WORLD CUP? What World Cup?

So Australia lost, 1-0, to Italy in our final 16 game in Germany on Tuesday.

So the ref gave a very dubious penalty after 90 minutes and 2:50 of the allotted three-minute injury time.

So the Italian fella took a blatant dive.

So...?

Let's get over it, people. It's just a game and we got a helluva lot further than anyone predicted.

Sure, we went out of the tournament in heartbreaking fashion, but Australia has nothing to be ashamed about. We played very good football for a so-called minnow in world soccer.

So, can we stop the whinging and chest-beating over one funky referee's decision?

Now, let's never speak of it again...until the next World Cup in 2010.

REVIEW: Batteries Not Included

Traci Lords

IT'S been a long time since I've found an article in Batteries Not Included - Richard Freeman's long-running literate porn zine - that's really caught my interest. But Volume XIII Issue #6 (June 2006) did so with Dave Kosanke's interesting overview on the career of Traci Lords.

Now, I'm no fan of the world's most famous (or is that infamous?) cream queen, but the article mentioned a couple of my fave zines in passing and a couple of BP alumni, so I had to give it a read.

First up, Kosanke mentions Traci's notoriety leading to "numerous large and underground zines during the early 90s, with one of the most famous originating out of England: Nora K".

Nora K - or Norma K as it was originally titled - was published by Steve Rag, better known as Tim Greaves from the UK. Tim, of course, is a veteran BP subscriber - in fact, I think we started trading zines with my very first issue in 1992.

Next comes a section referring to the illegality of the vast majority of Traci's porno, due to her "under-age" status in the USA when she was in the biz: "One notorious episode that occurred during this time period revolved around one Rick Sullivan [who] published a zine titled The Gore Gazette and soon after started up his own mail order business. When he started selling dupes of Traci's XXX flicks word got round to the autorities and soon Mr Sullivan was serving time for selling child porn. I got this story direct from his friend Shawn Smith. As to the severity of Sullivan's crime I can't say, but his sentencing was proof that you really had to be careful who you talked to about her tapes."
Or course, I was a big fan of Sullivan's zine - I still have a few copies floating round the house - and he was an early subscriber to BP before he disappeared (possibly to the local penitentiary). I haven't heard from Rick in over a decade and he is virtually a nonentity when I try to Google him.

The rest of Kosanke's piece is fine and all, but these two unexpected references to my zining past really struck a chord with me and brought back some pleasant memories.

Elsewhere in this issue of BNI, there's a Briana Banks inteview, lots of oddball porn news, a piece by Freeman on XXX reviewer/film-maker Jim Holliday and a positive review on The Notorious Bettie Page. All in all, the best issue of BNI in a long, long time.

For further info on ordering a copy of BNI, e-mail Richard at bni@aol.com.

REVIEW: Low Happening EP by Howling Bells

I WON’T be the first person to compare the vocal style of Howling Bells’ lead singer Juanita Stein to that of PJ Harvey – and I’m certain I won’t be the last.
But the influence is definitely there in the Aussie band’s recent EP Low Happening. Maybe that’s the reason why I love this CD so much: you can’t go wrong emulating ol’ Polly Jean.
Backed up by two solid supporting tracks (The Wild and This City’s Burning Down), Low Happening is a mature effort from a band that’s clearly benefited from its time away from Aussie shores, soaking in the British influence in not-so-sunny England.
Before heading overseas two years ago, Howling Bells were a struggling Sydney band called Waikiki.
As Juanita told the Sydney Morning Herald, “I realised onstage [one] night that I wasn’t into it. I didn’t believe in what I was doing. I thought, ‘How will [the audience] feel it if I can't?’”
A crisis meeting was quickly held and Waikiki decided to try their luck in the UK instead. Thank God for that – as Low Happening by the renamed Howling Bells is the end result.
The band have scored rave reviews in England and I feel certain they’ll replicate that success in their homeland ’cos, from the sound of the EP, Howling Bells’ upcoming full-length CD should be awesome. I’ll review that (hopefully) in the next week or two.
In the meantime, grab their CDEP pronto and get a headstart on the next big thing in Aussie indy pop. And check out the band’s web site at www.howlingbells.com.
All that’s left for me to do is don my Molly Meldrum hat and lisp that well-worn cliche, “Do yourself a favour…”

