mcbridematt.dhs.org

Does my arse look big in this? [a late arrival comes into the theatre] DOES MY ARSE LOOK BIG IN THIS? [to late arrival] WELL BOY THATS THE LAST TIME YOU ARRIVE LATE TO A THEATRE!

Vamp is a very interesting piece. The term Vamp refers to a popular image of a Femme Fatale character. Here we see something loosely based around people such as Mata Hari.

You may think the name of the show implies some sort of serious drama; hardly. Vamp is a one and a half hour cabaret-style performance featuring performer Meow Meow (no actual name supplied). To me her sound isn't new; its like a matured Dresden Dolls (who, conincidentally, she has toured with).

Vamp contains mostly original work by Meow Meow and experianced composer Iain Grandage. The show is mostly set in a gothic 20th century Europe as the character of Vamp describes her adventures and encounters (with men, err clients).

But song isn't the only thing you'll see. This is a cabaret after all. The intimate setting of the show means she is performing for us. Those in the front row around the stage got the value of their ticket and then some.. (I won't spoil it). There was a very well done aerial performance, and the rapport with the audience was great.

Vamp isn't a performance for big babies though. The story line does slow down near the end but Meow Meow makes up for it afterwards. It would be best enjoyed with alcohol, or perhaps even absinthe. And the young and uneducated like me won't necessarily get everything in it; the woman sitting next to me, and a good portion of the audience for that matter seemed to crack up at everything.

Vamp finishes this Saturday the 20th of September at the Malthouse but moves on to the Sydney Opera from the 24th to the 5th. (and as an aside; I hope they do a cast recording of this show on CD)

Promotional image shamefully stolen from Malthouse website

Sweeeet.

Hey Charlotte Perrelli, good song, but DITCH THE MONOCHROME NEXT TIME

I saw the Black Balloon today. They have done an excellent job at making a good movie, and keepin' it real :)

Looking for something different? Starbucks has an ice tea version of Tazo's 'Passions' Tea.

Reminds me of red cordial. Even makes me act like I'm on it.

Autism comes with a variety of effects. On one end are those with major difficulties communicating (unable to speak etc., extreme sensory overload), on the other there are those with intense interests and interesting quirks, like me.

But the above classification system can be rubbish. Meet Carly, a 13 year old girl, unable to speak, but able to show emotional and language development hidden inside. With a keyboard.

I'm even jealous.

I like to beat my brother at connect four nits so funny because he tries so hard

I'm incapable of playing even the most basic strategy game, but she can beat people??!!!

Nightwish came and went. Anette, the new singer was great. Next time I should probably listen to the album first instead of saving it for a live event.

I did take some photos but they weren't too good (I failed photography 101: zoom vs aperture), but a video below by a kind Youtuber shows the awesomness

I'm so bored that I'm watching the National Press Club address by John Howard.

Asked by a journalist about wheather his contesting of the election was in the interests of the Liberal party, he said "yes", the entire room laughed...

Howard managed to 0wn a few journos with bad organization too..

I saw Anton Corbjin's Control on the weekend. A great movie which does a good job of portraying the life of, Ian Curtis, the Joy Division frontman, up until his suicide. Unfortunately, you can be famous and respected and still feel shit. Control does a wonderful job of immersing the audience in the scene, especially for someone after the time, like me. It also shows theres good stuff outside the hyped Hollywood/etc. films. The Kino Dendy cinema in Collins Place where I saw it was fantastic.. get lost MPAA/MAFIAA, horray for independent film!

I've also ordered my tickets to the Nightwish Melbourne show on the 30th of January. w00t! Haven't really immersed myself in Anette, after MAFIAA hugger Tarja got booted. Looking forward to it. 

 

Last nights Cure concert was epic. Unfortunately, I didn't get to enjoy it the best way - learnt the hard way never to put off buying a ticket to buy hardware :(

Pity the live action is a distant memory when I'm listening to the record versions right now. What did sink into me, however, was how strong Rob Smiths accent was, it was like, typical British with a few EQ knobs turned up.

