuine in their behaviour - maybe because, in the words of Bob Dylan and probably many others, "if you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose". However, the outliers that I know - whose fortune has granted them not only a reputable birthplace but, more importantly, an extremely personable character - preclude me from declaring "quad erat demonstrandum" and making this theorem a law.

What disenheartens me when I think of the West is the fatal flaws in its character, which are often the same that make it so great. One example is a visceral fear of not grandiloquence, but greatness. I feel we are right to shun the excesses of the former but we take it too far when we avoid the latter. I see that we, collectively, are too happy to embrace the status quo, which in part explains the rise of conservatism. Our atypical life experiences should provide a springboard for alternative ideas and practices, but too often we ignore our uniqueness to return to safe, stale ideas. It is the real-life equivalent of slipping on a Snuggie as soon as you get home from school or wake up on the weekend. Imagine a society in which we ridicule conservatism as much as we do the Snuggie. Imagine if one of us were to come up with a set of ideas, a worldview, that shook the West from its slumber of apathy. Perhaps that was the true spirit of Horace Greeley's dictum       



Change of career for a man in White - prologue

Welll, given White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs' imminent departure, I thought I might take the opportunity to write a retrospective on him. However, his Wikipedia page won't quite cut the mustard, so I thought I might try and get in contact with the man himself, through the White House. Right now, I'm preparing an introdctory message, with questions attached. Tomorrow I will get the esteemed Mr. Buttacavoli to look it over and hopefully I can get it sent soon. Keep your eyes peeled....

Ashes post-mortem

Mon dieu. A team of fruity and frisky Frenchmen could have put up a better fight against the Old Enemy than our so-called Australian XI in the most recent hunt for cricketing's greatest glory. However, congratulations must go to those pasty Poms that have retained it. I know all good Engländer who have read this blog from Britannia - and a certain Cannockman over here - will have sipped their warm lager and munched on their crisps - whatever they are - well into the evening as they celebrated this invective victory. And good on 'em. It's not like they have much to celebrate over there at the moment - midwinter, being forced to sit through another royal wedding soon, plus other associated Anglophobic miscellanies.

More importantly, however, is the reovery of the Australian cricket team from the ashes of an absolute débâcle of a series on home soil - for the first time since '86/87 have the Aussies conceded the tiny urn on their own turf. The fact remains that it is an absloute indictment on our current crop of cricketers - especially soon-to-be-deposed captain Ricky "Swisse" Ponting - that in a series of 5 matches, we lost by at least an innings in 3 matches. Not good enough, I'm afraid.

The Aussie top and middle order was woefully pathetic right through the series, starting in Brisbane and ending a couple months later and a few hundred kilometres south in Sydney. Katich probably played his last Test in Adelaide, not because he got out for a diamond duck, but because he seems to have fatally injured his Achilles - there is no need to snidely suggest running is his Achilles heel, but I'll do so anyway. Tired and stressed Ponting either will come back as captain after his injury to his finger, or not at all. The latter is the wiser option. Clarke better shape up quicksmart or he could find himself deputising once again to the likes of Hussey or Haddin. These two actually seem the only players booked into any Aussie XI side at the moment, with the former averaging 63 with a high score of 195 in Brisbane (he got out stupidly by slogging slackly for a double century) while Haddin is the Woodbridge to Hussey's Woodforde, averaging a fruitful 45 and saving splendidly with the gloves. Marcus North was an absolute joke; as Crikey's Tom Cowie rightly pointed out, no matter "how many of the selector’s family members he may or may not have locked in his basement, you can’t continue to fail on the big stage". And fail he has. The rot set in last summer and the proverbial sword of Damocles has been hanging over his head ever since. However, ironically, bizzarely, surreally, superlatively - anyway you look at it - Marcus North achieved the best bowling analysis (1-47) in the second innings in Brisbane when, as Crikey's Leigh Josey so colourfully imagines it, the Aussie bowlers were simply "Cook Blocked", or maybe had a case of the Trotts. [Scroll down to comments section]. Bravo, sir. (Josey, not North).

There is some light at the end of the tunnel in terms of batting. Usman Khawaja, if nothing else, scored consistently with a cool temperament in his début match in Sydney. However, replacement opener Phillip Hughes certainly lived up to his Jewish roots by making runs at a miserly level, and then getting out cheaply.