REVIEW: Import Skin

IF YOU'VE been wondering whatever became of Tylene Buck ("Major Gunns" of WCW fame), well...check her out in this 2005 soft-core epic from Peach DVD.
Import Skin has a simple theme - beautiful buxom women writhing nakedly over super-duper street machines to generic synthesiser porn music .
Tylene's the major character in the DVD, appearing in two vignettes where she plays two distinctly different sisters - one a brunette bitch, the other a blonde Daddy's girl.
Of course they do have one thing in common: hyooooge silicone implants.
Other "names" in the cast include noted glamma models Francine Dee, Crissy Moran and Teanna Kai. However, for me, the standout performer is ebony beauty Ananda St James (pictured below). The cars don't interest me in the slightest, but watching Ananda rubbing her bod all over the bonnet of one is almost enough to turn me into a revhead...almost.

World Cup update: Go, you Socceroos!

ONYA, Australia. We drew with Croatia, 2-2, this morning...which means we now face Italy in the second round next Monday. Sure, we'll get thrashed but at least we made the top 16!

And after we lose next week, we can all stop pretending we understand soccer for another four years. Hooray!

BETTY PAGINATED #29...

...is now available for sale. It's 68 pages of wacky goodness mainly focusing on me and Helen's trip to the United States last year. I've gone to a better printer for this ish and the results have paid off, particularly in the B&W interior. Colour covers are pretty nice, too (check out the cover pic of me being strangled by the hands of the Boston Strangler (as portrayed by Tony Curtis in the 1968 film).

There's also heaps of porn and wrestling goodness...as per usual - including way too much glorifying of the Necro Butcher by my heel relative Doc Riot (www.docriot.blogspot.com).

For your copy of Betty Paginated, just send US$10/AUD$10/5 pounds to: Dann Lennard, PO Box A1412, Sydney South, NSW, 1235, AUSTRALIA.

Please state in your letter that you're over 18 years of age...yadda yadda yadda.

REVIEW: Varietease and Teaserama

BACK in the mid-1950s, there was no Jenna Jameson, People magazine or Big Brother to help blokes get their below-the-belt jollies.
Instead they had to make do with visits to their local burlesque house to see sexy young women pretend to take their clothes off on stage to music, interspersed with generally not very good variety acts.
Varietease and Teaserama – which both feature 50s pin-up legend Bettie Page (pictured above) – provide a fascinating look at this long-forgotten corner of the entertainment industry.
Bettie does a quirky harem girl dance in Varietease (1954), but the real star’s famed stripper Lily St Cyr (pictured below).



The first movie was such a success, producer Irving Klaw came back the next year with Teaserama. While the main star’s listed as big-boobed stripper Tempest Storm, it’s clear the real star’s Bettie, who appears several times throughout the flick. She can’t dance, but the sassy brunette’s so damn cute you won’t mind.
In fact, the highlight of the movie is a vignette featuring Tempest as the mistress of the house and Bettie as a vivacious maid (below).

Sadly, there’s no nudity in the films – I’m not sure how they scored an M rating.
In fact, the only obscene things on Varietease and Teaserama are the jokes told by alleged comedians Joe E. Ross (below left) and Dave Starr (below right), which were old even back in the 50s.

An example of Dave's "wit": “Marriage is a lot like warm water, folks…once you get used to it, it ain’t so hot. Now, take my wife…please!”
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!
So, until The Notorious Bettie Page makes it down-under, you’ll have to get yer Bettie fix with these flicks.
* Varietease and Teaserama (both rated M) are out now from Umbrella Entertainment and retail for $19.99 each.

