What I Did In My Weekend

Mammal fucking rock edition


Friday:

• Became an ordained minister. I can now perform marriages and name children in states of the USA that have not passed laws against bullshit internet religions that make anyone who fills out a form an ordained minister.
• Had dinner at Bentleys. Still the best damn food I've tasted in Sydney.
• Had a drink at the Cricketers Arms. I'd stayed out of there until now because of it's reputation as a hipster hangout, but I found that it 's actually full of Irish people, and you can't go wrong drinking with the Irish.

Saturday:

• Visited the Museum of Modern Art. Didn't get to see a lot of it unfortunately, maybe next time.
• More on Saturday night in a second.

Sunday:

• Had breakfast at the NSW Art Gallery (which was pretty good, lovely view of the gardens and the harbour) and had a wander around. It was really great. I liked the modern art but the 19th century paintings totally fascinated me. I've never really been much of a visual arts sort of person but I may have to remedy that with some more visits in the future.

Anyway, the big event of the weekend was Mammal playing at the Annandale on Saturday night. I'd seen these guys at Come Together and they fucking rocked something wicked, so it was time to give them a second look and see how much of my enjoyment the first time I saw them was due to the copious consumption of intoxicating substances.

First up, the opening bands. Furcurve reminded me a hell of a lot of The Murder of Rosa Luxemborg, as they played thrashy hardcore with the spastic rhythms of Converge, but with a vocalist who cooed and minced like Morrisey. They didn't inspire me hugely, but get a half hearted thumbs up for doing something interesting and different and pulling it off well.

Next up were Guns for Glory, who very nearly bored me to death with a long dose of straight up emo. My lovely concert going companion started to get restless and only my confident reassurances that Mammal would make up for it convinced her to stay.


And fortunately they didn't make a liar of me, their set was every bit as energising as the last time I saw them, if not more. I've described them as 'like Rage Against the Machine but upbeat' and I think that's a pretty accurate description. They've got your funk, your metal and your rap and despite sharing Rage's political inclinations they blast their message out with positivity and fun, rather than bitter anger. These guys are a brilliant live act and all four members have that performer's x-factor that grabs your attention and holds it from the second they take the stage. The vocalist especially has the same kind of showmanship that I noted about Mike Patton earlier this year that transfers his energy and enthusiasm straight to the audience. The moshpit was one of the best I've seen in a while, with everyone, jumping, dancing and generally going nuts and having a good time. I've waited too long to go to the Annandale, which has a reputation as one of Sydney's best live venues. One that appears to be justified.


Anyway, brilliant live band. Go see them if you have a chance.

What I Did On My Weekend

PVC and Corsets Edition

I had no intention of making these posts a regular fixture on my blog but I keep doing things that I think are worth mentioning. I'm sure you'll forgive me a little livejournalness.

Saturday night wasn't that exciting. One group of friends is still holidaying in NZ, others were worn out from Friday night (more on that in a second) and the rest were either busy or boring so I was left on my own. I decided to head out to AbductionX because I hadn't been there in months, and it's comforting to see that nothing has changed. Everyone is drunk and there's a competent but generic thrash band playing. Anyway I got to see a few people I hadn't seen for a while so I'm glad I went, but next time I'll have to make sure I gather a bit of a posse because it can be a little dull on your own.

Friday night was a little more interesting. Once a month there's a fetish club held on Oxford Street called 'Hellfire', and I knew it well by reputation but I'd never been. Anyway my friend N. had gone last month and came back totally buzzed about how great it was and insisted that I come. I was a little skeptical but I decided to go around to his place for pre-drinks anyway. Upon arrival I had a real 'small world' moment when two of the people I met through the Death Metal Kindy Teacher were there. In a city the size of Sydney you wouldn't expect to run into people you know in unexpected places all the time the way you do in Christchurch but it still happens just as often. I guess even if the city is larger the social scenes remain the same size. As it happened there were a lot of people I knew there and they all talked me into coming along.

So once again I found myself in the Columbian, the least gay gay bar in Sydney, for more pre-drinks. It's a place where I have an unfortunate trend to get off my tits, but I restrained myself this time. We then went down the road to Hellfire, and as soon as I walked in the door I was glad I went.

It's not really a serious fetish club, more of what they refer to as an in-betweeners club, where genuine fetishists make up less than half of the attendees and the rest are merely curious onlookers who look just alternative enough to get in the door. It's worth going just to see the outfits and costumes, I suspect that for most attendees it's more about the fashion than any extreme sexual proclivities.

Mind you it must be noted that you'll still see some moderately crazy stuff there. People will just spontaneously start tying their partners up to conveniently placed scaffolds and start spanking or whipping them, or just engage in generally exhibitionist behaviour. The official entertainment involved rather more blood than I expected too. Still, it must be emphasised that it's not nearly as scary as it sounds, since it's a pretty mellow environment and kinky weird people generally tend to be easy going, friendly and approachable. I will probably go again and may even make a small effort to dress more appropriately.

As I write this it's a dirty grey Sunday afternoon and I'm trying to remember what we used to call all this wet stuff coming out of the sky back in NZ. More excitement next week...

The Sunday Lessons

Because I haven't done one of these for a while.

