Re-Hash Trash

Stalker
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

On the way to Famous I got a call form one of the Messy Creations guys about a warehouse party they were having in Kensington.
Off I popped in a cab, found the elusive street, walked through a very dark industrial estate, wandered in and amongst workshops and factories and train yards and earth moving machines to finally discover an oasis of light and music.
The warehouse itself was a large space, decorated like nothing I have ever seen. Rooms made up by a small caravan and cushions stuck to the wall, the DJ booth made out of an old Valiant, shadow sculptures made out of old bicycle parts. Even just describing it again now is making me wonder at how they came up with such inventiveness.
The music was awesome, a real breath of fresh air from the commercialism of Famous. Favourites like Colonel Mustard and Nicnac, and new faves like Toupee generated some fantastic tunage, and the crowd really got into it. It was especially nice to see more and more people I knew showing up as the night went on, until there were heaps of friendly faces. It was one of those random organic nights that just showed up and turned out to be a wonderful experience. Thanks Messy. :)

Famous

Stalker
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Finally got a chance to get down and visit Melbourne's newest super club - Famous. Future Entertainment have renovated the old Queensbridge Hotel and reopened it as a regular weekly club. My editor Sara, from itm, was keen to get some shots down there and I was keen to check it out so down I popped.
I must say I got a heap of shots in a very short time, I even missed a happy snap in the time it took me to get my flash out of my bag and yet had another lined up by the time it switched on :)
Pretty good club with a lot of potential, without too much of the original QBH soul ripped out.

Farewell Bec

Farewell Bec
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

As an indicator of how up to date my blog is, here';s the entry about Bec going off on holidays to India, except she's almost due home again :)
We had a few drinks and some dinner to sned her off and all was well.
I was especially happy as we popped into the Italian Waiter's Club for dinner, which I absolutely love and do not go to anywhere near enough. If you like italian food and live in melbourne, go here.

Happy Birthday Joe

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Saturday was Joe's 30th Birthday and we celebrated in style. To mark the move out of his 20's he held a 1920's themed party and a huge number of people came in costume. There were flappers, gangsters, street urchins and prize fighters, even Charlie Chaplin made an appearance.
There were a few DJs playing, some of the usual crew, as well as Joe himself doing his debut set as a psy trance DJ, and doing a pretty good job too. There were people from flickr, inthemix, kpmg, they were coming out of the woodwork like crazy :)
Even the birthday cupcakes had little picture of Joey on them. it was crazy fun :)

Data on Dub

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Friday night we popped into The Espy for the Data on Dub showcase (part 1).
Pretty good party from some of Melbourne's best minimal DJs, with some fantastic pops and squeaks. Really good stuff.

Gino's

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

When I worked at Melbourne CAE and Melbourne Uni we would regularly go and get Pizza on Lygon st, in fact there was a point in time where that's what we had for lunch every single day, and there was a few years where every Friday was pizza with the other non-academic staff at the CAE.
During this time we sampled every pizza place on Lygon st, an area renowned for having the best Italian food in Melbourne.
Without a doubt in my mind, the best pizza place on Lygon is, was, and probably always will be Papa Gino's.
On Tuesday a bunch of the old crew hit up Gino's for dinner. Damn it's good pizza. :)

Push

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Popped into the White Bar @ Push to see Fifi and Elektra, and they managed to drag us off to Revolver as well. We normally try to avoid that place like the plague that most likely inhabits its bathrooms, however with the right crew, and at the right time (post post post munted crazies in the morning) it turned out to be not too bad. :)

Pyjama Jarmi Jam!

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

DJ's in their PJs!
Cuznmatt's Pyjama party has finally come to fruition. The Pyjama Jarmi Jam, held at Acemorning and featuring DJs in their PJs.
Very funny night, met some new peeps and saw some old peeps and generally had a bit of a dance to some good music and a bit of a laugh at some dodgy PJs. Funny stuff.

inthemix50

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Popped in to the inthemix50 party at Room680 for a few hours this Friday. A really great party where the winners of the Technics inthemix top 50 were announced and some of the top 50 DJs spun a few tracks.
Lots of beautiful people just out to have fun. Normally this generates a lot of idiots, but for some reason this didn't happen here. Not sure why but I'm really happy it occurred.

Happy Birthday Felicite

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Sharon's School Disco meant that we couldn't make it to Felicite's birthday dinner, so we all went to The Windsor Castle for some sunday arvo drinks.
I'm glad we got to catch up with Felicite and Dean, as they are some of the nicest people I know. Funny and quirky and just all around good people. :)

p.s.: the food at The Windsor Castle is fantastic. Highly recommended.

School Disco

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Time for a private party this time, and it was Sharon's School Disco with all the regular crew dressed in their best uniforms.
It was a lot of fun and everyone seemed to have a bit of a laugh. I won't mention the whole schoolgirl fantasy thing, but the winner or the evening was Amelia who wore her actual original school uniform. :)

140

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Friday night after the shoot, Joey, Marcus and I went to 140 @ 3D nightclub. The club is always interesting, as they usually have three different styles of music across the three floors, often they are even different events like they were this time.
Downstairs was "Brad's Birthday" playing hard trance, level 2 was "140" playing trance and techno and upstairs was "Psychotic Episode" playing psy trance.
It was a great night, with good music on each floor and a strong contingent of people making an appearance on each floor. I also got a chance to meet some more of the local DJs i've been keen to meet like JulesPlees (i'd met him, but I wasn't sober enough), Ben Evans and Steve Strangis.

