Thirteen Things

Stuff I rediscovered while moving house

Guy Sebastian’s debut album, Just As I Am, on CD

Before it became an unwieldy fire hazard and had to be shut down, my university student accommodation had a ‘gratitude room.’ This, in theory, was a space where residents could pay forward clothes and belongings that they no longer had a use for; it, in practice, was mostly a space where people dumped their hard waste. Still, there were sometimes gems amongst it. This CD copy of the debut album of Australian Idol winner, and Eurovision loser, Guy Sebastian was amongst them. I collected it not because I am a fan of Guy Sebastian; amongst Australia’s various ‘pop icons’, I rate him somewhere between Dami Im and Kate Miller-Heidke (also Eurovision losers). No, I collected it because my friend Chelsea once had a nightmare where Guy Sebastian was hovering outside her window, vampires in Salem’s Lot-style, and has been afraid of him ever since. The plan was to prank her by ‘haunting her’ with the CD. I never once pranked her. But, eight years and fives moves later¹, I still have the CD.

Toy Figurine of Neytiri as portrayed by Zoe Saldana in James Cameron’s Avatar films

In their article, ‘8 Best Movies Archers of All-Time’, Bowhunter ranked ‘The Na’vi’ in eighth place. People often accuse James Cameron of painting with a broad brush in his conception of the Na’vi—picking and choosing little bits of culture and iconography from various native peoples across the world and plonking them together in a great big imperialist stew—but I think we should extend the purview of our criticism to include, Bowhunter, who—after seven character-specific entries: Katniss, Hawkeye, Rambo, etc—end their list with just ‘The Na’vi’, when clearly they mean Neytiri; they use an image of her for the list entry, and cite her specifically in their favourite Na’vi archer moment: ‘the film’s heroine, Neytiri, uses her bow to take down the film’s cold-blooded killer before he can kill the main character, Jake Sully.’ Not good enough Bowhunter.

Display figure of Kaworu Nagisa from Neon Genesis Evangelion

He’s an angel, don’t you know?

Melbourne High School’s 1972 speech night, recorded at Town Hall, pressed on vinyl

Doesn’t actually contain any speeches! Just a recording of the school band and choir², which performed during the interludes! Odd to say I feel ripped off, considering I bought this from an op-shop in Fitzroy for $2 as a bit in 2022 and subsequently never listened to (because, like, why would I³?) but I do. I feel ripped off! Do better Melbourne High school.

Transcendental Style in Film by Paul Schrader

Per Variety: Paul Schrader had an ‘AI girlfriend’ who ‘terminated our relationship’, quote: ‘What a disappointment.’

Two copies of the card game Exploding Kittens

Why do I own two copies of the card game Exploding Kittens? Would anybody like a copy of the card game Exploding Kittens? I possess two copies, which is more than I need, and I would like to give one away, because I have two, and I only need one, which is all I need right now.

VHS copy of A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965); a vinyl press of the soundtrack for A Charlie Brown Christmas

It’s the best Christmas media ever created, okay?

The Newsroom complete series on DVD

I’m always at risk of writing an essay here about Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom. While it’s an absolutely calamitous bit of television, the kind of thing that could only have come about in the neoliberal death-rattle that was the Obama Presidency, it also has an outrageous cultural longtail. Without the ‘America’s not the greatest country in the world anymore’ speech⁴ I don’t think we get the ‘America, you great unfinished symphony’ line in Hamilton, for instance.

This fabulous lamp

Put her on RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 19.

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy Special Extended DVD Edition

Twelve hours of film, plus a further twenty-six (!!!) hours of bonus material. The amount of film fans I know who were activated by this specifically is outrageous. Countless hours lost learning about how many swords they made for this film, how many suits of armour, the storyboarding, the special effects, all the places they traveled to, etc, etc etc. It’s ironic then that they not only stopped producing lavish extended edition physical releases like this, but also stopped making movies like this in general. The only blockbusters I can think of that have come out since that are as intensive and hand-crafted are George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which interestingly were actually conceived around the same time, but were delayed for a decade-and-a-half for various reasons, so really you could still think of them as contemporaries for LoTR.

A piece of the Berlin Wall

No fan of Reagan but he did kind of eat with the, ‘Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!’ moment. Like, yeah, actually, tear down this wall, diva.

