random n2n hotness

Today's Random Hotness comes from N2N Bodywear...

I'm not sure how practical the pink one is for a wrestling match... but the model looks pretty damn good in it...

Current Mood:

unconscious mutterings 426

A long day sucking very badly at talking to empty rooms... and now I feel a wee bit feverish... I only need to make it to Wednesday afternoon and I can fall apart then!

Until then my illness addled brain can take on... Unconscious Mutterings...

1. Recommendation :: Food
2. Toilet paper :: Kleenex
3. Scissors :: Running with
4. Blaze :: Pointless local gay rag
5. Frame :: Glasses
6. Process :: Review
7. Flight :: Sydney
8. Irish :: Coffee
9. Glasses :: Hipster
10. Campaign :: Trashy gay mag from the 90's

Current Mood:

shakespeare (abridged)

After a very long and very trying day yesterday, probably the best remedy was going to see the State Theatre Company's production of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) at the Festival Theatre.

We had exceptionally good seats too... second row centre... I love good seats!

Other than the fact that it was a comedy and was supposed to feature 37 of Shakespeare's plays in just under two hours, I wasn't completely sure what to expect... and to be honest, when it started I did wonder how long it was going to take them to actually get to the proper Shakespeare bits.

But once the curtain came up and the three stars turned up in costume, it was worth the wait.

Speaking of costumes... and the set, while we're there, since Ailsa Paterson was responsible for both... the costumes were absolutely hilarious in their own right. Think Elizabethan dress by way of the Mardi Gras complete with sequins, feathers and an impressive use of Converse sneakers. And the set, a transforming, adapting caravan of wonders, was equally impressive.

The show itself is hilarious... it starts off with a retelling of Romeo and Juliet, moves on to Titus Andronicus, before taking on Othello... then the pace really starts to pick up and before you know it, they've done everything but Hamlet and it's time for the interval.

The entire second act (which, granted, is much shorter than the first act) is Hamlet.

I don't want to say much more about it, because there are a number of great surprises in the show (or jokes that I don't want to spoil).

The three stars, Damian Callinan (who is probably the "best known" face of the three), Nathan O'Keefe (who I saw in Assassins in 2007) and Mark Saturno (arguably the most Shakespearean of the three), are excellent... they have great comic timing and never seem to miss a beat during the whole show.

Of the three I think O'Keefe was my favourite though, especially for the Hamlet speech he gives during the second half, but also because he has great energy throughout the show.

I was perhaps a little disappointed that Macbeth only got a tiny scene... although they do manage to distil it down perfectly.

If you're a big Shakespeare fan, you should love it, and if you're not, well it might make you want to give him a try!

Current Mood:

waiting room blues

Yesterday was The Longest And Dullest Day Of My Life!

But since it ended up being all about doctors and waiting rooms and medical procedures, consider this a warning!

After all my ranting on Friday about the issues with my ear, I had a horrendous night's sleep and woke up to find that my ear felt completely blocked and kinda painful.

Which made my efforts to tidy up the apartment somewhat complex...

Anyway, when Ma got here, I gave her the whole story and then we went off to do the usual shopping stuff.

And as always happens when I'm not feeling completely well, I didn't end up getting very much shopping at all... which is fine, but it'll just mean some extra trips to the shops during the week.

When we got back here, I called my doctor's office (and got The Weekend Receptionist... who was quite literally dumber than a box of hair) and made an appointment for a little later that morning.

But because shopping had been kind of light on, we made it back here really early, so there needed to be a whole lot of sitting around here before we headed down to Melbourne Street to see my doctor.

I sent Ma wandered off while I went in... and didn't really have to wait all that long, or at least it didn't feel that way.

So I poured out all of what had been going on since I last saw the doctor, and he poked around in my ear a bit and said that the mild swelling in my ear canal on Thursday had gone seriously hardcore and essentially had blocked my ear.

I'm pretty sure he said it was "Otitis externa" and given the description on Wikipedia, it sounds about right...

But then he said the words that didn't particularly thrill me... "hospital"... although they were more in relation to going to see someone with specialised skills and tools rather than having to be admitted, which didn't make it seem so bad.

He also called the Emergency Department to let them know that I was coming in, which I thought was nice... although given the rest of the story, it obviously didn't make the least bit of difference.

Anyway, he wrote me a referral letter, gave me a prescription for Panadine Forte and sent me on my way.

Ma was waiting for me outside in the car and I just pointed her in the direction of the Royal Adelaide and off we went...

