Many years ago I witnessed an amusing incident in the Bourke Street Mall here in Melbourne. The Mall itself is a pedestrian Mall, but while cars can no longer travel down the Mall, a major tram line runs down the street, and thus trams still runs along the Mall. At the bottom of the Mall the trams merge back into the street traffic.

One day a tram was waiting to exit the Mall, the lights ahead were red and the tram driver was waiting for them to change and for the pedestrians to finishing crossing the entrance to the Mall in front of the Tram. The lights turned green and just as the tram was about to move forward a man decided to cross in front of the tram, causing the tram to come to a quick halt. I didn’t realise it, but trams have external speakers, and suddenly the tram drivers voice came over the loud speaker

“Where do you think you are mate? Tiananmen Square?”

In Melbourne over the last few years we have been replacing our old trams with new ones. there are two new trams, and while they are very similar they are manufactured by two different firms, Siemens of Germany and Alcatel of France. The Trams are newer and assumably more efficient, although from a customer perspective they do not seem better. The seats are less comfortable and some have less room for bags, they rock back and forwards and are just as loud.

But for me the worst change is the bell. The older trams have bells for warning vehicles and pedestrians of the approach of the tram. It is no way special, but the ‘ding, ding‘ of trams has added something to the city, to the sounds of the city, which would otherwise be dominated by the ever present grumble of car engines. It is a sound with a certain charm.

When the new trams arrived they had the factory created electronic honk. Over time this was ungraded and now the trams have an electronic ‘ding’ sound. I appreciate the effort they went to, but at the same time it seems to make a statement about the modern world.

The old bells were just that, metal bells, that would probably last for a hundred years. In the new trams they have been replaced by some electronic components that will probably wear out in ten years, and produce an inferior sounding ‘ding’. So we seemed to have gone backwards.

I have a rating system that I use for novels, where I classify them into five categories. In ascending order they are:

level 1: Dreck, airport fiction, books with no literary merit. They have no good prose, no interesting ideas and basic plots. Vast quantities of these books seemed to be sold.

level 2: Dreck with redeeming features: these are books that would otherwise be assigned to level one, but have some aspect that raises them above the rest. They have a compelling story (despite being poorly written) or they cover some interesting issue. I tend to put Dan Brown in here, his books are poorly written, but at least they can cover interesting issues.

level 3: Books That Women Read on Trams. This is the category that started me really putting this scale together. It came from an observation of the types of books that you see women reading on the Tram on the way to work. I would put in this category novels such as “Perfume” by Patrick Susskind. This is the solid core of literature, good well written books. Female friends some times criticise me for having this category: it is derogatory to women. But I tend to see it as generally a positive description, a description of the good quality books that women read, above the general books you tend to see men read (if they are reading at all).

level 4: These are the standout novels that rise above the herd, that have some really standout characteristics. My archetypal level four novel is “The Name of the Rose” by Umberto Eco which manages to tell a compelling murder mystery story while delving into the rich detail of religious and political disputes of the 12th century.

level 5: The top shelf. The great novels that only come along occiasionally. They win the nobel prize for literature. Of course in here we have “Remembrance of Things Past” by Proust and “Ulysses” by James Joyce. We also have “Infinite Jest” by David Foster Wallace.

Well It is time for the Grand Pricks to return to Melbourne, a time when the city is crowded with drunk Germans and the type of people who pay to travel across the world or across the country to see some weird looking motor cars go round and round and round. Over at Club Troppo Rex Ringschott takes a go at the GP: Club Troppo Kicking against the Prix.

I cant for the life of me think why anyone would think it is still good to have the GP in Melbourne. I can see a vague argument that at the time it was first introduced there was a benefit in generally boosting the profile and confidence of Melbourne, but i cannot see how it is possibly a good idea to continue it.

It has been argued that we gain a benefit from having the GP in Melbourne, people point to the new road in the park and the great new aquatic centre. This is a fanciful argument, if we could build a multi-million dollar aquatic centre and subsidise some cars pointlessly going round and round in circles, imagine what we could have built without the subsidies.

I went to see the Gotan Project this weekend. If you have not heard of them they produce a mix of South American tango with Parisian chillout beat sensibilities. I first heard of them on one of the early Hotel Costes albums. To get a sense of them look at the videos below.

This is a track off of their first album:

This is their latest single:

And this is a video of their live show, pretty much the same as the one i saw:

For an absurd sense of humour you cannot go past McSweeneys. The good thing is they maintain quite a lot of material online, including their fascinating list of list of things: Timothy McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Lists.

As a sampler I would recommend these lists:

Hit Songs of the 1970s and ’80s If the South Had Won the Civil War.

Lists Involving Christ, Christian Names, and Peace of Mind

Jokes Made by Robots, for Robots.

What the People Who Used to Live in My House Apparently Said to Each Other Before Selling It to Me.

McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Last Night’s Top Five Alphabet-Soup Spoonfuls.

McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Why Hollywood Hates the Metric System.

I must admit to being mildly surprised to see the accolades given to this movie in some quarters. For example, in a review of the Oscars, the Slate magazine movie critic Dana Stevens says:

“Emmanuel Lubezki will win the cinematography prize for his innovative lensing of Children of Men. Not only because it truly is groundbreaking camerawork…but because that nomination and two others (one for editing, the other for best adapted screenplay) are the only crumbs being thrown to what was, to my mind, the single finest film of the year.”

The best film of the year? In Australia the movie was given 4/5 by both Margaret and David, and if they can agree on something then it must signal that they (collectively) view it as a good movie.

And yet for me the movie was a huge disappointment. I went to see the movie with an open mind, in fact I was quite keen, what with Clive Owen (star of the little gem Croupier). The premise was also quite interesting – (don’t worry no real spoilers) a world where the last child was born 18 years ago and the world faces a slow aging until there is no one left.

For me this was the core of the problem with the movie, while the premise was interesting it was explored very little in the movie. There are some references to it at the beginning of the movie, but it quite rapidly descends into a chase/thriller/action movie, with very little additional examination of society. The action is based around a number of organisations that have sprung up, none of which has much background and it is difficult to get a sense of the motivations of the characters (other than to not get shot in one of the chases). No attempt is made to explain why the world has ended up the way it has or what that means.

Fundamentally the movie is an action adventure, with long drawn out gun battles and chases.

I suspect the attraction of the movie is in some sense more political. The Britain that is presented in one besieged by refugees with cages and camps everywhere. The cause of this is not clearly stated but assumably has something to do with the fact of babies no longer being born. But it adds nothing to the plot or the themes, it is just a device (any movie could assume something bad happens and all the refugees head for Britain).

I suspect this may drive the difference between my perception of the movie and the view of others. For me the core of the the movie was cold and lacked nourishment, they failed to explore the interesting premise and filled the movie with chases and violence and interminable wandering through refugee camps.

For others, who for various reasons may take a much stronger view on refugee issues (whether they be Australians, with our harsh border protection policies, or Americans, with their Guantanamo Bay) the movie is all about refugees, and the interminable gun battles in the refugee camps had some greater message.