saw a fox

 

Yeah a few days ago Perry and I saw a fox. At Aberfeldie, the Afton St Conservation Reserve we often like to go to. Perry saw it first, I didn't have a clue what he was excited about, but then it sauntered into view. Above is it turning around to retreat. Below is it thinking no-one could see it when it was partially hidden behind a bough. It was a fox. That's all. 

jacana reserve walk

So just for the heck of it, quick deets on a Jacana Reserve walk this morning. This is Barry these days, he is too old to walk a long way, but he still has a good life, I am told.  

Ibises in the park. There were tons of them, a huge flock, but these were a little further north just a small gathering and closer to the path. I have no idea what they were all eating, but they were all eating. 

I just couldn't figure out what this was. Can you tell? 

I am kind of into this weed island, looks like Perry and Ferdie were too. The shopping trolley reminded me of how once (15+ years ago) I called the supermarket in high dudgeon and told them they had to get the shopping trolleys out of the reserve. The idiot who answered the phone said of course they would because they were worth $1000 each. I'm sure. 

Can you say fox on the isthmus six times quickly? 

fox on the isthmus six times quickly fox on the isthmus six times quickly fox on the isthmus six times quickly fox on the isthmus six times quickly fox on the isthmus six times quickly fox on the isthmus six times quickly gosh you're sly

homicide s5 e43 'the peace man'

So people at Crawfords were clearly having a laugh with the Foxes. This is Henry Fox, another Fox character on three out of four successive episodes of Homicide (all from late 1968). He's played by Luigi Villani. This episode is set in Dandenong, which is not really a rural area. Bizarrely he claims his girlfriend's name is Betty Fox, and that they started going out together because their names were both Fox, and that when they got married they'd both be Foxes and their children would be... (he then trails off) but the whole thing makes no sense obviously because if he married her the family's name would all be Fox anyway so... huh? 

Jeff (here credited as Jeffrey) Kevin as Michael Bolton, a conscientious objector, being followed by some bodgies (who beat him up). Five years later Kevin was playing Arnold Feather in Number 96. He told the Sydney Morning Herald in early 1973 that: ‘In the Crawford productions I was usually type-cast. I always seemed to be the misunderstood youth who looked as though he did it… but did not.’* 

This episode was written by John Dingwall, who would go on to write the incredible 1975 film Sunday Too Far Away. 

*‘Who’s that behind that sharp, hurtful Arnold?’ SMH 19 February 1973 p. 14

homicide s5 e41: the mask

Mildly interesting episode of Homicide which features Stanley Page as a kind of mad married monk figure operating a little coven of weirdoes for no really explicated reason in somewhere rural like I'm guessing Maldon. A barely notable quirk of (lack of) continuity is that whereas in the previous episode we first encounter Alwyn Kurts playing Colin Fox (as a rural inspector) (this character and actor would go on to become a stalwart of the show) in this episode there is another presumably completely unrelated character called Joe Fox. We only see him in the first scene. I suppose the Crawfords people being incredibly urban artsy people just had an inclination to give people from the regions the name 'Fox'. Anyway, here are Mack and Peter spying on the group in their ritual basement:

Bruce Thompson is Richard Wagner (I shit you not), Cheryl Stroud is Donna Slater and Page is Frank Slater. As you can see it's quite a temple they have there. 

The story is essentially about a girl who is murdered and it is made to look like a suicide, then the married man who impregnated her (who we never see - and of the girl all we see is her feet) also dies, poisoned. These crazies are the most likely to have done it. 

Well, spoilers sorry it's Richard Wagner who did it. 

This is the mask they like to wear in their rituals. I make no comment. 

You'll be shocked and amazed to hear that everyone gets there just in time to stop Wagner killing Slater. We are left with this as the closing shot. 

Stanley Page was born in Geelong (I am fighting not to suffer from intense irritation that IMDB notes this and then calls him a British actor) and worked for a long time in the UK, coming back in the 60s-70s periodically for things, such as appearing in the Emerald Hill production of The Bedsitting Room:

He was also a contributor to one of Melbourne theatre's great cultural milestones: 

Melbourne Age 17 May 1972 p. 16

possibly the worst british film ever

Bruce Beresford's Side by Side is a 1975 comedy about two clubs, the Golden Nugget and Sound City. The first is owned by Max Nugget (Terry Thomas) who is both contemptuous of and dependent on his nephew Rodney (Barry Humphries), and the second by Gary (Billy Boyle). When it is discovered that the borough of Sludgley can only have one 'clubbe', the magistrate gives Inspector Crumb (Frank Thornton) the job of deciding which of the two clubs will have to close.

Naturally Gary gets on his motorbike and rides to London to find some new rock acts to book for the club. And equally naturally Max calls his niece Julia who works in a booking agency called Three Rs (rock 'n' roll representation). She is also apparently making an album at Abacus studio in her lunch break. Gary turns up at Three Rs as well and by grim coincidence becomes friendly with Julia, to the extent that before the end of the day he's telling her he loves to kiss girls' necks. He also tells her he can get a comedian to play at her uncle's club, though at this point he doesn't know that her uncle is his sworn arch-enemy Max Nugget. She plays him a video of Fox performing their second* single 'Imagine Me Imagine You', and by the time it's over they have apparently gone off to root. The next morning, they try to eat food at Biba's but when Gary discovers that Julia's Max Nugget's niece he throws a cream pie at famous comedian Joe Baker and runs out of the shop, just runs out.

Meanwhile no-one really knows what to do at the Golden Nugget but there is a woman called Violet, who just hangs around with no real purpose except to lavish attention on Rodney, who she adores passionately but who can't bear to be touched. She keeps trying to ravish him.

The film is full of people putting paste on posters, from enormous glue pots, which they then only seem to stick out the front of their respective venues. Sound City is full of kids, presumably bored young foxy kids, who help out. Julia has booked all the hot young bands for the best show ever, and these bands are Hello (who we have already seen performing 'Bend me shape me' and who Wikipedia informs us had a drummer, Jeff Allen, who was actually born Jeffrey Allen) and Desmond Dekker (he sings 'Israelites'. I notice that in Peter Coleman's book about Bruce Beresford's career he says that some of the songs in the film were hits. He doesn't actually say that they were hits because they were in the film, but I reckon there's an implication of that. 'Israelites' was a hit in 1968).

Then the two clubs put on the shows, and there is a riot for no apparent reason but it does involve cream pies, including one in the face of Joe Baker, who I forgot to tell you is performing at the Golden Nugget, and who does a very, very short act about pneumatic drills. In the conflagration the walls are smashed in and so there is now one club, Julia and Gary get back together and someone sings a song. Violet does a striptease as Madame Lash and whips Rodney, curing him both of his hayfever and his asexuality. At almost the end there is a caption on the screen to say:

'The clubs were renamed GOLDEN CITY and are now the centre of Sludgely's cultural life'.

Jokes:

Rodney: 'Who else do you know who isn't dead or Australian?'
Max: 'What's the difference?'

Rodney: 'I think I will have that massage after all, Violet, I do feel a little stiffness.'

One of the places named amongst the locations is 'Sludgely'

Max Nugget reels off a short list of all the 'greats' he knew in his day, including 'Terry-Thomas'.

I wanted to see this film because:

(1) everyone who has seen it derides it. Coleman says Beresford did it for money and because, after the Barry McKenzie films, it was hard for him to get work.

(2) I thought it would have some good things about gentrification, performance spaces etc

(3) I thought Noosha Fox had a role in it

Now I can say with confidence to (1), it's justifiably derided (2) nah (3) nuh-uh.

* Possibly third