More on Melbourne

As you might be aware, I recently had a short trip to Melbourne for entirely recreational purposes. I was going to do a straight up recount of the whole adventure, but Hugo already beat me to it and covered most of the big stuff over here, so I'm just going to give impressions and thoughts.

Melbourne was a trip marked by running late, failed meetings, hanging around killing time in bars and unadulterated fun. It started, for me, with a taxi that wouldn't turn up and the prospect of missing my flight. The flight was caught in the end, at the cost of parking at the airport for the entire trip. Apart from the slight stress, it was actually really nice to cruise into town on my own at my own pace. After flights and skybuses, I had a short wander about until meeting up with Pete at his work and dropping my bags off and taking some time for a coffee in the cafe under his office. We had some excellent Japanese for lunch at a sly sushi place with vague menus - the deluxe, super special or ultra sushi lunch deal?

The rest of the day was a blur of pubs, wappers, taxi and tram rides. I met Hugo's mate Krispin, who was a bit of a legend, and a good man to slay a few beers in the sun with if you ever get the chance. I also got to visit two parts of Melbourne wholly new to me - Brunswick and Camberwell. Brunswick was a nice (if eclectic spot) and from my limited experience, Camberwell seems to be filled with rappers (American or otherwise) with names that consist of three letters living in run down share houses. We met the GDP, DNA and AOI and hung out for like a minute yo-yo.

As an aside, I used to think that if I had a rap name it would be Long Island Ice Tea, but now (and after that whole "down low" speech on SVU) I reckon it should the TLA, the public service rapper. With the dope evidence based policy styleeeeee!

The other thing I noticed about Camberwell, was that it was a bit far out. Given that it was still within tram distance, this is probably just a side effect of living in Canberra too long.

What else to say about day one, but that Hugo's gig was pretty awesome. There was a never-ending rider, and apparently my designated role as "the dude that yells at his mate on stage" was enough of a performance role to give me access to it. I love Melbourne bars! Even if the staff won't give me a Redbull and look down their noses at me for having suggested I might like to purchase one.

Day two in Melbourne was fairly laid back for me - hung around Pete's place (which is really freaking sweet) in Richmond, did the crossword, had a big breakfast at 1pm and watched season 4 of Weeds on Pete's fiddy inch plasma. Gently eased into beers and BBQ at Pete's place, with excellent company. I laughed so goddamn hard, and it reminded me of excellent bygone days in Perth at Meriwa street with my Perth boys.

I should take a moment to give some major league props to Pete and his (ZOMFG) wife Christine for putting me up and going above and beyond the call of duty in opening their front door at 2am and dashing to the airport on the day four. Better people you will not meet. And did I mention their house was friggin SWEET? Because it is.

Day three involved a pretence at shopping in town, followed by an authentic community radio experience; I accompanied Hugo to an interview at RRR in East Brunswick. It was cool to see how it all worked, and to actually sit in a radio studio. For most of the interview I hung out in the green room with the naughty offspring of the lady who does the country and western show. I was tasked with keeping their volume down to a dull roar so that their shrill voices did not make it through to the broadcast. I was not always successful.

The day then dissolved once more into bars and beers. We visited the rather yuppie Cookie in town and the rather excellent Lambs Go Bar in Fitzroy. Props to Joelle for suggesting that one. Lambs boasts over 100 beers, and we did our best to sample them all between us that night. This contributed to the night becoming pretty fuzzy by the time we headed into town to catch pots and pans music, courtesy of UK DJ/producer Dom & Roland. It's a bit hazy, but I remember enjoying the man like Dom. Unfortunately, he was not enough to keep me awake, and after a nap in the club, it became clear that it was time to head home, or at the very least, that the bouncers weren't going to let me get any more sleep at the club.

Day four of the trip, the final day, was scarily similar to the start of the trip - a very real threat of a missed flight, and an upset Henry in front of the cameras from "Airways". Thankfully Pete came to my rescue, and with an inhuman feat of driving, got me to the airport in time to check in. I think I managed to get to the counter a total of 2 minutes before check in closed - plenty of time!

All in all, the trip was excellent, caught up with some great mates, met some new people who were more than worth the time of day. It was also excellent to explore more than the CBD of Melbourne. Don't get me wrong, there's lots to see there, but I feel like I've got the feel of it for the most part, and was ready to check new places out. I can't wait to get down there and do it all again soon!

