secret stash

Secret Stash by Yiting Cheng... "Ordinary objects being used as materials to create secret hiding places"...

I saw this this morning and completely fell in love with it... especially the secret drawer in the desk and the side of the cabinet...

I love secret spaces... hiding things in places that nobody else knows about, finding that perfect spot for any number of treasures.

Although the risk is always that you'll hide something so well that you'll forget where you put it!

Current Mood:

movies: toy story 3

I'm going to come right out and say it... Toy Story 3 is kinda dark...

And it made me weep like you would not believe... but that's probably not really news to anyone, and maybe you'll all believe it quite easily.

The overriding theme of the third and final Toy Story movie is "loss"... the first two touched on it, but were more skewed towards "replacement" and "abandonment" respectively, but this seems to be the saddest, darkest and most heartbreaking of them all.

I just reread that last paragraph. Man... we let KIDS watch these movies? They're not exactly bright and happy are they? Replacement, abandonment and loss... yeah, that's a recipe for award winning children's entertainment right there!

But everyone ends up in a good place at the end of each movie, so that helps I think.

I don't think I've cried during a Toy Story movie though... other Pixar movies, sure... but I pretty much lost it through about the last quarter of this one.

The movie starts off dark actually... the toys have already been whittled down to a fortunate few who are trying to get Andy to notice them, to play with them, to love them again before he goes off to college, but he's 17 and not interested any more.

In fact, Stinky Pete's prediction in the last movie is particularly apt...

How long will it last, Woody? Do you really think Andy is going to take you to college, or on his honeymoon? Andy's growing up, and there's nothing you can do about it.

They've resigned themselves to storage in the attic... which is pretty depressing when you think about it... from being loved and adored, to ignored, to being packed up in a box and stored in an attic for who knows how long.

But, as is the formula with these movies, they end up far away and have to find a way to get back to Andy before the end of the movie.

And while there's a fair amount of comedy to lighten the mood, at heart this is possibly the least "funny" of the three movies.

I'm sure there will also be a couple of scenes towards the end that might scare little kids. I know I was feeling anxious about certain plot developments even though I know these things invariably work out for the best. And that was one of the scenes that made me start crying.

The other scene that totally wiped me out was the final scene (without giving anything away) where Andy decides on the fate of the toys (and as an interesting side note, Andy is played by the same actor, John Morris, who played him in the first two movies... at ages 10, 14 and now 24).

I think part of the emotion comes from the advances in animation... the humans in the first movie were very clunky and jerky, and even the textures were "almost but not quite", whereas now they're very beautifully rendered and the movement is pretty much spot on.

All in all, while it's not going to rank high enough to be my Favourite Pixar Movie Ever, and it is, as I've previously said, quite dark and maybe a little intense for some kids, it was an enjoyable movie.

yani's rating: 4 Mr Tortilla Heads out of 5

unconscious mutterings 387

Something of a long slow day...

Unconscious Mutterings...

1. Collectors :: Andy Muirhead's legal troubles
2. Passion :: Fruit
3. Winner :: Loser
4. Uninhibited :: Exhibitionist
5. Challenge :: Recruitment Agency
6. Self :: Love
7. Your :: Mine
8. Viewer :: Viewmaster
9. Random :: Hotness
10. Vice :: Miama

Current Mood:

bracegirdles, benzo and the beach

Actually, the title of this post is a little bit of a misnomer, but "Bracegirdles, Glenelg, Toy Soldiers and the Rundle Street Markets" didn't have that same alliterative ring to it...

Plus, the mermaid was done by Store, not Benzo... so it's all a big lie...

I had a plan today. As I said on Twitter on Friday... "I'm formulating a plan for Sunday that involves the beach, hot chocolate and street art... It's looking better all the time..."

Essentially it was a repeat of the plan from May last year... except on a smaller scale.

So this morning I pottered around the apartment for a bit then packed up all my bits and pieces and headed down to Glenelg.

