Friday, 2nd March 2007
NIGHTISH – KJ came down from Gladstone. We caught a screening of Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth. Think a darker, Alice in Wonderland for grown-ups. Enthralling.
Saturday, 3rd March 2007
MORNING – Inspected the “2 bedroom fully furnished unit for rent” in Southport which was really the converted 2-car garage of a family home (with the family living in it). The ad said “a short walk to uni” but what it meant was “a kilometer long walk to uni across a darkened, forest-y/bush area where hoods and predators may hide in the shadows and jump you at any given moment.” And there wasn’t a bus stop nearby. And one of the first things you see is a sign that says “NO SMOKING OR RISK IMMEDIATE EVICTION” followed by a framed poster of Donald Duck on the wall along with Donald Duck sheets and a skinny iron bed that looked right out of a correctional facility. I refuse to live in a suburban garage shrine to Donald Duck. A non-smoking one at that! Didn’t Donald smoke a pipe?
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REST OF THE DAY – Attended St. Jerome’s Laneway Festival in Brissie with KJ. I know I said being stuck at a music festival with all the sneering indie-hipster kids in their floppy hair, thick framed glasses, skinny jeans and i-haven’t-bought-a-new-dress-since-I-was-9 glory was my worst nightmare but KJ paid for the tickets. I’m a grateful free-loader. Lots of drunk, underage-looking kids running around with red plastic cups and Jack Daniels cans with bits of cookie in their hair. Caught Youth Group, The Walkmen, The Sleepy Jackson, Peter Bjorn & John (plus a duet with the chick from Camera Obscura)and Yo La Tengo. While I’ve never thought much of Sleepy Jackson, I have to say I love musicians who seem to be enjoying their show more than their audience is (syok sendiri). Seriously, if you’re going to go up on an elevated stage and appear as awkward and uncomfortable as the rest of us, then you might as well not be on it (The Walkmen, I’m talking to YOU!). Peter & Bjorn brought some Swedish humor to the proceedings – “Hello Brisbane! I was…..hello……yes, I was. I was born that way.” Yo La Tengo lived up to their reputation of being the ugliest band ever – when they came onstage, I couldn’t help but think, “Jeebus, what is that?!!” – still, they had moments of musical brilliance which I would’ve enjoyed thoroughly had it not been for the fact that they were the last people to go on and I’m ageing rapidly and I need my rest. My mom called my mobile while I was at the event yelling, “What’s that noise?! Where are you?! Why are you at a music festival? Aren’t you supposed to be out looking for a house to live in?!!!!” Yes. Except it is 10 p.m. and which shady real estate agent is open at this hour?
Sunday, 4th March 2007
Waved goodbye to KJ in the morning. Crashed on the couch and decided that I’d rather watch some corny, American dog movie on TV than be productive. Despite the fact that I find all movies featuring clever animals rather irritating (perhaps, because they make me feel inferior). A dog that can fold a napkin while outsmarting the baddies? Wow-wee, Beethoven! They’re always showing a movie about some kind of wondrous dog on Sundays. I think it is part of some underground conspiracy to punish the people that don’t go to church or play footie in the park.
In the afternoon, I was manipulated by Zher and SD into attending a poolside barbecue at M’s place (You might remember that M was the guy in the chicken suit and the bling necklace from last Halloween) out near Carrara (but further). It’s a nice, shiny, new, two-storey house, huge yard, decent-sized pool facing a snaking, river canal, rolling greens and a (golf course?). Bob Marley was playing on the stereo and a German guy they call “Scheiße” was barbecuing fish he had caught himself in the morning. I don’t know how I feel about eating something cooked by someone who has been nicknamed after the German word for shit. And I hate being conned into socialization. I was trapped in conversation with P (the guy with the silver face mask on his crotch from last Halloween) for a while. He was talking about how he went to Phuket & Bangkok and all the girls he met were hookers (well, he is a white boy hanging out at all the touristy places) or they used to be boys and now they were girl hookers. He said the experience made him uncomfortable. There are only so many hookers a man can take before wanting to have fun for free, I gathered, although P tried to phrase it in a way that would make him sound as if he just wasn’t into hookers. Please. You’re probably just cheap. P asked me what the girls in KL were like. Well, not all of us are hookers, for a start. “I don’t know, they’re like me, like Zher, I guess,” I said. Yes, I was boring myself in this conversation. “You mean, hot?” P asked. Uh. Yeah, sure whatever. But yes, Zher is hot. (Alas, I’m either ‘alright’ by association or hideous by comparison). In other conversations, Grandma C (dubbed “Grandma” because she’s loud, she nags, she bakes killer cakes and keeps harping on about how young we are as compared to her grand old age of 27) talked of her tendency to catch diseases that have been largely unheard of since 1939.
