#photoadayjuly

#photoadayjuly

I'll confess, July has been the most difficult Photo-A-Day month so far... I'm not sure if it's the winter weather, or a lack of inspiration... but I got stuck on Day 2 and didn't manage to unstick myself until Day 4. And a few other shots have either not completely come together or else been last minute versions, and very few have actually been planned out in advance (with the possible exception of Days 6 and 15).

I also think that this month has more carefully stage-managed shots than previous months (specifically Days 2, 20 and 25) beyond the obviously set up shots.

It was also a low Lego month, with only four shots (Days 1, 4, 17 and 29), bringing the total Lego Photo-A-Day entries up to 27. Almost a whole month's worth.

Day 10 taught me an important lesson about my iPhone... if you let the lens get all covered in pocket fluff then your photos will have a weird diffused quality to them... which isn't great.

  • Day 1: Self portrait (Little Traveller standing in for me again)
  • Day 2: Busy (I wasn't at the time, this is a completely fabricated shot)
  • Day 3: Best part of my day (hometime)
  • Day 4: Fun (I wasn't having any, so I made my own)
  • Day 5: On the floor
  • Day 6: Chair
  • Day 7: Garden
  • Day 8: Lunch
  • Day 9: Big
  • Day 10: My favourite colour (red, obviously)
  • Day 11: Letter
  • Day 12: Texture
  • Day 13: Open (an open sign, in an open bin at a gallery opening)
  • Day 14: Building (or, rather, a tree inside a building)
  • Day 15: Finger
  • Day 16: Sign
  • Day 17: My addiction (addictions actually... Lego minifigures and Iced Coffee)
  • Day 18: Plate
  • Day 19: Animal/insect/pet
  • Day 20: Eyes (my eyeBirds making an appearance)
  • Day 21: 9 o'clock
  • Day 22: Upside down
  • Day 23: Mirror
  • Day 24: A stranger
  • Day 25: Heart
  • Day 26: Sunshine (I really thought this day's word was sunLIGHT)
  • Day 27: On the road
  • Day 28: Cup
  • Day 29: Last thing I bought (he's stuck on my keyboard at work now)
  • Day 30: Calm (the river has very often been my calm place)
  • Day 31: Toothbrush
And for new players, you can find the August list here...

Current Mood:

movies: the dark knight rises

the dark knight rises - the legend ends
Me and July and Batman movies... it's a pattern. Seven years ago, my third ever blog post (and my first official movie review) was for Batman Begins... then almost exactly four years ago it was The Dark Knight...

And today it was The Dark Knight Rises.

I went back and read my thoughts on the previous two movies, and I have to say, a fair amount of what I said on both those previous occasions still holds true for this movie.

Firstly, it's too long... and partly it's too long because there are just too many characters, which means too many plot lines to have to service and give time to and eventually pay off.

And almost all of those minor characters are played by people whose faces I recognised (Ben Mendelsohn, Burn Gorman, Aidan Gillen, Matthew Modine, Juno Temple... and the inclusion of at least three of those names point to the fact they obviously did a fair amount of filming in the UK), which is very much like the previous two films.

Not that there's anything overly wrong with that approach, and as I've said on previous occasions, who wouldn't want to be in a Batman movie, even for a few minutes.

I also couldn't help feeling that around half way through the plot starts to feel like it belongs to a completely different kind of movie... some sort of semi post apocalyptic, science fiction, dystopian future kind of movie.

Somehow it felt too big for a superhero movie... which I know sounds weird, given that superhero movies are generally over the top, but usually the superhero stops the bad guy before the kind of radical change that happens to Gotham City here happens.

And to be perfectly honest, Batman (or The Bat Man as everybody in the movie seems determined to refer to him as) is almost unnecessary to the plot of this movie. I don't know what percentage of the running time of the movie actually has Christian Bale in full costume as the titular Dark Knight, but if it's greater than 10% I'd be fairly surprised.

I also think that Batman/Bruce Wayne is the least interesting character in the movie... so much so that he ends up feeling unnecessary to a certain degree.

