1 day, 205 stations, 17 hours, 25 minutes

Lachlan Campbell rides again. Photo: Paul Rovere

YOU can call him eccentric. Perhaps you can even call him a trainspotter. But you can't call Lachlan Campbell a quitter.
In January, a delay on the Epping line foiled the 19-year-old's first attempt to achieve his dream: to stop at every railway station in Melbourne on one day.
Like Everest, this mountain had been conquered before Mr Campbell got to it.

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In 2008, Melbourne man Heath Tully zipped through the 369-kilometre journey in 18 hours and 18 minutes.
Ever since, Mr Campbell - a psychology student and son of a train driver - has been planning to better that time, by almost an hour.
Yesterday, he tried a second time.
Why? ''Why not?'' he said. ''Everyone's got a goal; it's mine. It's better than wasting your life away in front of a computer.''
A precise schedule, which Mr Campbell spent a year developing, is required to get to every station in less than 18 hours. It all falls apart if too many trains are late or cancelled.
In January his schedule was thrown into disarray after Metro cancelled one train, and then a sick passenger delayed another one.
Yesterday, Mr Campbell launched his journey at 4.32am, on the first train from Hurstbridge.
''I only slept a couple hours,'' he said mid-morning, as he sailed through Mooroolbark station. He put the lack of sleep down, in part, to ''the excitement of doing it again''.
Using his concession myki card (70¢ cheaper than using a Metcard), Mr Campbell was travelling yesterday with not just one companion, as he had in January, but six.
''It's got more of an uplifting feel to it, [being] with others,'' he said, cheerfully, late yesterday afternoon.
In the lead-up to yesterday's attempt, Mr Campbell contacted Transport Minister Terry Mulder, who did not respond, and Metro, to tell them of his attempt.
A Metro employee wrote back, wishing him the best of luck.
Mr Campbell's assessment of the system yesterday would have been music to the ears of Metro's public relations team.
''Everything's been pretty much running to clockwork, which has been a bit of a shock.''
Fewer than five trains over the course of the day were significantly late, and none were cancelled, he said. And, in a rare good news story for transport in this city, Mr Campbell last night achieved his dream, completing his circuit of Melbourne's rail system in a record 17 hours and 25 minutes.
''I just feel relieved it's over,'' he said, as he took the final train to Pakenham.
Having climbed his personal mountain, The Age asked Mr Campbell last night what challenge he would tackle next.
The answer should have come as no surprise.
''I will be doing it again. There are heaps of little extensions to the network.''


Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/1-day-205-stations-17-hours-25-minutes-20110721-1hr66.html#ixzz1So2uL8sm

Bright lights, big history

Gertrude Street comes alive in a celebration, writes Carolyn Webb.
BEHIND the trendy boutiques and cafes there's a strong Aboriginal presence in Gertrude Street, Fitzroy. For 25-year-old indigenous artist Arika Waulu, it's a precious community, not just somewhere to go for coffee.
In the late 1970s Waulu's grandmother, Alma Thorpe, helped found the Fitzroy Stars youth club and gym, patronised by world champion boxer Lionel Rose.
In 1982 it was renamed MAYSAR, the Melbourne Aboriginal Youth, Sport and Recreation centre, at the corner of Gertrude and George streets. Not just a sports club, it became a place of support for indigenous people.

