However when you get an email offering the chance to be part of a landmark international art work and get naked with thousands of other like-minded freaks at the same time, there’s no way to say no.

So, tired beyond belief and shaking with excitement, we faffed our way to Circular Quay and were met by a line that stretched from the Opera House, all the way to the Ferry Wharfs. We were sandwiched between a group of young German girls, and some heavyset bear-types from the States.

We had no idea how many people were going to be there, as the only information I had received was “Be there by 4AM.” However we were both horrifically excited about the whole ordeal and we jittered our way down the line like school girls at a Shortstack gig. The anticipation of getting nude is always a favourite feeling of mine, though I rarely get to indulge in it (while Cookie, my companion on this mission, spends most of his weekends on Oxford Street in various states of undress).

I haven’t always enjoyed getting my gear off, even though I came from a fairly nude house (I’m uncertain if dad ever wore pants before 8:00am). As a matter of fact, it wasn’t until University that my nude side really blossomed. Whether it was the ballooning confidence [Cookie says: ego] that grew uncontrollably due to a sudden injection of sexual encounters, or if it was simply a series of spumante induced nudie runs… either way, I grew very fond of getting nude.

If you ask my girlfriend, she’ll tell you that she unleashed the nude within me – as I once tried to sleep next to her with jeans on. I tried to explain that I’m just a really edgy guy who liked to sleep with his jeans on (she saw through my ruse and demanded I get my kit off).

Whatever unlocked the exhibitionist inside me, I’m thankful for it; as some of my favourite (foggy) memories consist of either being nude, or partially clothed. Suffice to say that this morning’s event will stick out like winter nipples in the unclothed annals of my memory bank.

After signing up (and receiving an ego injection as we signed the ‘model’s release form’), the crowd was herded like sleepy cattle into different nooks of the Opera House forecourt. Volunteers informed us that we were now waiting for the sun to come up, so we found a spot to flop and tried to get comfortable, surveying what portion of the audience we could see from our spot by the water.

It was an amazingly mixed crowd, with dreadlocked Newtownians, unshaven creative looking types, pearl wearing mum and dad types… and a man who looked like Ahab from Moby Dick, who calmly puffed on a pipe and said nothing.

We did our best to meet and greet the folks around us, but it was 5 in the morning after Mardi Gras weekend; so conversational skills were fairly limited. We were introduced to our production manager, a heavy-set bearded biker with a megaphone, and instructed that we should probably use the bathrooms before the shoot begins.

I’ll skip the next hour or so, as most of it consisted of me waiting to use a toilet.

Come 7 or so, the sun lifted and Spencer gave the signal for the first group to start taking their kit off. There were thousands of people in the Botanic Gardens, who I did not see earlier due to the dark, and the crowd went insane as these pink figures in the distance stripped in a nude flurry and began to march in double file through the cheering masses.

It was absolutely amazing, the line of nudes resembled a naked army marching in unison, waving to a welcoming crowd… at this stage, my smile dominated the majority of my face.

Then it was our turn.

We didn’t hear any signal, but all of a sudden, people around us were ditching their threads and screaming in a happy cacophony of exhilaration. We followed suit and stuffed our belongings in the provided plastic bags. Getting my shoes off was a struggle as I battled with my excited hands.

This was my first time being nude around so many (as I assume was standard for most), and I found it hard to tell where I was supposed to look. It was similar to the urinal, or a change room at the gym; in that you just focused on keeping your eyes at eye level… and used your peripheral for looking at everyone’s naked bodies.

Suddenly, there were thousands of screaming nudes ascending the steps of the Opera house, clapping frantically and slapping their buttocks (which gives an amazing sound – like a wet clap). The whole thing was very tribal and I couldn’t decide where to look – or what to do – as the Opera House steps were painted with flesh.

It was an amazing display of all humans great and small, a veritable tableau vivant of naked race, exposed sexuality and stripped religion – not to mention every shape of Sydneysider. There were fat guys with thin penises, short women with long breasts, wide women with thin breasts and tiny men with massive cocks. As a matter of fact, I got so used to people looking at my penis that I inturn felt comfortable doing the same. It was equal parts odd and liberating.