I definitely need to stock up on the discography :)

Anyway, in probable violation of my ticket conditions (well, everyone was doing it), I managed to take a few pics. I had to experiment between shutter speeds and exposures etc. to get these, and sitting so far back they aren't that great, but still, "I've been looking so long at these pictures of you... That I'd almost believe that they were real" :)

 

• Flickr gallery
• Cure concerts.de: 12/08/2007 Melbourne

 

 The Cure is on an Australian tour and will be in Melbourne on the 12th of August. Unfortunately, the promoters only booked out the Rod Laver Arena :( For such a bad, they should've hired Docklands. Apparently General Admission and the front rows (except 'restricted viewing') we're sold on in four days...

 

Wasn't able to get a seat in the good section, but oh well, at least I'll be there :)

 

 

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Hmm, its been some time... I've managed to get hold one one of the rarest Liv Kristine works. We'll, not to rare, but its existence is only acknowledged in some promotional blurbs and its not available in the volumes that works of the time were.

And on top of that.. something unusual, an actual radio mix CD. I'm probably violating some RIAA/equivalent enforced convention by having it. Meh.

If anything has ever motivated me more to learn German, its the above press release :) And I've also got my hands on something more recent and widely available:

Anyway, on to other matters. The Funambol Citadel connector joins the Funambol community project line up, along with the GroupDAV connector, bringing easy push email to Citadel users. There is a bionicmessage.net blog which will be home to future technical posts. This blog is going to be about mundane things now :) If you, like me have a HTC TyTN, known by its various other incarnations - JASJAM, 838pro etc, get yourself WM6 Black. Serious credit has to go to jasjamming, a Melburnite for making a seriously unreal PDA rom. The latest one has bits of HTC's JobsPhone 'killer'.

Also interesting is the finger-oriented touch screen player included, but I still prefer the normal media player for the album art..

And on to another topic, many of you are whining about Internode's price rise. Shock to everyone, not to me, because....

No seriously, I did

This is why we see all these 'Only in America' stores:

Principal Ed Kovochich is a veteran in the Milwaukee Public Schools, and the principal of Bradley Tech, a technology and trade high school. He's long been an advocate of a cell phone ban.

And recently, students at the school have used cell phones to call in reinforcements during fights.

The entire story off NPR's All Things Considered can be listened to at their website

And this is the response I sent in, and if they have any sense, they will air it.

Hello,
I find it amazing that Principal Ed Kovochich has resorted to such extreme measures.

I have garnered a very good impression of the American school system through this story, and combined with all the 'Only In American Schools' stories that hit the blog sites on the Internet, perhaps Kovochich should look closer to home.

Even the worst public schools here in Australia have dealt with mobile (thats cell to you) phones gracefully, usually by giving the students hell if they ring in class. Nobody gets hurt. No teachers go on rampages. No one cheats on exams.

Yet, Mr Kovochich here fingers them as contributing to an unrelated problem.

Amazing. Stupid.

If your students have a habit of getting into brawls, its the fault of you Mr Principal for failing to encourage them not to, the fault of the local cops to remove the drugs in the first place, and the fault of the parents for not teaching their children better.

I'm sure that there are other institutions in the U.S that can counter extremities like these. For the benefit of your international listeners, like me, please, put them on. 

Might I also add that us Aussie's own American's in math?

Look at OECD Education Indicator A4.

Gee, Steven Colbert may as well continue his characters crusade against books.  

Today Tonight did a story (tv rip temporarily removed due to bandwidth) on some frucked up youth today (23oct) and heres some facts only the internets can bring you.

• The name of the movie was "Cunt"
• Quite a few in the video were not from Werribee Secondary, but from a school a little south of there. /dev/urandom cannot reveal the name of that institution until it becomes public knowledge due to imminent legal threats
• Said movie was freely distributed at said institution.
• The guys have their own myspace page, with quite a few videos visible on YouTube and Myspace videos.
• The movie features several youths breaking into Werribee Zoo and patting a rhino

edit: To be clear and add a few updates:

• All info I have is second hand
• One of the institutions involved (no prizes for guessing) is now gagging outside debate on this issue, by not only students BUT PARENTS TOO.
• I predict a police raid on all schools in Melbourne and regions around it is imminent, considering some media outlets are now reporting the cops consider it child pr0n.
• The back cover of the DVD has a picture of a naked woman.
• Lots of stuff in Wikipedia

The Emos - short for Emotional - regard themselves as a cool, young sub-set of the Goths.Although the look is similar, the point of distinction, frightening for schools and parents, is a celebration of self harm.