A shrine dedicated to Jeff Goldblum and also a frog

Received as a joke gift by my good friends Lily and Celia⁵ five or six years ago and proudly displayed ever since. I have no special fondness for Jeff Goldblum or frogs—I think the former has become sort of a flanderised⁶ version of himself in modern movies⁷; the latter, meanwhile, is cute in pictures but kind of freaky IRL, IMHO—but! This is a great conversation starter when I have people over to my house. Everybody who’s even a little bit uncomfortable as a host should consider investing.

The In-Between by Christos Tsiolkas, “signed by author”

This was gifted to me by my ex-coworker Mackenzie who I bonded with over our shared love of movies—particularly yummy trashy garbage from the bin. At the time I was also a subscriber to various Schwartz media outlets⁸, including The Saturday Paper, where Christos Tsiolkas was writing film reviews. Now, Tsiolkas is obviously a great writer—The Slap, like hello???—but his film criticism is (was?) in my opinion… average at best; there are a lot of really smart film critics in Australia, I’m lucky enough to be friends with a few, and it frustrated me that this guy who had no particular background in film was getting the chance to write reviews in a major outlet at the expense of much more talented voices. Anyway, when The In-Between was released, Tsiolkas came into our store to do a signing; I kept a wide berth, thinking it best not to engage lest my inability not to give my opinion land me in hot water. Mackenzie took this opportunity to forge his signature and write a fake dedication, to prank me into thinking she’d put me on blast to one of Australia’s leading literary figures. For about thirty seconds, she really had me thinking the earth of my career was salted.

Christos, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry; your fiction is really good but!

1. Originally this article was going to be a far more literary essay about moving, but then that was too Rachel Cusk for my tastes; then it was going to be a ranking of Skyrim houses, but that was too 2015 for my tastes, now we are here.

2. Worth noting that the band kind of devourers their performances; the choir is so-so in a way that is so charmingly high school; doesn’t matter when, high schoolers are always going to be too nervous to really commit to live performances.

3. Aside from the purpose of writing this list, obviously.

4. Will: It’s not the greatest country in the world, professor, that’s my answer.

Moderator: [pause] You’re saying—

Will: Yes.

Moderator: Let’s talk about—

Will: Fine.

[to the liberal panelist] Sharon, the NEA is a loser. Yeah, it accounts for a penny out of our paychecks, but he [gesturing to the conservative panelist] gets to hit you with it anytime he wants. It doesn’t cost money, it costs votes. It costs airtime and column inches. You know why people don’t like liberals? Because they lose. If liberals are so fuckin’ smart, how come they lose so GODDAM ALWAYS!

And [to the conservative panelist] with a straight face, you’re going to tell students that America’s so starspangled awesome that we’re the only ones in the world who have freedom? Canada has freedom, Japan has freedom, the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia, Belgium has freedom. Two hundred seven sovereign states in the world, like 180 of them have freedom.

And you—sorority girl—yeah—just in case you accidentally wander into a voting booth one day, there are some things you should know, and one of them is that there is absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we’re the greatest country in the world. We’re seventh in literacy, twenty-seventh in math, twenty-second in science, forty-ninth in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, third in median household income, number four in labor force, and number four in exports. We lead the world in only three categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend more than the next twenty-six countries combined, twenty-five of whom are allies. None of this is the fault of a 20-year-old college student, but you, nonetheless, are without a doubt, a member of the WORST-period-GENERATION-period-EVER-period, so when you ask what makes us the greatest country in the world, I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about?! Yosemite?!!!

We sure used to be. We stood up for what was right! We fought for moral reasons, we passed and struck down laws for moral reasons. We waged wars on poverty, not poor people. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors, we put our money where our mouths were, and we never beat our chest. We built great big things, made ungodly technological advances, explored the universe, cured diseases, and cultivated the world’s greatest artists and the world’s greatest economy. We reached for the stars, and we acted like men. We aspired to intelligence; we didn’t belittle it; it didn’t make us feel inferior. We didn’t identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election, and we didn’t scare so easy. And we were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed. By great men, men who were revered. The first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one—America is not the greatest country in the world anymore.

5. RIP <3.

6. If you need: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Flanderization.

7. Wicked is obviously the chief offender here, his performance as the Wizard is imitable and no necessarily bad, but certainly a schtick.

8. Obviously not any more! I’m not gonna be spending my hard earned dollars on magazines that refuse to allow writers to cover the Genocide in Gaza; do better!