vagrant kinoites

 

sydney KINO has lost our fave stomping ground which was fraser studios off broadway. sadly as the urban gentrification hits the dirged street corners which we love & the old adjacent brewery converts to expensive high rise inner city loft apartments, the noise complaints come.

as we desperate filmmakers deign to find a new underground home to accommodate us, a spot of nostalgia led me to a fairly recent soiree which is my last photographic memory of that which was, and the habitat it provided us gutter snipes where dumpsters were worthy of a second investigation when a long drunken walk home seemed unfeasible after one too many free jamesons. in fact it serves as the only memory. such is often the posthumous KINO way.

the worst part of losing fraser studios as a venue is arguably after KINO drinks at the clare. many moons back we lushed after films at the strawberry hotel but like quacking ducks we took to the clare like water & in no time at all there was no place like home. aaah, the bliss of the couches & shabby chic surrounds. the shelves of jagermeister lined up like eager soldiers ready to gun down a surrendering throat & jugs on endless tap... no snapping of red heels required dorothy.

of course at times the alcoholic storm was too much to be weathered & required emergency trips to the bathroom... 

where we would re-meet old unfocusable cherished friends.

 which is really awesome until...

the weight of the universe & excessive evening consumption combined with good times & often films would weigh heavily down upon us. how can life be so sweet?

the next chapter of sydney KINO awaits with the settling in of a new home. follow us there for great film, live performance, food, alcohol... it's a religion for some.

skipping down the garden path

i know some amazing women. they're so incredible they constantly blow me away & i can't believe there are so many of them. in some ways it really is a man's world. no wonder they all look so smug. i'm lucky enough to call some of these goddesses my friends, even though often i'm unsure whether i'm particularly deserving. 

whilst i struggle with my own existence, the meaning of it and whether it ought to be continued, i end up coming back to the women of the inner sanctum in my life: raen, claire, clare, serena, sonja, marianne, kate, ang, ky, gina, monica, cat, jess, kathleen, karina, shell &  sometimes conrad. the keepers of the secrets. there are men too but they number fewer even though typically i always liked men. sometimes it was mutual.

this is claire: the minx. the pragmatist. the comic. in my wildest fantasies i imagine us in our decrepit old age on balcony chairs gazing out together into the ether with vibrant blue rinses & cackles which soar to match. i am happy then.

but the thing is, which has been blatantly & painfully illustrated in my most recent love relationship is that there can be no future without a present. you can plan all you want but there's no point picking out the wallpaper & obsessively researching it if the foundations & roof aren't built. noone likes soggy walls. which invariably collapse.

one may as well just skip blindly down the unformed garden path back into the emotional wasteland from which we come from.

loser cycle of three

last night henderson snr & i hit the opera house to indulge in some culture for the opening night of opera australia's production of puccini's B side the girl of the golden west. you just can't beat comp tix! a slightly camp [waves of dick johnson references] spaghetti western in italian. opera style. now there's a genre mix. 

highlights: giant projected roses overtaking the stage as minnie's um, innocence is lost. you should see what happens when a mass of roses hurtle through the sky frenetically like sperms on speed. hold onto your flaming zorro inspired R & lunge for the nearest badass half-breed bandit. in a gold rush world dominated by miners, men and mayhem there's plenty to choose from.

earlier en route we had almost been thrown out of the cab because my language describing the content of my current film project was deemed offensive by the taxi driver who informed us that "my mother had brought me up much better than that." apparently using words to describe male genitalia or phallus is however acceptable. after failing to justify context & in order to save our ride we clung to one another, our silence was bought. much suppressed  hilarity ensued.

these photos were taken with my [un]trusty phone after several alcohol intermissions and more wayward frolicking not long before i actually lost my phone. this is a common occurrence. we spent the end of the night chasing ivan the theatre manager & eventually locating said phone in security. hurrah!

catching a cab to the walker st abode & satisfactorily cleaning out troy of his last five dollar bill to find a bedridden claire. we regaled upon her stories of the night only to find that she had spent the evening off her sick bed chasing lost keys assuming she's left them in the front door. she had then spent the evening assuming a home invasion was imminent. once she tidied her room the keys mysteriously turned up.

then troy with pockets out-turned abruptly interjected wanting to know if i remembered the type of cab we'd hailed. seems he'd left his wallet in the car... 

the ride home

...driven home under dusk skies in a sated state after an afternoon of dumplings with claire. 


just some quick mobile pix [countdown is on until the 40D is back - canon say any day now. hello new motherboard]. soon my trusty phone can be retired, although the low light performance on the samsung HD icon isn't completely horrific, it's certainly no SLR.

high tea by candlelight

contrary to popular perception high tea does not bear aristocratic roots. the poor working class of yesteryear could only afford one solid meal per day which was lunch. after crawling back home late at night from the coal mines, factories etc they were obviously hungry.

the kettle would go on, tea would be brewed and what scraps could be gathered and assembled into a snack of sorts supplemented by never-ending cups of tea. it would seem that the institution of english drinking copious amounts of tea is a many headed beast. in far flung colonial outposts the aristocracy would be drinking tea under the mobile shade of their coolies as a symbol of class superiority whilst back home the comfort it provided the poor industrialised peasants was arguably equivalent if not greater. emotional, physical and psychological sustenance is hard to beat.

as standards of living gradually increased then so did the quality and quantity of accompanying tea foodstuffs until eventually the now antiquated english expression "tea" was born. and still they incessantly drink the vile stuff in delicately patterned porcelain cups. i mean even lady gaga does it [this makes me think of my south australian friend dave].

cut to every other thursday. in a semblage of eclectic worlde bric a brac & dark sombre tulle walls surrounded by the odd what not, a wonderful underground movement has been born sprung from the humble building which gave us the original [recently relocated] 505. this is high tea.

last visit we [claire & yours truly] were delighted to find ourselves in a small world filled with strangers punctuated by friends. the wonderful kent eastwood [who was my 13th hour live pianist for my "explorations into the sound mind" installation at the successful punk monk collaborative "multiple personalities exhibition"] was a special guest performer. with renny field. a delightful & unexpected treat. fine company indeed.

high tea is a pseudo secret movement for artisans & lovers of intimacy where unplugged sets are experienced up close with a cup of tea in hand or a bottle of bagged wine. i'm not that traditional & nor is claire, so we float on the periphery of the caste system with lips stained red not black or blue. no china required here.

but RSVP quick.

another day, another decade, another song

with the beginning of one year lies the shadow of the last. mine was cast in glorious tribal technicolor beats & imagery surrounded en masse by beautiful people, vibe and scenery. peats ridge festival 2009.

best of all at my side was this similarly solar powered faerie lit chick who i even have a theme song with & a bunch of long distance calls with the man who brings the music. i am fortunate that there is a whole symphony worth of incredible people in my life [hello raen, punk monks & friends] & nothing shows that more than a few trashy self-depreciating new year's eve photos. aaah, out with the old and in with the new.

sadly all my footage is in mobile film this year as we played wannabe rolling stone journos so i rely on the cooperation, read vetting, from my fellow conspirators to provide more of these humiliating time-capsule gems. you know who you are.

apparently there are a lot more where these came from...

bleached beach painters

saturday avo. bondi beach. number 12.

three intrepid adventurers raen, claire & myself assailed dear friends; francois & marianne's over the weekend to transform their new 1940s pad from ugly duckling to beautiful swan with paintbrushes & chisels firmly in hand.

with the invaluable aid of julien, the saw wielding wonderboy & under the inimitable direction of the expectant overseer marianne: grill rendering was, um, resculpted, a ladder was beautifully painted rather than walls, a fab new brown paper bag hat trend was set, a bathroom ceiling was miraculously created, orange nectar from the gods/shop down the bottom of the road was quaffed & i somehow ended up looking like i'd been at a face painting carnivale...

time happily sucked us up into a vortex & we also managed to miss the premiere of another friend, ben ferris's feature film penelope at the sydney underground film festival but managed to [just] make it in time to see our own two films [chick addict & salome's picnic] play in the following session... before engaging in that err, stimulating ass-talking scene in pink flamingos.

we missed the midnight session of porn dogs [but love the website] after an epic three session run, but befriended greg blatman, the director & his lovely wife [who was almost a willing victim to an alien pink abduction]. congratulations on winning SUFF's "most taboo" award. greg won't be introduced to my furry felines anytime soon... fluffers they are not.

vaude-villa

with a dire weakness for red velvet curtained stages, i found myself in heaven on the weekend when two of my favourite peeps [coin-operated claire & dashingly pencil moustache'd troy] lured me out of the corner shop to a vaudeville party for owen's 30th birthday party in the hip inner west mecca of marrickville. i took a couple of germans [felix & michael fresh off the plane] along with me for props as we were fresh out of afghan hounds. they really did complement my outfit perfectly.

not only was there a stage, but an extraordinarily cool bar with well-turned tenders who never stopped burning the midnight oil well into the early hours under low slung ladder lights & an eclectic smorgasboard of drinks ranging from mojitos to cosmopolitans on tap throughout the evening as various performers ran amok & entertained the well heeled carnivale crowd.

highlights have to be lyrical eco terrorists the lurkers who really know how to work a socio-political vocal set with double bass AND multiple sizes of banjo... ZOMG! zoe & miriam rapping it out with cityrail and last but not least the scientific experiment where josh & the ever shimmering miriam successfully demonstrated something about wearing a nappy whilst upside down drinking shots... excellent eye candy. who needs to drink wine through a straw when you can just stand on your head? this may just be my new default drinking pose...

some hot jazz

so my vivacious friend claire lured me out to an underground jazz shindig tonight... it's the new black on wednesdays.

this is what we did. yes, we did crawl up the stairs and walls -- the music was pretty good. as was the scenery. pardon the blurs: we got a bit sh*t-faced.

PS. she's hot, crazy & single. call now on 1900 ms monk.

[apparent blogger censorship deems i must blip my "i"]