I only really had two aims... to sit in the window of Bracegirdles with my book and a hot chocolate... and to photograph the completed Toy Soliders mural Ma and I discovered in progress on her pre-birthday outing.

The completed thing is gorgeous, and although I tried to do the panorama thing, I don't think I took enough shots to be able to stitch it together properly, so I'll have to attempt that again later... but it looks a little something like this...

While I know that the diver is Benzo, the mermaid is Store and the little rock/pod things are Fredrock, I have no idea who is responsible for either the crab, the treasure chest, the leafy sea dragon or the treasure chest... not to mention the bit TS logo.

Photography over, I wandered down to Bracegirdles, ordered myself a hot chocolate plus a ham and cheese omelette and proceeded to take up the whole leather sofa in the window.

*contented sigh*

Chocolate was good... omelette was good... book was good... sofa was good...

Eventually I reached a break in my book and relinquished the sofa to a hot boy and his blonde girlfriend and took myself on a wander down to the water where I snapped a few more shots.

Then I wandered down to the other end of Jetty Road, and back, grabbed a newspaper and headed for the car. I figured that since I was already going "past", I may as well stop off at the Rundle Street Markets, just for a look.

I swear that that place gets worse as time goes on... I did look at alpaca scarves though, but they were essentially all too short other than the really expensive ones. Nice though.

And then I brought myself home again, and it turned out to only be about 12:30.

It was a very enjoying morning... I should do more of those...

Current Mood:

cabaret: caroline o'connor's musical life

Just like last year, our last trip to the 2010 Adelaide Cabaret Festival was a fantastic finale...

We saw the First Lady of Australian Musical Theatre, Caroline O'Connor and her show "A Musical Life".

And to sum up... the show ended in three encores and two standing ovations. She was simply sensational!

We had great seats too... down in the tables at the front.

She started the show with songs from Chicago, since she's been involved with it for over 15 years, and performed it in at least three countries.

And boy can Caroline sing!

But that's kind of a given... what I didn't know is that she had such great comic timing (which I suppose isn't that much of a surprise given her background in musical theatre)... her between song banter was great.

Some of the music I didn't necessarily know, most of it was show tunes... but essentially it was her life in music... or maybe, in musicals would be a better description.

She did a great couple of pieces from Moulin Rouge too... the intro song (Nature Boy) and El Tango de Roxanne, which was interesting with a female spin on it.

My favourite number was probably a toss up between "I Hate Musicals" from Ruthless and the mashup between Somewhere Over The Rainbow & Waltzing Matilda she did as one of the encores.

But everything she did was fantastic... she's highly skilled at accents and impressions (or else is just a natural mimic) and was wonderful when she channelled other divas like Judy Garland and Edith Piaf.

She very much deserved the two standing ovations we gave her.

Which brings our Adelaide Cabaret Festival adventure to an end for another year!

Current Mood:

rundle mall saturday

Today was a short day by comparison to the last few weeks...

Doubly so in some ways because Ma was getting her hair did, so I went off on the Supermarket Safari. And has happens from time to time, they were doing stocktake or something so the supermarket was full of staff (most of whom looked about 12) counting things. It's enough to put one of one's shopping list!

Fortunately I'd already decided to take my headphones along, so I just cranked up the music and got on with things.

I managed to finish everything within about half an hour, then picked up my drycleaning and unpacked everything, read the paper and whatnot all before Ma got here.

Since we had the final Cabaret Festival show at 3pm, we figured we may as well spend the whole day in the city... but before we headed off I showed Ma one of the hotels I'd found in Melbourne... and after a couple of false starts in working out whether or not there were rooms available we figured we should probably book them.

Interestingly enough, the hotel isn't actually open yet... it only starts taking guests at the beginning of July... and when viewed on Google Maps, it's still a construction site.

So fingers crossed it will actually be ready... but if it is, it will be very sleek and shiny and new, which will be very nice. Cross your fingers for me!

