Cassowary Crossing

Julia Zemiro steals false fingernails. Charles Firth swallows longnecks in North Korea and waxes poetic about hedgehogs. Meantime Graeme Blundell drops F-bombs in notable kitchens, while crime comic Shane Maloney goes to Underbelly court.

A four-taste of the frolics lurking in The Best Australian Humorous Writing, due for release later this year – unlike those Underbelly guys. I’ve just received an advance copy from Melbourne Uni Press, and the damp ink smells like, ah, Christmas Time.

Lurid green, the book brags 48 pieces, from smart-arse columns to inspired rants, from smirk-funny to goddamn guffaw-worthy.

And why the spruik? This blogger has a quiz-show confessional among the roll-call, a TV flashback that derives its humour from the comedy of self-reproach.

A few years back, I Came, I Buzzed, I Lost needed to run under a pseudonym due to the story’s legal concerns. (Quiz shows outpoint ASIO on their gag-rule demands.) Hence Steve Bennett, a favoured alias of Bart Simpson, was the original ‘author’ in Sunday Life magazine.

But now the truth is out – and so’s the book. Soon. Just in time to titillate this bearish marketplace.

Okay, brave hearts, time to roll out three Paul clues that still leave me stumped, long after their answers have been revealed. Kudos to anyone who shed a ray of light:

Hunter requires variations = NIMROD

“If victory’s British, I’m Batman!” = TAX COLLECTOR

Pensioner’s bedside companion half unsure about support put in place = FALSE TEETH

Any insights welcome

What links the board game Sorry, the Beatles song Help, the pop band Wham, the quiz show Jeopardy, the search engine Yahoo, the celeb magazine OK and the three musicals Moulin Rouge, Oklahoma and Keating?

SOLUTION NEXT WEEK
BB174 SOLUTION: Release, unleash

John Halpern is a former barman, an ex-lab geek, a former bank clerk and English teacher based in Rome. But more recently, this restless spirit is a crossword setter, better known as Paul to the solving public, creating puzzles in both The Manchester Guardian, and (anonymously) for The Times.

And he’s my favourite compiler, with an honourable mention to Taupi (for his brevity), America’s Henry Hook (his brainwaves) and Brendan (his daring).

But Paul tweaks my synapses best. His clues combine cheek with flair, teetering between tough and outrageous, though invariably fair. To give you a taste of his recipes, here’s a little ‘amuse bouche’ I prepared earlier:

A rather unfortunate flyer! = EARHART

For now, I hate myself = MEANTIME [me-anti-me]

Post-op, his number was up = CASTRATO

Close walrus relative = SEAL

PC Short cleverly called a night manoeuvre = VERTICALLY CHALLENGED

Garage worker’s unanswered quiz question? = PANEL BEATER

From which comes peace offering to relieve suffering = OLIVE TREE

Pot reds = KHMER ROUGE

Some elegant anagrams. Several skewed perceptions. Brief, zestful, with high-smile factor. In a word Paulish.

Solving a crossword, you want that impasse feeling, where no clue yells the answer, and completion feels a lifetime away. And suddenly, an anagram emerges, a homophone flashes by, a double-meaning murmurs, and the hunt is on, taking you via cultures low and high, allusions cheap and classic, images sweet and bizarre, with a polished surface to the clues, and invisible seaming between definition and play.

The nib always itches when I see a blank Paul in need of solving. You can get a free hit of this nimble sensei at the Guardian website, chancing your arm with the other regular setters, such as Rufus (king of the oblique) and the evergreen Araucaria.

But occasionally, Paul can be over-puzzling. Next post I’ll be running a few clues from the Halpern canon. Even with their answers revealed, I’m struggling to un-riddle them. Maybe you can.

Smith Magazine began the mania. Or was it Ernest Hemingway?

Old Papa was challenged to write a short story in six words. His typewriter bashed out this beauty:

For Sale, baby shoes, never used.

Then Smith picked up the thread, the literary magazine daring readers to summarise their lives in six words only. What followed was a frenzy, including:

Found true love, married someone else. (Bjorn Stromberg)

Never really finished anything, except cake. (Carletta Perkins)

Near-death experiences are my forte. (Anna Mauser-Martinez)

Being a monk stunk. Better gay. (Bob Redman)

Lucky in love, unlucky in metabolism. (Leah Weathersby)

So addictive were these mini-memoirs, the magazine became engulfed. They had no option but to create a collection, Not Quite What I Was Planning. Inside, the flavours range from acerbic (Girlfriend is pregnant, my husband said) to cosmic (Still lost on road less travelled.)

Come review time, perhaps the Philadelphia Magazine said it best: ‘Buy it, keep it in bathroom.’

Of course, makes you wonder what six words capture your own life. Once upon a time – the phrase – suddenly feels like a mouthful. How would you describe you life in a half-a-dozen? You show me yours – I’ll ditto.