The two characters who did command my attention every time they were on screen were those played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Anne Hathaway.

Sadly, Hathaway's Selina Kyle doesn't get as much screen time in the second half of the movie, but she is the perfect Catwoman (not that she's ever referred to as that at any point in the movie, just references to her as "The Cat", a rather unimaginative name for a cat-burglar) for Nolan's universe in the same way that Michelle Pfeiffer was the perfect version for Tim Burton's universe in Batman Returns.

Hathaway is sexy, deadly and the personification of style in this movie.

Gordon-Levitt's John Blake feels more like the nexus of this movie than Batman/Bruce Wayne. And given how much of the movie happens to/around him, you could almost say he was the protagonist. And as always Joseph is incredibly watchable.

As the villain of the piece, Tom Hardy is almost unrecognisable as Bane... he's also very frequently incomprehensible as well due to the Bane's mask and the vocal effects they use on his dialogue. There were perhaps a half dozen places where I actually couldn't understand a word Bane was saying. And for the rest of the time he appeared to be doing a weird Sean Connery impression.

And in a similar way to the fact that I didn't find Ledger's Joker especially disturbing, I also didn't find Bane to be overtly menacing.

But perhaps that has more to do with the pace of the Nolan Batman movies and, as I mentioned already, they're so packed with both plot and character that some of the characters don't really feel like they're making a great impression.

I also had a little bit of a problem with both of the confrontations between Batman and Bane in the movie, in that they're essentially just standing toe to toe and brawling. The second of the confrontations is even worse as they're standing in the middle of the street in broad daylight punching it out.

To me, that's not who Batman is supposed to be... he's not the "stand in front of you and punch your lights out" superhero guy... he doesn't have super strength, he's not invulnerable... he's the sneaking around in the shadows, using gadgets and stealth to disable his opponents kind of superhero. But for the most part, that's not what Nolan's Batman does in this movie. I mean his grappling gun doesn't even make an appearance.

Maybe it's true to the source material of the comics... maybe it's true to who the comic book version of Batman is... or at least one version of Batman is... but I don't think it's my version of Batman.

And part of the whole Batman arc feels almost as though it's lifted straight from the first movie... there's a hell of a lot of "beginning" (or possibly re-beginning, even though that's not a word) in this movie.

Overall though, it's a big movie... a grand movie... a beautifully designed, gorgeous looking movie... for the most part, it's an entertaining movie... and Hathaway and Gordon-Levitt are wonderful (and I would totally pay money for a full length movie with Hathaway's Catwoman... think superhero meets heist movie), but it didn't hit me on an emotional level the way that The Amazing Spiderman did, and I'm kind of glad that this closes the book on the Nolan trilogy.

yani's rating: 2 hostile takeovers out of 5

cinematic saturday shopping

the dark knight and shopping
There really isn't all that much to report from today...

I did stay up until about 1:30am this morning watching the two previous Batman movies in preparation for today, which meant that when my alarm went off, I went back to sleep and I think I only woke up again when my phone went off with a message from Ma telling me she was on her way.

The upside of that is that she lives far enough away that I was still able to get up, tidy up a little, have a shower and get dressed before she got here.

Next up was a fairly standard shopping excursion... including getting some supplies to make goodies for Banger's birthday morning tea at work next week.

After that, we came back here for the usual unpacking and suchlike and then I attempted to buy tickets to The Dark Knight Rises via the Event Cinemas app on my iPhone.

I say "attempted" since it was monumentally confusing, full of references that I didn't actually understand and I couldn't make it do what I knew it should be able to do. So in the end I gave up and fired up the laptop, which was so much simpler.

And due to the fact that I had more than enough points on my Cinebuzz card, plus Ma has her Old Lady Card, plus I still had a little bit of cash left on the gift card that La Cousina gave me at Christmas, two tickets ended up costing me $10.10.

So in the last week, Ma and I have seen two different movies, neither of which were on that particular cinema's "cheap day", and all it has cost us is $10.10. Which is pretty damn good.

