McSweeny’s Launch Party at MWF
McSweeny’s launched edition 32 at the Toff in Town last Saturday night 29 August 2009, as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival. The event officially called McSweeney’s (Futuristic) Antipodean Adventure!, like the book, had its theme being the world of the year 2042, where the future has become a little absurd.
The night started off quite horribly in a bar that was quite stuffy, oxygenless and extremely crowded in this small space. I entered fashionably late when the performances where already happening, and heard about a steampunk future. Then there was the experimental music, that got much of the audience angry, having hybrid electronic instruments, they created random sounds without any melody or pattern of any kind to their sound, that went on far too long. To a book crowd, who live off a daily serving of narrative text, this in book terms would not even be considered the simplest form of poetry, the metaphor would be cutting out random words from the dictionary and angrily throwing them in your face.
The second half however ended on a very positive note, with total extreme awesomeness (my excitement was so intense that it can’t be described without this use of bogan-tounge). A third of the crowd had already left in disappointment, so it we weren’t tinned sardines anymore. Heidi Julavits gave a brilliant reading of her story in McSweeny’s and she read with incredible humour. The final act was just hilarious, it was a local comedy act called the Suitcase Royale. Their comedy was very Melbourne and very Boosh-inspired. They made fun of my old hometown Traralgon, funny because it was so true. I love these guys and I will follow them like a stalker. It’s one of those random comedy groups that might show up on Youtube, they’re very funny, but the video quality from iPhone filming is so bad that it gives them a bad name, so I’m glad no-one was phone-filming. After that we danced the night away and came home very late, an indication of a good night out. Our ticket price included the McSweeny’s book, which looks much more valuable than what we paid.
