Sassy the Sasquatch

Sassy the Sasquatch, commonly known as just 'Sassy' is the deuteragonist in The Big Lez Show, a minor character in both the spin-off/prequel miniseries The Mike Nolan Show and the Mike Nolan’s Long Weekend and the titular main protagonist in the spin-off series, Sassy the Sasquatch. He is Lez's best friend and next door neighbour. Sassy lives and hangs out with a group of three other Sasquatches - Donny, Wayno, and Scruffy - as well as Owlanox and reside in a run down house next door to Lez.

One of Sassy's defining character traits is his ability to take excessive amounts of drugs without being injured or dying as a result. He is shown as being constantly high, whilst accusing other characters around him for being 'druggos' in the meantime.

Sometime after parting ways with Scruffy, Sassy is walking aimlessly around Antarctica watching the auroras, when suddenly a giant orb of light (which he encountered and involuntarily ate earlier in the show) erupts out of him and consumes him. He arrives in another dimension. After figuring out how to break free from this place, by using his imagination, he meets his Higher Self, who explains what he and his purpose are.

His Higher Self explains that he keeps erasing his memories and reliving his past. Confused at which past he's reliving, Higher Sassy shows Sassy all the experiences he forgot, including the universe in which The Big Lez Show occurred. After quickly (in our perspective) reliving through the events of The Big Lez Show, Sassy remarks how sad he feels about Lez's death. Higher Sassy is struck with the idea to send Sassy into the Jez universe, so he can have some closure and leave with the knowledge that Big Lez is alive and living his best life in another dimension. Returning with some proper closure and satisfaction with Lez's story, Sassy returns to his Higher Self. After Higher Sassy asks Sassy what he wants to do now, Sassy's last request is to relive the story once more. Higher Sassy is surprised but obliges, allowing Sassy to return to Earth in the year 1991, in a forest beside Nigel's ranch outside of Brown Town. After arriving, Sassy uses his interdimensional portals to retrieve Owly, Wayno, Scruffy, and Donny from their respective timelines. The five of them return to Nigel's property through the portal. The sight of this understandably freaks Nigel the fuck out who requests them to go back to wherever they came from. However Sassy's portal seems to break down, preventing them from leaving. With the five of them arriving on Earth in 1991, so begins their lives in Brown Town, which many years later, leads to the events of the entire Big Lez Show.

As his Higher Self reveals, Sassy is an interdimensional time traveler, or 'observer'. Sassy was splintered from his higher self (which is a sort of deity) for the purpose of exploring the multiverse, collecting memories and experiences, with which to ultimately return to his Higher Self to learn more about the multiverse. However after living through the events of The Big Lez Show, Sassy misses Lez after his death, and wishes to relive the story again. Sitting at the fire, after recounting the story to Nigel, Sassy eats his "magic jelly bean" which erases all his memories (and gives him a bit of a buzz), after which all he wants is to see a dinosaur. Right after this the aforementioned grey aliens arrive out of an interdimensional portal. Seeing this as his opportunity to see a dinosaur, he barges into the spacecraft and starts pressing buttons and generally fucking around with the alien tech. Obviously pissed off by this, the four aliens handcuff him and oblige to take him back to dinosaur times. They drop him off in handcuffs on Earth on the day of the KT mass extinction event 66 million years ago, completing the cycle which the series started off at.

It's unknown how long Sassy spent reliving this cycle of experiencing and forgetting, but he definitely did it a fuck-ton of times. Eventually however, after god knows how many cycles, Sassy makes the ultimate decision to cast his magic jelly bean into the campfire, finally breaking the cycle and allowing Sassy to live on to see and experience new things. After this he presumably returns to and becomes one with his Higher Self again, though it's never explicitly shown in the show.

BE PEACE

"D.I.Y. or Die How to Survive as an Independent Artist"

 

D.I.Y. or Die: How to Survive as an Independent Artist is a low-budget documentary film released by Music Video Distributors in 2002. The film is a "celebration of the underdog" and deals with why artists do what they do, regardless of the lack of a continuous paycheck.