The only downside to sitting through the two hours and forty five minutes of The Dark Knight Rises is that my body didn't appreciate it in the slightest.

After the movie we had a wander around Arndale for a bit just so that I could stretch out my leg/back before we called it a day.

When we got back here we both wanted something to eat so we took a walk down the road to grab something, having to settle for Subway when the place we originally wanted to go turned out to be closed.

And for all intents and purposes that has been my day...

Current Mood:

photo friday: wet wet wet

stone point - adelaidebe free - brisbane

living leaf - melbournerock splash - sydney

It has been, in a great many respects, a full-on week.

Actually, let me clarify that... a full-on week emotionally.

There have been a large number of work related things weighing on my mind of late. Part of which is a lack of continual work (a lot of my work happens in fits and starts depending on what's coming in) and I think the fact that it's hard to make it through a whole day at work without being in pain plus the fact that I haven't exercised since I injured my back... well, let's just say that the emotional part of my brain has been pulling some major three year old tantrums and is in need of a serious time-out.

It all came to a head at our planning day yesterday... although the fact that I was able to walk to the venue in the morning, stand up for pretty much the whole day and then walk back to work in the afternoon did do my back a world of good... it's just a shame that I can't stand up every day.

But anyway, back to the planning day... very often when I start talking about stuff, especially during those kinds of meetings, I'm never completely sure what it is I'm going to say when I start talking... and sometimes the things I say actually come as a surprise to me... or perhaps it's just that I haven't ever had that actual conscious thought or put two particular thoughts together to come up with a realisation.

So I started talking at the planning day and realised that there were a lot of things that were making me angry and sad and just generally blah. Not that I said all of that in the meeting, it just started the train of thought that continued during my walk back to the office.

That then led to a conversation with my manager, who I will just say here and now is a prince amongst men, which allowed me to get a bunch of stuff off my chest and out in the open. Some of it wasn't even anything that needed solving, it was more "logically I know X, but emotionally it makes me feel Y", and I actually walked out of that meeting feeling like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

 Current Mood:

random ranch hotness

This week's Random Hotness is a little bit of an audiovisual feast... pictures AND video (that's two weeks in a row there's been video)!

I don't quite know how or why this particular video and photos from underwear company Andrew Christian managed to sneak past me, but as soon as I saw the Jockstrap Cowboys video (at the bottom of this post) staring Quin, Sean, Brandon and Colby, I knew it was destined for a hotness post.

sean for andrew christianquinn for andrew christian

colby and brandon for andrew christianbrandon and colby for andrew christian

brandon, colby and sean for andrew christianquinn, robert, colby and sean for andrew christian

In addition to the official video, there are also two behind the scenes videos... which are also worth watching.


Jockstrap Cowboys by Andrew Christian from Andrew Christian on Vimeo.


Current Mood:

movies: hysteria

hysteria - a comedy about the birth of the vibrator in victorian england.
There's a type of movie that the English almost always get exactly pitch perfect... Kinky Boots was one, as was Miss Pettigrew... and I have to say that Hysteria is a very worthy addition to that list.

I honestly think that the last time I laughed out loud so much during a movie was in The Producers. In fact there's one scene around the middle of the movie where I actually ended up slumped to one side because I was laughing so much.

Sure, it's a little bit of a by-the-book romantic/screwball comedy (I've been watching a number of old screwball comedies of late, and I'd actually say that it leans more towards that kind of idea than your traditional romantic comedy)... and you can actually see more or less how all the pieces are going to come together from the start... but the journey itself is well worth taking.

And I think one of the early descriptions of it I read pretty much sums it up:

Yes, this film is about the invention of the first vibrator. Sure, it sounds risqué, but not to worry, we promise you this film is nothing but wholesome fun! Witty and entertaining, Hysteria will not only amuse, but also educate you on how this very popular device was created.

It's a decidedly cheeky movie (to use a very English description... it's not dirty, but it is a little bit impudent and saucy at times).

