Spoilers ahoy – for Twilight (natch), True Blood and pretty much any other vampire themed story I’ve happened across and felt inclined to reference. You’ve been warned.
This particular entry is about the book, not the film. Yes, that means I’ve read it. For several reasons – 1) I was curious, as I tend to be about any literary phenomenon; and 2) I thought it might make an interesting topic for a blog post.
As you’ll see, I didn’t particularly like it. But I didn’t hate it so much I couldn't continue - though that may be more because I had this blog post in mind; if I'd read it without an opportunity to vent afterwards it may have been a different story.
Anyway, I’ve broken it down into the different areas of analysis that I think are relevant: plot, characters, writing style, vampirisms and themes.
The plot1
Isabella ‘Bella’ Swan moves to Forks, Washington from Phoenix, Arizona and falls in love with an unusual and – at first – distinctly unfriendly boy named Edward Cullen after he saves her from harm a couple of times and who, it is revealed (to anyone who didn’t already know), is a vampire – though a vampire unlike any other in folklore, literature or popular culture. However, it doesn’t go very smoothly for several reasons – she doesn’t think she’s good enough for him, and he’s afraid he’ll lose control and suck her drier than the Gibson Desert on a hot January day2.
Seriously, that’s pretty much it. There’s a somewhat dramatic development late in the book when another vampire decides he wants to drink Bella’s blood and (somewhat oddly considering how events pan out) the vampires concoct a plan to send her back to Phoenix to escape. But that’s really only a minor plot point by comparison – the rest is bland descriptions of uninteresting happenings and overly-long scenes describing how attractive Bella thinks Edward is and/or how bad Bella feels about not being good enough for him.
In and of itself that isn’t a deal-breaker, since I don’t consider the lack of ‘action’ to be an insurmountable obstacle; I read a lot of literary fiction where little happens in terms of plot. But in that kind of book the underemphasis on plot is balanced out by (usually) excellent prose and interesting descriptions of things – e.g. characters, character development and social commentary. But Twilight isn’t literary in that sense, and doesn’t make up for a lack of action with superb prose or profound insights into the human condition. It’s just about a rather uninspiring girl and her adoration for a (from my perspective at least) unlikeable pretty-boy vampire with super powers.
Basically, it’s fluff - with fangs (well, sort of). Oh, and sparkles - but more on that later.
Despite the thinness (and sluggishness) of plot, it did hold me enough to get me through the entire book, so that counts for something. There was some effective building of tension that made me want to find out what was going to happen – though I did (from time to time) kind of wish that it hadn’t taken as long to get to that point. But, as I noted earlier, it was about plot resolution – not any kind of resonance with the characters.
There are, of course, some weird plot holes. The falling in love part in particular. Really, we’re given no reason for why this happens beyond ‘Edward is so beautiful and mysterious and powerful’ and ‘Bella smells nice and I can’t read her mind like I can other humans’. They barely know each other – and what they do know of each other is hardly likeable – and yet we’re somehow meant to believe that they develop strong feelings for each other. It’s really more like two people develop crushes on each other at the same time – and that, sad to say, ain’t love.
Bella’s apparent unattractiveness (physical and in terms of personality) doesn’t make sense either. She goes on and on about how plain and boring she is (and she's right, at least about the latter) yet every guy in town chases after her and the other girls in her school are jealous of her. Again, this is the sort of thing that would be okay to have a character think at the beginning of the story, but which – as part of character development – she would realise isn’t the case and come to terms with it. But she doesn’t, and this is a problem because it’s far easier to identify with characters who behave like actual people at least might.
Edward’s big reveal should have more impact than it does. Why doesn’t Bella freak out at least a little once she realises he’s a vampire? She does some research, and almost everything she’d have found would have told her that vampires are, in nearly every folk tale and horror story, dangerous monsters. Surely she’d have to have at least some doubt about him. That would be understandable, even if she only took a couple of minutes to contemplate it.
Other plot developments and contradictions are just as aggravating and a lot of what happens just doesn’t make any sense. Much of this is how the characters act and react to events. Yes, people do do stupid things; that’s a fact – but in Twilight it’s the norm rather than an aberration. Constant stupid and irrational conversations followed by repeated stupid and irrational decisions and actions just annoy me.
1I can’t imagine too many people don’t know what it’s about, but you never know.
2For overseas readers, that’s a desert in Australia – I was feeling patriotic – and for us January is a summer month.
Characters
One of the bigger flaws. I didn’t like either Bella or Edward, even slightly, and I couldn’t bring myself to care what happened to them – the little interest I had was in terms of the resolution of the plot; basically, if they’d both died I would have been just as content at the end. Probably more so if it’d involved some interesting writing to describe it.
Bella
Bella is written as exceptionally dull, which is a huge problem because the entire story is told through her eyes (first-person; I’ll talk more about that later) - she doesn’t seem to be particularly interested in anything, including thinking about herself in such a way that the reader is given much insight into who she is – well, other than someone who doesn’t want to live in Forks, Washington. That does change somewhat once she meets Edward, but then all she can do is gush about how perfect he looks and smells and sounds or moan about how wretched she is and that he’s too good for her.
Really, I found it impossible to like Bella, and it was unpleasant to view the world through her eyes. All Meyer needed to do was give this girl some spirit, some backbone, some character - and that alone would have improved things no end. But it seems like having those characteristics would be flaws in Meyer’s eyes so instead we’re left with this unlikeable, simpering dishrag of a person.
While having this kind of character in a story isn’t unusual – in fact, it’s kind of necessary; you can’t describe and develop everyone at length - it is, however, very strange to make someone so one-dimensional and uninspiring the main character and narrator of the story. If done the right way this could be clever and interesting – but it isn’t and therefore doesn’t.
A handy term for analysing Bella as a character is Mary Sue – which, according to Wikipedia, is this: 'Mary Sue, sometimes shortened simply to Sue, is a pejorative term used to describe a fictional character who plays a major role in the plot and is particularly characterized by overly idealized and clichéd mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as wish-fulfillment fantasies for their authors.'
That’s a good description of Bella. Meyer attempts to give the character some flaws, but they’re either totally contradictory to the events described (Bella being ‘plain’ in appearance yet every guy in school wants her and many of the girls envy her looks) or aren’t flaws in the sense that they provide her with anything to be overcome – the ridiculous clumsiness, for example. She sure is whiny, though – albeit only how she isn’t good enough for Edward; I don’t , however, believe that disqualifies her from Mary Sue status.
Mary Sues appear more often in fan-fiction than actual fiction – and they tend to be a vessel through which an author can insert themselves into a story. In this case, though, it’s more like the character is more designed in such a way that certain kinds of readers can insert themselves into the story.
And since I’m not really all that interested in fantasising about being a teenage girl in love with an impossibly attractive male vampire, it’s not all that surprising it didn’t exactly work for me.
Edward
Edward isn’t dull like Bella, but he certainly isn’t any more pleasant to dwell upon; he’s domineering, arrogant, controlling and condescending – the last demonstrated, most annoyingly, by the fact he laughs at Bella all the time. Everything she admits to thinking is, to him, laughable. Is that really a likeable quality?
He’s also a creepy stalker. It’s not only the breaking into her house to watch her sleep, it’s the mind-reading of every person around Bella in an attempt to try and find out what she’s thinking. That’s not heroic – it’s disturbing and all kinds of wrong.
As unlikeable as Edward is, I suspect the book would have been much better had it been told through Edward’s eyes3, since he – unlike Bella, actually has something that he has to wrestle with, i.e. resisting the inclination to kill and drink the blood of someone who he cares about (apparently), and what the consequences of that would be for him and his family who wish to live anonymously amongst humans. But it isn’t, so we’re only given insight into Edward’s struggle through Bella’s boring eyes. She isn’t given the capacity to grasp exactly what it is he’s going through and so doesn’t explain it very well beyond telling us that he gets angry about things.
The term Byronic hero gets thrown around to describe Edward, but I tend to disagree – based on Twilight at least – mostly because we really aren’t given enough insight into his character. Really, apart from his bloodlust, Edward’s very ‘straight’ – and Byronic heroes tend to be more reckless and disregarding of authority. Edward’s just kind of moody and filled with self-loathing and scorn for Bella; the danger in him comes from him being a vampire, not from the choices he makes in his life.
At least we’re not encouraged to believe that Edward’s fascination with Bella is because of her wonderful personality – suspension of disbelief would never stretch that far. It’s explained away by the uniqueness of her smell and the fact that he can’t read her mind like he can that of everyone else4.
Other characters
There’s not really much to say. As drab as the two main characters are they’re glorious Technicolor compared to the others. Much of this, of course, is due to the story being through Bella’s eyes; as a result, anyone who’s not Edward is only given minimal consideration. Really, they’re only there to drive the plot forward – particularly in the case of vampire James, who only appears so there’s something for them to actually do rather than sit around and gaze at each other while not giving in to lust.
3Apparently, Meyer has written (or is writing) a retelling of the story from Edward’s perspective, which may make slightly more interesting reading.
4Interestingly enough, this is also a major factor in one of the relationships in True Blood – though the situations are reversed; it’s the otherwise-psychic human who likes that the vampire’s mind can’t be read.
Writing Style
There is a writer’s mantra: ‘Show, don’t tell'. Meyer has either never heard this, or has heard it and chosen to ignore it. And that’s a problem because it has a huge impact on how enjoyable stories are.
An example: you could have a character come into a room and say to another character ‘it’s raining’ and you’d know it was raining. Or you could have a character describe hearing the soft beat of the rain on the roof, the smell of rain in the air or how they can see the droplets as they slid down the window-glass. I know I’d rather read the latter because it puts me there. The former is what I’d expect to hear from a witness in a courtroom.
We’re constantly told things – Bella is smart, Edward loves Bella and so forth – but we’re never actually shown anything to indicate that this is true. In fact, more than occasionally we’re told things that are then contradicted by what we’re shown – mainly Bella’s supposed unattractiveness, which doesn’t fit with how everyone around her acts.
Her descriptions of the events taking place around her are often effective in moving the thin-on-the-ground plot forward, but that’s not enough – we need to be taken into her world, and the best way to do that is via that mantra of writing: show, don’t tell. As it is it’s written far more like the treatment of a film script – where it’d be up to the director and the cinematographers to fill the gaps. But that’s not what I want from a novel.
Related to this – or possibly the heart of it - is that it’s written in first person. But this can work – The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, which I raved about in a recent blog post, is in first person; so are both The Virgin Suicides and (much of) Middlesex, two of my all-time favourites – but it’s got to be done right. In Twilight we see everything through the eyes of Bella; however, Bella is so insipid and clueless that what is can be a positive feature of first-person writing – indepth description of the world and other people through the lens of a narrator’s unique perspective – is completely lacking.
What may be more frustrating is that there are times when she gets it right – describing Charlie’s kitchen early in the book, for one – but these are few and far between. It’s a pity the editor – if there was one – didn’t get that point through to Meyer.
Paucity of description aside, there’s also the issue of the word choice – and it’s a big one. Stephen King somewhat famously chided (gently) Harry Potter author JK Rowling for her overuse of adverbs – ‘...hasn’t met an adverb she doesn’t like’ was the quote – but JK’s got nothing on Stephenie Meyer. Like King (one of my early literary heroes5), I also dislike the overuse of adverbs – and also like King I define ‘overuse’ as ‘anything more than the absolute bare minimum’. There are times when you can’t do anything but use an adverb, but if you use them at any time other than when you’ve no other option then you’re beginning to tell rather than show.
An example:
‘He touched the corner of my eye, trapping one I missed. He lifted his finger, examining the drop of moisture broodingly.’
Broodingly? Good grief. There are ways to show (not tell) that someone might be brooding: a furrowed brow, distant eyes, a set to the mouth – any number of facial expressions. But no, we get ‘broodingly’. Ick.
Of course, King also said that Stephenie Meyer ‘can’t write worth a damn’ – which I think is a bit harsh. But only a bit.
Then there are the adjectives. If there’s a synonym for attractive then Meyer has used it at some point, over and over again. Since everything’s told through Bella it may be Meyer’s way of indicating that Bella has a fondness for saying the same things over and over again – but that doesn’t help the reader much. So, we’re exposed to the frequent use of words such as ‘glorious’, ‘seraphic’, ‘incandescent’, and ‘scintillating’.
Oy.
One of the other qualities the writing lacks is humour. Good writing should be witty and entertaining6 even when describing something mundane. But there’s none of that in Twilight; the descriptions are dull, perfunctory. Again, if this was a deliberate effect to convey Bella’s personality as a wretched, unlikeable character then it would be clever; as it isn’t, the result is uninspiring prose of a very bland kind.
5Like or dislike what he writes about, he is a very proficient crafter of prose. He’s also a former English teacher and his book On Writing is one of the most insightful and useful books about writing that I’ve read.
6‘Wry’ is a good word to describe how I think writing should be. But I wasn’t feeling alliterative so I didn’t use them both.
Vampirisms7
Different writers give their vampires different qualities; however, beyond the need to drink blood, vampires across different fictional universes may have almost nothing else in common - and what vampires are (or aren't) capable of can make a massive difference to the story. But with the sheer number and variation of vampire stories it’s almost impossible to say what is ‘typical’ of vampires anymore.
Wikipedia has a handy table outlining the abilities of the more well-known kinds of vampires here.
One of the criticisms of Twilight that I’ve come across is that the vampires are ‘wrong’ – which is something I disagree with. 'Your universe, your rules,' I say. Really, there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ vampires because they don’t actually exist – though I’d say that to not have them drink blood would be a deal-breaker; you’d really have to call your creatures something else if that was the case. Though I'm not going to be surprised if someone's done that, too.
Twilight vampires, then, have almost nothing in common with any other vampires beyond the standard superpowers – effective immortality, strength, speed, healing and so forth. They are (apparently) unaffected by any of the standard quasi-religious artifacts and items (crosses, holy water and so forth); garlic and stakes don’t bother them; super-strength and invulnerability would make being decapitated simply impossible; and silver has no particular effect on them In fact, Twilight vampires are probably the hardest to kill of any fictional vampire; they appear to only be susceptible to fire – and for that to be effective they have to be incapacitated to such a state that they can’t escape from its effects, i.e. for it to work they have to have been torn into pieces – something we only hear about happening as a result of several other vampires working together.
