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| Sunday, July 5th, 2009 | | 9:37 pm |
so, i get back to the uk on wednesday. that'll be nice. give me a shout if you want to meet up for a beer or something. dunno how long i'll be about for yet, maybe just a couple of months. | | Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 | | 12:56 pm |
| | Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 | | 8:15 pm |
I spent this last weekend, from Friday evening til Monday, at the Dreaming Festival, which is a festival of music, theatre, dance, art and film by indigenous folk from around the world, especially aboriginal australians. The concept does sound a bit pretentious, and there was a lot of cultural tourism, rich hippy kids, white middle class people, and few aboriginal punters. Nonetheless, the acts were fantastic and it was a great experience. I was volunteering as an Assistant Stage Manager, which meant I spent 5 hours a day working in their theatre venue helping with... well, stage stuff. Cleaning stages, setting stages, that sorta thing. I'm not really a theatre person so it's quite hard to define. One of the hits of the festival was an excellent play called "Page 8", about the life of David Page, who's now a successful composer, actor, etc. but who was Australia's answer to the young Michael Jackson in his early teens. Mostly it's about his family life, and has the best and most pertinent use of projection I've ever seen in a theatre show - it uses snippets of 8mm home movie footage he recorded when he was a kid to illustrate his stories about his family and friends. It was funny, touching and utterly engaging; the story is true, after all, and you can't help but be moved by his accounts of both good and bad times with the people he was close to. I saw some great music, too; Mihirangi, a maori woman who beatboxes and layers harmonies with a loop pedal (yeah, everyone's doing it now, but she was still good), Blue King Brown, who were a stunning 9 piece funk/urban band, very dancable, Street Warriors, fairly standard but good rap, and the Rhythm Hunters, who wedge together Japanese Taiko drumming, Sumatran Islamic music, didgeridoos, and a guy in a blue spandex jumpsuit (no idea why) to amazing effect. | | Monday, June 1st, 2009 | | 4:55 pm |
So, I'll be back in the UK on the 8th of July, and I'm pretty sure I'm gonna come back to Australia in the middle of September, but in the middle of that I'll need somewhere to stay. I already have a couple of offers of rooms, but they're not entirely suitable for various reasons. Basically, I need somewhere reasonably affordable - probably less than 400 per month, including all bills and such - and within walking distance of George Square. Anyone got a spare room for a couple of months? | | Sunday, May 31st, 2009 | | 11:54 pm |
I just saw Battles at the Sydney Opera House, it was awesome... I was maybe 8 rows from the stage, in a fairly good seat. They're great, I'd well recommend seeing them, remind me of Mogwai but a bit less epic and more electronic. The drummer was awesome, and they had him front and centre which was pretty cool; but then their whole bag is that they're all amazing musicians, two of them play guitar with one hand while simultaneously playing keyboards with the other. | | Thursday, May 28th, 2009 | | 4:32 pm |
| | Monday, May 25th, 2009 | | 7:35 pm |
and on another note...
I'll probably be selling a bunch of stuff when i get back to the uk in july; things I haven't missed while I've been here and don't feel I especially need. this is as much for my reference, but ( if anyone's interested... ) | | 3:55 pm |
| | Saturday, May 23rd, 2009 | | 7:49 pm |
Hostels, my life, and WHO WANTS A MUSIC VIDEO MADE?