There are also times when it almost feels like there are two movies butting up against each other... the total comedy around the invention of the vibrator and a drama about a woman trying to make a difference in the lives of people less fortunate than herself. For the most part the two storylines are easy bedfellows, although on occasion there are some quite swift changes in tone, but nothing that brings the movie to a screeching halt.

And I don't know what it is about handsome young gentlemen in Victorian attire... but there's something about those high starched collars and waistcoats that I find terribly appealing... especially on a gentleman like Mr Hugh Dancy... who also does a brilliant job as the central character, Dr Granville.

His performance really does remind me of some of those old screwball comedy stars. In a good way.

Maggie Gyllenhaal is more than his match, and as with her performance in Stranger Than Fiction, she never shies away from playing a strong, free spirited woman who does things because she knows they're right, rather than what society tells her she should be doing.

The supporting cast has a number of familiar English faces, including Rupert Everett who appears to just be having a whale of a time and chewing on any bit of scenery he can get his hands on (and is it me, or has he had "work done"... there were a couple of scenes where he didn't look quite right).

It's definitely one of the funniest movies I've seen in a while, and although it's occasionally a little bit cheeky, it's still something you could take your grandmother to.

So a big thank you to Sebastian and all the folk from Hopscotch for providing the opportunity (and the free passes) for me to see it.

yani's rating: 4 Jolly Mollys out of 5

another arts and crafts shopping saturday

shopping - it's still cheaper than therapy
It's been an highly arts and crafts related Saturday today... and a very busy one.

It all started with the usual routine... although there was perhaps more shopping at the supermarket than usual.

There was also a little wandering around in Target... for no real reason, although I did buy some new black socks since my existing ones seem to be disappearing or just generally dying.

Thrilling stuff really...

After that we headed off to the Showgrounds for another round of the Bowerbird Bazaar.

I said to Ma before we went that it was entirely likely that we would wander around and not buy anything...

That turned out to be not so true...

bowerbird realness
In fact, we didn't even make it past one of the first stalls (Deepblue Designworks) without buying some of their little wooden ornament thingies...

As usual though, we only really bought small things... Ma picked up a few cards from Short Story, I bought a little leather bracelet from Temono...

In fact, I think the largest thing I bought was a plate from Douglas & Hope with a design by GhostPatrol.

Like always, once we'd finished out wanderings we headed over to the Red Door Bakery stall to grab some yummy lunch (and awesome dessert).

We did do a little bit of wandering after that, just to make sure we'd seen everything properly... but then we pretty much called it quits.

Our next stop was the city...

And I'm a little annoyed that they've put the parking ticket prices up on Rundle Street again... and not only that, but the machines won't do a damn thing if you haven't put the exact money in. Actually that's not true... they won't do anything if you put LESS than the exact change in (plus they don't actually tell you what the issue is, they just won't work), but if you put more in, they'll happily take the cash and not give you any change.

Rudeness!

Anyway...

We stopped off at Espionage Gallery so that Ma could take a look at the Ingrained show... and as always Josh was happy to see us. And we ended up having a totally non-artwork/gallery related chat...

Next stop was the Museum for The Waterhouse Art Prize.

waterhouse 2012 - joanna roberts, coleoptera - jane price, emerging - kay gibson, home - tom moore, circle of birds - tess cole, chrondrichthyans
I can't be bothered looking back at previous blog posts about the Waterhouse, but I have a feeling a number of them would say something like "the standard of work isn't as good this year as it's been in previous years".

And to be honest, this year wasn't any different. Now there's two possible reasons for that... either a) it's twelve months between instances where we see the Waterhouse exhibition, and in that time I actually forget what the range of work actually looked like... or b) the standard of work isn't as good when compared against the previous year.

I could also be wrong, but it felt like there were less pieces this year...

We also had to content with the Old People Art Appreciation Society, which seemed to be out in force a little bit... usually when we've gone it's been first thing in the morning, right after we get back from shopping, but this time it was early afternoon by the time we got to the museum.

But getting back to the artworks...