Won't you take me to...Snowtown?

Robert Wagner, left, and John Bunting...just a coupla fellas who liked a bit of fun ("fun" for them being multiple murders and torture)

JOHN BUNTING was a closet homosexual, so ashamed of his long-suppressed desires that he became a gay-basher/gay-murderer. It's not stated anywhere as a fact, but that's the natural conclusion I came to after reading two books about his masterminding of the bloody and brutal Snowtown serial killings - the so-called "Bodies In The Barrels" case - that rocked South Australia during the 1990s.

What other reason explains why Bunting spent so much of his adult life socialising with "dirtys" (as he liked to call them) - gays, bisexuals, transsexuals, paedophiles (who happened to be gay) and transvestites?

Sure, he inhabited a pretty perverse, incestuous social circle but come on!...it's not like the freaks he hung out with were an everyday occurrence in South Oz. How does one go about befriending so many perverts in economically depressed areas like Salisbury (in Adelaide's bleak northern suburbs) and rural Murray Bridge?

Well, Bunting did. Along with his chief partners-in-crime Robert Wagner, James Vlassakis and Mark Haydon (nee Mark Lawrence), the group tortured and murdered 11 (and probably 12) people from 1992 to their arrest in 1999. Hanging, strangulation, crushing skulls with blunt objects - the killing methods varied but the torture methods stayed unnervingly the same (all I'll say on this is that I'll never look at sparklers the same way again).

While the majority of murders took place in metropolitan Adelaide and nearby satellite town Murray Bridge, the final murder of David Johnson occurred in the small northern town of Snowtown. This is also where the killers eventually stored 10 of the 12 bodies, in barrels of acid kept in the vault of a disused bank they had rented. Hence, and somewhat unfairly, they were dubbed the "Snowtown murders".

At first the group justified their crimes as ridding the streets of paedophiles and homosexuals (who were one and the same thing according to ringleader Bunting, who claimed he had also been molested as a child). But as time went on and the frequency of murders increased, it became clear the motives really hinged on pure pleasure in inflicting pain and, strangely enough, monetary gain. Nearly all the victims' government pensions and/or dole money were kept going courtesy of numerous deceptions and frauds perpetrated by the killers and their families/loved ones).

Nearly everyone involved was a friend of a friend or a relative or a loved one or involved in one of the killings.

THE KILLERS were all close friends. Hell, Bunting was even considered a virtual step-dad to Vlassakis. But things get even more interesting when you look at the complicated web weaved between the killers and THEIR VICTIMS:

* CLINTON TREZISE: gay lover of Barry Lane, who was called upon to help dispose of Trezise's body

* RAY DAVIES: known paedophile who was friends with Barry Lane and Suzanne Allen's ex-lover. Bunting's defacto Elizabeth Harvey (Vlassakis' mother) most likely helped in Davies' murder

* SUZANNE ALLEN: former lover of Ray Davies and John Bunting. Supposedly she knew too much about the first two killings

* BARRY LANE: gay lover of Clinton Trezise, Thomas Trevilyan and Robert Wagner. Friend of Ray Davies. Lane, a convicted paedophile, helped dispose of Trezise's body. He reached the end of his usefulness after providing Bunting information about alleged paedophiles in Adelaide. And Lane knew too much. This was also considered a revenge killing for the sexual abuse Lane had done to Wagner when the pair were in a relationship

* MICHAEL GARDINER: Gay housemate of Nicole Zurrita, who was a cousin of Robert Wagner's girlfriend Vicki Mills. Bunting and Wagner equated homosexuals with paedophiles and hated both with a passion

* THOMAS TREVILYAN: gay lover of Barry Lane, who was involved with his murder. Mentally unstable, he was considered a liability. He was hung from a tree outside Adelaide and it was made to look like a suicide

* GAVIN PORTER: Vlassakis' best friend. A heavy drug user and Bunting despised druggies.

