I'm... Cuppuccino!

♪ See you ar the party looking cool.

Fri, 28 Jul 2006 04:59:47 GMT

I guess that LJ might still be a good way for me to plug things I think people might be interested in so I'll post here I guess.

On Monday night at Manning Bar, Sydney University, me and my hip-hop crew are performing in the quarter finals of the USU Band Comp. We're called Well Connected and you can find out more about us on our MySpace site where I promise we keep the emo to an absolute minumum.

Anyway we're performing four songs from our album - Good Thing, Fish Out Of Water, I'll Be Alright and Broke As. If we get through we go on to the semi-finals which would be absolutely rad. Oh, and part of what decides that is audience response so come and rock out with us!

If you do come, wear a little yellow somewhere so we can own the dance floor and come up and say hi. It would be great to see you there!

What: Battle of the Bands Quarter Final
When: 7:00pm, Manning Bar, Sydney Uni
How Much: Free!

♪ The end my only friend.

Tue, 06 Jun 2006 14:08:31 GMT

As sad as it is to say it, this is probably the end of Livejournal posting for Dave.

Now some people wake up and decide to abandon their LJ because they wake up and realise that, far from cathartic, their journals have only caused them to become more and more emo, falling more and more into terrible cycles of pity and self-loathing. They see the journal as the crutch that is keeping them from being truly happy and, cutting it loose they feel the better of it.

Not me though, my journal rocks! I'm just moving to my own domain!

So yeah, set your RSS feeds and whatnot to megadave.com where I'll be keeping the blogging spirit alive with pictures and my own wordpress site. I'll be trying to keep up to date with my friends page I imagine but I'll be posting all my actual blog posts there. If I get around to it I'll be stretching the archives back too with fodder from the olde days here.

It's been a good few years LJ. We'll do lunch some time.

♪ When we ride come equipped with game.

Sat, 03 Jun 2006 13:41:51 GMT

You know what sounds like an interesting idea? Geocaching. And just when I thought that buried treasure didn't really exist in this dreary old age of ours. I've got a lot of plans for interesting and exciting things to do these holidays but if anyone I know has a GPS system and an SUV they can borrow then fuck it, we're going digging for Spanish gold and log books!

Thursday night me and the usual suspects went to see Brydie's brother and The Herd rock Manning at the USYD End of Semester party. It was a fun night but the knowledge I was going back to work the next day and my inability to drink tempered any irrational exuberance that otherwise might have been bought to bear. I feel like there's a whole lot I can learn from watching guys like Ozi Batla rap - my own mic skills and stage presence are pretty woeful when it comes to hip hop and I'd really like to work out something to do other than stand there and belt out rhymes with a terrified expression on my face. I'm sure mostly its a matter of experience but August is slowly ticking forward and we'd certainly like to pick up on some of the mistakes we made in the first round of the band comp - especially if we want to get much further.

Friday night I was hosting Scared Scriptless at the Clarence Hotel which ended up being a blast! The format was the Scriptless World Cup which while seasonally appropriate is something I know little about. In 2002 I cheered the Koreans but to be frank I was in a net cafe on the night of the big game and I think I was just worried that if I didn't I'd be beaten up by the Da Nang Boys or something. I tried to explain to Tim that I might possibly know more about the art of Quidditch than I knew about the 'big game' and as such my flavasome spiel might suffer a little. However Tim believes in me and as terrifying as that is, I got the gig.

Happily very little flava-flav was necessarily. Everyone was playing some awesome theatresports and Amanda Buckley is my new favourite person to host with, ever. There was a plethora of screw-ups, almost all of them were my fault, but it was a fun night and it was great to be out and doing stuff right after coming out of RNSH. It was also pretty touching to see how many people seemed to know I'd just been sick - got a lot of well-wishing which was nice.

Strangelove news! We're committing ourselves. At the moment its up to the benificence of the SUDS voting majority to grant us our wishes but we're setting our beady little eyes on the Week 10 slot in Semester II, roughly four months from today. We had a big meeting today, myself, Mark and Tristan and we agreed this was doable. It's going to be a crazy ride but I think the script is getting to the stage where we're ready to kick it all up a notch. Any real fears we had were helped out heaps as well by the fact that Tristan has been making music like a motherfucker and it sounds just awesome.

Oh and it seems I have a small role in a SUDS play thats going on at the very beginning of next Semester! I shall be playing the role of Richard Noakes, originated by Mr. Sidney Livingston in the Royal National Theatre, London in 1993. It's Arcadia and its a perfect holidays jaunt and way to get back in touch with the Cellar Theatre so I'm really glad to be doing it. Extra workload? Maybe. Give work to a busy man, I guess.

♪ Your body rent my body broken.

Wed, 31 May 2006 04:07:04 GMT

I have been sick but, like Lazarus, I have risen from my bed. The world has changed. There is much to do.

I was discharged from the Royal North Shore Hospital on Monday night after having been run through the gamut of tests and procedures most uncomfortable. I have to say I seem to have drawn some kind of short straw with crohns - I'm fairly certain that of all the cool chronic illnesses you can sign yourself up for, nothing has a bead on crohns when it comes to disgusting vomit-inducing prep fluids you have to drink. Still, the world can only contain so much barium sulfate solution and isotonic fluids and finaly I'm back to the world of university assignments, crackpot writing projects and drunken episodes with the people nearest and dearest to my heart.

It's good to be home.

Monday night I had a great dinner with housemate Lauren and homegirl Penfold of whom readers of my journal should be more than familiarly aquainted. I've been put on a low-fibre, no alcohol style diet and draconian medication schedule for the next two months which I'm not looking forward to but I had great fun ordering manly smoothies to match my fellow diners' cosmopolitans. I can get through two months without booze. I can get through two months without booze. Fear is the mind-killer.

Tuesday night saw a bunch of us living it large at Hermann's Bar for some Sydney University Electrical Engineering Society before heading back to maison d'ave for Pad Thai and the many drunken episodes of Neal Downward. It seems whenever more than five people end up at my house in midnight, Hing is always going to try and invoke a sunrise pact - a promise from all to stay up until the sun rises for no good reason at all. He seems to have no reason for this - to Hing it simply seems that sleep deprivation in the middle of the working week is tantamount to a good time. Needless to say we all refused and retired at about 1:00am.

Been doing some more writing, both for the Strangelove project and trying to do some work for Jordan's show The Ronnie Johns Half Hour which begins filming its second season in about four weeks. I've a meeting with Mark tonight to go over Strangelove and another one with Tristan on all things musical on saturday. Rights for Strangelove still loom over my head in all their ugly glory but as soon as we feel prepared to go and pitch our case to the honourable estate of Terry Southern we will. It's just something we don't want to go into half-cocked.