The film features some artists that define the DIY ethic and speaks to the overall DIY culture. It features interviews with Steve Albini, Lydia Lunch, Ian MacKaye, J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr, Jim Rose, J. G. Thirlwell of Foetus, Mike Watt, Eric McFadden, Richard Kern (filmmaker), Ron Asheton of The Stooges, Madigan Shive of Bonfire Madigan, Lynn Breedlove of Tribe 8 and Dave Brockie of Gwar, among others.

Alicia Dattner appears in the credit sequence as a punk street artist stapling DIY flyers. Original artwork for the credits drawn by Attaboy, co-founder of Hi-Fructose Contemporary Art Magazine.

The DVD was released (under the title "D.I.Y. or Die: Burn This DVD") with no region restrictions or copy protection. Director Michael W. Dean allowed and even encouraged people to make copies for non-commercial use.

With Out Walls "Jean-Michel Basquiat"

WITHOUT Walls: Shooting Star (1990 Channel 4) chronicles the rapid rise and tragic fall of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Ten years ago he was an anonymous teenage graffiti artist. By 1985 he was one of the most celebrated painters of his generation selling work at $30000 a canvas. Today his paintings change hands for millions of dollars each. But Basquiat cannot reap the rich rewards of his success. He died from an heroin overdose in 1988 the victim of a £l000-a-day habit funded by his success as an artist. New Yorker Basquiat was one of the most successful black artists ever but throughout his short life he complained bitterly that he and his work were never taken seriously enough. He became a close friend of Andy Warhol and was rumoured to be Madonna's lover. But beneath the glittering surface he was a serious artist who spoke for the victims of the destructive power of racism.

Erik Satie: Things Seen to the Right and the Left

Eric Alfred Leslie Satie (17 May 1866 – 1 July 1925), who signed his name Erik Satie after 1884, was a French composer and pianist. He was the son of a French father and a British mother. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire, but was an undistinguished student and obtained no diploma. In the 1880s he worked as a pianist in café-cabaret in Montmartre, Paris, and began composing works, mostly for solo piano, such as his Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes. He also wrote music for a Rosicrucian sect to which he was briefly attached.

After a spell in which he composed little, Satie entered Paris's second music academy, the Schola Cantorum, as a mature student. His studies there were more successful than those at the Conservatoire. From about 1910 he became the focus of successive groups of young composers attracted by his unconventionality and originality. Among them were the group known as Les Six. A meeting with Jean Cocteau in 1915 led to the creation of the ballet Parade (1917) for Serge Diaghilev, with music by Satie, sets and costumes by Pablo Picasso, and choreography by Léonide Massine.

Satie's example guided a new generation of French composers away from post-Wagnerian impressionism towards a sparer, terser style. Among those influenced by him during his lifetime were Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, and Francis Poulenc, and he is seen as an influence on more recent, minimalist composers such as John Cage and John Adams. His harmony is often characterised by unresolved chords, he sometimes dispensed with bar-lines, as in his Gnossiennes, and his melodies are generally simple and often reflect his love of old church music. He gave some of his later works absurd titles, such as Veritables Preludes flasques (pour un chien) ("True Flabby Preludes (for a Dog)", 1912), Croquis et agaceries d'un gros bonhomme en bois ("Sketches and Exasperations of a Big Wooden Man", 1913) and Sonatine bureaucratique ("Bureaucratic Sonatina", 1917). Most of his works are brief, and the majority are for solo piano. Exceptions include his "symphonic drama" Socrate (1919) and two late ballets Mercure and Relâche (1924).

Satie never married, and his home for most of his adult life was a single small room, first in Montmartre and, from 1898 to his death, in Arcueil, a suburb of Paris. He adopted various images over the years, including a period in quasi-priestly dress, another in which he always wore identically coloured velvet suits, and is known for his last persona, in neat bourgeois costume, with bowler hat, wing collar, and umbrella. He is believed to only have had one intimate relationship with another person. A passionate four month affair with the painter Suzanne Valadon (who painted Satie's portrait in 1893-94, shown below).

