Internets are tricky Part 1

I always expected that it would be tricky to get decent Internet connections on this holiday, and I was not wrong. Once we’d arrived in La Serena, it was revealed that the USB dongle type Internet connection thing was inoperable; The Windows PC it was tried on, would spew forth tons of virus warnings whenever you tried to run the connection software.
I plugged it into my Mac, and installed the software, which seemed to go OK, but then the only signal I could coax out of the device was GPRS, instead of a HSPDA or UTMS signal, and thus it was slower-than-dialup slow. Not ideal. We took the device down to the Claro shop at the Mall, where it all functioned perfectly. Great.
Then magically, the next day it started working. Whoop. I managed to share it via the wireless on my laptop, so at least Fran and I could use it then. Later I replaced the virus checker on the PC, (turns out Avast was giving false positives), and all was well again.

It’s a bit like on Baywatch

Humitas. Delicious.

After having an awesome and huge lunch consisting of Humitas and a (deliciously sweet) giant watermelon, we took the bus down to another part of the beach, where there was tons of activities going on, such as bouncy castles, beach volleyball, kiosks with Internet right on the beach, girls in small bikinis giving away free ice cream. Yep, it was alright.

Despite this beach being much less over-run with jellyfish, (and far more over-run with smoking hot South American babes) it didn’t stop some people getting into trouble. We saw at least two instances where the surf rescue helicopter flew out over the water, dropped in a scuba guy, and then fished him and another person out of the (incredibly calm and un-dangerous) surf. I think there’s a general consensus that Chileans can’t swim for shit. The fun really came when then helicopter decided it was cool to do super low passes over the beach, sending beach umbrellas in all directions…

We finished up the afternoon by having pizza and beers at a place called Huentelauquen Pizzeria, which was a restaurant where half of it was shaped like a giant Pirate Ship. No photos of that because I didn’t have my camera with me (and cameras with big lenses on them are creepy at the beach, right?) and all the photos of it I can find on the Internet are wildly out of date
The pizza was alright, the beer was better, and for the first time in about as long as I could remember I felt totally relaxed and at peace with things. I was finally On Holiday.

Good idea / Bad idea?

While in this state of relaxation, and listening to the house band belt out a rendition of “Pretty Woman” I wondered if they should make a prequel to that movie. Where it’s 2 hours of Julia Roberts doing awful things while turning tricks with sweaty old men, and Richard Gere sits in board meetings getting rich. Should I start making my pitch to Hollywood now?

I now see why. God, that movie was terrible. As far as I could see, there was no explantation for anything that happens in it at all.. it was like a bunch of retard 10 year olds came up with the script – “hey lets have these different bad-ass alien things come down to earth and fight each other, and a bunch of people totally get killed for no reason and there’s a love interest between the sort of nerdy guy and the really hot girl that would never go for him, but dumps her jock boyfriend anyway, but it doesn’t matter because she gets totally fucked up by the Predator later, and then some more people die, and the lady who has come back from serving in Iraq just runs away instead of kicking ass like Ripley would have, and then the US Govt just nukes the entire town, and no-one seems to mind”.

That movie was robbed of an Oscar.

At least I also watched The Darjeeling Limited, which was actually fantastic.

Gigs:

Little Pictures (x2): Fran mentioned that these guys would be hitting town, and I remembered seeing them at her alternative craft fair event last year, so I thought I’d pop along to give them some support as it’s got to be hard playing in an unfamiliar town.
Anyway, their first gig is at some weird multi-level club, in the basement level. Apparently the event is some end-of-semester student thing, and there are a very very young and very very drunk kids running around. Dressed in fluro. Throwing up all over the place. Most of them luckily spend their time upstairs away from the bands. I actually had to talk my way past the bouncers because I looked too old. Good grief.

