It’s probably true to say there aren’t many books that could be spun out from a Vice column. True, some of the don’ts are quite evocative (ref: ‘It’s like it’s 1929 and she’s the Prime Minister of hand jobs’ and ‘But Humpty, what if nobody turns up to our party’). But these are few and rich in their brevity.

Lesley Arfin is breaking the mould with her memoir Dear Diary – expanded from a column in which she revisits entries in her teenage diary, then hits up her grade-school tormentors with questions about why they were bitches.

DEAR DIARY
Here’s what’s going on: Wendy, Sara and Amy all like Alex Berkowitz. Wendy used me to get to Alex (Amy told me)…

UPDATE:
Lesley: Do you remember when I tried to beat you up?
Wendy: I remember exactly where it was, outside the gym…
Lesley: I was hurt that you didn’t invite me to your bat mitzvah. I mean, we even carpooled to Hebrew school together! I was totally f**king embarrassed…

We all want revenge. And closure. And to satisfy ourselves that the bitches who turned everyone against us until we tried to slash our wrists with blunt parsley scissors are now ugly, fat, public servants. Reading Dear Diary will vicariously thrill you in these ways and more. Plus there’s an introduction by Chloe Sevigny with pictures of her looking bad in Cosby sweaters.

By Penny Modra

Naked On The Vague are thrillingly deep in a woods all their own on Sad Sun – a new EP on rising Melbourne label, Sabbatical Records. No one in the country makes claim to as spectrally macabre or chilly territory as this eerie Sydney duo right now, whose sound has moved from bracing synth punk (see DualPlover debut 7”) to a full-blown Gothic expression of cosmic dread on this, only their second release. Atmosphere is all-important here; a subtle attitude of awed listening persists as if for the scratching of unknown, outside shapes at the universe’s outmost, darkest rim.

The five new songs are heavy and enchanting like the cracking drift of glacial pack ice. Opener ‘Horse Pt. 2’ is a Carny gaze-number with echoes of La Monte Young’s drone and weird Pan flute. ‘White Blanket’ gets darker with a machine-driven pulse and ominous, growled refrain; ‘Cover your eyes with a white blanket / Smother your face with a pillowcase’. ‘Blood Pressure’ has a spine-chilling whistle and feedback harmony in the breakdown, and closer ‘Sad Sun’ reminds of Current 93’s demon-folk stylings. These are telekinetic hymns of doomed pleasure. Current Mood: Moonstruck.

By Mark Gomes

Debate spurred over Lee Jeans’ cheeky lollypop-licky-licky advertising campaign late last year. Some applauded the work by infamous Vice photographer Terry Richardson and some were revolted. The beauty of the campaign was that we engaged and criticised rather than mindlessly sucking up the message.

Lee will provoke conversation again at their gallery launch this Friday. At the forefront of denim design and edgy imagery, they have much to parade after a stirring 118 years.

At their Grand Opening and General Debauchery Party, DJ’s include Ajax, Muscles, Jaime Doom and Sleater Brockman.

By Isabel Dunstan

If you, like Kate Hannaford of MOTH Design, were opening a temporary fashion retail and exhibition space in an old city warehouse, would you call it ‘MOTH Design’s temporary fashion retail and exhibition space in an old city warehouse’? No. You would totally call it Penthouse Mouse, or something of that ilk.

Being, however, that the title is abstract and evocative of small, free-livin animals, some explanation is required: This is a pop-up shop happening during Motorola Melbourne Spring Fashion Week. MOTH Design have totally gutted and done up the interior of an awesome, three level shopfront and warehouse next to Ding Dong. Fashion displayed and for sale will include the latest summer 07/08 ranges of from Leonard St., Parc Diamond, Limedrop, Les Corbeaux, Arnsdorf, Dress Up by Stephanie Downey, Skin and Threads, Montlaroc, Trimapee, and Dhini. Plus jewellery from Julia Deville, This Charming Man, Psuedo Republik, Coconut Lu, and Jessica Morrison.

You should see what they have done with the place too. The interior includes lighting and structures by Volker Haug, work by designer David McDonald from Side Project and graphics by Studio Organic.  And there is a bar. Watch out for parties on at Penthouse Mouse in the coming week. And lil’ rodents lighting their cigars with hundred dollar bills.