Despite being a musical iconoclast, and encourager of modernism, Satie was uninterested to the point of antipathy about innovations such as the telephone, the gramophone and the radio. He made no recordings, and as far as is known heard only a single radio broadcast (of Milhaud's music) and made only one telephone call. Although his personal appearance was customarily immaculate, his room at Arcueil was in Orledge's word "squalid", and after his death the scores of several important works believed lost were found among the accumulated rubbish. He was incompetent with money. Having depended to a considerable extent on the generosity of friends in his early years, he was little better off when he began to earn a good income from his compositions, as he spent or gave away money as soon as he received it. He liked children, and they liked him, but his relations with adults were seldom straightforward. One of his last collaborators, Picabia, said of him:

"Satie's case is extraordinary. He's a mischievous and cunning old artist. At least, that's how he thinks of himself. Myself, I think the opposite! He's a very susceptible man, arrogant, a real sad child, but one who is sometimes made optimistic by alcohol. But he's a good friend, and I like him a lot."

Throughout his adult life Satie was a heavy drinker, and in 1925 his health collapsed. He was taken to the Hôpital Saint-Joseph in Paris, diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver. He died there at 8.00 p.m. on 1 July, at the age of 59. He was buried in the cemetery at Arcueil.

Suzanne Valadon - Portrait d'Erik Satie 1892-93

Max. Mon Amour / Max My Love (1986)

Peter Jones (Anthony Higgins) a British diplomat in France, suspects his wife Margaret (Charlotte Rampling) of having an affair. He hires a private detective, who reports that Margaret has rented an apartment. It then turns out that her live-in lover is a pet chimpanzee she calls Max. A bizarre love triangle comedy in the surreal style of Buñuel. Directed by Nagisa Oshima (In The Realm Of The Senses, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence), written by Jean-Claude Carrière (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie).

The Sapphire Room

The Sapphire Room from Sean O'Brien on Vimeo.

The famous Les Girls 'All Male Review' in the heart of Sydney's Kings Cross since 1963 was still going strong in the 1990s, headed up by the performer Carlotta. Capitalising on the sudden success of the feature film 'Priscilla, Queen of the Desert' (Stephan Elliott, 1994), Les Girls went on tour, leaving their night club vacant. Sean O'Brien, and his fellow filmmaker colleague Robert Herbert took advantage of the vacant Sunday night spot at Les Girls (2a Roslyn Street Kings Cross) to run their own fun spot.

Tender Trap was for the emerging scene of easy listening, lounge, cocktail, exotica, and incredibly strange music experiencing an enormous international resurgence in the mid 1990s. With the filmic by-line, 'A celebration of cocktail culture at its most sophisticated and savage', O'Brien and Herbert developed a narrative arc to each evening evening – 'First the cocktails and sophisticated conversation, then the live performance, then the wild dancing shall begin'. The sleaze, gangs and drugs of 1990s Kings Cross were left outside the doors of Tender Trap. Soft, pastel lighting, a very vintage sound system, and hand-made stage designs for the cabaret acts all gave Tender Trap the feeling of an oasis in the centre of the Cross, for those who were seeking it. (I attended several events there, including a performance by Japanese ambient noise legend K.K. Null in 1995). 

After running Tender Trap for eight years, in January 2000 the club had its final night, as the historic Les Girls building was shut down for major renovations, becoming yet another inner-city hotel. 

This film by Sean O'Brien is a  portrait of the twilight world of the Sapphire Room, the last of Sydney’s legendary cabaret nightclubs. The film blends candid footage of local “exotic” cabaret artists with a dramatic plot which follows the characters and actions over one eventful night at the club. It features Johannes K. Drinda, the World's Greatest Whistler, who performed his unusual repertoire outside the Sydney Opera House for many years. Filmed on location at the Tender Trap club, in the Les Girls building, during the mid 1990s.

