They Killed Bobby

Last night was the penultimate episode of the final season of The Sopranos and it was shocking. I suppose I felt things were going seriously sour for la famiglia a couple of weeks back when “Cristofeeerrrr” whacked his AA Law & Order scriptwriter confidante in his own apartment in what seemed like a very reasonable argument.

Then last night - BAM! In the final 5 minutes the disgruntled NY mob emptied a few rounds of lead into Robert Baccalieri, Jr. AKA Bobby Baccalà while he was buying a model train, Silvio is in the hospital, unconscious, with a few rounds himself caught in his car outside the Bada Bing, and Tony is in a temporary “safehouse” waiting for the inevitable in a sheetless bed with a shotgun & memories as company. Tony’s looking like a man reconciled to fate now. I don’t think I am yet, though. I refuse to believe this is the last chapter ever, much less coming to a close.

Baccalà means salt cod in Italian. It is also slang for idiot. This fact doesn’t appear in Mark Kurlansky’s excellent “Cod, A Biography of a Fish that Changed the World”, though other cod derived expressions do. The French word for cod, morue, came to mean prostitute, but the Danish word for cod, torsk, also means fool colloquially.
I wonder if the idiot part comes from being a fish out of water and how did the Danish and Italian meaning align rather than the French?

Bobby seemed a bit gormless in the earlier episodes, but he was faithful and sensitive. Bobby didn’t come across as a baccalà in the last couple of seasons – he got his nickname before he even married Janice. He even said wise things, albeit in a quiet & simple way.

I knew many "baccalàs" growing up. There was Johnny “Baccalà” & Tony “The Baccalà”.
This was all through my Pa, of course. With the nickname “Ringo”, this is no surprise.

Magical Drinking Tour

Reading Saturday night’s confusing maiden blog entry, I realise it could be a dangerous habit to drink & type.
We were at the marvellous 50th birthday party of the lovely Frances Gibson at her and Stephen's Cape Cod style house in Bendigo and after a few whiskeys and proclaiming I was going to start a blog before I moved to Macau, Dave Nichols was right on to it and suggested that I do it immediately. Hence all the missed keys...



I drove up in the Jag with the irrepressible Mr Shane Moritz and the charming Ms Olivia Johnson. I love the way Shane says Jaguar. He pronounces it “Jagwaaar” as opposed to the ordinary “Jag- you- ar”. It just sounds so damned suave.
After troubles tuning in to get the itrip working we listened to Fran’s birthday CDs compiled by S+O – the Evens, Lilliput, LCD Sound System, Blue Oyster Cult, Pavement –these CDS rocked and soothed my sore head that had suffered from just “going out for a couple” the night before and ended up with pogoing around a friend’s apartment to Bowie and the Magnetic Fields. I love impromptu discos! They always put me in an excellent frame of mind the next day.


Kiki & Herb






It was my birthday yesterday and I went to see a Festival show at the Meat Market in North Melbourne – what an amazing building and venue – the bluestone floors and intricately patterned steel trusses can really create distraction from the stage. The show was by some New York cabaret terrorists called Kiki and Herb’s Magical Drinking Tour. Kiki is a man in drag as a boozy aging chanteuse with saggy tits accompanied by her trusty sidekick, Herb, on a grand piano. The show is a musical set interspersed with the hilarious monologue of a fictionalised account of their lives. Kiki is like a cross between a sodden aging Judy Garland, and Shirley Maclaine as a thinly disguised Debbie Reynolds in Postcards From the Edge.
The songs are covers of Kate Bush, Jarvis Cocker, The Gossip, Bonnie Tyler, Joy Division, The Spiritualised, Britney Spears….and the list goes on…… and this dame belts them out in true Vegas/cheap nightclub act /Show tune style. It went for 2 hours and I couldn’t stop grinning.


Meow Meow


Then Kristin & I cabbed it over to the Spiegeltent where the door girl looked kindly upon us and let us in to the last half hour of the Meow Meow Beyond Glamour Show free. The extremely talented, vampy and glamorous Meow Meow seduces the audience by purrin’ and caterwauling out numbers from Jacques Brel, Kurt Weill, opera ‘brut’ interspersed with comedy, audience terror tactics and on-stage clothing changes full of sequins, fishnets and some serious boning that would have Vivienne Westwood gasping. Move over, Sally Bowles!

Kris and I argued about the Weimar Brechtian style of cabaret versus the American showtune style (no conclusion) and then danced on at the Spiegeltent until 3am on a school night. It WAS my birthday after all, though I feel like I've been on my own magical drinking tour that started two weeks ago with Motorhead, went on to Grinderman and Nick Cave, Laurie Anderson last week, The Lighthouse Keepers and Razzmatazz on Saturday and culminating with last night’s explosive mixture of melancholy and parody.

I’m tired.

I Waany More WHISKEY

okay,.... I wrote a whole lot and realised I was too drunk to write so I'll start agin , I was a t a wonderful party and i feel like i'm missig out, the converdations are floating in. dave helpe dme set up this blog and i'm glad he did + i waany more WHISKEY. I an't believe i was nineteen again and listening to the lighthouse keepers.! I neeed o go outside nd etablish whether a cow lactates whether hey've had a cow or not........ you decide........