Who says crime doesn’t pay? Two of my short plays – both with a strong crime theme – are due to be lovingly pummeled in the coming months.

The first, The Mercy Kitchen, is slated to be staged later this year as part of the Short & Sweet Fest in Melbourne. Winning a Wildcard berth, the piece will get its ten minutes of limelight as part of a Saturday matinee, possibly on December 20, at the Melbourne Arts Centre.

(If you haven’t been before, do. Every Short & Sweet session is a pig-out gorge of Quality Street choccies. Some pieces are nutty. Some fermented. Others will stick in your jaw for weeks.)

Andrea Cheung, the show’s director, is currently combing the city for a couple of cops and an elderly woman with a jagged little pill. Will keep you posted as we progress the Kitchen onto the Apron – as well as letting you know about time + place if you’re in reach of Melbourne.

The second caper is Snowtown, otherwise known as the bodies-in-the-barrels case that semi-shocked Australia in 1999. Only semi, as most of us have come to expect Adelaide to manufacture perversity on a casual basis.

Thirty minutes in length, this play (still in search of a title) is part of a commissioned ruckus of ten other scripts to be viewed by Newtown Theatre in Sydney, each one based on a true Australian crime.

Makes you wonder where other playwrights have wandered – the Shark Arm Murder? Peter Falconio? Last summer’s Gabba streaker? Part of the pleasure will be seeing the various treatments – with four plays eventually selected on a workshop weekend for further development, and an eventual season in early 2009. Again, will keep you various abettors informed.

Okay, so maybe crime doesn’t pay in filthy lucre. Not so far. But in terms of creative compensation, I’m in the black. (Loiter, and more grubby details are sure to come to light.)

LEAS lies in the same position
In two verbs sharing their definition.
Naming both is now your mission.

SOLUTION NEXT WEEK
BB173 SOLUTION: Perturb (Pert/Brut)

A classic, says Mark Twain, is a book people praise but don’t read.

War and Peace, say. Or Ulysses. Both tomes appear on a list of Most Unfinished Novels, a survey result from March last year. As do a few surprises.

In order of abandonment, according to feedback from 4000 failed British readers, the Least Concluded read:

1 Vernon God Little, DBC Pierre
2 Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
3 Ulysses, James Joyce
4 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
5 Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
6 The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
7 The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
8 War & Peace, Leo Tolstoy
9 The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
10 Crime & Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky

To be honest, I’ve completed two – namely (3) and (10), and lost the battle with Tolstoy. And since the library confessional is open for biz, I’m growing more prone to hoicking books prematurely, including the Raw Shark Text and The Yiddish Policeman’s Union most recently. Both could be dubbed clever-clever and sometimes all I’m craving is a good tale.

Are we ditching books with greater abandon? Is this a list liable to blossom, the time-poorer we become, the shorter-fused, the less forgiving?

Other lapsed scalps of my past are The Master and the Margarita (twice) by Mikhail Bulgakov, Possession (more like dispossession) and For The Term of His Natural Life (which is what if felt like.)

Undaunted, I’m currently one-fifth into A Fraction of the Whole, the 700-page whopper by Steve Toltz. Still the honeymoon phase really, I’m happy to report that the book and I remain very close. We won’t be splitting up just yet.

A thanks to Simon M, by the way, for letting me know about this jilted list. I’m led to believe the late-great David Foster Wallace made Infinite Jest so damn inifinite (at some 1000+ pages) as one way to highlight our diminishing patience as consumers - and the guy was on the $ IMHO.

So what novel(s) saw you break the deal before consummation?

What seven-letter verb starts with a shampoo brand and ends with a reversed aftershave?

SOLUTION NEXT WEEK
BB172 SOLUTION: Nagoya, de la Hoya, Sawyer, Goya, La Toya, destroyer, Moya, coir, Boyer, foyer, lawyer

I’M NOT YOUR MUMMA SO CLEAN YOUR OWN MESS!!!!

WOULD JESUS LEAVE HIS BIKE HERE???

You know the kind of notes I mean. The furious Post-Its. The fridge communiqué. The bold-type printouts – with no name attached – lurking in your letterbox, telling you to wash your car, control your kids, leash your dog or generally how you should be living.

SOME OF US SLEEP AT NIGHT ASSHOLE.

XEROX MACHINES DON’T FILL THERE SELVES [sic]

To visit the crème de la crème of anon crud, visit passive-aggressive and take a browse. New York journo, Kerry Miller, curates the collection, and was a great help in assembling my own story earlier this month in Sunday Life - I’m Talking To You.

I’ve just posted that feature under Anon on the right – a story exploring the motives behind these phantom scribbles. Feel free to take a browse, then leave an anonymous response to tell us what you really think!!!!