ELMO KEEP

Digital Keynote Address | EMERGING WRITERS FESTIVAL

Sun, 27 May 2012 05:29:00 -0400

As denoted by the fucking huge photo of my head, I delivered the inaugural digital key note address at the 2012 Emerging Writers Festival. Take a peek! (Thanks to Dan Donahoo for tricking everything out like a boss.)

I’ll be talking about getting paid for your writing (AHAHAHAHAHA!) at this panel on Thursday, May 31st at the Melbourne Town Hall.

Book tickets this a-way»

HBO's 'Girls' | THE GREEN GUIDE

Wed, 23 May 2012 18:47:00 -0400

Where the characters in Girls stray furthest from reality is in the way they speak: short, clipped, perfectly timed, culturally metatextual, Sorkinish bites. But what do we want from television, realism or escapism? Girls is trying to meld both and the result is something at once interesting, compelling, weird, off-putting and often hilarious but difficult to love.

Compromising Positions | DAILY LIFE

Tue, 22 May 2012 21:20:54 -0400

What else intimate relationships are partly comprised of is absolute terror (2%). They are terrifying because when we are in them, we are completely exposed as our true self to another human being. Our true, fault-ridden, sometimes horrible selves and all our desires, no matter how base, are there to be seen in the clear-eyed glare of someone else who has chosen to not look away, not matter what they see there (and because they like the look of the awesome stuff they also see.) They too want to be able to be seen in this way, to not be judged for it either. But this is the fear that being with someone else invites; that one day they might see you and decide to look away. That notion is extraordinarily frightening. Conquering the fear is the work of maintaining the relationship.

— Hmmm, I seem to have written about sex for a “women’s interest” website!

So this is freeeeeeee, in the wild for you to read!

Mon, 07 May 2012 21:21:00 -0400

So this is freeeeeeee, in the wild for you to read!

'Justified' | The Green Guide

Thu, 03 May 2012 00:23:34 -0400

”Raylan, you’re the angriest man I know.”

I know it appears, technically, to be “sold out”,...

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 01:58:00 -0400

I know it appears, technically, to be “sold out”, but just come along anyway! There’s room for everyone at the sex party! Also, it’s free! So how can it be sold out? JUST COME. See what I did there*?

*actual jokes will be way funnier.

Don't Fear The Reaper | Meanjin

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 20:25:38 -0400

Technologies which allow huge numbers of people to pursue vocations that were once extremely specialised narrow the digital divide, though never completely. We’ve seen this argument play out in the media several times already: that blogging isn’t real writing; that noone will listen to mp3s; that online reporters could never do the job of print journalists; that shooting on digital formats will never produce the warm authenticity of film; that using Final Cut Pro doesn’t make you an editor; that ereaders are terrible for literature. All are arguments which even the slightest interrogations reveal to be hollow. The proof is all around you: in all the media you consume, and in all the legacy media properties grappling to stave off their own deaths which are now coming about for their having succumbed, stunned and inert, to the shock of the new.

Just Do The Work

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 01:51:00 -0400

Here’s a story, a little bonus story I left out of the Vincent D’Onofrio thing.

Sometimes I listen back to the workshop he gave that I taped, because like I wouldn’t do that.

There’s a part where he’s answering the question, how to make it as a young actor in New York. His response is that you have to make it all that you do, day in day out. And he talked about bouncing at a club to pay the rent. He would get home at 5am, sleep for three hours, go to an audition, rehearse the off-off-Broadway play he was in, perform the play that night, go straight to the club and man the door, then go home to bed and then get up and do it all again.

Six days a week for years he did that, until he caught a break.

“You have to never stop, never give up. Just do the work, that’s all that matters. Now people love me? I don’t care. Some people hate me. I don’t care. I can’t do anything about it. I can just do the work. And that’s what you should do.”

And you should show me if of not you have any fluff in your belly button. Really though, that is killer advice. Just switch out acting for whatever is it that’s the thing that you do and New York for wherever is it that you want to be.

The Rules of TV in Australia, 2012

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 20:03:00 -0400

The Rules of TV in Australia, 2012:

Fun working on this piece in the Green Guide.

In Defence of Video Games | The Global Mail

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 23:00:00 -0400

The same accusations of cultural waste were once laid at the feet of television, but that was before the dawning of the current age of the “novelisation” of TV, when we’re now free to enjoy critically revered shows — Mad Men, The Wire and The Sopranos — on an intellectual level because they have been bestowed with a sufficiently literary point of reference, safely elevating them above the level of pop culture dreck in the eyes of cultural arbiters. Even novelist and technophobe Jonathan Franzen has okayed the television adaptation of The Corrections with HBO. Yet for Franzen, new-fangled technology Twitter poses an unmitigated threat to literature, labelling it the “ultimate irresponsible medium. People I care about are readers… particularly serious readers and writers, these are my people.” One can only imagine the grave disappointment Franzen may now be feeling in Martin Amis, knowing he once deigned to write a book about video games.

