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the evening suddenly improved when the folk singer girl support act finally left the stage. it wasn’t that she sang badly, and really, she only played her guitar out of key once. her banter seemed a little self-indulgent, given that if she had not chatted as much, she could have gotten off stage quicker. maybe it was just that we thought bruce cockburn would come on at 9.30, and since it was actually folk singer girl who started keening about war at that time, we figured that the show wouldn’t be over until at least 11.30. way past bedtime. so not roskenroll. plus, it was like watching phoebe buffay.

the boy had said, as we walked up to the basement, “i hope he doesn’t just play all new songs.” having heard none of anything, they would all be new to me. it turned out that they were all things of beauty. how does a man play a guitar and make it sound like two guitars and a bass? and with just ten fingers! and what’s with that “sufi-rockabilly”? i was torn between wanting to listen to him all night, and wanting to go home to bed. fortunately, two encores took us past bruce’s bedtime too, so he said.

(i’m a poet and i don’t even know it)

midnight, i was finally able to step away from the annoying angelica houston lookalike who over the course of the show had been stepping backwards and backwards and rubbing her ass on me and flicking her scrubby ponytail into my face and sticking her handbag into my arm. but even she couldn’t spoil the big night out. yay bruce!

also, in an attempt to reverse the blood donation-induced anaemia, i had a hamburger (with beetroot) for lunch. all round, a pretty good day.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 12 March 2004 at 8:11 am

permalink | filed under around town, boy, grumble, lunch

happy cake news! an end-of-day grocery and noodle soup excursion to chinatown resulted in the reliving of the very cake that caused such cake-fueled hysteria late last year.

and also, krispy kreme finally opens a store in sydney. but not until may. ntch.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 4 March 2004 at 4:55 pm

permalink | filed under around town, cake

some days the air is so warm and moist that your armpits are no longer just armpits, they are pits of hell. is there a steaming carcass tucked up there? something that crawled inside and died?

on such a day, it would be wise to catch an airconditioned bus to the airconditioned cinema, where you can see “infernal affairs“. you will bite your nails down to just before it starts to hurt. you will stop breathing a few times, it gets so exciting. my word was i excited!

in the dark you might have a bottle of apple-cranberry juice and a tofu nori roll, and you will have tony leung chiu wai, surely the most handsome chinese man in the world (sometimes the most handsome man ITW fullstop, depending on what sort of day keanu and jude are having).

your armpits will thank you.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 11 February 2004 at 7:38 am

permalink | filed under around town, at the movies, snacks

sometimes it’s nice when clients take their time getting back to you, because that means you can take the morning off and see the shag exhibition at the opera house and the tracey moffat exhibition at the mca, and in between, a show of sydney object design, in what was up until a few months ago, some secret walled-up space underneath the sydney opera house. cool.

the moffat show was particularly worthy because it included every piece of her various series [what is the plural of ‘series?’] of photographs. whenever i;ve seen her stuff in the past it’s usually been just one picture out of a set, so today was the first time i experienced the full narrative element of her work. i felt better for it.

i’d usually rather see a drawing show than a photography one, but goshdarnit i like that tracey moffat, especially her “scarred for life” series. i’m even going back in to see the screenings of her films (there is only so much art a girl can see in a day), which is saying a lot really, because my standard reaction to the phrase ‘experimental film / video art’ is… not a pretty sight. i think the key is ‘narrative’. so call me linear, dammit.

lunchtime midafternoon saw me perched at a counter in a foodhall with three nori rolls, popular music from vittula and a gloria jeans tim tam iced chocolate. everything was tasty and extremely satisfying.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 3 February 2004 at 10:21 pm

permalink | filed under around town, bookshelf, lunch

bleary-eyed, claggy-mouthed, stumbling through the local mall to get the weekend paper when — good lord! i was jolted awake by the wanton display of cream-filled lamington sponges in the glass case at michel’s patisserie. eight-inch rounds of sponge cake and chocolate and dessicated coconut, sandwiched around what seemed like a litre of fresh whipped cream. there was no reason why this could not be part of a healthy saturday breakfast.

and what’s this, just beyond the wall of cake? my boss from an era past, toby, and his luminescent child, alice. we were all always dazzled by the girl’s beyond pale skin, and her sparkly eyes, and her mermaid hair, all goldiblonde tendrils halfway down her back. this morning she was dressed up as a fairy, waiting for a plastic ornament not unlike herself to be placed on a cake. “i go to big school now,” she said.

toby’s got a new book out. it’s pink!

posted by ragingyoghurt on 31 January 2004 at 11:04 am

permalink | filed under around town, breakfast, cake

so. trying to stick to this plan of watching less crap tv (already slightly fallen off the rails by watching half of “the bachelor” two nights ago), it occurred to me that i should go to the strokes show instead.