I'm pretty sure that the last time I was in the Emergency Room of the RAH was around about the turn of the millennium... I have a feeling it was when my knee got some weird infection and I had to spend a few days in hospital as a result... after having to spend a stupidly long time waiting around the waiting room, only to have the orthopedic specialist come down, take a look at me for 30 seconds and get me admitted...

Anyway, I went in while Ma went off to park the car... I reported to Triage, showed them my letter, they took a bunch of details, then I had to speak to one of the clerical officers to book myself in (or something)... which is about the point at which Ma showed up.

By about that point, it was around 11:15am (or at least that was the time on the parking ticket Ma had).

And then we sat down to wait.

And we waited.

And the first hour went by kind of without me realising it...

And we waited.

And I amused myself tweeting and fiddling around with my phone.

And we waited.

And everybody who had been in the waiting room when we got there got seen to.

And a whole new batch of people showed up.

And the second hour dragged somewhat...

And we waited.

And we waited.

And the whole new batch of people all got seen to.

And we waited.

The third hour was incredibly trying.

Partly that was because some time around the end of the second hour Ma went over to ask the Triage nurse if we had any kind of ETA (personally I didn't see the point and knew they wouldn't tell her anything really useful, but she wanted to)... and found out that I was classed as Category 5...

So everybody who came in after me was higher priority...

Yes, I'll grant you that the woman who appeared to be in unspecified pain should have gone before me... and the woman who can in about chest pains... and the 15 year old who hopped in from a taxi after falling off his skateboard with some sort of busted ankle... and the woman with the "bug bite" on her leg... and pretty much anybody who came in via ambulance...

But to continually bump me back to the end of the line all the time? And to take the guy in his twenties with the arm tattoos who came in with his parents and didn't seem to be in any immediate danger or pain or anything? Surely I could have gone before him.

I do understand the meaning of triage... really... but to make me wait for three hours when I only ended up taking up about 15 minutes with an actual doctor (and a lot of that was her wandering around looking for things), it seems a little bit fucked.

Anyway, like I said, after more than three hours a female doctor came and got me and took me around to a cubicle with a dentist chair... and you would think, right, that if I have to go through all the drama of telling the triage nurse what the problem is, that they would actually write that down and put it on a file so the doctor doesn't have to ask "what can I do for you today?" or something similarly inane...

Fortunately I could just hand over my letter and didn't have to go through the whole entire story.

But then there was a lot of prodding and poking of my ear... not especially pleasant. And equally large amounts of the doctor looking in cabinets and drawers in the cubicle and then wandering off for a while...

Part of that was so that she could fashion a tiny little vacuum cleaner from a syringe body, a blunt bent needle thing and a suction tube. Kind of impressive really.

Although having it in my ear wasn't particularly pleasant... although it was somewhat satisfying when she pulled out a big lump of something and my ear felt clear suddenly... which was great, right up until the point she packed it with cotton wool soaked in antibiotic drops... and suddenly it was worse than before...

Worse because I'd been able to hear, and now I couldn't... plus the cotton was kinda irritating and probably rubbed against all the little abrasions inside my ear... urgh...

Also, I'm sure it looked very attractive, with a big lump of cotton wool in my ear...

So by the time it was all over, we were well into Hour Four... not really how I'd planned on spending my Saturday.

We decided to wander up to the Mall, since that had been our intended destination before all of this shit started... but we only really managed to string that out for about half an hour... even including a trip to the chemist to get my Panadine Forte and some cotton balls... so I'm really not sure what the hell we would have done with yesterday anyway.

And as a side effect of having the cotton in my ear, everything seemed excessively noisy... urgh...

Anyway, we came back to my place, went off to get some dinner since neither of us had really eaten since before we went to the hospital then headed out to see The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) at the Festival Theatre.

It probably would have been better if we hadn't had to go out last night... I was kinda exhausted after the lack of sleep and the rest of the day, but if laughter really is the best medicine, then I got myself a nice big dose.

But because I was so exhausted by the time we got back, I pretty much just fiddled around with my phone for a bit and then went to bed not long after 9:30...

Unfortunately I didn't have a particularly great night's sleep again... mostly because I'm a side-sleeper and end up laying on one ear or the other... and when one side isn't comfortable to lay on, it's a problem.

I also woke up with both ears feeling a little weird... it kind of feels like when you have the flu and your voice echoes in your head and everything sounds kind of a bit muffled... but I'm not freaking out about it... partly because it doesn't feel like it did yesterday... and also because I just don't have the energy. I'm guessing it's possibly because of the amount of poking at prodding they've had of late... and the fact that I think both doctors looked from one ear to the other without swapping little protective covers on the ear thing, and if what I've read about otitis externa is right, I think it found it's way over to my other ear.