* TROY YOUDE: Elizabeth Harvey's son and Vlassakis' half-brother. Youde molested Vlassakis repeatedly when they were young teenagers. That sealed his fate when Vlassakis told Bunting about the abuse. This was the first hands-on killing involving Vlassakis and, possibly, Haydon

* FRED BROOKS: Son of Jodie Elliott, who was engaged to John Bunting (while Bunting was still in a relationship with Elizabeth Harvey). Bunting hated him

* GARY O'DWYER: Bunting's brain-damaged neighbour in Murray Bridge whose only crime was that Bunting thought he looked a lot like Troy Youde

* ELIZABETH HAYDON: Mark Haydon's wife and sister to Jodie Elliott. She knew too much and was silenced

* DAVID JOHNSON: Vlassakis' step-brother. Bunting thought he was a snob who looked down on him. That was enough. Vlassakis later alleged in court Bunting and Wagner also fried and ate a piece of Johnson's flesh after his murder.

What you have here is one of the most bizarre and unique serial murder cases in the world. A group of like-minded individuals preying on their own kind.

And in this dysfunctional world, 12 missing people were hardly noticed (and, if so, were rarely reported missing by friends and family to the police, who were feared and distrusted by this particular sub-culture of the community).

This allowed Bunting, Wagner and co. to get away with their abhorrent behaviour for seven years.

Eventually, the four men were arrested and charged with homicide. Vlassakis pleaded guilty to four murders and turned State's evidence on Bunting and Wagner, who were both convicted in 2004 of multiple murders after one of the longest cases in South Australian history. Haydon received a lesser jail sentence for assisting them but avoided the murder charges.

As you can see, Snowtown was a fucking complicated, highly confusing case. I haven't even come close to summarising it properly for you in just a few short paragraphs. So how did the professionals go?

I read Jeremy Pudney's Snowtown (HarperCollins) first, mainly 'cos he used to co-read the TV news with Helen in the Riverland many years ago. He went on to work as a journalist with The Adelaide Advertiser and Network 10 and covered this case extensively for those news outlets. This is Pudney's first book - the blurb on the back states it'll "take its place among the classics of the true crime genre". Bollocks.

Pudney has written a succinct 90-page book on the murders. Sadly, his publishers wanted 270 pages, so he repeats it THREE times. Firstly, he tells us how all the victims went missing from the killers' perspective, then he tells us how they were murdered, then he quotes verbatim from the prosecutor at the trial on what happened. This is just fuckin' lazy. And, even after that, the book is still kinda boring. Also, certain facts on the case have been omitted - for legal reasons - to allow the book to be sold in South Australia. That means the cannibalism snippet is excised along with certain other facts. All in all, it's a shoddy piece of work

The Snowtown Murders (ABC Books) by Andrew McGarry starts out more promisingly. A journo with The Australian, McGarry's not afraid to tell all the facts (which is why the book can't be sold in South Australia). He also links this case with the other notorious cases in SA's recent past which has helped cement Adelaide (somewhat unjustly) as Australia's "weirdo murder capital". But within a few pages the errors start racking up: typos, wrong years listed, wrong names listed, sentences missing, even whole paragraphs, factual errors (eg. South Australian town Port Pirie is two hours north of Adelaide, not "west of Adelaide"). I mean, where was the bloody proofreader on this book? It destroys McGarry's credibility. In the end, I couldn't overcome the stacks of mistakes to fully enjoy the book. Pity, as it still blew away Pudney's steaming turd of an effort.

So what have I learned from the "Bodies In The Barrels" case? Well, I doubt I'll ever stop my car in the northern suburbs of Adelaide again. Too many paedophiles there for my taste.

Also, I've discovered that just reporting on a juicy multiple murder case doesn't qualify a person to knock out a book if they can't write for shit.

Finally, there's one positive for John Bunting these days: he's enjoying lots of hot gay sex in jail. So at least he's happy.

The bank in Snowtown that housed some unspeakably evil secrets