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Inside MAYSAR today, it is vibrant; there is still a boxing gym but also a kitchen, art studio, meeting rooms, internet cafe and multimedia business.
The exterior of the two-storey Victorian building, however, is rather opaque, with frosted ground floor windows.
''People could walk past for years and not even know what that place is,'' says Waulu. ''It is kind of hidden, even though it's a big building.''
She aims to draw attention to MAYSAR at the Gertrude Street Projection Festival, which begins tonight.
Waulu has co-created an animation sequence that will be projected onto the building's exterior for the next 10 nights.
The festival began in 2008 with eight buildings. This year, there are 29. New participants include two housing commission towers.
Also new is Stories Around the Fire, a free storytelling night featuring elders and activists who will talk about the area's indigenous heritage on Sunday at 5pm at Atherton Gardens housing estate.
Waulu says MAYSAR members asked her to create something ''to represent them and what they're about''.
Festival director Kym Ortenburg teamed Waulu with Yandell Walton, a Collingwood-based, internationally recognised video installation artist, who drew out Waulu's ideas and mentored her on animation and projection. The result is a five-minute series of images that run on a loop. There are silhouetted Aboriginal dancers collaged with old photos of boxers and footballers; in the next sequence, photos of the eyes of current MAYSAR people are imposed on the glittering leaves of an animated tree to represent heritage, community and growth.
The wider story of local Aborigines is told with simple but powerful images: firstly with video and animation of native plants growing; next with animated images of the Australian coat of arms amid fire, representing white intervention; and then with images of long bullrushes to symbolise regrowth after fire.
For Waulu, it's a very personal piece, and her grandmother and MAYSAR are not the only link to Gertrude Street.
In 1933, her great-grandmother, Edna Brown, aged 16, was forced to come to Melbourne from the Framlingham Aboriginal mission near Warrnambool to work as a domestic.
In 1972, Brown helped set up the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service, with one voluntary doctor, in a slum they refurbished at 229 Gertrude Street.
Brown worked there as a cleaner but also helped treat homeless people in the Exhibition Gardens and the street.
She also helped set up the Aboriginal Funeral Fund, to give indigenous people a dignified burial.
Waulu's parents, Marjorie Thorpe and Kelvin Onus, met at the Builders Arms pub in Gertrude Street in 1980, and both worked at the health service. They were in netball and football clubs that trained at MAYSAR, and when Waulu was a child in the late 1980s she would spend school holidays there dancing, painting, playing games and watching movies.
When Waulu was six, the family moved to Lake Tyers, near Bairnsdale, but would visit relatives in Gertrude Street when in town.
Waulu moved back to Melbourne when she was 15 and the Fitzroy connection continued, with grandmother Alma on the Health Service board and her great-aunt Rose Dwyer and several cousins health workers there.
Waulu's aunt, Glenda Thorpe, is the current head of both the health service and MAYSAR.
Waulu feels ''entwined'' with Gertrude Street and proud to talk about it.
''It's been a big part of our history for many generations. I feel connected to this area, proud to come from a family that has been a big part of building the Aboriginal community,'' she says.
''I hope my piece unveils the hidden MAYSAR, which is the great community happenings in that place, behind those doors.''


Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/bright-lights-big-history-20110721-1hqrx.html#ixzz1So2QT4KK

Alleged Monroe sex film for auction

Marilyn Monroe

A Spanish collector plans to auction what he claims is a newly discovered 8-mm version of a film purportedly showing Marilyn Monroe having sex when she was still an underage actress known as Norma Jean Baker.
A Marilyn Monroe expert, however, says the actress in the film is someone else, considerably heavier and less feminine than the legendary film star.
"That's not Marilyn. The chin is not the same, the lips are not the same, the teeth are not the same," said Scott Fortner, who has a sizeable collection of Monroe memorabilia, including a belt he said proves how much more petite she was. "Marilyn was a tiny little thing. And I know that for a fact. I own her clothing."

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Collector Mikel Barsa said in an interview on Wednesday that he wants at least $US500,000 ($A466,984) for the sexually explicit 6 1/2 minute, grainy black-and-white film, which he says was made before 1947, when Monroe was not yet 21.
He said it's an exact copy of a 16-mm film discovered more than a decade ago. Barsa brokered a sale of that film to a European magazine in 1997, which he said in turn sold some 600,000 copies before a collector bought the original 16-mm reel for $US1.2 million ($A1.12 million). Copies of that version are still circulating on the internet.
"People with romantic notions have denied that it's Marilyn Monroe, and have invented stories" to raise doubts about the film, Barsa said in his Buenos Aires office, which is lined with pictures from his days as a concert promoter. "This film shows the real Marilyn Monroe - it was only later that the studios discovered her and transformed her."
The face of the woman in the film looks considerably different from the Monroe who emerged later as a star, but more similar to the Monroe seen in one of her first movies, 1949's Love Happy, which shows the actress before she lost weight, added a beauty spot on her left cheek and became one of Hollywood's most enduring stars.
Barsa said he has no idea how the two original copies ended up in the hands of the people who sought his help selling them, and he refused to identify any of the principals involved. He said that in the 1940s, sex films were often made using side-by-side 16-mm and 8-mm cameras, since audiences used both formats.
The collector said that Mark Roesler of Indianapolis-based CMG Worldwide, which has managed the image and estate of Monroe, threatened to sue after the earlier version surfaced in 1997. Barsa said nothing ever came of it after the owners offered to sell the film to CMG.
Roesler didn't respond on Wednesday to two emails and a phone call requesting comment.
Barsa says he plans to auction the film himself on August 7 at a memorabilia collectors fair that he has organised in Buenos Aires, and is hoping for publicity similar to the scandal he generated when he screened the 16-mm version at a similar fair in Madrid in 1997. News coverage of his auction is already creating another buzz on the internet.
His part of the deal is a 10 per cent sales commission, he said.
A variety of sexually explicit films and pictures have been attributed to Monroe over the years, fostering a long and unresolved debate.
"In the Marilyn community, people have debated this for years and years and for the most part it's widely believed that this is not her," Fortner said.
Still, even Fortner said Monroe's image changed considerably as she became a star - that she had some plastic surgery, learned how to hold her face differently in modelling school and adopted a mole on her left cheek. "I actually think it moved from time to time," Fortner said.
Monroe died of an overdose of sleeping pills in 1962 at 36.
AP


Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/movies/alleged-monroe-sex-film-for-auction-20110722-1hrua.html#ixzz1So2FmWu3

Man of Steel to unveil hot look

The jeans-clad super hero.

