shopping and street art

A slightly more productive day of shopping today!

Ma brought down my blender (woohoo!), so now I just need to find somewhere to store it, and work out a few things to make with it. I made some Mango Lassi this afternoon which wasn't too bad, and I might make a smoothie tomorrow morning.

As expected, Supermarket Adventures took far, far longer this week than last week when I was flying solo... four times as long in fact (at least for just the initial run around the supermarket)... but then I did get a whole bunch more stuff. And I made a VERY appealing discovery... Palmer's Cocoa Butter Formula Dark Chocolate and Peppermint Lip Butter.

OH! MY! GOD!

Never before have I wanted to make out with myself quite as much as I do right now while I'm wearing some of it. Sadly it was actually Ma's... so I'm going to have to get myself a tube of it next weekend. Smells SO damn good! Nummy!

The rest of the food style shopping was about average, and after we came back here and I unpacked it all we decided to go down to Arndale because for some really odd reason the Big W catalogue had some decent looking clothes in it for both Ma and me. Now usually when we go looking at places like that the clothes never look half as good up close (damn deceptive catalogue photography), and while that was true to a degree there were actually some decent things.

I found a Transformers logo teeshirt (woohoo!)... I've been looking for something in that genre for AGES, and they had a couple of different ones, both of which fit. I settled on the Autobot symbol version, because while the Optimus one was kinda cool, I was always a Bumblebee man. And my ongoing obsession with scarlet continues... I found a red Bonds zip up hoodie which looks pretty groovy actually. There were also a couple of other tops and a pair of slip-on thin soled sneakers (to replace the ones I have at the moment when they finally give up the ghost). It's all going to end up being saved for the Sydney trip I think (only 30 days to go!)... be nice to have some nice new things to wear while I'm there.

Oh, and by the by... what the hell is it with checkout operators in retail chain stores? As soon as you ask them if you can keep the coathangers they all seem to lose their tiny minds. You would think that they would take the coathangers out, fold the clothes, if only roughly, and give you both clothes and coathangers separately... well, no... they just attempt to roll the clothes around the coathangers. Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid... so we just went straight back to the car, I took things off hangers, Ma folded...

The Universe also played that game of "You got that thing you wanted, now I'm going to show you other, possibly better versions of the same kind of thing" with me... after I bought the little box for my bedside table last week, I found a slightly more substantial version, and one that was kinda more what I was looking for (without giant holes in the sides and with a catch and corners and stuff) for the same price somewhere else. But since Ma is the Queen of Packaging (and to a lesser extent me too), we got the new box and she took the other one away for use at some future date.

After we'd finished wandering around Arndale we headed into the city. In the free local paper yesterday there was a little blurb in the Entertainment section about the Toy Soldiers having some sort of exhibition.

And luckily the blurb came with a little picture of some of their artwork, because I recognised the TS logo right away... Benzo is part of that crew (I'm guessing that's the right word).

I half expected it to be in an actual gallery of some sort... or something not overly permanent... and we ended up having to go around the block a bunch of times because we couldn't quite see the place in question, and couldn't work out where to park. In fact that might be one of the levels of Hell... or Purgatory or something... going around and around and around city blocks, looking for a street number you can't quite find, and not being able to find anywhere to park.

But I digress... as per usual.

Eventually we found somewhere to dump the car and trotted back to the general area. Turns out it was pretty much just a doorway, which is why I kept missing it as we went past in the car. A doorway, leading down a set of stairs into this little anteroom, all adorned with just coolness really (some of the tribal tikis, various other bits and pieces), before the main "gallery space". I was a little surprised that it was such a tiny space and so up close and personal with the guy behind the little counter that I forgot to get my camera out and take any photos of the anteroom... next time maybe.

And because it was such a small space and the guy was just right THERE behind the counter, it was hard not to say hello and whatnot... plus I was dying to know if he was one of the Toy Soldier boys or what... turns out he was... Store, in fact, who's responsible for all the pigeons, and the clouds and stuff... and possibly the flying fish on the place down at Glenelg.

It was trippy just being in there talking to one of the guys whose artwork I've been admiring for ages... I'm just glad it wasn't actually Benzo otherwise I might have said something stupid or otherwise made a fool of myself.

Store told me to give him my email, and he would let me know next time they had a different exhibition thing at the shop... and I asked him if they'd done any "outdoor works" recently... and he gave me a couple of leads to follow up. Ma and I attempted to follow up one of them this afternoon, but I think I got the name of the street he mentioned wrong... so I'll probably go into town and wander about a bit tomorrow. The second spot he mentioned was something they're doing during Fringe, so I'm definitely going to go and have a look at that once it's done.

It's just a shame that I'm so broke and all they're artwork was "so" expensive (not as far as artwork is concerned, but just in relation to what I could afford), because there were a few very groovy things in the shop... Benzo skateboards and stencilled bags... Store's artwork... just groovy stuff.

I was a little bit floaty and hyper when we left... it was like meeting somebody famous or something... very cool. Anyway, as we went back to the car I noticed a pasted up notice with Jules' name on it... he (I'm assuming it's a he) is another name I keep seeing everywhere... and is actually responsible for the Phoenix Crane. Turns out he's having some sort of exhibition in an "outdoor makeshift gallery" next Sunday. Not sure if that means they'll be stuff on walls or if it'll be freestanding stuff and he's just using the space. I do have half a mind to go down there though... just take a look. We'll see.

Anyway, after I saw that we decided to go in search of the alleyway mentioned... which actually led to these "car park barns" (I'm not completely sure what the hell the deal with them was) that were full of stencil art. Woohoo!

So lots of street art sightings going on this afternoon... then it was back here for Mango Lassi and whatnot.

And a good day was had by all...

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photo friday: phoskee

It's textual, it's colourful, it's slightly unreadable...

I can't quite work out if that third letter is an O, or an A... or even a U... pretty though...

This was part of the "Art Alley" I found last Sunday. And the whole long wall had that sunset background going on... which looked really good actually.

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if i were a book

Great... I'm a book I've never heard of, about somebody I've never heard of, by somebody I've never heard of...

Stole this from Michael over at Pipedreams... at least he came up as an author I'd heard of...

You're A Prayer for Owen Meany!
by John Irving

Despite humble and perhaps literally small beginnings, you inspire
faith in almost everyone you know. You are an agent of higher powers,
and you manifest this fact in mysterious and loud ways. A sense of
destiny pervades your every waking moment, and you prepare with
great detail for destiny fulfilled. When you speak,
IT SOUNDS LIKE THIS!

Take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid

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random matador hotness

I decided on a Matador theme for this week's Random Hotness.

That's not to say that I approve of bull fighting... but you have to love the outfits... all that embroidery and skin tight fabric and the little short waisted jackets... and all those layers that it would be both interesting to unwind them from as well as being something of a puzzle...

And I love a good puzzle...

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power outage

We had ourselves a little power outage this morning in my neighbourhood...

When I woke up this morning I looked at my bedside clock to find out what time it was... blank... microwave clock... blank... fridge... silent...

Oh yah... a blackout!

I looked outside, all the street lights were off, so it wasn't just my house, it was my whole block, in theory anyway.

I'm just glad I now use the alarm on my mobile rather than the one on my bedside clock, or who knows when I might have woken up. I did feel sorry for anybody in the neighbourhood who HAD set their alarm the normal way and had slept in as a result (not much... but I know if it had been me I woulda been annoyed).

So I took myself off for my walk since there wasn't a whole hell of a lot else I could do anyway, and hoped that by the time I got home again everything would have fixed itself.

There's something slightly unnerving about a power blackout like that... it's always worse when it's during the evening and you don't have lights or teevee or anything... but in the early hours of the morning like that it just feels a little creepy... you don't need the lights, but just being without the streetlights and the general noise and hum of technology is a little weird.

I wasn't feeling overly hopeful about the power being back as I entered the home stretch, since the traffic lights where out at the top of Montifiore Hill (which means that the whole entire slice of North Adelaide, from my place down to the parklands was all without power)... but I could see that the lights at the far end of Jeffcott Street were still working, so there was hope.

Alas, when I walked in the front door I was confronted with a blank microwave... no power, no nothing...

So, as I always do in these situations, I called Ma to bitch about it. I knew that she couldn't do anything to fix it, but just the act of having a whine about the problem always makes me feel better.

And there must be some sort of magic in that kind of phonecall, because while I was chatting with her the power came back on... yaaaaay! Which means that it was out for over an hour and a half, maybe more... I don't actually know when it first went off.

It also meant I had to reset my microwave and DVD/VCR clocks (annoying but not overly complicated)... although my bedside clock has a battery in it, so it just remembered the time all by itself... clever little cabbage...

There's also no word on why the power was out... or at least nothing on the Adelaide Now news website... they might mention it on the news tonight, although I probably won't remember to watch...

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somewhat slutty

You Are Most Like Samantha!

For you, dating is the ultimate sport You're into guys with power, looks, or a lot of money. You rather have a great two weeks than a great forever. But even you fall victim to love from time to time. Romantic prediction: You'll find love in the next few months... But you'll be the last one to realize it.

Which Sex and the City Vixen Are You?

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linework

The downside to these two shots, the blue on especially, is that my camera had something of a hard time picking up the linework on walls that were almost the same colour. And the blue bird has a weird almost "strobing" effect that it just didn't have in person.

It would be interesting to know if they were only ever intended to be linework, or if the original intention was that they were going to be fully filled in... although somehow I doubt that.

I also realised the other day when I was flicking through some of my previously posted photos that the pink girl's tag line, "we're all friends here", is the same as the speech bubble on the street art that was covered over before I got to it down on the Linear Park track...

Which just goes to prove once again how small a town Adelaide can be.

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strike a pose

Vogue or voguing is a highly stylized modern dance characterized by photo model-like poses integrated with angular, linear and rigid arm, leg, and body movements. Popularized by Madonna's song and video of the same name, the unique inner-city dance subculture was brought to international mainstream attention.

The year was 1990, the song was Vogue, I was sixteen, in Year 11 at high school and nuts about the song (spot the early ninties closeted gay boy... nuts about a Madonna song, go figure!).

And this morning I happened to catch some random remix/mash-up/alternative version of the song on FreshFM, and it brought the whole experience flooding back and made me smile one of those really big nostalgia smiles.

It makes no difference if you're black or white
If you're a boy or a girl
If the music's pumping it will give you new life
You're a superstar, yes, that's what you are, you know it

Part of the reason it had me wearing my very happy nostalgia pants (extremely comfortable, but not in the least bit flattering) was that Vogue was a massive part of my life during 1990 (and I think possibly 1991 too, it's all a bit hazy now, since it's now over half my life ago) because I used to dance to it... well actually it started that way, but it ended up as "performing"...

Yeah, I know... gay to the power of like a million, right?

I don't really even remember how the hell it started. I was friendly with a number of the ESL (English as a Second Language) girls, and got invited to somebody's birthday party along with a couple of the guys I knew... and before I knew it we were getting invited to ALL of their birthdays, parties, dances, whatever...

Which was very cool actually.

And somewhere along the way I started dancing to Vogue. I'd probably been dancing around in front of the teevee to it, and I know I owned the album (on cassette no less) that it came from, so it was quite possibly on high rotation anyway, so I don't think I'd worked out an actual routine or anything... part of it would have been stuff that I made up, part of it would have been taken from the videoclip, part of it probably made me look like a dork. And while some of the stuff stayed the same I don't think I ever did the same routine twice... I just went with whatever felt right at the time.

But before I knew it, it kind of became a "thing" at the parties... where I ended up doing it with just about everybody watching and standing around me. Whether it was because I was very good and they enjoyed it... or very bad and hence very amusing, I don't know... I did have a thought earlier today though that if the technology that was around today had been around then, I'm sure I would have ended up on YouTube or something.

I do know that I always had a huge mix of terror and adrenaline going both before I went out there, while I was out there, and right after I stopped... although usually once I was done it was more adrenaline and endorphins.

So much of an expected event did it become that I remember walking into one of the parties, and we'd quite literally just walked in the door when the DJ (who also happened to be my best gal-pal's brother) put the song on. And while I was shooting him filthy looks, he just grinned at me... and from memory I kept shaking my head at him to let him know I wasn't going to do it... then thought "fuck it", slide or threw or did something with the jacket or overshirt I was wearing and stalked out onto the "dancefloor" (which I think was actually the living room, since that was one of the parties where we were at somebody's house).

I think that was the time that I actually popped my shoulder partially out of it's socket while I was out there... but luckily that was before my shoulder fell apart completely (and possibly part of the reason that it did) and all I had to do was roll my shoulder 360° to get it to pop back into place...

Actually somewhere I have all this stuff written down, I used to keep a "party journal" of sorts, but I'm not sure if I still have the electronic version, and the paper printout version would either be at Ma's in one of my boxes or else it fell victim to one of my many clear-outs. Which is kinda annoying, because not only would it make it easier to write this, it would also be nice to see what I had to say for myself at the time too.

Then there was the culmination of the whole Vogue experience... the Year 11 Formal/Dance (I think, I don't think it was the Year 12 one because that was all a big to-do)... and for whatever reason, word had gotten out on the grapevine about the whole Voguing thing (as it does in high school), so it was something of a forgone conclusion that it was going to happen, and that people were expecting me to do it. Possibly aided on the night by the fact that the same guy I mention before was going to be DJing for the dance.

Luckily though the story does have a happy ending... I didn't fall down and break a bone or totally humilate myself and have to go running from the school gym in tears or anything... and it was the memory of that "success" that made me smile as much as anything else when I was out this morning.

I do remember that one of my other gal-pals danced a little like one of the guys in the video (the one who's busting a move while Madge stands still), and she came out and joined me for that part of the song, which was cool... and my Gay School Nemesis (the boy I'd formerly been best friends which, but as we both realised that not only were we gay, but the other one was gay as well, we very much distanced ourselves from one another and became pretty much enemies) saying something to me along the lines that he'd thought I was going to make a twat of myself, but it was better than he'd expected... something along those lines anyway.

You just gotta love a song that has significant high school memories attached to it...

Greta Garbo, and Monroe
Deitrich and DiMaggio
Marlon Brando, Jimmy Dean
On the cover of a magazine

Grace Kelly; Harlow, Jean
Picture of a beauty queen
Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire
Ginger Rogers, dance on air

They had style, they had grace
Rita Hayworth gave good face
Lauren, Katherine, Lana too
Bette Davis, we love you

Ladies with an attitude
Fellows that were in the mood
Don't just stand there, let's get to it
Strike a pose, there's nothing to it

Vogue

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unconscious mutterings 261

Humid, humid, humid... Unconscious Mutterings...

1. What women want :: Mel Gibson


2. Epidemic :: Flu


3. Taxes :: Death


4. Hello :: Goodbye


5. Confidential :: Mail


6. Lights :: On


7. Summation :: Trial


8. Hard feelings :: No


9. Electric :: Boogaloo


10. Fresh start :: Fresh Prince

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sunday excursion

The theme for this weekend is obviously "productive and unproductive in equal measure"...

Ma came down this morning and we went out, firstly in search of something for breakfast (brunch really by the time we were headed out), and kinda sorta maybe trying to find me a blender.

Firstly we went and had a look at the fire damage to a set of apartments down the street... I was sitting on the couch late last night, minding my own business (and watching yet another episode of West Wing) when I realised I could see red and blue flashy lights through my bedroom window, and when I went to look it was a fire engine stopped down the street, and a huge plume of smoke, lit up orange from underneath complete with little orange sparks floating up into the night. So I hightailed it down the street to have a nosey (without shoes or camera, since I didn't know I was going to get so up close and personal... and I might add, without shutting the front door or anything first), to watch the pretty fire and whathaveyou.