Twilight vampires don’t seem to need to breathe or have heartbeats; this is, for me, another black mark against them – though that applies to any writer whose vampires do that, because it’s just silly. If they’ve got blood in them (which they do), if it isn’t pumped around by their heart it’s just going to collect in their feet – and it certainly isn’t going to gush out of any wounds on its own. And in terms of male vampires being able to, er, perform certain acts, a beating heart would be essential. Breathing is less problematic, but only slightly – if for no other reason that breathing is necessary for speech. And I don’t think ever I’ve read about/seen any mute vampires.
One of the big ones you’re probably already aware of is that Twilight vampires are not harmed by sunlight, which tends to be one of the most common weaknesses. They do avoid sunlight, but not because they dislike it – it’s because they sparkle in sunlight. I don’t think much of that. Enough is made about how unbelievably attractive the vampires (particularly Edward) are; making him also sparkle in sunlight is just going overboard – not to mention being so lame as to trigger my gag reflex.
Twilight vampires don’t have fangs – retractable or otherwise – and the ‘turning’ of people into vampires is a bit different as well; vampires have venom which, if left unchecked (i.e. the vampire bites you but doesn’t kill you) in the human body will eventually turn the human into a vampire – albeit after a really unpleasant couple of days – see here for a full description. I do kind of like this because it’s a deliberate move away from the drain-your-blood/suck-my-blood formula – and also because it reminds me of one of my all-time favourite creatures, the Komodo Dragon.
However, this otherwise interesting variation on traditional vampirism is not elaborated on (in terms of mechanics) and, as a result, creates what can be considered a plot hole when Edward sucks another vampire’s venom out of Bella – if the venom doesn’t come from the bite itself (which it can’t, because vampire teeth aren’t any different) then is it just present in the mouth? If so, why then doesn’t Edward’s venom poison Bella the same way?
Overall, the vampirisms are kind of a mixed bag. The sparkly crap makes me want to hurl, but many of the other qualities Meyer has dropped include the head-bangingly irritating ones such as the ‘no reflection’ – more irritating in film and tv, because they tend to somehow have magically invisible clothes as well – and the ‘cannot enter uninvited’ nonsense, which I’ve never liked. How, exactly, is that supposed to work anyway? I’m all for suspension of disbelief, but it should still maintain a certain logic no matter what; ‘magic’ still has to make some sense as far as I’m concerned.
Their nigh-on invulnerability is a bit of a problem, too – one of the things I like about Buffy and True Blood is that, while vampires are über-powerful, they can be brought down by normal humans if they’re well-organised and determined enough. Characters that are too powerful become hard to care about (since you know nothing can really hurt them); it’s what turned me off Anne Rice’s vampire stories and something I find problematic with a lot of fantasy fiction8.
But my research has led me to conclude in the later books that the vampire characters end up under threat – from other vampires and werewolves – so the issue seems to be limited to the first book alone.
7It took me a long time to find the right word, so I’m now very fond of this one – both for its elusiveness, and for just how damn apt it is.
8It’s one my many criticisms of David Eddings.
Themes
This is where it gets a bit more problematic, and where much of the criticism of the book stems from.
I find the Edward/Bella relationship to be disturbing, for want of a better word – creepy paedophile older relative disturbing. I’ve heard this argued away with ‘but he only looks seventeen!’, which is missing the damn point completely. He’s very much an adult and she’s very much a child, certainly emotionally younger than her physical age of seventeen. It’s not a relationship between equals, or even near-equals, and it runs through the whole story.
To illustrate: we’re led to believe that Edward loves Bella, but treats her with unabashed contempt – talks down to her, laughs at her constantly (laughs at, not laughs with) and almost never lets her make decisions for herself. To me it sounds more like a (bad) parent with a not-especially-bright child. Or a person with a pet. Not only is he aware of how one-sided the whole thing is, he seems to enjoy reminding her of how weak and useless she is compared to him.
There are ways this could have worked. Bella could have actually called him out on his assholish behaviour, and refused to have anything to do with him until he stopped being such a prick; he could have actually taken this on board and tried to act differently – and maybe stopped telling her everything she thinks and does is stupid and wrong and that she’s a puny human while he’s a vampire. It’s hardly far-fetched and would make it a lot less baffling to read about. But no, Edward remains the same asshat who treats her like crap; the difference is that he now spends time with her and tells her that he cares for her. Even though it doesn’t come through in how he treats her. We’re told that he cares for her - not shown.
This is another reason show, don’t tell is such an important rule to remember when writing – it makes characters and situations more believable. And that’s important, even when you’re writing about unbelievable characters and situations. It’s the suspension of disbelief, not the removal of it altogether.
What are we shown he does that could pass as being an actual demonstration of his feelings? He saves her life from time to time despite the fact doing so could expose him as a vampire (which, to be fair is not unreasonable) and, despite the fact that he really likes the idea of drinking her blood, he chooses not to kill her. There’s a scene in the forest where Edward rips the branch from a tree and smashes it against another tree to demonstrate just how easy it would be for him to kill her – but says that he never would. And there are other scenes that go along these lines.
That part again: not killing her. Yeah, that sounds like a good reason for loving someone: because they don’t kill you when they so easily could.
Some of it can be explained away by the fact that he’s a vampire, and is obviously somewhat removed from typical human emotional behaviour. But it’s something that the other vampire/human romances in fiction – e.g. Buffy/Angel and Bill/Sookie (in True Blood) - deal with a lot better by virtue of the fact that the human in both those stories has something to ‘bring to the table’ so to speak, e.g. being a sassy superpowered vampire slayer or a sassy southern psychic.
Bella, sadly, is not sassy. She’s as limp as five-day-old lettuce in an inefficient refrigerator. She has nothing to bring to the table; in fact, she’s so far away from the table that she can probably only barely make it out on the horizon. With binoculars. As a result, Edward's relationship with her comes across as totally creepy – and her acceptance of it implies that she thinks it’s okay for a female to be completely dominated by the male on almost every level.
Apart from the ‘not valuing you as a person is totally okay’ message there’s also the ‘sex is bad and abstinence is good’ message. While I personally disagree with this it’s not, in and of itself, as objectionable – or, more importantly, all that surprising; Meyer is a Mormon, and Mormons aren’t keen on premarital sex. As a theme alone this is irritating; combine it with page after page of scenes packed with scenes which are metaphors for struggling to resist giving in to their lust (because sex is wrong!) and it gets very annoying. You’ve made your misguided point; don’t harp on it.
Of course, related to that is the idea that men struggle to control themselves around women. It isn’t too flattering to women, either; since it implies that women are powerless and shouldn’t do anything that might lead to a man being overwhelmed by his lust and doing something they’ll both regret. it’s a pretty sickening (and, as a man, personally insulting) concept no matter what the context.
As a role model, Bella is a poor heroine, since she’s completely dependent on Edward for everything – making her decisions, saving her life, catching her whenever her gosh-darned inconvenient clumsiness causes her to fall over. And, as a result, it doesn’t provide much of an incentive for guys to be anything other than domineering and condescending; the male classmates who attempt to treat Bella like normal high school boys would are shunned as inferior – is the message that they should be more like Edward with the stalking and the mocking and the dismissals?
Then there’s the creepy mind-reading that Edward does, which I noted in his character analysis. He can’t read Bella’s mind, so he reads the minds of everyone around her so he can work out what’s going on. In our would that’d be like hacking into someone’s emails or reading their diaries to get information; it’s the kind of thing that only stalkers and other weirdos would do – why is it okay when Edward does it?
More creepiness: he broke into her house to watch her while she slept. Is that not just made of wrong? He’s done any number of things now that would lead almost every sane person on the world to get a restraining order (or its equivalent9) against the person – not consider it sweet and endearing.
As far as I’m concerned there aren’t a lot of positive themes in the book - not that I believe that themes are required, mind you; pure, unadulterated escapism has its place – but I have vague concerns over whether people who are reading the books are somehow incorporating what they’ve read into their ideas of what constitutes a healthy relationship.
Interestingly, the majority of women I’ve spoken to who’ve read the books have loved them. Whether or not the fact that they were enjoying what is essentially the colossally unequal relationship between a creepy, controlling, barely-controlled murderous, paedophile stalker and his infatuated, naïve, fangirl puppet was obvious to them I don’t know.
Oh, and if you think this is judging it harshly in terms of themes then you need to browse the internet some more.
9It’s called something else in Australia, but I don’t know what; I wasn’t paying that much attention on that particular day in court...now I’ve said too much.
Overall
As I mentioned at the beginning, I did not hate this book – but nor did I like it. It’s poorly-written (somewhat of an understatement) with unlikeable characters, a wafer-thin plot and myriad themes I find distasteful and depressing.
The story is written about a character who is only the barest outline of an actual person, and therefore someone that readers can insert themselves into and feel as if the events described are happening to them – and that’s not (in my mind) what fiction writing is about. We’re meant to be enjoying the experience of seeing the world through someone else’s eyes, not simply cutting-and-pasting ourselves into a set of events. It’s one thing to empathise with, be inspired by and learn from a character; to be given a scenario through which we can live out our own personal romantic daydreams is something else entirely.
However, at least some of this has to come down to the fact that everything is written with an audience in mind, and for Twilight I am most definitely not it.
There’s also the fact that I’m a bit of a literary snob10, and I’m aware that such a standard is going to mean a great deal of what is published isn’t going to impress me – an attitude that has by no means been ameliorated by the fact that I’ve spent the last week or so reading what I consider to be one of the best books – if not the best book – I’ve ever read, the aforementioned Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Having that as a yardstick ensures that almost everything else is going to fall short.
About the only real positive I can conceive of is that people will read this and move beyond it to well-written works - since I know from bitter, bitter personal experience that a person can start out on low-quality books11 and work their way up to worthwhile reading material.
As an exercise, though, reading and critiquing the book has been interesting – mostly because of the polarising effect the book has had. People are insanely defensive of this book, like nearly nothing else I’ve seen – except maybe the series featuring a bespectacled young wizard. But, on the other side, the hatred and loathing for it (and its fans) is far more intense than that inspired by Harry Potter.
Librarians, feminists, linguists, educators, writers and filmmakers and – very significantly - people who don’t otherwise even appear to read books have come out of the woodwork to express how much they despise it. Some it is purely reactionary, but much of it is the result of genuine analysis.
Facebook groups exist to do nothing more than illustrate distaste. Blog posts, websites, and even a Wiki are devoted to this purpose and this purpose alone. One even goes through it chapter by chapter (starts with the preface/chapter one here) to detail exactly what the author was annoyed by. It’s hilarious and chock-full of snark; I'll happily admit I enjoyed reading his analysis far more than the book itself.
But it has had an impact, and that's important. Heck, even I’ve churned out something like five thousand words on the topic. And I’m stopping right now – even though I could go on if I had to. The more I think about it, the more I’m coming up with things to rant about. There are other things I need to be writing about, so I’m pulling the plug right now.
Don’t expect anything on any of the sequels, though. I got about 40 pages into New Moon and just couldn’t go any further. Funnily enough I’m now reading a Sookie Stackhouse omnibus – the books that True Blood is based on - and even though I’m not that far into it I already like it a lot more than I liked Twilight.
Argh! Enough. Goodbye, Bella and Edward. It’s been...painful.
10I’m not an out-and-out elitist; I enjoy reading genre fiction from time to time – but I’m still critical of it when it falls short of what I consider reasonable literary standards. Let’s just say Dan Brown isn’t amongst my favourites.
11Let’s just say if it was published before 1990 and it had a picture of a dragon or an overly-muscled dude with a sword (or an axe or a flail or a freaking morning star) on the cover then I’ve probably read it.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
The fortnight (or so) that was #11
Darren Hanlon
On December 16, Darren Hanlon played at the Grace Emily, in what seems now to be an annual Christmas show. I’d already seen him once this year but I’m happy to see him again, since he’s one of my favourite singer/songwriters – and it’s not as if he asks all that much for tickets; these were $20, which I think is the most I’ve paid to see him. But it’s money well-spent.
If you aren’t familiar with his work, he falls into the genre of ‘urban folk’; you can see/hear a couple on YouTube – Falling Aeroplanes, Punk’s Not Dead and A to Z. Somewhat unusually (though less so these days than a few years back), he sings with a distinct Australian accent.
Falling Aeroplanes is what got me interested in his music, so I bought Early Days - the EP that contained that track - and found that I liked the other songs as well. A couple of years later I was able to catch him in Adelaide playing live at the Jade Monkey and was stunned to find that he, too, was from country Queensland – specifically, Gympie1. After the show I ended up talking to him for a while and he was a little surprised to find that someone in Adelaide not only knew where Gympie was but had spent some time there.
I’ve managed to see him most of the times he’s been to Adelaide, excluding the gigs I didn’t manage to hear about or where he was playing as part of a festival (i.e. the 2008 Laneway festival). I’ve seen him play with the other artists on the Candle Records roster (The Lucksmiths, Golden Rough, Jodie Phillis – amongst others) at the Enigma Bar and then at Jive earlier this year.
Over that time I’ve picked up a couple of his albums but not all; I don’t seem to like the songs he releases as singles as much as I liked the earlier songs, and that’s kind of put me off – though I’m almost 100% there’d be album tracks that I’d love. I suspect I’ll eventually collect them all, but for now I’m happy with those that I’ve got – when I saw him at Jive I bought his b-sides/oddities collection Pointing Rayguns at Pagans which has some great songs like Pinball Millionaire, Eli Wallach2 and Perfect Day, the cover of a Fischer Z3 song that I remember liking the original version of.
But the songs of his I do like – a lot. He has exactly what I look for in a singer/songwriter – he’s genuine4 and writes funny and extremely intelligent lyrics. A to Z in particular is full of some of the cleverest phrasings of any song I’ve ever heard; my favourite section is this gem:
‘But there’s never an argument
I don’t need an apology
It’s all half a dozen eggplants
Or six aubergines’
To a word-nerd like me that’s pure gold. On pure lyrical value alone I would struggle to think of too many examples that better that, other than one or two Elliott Smith songs. That it’s paired with some exquisitely composed music – and that overall feeling of genuine emotion - makes it even more enjoyable.
