Nothing like a bit of Tom Waits to nick a post title from.
This post isn’t really about Tom Waits, or Valentines’ Day. (Though you can talk about them if you want). I just thought I’d pause and note that Mark’s birthday is the day before Valentines’ Day. For those of you who astutely follow your calendars, that’s today! So happy birthday Mark!
Birthdays are a tad depressing sometimes when you’re in your 30s but needn’t be!
Here’s a candid snap (taken by Mark’s official photographer Cazbah) of LP’s founder (in appropriately purple shirt) enjoying the Parisian like pleasures of bohemian indulgence on an inner city Brisvegas boulevard.
<img src="http://larvatusprodeo.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/markmilton.JPG"
Thanks!
Happy birthday, Mark. I’ll bend the elbow in your honour this evening.
I’ll have a large gin and tonic in your honour. Happy Birthday, Mark!
As one who left their thirties last year, they don’t seem so bad anymore!
Happy Birthday or commiserations, depending on how you feel Mark!
Hey, happy birthday, Mark! Plus, it’s a lucky thing for you that I’m a whole continent away, so’s you don’t have to get yr Noo Yawk schoolyard-style birthday punches…
btw, that’s an amazing looking car behind you, in the photo!
–j_p_z, who generally hates birfdays in a somewhat neo-Grinchian manner…
Mine will be a scotch, as that’s what’s been put aside to celebrate the little lady’s new job at the Department of Sustainability and the Environment starting today. But I’ll be sure to spare a thought for you too Mark.
You do good work.
j_p_z, I think it was a Ferrari or a Lamborghini (or something similarly Italian and very exxy) – there were three in a row (one a rather garish lime) parked outside that joint on Thursday night!
Jeez, three in a row? It sounds just like certain clubs in Brooklyn that are frequented by, ya know, ‘great guys’… what they transposed into ‘good fellas’ in the movies.
(p.s. I have a very funny story about the opening night of GoodFellas, but I’ll save it for another day…)
The joint in question is on Park Road, Milton – La Dolce Vita. It’s a bit of a kitsch strip – features Brisvegas’ miniature Eiffel Tower (which no one can really see the point of – must have been someone’s idea of a tourist trap at some point – it was “officially opened” by former Liberal Lord Mayor Sallyanne Atkinson). La Dolce Vita isn’t a bad place – very nice Italian desserts. Milton isn’t really my side of town – I think I’d been there last in 2005. I gather one of the cars belonged to the owner – the other two may have belonged to his mates. The crowd tends to be Italians (a good sign for an Italian food place!), international students (lured by the tourist trappiness) and Western suburbs rugby playing types. Cazbah and I were showing a friend of hers from Perth the sites. I enjoyed visiting the Southbank beach more!
Hmmm. Is the house of mirrors effect supposed to symbolize something about Mark’s birthday celebration??
Happy birthday, and enjoy the pleasures that Brisvegas has to offer (humidity, humidity, heat, humidity…)
Actually, nice cool rainy day today, Robert!
http://www.ourbrisbane.com/news/weather/
The photograph shows Mark smoking outside, away from the eating/drinking area, correct? Parisian: yeah right.
Somewhere the ghost of Maurice Chevalier is coughing up a lung oyster in protest at the very idea of clean air, and the ghost of Baron Haussman is drawing straight lines and smelling imaginary powder-smoke.
I’ll have an autre cognac, s’il vous plaît.
Mine’s an armagnac!
Does the same job, Mark, and tastes as good, especially by the third, fourth, and so on. Region controlée is for brand-conscious paranoiacs and frightened producers in front of EU tribunals.
If you’re worried about the 30s try the 60s. I struggle to remember the 30s.
But I do recall a day in my late 20s when my first-born appeared. You weren’t allowed in delivery rooms then, so I saw him about 30 mins after birth. The nurses were having fits at the squirming and the faces he pulled. It was easy to see that here was an unusual one who was going to have an impact on the people around him!
Hi Mark. Happy birthday!
Happy Bday Mk!
Very fine time of the year for a birthday methinks. (mine was sunday – though i forgot till the kids reminded me).
Unfortunately for my birthday i got a failed root canal which = extraction. Extraction = puffy face and no alcohol for a bit. Not fun.
At all.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Happy birthday, Mark!
Happy Birthday, Bogan!!
Happy b’day lopsided but still sublime cowgirl!
And thanks everyone! Brian that’s a nice story…
Well, I’ve got one more year of 30 somethingness to go!
Hey Brian I hope the Doc gave that one a good slap on the butt from the onset. …..;)
sublime cowgirl, come to think of it his botty was red!
Happy Birthday, Mark!
I will celebrate with a whisky. Green Label, a quality blend, just like you.
