Impossible Germany, Unlikely Japan. Incredible Melbourne.

I saw Wilco again on Wednesday night. I saw them at a venue formerly called the Metro where Sarah and I went to see the Shins in the Melbourne CBD. It was a great show. Some of the tracks were downright country, and on others they RAWKED it with a Kid-A style light show.

This show was critical to my returning home from Rimini. I needed something to look forward to or I might just have run away from home and I built the show up in my mind to epic proportions. Wilco delivered.

They played for 2 and half hours and played fan favorites from AM (Casino Queen, Passenger Side) Being There (Outta Mind, I Got You, Sunken Treasure, The Lonely One) and Summer Teeth (She’s a Jar, Via Chicago, Shot in the Arm, How to Fight Loneliness). There wasn’t too much from YHF or even Sky Blue Sky.

Jeff was in a last-day-of-school mood and dedicated every song to one of the roadies like he was signing their yearbooks. I had a great time and bought a swell new t-shirt to stave off the impending t-shirt shortage of 2008 (Al Gore’s new pet cause now that global warming is all sorted out).

Here’s a pic and a wack tiny video. You get the idea.

Going through a Johnny Cash Phase?

Since you are procrastinating at work (I know it and your boss knows it) I’ll offer these up as well:

Please check out this skit that Matteo suggested with Gob from arrested development.

And this list from Kimmie that is spot on like lime Jello.

Also, check out this typo that Jesse found on ESPN where the #s 1 and 5 are reversed. Hello? Proofreaders?

(Boos and tears to G-Town for losing to Davidson in the 10-2 game. What the hell?)

Okay, it's 4 AM. I'm going to try going to bed now again and see if the jet-lag gods will shine down upon me.

Paganello!

Paga Paga. Paganello. Paga Paga Paga Paga Pagenello! That is a lot more like the Hare Krishna chant than I realized at the time.

I am back from Italy. The trip was great. The beach ultimate was great and hanging out with all the wedding folks was great. Fortunately/Unfortunately, most of it is a drunken haze so I can only generally describe what occurred.

I can recall the 38 hour trip over there pretty vividly. I flew from Melbourne to Singapore for 8 hours and after just a few hours in that airport, flew from Singapore to Paris for 13 more hours. I was trying to drink my weight in the free business class champagne.

Movies watched in Route:
Juno: A+ - New rule: the more former Arrested Development cast members, the better the movie
Beowulf : B- - Angelina Jolie as Grendal’s mom? Really?
No Country for Old Men – A+ Best villain since Ving Rhames
I am Legend – B+ - Breaks the rule that the dog never dies
Margo at the Wedding: B- - Am I supposed to hate her? I do.
We Own the Night – A – Marky Mark + Joaquin Phoenix means and A was the lowest possible score for this movie, given the eye candy factor, and boy did it ever earn that. Must avoid if you don’t love them both.

Upon arriving in Paris, I learned that due to some Italian labor dispute my 7 AM flight was cancelled, as was the 9, noon, etc. on until 4 PM. I decided to take the train into Paris and though my warm clothes were checked through to Bologna, I had a pretty fun time tooling around a beautiful city.

I took the train to Notre Dame:

From there I had a typically touristy French breakfast that was delicious:
Well fed, I walked along the Seine to the Eiffel Tower. This is a view from my approach:
And from under her skirt:

There were long lines to go up the tower at 3 of the bases. The fourth has a much shorter line, because you had to use the stairs (no elevator) so the fat American tourists did not even consider it. It only took 15 minutes or so to walk up to the second platform. It was windy and hailing, so I took some pictures and got out of there.

There are these cool tourist city bikes that you can hire for just a few dollars an hour from stations all over the city. I rented one of those and biked back to Notre Dame. Here’s the bikes being serviced:

Paris seems pretty bike-friendly with lots of cycle lanes. After I got back to Notre Dame, I took the train back to the airport and waited to fly to Bologna. That flight was uneventful (a little more champagne and a nap).

Once I landed in Bologna I saw this slogan which captured how I was feeling quite accurately at the time.

From there I had an 80 minute train to Rimini and then checked into the Cortina, where I took a long overdue shower and went to sleep. This would prove to be my last full nights sleep for the length of the trip.

On Thursday I synced up with Jen, Chip and the rest of the gang. We started drinking red wine on the beach and the rest is pretty much a haze until I had to get back on the train on Monday. D. Rex played really well, beating our seed (14) and ending up 7th. If it hadn’t been for rain induced hypothermia I am pretty sure we could have broken in to the top 4. We ate one good Italian dinner and a lot of Shwarma. There was much dancing and drinking. There was much amusement due to Duck Rex. Check out his magic neck:

Here’s a wedding point, with a groomsman (Max), the groom, the bride and two bridesmaids:

It's all a haze to me but if you want to see a proper breakdown of scores and games please see Chip's write up who covers everything with such detail I'm beginning to wonder how drunk he really was.