But I'm just going to start using the drops in both ears...

I think if any day of my life can best be categorised as FML, it's yesterday.

On the up side, I least I know what the problem is...

Current Mood:

photo friday: sculpture on blue

One of these things is not like the other...

Two are from Melbourne, one is from Bondi and one is from Hindley Street...

Also, when did Blogger stop the images behaving the way they've behaved for some time now? Maybe it was when I upgraded to Firefox 4 this week... I really have no idea...

Anyway... I'm not a happy little bunny at the moment. On occasion one or other of my ears gets blocked, but usually it resolves itself with a minimum of fuss a few days later... this unfortunately is not one of those times. It got so painful that I had to go and see the doctor... and given that the last time I went to the doctor was June 2009, you kinda get an idea of how bad it was.

The downside of that is that I really, really dislike my doctor. But since I've only needed him twice in about twenty months, I'm not sure I can be bothered going to find a new one. But I might... because there's something about this one that just feels like he's a little bit stuck up or something. And I'm not sure if it's that I don't explain myself properly or he just doesn't listen or pay attention.

And there's nothing to make you feel like a well rounded, confident, urbane human being than holding a kidney bowl up to the side of your head while someone approaches you with an enormous metal syringe filled with warm water.

But essentially my ear which was blocked and occasionally painful is now blocked and occasionally much more painful than it was before... and it cost me $110 (okay, about $40 with the rebate). Plus another $75 for two lots of medication which so far hasn't seemed to do a damn thing but half of it has aided in the "more painful" part of the process.

When I got up this morning it was fairly painful, but I had some stuff I wanted to do at work, so I went in... and fortunately it settled down once I got there, only to flair up again when I got home.

PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT!

Fucking bollocky shit!

So I think there will be no small amount of curling up in my chair with some sort of blankie tonight and a small degree of sulking...

Current Mood:

random bl33n hotness

What is BL33N? Well, according to the website, you are BL33N... BL33N is also the subject of today's Random Hotness thanks to the images below...

After a little digging though, I now know that BL33N will be an online magazine and clothing line run and shot by gay couple Matthias & Donovan Vriens-McGrath...

Current Mood:

movies: the adjustment bureau

Do you know how long it's been since we went to the movies? Two months today! I think that's a record since we started doing movies regularly, and certainly a record while I've been running the blog. I knew it was a long while, but two months!

And the movie to break the drought... The Adjustment Bureau.

How much of your destiny is your own, and how much of it is predetermined... or guided by an external force? Much more than you would think according to this movie.

To be honest I was expecting more of a science fiction vibe... especially since it's "loosely" based on a short story by Philip K Dick... but what I ended up with was something with much more of a religious feel.

In essence, they tried very hard to be non-specific about who or what The Adjustment Bureau was, but they seemed to be closer to angels than to any other explanation... especially given the references to the mysterious "Chairman" running the whole show.

And in a way, that didn't work quite as well for me as it could have without the religious overtones.

It also left like it was borrowing somewhat heavily from The Matrix. More so the concepts from the later movies... but also the idea that "everything that happens, happens and couldn't have happened any other way"... and the idea that "anyone wearing a hat" can be "one of them". But maybe that's more that the Matrix was inspired by the original story rather than the other way around, I don't know.

Fortunately I never get tired of watching Matt Damon... and he's in his element here as a slightly Barrack Obama-eske yet hot-headed senator who is headed for great things.

Emily Blunt (who I think I've seen in other stuff every time I see her name, but it turns out this is the first thing I've actually seen her in) is equally watchable as the somewhat mysterious (at least to start with) Elise.

The stand-out performance though has to go to Anthony Mackie... it's very understated, but you can sense the layers there, even if they're never fully explained.

Overall though it is a little slow going... and for a movie that seems to be selling itself (from the poster at least) as a movie that should have a lot of chasing in it, there was much less running and chasing than I was expecting. And it also feels slightly like stuff we've seen before... but it's still worth watching.

yani's rating: 2 ripples out of 5

unconscious mutterings 425

So I learned today that it's easier to upload a 112MB to YouTube on a Friday at lunchtime than it is to upload a 50MB file on a Monday afternoon...

Unconscious Mutterings...

1. Jacob :: Team
2. Green :: Grocer
3. Cupcake :: BTS Cafe
4. Acts :: Play
5. Thunderous :: Fury
6. President :: Obama
7. Anxiety :: Medication
8. Matter :: Anti-matter
9. Diner :: 50's
10. Absence :: Makes the heart do that thing

Current Mood:

shades of grey

From the top...