Oh and Theatresports muddles on in an enjoyable fashion. I've promised Neal and Deanna I'll play with them this week so I'm looking forward to thursday. I'll be doing some hosting for Tim Judge's World Cup season at the Clarence Hotel on friday night and on Sunday week should be playing in the new Belvoir season at its temporary Newtown Theatre home. Fun fun fun!

Happy birthday David Cunningham. May your next 21 years accumulate you an equally worthy stockpile of reminisce. You may spot his updates at Megadave.com from time to time - I've given him an author account to this site just to see what would transpire of it. Very little has to date.

A wise man once said that a post without pics is useless. Dave once said he wishes he had a digital camera. Until next time, watch the skies!

Serious Business Venture

Tue, 23 May 2006 00:13:43 GMT

I’m going into hospital for a few days for some tests and I don’t think my mobile phone will last the distance. As soon as I get a bed I should have a phone and I’m sure my parents will know it within a couple of hours so the best way to contact me is probably through them - 98802552.

It’s nothing too bad - I’m not hugely sick, but my Crohns Disease (which till now I may have neglected to mention) is just not getting better and that’s getting a little concerning. As soon as I can I’ll hit you guys with an update.

♪ Just in case the world ends.

Sun, 21 May 2006 15:11:54 GMT

I just finished Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk and while a few of the short stories in it were great - Guts and Civil Twilightspring to mind - a lot of it was just pretty humdrum. Maybe I’m acynical twenty-something that spends too much time reading SomethingAwful, but shock alone doesn’t mean brilliance and the book just didn’treally go anywhere that interesting. I thought it was a bit of a letdown, considering how strong it started.

But that’s not the main point of this post. I have some pics from Byron!

I choose to share them with you now!

♪ Chakko mo fi-nah-ney

Thu, 18 May 2006 16:16:35 GMT

OK, so this is a little late but a lots been happening. About a month ago, me and about 16 friends headed off to stay in a 10-person house in sunny Byron bay for the five-day 17th East Coast Blues & Roots Festival. Now I like music as much as the next man, which is to say only if the next man only really listens to Broadway showtunes and hip-hop, so I was feeling a little apprehensive about this trip. I shouldn't have. This was easily one of the best weeks of my year and we all agreed it was an amazing experience and great festival.

The trip started with the epic Wednesday morning drive up. Myself, Hing, Ben, Brigit and a girl who I had only been cryptically introduced to as 'Peru Girl' piled into Hing's giant car and steeled ourselves for a 14 hour car trip up the coast and into Queensland.

Three maccas stops later, three iPods depleted of songs and after we'd all gotten ready to kill Ben (who insisted we stop every forty-five minutes for a cigarette break), we arrived at nightful to meet the team and have a bit of a covert sing-song and drink as we got pumped for the five days of music ahead. One of the best things about the trip was how most of us were meeting so many of us for the first time. For my part there was about 6 people present whom I really didn't know or had never met and I can honestly say that, having shared the Byron experience with them, they're all close friends now. My experience wasn't unique - we all hailed from a diverse field of social circles and it was a great experience in making new friends for pretty much everyone who went. After we'd all bonded over a rendition of Freelove Freeway performed by the talented Mr. Dave Sutton on the ukelele we readied ourselves for bed. Tomorrow would be an exciting day!

The Blues and Roots Festival is a constant, never-ending symphony of music in styles that range from folk to blues, to jazz, even to hiphop and experimental. There were four different stages set up for the festival and each one offered a different style of performer and music.

The Mojo Tent was by far the largest and most mainstream tent. All the headline acts performed here and while I saw a number of great acts here (The Cat Empire!) it actually was a pretty horrible place to try and stay for any length of time. Crowded, sweaty and with air that quickly got polluted by sneaky cigarette smokers breaking the rules, it wasn't a place conductive to clean air and open living. It generally played as close as Bluesfest came to having pop music, with some hiphop and star-power acts thrown in.

Jambalaya was a medium sized tent that seemes mostly dedicated to Reggae, ska and groovie rastafarian and latin beats. I spent some time here and saw some great acts, some incredibly great acts, but it wasn't the greatest thing in the festival.

Apra was a really cool thing and I'm very glad they ran it. It was a tiny, intimate stage where an audience of about 80 could sit down and enjoy a relatively unknown performer enjoy a one-on-one musical experience with them. If I have any regrets at Bluesfest its that I didn't have more time to spend at Apra since everything I saw here really impressed me. But considering the phenomenal acts going on at other stages,

The Crossroads Tent was the greatest thing ever. Our whole group spent large tracts of time at the Crossroads stage, taking in predominantly folk, blues and jazz music. Glorious entertainers, a tent just small enough to give you a fighting chance of either reaching the front or finding your friends, it was love incarnate, if love incarnate could actually manifest itself as hundreds of metres of assembly-grade plastic tenting, poles and thousands of dollars of sound and lighting equipment.

I was actually planning to try and give a day by day commentary. That way would be madness however. So I'll just describe some of the more memorable acts I saw and list the rest at the end.

My first golden moment would have to be The Greencards - a bluegrass accoustic group made up of four musicians who sing their own vocals intermittedly and write kickass awesome songs. Their Irish murder ballad The Ballad of Kitty Brown may well be my favourite song I heard at the festival and one I've already butchered for a blog title of late.

The 2006 New Orleans Band Aid Tour was an amazing high energy show that kicked so much ass I went to see it twice during the festival. It featured a bunch of amazingly talented performers. They played blues and if you can play blues and still rock the kazbah I'm fairly certain this is what they were doing. Davell Crawford performing his jazzed up version of iko iko was another huge Bluesfest moment but to be honest there were far too many of them to list all. Considering so many of these artists were actually dislocated and lost all their homes and belongings in Hurricane Katrina, the power they held as a band together was awe-inspiring.

Oh my god, the Blind Boys of Alabama!. A gospel/soul choir formed out of members of the Alabama Institute for the Negro Blind in 1939. If you ever get an option to see these guys in the next couple of years you have to. Their music was beautiful, powerful and infectiously fun and they're just not going to be around forever. Founding member Clarence Fountain leads the boys and by god can they sing. Their rendition of Amazing Grace to the tune of House of the Rising Sun was awesome and immensely danceable. Try to sing it - it scans perfectly! Genius I tell you!

I realise that I'm the last person in the world who hasn't really gotten familiar with The Cat Empire at this point. Suffice to say that I saw their live show twice and they're an amazing band with great tunes and an incredibly friendly stage presence. Mad props go to the Empire Horns who not only played their hearts out but weren't afraid to jump out of the box and dance their hearts out in songs that didn't require them. I love stuff like that.

Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. Now I'm sure they Dap kings were dip-dappin', but I just wonder if they dapped quite enough.