Monday afternoon I needed to head back to Bologna for my plane. The Italian trains on Easter Monday are chockers. I had a seat but it was still nuts trying to get on and off with all my luggage, especially since I had picked up the Sporting Team Box Athletico United brand spanking new jerseys and shorts off the boys from 5 to save on the postage all the way to Australia.

It was a struggle but I made it back to the airport. There was a lot more sleep on the return flights, but I did see a couple more films:

Rendition: C+ - Cloying, pregnant Reese Witherspoon just about cancels out Jake Gyllenhaal, which is saying something

August Rush: D- - I could only tolerate the first 20 minutes. I should have known better.

Lions for Lambs: C- - Contrived. Stilted. After-school specialesque. I think that might be the kid from growing pains.

Now that I’m back home in Melbounre I’m still on Italy time. It might be jet lag, or it might just be a protest about the trip being over.

checklist

• win southern australian regionals - check

(read the write up here)

• have a blast - check
• survive adelaide's 39 degree days and bull ant plague - check
• dress up as 60 and 70 year old women for a 60s & 70s party - check

me on the left. sorry mom, i know this is not what you dress like. (exactly.)

also hussey, joy, greta, tegan, amunda, jess, liz, palmer and kp in the mush pot
kp and me

• drink self into boorish beer stupor on flight home from adelaide - check
• pack for italy - yellow status: 0% complete. behind target start date !
• fly to italy - target tuesday 18-mar - on track
• panic - check

violent goodness

quickly folks, i need to go to bed.

And Sodom, South Georgia
Slept on an acre of bones
Slept through Christmas
Slept like a bucket of snow

iron and wine started out good. they played some acoustic tracks. it was the kind of good that makes you angry there is anything else. it makes you want to smash a beer bottle and demand this go on and on and on. do you know that delighted anger? i was enraged.

then they played a long indulgent experimental set that was like some kind of phish show nightmare. jamming. grrr. i went hoping for sodom, south georgia, and i got it, but i was surprised that the best song of the night was the creek drank the cradle's upward over the mountain. sam was great, but left me wanting, which maybe was the plan all along.

zzzzzzzzz.

Baby Birds

Work is an endless sea of screeching baby birds. I am flapping around looking for worms (and I don't even like worms) but no matter how many I find, it is far less than the piercing demand.

I'll just say that this looks to be the way forward for some time. Great.

That said, this Wednesday is Iron + Wine at the Corner, again with Mama as wingman.

This weekend, Sporting Team Box Athletico United is off to Adelaide to win Southern Australian regionals and then I'm off to Italy for Easter.

I may be sleep deprived, but I will not be bored.

Also did I tell you I finished season 4 of the Wire and it was incredible but now I am in withdrawal. I am hoping for a spin off of Omar driving that cab around Baltimore on stakeouts.

Will someone please tell Denver to put in for a transfer to the Eastern Conference so they can make the play-offs? (Queue Jim Mora "Play-offs?!?!?" wavefile.)

Look out for my Hoyas to be jinxed by the regular season Eastern Conference title and lose in the second round of the Big East tournament at MSG.

Hope you are all well and getting ready for Spring.

i hate my job

sleep in short supply
are things worse or just the same?
everything is grey

I believe my throat hurts. Example is the checker to the key.

A lot can kill you here in Australia. They have killer snakes, great white sharks, killer spiders, crocodiles on every river and even killer jellyfish. As another example, I have just snatched life from the jaws of what is typically a fatal Aussie cold. Everyone has it here and there are kangaroos pulling carts though the Melbourne CBD calling , "bring out your dead". The cold lasted about 20 days and there were a lot of tears and contemplation of throat amputation. It is a good thing they took away my pocket knife at the airport in the security line. Despite all odds, I persist.

When we left off, dear reader, I was about to go to Jacko's birthday. Here's some pics of that.


We had a great time. Mama, Cath Matthews, Liz and Hussey were there, and heaps of other folks. Shakahari had great food again, and terrible service again and I won't go back there. Also the night ended for me in tears of throat pain, and with Mama earning a black eye in her campaign to educate us all not to drink and cycle. Learn the lesson people!

The whole send-up reminded me of my 21st, which I spent in Dublin with Amy. I think we died my hair blue and then went out to the Foggy Dew for cider. Why did I drink so much cider?

Other than that, last week, I ate a lot of soup, blew my nose a lot, went to a doctor in a mall (no help), slept, worked and watched more of The Wire.

The Wire season 4 is awesome. The Omar prison scene is one of my favorite ever. Even though Oz was one of my favorite shows of all time, I feel like this 90 second scene says everything you need to say about prisons in the US. "They got Honey Nut Cheerios in here?"

By the weekend I was feeling a bit better. On Friday, Mama and I saw this tiny street busker break dancing. You can't really tell this from my crap phone video, but he is about 6 and about 3 feet tall. Mama thought it was the funniest thing ever.