Photo

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 20:47:02 -0400

3700 word KISS opus in the Autumn edition of Men’s Style.

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 20:06:54 -0500

3700 word KISS opus in the Autumn edition of Men’s Style.

How To Internet | Storify

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 01:45:15 -0500

Accept also that if you are irked by people on the internet, then you are likely going to be doing some irking of others yourself. Not everyone will like you! This harsh but true fact of life is one you probably should have grasped in highschool, but seeing as this is the internet, no harm in brushing up on that one.

— Something I did up for your parents/boss.

Download This Show | Radio National

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 21:36:00 -0500

Download This Show | Radio National :

Did a guest spot on Marc’s new radio tech show on RN. Click the link to listen to me talking about the internet, on the internet.

And yes, I think Twitter’s proposed censorship measures are good; the ultimate Streisand effect.

In The KISS Navy: The Non-lethal Comforts of a Mid-level Cruise

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 20:25:11 -0500

Everyone I know is full of helpful warnings and advice before I leave Sydney, as though I were setting sail on the voyage of the damned: don’t ever go anywhere alone. Don’t accept drinks from strangers. Don’t get drunk on the deck. In fact, just don’t drink. Definitely don’t do any drugs. Don’t take anyone back to your room. Don’t give out your room number. Don’t catch a cab in the Bahamas unless you want to get stuck on the wrong side of the island. Don’t lose track of time off ship. Don’t look out your porthole, you’ll see the sea pitched at a 45 degree angle. Take anti-nausea medication with you. Tell people you’re married. Do you know any martial arts?

The weird world of rock and roll themed cruises, the Hairpin.

Longreads: Elmo Keep: My Top 5 Longreads of 2011

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 19:06:56 -0500

Longreads: Elmo Keep: My Top 5 Longreads of 2011:

longreads:

Elmo Keep is a writer who has written for The Hairpin, and other places.

•••

The Tetris Effect — Justin Wolfe, The Awl

There really isn’t a way to talk about this without spoiling the reveals. Just read it, whether you understand gaming or not, it doesn’t matter: If you don’t,…

20 Years After Achtung Baby | The Awl

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 19:03:00 -0500

But “With or Without You” is not even subtle in its imagery. It’s up there in its mass misinterpretation with “Born In The USA.” This is not a love song, it’s a song about bondage.

That’s right, U2 write kinky tunes about S&M. TRUTH EXPOSE at the Awl.

You’re Not An Emerging Writer Unless You’ve Published A Book

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 20:42:00 -0500

You’re Not An Emerging Writer Unless You’ve Published A Book :

Some might argue that it is not the job of the country’s premier arts body to fund journalism — not even the literary, creative non-fiction kind — because it pales next to fiction as a literary art. I would disagree with that, obviously, as I am not a fiction writer. But funding for that kind of journalism hardly comes from within the journalism industry itself, awash with commercial publications that pay pitiful amounts ‘per page’ and online outlets which pay $50 ‘per post’ regardless of length, or far more frequently which don’t pay anything at all.

This is generating good discussion: some thoughts I had on the Australia Council’s narrow definition of ‘emerging’ writer.

Troll Me Once, Shame On You. Troll Me Twice...

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 19:03:00 -0500

Troll Me Once, Shame On You. Troll Me Twice...:

Here are the cliffnotes: people are idiots, sometimes, on the internet. Unbelievably galling idiots. Men sledge other men, men harass and demean women, women harass and threaten other women, and women bully men. This is the sad fact of our nature as proved over and over by history’s greatest ongoing social experiment, the world wide web. This tendency for people to be disengaged from their brains when they hit ‘post comment’ as though they were a cockroach poisoned by one of these horrifying wasps, was once succinctly captured in this web comic, which so far for brevity, has not been surpassed.

A Very Informal Chat With Geoff Barrow of Portishead

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 00:34:00 -0500

A *Very* Informal Chat With Geoff Barrow of Portishead:

I wanted to ask you how the [charity] soccer game turned out that you guys played a couple of weekends ago?

Yeah, it was really good. We raised a lot of money for the childrens’ hospice and stuff, and Daddy G, Roni Size played and a few proper football legends were there, and the weirdest thing: Kelsey Grammer was there.

No way. Frasier was there?!

Frasier was there.

Did he score a goal?

No, he didn’t play. He was just there.

Of course!