Glass stairs at The Temple of Shiny (Sydney's Apple Store)... instructions on where to dance... Benzo face in grey... floor words from Sydney... grey bike on a grey wall... and All You Need Is Like...

All of which kind of match the weather right now... I think the slow descent into Winter has begun, which makes me very happy... although it's a little humid for my liking just now...

You know those Sundays that just disappear... you get up, you do a couple of things, then suddenly it's lunchtime, then you do a couple more things, put together an Ikea coffee table and suddenly it's 5:30?

I've had one of those days.

Can I have a do-over please?

Current Mood:

bargaination shopping saturday

Given the instagr.am photo that accompanies this post, it's not really any surprise where we ended up today...

In fact it was very much the day of shopping for bargainage...

Well, once the Usual Shopping Routine was over.

I possibly need to go through my food cupboards and throw some stuff out though... there's way too much shit in there I'm probably not going to use.

And currently way too much stuff on the counter top because it won't fit in the cupboards.

I also had a craving for Toona Noodle Doo while we were shopping, so hopefully I have some celery soup in the back of the cupboard...

Anyway...

Once we were done with the Usual Stuff, we headed down to Ikea. By happy coincidence this took us very, very far away from the Bogan 500 currently polluting the air with stupid car noise.

I also very nearly bought my dream set of Billy bookcases... because I've essentially run of of both DVD and tchotchka storage space (plus books, but I'm buying a lot less books than I used to). My one fear thought is that I'll end up filling the whole entire thing with books and DVDs and not have any room for decorative stuff... or add in the decorative stuff and not have any room for more DVDs or all my books...

It's a puzzle.

So as we wandered around I wrote down all the stupid little codes for all the bits of random bookcasery that I would need...

Ma picked up a couple of things, and I did end up getting the Lack coffee table which was marked down to half price (woohoo... and in the colour I want too)... I'm going to use it as a teevee stand, since none of the ones I like are narrow enough to fit in the space.

Obviously though, I didn't end up getting the bookcases... it's one of those chicken and egg things I think. I need to make the decision that I'm going to do everything I need to do with both the old and new bookcases... then I need to buy the bookcases... then I need to pack everything up... then I need to organise for the old bookcases to be given to the right people... then I need to have the new bookcases there... and so forth. Part of me thinks that if I had the bookcases in the house, then it would spur me on to do all the other things... but I also need to know I'm ready to do all the other things before I buy the bookcases...

Bah!

Anyway, once we were finished in the Land of Swedish Meatballs, we headed over to Harbor Town since it's just around the corner. No real reason... just because.

Mostly there was a lot of Wandering Around Looking At Stuff (or more truthfully Wandering Past Stuff There's No Point In Looking At)... but we did browse in the new Typo store and discovered that the perfume place had Ma's Harajuku Lovers perfume on special... as well as having the full set of little bottles of the new version... so I bought that for either her birthday or Christmas... not sure yet.

It was also nice sending Ma home reasonably early in the afternoon given that we've had Fringe shows to go to the last two Saturdays...

Current Mood:

photo friday: mr sloppy under glass

Just when I thought there couldn't be any new Mr Sloppys, I spotted this last week as I was leaving town after my haircut...

Sad that I remember when that store used to be a cute little second hand clothes shop!

Today has been... challenging...

Not necessarily a hellish day or a day when I was out of my depth... just a day where I kinda feel like I took a stoopid pill and everything all came back to land on my plate at once. Which is only fair really, since before today I didn't really do a whole hell of a lot with this project (which is just as well too, since everything I'd already done got canned and replaced with an idea I suggested).

And the stoopid pill part came in because I was feeling a little flustered I think... I deleted something I shouldn't have... I ran reports over the top of other reports because I hadn't changed the file name... I called somebody a bunch of names (not so they could hear, naturally) because they clearly didn't know what the hell they were talking about, only to discover that I hadn't actually run that particular process.

You know... stoopid pill stuff.

We've all been a little punchy this week I think... the end of a project that keeps getting whittled down and removed from our control... and I think we're all very glad to see the back of it.

It's also somewhat confronting when a guy you've only ever really thought of as "general background" at work (nobody in my immediate team thankfully) shows up in a particular pair of jeans and a particular teeshirt that make you look at him and go... "Hello Mr DILF!"

They were very, very, very good jeans...

Speaking of which, one of the pairs of jeans I bought last weekend seem to be cut kinda low in the back and high in the front for no logical reason that I can think of... surely it would make more sense to cut them in exactly the opposite way... but no. So I realised at lunch that I may very well have been flashing ass crack at the world for the previous 20 minutes. Not flattering.

