How to eat at a grand buffet and attend MWF

Writers’ festival programs are like the buffet at the Grand Hyatt: a big ol’ fancy tease. That first glance is near overwhelming: towers of cakes and pastries, silver platters featuring rows of fresh seafood, fruit, nuts, ganache and coconut, sausage rolls the size of your thumbnail and cream puffs like clouds of angel’s breath. You’re eying off that lemon meringue pie like nobody’s business, but there are also those delectable little salmon quiches and dear god, yes, butterfly cakes dusted with chocolate. You have died and gone to culinary heaven, and yet the unfortunate truth is that even if you tried your hardest, even if you wholly devoted yourself to that most divine of tasks, you could not eat it all. It’s unlikely you could even sample everything, and you resign yourself to the fact that you will need to make a judicious and limited selection. But how do you choose? 

My research¹ indicates that Festival Indecision² is a common affliction. Those of us on a shoestring budget in particular know the symptoms of FI all too well, and while we probably won’t ever get to a Grand Hyatt buffet (I did gatecrash it once, though, true story, and there was, like, a wall of champagne) we might be able to make it to a couple of writers’ festival events.

So, in the interests of fellow sufferers, I have come up with a selection of ways to choose which MWF sessions to attend. (Warning: some of these suggestions may have adverse side effects, but desperate times call for desperate measures and all that.)

Ahem:

 

How to Choose Between MWF Events

1. Send a barrage of emails to the publicists or agents of the authors on your shortlist. Attend the sessions of anyone who replies. If they reply angrily, buy a copy of their book. If you already have it, buy a copy for your mum. If they take out a restraining order, we don’t know each other and you never heard this from me.

2. Play a game of pool with your bestie, assigning an MWF event to each ball. The order of balls pocketed is the order in which you must buy your MWF tickets. Buy tickets accordingly until you hit your budget. If you lose the game, buy your bestie a round. If you win, buy yourself a ticket to Friday Night Live.

3. Borrow a harried friend’s child for the week and take them along to the Schools’ program. Your stressed out friend will be grateful for the break and you’ll remember how awesome kids’ books are and regret ever having to grow up and read totes srs literature.

4a. Stick the pages of the MWF 2012 Program to the dartboard at your local pub. Throw the darts. Attend any session skewered. If the dart knocks over another patron’s beer, invite them along, too. If you accidentally hit another patron, attend every Big Ideas session. If you get into a fight with the big burly regulars because you’ve plastered the dartboard with newspaper, run.

4b. Variation: accost passers-by and get them to throw the darts for you, thereby availing you of all responsibility for the outcome. If the session sucks (Unlikely! But even the food at the Grand Hyatt sucks sometimes³) you can blame that old stringy guy with the weird eye.

5. Make it your festival mission to uncover the identity of @WFQuestions. Pretend you’re playing Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego. Use her tweet-stream as a guide to the festival. Wear your running shoes in case she finds you first, waves her dream beads in your face and tries to sell your her erotic e-book 50 Planes of Sexy Flying.

 

Now: what are your suggestions for dealing with the dreaded Festival Indecision? And if MWF 2012 were a buffet, who would be the meringue?

––

¹ listening to my friends complain
² a real disease
³ I guess

Five reasons why I love Julia Zemiro

 

1. She’s smart and funny in equal doses.

Evidence for smart? She told The Age earlier this year that if she was transport minister, she’d made public transport free for a year. “I know the system can be pretty poor but a year would be long enough for people to see some real benefits of walking and leaving the car at home.” If that’s not smart, I don’t know what is. Evidence for funny? She was a favourite on improvisation comedy program Thank God You’re Here, but she also manages to insert witty barbs into just about any interview or appearance.

2. She’s a natural at hosting and a terrific interviewer.

She makes the audience feel comfortable and at ease. It’s a rarer talent than you’d think, and you don’t generally notice it because it’s a bit like editing – it’s all about absence (of awkward pauses, imperfect segues, etc.) Talking to Sunday Life a few weeks ago about her job hosting the SBS documentary Sex, she said of interviewing: “I’ve done a lot of waitressing in my life and the whole point of waitressing – or hosting [TV shows], indeed – is to make people feel comfortable. It’s to let them know what the night’s going to be like, and what they can expect. And when you interview someone, it’s about saying hello, and making a connection.”

3. She’s half-French.

Who doesn’t love the French? (Apart from the English.) I could be imagining it, but there seems to be a certain French insouciance in some of her attitudes. On fashion: “There’s a difference between wearing a mini and a great pair of kinky boots and wearing a revolting mini and a pair of Ugg boots, where it’s, ‘Oh yeah, I can see your underwear.’” On pubic hair: “I remember the Joy of Sex book. I don’t wax, or ‘Brazilian’ or anything – I tidy, you know, but I don’t believe in doing the whole thing: a) because I don’t like pain, and b) because I don’t like how it looks. I feel like a child, and I’m a woman.” On SBS’s reputation for racy content: “I think it’s high time people grew up – in Europe, this wouldn’t even be an issue. In Australia what astounds me is, ‘Ohhh, there’s this TV station, SBS, where you can see boobies.’ It’s like – are you for real?” *

4. She’s a feisty, unafraid-to-be-herself, woman. (See above.)

She exudes real. (Yes, whatever that is.) As she told The Age, “Women of different ages often tell me they love what I’m doing and to not get skinny and weird.” I second that.

5. This is a bit shallow, but – she rocks a vintage frock, or a striped tee.

I would love to steal her Rockwiz wardrobe, especially.

 

If you love Julia Zemiro too, you’ll love MWF’s very own Friday Night Live late-night talk show, hosted by Julia herself. At BMW Edge, Federation Square, both Friday nights of the festival, 9-10.30pm. With house band The Bamboos.

Friday 26 August: Steve Hely (The Office, 30 Rock) , Jon Jon Goulian, Tess Gerritsen, Felicity Ward, Gareth Liddiard

Friday 2 September: Simone Felice, John Elder Robison, Rachel DeWoskin, Casey Bennetto, Leslie Cannold, Charlotte Smith