Oh god I can't go on. GOCOO + GoRo were incredibly with their J-girl taiko drummers and dijiridu prowess. Buddy Guy is downright awesome and I'm so glad I got to see one of the greats of the twelve bar blues in his element. Sigur Ros didn't do it for me, and I'm not sure why Bob Geldof is famous. Other awesome acts included Keb' Mo', Batucada Sound Machine, Daara J, The Skatalites, Michael Franti less so, The Hands, Ash Grunwald, Beth Orton, Xavier Rudd, Donavon Frankenreiter, Martha Wainwright, Georgie Fame & The Blue Fames, The Audreys, Jackson Browne, Eddi Reader, Juzzie Smith and Bernard Fanning who was OK.. I guess.

Because life has to have losers, I will agree with Mark Sutton who said of Daniel Lanois "That man's music is like his face. Non-descript."

Sorry Daniel.

The rest of the trip was a haze of blessed hare-krishna food, suspiciously herbal cookies. two-minute noodles and beer. The last night we all spent out on the beach, watching the sun rise and singing at the top of our voices. An amazing trip and one I'm looking forward to again next year.

♪ the test begins… Now.

Wed, 17 May 2006 15:47:16 GMT

The lovely lady Alice Workman took some photos of Well Connected rocking Manning Bar in what I'm hoping was precisely the manner it should be rocked. I thought I'd share some of the ones where I don't look like a child who might qualify for protective headwear.

#1: Escher (rockin')

#2: Bitches (flockin')

In case anyone missed my masterful build-up these are pics from the first round heats of the battle of the bands where me and my fly-homeboys (and fly-homegirl) managed to secure a ticket through to the quarterfinals last week. OK, we're still having a hard time letting the euphoria go.

stopping all crashes that is the crew's comin at ya

s.co struts his stuff on the stage

me and silverspoon share a moment. a rock moment.

oh god what am i doing i am not good with dances

mad props to our friends who wore their colours to show support.

stereo friends!!!

i am consumed by the power of my rock

after the show i drank a lot and fell down

That's all I've got. OK, that's a lie there's like 200 photos here but I really look like an idiot in most of them and I can't be screwed to fix up all that red-eye in photoshop. Thanks to everyone who came and to anyone who didn't - August is the quarterfinals! Book the whole month! Refrain from doing anything! Make sure you don't miss it!

♫ the crime of love was the judges decree.

Mon, 15 May 2006 12:47:06 GMT

This is part 1 of a 2 part test for _dracaena_ to see if you can do multiple posts on the same day as one post easily.

Well Connected news! We’ve got our cover design finished. Thanks go of course to the lovely lady Pei (the fey?) who designed these in her usual manner of incredibly amazing artwork coupled with terrifying haphazard communication. It was a scary wait but honestly this is the most awesome CD cover I’ve seen in a while and I’m including professional stuff. You rock, annie.

click for a larger view

Update! It seems you can't sadly. I just had to edit my entry. The multiple posts thing must have been Xanga. Oh, I weep for my friendslist.

Strangelove continues in its own fashion. I have a meeting with Mark onWednesday to nut out our proposal and to lay down an action plan overthe rights. I’ve got a couple of phone calls to make and some prettygood advice from a few quarters. Atmosphere remains optimistic on thefield. I just really, really, really hope Warner Brothers just doesn’tban it from the outset or something. Knock on wood.

♪ Harry! You're gonna be a lawyer some day!

Fri, 12 May 2006 07:58:42 GMT

Hooray! We got through the first heat of band comp! We now go straight to the August 2006 Quarter-finals and are one step closer to actually making the finals which would be awesome indeed.

I still feel in full control of my studies which is pretty good for me this late in semester. Here's to hoping I've grown up a bit. Being in a stable house full of smart students helps oodles too.

I know I promised to write about blues and roots but I just haven't got around to it. I will one day soon I promise. Don't hate me journal! :(

Oh and here's some cartoons for you! Racist cartoons!

Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarves

Watch the video here.

The film is a great testament to 1940s American mainstream attitudes - at least in as far as what was an acceptable theatrical release. This was only about 65 years ago - and it's an awesome piece of work. Wikipedia sums it up nicely.

The rich, wicked queen then appears, depicted as a "food hoarder", with a large repository of items that were on ration during World War II: rubber, sugar, gin and more. She asks her magic mirror to "send her a prince about six feet 'tall'", but when Prince Chawmin' arrives in his flashy car, he declares "that mean ol' queen sho' is a fright/but her gal So White is dyn-a-mite!" Finding So White hard at work doing the laundry, the prince takes her hand and the two swing out into a wild jitterbug. The queen sees this and hires "Murder, Incorporated" ("We rub out anybody for $1.00; Midgets: half-price; Japs: free") to "black-out So White"...

Full article here.

Oh, and some great screens from the short can be found here.

Scrub Me Mama With a Boogie Beat

You can see it here.

I still find this stuff awesome but there's a pretty clear message here that you don't find people lazier or more monkey-like than blacks. While it takes a light-skinned woman from Harlem to make the people of Lazy Town do their work - she can only do it by pumping them up with promises of sex and jazz - appealing to their base instincts.

Oh and the music is great and its an awesome clip so have fun watching it without the social studies lecture.

Wiki is here.

If anyone knows of any other public domain racist cartoons like these, share and enjoy!

♫ jettison your fears as you stand on the jetty.

Sat, 22 Apr 2006 08:42:27 GMT

Good to see you LJ, it’s been a while between drinks. But I’ve been keeping myself busy. I’ve got a couple of updates that have been a long time in coming, but for now I’ll keep myself to one subject - my band has finished writing our album!

Those of you who have me on MSN or pei_ayanami on your friends list probably already know this already. But humour me as I tell this again – it’s all pretty exciting.

This isn’t the actual CD cover. Annie’s working on that. But imagine things to come!

The band, once Serious Crew is now called Well Connected and it looks like we’ve put to bed our pilot CD. It’s a 14 track monster and when we’ve finished production we’ll be printing off a bunch of them and holding an album launch at a venue as yet unspecified. We’re also going to be appearing in the USU band comp this year – and the first heat starts at 7:00pm on May 9th at Manning Bar, three weeks from now. So exciting!

Anyway, to celebrate the album being so near to completion, we’ve put up a MySpace site with some of our songs available for easy listening through MySpace’s terrible proprietary music player. I know, I’m sorry. It wasn’t my idea. If you’ve got a second and feel like listening to some Aussie hip hop Dave style, please drop by, load up a song or two and maybe give us some feedback.

MySpace sucks! But click anyway!

(Oh, I go by the name MC Escher in the band – so, yeah, that one’s me. I’m the guy who starts off ‘I’ll Be Alright’ and ‘Broke As’ if you’re still confused.)

Next post: The East Coast Blues and Roots Festival 2006!

intelligence included.