Writer/Director: Sean O'Brien 

Camera: Simon Von Wolkenstein, Tristan Milani, Sean O'Brien 

Editor and sound design: Nick Meyers 

Cast: Rowan Woods, Sauly Saul, Sasha Madaluno, Ali Higson, and a scintillating line-up of Sydney's cabaret stars.

The Children of the Stones

 

The series follows the adventures of astrophysicist Adam Brake and his teenage son Matthew after they arrive in the small village of Milbury, which is built in the midst of a megalithic stone circle.

Filmed at Avebury, Wiltshire during the hot summer of 1976, with interior scenes filmed at HTV's Bristol studios, it has sinister, discordant wailing voices heightening the tension in the incidental music. The music was composed by Sidney Sager who used the Ambrosian Singers to chant in accordance with the megalithic rituals referred to in the story. Director Peter Graham Scott was surprised on seeing the script that the series was intended for children's airtime due to the complexities of the plot and the disturbing nature of the series.

Cast as the leader of the village, Hendrick, was Iain Cuthbertson, while the leading role of Adam Brake was filled by Gareth Thomas. Cuthbertson and Thomas had previously worked together on the TV series Sutherland's Law. Veronica Strong (the wife of series co-writer Jeremy Burnham)[6] played Margaret Smythe, the curator of the local museum, who partners with Brake to solve the mystery. The child actors Peter Demin (aged 17 at the time of filming) and Katharine Levy played the teenage leads, Matthew (Brake's son) and Sandra (Smythe's daughter). Freddie Jones and John Woodnutt were cast as poacher Dai and butler Link.

Jimi Hendrix (1973)

 

Jimi Hendrix (1973) from Robert Alan (Scoobzy) McDowell on Vimeo.

This documentary was made three years after Jimi Hendrix's untimely death. At the time it was an example of how a visual biography should be done, but some of the information in it needs revising in the light of new information uncovered over the years. The film contains concert footage spanning the Marquee in 1967 to his last UK performance at the third Isle of Wight festival in 1970; along the way we see classic performances at Monterey (1967), Woodstock (1969), Fillmore East (1969/70), and Berkeley (1970). A double album was released to tie-in with the film, containing the complete performances in the film, along with interviews with people in the film (not necessarily the same interviews). The film is worth seeing for Jimi's performances, and to hear what his contemporaries have to say about him (Eric Clapton, Mitch Mitchell, Lou Reed, Mick Jagger, Pete Townsend, and others).

Citizen Smith

Citizen Smith is a British television sitcom written by John Sullivan, first broadcast from 1977 to 1980.

It starred Robert Lindsay as Walter Henry "Wolfie" Smith, a young Marxist "urban guerrilla" in Tooting, south London, who is attempting to emulate his hero Che Guevara. Wolfie is a reference to the Irish revolutionary Wolfe Tone, who used the pseudonym "Citizen Smith" in order to evade capture by the British. Wolfie is the self-proclaimed leader of the revolutionary Tooting Popular Front (the TPF, merely a small bunch of his friends), the goals of which are "Power to the People" and "Freedom for Tooting".

Wolfie dresses in a stereotypical fashion for rebellious students of the period: logoed T-shirt, denim jeans, Afghan coat and black beret. He supports Fulham F. C. and occasionally wears a Fulham scarf. He rides a scooter and spends most of the time at his girlfriend's house, which means he constantly clashes with her parents.

Anchoress (1993)

In the 14th-century, a visionary girl is to become an Anchoress, a walled-in recluse, so that she can live in the Virgin's house forever. Over time she awakens to her own sensuality and explores her own female, earth-based spirituality.

The screenplay is partly based on accounts of an historical female anchorite, Christine Carpenter, who was walled into her anchorhold in a village church in Shere, Surrey, in southern England, in 1329. The story revolves around the girl's mystical visions of the Virgin Mary, the local reeve who wants to marry her, and the priest who walls her into his village church and his dislike of her mother, a midwife whom he regards as a witch.