Here comes the curtain coming down on another year.

Before it does, time to savor some highlights…

Oh, and the leaning tower of Pisa with the surfboard and balloons at the top?

I’ll say this much – it’s a little hard not to stare when you see a complete stranger at the beach dressed in a swimsuit bearing your site’s logo. How exactly that happened is, like why swinging-from-the-jungle-vines Tarzan never had a beard, one of life’s mysteries.

PEPSI, WHERE’S MY JET? (January)

THE RISE, FALL & RISE AGAIN of GARY NUMAN (February)

A DAY TOO LATE – Short Fiction (February)

Why were People in the ‘Olden Days’ so much less attractive than Today? (March)

Top Secret UFO Projects Declassified – Part 1 (March)

Top Secret UFO Projects Declassified – Part 2 (April)

Murder on Palmyra Island (April)

A Year in Teddy Land (May)

The Rise, Fall & Rise Again of Gary Numan – Part 2 (May)

A Salute to TV’s Mrs ‘C’ (June)

Classic Letter from 1865 (June)

Three Days in Singapore (June)

Nine Days in Korea (July)

King of Comedy Don Rickles (July)

Birth of the Internet (August)

Street Names (August)

Computer Passwords (September)

The Rise, Fall & Rise Again of Gary Numan – Part 3 (September)

NON-Renewing my Queensland Theatre Subscription (September)

The Rise, Fall & Rise Again of Gary Numan – Part 4 (September)

Goldeneye the Game (October)

Favourite Films of the 2000’s (October)

Short Story – ‘FLUSHED WITH SUCCESS’ (October)

Why Do Homeless People Prefer to Sleep on Grass Rather than Concrete (October)

Motley Crue – Def Leppard Concert (November)

Shipwrecks (November)

The Rise, Fall & Rise again of Gary Numan - Part 5 (November)

Loopholes (November)

Best Book Covers of 2023 (December)

NO BLOG FOR YOU… OK, JUST A LITTLE BIT THEN

THIS BLOG IS MASSIVE IN GERMANY

This Blog is Making me Thirsty… and Informed and Entertained

This Blog is Huge in Singapore

What It Isn’t

Triggering

Nobody Puts this Blog in the Corner

Remember the time that thing happened? Me neither.

Back in late January, a tiny but potentially deadly radioactive capsule (containing caesium-137) fell off the back of a mining truck as it was being transported to Perth, Western Australia.

This sparked a frantic search along a 1400 kilometer stretch of outback highway. The search was likened to looking for a needle in a haystack. The capsule was eventually located more than a week later, just two meters off the side of the road.

Back in October, Brisbane Broncos player Ezra Mam scored a hat-trick of hair-scorching tries in the rugby league grand final. Razzle-dazzle on that scale is a pretty rare thing. No one’s done it in the NRL’s ‘Big Dance’ for 15 years.

And in the entire history of league grand finals, just one person has ever gone one better – four tries – on one single occasion (okay – you prized it out of me – it was back in 1951 by Rabbitohs winger Johnny Graves).

It was truly incredible! Almost as incredible as the fact the Broncos somehow still managed to lose the game.

Anita Pointer (member of The Pointer Sisters) Aged 74 – January

Child star Adam Rich (‘EIGHT IS ENOUGH’) Aged 54 – January

Australian singer Renee Geyer Aged 69 – January

Child Star Lance Kerwin (“JAMES AT 15) Aged 63 – January

Italian Film Star Gina Lollobrigida Aged 95 – January

Lisa Marie Presley Aged 54 – January

Guitarist Jeff Beck Aged 78 – January

Actress Cindy Williams Aged 75 – January

Rachel Welch Aged 82 – February

Aussie Ken Warby (speedboat world record holder) Aged 84 – February

Actor Tom Sizemore (“Saving Private Ryan”) Aged 61 – March

Singer Tony Bennett (aged 96) – July

Singer Sinead O’Connor (aged 56) – July

Mark Goddard (aged 87) October

I’d thought for certain – before I actually went to the cinema to see it – this ‘award’ would go to THE EQUALIZER 3 (Denzel Washington) but… well, that didn’t really turn out like I thought it was going to.

No, by far the most mind-smashingly spellfull film I saw this year was one I recorded from television on the SBS World Movies channel.

DELIVER US FROM EVIL is a Korean movie released at the height of the pandemic in 2021.

‘Great’ is too weak a word to describe the experience of it. Pulsating – primal – poetic – and palpably all-eclipsing might be a little closer to the truth. Yeah, I liked it.

