And so here we sit, saying our goodbyes to the Summer festival season with sad, sunburnt eyes. Wrap up your Raybans, fold up your flouro (actually, maybe drown it in gasoline, burn it and throw the firey ball of grotesque at anyone who still hasn’t realised how terrible those colours look next to skin), throw out your thongs and pack away your poncho. And then write a reminder to yourself to stop wearing ponchos for festivals. And another one reminding you to stop labouring points and alliteration.

But maybe the fun’s not completely over - there are plenty of things to entertain you in the cold, harsh winter to come. We’ll help you. Why not discover religion, redecorate your house, monitor the election, or scour the country on a quixotic mission? I’ll just be over here imagining what it would actually be like to sunburn your eyes.

14 APRIL - 17 MAY > Tom Stoppard’s most recent comedy, Rock ‘N Roll, has been touted as “one of the greatest political plays in the English language”. It spans two countries, three generations, and 22 turbulent years of Czech history. There’s an English Marxist professor, there’s a Czech anti-Marxist student and, in typical Stoppard form, there’s an artistic movement potent enough to alter a society. In particular, it tells the story of the Plastic People of the Universe, an underground band who came to represent the Czech democratic movement that culminated in the Velvet Revolution. It’s got the anti-culture of rock up against the repression of the soviet bloc. It’s got the nostalgic soundtrack. It’s got the Stoppard. We’ve got the tickets.

25 APRIL > Last weekend ended the Summer Festival season (sad), but we're adaptable creatures. We'll move to Europe, buy gumboots for Splendour, or better yet just wipe off our muddy Chucks and make our way indoors. Sure there's less of that hedonistic, grassy, drunken sunshine goodness - but there's also less drunk, sunburnt and sweaty people to gross you out whenever you're surprised by a portaloo mirror. Enclosed in the cosy, classy cocoon of the Gaelic, they're opening up rooms you didn't even know existed. This year (apart from that whole Ratatat thing), they’ve got Regurgitator headlining a merry cast: the Seabellies, Dardanelles, Richard In Your Mind, Cuthbert and the Night Walkers, Grafton Primary, Shocking Pinks, The John Steel Singers, and more.

My query for you this week is whether being the Prime Minister of Australia is as delicious as it looks. If not, then the why the fuck does Kevin lick his lips so much?

As Autumn winds increase and the leaves start to dive bomb our faces, Kevin’s trust in the ability of his lips to keep themselves moist concerns us. Because if our leader can’t trust his own lips, we shouldn’t be expected to trust the rest of his face; or specifically his mouth and the words and noises emitted from such a watery vessel. Despite all these fears he decides to embark on a world tour IN THE FREAKING NORTHERN HEMISPHERE!!? You’ve got to be kidding yourself, Kevin. Are you at all prepared? No wonder you snubbed Japan, it reached as low as 6* in Osaka today – you’d die out there, man. Your lips would be split like the grand canyon. Only, in the desert. Of your face.

Sources close to him have suggested that, since breaking his popular earwax-eating habit, he’s struggled to find a physical idiosyncrasy which he’s comfortable with. John Howard had his eyebrows. Bob Hawke had his yardlong-beer habit. Harold Holt had his oceanic disappearances... and death... So what does Rudd get, outside of the Mr Sheen thing? He had to rule out cracking his knuckles after his own arthritis worries were added to by the passive-aggressive pointed grimacing of his parliamentary cohorts. And there have been claims that twirling his hair would be “a wasted exercise”. I’m forced to wonder, as philosopher Fred Durst so eloquently put it, “is your mouth writing cheques that your ass can’t cash”? Recent misspeaks in the US would suggest just that, with Rudd inexplicably referring to Rove McManus as “John Denton”.

Besides, the licking is a quick fix - everyone knows that. Try as you might to fool your lips into this two-second moistness, you just wait – just wait until you have to sleep, and they dry up like a barren wasteland... Everyone has to sleep... Sometime. SCORE: B-

FROM 03 APRIL > The fact that reviews for this film use words like ‘gentle’, ‘satisfying’, ‘poignant’ and ‘delightful’ immediately put it at odds with all I’d ever seen and heard about Real Dolls – the eerily lifestyle “love dolls” that a California company started manufacturing just over 10 years ago. Lars And The Real Doll was a Toronto Film Festival favourite, was written by Oscar-favourite Nancy Oliver, stars Acadamy Award-favourite Ryan Gosling, and features a Throw Shapes-favourite theme – a strange, misguided introvert and the sex-doll who loved him. Interested? Lonely? Got $8000 to spare? The real Real Dolls are available at this NSFW website. Poor? Shadenfruedic? Didn’t win tickets? Here’s a free 46 minutes of entertainment.

12 APRIL > Maybe we’re going overboard with the festival thing here, like blind men clutching moths in the dark on the camel’s back or something, but a festival’s a festival and all the proper ones are pretty much over now. Slurry Fest this year features a Chai Temple, a Healing Space, a fashion show, bands like Watussi, Kat Frankie, and the Dirty Secrets - and, of course, a shitload of markets and probably gozleme. All that said, we predict the best part of this day will be the magic tricks workshop from 1.30 – 2.30pm presented by The School of Transmogrification. Finally.