Mon, 27 Mar 2006 13:17:40 GMT

Shit. It's midnight monday morning and I haven't done my New York readings on Racial Tensions and the Five Points. If I just watch the trailer for Gangs of New York on repeat while I go to sleep will that count?

No?

Looks like I've got some reading to do. :(

♪ the rocketship passengers.

Tue, 07 Feb 2006 00:18:13 GMT

I just read an interesting article by Andrew West in the Sydney Morning Herald on what I'm really hoping television news doesn't start calling Mohammadgate. I'm sure you've followed the story - a series of cartoons published in the Netherlands depict Mohammad in violation of Islamic scripture, and in a less than flattering context.

Now I've gone looking for the cartoons (it wasn't hard - pretty much every Daily Telegraph op-ed writer has them on their blog for a start.) and they're not clever, funny or insightful. They're just a bunch of different ways you can draw the equation MUSLIM=TERRIST LOL if you had a deadline and had to offend as many people as possible. So my first impression was that the cartoons weren't intelligent enough or engaging enough to be defended by any call for free speech and that anyone printing them was just an opportunistic paper merchant. As many people have said: the cartoons have been described again and again in near pedantic detail - there's no actual need to print them anywhere.

But Andrew West's opinion piece has certainly given room for pause. Lest anyone think that I always make up my mind one way and no amount of arguing will ever sway it I'll link it here:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/three-killed-in-cartoon-protests/2006/02/07/1139074190911.html

Those Cartoons Must Be Published

The cartoons that have so offended Muslims around the world were not worthy of publication in the first place. They're not really funny and are little more than a gratuitous provocation. But the violent opposition of Muslim zealots now demands that the media in western liberal democracies publish and be damned.

There is an uncompromising first principle at stake here: Muslims, and the adherents of any other faith, living in liberal societies must accept that, in such societies, a critique of religion, however juvenile and insulting, is not only permissible but intrinsic to democracy. You must have the right to tell me that what I believe is bunkum (as so many do on this site so often!).

First, let's establish one ground rule. Islam is a faith, a religion, a set of ideas. It is not a race or ethnicity.

To disparage Islam in the way these cartoons do, may misrepresent the faith but they are not racist. These cartoons mock Muslims as believers, as subscribers to a set of ideas, not as people of a particular skin colour. And there is a yawning chasm of difference.

I have said in this space before that some interpretations of Islam are incompatible with liberal democracy and social democracy, but the cartoon that portrays the prophet Mohammed in a turban fashioned as a bomb suggests a sweeping generalisation about the entire body of Islamic adherents. That makes the cartoon inaccurate and hurtful but, again, it does not make it racist.

We have -- legitimately, I believe -- laws to protect Australians from racial and ethnic vilification and discrimination. We protect people against irrational attacks based on their natural characteristics.

But we cannot, and should not, attempt to protect people's voluntarily held beliefs from criticism. (Indeed, aren't all beliefs are held voluntary, if not expressed voluntarily?) It is fine for Muslim leaders to say that a belief in the purity of Mohammed and his image is the most cherished tenet in all of Islam, and must therefore be protected, but where do we draw the line?

For a century or more, Marxism held a religious-like grip on many of its adherents. They kept busts of Marx and Lenin and even Stalin on their mantles, much like Roman Catholics, Orthodox and some Protestants displayed crucifixes and other icons of Jesus and the Virgin Mary. (I myself, a liberal Anglo-Catholic, display a small Jesus icon at home.) They embraced Marxism with the same fervour as any Christian or Muslim zealot. Das Kapital and Lenin's The State and Revolution constituted a set of socialist scriptures. But did we resile from a critique of Marxism -- a dearly held belief system for many -- especially as it entered its bloodiest days under Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot? Of course not.

A literal belief in creationism is central to the faith of millions of Christians, who are repelled by the notion they are descended from apes rather than created in God's own image. Yet we do not spare their feelings in public debate but subject their beliefs to the most probing scrutiny, and rightly so.

In a liberal or social democracy, in the kind of society in which Australian and European Muslims live, people are free to set themselves up as Wiccans or as followers of paganism. A few years ago, a graduate of the esteemed Harvard Divinity School, Richard Yao, established the Church of Princess Diana, after claiming the late Princess of Wales had appeared to him in a dream with a divine revelation. In a free society "Chairman" Yao was free to proclaim whatever revelation he wanted, but we weren't required to take him or his belief system seriously.

I accept that to the genuine believer, there can only be one truth and in a pluralist democracy you must be free to proclaim it and to seek willing converts. But others must be free to debate and even disparage your beliefs.

It is simply not enough to declare your faith to be holy and inviolate and therefore off limits to criticism, however puerile the criticism might be. Anyway, if your beliefs are firmly and sincerely held, and if they are a divine revelation from God, surely they will not be shaken by a cartoon? And God will certainly not need protection from those you consider infidels.

Andrew West
February 6, 2006 09:51 PM

I've never heard it said before but I think I might subscribe to the idea that you have to seperate notions of racism from religism. Oh, sure, lots of the people who want to see the cartoons rile muslims up are racists, and want this because of their own racism, but I could be convinced that there are bigger issues at stake here. Are religions deserving of a P.C. blanket of protection? Surely any ideas should be forced to stand up on their own merits or at least sell themselves while taking on the slings and arrows of anything we can throw at them? After all, I'm prepared for proponents of evolution to say some very nasty things about creationists - and given the importance of the battle they're fighting, I want them to have every tool at their disposal they think they need. I don't want someone making half their case redundant because it can be gauged as a cheap shot. Sometimes you need to throw in a cheap shot to show just how open someone elses case is.

Should we all agree that religions, political theories and all other ideas should never be protected in the interests of political correctness? Can we scrap the idea of religism or has Dave become a right wing neocon nut? You decide!

♫ in lieu of the innuendo.

Thu, 02 Feb 2006 23:21:55 GMT

Just a quick appendum to Serious Crew hip-hop news. My fellow MC and east-side homegirl Penfold^† has been keeping a blog of the progress of the group. If you're bored and you want to chart the progress of an Australian student hip-hop group rise from the depths of obscurity to the slightly less murky depths of obscurity, you can find it here: http://www.somekindofcrew.blogspot.com/. It makes for a pretty interesting read.

___________
† fo shizzle.

♪ brain like a brick but a body like a rifle.

Thu, 02 Feb 2006 02:55:21 GMT

Still no internet. Noone really to blame but myself and Telstra, but its kind of hard to get it fixed when I'm working business hours five days a week.

My post-pre-enrollment (?) got approved and I'm now officially a student again. I'm actually a lot more excited about this than I thought I would be. After six months of working a lot, I'm actually pretty nostalgic for the old alma mater. Looking forward to going back, sitting in Manning and having vibrant conversations about whats wrong with the world while we all procrastinate doing anything to fix it. Ahh the carefree life of a student...