the morning’s quest to purchase a ticket was initially unsuccessful. stepping off the bus and into the tail end of the post christmas sales, it wasn’t so long before i had two tins of half price christmas biscuits (amarettini limone and fruit-studded, chocolate-covered gingerbread, probably still costing more than biscuits should), two hats (an orange bucket hat, and a blue hat similar to the orange except with a much wider brim) and a pair of jeans (dark denim with pink stitching, i suspect they are a capri style, but on me the length is perfect!). fortunately i came to my senses and ignored my need to buy a scott joplin cd, and suddenly i had a strokes ticket.

my reservation about paying $72 to see the strokes, is that on the record, at least in terms of aesthetics and production, they seem like a $30 band, tops. and what good is a burgeoning australian dollar if the pleasing exchange rate doesn’t translate to cheaper concert tickets? still i was determined to watch less crap tv!

five minutes before the band goes on, a girl in front of me whips around, her eyes roll up and she’s on the ground. her boyfriend carries her off the dancefloor and the crowd moves in to fill the space. there are lots of short people at the show, hurrah, so five or six metres from the stage is a pretty good place to be, pointy-elbowed girls with flippy hair not withstanding. the band strut… amble on and play a clash song — “this is a clash song, by the way” — and then it’s “this song is called ‘reptilia'”, and then

du-duh. du-du-duh
du-duh. du-du-duh
du-duh. du-du-duh
du-duh. du-du-duh…

there is good-natured banter and a thought-provoking lightshow (so *that’s* where the money goes), and on-the-spot boppping on my part, and all too soon julian stroke is bargaining with the audience how many more tunes the band will play: “*ten* more? we don’t have that many songs.” so it’s three. two. one. and they’re gone in a cloud of feedback. cheering for encores? feh. they’ve milked all the adulation during the show.

am i gushing? well, yes. ROCK!

posted by ragingyoghurt on 22 January 2004 at 12:27 am

permalink | filed under around town, shoping, soundtrack, tv

what aerodynamic piece of food can you throw a pelican, just so you can see him open his beak wide and snatch it from its trajectory?

yesterday an afternoon jaunt to centennial park saw mss amber and ella berry and me amusing ourselves with a host of pelicans, quite a few water fowl, some ducks and a few swans. sensing lunch, the pelicans swoop out of the sky, across the lake and right into the throng of smaller birds, their beaks like awnings over the heads of the others. hanging open. feed me.

we threw them stale baguettes, crusts cut from vegemite sandwiches, a few crumbs of polenta cake, and three jalsberg sandwiches.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 21 January 2004 at 6:12 pm

permalink | filed under around town

ah chinatown. where there will always be a happy chef beaming as he pushes a bowl of noodles and wontons towards you. where you will be elbowed by chinese grannies down in the markets, but it will all be made better with a $1.20 bagful of deep red tomatoes and a $1.50 fourpack of corn. and just for today, a pride of gold and silver lions roaming the streets, pulling lettuces off shop awnings, tossing their large felty-tinsely heads at passers-by.

in recent years, this question has surfaced each time chinese new year rolls around: why, amongst the piano lessons and maths tuition classes, did my mother not insist i also attend lion dance practice? now, standing on street corners in the presence of these magical beasts in their kung fu shoes, surrounded by the support team of drummers, cymbalists, pole bearers and other big sweaty dudes, i feel a sense of exhiliration, and yearning.

i too could run free like these lions, no?

running away and joining a lion dance troupe is my new second tier new year’s resolution. ahead in the list:
– draw
– draw comics
– read books
– watch less crap tv
– get back to yoga
– see friends
– be nicer
– cook meat

posted by ragingyoghurt on 18 January 2004 at 6:07 pm

permalink | filed under around town, misc

why oh why oh why am i stuck on a department store escalator with people standing both on the left side and the right side of the step, denying me overtaking privileges? why has the volume of said people tripled in the last two hours? why do they all smell slightly sour?

could it be that i, who don’t do christmas shoping, last minute christmas shoping, am participating in this most diabolical of year-end traditions? ummmm… yes.

fueled only by a just-bought package of braune lebkuchen mit früchten und schokoladeboden, and a small bag of mcdonald’s fries i got free with the coupon they gave me the last time i gave blood (now there’s an incentive to rock up to the red cross with elbow pit bared), i’ve been riding escalators between floors for ohhh… three hours, trying to find the most classy photo album for ‘a reasonable price’. why is it the cheaper the album, the shinier it is?

posted by ragingyoghurt on 24 December 2003 at 6:34 pm

permalink | filed under around town, grumble, shoping, snacks

after a day out walking around the city, i returned with a blister on my little toe, the size of my little toe. much as i would have liked to preserve it as a living specimen, i had to drain it the next day to fit back into my shoes. i stuck a needle into it and good lord! it was like the birthing scene in “like water for chocolate”.

i think i would like to go for a swim.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 23 December 2003 at 10:07 am

permalink | filed under around town, misc

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