After that, we headed into town (although we had to come back here because I'd forgotten to pick up the tickets... and we still managed to leave something behind!). Unfortunately we weren't able to find a very cheap parking space, but it turned out to be for the best, as we parked in the Festival Centre, which is a flat rate for the whole day... and we definitely got our money's worth... we parked around 11:30 and didn't leave until nearly 5:30...

We headed down to Target at the end of the Mall without visiting any of the shops, and then wended our way back, browsing and shopping and whatnot.

I was volunteered to buy a present for Sugarmonkey Jr... and even though we looked in a bunch of stores at a bunch of stuff I wasn't feeling especially inspired. I think it's the difference between being volunteered and actually volunteering yourself. Plus it's Sugarmonkey, so it actually has to be "right"... but I don't know what "right" is yet.

The more we looked the less sure I was and the more frustrated I got. I'm a big one for buying books... which is definitely something that comes from Ma and my Nanna... as is the fact that presents have to feel right, or be right, or something. It also means I end up looking in all of the stores, and then going back again and buying something in one of the first places that I looked. Damn childhood conditioning...

Speaking of childhood... I also picked up a pair of Autobots underwear... with OBEY written on one side in big silver letters and Optimus pointing his cannon... in, well, you know, the cannon pointy place. I am a little annoyed that they don't make more Bumblebee stuff though... Optimus is the only Autobot that seems to ever get any play!

I also discovered that Borders is currently stocking bottles of Tru Blood (from the show of the same name)... I didn't get one, but I think I'm going to have to go back and pick one up next week...

Since we had so much time to kill, we ended up looking in a lot more places than usual, I sprayed myself with some slightly bland cologne in Myer, we had hot chocolate shakes from Wendys (not bad... but mine wasn't as hot as Ma's) and stopped off at Haighs on our way back to the Festival Theatre.

As the performance we were headed to see was at 3pm and contained a lot of show tunes, it was a bit of an Old People Palooza... more specifically old ladies... lots and lots and lots of old ladies (a large number of whom appeared to be wearing red)... a few of whom had been brought along by their gay sons or grandsons... and there was a party of four homosexualists in their late 30's...

Once the show was over, we'd planned to go to hit the outdoor cafe, but then didn't open for about half an hour, so we hung out and chatted and then had dinner from Squid Inc before heading back here.

And I actually get the evening to myself... which so far has consisted of writing about the rest of the day...

Current Mood:

photo friday: dawn gum

There's something magical about photographing the colours of dawn (and conversely, sunset)... the colours only last a few minutes and then they're gone forever.

This shot was taken from my doorstep yesterday morning... I got up out of my chair to go hit the shower and realised that the sky was lit up pink and orange... and in the time it took me to find my camera they'd faded a little, and within a minute or so afterwards it had completely faded to grey.

In other random thoughts from today...

While half of the time I feel like I don't know what I'm doing, there are those moments when I open my mouth and all this "expertise" comes flooding out. I had a couple of those moments this week and whenever I realise I'm having one it amuses/surprises me.

We met Sugarmonkey Jr today... so tiny, so cute... but it's still weird to think of Sugarmonkey as being a dad.

I have tiny, weird little toe nails (that is, nails on my little toes), and yesterday I managed to tear about half of the nail off the left toe... which was fine, except for the case that I chose to wear the skate shoes that always pinch my feet... so it hadn't even gotten to 9am before I was limping around.... and it didn't improve all day. Ow!

Current Mood:

random halley hotness

Today's Random Hotness was one of those "just in time" discoveries... which is an incredibly bad pun because the model's name is Justin Halley...

I suppose it could have been worse and I could have made comet jokes... you know, Halley, Halley's Comet... oh never mind...

You can see more of Justin on Queerty...

Current Mood:

hello wednesday dotpoints

Five slightly long and rambly Wednesday dotpoints...

• After yesterday containing an element of thumbtwiddling at work, today was full on... the phone, which I think has rung maybe three times in the last week just kept ringing... tasks kept piling up on my To Do list... and some of them weren't even tasks I should be doing... and then people kept wanting to come and either ask marginally dumb questions or chat, which normally is fine, but today... grrr...