THE Man of Steel is back on the market looking for love. Superman, who has been married to star reporter Lois Lane since 1996, will be a bachelor again when DC Comics relaunches its entire superhero line in September.
''We just felt there were more interesting, creative stories to mine in that time period prior to him getting married,'' says Jim Lee, one of DC's co-publishers. ''There was something special and unique about the love triangle that existed between Clark Kent, Superman and Lois Lane,'' Lee said.
''By restoring that essential part of his mythology, we would take Superman and Clark Kent in directions that felt more contemporary.''

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There will be two Superman-centric titles in DC's The New 52 line. One is set in the present and features Superman sporting a new costume (red briefs are out, Kryptonian ceremonial armour is in), a new villain who is more powerful than the Man of Steel, Clark Kent as a bachelor and Lois Lane dating a co-worker.
The other title, Action Comics No. 1, will be set five years in the past. This book promises a younger, brooding, outsider version of Superman who is still finding his way in the world as an alien from the planet Krypton.
His outfit? Jeans, T-shirt and a cape.
''Does he wear a skintight ballet suit? No, I don't think anyone falls for it,'' writer Grant Morrison said. ''And if the skintight ballet suit has to come into it, I want to have a really good explanation.''
Action Comics No. 1 in 1938 introduced the world to Superman, and the new one is taking a similar approach.
It tells a ''Year One'' story in which Superman wins the public's acceptance - and accepts mankind as well.
Lee is looking forward to offering a truly different ''Man of Tomorrow''.
''Maybe we've grown too comfortable,'' he said. ''Part of the change is to tell people, 'Look, you may think you know Superman, but you don't.' There's a lot of great stuff that hasn't been presented before.'' USA TODAY


Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/books/man-of-steel-to-unveil-hot-look-20110721-1hqp7.html#ixzz1So1mnAwC

Clash of the coupons: Aussie brothers cash in again after blocking US giant Groupon

After cashing in for $80 million on selling their online coupon business to a consortium led by James Packer, two Australian brothers have now brought one of the biggest online brands to heel in a further windfall worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Melbourne-based brothers Gabby and Hezi Leibovich - who recently sold a chunk of their lucrative daily deal sites CatchOfTheDay and Scoopon at a believed valuation of $200 million - registered groupon.com.au and its associated trademark and business name before its rival, US coupon giant Groupon, revealed its plans to launch in Australia.
The Leibovich brothers' sites are very similar offerings to those of Groupon. Both market coupons for different items each day and prices are heavily discounted as each item is bought by a large group of people.

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Andrew Mason, chief executive officer and co-founder of Groupon. Photo: Bloomberg

The opportunistic move to snap up Groupon's Australian trademark and domain name forced Groupon to launch in Australia under a different brand, Stardeals.
Last year Groupon took the Leibovich brothers to court, filing cases in the US, New Zealand and Australia. It hoped to force the Leibovich brothers to hand over the name.
Now they've agreed to settle and it's understood the Australian brothers have been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to hand over the groupon.com.au domain name and local trademark.

Billionaire James Packer. Photo: Nic Walker

A study released in July by the research firm Telsyte showed the Australian group-buying market was booming.
"The market grew from $71.8 million in Q1 2011 to $123.9 million in Q2 2011, a quarter-on-quarter increase of 72 per cent. The market is on track to reach or exceed $400 million by the end of 2011," Telyste said.
In US court documents obtained by Fairfax Media, publisher of this website, Hezi Leibovich says in a declaration to the court that the Groupon business name, trademark and domain name was purchased "solely for defensive purposes ... to ensure that neither plaintiff [Groupon in the US] nor any other entity could use the name to offer online discount voucher services that might lead to confusion in Australia with Scoopon".
Hezi also makes note of the fact that his groupon.com.au domain name had "not conducted any business in Australia or elsewhere" and that the website was "not in operation" and returned a "server not found" message when viewed using a web browser, effectively meaning that the Leibovich brothers weren't even using the website to sell goods and had only purchased it to block competitors from using it.
Documents filed by Groupon in the US allege the Leibovich brothers had copied their idea and were infringing on their copyright, among a number of other allegations including the Leibovich's knowing about Groupon in the US before registering groupon.com.au, the trademark "Groupon" and the business Groupon Pty Ltd.
Groupon also alleged that the brothers' Scoopon website home page was "nearly identical to Groupon's home page" and that supporting web pages were "similarly indistinguishable from Groupon".
Groupon was seeking damages which it had not put a price on in the US court.
Separate to lodging a case in the US, Groupon lodged an intellectual property action in the Federal Court in Victoria last August in an attempt to gain access to the groupon.com.au domain name, trademark and business name.