Culturazi

Thought you might like to hear how the good burghers of Adelaide are seeing in the end of smoking in pubs.

Wednesday 31 October 2007
GUILLAUME SOLOACOUSTIC + The Torrents
‘THE LAST DRAG’ @ The Grace Emily Hotel
(Waymouth Street, Adelaide)
Free entry, starts 9pm

Cheers,
G.

Tags: Drugs by loadedog
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Currently holidaying in Beijing, our world-roaming correspondent and former podcastee, Andy K, has finally seen fit to send in a report, two days before he returns to Canberra. It takes the form of a coffee review…

Perhaps a formula 1 themed coffee house (complete with peaked caps, badged shirts, multiple sports lcd screens) was not a naturally synergistic enterprise and, with some wisdom, even Starbucks would have been a wiser choice, but hey, gotta try these things:

Pitstop Cafe, The Place commercial centre, Chaoyiang District, Beijing. Decor: upbeat sports bar, standup tables and sofas, and extensive outdoor seating overlooking giant LCD covered plaza.

Staff 5. Customers, me.

That’s a nice ratio for service but mi hablo una poco espanola, y nada mandarin.

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Tags: Humour by loadedog
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Tags: Posters by loadedog
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Meg Roberts, Kate Smith, Leah Bullen, Marina Neilson, Karena Keys. CCAS show at Mount Majura Vineyard. Opens 3pm, Sat, 3rd Nov.

Tags: Art, Posters by loadedog
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Slim Pickens and Round John Virgin, Rafe, Jordan Best, Cyclone Rangers, Smitten, Ocean Moses. 7-11pm, $10/5 conc/early bird. Email us for address.

Tags: Backyard Backanalia, Posters by loadedog
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Forestry workers are special. They don’t just ‘go to work’. They have a ‘way of life’, sort of like Aboriginal people had a way of life. Unlike the Aboriginal way of life, however, the forestry worker’s way of life must be protected because, unlike Aboriginals, forestry workers know no other way of life. Cutting down trees is all they know and if you take the trees away from them they will all wither and die and drink too much and screw their kiddies in the process. And we can’t have that.

Forestry workers are a bit like farmers, who aren’t businessmen using vast quantities of natural assets to make a killing in the good days and cry for help from the government in the bad days but more a sort of primeval clan. Farmers have mystical knowledge about how to smooth up a sheep’s bum cheeks and how to secretly pump water out of the creek and they have a spiritual connection to the land their fathers bought, unlike Aboriginals who couldn’t even work out a land title system for land they supposedly ‘owned’ for thousands of years.

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Tags: Politics by loadedog
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My life as we know it is over. I’ve discovered Scrabulous. My identical twin sister has been playing for ages, but she’s the sort of person who gets 100 points for a single word, so I’d resisted it until now. I have some pride.

Frankly, I think I overdosed on my first night, playing 3 games simultaneously. I felt like one of those small children in ties who play a dozen games of chess for the amusement of others. Wildflower was quite interested in the on-screen action too, so she got her junior scrabble out and that made 4 games. Thankfully, she beat me pretty convincingly straight away, because that 4 game pressure was really getting to me.

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Tags: Gertrude by Gertrude
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I have no desire to pick on Ben Cousins or Joey or any other ‘disgraced’ footballers, what they do in their spare time being no business of mine, but when this little rhyme popped into my head, I couldn’t resist giving it a little twist, all in the cause, hopefully, of humour. I think you will recognise the original song. Feel free to sing along.

There was a footballer who snorted some coke
What a top bloke, he snorted some coke
Perhaps he’ll croak

There was a footballer who smoked a big jay
He didn’t go psycho so p’raps it’s ok?
He smoked a big jay to come down from the ice
He’d started confusing his freckles with lice
He took the ice to pick up from the smack
It’s cheaper right now that Afghanistan’s back
He shot up some smack to chill from the speed
He had it on intravenous feed
He mainlined the speed to pick up from the ether
Which goes very well with the afternoon reefer
The ether was chaser for four or five E’s
That somebody gave him, supposedly free
The E’s added pep to some LSD
It’s better than drinking disgusting VB
He took LSD to round out the coke
What a top bloke, he snorted some coke
And now he’s broke

Tags: Drugs, Humour by loadedog
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A Glass of Twilight and Untitled Monologue
By Daniel Keene
Reviewer: Laura McHugh

Below the Line is director Ben Drysdale”s third season of short plays derived from Daniel Keene”s collected works to whom it may concern and other plays. The Sydney Morning Herald writes “Daniel Keene is a dangerous playwright”he works right on the moral edge”. And this he certainly does in both A Glass of Twilight and Untitled Monologue.

