meh

Lately I've just been doing the same old stuff, reading stuff for school, making quesadillas, kicking it at the lodge, cooking kangaroo steaks to put inside my quesadillas, etc. I went skating around town tonight, but most of downtown was too busy with foot traffic, but I skated the museum, which has some nice flatground and stuff. I bought an Australian skateboarding magazine and saw a spot (curb cut to tall flat bar) with a street sign in the background so I was able to locate it in Chinatown. Its too tall for me to skate, although I might be able to get into a front nose on it, but it was too busy tonight. Now I'm staying up late waiting for it to be 9am in California when two more spaces in Advanced Painting will be opened up. I signed up for classes this morning, and there wasn't space in it, but they open a couple spots a day at various times. I did get into metal sculpture though (welding), which should be fun.

The highlight of my last weekend was going to a show in St. Kilda (a beach neighborhood south of Melbourne City). It was at the Espy which was a cool place, spacious yet intimate. We were able to save some money by drinking wine on the tram ride over, and heading over to the bottleshop and drinking beer on the beach. The show, however, was free, so I bought a drink at the bar. $4 for a pot, not bad, relatively (a pot is a glass, less than a pint). The bands were good. Loud, fast rock and roll. Most of them were Melbourneans, although the headlining band was from Tokyo (The Gimmies). Tomomi came along, and she generally listens to pop music, but was dancing and rocking out just as much as anyone (actually only about ten people in the crowd were moving at all).

My classes are winding down. Next week is the last week of classes, then I have a week off (to write papers), then the next week I have three final papers due, then another week off (maybe a skate trip to Canberra?), then a final exam, then I'm off to Queensland. So basically right now I'm mainly preoccupied with research for my three final papers, which seem interesting enough, except for my renaissance class, but I was expecting a worse topic (the only class with an assigned topic, sort of, my modern art class gave us at least 11 choices). For renaissance we could choose between:

How would you rewrite the history of the 15th century Italian Renaissance for a book entitled Donatello to Leonardo Da Vinci?

or

Write an essay about the importance of gift giving on the occasion of weddings in the Italian Renaissance?

Anyways...I've probably already bored you enough with descriptions of this class. Next week for my last Australia Now class were going to watch a movie. The lecturer wanted to show "The Rescuers Down Under", but apparently in previous semesters students had complained about watching a cartoon in a college class. I think theres still a chance he'll show it, but either way, I trust this guy to put on something highly entertaining. He wanted to show the Disney film because its a very American take on Australia, stereotypes, inaccuracies (the kangaroo has a cockney accent, because after all, what American child will know the difference?), etc. so he thought it would be good to see it through "Australian Eyes" now that we know something about Australia.

A week from Friday there is a local skate video premier. My friend Sacha who I met in my philosophy class who I skate with sometimes told me about it. Its his old skate crew's video, and originally he was going to have a part in it, but its been in production for almost four years now, and he rarely even skates with them anymore. It sounds like overall, thy'll be some good skating, some mediocre skating, and fun random stuff, kind of like our skate videos (Schpoofed, Step it Up, Bootysweat). They're even premiering it in a theater. Also, while I'm talking about skate video premiers, the new Zoo York video is going to be having a Melbourne premier in a few weeks in St. Kilda. That seems to be the thing nowadays, having multiple premiers. Zoo York has maybe changed a bit from its roots (they're now owned by Marc Ecko), but they still have a good skate team, so it should be cool.

Until next time.