I was not the biggest man in the crowd by neither belly nor ballsack, nor was I the smallest; which had me feeling quite comfortable in my chubby flesh suit. However, the large gay cohort present meant that there was an abnormal amount of prefectly sculpted men about; which was somewhat harrowing as I stood there with my shaky hands on my jiggly love handles.

There was also an abundance of strikingly designed middle aged women, who stuck out like beautiful beacons of hope in the mess of man meat. However, their amazing breasts and teetering legs lost all sexual prowess when thrown in the context of 5,200 naked people on the Opera House steps.

I really thought that I would feel awkward or self conscious, as my adolescent years were spent comparing my penis to the big dick supremacy of my well-hung-heroes such as Macho Vidal, Ron Jeremy and Lexington Steele.

I’m also uncircumcised, which gives you very little for comparison in mainstream pornography (though I should mention that Michaelangelo’s David was a childhood hero of mine). Though as the models marched out and my peripheral was consumed by nude, any qualms I had were lost in the overwhelming emotion of thousands of people getting together, smiling and laughing for shits and giggles; art and equality (and the fact that worrying about it made as much sense as obsessing about the comparative size of my eyebrows).

The shoot was a peaceful and playful experience, with Spencer taking us through several poses, including one lying down (where my position on the steps became a back-breaking issue). We laughed with the guys and girls next to us (one of which had flown from Melbourne just for the shoot), we all giggled at Spencer’s gags and shuddered at the icy winds as they blew from the ocean. We could hear the wind coming as it brushed against the people further up and caused gasps and squeals along the way; creating a Mexican wave of buttock-clenching and genital-flapping.

Once Spencer was happy with his shots, we all clapped, laughed and moved on to shoot number 2 – deep inside the sails, in the grand concert hall. Some 2000 of us had been given tickets to the next shoot, so we grabbed our clothes and walked through the Opera House. After a few hours in the cold, we were too chilly to keep our shirts off… but also too proud to put all of our clothes back on. This was a once in a lifetime chance to shuffle through the Opera House naked and I wasn’t going to miss out. So I made sure to keep my pants off and let my dick dance in the Opera House air.

On the way to our assigned seating, worried looking Opera House staff handed us plastic sheets to cover the velour seats, and we sat around in the concert hall admiring the naked audience in front of us – as we chatted with the strangers next to us. This part felt a little less tribal than the experience on the steps, with the rigid seats forcing conversation beyond our control. That said – it was beyond words… the feeling of sitting there, nude and happy, as though that’s the way people have always sat in that art deco hall.

Despite the tired subject matter, the shoot was a lot of fun. Spencer covered the stage in nude bodies, asked us to stand on the seats and drape ourselves across arm rests. However, as the saying goes; all good things must come to an end.

The pack up was a little disheartening, with the majority of the models racing to re-clothe and avoiding the talk that had been so prevalent only hours beforehand. However it’s worth noting that the time was now 9:15, and the crowd looked ridiculously ravaged from the previous 6 hours.

We went to a cafe afterward, and I saw the woman who sat next to me in the concert hall. She was now looking dull in an olive green polo, but I couldn’t stop looking at her – imagining her naked. I couldn’t help but feel a close connection to her, as if we’d shared some kind of intimacy as we went about proving – both to ourselves and the world at large – that we really are all exactly the same beneath our clothes.

Fuck I love this city.

Simon Hills-Johnes

I’m here crouched in front of my Macbook, with Neighbours feigning entertainment to my right… the poor performances and slice of life approach mock my own impoverished thoughts. However, I force the fake tears out of my computation and write my first submission to a magazine that (thankfully) inflicts a ravaging sliver of hope upon the weighing condition that is my “blessed” banishment.

I’m away from the torturous 6am walk home through King Cross, away from the scathing eyes of rental junkies offering me head at a discount price and dealers offering me the time of my life. Though the sickeningly sad truth is; after years away from Sydney, I long for the soft embrace of a looming dealer, or the jittery temptations of a terrified junkie.