I could be mistaken, but it seemed that there were a lot more monochromatic works than previous years... or else it all just felt a bit colourless... I'm not sure.

There were some excellent pieces (although once again, the appeal of the winning piece totally escapes me)... most notably, the five in the above image (and yes, even given the fact that three of them are fairly monochromatic)...
  • Joanna Roberts, Coleoptera
  • Jane Price, Emerging
  • Kay Gibson, Home
  • Tom Moore, Circle of Birds
  • Tess Cole, Chrondrichthyans
My personal favourite was Joanna Roberts piece... it's impossible to see in the photo but the beetles are each made up of layers of coloured vellum which causes some of the colours to only exist because you're seeing through multiple layers. It was also the piece that I voted for in the People's Choice section.

There were a few others that made it on my list, but those were my favourites.

And that was pretty much it for the day really...

Current Mood:

photo friday: blue friday

barlow bluebenzo spirals

bird utesilver leaf

It's been a bit of a difficult week...

And I'm deep in the throws of "it gets worse before it gets better" with regards to my back... today was the second of my chiro appointments, and while I felt better immediately after getting off The Table, generally the afternoons have been more difficult this week.

I also can't help feeling that the actual adjustments are a major anticlimax... not only does The Table stop me from being able feel/hear any of the clicks or pops as my spine goes back into place, but it's also over really, really quickly.

Combining that with the fact that work is a little bit frustrating at present (not helped by the fact that sitting is an issue)... more so from the lack of things rather than the opposite... I'm feeling a little flat... a little blue you could say.

So I think it might be time to go lay in bed and watch movies...

Current Mood:

random bingliest hotness

Today's Random Hotness is a little different from the normal kind of hotness.

I think this is the first time the hotness is question has been fictional. Well... he's partly fictional... actor Christopher Sean plays the very adorable "almost doctor" Bing Lee in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.

If only there was a reason for Bing Lee to appear in every single episode shirtless...


But he does ramp the adorable factor up to about 11 in his first appearance...




And for the record, Laura Spencer plays Jane Bennet, and made me fall completely in love with Jane from her very first appearance, so I was very glad that Bing turned out to be worthy of her.

If you haven't experienced The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, do yourself a favour and go back to Episode 1 and watch them all...

Current Mood:

seventh blogiversary

yaniblog's seventh blogiversary

Would you believe that I totally forgot that today was my blogiversary!

So much so that I'm actually posting this a day late. And none of the images that I'd lined up were really working... so Lego to the rescue at the last minute.

In a lot of ways, that does kind of sum up this seventh year of the blog... not only the plethora of Lego related things... but also that it's not as much of a focus for me as it once was.

Plus the fact that just at present, my concentration is a little scattered.

But I'm nearly at 3000 posts... and my blog still does a great job showing off my photos and documenting my thoughts.

Current Mood:

getting adjusted

I had my first chiro adjustment today.

Actually it was a fairly full-on appointment overall. More so from the amount of information I had to absorb in a relatively short period of time (and a lot of it less than good) than the adjustment itself, which took all of about two minutes to do.

It turns out that most of the places that my spine is supposed to curve, it doesn't... and places where it's not supposed to, it does. Plus my neck is further forward than it should be and my pelvis is out of alignment.

So, to boil it down, I'm totally fucked up.

Essentially the underlying issue has been around for about 20 years, and my body has just been compensating and compensating and compensating... and that incident in May was pretty much my spine going "you know what... fuck this for a joke, I've been doing this for too long, I'm done now".

I'll be honest, I had a little bit of a cry in the chiro's office... okay, I had three little cries... and I can't say for certain whether it was just because the news wasn't great and was a long standing issue I was pretty much unaware of (well, I knew there were issues with various body parts at various times, but I didn't realise they were all connected to each other and specifically connected to my spine) or if it was from relief that I could put a finger on the issue (as it were).

I think it was more the former to be honest, but I think there's a little bit of the latter in there too.

What originally set me off was the chiro telling me that I was just about halfway on the little visual aid spine between a normal spine and osteoarthritis spinal fusion.

