lifescouts: january's mixed bag

I'll be honest, I had figured that due to the brouhaha that blew up last year around the creator of the Lifescouts project, as well as a number of other young male YouTube "personalities" (which I won't reiterate here, that's what Google is for), that we'd possibly seen the last of Lifescouts.

But it returned with something of a vengeance this January with a badge a day during the latter half of the month.

To some degree, I'm slightly tentative about the whole thing given the aforementioned brouhaha, but I am also something of a completionist, so the part of my brain that knows that there would be unclaimed badges out there would niggle at me, at least for a while.

Plus, it'll be nice to be able to post some stories from the past (even if that mostly involves digging through old blog posts), rather than just present day adventures... although I am hoping that there will be some badges that come up that I can arrange an adventure for.

And for the record, the addition of the twelve items below brings my grand total of Lifescout badges up to 45.

Sunset

Sadly, since I moved apartments at the beginning of last year, sunsets are much less a part of my day-to-day life than they were once upon a time.

It used to be that all I needed to do was to turn my head and look out of my bedroom window to watch the sunset, but now there's an apartment block in the way and I only very occasionally catch part of the sunset from my bedroom window when I'm on my way to or from the bathroom.

However, sunsets are very often a major part of our experiences when we travel, and the most memorable (both for good and bad reasons) was when we went up to the top of the Sydney Tower Eye just before sunset... because seeing a sunset from around 300 metres in the air is a hell of a thing.

I'm also very glad that I live in a city where the sun sets over the ocean...

Cooking

This one is pretty much a gimme... I've been living away from home since I was 22, and I've been living on my own for all bar about a year of that. So yeah, it's generally either cook or go hungry, because who has the money to eat take out all the damn time.

I cook... not always particularly brilliantly or overly fancily (because who the hell can be bothered when you're just cooking for yourself)... but I get by just fine.

Soccer

I used to play soccer when I was about... I don't know, eight or nine I guess. I know it was in early-ish primary school, and given the photos that still exist, I was still somewhat tow-headed and the skinnier kid that I often wish I'd remained in later years.

But what I wasn't actually any good at was the sport itself. There exists somewhere a photo of me in my yellow and black soccer uniform, in the middle of the pitch, during a game... and I'm not paying the least bit of attention to the game, I've turned around to smile and pose for the camera in an especially non-sporting way.

And that probably sums up my soccer career the best to be honest, I was never particularly interested. I also don't think I ever even saw the ball during a match. Running, then, as now, has not and never shall be my friend.

So I'm guessing it was a relief to my team's coach when I just quietly bowed out between seasons and sent a message along with one of the other players.

Theatre

With Fringe about to start, this one seems particularly topical.

I have a whole collection of blog posts under the theatre label which would pretty much sum up my theatre going experiences.

Of course there's my ongoing obsession with Macbeth... not to mention that one time I was on stage for the last third of a show. Plus the time I helped read a letter.

And who could forget that time I was snogged by a big, black, opera singing drag queen!

Circus

There are three thoughts that automatically spring to mind when the topic of circuses comes up...

The first is that once upon a time, I was a bear in the circus. Okay, not a real bear, but when I was really young our class (or the whole school maybe, I honestly don't remember) put on a "circus"... kids playing all the roles, and the only two things that I really remember were the two kids who went on just before us with a flea circus (and that the finale of the act was one of them clapping their hands together and "killing" the star performer), and that I played one of the bears in the, I'm guessing, bear tamer act. And my big trick was getting up on my "hind legs" on an upturned metal waste paper basket.

Secondly, when I was around 12 or so, Ma took me to see The Great Moscow Circus for my birthday. I'm not completely sure what I was expecting, but I do know that because it wasn't the typical type of circus and didn't have the elephants and lions and whatnot (at least I don't remember it as having lions... I could be wrong), I remember being fairly disappointed.

And lastly, there's always Cirque du Soleil.