• The Bonds Slipper Socks I bought on the weekend are the BEST INVENTION EVER! Normally I wear socks around the house in Winter, but my feet still get cold. Since I started wearing the Slipper Socks my feet have been toasty warm... this comment has not in any way been paid for by Bonds, but if they want to slip me a few more pairs I'll say more nice things...


• There was an interesting video on YouTube (no longer available due to a copyright claim by 1428 FILMS LLC) discussing how "gay" A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge is... especially given that the lead actor is now openly gay... and although it's probably the crappiest of all the Nightmare movies, it did make me want to go out and get the DVD...


• I keep saying "oops" when unexpected things happen and it's really annoying me, especially when it's not a situation where "oops" is an appropriate response! It seems to have become my "default surprised noise"...


• La Ninj is currently winging her way across the world to Canada... I asked her to bring me back a Mountie. Not sure how she's going to get one in her suitcase though...

Current Mood:

tiltshift melbourne

A perfect miniature replica of the Crown Casino Complex in Melbourne?

Or me playing around with TiltShiftMaker?

Current Mood:

unconscious mutterings 386

Two weeks ago when I was working late I was inundated with work... however I can foresee some serious thumb twiddling by the end of this week...

Unconscious Mutterings...

1. Executive :: Director
2. Director :: Movies
3. Dress :: Code
4. Studio :: Movie
5. Accountant :: Numbers
6. Unit :: Apartment
7. Engaged :: Married
8. Safety :: Dance
9. Post :: Box
10. Dialogue :: Box

Current Mood:

cabaret: mitchell butel killing time

I think I can officially say now that we've only seen one straight guy during this years Cabaret Festival... and it wasn't Mitchell Butel...

After seeing him in Avenue Q, there was no way we weren't going to go and see his solo show.

It was probably the most "mainstream" show we've seen so far, although it did get a little more interesting as it progressed.

Both Ma and I had a moment of thinking it was going to be particularly vanilla at the beginning... but then Mitchell launched into a string of "fuck" during one the breaks between the songs, and it kinda picked up from there.

Well, between there and the very awesome arrangement of "9 to 5"...

The whole show is based around time... songs about time, specific times, time as a concept and compresses 24 hours from dawn to dawn into 60 minutes. And somewhat surprisingly (since we've tended to see people singing with nothing but a piano) he had a piano, double bass and a drum kit backing him up.

Mitchell really has an amazing voice... one minute he's singing loud and powerful, the next soft and soulful... and the final number where he sings without the microphone and with only the piano was amazing. It did make me wish that more performances were done that way though... throw the microphones away and let us just hear the singer live and unplugged.

Some of the songs I recognised, but a lot of them I didn't... at least not in that particular arrangement. Other than 9 to 5 my favourite song of the night had to be one about a gay caveman, "Way Ahead of My Time", which was hilarious (and a version of it now lives on my iPhone).

The only slight downside to the show were the number of quotes and things Mitchell included in the show, if only because he was reading them all from notes rather than including them organically... and I did feel like a couple of them just got dropped into the middle of a moment and basically sat there like the proverbial lead balloon. When he was just talking he was great, it was just the "prepared remarks" that felt a bit forced.

But his voice, his style and the fact that's as charming as hell makes up for any minor problems.

A really great show!

Current Mood:

cabaret: raymond crowe

Raymond Crowe and his Wonderful World of Hand Shadow was the show I remember Ma being particularly enthused about when we went through the festival guide...

That's not to say that I wasn't interested in seeing it... but to be honest beyond the titular hand shadows I didn't really know what to expect. And to be honest, I kinda thought there would have been more of them.

Turns out that Raymond is an "unusualist" (which I think is a term he made up since the only references to it in Google seem to be him)... essentially other than the hand shadows, he's also an illusionist, a ventriloquist and a comedian.

And he's quite good.

The hand shadows are really good... especially the rabbit from the picture... I think it's one he's really mastered the knack of because he does it especially well.