The week that would not stop

So tired. Too much stuff to fit in. Arg.

Currently doing my best to make it to the end of the day so that I can meet up with the Esa Mess (aka party planner extrodinaire) and help him prep for the bucks tomorrow. I've had a good run of productivity today, but it has not been sustainable.

This has been the week (fortnight!?) that just won't quit, and it's not over yet. Don't get me wrong, it's been awesome (although has had its low lights) but I'm not sure how much longer I can handle the intensity; I'm bloody knackered!

I promise there will be proper posts on some of the festivities in dure course, but in addition to the intensity that was Melbs to kick the week off, there has been/will be:

• The job interview;
• The Road Trips;
• The Prodigy;
• The Bucks Part I - Paintball in the rain; and
• The Bucks Part II - The gambling.

Somewhere in there I'll get some sleep. Hopefully.

There are already some pretty good youtube vids up from Prodigy, but I'm going to see how the ones I took on my camera turned out before I put them up. Be prepared for me to gush a lot in the post about the Prodigy.

To close, here are two versions of one of my favourite tracks of all time, No Quarter, originally by the Zep and also covered by Tool (see below). This is the kind of track that makes me feel calmer and better about the world when things are getting too much.

First the original (albiet a live version):

Edit: Holy poop, I just watched that clip through - very weird. The album version, which I think is slightly better, is also on youtube, but I it just has the cover art. Moving pictures are more interesting...

Second the Tool version (with some strange video a random youtuber made for it):

Tool rock. If anyone can do a decent Zep cover, it's them.

Melbourne

Melbourne was, in a word, delirious. I'm going to have to think quite hard to distill it into a blog post, so I'm not going to bother with that right now (have other things to worry about, like interviewing for my own jearb!).

One thing the weekend did was to remind me how much I enjoy Gary Numan, even though I only really know like two of his songs. I was going to post up a whole bunch of youtube videos that I found entertaining, but unfortunately youtube's fancy new format is somehow incompatible with my work computer (I blame IE7) and the embed links take like 5 minutes to load.

Here's the only one I managed to get after a lot of pissing about.

In summary - Gary Numan and NIN both rock, new youtube and IE7 bad.

peas.

Sydney

Just a quick follow up on a previous post - the TCV gig last week was great (John Paul Jones is a legend), and it was excellent to catch up with people in Sydney. A big highlight for me was John Paul Jones's piano interlude, which was excellent. Check it out in the Youtube clip below!

That Youtube user has fairly good quality vids of the whole gig set up as a play list with all the track names. That's actually a little bit shocking - I was expecting just crap phone rips, but the whole gig is pretty much up there and you can see and hear everything. It's amazing what technology can do, but I can see how that would piss bands off - sure its a poor substitute for going to the gig, but its also free, which makes spending $100+ for the gig a little harder to stomach.

Although maybe its not that much of a thing - I'll certainly still go to the gig rather than just watch it on Youtube, its just not the same.

Anyway, here's another video of the gig, this time of Mind Eraser, No Chaser, which I dig.

One thing I did realise while I was up there is that I cannot handle the Tekken drinking games like I used to...although I can apparently still whoop all of you at Tekken while passing in and out of consciousness.


For those less in the know, the Tekken drinking game goes along these lines. You play a modified version of champs and challengers in versus mode, where the champ has to drink when they win, in addition to staying on. While it's a litte crude, the idea is that if one person is better at the game, they will soon be too inebriated to keep winning, giving everyone else a fighting chance. Unfortunately for me, it took Rob and Brian a little too long to hit their stride.

Also did a couple of other groovy things in Sydney, like visiting the beach, catching the ferry to Manly, ate some excellent food (including sushi train, dope style laksa and a bitchin burrito), hit some shops and generally lounged around. I bought a couple of new business shirts, including a blue gingham shirt. That's right, I'm bringing gingham back.

Things that I'm looking forward to at the moment (in chronological order):

1. Leaving work today;
2. Pay day tomorrow;
3. Multicultural festival on Saturday (which will see excessive amounts of exotic food and beverages consumed) followed by;
4. Drinks for Dana's birthday;
5. Melbourne in a couple of weeks with my boy dos4gw; and
6. Prodigy in Sydney in early March.