Painting

I think the less said about my brief foray into the world of painting, the better.

Sandcastle

I don't have any really specific sandcastle memories, and no great stories to tell, but growing up in Australia in the 70's and 80's and spending at least some of that time at the beach until I was sunburned to within an inch of my life, I know that I've definitely built a sandcastle or two.

Pool

This one is mostly a Ludo memory, since he's the one who actually taught me to play pool.

At a certain point between when he moved in with Ma and me after he got kicked out by his girlfriend at the time ... and when he and I finally moved in together... Ludo lived in what can only be described as a "halfway house". I don't remember all the reasons why, or to be honest, I don't even know if I knew them all at the time. But on occasions we used it as a base for whatever ill-thought-out scheme we were embarking on.

They also had a pool table, and Ludo and I spent more than a few afternoons just killing time playing pool.

Santa's Grotto

Like everybody, I have various photos of Little Kid Me sitting on Santa's lap (back when you could actually sit on Santa's lap without everybody losing their ever-loving minds) looking freshly scrubbed and otherwise unimpressed.

But beyond the photos I don't really remember those times.

The time I do remember is when I was around 16 or so, and myself and the bunch of girls that I regularly hung around with in school all had a free lesson and we decided to head across the road to the shopping centre. I don't know who's idea it was, but somebody suggested that we should go and see Santa (I would have said that it was suggested ironically, but this was before teenagers had discovered irony, as far as I remember).

The poor bastard in the big red suit couldn't have known what the hell to expect when about half a dozen teenage girls (and me) turned up to say hello and sit on his lap (well, not that I actually sat on his lap, I was a little too... substantial for that).

Bumper Cars

Bumper cars are one of the few fairground attractions that I like. I'm not much for rollercoasters or those big rides that whiz you around (they make me want to throw up... or at least they used to)... and Ferris Wheels, while nice, are somewhat dull.

I do love a bumper car though...

Fireworks

When Ludo and I first moved in together we spent that year's Skyshow sitting on our balcony watching the fireworks go off just behind the trees, it was nice.

When I moved out on my own, Ludo, Lownee and a ton of people I worked with at the Courts all went along to Skyshow. It was one of only two times I ever went along, the other involved me standing around in 2006 and taking a lot of slightly blurry, yet vaguely artistic photos.

Unfortunately my old apartment was never in the right place to enjoy fireworks... but since moving to the new apartment all I need to do is lay on my bed and I can enjoy all the random fireworks as they happen.

Martial Arts

I feel like I've dipped into Martial Arts on occasion throughout my youth, however it was never particularly officially or for very long.

But at a certain point between leaving school and leaving home, Ma and I did do a course of tai chi over a number of weeks. I don't really remember much of it now, and I never kept up with it once we finished the course, but it was fun

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movies: mortdecai

I spoken in other reviews about actors having big chunks of set wedged in their teeth due to overly enthusiastic chewing of the scenery... just about everyone involved in Mortdecai puts them to shame... deep, deep, deep, overwhelming shame.

It's not a smart movie, it's not a complex movie (although I think it attempts to be on more than one occasion), but what it is is a silly, fun, enjoyable movie.

And at it's heart it's 50% heist movie and 50% farce.

Johnny Depp is Lord Charles Mortdecai, all around rogue, art dealer, total nincompoop and owner of the most luxuriant moustaches since Hercule Poirot. Paul Bettany is Jock, his long-suffering man servant and is clearly channelling his inner Jason Statham. Gwyneth Paltrow is Lady Mortdecai, very chilly, very efficient and very British. And Ewan McGregor is Martland, the MI5 detective (and old rival) who is trying to secure the painting and seduce Lady M.

Like I said, it's silly, incredibly over-the-top, and tried very, very hard to be a better movie than it actually is. In fact, if I'm being honest, the story and it's lack of complexity is where the movie falls squarely on it's face. But it is a ton of fun, and it does have one of the best and slickest looking travelling transition sequences I've seen in a long while.

So if you're in the mood for a lot of INCREDIBLY camp and outrageous performances, and a movie that isn't going to overly tax your brain but which should make you laugh, this is definitely the right movie to choose.

yani's rating: 2 Duchesses out of 5

public art filled shopping saturday

It's been another big, long and involved day... and it kicked off with me hitting the supermarket at the ungodly hour of 7am.

There were actually two reasons for this... this first of which was that Ma was getting her hair did today, but the main reason was that somebody decided that Saturday morning and closing road between 8am and 10:30am which would have either trapped me inside my apartment, or conversely, outside.

So instead I decided to forgo the usual trip down the road to Northpark and instead as soon as I got up I threw myself in the shower and then hit up the Foodland in the North Adelaide Village which opens at the slightly insane and aforementioned time of 7am.

Unsurprisingly there were a number of early morning gym goers picking up some breakfast, but beyond that there seemed to be more staff roaming around than shoppers.

And even though I shop at the Village regularly, I normally just wander around aimlessly until I find what I'm looking for, so I haven't really got everything mapped out in my head in the same way that I do with the Foodland at Northpark.

But I still ended up with the majority of the stuff I needed. While there were a number of staff around the store, there was only one register open, which always seems a little silly... especially since I ended up having to go through the "12 items" lane with all of my shopping.

But even after taking a side trip to Bakers Delight and the greengrocers, I was still home by 7:45am...

It gave me plenty of time to tidy up, do some dishes and generally potter around doing all the things that I normally do before we go shopping.

Ma turned up around 10am, showed me a few things she'd dug out of "the family archive"... the most interesting of which was a letter written to my grandfather by someone he served with in World War II.

When we headed on out, I remembered that I wanted to divert down Waymouth Street because I'd seen a "new" Benzo piece on Instagram the other day and since I was already carrying my camera, it seemed like the right time.

If there is one thing that you can say about Benzo's work (and trust me, there are MANY, MANY things I can say about it), one of them is that he knows how to put light and life into eyes with only a couple of colours of paint.

And since I also took a few shots on my phone, I fiddled around when I got back in the car and turned one of them into my new lock screen wallpaper. Which means that in the five plus years I've had an iPhone, Benzo has ALWAYS been my lock screen. First it was the Pencil Solider... then the Blue Spaceman... now The Mystic (all names are one's I've made up, obviously).

The actual destination for today was the poor man's Sculpture By The Sea, the Brighton Jetty Classics Sculpture Exhibition. That's not to say it's not enjoyable, especially since we've been to four out of the last five years, including this one... but as I think I generally say about stuff like this, I don't know if was a good as last year... and there certainly weren't as many people around making use of the beach as there were the year before.

By which I mean I didn't have the opportunity to take anywhere near as many slightly pervy photos of hot guys on the beach.

It wasn't a total loss though.

Ma's having some issues with her foot at present, so we didn't go rushing around... although given the fact that as a general rule people don't bother to pay attention to whether or not that's completely in the way and generally taking up space at something like this, it's always more of a stop-start stroll than it is a forced hike.

As always, I strapped on my giant-fuck-off telephoto lens because it's more often than not easier to just photograph around people from a distance than it is to wait for them to move completely out of the shot. Also, it's good for photographing people on the beach.

I don't know how many pieces were in previous exhibitions, but I think Ma said this one had around 120, but I felt like there were less pieces this time. Or else there were more small pieces, so it didn't cover as much ground.

After we'd done the usual circuit and poked around the pieces in the Surf Club, we headed up to Jetty Road and had lunch again at the same place we went last year, Enuf Burger Bar.

I know, I know, I keep saying that I'm swearing off burgers, but also like last time this was one of their chicken burgers, and it was really good. Plus they make really nice fries.

When we'd finished lunch, we headed back to the car and took the "much longer drive than it seems like it should be" from Brighton to Port Adelaide (although looking at it, it's a half hour, 20km drive, so no wonder it took a while).

Of course, the trip to Port Adelaide was to check out the finished works from the Wonderwalls extravaganza last weekend.

The two that were probably the most different from when we saw them last are the two above... Josh's aerialist stencil piece and the amazing, amazing piece by Smug One. The even more amazing thing about Smug's work is that while it almost looks like an oil painting from far away, when you get up close to it, especially on the lower land, you can see the obvious marks of the spray can.

Just blows my mind.

We finished up, like last weekend, with the two gigantic pieces on the former Department of Marine and Harbors Building.

From there we headed back here.

So kind of a full day really... and not bad overall. But at least I didn't get sunburned this time!

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photo friday: paint and places

I've decided that the Australia Day holiday is generally cursed for me.

In 2013 I spent that weekend with a busted toilet...

Last year I spent that weekend and a large number thereafter with a busted thumb... sure the actual "busting" took place three days before, but it was still in the general vicinity.

This year it was my iPhone that busted itself. Well, when I say busted, I decided that the public holiday Monday was the right time to finally get around to installing iTunes on the laptop I've had since about May, and finally upgrading my iOS on my iPhone.

However it was probably a rookie mistake on my part to be upgrading the iOS at the same time that I was moving a bunch of files from one external hard drive to another (and cleaning the house at the same time, but I don't think that last bit was actually related). So when my phone had been through all of the things it needed to do and was at the last stage of disconnecting from iTunes, rebooting and reconnecting, it got stuck on the rebooting stage and I was stuck looking at the white Apple logo.

I eventually gave up looking at it and went to play some Assassin's Creed, but several hours later, it was still on the Apple logo.

So yeah, fucked phone. You never quite realise a) how much you rely on your phone to do, and b) how naked and vulnerable you feel without a functional phone. No alarm clock, no podcasts to listen to to and from work, no ability to just randomly check something on Google... and no entertaining ways to waste time. In short, I didn't like it and I don't recommend it as a lifestyle choice.

And I had to endure that for three whole days from Monday to Thursday which was the earliest appointment I could get at the Apple Genius Bar. I don't know if it would have been any better if I'd just gone in without an appointment (I doubt it).

On the plus side, when Thursday finally did roll around, it took me longer to walk from work to the Apple Store than it did for the pleasant ethnic bearded hipster to take my phone out the back and bring it back again in a functional state. I assume they have a machine out the back that just brute forces new software onto the phone no matter what it's doing.

I will also say that if you ever want to be simultaneously amused by and despair at humanity, go hang out in an Apple Store some time before noon and watch the Geniuses help little old gents and ladies with their technology issues. It's adorable but also at the same time there's an element of face-palming.

Even though it was back to "fresh out of the box" status, I was completely convinced that I was going to lose something in the transition, since this was a new copy of iTunes and I hadn't pulled all of my photos off the phone properly, and maybe I would lose my notes or my contacts or my photos... but no, it was all fine and fully functional. So now I have a functional iPhone, complete with the new (but now technically kinda old) iOS8.

Speaking of iOS8, while I don't really give a crap about the new Health app all that much, I was intrigued to find that it just started tracking my steps without me even asking it to. And in the last couple of days I've taken 15,555 steps, or walked 13.08km, and that was only really with one morning walk and two walks home. How accurate it turns out to be (since I think the numbers might already be a little bit rubbery when it comes to counting steps), I have no idea, but it'll be fun to keep an eye on. Plus it has a graph, and as I think I've mentioned before, I do love a graph.

On the down side, as I was walking back from the Apple Store, I managed to essentially trip over a crack in the footpath and fall-down-go-boom, down I went. It wasn't as bad as some of my previous falls, but I did scrape my knee a little and I'm glad I already have an appointment with my chiro on Monday, because I think I shook things up a bit.