James H, it’s just Johnny, and no matter what the colour of the label, it’ll still be a close relative of all the other bottom-shelf brown boozes that go in every Friday night Scotch-and-cola. Have some self-respect and say: “get thee behind me, brand-name snobbery”, and enjoy the sublime act of getting pleasantly shickered, because belive me, you’re only ending up with everyone else in Sheol, or at least in bed at 10am with the pillow over your head. I’d bet you after two or three you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference blindfolded between the hoity-toity square-bottle squinch and the red-label prole-feed.
Quality is only ever worthwhile when it’s accessible to the people.
Happy birthday Mark.
Many happy returns, Mark, you cerebral rainmaker.
Mark, many happy returns but please take the pledge asap – no more fags. Be strong…maybe make it a blogging thing…virtual abstinence with support.
Hats off to Cazbah. That is a fabulous photo.
Happy Birthday Mark.
I have been an lp lurker for about five months and started posting onlyt in the last week.
Your affinty with Brisbane, my hometown, long ago fled, but frequently re-visited, and always loved, and your mere mention, above, of “Milton”, the hilly suburb from which even from here I can smell and sense the Brisbane River, sends shivers of atavistic pleasure through my veins.
btw, have you read “The Eyes of the Tiger” by Manfred Jurgensen? I came across it by chance last year and loved it among other things for its evocation of the sensuality, fecundity, lethargy, corruption and straight out strangeness of this city.
You should write about it and photograph it more. You have a talent for it.
Happy Birthday Mark! Wish I had a drink to raise in your honour but the CityRail trains seem devoid of bars.
Happy Birthday Mark.
Take pablo’s advice.
BTW I went from 50 plus a day to zero; overnight. It’s a piece of piss, if you want to.
Now my problem is to rid myself of the additional 2 stone of lard. Not so easy.
wpd and pablo, if you think that’s so easy, see how it feels for a non-smoker to go from zero to fifty-a-day overnight.
That’s not so bloody simple.
Happy birthday..
IT CAN ONLY GET WORSE.
Enjoy and leave a mark while you can still lift a chisel.
Mark:
Happy Birthday!
Sublime Gothic Cowgirl:
Belated Happy Birthday to you too (hope next one is more fun).
TheDevilDrink:
Speaking of Scotch and brands (as my age increases so too the age of the Scotch I prefer) ….. is the smooth, inexpensive and uncommon Usher’s Green Stripe still in existence?
Greta, I haven’t read Jurgensen. I’m sort of aware of his work because he used to be in the German department at UQ. I should track it down.
Thanks for your kind words – I’m expecting a digital camera for my birthday so I plan to do some more Brisbane writing and photographing!
I hear it’s
bigsmall in Japan, Graham.If it’s smooth and inexpensive you’re after, go with an Irish whiskey. Can’t go past Jameson’s for the price, tho’ it’s common as the proverbial Eliza Doolittle.
Happy Birthday dude!
[Sings]
Hippo birdies two ewes,
Hippo birdies two ewes,
Hippo birdies,
Hippo birdies,
Hippo birdies two ewes.
happy birthday Mark!! enjoy your remaining thirthysomethingness, including every (last) bunger…. you’ve got a whole decade to worry about your health coming up in year or so…(& you’ll have plenty of other neurotic 40somethings obsessing with you.)…….& look forward to more beautiful pics of brissy, with your new birthday toy.
birthday greetings to SC too. was it a crap dentist or just bad luck? – after a dodgy suburban experience, i go to a top macquarie st bloke now (and pay top rates) and have had 2 full root canals and a wisdom extraction without feeling a thing, and hardly anything after… & he lays on the gas and turns up the music.
Mark,
thanks also, for being the best blog host anywhere. LP is like the coolest bar in town – the funkiest jukebox, TEH most interesting women hanging out…quite a few v.clever dicks and assorted wannabes holding up the bar, a decent show of crazies (one or two who get thrown out for being too rowdy on occasion), lots of regular punters, a telly showing sport out the back, lots of art on the walls, and a top crew serving up classy threads…………& by a country mile. cheers.
Happy birthday Mark.
On a more sombre note, I was reminded upon reading Greta’s tribute to Brisbane above (as the summer-not-spring rain falls outside) that Grant McLennan would have just had his 49th birthday.
That’s right, aml.
I remember being up at the Alibi Room around this time last year having a drink with a friend for my birthday and chatting to someone I’d only known slightly from the late 80s/early 90s bar/club scene who’d just come back, very melancholy, from McLennan’s funeral.
Thanks heaps everyone for your very kind wishes!
I should have set my birthday as a giving up the smokes deadline – particularly since I’ve got a sore throat and a bit of the sniffles which (along with work tomorrow) explains my lack of celebratoriness tonight. But I’ve postponed the said celebrations and have had a not unpleasant day and night lazing around.
