Monthly Archives: March 2007

Weird Al!!!

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I’m sure I did some other stuff today, but mainly it was all killing time until the Weird Al gig at the Enmore Theatre.

Oh, one mention to a Swiss guy in my dorm who gave me some pointers on his country for The Walk, such as the fact that I can’t walk through any of the road tunnels, but that most have fairly direct hiking tracks over the top of them. His name’s Bernie – if you can’t figure out why this is a great name for a Swiss guy, check out that list of capital cities in your encyclopaedia.

Back to the main feature. I’ve waited something like 16 years to see this guy play live. If I remember correctly, I picked up a copy of one of his albums in a discount store in Newcastle when I was still at school. Then I spent an age tracking down all his older stuff. Heck, when I was younger and had long hair, I looked like his love child. Scary, indeed.

The thing is, to the best of my knowledge he’s never toured the UK. He certainly hasn’t as long as I’ve been on the lookout. I don’t know how often he plays in Oz, but the number and location of tour dates here is impressive. I’m glad to say that the show’s as funny as I’d hoped, though there seemed to be some mic problems – but these things happen.

This is the first seated concert I’ve been to in a really long time. The Apollo in Manchester started removing the seats pre-gig once the realised that replacing the damaged ones after every gig was more expensive than uprooting them and storing them safely for the duration. I was in S-5 which sounds bad, but wasn’t actually too far back.

The lights dimmed. The announcer announced.

And some comedian from Byron Bay came on stage.

In fairness, he wasn’t bad. I suppose every act needs a warm-up and a comedian was a good choice for a Weird Al gig. Still, the crowd was baying for Al. The stand-up got a good send-off and a decent applause (deservedly – he was quite funny) and then everyone sat around for another fifteen minutes.

At last.

Lights down again. Videos on big projector screens. The sound of an accordion… and Al!

The set must have lasted two hours, perhaps a bit longer. There was no way he’d play every song people wanted, but the selection was top notch. A handful of full length tracks was followed by a very long medley of part-tracks involving on-stage costume changes as well as one or two lyrical updatings of previous parodies. The single verse of Headline News (Crash Test Dummies Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm) was fairly topical:

Once there was a girl who, drove around in limousines and didn’t wear her panties
Then one day she lost it, cut off all her hair and didn’t even have a reason
It had always been there

(somewhat inaccurate, but you get the point)

Of course we got Canadian Idiot complete with paper streamers exploding at the end; Fat with the huge “fat-suit”; Amish Paradise; Polkarama! with the original music videos in the background perfectly lyp-synced to the live stuff; Do I Creep You Out while Al “got jiggy with” several embarassed audience members; Smells Like Nirvana with no sign of a shotgun anywhere…

It was great. I’d say the only disappointment was that it didn’t last seven hours and contain everything he’s ever done. Yes, I’m greedy.

The between-set Al-TV videos which gave the cast time to change costumes varied from amusing to hilarious. Celine Dion, Madonna, Eminem, Keith Richards and more had the “fake interview” treatment, plus the video for Weasel Stomping Day and some parody healthy and safety infomercials.

That was pretty much the day. I ate for free when I got back – in fact I paid for one tin of beans all day. Thanks to the European contingent for leaving me to much free food! And whoever left the big Coles bag in the “free” section so I won’t be short of bread.

Looooooooong day

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I was up fairly early again as I’d been sleeping in someone’s lounge, so spent the first few waking hours in a semi-daze until I found somewhere to snooze for a while. A final BBQ lunch was washed down with definitely non-alcoholic beverages and one of my new friends gave me a lift back to Sydney – thank you Sam!

I had a great weekend, even if I was more exhausted after it than before! I won’t thank everyone simply as I’d miss someone out, and I don’t want to do that. So thank you all!

Back at the hostel I again met Sophie, Delphine and Jerome. They’d stayed on a day longer than expected with their train to Canberra early the next morning. Delphine and I decided to go to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner and – after some slightly not-quite-right directions – we eventually found it about a hundred metres from where we’d had dinner with Sophie’s parents.

Nestled next to Michael Jackson’s shoes, Elvis’s belt, some hand-written Sex pistols lyrics and a gazillion shiny commemorative 12″ discs we chowed down on some very nice food. The barbequeue sauce on my ribs and chicken was amongst the best I’ve ever tasted and we can both recommend the apple cobbler dessert.

We were more or less rolled out the door after our meal and somehow managed to drag our extended bellies back to the hostel by way of Hyde Park where we stopped to look at the war memorial and let a possum sniff our fingers.

Then I found out it was FA Cup night with three matches on ESPN one after the other. I was still awake when the French/Belgian contingent’s taxi arrived to take them to the train station!

With any luck I’ll catch up with them in Australia again, though our plans don’t work out at present. Still, mine’s always subject to change!

Back home! Kinda…

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Despite a lack of sleep and a definite non-lack of alcohol in my bloodstream, I got up around 9am to get another lift from Dave. He was visiting his parents then heading into Newcastle itself (via Gateshead). We stopped at a couple of signs so I could get my photo taken in this city with a second-hand name, and had a very brief walk around.

Newcastle is quite small and very expensive to buy property in. There are two beaches, some good surf, a KFC in an old bank building and a port. Dave’s dad regaled us of tales about his youth and described how the streets and buildings used to look. He’s a great old guy – wonderful to chat to for a while. The city’s fairly modern-looking in a seaside-town way and it’s nice to get a perspective on what it was like sixty years ago.

