It’s Magic You Know.

Context is everything really. I am reading another novel by Haruki Murakami called Kafka on The Shore and in this pretty good book a man sits in a vacant block of land, waiting for a certain cat to wander by. Given the man can talk to cats, although some cats being typically snooty don’t talk back, this is not as strange as it might seem. After a few days a large dog comes along and talks to the man and orders him to follow him to the home of his master. The dog’s master calls himself and is dressed like the famous Scotch whisky brand and logo Johnnie Walker. He does make a point early on that he is not actually the Johnnie Walker just someone who dresses like him. Does that mean that Johnnie Walker was real or was it a copyright thing?

Anyway I know what you are thinking “Oh goodie, goodie another pile of magic realism from one of the masters. Big Fucking Deal”

Magic realism is a genre of fiction that I understand would drive some to distraction. I can take it or leave it but Murakami is a master of easing you into these funny parallel universes so much like here but subtly different. Plus unlike some genres of fiction that explore alternate realities nothing much actually happens. There is no time travel or aliens or end of world scenarios. At least not yet anyway, as I am only about quarter of the way through the book, I might be only a page or two away from a zombie apocalypse. I think it is unlikely. We are looking for a missing cat after all.

So far some school kids have mysteriously passed out, we’ve met the aforementioned man who has a job as a kind of Japanese Ace Ventura tracking lost cats and another kid has ran away from home to hang out in a library but then he gets marooned in a cabin in a forest by hitching a ride with another guy in a mildly hotted up Mazda Miata. On the way they listen to a piano concerto by Schubert. It’s not all bad though because so far library guy has also copped a handjob from a girl he meets on the Japanese version of the cross country Greyhound bus so I guess he is in front.

I really have no idea what is going to happen next and that is good. My earlier point about context though is this. I swear my good mate Blaze told me an identical story about forty years ago when we younger men. He said that he went out one Friday Night and things got messy and by the time he got home on the following Sunday afternoon all of the above including the talking animals had happened to him. The only difference was that he was in an adult bookstore and that the dog was a Deep South, man tracking Hound Dog with big floppy ears that escorted him to a man who claimed to be Jim Beam. He was dressed like Fess Parker in the TV series Davy Crockett. [Look it up].

I politely listened to his alcohol and drug fueled fever dreams and suggested that had just had a very big weekend, probably masturbated and was so off his nut that he thought it was someone else working his member and had then passed out in front of late night TV in somebody’s house with their pets giving him the death stare as he was lying on their spots on the couch.

If only he had put his story in a book things might have been very different for Blaze.

On the subject of alternative realities you might want to check out a new and very topical series on Stan called Made for Love. Starring Cristin Milioti and Ray Romano the eight episodes tell the story of a controlling tech billionaire and his trophy wife who wants to break free from his compound which is mostly an alternative reality world. All goes well with her escape until she discovers he has put a chip in her brain. It is a black comedy carried by the always watchable Cristin [also check her out in the movie Palm Springs on Amazon prime] who is a fantastic comic actress. Ray is also great and it rolls along pretty well. Imagine a funny Black Mirror or any number of runaway bride movies with a tech overlay.

Also recently, I gave the new Australian movie The Dry a try and unlike Murakami it went exactly as I expected. It is a perfectly acceptable Aussie bush murder mystery in a small town with secrets and empty rainwater tanks. Adapted from a novel that is so formulaic it makes the music of AC/DC look as spontaneous and freewheeling as Frank Zappa’s, it does what it sets out to do quite well. There are no real surprises but the performances are strong and the amount of the usual Aussie actors who tend to occupy these projects is kept to a minimum. No complaints about you though, the wonderful Bruce Spence. Eric Bana is the lead and he has come a long way from kickboxing in The Castle, so far that I am not sure he looks Aussie enough in this most Aussie of whodunits. Hell there is even a big rock where the backstory featuring troubled teens with multiple ear piercings takes place. This outcrop is not as big as Hanging Rock but it still holds secrets. Where would Australia cinema be if we didn’t have that wonderful outback country to do so much for us at so little cost?

Finally there is Nomadland, an American movie that also relies on magnificent rural and wilderness vistas. It really rocked my world. Like a Murakami book this is a movie of moods, slow paced and dreamy with a structure closer to documentary. Broadly it is the story of modern day itinerant workers in the USA moving from seasonal job to seasonal job in their campervans. As the wonderful Francis McDormand [the policewoman in the Coen brother’s masterpiece Fargo] points out,”They are houseless but not homeless.” I loved it, being outraged and inspired at the same time by their circumstances and life choices. I suspect others will be bored shitless. And that is ok too.

Finally time for something different for your ears, check out the debut from London band Dry Cleaning. The release is titled New Long Leg which makes it sound vaguely like cricket commentary but believe me it is not. Their music features tight, driving soundscapes overlaid with the mostly spoken vocals, delicious accent and the fantastic, bone dry lyrics of singer Florence Shaw.  If you are a fan of English post punk bands like Joy Division and Wire, NY’s Television and Sonic Youth or even Australia’s Adam Gibson [The Aerial Maps] then you will dig it. Like Aldi - Good Different.

P.S. Just read more pages of Kafka on the Shore. I wrote too soon about there being only mild weirdness. Things have just become very weird and quite gory.