And now I'm going to make quiche for dinner... mmmmm...

Current Mood:

random kaboom hotness

Over the weekend I watched the Gregg Araki movie, Kaboom... weird, but not without the odd Random Hotness...

The main hotness was definitely the character of Thor (played by Chris Zylka) though... the dumb surfer who wears very little, is as straight as an arrow but behaves gayer than gay... and who attempts auto-fellatio at one point.

Zylka hasn't been in anything particularly memorable (although he did play Joey Donner in the teevee version of 10 Things I Hate About You)... but he's about the star as Flash Thompson in the new Spiderman reboot... so if that doesn't "launch" him, nothing will!

Which possibly explains the radical makeover! I kinda miss the longer hair though...

Current Mood:

blue lines

It's been something of a trying day...

I forgot my glasses this morning so I had a headache by lunchtime which hung around even though I'd taken a couple of tablets... in fact it hung around until I got home and put my glasses on.

Then one of my ears was playing up and I couldn't hear properly all afternoon (but that's okay now too).

Then I came home to a disappointing dinner and an over-rated movies...

I'm very thankful it's only a four day week!

Current Mood:

post fringe round-up 2011

Twenty-two days, 16 Fringe shows (that's one show every 1.375 days)... and now it's all over for another year!

This week is going to feel incredibly quiet (from a "not going anywhere" point of view).... quiet, but kinda a relief...

I know I said this last year, but I think possibly that 16 shows in three weeks is my limit! I mean, maybe I could try for 20, but that would be the absolute limit...

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed everything bar about three shows... and I definitely have a bunch of names that I'll be looking for in the Fringe guide next year... it's just that the whole thing is a touch exhausting.

And there wasn't really anything that I wanted to go and see that I never got around to. There's maybe one or two things I was a little curious about... but nothing I really feel like I missed out on.

One thing I won't miss is the godawful poster design... so monumentally crap! And the fact that it was an overseas "designer" who won it just rubs salt in the wound... Australia-wide I can understand, although really, don't we have enough talented folk here in South Australia to come up with a design?

But I'm getting off track...

Just for the record though, some of these shows are separated only by minute degrees... and I kept seeing such great stuff that it pushed other great stuff further down the list.

1. Macbeth
   "Both Douglas Brooks and Laura Irish are magnetic and emotionally raw as the titular Lord and Lady... I don't know that I've ever seen such incredibly passion between the two characters, and it made sense to me that she could manipulate Macbeth to do such terrible things because he is so madly in love with her."
   
   This was only the second thing that I went to see, but it still is the one that completely and totally blew me away. And when anybody has asked what my favourite show has been, this is always the one I mention. It's also the show that I found most effecting and that has stayed with me more than any of the others.


2. I, Elizabeth
   "From the moment that Rebecca Vaughan steps on stage, she is every inch the monarch... with grace and good humour (and the occasion fit of rage or tears) she commands the space, commands the attention of the audience, and is just mesmerising! I seriously could not bring myself to look away from her for the whole show!"
   
   I very nearly missed out on this one (thanks to my Twitter buddies, especially Peteski, who made such a strong case for going to see it), which would have been a great shame... it was simply amazing.


3. The Boy with Tape on His Face, More Tape
   "And just when I didn't think that you could possibly top the finale of last year's show with the bubbles and the fans, you manage to take it all the way up to the next level in spectacular fashion this year with Total Audience Participation Armageddon!"
   
   For as many years as The Boy with Tape on His Face keeps coming back to the Fringe and putting on shows as good as either this year or last year, I will be in the audience!


4. Shakespeare's Mothers: Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know
   "Martin and Perry are amazing, strong and feisty women who just act the living shit out of the various roles... as the title suggests, the play is much more about them that it is about Jones in either the role of Shakespeare or any of the male characters he plays to offset the women... in fact, in a number of the scenes he isn't really lit at all, the emphasis instead is squarely on the women."
   
   A fantastic grab-bag of Shakespeare's women... and an amazing piece of theatre. I just hope that it managed to attract the audience it deserved.


5. Freefall
   "The way that they leap and throw each other around, not to mention fly through the air on occasion is simply amazing to watch. And my hands are still a little sore from all the clapping we did during the show. In fact I think I can safely say that I clapped more in this show than I think I've clapped in anything we've seen at this year's Fringe."
   
   This is definitely one of the shows where the artists have gone straight onto the "if they come back, I'll see them" list... amazing, amazing work, either in spite of, because of or completely regardless of their ages.


