tuesday : 29 jul 2003
Have you ever tried fighting off a head-cold when the wind gusts in town were so chilly it felt as though they had blown straight off a glacier on Pluto? I can usually shake a cold quickly, but not in such miserable weather. Nevertheless, apart from sounding like Elmer Fudd, the past week was pretty good, all up.
Friday night involved a work social club Trivia event, with food and drink supplied to members for a nominal fee. To take full advantage of this arrangement and to guard against the effects of cheap booze, I purchased a packet of Alcodol (a hangover preventative multi-vitamin) which worked a treat. Our team, called The Winners, came second-last out of 15 or so tables. But we drank a commendable, decidely non-trivial share of the bar supply. If I went for a jog immediately afterwards, I would have sweated VB and champagne. After a quick visit to The Exchange with a few others, I hung around town for a spell then caught the 4:30am Nightrider bus home. Yes, I am a bit of a nightowl. I blame my parents, who met whilst out late clubbing in Auckland, circa 1965. Thus, my destiny was genetically predetermined.
The terminator brought Saturday crashing down on me way too early for my liking – an extended solar eclipse would have been marvellous timing. Still, there is nothing like visiting the local Westfield for resetting one's body clock. Back at home, I spruced myself up for an interesting afternoon watching the Russian ice skaters in The Nutcracker on Ice at Her Majesty's Theatre, courtesy of marylu the magnificent. Given my health status at the time, ice dancing in a refrigerated auditorium would seem like the last thing I needed. Let me just confirm that laughter must be the best medicine, because afterwards I felt better than I have in quite a while.
The show. What can one say? There was so much talent on display, so many hours of practice, so much poetry and grace, that I could only sit there quietly in Row-G, Seat-18, and attempt to shine my admiration back onto the stage. (Marylu was a tad more specific in her appreciation: "God I love men in tights.") I was familiar with most of the classical numbers in the production, which was a bonus, and the skaters themselves were as taut and attractive as most of us wished we were in our day-dreams, or after a couple of Gin and Tonics. And guess what, on the way back from intermission, I touched the ice!
Drink and coffee in the Maj Cafe was also priceless. Present were myself, marylu and two of her sons, the incomparable Alice, and a gorgeous friend of hers whom I had not previously met. Well, the shared experience of the ice show, the caffeine, and the gin conspired to bring out the stand-up comedian in all of us. The ever-smiling Flick was there too, serving in the background. Hmmm. It is difficult to explain the rapport we had going, so I'll just mention that we stayed longer than we had planned to, keeping each other company with good humour and silliness.
Since my two flatmates are away house-sitting for three weeks, Sunday offered up a rare opportunity to sloth down a few gears with surround sounds and a wide screen. A blissful end to a nutty weekend.
tuesday : 22 jul 2003
Rewind back to the weekend.
Mine tend to start on Fridays straight after work. The festivities may begin at lunch time, but those are rare occasions, because I usually need the afternoon to reach my 38-hour benchmark. Thus between 4pm and 5pm, the pressure beings to mount: first with verbal hints being dropped in the corridors, then one or two rather blunt e-mails materialising in your in-box, and finally prodding and PCs forcibly being switched off. What pressure is this exactly? Beer pressure. Resistance is futile.
A classy venue, one of many close to us in the glittering CBD of Melbourne, is the default meeting place when the stop-work whistle blows. Happy hour is between 5pm and 7pm, which is time enough to unwind and plan the evening. For this night, someone suggested a bar five blocks down that held good prospects for single guys, and therefore warranted checking out. It ended up being close-quartered and lacking the absurd female-to-male ratio heard on the grapevine. Of course, the obvious explanation was that other blokes had acted on the same hot tip. Duh. (No mystery was beyond our powers of deduction.) Still, we drank more beer, munched nibblies and enjoyed the atmosphere. A workmate and I ambled off for take-away food the when the others eventually left. En route to Crown Casino, I bumped into an acquaintance I had not seen for over a year, and we stayed in town until the first Frankston train took me home.
Saturday night involved a 21st birthday bash for a friend's daughter. Since I was nursing a mild hangover, I drove marylu and myself way out east to an area called The Basin, up where the misty hills are covered with moccasin tracks and empty VB cans. While a large hall had been hired for the occasion, someone forgot to rent the crowd. But that oversight was forgotten once the band started up, which was fronted by one the birthday girl's many uncles. Also providing entertainment was marylu, who was getting quite smashed on Jim Beam and cola by this stage...after a long head start, I might add. There are few things more amusing than watching, from the vantage point of sobriety, a close friend drink to excess. After an embarrassing episode which involved a group of clearly insane people trying to get me to dance to rock ballads, we drained ourselves out of The Basin, having had a great time regardless.
My head cold, tiredness and raspy voice were in full swing on Sunday. I eventually peeled myself out of bed at the crack of 11am to engage our interstate house guest in conversation. When my other flatmates Suzie and Euan appeared from down the hall and across town, we all had a late lunch at Blue Train, Southbank. While the food was tasty, this is the first time I remember the meals arriving before the drinks. Good to see that the art of microwave cuisine is alive and well in Melbourne.
monday : 21 jul 2003
I voted for Reggie, too!
