eleventyone

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.

Victoria is burning. With the hottest days on record, comes some of the worst bushfires on record. For me this hits close to home, because I have family in Gippsland surrounded by thick smoke from the bushfires. Although I’m watching the fires from safety in Melbourne, the images still get to me. For many years the Gippsland campus of Monash University in the town of Churchill, has been my place of study and work – it has been a home to me. The shock of the fires has spread all over my social websites. People are posting images and videos of fires on many sites.

Fires behind Monash Gippsland

I’ve seen the hills above the Churchill alight with bushfires before, but from my safe distance it seems more shocking to me. Last week Monash setup a makeshift headquaters for firefighters and fire refugees. There’s a collection Youtube videos of the Churchill fires, such as this one shows the town surrounded by the fires, there’s this one which is cute, but still shocking and this one with a dodgey soundtrack. I’ve also been listening to the CFA radio stream online, where you hear things like, “we’ve had reports of an eighty year old grandmother, a father and some kids trapped in a house.” Here’s the CFA incident summary. There’s a good online map here showing all the fires in Victoria.

Fires behind Monash Gippsland

Monash Gippsland (from the Herald Sun website)

It is Sunday tomorrow and I know, through the great art of prescience, that you are not doing anything productive so you may as well come down to this new little market in Brunswick.

There will be laughter, frivolity, vegeburgers and I will be doing a stall there also selling my newest wares…and the regular array of body jewellery.  the address is (at the rear of) 290 Albert St, Brunswick

It will be held every 1st and 3rd sunday of the month and tomorrow is kick off…  Heres the map.

And now for some blatant advertising. Check out my new range of tatto style jewellery. i will be selling it all tomorrow. it is all under $30. It can also all be purchase from my website www.jubly-umph.com

See ya there, xo Tasha xo

“Wow!” sums up the exciting blur of fun I had at this year’s Big Day Out – the bands, the people, fun times!

My friends managed to get old of bed up early enough for fresh slap of wake-me-up music from Sparkadia, under the banner of their Aslan-like lion banner. It was only midday when I heard the band that made my day worth every penny – it was boppy Australian band The Grates and their great performer Patience Hodgson.

It felt like the entire crowd migrated to the Green Stage to see newborn stars the Ting Tings. I loved them even though I was so far back I couldn’t hear a thing and still don’t know her name. It was so crowded that people lined the grassy knoll edge of the stage towards the train tracks. Some entertainment was provided by a bogan dressed in a blue wig and an Australian flag, who straddled and humped the audio-mixer tent, encouraged people to throw bottles of water at him, caught a sunscreen bottle and pretended to drink it. Security eventually caught him.

One thing I do regret missing is the Silent Disco. People are given headphones in one particular tent and dance around to the music they hear. Watching from the outside is hilarious because it looks like they’re dancing to nothing.

I missed The Living End, but have seen them at every Big Day Out. Instead I heard the memorable electro-rock sounds of Cut Copy – a total chillax to the max. Then there was the English band Arctic Monkeys, who had the crowd moving crazy to great indie rock. Prodigy finished the night up by calling out to their Melbourne warriors to Smack my bitch up and become a Firestarter.

I’m an old hack when it comes to this music festival, but to me it was better this year. My last adventure at Flemmington was Big Day Out 2005, when I danced my socks off to The Chemical Brothers and System of a Down. This year it was different, because the entire layout of the stages had changed. The redevelopment of the Flemmington Racecourse has opened the area right up with large grassy areas. No longer did I have to squeeze between a tiny gate with hundreds of other people to get from old stadium to the main stages. No longer did we have stinky concrete toilets with huge queues, but instead had clean portables. No longer are the drinking areas located in old no-room-to-move concrete structures, but are in huge outdoor tents – and facing the stage! There were now huge non-drinking tents for people to relax and hide from the sun. There were also huge tents around the eating areas. It’s like they actually care that we don’t want to get sunburnt. They also didn’t want us to die from dehydration – at the main stages they watered the crowd down occasionally with a hose.

All the new prettiness came with a price. It cost $139.50 to get your hands on a ticket this year. This was perhaps because of the over-crowding problems last year. The Big Day Out didn’t even sell out this year, with only 40,000 people instead of the usual fifty thou’. The cost probably cased one of the biggest changes I have seen – the total lack of crazy mohawked punks, emo kids and goths sweating in the shade from black clothing in extreme temperatures. This year the usual attire was Australian flags and bogan wear, because it was Australia Day. Melbourne doesn’t usually get Big Day Out on Australia Day – Sydney usually keeps that day for themselves. For these reasons I’m itching to say what everyone says every year, but now I really mean it – Big Day Out has finally sold out and gone commercial, and perhaps even for the better – oh yes I did!

The crowd also behaved themselves this year, even when half of them were drunk or wasted on drugs. The police didn’t really try hard by putting sniffer dogs in front of the lesser used entrance to catch 17 people. People weren’t even that angry that the Big Day Out only sold Tooheys New beer. The only annoyances were on the trains going out. There were train delays due to vandalised signals. I witnessed a train fight at Flinders and train travellers forced one of the offenders out of the train, but he then smashed a window to try to get at the other guy. After fifteen minutes Connex security showed up and grabbed the guy, but he somehow showed up at Parliament and train travellers forced him away again.

This broken window on an otherwise fine day was counteracted by awesness of fun we had during the day. I’ll always remember the game of fetch we created, by attempting to throw a hat onto heads in the crowd from the beer tent, then when it fell on the ground, people walking past would bring it right back to us with a quizical look on their face, “is this your hat?”