Wedding Shoot

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

I got another paid shoot this week, another wedding via someone on inthemix.com.au, this time it was phunkdust's brother's wedding.
It was really good to shoot on behalf of another photographer because all I had to do was shoot the pictures and he did all the post processing :) easey peasey.
I shot the whole lot in RAW and was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't that much harder to work post. I'd still need some significantly larger memory cards to do it for club events, but I really loved being able to control the white balance and exposure in all the shots before opening in photoshop.

Technoir

Rave Love - Stage 3 - Impregnation
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

The second party on Saturday night was a much different affair. The latest installment of Technoir, held in a warehouse in Coburg, harking back to the old rave days where it's BYO alcohol and everyone is friendly and there to have fun. Lots of great music (it's Technoir after all), heaps of silly shenanigans, and just a really nice party.

Vermillion

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Saturday brought a couple of very different and very interesting parties. The first one was Vermillion, held at the upmarket strip club Spearmint Rhino. Elektra played as well as Luke McD but the highlight was the floor shows, put on by a couple of very good dance troupes, that included some great burlesque, some very advanced pole dancing, members of the audience being dragged up for sexy dancing on stage and a group of very cute girls who dressed as various male fantasy models, cheerleaders, nurses, schoolgirls etc.
At one point I ran into one of Vanessa's friends, Elise, and she asked if I got paid for this sort of thing. I only had to gesture to the 12 hot girls dancing on stage a few feet away to indicate that it wasn't really necessary. :)

Lectro: Pirates of Porn

Elektra
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Another installment of Lectro, this one centered on Pirates and Porn, the mainstays of the Internet.
This time the party was taken to Room680 and Lectro managed to fill the place quite well. A very successful party from a crew who are really going places.

Happy Birthday Kerryn

Princess Kerryn is crowned
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Playing a bit of catch-up on the blog here so bear with me :)

The day after the boat party we went to Bridie O'Reilley's on Chapel St to help celebrate Kerryn's birthday. It was a lot of fun, even though Joe and I were still a bit tired form the day before, but it was good to spend some quality time with Kezza and Elli and meet some of Kerryn's friends, her new flatmate, and to finally meet Elli's boyfriend Jake.

boat party madness

Joe is, er, distracted
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Hooray for the Screw crew's boat parties, simply one of the best parties in existence. These parties are definitely the most fun that can be had on any boat, anywhere, any time, up to and including being a Guest Star on The Love Boat and having a love interested with Judy, your cruise director (or Isaac, your bartender, if that's more your style).
The parties are a fairly well kept secret, in that you have to know someone involved to get tickets, and they sell out fairly quickly, so you know it's only going to be good people who are interested in having fun and not a bunch of idiots :) Just good people having a great time dancing to some fantastic DJs.
The after party was also pretty cool, although I was very messy by the time I got there so I think the less said the better. I will say that I was so drunk that when I ordered Smirnoff Ice at the after party and was told they didn't stock it, I managed to stuff up my order of the equivalent Skyy vodka drink that I ended up with Skyy vodka and pink grapefruit and didn't notice until I was nearly finished, despite another friend telling me a few times that I was drinking a 'girlie' drink and laughing at me. :)

Puma shoot

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Joe and I got an email from our photo editor at inthemix, looking for someone to shoot the launch of Puma's spring women's collection in Melbourne.
It was a fairly easy shoot, and a quick way to make some money, although it was kind of weird shooting people who were basically shopping :)

Ski trip 2006

overhand
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Well, another year's ski trip has come and gone :)
This year the snow was a bit light on, but we had enough mostly for our purposes. The summit area was closed the entire time, in fact I don't believe they've had it open at all this year, they'd also sent a lot of their staff home, as there wasn't enough work for all the towies and instructors. At one stage in the week we'd heard that Hotham had just closed down, as they're run out of their water allotment and couldn't make any more snow to keep the runs open. There was a big dump of snow the next night so they were probably pretty thankful. One of the advantages of Falls Creek (where we were) is that most of its ski area is on the edge of a lake, meaning that water can be drawn from that lake for making snow and any melt or runoff will flow straight back into that lake. I suspect this means that water used on those slopes for snowmaking doesn't count towards their water allotment to as great an extent and is the difference between a resort almost closing and only having one run open, and a resort doing well and having half the mountain open.
So the snow was pretty good, where it was, and we were able to ski every day. Except I only skied half days, and didn't ski at all on the day it was pelting down snow and rain, because, frankly, i'm over that ;)
Skiing was a lot of fun, as it usually is, you can tell because we often end up the run and meet at the lift queue and everyone has a huge smile on their face, and nobody has to say anything.
Apart form the skiing the time was spent in the usual ways, drinking a bit, talking a bit of crap, playing dice and card games, watching a few dvds, eating a lot (we eat very well, and there's no shortage of good food), and of course 'entertaining' the kids (read: torturing)
A very restful week overall, lots of good skiing, loads of relaxation, not as much alcohol as normal, heaps of home cooked meals. awesome :)