Dude, where’s my country? – michael moore. A christmas present from Nig and Stevie that was rapidly devoured on Boxing Day! Another US government bashing epic from Mr Moore. No question is left un-asked – from ‘how come the Bush family is best mates with the bin Laden family?’ to ‘how come you gave tax cuts only to the wealthy 5% of the country?’. It’s scary to read, and although you now approach it with a bit of healthy skepticism, Moore backs it up with attributable sources. Just have to hope that enough people read it and vote a more sane US government back next year.
‘Twas the day after the day after Christmas
And all round the house, not a creature was stirring except for the lesser spotted ‘loudus stompious chrisus’. Ah well, good to get up early sometimes {;)
Belated Merry Christmas to everyone wherever you are!
So that was my first Christmas ever away from home… Had a lot of fun, although did miss everyone something back home muchly. Also managed to eat less than usual, mainly because it’s hard to eat too much filling, carb laden food when it’s almost 30 degrees!
It was also strange because it was probably the first Christmas ever when no TV at all passed my eyes. Huzah! Not having a TV here has been quite a strange adjustment – you don’t realise quite how much of your life is spent sitting in front of it just ‘passing time’. I always planned to do that when I first moved to New York but somehow a TV materialised quite rapidly in my apartment.
And on a related note it’s only five hours till I see Return of the King! Perhaps the true meaning of Christmas… well, this year at least since it comes out later here than everywhere else in the world. Aussies have a big spate of summer blockbusters released on Boxing Day which seems quite strange. In Victoria this is combined with the fact that there is no public holiday on Boxing Day, unlike the rest of Australia – much to many people’s dismay.
Bappity bap bap thonk
Another fun African drumming session, continuing to learn a rhythm called ‘yagga’. Today was even more fun than last week as the weather was even more gorgeous, the flies were less plentiful, and we all managed to keep the rhythm going for ages without messing up. Sweet! It’s great just sitting there banging away at the drum – you go into this completely different zone, until you realise that you’ve missed the cue for the next section of the song and have to catch up. Oops!
Post drumming went to see ‘The Spanish Apartment’ (L’Auberge Espagnol) – a French film about a group of Erasmus students of varying nationalities living in Barcelona for a year. Very funny movie, and also quite intellectually challenging if you stop reading the sub-titles (sous-titres) for any length of time as the dialogue moves rapidly between French, English and Spanish – both Catalan and traditional Spanish at that! Been a bit of a film week already as also went to see Spellbound yesterday – a film about the final of the National American Spelling Bee competition. It’s amazing how interesting a documentary about a load of kids spelling words on stage can be… and also nice to see something about American culture that didn’t involve violence in any form.
Final bit for the day – bought a new toy for my camera antics: a Vivitar Zoom Thyristor 3500 flash unit. If you’ve been looking at my Fotolog over the past few weeks you’ll have noticed the photos using more random direct light sources. Mostly this has been anything I had to hand, especially other people’s cameras – or at least the flash from those. Anyway, decided it was time to stop wasting other people’s batteries so you can expect to see a lot more randomly lit shots coming up in the foreseeable future. Even better news is that this AU$70 flash does trigger off my EOS SLR contrary to what the bloke in the shop thought. Although being an old flash it doesn’t pick up all the exposure info it needs so it’s a full manual job. And, of course, having bought that second hand flash I found a ‘proper’ EOS flash second hand the next day – d’oh!
ps, If I don’t write anything more in this blog ever it’s because I’ve been eaten by the one (or all) of the hundreds of spiders that seem to have set up web in my bedroom suddenly. Lovely. Hope they’re not all expecting me to buy them Christmas presents…
Pingu!
What a great night out in St Kilda! No, not the usual drunken session with the boys and girls, although they were all there, but just very different and fun. It’s continuing to be ridiculously hot (37 C) – after a whole weekend of this and the forecast is offering more of the same. Phew! Very glad indeed at the moment that our house holds a welcome blast of coldness in the bedrooms as long as you keep the kitchen door closed. So with that backdrop – a trip over to the seaside of St Kilda makes a lot of sense, plus it was Kate and Amy’s last night in town before heading over to Sydney.
First up I randomly decided to go try some African drumming for a change of pace (and to get away from launching Tripsta which is almost there now just waiting for my fixes on a few niggling things – grrr). Simon who runs these sessions is holding them on the pavilion near St Kilda beach – so get to learn African rhythms as the sun starts to set and the fly swarms start to hand over to the evening shift of mosquitos. So much fun. As most people know I’m a compulsive tapper of tables in bars so it was a nice change to apply this to more ‘melodic’ pursuits. Hardest thing was keeping in time with everyone else, plus repeating the same bars over and over again without trying to improvise. Looking forward to next week already…
Met up with everyone at the Espy after that to watch the sun set before we wandered down to the beach and pier. On the edge of the breakwater heard this rough sqwauking noise – and a quick flash photo later revealed the source to be these cute little penguins! So now I only need to see a wombat in the wild and my collection of random Aussie animals is complete. Oh, and also saw a huge rat – but that was less cute.
So a good night – following a fun weekend. Oh, and quick weekend summary – Friday went to see Holly play at the Espy where she was supporting for a fellow Adelaide band whose name escapes me, from there went along to a warehouse/hip hop party with Gretta and Turtle which was great fun. Saturday met up with everyone at Emma and Emmet’s place for preliminary drinks before heading over to Revolver on Chapel Street. Then Sunday was pretty chilled – ending up with Holly playing an awesome set (her best and longest yet) at her regular Daguerres slot on Chapel St. Phew!