Oh, and if you like your military history, this one (which I saw at the cinema just a few days back) – and features the same main actor from DELIVER US FROM EVIL – does the job quite well also –

Plus two-shortlisted words that almost grabbed the gong…

SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK has some big events planned for 2024, so until then…

Staying happy: that’s what it’s all about, right? Better click HERE

Show me a person that DOESN’T – at least partially – judge a book by its cover and I’ll show you a person who doesn’t read books. 

Yessiree, it’s time again to celebrate the best the year had to offer in book cover eye candy. And there’s a lot to celebrate.

(A) Sprinkle on a few mushrooms and you’ve got a recipe for garden variety quirk and intrigue.

(B) You can call it bounding up the stairs. You can call it kung-fuing up the stairs. Whatever you call it, it’s time to get your (Chinese) groove on.

The black hand was for the UK market. The red one was for the Transylvania market.

(A) Monstrilio, the half-human, half-monster child at the heart of this story, just had to be on the cover somewhere, right? Even if it’s just some of him. Er… some of it.   

(B)   You could occupy a University Gender Politics class for a good hour unpacking this piece of bizarro. No time for that here. Instead, let’s just agree it’s the definition of head-turning.

(A) Two dots and a scribble say so much. Exactly what, I can’t be sure. A real wink of a cover.

(B) You want a real cliffhanger? You came to the right book.

(A) Energy! Drama! Hand-lettering! It’s the perfect highbrow pirate book cover.

I recognise word warp when I see it and this is most certainly classic ‘alternate reality’ word warp.

(A) The saturated black is doing a lot of work here.

(B) Without meaning to gross anyone out can I just say I would like to lick this book cover even though I am pretty sure I shouldn’t. The dewy glow is perfectly captured and cropped, but it’s really the iridescent drip for me.

Clever and super-duper retro. I’m old enough to remember when library borrowing cards used to look like this. Really.

I’m weirdly impressed by the amount of black space on this cover—and, of course, by the cheeky and cannibalistic image – though apparently it makes perfect sense once you’ve read the book.

(A) Raise a glass – or paper cup – to this one. Possibly 2023’s most stand-out book cover.

(B) I particularly love the way the thought bubble tail infects the B.

(A) Not just the nose, which is silly enough, but what’s coming out of it (or is that going into it?)

(B) Alright, the red one might be a close relative of Spiderman and the green one is definitely your old-school alien type, but the others?

(A) Look at the expression in the eyes of that catamount will you!

(B) The weirder the better, right?

It looks like the cover for an ultra-modern horror story. Maybe it is.

Is that a tennis ball in the dog’s mouth? Nice offbeat touch if it is.

(A) Simple. Eye-catching. And – check the title – happy!

(B) The latest from South Korean novelist Kang Young-Sook. The honeycomb effect over the face is nice. The book’s title? Nicer.

(A) Lights are on but no one’s home? Don’t bet on it.

(B) Nothing like a good parody book cover. The “Your tent or mine?” inscription is cheeky cute.

What’s that? You’d like to see a BEST BOOKS OF 2023 list? HERE you go.

Oh, and a BEST FILMS OF 2023 list as well? HERE you go.

And to get completely happy, go HERE.

Many years ago I was a manager of a large petrol station. I had a standard employment contract, but we also had additions specific to our station regarding discounts and freebies etc. One of the clauses was that petrol was not to be discounted, and we were to pay the full pump fee, just like a regular customer.

As often happens, petrol prices fluctuate, and we had to adjust the prices on the computer which controlled the prices on the pumps every few days, a few cents up or down.

Our computer system was very old, as were our pumps. It could sometimes take up to 15 minutes for the pumps to display the new prices.

This meant we had to close the station during the update. One day I was on the forecourt while the prices were updating, so picked up a pump to check if the update was complete.

I immediately ran to my car and pulled it up to a pump to fill my tank.

It turned out that when the update was, well, updating, the prices on the pumps defaulted to 5 cents per litre. I filled my tank for $6. It should have been more than $100 Once the tank was empty, I tried again, and it still worked. The time after that I tried the premium performance petrol. Same price.

I didn’t spend more than $100 IN TOTAL in the rest of my time there after that.

Before anyone suggests I was stealing or defrauding the company – I wasn’t doing either. My contract specifically stated I had to pay the price displayed on the pump, and that is exactly what I was doing. My loophole was knowing when the price would be lower and taking advantage of that.

Two nights ago SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK attended the Brisbane concert of ahead-of their-time-but-now- cult-retro-band DEVO (formed in 1973) I’ve been seeing a few live acts recently, I know right?

Me and 1200 other fans grooved along (may as well go retro in the description stakes as well) to every catchy-song-moment of this show. Highlight? Probably the song THAT’S GOOD (originally released 1982). For a bit of fun, here’s a kids version of this song performed by DEVO tribute band DEVO 2.0. They were a thing for a couple of years around the mid 2000’s.

READ IT HERE