I solemnly smile, my girlfriend/wife is sitting 78 centimeters away from me; completely content in her blinded vision of our perfect happiness… she must not know. My bastard son, which I might add I love more than myself, is sleeping silently… ignorant of how his father really feels, blissfully unaware of what life can really do to a man.

How did this happen? Well… bluntly – I didn’t wear a condom. Esoterically? Well that’s a concoction best saved for a fearful Freudian.
I’m sorry, but I won’t be dealing with this scenario right now, that requires me to dive in deeper than a Tuesday night of cheap wine will allow. I’m simply not prepared to pull out of this swirling abyss just yet… four more years anybody? Eighteen perhaps?

TV ads blaze in my left ear and raze my ambition, telling me to try a better dandruff solution, and my frantic fingers slow to a halt… I am hitting the end of a word purge. Like a Hemingway guppy swimming in a bowl-full of it’s own dissolution.

I look at my kid… my girlfriendbosswife and the dipping palm trees outside and I start to beg inside my head… Praying that I will one day be granted access back into the city of Sydney, hopefully with my kid in tow.

So while I figure out the next step, I’ll leave you Sydney readers with a piece of advice… Wear a condom – not matter what she says, wear a condom.

In Exile,
Maddox Heatley

However, the cock in question was far more proverbial than the usual phallus, and it came in the form of a competition.

The comp asked kids to explain “The gnarliest thing you’ve ever done on a treadmill.” Noticing a void of any word limit, this is how I saw OK GO for free:

On 16/02/10 1:33 PM, “Simon Hills-Johnes” wrote:

From: Simon Hills-Johnes
Date: 16 February 2010 13:33
Subject: OK GO
To: winstuff@oxfordartfactory.com

Hello There,

The gnarliest thing I’ve ever done a treadmill, is also the gnarliest thing I’ve ever done.
You see, between the Summer of ’73 and the Winter of ’84, I actually traveled around the world on a customised treadmill.

The treadmill in question was a ’73 model Sole, which I’m sure you’ll remember was not only the best treadmill on the market at the time, but it was also easy to customise and was therefore a huge success in the treadmill travel market. The brand was quite new to the market in the early 70′s, so the big wigs at Sole were keen to make a splash in the travel treadmill market by offering plenty of incredible additional parts for treadmill travel enthusiasts like myself.

My particular machine, was equipped not only with off road tyres and aircraft suspension (similar to a design used by Boeing in the late 60s), but I equipped my ‘Tread-rig’ (a term we enthusiasts coined to refer to severely customised treadmills) with a flotation system that allowed me to use my tread-rig for aquatic adventuring. On top of all this, I attached a series of self-defense options for traversing the more ‘rough-neck’ sections on the globe, where my safety would be an issue.

The route I took was the standard Americas, Europe, Africa route chosen by many treadmill travelers, only mine incorporated more sea travel (and may I say, you’ll never know true fear until you’ve navigated Cape Horn on a treadmill). Along the way I met several interesting characters, including (but not limited to) Fidel Castro, The Queen of England, The King of Malta and my wife. Yes, I met my wife on a treadmill somewhere around the Republic of Chile… she was working with the local Basques at the time, trying to sort out some of the self-determination issues that still resided in the Spanish Constitution of 1978.

All of this seems quite amazing in written form, but I assure you that I’m just your average guy. I have lived a wonderfully full life, filled with extreme highs and lows. Although I must say that since moving to Sydney in 2000 (I was originally here to compete in the Olympics – I’m an amazing wrestler), I have come across a great deal of problems when trying to find other travel treadmill enthusiasts.

So, if you could please assist me with some tickets to see the OK GO Treadmill show, I’m certain I could meet with some other, treadmill travel enthusiasts (I’d also love to hear about the band’s own travels on treadmills).

–
Kind Regards,
Simon Hills-Johnes

PS.
I planned to attach a photo of my rig, but most of my belongings were lost along with my wife and 9 children in a freak fire while we were working on the Gullfaks C offshore oil platform in the North Sea some time around the late 90′s. I can draw a rough sketch, though I assure you my skills are strictly limited to treadmill customisation and wrestling.

