All of this week's photos were taken with a non-digital film camera.
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I heard there was going to be a big free festival in my area this week, called the "St Kilda Festival", which was rumoured to be the largest single-day music event in Australia. Three hundred thousand people go to the "St Kilda Festival". So I thought to myself, "I'd better go to that, otherwise I'd be really missing out." It's an annual thing and there are always some good bands playing – I don't usually get to see bands in the daytime. It's a special occasion.
So I went down there, and the first thing I noticed was, it was very crowded. When I walk through the crowd, it's sometimes hard to go fast because there's so many people in the way. But it's still okay, because the people look really nice and so, being in a crowd of nice-looking people is like being surrounded with nice-ness. There were several stages with bands playing –- one on the street, one in the park, one next to the beach, and they were playing all different sorts of music like jazz and funk and rock and hip-hop and the rest.
There are also food-stalls. I bought the most delicious thing for lunch – it was like a hamburger, but instead of beef, it had chicken. I put lots of tomato sauce on it and ate it while I sat on the grass listening to Killing Heidi. And then, when I was nearly finished it, I went back for more sauce.
Ella Hooper, the lead singer of Killing Heidi (I took this from a long distance)
The festival covered a wide area of St Kilda, and in one corner there was a large group of people dancing to rave music. Some of them were waving at their friends with drink-bottles in their hands, others were wearing triangular Chinese-style hats. Also, on the main stage at three o'clock there was this rap-group called Downsyde, from Perth, and when they were playing, the crowd waved their wrists up and down with the music with their hands up in the air, sometimes, 'cause that's what you do when you're listening to rap music.
But it wasn't all high-energy dancing-style entertainment. One of the best performances of the day, in my memory, was by a lady named Lisa Miller who played mellow easy-listening songs which were sort of country, but in a good way. She had this t-shirt on which said "Jaws" on the front, and she said the reason she was wearing it was because it almost rhymes with "No War". I really like Lisa Miller. Her singing voice, especially.
Lisa Miller
There were also rides. There was the "Cha Cha" ride, the "Top Gun" ride, the "Dodgem Cars", and several others – I only went on one, called the "Break Dance" ride. It has this thing where the cars spin around, and the whole thing spins around as well, on a tilted plane. It was fun at first, but to be honest I got a little dizzy towards the end with all the spinning.
A lot of people were sitting on a sloped grass area, watching some guys on motorcycles doing jumps. They went very high, and while they were up there, they did tricks like taking their legs and hands off the bike. It looked dangerous, but no one got hurt. Not while I was watching, anyway.
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The second-last band to play on the main stage was a famous one called Motor Ace. By this time the crowd was so thick around the stage, I never would've been able to get to the front. But that didn't really matter because I don't care much about Motor Ace, and if I had entered the most active part of the crowd with all the moshing and crowd-surfing, my camera might've got stepped on or something. The headline act was called Dan Brodie And The Broken Arrows – that band are just a little bit famous but I don't like them much 'cause they're sort of country, but in a bad way. I wasn't even sure if I should stick around for them.
But you know, sometimes the best things can happen in the most unlikely of times. I did stick around and listen to Dan Brodie And The Broken Arrows, and I noticed there were three girls nearby who were dancing around so enthusiastically, you'd think they were on some sort of drug to give them extra enthusiasm. Sometimes they even hugged eachother and stuff. So I watched them.
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Towards the end of the music, I noticed one of the girls was making eye-contact with me, perhaps noticing that I was appreciating the music. And then, she came over and bounced up and down next to me while she looked at me. So I bounced up and down too, to show her that I was a fun-loving kinda guy. Later, she encouraged me to keep dancing, and I did, and she was going "wooooooo!" and stuff. In the last song, she danced next to me again and she yelled at me happily while she was dancing, like "Aaaaaaaa!" and so I said "Aaaaaa!" and she went "Aaaaaa!" and I went "Aaaaaaaaaaaa!" and then we danced some more. At the end, when the music was finished, she said to me, "You only live once", and I said "Yes." She was such a nice girl. I never did get her name.
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I went for a walk up the pier by myself. It was the end of the night and some people were going home, some people were going to night-clubs, and some people were twirling fire-sticks on the beach. The carnival-workers were starting to pack up the rides. I watched as some of them packed up the "Top Gun" ride, and this one guy came along and stepped onto the platform at the front of the ride and he asked his friends to catch him as he jumped off the platform. But some of them were kind of reluctant to catch him because they were too busy having their own conversations. So it took a while for him to persuade them to come over, and the carnival-workers were getting annoyed with him 'cause he was in the way. But eventually, he did jump off the platform and his friends caught him in their arms, and everyone was happy.
The next day, I went out to the cinema and saw a movie, it was called Bowling For Columbine and it was a documentary about how America is really stupid and everything. In America, a lot of people get guns and shoot eachother – and the reason is, because they're so scared of eachother. Gun violence is much less of a problem in Canada, apparently, even though guns are just as freely available over there. When people see this movie, they would think, "Oh, it's so sad, about Americans. They're so stupid. But it's also kinda funny." And it is, you know – the documentary was made in a comedy style and the audience were laughing and laughing and laughing. This film was made my Michael Moore, the film-maker – he's really smart.
Television: Buffy the Vampire Slayer is back – this is my favourite show on television. "Buffy" is played by Sarah Michelle Gellar – she's really good looking, but my favourite character is Willow 'cause she's so cute and she's got a multi-layered personality. There's a lot of violence and scary stuff on this show – I really like the lighting. And as well as being deep and meaningful, it's also funny. I heard that this is going to be the last series – I bet they've got some really big plot-developments planned for this year. I'm glad I'm not a vampire slayer – I wouldn't last five minutes.
Karaoke:
This Wednesday I went to the karaoke and sang the song "Why Don't You Get A Job", by the Offspring. If you know this song, you might know that it starts with just the vocal, and then the drums come in for about six bars, and then the rest of the instruments come in. So it's really hard to sing it karaoke – you have to kinda guess at the pitch and the tempo at the beginning. But I got it about right, by a stroke of luck. And I sang it so well, that one person came up to me later and said how much they liked it.
Reading:
I'm reading this book called "Rock n Roll Babes From Outer Space" by Linda Jaivin. I stopped reading it for a while but now I've started again. It's about these aliens who come to earth with the intention of having a good time and having sex with earth people and forming a band. So it's kind of science fiction but there's not much scientific about it – it's more of a romantic comedy. I like the way it's about poor people and the live music scene. It's an Australian book, published in 1996. If I was going to write a book, it would be something like this. Oh it's not that good. I mean, it's not deep – it's light and frivolous.
Live Music:
On Tuesday night I went out to see a band called Disasterware whom I'd seen at the St Kilda Festival. It was a free gig at the Evelyn Hotel. The band played two sets, and they really played well – it was hip-hop music with all-live instruments, female singing and a bit of male rapping here and there. The audience was small and unresponsive. It's surprising, that such a great band would not be more popular with the punters – I hope to dance to them one day, that would be fun.