Falling Aeroplanes is my other favourite of his songs, and, while not quite as epic in the lyrics department as A to Z, certainly matches it in terms of genuine feeling – and it’s played (primarily) on the banjo, adding to the charm.
I may have mentioned in one of the posts about weddings that I tend to dislike the music of most weddings and that, if I did ever get married5 I’d be putting together a playlist of songs that are meaningful without being nauseatingly fake – and, so far, that’s a pretty short list. But both A to Z and Falling Aeroplanes are on it – which I think is a heck of an achievement.
Anyway, back to the gig – he played both Falling Aeroplanes and A to Z (the latter I don’t think I’ve ever actually heard him play live – or if I have, it was a while ago; he definitely didn’t play it at Jive earlier this year) as well as a range of songs from the other albums and some great new songs – so good that I’m really looking forward to the next album coming out. And he not only played Pinball Millionaire but told us a story about how, when he was in Seattle, his booking agent entered him in a pinball competition that he ended up making to the semi-finals of – so it turns out (not all that surprisingly) that he’s a good storyteller as well.
Pretty much the only downside to the whole evening was how late it went – it was a Wednesday, and I didn’t get home until after midnight. Still, I think it was probably worth a poor night’s sleep – and I’ll certainly be seeing him again when he’s in town.
1It’s in the south-east part of Queensland, slightly north-west of Noosa. My brother and his family live there, and I’ve stayed with them a few times.
2An actor, best known for his role as ‘The Ugly’ in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly – arguably the best western of all time.
3Don’t worry if you don’t know them. They weren’t particularly big.
4By which I mean I believe that he feels what he’s singing about. That’s a very big thing for me, and something that, in my opinion, the vast majority of music lacks.
5No, Mum, that doesn’t mean you should get your hopes up.
The Work Xmas Function
We had our work Xmas function6 at the Hyatt this year, where we’d had it two years ago. I wasn’t intending to go but got talked into it by the cube-neighbours, who seemed to think I should be there.
I don’t enjoy such things as a general rule. While there aren’t that many people at work who I don’t get along with, there also aren’t too many that I have enough in common with to have an extended conversation about non-work things about – and no-one should be talking work at a Xmas function. I like and get on well with my cube-neighbours, but we see each other every day and, as a general rule, talk about anything significant when it occurs; as a result we don’t have a lot of ‘catching up’ to do, per se.
Which kind of means I don’t see the point of going to such things – if you’re me that is. But I let myself get talked into it and put my name down.
Nearer to the day itself I came very close to pulling out – because a number of people other than those in ‘my’ group (i.e. those people who sit in the same row as me, plus one partner who was also coming) had invited themselves to sit at our table, and I wasn’t sure exactly how many seats the tables had. Since not sitting at that table would make going an entirely untenable position, I had two choices – have it confirmed that the numbers we currently had weren’t going to be too many, or pull out.
Turns out the tables sat ten – which was exactly as many as we had. So I didn't pull out.
By the time the day itself rolled around I was somewhat regretting my decision, mostly for the reasons I’ve already mentioned – it wasn’t as if I was going to be able to spend much of the night talking to anyone I didn’t already spend eight or so hours a day with.
And that was pretty much how it panned out. There were a few people from the other office (Kidman Park) who I know well enough to be able to talk to, so I caught up with them – but the rest of it was kind of subdued, at least compared to the sort of conversation that I prefer to have if I’m having conversation. I guess what it comes down to is that, while my range of interests is broad (as far as I can tell), it doesn’t seem to stretch far enough to overlap with people I work with.
Of course, there might be people at my work who are interested in literature or film but if they are it’s a mystery to me because finding out would involve overcoming the other barrier I face at any work-related function – or even within the workplace itself – which is that I lack the ability to engage a significant segment of people from my workplace in conversation about anything.
I’m not entirely sure why this is. I don’t pretend that I’m charismatic or charming – in fact, I’ll argue ‘til I’m blue in the face that I’m the antithesis of either – which I suspect has something to do with it. Admittedly, I don’t really try all that hard anymore – but a lot of that is down to resentment, because I have tried with a few people, on several occasions, and gotten nowhere. There are really only so many dead horses I’m prepared to flog, and I’ve made the decision that I don’t care that much if I don’t speak to other people at work beyond basic banter.
Not that this is limited to work, though. These days I’m finding it harder to talk to people I don’t already know well – and sometimes even those conversations aren’t going as smoothly as they once did. I have no idea why this is; I don’t believe that I’m doing or saying anything different from what I’ve always said and done – in fact, it may just be a perception with no basis in reality. What I also don’t know is if there’s anything I can do about it. But I do know I have to keep it in mind when I’m asked if I’m doing anything social – since I’d far rather stay home than risk being out somewhere feeling uncomfortable.
So, having made my decision not to bother people who don’t have time for me, I ate my food, kept to myself and then sat and suffered through the nightmarish selection of music provided by the DJ – a setlist comprising almost entirely of wretched 70s and 80s dancefloor standards.
Choosing the work-organised bus home was a mistake ‘cause it meant I had to stay there about an hour longer than I should have. But home time rolled around and off we went. As a result I didn’t have too late a night and, since I only drink heavily when I’m in a very good mood, I hadn’t had so many drinks that I was feeling too out of it – though I had had a few beers and a few wines, which did impact me somewhat the next morning; something which will prove significant in the next topic I cover.
Anyway, short of developing a few more friendships around the office between now and this time next year I doubt very much I’ll be attending the 2010 function.
6It sometimes gets referred to as a ‘show’ – but I don’t think that’s accurate; ‘show’ implies some kind of presentation or performance, and that hasn’t happened at any of the functions I’ve been to.
Tempest
The morning after the work Xmas dinner I had an audition for Mixed Salad’s 2010 production of The Tempest – for which they appear to be dropping the The7. I would have preferred for it to be another day, but one doesn’t often get to choose these things. As it was I was down for the 11.30 slot rather than the 9.30, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
My performing plan for 2010 had included doing a Shakespeare – but not with Mixed Salad; I had intended to audition for (and get a part in8) whichever Shakespeare the Adelaide Uni Theatre Guild would be doing in mid-year – since they seem to have established a tradition of doing mid-year Shakespeare’s it was not an unreasonable assumption to make.
But, as they say, when you make an assumption you make an ass out of you and umption9– while they are doing a Shakespeare mid-year, it’s going to be a student production. Since I’m not a student – and have no intention of becoming one again – I don’t have the option. Admittedly, they are doing A Midsummer Night’s Dream and, while that is one of my favourites, it is also one I’ve done before, and in which I know I’d only be prepared to take certain roles – specifically Peter Quince, Oberon or Puck. And I suspect those would be roles I wouldn’t get anyway.
I was a bit annoyed about this at first – I’d actually emailed them to find out which show they were doing; I was told they weren’t announcing yet and, as a result, didn’t audition for another show I was contemplating doing – Curtains, with Therry. But if they had told me, I’d have auditioned for Curtains, may well have gotten in, and not even considered Tempest; since I wouldn’t have imagined that I’d have gotten a part in a Mixed Salad show, I’d wouldn’t have auditioned.
But, I hadn’t auditioned for anything else and it was looking like the first half of next year would be sans performance. But I heard about Mixed Salad doing a production of The Tempest (minus, as I mentioned, the The) and though I might as well give it a shot – more because of the fact they were doing it as a group audition (which I tend to enjoy) and because their people have such a good reputation that I expected that a group audition with them would be a learning experience and valuable in its own right.
Mixed Salad, if you’re not familiar with them, have put on some of the best amateur productions in Adelaide over the last few years. My friend Bonnie was in their excellent production of Five Women Wearing the Same Dress a few years back; I saw their contemporised Two Gentleman of Verona in 2007 and enjoyed that; this year they put on one of the best shows I’ve ever seen, The History Boys. Their casts have included some of Adelaide’s best amateur performers, and from time to time one or two ex- (or currently on hiatus) professionals.
So, high standards. I would have been a lot more confident of getting a role in a Theatre Guild production than I was of getting into this.
Anyway, back to the audition. I woke up feeling somewhat under the weather from the effects of the work Xmas function – bad, but not hideous. I had toast and tea and dragged myself ‘out west’ to the Star Theatre in Hilton. After I got there I filled out the form, had my photo taken (blech) and waited around for the audition to start – I chatted to a girl named Carla, who’d been in the St Judes production of An Inspector Calls that I’d reviewed earlier this year.
Before the audition itself started, Sally (the director) took us into the main theatre (I’d been there earlier this year to see Rent) and explained what the setup for the show would be; they’d be using a thrust stage designed to look like a jetty, with a beach section (featuring actual sand) and an overturned boat – all in keeping with some of the key plot-points from the original, which includes several of the characters being shipwrecked on the island where the story takes place.
Then we went into the smaller theatre in the building (which I’d never seen before) and went through some interesting exercises – the first, hilariously, was to act as if we’d fallen asleep on the beach after a night of heavy drinking; thanks to the night before this wasn’t exactly a stretch of my acting talents. After that we had to develop a way of moving that corresponded with one of the four elemental properties (air, water, earth or fire) which was a bit more challenging because I wasn’t entirely sure of how to go about that – but I gave it a damn good go anyway.
After that we were divided into two groups – masters and servants – and let free to act how we felt our characters would act. I got ‘master’ so I hounded one guy and then, when it was pointed out that one of the ‘servants’ hadn’t been given any orders, set her to work as well. I was reasonably happy with how that went.
Next we were split into pairs and given different scenes to work on – I went with a guy named Keith (maybe), who I’d seen in a few things before; we had a scene featuring Prospero and Caliban that we tried a few different ways: switching roles and so forth. We were given a different scene that we struggled with – but it still gave us the opportunity to try out some comedy.
And that was it. I’d had a fun time and learned a few things – the whole ‘moving like the different elements’ was new to me, but I can imagine it’s a technique I can use in the future.
Later that afternoon I got the call – imagine my surprise when Sally told me she was offering me a role in the show. I’m in the ensemble (holiday-makers, party-goers and drinkers) as well as Alonso, one of the supporting characters – in the original he’s the King of Naples who helped betray and exile Prospero (the main character) to the island he now calls home. Of course, since they’re contemporising it, I can’t imagine Alonso will still be the King of Naples, but I suppose there’ll be some kind of parallel.
Not that I’ll find too much more out before March, when rehearsals start – apart from whatever information is provided with the script I seem to recall them mentioning they’ll be sending out. A few names I knew were mentioned, but I believe they were fellow ensemble; I’ve no idea who’s playing any of the principals.
I’m kind of hoping that I’ll be in the mood to document the whole process – keep a rehearsal journal, if you will – so expect to hear a lot more about Prospero, Ariel, Caliban and Alonso in the coming months.
7It does has more impact without it, I guess.
8This isn’t arrogance, by the way. I’m a male, I’m at the very least a competent actor by amateur standards, and I’d have been happy to take third spear-carrier from the left if that’s all that was offered to me - and they seem to like having as large a cast as they can get. Those things combined would make it highly likely I’d be offered a part.
9I’ve never quite understood this joke.
On December 16, Darren Hanlon played at the Grace Emily, in what seems now to be an annual Christmas show. I’d already seen him once this year but I’m happy to see him again, since he’s one of my favourite singer/songwriters – and it’s not as if he asks all that much for tickets; these were $20, which I think is the most I’ve paid to see him. But it’s money well-spent.
If you aren’t familiar with his work, he falls into the genre of ‘urban folk’; you can see/hear a couple on YouTube – Falling Aeroplanes, Punk’s Not Dead and A to Z. Somewhat unusually (though less so these days than a few years back), he sings with a distinct Australian accent.
Falling Aeroplanes is what got me interested in his music, so I bought Early Days - the EP that contained that track - and found that I liked the other songs as well. A couple of years later I was able to catch him in Adelaide playing live at the Jade Monkey and was stunned to find that he, too, was from country Queensland – specifically, Gympie1. After the show I ended up talking to him for a while and he was a little surprised to find that someone in Adelaide not only knew where Gympie was but had spent some time there.
I’ve managed to see him most of the times he’s been to Adelaide, excluding the gigs I didn’t manage to hear about or where he was playing as part of a festival (i.e. the 2008 Laneway festival). I’ve seen him play with the other artists on the Candle Records roster (The Lucksmiths, Golden Rough, Jodie Phillis – amongst others) at the Enigma Bar and then at Jive earlier this year.
Over that time I’ve picked up a couple of his albums but not all; I don’t seem to like the songs he releases as singles as much as I liked the earlier songs, and that’s kind of put me off – though I’m almost 100% there’d be album tracks that I’d love. I suspect I’ll eventually collect them all, but for now I’m happy with those that I’ve got – when I saw him at Jive I bought his b-sides/oddities collection Pointing Rayguns at Pagans which has some great songs like Pinball Millionaire, Eli Wallach2 and Perfect Day, the cover of a Fischer Z3 song that I remember liking the original version of.
But the songs of his I do like – a lot. He has exactly what I look for in a singer/songwriter – he’s genuine4 and writes funny and extremely intelligent lyrics. A to Z in particular is full of some of the cleverest phrasings of any song I’ve ever heard; my favourite section is this gem:
‘But there’s never an argument
I don’t need an apology
It’s all half a dozen eggplants
Or six aubergines’
To a word-nerd like me that’s pure gold. On pure lyrical value alone I would struggle to think of too many examples that better that, other than one or two Elliott Smith songs. That it’s paired with some exquisitely composed music – and that overall feeling of genuine emotion - makes it even more enjoyable.
Falling Aeroplanes is my other favourite of his songs, and, while not quite as epic in the lyrics department as A to Z, certainly matches it in terms of genuine feeling – and it’s played (primarily) on the banjo, adding to the charm.
I may have mentioned in one of the posts about weddings that I tend to dislike the music of most weddings and that, if I did ever get married5 I’d be putting together a playlist of songs that are meaningful without being nauseatingly fake – and, so far, that’s a pretty short list. But both A to Z and Falling Aeroplanes are on it – which I think is a heck of an achievement.
