THE STARS

The Slap audiobook, Venice at home, Euphoria

★★★★★ Bike theft and community recovery

First up this week, some crime reporting. One of the editors—guess who—owns one of those cargo bikes with a large wagon attached to the front, a libidinally impoverished yet highly practical car alternative that he uses to lug around groceries and children. It was a significant investment. This particular editor recently parked his bike overnight on Flinders Lane. A dumb idea, sure, but two D-locks and a chain, along with an optimistic outlook about the state of the city and his fellow citizens, made him feel secure. Alas, the next morning the bike was gone. Panicky and crestfallen, the editor got in touch with the man who sold him the bike, a fellow by the name of Yoga, who asked if it was insured. No. A long pause. He eventually offered to post a photograph of the bike on the small but vibrant Cargo Bike community Facebook groups. “You never know,” said Yoga cheerfully, but the editor could detect beneath this cheer what Lauren Berlant might have called a cruel optimism. Two days later, the editor was sitting at his desk working on another bike-related story (about the boys who pop wheelies around Melbourne en masse, out on TPE next week), when he received a message from a man named Avalon who worked at a bike rental place next to the Melbourne Aquarium. “Might have eyes on your stolen cargo bike,” Avalon said, attaching a photograph of the large bike with two track-suited fellows sitting next to it, one in a blue flat brim baseball cap and the other in a red bandana, glaring menacingly at the camera, with a duck waddling in the foreground. The editor jumped on his mountain bike and pedalled as fast as he could. When he arrived, some 15 minutes later, Avalon informed him, via text, that the men were headed west-bound towards the Docklands. The editor rode hence, past the old World Trade Centre and a gang of scrawny teenagers fishing for flathead, until, approaching Jim Stynes bridge, he saw a tall and strapping young man waving from the overpass. It was Avalon. He was so handsome, with crystal blue eyes and long ringlets of golden hair framing a square yet supple jaw, that your editor almost forgot about the bike, until Avalon pointed at two men wheeling it back towards Footscray Road. “What do I do?” your sweaty and anxious editor said. “Ask for it back,” Avalon suggested, with a calm and distant smile. The editor approached the men and noticed that they had packed the bike’s wagon with spades, crowbars, a witches hat, a karaoke machine, and various 1.5 litre soft drink bottles filled with a yellow substance. “Um hey guys,” the editor began. “I think that’s my bike.” At this point, the bandana man simply walked away. The second man, however, was more resolute. “Nah, it’s not,” he said, to which the editor offered the powerful riposte: “Yes it is,” before explaining that it’s how he gets his kids to school, and so, if possible, it would be great if he could get it back, please? At this point, the editor looked back at Avalon, who nodded approvingly. The thief, less impressed, retorted that he too might like to use the bike to dink his daughter to school, if he ever got to see her again. “Oh,” the editor sighed. “But it’s not yours.” The negotiation went back and forth like this for a while until the thief mumbled something incoherent and then leaped on the bike and pedalled away in the direction of the city. What ensued was an extremely low speed chase up Flinders St. The electric motor had been disabled when the 51kg bike was wrenched from its locks, and so the thief, a diminutive man, could only really manage a top speed of approximately 15kms per hour. The editor tailed him while calling out, meekly, “Stop! I don’t want to call the police!” Avalon brought up the rear, riding with his AirPods in and no hands, arms folded, like a parent fed up with his misbehaving children. It all came to an unremarkable climax under an overpass by the Aquarium where, exhausted, the thief simply gave up. He took his stuff out of the bike, dumped it into a garbage bag, and walked off shaking his head. The editor thanked Avalon profusely. Avalon smiled and said, in a Yoda-like cadence, “It was good the police didn’t come. If you had called them, I may not have helped you.”

★★★★ The Slap audiobook

Christos Tsiolkas’ bestselling (and actually good) 2008 novel, The Slap, chronicles a group of intertwined friends, frenemies, family, and coworkers in the aftermath of a shocking event: a 40ish year old father slaps another family’s bratty three-year old (once, hard). Last Sunday, at a gathering much like the one in the novel, your editors joined in on a thought experiment. If you had to write a version of The Slap for 2026, what would the inciting offence be—the thing that could most upset current parenting styles and social mores while still cleaving people to different sides of the ensuing division? Calling a toddler the R word? The Altona North hubby of a friend backing his RAM into the Cargo e-bike of the Carlton dad? Using other peoples’ children for content without permission? Slipping a hyperactive but currently undiagnosed six-year-old a dexie? Anyway. We just finished listening to the audiobook of The Slap, which is read by Christos-collaborator and actor Alex Dimitriades (side note, if you click the link: it’s crazy how they managed to make this movie look so hetero). In typical Christos style, there are characters of every race, religion, and archetype in The Slap. There are Muslims, including an Aboriginal Muslim man and his white trash convert wife, there are Jews, there are Greeks, of course, there are Vietnamese people, there’s an Indian woman, there’s Thai people, babies, old fogeys, malakas, Gen Xers, sexy WASP mums, and a gay teenage boy who loves Six Feet Under and his best friend (relatable). Dimitriades does every single one of their accents. He more than commits; he performs. He delivers the line “Can I have boobie?” in a wet, simpering, baby voice, and the good-natured jibe “Go screw yourself, you hairy butt-ugly wog dog” in a Vietnamese-Australian accent. The effect is simply bonkers, especially given how many characters there are—it’s like a multiculti Qantas ad meets an episode of Fat Pizza. We thoroughly enjoyed it. If you’ve got a bond clean or a long drive coming up, we recommend indulging in all 15 hours and 42 minutes of it with minimal breaks.