Thursday, January 14, 2010

A quote or two from Reg Mombassa


"... I'm sort of anxious about the world. I'm more frightened about humans than anything else, I think. They're the most dangerous, and violent, and irrational creatures on the planet, I think."

A quote from Reg Mombassa (real name Chris O'Doherty) taken from the ABCTV show Talking Heads.

Reg Mombassa is a co-founder of the popular 1980s Australian rock band Mental as Anything, also a painter, musician, designer of stunningly crude T-shirt art (within the long and proud tradition of amusing and confronting Australian vuglarity), and a person who apparently "came up fairly high" on some questionnaire about Asperger syndrome (according to page 395 of the recent book about his life and art).

Here's a later quote from a newspaper article about Mombassa:

"To some extent, I am hiding from people, I'm afraid of people. I always have been. I'm not really a people person. I'm happy to be in a room by myself with a pencil drawing."


References
Waldren, Murray (2009) The mind and times of Reg Mombassa. Harper Collins, 2009. 
[A detailed and personal biographical and art book including history of the band Mental as Anything, featuring a lot of eye-catching art and photographs.]

Thompson, Peter (2007) Reg Mombassa. Talking Heads. ABC TV. first screened 23rd July 2007. 
http://www.abc.net.au/talkingheads/txt/s1982349.htm 
[transcript of this interview available]

Thompson, Peter (2007) Reg Mombassa. Talking Heads. ABC TV. first screened 23rd July 2007. 
http://www.abc.net.au/talkingheads/txt/s1982349.htm 
[transcript of this interview available]

West, Andrew (2010) Mental in a good way. Sydney Morning Herald. smh.com.au January 12th 2010. 
http://www.smh.com.au/executive-style/culture/mental-in-a-good-way-20100112-m4ah.html 
[transcript of this interview available] 

Mombassa/O'Doherty is just one of the many fascinating people in this list: 

Referenced list of 175 famous people diagnosed as autistic or subject of published speculation about autism/Asperger syndrome (AS)
http://incorrectpleasures.blogspot.com.au/2006/09/referenced-list-of-famous-or-important.html 




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