Anyway, back to the gig – he played both Falling Aeroplanes and A to Z (the latter I don’t think I’ve ever actually heard him play live – or if I have, it was a while ago; he definitely didn’t play it at Jive earlier this year) as well as a range of songs from the other albums and some great new songs – so good that I’m really looking forward to the next album coming out. And he not only played Pinball Millionaire but told us a story about how, when he was in Seattle, his booking agent entered him in a pinball competition that he ended up making to the semi-finals of – so it turns out (not all that surprisingly) that he’s a good storyteller as well.
Pretty much the only downside to the whole evening was how late it went – it was a Wednesday, and I didn’t get home until after midnight. Still, I think it was probably worth a poor night’s sleep – and I’ll certainly be seeing him again when he’s in town.
1It’s in the south-east part of Queensland, slightly north-west of Noosa. My brother and his family live there, and I’ve stayed with them a few times.
2An actor, best known for his role as ‘The Ugly’ in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly – arguably the best western of all time.
3Don’t worry if you don’t know them. They weren’t particularly big.
4By which I mean I believe that he feels what he’s singing about. That’s a very big thing for me, and something that, in my opinion, the vast majority of music lacks.
5No, Mum, that doesn’t mean you should get your hopes up.
The Work Xmas Function
We had our work Xmas function6 at the Hyatt this year, where we’d had it two years ago. I wasn’t intending to go but got talked into it by the cube-neighbours, who seemed to think I should be there.
I don’t enjoy such things as a general rule. While there aren’t that many people at work who I don’t get along with, there also aren’t too many that I have enough in common with to have an extended conversation about non-work things about – and no-one should be talking work at a Xmas function. I like and get on well with my cube-neighbours, but we see each other every day and, as a general rule, talk about anything significant when it occurs; as a result we don’t have a lot of ‘catching up’ to do, per se.
Which kind of means I don’t see the point of going to such things – if you’re me that is. But I let myself get talked into it and put my name down.
Nearer to the day itself I came very close to pulling out – because a number of people other than those in ‘my’ group (i.e. those people who sit in the same row as me, plus one partner who was also coming) had invited themselves to sit at our table, and I wasn’t sure exactly how many seats the tables had. Since not sitting at that table would make going an entirely untenable position, I had two choices – have it confirmed that the numbers we currently had weren’t going to be too many, or pull out.
Turns out the tables sat ten – which was exactly as many as we had. So I didn't pull out.
By the time the day itself rolled around I was somewhat regretting my decision, mostly for the reasons I’ve already mentioned – it wasn’t as if I was going to be able to spend much of the night talking to anyone I didn’t already spend eight or so hours a day with.
And that was pretty much how it panned out. There were a few people from the other office (Kidman Park) who I know well enough to be able to talk to, so I caught up with them – but the rest of it was kind of subdued, at least compared to the sort of conversation that I prefer to have if I’m having conversation. I guess what it comes down to is that, while my range of interests is broad (as far as I can tell), it doesn’t seem to stretch far enough to overlap with people I work with.
Of course, there might be people at my work who are interested in literature or film but if they are it’s a mystery to me because finding out would involve overcoming the other barrier I face at any work-related function – or even within the workplace itself – which is that I lack the ability to engage a significant segment of people from my workplace in conversation about anything.
I’m not entirely sure why this is. I don’t pretend that I’m charismatic or charming – in fact, I’ll argue ‘til I’m blue in the face that I’m the antithesis of either – which I suspect has something to do with it. Admittedly, I don’t really try all that hard anymore – but a lot of that is down to resentment, because I have tried with a few people, on several occasions, and gotten nowhere. There are really only so many dead horses I’m prepared to flog, and I’ve made the decision that I don’t care that much if I don’t speak to other people at work beyond basic banter.
Not that this is limited to work, though. These days I’m finding it harder to talk to people I don’t already know well – and sometimes even those conversations aren’t going as smoothly as they once did. I have no idea why this is; I don’t believe that I’m doing or saying anything different from what I’ve always said and done – in fact, it may just be a perception with no basis in reality. What I also don’t know is if there’s anything I can do about it. But I do know I have to keep it in mind when I’m asked if I’m doing anything social – since I’d far rather stay home than risk being out somewhere feeling uncomfortable.
So, having made my decision not to bother people who don’t have time for me, I ate my food, kept to myself and then sat and suffered through the nightmarish selection of music provided by the DJ – a setlist comprising almost entirely of wretched 70s and 80s dancefloor standards.
Choosing the work-organised bus home was a mistake ‘cause it meant I had to stay there about an hour longer than I should have. But home time rolled around and off we went. As a result I didn’t have too late a night and, since I only drink heavily when I’m in a very good mood, I hadn’t had so many drinks that I was feeling too out of it – though I had had a few beers and a few wines, which did impact me somewhat the next morning; something which will prove significant in the next topic I cover.
Anyway, short of developing a few more friendships around the office between now and this time next year I doubt very much I’ll be attending the 2010 function.
6It sometimes gets referred to as a ‘show’ – but I don’t think that’s accurate; ‘show’ implies some kind of presentation or performance, and that hasn’t happened at any of the functions I’ve been to.
Tempest
The morning after the work Xmas dinner I had an audition for Mixed Salad’s 2010 production of The Tempest – for which they appear to be dropping the The7. I would have preferred for it to be another day, but one doesn’t often get to choose these things. As it was I was down for the 11.30 slot rather than the 9.30, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
My performing plan for 2010 had included doing a Shakespeare – but not with Mixed Salad; I had intended to audition for (and get a part in8) whichever Shakespeare the Adelaide Uni Theatre Guild would be doing in mid-year – since they seem to have established a tradition of doing mid-year Shakespeare’s it was not an unreasonable assumption to make.
But, as they say, when you make an assumption you make an ass out of you and umption9– while they are doing a Shakespeare mid-year, it’s going to be a student production. Since I’m not a student – and have no intention of becoming one again – I don’t have the option. Admittedly, they are doing A Midsummer Night’s Dream and, while that is one of my favourites, it is also one I’ve done before, and in which I know I’d only be prepared to take certain roles – specifically Peter Quince, Oberon or Puck. And I suspect those would be roles I wouldn’t get anyway.
I was a bit annoyed about this at first – I’d actually emailed them to find out which show they were doing; I was told they weren’t announcing yet and, as a result, didn’t audition for another show I was contemplating doing – Curtains, with Therry. But if they had told me, I’d have auditioned for Curtains, may well have gotten in, and not even considered Tempest; since I wouldn’t have imagined that I’d have gotten a part in a Mixed Salad show, I’d wouldn’t have auditioned.
But, I hadn’t auditioned for anything else and it was looking like the first half of next year would be sans performance. But I heard about Mixed Salad doing a production of The Tempest (minus, as I mentioned, the The) and though I might as well give it a shot – more because of the fact they were doing it as a group audition (which I tend to enjoy) and because their people have such a good reputation that I expected that a group audition with them would be a learning experience and valuable in its own right.
Mixed Salad, if you’re not familiar with them, have put on some of the best amateur productions in Adelaide over the last few years. My friend Bonnie was in their excellent production of Five Women Wearing the Same Dress a few years back; I saw their contemporised Two Gentleman of Verona in 2007 and enjoyed that; this year they put on one of the best shows I’ve ever seen, The History Boys. Their casts have included some of Adelaide’s best amateur performers, and from time to time one or two ex- (or currently on hiatus) professionals.
So, high standards. I would have been a lot more confident of getting a role in a Theatre Guild production than I was of getting into this.
Anyway, back to the audition. I woke up feeling somewhat under the weather from the effects of the work Xmas function – bad, but not hideous. I had toast and tea and dragged myself ‘out west’ to the Star Theatre in Hilton. After I got there I filled out the form, had my photo taken (blech) and waited around for the audition to start – I chatted to a girl named Carla, who’d been in the St Judes production of An Inspector Calls that I’d reviewed earlier this year.
Before the audition itself started, Sally (the director) took us into the main theatre (I’d been there earlier this year to see Rent) and explained what the setup for the show would be; they’d be using a thrust stage designed to look like a jetty, with a beach section (featuring actual sand) and an overturned boat – all in keeping with some of the key plot-points from the original, which includes several of the characters being shipwrecked on the island where the story takes place.
Then we went into the smaller theatre in the building (which I’d never seen before) and went through some interesting exercises – the first, hilariously, was to act as if we’d fallen asleep on the beach after a night of heavy drinking; thanks to the night before this wasn’t exactly a stretch of my acting talents. After that we had to develop a way of moving that corresponded with one of the four elemental properties (air, water, earth or fire) which was a bit more challenging because I wasn’t entirely sure of how to go about that – but I gave it a damn good go anyway.
After that we were divided into two groups – masters and servants – and let free to act how we felt our characters would act. I got ‘master’ so I hounded one guy and then, when it was pointed out that one of the ‘servants’ hadn’t been given any orders, set her to work as well. I was reasonably happy with how that went.
Next we were split into pairs and given different scenes to work on – I went with a guy named Keith (maybe), who I’d seen in a few things before; we had a scene featuring Prospero and Caliban that we tried a few different ways: switching roles and so forth. We were given a different scene that we struggled with – but it still gave us the opportunity to try out some comedy.
And that was it. I’d had a fun time and learned a few things – the whole ‘moving like the different elements’ was new to me, but I can imagine it’s a technique I can use in the future.
Later that afternoon I got the call – imagine my surprise when Sally told me she was offering me a role in the show. I’m in the ensemble (holiday-makers, party-goers and drinkers) as well as Alonso, one of the supporting characters – in the original he’s the King of Naples who helped betray and exile Prospero (the main character) to the island he now calls home. Of course, since they’re contemporising it, I can’t imagine Alonso will still be the King of Naples, but I suppose there’ll be some kind of parallel.
Not that I’ll find too much more out before March, when rehearsals start – apart from whatever information is provided with the script I seem to recall them mentioning they’ll be sending out. A few names I knew were mentioned, but I believe they were fellow ensemble; I’ve no idea who’s playing any of the principals.
I’m kind of hoping that I’ll be in the mood to document the whole process – keep a rehearsal journal, if you will – so expect to hear a lot more about Prospero, Ariel, Caliban and Alonso in the coming months.
7It does has more impact without it, I guess.
8This isn’t arrogance, by the way. I’m a male, I’m at the very least a competent actor by amateur standards, and I’d have been happy to take third spear-carrier from the left if that’s all that was offered to me - and they seem to like having as large a cast as they can get. Those things combined would make it highly likely I’d be offered a part.
9I’ve never quite understood this joke.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
The week fortnight non-specific time period that was #10
I’m just going to give up apologising. Just assume that each blog post contains an expression of regret for having taken far too long to appear.
The Wedding of Selena and Shane
If Shane and/or Selena are reading this I hope you don’t feel bad that you didn’t get a blog post of your own like Miriam and Paul did – it’s nothing personal, honest. But yours didn’t require a road trip1 and an overnight stay in the country so there’s kind of less to write about.
Some background: like so many people I know, I met Selena doing theatre; specifically, the Burnside production of Much Ado About Nothing2. However, unlike previous-wedding-Miriam, she didn’t get the role I wanted – even with the messing around with gender in that show.
The wedding itself was at the chapel at St Aloysius school in the city – I’m not sure why; it was something I was going to ask about but didn’t. About all I know about the school is that it’s a Catholic girls’ school, a couple of people I know went there, and about half a dozen current students catch the same bus into town as me. I went in with friends Tim and Nora who picked me up from my place.
In what is an excellent illustration of the vagaries of Adelaide weather, this temperature on the day of this wedding was 20 degrees lower than that of the previous one only two weeks ago. The ceremony part was as you’d expect – and far less preachy than the last wedding, though the constant crossing thing took a bit of getting used to. It wasn’t especially long either.
There were a few hours to kill between the ceremony and the reception, which was at the Stamford on North Terrace in the city. I went back to Tim & Nora’s with them and we kicked back for a while and went through the always challenging process of composing something appropriate for the card. Despite my enthusiasm for writing I always struggle with cards, whether they be for weddings, birthdays, anniversaries or Bar Mitzvahs3. But I managed to overcome sentiment-specific writer’s block and come up with something that (I hope) worked.
We caught the bus back into town (no-one wanted to drive) and braved the squally weather to get from the bus stop to the Stamford and found we’d gotten there a bit too early and sat around the bar until 7. Once that rolled around we joined the queue for the tiny lift to the Crystal Room on the fourth floor (which, incidentally, had been the venue for a few work functions when I was with Origin) and joined the party.
Like nearly everyone else there I was surprised to find a jar with my name on it as a placemarker – a jar filled with a whitish powder. But more on that later. We sat and drank and chatted to people; the usual kind of thing where you’ve got groups of strangers linked only by the fact that their social circles overlap by one or two people.
The entrée – a risotto (possibly) with crab and prawns, which I’d normally be dubious about but which turned out to be quite nice – appeared. The main course was going to be a bit more of mystery since it’d been communicated to Selena that I was vehemently anti-pumpkin; I hadn’t, however, noted this in my RSVP because I didn’t think it’d be that big a deal but it would have been because the vile gourd was a major part of both options. So, I was spared the revolting orange muck and got potato with my choice (lamb) instead. Dessert was – I’m struggling to recall it now – a kind of apple crumble cheesecake thing, which. I only barely managed to get through.
Speech time: the usual suspects – best man, father of the bride and the groom. Hilariously, it was the most I’d heard Shane say the entire time I’d known him – even if you added up everything I’d ever heard him say in that two-year period. The mystery of the jar was revealed - it was pancake mix; significant because the first meal the bride & groom had had together was at the Pancake Kitchen.
That’s pretty damn awesome. If I were ever to get married (this isn't likely, for a number of reasons - and certainly not something I'm going to write about now) I’d want to do something that would set it aside from other weddings – though I’d already be halfway there with the choice of music, since I’d be playing a whole bunch of stuff that a lot of people won’t have ever heard, and definitely not playing what gets played at most weddings.
Anyway, the night continued into the dancing to mostly ghastly (to my sensibilities at least) dance-floor standards and I maintained my stance of not bringing myself to submit to the pressure to dance to anything I considered too unpleasant to validate by shaking my skinny white ass to. But some Jackson Five came on; they fall into the ‘acceptable’ category, so I got myself up there to show off my distinct lack of rhythm.