Our housewarming was an epic thing. 150 people or so through the doors all told and we drank, ate, danced and chatted all day. Afterwards the house was trashed, bottles everywhere, red wine on the carpets, the house reeked on tobacco and pot - but with a little work with a vacuum cleaner, air freshener, garbage bags and, in the case of the wine, bicarb soda, we soon had our house back to its regular, sexy self.

Holt! is up to draft 8 and counting. I'm still writing which is good. I suppose if I can keep writing when I have nothing to procrastinate in favour of doing, I'll be a powerhouse once uni starts back up. I'm loving my house, loving my housemates and really enjoying my self at the moment. Sure we all have issues and little things that annoy each other, but generally there's just a real feeling of goodwill in the house. Having about 10-12 people over tonight for Pizza, Family Guy and games. Soon Lost and The Amazing Race will be on and Thursday nights will begin again in earnest.

Other than that, the only really exciting thing in my life is the hip-hop crew I've mentioned in bygone posts. We've got a couple more songs and some production work to do before we can cap off our first album but the progress is still amazing. I find it quite hard to write rap, but I enjoy it immensely, and its great preperation for the song-writing that writing the Holt musical is going to entail. Still no finished MP3s to share with the doubtless millions who read my LJ but never comment, but I thought I'd give a little bit of lyric away. This is my verse and the opener for the song "Broke As" which is about just that. It's also the song that MC Ozi Battla of the herd features in!

Everybody bounce as your EFTPOS bounces,
Got no money in your saving accounts as
We pinch our pockets to be saving every dollar
Jump up, jump up and be proud to be hollerin'
I'm broke as brother, I'm broke as.
I'm broke as brother, I'm broke as.

Yeah, it's fun. Don't exactly think we're going to break triple platinum, but I think we've got a real chance at battle of the bands if we keep our noses down.

♫ i've got new shoes.

Tue, 24 Jan 2006 01:39:30 GMT

Still no internet at home so my updates have been pretty sparse. I'm looking forward to having the phone connected soon and getting back onto the big bad internet but until then I'll be doomed to the occasional update while waiting for something at work.

House of Fun is a rip roaring success to borrow a slogan from a bygone era^†. This is by far the most social house I've ever lived in - most nights sees at least one or two guests over - and I'm having the time of my life. Thursdays in particular are becoming something of an institution which see 6-8 people come over for dinner, TV, boardgames and just to talk. Last thursday the tennis took out all of our favourite programs and so we amused ourselves instead by cooking a batch of homemade pizzas, working through a bottle of wine someone had been thoughtful enough to bring over and playing Scene It, a game I thoroughly recommend.

Other than that my life has muddled on in a thoroughly enjoyable fashion. I'm working quite a bit at the moment but whenever I'm not I've had something on, somewhere to go or something planned with friends. The musical is progressing really well, with our first meeting taking place last Sunday. The Serious Crew are actually getting close to a CD launch of some kind - we've recorded about 6 songs and are close to finishing another 4. Once production has been finished on them, I'll have some MP3s to upload. It was good to see Kenny off in proper french fashion (fondue is awesome) and I had a lot more fun at Annie's 21st then I had previously expected. Something of a snapshot in time but once in a blue moon its fun to hang out with people who were a big part of your life a couple of years ago that you never see anymore. Plus I got to school Kenny in frisbee - take that you hack!

Scott is still trying to get me into clubbing and it is slowly starting to grow on me. I spent friday night at Chinese Laundry - it's the third club he's taken me too and by far the one I've enjoyed the most. Much less preppy clothing, great decor and nice people - but the most fun was how they handled the dancing. Instead of playing club tracks they have live DJs who mostly just play beat tracks, with MCs with wireless mics dancing out with the patrons who freestyle over the top. The first club experience I've had which actually felt like clubs in movies. Got my :tenbucks: worth.

Really looking forward to Thursday - its the day of our open door housewarming party and combination Australia Day/JJJ Hottest 100 party at my new house 135 Glebe Street, Glebe. It's open door but BYO so if anyone who reads this actually feels like coming please feel free. We'll be kicking off when the JJJ broadcast starts at 10 and going till late late late. Pop by and check out my new pad if you've got nothing else on. It will be a shindig of epic proportions.

________
† Or possibly David Cunningham

♪ girl, i like you heaps and stuff.

Wed, 21 Dec 2005 23:00:31 GMT

I've recently moved into a new house with three Arts Revue friends - Lauren, Alex and Scott. Housewarming to be some time in February (Lauren's away for the holidays) - for the past week outside of work hours I've been all about one thing and one thing only. The big move in.

Now, as I mentioned in my last post I've been sick as all fuck with the flu this week so a big move was not exactly what I was looking forward to. Having hot showers every five minutes, crawling into a corner and wheezing was more what I was about last weekend. But needs must and all that and come Sunday I was determined to make an effort to at least begin the process of shifting all my belongings two streets up the road. Yep, my new house is not exactly far from my old one. With a bit more energy I probably could have carted my belongings from Spacemountain to the new place in a rickshaw.

But, dear reader, I digress. Sunday saw me backing up my data, formatting my computer one last time on vdias' gloriously easy to use network and packing my room up as best as I could manage. Rearranging all my stuff was throwing up dust like nobodies business and with my flu I was having to stop every half an hour for huge epileptic sneezing fits. I'd just started and was not looking forward to the rest of the day to come.

It was then that I realised my friends are, in fact, awesome.

It started with Warren driving by with a bunch of boxes he'd picked up while green grocering it up at the IGA. Then Hing called me asking if, since I was moving today, should he drive past his dads house and pick up the van that he owned. Adam and Fiona turned up and basically pledged allegiance to the packing and dismantling Gods. Before I knew it I had an army of movers and a fleet of cars moving my stuff from house to house and I'd barely even needed to ask the favour. It got to the point that after I finished vacuuming my old room and had been driven to the new place I discovered my bed was already reassembled and in my room. My guys are alright. Suffice to say I bought them all dinner.

The house is great. Four bedrooms, two bathrooms, tire swing, piano room, two huge TVs and the biggest living room ever complete with four beanbags and a leather sofa. It's also right next to Broadway Shops so very close to everyone in terms of picking up visiters. So far every single night I've lived there has seen about 4-8 people pop by for dinner and a chat. Definately one of the more social houses I've lived in. Not having internet access there yet is a tiny bit of a pain but to be honest I haven't really had the time to use it if I had it.

That said, had dinner with Jordan last night who convinced me to let him reactivate my WoW account and to come with him on a Molten Core run. I haven't played World of Warcraft since about August and to be honest it just seems to have lost some of that golden feeling. I cut myself off from games while I was doing the Arts Revue and never really got back into them. I've played one FPS that Terence was talking about and a little bit of Sim Tower oddly enough - but nothing else really since then. I actually bought City of Villains out of a promise to friends but after about 4 sessions my account was banned^* and I discovered I didn't actually care enough to appeal it.