From: Zoh McEnally
Date: 17 February 2010 15:56
Subject: Re: OK GO
To: Simon Hills-Johnes

Hey Simon.
Obviously you’re the winner.
Your name will be on our guest list tomorrow night with a +1.

Cheers : )

———————————————————————————————-

A fabulous stranger, Sheree89, has informed me that tickets were only $40 each… this is still the most I’ve ever been paid for words (on a per word basis).

I offered to buy Zoh some organic fish head soup… but I’m yet to get a reply.

The band themselves were actually great, although I usually prefer my culturally significant pop culture references with a little less personality. I’d love to tell you all about it, but I’d much prefer to finish off the vinegary white wine that I found stewing away in the bottom drawer of my desk.

Ridiculously,
Simon Hills-Johnes

In the wake of what was another, amazing Sydney Festival; I have a special message for every Gen-Y Sydney Sider that crossed my path over the proceedings: “Fuck – you.”

You pretentious, arrogant, cultureless, uneducated bag of backward bogans! You are all responsible for fucking up just about every gig, film, show and sun-ray I attempted to enjoy over this year’s festival – and I have something special to say to each of you.

To the people who were swing dancing at Big Bad Voodoo Daddy,
For making my date give me that look like “Why don’t you dance like that?” – fuck you.

To the people who talked through Grizzly Bear,
You bandwagon hopping, scene swimming, Triple J stalking cum-stains. If you’re not into the band enough to shut the fuck up while they’re playing, then don’t come to the gig. Period. If you must be seen doing something cool, then grab your short-brimmed fedora, don your purple Cheap Mondays, then ride your fixed-gear-Deuce down to Side Plate and slit your wrists while downing your double ristretto.

To the members of Middle East who got sick,
Thank fuck you were too unwell to play that night. If you hadn’t pulled out; we all would have missed out on seeing Patrick Watson.

To the girls who got angry at me for pushing in during Patrick Watson,
I’m down with equality (so… fucking… down), but the next time you feel the urge to lecture me on proper crowd etiquette, understand that chivalry does not exist within 100 meters of a live band. And before you waggle your finger and squeal in my ear – know that I’ve back-handed men for less.

To the loud laughter at Six Characters Looking for an Author,
Yes, we all understand – you find stuff funny and you want us all to know it. However, have you ever stopped to think that the bits you’re laughing in, aren’t fucking funny? No one thinks you’re fucking intelligent just because you let out a 98db laugh at some minor witticism about existence. Secretly, we’re all thinking about how it would feel to grab you by the giggly neck and choke you ’til our knuckles cramp.

To the gossipers at the Spiegel Tent,
If I had things my way, each and every one of you would be water-boarded, slapped, fucked and burned; then posted on stakes along Hyde Park as a warning to other, potential gossip queens. I get to enjoy this ridiculous tent only a few days a year,  and my idea of good entertainment isn’t listening to the gaggle of you compete to see who was the biggest trash bag last night. I honestly hope you all get breast, cervix and tongue cancer.

To the boyfriend of the question asker who sat behind me at Oedipus Loves You,
Mate, instead of taking your girlfriend to another play, please consider taking her to community college.

To the short bloke at Breakestra who complained he couldn’t see,
I’m assuming that you didn’t get short over night, which means you’ve have quite some fucking time to come to grips with the fact that you are a short cunt. So please plan your evening so that you get a prime position. Ideally, somewhere the fuck away from me.

To the newbies on drugs at Becks Bar,
Every time I go drinking these days, I feel like an old sheepdog surrounded by tiny, tiny, terrier puppies. Just as I expect to be able to down a nice glass of red without being pestered by a sweaty eighteen year old wanting to play ‘Goon of Fortune’ I would love to be able to get high without being bugged and hugged by these newborn fuckwits who still have all their serotonin receptors left.

To the people who whinged about ‘Unprofessional Themes’ at Rogues Gallery,
You fucking retards. It was a pirate show featuring ex-drug addicts, sex-fiends and dried-out alcoholics; and you were expecting Andrew Lloyd Webber?

To the rest of Sydney (and the organisers),
What a brilliant year. See you at Tropfest.