That's never really news you want to hear.

All of the discussions and the explanations of what was wrong and what it was supposed to look like and what my spine actually looked like took, as I mentioned, the bulk of the appointment.

Then I got to experience The Table.

The Table is a disturbing piece of equipment... it looks like a cross between a massage table, a piece of exercise equipment and something that wouldn't have looked out of place in the Maquis de Sade's rumpus room. However I only spent a couple of minutes on it all up, three fairly quick adjustment spots... a little anticlimactic really. I don't know what I was expecting... I suppose I though it would take longer somehow.

Although when I got off the table I did feel like I was standing up straighter (and according to the chiro, I was).

Unfortunately the fact that I have to spend most of every day sitting at my desk isn't particularly useful... but I've managed to make all but one of my appointments for the next four weeks for after I leave work. It is a lot of appointments too... twice a week, which just happened to end up being Mondays and Fridays between now and the middle of August.

And hopefully by that point I shouldn't be in constant pain and more and my back should be approaching normality.

It has made me a little paranoid about doing every day things with my back though... which is good in one way I guess... a little bit the same way I was after I hurt it originally...

Annoyingly I just want the process to be done already... it's another one of those situations where I wish life had a fast forward button... or a montage...

Current Mood:

lego minifigure series 8


The first images of Series 8 of the Lego Collectible Minifigures have started showing up online...

The line up for this series includes:
  • Thespian ("Shakespeare")
  • Lederhosen Guy
  • Conquistador
  • Cowgirl
  • Diver
  • DJ
  • Evil Robot
  • Alien Villainess
  • Fairy
  • Football Player
  • Pirate Captain
  • Red Cheerleader
  • Santa
  • Downhill Skier
  • Businessman
  • Vampire Bat
Given that the blue cheerleader and the vampire from Series 1 and 2 respectively) were the minifigures that started off my collection, I like that there's a new cheerleader (plus the football player) and the man-bat in this series.

But I think my favourites have to be the diver, the pirate captain, the DJ and the aforementioned man-bat.

I'm least excited about the female skier (really, do we need another Winter sports person... that will make seven all up) and the "enemy robot" (it's the exact same robot as Series 1 but with a different paint job.

They all look like they're going to be easier to feel in the bags too... oddly Santa and the red cheerleader might be the hardest to tell apart, but the rest of them have pretty unique accessories.

Of course this is coming from someone who managed to identify the entire set of Series 7 in one go.

Now I just need to wait until September for them to come out (which will probably be October by the time they show up in Australia).

Current Mood:

aimless window shopping saturday

vintage window shoppers
It's usually around this time of the year that we run out of this to do and places to go on a Saturday.

Not that that's necessarily a bad thing... not needing to do anything is cheaper than the alternative, but it does lead to some problems when it comes to making decisions.

Today was very much one of those days.

It started off a little differently, in so much as Ma was getting her hair cut, so I got to do my shopping all alone.

I actually got off to a bit of a late start... so I only got to the supermarket at quarter to nine... however, because I was alone, I was finished shopping by five past nine.

It's amazing what you can do when you're on a mission.

Just after I got there, Ma had sent me a message to say that she was done at the hairdresser and on her way down... so while I wasn't rushing, I didn't waste any time either. I actually ended up with enough time to take a quick look at jeans in Target, and still managed to make it home a few minutes before Ma.

It was from that point on that we had trouble deciding what to do... it was so bad in fact that we literally stood looking out the window for about ten minutes trying to come up with some sort of plan.

Eventually we came up with more of a direction than an actual plan, but it turned out not to be too bad...

Often when we drive down the various roads that run parallel to King William Road on the other side of the city, we comment that we should really stop and look around one day.

So that was the plan.

It didn't necessarily work out exactly, we only really stopped off in one spot, and that was to check out the These Walls Don't Lie gallery, but it wasn't open yet (and I couldn't find it's actual opening times online due to Facebook not working in Safari and no other website actually having the opening times... there may be a blog post in that at a later date actually).