So while it was fun running around with my one-time guildies in Sulfuron's old stomping grounds, the game certainly seemed much less fun than I remembered. I guess I just lost the investment that makes you care about the character. Poor Muldan. He was once so dear to me.

Heading off to have egg nog and brandy cake with friends tomorrow. Now that's the kind of multiplayer experience I can get my head around right now.

________
* - Funny story. Bottom line: Don't create a Natural Mastermind called Osama Bin Laden and walk around inciting holy war against the heroes of Paragon City. NCSoft does not have a sense of humour about this kind of thing.

♫ the dance was in the hips; oh well.

Tue, 20 Dec 2005 01:32:52 GMT

Ugh. Sick as a dog today. Got the flu something vicious. But what a week its been.

Spent last week away with 10 friends at Copacabana at a beach house paid for and filled by my parents and friends. We came up with music, DVDs, guitars, poker chips, card decks, swimwear, 10 laser tagger guns and enough alcohol to preserve an elephant corpse. We ended up only being away for about four days and four nights before we needed to come back to Sydney and our respective jobs but the first half of the week was a studied exercise in the lesiure-time arts. Got a bit sunburnt but all in all an excellent time was had.

One important element of the trip away was a chance for us to play a few more rounds of a game we first played as a group at the Arts Revue camp - a game simply known as Kings.

Kings is a game for 4 or more players and can easily play up to about 12. The more the merrier. It is simplicity itself to set up. Just take a tall(ish) juice or water glass and place it in the center of a table. This becomes the Cup of Kings. Around it, arrange a shuffled deck of regular playing cards in a sort of moat. Everyone sits around the Cup at the table.

Kings is a drinking game and doesn't work if you're not intending to get absolutely hammered. Everyone at the table needs to have a drink of choice they are drinking and have plenty of backup beverage as the game progresses. Straight liquor is not recommended - you'll destroy yourself and your liver. Drink responsibily kids!

Players take it in turns to draw a card and show it to the group. Depending on what card is drawn, different actions or minigames need to be undertaken. As the game progresses and everyone gets more drunk it becomes more and more difficult to play. This is part of its beauty.

A - Social! Everybody take a drink!
2 - Twos! Distribute 2 fingers among any players to be drunk. They can be given to the same player.
3 - Threes! Distribute 3 fingers among any players to be drunk. Theyc an be given to the same player.
4 - Fours! Distribute 3 fingers among any players to be drunk. Theyc an be given to the same player. This gets a bit vindictive.
5 - Five on High! When a 5 is drawn everyone has to put a hand up above their head. The last person to realise we're playing Five on High takes a drink!
6 - Product Die! Play a simple Theatresports warm up game. The person who drew the card decides on a category (ie. 'Movies with Russell Crowe') Players go around the circle naming a new example of the category. Any repetition, mistakes or hesitation leads to the loser drinking!
7 - Make a Rule! Game not complicated enough? Make a new rule that any violation of results in a drink!
8 - Waterfall! This is nightmare. Everyone puts their drink to their lips and drinks. The person who drew can stop drinking at any time. However noone else can stop drinking until the person to the left of them stops drinking. It ends with a silly amount of alcohol being consumed.
9 - Busta Rhyme! The person who drew the card starts a poem, nonsense song or starts talking in rhyming couplets. Go around the circle and the first person to screw up or recycle a rhyme takes a drink!
10 - Never Ever! Play a round of Never Ever or Lost, Veronica Mars or frat party anywhere fame. Everyone who has, drinks!
J - All boys drink!
Q - All girls drink!
K - The first person to draw a king pours enough of their drink of choice into the Cup of Kings to fill it up a third of the way. The second and third king drawn does likewise. The last poor soul unlucky enough to draw the fourth king takes the Cup of Kings (by now often filled with a terrible mixture of beer, vodka, orange, breezer and all manner of nasties) and downs the drink in one pull. They are the king until the game is played again and may insist they be referred to formally as such for the rest of the night!

It's a silly game really. But I've played three full games and not had to drink from the Cup of Kings yet. I drew the second last card in our final game. 'Twas a close thing indeed.

It was great to escape from Sydney for a few days but once I came back I was only home for two days before I had to go up north again to another friends summer house for a weekend of recording. You see, myself, Scott (from Arts Revue), Sean (from Arts Revue) and Brydie (from Theatresports) made a pact to put together an Aussie hip-hop crew for next year's Sydney Uni Battle of the Bands to take on rival Arts Revue Aussie folk song band St Francis of Assisi and the Slaughterhouse Five. Our group is called Serious Crew so they're already beating us in terms of names. So we agreed to spend a weekend in a summer house that Brydie's family owns to do some recording of the songs we'd written over the past couple of weeks.

We recorded four tracks - Prepare, Fish out of Water, Get it Together and Dance With You Baby (I Want To). They're being produced at the moment by Scott but I'll post up any MP3s once I get them. This started as a silly bit of arts revue rivalry but I actually am having huge fun writing and recording songs. Plus its fun to go around telling people that you're in a band. :)

We're actually working on a repertoir or 10 songs or so called "Night Prior // Morningg After". Most of the songs are in some degree of active development, including one which will be a collaboration between Serious Crew and Ozi Battla of Sydney crew The Herd. We have a connection who got him interested in doing a track with us. So score!

I want to go on and talk about the move and our new house but this is approaching lengths rediculously prodigious so I'll call it a day. Next update with house pics of 135 Glebe Street - the new house of Fun!

♪ uncomplicated loving.

Sat, 10 Dec 2005 00:58:58 GMT

Anyone who thinks that Australia is much the same country as it was a month ago really needs to start reading newspapers.

In the final 30 days of the Parliamentary year, John Howard has used his majority in the Senate to push through a horde of bills that change in very fundamental ways how law in Australia works.

For anyone who hasn't been following the play-by-play

* You are no longer innocent until proven guilty if the police decide to charge you as a terror suspect.

* You can be held for up to 14 days in a prison cell without being even charged of a crime if the police think its in their best interest.

* Freedom of speech was a thing of the past. You can now be jailed for seditious writing or criticising Our Glorious Leader's country.

* Our welfare system will now just stop paying pensions to 100,000 disadvantaged Australians and single parents. Instead we're going to start using the American Welfare to Work model.

* All that I.R. reform that people were talking about? Passed unoquivically. You can be denied a job for not negotiating a private contract with your employer, fired for not providing a medical certificate to your employer after a sick day, or refusing to work a shift you can't make. Of course if you work for a company with less than 100 employees it's different. Your boss no longer needs to provide a reason for firing you. Hell, he can fire you for not responding to his sexual advances.