• Drug dealers have very nice apartments.
• B&D clubs can be more fun than you'd expect.
• I must be getting old. Getting drunk and heading out clubbing by myself has lost a lot of appeal.
  

What I Did On My Weekend(s)

For no particular reason, except that I did a bunch of cool stuff over the last couple of weeks, I'm going to indulge in a little cat blogging and recite the (hopefully not too tedious) details of my life over the last few weeks.

Last weekend (the 28th and 29th) my work flew everyone up to Port Douglas for a holiday (thank you U.S. stock market crashes!) I'd never been up to that part of Australia before (I never even realised how huge Queensland is compared to New South Wales, but I guess that's what you get when most of the country is desert that's no use for anything) so it was pretty exciting. Unfortunately the weekend was somewhat marred by the fact that some of my luggage was lost on the way up (and I'm still waiting to get it back), but other than that it was great fun.

On Saturday we went on a trip out to the Great Barrier Reef to go diving and snorkelling. I passed on the diving on account of feeling a little unwell, but I regret that now. At least I got in the water (unlike some people), and at least once I got in the water I didn't jump straight back out again because I saw a big fish (unlike some other people). The reef is a very unique, beautiful place (almost as good as New Zealand) but unfortunately none of my photos turned out very well. At least I got this one of a whale on the trip back:


Later that night we went out to dinner at Nautilus, one of the swankiest restaurants in this swanky resort town. It was open to the rainforest and the ambience was superb. The waiters certainly knew what to do when they saw a big corporate group come in with the company paying the tab and plied us with all manner of expensive wines, and even egged us on by telling us that the next table had spent more than us and we should try to catch up. I hate to think how much I drank and considering that I woke up without a hangover when red wine usually seriously disagrees with me it must have been very good quality. The food was excellent too.

Afterwards there was a spot of clubbing and then a long walk down the beach back to the resort. The beach looked amazing in the moonlight even when perceived through my hazy drunken memories. Back at the hotel much room service was consumed and drinking games continued well into the morning.

The next day was spent lounging by the pool and on the beach, with a spot of Coconut Olympics in the afternoon (won by the UK in a controversial round of 'who can throw the coconut the furthest', which could not be resolved due to the object of play bursting open and leaving smelly, rotten coconut milk all over the hands of the contestants).

It was a pretty cool holiday.

This weekend just been was supposed to be a quiet one but the Death Metal Kindy Teacher was ill, leaving me to wander the streets of Sydney without the tender oversight of a woman to keep me from going off the rails. Friday night ended up being work drinks, and a few unsuspecting co-workers were press ganged into a slow, meandering ramble down Oxford Street, during which I learned the following valuable lessons:

• Doing two consecutive jagerbombs is easier than a single shot of 42 below.
• Living so close to Oxford Street has made me surprisingly comfortable in gay bars.
• It's always the foreigners who go home last.

I actually got a little too wasted that night but my friend E. was having a birthday party on the Saturday so I soldiered on the next night too. We began with a very nice home cooked meal before heading off to the Crystal Boudoir, Sydney's trendiest burlesque club. The term burlesque seems to be a fairly unspecific one, and can mean anything from a slightly classier variety of stripping to something quite arty and pretentious. Crystal Boudoir is located right in Martin Place, more or less the most sophisticated (or at least perceived as the most sophisticated) part of Sydney (home to the most expensive bars and stores like Armani and Louis Vuitton) so it tended towards the latter. Things almost went awry with the door staff having issues with some of our shoes, but a party of twelve with prebookings pretty much does as the proverbial five hundred pound gorilla so in we went anyway.

But man, what a great show! The bar itself is a very nice venue, with lots of class and ambience. The drinks are expensive but not too bad for that part of town. You sit there and drink and eat nibbles, and periodically the performers take the stage and entertain the crowd for a while. The first few dances leant very much to the 'arty' side of things, being slow, graceful and moody, while still sensual. Later on things got more fun and light hearted. The performers themselves, male and female, were just brilliant, exuding so much grace and sexuality that the entire room was enraptured every time they took the stage. A bit of audience participation never fails to go down well either, as one relatively straight laced girl in our group learned when she got a face full of hot, jiggling burlesque dancer arse. Anyway, if you get the chance to go to anything like that do it, because I don't think I've been so well entertained for a long time.

Afterwards we ended up back on Oxford Street at Spectrum, a club that I loathe with every fibre of my hipster hating soul, but it was the birthday boys choice so there we were, hanging out with eighteen year olds who think they invented cool because they've heard of The Smiths.

Overall it was a very fun night, especially the burlesque, but what goes up must come down and on Sunday night I found myself sicker than I can remember being in eight years. I trundled off to bed at about ten (pretty early for me) where I was beset by a fever and dreams that three wizards were having a fight (complete with purple and green lasers shooting from their staves) inside my head. Finally at about midday on Monday one of the wizards triumphed, emerging from a shattered hole in my crown that had been opened by a final climactic concussion, and declared victory. I then returned to the realm of the sensible, although I was still unable to get out of bed until four hours later, when I staggered down to the dairy to buy the only dinner I could stomach the thought of; several cans of tinned fruit and a big tub of chocolate ice cream. A worthy reward for such a tiring couple of weeks.