Also in the "what the fuck" column, I sincerely need to buy a set of earplugs. Well, hopefully I don't need to, but Wednesday night my problematic back door neighbours (I need to come up with a consistent name for them, because that just sounds wrong) decided that it was a good time to sit outside and talk and drink from 9pm to 4am.

If it had just been the talking, then maybe I would have been fine, but even the occasional outburst of laughter and/or shouting, I slept, as they say, fitfully... right up until the point at 3:30am where they always seem to be over-taken by demonic entities (or just get too drunk to function like reasonable members of the human race), and there was increased volume of music, some drunken yelling, dropping of bottles into (I'm guessing) a wheelie bin, tuneless singing and some sort of banging (possibly against the lid of the aforementioned wheelie bin).

Had I had a functional iPhone, I would probably have called the police much earlier in the evening, but I would have had to get up, fire up the laptop, find the non emergency number for the police, then call them and it all seemed like too much effort.

As also seems to be the case when this has happened before, everything went quiet some time after 4am when they all dragged their drink soaked asses off to bed, so I got at least two hours of uninterrupted sleep.

I finally gave in and wrote the note I've been threatening to write since all this shit started, and dropped it in their letter box on the way home on Thursday night. I tried for a slightly humorous, "I don't want to be that guy, but" kind of vibe... so we can only hope it has some effect.

I don't think they would have seen the note until Friday, but I almost felt like I was being pranked on Thursday night... because while they were outside talking up until around 10:30, everything went quiet for about half an hour and then suddenly there was the sound of running water. They appeared to be using the hosepipe to "fill" the swimming pool at 11pm. Seriously? If the hose had been IN the pool, fine... but putting it on the edge of the pool so there's the continual sound of running water. That has all the earmarks of being punked in the most passive aggressive manner.

Fortunately it didn't stop me from getting to sleep eventually... but I'm hoping for a disturbance free night tonight.

Work continues to be all kinds of mental... good for the most part, but on occasion all kinds of frustrating. Although the fact that I reached a particular level of sleep deprivation on Thursday led for a couple of instances of hysterical laughter.

Oh, and for the official record, this is my 3,500th blog post!

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movie scores update

This post is essentially a tiny little bit of blog-housekeeping, mostly for my benefit... so feel free to ignore this entirely.

I've been threatening for some time now to go through and update all my movie review scores. In the 9 years, 6 months, 2 days from my first movie review to the most recent one I've been ranking movies out of 10, and it's become unmistakably apparent that my scores are very heavily weighted to the upper end of the scale (I think there are literally about two movies that were rated 4, and less than ten that were 5's).

So I've just gone through all 248 movie reviews and re-ranked them all on a 1 to 5 scale. Okay, technically it ended up being a -1 to 5 scale to accommodate the lower end of reviews, but like I said, there were only a handful of those outliers.

Part of the reason it took me so long to finally get around to it was that I didn't want to suddenly introduce half points, but eventually I settled on just taking five away from all the numbers, 10 becomes 5, 9 becomes 4... 5 becomes 0 and 4 becomes -1.

But that was it, other than adjusting the numbers (and the occasional spelling mistake or typo... I can't spell "definitely" right to save myself), I didn't change any of the ratings.

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wonderwalls street art saturday

Let's start with the most important stuff first... I'm down one annoying set of neighbours! The people who followed me here from the old place are gone. I suspected as much on Friday when I got home and what appeared to be a moving van was parked outside the apartment, but they seemed to be unloading rather than loading. But this afternoon as Ma was leaving, the door opened and this shirtless, gorgeous young blonde guy stepped out. I was so gob-smacked I didn't even have the presence of mind to do the "new neighbour head nod" thing. So thanks very much Rental Agreement, God of Housing... you did pretty damn well!

Hopefully they (I'm guessing the girl who he was opening to door for is his girlfriend... but you never know) turn out to be the respectful, quiet kind of neighbours.