* Like America, convicted felons can no longer vote in this country. Or any young person who isn't enrolled the day after an election is called. Or any recent immigrant who doesnt' front up to the ballot with full photo ID. The poor, the young and the aspirational migrant are now going to find it very hard to vote (and they all traditionally vote labour). On the flip side after years of succesfully avoiding huge expensive acidic multi-million dollar electoral campaigns, the Senate have finaly passed a bill allowing soft money contributions to be made anonymously. Rich Australians and companies will find it easier to support the liberal party than ever before.

* Nuclear waste can now be processed in the Australian territories, regardless of the desires of the state or premiers.

* Telstra is now fully privatised. What Howard began on the condition that he would only sell a minority share in the company so as to keep Australians in control of their own phone lines ended this year as Howard said keeping the main share was uneconomic and a bad idea anyway. His pet senate ushered the bill in.

* Voluntary Student Unionism is in. It will come into complete effect come July 1 2006. Compulsary Student Unions are now criminalised with steep fines placed on any university that dares to try to charge so much as an amenities fee. It was rushed through the senate in under 2 hours of debate after Steve Fielding of Family First sold his vote to the government. Of course noone knows what John Howard offered him in his private thursday morning meeting with the senator but seeing as Fielding's drafting a private members bill to illegalise abortion drugs in this country I'm sure we'll get something in exchange for the loss of campus life on universities around Australia.

The Greens, the ALP, the democrats and even Barnaby Joyce can't muster enough votes to stop any bill that the Howard government brings up and the Howard government is using this to change Australia in ways nobody realised they would last election. There's no point them even turning up to work - debates are being stifled and John Howard is just getting whatever he wants passed.

This is what a mandate means. This is what happens when you give control of both houses to one party. And they have two more years to keep doing it.

♫ what was once the emerald city's now a crystal town.

Thu, 24 Nov 2005 08:13:31 GMT

It's cool. I've got my procrastination worked out for these holidays.

Meer Dr Henrik Mauser.

He's evil.

God, City of Villains is fun.

never get to college but they sure like cool.

Tue, 15 Nov 2005 00:33:18 GMT

This year me, Jordan and Neal were admitted into the Sydney-wide Cranston Cup theatresports tournament. It's a pretty big deal - about as big as it gets as far as improv is concerned in Australia and only the second time I've got to play it so I was pretty keen to get my improvisational groove on.

This year we were Batman's Shameful Secret and we actually did pretty well for ourselves, securing ourselves a place in what the Honker insists on referring to as theatresports' "Night of nights" - the grand final at the Enmore Theatre.

Being the biggest stage I've ever performed on and one which I saw Mr Yancovic strut hiss hirsute stuff, I was looking forward to the show. As I lost the Robin costume approximately 15 minutes after wearing it at the Sydney Uni grand final I'd been wearing a suit and fake moustache as Alfred for all the heats and semis but decided that I needed something special for the grand final. In the end I found a $20 white suit at the Salvation Army and with the aid of a stencil, some green dye and black spray paint I soon had a green question mark'd suit of which Edward Nygma would be jealous. Add a cane and a green bowler I borrowed off Lauren and I was hot to trot.

I sometimes think of the actual poor people who miss out on quality clothing because I need gimmick costumes and weep.

Anyway the competition was a great night. We didn't win - far from it - but we had some huge support from the audience - one of our scenes got given a 2 for entertainment only to have the audience boo the judges for about 30 seconds before the host could get them under control. Who needs a high score when you're getting that kind of love from the audience.

We played some good games and were in the end very happy with how we'd played. It was a great end to a theatresports season. Most years I end the competitions with bitter thoughts of 'never again' - this year I'm really happy with how I played on average and looking forward to playing again next year. For a while I was worried that I was plateauing or even regressing in terms of my skills in the games but I really believe in the last couple of games I played this year I started to find a whole new level of comfort with playing which is making it much more fun.

I've been quite prolific in my reading recently. I got through Thud! while I was still in N.Y. and quickly read some god awful X-men TPB's that crapcomics lent me, Chucky P's Survivor and Gregory Maguire's Wicked once I got back. Hooray for gay American authors I guess.

Now I'm reading Mirror, Mirror and Slaughterhouse Five - a combination guaranteed to trigger an onset of MPD. I used to read like this as a kid and I'm glad to be back in the habit. I'm sure once uni starts next semester and I have readers to get through my reading will cease immediately but it sure is fun while it lasts.

a very deeply flawed man.

Mon, 07 Nov 2005 13:32:15 GMT

I don't normaly spam links but the word of the days is: eBaum's World sucks. Spread the word.

http://www.eviltrailmix.com/ebaum/

altF4 and Trapazoid can have my babies.

♫ familiar faces, worn out places.

Tue, 01 Nov 2005 14:49:03 GMT

I hate it when you finish a good book that you've been reading for a while before you're quite ready to go to bed. I also hate it when the book ends on a down note. Not exactly a formula for a contented nights sleep.

Just finished Wicked. It's weird and at times oddly sexual but its a pretty cool retelling of the Wizard of Oz. Be warned though, its nothing like the musical. Much, much darker and with far more gore and violence and less happy endings.

Also, I'm not really much of one for cosplay any more but is this not the most awesome Harley Quinn costume ever?

From a cosplay group/site called Gotham Public Works. The things one finds on Something Awful.

I don't want to go to work tomorrow!

no good deed goes unpunished.

Fri, 14 Oct 2005 18:18:03 GMT

Oh my god, oh my god, Wicked was amazing.

Every now and then you have a moment in life where you see something that's going to have a big impact on you. First big concerts, big movies, amazing artworks, that kind of thing. Wicked is said to be the largest and most expensive show ever to be put on Broadway in New York City and it felt like it was tailor made to me. A subversive take on the Frank Baum's classic, casting the classic villian in a sympathetic light? Count me in.

Oh and I also got to see some amazing percussion and mime courtesy of the Blue Man Group and some great freeform improv at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. Big update here, folks!

Wicked, the new musical by Steven Schwartz offers a parallel narrative to the famous goings-on of Dorothy and Co. in the MGM classic The Wizard of Oz. While the movie focused on snotty-nosed Kansas drop-in Dorothy, the musical is all about Elphaba, the talented and unloved daughter of the governer of Munchkin land, one day to become the Wicked Witch of the West. The moment I entered the theatre it was clear that no expense had been spared for this production - if anyone was in any doubt of that the giant, clockwork, smoke-belching puppet dragon suspended above the stage should have comforted them.

Maybe I'm easily impressed but I knew at this point that I was in for something big - I was just hoping it was going to be clever and to my taste as well.