6. Philip Escoffey: Six More Impossible Things Before Dinner
   "Escoffey doesn't claim to be psychic or a mind-reader or anything, but it feels like he should be... in essence I think he's profoundly skilled at misdirection, human behaviour and psychology (essentially, the magician's arts), but it's really up to everyone who goes to the show to make up their own mind about who and what he is."
   
   The longer I think about this show, the more of the tricks I feel like I can kind of work out... but it's still those moments that I have no idea about that amaze me and would bring me back to see him again.


7. Le Gateau Chocolat
   "That deep, warm, powerful, comforting, beautiful, liquid velvet voice that wraps around you like so much gold sequinned lyrca!"
   
   Do you think there's a space for Le Gateau Chocolat at the Cabaret Festival? I'd love to see him on stage at the Festival Theatre... as I said in my original review, an hour of Le Gateau Chocolat just wasn't enough!


8. Mothlight
   "Once the performance does begin under the light of a single bulb, it's dirty and raw and brutal and messy and painful and takes place as though the audience isn't really there for the most part. It's also silent... that's what makes it most effective I think... the whole show is performed silently, with only the wind flapping in the plastic, the sounds of the traffic below and the occasional slap or grunt from bodies in motion."
   
   Although this show was touted as being all about the acrobatics, it was everything about it that made it not only an amazing experience, but also, without doubt, once of the weirdest Fringe experiences I've had so far.


9. Niets is echt moeilijk
   "Bart Strijbos, Dorus van der Meer and Toon Kuijpers don't just sit back and expect people to come and see them, each performance is proceeded by about 20 minutes of them working the crowd, handing out plywood "flyers" (I got the very first flyer, right before the hoards of children descended) and drawing people in."
   
   This show was amazing not just for the insanity that happened inside the big wooden box, but also for how hard they worked to ensure that they had a full house each night.


10. Swamp Juice
    "However the finale more than makes up for it, and is something that I totally didn't expect to work as well as it did (I'd say what happened, but Achtem asked us not to tell... it's a surprise!)."
    
    An entertaining end to our Fringe experience... and the finale was just wonderful!


11. Talking Poofy
    "I don't know what it is about Adam Richard that makes me laugh so hard... I think it's his giggle... it's not a clean giggle, not by any stretch of the imagination, and once he starts, it starts me off.... and before you know it I'm essentially crying with laughter. But all three poofs had me pretty much in stitches."
    
    The only really "mainstream" comedy show that I saw, and as always, Adam Richard is comedy gold... of course the other two weren't bad either.


12. Barry Morgan's World of Organs
    "The other great thing about Barry is that he can definitely play the organ... it's not all big hair and even bigger smiles... oh no, Barry can play, even if a lot of the songs walk the line between nostalgia and 80's cheese."
    
    While I still don't know if he could really sustain a whole hours worth of show, parts of it were very funny.


13. @shakespeare.com
    "It was a trifle uneven overall... I think they had a great premise, but the execution felt a little haphazard, as though they either had too many ideas to fill up the time but didn't necessarily chose the best ones... or else they ran out of ideas just from one play and ended up throwing everything and the kitchen sink at it towards the end."
    
    I'd really love it if they took this show away, stripped back some of the parts that didn't work, polished up what remains and brought it back... it definitely showed promise.


14. Pirate Rhapsody, Mermaid Requiem
    "As a singer, Bradson is quite good, although a lot of the theatrics get in the way of the performance at times I think... and as I said before, sometimes it's hard to tell what he's actually singing."
    
    It's fortunate that I'm not ranking these on the way the artists reacted to their reviews.


15. Nice Work If You Can Get It
    "What I'd really expected was almost an hour of dance and acrobatics with a very combative feel... what I got was a show that wandered through most of the performing arts and felt a little soft around the edges."
    
    These two guys were in the audience for Freefall... and I wanted to say to them afterwards... "see, THIS is how it's done"... there was promise there, but it just failed to deliver.


16. World War Wonderful
    "Sorry ladies, but World War Wonderful was anything but."
    
    A complete and total disappointment.

So that's it! Farewell Fringe 2011... bring on the Cabaret Festival... and then Fringe 2012!

Current Mood:

unconscious mutterings 424

So I've managed to do pretty much nothing on my day off... I went to the gym this morning, the pretty boy at the counter wished me a Happy Birthday, I did my workout (and how young is too young for the gym... there was a kid there with his mum who couldn't have been more than about 14), he also said something to the effect of enjoying the rest of my day when I was on my way out ("Well how about you come home with me and I can really make it a birthday to remember")...

I came home, had a shower, swapped the shorts and teeshirt I went to the gym in for the shorts and teeshirt I've worn all day, I didn't bother shaving or doing my hair... then after pootling around on the laptop for a bit, I settled in to watch movies all afternoon...

All in all, the perfect birthday so far!

Unconscious Mutterings...

1. Judge :: Judy
2. Safe :: Cracker
3. Boulevard :: Sunset
4. 27 :: Hours or Days Later, but neither is actually correct
5. Next :: Week
6. Ma’am :: Yes
7. Desktop :: Icons
8. Club :: Chocolate
9. Violet :: Crumble
10. Enamel :: Bathtub

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it's my (37th) birthday

And so it's my birthday... finally... at the end of a weekend that has been something of a birthday orgy (well, no, not really... that's a whole other kind of birthday celebration, which I haven't managed yet)...

Interestingly, I think I'm having the same reaction to turning 37 that I had to turning 27... I'm starting to think about the big round number birthday that's just around the corner. It's like when I had to stop checking the "26-34" box on forms and had to move up to the "35 to 44" one... confronting.

But at least I feel young and fresh compared with Albert...

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fringe: bunk puppets - swamp juice

Our Fringe journey came to an end tonight with Swamp Juice by Bunk Puppets...

It's very much a show aimed at kids, there's nothing "adult" or risqué about it... there are a couple of fart jokes, but kids love those. But perhaps not for the under 5's as there are a couple of scary moments and one of the kids tonight did get a little freaked out at one stage.

I would have to say that it's a very "non-traditional" shadow puppet show, if only because Jeff Achtem, the puppeteer, is completely visible the whole time (totally in character), as are the puppets and you can see everything that he's doing and how he makes the puppets do what they do. It's all decidedly homemade and not refined in any way, but still manages to give a great result on screen.

He also has this great rig that allows him to switch between three different "sets"... kind of the shadow puppet equivalent of close up, medium and long shots I guess.

And it's the first time that the ever present and completely annoying locust/cricket/fugly bugs that have infiltrated every single show that I've seen in The Garden of Unearthly Delights have become part of the show... and was one of the funniest parts of the show (whether it's something he's done all through the run or whether it was just tonight I don't know).

The story is very simple, which is fine... although I'm not sure some of the stuff at the beginning really follows through to the end, which it felt like it could have done.

My only real complaint though is that the music/sound effects track often drowned out the sound of Achtem, meaning that some of his funnier lines were missed.

However the finale more than makes up for it, and is something that I totally didn't expect to work as well as it did (I'd say what happened, but Achtem asked us not to tell... it's a surprise!).

All in all though, a nice way to round out our Fringe experience.

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pre-birthday non-adventures

Looking back on my last couple of birthday/pre-birthday blog posts, it seems that last year I was decidedly unbirthdaylike and sound a little glum (I didn't even take a photo of my presents last year, and I have no idea what the hell I got)... but the year before we did interesting things involving art and stuff...

This year (although my actual birthday isn't until Monday... so this would be one of those "pre" things) it's a little of both to be honest... a ho-hum day, but we have plans (dinner and the final one of our Fringe shows) for the evening which should be good.

Fortunately, because I spent yesterday morning cleaning up, all I had to do this morning when I got up was wash the dishes, which was nice... and also fortunate, because I don't think I had the greatest night's sleep ever. I only really remember waking up once, but it still didn't feel like a restful night.

Possibly that was the weather... it's been kinda humid but just generally ick all day, which isn't really allowed on my Birthday Weekend.

Anyway, we did the usual Supermarket Routine... before diverging slightly to go and look for jeans for me in the Red Circle Boutique... and fortunately they had 20% off men's clothing... plus I picked up one pair that had been $50, were marked down to $30 and then scanned at $11... woohoo!

I maybe got a little carried away and bought three pairs... but I never liked one of the pairs in my wardrobe and the other two currently don't fit... so...

Once we'd come back and I'd unpacked and flicked through the paper, it was Present Time... once again I say woohoo!

Although, really, there wasn't a lot to unwrap... and most of it I knew about... but the money was a surprise. That's supposed to go to a new camera or something. Not completely sure what I want to do with that, so not really sure what I'm doing with the money.

And I have no idea what the hell I'm going to do with the little suitcase... I don't really even remember Ma buying it... I kinda sorta do, but not really.

Anyway, I put the camera pendant on the same chair as my toy soldier (which instantly sounded like I was wearing a cat bell for some unknown reason) and we headed out again.

To be honest, neither of us really had anywhere we were desperate to go to or anything we really needed to do, with the exception of going to pick up Ma's evaporative cooler which stopped working a couple of weeks ago and was in for repairs.