So Australian Big Bother is over for another year. The first series was interesting for its novelty value; I managed to watch and enjoy most of it. I remember fragments of the second series, only tuning in properly toward the end. Because I do not think too highly of Aussie TV celebrities, even when they are supposed to be entertaining us on their own tedious shows, the thought of watching Celebrity Big Brother held about as much appeal as drinking a Drano smoothie. I made sure to find out what time it was on so that I would not change channels and see it accidentally.
This time around, because one of my flatmates had it on regularly, I absorbed much of it: becoming both addicted and poisoned by it in the same manner as one does with passive smoking. I call the phenomenon 'Passive Big Brothering'. The various dramas and personalities were engaging; I think they ultimately chose a good mix of housemates. The winner, Regina Bird, fully deserved it – not in the usual sense of earning first place, but just by being a humble, beautifully disarming human being. I made my one and only telephone vote three minutes before the lines closed tonight for Reggie, the Tasmanian fish-n-chip Wondersheila. How can you not love someone who upon winning $250,000 in cash says, "Oh, I thought I'd won a PlayStation!"
And let me say, it felt very 'spesh' to be a part of it all. Dialling myself in to connect with the massmind of the nation with nervous, twitchy fingers. Participating in the biggest cultural event this country has seen since those big thongs and motorised BBQs swarmed into the stadium during the closing ceremony of the Sydney Olympic Games. It was a proud, pants-wetting moment in my life. And look, it even caused me to neglect a run-down of the weekend's activities, which I will have to toss into tomorrow's entry instead.
What can I say except to quote our newest national icon: "Bugger!"
thursday : 17 jul 2003
As of today, I have been 34 years old young for exactly one week. Celebrations started on my last night in Brisbane, with roast chicken at my brother's house (I doubt the chook's relatives felt like celebrating much) and then lunch with workmates in Melbourne the next day, followed by a kick-arse Japanese banquet and gallons of saki with more friends on Saturday night. Besides being hangover-free, which was a gift in itself, I received a swag of great presents – all chosen with the miraculous precision of successful brain surgery performed at sea after dark during a hurricane.
I am not easy to buy gifts for.
Now, the obvious question is: do I feel different? Am I reappraising my direction in life? Is this when I quit my IT job, burn my signed first-editions, and put the home cinema gear out for hard rubbish collection, in order to rent a treehouse in Nimbin with my dole cheques and eat hash cookies all day? Fuck that, baby. I am quite happy with my relatively opulent, self-indulgent lifestyle. Donating my entire income to my favourite charity, moi. Consuming baked cheese cake for breakfast just because. Hunting down German-made Hugo Boss suits for no rational reason other than my ill-informed fashion radar thinks they are hot shit. Being in such a spending fugue state that I have unwittingly bought Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much on DVD twice...the clincher is that I will simply give away the spare copy.
The often-used aphorism "you are only as young as you feel" does apply to me. Given the trajectory of my life, I think I am coping with the steady march toward the Big Beyond with my combat boots firmly laced and a healthy air of levity. I steadfastly refuse to give up one of my favourite activities – clubbing – when others have retired their dancing shoes in favour of footy games on TV and the whole domestic tableau. Chart music still interests me; I actually like Britney Spears, for instance, and love taking in hours of that most underrated of artforms, the video clip. I try to dress hip, but probably look more like Ali G's grandfather than Eminem.
These may all be indications that I have a neurotic fixation on my 20s, no? Well hang on, please to explain. Firstly, they were not so crazy or memorable as to warrant running them on A-B Repeat. And secondly, I cannot recapture those days anymore than Dennis Lillie could bowl a hat-trick, or Sir Edmund Hillary climb Mt Everest. But since I am still single and 'young at heart' (cue the fingers-down-throat gesture) then I have no intention of slowing down. The only thing holding me back is sleep deprivation, which maybe the topic of a future entry. In fact I am sure it will be. The realisation that I have had maybe a dozen non-tired days this year is disturbing. To that end, pleasant dreams...a big weekend approacheth.
wednesday : 16 jul 2003
Welcome to my first web journal entry.
As you can see, the rest of the site is still under construction – sorry about the noise. This project has been stewing in the broth of my imagination for about three years, kept simmering on the back burner thanks to my endless talent for procrastination.
The first milestone, a register of censored movies called The Chopping List, has been in maintenance mode since May 2003. This formidable task involved learning HTML and performing a stack of data entry, so it was a rather long haul. The second stage is this web journal. As time goes by, more of the other scenery will fall into place. Because I am essentially building the site from the inside out, there has already been one minor URL tremor involving the Chopping List files. With luck and adequate planning, it should be the last. Ah, Trial and Error: my two greatest mentors!
As for personal matters, there is much to reveal, both in terms of bringing you up to speed on my role in this crazy sitcom called Life, and also detailing future developments. I will not promise you any profound revelations or fancy Beatnik word salad, just a few cursory thoughts and observations. Cue the canned laughter.