Picture palace – paul theroux. My first Paul Theroux book, again thanks to Chris for putting this my way and for cleverly sequencing it after the Graham Greene novel (Greene is a character in this book). The story in this book follows a fictional female photographer, Pratt, through her life, the people she’s photographed and her obsession with her brother. The writing is dense and interesting and you really believe that Pratt existed, such is Theroux’s observations on photography in general and the styles (and behaviours – however true they are) of famous photographers shortly after the war. Another great read that drags you from page to page and leaves you wanting more at the end.
Phew! Completely knackered now as just back from a run round the park and cemetary. It’s a really nice route, lots of green and a car free running path – very pleasent indeed. The run was made even better by eating little Chris’ lush pasta afterwards (thanks for that) – no idea what’s in it but it is totally awesomely lush. Will let you all know the recipe when I find out later.
Had a nice relaxing evening ‘in’ last night for a change. Went to Vera and Dom’s and watched ‘Animal Factory
, a Steve Buscemi film about life in a prison. Very watchable with some great characters but overall not a great movie. Good to relax though, especially with all the pre-Christmas going out plans for this weekend – huzah!
Dead famous – ben elton. Big brother and reality TV in general is the target of this Ben Elton satire, blended together with a murder mystery. The question posed is hence fascinating – how do you commit a murder and get away with it when you’re being watched all the time? Unfortunately the answer is quite obvious and although there are funny moments generally the book, though very readable, is not as entertaining as some of his earlier work. More interesting to read for some background insight into how TV works than anything else!
Travels with my aunt – graham greene. Never read any Graham Greene before so a big thanks out to Chris (the littler one) for recommending this to me from his huge pile of books. The story revolves around a retired bank manager who meets his aunt for the first time at his reserved, religious mother’s funeral. This meeting leads to a number of revelations about his family history and consequently to his travels with his aunt to various locations, never quite knowing what’s going on. It’s a highly readable book that pulls you along from page to page, and although the transition from fuddy duddy bank manager to international ‘criminal’ is maybe a bit far fetched at times it makes for a great story. Green tackles the uncertainty in the nephew’s mind about his new adventures wonderfully and it’s a great book to read if you’re not sure you want to go travelling…
Cleese encounters – jonathan margolis. – Continuing my biographical bent at the moment, I picked this 1992 version of the book up in a second hand shop. The contrast between these two comic greats is amazing – whereas Sellars went for the ‘crazed artistic schizophrenic genius’ style, Cleese constantly re-invents himself and grows around the ‘repressed English middle class’ medium. Fascinating stuff, and well researched given that Margolis was not allowed to talk with Cleese and this is all through secondary media.
Been another busy few nights… guess it must be Christmas, although I’m only really understanding that because I just spent a few days wrapping presents and sending them off to my family in all their various locations. Should all arrive in time the Post Office tells me…
Apart from wrapping presents the start of the week was filled with watching the final few ResFest films. Pretty intense watching 12 hour and a half long film sessions in fairly quick succession and have been on a film related ‘come down’ ever since (which was partly alleviated by watching a Chinese epic movie called ‘Hero‘ in the meantime – very good indeed in a Crouching Tiger stylee). Highlights of ResFest – the Michel Goudry retrospective, a short called ‘Japan Tradition: Relationships’ and a animated ‘Letter to Mr President’ done by painters on a large board filmed by above. Michel Goudry is the guy who did the Kylie video with many Kylies walking along roughly the same route, which is a culmination of many years of playing with how we perceive time variations. Amazing visual sense.
Had a fun session out on Tuesday night with Vera and Dom trawling from St Kilda back to the CBD where found a nice new bar called East 88 on Elizabeth Street and took some cool photos using a mix of their camera flash and my camera with no flash which I’ll try and post onto My Photos soonish under Aussie Friends. Big shout out to Sarah the bartender for topping the polls on most friendly barkeep in Melbourne thus far.
Last night was again busy – first watched a bit of the queues to get into Robbie Williams at the Telstra dome, since didn’t have a ticket to go see the man himself. Hugely busy. Then my friend Irene had an opening at Ivy Hope for her ‘Iggy and Lou Lou’ range of porcelin jewellery. Beautiful pieces, with a mix of animals, faces and more gothic elements. ‘Iggy’ is actually Irene’s nickname and Lou Lou is her friend Louise (who makes awesome t-shirts), originally they were working together but it ended up just being Irene – the name stuck however. Irene also makes these great kids plates, so both of these businesses are keeping her and her boyfriend Peter rather busy at the moment! Good to catch up with them both again though.
From there, fuelled by the opening’s free sparkling red wine we popped briefly into Robot before I heading on the No.6 tram down to Bar 116 to meet Holly and her pals. Last time I was at 116 it was to see Holly play guitar, but tonight she was just out to play. Lovely evening, meeting piles more of her friends and taking some more cool piccies. Also heard some more amazing music – a solo guy playing Irish whistle which was beautiful and this highly intense solo woman with guitar who had everyone in the room enthralled by her intense, passionate PJ Harvey/Gypsy style playing. Think all the boys in the room (and probably a lot of the girls) were in love with her by the end of the set she was so emotional and intense as she attacked the guitar and swayed back and forth singing her lungs out – I certainly was!