Can thoroughly recommend the New Farm Deli roast capsicum soup for not just the sore throat but the great taste!
And if anyone’s looking for an ultra cheesy ultra gory scifi slasher pic on dvd – try the truly over the top Evil Aliens!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0383353/
Happy birthday for yesterday Mark!!! (Well, it is yesterday for some of us!!!)
Aw, shucks, jo, thanks.
If only I were like the green skinned red horned host in Angel and I could also read minds while demons and humans sing karaoke in a zone of tranquility, and much loud music and drunkenness!
Best wishes on your day, Mark!
As a fellow smoker, at least for now, I recognize that lonely pose just outside the restaurant.
She’s good. She’s got a photo in the Museum of Brisbane “hidden Brisbane” exhibition that’s on now – people were invited to submit photos of bits of and around town they thought people wouldn’t know about – and it was just photo taking citizens and not professional photographers, but judged by the latter.
And thanks to Damien and Another Kim!
And, Another Kim, banning smoking in pubs and bars at least means the hangovers aren’t so bad when you only rarely leave good company for a fag!
I got a couple of details of the MoB exhibition wrong. It’s “Secret Treasures of Brisbane” aka the Lord Mayor’s Photography Awards, and was open to both amateurs and pros.
On til March 25.
http://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/BCC:BASE:567918862:pc=PC_2110
Greta, mentioning Milton brought back a memory.
I was living in Adelaide in exile from Brisbane when I went back to get married. On returning to be wed I got to town just after midnght and headed for Petrie Terrace where there was a cafe that taxi drivers used to have a late cup of coffee. Driving up the tramlines past the XXXX place, the humidity wrapped around me and suddenly I knew I was home.
It took a few more years. Mark was actually born in Adelaide. We moved back here when he was 3 months old and haven’t left.
Mark — if you’re trying to give up the cigs, (and you should!), may I suggest a transitional vice that has helped a few folks I know to kick the habit… stop smoking cigarettes, and switch to expensive cigars for a while. The approach has two benefits: 1. good cigars cost a fuck of a lot more money, so you just can’t smoke nearly as often — this trains you to expect to smoke a lot less frequently; and 2. the quality of tobacco in a good cigar is so vastly superior to the industrialized, chemically treated horseshit they put in cigarettes, that once you acquire a taste for the good stuff, you won’t really be able to go back to cigs. You’ll light one and say, “What the fuck is THIS crap?” It’s like switching from Cool-Whip to real cream. Cigars are more civilized, they take time and discernment, they’re non-repetitive, and after a short stretch, you can just phase them out, too. Which you should.
I recommend the Butera torpedos. Oh, and watch the hilarious movie “Thank You for Smoking,” too.
Thanks, j_p_z, I used to enjoy the odd panatella in my misspent adolescence! And the Black Russian cigarettes – they were the classiness! Oh, and Gitanes for pretending to be an existentialist…
Happy Birthday for yesterday Mark. I hope that you had a good day despite the sniffles.
I was actually out to dinner celebrating my wedding anniversary (a day late) – so the sorbet was retrospectively for you.
Happy birthday for yesterday, Mark. j_p_z is right about the cigars, but you can go for Cubans here (I am not doctrinaire in my consumption patterns)- Cohiba is my choice.
Sobranie Black Russians or – horrors – Sobranie Cocktails looking like little burning pastels. Those bring back embarrassing memories of faux elegance at various UQ balls in the 80s. In those Brideshead Revisited/Spandau Ballet days guys didn’t mind looking like a right bunch of mincers if they thought it would get them laid.
Well, of course, that was never my reason for smoking them, Bismarck!
But, yep, the faux elegance was very late 80s UQ.
Milton for me in the early 70s, when I was still in Brisbane, meant the Fourex brewery and the Arnotts biscuit factory – no chic Park Road cafes then. Depending on your gender, the brewery and the factory were where recalcitrant students from Catholic schools like All Hallows and Gregory Terrace were told they would end up working if they bombed out at school, so they both held a certain horrible fascination.
The other major memory of Milton from that time was the 1974 floods which sent thousands of Fourex bottles afloat in Milton Road and the media went ape warning those who, naturally, salvaged them, to not on any account let their contents pass their lips, unless they wanted to die of a Very Nasty Disease.
Happy birthday Mark! Look forward to a similar photo of you enjoying the ambiance of Montmartre or st Germain de pres.
I second the cigar suggestion Mark. And yes Cohibas are excellent value as are Cabanas and Hoyo de Monterrey.
As for non-cuban cigars, I suggest you ask our poor yanqui friend about dubious Connecticut and Dominican Republic assemblages.
“…the ambiance of Montmartre”
I think Le Marais would be more Mark’s speed Sacha.
I can see Mark sauntering around the Place des Voges and the Pompidou centre enjoying a red wine in the outdoor cafes
Actually, I think he’d like the Latin quarter moreso, what with all the bookshops.
