Rainbow Serpent

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

We finally managed to go to the Rainbow Serpent festival, and I have to say it was one of the best, if not THE best parties I've ever been to.
The crew list was as follows: Joe, Sean, Nick, Kathryn, Kim and Vanessa (friends of Nick), and as per our usual crews, everyone was as silly as humanly possible :)
We had a good camp setup, with Joe, Sean and I having a tent each, so it was definitely Camp Comfort :)
The gig itself was awesome, some simply fantastic music, great visuals, great staging.
There were lots of silly shenanigans, brides stripping down to their underwear, guys in suits with clipboards checking the quality of the sand and tsk-tsk-ing then moving on to another spot, lots of people with wings, crazy hats, gorilla masks, everything you would want.
Friday night was fun, Saturday afternoon good, Saturday night simply awesome, mind numbingly fabulous music, Sunday morning was great, superb techno rolling into a fun Sunday afternoon.
Basically, it was good, I liked it a lot, will be going again, wish I was still there :)

Australia Day

run bec run!
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

This year Australia day was an absolute scorcher, so we had to make sure wherever we went, it was well air conditioned.
The location of choice was Felicite and Deans place, where they promised us a BBQ and a chilled lounge room.
It was a great day, hanging out with Joe, Felicite, Bec, Steph, Sarah, Paul and Dean. Dean 'took one for the team' and cooked the BBQ out in the 40 degree heat, which was especially arduous since their aircon also exhausts it's air straight under the BBQ. We all did a stint out there to keep him company, and it was bloody hot :)
It's always a lot of fun to hang out with these guys, as they are just plain silly.
For example, after it cooled down a little, the girls went exploring on the roof outside the apartment, running across it and going down into a sunken air conditioning vent and pretending it was a pool, popping their heads up as if swimming and diving, making us all crack up.

Mudgutz meetup

mini meet
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Sunday was slated for a meetup with DJ Mudgutz, and given the excessive heat (40+ C)we had to take some special precautions. The original meet-point was Transport at federation square, because it's easy to meet at and very well air-conditioned, although the drinks are expensive, especially on this day since the beer taps weren't functioning :)
After some discussion we decided to try E55 as we knew it was cheap, and it was bound to be relatively cold, being underground.
All was going well, we were joined by some more friends and were having a bit of a drink and a bit of a surf and so forth.
The drinking and surfing was interrupted when the lights went out.
At first everyone just laughed, we'd all heard that there had been brown-outs throughout the warm weather and just put it down to that, at least for the first 10 minutes. Most of the guys got their cameras out and were flashing away up until one of the bartenders asked s2art to stop because it was really annoying :) and I see his point, trying to fix a problem at work in the pitch dark and all you get is constant flashes :)
We ended up having to relocate and made our way to The Elephant and Wheelbarrow, which is nasty, but they had decent food and good A/C :)
By the time we finished up the cool change had come through and the wind was blowing a gale through town. Melbourne :)

Berley's Birthday

Kim's new skates
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Berley's Birthday

As Saturday was Kim's birthday, Rik had made arrangements to have a surprise visit to go roller skating with a bunch of friends. Kim had just received a new pair of Nike hockey skates for her birthday and still hadn't realised that this meant she was going skating on the day as well :)

The skating was a lot of fun to watch, and the rink was very well air-conditioned, which is a bonus on such a hot day, and I managed to get a bunch of good photos.

After the skating we all went back to Rik and Kim's house to hang out, play a little XBOX Karaoke (hilarious) and soak up their extremely good air-conditioning. Dave cooked up a storm on the BBQ and the kids had a bit of a frolic in the spa but I was happy to just be in a very cold room on a very hot day :)

Friday fun and Games

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Another Friday rolled around and I was up for something a bit bigger than just sitting around a bar drinking, so Kathryn, Nick and I decided to hit a club. Nick got on the phone to a friend to get a recommendation and we ended up going to a club called CBD for their 3D night. An interesting mix of music, with one floor doing Hard Trance, one floor doing Happy House and one floor doing Psy Trance. SO you get two floors of candy kid ravers with their reflective phat pants and coloured beads and one floor of dread-locked hippies and mushroom and tribal decorations. Kinda weird mix, but it seemed to work :)
We stayed until about 5ish and then went back to Kathryn's place to crash on the couch and watch a little TV. A good night overall, had a lot of fun and took some cool photos. :)

Return to Work - The Late Shift

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Well, I'm back at work this week, and manage to get the late shift for my first week back.

It's annoying having to work until 9pm, but at least it gives me the opportunity to wander the streets at night looking for nice shots.

Kapoomga 06

crazy silhouette time
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Well, after a very long hiatus, Camp Kapoomga has finally returned.
This event started out with a bunch of guys from KPMG and their friends going away for a crazy boys weekend of meat eating, beer drinking, and audio visual creativity. Kapoomgas of the past had grown to the point where we had literally vanloads of gear, multiple video editing systems, 20 channel audio mixers, professional video mixers, a five to eight piece band and a full sized PA system.

The problem with this is that you end up with so much gear that it takes a few hours to setup, and a few hours to packdown and you spend a few hundred dollars on gear every time, just to basically have a boozy weekend. All that effort means that it gets harder and harder to organise and we end up going for a couple of years without an event.

