monday : 27 feb 2006

8:02am. Yesterday, Sunday, I did one of my favourite things: watching a couple of movies in the cinema in a row. Because I wanted to be home by 6:30pm for the last installment of Killer Sharks, the movie thing required careful session time planning. I caught the 10:45am session of Memoirs of a Geisha. 145 minutes later I had to make a mad dash for the ticket queue to catch the 1:00pm showing of Hostel, followed by a 50 minute time-out before Walk the Line kicked off at 3:40pm. I got home and switched on the telly at 6:29pm.

Had another late night in town on Friday, lobbing into Bridie O'Reilly's and then Pony next door. Some good news for fast-food junkies: KFC's Mashies are back. They're not as soft and flavoursome as before, though. The batter is tougher and the condiment is this thick, yellow paste, still yet to be identified by Gil and crew at the CSI labs. If it's any comfort, I'm still alive, but perhaps BYO dipping sauce. Originally, KFC supplied gravy. Much classier.

Oh yeah, finally, at long last, I fixed the spacing problem on the home page. I am an HTML god. Bow down, you mere genuflecting mortals. You navel fluff of creation. Bow down in humble worship and call me by my deity name of, um, Chuckles?

wednesday : 22 feb 2006

1:16am. I'm still wearing my suit and tie after walking in the door ten minutes ago. But before I say more, this news must be broadcast to the universe: Andrew beat Dave at Pool by three games to one. Again, that's 3 to 1. Also, not to be outdone, I beat Dave one game to nil, but then I retired and went back to what I knew best, namely...drinking. So I didn't give him the chance of a rematch. Tough titties, I say. (Nevertheless, may the record reflect, yer honour, that Dave is better skilled at playing Pool than I am.) The venue? The Melbourne Lion, upstairs in Melbourne Central.

Presently, I've got the Rogue Traders' painful CD Here Comes the Drums playing on the Meridian G08. Nevermind that it's the Witching Hour. In a moment of weakness, perhaps caused by the band performing on Rove Live last night in an ordinary but inspiring spot as the closing act on a very mediocre show (first one of the season, no less), where the band did not take the easy way out and mime their third single 'Watching You', despite Bassingthwaite's voice sounding coarse, I bought the CD today for $18. This song, 'Watching You', might be my favourite single so far. It's got a cheeky vibe I like very much. The rest of the album is pure filler, except for the other singles 'Way to Go' and the excellent yet repetitive 'Voodoo Child', which scrubs up OK in a remixed version on Ministry of Sound's 2006 Annual. What will the fourth single be? Dunno yet. They may choose a more 'singy' track for contrast.

Hey, did I mention that Andrew beat Dave three games to one at Pool? Fact. What is also true is that I left Andrew ("Get a beer ya poof") and Dave ("What's your form, mate?") in the city, seeking nourishment at Hungry Jacks as I scrambled to catch the last train home from Flinders Street station. Who knows what they got up to next. Three Degrees was just across the road... Burp.

tuesday : 21 feb 2006

8:04am. I was going to write a journal entry last night after arriving home at 9:30pm, but there's a bug on the main home page that only shows up on Microsoft Internet Explorer, an extra-wide gap between the middle tiles and those on the right side. Arrgghh, it is annoying the shit out of me. I know what it's doing at least; just have to get around it without stuffing up the display for other (superior) browsers. Back soon!

friday : 17 feb 2006

7:46am. Just had a horrible night's sleep, which consisted of about three hour's of actual shut-eye between 4:00am and 7:00am. I'm not sure what caused the insomnia. Perhaps the cup of tea late yesterday arvo, or the skipped meal last night – food usually triggers a release of sleep-inducing hormones. This is the same mechanism that makes you feel drowsy after lunch. Anyway, this morning is definitely a Doors morning: their $10 best-of CD is playing on the stereo as I type this, shovelling rolled oats into the Halloween mask that passes for my face. Urrghhh. Now, the Doors aren't my thing, really. But the pub rock garage band I joined in Brisbane, they had a thing for The Doors, so I had to learn some Doors songs on the drums, and I guess some fondness rubbed off. Ahhh, those were good times. Anyway, the bitch of it is that I didn't even have fun on the town last night to feel this washed out.

I did do a mini bar crawl in the CBD on St Valentine's day after work, followed by a glass of cabernet Savignon while watching Brokeback Mountain during a late sell-out session in a suburban multiplex. When I found my seat, some goony bird was already in it. He muttered, "she said I could sit up the back". I dunno who "she" was, probably an usher, but I made it clear that I intended to sit there – a middle spot in the back row, and the last good seat in the house, no doubt. Goony Bird relented and stomped his way to the front row. I raised my glass to him and settled in to watch the poof cowboy moofie (recomended). Actually, a glass of red is a fine choice for cinema watching because you don't have to worry about it staying cold. And it doesn't seem to put me to sleep, like beer can, but rather it perked me up. A very enjoyable evening all up, even if it was spent flying solo.

Tonight there's drinks on for Code Monkey down at the Belgian Bier Café on St Kilda Road. Can I survive eight hours of work to get there? Hmmm. Jim Morrison is helping. I'll put on Ministry of Sound's 2005 Annual after that.

tuesday : 14 feb 2006

Happy birthday to Code Monkey for today. He's at home indulging in some quality solo time. Work is definitely the wrong place to be on one's birthday. Happy Valentine's days to those folks who have partners, including dad, who's taking his new girlfriend out for a meal on the beach in Queensland with a bottle of red. Way to go, dude! Now, where's my valentine?!?! Sob.

sunday : 12 feb 2006

It's 11:08pm. In an attempt to retire to bed sooner than the usual vampire prowling hours I usually keep, I have set aside 30 minutes to write this entry. So, working backwards from today: Heathen dropped in for a visit this afternoon, which is always a hoot, to swap DVDs and music, and also to reaffirm each other's world views. Not surprisingly, ours overlap quite a bit. After his visit, and feeling very mellow from the two bottles of James Squire pale ale I drank, I camped out in front of the idiot box and absorbed some fine television, namely David Attenborough's latest documentary Life in the Undergrowth, made possible with new close-up cameras, and the somewhat more flashy but also entertaining shark exposé Killer Sharks, featuring amateur video footage of an actual shark attack in the ocean near Easter Island. Following that, I settled in to watch the women's downhill skiing event on the Winter Olympics.

Yesterday (Saturday) I did bugger all, because Friday night was a fairly big one. It started with drinks at one of the fake Irish pubs in the CBD for Emma, one of the PAs on another floor, who was leaving work and traveling overseas. Then I scooted over to see An Inspector Calls, a stage show at Her Majesty's Theatre. Because Marylu (the magnificent) called me that afternoon about it, I wasn't exactly dressed for the occasion: cargo pants, a black Nike sweat shirt, and white skateboard shoes. But of course, it's not what you wear, it's how you wear it. I ignored the derisive looks the better attired patrons cast my way as we headed over to claim our seats. I liked the show, too. How to describe it? An upper-class family has its pretentions torn down by the immoral actions of its members, as revealed by a cunning police inspector. It was a long haul due to the lack of intermission, the constant dialogue and details being dumped on the audience, and the non-trivial amount of turps I'd consumed beforehand at the pub, causing a small measure of bladder busting near curtain fall, heh heh. All worth it, though. Additionally, this was the first stage show I've seen that featured actual rain on the set. Quite amazing. I wonder if the individual water drops were choreographed to fall in a certain order?

After the show, we had some drinks at the bar and a late supper of Chinese food backstage. I had vegetarian Singapore noodles, which is fast becoming one of my favourite Asian dishes. As I did on Friday night, I just order it by name, without even bothering to look at the menu, which shocked them a bit, I think. Never underestimate a man wearing white skateboard sneakers.

tuesday : 7 feb 2006

At lunchtime yesterday I left the office and joined two lads from work to watch the American Superbowl game on the big screens at Crown Casino. Except that...Crown could not receive the ESPN telecast through Fox, so I found the lads down at a hostel on Clarendon Street that was showing the game projected onto a wall. Good enough. The hostel bar was fully stocked, so we had a pleasant afternoon there mixing with back-packers and taking it easy. I'm feeling a bit seedy today, though. About the game itself, I still hate it. The pauses between plays drive you insane. In the last minute alone, there were about seven stoppages, the last one occurring three seconds before full time. Arrrghh!!

monday : 6 feb 2006

7:51am. Another excellent weekend just rolled by. It started with fellow Queenslander Carl Barron at her Majesty's Theatre, courtesy of Marylu who got four of us the best seats in the house. Barron was very bloody funny once again, despite reusing some material he used last time I saw him live at the same venue. When the show was over I ended up going bar-hopping until 3:30am. Dumbly, I forgot that I was heading off to Bendigo for the work social club race day. I fronted up at the bus the next morning with barely three hour's sleep down, and probably still a bit inebriated, too. The race event was a winner, with tons of sunshine, food and drink to go around. I got sunburnt: first time in eight years, I think. Andrew and I backed one winner at good odds (he picked the horse), along with a couple of placings...those successes just put us ahead for the day. On Sunday, yesterday, I took it very easy and stayed inside my aerie of A/V delights.

tuesday : 1 feb 2006

7:58am. Well, I found it at last, the trance music I like, it now has a name. Goa trance. I'll be trying some psy-trance soon, too. For now I'm focusing on releases from a label called YSE, or Yellow Sunshine Explosion. I prefer YSE. This outfit have published numerous trance compilations and single artist albums for the last five years or so. The 2005 compilations I have are well produced (i.e. great sound quality) and feature laid-back, almost minimal trance music. I love it. Unfortunately, this stuff is still relatively underground, making it hard to find shops that import these CDs. JB Hi-Fi do, but if I want back-catalogue stuff, I'll have to mail-order it directly from YSE. I had been worried that Goa trance would be too tribal and world music-y, and I know it's usually heard when tripping on this or that chemical cocktail, but to me it's almost got an electro industrial vibe that sounds perfectly excellent straight and sober.