Not long after that I went home; I didn’t feel like making a huge night of it and the last bus going in my direction left at 11.30 or so and I wanted to be on it. All in all a good night. No so good that it’s overcoming my natural inclination to never get married, of course, but it was fun.
1Unless you count driving from Payneham South to the city (a distance of 6.8km) a road trip.
2I hadn’t realised it before but I believe this is the third wedding I’ve been to of people from the cast of that show.
3Technically, I’ve never been to a Bar Mitzvah. But I’m sure that if I had to write in a card for it I’d find it difficult – well, beyond ‘mazel tov’.
Cricket
On Saturday the 5th I went to day two of the test match between Australia and the West Indies. I hadn’t been to the cricket for years, but this time I’d noted when the match was going to be on and it was on a weekend where I knew I had no other commitments; all I had to do was find someone to go with – cricket’s one of those things that is necessary to do in the company of others, unlike most of the things I do.
Serendipitously4, my friend Tracey had recently begun a relationship with a guy named Sam, who plays cricket – meaning that (in my mind at least) it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that he would also like watching cricket. So, I asked and was met with a resounding ‘yes’. Originally Tracey was also going to come along but she ended up changing her mind, meaning it was just Sam and me.
It’s not all that far from my place to the Adelaide Oval so I decided to ride my bike there rather than drive (also sensible because parking nearby is a) limited and b) not free) or catch the bus and walk. So, laden with equipment (well, a hat and a backpack with a book and a bottle of sunscreen) I made my way from Payneham South to North Adelaide and found my way inside and to a good spot – in the north-east corner in front of the light tower and four rows back from the fence.
Sam was having breakfast with his cricket club at the Kensington hotel beforehand, so we agreed that he’d just come and find me when he got there. I’d gotten there about twenty minutes or before play began so I was ready and waiting when the first ball was bowled – and a good thing that I was; Siddle took a wicket with it. As it was people coming were a bit confused by the number of wickets down on the scoreboard and were a bit shocked to hear that one had fallen first ball.
Not a huge amount happened in the rest of the session, but that’s quite normal for tests so I just sat back and enjoyed the atmosphere – which is really what it’s about as far as I’m concerned; you don’t go to really ‘watch’ the cricket itself since you’re not able to see things all that well from where you sit. It’s better now they’ve got a permanent video screen set up – that way you can see replays – but as far as comprehensive coverage is concerned you’re better off watching it on television.
After a while, Sam showed up and the other essential aspect of live cricket began – the drinking of beer. Some more wickets fell – finally; it was a bit embarrassing that their number eleven, typically the least talented batsmen in the side, was able to make forty runs not-out before our bowlers dispatched his partner. But they were out and we were in.
I’d actually planned on eating more but the only thing I ended up buying was a fairly average hot-dog from a nearby cart. They now sell strawberries at the cricket, which I find quite odd – it’s most notably a Wimbledon thing, at least to my knowledge. Do they do a roaring trade? I couldn’t really say, but at no point did I notice anyone near me with any. The couple in front of us seemed to have invested in a portable hole or perhaps Mary Poppins’s carpetbag because they produced a non-stop supply of food and drink from it.
No Australian wickets fell for the rest of the day so we were treated to a good display of batting from Watson and Katich – though, as the record will show, not quite good enough for Watson to get his hundred before stumps. At the time I remarked that this wasn’t a good thing since being not-out overnight in the nineties seems – for Australian batsmen at least – to lead to getting out the next morning before making it to the century mark.
Which is, of course, exactly what happened. I blame both Watson and Katich, since they could (and certainly should) have played to try and get him to his ton before stumps for that very reason. They took twos when they could have taken singles, threes instead of twos, and even one four all-run when stopping at three would have left Watson on strike for the next over.
The day finished and Sam and I went our separate ways. I was faced with the somewhat interesting task of riding my bike home while being slightly drunk (I’d had six pints of mid-strength beer over the space of maybe six hours; for someone with my low tolerance for alcohol that’s enough to have a noticeable effect). But I managed to make it home without a) falling off or b) getting arrested5.
A damn good day, and something I’d like to make an annual event – preferably with more people next time. Heck, I’ll even volunteer to organise it.
4This might or might not be a word.
5Technically, riding a bike while drunk is an offence. You don’t hear about it as often because, as far as I know, they don’t set up breathalyser stations on bike paths.
Green Day
On Sunday the 6th I went to see Green Day at the Entertainment Centre. I’d never seen them before, mostly because I don’t think I’d have counted myself as that big a fan of theirs the last time they were in Adelaide. But that had changed since I’d gotten my hands on a copy of their 2004 album American Idiot, which I grew to love after a few listens. So, as soon as the tour was announced (without any specific details being released) I decided I was going to see them when they got here – as long as they came to Adelaide, that is. But they came here last time they toured, so chances seemed pretty good they’d include us on their itinerary.
I was not disappointed – dates for Adelaide were included. I signed myself up with whichever mailing list/membership/pre-sale preferential group it was they used and made sure I was not going to miss out. It’s a bit of a song-and-dance: getting a unique user code and using that to log in to the website at the specified time for Adelaide – they stagger the dates and times so the feeding frenzy doesn’t crash their system – and buy tickets. But it worked – I got two tickets about two minutes after it opened.
This, of course, was about six months ago. I’m one of those people who hates not being able to get something I’ve bought straight away so the waiting was kind of annoying, but that’s the way of concert tickets these days – you get in early or you don’t go. But the months rolled by and the day arrived6.
I did a bit of research beforehand and found that the support act was Australian band Jet – which was good ‘cause I don’t mind them. I’m not a huge fan but nor would I be unhappy about standing through a half-hour set of theirs before the main act began. I also looked online for some setlists – people post complete setlists from gigs, which is a great way to get an idea of what kind of songs (and how many) a band might play at a typical show. I was blown away to see they’d played thirty-four songs at a recent appearance in Italy.
Of course, they were (or still are, depending on your definition) a punk band, so some of their songs aren’t all that long – but the official tour website had their playing time listed as from 8.30 – 11.30, which led me to believe that they would be playing for a decent amount of time. I didn’t really expect three hours, but even two full hours would be good.
We (concert/theatre/film-going associate Miriam and I) decided to pre-empt the insanity of competing with people for parks and had dinner at The Gov before wandering over to the entertainment centre. This plan worked quite well; we got a park only about five minutes walk away – and for which we didn’t have to pay.
Doors were due to open at 6.30 (I think) and we headed over and made our way through the doors and down onto the stadium floor (we’d opted for general admission rather than seated) without too much hassle and found ourselves a spot inside the ‘D’7 that was not too far from the stage but not where we anticipated the moshing would take place.
Jet came on at 7.30 and played for their allotted half hour – they played well (I think I’ve seen them before, at a Big Day Out, but I’m not sure which) and were very enthusiastic.
While what seemed to be to be the largest crew of roadies8 I’ve ever seen cleared off the Jet equipment and brought in the Green Day gear; we speculated on what kind of lighting/on-stage set they’d have – since it wasn’t particularly obvious from what we could see. But we watched as they raised two spotlight operators up on a boom behind the stage, which kind of indicated it was going to be somewhat interesting. Not really a job I’d volunteer for, though; they went a long way up and spotlights (as I’ve learned from experience) get hot.
For no reason that I didn’t – and possibly never will – understand, someone (I contend it was a female because (s)he had hands even smaller and more delicate than my own, which is saying something) came on dressed in a pink bunny suit, danced around for a while and – with the exhortation of the crowd – knocked back two Crown Lager stubbies before going off again.
Eventually Green Day took the stage – but what I was blown away by first was the set, which had the entire wall behind them looking like a giant city horizon with huge skyscrapers. It was one of the coolest things I’d ever seen. See a photo of it here.
For the next two hours and twenty (or so) minutes, we were treated to one of the most dynamic and enjoyable rock concerts I’ve experienced – and I’ve seen a lot of bands. Not very many stadium shows, though; the majority of acts I see are either too small or who I saw when they were small but whose music I now don’t enjoy enough to fork out the cash for that big a show.
I won’t bother trying to name the songs; you can see the complete setlist here.
They were ‘on’ the whole time; Billie Joe (lead vocals/guitar) and Mike Dirnt (bass/backing vocals) kept moving almost the entire time, running back and forth and jumping around; drummer Tré Cool, of course, was sitting – but his drumming is of the enthusiastic variety so it wasn’t like he was sitting still.
Pretty much all the stadium-rock standards got used: audience members brought on stage (and thrown back in to crowd surf), t-shirts shot into the stands with an air-gun, water sprayers, and a motorised toilet-paper dispensing device. The audience were encouraged to sing along and were split into two halves and ordered to ‘chant-off’ against each other. As the setlist shows, there were a few covers; the audience went nuts went they played the opening riff to AC/DC’s Highway to Hell.
But it’s not really something I can describe, beyond listing appropriate superlatives: brilliant, excellent, awesome, spectacular, cool. They got a guy up and he ended up singing all of Longview – I can only imagine how happy he was after that. The ticket was $100, but I’d gladly pay that again – tomorrow, if the opportunity arose.
There’s no doubt that I enjoyed it. The only question now is to where this particular gig will get slotted into my list of all-time favourites. It’s a pretty hard decision; the list includes the first gig I ever saw (Hoodoo Gurus at the Dalrymple Hotel in Townsville), the first international bands I saw (Brad9 and Ben Harper), Pearl Jam at Thebarton Oval, Radiohead at the Entertainment Centre, George in the Austral beer garden, Foo Fighters, Nine Inch Nails, The Flaming Lips and about a dozen other bands at assorted Big Days Out, They Might be Giants at Heaven, Regurgitator/Prodigy at Thebarton – the list goes on.
But it’s up there. It’s definitely top 5. Number 1? Possibly. I’ll have to think about it.
6No pun intended.
7For the unitiated: they use a barried shaped roughly like a ‘D’ (with a gap in the middle for people to get through) close to the stage; its purpose is to minimise the number of people who can rush forward and crush people against the front.
8Is there a collective noun for roadies? I’m guessing that, traditionally at least, it’d be ‘crew’, since ‘roadies’ would be an abbreviation of ‘road crew’. But I’m sure someone’s come up with a funnier one – like ‘buttcrack’, ‘bandana’, or ‘black jeans’.
9Brad is the side project of Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard; somewhat hilariously, I went to that gig more to see Brad because at the time I hadn’t heard that much Ben Harper. Imagine my surprise.
The Wedding of Selena and Shane
If Shane and/or Selena are reading this I hope you don’t feel bad that you didn’t get a blog post of your own like Miriam and Paul did – it’s nothing personal, honest. But yours didn’t require a road trip1 and an overnight stay in the country so there’s kind of less to write about.
Some background: like so many people I know, I met Selena doing theatre; specifically, the Burnside production of Much Ado About Nothing2. However, unlike previous-wedding-Miriam, she didn’t get the role I wanted – even with the messing around with gender in that show.
The wedding itself was at the chapel at St Aloysius school in the city – I’m not sure why; it was something I was going to ask about but didn’t. About all I know about the school is that it’s a Catholic girls’ school, a couple of people I know went there, and about half a dozen current students catch the same bus into town as me. I went in with friends Tim and Nora who picked me up from my place.
In what is an excellent illustration of the vagaries of Adelaide weather, this temperature on the day of this wedding was 20 degrees lower than that of the previous one only two weeks ago. The ceremony part was as you’d expect – and far less preachy than the last wedding, though the constant crossing thing took a bit of getting used to. It wasn’t especially long either.
There were a few hours to kill between the ceremony and the reception, which was at the Stamford on North Terrace in the city. I went back to Tim & Nora’s with them and we kicked back for a while and went through the always challenging process of composing something appropriate for the card. Despite my enthusiasm for writing I always struggle with cards, whether they be for weddings, birthdays, anniversaries or Bar Mitzvahs3. But I managed to overcome sentiment-specific writer’s block and come up with something that (I hope) worked.
We caught the bus back into town (no-one wanted to drive) and braved the squally weather to get from the bus stop to the Stamford and found we’d gotten there a bit too early and sat around the bar until 7. Once that rolled around we joined the queue for the tiny lift to the Crystal Room on the fourth floor (which, incidentally, had been the venue for a few work functions when I was with Origin) and joined the party.
Like nearly everyone else there I was surprised to find a jar with my name on it as a placemarker – a jar filled with a whitish powder. But more on that later. We sat and drank and chatted to people; the usual kind of thing where you’ve got groups of strangers linked only by the fact that their social circles overlap by one or two people.
The entrée – a risotto (possibly) with crab and prawns, which I’d normally be dubious about but which turned out to be quite nice – appeared. The main course was going to be a bit more of mystery since it’d been communicated to Selena that I was vehemently anti-pumpkin; I hadn’t, however, noted this in my RSVP because I didn’t think it’d be that big a deal but it would have been because the vile gourd was a major part of both options. So, I was spared the revolting orange muck and got potato with my choice (lamb) instead. Dessert was – I’m struggling to recall it now – a kind of apple crumble cheesecake thing, which. I only barely managed to get through.
Speech time: the usual suspects – best man, father of the bride and the groom. Hilariously, it was the most I’d heard Shane say the entire time I’d known him – even if you added up everything I’d ever heard him say in that two-year period. The mystery of the jar was revealed - it was pancake mix; significant because the first meal the bride & groom had had together was at the Pancake Kitchen.
That’s pretty damn awesome. If I were ever to get married (this isn't likely, for a number of reasons - and certainly not something I'm going to write about now) I’d want to do something that would set it aside from other weddings – though I’d already be halfway there with the choice of music, since I’d be playing a whole bunch of stuff that a lot of people won’t have ever heard, and definitely not playing what gets played at most weddings.
Anyway, the night continued into the dancing to mostly ghastly (to my sensibilities at least) dance-floor standards and I maintained my stance of not bringing myself to submit to the pressure to dance to anything I considered too unpleasant to validate by shaking my skinny white ass to. But some Jackson Five came on; they fall into the ‘acceptable’ category, so I got myself up there to show off my distinct lack of rhythm.
Not long after that I went home; I didn’t feel like making a huge night of it and the last bus going in my direction left at 11.30 or so and I wanted to be on it. All in all a good night. No so good that it’s overcoming my natural inclination to never get married, of course, but it was fun.
1Unless you count driving from Payneham South to the city (a distance of 6.8km) a road trip.
2I hadn’t realised it before but I believe this is the third wedding I’ve been to of people from the cast of that show.
3Technically, I’ve never been to a Bar Mitzvah. But I’m sure that if I had to write in a card for it I’d find it difficult – well, beyond ‘mazel tov’.
Cricket
On Saturday the 5th I went to day two of the test match between Australia and the West Indies. I hadn’t been to the cricket for years, but this time I’d noted when the match was going to be on and it was on a weekend where I knew I had no other commitments; all I had to do was find someone to go with – cricket’s one of those things that is necessary to do in the company of others, unlike most of the things I do.
Serendipitously4, my friend Tracey had recently begun a relationship with a guy named Sam, who plays cricket – meaning that (in my mind at least) it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that he would also like watching cricket. So, I asked and was met with a resounding ‘yes’. Originally Tracey was also going to come along but she ended up changing her mind, meaning it was just Sam and me.
It’s not all that far from my place to the Adelaide Oval so I decided to ride my bike there rather than drive (also sensible because parking nearby is a) limited and b) not free) or catch the bus and walk. So, laden with equipment (well, a hat and a backpack with a book and a bottle of sunscreen) I made my way from Payneham South to North Adelaide and found my way inside and to a good spot – in the north-east corner in front of the light tower and four rows back from the fence.
Sam was having breakfast with his cricket club at the Kensington hotel beforehand, so we agreed that he’d just come and find me when he got there. I’d gotten there about twenty minutes or before play began so I was ready and waiting when the first ball was bowled – and a good thing that I was; Siddle took a wicket with it. As it was people coming were a bit confused by the number of wickets down on the scoreboard and were a bit shocked to hear that one had fallen first ball.
Not a huge amount happened in the rest of the session, but that’s quite normal for tests so I just sat back and enjoyed the atmosphere – which is really what it’s about as far as I’m concerned; you don’t go to really ‘watch’ the cricket itself since you’re not able to see things all that well from where you sit. It’s better now they’ve got a permanent video screen set up – that way you can see replays – but as far as comprehensive coverage is concerned you’re better off watching it on television.
After a while, Sam showed up and the other essential aspect of live cricket began – the drinking of beer. Some more wickets fell – finally; it was a bit embarrassing that their number eleven, typically the least talented batsmen in the side, was able to make forty runs not-out before our bowlers dispatched his partner. But they were out and we were in.
I’d actually planned on eating more but the only thing I ended up buying was a fairly average hot-dog from a nearby cart. They now sell strawberries at the cricket, which I find quite odd – it’s most notably a Wimbledon thing, at least to my knowledge. Do they do a roaring trade? I couldn’t really say, but at no point did I notice anyone near me with any. The couple in front of us seemed to have invested in a portable hole or perhaps Mary Poppins’s carpetbag because they produced a non-stop supply of food and drink from it.
No Australian wickets fell for the rest of the day so we were treated to a good display of batting from Watson and Katich – though, as the record will show, not quite good enough for Watson to get his hundred before stumps. At the time I remarked that this wasn’t a good thing since being not-out overnight in the nineties seems – for Australian batsmen at least – to lead to getting out the next morning before making it to the century mark.
Which is, of course, exactly what happened. I blame both Watson and Katich, since they could (and certainly should) have played to try and get him to his ton before stumps for that very reason. They took twos when they could have taken singles, threes instead of twos, and even one four all-run when stopping at three would have left Watson on strike for the next over.
The day finished and Sam and I went our separate ways. I was faced with the somewhat interesting task of riding my bike home while being slightly drunk (I’d had six pints of mid-strength beer over the space of maybe six hours; for someone with my low tolerance for alcohol that’s enough to have a noticeable effect). But I managed to make it home without a) falling off or b) getting arrested5.
A damn good day, and something I’d like to make an annual event – preferably with more people next time. Heck, I’ll even volunteer to organise it.
4This might or might not be a word.
5Technically, riding a bike while drunk is an offence. You don’t hear about it as often because, as far as I know, they don’t set up breathalyser stations on bike paths.
Green Day
On Sunday the 6th I went to see Green Day at the Entertainment Centre. I’d never seen them before, mostly because I don’t think I’d have counted myself as that big a fan of theirs the last time they were in Adelaide. But that had changed since I’d gotten my hands on a copy of their 2004 album American Idiot, which I grew to love after a few listens. So, as soon as the tour was announced (without any specific details being released) I decided I was going to see them when they got here – as long as they came to Adelaide, that is. But they came here last time they toured, so chances seemed pretty good they’d include us on their itinerary.
I was not disappointed – dates for Adelaide were included. I signed myself up with whichever mailing list/membership/pre-sale preferential group it was they used and made sure I was not going to miss out. It’s a bit of a song-and-dance: getting a unique user code and using that to log in to the website at the specified time for Adelaide – they stagger the dates and times so the feeding frenzy doesn’t crash their system – and buy tickets. But it worked – I got two tickets about two minutes after it opened.
This, of course, was about six months ago. I’m one of those people who hates not being able to get something I’ve bought straight away so the waiting was kind of annoying, but that’s the way of concert tickets these days – you get in early or you don’t go. But the months rolled by and the day arrived6.
I did a bit of research beforehand and found that the support act was Australian band Jet – which was good ‘cause I don’t mind them. I’m not a huge fan but nor would I be unhappy about standing through a half-hour set of theirs before the main act began. I also looked online for some setlists – people post complete setlists from gigs, which is a great way to get an idea of what kind of songs (and how many) a band might play at a typical show. I was blown away to see they’d played thirty-four songs at a recent appearance in Italy.
Of course, they were (or still are, depending on your definition) a punk band, so some of their songs aren’t all that long – but the official tour website had their playing time listed as from 8.30 – 11.30, which led me to believe that they would be playing for a decent amount of time. I didn’t really expect three hours, but even two full hours would be good.
We (concert/theatre/film-going associate Miriam and I) decided to pre-empt the insanity of competing with people for parks and had dinner at The Gov before wandering over to the entertainment centre. This plan worked quite well; we got a park only about five minutes walk away – and for which we didn’t have to pay.
Doors were due to open at 6.30 (I think) and we headed over and made our way through the doors and down onto the stadium floor (we’d opted for general admission rather than seated) without too much hassle and found ourselves a spot inside the ‘D’7 that was not too far from the stage but not where we anticipated the moshing would take place.
Jet came on at 7.30 and played for their allotted half hour – they played well (I think I’ve seen them before, at a Big Day Out, but I’m not sure which) and were very enthusiastic.
While what seemed to be to be the largest crew of roadies8 I’ve ever seen cleared off the Jet equipment and brought in the Green Day gear; we speculated on what kind of lighting/on-stage set they’d have – since it wasn’t particularly obvious from what we could see. But we watched as they raised two spotlight operators up on a boom behind the stage, which kind of indicated it was going to be somewhat interesting. Not really a job I’d volunteer for, though; they went a long way up and spotlights (as I’ve learned from experience) get hot.
For no reason that I didn’t – and possibly never will – understand, someone (I contend it was a female because (s)he had hands even smaller and more delicate than my own, which is saying something) came on dressed in a pink bunny suit, danced around for a while and – with the exhortation of the crowd – knocked back two Crown Lager stubbies before going off again.
Eventually Green Day took the stage – but what I was blown away by first was the set, which had the entire wall behind them looking like a giant city horizon with huge skyscrapers. It was one of the coolest things I’d ever seen. See a photo of it here.
For the next two hours and twenty (or so) minutes, we were treated to one of the most dynamic and enjoyable rock concerts I’ve experienced – and I’ve seen a lot of bands. Not very many stadium shows, though; the majority of acts I see are either too small or who I saw when they were small but whose music I now don’t enjoy enough to fork out the cash for that big a show.
I won’t bother trying to name the songs; you can see the complete setlist here.
They were ‘on’ the whole time; Billie Joe (lead vocals/guitar) and Mike Dirnt (bass/backing vocals) kept moving almost the entire time, running back and forth and jumping around; drummer Tré Cool, of course, was sitting – but his drumming is of the enthusiastic variety so it wasn’t like he was sitting still.
Pretty much all the stadium-rock standards got used: audience members brought on stage (and thrown back in to crowd surf), t-shirts shot into the stands with an air-gun, water sprayers, and a motorised toilet-paper dispensing device. The audience were encouraged to sing along and were split into two halves and ordered to ‘chant-off’ against each other. As the setlist shows, there were a few covers; the audience went nuts went they played the opening riff to AC/DC’s Highway to Hell.
But it’s not really something I can describe, beyond listing appropriate superlatives: brilliant, excellent, awesome, spectacular, cool. They got a guy up and he ended up singing all of Longview – I can only imagine how happy he was after that. The ticket was $100, but I’d gladly pay that again – tomorrow, if the opportunity arose.
There’s no doubt that I enjoyed it. The only question now is to where this particular gig will get slotted into my list of all-time favourites. It’s a pretty hard decision; the list includes the first gig I ever saw (Hoodoo Gurus at the Dalrymple Hotel in Townsville), the first international bands I saw (Brad9 and Ben Harper), Pearl Jam at Thebarton Oval, Radiohead at the Entertainment Centre, George in the Austral beer garden, Foo Fighters, Nine Inch Nails, The Flaming Lips and about a dozen other bands at assorted Big Days Out, They Might be Giants at Heaven, Regurgitator/Prodigy at Thebarton – the list goes on.
But it’s up there. It’s definitely top 5. Number 1? Possibly. I’ll have to think about it.
6No pun intended.
7For the unitiated: they use a barried shaped roughly like a ‘D’ (with a gap in the middle for people to get through) close to the stage; its purpose is to minimise the number of people who can rush forward and crush people against the front.
8Is there a collective noun for roadies? I’m guessing that, traditionally at least, it’d be ‘crew’, since ‘roadies’ would be an abbreviation of ‘road crew’. But I’m sure someone’s come up with a funnier one – like ‘buttcrack’, ‘bandana’, or ‘black jeans’.
9Brad is the side project of Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard; somewhat hilariously, I went to that gig more to see Brad because at the time I hadn’t heard that much Ben Harper. Imagine my surprise.
Monday, November 30, 2009
The week that was #9
Okay, I’ve really lost continuity with the whole ‘week that was’ concept, but unless I can find something big to write about I’m going to stick with them. I do have a couple – the not-really-anticipated-by-very-many Arsenic & Old Lace post is one; there’s another that I’m keeping under my hat for the moment – but I don’t know when they’ll appear.
My main problem is focus. Really, if I don’t write something in pretty much one go I find it very difficult to want to bother finishing it. This, of course, is a huge problem when you consider that, like anyone else who writes, I’d like to actually get some kind of long-form work published or produced. But the only way I’m going to manage that is if I do it in one go – which is not really all that likely, considering how much I like sleep But you never know.
For now I’ve got blogging1 to keep me entertained.
1Have I mentioned I really dislike the word ‘blog’ and all its derivatives? I suspect it may have contributed to my not getting into online publishing earlier. Maybe I’ll spearhead some kind of campaign to come up with a new word.
The weird weather
We had a patch of very hot weather a week or so ago, and I can’t say I enjoyed it. One of the reasons I was happy to leave northern Queensland was to escape the heat – though it is, as anyone will tell you, a different kind of heat. And they’re right; the difference is the humidity, which there is a lot of up there and little of down here.
In terms of maxima, though, South Australia gets a lot hotter than Queensland – or, at least, the part of Queensland I’m from. Summer temperatures don’t tend to go over 35° in either Bowen or Townsville, the two places I lived when I up there. But while it’s not as hot per se, it is still warm – and it’s warmer for longer, i.e. there are more months of the year where the temperature is in the high 20s/low 30s.
Combine that with the humidity and you get a place that, although it’s less hot at its hottest, and far milder in winter, is sticky and unpleasant for a greater proportion of the year. Mathematically – for me at least – it’s better to be down here.
Though when we get eight street days of maxima above 35° – as we did in the middle of November – I start to wonder. And even that pales in comparison to the record heatwave we went through in Feb/March of 2008; that was eleven consecutive days above 38°. Of course, it isn’t really the daytime maximum that I have a problem with – it’s the overnight minimum. Generally I can sleep in my unairconditioned bedroom (with the windows open to catch the breeze – if there is one) if it gets below 25°. But on at least several occasions in both those hot spells the temperature didn’t drop that low, instead staying in the low 30s the whole night.
While I have airconditioning in my place, the unit is installed in the dining room2 and isn’t capable of cooling the bedroom – so, if I want to make use of it on hot nights, I have to sleep in the lounge on my spare mattress. It’s better than sleeping uncooled in my proper bed, but - between being on a thin mattress on the floor, and the effects of the airconditioning (which I’m convinced isn’t good to sleep in) - I almost never get as good a night’s sleep as I’d like.
And I really, really hate not getting a good night’s sleep.
But it’s become cool again over the last week or so, and I’m a lot happier as a result. Not that I don’t expect it’s going to heat up again before too long, but the fewer days that I have to spend checking different weather websites3 to see if the temperature is going to drop enough that it’s worth opening up the house and sleeping in my room the better.
2This might be somewhat of an exaggeration; I live in a unit, not a house and by ‘dining room’ I mean a kind of combined kitchen/dining/lounge room area.
3I’m contemplating buying a thermometer so I can work out if it’s cooler inside the house than outside of it.
Glee
It’s simple: I love Glee, to the point where it’s probably my equal favourite show on television - it ties with Castle for my affections. The premise is simple: it’s a musical/comedy/drama series about a high school (the fictional William McKinley high in Lima, Ohio) glee club and their attempts to become good enough to reach the state championships.
Though it is a bit more complicated than that; pretty much everyone (teachers and students) in the show has a host of social/emotional/psychological problems which threaten the continued existence of the club, and the school’s cheerleading coach is out to destroy them.
Many of the characters are stereotypical – the standard glee club ‘losers’ (in the sense of being low on the social ladder of a high school in the US), for example, include a camp gay guy, an ambitious Jewish theatre tragic girl and an R&B-loving don’t-take-shit-from-anyone black girl. However, they do mix it up a bit by having a couple of football players and cheerleaders who defy the ‘natural order’ to be involved.
Friends of mine who don’t like the show have commented that there isn’t really anyone to like in the show, and I kind of agree – but that doesn’t seem to stop me from enjoying it. A lot of it is to do with the music, which I’m kind of surprised by because – for the most part – they sing cover versions of songs that I dislike the original of. To me the show gives them something the earlier renditions lacked - with the exception, of course, of The Thong Song, which I realised I hated even more than I did before when the lyrics, in all their lameness and inanity, were revealed.
I think the key to my liking it is probably the humour – which is quite dark and very dry. And the writing in some of the episodes has been superb, particularly the dialogue given to the ‘evil’ cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester, who’s played by the always-brilliant Jane Lynch4. One episode contained this voice-over:
‘Glee Club. Every time I try to destroy that clutch of scab-eating mouth-breathers it only comes back stronger, like some sexually ambiguous horror-movie villain. Here I am, about to turn 30, and I’ve sacrificed everything only to be shanghaied by the bi-curious machinations of a cabal of doughy, misshapen teens. Am I missing something, journal? Is it me? Of course it’s not me. It’s Will Schuester. What is it about him, journal? Is it the arrogant smirk? Is it the store-bought home perm?’
I rewound and watched this bit about seven times before I stopped laughing. Scab-eating mouth-breathers? For someone like me who loves well-phrased insults, that’s absolute comedy gold. Offensive? Sure. But still gold.
Some more of Sue’s dialogue:
‘Let me be frank. Your husband is hiding his kielbasa in a Hickory Farms gift basket that doesn’t belong to you.’
‘Guidance counselor. Real floozy and a man eater. Wears creepy brooches like the kind my nana was buried in.’
‘I’ve always though that the desire to procreate showed deep personal weakness.’
‘Unless you want to lose your man to a mentally-ill ginger pygmy with eyes like a bushbaby.’
I could listen to this kind of talk all day.
Whether or not Glee can maintain the high standard remains to be seen – it does kind of lend itself to a short lifespan, considering that the characters are high school students and will eventually graduate – but I’ll keep watching for now.
Oh, and I recently learned that Joss Whedon will be directing an episode early next year – I don’t think I could ask for a better combination.
4You might know her from her work on the mockumentaries A Mighty Wind and Best in Show or her guest appearances on Two and a Half Men (as Charlie’s therapist) and Criminal Minds (as Spencer’s institutionalised mother).
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
A novel by Alan Bradley5, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is a murder mystery set in country England in the 1950s; the twist, however, is that the sleuthing is done by ‘very-nearly-eleven-year-old’ Flavia De Luce, who is forced to investigate the murder of man whose body is found in the back garden of Buckshaw, her family home, after her father, Colonel De Luce – a reclusive philatelist and widower – confesses to the crime. Flavia – a prodigious child whose chief love is for chemistry, thanks to her discovery of her late mother's chemistry textbook and her late uncle Tarquin’s having built a fully-stocked laboratory in a wing of the house - sets about following the trail of clues, starting with the discovery of a dead snipe with a stamp impaled on its beak left on their doorstep.
In her efforts she’s forced to contend with not only the local constabulary, who are also attempting to solve the crime, but with the local townsfolk, the De Luce’s shell-shocked gardener/driver Dogger, and her two unhelpful older sisters, Daphne and Ophelia.
The book was lent to me by Miriam6, who gotten it for her birthday this year; I was there that night and had had a glance through it – this is generally how I judge a book; I open to a random page and see what the prose style is like – and thought it looked interesting.
I was right; it was a fun read. The prose is excellent; an example:
‘Mrs Mullet, who was short and grey and round as a millstone and who, I’m quite sure, thought of herself as a character in a poem by A.A. Milne, was in the kitchen formulating one of her pus-like custard pies.’
Brilliant.
It is, of course, a bit unrealistic: the ten-year-old protagonist has more esoteric chemical knowledge than the average university student and, as is often the case in child-centered fiction, the adults tend to be more than usually lacking in insight – but, when it comes down to it, it’s not a huge barrier to overcome; that’s what suspension of disbelief is for. Flavia is an excellent character, the story is well-thought-out (and impeccably researched, particularly the chemistry and the history of British stamps) and the prose is delightful.
So, if you like a good ‘ripping’ story in the English tradition then you’d probably enjoy this – it’s a bit like Harry Potter but with science rather than magic.
If you’ve already read it and liked it, some good news: there’s a sequel coming out in early 2010. As long as the author doesn’t just do a Dan Brown and copy out the same basic plot with only minor cosmetic modifications then chances are it should be good.
5No, I’d never heard of him before either.
6Not the one who got married, the other one.
My main problem is focus. Really, if I don’t write something in pretty much one go I find it very difficult to want to bother finishing it. This, of course, is a huge problem when you consider that, like anyone else who writes, I’d like to actually get some kind of long-form work published or produced. But the only way I’m going to manage that is if I do it in one go – which is not really all that likely, considering how much I like sleep But you never know.
For now I’ve got blogging1 to keep me entertained.
1Have I mentioned I really dislike the word ‘blog’ and all its derivatives? I suspect it may have contributed to my not getting into online publishing earlier. Maybe I’ll spearhead some kind of campaign to come up with a new word.
The weird weather
We had a patch of very hot weather a week or so ago, and I can’t say I enjoyed it. One of the reasons I was happy to leave northern Queensland was to escape the heat – though it is, as anyone will tell you, a different kind of heat. And they’re right; the difference is the humidity, which there is a lot of up there and little of down here.
In terms of maxima, though, South Australia gets a lot hotter than Queensland – or, at least, the part of Queensland I’m from. Summer temperatures don’t tend to go over 35° in either Bowen or Townsville, the two places I lived when I up there. But while it’s not as hot per se, it is still warm – and it’s warmer for longer, i.e. there are more months of the year where the temperature is in the high 20s/low 30s.
Combine that with the humidity and you get a place that, although it’s less hot at its hottest, and far milder in winter, is sticky and unpleasant for a greater proportion of the year. Mathematically – for me at least – it’s better to be down here.
Though when we get eight street days of maxima above 35° – as we did in the middle of November – I start to wonder. And even that pales in comparison to the record heatwave we went through in Feb/March of 2008; that was eleven consecutive days above 38°. Of course, it isn’t really the daytime maximum that I have a problem with – it’s the overnight minimum. Generally I can sleep in my unairconditioned bedroom (with the windows open to catch the breeze – if there is one) if it gets below 25°. But on at least several occasions in both those hot spells the temperature didn’t drop that low, instead staying in the low 30s the whole night.
While I have airconditioning in my place, the unit is installed in the dining room2 and isn’t capable of cooling the bedroom – so, if I want to make use of it on hot nights, I have to sleep in the lounge on my spare mattress. It’s better than sleeping uncooled in my proper bed, but - between being on a thin mattress on the floor, and the effects of the airconditioning (which I’m convinced isn’t good to sleep in) - I almost never get as good a night’s sleep as I’d like.
And I really, really hate not getting a good night’s sleep.
But it’s become cool again over the last week or so, and I’m a lot happier as a result. Not that I don’t expect it’s going to heat up again before too long, but the fewer days that I have to spend checking different weather websites3 to see if the temperature is going to drop enough that it’s worth opening up the house and sleeping in my room the better.
2This might be somewhat of an exaggeration; I live in a unit, not a house and by ‘dining room’ I mean a kind of combined kitchen/dining/lounge room area.
3I’m contemplating buying a thermometer so I can work out if it’s cooler inside the house than outside of it.
Glee
It’s simple: I love Glee, to the point where it’s probably my equal favourite show on television - it ties with Castle for my affections. The premise is simple: it’s a musical/comedy/drama series about a high school (the fictional William McKinley high in Lima, Ohio) glee club and their attempts to become good enough to reach the state championships.
Though it is a bit more complicated than that; pretty much everyone (teachers and students) in the show has a host of social/emotional/psychological problems which threaten the continued existence of the club, and the school’s cheerleading coach is out to destroy them.
Many of the characters are stereotypical – the standard glee club ‘losers’ (in the sense of being low on the social ladder of a high school in the US), for example, include a camp gay guy, an ambitious Jewish theatre tragic girl and an R&B-loving don’t-take-shit-from-anyone black girl. However, they do mix it up a bit by having a couple of football players and cheerleaders who defy the ‘natural order’ to be involved.
Friends of mine who don’t like the show have commented that there isn’t really anyone to like in the show, and I kind of agree – but that doesn’t seem to stop me from enjoying it. A lot of it is to do with the music, which I’m kind of surprised by because – for the most part – they sing cover versions of songs that I dislike the original of. To me the show gives them something the earlier renditions lacked - with the exception, of course, of The Thong Song, which I realised I hated even more than I did before when the lyrics, in all their lameness and inanity, were revealed.
I think the key to my liking it is probably the humour – which is quite dark and very dry. And the writing in some of the episodes has been superb, particularly the dialogue given to the ‘evil’ cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester, who’s played by the always-brilliant Jane Lynch4. One episode contained this voice-over:
‘Glee Club. Every time I try to destroy that clutch of scab-eating mouth-breathers it only comes back stronger, like some sexually ambiguous horror-movie villain. Here I am, about to turn 30, and I’ve sacrificed everything only to be shanghaied by the bi-curious machinations of a cabal of doughy, misshapen teens. Am I missing something, journal? Is it me? Of course it’s not me. It’s Will Schuester. What is it about him, journal? Is it the arrogant smirk? Is it the store-bought home perm?’
I rewound and watched this bit about seven times before I stopped laughing. Scab-eating mouth-breathers? For someone like me who loves well-phrased insults, that’s absolute comedy gold. Offensive? Sure. But still gold.
Some more of Sue’s dialogue:
‘Let me be frank. Your husband is hiding his kielbasa in a Hickory Farms gift basket that doesn’t belong to you.’
‘Guidance counselor. Real floozy and a man eater. Wears creepy brooches like the kind my nana was buried in.’
‘I’ve always though that the desire to procreate showed deep personal weakness.’
‘Unless you want to lose your man to a mentally-ill ginger pygmy with eyes like a bushbaby.’
I could listen to this kind of talk all day.
Whether or not Glee can maintain the high standard remains to be seen – it does kind of lend itself to a short lifespan, considering that the characters are high school students and will eventually graduate – but I’ll keep watching for now.
Oh, and I recently learned that Joss Whedon will be directing an episode early next year – I don’t think I could ask for a better combination.
4You might know her from her work on the mockumentaries A Mighty Wind and Best in Show or her guest appearances on Two and a Half Men (as Charlie’s therapist) and Criminal Minds (as Spencer’s institutionalised mother).
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
A novel by Alan Bradley5, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is a murder mystery set in country England in the 1950s; the twist, however, is that the sleuthing is done by ‘very-nearly-eleven-year-old’ Flavia De Luce, who is forced to investigate the murder of man whose body is found in the back garden of Buckshaw, her family home, after her father, Colonel De Luce – a reclusive philatelist and widower – confesses to the crime. Flavia – a prodigious child whose chief love is for chemistry, thanks to her discovery of her late mother's chemistry textbook and her late uncle Tarquin’s having built a fully-stocked laboratory in a wing of the house - sets about following the trail of clues, starting with the discovery of a dead snipe with a stamp impaled on its beak left on their doorstep.
In her efforts she’s forced to contend with not only the local constabulary, who are also attempting to solve the crime, but with the local townsfolk, the De Luce’s shell-shocked gardener/driver Dogger, and her two unhelpful older sisters, Daphne and Ophelia.
The book was lent to me by Miriam6, who gotten it for her birthday this year; I was there that night and had had a glance through it – this is generally how I judge a book; I open to a random page and see what the prose style is like – and thought it looked interesting.
I was right; it was a fun read. The prose is excellent; an example:
‘Mrs Mullet, who was short and grey and round as a millstone and who, I’m quite sure, thought of herself as a character in a poem by A.A. Milne, was in the kitchen formulating one of her pus-like custard pies.’
Brilliant.
It is, of course, a bit unrealistic: the ten-year-old protagonist has more esoteric chemical knowledge than the average university student and, as is often the case in child-centered fiction, the adults tend to be more than usually lacking in insight – but, when it comes down to it, it’s not a huge barrier to overcome; that’s what suspension of disbelief is for. Flavia is an excellent character, the story is well-thought-out (and impeccably researched, particularly the chemistry and the history of British stamps) and the prose is delightful.
So, if you like a good ‘ripping’ story in the English tradition then you’d probably enjoy this – it’s a bit like Harry Potter but with science rather than magic.
If you’ve already read it and liked it, some good news: there’s a sequel coming out in early 2010. As long as the author doesn’t just do a Dan Brown and copy out the same basic plot with only minor cosmetic modifications then chances are it should be good.
5No, I’d never heard of him before either.
6Not the one who got married, the other one.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
The Wedding of Miriam and Paul
Although, technically, I could have written about this last entry I didn’t; I was already a week behind and had plenty to write about as it was. So I left it for this week. Anyway, the wedding was that of my friend Miriam Lyon, to Paul vander Woude, and it took place in Renmark - a town in the country about 250km away.
Like most of my friends in Adelaide, I met Miriam doing theatre; specifically, in the Burnside Players production of Daisy Pulls It Off1 in which I was the stage manager and she was in the cast. In a way I’m actually surprised that we became friends because it was my first time as SM and I was having a few problems and not necessarily dealing with them very well; I was stressed and shitty and even more prickly than normal. Miriam’s one of the most capable people I’ve met, and I got the feeling she considered it a bit of a débâcle, and me a blundering dimwit.2.
So I was more than a little surprised when she showed up at the house party I hosted not long after Daisy finished – I hadn’t invited her (I don't tend to invite people to things if they think I'm an incompetent nitwit, even if it happens to be true - hmm, this may be why I only ever have small parties); I’m still not sure who did. But I ended up talking to her at some point (it helped that I’d had quite a lot to drink) and I was surprised to find that she didn’t have a problem with me at all. And we’ve been friends ever since. We’ve done two shows together, both Shakespeares: The Taming of the Shrew and Much Ado About Nothing – and I managed to not resent her (too much) for getting the part I wanted in the latter (Don John – the villain).
