Think back to Primary School winter wash outs. It’s pouring outside, your polar fleece track pants smell of damp and playing poison ball on the basketball court is off. You resort to spending your lunchtime within the comforting confines of the library.

Walking into Brunswick Bound on a rainy day is like finding solace on a winter wash out with the cosiness and friendly face of the store providing instantaneous relief from the bitter wind outside. There are a few points of difference from the average Primary School library however. Instead of the entire back catalogue of Grug, the works of Henry Miller and Bukowski line the shelves. A healthy collection of visual culture books, Hidden Track La cambre Model(s) take the place of art-and-craft handbooks and the upstairs gallery space exhibiting Tom Civil’s drawings and woodcuts substitutes the grade two diorama display.

The collection of magazines can’t compare to the collection of TV Hits for the grade six-ers as air freight editions of Eyemazing and Monacle are at hand. Be sure to see their copy of We Love Magazines too.

Brunswick Bound, with their inviting couches and hardcover treats, is like a motherly embrace on a winter’s day.

By Isabel Dunstan

This isn’t really a LOOK so much as a DO because script submissions for this short play competition gotta be in by July 31. It’s not often that ThreeThousand suggests you create things yourself, we’re more about telling you to go and see things other people have created, and drink their vino while you’re there. This week, however, we’re feeling clean-living and motivational.

Don’t be deterred by the competition from, like, all over the world. Short & Sweet entries are open to everyone and your script has just as much chance of being produced and staged at the Arts Centre as anyone else’s. As long as it’s ten minutes or under and it’s, well, good. You can find submission details and various hints here.

If you’re not the writing type, there are some other dates to put in your diary. Perhaps you would like to act one of the shortlisted plays or, indeed, direct said actors?

Meanwhile, writers, if we haven’t motivated you yet, write this down: $20,0000 in prizes. That’s all.

What:
Short & Sweet script entries

Where:
Get them in

When:
By Tues July 31, 5pm

How much:
$15 to enter

Contact:
shortandsweet@theartscentre.net.au

“Fashion is the last repository of the marvellous”, said Christian Dior www.dior.com (and Malcolm McLaren, who would typically pilfer the quote for his own ends). The same could be said for Clara Fox. Perched prettily in the suburban leg of Brunswick Street, this parlour of vintage proper is presided over by the titular, flame-haired Ms Fox, a grande dame of Melbourne’s rag trade who has finally collected her treasures in one spot.

Dresses dominate (Sedgwick shifts; ones that swish like Jean Seberg’s in Breathless), but there’re also teeny hats, mohair scarves, heels, real ballet slippers, coats, furs, bedazzled denim boleros, pillbox bags, opera gloves, and fans made from the best bits of tortoises and ostriches both – all in seasonal rotation. Much of it has never been worn, still bearing original tags, and is a helluva lot cheaper than the ‘designer’ frocks that rip off these same cuts in lesser fabrics each year. The best part? Unlike many vintage dresses, so tiny they require a corset and a colonic before you can get near them, Clara’s pieces magically fit the leggy Melbourne debutantes of today. Truly, deeply foxy.

By Kate Scott

What:
Clara Fox

Where:
479 Brunswick Street, North Fitzroy

When:
Wed-Sun, 11-6 (depending on the season)

Contact:
0422 777 954

Lars Von Trier is not a happy camper. The sadistic tendencies of his anti-cinema have resulted in wildly bleak films that are often fascinating in theory, but not nearly so interesting to actually sit through. When he introduces his latest, The Boss Of It All, by announcing it won’t be preachy – “It’s a comedy and it’s harmless” – should we believe him?

An actor is hired to play the part of an imaginary CEO, invented to spare the real boss any backlash from unpopular decisions. As he improvises his way through the office, sinking more deeply into the office politics, the film becomes laugh-out-loud funny. It also comes with a new gimmick: Automavision, a computer that selects the cinematography from multiple cameras. Amazingly, this works, and the jump-cuts giving the film a choppy, magnetic immediacy.

Von Trier has recently stated that depression has left him like "a blank sheet of paper" and he doesn’t know if he’ll ever return to cinema. There’s a joy in The Boss Of It All, but there’s bitterness too, as it mockingly weighs ‘difficult’ art versus broad sentimentality. Von Trier is right about it being comedy, but it’s not so harmless.

By Martyn Pedler

Not a plank of dimensional lumber, not a 1998 film about Irish labourers directed by Jimmy Smallhorne, not a Metallica song off Load (1996) or a Blind Melon song off Soup, not an NYC design studio. Sure, these guys with their online t-shirt store have got some competition in the name game but soon 2x4 (the online t-shirt store) will be top o’ that list on Wikipedia. It’s just the kind of simple idea that rises like cream above the lumber in our web 2.0 world. And if they run into trouble with Jimmy Smallhorne they can just change it to ‘8’ maybe.

Anyway, 2x4 features two designs by four artists in each of their t-shirt releases. And each release of eight designs is limited to 200 t-shirts. Founded by designer and all-rounder Damian Aistrope, 2x4 features unique work – in a t-shirt medium – by artists, designers, illustrators and photographers from around the world. The current ‘eight’ includes designs by Jeff Canham, Noah Butkus, Emil Kozak  and Adam Cruickshank (Regular Product). You can also see Adam’s work alongside Dell Stewart’s in their collaborative Sleep Club  show Dead To The World at Utopian Slumps right now, or on desktop desktop. Sock that to Smallhorne.


By Penny Modra

What better to accompany your champagne toast than a trip to the changerooms with an armful of Maus Cat Berlin? Of course there’s also Sarah Francis, Tina Kalivas, Michelle Robinson, TV, Carl, Mala Brajkovic, Mjolk, Friedrich Gray, Beat Poet, Who is dead Martin, Romance was Born, One Trick Pony, Lucy Folk, Iggy & Lou Lou  Caracus, Elke Kramer, Amy Renshaw, Elizabeth Kennedy and some hot locals to come.

Make sure you check out the interior embellishments by Kit Wise. There will quite possibly be some gift-with-purchase action too. What a lady.

By Penny Modra

What:
Special customer night

Where:
Alice Euphemia  - new store! - 114 Gertrude St, Fitzroy

When:
Fri July 20, 5-8pm

How much:
Free to attend
10% off any purchase on the night including sale guff

Who do these French think they are? Epoisses de Bourgogne delicately treads the line of genius and insanity. Only made from spring milk of cows grazing on aromatic grasses and herbs, this pungent, really pungent, small orange-red round of cheese is like no other. So much so it is banned on the Metro. A washed rind of the highest regard, it is, during its 6 weeks of maturation, hand-rubbed up to 3 times a week with rain water and marc de Bourgogne, a local wine by-product that can only be described as moonshine. Once reaching maturation it takes on an odor not unlike an old sock, but within lies the secret. It has a pale, creamy ooze-like consistency that is ambrosia. Earthy, woodland flavours; salty, sweet and mouth watering. A good baguette, champagne and another blurred line of intelligence, the Tour de France, will put you in the mood.
 
Seasonal, it is best at each end of the European Spring. First batches are arriving now. Simon Johnson has the Epoisses Berthaut variety available.
 
By James Cameron

What:
Epoisses

Where:
Simon Johnson, 12-14 St David St, Fitzroy and 471 Toorak Rd, Toorak

When:
Call ‘em and order it in

How much:
$39.50 per kilo

Contact:
Fitzroy 9486 9456
Toorak 9826 2588