Turning to bowling now, and this part of the side thankfully is able to challenge at least a VTCA side. But, that is not to say there are no issues at all. The pre-Ashes media hype focussed on who would be the spin doctor of the Australian side. Would it be Nathan "German" Hauritz? No, how about Xavier "College" Doherty? Try Stephen "Not the Defence Minister" Smith, or, for those playing at home, Michael "I Needa" Beer.

First of all, to intimate that Smith is the number one bowler in Australia, as the selectors seemingly did for the third and fourth Tests, is beyond the pale by a country mile. He is, at best, a batting all-rounder. Alright, Hauri isn't all glamour like Warnie, with his right-arm offbreaks, but at least he can get a 6-fer in a Test match. Against England, too. Onya, Hauri. Doherty's been around the traps long enough, but he still has an apprenticeship to serve. And Beer is too lanky to be a spin bowler. I reckon he's the same size as pasty paceman Chris Tremlett - and one's bowling almost double the speed of the other. See, that's what you can't deny about the English - they're efficient. They probably convicted cricketers and sent them over here for  bowling spin when they had the height to bowl pace, or could at least swing it.     

Right. Onto pace. Shane "It's Elementary" Watson, whose action has been described by Cricket with Balls' Jarrod Kimber as having a "elderly-man-getting-out-of-a-car bowling style", did the job required of the back-up/into-the-wind bowler. Hell, he even picked up a few wickets. His opening batting was equally unequivocal, even if he was involved in two run-outs. Ryan "Scott" Harris, Ben "House of Hilf" Hilfenhaus and Peter Siddle are above rebuke or criticism. Every Aussie's highlight would be Siddle getting the hattrick in Brisbane, and everybody's second highlight would be Tubby Taylor going absolutely ape calling it. Mitchell Johnson's bowling was more erratic than a person with split personality disorder, and for Doug "the Rug" Bollinger to only play in Adelaide is actually a good indication of how good the Aussie bowlers are.

Meanwhile, the English players seemingly were here on a holiday cruise; the retaining of the urn was merely a menial housekeepung matter. Even Strauss, who got out on the third ball of the Ashes series later merged with Alastair Cook and Jonathan "My first name's actually Ian" Trott to form some sort of perverse, inpenetrable, Pommy top-order. Cook was deservedly awarded Man of the Series with 700+ runs, something which English lion and legend Wally Hammond would be proud of. KP was about as intimidating as a person wearing a white cloth going "Boo!" - although his mo, albeit for a fantastic cause, was downright terrifying. Ian "My last name is a noun" Bell improved dramatically, although maybe that's because there was no Warnie on the field to taunt him with "Sherman" jibes, a la the character from American Pie. Paul "Good Old" Collingwood was sent off in a dignified manner from Test cricket, performing roughly the same role as Watson, even though he has the one-day captaincy - more on that in a minute. I like Matt "Not late" Prior as a wicketkeeper - he's cast in the same rugged vein as Rod Marsh, Bert Ironmonger and Graham Manou, rather than Tim Paine and his crew. The pace battery is secure, with the likes of gentle giant Chris Tremlett, swinger James Anderson, and relative veteran Stuart Broad. With Ajmal Shazhad waiting in the wings, the Aussie one-dayers must be scared out of their wits. With the white ball he could do anything. When I saw him in the match against Australia A in Hobart, he was bending it like Beckham.

While England were officially declared the winners of this tour, one cannot help but feel that the real winners were Channel 9 in providing coverage. The status bar at the bottom of the screen broke new ground in display, while the "Earl of Twirl" segment was delightfully surreal - like a Dali painting, with the melting clocks and whatnot. Also, Mark Nicholas has jumped to the head of the queue as Laurie Oakes' heir apparent, with a stunning and politically-incisive interview of Julia Gillard of the Fifth Test re the tragic floods in Queensland and New South Wales.

Today, as a transition from Tests to limited-overs cricket, the English XI played the Prime Minister's XI in Canberra, and the news filtering in from there (anything takes a long time to get from Canberra to civilised society anywhere else) is that England won by 7 wickets with 9 balls remaining, via the Duckworth-Lewis Method. Now, the thing that struck me as odd as I eyed the card was that Paul Collingwood bowled only 3 overs. Fine, s'il vous plait, he's gonna have a bat. But, according to the card, he was due to come in at number 8, after Shazhad and some random named Tredwell. Umm, I'm not sure the captain is utilising his abilities to his full potential. After all, he is the one that makes the selections. But then, that batting list could be academic, given the rain. Chi lo so? as the Italians would say.

So, there you go, my treatment of the recent Ashes series. Unfortunately, from an Australian point of view, the less words said - or written - about its campaign, the better.