When he first started out with some of the magic tricks I'll admit I was a little bit disappointed since I could "see" the tricks... or at least work out how he was doing them, if not actually see him do them if that makes sense. But as the show progressed the tricks got more complicated and seemed much more like "magic".

There was also quite a bit of audience participation which included some hilarious ventriloquism. A lot of the show was very funny actually, Raymond has a great sense of timing.

He finished off the show with a hand shadow version of Louis Armstrong singing What A Wonderful World which was amazing!

Current Mood:

scarf related saturday

While last week was definitely a longer day... this week seemed to be much busier.

And much more about scarves and movies and with twice as many cabaret shows (that's two rather than one for those of you playing along at home)...

Of course it didn't help that I had to do the whole "boil water/make bath" thing first thing this morning...

"Welcome to Life in 1840... today's episode is about personal hygiene!"

But it was reasonably painless, even if I didn't quite rinse my hair off properly before the water was all done and had to do it with cold water. Brrrr!

Anyway, we headed off for the usual Supermarket Safari, although it was something of a light shopping week this week. Then we headed into Target to look at the offerings from their DVD sale... that is, once we actually found them, because they'd essentially hidden all the good stuff away in a slightly weird location... but I ended up getting a bunch of classic movies.

Once we were done with shopping and the requisite unpacking we decided to head down to Marion... mostly because I wanted to look for some more scarves... or for a red one at the very least.

I ended up buying three different scarves... one grey/black, stripy, long, skinny & knitted which I'm wearing now... one red, tartan and soft... and a little short grey one which may end up being semi useless, but it was cheap.

I also couldn't resist a pair of Bonds "Slipper Socks"... which I have to say are the weirdest sensation to wear, but I think that's because they're technically a size to o large (even though they're the S-M size). Very warm tho!

We also did quite a bit of wandering about, grabbed a spot of lunch, more wandering then decided to head off. Just before we did we stopped for a bathroom break and once I'd done what I needed to do and was turning to wash my hands, I almost literally bumped into J... of all the people to run into in the mens room! He was also there with his mum, so we had a brief yet odd conversation (outside the bathroom).

By the time we got back here we pretty much had enough time to get changed and head straight back out for our first Cabaret Festival show of the day.

The downside of the show was the group of kids sitting behind us who weren't completely obnoxious but they didn't' really sit still or shut up during a lot of the show.

And unfortunately because the first show finished at 4pm and the second show was 7pm there really wasn't a lot of point in sticking around the Festival Theatre, so we came back here, got changed again (don't ask... I was having a wardrobe crisis) and headed out to get some dinner before the second show.

When an item on the menu says that it comes with onion rings and wedges, you don't expect there to be very many of either... and for the first time in a long while I didn't end up finishing everything on my plate. It was all quite tasty though.

By the time we got back to the Festival Theatre it did feel like we'd only just left, which technically I guess we had. And all the famous folks seemed to be out and about... I saw Premier Mike Rann with a group of people (including a woman I assume was Mrs Rann trailing behind with an odd expression on her face... somewhere between irritation and boredom perhaps) and then while we were waiting for the theatre to open up, the Artistic Director of the Festival, David Campbell wandered past looking a bit sexiful in his leather jacket.

After the second show we stopped off for a warm drink and a serve of churros before calling it a night.

Only one festival show left to see now...

Current Mood:

photo friday: tree people

It's been something of a turbulent 48 hours...

Yesterday was really good... booked our flight to Melbourne (hence the photo of a statue from a Melbourne laneway), saw Kim Smith at the Cabaret Festival... a very good time was had by all.

And before I went to bed I discovered my hot water was out... again... but by this point it was 1am so I figured I'd deal with it this morning, since I successfully managed to relight the pilot light after the plumber showed me how last year.

But then I overslept this morning and only woke up at 7am... and I did everything I think I'm supposed to do with the water heater but all I ended up with was frozen, numb thumbs and the need to bathe in a bucket.

