Introducing.......................>

Hitching a Ride on the Caravan of Sadness

Recently we were commissioned as fashion illustrators by Brad Pitt to 'capture' his shoot for GQ . Unbeknownst to us he's been following us since 2004. He says the first time he saw our portrait of him, he cried. But he can only admit to that now.  "I went through two therapists to get to the right one," he says. Brad tells us this over and over and over again whilst manically sculpting something out of clay. We didn't mention the 2013 portrait was a critical piece, because we really wanted to go to the Everglades. What we didn't realise was that we were joining a Caravan of Sadness touring American National Parks, featuring Sad Dad Brad.

Brad Pitt pulls in to the GQ shoot

Ice Face

Pale Blue Onesie Issey Miyake Men $1750

Ice Face #2 

President Elect Donald Trump (In the style of Vincent Namatjira)

Advisory List For President Donald Trump

1.  Bring all US forces home - usher in a final end to post colonialism - leave others alone. 

2.  Edward Snowden come home - if it wasn't you it woulda been someone else. 

3.  Chelsea Manning - you are pardoned - you showed us the dark depths to which politicians and bureaucrats are prepared to sink. 

4.  Julian Assange - 2 Options

Option 1 

Tell those Swedes to leave him alone and fly in a Trump helicopter in full agreement from Ecuador and set him free. 

Option 2 

Do an exchange deal with Ecuador whereby Julian goes to America in exchange for Hilary taking his place in the Ecuadorean Embassy. 

Option 1 Probably more realistic. 

5.  Guantanamo Bay - close it - make new prison that is humane. 

6.  Gay Marriage - just do it. No explanation necessary. 

7.  Get in Air Force One (we don't care if your new furnishings are somewhat garish) and fly to North Korea and sit down and have a chat to Kim. We know that you understand he is only 33 and you will work very well with that. 

8.  Russia - same gig as with Kim. Putin would like to be you and that's the edge there. 

9.  China - same deal with Xi Jinping, you will be able to vibe very quickly the score with this cat cause that is your skill. Read about the style of how Mr Gough Whitman went there. You will relate to him. 

10.  Europe - forget it - sinking ship. 

11.  Middle East - probably won't need to do much if you pull the troops out. Let those guys work stuff out themselves. No more need for Isis - let Post Colonial France deal with that mob. 

12.  Mexican Wall - we know it already partially exists and you don't need to do anything there as people forget stuff real quick. 

13.  Social Issues - let American people break free from political correctness and dismantle institutional regulation on this level. Of course the really good things from that era will remain intact - it's gardening Don. 

14. Guns - big challenge - involves the creation of a new mind set for many Americans - big call. We shall see. 

15.  Bono, Bob Geldof, Sting - don't need em - they are fucked and you already know that. If they do arrive at the White House for a cup of tea we will play with them and laugh about it later. 

16.  Queen Elizabeth - get an audience. She's very wise and she can help you. She will laugh at your jokes. 

17.  Prince Charles - old hippy with some good ideas - might waffle on a bit but a good bloke. 

18.  Prince William - don't bother. 

19.  Women's Issues - one voice to listen too - Camille Paglia who supported you all the way. If she's interested give her a portfolio. 

20.  Dalai Lama & Nic Sarkozy - these guys love celebrities and will sniff around. Block their addresses. 

21.  Round up all the Imans and get a confab happening to start or intensify the dialogue about Muslims doing some of the shit themselves re disenfranchised young Muslim dudes with mental health issues and terrorism. 

22.  Australia - be very suspicious of the current Prime Minister. He has already shown that he does not respect your privacy by getting your telephone number through Greg Norman. He has no real power in this country so don't worry about him. If a man called Stan Grant takes the stage he will work very well with you as he is also an outsider.

What Happens When White People Get Lost

We have been flying in and out of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory (AU).  Locals call us FIFO's to tease us as we are not trades people.  Some fans from remote communities tracked us down and sent us 'an invitation to contribute'.  They are compiling an educational manual on why white people do what they do and are how they are.

As much as we knew that we were the right people for this job we had to ask why we were chosen.  It turns out stories from our category House of Windsor are regularly read and discussed on community radio stations, some of them as far away as the APY Lands.  We're big in the desert.

