May 2007

In Sydney in May all the leather boys come out to play. It's Inquisition time. (Queue the music from Mell Brooks "History of the World: Part 1")

Greig and I both went to the party this year. It's not a party that Greig normally goes to, but Will convinced him that he should.

As expected, the party was pretty ordinary. Don't get me wrong, the Inquisition Party isn't renowned for being ordinary. It's the venue. City Live/Stage Eleven/The Forum (or whatever it is called this month) at Faux Studios. It would have to be the shittiest venue in the entire city to hold a party.

How can you have a purpose built club that has a tiered dance floor? It's all fine and well if you want to dance in a straight line and in neat rows, but that's not how people dance. (Well, not at dance parties anyway. That's more a barn dance thing.) If you want to get from point A (being at the top of the venue) to point B (being at the bottom of the venue) you can expect to trip down the stairs a few times on the way. And don't get me started on the air conditioning outlet vents on the side of the dance stairs, blowing cold air directly on to you if you are unlucky enough to be at the edge of the dance stairs.

But enough about the venue. It's shit. Everyone knows it. Get over it. Move on.

The party itself was fun. The music certainly had some low moments, but mostly it was good. The crowd wasn't incredibly good looking but there were a few exceptions. I ended up spending most of the night partying with Sam but we ended up leaving at about 6am.

Sam and I did a little more partying at the Shed but then things started getting silly.

Very silly.

Very, very silly.

Sam started trying to eat my shoulder. He was asking for soy sauce.

On a completely different train of thought, Greig and I dragged Dudley along to be in the audience for the taping of "The Sideshow" at the ABC TV studios in Ultimo. The funny thing is that neither Greig or I have seen an episode of the show go to air. Apparently it airs on Saturday nights and I guess there are always better things to do.

Rod gives Will a licking

Will (Little Will as opposed to Big Will - or is it the other way around?) held his housewarming this month too. An interesting gathering of people indeed. Greig and I wandered along and had a few drinkies to toast his new unit and his bunny rabbit.

Things degenerated a little bit when Sam (who was also there) decided to demonstrate the correct technique for using a riding crop on Will. It was all above board of course - no clothing was removed. A couple of the other younger guests were obviously a little surprised/disturbed/intrigued/excited by the whole thing. Will was a little bruised.

Circus Oz is performing again, this time at the Sydney Opera House. Greig and I went along to see the show and possibly the Opera House for the last time. We figure that with George Bush and a myriad of other world "leaders" attending the APEC Summit at the Opera House in September, the beautiful building's days are numbered. What terrorist organisation could resist a target like that?

(A big cheery hello to all the various government spooks who have zoomed in on this page because of that last paragraph.)

Circus Oz are still great. Even better, we had front row seats. It did mean that we were prime candidates for "audience participation", but we managed to get out unscathed.

The final event for the month was to go and see the Homotones at Slide.

This was the first time I've been to Slide since it opened a couple of years ago. I really should get out more. It's actually a nice little cocktail bar. Not large by any means, but that's often a good thing. The lit dance floor is a little on the tacky side, but you can forgive them for that at least.

The Homotones and J. Bear in full flight.

Greig and I actually went there for dinner as well as the show. We were joined by the lovely Dan #1 and Dudley. Dan #1 is a member of the Homotones and plays sax, my favourite instrument in the whole world. Our host, Claire de Lune, was attentive and graceful and the wait staff all wore kilts. I'm not quite sure what that was about, but they did have nice legs.

The food was actually very nice. We'd heard mixed reports so we weren't quite sure what to expect.

The Homotones themselves are a gay concert band. As such they are required to play a fixed percentage of show tunes, abba and disco. I must admit, they got off to a bit of a rough start, but they soon settled down and were actually quite good.

My biggest problem with the show was that three days later I was still singing "One night in Bangkok" over and over in my head after they played it and it was shitting me.