All the best,
George Bannister

Cannibalism and Autocannabalism.
It was initially suggested to me by my esteemed editor that I could suggest a few techniques for isolating and consuming tasty parts of the self. Autocannabalism may be slightly more ethical than murdering acquaintances to make a roast dinner, even if the other person consents (like that guy in Germany). However, unless you are the world’s best and most limber vascular surgeon, I doubt it is possible to remove an organ, limb, muscle or even large section of one’s own skin without bleeding to death. Besides if Morrissey has taught us anything at all (besides how to be a hip miserable bastard) it’s that all meat is murder, so I say go crazy!

If the idea of autocannabalism (eating parts of yourself, not to be confused with endocannabalism, eating people from your community) appeals to you I would suggest going as fresh as possible. Take a few bites out of your forearms or small pieces of flesh from your thighs. If your immune system is ok you should be able to get a few grams of meat out of small wounds (not much bigger than a 20c piece and not delving into the muscle) and still be able to recover adequately. I should also specify that if the idea of autocannabliasm does appeal, you should probably seek psychiatric help.

Classic Cannibalism
What to Eat

Muscle, eat muscle! What we think of as ‘meat’, such as steak, is the larger muscles of animals. A well cooked piece of human muscle is no more likely to be contaminated with bacteria than a nice T-Bone. I’ve heard human tastes like pork.

As for cooking, following the traditional methods of preparation for any particular organ is probably a safe way to hop the train to flavour town. I.e. pate is made from the liver of a duck or goose and there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to do that with a human liver, as long as the subject of your salivatory intentions has a lot of fat in their liver (most Westerners do).

The same goes for ‘sweetbreads’ which is actually the thymus and pancreas. There’s no reason human endocrine glands could not be eaten the same way as that of a pig, although, eating organs that secrete gastric enzymes and immune cells (human or pig) strikes me as particularly disgusting.

What Not to Eat
Brains, Nervous Tissue and Spines.

Children, stay away from the nervous system. I cannot stress this enough. Firstly, I think these might be the three least appetising tissue types in the body, brains, nerves and spines being respectively gelatinous or tough and stringy like a cross between over cooked chicken and spaghetti. Secondly, eating the nervous system will kill you by making your own brain melt. That might sound a tad dramatic even for an article on eating your fellow humans but it is essentially true. Eating brains is a quick and simple way to become infected with a disease called Kuru (a cute name for a horribly debilitating neurological ailment also known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathy). We know this from studying cultures in which cannibalism was de rigueur;
take for example the Fore tribe of Eastern Papua New Guinea.

Mid twentieth century these guys were found to still be regularly indulging in delicacies of the homo sapien derivation, some try and clean this story up by claiming the Fore were would eat their own relatives after death (yeah right, murderous bastards).
The Kuru disease seemed mostly restricted to women and young people. This is because whilst the men took the delicious muscle tissue and fatty organs women and children were left to fend for themselves with nothing but the brain and spine for dinner. Hence, we can deduce that brain and spine were the mode of transmission.
Even more interesting is that the pathogen that causes Kuru has been found to be more than your average germ. Spongiform encephalopathy is actually a prion; a tiny protein molecule that (theoretically) gets into your brain and causes all the protein molecules that are already there to refold so they’re shaped like the prion (a.k.a Mad Cow Disease).
Basically, eat a brain and you’re gonna lose your shit. You’ll be a zombie, except with less motor skills than an actual zombie. No thanks. If somebody offers you a brain sandwich at a party kids just say no. Even if all your friends are doing it.

Hearts
If you’re going to eat hearts I wholeheartedly suggest you stick to children as your victims. There’d be no tougher dish than the cold black hearts of fat Western capitalist bastards. This works well as a metaphor but it’s true too! With the rates of heart disease in western society the cardiac muscle is likely to be hypertrophied (overdeveloped) and over pumping its way to a ticking infarct timebomb. Even athletes get this hypertrophic muscle tissue in their hearts. Go elsewhere.

