Two Tribes

Candy Kids going off tap :)
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

It was time again for the Annual excursion to Two Tribes at Melbourne Park. Again this year the event covered Rod Laver arena and Vodafone arena and the area between them, as well as rooms in the Cafe and Conference centre, a total of 8 stages and heaps of international DJs. I got a Media pass from ITM which was basically a free VIP pass, so that was a bit of fun to walk around with, and even better, one of our all-time favourite DJs Elektra won the ProDJ competition and had a DJ set at Two Tribes. She was pretty stoked, and played an awesome set, as always.
Two Tribes was huge and crazy as always, people everywhere, everyone dressed up to the max and everyone seeming to have lots of fun.

Lounge and Infusion

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

This weekend was shaping up to be a big one for the ITM crew with a bunch of out-of-towners coming down for Two Tribes, so there was a bit of a meetup at The Lounge on Friday to catch up with everyone. Suffice it to say that this turned rather quickly into a crazy drunken express train. I didn't stay too long for the shenanigans because I had to go shoot photos of one of my all-time favourite bands, Infusion.
This local group of three guys won an ARIA for their recent album and has been touring the US and Europe very successfully. It was an awesome gig and I really enjoyed myself, especially since I got in for free! :)

Beach blanket bingo

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Another beach party down at Elwood, with the usual crowd of ITM malcontents and reprobates. It was a good day, with some excellent music, and ended up fairly early, which was good because it was also very tiring :)

combination

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Friday drinks, combining flickr and work friends, along with that all important 'work funded' portion of the evening. Lots of funny shenanigans ensued :)

model behaviour

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

This afternoon the Victorian Finals of the Miss Universe contest were held in QV. It's an interesting process to go and watch, for a pageant that is solely judged on beauty (talent, intelligence, etc, they're not interested), they certainly didn't seem to be able to judge beauty very well. The girls they chose for the finalists were mostly very attractive, but there were a couple that were honestly not particularly attractive. Of course there were a few that were simply stunning.

multi-party

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Saturday was one of those nights that are becoming very frequent lately, where we have multiple parties on one night. The start of the evening was Leah's housewarming/birthday party out in Maribyrnong. This was an interesting party, since Leah's housemate is a police officer, we ended up with a party that had 6 people from Leah's side (Leah, her boyfriend Graeme, me, Joe, Kathryn and Diana) and then the other 10 people were pretty much young female police officers. :)
The next part we attended was at ABar in prahran, where some of our usual crew of ITMers were congregating to listen to a friend DJ and check out a new club night. That was a bit of fun for a while, and then we decided to head into the city to get some Electro fun at the Mercat Cross hotel. We arrived just in time to hear Luke McD starting his set, and spent the next few hours being forced to groove to Luke, Luko, and Pro Tool pump out some seriously good tunes. Afterwards we went back to Ryan's place (because it was very close, and we were very tired) and hung out for a bit before heading home to sleep the sleep of the dead :)

alcohol driven

pretend I'm saying something funny
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

I guess sometimes it seems like my life is fuelled by alcohol. Friday was another of those times, drinking with a mixed group of ITM and Flickr friends, laughing and joking around, then Kerryn and I went on a little drunken photowalk. I know from past times that it's still a lot of fun without drinking, but it's also a lot of fun when you are drinking :) There's certainly a lot more jokes, the ones that are only funny when you're brain isn't working properly :)

Sandy

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Sandy was in town for a few days so I went to meet up with her and Kate at Polly in Fitzroy. It was good to see them both again, especially Sandy as I hadn't seen her for many months, but I also hadn't seen Kate for ages either. As such, Kate actually gave me my birthday present while I was there, which was a very cool AFI yearly membership, which means cheap movie tickets, access to special screenings, and being able to vote in the AFI awards. It's pretty cool stuff :) It was great to see Sandy again and have

flickrmeet

meta meta meta
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

What is it about flickr meetups that makes them always occur after a big night out? I can't remember the last official meetup I went to that I was sober when I arrived. Maybe the first one. granted i've never been sober when I left, but that's a different story :)
The february meetup was help at The Standard hotel in Fitzroy, and was frequented by a number of new people and even a foreigner or two :)