Little Pictures at Pony

Managed to have a good chat to Mark and Johanna from LP anyway
Their second gig (well it was their third actually, they played a show at The Tote as well) was at Pony, which was a much more age-appropriate venue. Even though their set started at 2am, by that stage, the place was packed out, and they were a real hit with the crowd that night, who were begging for encores by the end of it. GG guys

Angelspit and Baal: This was actually the night after the first Little Pictures gig, and held in the same venue. This time, however, instead of a few drunken teenagers, there was probably a hundred or so cyperpunks and goths in full dressup, dancing away to Industral rock from Japan (Baal) and Electro/Industrial from Sydney (Angelspit). Both bands were pretty awesome, both Clara and I enjoyed it a lot

The Mars Volta: Since Clara put me onto these guys a while back, I’ve become a fairly big fan… mainly their album “Deloused in the Comatorium”, which is pretty epic. Anyway, we both got tickets for their gig at the Forum Theatre, which is pretty epic in of itself:

Forum Theatre Mezzanine

Forum Theatre Auditorium

It has this crazy painted-blue ceiling, so it feels like you’re standing outside, in this crazy Roman Colosseum sort of place.
The Mars Volta themselves… hrmm.. well they played for about 3 hours, and as far as we could tell, it was only material from their new album, which neither of us like anywhere near as much as “Deloused”. They seem to be big fans of the super-extended jam versions of their songs with additional sonic wankery toppings. They were very tight and had moments of sheer brilliance, but it got old after a while, and a bit of self-editing I think would have helped my enjoyment considerably.

A couple of Saturdays ago, I found myself with nothing to do, as plans I had fell through, and then I remembered that Joe Satriani was playing in town that night, also at The Forum. The Friday night show had sold out a long time beforehand, so I didn’t think there’d be any tickets left, but I went along to the box office at 7:30 or so anyway, and yes, they did have some available. Joe was excellent – I managed to get a decent spot, and could see and hear everything pretty well. Stu Hamm was pretty good on bass, although it sounded like the crowd were booing him at several opportunities.. I later found out they were yelling “Stuuuu”, which is some kind of in-joke with him. Videos here: Cool No 9 and Summer Song.

The Greenmatics: This is a band that a friend of Frans is in… Mel has been living in Melbourne for a couple of years, so it was very nice to be able to head along to their gig at the Roxanne Parlour – which is pretty hard to find (typically), and have people to chat to. Mel’s friends are crazy, like good crazy

Tricky: This was at the Prince Bandroom in St Kilda, on the day before Fran arrived back in town to visit. Ended up going by myself, mainly because a certain friend of mine who is a massive Tricky fan, was feeling too broke to come along, which was a huge shame. The gig itself was pretty awesome – the singer he had, which is a replacement for the one he used on the records, was amazing. Tricky himself “sung” on a handful of tracks (something for which a reviewer later gave him crap for), but he spent most of the time ‘conducting’ the band – being the producer that he is. Anyway, the show utterly rockes. Videos here: Pumpkin, Black Steel, Overcome.

People:

Well, this is going back quite a few weeks now, but the notes are there so here we go…( in roughly chronological order – I think)

Went out with Dana (the American girl I met at a cocktails meetup thing ages and ages ago) again, this time out to Pahran, because neither of us had been out that side of town before. Ended up wandering around looking for suitable bars… we managed to find a couple, including a very cool tiny little place, which was more a cafe than a bar, but it had a DJ playing in the corner, a going fireplace, a bunch of friendly looking people who seemed to all know each other, and Monteiths Golden on tap. It kinda had a bit of a “Sputnik Cafe” vibe – for those of you in Chch who remember that wonderful place We also managed to stumble upon the infamous Revolver bar, which seemed pretty cool… but mind you, we there during it’s more civilised hours – it’s open all weekend without closing….

The girl I mentioned in my last post.. didn’t really work out like I thought it might… eventually she had some time off during the weekend, so we arranged to meet up at Pony, to Little Pictures, and whatever band happened to be on before them. I get there, and she’s with this other guy, who she had mentioned meeting a little while earlier, but said they were just friends. They were definitely not just friends. Ah well, move on….

