Monday, 25 June 2012
Sydney's totally gay and lesbian mardi gras 2012
and you know what? i avoided the whole fucking thing. but what i did do was way more awesome than another big gay dance party
now don't get me wrong. i love mardi gras. i don't care if it's not the same. i don't really care if it's lost it's way (from a protest to a celebration spattered with whorish displays of shameless corporate sponsorship). i don't really care if it's not as much fun as it used to be. i had my fun there.
one year, 2001, me and my bitch at the time sharing a case of beer with a couple of lil' lesbians who shackled up beside us. it was the year of celebrating gay families. gay kids marching with their parents and more importantly gay parents marching with their kids. it was quite a touching theme until wedged in between those teens and toddlers came the Mature Age Gays float, a bunch of old men waving signs in the air saying "lower the age of consent now". sure they just meant lowering the age of consent from 18 to 16 years to be equal with heterosexual sex, but it just terrible placement and seemed a little tasteless. so when a bunch of friends in the Sydney University Queer Socialist Group came screaming up oxford street demanding we all fuck the police and destroy capitalism, we had reached our tolerance with the mardi gras jumped the fence and marched with our mates
i have since heard jumping the fence and joining the parade is a near impossibility with security, but we looked like we were part of that group anyway
the last time was 2008 and one of the gay newspapers needed someone to take care of the music. the 'repeat' button on the cd player was broken and they needed someone press play every 8 minutes. it was a fun slow drive up oxford street with hoards of young asian girls screaming their guts out in excitement all the way. for my troubles i was given a free ticket to the party. the venue is huge and music sucked ass. i stayed for half an hour before going home, having a cup of tea and crawling into bed
the only thing i'm annoyed about Mardi Gras these days is during the month leading up to the parade and party, thanks to the damn non-recession/GFC i've gone from earning thousands of bucks per week to just on a thousand per week. that's a huge drop. also because the booming australian dollar and Sydney becoming more and more expensive there are less tourists and they're not staying as long as they used to. still, the international hookers keep spilling out of those A380s and the local johns snap them up
this year friends were organising an alternate party at the Oxford Arse Factory. live bands. live drag queens. Velvet Hammer was a success in the past and this was going to be another. i offered to help and in a few hours before the show got asked to knock up some fake glory holes out of cardboard to hide some stage props. where we pay homage to The Den (R.I.P) and the infamous interview of the cracked-out owner and his interview going viral all lit up by some trash 90s aussie trannie porn
she's a chick with a dick and she's hung
GET FUCKED!!!
it was a fucking good party the highlight being Totally Unicorn - a punk band from Wollongong. that it in self means nothing, and if your not from Australia i'm sure you think that's not really a name for a city and i just stuck a bunch of random letters together and stopped repeating them just before it became ludacris. but no, Wollongong is a city well known for using the tactic of playing Barry Manilow 24 hours a day in shopping malls, parks and any places youths might congregate to scare them off and stop them wrecking the place. it was a complete success.
Totally Unicorn were totally amazing. shouty, hard and fast punk with near naked stage diving. can't recommend them enough. i took too many drugs and got really fucking drunk, so here's a friend's review. she writes it better on her antitouristguidetosydney
Brian getting Totally Unicorned
Totally Unicorn's totally hot drummer
stalk him. totez
Wednesday, 20 June 2012
Tuesday, 19 June 2012
a whore's guide to tasmania
where do you take you boyfriend on their 43rd birthday?
where do you take someone that has been around the world? for fuck's sake, he has even been to easter island?
for many, i doubt the answer to this question is Tasmania. but that's exactly where i took him. to a place he had never been before. looks. it's all beautiful and shit
the first time i came to tasmania with my motorbike stashed on the ferry i was all excited. and it sure didn;t take long before i heard some traveller innocently ask the old lady at the tourist information desk "excuse me, do you have a map of tasmania?"
i nearly choked, sniggered my tits off and quickly staggered out. no doubt the old lady wasn;t stupid and got this all the time
(for non-Australians, because they both share a triangular shape, a 'map of tasmania' or 'map of tassie' refers to a woman's vaginal bush)
Mount Wellington. fucking nice, eh?
bribie? i don't know. some fucking island thing. it even had a lighhouse and shit
yeah pretty stuff is nice, but more importantly, i wanted to take him to MONA on his birthday.
