Songs From The 86 Tram has been nominated for an ARIA – Best Comedy Release. It’s up against Andrew Hanson (The Chaser), Heath Franklin (Chopper), Jimeoin and Arj Barker. Winners announced November 7. The 86 Tram tour was a blazing triumph. Sold out Melbourne & Brisbane shows! Diary pending.

• The Northcote (So Hungover) video won an award of merit at the Los Angeles Cinema Festival of Hollywood. It received a .jpeg of a laurel. Congratulations director Craig Melville and producers The Money Shot.

• The Songs From The 86 Tram National Album Tour is wising up, getting down, dropping in and rocking out with its left-field a-game on and folk-right b-list rocks off. We anticipate your participation in the humorous electro-acoustic dalliances of myself and all-star oddbods The Awkwardstra as we gallivant from concert to concert like avant-garde poncy savants in a dashing man-museum of absurdly discerning earnestness. Other such lustrous audio leaves you may collect and press in your subconscious scrapbooks include those delicately dropped by excitement ambassadors The Boat People. About three-fifths of the national program will include the songwriting testimonies of maelstrominous balladeer Pinky Beecroft accompanied by his White Russians. The layering of experience may caramelise with vintage emotions and the light bubble of modern vigour to swish through your existence like a chocolate cocktail from the intrepid ether, such is the divine mockumentary of our lives.

• I didn’t think Inception was that good. I thought it was a bit busy and ‘insisted upon itself.’

• Hipster is defunct. Honda have a ‘savvy, satirical and self-aware’ ad campaign out now targeting Hipster culture. In light of Northcote it makes me feel quite dirty, like exactly how Kurt Cobain must have felt after the Grunge explosion. The clichés are right, capitalism is awful. The speed at which a sub-culture is identified, and ‘captured’ by corporations for commercial gain has increased significantly since the Internet. If you’re a visual artist who’s work is receiving some kind of exposure – don’t be surprised if a very similar aesthetic is appropriated and used to sell OMO’s new ‘retro’ range of fabric softeners. I predict the next sub-culture target will be the Frankie craft brigade. Read: Kia ad where a girl in retro dress and cardigan has knitted a cover for her car. Car drives off with one strand untangled, it weaves all over the city leaving a red thread train until you zoom out to reveal car has drawn an enormous 70’s string art geometric pattern that morphs into the Kia logo. Cue Florence & The Machine chorus and a sharehouse couch worth of girls passionately discussing the ad using the company’s name several times in conversation as they try and determine whether they feel compromised. (NOTE: To all advertising creative goons googling indie-craft related keywords for the express purpose of this exact thing. I take 40% and international residuals.)

• If ye be in Melbourne and listening to Triple R’s radiothon, why not subscribe to stylish radio comedy program ‘Lime Champions,’ 7-8pm on August 15.

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