By Penny Modra

Actress, writer, director Adrienne Shelly was found murdered in her apartment late last year. There’s no better, more awful reason to revisit her work and see what made her an indie-cinema favourite, especially in Hal Hartley’s Trust. An iconic example of ‘90s US arthouse filmmaking, even the opening credits of Trust look alarmingly like they’re about to tell you that FRANKIE SAYS RELAX.

High school student Maria – all teased hair, red lips, impossible eyes – tells her father she’s pregnant, and he drops dead of a heart attack; Matthew is a furious intellectual who carries a hand grenade as a security blanket. Is it love? Is there such a thing as love? Trust combines black comedy, offbeat melodrama, and an odd Nancy Drew detective subplot with Hartley’s gorgeous flat pastels and the famously deadpan delivery of his actors.

Before her murder, Adrienne Shelly completed writing and directing the romantic comedy Waitress, which ACMI are premiering alongside Trust this Friday night. But tense yourself for the emotional gutpunch when the night ends with the final shot of Trust: the young, luminous, Shelly, framed alone. Now she’s gone.

By Martyn Pedler

Spit out your tobacco. Take a shower. This springtime Genki invite you to do away with trailer trash.

The Springtime Happy Caravan will be far from what the Timmins family call home by featuring Genki’s family of designers; Lover, Gen Kay, Tatty Devine, House of Baulch , Chip Chop, Built by Wendy, Rittenhouse.

The caravan inherits the colour and cheer that Genki is renowned for. While Trixie, your make-up-caked nose-bleeding starlet won’t be there, rumour has it hula-hoopers and fortune-tellers will be.

Any snaggle-tooth wife-beater-wearin’ folk with horrendous diction (think Cletus the slack-jawed yokel) will be asked to take their moonshine elsewhere.

By Isabel Dunstan

Gentlemen, start your engines. Or, in case you don't drive a '68 Lancia, shine your shoes, chalk your pool cue and thank your lucky stars that James Cameron is here to help your gentlemanly aspirations. This isn't hipster dandyism, this is the real gentleman/scholar deal.

As Spring Fashion Week arrives, James is unrolling his new range of wares, replete with his well-mannered sense of stripped-back, wearable tailoring, and The Great Escape era Steve McQueen rakishness. Unlike the Motorola-endorsed sameness that you're likely to find at MMSFW though, James has, appropriately enough, planned a bespoke launch for his latest collection, The Outsider.

The James Cameron store in Oliver Lane is being transformed into a '68 Paris basement jazz club, with live band, pool table and bar. And if that weren't enough, the invitations (that's right, invitations) come with coupons for a shoe-shine and free grooming agents when you get your hair cut at Fur and chin shaved at Rockit Barber Shop.

If you can’t secure yourself an invitation, have a shave, shine your shoes, get a haircut and drop in to see the new range anyway because real gentlemen, in the literary sense, are thin on the ground and James is here to remind us that boys become men, and should embrace it.

By Stuart Geddes

In this fast-paced, profit hungry world, it's nice to know there's still a place you can go where everyone knows your name. That place is Fandango. Since late November 2006, this now famous North Melbourne eatery, housed in a shopfront on bustling Errol Street, has been central to the social lives of many local residents and their friends (who, rumour has it, travel from as far away as Richmond to sample the wares).

Here there's breakfast all day, lunch from 11, fair trade organic coffee and free-range eggs. There are smoothies, hot chocolates, cup cakes, an interior worthy of any discerning inner city resident's approval, Bonsoy and a footy tipping competition. Highlights include apricot and date loaf with homemade honeyed cream cheese and roast pumpkin toasted pide with fetta, spinach, semi-dried tomato and pesto. Oh, and if the fear of type II diabetes isn't in you, brave the pancakes.

Until the famed courtyard reopens, outside dining is limited to the coveted pavement seating outfront, where, in lieu of full sunlight, you can borrow one of the inhouse crochet rugs. Inside it's cosy, bright and lively around the coffee machine, where customers of all ages revel in the general community atmosphere. If online social networking's got you down, Fandango will lift your spirits – it's Melbourne's real “place for friends”.

By Kirsten Law