hello well-travelled friends! Can anyone recommend a website for finding decent, cheap places to stay? At the moment I'm defaulting to YHA's because they're reasonably priced and seem to generally have reasonably central locations. A bit of a safe known quantity thing. They're also a bit on the dull side, and somewhere with some life would be welcome on my imminent wee adventure. Oh, ( and what I've been up to ) | | Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 | | 11:41 am |
aaaaaaaaaaaaand relax
woo, now that all the majorly stressful situations - work, wedding, erm that's it - are out of the way, i feel much more like a normal human being again. life is alright and i had a lovely cheery day yesterday. | | Sunday, April 19th, 2009 | | 4:45 pm |
| | Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 | | 11:34 am |
So, I've been back in melbourne for a couple of weeks. I'm currently working 6 days a week at trades hall, the biggest indipendent venue at the melbourne international comedy festival. You probably haven't heard of any of the acts we have but there are some great shows, and some which I'll tell you all to go and see in august. I get Mondays off which is nice, especially as I only had one day off in between adelaide fringe and this. This Monday I went to a park - Edinburgh Gardens - with some friends and a great many dogs. There was a band playing in the park, and we sat in the sun listening to vaguely funky music, drinking cider and eating various things that get dipped in other things. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) jinxremoving came a long a bit later on, and it was ace to see her again; she came back to my house and cooked us a superb risotto and generally hung out. also, new photos on flickr, go look at them! they cost me a ton of money in processing... | | Sunday, March 22nd, 2009 | | 5:16 pm |
I spent the last few days in port augusta, which is a country town about 300km from adelaide. North I think but fuck knows. I was running sound for Desert Fringe, which is an adelaide fringe event that takes some fringe acts up to the country. We stayed in a nice hotel thing, which was really a series of self-contained little blocks of 6 mini apartments, complete with their own washers and driers - very much aimed at working travellers, port augusta being basically a crossroads town. Luxurious relative to the YHA and good for post work drinking, of which there wa far too much on friday, and of which there will again be too much tonight at the fringe awards. Life is good, very tired though. Oh, on the way back we stopped to look at a nessie made of old tyres on a salt flat, and to lick said salt flat. it tasted good... | | Monday, March 16th, 2009 | | 5:31 pm |
Adelaide is pretty damn dull other than the festival, i'm going a bit stir crazy today. Saw Watchmen yesterday, very good overall. I kinda like the villain's evil plan better in the movie, it makes a little more sense in some ways, though not completely - dr. manhattan would surely have figured out what he was going to do, or at any rate what he could do. It also suffered from the loss of the ancillary characters, the news vendor et al; I understand they needed to be cut for time but it weakens the emotional impact of the ending massively. Some of the hollywood gleam was annoying too, the fight sequences were silly after a while, and the twin towers motif can fuck right off - this is sure as shit not an american parable and making a point that the towers still stand at the end of the film is hollywood wiping it's ass on moore's book. Still, overall it was pretty much true to the book, certainly had respect for it and did what it could within the time and glamour restraints set by hollywood money. Oh, and on another note - fuck the merchandise, too. Special editions of the book I can stomach, action figures ok, but fridge magnets? piss off... and if you're going to do a set of badges, there's one that needs to be in there, and if you don't include it you're a clueless idiot. anyway, meme time; "Leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember. Don't send a message, leave a comment on here. Next, re-post this (or don't, i don't care) and see how many people leave a memory about you. It's actually pretty funny to see the responses..." | | Tuesday, March 10th, 2009 | | 10:59 pm |
wow, actually not drinking turns out to be really good for your state of mental and physical health. I like rediscovering the fucking obvious... | | 7:02 pm |
drunken internet bad... still, i feel much better today, and worked my way through the hang over so didn't suffer the worst. | | Friday, March 6th, 2009 | | 2:06 am |
fuck, i just got offered areally fucking good job at the melbourne comedy festival...ace... adelaide fringe is hard work, and often pretty shit work, but still good. | | Saturday, February 28th, 2009 | | 3:20 pm |
i've been workign for the fringe for a week now; i'mm very very tired, but the opening party was last night and it was ace, and it's nice to get some payoff. things don't slow down for me too much though, as i'm event crew and there are more events next week and for the rest of the month. still, it should all be fun. day off for the rest of today and all of tomorrow, yay! | | Friday, February 20th, 2009 | | 4:25 am |
I'm having a great time in adelaide. Last night I went to the opening party of the garden of unearthly delights, which is like the spiegelgarden but with half a dozen venues, 5 or more times the size, and generally better in every way except the beer prices which are equally appalling. $8 (~£4) for a bottled beer? ffs. Anyway, I met up with friends there, met some new folk, and ended up dancing like an eejit at midnight in the open air right by the pa cos i need my bass. Top notch. Today I met my new employers, who seem lovely, and found out what i'm doing - basically I'll be doing events for the fringe, like the launch party and their family weekend and such. yay! | | Wednesday, February 18th, 2009 | | 2:45 am |
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