MONA (Museum of Old and New Art) is the art gallery for people who don't like art galleries. and even those that do will jizz their pants
free for residents of tasmania, $20 for everyone else. that sort of thing might piss me off it didn't out to be the best thing i have ever seen. also, i recently paid $25 to see a Picasso exhibition in Sydney that was underwhelming as fuck. the only thing i learned about him then is once you find the tits in a Picasso, the rest of the female figure just falls into place. MONA also lets you takes all the pictures you want
if you want to read what some boring old fuck thinks about MONA go here. but if you're not a miserable old cunt, look at these photos. it is worth flying to hobart just for this museum
old art = boring
oh wait. there's a penis! a really fucking ugly penis. i love art!
fuck reading shit on a wall. MONA gives you an ipoddy thing that gives info and you can rate it 'love' or 'hate' anything that doesn't polarise the audience and gets a middle of the road response (equally loved and hated) will soon be removed from the gallery
i think this was favourite - Berlinde De Bruyckere
Melbourne Burning - Arthur Boyd
huge and incredible M.C. Escher-like sculptures carved from metal and tractor tyres
Wim Delvoye
another favourite *kisses*
Hobart isn't the most exciting place to be. it's a nice quiet little city but it's also a little bit of a shit hole. so instead of pussying out and flying back to sydney after a couple of days we drove out to the most remote part of the land we could find. Queenstown. smack in the heart of the national park, this former mining town is the bloody fissure on Australia's raped asshole, a grim reminder of what happened when tear up the land. the land was once beautiful, but after a 100 years of mining there are enormous holes in the landscape, hills stripped so bare it looks like the surface of the moon and a river so poisonous it will stay that way for over a thousand years spilling out into the ocean
welcome to queenstown
the little town just before Queenstown
this was the middle of summer
in Queenstown. some dumbfuck AFL nut flaunts his impressive obsession
the gay miners of Queenstown. imagine a rin job from one of those handlebar 'taches.
the one on the end looks like Michael from Tales of the City. i'd fuck him
half the people in this town were great small town folk. a little on the freaky and interesting side. the rest were just small town jerks that have a sunday dinner in the pub and piss the rest fo their cash away on the poker machines. sad fucks. there is a hefty tourist trade here for such a small town. you can see them wander in, look around and struggle for things to entertain themselves with
one of my flatmates from melbourne has the best story that sums up Queenstown in one short speech. Leith grew up in Tasmania so he's fully aware of all the slow brained inbred hillbilly expectations of the people. on a holiday he was in the main bar of the Queenstown pub. he sat down. ordered a beer and packet of crisps. the bar wench poured his beer and dropped a packed of plainly salted crisps in front of him.
he looked up at her and asked "could i have a bowl for my chips?"
upon his request the fat slags nostrils flared. she slammed her meaty sausage fingers down on the hefty wooden bar and barked, "listen mate! we don't go for none of that fancy shit here!"
somehow the nasty history and current personality of this town on the verge of death charmed us enough to keep us around for 3 days. but i think i could have gone anywhere with the Elk and i would have had a kick arse time. though ultimately there was fuck all to do so we found and abandoned asbestos-ridden hospital and ran around like dickheads
former queenstown hospital. and one of the few recovered green hills around it.
had a chat to a local. the old bugger was thrilled that the countryside was recovering
inside the oldest part of the hospital. with all the grim wood and the funky carpet i expected to see a little kid scooting around the hallways on a tricycle and a couple of axe-murdered twins
baby steps
being a dickhead
on the wall outside of the hospital. still one of my favourite pieces i have seen anywhere
oh, and Hobart was shit for work. there was little interest because of recent law reforms making it illegal (but not really illegal) but illegal enough to scare everybody off. cunts
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