This year the decision was taken to return to the core of the event, friends, booze, meat. We went for a minimal approach, two computers, two projectors, one DVD player, one CD player, only about 60 DVDs, 4 cameras, equipment tents, outdoor projection screens, internet connectivity and the band joining us via video-conference from Darwin.

The simplified version worked very well and the costs were kept to a minimum, allowing more meat and booze to be purchased :)

Summer Holidays - Part 5

as the sun sets behind the pelaco sign
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Finally got off my ass and took some photos. I originally planned to go shoot some nightshots after going to the movies with George, but then I realised when I came out (saw Fun with Dick and Jane, pretty good) that it was still light, so I took some sunset and rooftop abstracts instead, got some nice shots in about 30 minutes and felt a lot better for having finally done something creative in my holidays :)

Summer Holidays - Part 4

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Went to see Garden State at the Moonlight Cinema with Kathryn, Leah and Leah's friend Emma, and it was a lot of fun.

If you haven't seen Garden State before, I would strongly recommend it. For some reason I didn't manage to see it at the cinemas and had to wait for it to come out on DVD and was very happy to finally get a chance to see it on a big screen. It's not really a big screen film, but it was nice to see it in large scale anyway. This is a very funny movie, and probably one of Natalie Portman's best performances, although her role in Beautiful Girls was also excellent.

Moonlight Cinema is a bit of fun, making an evening picnic out of going to see a movie, but don't get sucked into buying the 'Gold Grass' seats. We had a spot slightly better than theirs, had more room to spread out, were still able to hire the same bean bag chairs (half of which have too many beans in them and are therefore not comfortable) and we didn't have to pay $30 a seat.

Summer Holidays - Part 3 - Alive 5

Intelligent Design
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Time for another aLive gig at The Retreat Hotel in Brunswick. Lots of really good music, especially Becy's set which just blew me away.
Also a lot of craziness as is the usual situation with aLive.

One thing that set this one apart was that I didn't get so hammered as to start gibbering like an idiot, so I even managed to jump a train home at about 9pm, after only consuming a great deal of beer :)

Summer Holidays - Part 2

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

I also spent some time over the holidays hanging out with Kathryn. She had Nathan staying with her from Sydney for a week so we went to the Aquarium to have a bit of a squiz at the giant squid. Diana also joined us for a tour of the fish palace, I think we're all just big kids at heart :)

It was pretty crowded being School Holidays, but for the most part it wasn't a problem, just meant it took a little longer to get through it than normal :)

I got a few shots of the giant squid they have frozen in ice, although I don't know if it's real or not, since I remember something from a museum tour while I was a little kid where the curators told us that it's almost impossible to preserve a fish via taxidermy so they usually make fiberglass moulds and paint the appropriately, and shipping a big squid around in a huge block of ice seems a bit weird, but who knows, it might be real. Anyway, I blogged a photo of a jellyfish instead of a squid because I love taking photos of jellyfishes :)

Summer Holidays - Part 1

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Well, ok, so I've been on holidays and was far to slack to keep up to date with the blog :)

The majority of the time has been spent at home loafing around, watching a lot of Foxtel, playing with my new Playstation that I bought myself (yeah, I know, like about 3 years too late, but what can you do) and surfing the net.

Didn't really get out and take tonnes of photos like I thought I would, although this first week did include a bit of a trip to the Night Markets at The Queen Victoria Market.

Pretty interesting, lots and lots of fantastic food of all varieties from thai calamari to crocodile burgers, and heaps of handicraft stalls, similar to what you see down at St Kilda. I'd recommend it to anyone, even though it's finished now, but keep an eye out for it for next year :)

Summadayze

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Another year, another season of dance parties, starting with the traditional pilgrimage to The Sidney Myer Music Bowl for Summadayze.
Most of the parties through the year are events where you go to listen to somebody special, trying to hear the latest and coolest tracks, learning what's new and trying to ride the cutting edge without getting razor burn.
Summadayze is not like that, it's not about the latest music, it's about the biggest party, big tracks and anthems, stuff that everyone knows the words to, and just having a great big pile of fun. This year saw 20,000+ people jammed into the bowl, many of them forced to scramble for cover in the middle of the afternoon to escape the rain, while the rest of us were packed like sardines into the undercover section, dancing to our hearts content. One of the highlight acts was Fat Boy Slim, who played a fairly decent party set, and that meant that Dan, Cathy, Mick and Steph came along to the event as well as our usual crew of dance-bunnies :)
The event was pretty good in itself, but one of the highlights was meeting up with Becy, Ben, Emma and crew down at Becy's hotel room after the gig (the went to Sunshine People, a cutting edge NYD party) and spending a few hours talking crap and trying to guess what films Joe hadn't seen. Trust me, it was funny at the time :)

NYE

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Due to the fact that a bunch of us were going to Summadayze on New Years Day, we decided to have a small party at our house on New Years Eve. Well, the small party kicked on until about 4am and because it was so hot I didn't get more than 3 hours sleep, but that's the way it works out sometimes :)