I did managed to get through to my land agent on one of their numbers, but alas, it's too much to expect that anything would actually happen in a single day. I wish it wasn't too much, but obviously it is.

The end result was that I was an hour late for work and face a weekend without hot water. Again.

*deep breath*

On the upside, my ongoing belief that you can find just about anything on the internet if you look hard enough was further reinforced today... and for free!

Current Mood:

cabaret: kim david smith - morphium

It should come as no surprise to anyone to hear that I do like my men just that little bit deranged... more "Tim Burton" than "Ted Bundy" obviously, but deranged nonetheless...

And Kim Smith's stage persona in Morphium is just the right kind of deranged.

He's also incredibly sexy... what with the guyliner, tight shirt and perfect hair. But more than sexy, he's a whole world of slinky and mysterious up there on stage.

Thinking about it now... basically he's like a cat... well, a cat that sings in English, French and German and wouldn't be out of place in a smoky underground club in the 1940's!

But c'mon... who's not going to be won over by someone who looks that good and who can sing in three languages! And boy can he sing! Vocally he can turn on a dime too... go from almost a whisper to belting it out... from bright and bubbly to dark and painful... and the spin he put on some of the songs was fantastic... Kylie Minogue's Confide In Me in French... Somewhere Over The Rainbow in German...

The staging of the show is very smart too... when the pianist, Amanda Hodder, came out the lights were dark on the stage and up full in the crowd... as she played the lights slowly raised on the stage and lowered over the crowd. By the end of the couple of minutes of her playing the audience was absolutely still and somewhat mesmerised when Kim arrived from the back of the crowd and wended his way through slowly singing.

In fact, he had the crowd so completely under his spell that I think we missed a queue to sing the chorus of one of the numbers... so he just stood there and let us wallow in our mistake. But oddly it wasn't out of character for the show... Kim knows just when to pause and let the audience anticipate the moment. You can feel the transitions between interconnected numbers and only when Kim lets the audience go between numbers did we all break into thunderous applause.

I very much agree with the review on the AdelaideNow website... "Polished to perfection but still wickedly dirty when the moment calls for it, Morphium is one truly engaging hour of cabaret."

I'm giving it two very enthusiastic thumbs up.

And I think it will be a while before I managed to get this song out of my head!

Current Mood:

random scarf hotness

This isn't the first time that Ben Barnes has featured in Random Hotness...

But given that my week has been very much about the scarf, these shots seemed fitting (especially as Google Images failed me in my search for male scarf related imagery)...

Current Mood:

pogo

I mentioned the work of Pogo once before...

He's just released his latest piece... taken from the first Toy Story movie...

Toyz Noize (Toy Story)

This was the first Pogo track I heard, and I instantly fell in love with it...

Upular (Up)

This last piece is based on the real world rather than a movie... and it always makes me feel calm and meditative...

Gardyn

Current Mood:

architectural corners

The thought of the day:

You should always be careful what you ask for... because you might get it and then not know what the hell to do with it... and that wastes everybody's time...

Current Mood:

unconscious mutterings 385

I slept in, made a casserole and rice pudding (stew looks great, not sure about the pud yet), booked tickets to see the Tim Burton exhibition in Melbourne at the end of July, watching movies and only stepped foot outside the house at 4:15 because I wanted some bread to go with my casserole...

Bless Queen Elizabeth II and her birthday holiday...

Unconscious Mutterings...

1. Offense :: Criminal
2. Bench :: So You Think You Can Dance routine
3. Kissing :: Yes please!
4. Timely :: Intervention
5. Yellow :: Submarine
6. Get up and go :: Got up and went
7. Beer :: "No teevee and no beer make Homer something something..."
8. Calories :: Burn
9. Blast :: Off
10. Window :: Rear

Current Mood:

cabaret: que sera sharah

Last night was a very pleasant night indeed...

After a very delightful dinner (Best! Chicken! Ever!) at Paesano in North Adelaide we headed off to the Festival Theatre to see Tom Sharah.