Anyway, she moved down to the Riverland to be with Paul (he’s from Barmera, another smaller town near Renmark) a while back, and it wasn’t too much of a surprise when they announced their engagement. The invitations arrived announcing the wedding would be on November 14 and be held in Renmark. At the time it seemed so far away; however, October rolled around in the blink of an eye and it was time to start thinking about things.
But I didn’t have to think about too much; one of my friends (Miriam3 who was also invited is from the area, and had charged her mother with the task of sorting the accommodation. And, since it was a trip she was used to making – and she is possessed of a car more suitable for distance than my own – we went in her car. All I had to do was be home when the time came to be collected. Oh, and to choose some cds for the journey.
Things got a little bit more interesting when, the week before the wedding, the weather in South Australia became unseasonably warm. And by warm I mean the Saturday the week before the wedding being the first of eight straight days in Adelaide with maxima above 35°C – keeping in mind that Renmark tends to be at least three or four degrees hotter than the corresponding city temperature.
The hot week scorched on and the forecast temperature for the Saturday fluctuated a few degrees either way but finally settled on 43°C. Not exactly what you want for a three hour drive followed by a ceremony in an old stone church. At least I didn’t have to wear a proper suit – or a wedding dress.
I did come very close to wearing a short-sleeved shirt to the wedding but didn’t, for two reasons: 1) I didn’t own one suitable, and when I went browsing for one decided that I didn’t like any that didn’t cost more than I wanted to spend, and 2) I can’t abide wearing a tucked-in short-sleeved shirt but, similarly, couldn’t go to a wedding4 wearing an untucked shirt. So, I went with long-sleeves; fortunately, I do own a decent enough 100% cotton shirt, so I wore that. As it was I was dressed up a lot more than many of the guests – but less so than others, and far less so than the men in the wedding party5, who had vests on.
Anyway, we left Adelaide somewhere after ten or so, and drove pretty much straight through to Renmark where we stopped to get food (and some cold & flu capsules for me; I was still sick from the week before and I needed to make sure my nose wasn’t running during the wedding) and then found the Renmark hotel where we were staying.
Since there was an hour or so before the wedding, we kicked back for a while in the air-conditioned room and had showers before heading back out into the heat and driving to the church. Despite the fact that it had (as far as I’m aware) reached the forecast 43°C, it didn’t actually feel as bad as I’d expected it too feel – though that was outside, where we had the benefit of a slight river breeze.
We forced ourselves into the church where it was – as expected – very hot and stuffy; while there were a few languid ceiling fans they served for little more than stirring the hot air above us. Somebody had, however, very sensibly filled a couple of big eskys with bottled water, which got handed out before and during the ceremony – it made a huge difference as (to my knowledge, at least) no-one actually passed out.
The ceremony was – well, ceremonial. The priest6 seemed intent on making it far more about Jesus than about the couple, which I found somewhat offensive – and just because I’m not a Christian. Really, if I’d wanted to hear about Jesus I’d have gone on a Sunday. But I wasn’t there for me; ergo, what I think isn’t all that important. So, we sang a few hymns, listened to a couple of bible readings and a some more preaching before it was over.
We lingered outside for a while before heading back to the hotel to get in a few drinks before the reception was due to start; Miriam and two other Adelaideans Bonnie & Rhodri (plus their one-and-a-bit-year-old, Callum) and I propped up the bar for a while before heading off to the venue, which was the function room of a rose garden.
After finding our tables, which were all named after famous dogs; ours was ‘Laika’, which I remembered was the dog sent into orbit as part of the Russian space program and who was immortalised on a stamp7. I suggested that, since we were a table of (mostly) theatre people, it could be that we were meant to be the space cadets – though it could have been worse; one of the other tables was ‘Goofy’.
The heat had had its effect on me; I had a headache that several rapid beers failed to diminish, so I stopped bothering – when I’m like that I just cannot get drunk and there’s really no point trying. A bit annoying, but not that much of a imposition.
So we spent the rest of the night sitting around, talking - to old friends and new people - and drinking and having a good time. Dinner – three different salads (Caesar, potato & bacon and rocket & pear) plus a mixed grill, followed by either a chocolate cupcake with mint icing or a vanilla cupcake with icing I’ve no idea the flavour of because I had the chocolate/mint and didn’t bother to ask what the alternative was. Speeches were made and cake was cut and then it was time to go. It wasn’t a particularly late night since at about 10.30 or so Miriam and I got a lift back to the hotel with Bonnie and Rhodri as they were staying there as well.
The air-conditioner chugged away all night; once I tried to go to sleep I realised exactly how loud it was – it was like having a rock tumbler or coffee bean grinder in the room. Temperature, however, was inversely proportional to volume: it was freezing. But it only had an on/off switch, not any kind of adjustable setting, so there wasn’t a lot I could do; I didn’t want to turn it off entirely because the room would then get too hot. So, despite it having been a 43°C day, I got under the medium-weight hotel blanket and went to sleep.
I was up fairly early the next morning – I consider eight o’clock a sleep in these days; a far cry from years ago where sloth was my watchword and on most days I rarely crawled out of bed before noon – and we were back on the road before too long. Very little to note about the return journey, other than an a short-lived upset stomach cured rapidly by some appropriate substances, and a rather nice blueberry pie from the famous Waikerie Bakery.
And that was that. Another wedding over with – though it’s not long until the next: Selena and Shane’s on November 28.
I don’t tend to do a lot of traveling – heck, my parents have come down twice from Queensland and seen far more of the state than I have in nigh on twelve years of living here – but it was good to be there for Miriam and Paul’s special day, and to see a few friends I hadn’t seen for a while. Not to mention a brief reminder that there are places outside the city limits8. Not places I necessarily want to stay for any length of time, mind you – but overnight isn’t too much torture, even for a stay-at-home indoors-type like myself.
1Yes, I’m aware that that’s a title dripping with the potential for a double entendre. Please don’t – for all our sakes.
2Despite that being an accurate description, she’d ever actually say that; she’s far too nice.
3Not the same one who was getting married, obviously.
4A church wedding, at least. I wore a short-sleeved shirt and shorts to my niece Jasmine’s wedding – but that was on a beach so it was okay. Hilariously (or not) that day was cold and miserable.
5The women are the bridal party – are the men the groomal party? I think that should be a word.
6I’m not sure if that’s the official appellation for the denomination, which I believe was Anglican.
7Why I know this I’m not quite sure, since I’ve never done much research on Russia, dogs, space programs or stamps.
8For those who aren’t aware, I did actually grow up in ‘the country’ – I just never felt at home there and consider myself to be truly citified in every sense of the word. I really like seeing llamas and alpacas though.
Like most of my friends in Adelaide, I met Miriam doing theatre; specifically, in the Burnside Players production of Daisy Pulls It Off1 in which I was the stage manager and she was in the cast. In a way I’m actually surprised that we became friends because it was my first time as SM and I was having a few problems and not necessarily dealing with them very well; I was stressed and shitty and even more prickly than normal. Miriam’s one of the most capable people I’ve met, and I got the feeling she considered it a bit of a débâcle, and me a blundering dimwit.2.
So I was more than a little surprised when she showed up at the house party I hosted not long after Daisy finished – I hadn’t invited her (I don't tend to invite people to things if they think I'm an incompetent nitwit, even if it happens to be true - hmm, this may be why I only ever have small parties); I’m still not sure who did. But I ended up talking to her at some point (it helped that I’d had quite a lot to drink) and I was surprised to find that she didn’t have a problem with me at all. And we’ve been friends ever since. We’ve done two shows together, both Shakespeares: The Taming of the Shrew and Much Ado About Nothing – and I managed to not resent her (too much) for getting the part I wanted in the latter (Don John – the villain).
Anyway, she moved down to the Riverland to be with Paul (he’s from Barmera, another smaller town near Renmark) a while back, and it wasn’t too much of a surprise when they announced their engagement. The invitations arrived announcing the wedding would be on November 14 and be held in Renmark. At the time it seemed so far away; however, October rolled around in the blink of an eye and it was time to start thinking about things.
But I didn’t have to think about too much; one of my friends (Miriam3 who was also invited is from the area, and had charged her mother with the task of sorting the accommodation. And, since it was a trip she was used to making – and she is possessed of a car more suitable for distance than my own – we went in her car. All I had to do was be home when the time came to be collected. Oh, and to choose some cds for the journey.
Things got a little bit more interesting when, the week before the wedding, the weather in South Australia became unseasonably warm. And by warm I mean the Saturday the week before the wedding being the first of eight straight days in Adelaide with maxima above 35°C – keeping in mind that Renmark tends to be at least three or four degrees hotter than the corresponding city temperature.
The hot week scorched on and the forecast temperature for the Saturday fluctuated a few degrees either way but finally settled on 43°C. Not exactly what you want for a three hour drive followed by a ceremony in an old stone church. At least I didn’t have to wear a proper suit – or a wedding dress.
I did come very close to wearing a short-sleeved shirt to the wedding but didn’t, for two reasons: 1) I didn’t own one suitable, and when I went browsing for one decided that I didn’t like any that didn’t cost more than I wanted to spend, and 2) I can’t abide wearing a tucked-in short-sleeved shirt but, similarly, couldn’t go to a wedding4 wearing an untucked shirt. So, I went with long-sleeves; fortunately, I do own a decent enough 100% cotton shirt, so I wore that. As it was I was dressed up a lot more than many of the guests – but less so than others, and far less so than the men in the wedding party5, who had vests on.
Anyway, we left Adelaide somewhere after ten or so, and drove pretty much straight through to Renmark where we stopped to get food (and some cold & flu capsules for me; I was still sick from the week before and I needed to make sure my nose wasn’t running during the wedding) and then found the Renmark hotel where we were staying.
Since there was an hour or so before the wedding, we kicked back for a while in the air-conditioned room and had showers before heading back out into the heat and driving to the church. Despite the fact that it had (as far as I’m aware) reached the forecast 43°C, it didn’t actually feel as bad as I’d expected it too feel – though that was outside, where we had the benefit of a slight river breeze.
We forced ourselves into the church where it was – as expected – very hot and stuffy; while there were a few languid ceiling fans they served for little more than stirring the hot air above us. Somebody had, however, very sensibly filled a couple of big eskys with bottled water, which got handed out before and during the ceremony – it made a huge difference as (to my knowledge, at least) no-one actually passed out.
The ceremony was – well, ceremonial. The priest6 seemed intent on making it far more about Jesus than about the couple, which I found somewhat offensive – and just because I’m not a Christian. Really, if I’d wanted to hear about Jesus I’d have gone on a Sunday. But I wasn’t there for me; ergo, what I think isn’t all that important. So, we sang a few hymns, listened to a couple of bible readings and a some more preaching before it was over.
We lingered outside for a while before heading back to the hotel to get in a few drinks before the reception was due to start; Miriam and two other Adelaideans Bonnie & Rhodri (plus their one-and-a-bit-year-old, Callum) and I propped up the bar for a while before heading off to the venue, which was the function room of a rose garden.
After finding our tables, which were all named after famous dogs; ours was ‘Laika’, which I remembered was the dog sent into orbit as part of the Russian space program and who was immortalised on a stamp7. I suggested that, since we were a table of (mostly) theatre people, it could be that we were meant to be the space cadets – though it could have been worse; one of the other tables was ‘Goofy’.
The heat had had its effect on me; I had a headache that several rapid beers failed to diminish, so I stopped bothering – when I’m like that I just cannot get drunk and there’s really no point trying. A bit annoying, but not that much of a imposition.
So we spent the rest of the night sitting around, talking - to old friends and new people - and drinking and having a good time. Dinner – three different salads (Caesar, potato & bacon and rocket & pear) plus a mixed grill, followed by either a chocolate cupcake with mint icing or a vanilla cupcake with icing I’ve no idea the flavour of because I had the chocolate/mint and didn’t bother to ask what the alternative was. Speeches were made and cake was cut and then it was time to go. It wasn’t a particularly late night since at about 10.30 or so Miriam and I got a lift back to the hotel with Bonnie and Rhodri as they were staying there as well.
The air-conditioner chugged away all night; once I tried to go to sleep I realised exactly how loud it was – it was like having a rock tumbler or coffee bean grinder in the room. Temperature, however, was inversely proportional to volume: it was freezing. But it only had an on/off switch, not any kind of adjustable setting, so there wasn’t a lot I could do; I didn’t want to turn it off entirely because the room would then get too hot. So, despite it having been a 43°C day, I got under the medium-weight hotel blanket and went to sleep.
I was up fairly early the next morning – I consider eight o’clock a sleep in these days; a far cry from years ago where sloth was my watchword and on most days I rarely crawled out of bed before noon – and we were back on the road before too long. Very little to note about the return journey, other than an a short-lived upset stomach cured rapidly by some appropriate substances, and a rather nice blueberry pie from the famous Waikerie Bakery.
And that was that. Another wedding over with – though it’s not long until the next: Selena and Shane’s on November 28.
I don’t tend to do a lot of traveling – heck, my parents have come down twice from Queensland and seen far more of the state than I have in nigh on twelve years of living here – but it was good to be there for Miriam and Paul’s special day, and to see a few friends I hadn’t seen for a while. Not to mention a brief reminder that there are places outside the city limits8. Not places I necessarily want to stay for any length of time, mind you – but overnight isn’t too much torture, even for a stay-at-home indoors-type like myself.
1Yes, I’m aware that that’s a title dripping with the potential for a double entendre. Please don’t – for all our sakes.
2Despite that being an accurate description, she’d ever actually say that; she’s far too nice.
3Not the same one who was getting married, obviously.
4A church wedding, at least. I wore a short-sleeved shirt and shorts to my niece Jasmine’s wedding – but that was on a beach so it was okay. Hilariously (or not) that day was cold and miserable.
5The women are the bridal party – are the men the groomal party? I think that should be a word.
6I’m not sure if that’s the official appellation for the denomination, which I believe was Anglican.
7Why I know this I’m not quite sure, since I’ve never done much research on Russia, dogs, space programs or stamps.
8For those who aren’t aware, I did actually grow up in ‘the country’ – I just never felt at home there and consider myself to be truly citified in every sense of the word. I really like seeing llamas and alpacas though.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)