From there we decided to head over to Burnside... not really for any particular reason, but Ma had mentioned wanted to poke around Smiggle, and we haven't been to Burnside
Village since they finished the renovations, so it was as good a plan as any.

Turns out the renovations are pretty decent, if a little bit exposed to the weather... I've never quite understood why they don't close the whole thing up... it's supposed to be a very chic centre, but it ends up feeling a little crappy because it's at the whims of the outside temperature.

Anyway... after we wandered about and we both bought some cards for various upcoming work related stuff, we decided to stop off at Chibo for something to eat.

While Ma was in line, I actually dropped into Kiehl's since I was nearly out of my usual moisturiser and thought it might be nice to try something new. It was a little more expensive but the nice lady in the store also gave me a couple of free samples... one of shaving cream and one of eye gel... which is always nice.

After that we took a kind of circuitous route back to the southern side of the city, and purely through chance (and the fact that the guy in the car in front of us was a bit of a wanker who we wanted to avoid) we ended up on Duthy Street... which turned out to be a little bit interesting.

We stopped in a couple of places... once at a row of shops with a lackluster bakery, a cafe and a bookshop... the bookshop turned out to be decent. It was one of those old style second hand bookshops that are full to the brim and actually have a lot of really old and a lot of really cool (and sometimes both) books.

After we'd wandered around there for a while, we headed back down Duthy Street and stopped off at another row of shops with an art supply store and an antique/curio store. The art store was closed... which was a bummer because I always like wandering around those... but the antique store was quite cool.

It turns out that my old Lego sets could be worth some cash... granted they'd be worth more if we'd kept the boxes... but what are ya gunna do!

And that was about it... we managed to make a complete planless day last for a number of hours, and it ended up being a decent day out.

Current Mood:

photo friday: benzo opposites

benzo fire walkerbenzo power bot

I'm now officially convinced that I may be the only person doing gallery openings correctly...

Okay, that's not exactly true... although it feels kind of like it's true.

I went to the opening of Red Tomato Design's "I Have A Theme #2" at the Magazine Gallery. I'm not sure if it's actually a gallery show. I suppose it was, but it was slightly different given the fact that the artwork in question was on sweatshirts rather than paper or canvas.

I got there a little before the official opening time, but fortunately the gallery was open, so I wandered around inside, petted the adorable little sausage dog, wandered around some more...

Once opening time rolled around nobody seemed to be making any announcements... so I did my usual trip of approaching somebody in charge and asking what the deal was.

Which is why I'm now the proud owner of a Gary Seaman x Simon Pearce screen-printed sweatshirt.  It's not quite "one of a kind", although it was the only one in that particular size, and one of about seven (or eight) overall.

It's one of those things where it's so unique that I don't know if I would even want to wear it. But I'm also not sure that it will actually fit me. Which makes it a bit of a circular thought process... I don't know if I would wear it if I could wear it, but if I could then I'd have to decide of I would...

Anyway...

I also managed to get my hands on a teaser poster for the show earlier this week... I was on my way home on the bus and happened to glance out the window just at the right moment to notice the very distinctive Red Tomato face on an empty store front in North Adelaide... so I jumped off the bus and popped it off the wall.

Actually that was the second poster I popped off a wall this week... although I have the other one to one of the graphic designers at work because I thought it would appeal to her.

Oh, and I finally got my Metrocard from Adelaide Metro... on the same day that I got an email response from their Customer Service Team about my open letter blog post on Sunday. I honestly never wrote that thinking that anyone from Adelaide Metro would see that, let alone respond.

To be honest, I'm not sure I actually care about getting the response... the fact that you have to apologise for a bad customer service experience is never as effective as having a positive experience in the first place. But I suppose that it's nice somebody is paying attention.

Current Mood:

random amazing hotness

One of the reasons The Amazing Spider-Man is as amazing is it is due to today's Random Hotness, Mr Andrew Garfield.

So I think an extra large hotness post is in order... plus, skin tight suit... arms, arms, arms... and he looks damn good in black and white...





Current Mood: