Wizard's Hideout
 | |
Build YOUR Dream Home! |
Current Mood:
my hideout
I ended up doing this three different times, answered slightly differently each time and came up with three different answers... but this was the first one...
Current Mood:
Current Mood:
may the droid be with you
I meant to post these about three times last week... but with one thing and another it just never happened.
These are a pair of particularly impressive Star Wars themed stencils from last Saturday's excursion... impressive if for no other reason than I think they were both pretty much "life size"... if you can say that a totally CGI creation like the Trade Federation Battle Droid on the right has a "life size"... it was still pretty cool though.
I also liked that the word "solo" appeared above R2's head... not sure if it was already there, or came after, or has anything to do with Han Solo... but it amused me.
Current Mood:
window shopping and sydney planning
Today was very much a "it's hot, let's go somewhere cool" kind of day...We did the usual Random Supermarket Crawl... made slightly more interesting by the seemingly insane number of vans belonging to tradespeople that were cluttering up the car park when we got there at 8am. We kind of assumed they must be doing something rather large and impressive... but no, turns out that the teeny tiny optometrist office near the doors was being made over, and that seemed to require an army of about fifty thousand, and a huge enormous skip bin... weird...
Anyway the usual shopping blah-di-blah... grapes, ham, iced coffee, cheese, chicken, milk, Palmer's Cocoa Butter Formula Dark Chocolate and Peppermint Lip Butter, blah, blah, blah... home to unpack... blah, blah, blah...
And, just for something different (not!), neither of us had very much of a plan as far as what the hell to do next. Which always ends well...
We settled on Arndale eventually... for no other reason than it was a destination, it was close and it wasn't going to take much time to wander around. Unsurprisingly, it lived up to all of those things. Ma did want to get some enlargements from the photos I took at Second Christmas (of her grandnephew), so we stopped off at Big W to use the "make photo" machines... but Ma had changed handbags when she got to my place... didn't put her USB drive in the new handbag... d'oh!
So we decided that Marion sounded like it could be a plan... for no other reason than it has just about one of every kind of large scale store under one roof, and we hadn't been down there for a couple of weeks. Is anybody else sensing a theme of a total lack of thought process behind our choices today?
We didn't really buy very much of anything... well, a couple of books and a couple of DVDs, but beyond that nothing much else... except that while we were in the car taking what seemed like the extremely long and scenic route to Marion (I can't even complain, because I was driving and also navigating for the most part) Ma was digging around in her handbag, and what did she find... yep... USB drive... so we managed to get the photos printed (and within about ten minutes too, which is pretty damn good) after all.
The other thing we tried to do all day was get a hold of another one of the Sydney travel brochures that went AWOL... Ma had scored one )or at least one very much like it) at the travel agents near her... but nowhere we went into all day seemed to have the brochure in question... *mutter*
And, switching topics slightly, but also in the realm of "really, really, really strange"... we were headed downstairs on the escalators when I either heard somebody call my name or just call out, I don't remember... looked up and it was Marc... who I haven't heard from since the end of May 2006... and he was waving at me like some sort of slightly crazed person. I mean, seriously, I haven't seen him in almost two years, and he was waving at me like we keep in regular contact. Weird.
Also weird was my answer when Ma asked me if he was "from work"... I said, "no, he's from the sex"... hehehe.
Then after we'd wandered about, seen everything, done everything, blah-di-blah... we came home again...
That was when we started looking at things for the Sydney trip...
I have to say that a lot of my stress from the other day has kind of been settled down quite a bit. We've got more of a plan about what we're going to do (although not really when, just that it's stuff we want to do... I am thinking beers on Wednesday evening though), and it all seems much better now. Having said that, I very nearly threw the computer out of the window while we were trying to book the hotel. I updated my Norton Virus thingy this week (and while it wasn't quite so much of a headfuck as last time, it wasn't too far behind), and I think it's just eating system memory like a mo-fo... everything seems two hundred times slower, and my system keeps freezing up if I do more things than it things I should be doing... which it did right when I was trying to do the room bookings.
Actually, that's not true, I'd already looked at the single rooms we'd been originally aiming for, but they only had one of those rooms available at the cheapass rate on the Tuesday and Wednesday (bummer!)... so in the end, we spent an extra $20 and got rooms with double beds. Alas, I think they're going to be "internal" rooms, so no view and either no window, or else a window with a nice view out over the internal courtyard and dumpsters... ah well.
So, computer froze, so I thought I would just cancel the window, open a new one... except that for whatever reason it wouldn't open a new browser window... nothing, nada, zip... so I had to quit all my other windows and reboot the computer... which took it's own sweet time too... *mutter mutter kill die pain mutter mutter*
But on the up side, once I had rebooted, it all seemed to work fine (although that whole "new window" thing is still prehistorically slow... as is closing a browser window come to think of it).
So, hotel rooms... booked!
We also went through a bunch of stuff... the bus service from the airport to the hotel, the Sydney Explorer "tour bus" thing, a variety of stops it makes that we have to go and explore... and how much everything is going to cost. And I did discover something quite interesting... if you're planning a trip (I'm not sure if this just works for Sydney or everywhere), and you know there are various touristy places you want to visit that require an admission fee, check their website... both the Sydney Aquarium and the Opera House tour have an discount (10% and 30% respectively I think... and the Opera House has even more of a discount if you book for one of the first three tours of the day) for tickets booked online! Who knew?! Also, woohoo!
After a while we got a little delirious... and possibly a little overheated... and I think we'd viewed a couple too many websites, so we gave up and since it was around that time we went out and got some noodles for dinner.
So, yeah... that was about it really. I'm less freaking out about the trip, especially since we have somewhere to stay now.
Current Mood:
photo friday: amanita eaters
A piece from Sunday's excursion... it's by Jules, and it's under the same name as the exhibition on Sunday evening in the "outdoor makeshift gallery" that I saw the notice for on Saturday... I'm thinking about maybe going along for a look... depends on the weather I guess, since it's supposed to be all stinkyhot over the weekend.I actually saw a couple of these... same idea, slightly different execution. But I guess it's something you could draw three hundred times and never have two of them come out exactly the same. I'm not sure if the slight shading to parts of it is intentional or not, but I kinda like that it gives it a very "comic book" style graphic feel to it.
And interestingly enough, you can also see some other graffiti stuff in the reflection from the window.
Current Mood:
random satin hotness
Since Valentine's Day just happens to coincide with Random Hotness day, I figured I needed to post something vaguely appropriate... even though I generally have a "yah-boo-hiss" policy when it comes to the big VD (somewhat unfortunate acronym, wouldn't you say)... and my opinion hasn't really changed at all.
I did come across these photos though... they caught my eye originally because of all the red satin, but then I realised that it was the same model as last year's V Day themed post... only without the rather odd barstool this time around.
Plus, there's a little bit of VD bootay complete with tanlines...
Current Mood:
I did come across these photos though... they caught my eye originally because of all the red satin, but then I realised that it was the same model as last year's V Day themed post... only without the rather odd barstool this time around.
Plus, there's a little bit of VD bootay complete with tanlines...
Current Mood:
travel anxiety
Its 26 days and counting until Ma and I take off to Sydney, and the abject panic has pretty much started to set in during the last week or so... once we passed the thirty day mark.It's not surprising really... I have a long history of this kind of behaviour... one of the women I used to work with pointed it out once, right before we were due to have some conference or something (while I was flapping around like a crazy person making sure everything was organised if memory serves). I panic before things start... and then once whatever it is starts, I'm totally fine.
It all pretty much boils down to one simple statement...
I hate the unknown.
I guess I'm more about planning and organisation than I would like to admit... to a degree anyway... I don't mind playing things by ear once I'm out amongst it, I just like to have a plan going in. So if I know something is coming, and there's something about it that I can't lock down or work out beforehand, then my default status is not exactly panic, but some member of the anxiety family.
And the upcoming trip to Sydney is a whole world of that.
It's all very much an unknown quantity... it's a place neither of us have ever been (obviously, since that's the point of the exercise, but at least when we went to Melbourne back in 2005 I'd been once before and has some vague idea), we still haven't organised the accommodation since I'm hoping to get a booking on one of the el cheapo accommodation websites... actually, I just went and had a look at the site, and hotel I was thinking about, and they do have the kind of rooms we're after at half the normal price (we're not quite close enough that the whole period we're going to be in Sydney is on the website yet... couple more days), so I might have to organise that with Ma on the weekend and maybe even book it, then that's that off my mind.
The other thing that's niggling at me is whether or not we're going to have enough time to do all the things we want to do... not that I totally know what all of those things are either...
I know I want to see the Bridge and the Opera House, obviously... I want to have a beer with at least two Sydney bloggers (you know who you are) preferably somewhere gay... I want to go to The Bookstore (again, it's the gayness thing)... I want to see Chinatown and the Aquarium and maybe an art gallery or two... I just want to be all touristy in Sydney... I want to see things and take photos and go shopping just so I can say I have and wander around with a massive backpack on (okay not so much that last one). Then I want to come home and bore the crap out of all my blog readers by posting way to many photos from my trip.
But we only have two full days, plus two half days, so I'm not sure how much we're going to get done. Having said that, we pretty much only ended up having that much time in Melbourne because of the massive delay with our flight, and managed to get it all done.
Don't even get me started on the whole thing of probably bringing two cameras (just for me, three with Ma's) and probably both of the little travel tripods we got at Christmas... then being able to cart them around the place... I'll whinge about that later I'm sure.
Then there's all this rain that I keep hearing about that's all over Sydney... do you all think you could send Melbourne their weather back by the beginning of March, so it will be nice and sunny while I'm there? Ta!
And on top of all that, the very helpful and groovy brochure I got that told me everything I wanted to know about things of a Sydney tourism nature has gone AWOL. I mean it's not a monumental drama, I can hopefully get another one really easily... but it is kinda annoying. I'm sure I let Ma borrow it, but she swears blind that I didn't (we'll get back and three days later she'll find it behind the couch or something)... having said that, I was sure I'd given her something yonks ago, but it turned up in one of my drawers recently.
I'm not even completely sure about my choice of hotel... last time I did this whole online booking thing (in Melbourne), we ended up in a hotel that was right in one of the less interesting corners of the city... so that was a little annoying... extra walking and whatnot. Although this time we'll both be wearing our "shoes of appropriate walking"... no repeat of last time when I tried to traverse Melbourne in a pair of work boots that were a little large for my feet so I ended up with blisters on my blisters.
I know most of my panic is just because I don't have a clear idea of what to expect... once I'm there and have some kind of idea of the lay of the land I'll be fine... it will all be an adventure.
All I have to do at the moment is refrain from starting to make a list of all thing things I'll need to take with me...
OCD, party of one, your table is ready...
Current Mood:
movies: sweeney todd
I sometimes wonder if the Walt Disney Corporation ruined my possible appreciation of a vast number of "modern" musicals. In the Disney Universe you have dialogue and some plot, then you get a song that advances the story somehow, then you get back to dialogue, then song, dialogue, song... what you don't get is that weird blending where people are singing things they really should be speaking.I was a little apprehensive when Sweeney Todd started... it seemed to be going down the Phantom of the Opera route (a movie I HATE with every fibre of my being, and which had me wanting to walk out within the first five minutes... the only reason I didn't was that I was with Ma and all the shops were shut, otherwise I would have left her there and gone shopping... hated, hated, hated, hated, hated Phantom with the fiery vengeance of a thousand suns!)... and we had some singing that should have been speaking...
And because it followed a somewhat sketchy CGI title sequence I was holding my breath and waiting for the movie to possibly suck spectacularly. Maybe it's Tim Burton and musicals... I was slightly disappointed in The Corpse Bride to some degree... or maybe it is the Disney legacy thing, I honestly don't know...
But then it improved... and got funny and a little gory and bit twisted... and by the end I was pleasantly surprised.
Of course there were definite up sides... specifically Jamie Campbell Bower who runs around being all gorgeous and doe eyed and slightly docile (all those things I find incredibly appealing)... but who seems to only have the one song through the whole movie (there's a little bit of sung spoken at the start, but that's about it), although they do keep changing his lyrics. Even when he's all mussed up and bloody and dirty, he's still gorgeous... and there's a moment where he's highly Bambi in the headlights that appealed to me maybe a little too much (yeah, I know, I'm twisted... this isn't news to anyone).
As for the rest of the cast, my ongoing love affair with Helena Bonham Carter continues... actually, I think she makes the movie what it is... or her character does anyway... she adds that slightly crazed comedy she seems to be quite good at, and it balances nicely against Johnny Depp's rather single minded titular character. Actually I think this is the first one of Johnny's characters for a long, long time that I didn't instantly love... I mean he's very good, but the character isn't overly that appealing or engaging for the most part... he's more distant and disengaged from everything around him, which makes him somewhat hard to connect with. Visually fantastic, but somewhat remote.
And I hate to say it, but Borat/Ali G star Sacha Baron Cohen (who I would usually run a mile from) is actually perfectly cast as Signor Pirelli. Slightly over the top, but that's what the character called for.
I was also a little disturbed to find a very grey and stubbled Alan Rickman slightly sexy... I think it's all about the stubble to be honest... or maybe the stubble and the period costume... there was something going on there. Weird, but kinda hot. Which freaks me out just a little bit I have to say.
While I don't want to go through the entire cast list one by one, I also have to mention young Ed Sanders for his very strong performance. He doesn't seem to have done anything before (nothing movie or teevee-wise anyway... maybe he's done a bunch of theatre work), but he's very, very good for his age, and manages to hold his own next to Helena quite well.
Just going back to the costumes for a second... the Tim Burton/Colleen Atwood collaboration continues for the seventh time, and she does a fantastic job once again... just the layers and the fabrics in Johnny's costume are fantastic... not to mention the corsets and lacings and whatnot on Helena's outfits.
Interestingly enough, on the special features of Tim's remake of Planet of the Apes somebody (I think it was make-up wizard Rick Baker) describes the "Tim Burton look"... white skin, dark circles around the eyes, sticky-upy hair... and that's pretty much the look for Johnny and Helena have in this movie... at the beginning it's a little bit distracting, especially when they get very up close and personal in their first scene/song together, but like with all of those things, you get used to it, and by the end of the movie you don't really even notice it any more.
Since the movie is about a barber who cuts people's throats, it's possibly a little bit on the bloody and gory side... well, I didn't really think so, but I always know when Ma has to watch bits of the movie with her face behind her hand that it's maybe a little much. I would say it's actually more artful than gory myself... the blood is VERY bright scarlet and since the majority of the movie has a somewhat muted pallet of colours, it does tend to stand out. I did wonder how they did the effect of the slit throats though... whether it was make-up or partial make-up with some CGI or what I don't know... but I'd be interested to find out.
It's also the first musical movie I've seen in a very long while that I wouldn't mind getting hold of the soundtrack for. Maybe because it's a black comedy, but there are a few songs I really liked... The Worst Pies in London, Ladies in Their Sensitivities, A Little Priest, God That's Good and By the Sea off the top of my head... although because there were a few songs where two characters were singing counterpoint to each other, I did miss some of the lyrics on some of them, so I wouldn't mind hearing it all again, just for that reason alone.
So while the movie didn't start off particularly strongly in my opinion, by the end I was very much enjoying myself.
yani's rating: 3 meat pies out of 5
montage monday: backstreets six
A combination of Saturday and Sunday's street art safaris... including three Benzo pieces, two from Jules... and the Robot Devil from Futurama oddly enough...I was thinking about how this whole Sidestreet and Alleyways "project" has altered while I've been doing it. It started out very much in the spirit of the blog by Mark B that gave me the inspiration in the first place... signs and line and angles and general urbania (I may have just made up a word there, but stay with me)... and it's progressively got more of a street art focus and less of that urbania focus.
Whether it's because my focus has always been more of an artistic/aesthetic one rather than architectural... so I guess it's not really surprising that once I realised that there was this unexplored world of clandestine art out there I got sucked into finding and documenting and sharing it.
I had a thought while I was wandering about yesterday, it's almost like trying to collect the full set of some kind of trading cards or something (which I've never really done, at least not with any degree of commitment or for any length of time)... but a set that never ends and that you're never quite sure where any of the cards might be and when or even if another one will appear. Actually maybe it's more like the whole Pokemon thing... but then saying that just makes me sound like a sad case, so we'll just pretend I didn't...
And it kind of made me think about my photography in general too... I guess I have a tendancy to do this... get on one particular theme and stick with it for a while. Originally I was a bit generic, then I got on the whole portraiture kick and stayed with that for quite a long while (I still did other stuff, but that really was my focus for several years)... then when my supply of people to photograph dried up (and I got the digital camera) it kind of opened everything up again. I think I went back to a somewhat generic focus, but then got kind of obsessed at one point or another with architectural themes, botanical themes, colour themes... which leads us back to my current obsession with street art.
Of course I can already predict that my next obsession, albeit a brief one, with be with all things Sydney... but since I'm only going to be there for four days I'm not sure how long that one's going to last.
Current Mood:
unconscious mutterings 262
Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor... Unconscious Mutterings...
Current Mood:
- Score :: Soccer
- Luxurious :: Soap
- Party :: Boy
- Limited edition :: Single
- Security :: Guard
- Betty :: Boo... Just doin' the do...
- Under construction :: 90's webpage
- Pest :: Control
- Director :: Movie
- Express :: Yourself
Current Mood:
benzo, jules and store
Okay, maybe not...
I really should subtitle this post Sidestreet Part Five, because although I didn't just attack one area, I did do a lot of wanderings along various sidestreets... but the vast majority of big stuff that I found seemed to be by Benzo or Jules or both... Store too, but not so much.
This weekend has been so very much about the Street Art. Partially because of my visit to the TS Art Gallery yesterday, but also because I ended up finding a veritable online road map to a variety of pieces that I hadn't found on my own. Thank you Flikr!
So around noon I packed my bits and pieces (bottle of water, phone headphones, cowboy hat) and took myself off into the city. Granted it kinda took me maybe fifteen minutes to actually get the car out of the building, first I had to fill my windscreen washer water thing, then I'd forgotten my hat, and figured I should change my shirt, since wearing black probably wasn't the wisest idea, but I got my crap together eventually.
My first stop was the western end of the city (again)... I don't know if it's because that end of town is more residential and industrial rather than commercial, or if it's just technically out of the specific CBD, but there just seems to be more street art in that area.
Actually, I don't know how I missed some of the stuff I photographed today... I was all over that area before Christmas... but it just goes to show you, you miss one little sidestreet and you never know what you've missed!It did seem to be something of a Benzofest too... I found about eleven new pieces that I hadn't seen before, and photographed new versions of two more. Sadly I might have to go back at a different time of day to photograph a couple of them, because midday light isn't always kind when you're trying to photograph things under overhangs, you get partial shadows... it's a whole thing...
Interestingly enough, although I had a bunch of locations written down, for some reason they seemed to lead me somewhat sideways to various other spots fairly easily.
Anyway, I scoped out as many of places as I could from my location, then got back in the car and shifted it down to the carpark near the Rundle Street Markets, since there were some other spots down that way that I wanted to hit next.
It's slightly annoying that if we'd turned the car left instead of right yesterday I would have found this piece yesterday... interestingly though, after my explorations online this morning I know that not only is Jules responsible for this piece, and the Phoenix Crane, but also the little green Leave Me Alone faces too... and probably also the little blue bat guys too...Which is interesting, because when I originally started to see the Jules tag I didn't associate it with any particular pieces, but now I'm kinda seeing them everywhere... lots of birds oddly enough.
I wandered through the Rundle Street Markets to get to the couple of sidestreets I wanted to hit... happened to see some little modelling clay dragons and things that looked very much like the one I got from Petals in the Park, and I struck up a conversation with the guy behind the stall, turned out it was his work, and its possible that both he and the girl who did the little dragon I got at Christmas went to the same workshop or class or whatever that a woman from the States must have put on over here. Although I think he'd taken his stuff in a new direction from where the workshop finished. Some interesting stuff... dragons and mythological characters and a few seahorses... so Ma and I will be going back to visit him in the not too distant...
So, after taking the shots of Jules' flock and various other bits and pieces, I headed off in search of the place that Ma and I couldn't find yesterday.
On the way, I stopped at the park in Hindmarsh Square which has been overhauled recently and now has all these "backyard objects" in it... it's rather pretentiously called "Children's Interactive Science Learning Playspace"... and according to the description I can find "consisting of over-sized items from the average backyard – a dog’s bone, peg, fish, ball, thong, tap and hose as well as giant blades of grass"... the blades of grass are maybe a little overly esoteric, but the other things are quite cool, especially the thong (which is obviously the other photo up at the top of the post), the fish and the ball.
Anyway, after wandering up and down the "hills and dales" in the Playspace I powered along the Mall and out the other side to find the spot with the street art.
Turns out that the alleyway I was after was pretty damn easy to find, well, now that I know where it is anyway... and not only were there a bunch of new things from Store and Benzo (the pigeons up the top are Store's), but also a few older pieces I'd seen photos of online, but hadn't managed to find. I'll definitely have to drop back into that alleyway again, just to keep an eye on things (and again, the whole sunlight issue in at least once case).
Then it was off back to the carpark, and thankfully the place is still free on a Sunday, so parking didn't even cost me anything... and after a brief detour in search of some street art I thought was hiding behind a fence (which turned out to be a carpark, but fortunately right near where I parked the car was another Benzo piece that I didn't even know was there), I headed home.
Slightly overheated and sweaty, but very content...
Hmmmmm... obviously there's a street art theme going on in the Universe... I just saw a piece on the Sunday Arts show about the fact that Melbourne is planning a Zero Tolerance policy on graffiti... when the Melbourne alleyways are a tourist attraction (and not just for "other graffiti vandals" as one of the dumbass guys they were interviewing suggested) and a part of Melbourne's cultural landscape. Stupid, stupid, stupid government...
Current Mood:
