Spendthrift Shoestring

Print Crush: Vogue Entertaining + Travel

My latest print crush comes from Australia. Vogue Entertaining + Travel is big and bold, an oversize glossy that fuses the pleasures of high-end grub and travel. The default attention to trends and events in Australia makes it feel very fresh. The Australian restaurant scene is very exciting, and the magazine hits this point home again and again. If the cuisine scene in Australia doesn't excite you then you probably don't really like eating in the first place.

The Aug/Sept issue, which I picked up yesterday, is full of interesting features and enthralling nuggets. Most exciting are the bulletins relating to Aussie food and drink, like the news that Sydney's Toby's Estate has opened up a Melbourne outpost, or the tidbit that the fabulously named Elvis Abrahanowicz has opened a casual Argentinian diner-bar next to his extremely popular Bodega (in Sydney.)

There's also a splashy feature on Las Vegas by Michael Walters, with pretty pictures by Julien Capmeil. It reimagines Vegas as a home of old-fashioned kitsch, and points to the town's eco-friendly park and arts district. It's made me actually want to visit Las Vegas, something that the past decade and a half of hype and bluster has failed to do. Also of note: a food tour of Hyderabad by Matt Preston and a whirl through Melbourne's retail and restaurants, also by Matt Preston.

I shelled out $13.95 for a copy of the August/September issue, and I don't regret dropping the cash. In Australia, the magazine retails for AUD8.95 (about $6).

US Television Goes Aussie

I've been predisposed to Australian comedy television since I chanced upon an episode of Kath & Kim on a Qantas flight in 2004. The characters' plain absurdities, hilarious mashings of language, and constant invocations of celebrities make Kath & Kim a genius series.

The next great Australian comedy series I discovered down the pike was We Can Be Heroes, a mockumentary about the search for Australian of the Year. Creator Chris Lilley plays five different candidates for the prize, hailing from five different Australian states. His portraits are over-the-top irreverent and incredibly funny.

In Chris Lilley's subsequent mockumentary Summer Heights High, he plays Jonah Takalua (a delinquent Tongan youth who draws lots of obscene graffiti), Mr. G (a wildly inappropriate and self-aggrandized drama instructor), and Ja'mie King (an outrageously arrogant rich Sydney North Shore girl reprised from We Can Be Heroes). The characters are broadly offensive, and this is part of their charm. They provide a comment on the degree to which racism undergirds daily life, and they do so in a way that renders the offensive characters' behavior suspect as opposed to self-evident.

And now an adapted Kath & Kim is coming to NBC in October. We'll see if Molly Shannon and Selma Blair can successfully transfer Kath & Kim's inane hilarity to the American suburbs. Also coming to US television this fall is Summer Heights High, which will be on HBO from November. Regarding Summer Heights High, I think it's just a matter of time before the term "bogan skank" enters the American vernacular and this song becomes the club classic it so desperately deserves to be.