Managed to catch up with Greta, who is the younger sister of a guy I was friends with in primary school, who has moved here in the last 6 months or so. Went down Brunswick Street to find a cafe to get something little to eat and have a chat… we got pretty lost looking for the Black Cat, which is a place we both knew. It was hopeless Turns out our stories in how we ended up here are pretty similar. Anyway, headed into town after that, went to Murmur, which is a little bar, which I was a bit hesitant about the look of at first, but turned out to be pretty damn cool. We met up with some friends of hers there (including someone who was in the same year as me at the same high school… we knew some of the same people…. small world!!), and moved on to the Croft Institute, which is a two-level place, with the bottom level all decked out like a 3rd Form science lab, with the benches with sinks in, and science-y glassware all over the place.. very cool.

Also I’ve been helping Clara out with her computer woes. It hasn’t gone well so far… as most computer woes tend to do… I’ve also got her hooked on my Outrageous Fortune DVDs. Can’t blame her really, it’s the awesome

Went out again with Dana, this time to the Espy, hoping to see a band (whose name escapes me now), as neither of us had been there before either Turns out the band we wanted to see didn’t start till like 1:30am, so we went to the back room to watch whatever band was on in there. Whoever they were, they weren’t good. At one point, what we could only presume was one of the band member’s girlfriend got on stage and started to attempt to play the Tamborine… quite half-heartedly, while holding a can of coke. It was so appalling, we just had to stand there and laugh Then we wandered around St Kilda seemingly in an attempt to play every pinball machine in every bar we could find. Anyway, the night ended well. I’ve been hoping to catch up with her again, but her pending work-related trip overseas, plus the millions of vaccinations required seem to be conspiring against me

Movies:

I saw the Get Smart movie, and was actually surprised at how good it ended up being. Cool.
Managed to find a couple of really good box-sets of the original Battlestar Galactica (which is truly cringe-worthy) and the Evil Dead trilogy. These things make me a happy chappy.

Stay tuned for the next episode (hopefully coming pretty soon) in which Fran visits town again, we see a band from Iceland, an awesome movie on a stupidly big screen, eat rather too well, see an old friend, and get a rather sad bit of news…

Just figured I’d catalogue what I got up to in the weekend..

• Spent Friday evening with Becca and her friend Brad, got some beers and food down at the Northcote social club, and went back to watch some DVDs. I wasn’t in such a great mood after the events of the past week, and having to watch “Miss Congeniality 2″ and “Clueless” didn’t help.
• Saturday was shaping up to be a bit of a bust (it was raining pretty badly outside). Clara was completely AWOL, so DV8 was looking unlikely. In a flash of genius, I got hold of Anna and Makoto, who came round for an evening of Wii gaming. We played Tennis/Bowling/Boxing, Super Mario Galaxy and a fairly long game of Mario Party 8. Everyone was thoroughly entertained
• Sunday afternoon I managed to drag myself out to the Victoria Markets to get some fruit/vegetables to snack on (instead of my usual chocolate… I’m trying to be good). I figure I should bring Fran along when she visits in a couple of weeks. Ended up buying NIN’s The Fragile and the After Forever album pretty cheaply too.
• Sunday evening went out to Brunswick to a bar called “The Retreat” for Amy’s birthday celebration thing. Managed to catch up with a few of the people I spent New Years’ with, so that was good. The company was excellent, the band was good, the food was average, and the art… well… lets just say that the Third Eye/Glitter/Lady Bits rendition on the wall probably isn’t going to feature in a national gallery any time soon…
• Monday evening. Redeemed my movie horrors of Friday night by going to one of those internet meetup things at Nova, and saw The Counterfitters, which was excellent, but depressing, as most holocaust movies tend to be…

I also now have a copy of Boom Blox for the Wii. It’s extremely entertaining.