Happy birthday for yesterday Mark. I’m sorry I missed it, but I was thinking of you.
Do you still qualify for hip-middle youth? Goodness – do I?
Let’s have a beer at the bowlsie soon… Lots of love.
I smoked Git’s in the day…
very costly and went out all the time.
Tasty, tho’.
Meant the smokes extinqished themselves with no chemicals to keep them alight.
Mon Dieu!
Spell check.
I’m sure 39 is still hip mid-youth, Peta!
Mark:
Glad your birthday is still rolling merrily along.
And I thought Gitanes were personal portable mosquito-coils which explained why the French kept their African empire for as long as they did
TheDevilDrink:
Terrific! Thanks a lot. Shall try to get some of those miniature bottles of Scotch from Japan, plant them in the garden, give them plenty of blood&bone fertilizer and watch them grow into full Fifths.
(sorry to break in on ya thread Mark)
To be honest i think it came down to the lollies i scoffed in my youth.
Too many fillings in that molar 20 years ago resulted in a root canal which in turn left me half dead in hosp as side effect of the antibiotics killing too many good tummy bugs.
Stupid thing caused me grief by bleeding obscenely throughout my pregnancies and then had the audacity to crack yet again and turn all nasty last week.
My dentist at Sherwood was fine. I actually like dentists, but the pain after wasn’t nice. Good music though, and Listening to Pulp seemed rather apt i thought.
He was telling me he was playing Midnight Oil the other day, and the dental assistants (in their late teens & early twenties) didn’t have a clue who they were…
BTW MArk did ya get yr camera?
Not yet, sc! I think I’m being taken on a buying trip for it so I get the one I want – I need to do a bit of research about them!
Ps – on the scary dental stories front, I used to have a left molar a bit like that – hadn’t been to the dentist for about eight years after high school and all sorts of childhood and adolescent fillings had collapsed. However the dental hospital buggered up the extraction (they don’t do anything to reconstruct teeth!) and so despite my Austudyness, I begged Brian to pay for a private dentist who fixed it… He’s not cheap either, but I haven’t needed a filling since 98 so I’m happy. But I think if I’d had to rely on public dental services, I’d be wearing dentures by now.
yeah, i dont really have a clue, though i think the digital slr’s sound great (but combersome).
Have you got a Flickr account? If so, is it possible you could get the little rolling side display on here for pics related to LP? (Not sure what you call it, but it’ve put one on my suburban-gothic blog, after seeing it in action on Zoe’s blog).
Yep, I’ve got a flickr account. Not much action there yet because all it contains is photos from last year’s birthday party taken with a borrowed digital camera!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21775057@N00/
Its utterly disgusting that govt has let the public dental system become such a disgrace. How does anyone on a pension afford the work? You can practically plot the socio-economic level of a suburb on the missing teeth index.
I must confess i was seriously thinking about an implant in Thailand, it’s got to be cheaper than here.
Good dental health actually contributes much more than people might think to good health generally, and vice versa.
The Howard/Abbott attitude appears to be – let them eat cake, let their teeth fall out, and we’ll blame the states.
Interesting to see reports of Liberal backbenchers raising the Medicare/dental funding issue.
PS – correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t Medicare cover for dental health a Keating promise in 96 which Howard matched and then junked as “none core”?
Kim,
Just wish the guy a happy birthday……….
sc – you are spot-on about the missing teeth index & as kim points out – poor dental health has implications on heart disease and other medical outcomes http://www.news-medical.net/?id=7662
dental health in this country – is what the entire health system would be like, if there wasnt medicare. a quarter of the population enjoying first world dentistry including cosmetic & restorative dental services, one half paying for basic acute services only, and the rest – straight out of hogarth england.
i think you are right kim – re: the non-core promise….. ‘dental’ never got a proper run, & being so tied in with private insurance – with the introduction of two-tier health, dental was again, pushed to the back of the agenda. (private health insurance was only kept alive during the 80/90′s by dental cover.)
From memory, Medicare cover for dental cover was an ALP promise from the PM’s office just before the ’93 election. I think that it was junked as it would have cost too much – a couple of billion dollars, and might have covered too many procedures (other than essential ones) – but I’m not sure.
I noticed Rudd has suggested a public health promo campaign around kids and dental health. Apparently kids as young as 6 mths are having to get extractions due to poor diet choices (made by parents obviously).
should we split this thread off perhaps? its a bit topical of late it seems.
6 months? Surely not – my boy’s 9 months, and he’s only got 2 teeth (which his mother says is more than enough).
Good idea, sc.
And Jim, Kim wished me a happy birthday in the original post!
Here’s a dental health thread, folks:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/02/16/abbott-the-states-rot-your-teeth/