This particularly applies to the first piece, as the characters grapple with the morals behind homosexual relations and having sex for money. The play revolves around two central characters – a travelling, ageing salesman played by Matt Borneman, and a street kid, Tom, played by Pat Gordon.

The short play starts out well, with believable and strong performances by both actors. The first meeting at the train station is well imagined, with a subdued Tom and a slightly desperate salesman trying to proposition him. As we watch the relationship evolve, there is a great deal of tenderness shown between the two. These are two very lonely people (a theme that Drysdale stressed in the program) looking for and wanting companionship and a sense of connection in the rather isolating world which the play inhabits. However, it does dwindle away at the end, and I would have preferred a more dramatic climax to a piece that is on one level intent on shocking the audience.

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Tags: Gig Reviews, Theatre by loadedog
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Standardised to the strength of acidic masculinity; not without class.

Reminds me of the cafe that made the STRONGEST coffee that I’ve drunk yet in Canberra, long time before I started this review. Turkish. 700ml of caffeine.

Civic.

Place stinks of oven cleaner on a warm grill. Vegetarian for a long time; this place ate itself and came up farting employment agents.

Burnt milk.

The cool saves here are it’s open at night when it’s raining. And it’s close to a mountain.

Coffee’s fucked. Cafes with a clock aren’t cool.

Tags: Coffee Bitch by loadedog
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Tags: Posters by loadedog
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Tags: Posters by loadedog
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Last Saturday’s Backyard Backanalia was brilliant, with a great crowd (200+) of people of all ages dressed in flowery theme, some great music, comedy and the quietest after party loungeroom jam in history (brand new baby asleep in next room). Click below to see a few pics.

Tags: Backyard Backanalia by loadedog
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Friday the 19th of October
The White Eagle Club, Turner

The first folk club I ever went to was in Balmain.” It was above a shop, a dusty room of unpolished floorboards and tiny tables, with a small bar that sold dark red wine to a crowd of serious people who all seemed to know each other.” Being Balmain in the early 80′s it was probably just a front for the communist party.”

The White Eagle Club is operated by the Australian Polish Club and offers a far more salubrious venue in which to see a musical performance, without losing any of the homey and comfortable qualities necessary for a good folk venue.” And they sell very interesting beer.

But it was a largely”empty room I stepped into at 7.30pm last Friday.” Oh no, first again.” There goes that Virgo Ascendant.” I mentioned I had a complimentary ticket from loadedog, but I made a $5 donation anyway – ‘support Canberra Music all you can’ is my motto.” While the band set-up I amused myself with practising my pronunciation of “ywiec and then by drinking some.” Very entertaining.

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Tags: Gig Reviews by Gertrude
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Security. Our government likes to pretend that they can ensure it with men in storm trooper suits, wars on foreign lands and by spying on people and depriving the innocent of their liberty. All good. No terrorist attacks here since 911. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea that we helped invade Iraq?

But the old saying about glass houses ought to give us pause. Before attacking others, one should first assess how vulnerable you are to attack in return. While Australia is remote, reasonably well guarded and insignificant in the roster of those despised by most of those we have attacked, I believe we are terribly vulnerable to terrorist attacks against which we have no practical defence and which could be perpetrated by a small group of dedicated terrorists with no more equipment than a box of matches.

Look at California today. No-one is suggesting (yet) that the $1 Billion and counting bushfires there are a terrorist attack, but surely a few wily ‘Islamofascists’ are watching the news and eventually one of them will twig. Can you imagine the cost, chaos and economic disruption of a concerted campaign of bushfire/arson/terror around Australia’s bush-surrounded cities?

I mention this not to promote more fear, but to point out, yet again, that security is not bought at the end of a gun. We cannot protect ourselves from present threats, let alone those yet imagined. With a hot dry summer ahead of us, let us hope it’s only idiots, pyromaniacs and lightning lighting fires this year.

Tags: Politics by loadedog
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