Out of all the crap the UK media publishes on anything from Austism to Emos to whateverthefruckisbannedthere, this is the best yet.

Emos exchange competitive messages on their teenage websites about the scars on their wrists and how best to display them. Girls' secondary schools have for some time been concerned about the increase in self harm.

Some pretty terrible Emo poetry is offered on websites. A cartoon of two Emos has a bubble which says: 'What rhymes with razor blade?'

Theres worse. Waa waa I'm not sensitive enough.

In particular, Goths and Emos are a rebellion against sporty, manly cultures - which is perhaps why they flourish particularly in North European countries or North America.

See, this is what happens when governments pay schools to push the Christian line instead of actually educating people.

But compared to the music, the poetry is positively cheerful. The Gothic bands have names such as Bloody, Dead And Sexy or Colder Than Death.

LMFAO! 'Scuse me, far from the truth as far as 'goth' music is concerned. I'm guessing 'The Cure' or 'Siouxsie and The Banshees', or 'Within Temptation', 'Leaves Eyes' for some recent favorites, or 'Chalice' and 'Angeltheory' for some local bands must mean something down right awful. On the other hand, we have Emo, where dumb teenage girls think its cool to dress up like some gawth. I quote our friend h2g2:

Goth Wannabes

On the flip-side of this respect for other people's space, there tends to be a calm but deep disrespect, loathing almost, towards people who just want to be trendy. This explains the tensions between 'Goth wannabes' and 'real Goths'. The 'real Goth' believes in 'Goth' as a genuine lifestyle; the wannabe just considers it cool to dress in an attempt to intimidate. They have no respect for the messages the bands are trying to convey about individuality; they just want to be part of a 'weird, scary group'. The wannabes express their individuality by belonging to a group, while Goths belong to a group by expressing their individuality. For a Goth, first comes the state of mind and then the dress code; for a wannabe it's the dress code first. Wannabes have a dubious mindset and a desire to remain part of the mainstream because they fear the reaction of 'society' if they were to deviate from it long-term. Goths on the other hand generally don't give a toss about what society thinks or does - as long as they are left alone.

Shock horror. One does not need to dress black to be goth. I'm not going to go into the philosophy of these things though. I hereby move that the phrase 'mallgoth' be turned into 'mallmo' - because thats exactly what all the wannabe goths/actual emos I know are.

I've been a fan of Liv Kristine's work for some time now. Why? Her work is unique. People call it goth, symphonic, folk and whatever subcategory of metal is the buzz, but if I were to give Kristine's work a category it would be "Night-time music".

Liv Kristine - Enter My Religion
2006

Liv Kristine Official website
Wikipedia
Just f'ing froogle it!

Some go as far as to call it pop with a dark atmosphere. Unfortunately, since I live in Australia, where nu-metal and crap hip hop defines "pop", I'll stay out of there. Back to the point, Kristine's work is definitely something you can go to bed at night listening to and feel good as a result. One morning I woke up at 3AM while Kristine's 3AM was playing. I was hooked.

Her 1998 Solo album, "Deus ex Machina", from which 3AM comes from has been a favorite of mine for the past nine months. To think Kristine has held and improved the very same style for eight years certainly deserves credit.

Its not always the title act which is the best, and Fake a Smile (track no 2) carries that tradition on. Fake a Smile is definitely going to be at the top of my playlists until the next Kristine album - the memorable lyrics, coupled with the dark, but simple tones of the sound track is what makes it "Night-time music". Its done beautifully... dammit I'm not going to fake a muso reviewer anymore.

I don't quite share the same sentiment for the title track Enter My Religion, however. Its an interesting track, but for the love of <some deity> PLEASE SLOW DOWN THE TEMPO! Once I saw the lyrics the experience was a bit better, though. Hopefully once I get used to the style of this track I'll be more welcoming.

Theres some other interesting tracks around, however, Coming Home (track no 5) is definitely one I'll keep listening to, along with You Are The Night (track no 08).

For those of us like me who are good fans of Kristine - be it solo, or with Leaves Eyes, or someone else, this ain't bad.