Carl Cox

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Saturday night it was time to hit The Metro for the much awaited Carl Cox gig. Carl Cox is one of the grand masters of dance music, has been a world class DJ for decades and is still capable of creating a fantastic set of music. There had been some concern early on about my ability to take the camera into this gig and use it to shoot photos for ITM, as the promoters, Hardware, have a policy of no media access except their own house photographer, and had already denied ITM a media pass, so it was possible that I wasn't even going to get the camera in, and I definitely wasn't going to be able to blag better access to the DJs once I was in.
We hit the gig in good time, Joe, Nettsu (Michael) and myself and didn't get any hassles at the door. Once we actually showed up at the gig I started to worry less, as the security was being run by the same guys who did it for the TIGA gig, and I knew they'd recognise me and Joe from previous events. Once We were inside the gig it was a bit early and there wasn't much of a crowd gathering, so we did a quick once-around to see where the various stages were set up and then settled into the main room near the bar and started drinking :)
We were joined shortly thereafter by some other friends, Ashley from work, Trashy from ITM, and Fee (Fiona) and her friend Brina, who are old friends of DJ Mudgutz's (pictured above).
The music on the night was excellent, with a room thumping performance by Honeysmack and a huge set by the man himself Carl Cox. I was taking it fairly easy, still being on call, and spent a little bit of time wandering around taking shots, trying to at least get some decent shots of Carl Cox and also a few of Luke McD who was DJing upstairs in the Electro lounge portion of the gig. Poor Luke got the same timeslot as Carl Cox, so there was not that many people in the room while he was playing except a few dedicated Electro freaks :)
After the gig we were all a bit tired, so Joe, Brina, Fee and I headed back to Fee's place in Carlton to crash and talk crap, which was really good, we were cracking each other up consistently until my pager went off and I had to pop home to sort something out. Fee even gave me a lift as they had to go sort out some stuff in the city :)

Alive Alive-o

twice as fun, for twice as long
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Well, another month another episode of Alive.

This one had the usual mix of great music, crazy shenanigans and meeting new people. The music a these gigs just keeps getting better and better, I think every Alive I've been too has had better music than the last, usually from the same artists just pushing and pushing even more, and this was no exception. I don't think there was one moment all afternoon when I wasn't moving to the music, and some points when all conversation stops and everyone looks over to the 'dj' area in awe. (not that they are actually playing records, so not really DJing). The shenanigans were up to scratch, with Becy getting her book of stupid pick-up lines back off Ryan, Sally modelling a plaque stating "twice as fun, for twice as long" on her chest, and Ryans girlfriend Liz showing that she can actually touch underneath her chin with her tongue. The new people met this time were two of Sally's friends who were actually at Rainbow, we just didn't see them, some mates of Becy's from Sydney and Ryan's girlfriend Liz. Just a fantastic time as always.

The next alive is being held in conjunction with the Screw Crew and will be held on a boat, can't wait for that one. :)

Yak and Docklands

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Friday saw a return to old fashioned values by having a few drinks at Yak with Kathryn, Leah and a few of the guys from Kathryn's team. It was a fairly low key scenario, as they weren't drinking that heavily and I was On Call. The highlight of the time at Yak was teasing Kathryn about her meeting up with Anyhony whom she met at Rainbow Serpent. Friday was their second date, after a lunch date during the week. Anthony is pretty cool, so I stayed around until he'd been there a bit before saying my goodbyes, to help give Kathryn some support (as I am the only other person there he knew) and to not seem like I was leaving as soon as he showed up.
After Yak I took a bit of a trip down to docklands to see if I could get some shots and to see if any of the boats from the Volvo world race were in port. I got some great sunset shots and managed to see the boats, although it was too dark by that stage to get any decent shots of them.

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 :)