Five minutes after the curtain had risen and the scruffy and sinister denizens of Emerald City with their altogether too squeakily clean mascot Glinda the Good Witch and their sadistically off-putting cackles at the ding-dong death of the evil witch and I felt like someone had made a musical just for me. It had me from the opening number "No-one Mourns for the Wicked" all the way through to the end.

While it is a show that could almost just rest on its concept, costumes and staging, the book is surprisingly dense and complicated. Glinda and Elphaba are not just bitter rivals, their relationship is a complex one that plays upon your expectations. Both the principals were excellently cast - Glinda was all Alicia Silverstone, sugar and spice while Elphaba made a great Margaret Hamilton, from her first day at the University of Shizz through to her final moments outside Dorothy's cell.

The show just worked. The casting was great, from the warm Dr. Dillamond to the tragic Nessarose, sister of Elphaba and Wicked Witch of the East. The songs were huge and epic - not the best I've heard while I've been here but perfectly suited to the show - "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" and "Defying Gravity" jump to mind as great examples of big budget Broadway at its best. The finale of Act II is easily the biggest, greatest moment I've ever seen on a stage - the first time Elphaba casts a spell, enchanting a broomstick to escape from the Emerald City - an entire lift had been built into the back of the stage and as the song swells and the orchestra picks up, the ground falls away and Elphaba flies above the citizens of Oz, singing a song damning them all for their pettiness and cruely in a huge finale spectacular. It was quite a moment and one I'll remember for a while, I'm sure.

I've gone way over-time on Wicked so forgive the gushing, but it really was an amazing show and one I heartily recommend to anyone who travels anywhere near America in the next couple of years. While the cast change annually its a show that will be worth seeing for as long as its on.

That night, me and dad went to see the Blue Man Group play Off Broadway in a small, undeground theatre in the Village. The show is a bizarre experience of interactivity, rhythym and energy. While the Blue Men I guess are technically mimes, the show is all about sound with a heavy trance style band playing beats constantly throughout the performance, often to the accompaniment of the Blue Men on instruments improvised out of tin, piping and paint. The audience are constantly involved and just watching the Blue Men explore the audience, the stage and the objects around them is hilarious and involving. The innocence with which they played with everything they picked up was amazing and once they got in with the audience became almost surreal. And the music was great, not least for the ways and tools with which they were producing it. The show was short but definately memorable. It perfectly juxtaposed itself with Wicked - a short show with a small budget that focused on specific exploration of what were small and simple ideas instead of broad and epic quests.

To cap off the night I got to see some improvisational comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. This was freeform long format improv - very different to the kind I play myself but it was certainly refreshing to see. There was some real talent too - they used very little stimulus and generally just explored scenarios of their own devising but the show was very entertaining to watch. Also they mixed up an hour long show with two standup acts which helped break up the flow of the performance. I was pretty impressed with it all.

So yeah three great shows in 12 hours. An amazing day. The best I've had on the trip and I imagine the best I'll have. Wicked in particular has my brain buzzing like nothing else. I want to get back to Australia, listen to the CD, dissect what worked and get to work on my own show. I've seen some amazing stuff on this trip thanks to some incredible generosity by my parents and its certainly shown me just how much theatre can work. It's all very exciting.

Thu, 13 Oct 2005 16:57:01 GMT

Monday was a day off for Broadway with no Matinee or Evening performances. For this reason I might jump straight to Tuesday, Battery Park, Ground Zero, Sweeney Todd and Don't Tell Mamma.

In the morning we took a subway down through the Village towards Statton Island Ferry with an aim to seeing the Statue of Liberty and the World Trade Centre site. The subway system in New York, much like the road network is certainly easy to use. Each train line is given a letter and most will be heading uptown or downtown, making it a painless task to find a train that will take you the way you want to go. The smell of the subways is certainly not quite as much fun - one night I saw cleaners pouring big plastic bottles of bleach and ammonia into the gutters to try and fight it - but all up its a small complaint on a very easy to use system.

The weather wasn't really right for a big Ferry ride but as we got closer we saw we wouldn't need to. The Statue of Liberty is huge and easily visible from the tip of Manhattan. We took a path through Battery Park up the Western side of Manhattan taking photos and just having a gander at everything.

As we got further into the city again we quickly found ourselves at Ground Zero, the former site of the World Trade Centre. It stands iconically enough on the corner of West and Liberty, about halfway between Soho and the parks. Now, I remember watching on television whent he towers collapsed in 2001 and being struck by just how big they seemed and how epic the occasion was. Seeing the actual site helped give me an idea of just how big these towers were. Each tower is easily the size of 3-4 towers and absolutely colossal in height. If you've seen any of the iconic pictures of them you'd know how they used to tower over the buildings surrounding them - the building surrounding them are skyscrapers of the likes of which Sydney has certainly never seen on her own skyline.

After doing the tourist thing we headed back to our hotel to change, rest, for me to frantically-backlog my LJ some more and to buy tickets for our evening show, Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. I wasn't sure what to expect from this show - it ended up being one of the most amazing things I've seen while in New York.

The scene of the play is old-school London Town with a dark, sinister Jack the Ripper feel to it. The plot is explained in the opening seven lines performed by the entire cast in a set full of straightjackets, coffins and creepy, creepy costumes and lighting.

Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd.
His skin was pale and his eye was odd.
He shaved the faces of gentlemen
Who never thereafter were heard of again.
He trod a path that few have trod,
Did Sweeney Todd.
The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

The cast was tiny for Broadway, only seven or eight people but amazingly the show had no dedicated orchestra. Instead each player also played music, either in character or just somberly at the back of the stage to the mood of the scene. As Sweeney made his cut-throat kills, each member of the cast would retire, trading their coat for a bloodstained smock, and sit at the back of the stage as a dedicated orchestra and chorus member for the rest of the play. The instruments became part of their costumes and certainly part of the character. So the sinister Judge Turpin played on an ivory keyboard, a begger woman wandered the streets playing the flute while the pie shop owner Miss Lovett constantly kept a triangle lodged in her paybelt. Sweeney Todd played a guitair for his part, brooding over it in corners of the stage that never seemed fully lighted. The show was dark, powerful and scary as all hell. After the show I bought one of the big play posters and have every intention of framing it when I get home. The cast were great, Sondheim is God, what can I say.

That night both me and my dad were buzzing from the show and were quick to head out for a drink or two. We headed to a bar that we'd heard of - Don't Tell Mamma - a cabaret bar were Broadway hopefuls and up-and-comings sing hugely charismatic renditions of Broadway, jazz and pop hits while you drink and cheer. It seems to me that a lot of the best late night-life in New York has no cover charge and exists solely on drinks and tips. Don't Tell Mamma was certainly a great experience and one I'm sure we'll return to before the trip is out.

Tomorrow: Wicked, Blue Man Group and the Upright Citizens Brigade!