Like Nick Christo last year, Tom's show Que Sera Sharah, was chosen specifically because he looked so damn cute in the festival guide.

There's only one problem with general admission shows and that's the line... when people have allocated seats they don't bother with a line... but I have the worst luck with lines... the people behind me always end up being somewhat obnoxious...

Fortunately we got a great table near the stage and the people we were sharing it with were quite pleasant.

When Tom strutted his way on stage I knew we were going to be in for a camp old time.

I don't remember all of the songs, but the show did feature:

• Money Money Money
• Good Morning Heartache
• Stop (the Sam Browne version)
• Who'd I Be (from the Shrek musical)
• A Spice Girls Medley
• I'll Be Watching You
• Que Sera Sera (obviously)

Tom definitely put his own stamp on all of the songs... but none so much as "I'll Be Watching You"... which as soon as he started singing made me just about fall off my chair laughing.

While the lyrics seem completely reasonable... "Every breath you take/And every move you make/Every bond you break/Every step you take\I'll be watching you"... imagine them sung by a slightly crazed stalker... and they take on a whole new meaning.

Tom puts on a great show though... he's funny in the pieces between songs, he's quite cute, he's camper than a boy scout jamboree at times and he has a beautiful voice.

The only downside (other than the stage light that was pointed straight at me) was that the show was only an hour long.

He's definitely one to watch...

Current Mood:

shopping then art

Today is one of those very long days of hanging out with Ma... very, very, very long in fact...

About 14 or so hours worth what with shopping, and the other kind of shopping, and looking at things, and dinner, and then our first Cabaret Festival thing...

Good job we like each other!

Anyway, Ma was running late this morning, which is probably a good thing given all the day we had in front of us, but it didn't really throws things out too much.

The morning's Supermarket Safari proceeded as usual... although I did realise that since that because Monday is a public holiday I'll be able to slow cook something for hours and hours and hours... and so got the appropriate makings to invent something.

Then we took a stroll around Red Circle Boutique... and I had a look at jeans (black and kinda chubby hipster style... not that I would ever wear them that tight or that low), yet another shirt with those roll up shirt tabs and epaulettes (grey) and a soft, soft, soft scarf (dark grey). I never quite got the whole scarf thing I have to admit, but I'm wearing it right now and it's actually very very warm! Essentially I bought a whole new outfit... thank you 30% off sale!

I also did something I swore I'd never, ever do... I seriously considered a pair of those flat, slip on canvas shoes the kids wear these days with their skinny jeans and stupid hair... and if they'd had a pair in my size with the houndstooth pattern on it, well I might actually have bought them. Scary!

Anyway, we came back here, unpacked, lazed around a bit... well, in theory anyway... we didn't rush out the door like we did last week. And I saw a very, very cool yet completely over the top version of Single Ladies done by a band called The Pigs... and had to look it up on iTunes and download it. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when somebody first played their version for Beyonce...

Once we were done with all that we decided to head into town and look around since we haven't done that properly for a while.

First stop was Smiggle... Hello cute gay Smiggle salesboy! And a bucketload of their very cute animal bookends (giraffes and rhinos and elephants, oh my)... which even if they're not used at the end of a row of books are pretty funky since they stick out... but damn they were heavy on mass!

We also called into JB and we both played around with iPads... I probably wouldn't have done, but Ma wanted to. And I have to say... m'eh. It's just a big iPhone... not really seeing why everyone is getting their fanboy panties in a bunch about them.

The rest of shopping was a lot of "looking at things" really... little here, little there... and we stopped off at Cocolate for hot chocolate and crepes (yummy) then we dropped the bags off at the car and wandered off to the Art Gallery.

Our main reason for going was to see the Candid Camera exhibition (Australian documentary photography from the 1950s to the 1970s). And there was some really awesome stuff in the exhibition too... some photos I instantly recognised, but most of it was great stuff that I'd never even heard of before. All presented in black and white too... and we know how I love monochrome!