Turned out that a brush fence on a little vacant plot (although why the hell there's a vacant plot in the middle of North Adelaide is anybody's guess) had caught fire, and then that had spread to the back of a set of apartments, and a tree. When I got down there they had most of it under control, although the tree, and possibly the fence, as well as at least one of the apartments was still on fire when I was there. There wasn't anything on any of the news websites when I looked first thing this morning, but I just checked again now, and found this...

A fire which caused about $100,000 damage to three North Adelaide townhouses is believed to have been deliberately lit. MFS spokesperson John Foody said fire cause investigators believe the fire was deliberately lit in a brush fence before spreading to the back of the town houses.

And when you saw it in the daytime I can understand now why there was so much damage done.

But anyway... after we'd been to stickybeak, we went looking for somewhere to have breakfast... and because we can't ever make a decision, we ended up going down to the Brickworks Markets, since I don't know that I've ever been there, and we were kind of in the area, and I figured being a market type place it would be sure to have food stalls and stuff.

OH! MY! GOD!

I should have gone with my first instinct after we saw the first coffeeshop place which just looked incredibly skeevy... we should have just turned tail and left right then and there. The whole place was just WRONG... skeevy and skanky and icky and festy... There were several food type places, but each one seemed to be slightly worse (or at least not much better) than the one before it. We should have just left right then... but we ended up going into this little bakery. You know the kind of place where you don't really want to touch anything, or be there at all... yeah, it was like that. Shoulda turned tail and run for it... didn't. Big mistake.

Granted the cake I had wasn't that bad... but the place in general left a bad taste in my mouth. And we didn't even really look at the "market"... actually I was more than happy to just walk straight out after the food incident, but Ma wanted to walk through the market. Trust me, I didn't feel any better after we did that. Everything just looked icky... cheap and nasty and festy and icky... and when Ma tried to stop and show me some mobile phone holders (since I kinda want one for my bedroom) I pretty much just dragged her out of there. We finished the end of one row of stalls and legged it.

YUCKY TA! Never, ever, ever, ever going there again. Ewwwwww!

Anyway, we ended up heading over to the "Homemaker Centre" not that far away, and we had a sausage sizzle at Bunnings to try and "wash away the taste of the Brickworks" as I put it. Then wandered around there aimlessly a bit, then went looking for blenders at random stores nearby. Still no joy.

Then we headed over to a nearby Kmart, even though I looked in one yesterday, still no joy... there was a price tag thing on the shelf for a $25 blender... but no actual blenders on the shelf. In the end we just kind of gave up and headed home.

But because we came back through the city, and I'd taken my camera with me when we left the house (since we really didn't have any idea where we were going or what we were doing), I directed Ma towards Rosina Street and the "Carpark-Members Only" artwork by Matej Andraz Vogrincic. Its lucky I actually knew the thing was there, because as we drove into the street I didn't notice it. Maybe because it was an overcast day, so you didn't get the shadows like you would on a sunny day... I don't know. But once I'd noticed it... wow! 50,000 toy cars glued to a large expanse of brick wall... and toy cars of a variety of sizes too... mostly they were your normal "Hot Wheels/Matchbox" type car, but a few were huge by comparison. And I spotted at least one semi trailer or possibly a car carrying truck amongst all the others.

Just around the corner is Solomon Street, which is subtitled "Art Street" or "Art Arcade" or something similar, I forget now ("Art Alley" maybe... I remember thinking there was alliteration going on)... and it's full of murals and other bits and pieces of street art. And while a lot of them were colourful and pretty and everything, the yellow warning label was the thing that caught my eye (and appealed to my sense of humour) most of all.

That was about it really... snapped a bunch of shots of the street art, then came home.

Oh and Ma called me a little bit ago to tell me she tracked down a seemingly decent blender for me... woohoo!

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