Coal is still shipped from Newcastle, by sea in huge tankers. Looking out from the coast there are dozens of these ships just floating there at anchor waiting to load up. There was a 25km drive from Newcastle to Swansea (where the resort was) and these vessels could be seen offshore right along the route. It was like a waterborne scene from Independence Day – they way they all just sat there quietly as if waiting for some kind of signal.


We also picked up Dave’s brother who’s a bit of an amateur photographer so hopefully some of the pics of me he’s taken will come out better than my self-portraits.

Lunch was back at the resort with a bunch of my new friends. I basically chalet-hopped for the two nights taking advantage of people’s hospitality – something that Aussies are overflowing with as I’ve already mentioned. I tried my best to chip in with food and beer so I don’t feel too guilty!

More partying occurred. Well I just had to make as big a dent in the alcohol stock as possible. It’s the done thing.

I believe karaoke was involved, but I don’t think I was among the guilty.

Free lifts rock

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The first thing to say today is another “thank you” to Rachel and Dave for being kind hosts, putting me up and for driving me from Canberra to Newcastle. It was a pretty enjoyable trip and the first time I’d seen the scenery as both times I’d used the buss between Sydney and Canberra I’d slept right through.

Dave pointed a load of things out and I spent a lot of time playing with their younger daughter. Both their kids are fantastic and it was a pleasure to meet them.

We dropped the sproglets off with Dave’s parents before grabbing some supplies and driving to the resort where we were staying. I was to meet up with a bunch of people I know from online who’d arranged a party/get-together. Beer was loaded into fridges, barbequeue food into eskies and people into chalets. Then the alcohol and the BBQ food was moved into the people.

I managed to find some Brown Ale at a bottle shop for a reasonable price and worked my way through it at a scary pace. I think I had a good night from what I’ve been told!

ACTually, I think I’ve been here before as well…

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An early morning after a good night out with the mad French and Belgian brigade. We also met up – very briefly – with Leon the Welshman who has appeared at the same hostel. I’ll see him again on Sunday with any luck.

The fully-laden walk down to the bus depot took less than fifteen minutes and I arrived in good time to get my bargain ($15) coach to Canberra. As seems traditional now, I slept for the duration of the trip and woke as we pulled into the station.

I realised on the way there that another cap had bitten the dust, though this time hopefully only temporarily. It seems I left it in Delphine and Sophie’s room, and Delphine’s promised to keep care of it until we cross paths again. I bought another one from a closing-down souvenir store as I got off the coach. A whole $2.50. Whoop.

In fairness, the cap I left in Sydney had really seen better – and much less smelly – days. Still, it’s served me well for almost six months so it’d be a shame to lose it!

Back in Canberra, I met Kat for a chat over lunchtime before strolling down to Parliament House. This is well worth the visit and if you come to Canberra, then make sure you don’t miss it.

There are free 45-minute tours starting every thirty minutes. The guide I had was great fun, knew her stuff and chucked plenty of trivia our way. The building itself is fascinating, even though it’s less than 20 years old. Essentially, the hill on which it was built was levelled, the building placed there, and the hill built back up on top of it. Weird.

Most of the parts of the building symbolise something. The water feature outside (currently waterless due to water restrictions) symbolises Australia in the middle of the sea. The pillars in the entry hall symbolise the European forebears – all the marble used in the hall is from various places in Europe. The red mosaic outside symbolises the Aboriginal beginnings of the area.

Heck, even the name of Australia’s capital – Canberra – is an Aboriginal word meaning “meeting place”. Much better than some of the other suggestions from which it was picked: “Kangaroo”, “Shakespeare” and “Federalium” (or something similar).

The building is made up of five different areas. The major ones are the central building, the senate wing and the representative wing. As a very rough equivalent, these are like the House of Lords and House of Commons in Westminster.

The House of Representatives is all done out in shades of green – Eucalyptus leaves being the inspiration. Many of the acts of ceremony here are similar to the uK parliament, such as the mace being carried in before the Speaker (it’s modelled on the UK one) and government and opposition being sat opposite one another.

Before voting begins on major decisions, MPs are given a “4-minute warning” to get from their offices into the House. In the old Parliament building, this was two minutes. To come up with the 4-minute limit, the oldest MP was placed in the furthest office and timed in his walk from there to his place in the House. He took three minutes, so the time allowed was set at slightly more than this.

A huge tapestry in the Great Hall is the second largest in the world. It’s based on a painting and the only recogniseable items in it are trees and a white cockatiel. And Halley’s Comet. This wasn’t in the original painting, but it was visible in the sky when the tapestry was being worked on so, with the permission of the artist, was included in the final work.

In the House of Senates, the colour scheme is red – this symbolises the Eucalyptus flower and also the Red Centre of the country. It also has the only red “emergency exit” signs in Australia. Even the ones in the viewing gallery above it are green. A special piece of legislation had to be issues to allow the ones on the Senate floor to be red!

Yeah, I got overloaded on trivia today. Loved it! The Parliament House needs more time than I had – it closes at 5pm so I didn’t have time to have a “free” wander around so I may head back tomorrow if I can fit it in around the museum.

I walked back into the CBD (quite quickly) to meet Kat for dinner and chats. A good evening ran on into the night! Yet another overly-friendly Aussie!