Then we went out for some really crap Chinese food with Cath. Oh well. I guess it is the year of the Rat.

On Saturday I went to the Melbourne Food and Wine festival at Fed Square. It might have been called the Food and Wine festival but all I remember is beer. Beer after beer. We started out scoring the beers on a scale of 1-10, but by the end I was giving 10s out like the French judge at a figure skating competition.

I went there to meet Nicole from work, her partner Steven and his mate Andrew. From what I can recall, we had a blast.

On Monday, after league I went to see Clap Your Hands Say Yeah again with Mama at the HiFi. They were okay. I think he was wearing the same hat as last time.The crowd seems a little dead and the show was a little flat. Still Yankee Go Home! is always good to see live.

Tonight I ran around the Tan, with my buddies the bats (flying foxes). I also got to hear the Shakespeare in the Park cast booming out Romeo and Juliet. That was a nice diversion.

Congrats to both Tegan & Reuben and Sarah for adopting dogs from the shelter in the same week. Welcome to Wilson (a black lab) and Annie (a beagle mix, search for Didi). I cannot imagine what fool let either of these dogs go, but I am glad they are home for good now.

This week will involve Team Box training on Thursday and Sunday, and a scrimmage against Honey to get amped for regionals coming up in about two weeks in Adelaide. Get amped now!

Never Fold

Hussey and Joy with Jess' friend Garreth
Hussey's shot of (L to R) Garrith, Jess, Amanda, Joy and Tegan. Note the background poker game with Andrew, me and Troy
The poker game out of focus. I am almost out of chips. (Andrew, Rueben, Owen, Troy and Me.)

Party! Joy and Hussey got the visa application in and that's as good a reason as any to celebrate. I had a party in my apartment. The Phillips sisters (snail and cat) ran in to the city for the party from Camberwell (~10K). The Barr brothers did give them a ride home. Tegan, (here in front of Uluru) the resident parasitic pathologist PHD/pastry chef made a wonderful chocolate cake with peaches which we devoured. We also watched an AFL game (Essendon Bombers v. Brisbane Lions) as preseason of that is on again now. eeee!

Later we played some poker, where I brought my patented, "never fold" strategy to the game and stayed in longer than you would expect.

Status update: As usual I've been working, cycling, and playing disc. I'm playing league on Sebb Barr's team (X +1) Cheers For, where X= the number from the team name from last week. Team Box has just started mid-week training on Thursdays, in a Melbourne suburb appropriately named Box Hill. I'm staying up late at night to watch episodes of season 4 of The Wire. About a month to Italy.

I seem to have some throat thing going on. I am drinking tea and making soup.

Dinner tonight for Jacko's birthday at Shakahari. Some pub crawls /breweries on the weekend. Team Box training SUnday. Clap Your Hands on Monday at the HiFi.

Mail bag: Thanks to Paige, Marc, Moose and O for my Christmas tree! (You have to love the Australian mail service, mate.) Also to Mom for the Valentine candy and T-shirt. (Special to Lucas: I am promoting the Leopards down here in Melbourne!)

Out of Africa

Back in December, I was in the Pilanesberg National Park, in South Africa. You might recall me blogging about my Elephant Safari. Well, part of the Elephant Safari is that they take a video of you so that you can show your mom when you get home. It is a full service deal.

The original is two hours long. Lucky for you, I work with this very friendly and extroverted fellow from Accenture's Sydney office named Alex. Alex is learning to use his new video editing software and was able to cut this down to 6 much more bearable minutes. Alex gets director and producer credits on the video above.

In other news, this week I worked a lot and went to Team Box training. The Team Box nationals squad for 2008 has been announced and I am on it. I am super psyched to be on the team again this year. The team is top notch and we should be a force.

Saturday night I went to a party at Mama's house, dressed at outer space.

Also, Jesse sent me season four of The Wire, (the best show ever made) so I am watching that compulsively. I wasn't sure I would even like this season with Stringer dead and Avon gone, but I never should have doubted David Simon. As long as Omar is in, I'm in.

Also in the mail bag was a postcard from Mara (hi Mara!) from Spokane an a save-the-date for Jen and Chip's wedding where I'll be a bride's maid.

I'm 5 weeks from regionals in Adelaide with Team Box and 6 weeks from going to Italy.

eeeee!

haircut: sub optimal

oh well. i tried.

i got a new hair cut.

i wanted something clean and edgy.

when am i going to learn? i am about as edgy as a beach ball.

see?

my inability to take a photo of my self is previously documented. nonetheless, you get the idea.

i look like dorothy hamill on a bad day. ew.


oh well.

also, i've discovered that once i've blogged about something, i'm pretty much unwilling to recount it. if you want to know how my Christmas was click here, but don't ask me. i won't tell you. leave me and my puffy head alone.