The only downside was the two chattering women, one of whom may have been a professional artist, but who was definitely a professional pain in the ass. I hate hearing self proclaimed experts spouting random dribble about art. Urgh.

The other piece that I'd kinda forgotten about until we went into the Gallery was Patricia Piccinini's Big Mother...

Now, I've seen Patricia's work before and loved it... but Big Mother is just... wow!

And the Gallery has positioned it perfectly... it's in the third room of a series of connected galleries, but she stands, surrounded by black and lit perfectly, staring out down the corridor that connects the galleries, and you can't NOT go and see her up close.

I actually gave myself the heebie-jeebies a little bit too... standing right in front of her, her face is at eye level for me and I was staring into her eyes... and you just expect her to breathe... or blink... or make a sound... or something. Big Mother is disturbingly realistic.

Seriously, if Patricia could work out how to make one of these statues that appeared to breathe and occasionally blinked, I think she'd scare the crap out of people.

And it's one of those works that makes you think... Big Mother is incredibly sad... but is she sad because she's lost her own baby and has to take care of this human baby or is she sad because she knows this baby will be taken away from her too? Personally I think it's the former, because she's not really connected with the baby, she's holding it and feeding it, but she's somewhere else.

Anyway, I highly recommend people go and see her... she's definitely worth it!

Once we were finished at the Gallery we wandered back to the car, came back to my place and have essentially been dicking around on our respective computers for the past couple of hours... gotta love family togetherness!

And now it's about time to get ready to go out to dinner before Tom Sharah...

Current Mood:

photo friday: working late

You know, normally by the time I get to the end of the week I'm kinda shattered... but this week has been that times about 100...

• I stopped just short of throwing a tantrum yesterday and for the second time in all recorded memory walked out of the office, went downstairs and walked around the block.
• I really didn't want to go to work this morning... between left over resentment from the day before and the fact I was going to essentially be on my own all day just made it very hard to get motivated.
• I attempted to do the whole "sublimate my feelings with retail" at lunch... which didn't work at all... I looked at stuff, but then I put everything back and walked away.
• Except chocolate... and marshmallow...
  
• I'm planning to do absolutely nothing on Monday... sit around and watch movies all day... sounds pretty damn close to perfect.

I'm sure there was other stuff I wanted to say, but it's all gone clean out of my head...

Current Mood:

random opposing hotness

Going with a couple of opposites for today's Random Hotness...

They both feature model Stephen Kissinger, but one is black & white and very winter (shirtlessness notwithstanding), the other is bright colour and very summer...

Current Mood:

i need a day off

I currently have a headache... I have no idea why the hell I have a headache, but I do...

Although if I had to hazard a guess I would suggest that it's some combination of the cold weather, working late and, well, working my booty off.

We're only four days into the Month Without Sugarmonkey, and already I'm over it. People are coming out of the woodwork all over with time consuming requests, and although I'm generally not especially rushed off my feet most normal days, doing all the stuff I would normally do as well as all the stuff that Sugarmonkey would normally do it kinda draining.

Most of the time I don't really need a "To Do" list... I know what I need to do, I do it, I move on to the next thing. I'm currently on my second "To Do" list in as many weeks.

And I was aware how much discussion we do... we do a lot of talking about stuff and workshopping stuff and talking random crap about stuff... but it does eat up your day!

It's also kinda weird that while I may not normally have a full conversation with Captain Slow during a week, because it ends up being him and me towards the end of the day when everyone else has buggered off home, he's getting all chatty...

Yesterday that ate up most of the time before I left, but today I wanted to get stuff done so I ignored him as much as possible... in an appropriate, businesslike, "I'm busy" way, obviously.

It's also the stuff that comes up maybe twice a year that is suddenly showing up on my desk... why now?

So there's emails to write, documents to upload, documents to delete, meetings to go to, workshops to attend, CSS to code and rogue graphic designers to wrangle.

And I'm sure for some people that's all just a normal day at the office, but it's thrown me into a very high gear.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go and find some Nurofen and heat up some leftovers...

Current Mood: