I Shouldn't be Allowed Inside Record Stores with Money!

A while back I acquired some interesting tracks from a compilation which came with a magazine called The Wire. (Not a magazine I read regularly, I rarely read the music press these days unless they're writing about Kompressor or something :-)

There was a fascination track on it which I kept getting stuck in my my head. Took me a while to figure out where I'd heard it, because it was something I just dropped into my playlist then didn't register who it was by etc. Anyway, pinned it down finally when it popped up in Winamp, and then fortuitously wandered into Collectors Corner on Bourke Street when they were having a big-arsed sale.

And then my hopeless short term memory let me down again. I got to asking them about what I thought was the band... 'cause I found several promising albums, all lacking track listings! In the end I just said "which is the most recent album?" and I bought that.

I should have been warned when I asked about the track in question. It was called "Family Feud", the guy behind the counter said "I thought all they tracks were named in Icelandic..."

*slaps head*

So I ended up with an album by Sigur Ros when I wanted Von Sudenfed!!!! Stupid brain confused the two 'cause they're both two word non-english names! Ah well. Sigur Ros is definitely not my cup of tea.

I ended up just downloading the damn thing. Which I should have done first, because I didn't like the rest of the album!

I can't however explain why I picked up a copy of "Pet Sounds" by the Beach Boys. It's supposed to be a classic album, but fuck it, I coulda spent that $10 on something by the MC5 for example!!!!!

My New Years Eve

Probably time I jotted down the stuff I got up to on New Years Eve.

First off, I had lunch with Pauline, the Pregnant Friend from Sydney. Who I ironically saw not three weeks ago when I was up in Sydney. We met at a cafe on the Maribyrnong, which wasn't as cool as you might expect. It was 42 that day, remember? The loo was out the back of the building - so my hands dried without using the hand drier!

Friended a lady called Faye on Facebook on my Phone. Say that three times fast! Lots of F's! And of course, in another Six Degree's thing, it turns out she knows Leeyong, Luna's older sister!!! Small world.

Popped over to my dad's place on the way back, to borrow his new bike. Which turned out to be a girls bike! What! So I grabbed my brother's bike instead.

Because my plans for the night included a bike ride. Yep, hottest day of the year, what did I decide to do? Ride.

Made my way down to Geoff's place on the Bike, without getting lost. Riding is weird - the routes you take are completely different from being on a bike. Tim's bike had been sitting outside and squeaked heaps. So when I got to Geoff's place, I got him to oil it for me. Damn it needed it. And the back wheel was a bit bent. And it had no lights... Clearly I'm not from a family of hardcore cyclists. We headed over to the meeting place, in front of the Imax. A small group of cyclists gathered, which on the lawn next to us a bunch of people watched Spiderman Three. Why why why???

The first stop on the ride was somewhere in the city. I'm glad we were riding as a group, I really don't feel safe on a bike... We ended up on the Collin's Street Extension next to Southern Cross station. Where Geoff got a flat tire!

I thought we were heading over to the Docklands, but it turned out we were visiting a guy on Little Bourke Street. One of the problems with a bunch of cyclists: a tendency to meander like a lost bunch of sheep :-)

Nick, the bloke having the party, had the most awesome flat. It was on the sixth floor of a narrow little building, his not huge apartment took up the whole floor. We pottered around for a bit, then headed up to the roof. Which had a view over of the roof of the Forum and across to Fed Square! Brilliant spot! So we all gathered there to watch the first round of fire works, the one's at 9.15PM, for all the kiddies who need to get to bed early :-)

We chatted for a bit, and I did some silly dancing with a woman I'd met. You know, making up dance moves like "climbing a ladder" and "The Sprinkler".

Then it was time to move on. We hopped on our bikes again, this time I had a better idea of our destination - Fairfield, near the Boathouse. So I was a little confused when we started riding down and around the MCG... Turns out there's a bike path that meanders along with the Yarra up into Fairfield and places beyond - we were heading for that...

We were on the track which floats on the Yarra when the noise that the left pedal on Tim's bike revealed where it was coming from. The whole crank fell off, pedal and all! I yelled "I lost a pedal!" One good thing about riding with a bunch of cyclists: they always have tools :-)

A nice man called Val re-assembled my bike, and also tightened the seat. It'd been readjusting its angle every time I went over a bump and almost castrating me!

All was well for a few hundred metres, until the left pedal o' the bike started wobbling again. And proceeded to pop off, this time witnessed by several riding buddies, to much amusement. Basically, the bike was fucked and my riding was over for the day.

Did I mention that it was blindingly hot? It actually wasn't too bad so long as one kept moving.

Geoff kindly volunteered to join me on a train trip. There was a convenient stairway up to Chapel Street nearby, it even had a path you could push your bike up. We took turns "riding" the half-a-bike up the street - Geoff found the easiest thing to do was ride it the gutter and push off with his foot.

We ended up at East Richmond station. It was getting close to 11PM, which meant we didn't have a whole lot of time to get to the next party. Finally a train showed, so we decamped to a really busy Flinders Street station, and waited for the Epping train. Geoff was going to catch a train to Fairfield, and ride to the party, but the next train was to Epping, and by the time it arrived it was getting perilously close to midnight. So I invited him to watch the fireworks from my landing. We just made it on time, getting off the train near my place at 11.50PM.

Turned out to be a great spot, there were firworks all down the Yarra and in Docklands. I'm kinda over them - not much more than brightly colored explosions after all - but they did set off some amazing ones at the docklands, circular explosions with rings of other colors inside them! Never seen anything like that before.

Then we hopped in my car and FINALLLY made it to the party in Fairfield. Sat around and yacked and ate food, for some reason talking about Wrestling and Scientology a lot. The share house was something else, on a really steep block leading down to the Yarra, the bit above the Fairfield boat house. Part of the house was on three levels, including a basement of sort suitable for a Gimp, and must have had quite a view in daylight.

Around 2AM we all traipsed down to the bottom of the property - which was a surprisingly long hike - to a platform in the Yarra itself. Recently flooded, it was covered in a fine layer of dried mud. Six of the party goers swam by torch light (I know it was six because I half jokingly counted them in and out!) If I'd known there was water I woulda brought my bathers, and swum for the first time in two years.

A couple of the locals did silly impressions while swimming, including attempting to look like a platypus. Cute!

We traipsed back to the house and some hours later (and still three more friends on Facebook) I headed home. I have an open invite to swim there next time it gets too damn hot - which is later this week.

This was well above average for a NYE. I'm kinda over them, and the last couple have been a bit lame. At the end of 06 I was at a Goth nightclub with Goths too cool to actually acknowledge the end of the year *slaps head*

Strewth, long entry. Enjoy.