Also, and the reasons why will become apparent shortly, if they're not already apparent from the images at the top of the post, but I'm decidedly sunburned. Only down my forearms really, I had the presence of mind to actually wear a hat, but I am very pink of skin in spots.

The shopping portion of the day was reasonably painless... I was running a little behind this morning, which isn't really all that surprising, given that I was up until about 1:45 this morning (sadly not because I was doing anything exciting like having great sex or playing video games).

But when Ma arrived we headed off to the supermarket for all of the usualness, which this week seemed to consist predominately of fruit and veg... and nothing specifically exotic for Australia Day, because m'eh.

Then we headed back here and I showed Ma some of the research I'd been doing on the family tree... she's going to dig up some bits and pieces she has that I should be able to add to the tree or clear up details here and there.

I needed to grab a new screen protector for my phone, although I really wish I could remember (or find the left over ones that I'm sure I have somewhere) what the brand was of the one I used to have, it was essentially perfect in just about every way, no bubbles, it never peeled away until very recently and while I scratched the living daylights out of it with my thumbnail it held up very well.

We stopped off at Arndale and headed into Big W to take a look. I was hoping they may also still have the Lego cases in stock. Mine is still okay, but a year of pulling it in and out of my pocket has rubbed the Lego branding off the back of all of the studs, and it could just do with a general freshen up. But unfortunately they didn't have any.

Also, it always baffles me that they have to advertise that screen protectors are transparent... like that's some kind of fucking surprise. And that they often find several different ways to say the same thing on what looks like different versions of the exact same item.

Then we headed down to Port Adelaide for the Wonderwalls Street Art Festival!

We started out at the old Flour Mill to pick up a map of all the locations and check out the little art show they had there, along with the giant Guido Van Helten piece of the two faces in the previous pair of images.

The artworks were possibly just that little bit too spread out to really park in one spot and wander around to them all, but we did end up doing most of the central ones in one long wander.

And of all the pieces, including my favourite one (the guy with his face covered in the military jacket at the top of the post), I think the greatest revelations was the piece on the right, by Smug One, all the way from Scotland (although I think he was originally from here).

But seriously, the fact that that amazing piece of art came out of a spray can blows my mind. Doubly so, because as one of the comments on the Instagram version of that image said, Smug claims that it's "just copying a picture, anyone can do it".

Yeah, I'm going to go with "no". He's clearly a wizard of some sort.

Then we circled around to the collection of artists working on the fence surrounding that seemingly wasted bit of space down by the Port Adelaide lighthouse, and specifically to see my buddy Josh and his daring young girl on the flying... well, hoop I guess, or could you still call it a trapeze?

We chatted for a bit, helped him get one of his giant stencils in place and then headed off to check out some more artwork and then have some lunch.

Lunch was fairly by the numbers... we've been to the same cafe a couple of times before I think but I remember it being somewhat better than that. Or at least not seeming so pedestrian.

We definitely saved the most gigantic pieces for last.

I'd seen a number of pictures of the Sainer and Bezt (Etam Cru) piece online last night, but it wasn't until I saw the seven story military man that I fell completely and absolutely in love with it. I'd seen bits of it peeking between other buildings as we wandered around, but seeing it in the flesh and seeing just how incredibly ENORMOUS it is on the side of the abandoned former Department of Marine and Harbors Building.

The flip side of the building by Askew One and Elliot Francis Stewart was amazing too... and I actually loved that we caught it unfinished. Actually I always love that... seeing street art mostly finished, with some work still to do and then wandering back later and seeing how it's changed now that it's complete.

It was also great to see so many people out and about looking at the artworks...

Some were people you would, I guess, expect to see at something like that, but others were just regular folks out to see the art. Which is good, I always enjoy seeing people either experiencing street art for the first time, or finally understanding that there's a gigantic difference between the ugly little scribbled tags that mess up public spaces, and these absolutely amazing pieces of art.

That was pretty much it for the day really... which was good because by that point we were pretty much buggered from all the wandering around.

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