Wellington: I managed to get a couple of days off work (which doesn’t seem very hard to do), and I flew over to Wellington for Chant’s 30th birthday. It was really good to see everyone, and in a lot of ways it was like coming home. The shortcut taken down off the hill, through the bush and across the motorway to get into Lower Hutt certainly had the right amount of random idiocy I’ve come to expect The guy trying to buy Steve’s truck was dodgy as fuck. His sob story about his burnt out car was really something. Never got round to playing a game of “Killer Bunnies.” If you want pictures of the party, you’ll have to ask me nicely for the link

Movie of the week: Went to see “Lars and the Real Girl” at the Nova cinemas with an internet “meetup” group (all in the interests of making some more friends here in Melbourne). It was exceptionally good, and I fully recommend it to everyone. Funny and heartbreaking all at the same time.

I have good internets: I finally managed to get connected to ADSL2+ through iiNet, instead of the pretty crappy wireless connection I was on before. This happened just in time for the start of the new season of Battlestar Galactica, which makes me a happy chappy. Also, it comes with a SIP protocol voice-over-IP “line”, so I can finally make decent, cheap phone calls to you lovely people. It also has a ‘landline’ style number attached to it, so you can call that, and it automatically puts it through to my cellphone over Wi-Fi, if I’m at home. Technology is just too damn cool sometimes.

8bit doco: I went to see the documentary, “8-bit: a documentary about art and videogames” at the ACMI. It was very entertaining, and featured people playing original music live on Nintendo Gameboys and interviews with some pretty lively people, including Bodenständig 2000, of the infamous album “Maxi German Rave Blast Hits 3″. Fantastic.

NGV #1: Got bored one Sunday so thought I’d go and see the Sidney Nolan exhibit at the National Gallery of Victoria, because Caroline said I should. I managed to find the NGV, but there was no sign of Mr Nolan’s work. Turns out there are two NGV galleries, one for international art, and one for local. I’d gone to the international one. I did however see a very good exhibit of stetches done by a WWI german soldier, of the war. (Caroline, you’d better get over here to study them, i’m sure it’s vital to your thesis ). They also had part of the exhibit on the use of black in fashion. I appreciated the lounge version of Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” they had playing over the sound system

Funky night out: Went out with Becca for a night out, saw a funk band at Bar Open. The hippy saxophone player at one point pulled out and played a small harp. Cool. Then went to the Night Cat, which was a big club, with a big funk band placed right in the middle, with people around them on all sides. Becca managed to attract a fair amount of attention from the opposite sex (which she didn’t particuarly want). This is a trick I need to learn!

New albums: Nine Inch Nails have put out a full album, entirely for free, online. It’s really good too, and licenced under a Creative Commons licence, so you can distribute it, remix etc to your heart’s content. They just get it, and it’s great
Cripple Mr Onion FINALLY managed to release their LP, “Antigravity”. And it’s totally kicking my ass right now. I’ve listened to it right through probably 10 times already Having gone to their live shows for years, I’m glad this has finally seen the light of day.

Stuff with Anna/Makoto: Finally managed to catch up with these two recently… went to see “Iron Man” at the local Hoyts – was entertaining in an overblown Hollywood kind of way. Had dinner with them at an Italian restaurant down Lygon Street – there’s pretty much a whole couple of blocks which is nothing but Italian restaruants, with the various owners etc standing outside, trying to entice you inside their particular establishment with special deals, etc. It’s something you kind of have to mentally prepare for. I then took them out to a few different bars/clubs around, as they’d not seen many. Went to Section 8 (the shipping container one), Manchuria (the opium-den style coctail one) and the Carlton Hotel (the life sized stuffed Emu one)

NGV #2: Went to the Sidney Nolan exhibit with Anna and Makoto on Sunday, as well as a couple of friends of theirs, Pete and Gina, who are also NZers who have just moved here. (Side note, I still haven’t really befriended any actual Australians, and doesn’t anyone have any friends who are single??). The exhibition was very good, took up a good couple of hours just to see the Nolan works. Man, the guy was prolific.

On a sadder note, a friend of mine from high school passed away last night after being in intensive care after being hit by a car. I didn’t know him extemely well, but I knew he was a gentle and kindhearted soul. My thoughts go out to his wife and family.