So we did that, poked around the microwaves (me... must be stainless steel and shiny and possibly without a turntable), fridges and dryers (Ma... it would be nice if I could talk her into a stainless steel fridge, but I don't know how likely that is), then wandered over to Howard's Storage World for some Looking At Things followed by some Buying Things You Don't Really Need But Seem Like A Good Idea.

Once we were finished there, that was kind of the point at which the wheels came off the day...

We had no idea where to go or what do to... so we ended up heading into the city... which didn't work either since there were no cheap street carparks, so we didn't both trying for a real carpark since we didn't really have any great burning desire to go anywhere in particular.

In the end we headed down to Arndale, just because... and I bought a couple of new teeshirts, just because (and because one had a Smurf on it... because I'm obviously turning 7 on Monday)... had drinks at Gloria Jeans (because it's about the only decent place down at Arndale)... and I bought a new (Round Belcher... it's a thing, who knew) chain for my camera pendant... and then we gave up and came back here.

At that point I attacked my wardrobe and threw a bunch of stuff out, including all the old pairs of jeans except my black ones and the ones I'd been wearing... I also threw in the towel on the big green furry lined hoodie I bought in Melbourne last year... I was never ever going to wear it again, it's just too damn hot and takes up too much space in the wardrobe.

And when I was putting everything back in again, I may have gotten a teeny tiny bit carried away... it's okay, it'll only stay like that for about a week.

So that's about that really...

Now we're just waiting around before it's time to head down to Bombay Bicycle Club for dinner and then to The Garden of Unearthly Delights to see Swamp Juice...

Current Mood:

photo friday: best day off ever

These two shots are both from the day we went down to the Brighton sculptures... one is a sculpture, the other was a completely off-the-cuff snap I took just before I got back in the car... but somehow as soon as I saw the two images, they somehow matched up texturally (is that even a word?).

In other news... Best! Day Off! Ever!

I have had the best day! I slept in this morning for a couple of hours, got up, tidied the apartment (for the first time in about a week... damn all these nightly Fringe shows) and then headed out to the gym at about 8:30.

If felt quite strange to be going to the gym when the sun was up, even weirder when there were actual live people in the North Adelaide Village. I just hit about the right time too... all the people who go before work were either gone or just leaving, so the place wasn't too packed. But of course some random dude hogged one of the weights machines I use (fuck off and use something I don't use), so I had to work around him a bit.

Also, 20 minutes on the treadmill at 9% incline... go me!

I may have stretched my neck in a funny way at some point though, it's feeling a little weird at the moment... not painful, just weird.

After all the gymness I headed home, had some breakfast, fiddled around with my laptop and then headed into town for my Pre-Birthday Haircut.

Haircuts are so awesome... well, they are when you have an awesome hairdresser like Tink! She's great at cutting hair, great to chat to, and we've known each other, haircut-wise, for longer than I've been writing this blog... so at least six years. And we had lots to chat about this time because she'd gone to see The Boy with Tape on his Face (at my suggestion) and loved it... and I told her about some of the other Fringe stuff I've seen.

Just after she'd finished putting my colour on she told me she's moving house (she lives in North Adelaide too... but at the other end)... and she's pregnant! Very exciting! But I told her that when she goes on Maternity Leave I'm just going to come and get my hair cut in her kitchen (which she said was totally happening... woohoo).

As far as hair goes... it's the usual... short (although the longer side of short this time, through the top anyway) and blonde (although only blonde through the top, we left the sides au naturel again).

After I left the salon I went straight down to Dymocks in search of a copy of The Velveteen Rabbit (my official Go-To present for new babies, right after a pewter moneybox)... I had a specific edition in mind, but assumed that they probably wouldn't have it in stock, since I haven't seen it there the last couple of times I've looked. Turns out all the stars aligned correctly, and it was there. So now I have about six months to find the perfect rabbit to go with it. Hopefully Easter will help with that.

I stopped off at the car to drop the book off and pick up a folder of photo proofs, then headed down to the Paper String Plastic gallery to chat with the lovely man there about doing something with my photos... and he took all of the proofs and I now just need to work out what it is I want to do with them.

Squeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Me... with real live photos in a real live gallery... who woulda thunk it!

After that I needed to sit down and have a bubble tea... cool off a little... then came home via the supermarket where I bought some stuff for lunch (mmmm pastrami bagel) and dinner.

The one downside to the day was when the man from the electricity company rocked up on my doorstep and was all "putting in new meters, have to turn the power off for an hour"... but at least I got some reading done, so it wasn't a complete waste of time.

And now it's nearly time for So You Think You Can Dance and home-made pizza...

I say again... Best! Day Off! Ever!

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