The mob we are working with have given us 6 months (might be longer) to come up with some stories that 'unpack' the ways of the white fella to help Aboriginal people understand them.  We spent a week out bush on community where we hung back, took notes, kinda just listened.  Conversations ran far into the night, but we never asked direct questions, as we know that to be disrespectful in Aboriginal culture.

It was pretty clear that many of the artists felt that there was something strange about the white women who come to work at the Arts Centres.  They reckon some of them 'jealous*' their art by choosing their colours and telling them what things to paint.  Some are a real downer to be around because they seem guilty all the time and often talk very negatively about their families.  This was really something we could get our teeth into.  On the way back to Alice we were so inspired we pulled the vehicle into the Tropic Of Capricorn and scribbled our first allegory.  We wrote in silence, the only sound to be heard was the wind through the mulgas, like waves on an inland sea.  Here it is:

What Happens When White People Get Lost

Modern white people, particularly those from very rich countries, treat their identity in the same way Aboriginal people relate to the land. They need to feel that they are one by themselves and sometimes because of this other people don't matter. When some white people get lost and go looking for their identity it can make them sick.  White people believe that being in strange places will help them to find themselves.  This is why some of the white people who come to the desert want to hang around Aboriginal people.



* Aboriginal English
 Jealous / Jealousing: abusive, controlling, stopping you doing things.

The Bachelor Australia 2016 (Loaf)

Horrifying Images In The History Of Popular Culture Part 3

Flirting With the Karma Bus

Horrifying Images In The History Of Popular Culture Part 2

Wanapa's Dhapi Dance

The Bachelor Australia 2015

Australia, we dodged a bullet

Remembering the time when 'somebody' was nearly our next Prime Minister.

Where There Was Fire....Another Melbourne Society Crime Scene Goes Under The Hammer

Yes, we have just returned from the auction across the road.  We are writing this so we don't have to answer calls or text back.  Our impressions are as follows.

About forty people gathered, most of them in black emerging from shiny black vehicles and only three needed to be there.  The building was once a Society Decorator's business, home and eventually his funeral pyre.  Today his showroom was a shrine for real estate agents who'd hung profile features of the Decorator on every spare piece of wall.  The frames weren't what you'd expect, much more subtle and utilitarian.  A chill ran through the tour group as the sound of a disembodied voice called for help from behind a closed door.  Keen to start on time the agents had closed off the upstairs residence and some people remained trapped inside.  We were really annoyed about that because we had wanted access to see (or hypothesize) where the candle might have been lit.

The auctioneer's flu-affected voice sounded like he himself had just emerged from a tinderbox.  He stresses that everything inside is included, except for the chandelier and the doorknob.   He assures the crowd that yes, the coffee machine is included, it's wired in.  He doesn't clarify who gets all the framed memorabilia.

The Toorak kooks were there, decked out in their crazy person clobber.  A dude in vintage Toyota overalls with bowling shoes, ladies with sequined caps, cheese-cutter style and scattered Pug-Bichon mixes. The bidding started at 1.3 million and three dudes fought it out to 2.05.  A tall, perhaps nondescript, man won.  Gesturing his way one of the kooks says to us, "A blue polo shirt, Stuart would have been appalled".

Artist's impression of new owner

Doorknob not included

Ban Ray

Man Ray Contemplating The Bust Of Man Ray

William Wegman 1978

Panda B. (bandit) Contemplating The Image Of Panda B. (bandit)

Melbourne 2015

Punk and Blanket and The Mummy Blogger; Chapter 3; Exodus

As you guys all know we have a history of confrontation in the face of dumbness.  We don't often start a fight but we normally finish it.  So it was with some surprise that we found ourselves in mediation with our office-mate, Mia the mummy blogger.

It started as most modern spats do, with a tweet.  We were researching images of Prince Andrew sweating and grinding for our cartoons when we saw a headline about The Australian of The Year 2015 recipient.  Shocked, confused we shot out a quick tweet.

We were trying to render Andrew's teeth when two uniformed police officers appeared in tow with Mia.  She was a weird mix of scared and smug.  The officers asked if we were punk and blanket and we said yes.  We reach for pens assuming they want an autograph but they say they have reason to believe that our conduct has been of a threatening nature to our office mate and that she no longer feels safe to be near us in the workplace.  We know it's not a joke as Mia doesn't have a sense of humour.  For sometime we remained silent, as silent as Gerard Baden-Clay taking the 5th.  

Eventually they asked us if we had any understanding of why Mia might be afraid. We kept staring blankly. Constable Bethany Brown in a tough little girl voice goes "Mia reckons you guys published a hateful and provocative attack on survivors of family violence, accompanied by menacing visual imagery. Have you guys been on Twitter this afternoon?"

It was impossible to lie. Twitter was open on the desktop of our very large screen Apple MacIntosh computer. We hand the mouse to Constable Beth and her offsider, Constable Dean Marsh. We let them scroll away and got back to the royal teeth. Mia becomes agitated, probably because it's the first time she realises our ambivalence to authority is real. Screeching between the Constables and pointing at the Emojis, she looks like she is on the verge of a panic attack and demands an intervention order.  We know we are living in the era of the sook but that seemed pretty extreme.  The police threw water on her request and suggested it was an issue more suited to mediation.

Brian, our mediator told us that Mia said she needed a support person to 'balance up the room'.  That was fine by us, even though she brought Fi (her grief counsellor who tried to make us rat on Sir Elton) with her.  She had also requested that we not be in the waiting area when she arrived.  That was also fine by us.

The mediation kicked off with Mia telling Brian (reading straight from her copious notes) her reasons as to why her safety was threatened by us. The tweet was just the final straw and confirmed in her mind that we were "probably sociopathic".  She provided an extensive list of transgressions.

1.  They are self-absorbed.  Example, they only blog about themselves and things that only interest them.

2. They are nasty.

3. Uncharitable.  Example, they refuse to support social justice movements like, #jesuischarlie #Istandformercy #Iswear #he4she #everydaysexism #paythewriters #paythedancers #IbreastfeedthereforeIam 

4. Small-Minded

5. Apolitical.

6. So juvenile for educated people.  Example, their bad cartoons.

7. Think they are special because they believe they can channel dead surrealists.

8. They laugh at fat people.  Example, they go deep water running and make jokes about getting caught in the whirlpool of a fat person's slipstream. They say they feel like corks.

9.  They openly tell her small children that their drawings don't look like what they are supposed to be.

10. They never like the pictures of her friends children on Facebook.

11. She has heard that they have invented a parlour game for their parties called Mia Translations where guests have to translate her sayings. "He's been here before", about her middle son, would translate as, "My child is Jesus". 

Addressing us, Brian asked if we would like to put our issues on the table.  We said we are simply here to move forward. Before proceeding to the negotiation phase, Brian called private sessions with each of us. Mia went first, which was great as it gave us some time to smash through a couple of levels of Candy Crush. Brian came back and informed us he was not in a position to relay what Mia had said but that we could now talk freely. We really did feel comfortable with Brian as there was a non-judgemental openness to his bearded face. He looked like a friendly bunyip that would be receptive to our truth. We say Mia has an over-inflated idea about the importance of her blog and we think she has an unhealthy attachment to her followers and her opinions. She doesn't understand what we do and what we stand for, she doesn't know the difference between mischief and contempt. She's always at us to get 'sponsors' for our blog and won't accept that we will never be monetised or appear on The Project. Brian nods and says Mia does appear to be quite opinionated. We raise the hashtag activism scene that Mia is mixed up in, where people wear compassion like they would band t-shirts. Brian indicated he was familiar with these sort of pretenders. He thinks Ben Quilty and his mob of supporters are making it worse for Andrew and Myu. We agree and tell him we call it 'compassion porn' and think it's a really dark practice. Normally in lore, people smudge with sage bundles to dispel bad energy fields. We tell him we believe being in the room during a punk and blanket session is the surrealist equivalent of being smudged and Mia is not changing despite our daily presence. Brian terminated the mediation at that point. 

Un gros nu descendant un escalier 2014

Do we need to talk about Guy?

Probably. Yes.

Predicting the Winner of The Bachelor Australia with Panda B. (bandit), After Paul the Octopus

Reasons Sir Mick Jagger Is No Longer Our Friend And Why We Believe He May Be Sociopathic (in the style of Marcel Duchamp and the Daily Mail)

1.  At 70, spotted with ballerina, 27.

2.  For never, ever shouting a round of drinks, even when we've had a bad day.

3.  As to his failure to act as a proper rock n roll elder, we cite the Bittersweet Symphony grab.

4.  We've had enough of him trying to crack on to our friends kids at all our events.

5.  Upon reflection, we overlooked some unpleasant things. Like that time in Bali. We were all hungry after climbing the volcano. Mick was the only one to decline the villagers' offerings of fried fish. He ate from a picnic basket especially delivered to him from his five-star hotel. 

6.  We're sick of him using us to gain proximity to influential and important artists, especially those favoured by the aristocracy (he thinks he knows about art, but he doesn't; he just looks at the price tags and his reflection in the glass of the paintings).

7.  For ridiculing Ned Kelly.

8.  Against all our advice, he made the documentary called Being Mick in 2001. We told him he'd look like a middle-aged bubble boy, and he does.

9.  He rings us up, emails, doesn't ask how we are, doesn't ask about Claire, just bangs on and on about what some blogger has said about him that week.

10.  For not giving a shit about anyone...no-one....absolutely no-one. We've realised every time we've spoken with Mick about people's vulnerabilities, he just goes ahead and ruins their lives.

Deb is getting married!

We are patiently waiting for our invitation. 

Live Gazing With Panda B. (bandit) After Braco

Over Thinking With Juliana Engberg & Helen Razer

02 17 2014

Real Actors Real Life - The 86th Police Academy Award Nominees Are.......>

Best Actor In A Leading Role -   Queensland Undercover Officer known as Joe Emery for outstanding performance in the capture of child killer Brett Peter Cowan.  The Officer spent months building a rapport with his target after "befriending" him by sitting next to him on a flight to Perth.




Best Screenplay -  Queensland Undercover Operatives (no names) for writing "scenarios" of illegal gang activity, including collecting debts, bribing court officials and buying illegal firearms, drugs and even "blood diamonds" from Africa in order to trap their target into making admissions.




Best Supporting Actors - Queensland Undercover Operatives known as Fitzy and Ian for posing as members of a large and powerful criminal gang.




Best Director - High Ranking Officer (no name) Queensland Police.

The Accused in 1999

Photo by Polly Borland

Courtesy Google

punk & blanket tick roger settle

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Images Courtesy of the Artist and Wild Kingdom

Where There Is Smoke There Is Fire

Across the Road, Another Melbourne Society Murder

This latest true crime story has left us spent. We are tired, very tired, exhausted by processing information about a decorator’s suspicious death. It’s another society murder and this time it’s across the road.

We have been here before but never have we had such proximity. We were heavily entrenched in the Matthew Wales-King matter in 2002: we knew Paul King’s barber, shopped at Maritza’s boutique, and like her, preferred Agostino’s daiquiri mix.  One of our friends even sat in his Porsche outside the Glen Iris crime scene with the media, feeding us eyewitness accounts.  We’d often try to coerce our friends at Malvern CIB in to letting us see the room where they interviewed Matthew for the very first time. 

We also cannot wait for the Gerard Baden-Clay trial in August as we have followed it forensically.  We have contacts in Brisbane but no one connected to affluent Brookfield society, so we have formed our own view:  anyone who has time to gel and style his hair before his wife’s funeral is a person of interest.  Debate rages in our circles as to whether Joe Korp and Tania Hermann fall into ‘aspirational society murder’ or just straight ‘society murder’. There are also problems with the categorisation of Herman Rockefeller - dinner parties have turned bad discussing that one.

However, this time we live across the road. And it begins as most fires do, with the smell of smoke.  It was Saturday night and we were relaxing after a hard days work selling art and drinking shandies at the Toorak Bowls Club.  One of us was playing Candy Crush and the other was staring at the wall when we smelt smoke.  We knew immediately what it was, familiar as we are with the smell of a burning house. We briefly discussed calling the fire brigade but we thought it would be wise to check Incident Alert Vic SA on Twitter first. They reported a Malvern Rd structure fire not yet under control. We knew this was big because Incident Alert Vic SA has ‘Large Incidents’ on its profile pic. We heard sirens, finished our activities and went to bed.

Next morning we woke up and went straight to the computer. A leading Melbourne decorator had been found dead in the charred remains of his apartment behind his shop on Malvern Road. When we first moved to Melbourne that shop confused us. It’s one of those shops that are not really shops, sort of more like poshed up self-storage. After a comprehensive online search, including galleries of his work, we realised it was true: people paid him to decorate their mansions. We took our Staffordshire Terrier for what would be his last walk for seven days, because when we passed Minimax, we stepped right into another Melbourne Society Murder vortex. We tied up the dog and went inside.

Howls were bouncing off the hard shiny surfaces, a full-on lamentation was spilling out onto the ‘village’. Women with bobs and Husk bags were united in grief. Some of them knew the decorator, had heard of the decorator, had him as Godfather to their children. Some had friends who knew his friends.  We felt the familiar rush of ‘wanting to know more’, so we joined in the wailing, hugging, inching in closer to women who appeared to really know the deceased. Overhearing talk about a pilgrimage to the decorator’s shop we purchase some ‘cheap’ stocking fillers and follow the line of Jeeps a block and a half down the road. A couple of days later the boyfriend is arrested. Those of the pilgrimage who had embraced the numb and silent widower were now wondering if they might have been hugging a murderer.

Our newsroom was fully operational since before the arrest and now we’re pulling overtime. Everyone is in a frenzy – the intel is pouring in at such a rate we’ve had to prioritise our information sharing on a range of criteria: highest priority goes to those who return our texts. And people like our musician friend, who sends daily pics of the evolving floral display in the shop window gets classified information. There was talk about a candle starting the fire. Some sources were particularly interested in this information given the deceased was known to be scared of candles. He only used them for decoration (privately, we have always wondered why people would pay so much money for something they were going to burn). Misinformation regarding the brand of the candle drove us mental. People told us it was a Diptyque candle the couple had purchased from a famous local perfumery shortly before the crime. But we looked that up and discovered Diptyque candles were only $60 and didn’t look like the kind of candles the decorator would use for style over function. A very reliable source intervened and said no, it was a $100 Cire Trudon candle. That seemed much more credible.

Another thing about the Melbourne Society Murder vortex that can be annoying (apart from the fact that one of us is eating and one is not) is interference from other newsrooms.  People have been ringing us with their creative ideas, trying to impress us with their knowledge of the case. Some even tried to influence this piece, texting at all hours with title suggestions.  Hence we have turned off all of our devices whilst we write this.

There are those who have been ridiculously competitive.  One friend questioned our ability to detect the smoke, asking us exactly where we live. He was in South Yarra and we were Prahran so the wind must have been blowing the wrong way, he surmised. We have also had moral competition, like last night at a cocktail party.  About eight of us were sitting around making polite conversation.  One of us thought enough subjects had been covered and finally said, ‘Hey, are we going to talk about the fire now?’  Someone said “Yes”, someone else let out a single clap and we all leaned in.  All except Steph who exclaimed, “There will be no talk about the decorator tonight, this is a human being’s life we are talking about, and it’s not gossip”.  Everyone’s faces dropped.  Vibe ruined.  Steph is an older woman who speaks like a headmaster so we found ourselves obeying her embargo.  Even, the host.  We apologised and went into mediation mode asking Steph if she knew the couple.  She said she didn’t.

Today we spotted two prominent society trend forecasters heading towards the now brimming shop front.  We had a little laugh at the spring in their step because we have seen them at parties and they have made jokes about the decorator and his friends as being ‘A-List of bad taste’.

With our studies of true crime we have noticed a golden thread throughout Melbourne’s society murders – it appears that in each case someone says ‘ENOUGH.’ We’ve noticed that in this matter there are now mutterings on the airwaves suggesting power imbalances. We await the committal in June. That’s a good amount of time to recover before we find out the facts.  

   

The Stiffy Pic In Paparazzi History

Of the millions of pictures shot by photographers in the bushes there is only one known Stiffie Pic.

September 1996, Daniel Ducruet (husband of Princess Stephanie of Monaco) with Muriel "Fili" Mol-Houteman, Miss Bare Breasts of Belgium 1995.  Ducruet was later banished from the Kingdom by Prince Rainier III.

Jason's List (double click for a better view)

We found this list in Mia "The Mummy Blogger" and Jason's bin. We've seen these venting lists before, written in a stream of consciousness at Dad's in Distress groups. Jason is clearly experiencing early onset self-actualisation.