To prepare heart I’d recommend a quick removal be severing the nearby vessels, Once you’ve removed the heart from the body you should be able to see slight ridges where the heart is divided in to its four chambers. Make sharp cuts along these ridges, divide the four chambers into small fillets and scrape out the endothelium (inner lining) before frying with some fat to tenderise. Make sure you cut out the valves too as these are likely to have an unpleasant texture.

Teeth, Eyes, Bones, Hair. Fingernails.
What are you, an idiot? I need to tell you not to eat these things?

I hope this introductory guide has been illuminating. However, if you’d like more detailed information about a specific delicacy please don’t hesitate to contact me. No Hannibal impersonators need apply.

Eliza Milliken

I am currently sick as a dog, my face is a leaking faucet of various fluids and my coughs feel as though my body is wrenching out my organs like kitchen hands do to dirty dish rags. I’ve spent this week suffering the late night mood swings of our dear friend El Nino, pissing down rain and baking my skin all day like a menopausal minotaur.

This swift change in climate, along with the constant, Monday to Friday hunt for a story, customarily ends with me, wrapped in a doona, sipping medicine vials of dessert wine and balancing my alcohol intake with coffee and crushed Demazin.

It’s currently a gorgeous day outside and I’ll probably take a bottle of wine and a canvas into the park, or top up the oil and take the Harley up the coast, perhaps both… but for now, I’m sitting on our floral couch, with a stained Shearer’s Singlet cutting into my arm pits, coughing like a dickhead and burning my naked thighs with my overworked apple mac.

I have real, paying work to do, but I find myself in a reflective puddle, foggy from the mixture of booze, flu pills and porn (I’m still a huge campaigner for excessive masturbation as the world’s greatest cure all), and this reflective mood has me wondering about the last twelve months of SINKing.

This fucking ‘magazine’ is already beginning to take it’s toll on my (and my business partners’) sweaty organs. We’ve had some great times, but I’m 25, overweight, unwell, stupidly in debt and I owe most of it to SINK.

It’s been almost a year since a few, young lads set about to print a magazine about underground Sydney, a year of mid-week booze houndery and failed, drug-drenched adventures – all in the name of stories that barely get written, as we rarely remember them.

We’ve collected roughly $1000 in fines; a giggle-worthy rap sheet of charges for speeding, parking, drinking and public urinating (as well as having one photographer arrested and hospitalised) – while losing roughly the same amount of money on web design, printing, booze, hookers, drugs and the constant repair costs of SINK headquarters (where the carpet is now a papier-mâché cocktail of broken glass, ash, powder and pinot).

Each of us has fallen behind in our current mode of professional purgatory, often spending countless company hours working on this speedball side-project. Personal relationships have also started to slide with dinners replaced with drinks, gifts exchanged for gigs and dates missed for deadlines. And as I sit here, overweight, overworked, unpaid and unwell – I have to ponder; what have we accomplished?

Our web stats have slowed, our advertisers have all run away (after requests from their lawyers, owners and investors) and our contributors seem to be avoiding us (after request from their doctors, bosses and spouses). On paper, it seems a tremendous failure, and only an idiot give us their money… no magazine, no image, no hope.

However, whether from the coffee or Demazin, I’m on the up… I know that regardless of the paper trail failure that this magazine has been so far, what we have now can’t be measured in dollars or stats. We have grown from three, drunken dreamers; to an odd-ball team of 12, magnificent strangers. All working for free, writing for the thrill of it and behaving like the arseholes we were designed to be.

SINK is now a small, tactical team of crack, creative militia; storming the streets of Sydney for no reason other than the desire to do immoral, impractical, illegal things – and write about them in wonderful ways. So I remain optimistic for 2010, if we live to see the end of next year who knows where we’ll be? Hopefully in tangible form, sitting on your laps, bookshelves and toilet floors; crumpled from over reading, pages missing from joint rolling and arse wiping.

We’ll start the newsletter in the coming months (you can sign up HERE), to keep you all in the know, and we’ve got a bank of stupid ideas stumbling through the pebble-crete corridors of our collective, hive mind to keep the stories coming… but what we need of you, dearest freaks, is for you to send us your stories.

Chasing insanity has left our wallets dry, our livers pickled and our personal lives in ruin… don’t worry though, we’ve still got a desire to damage, but we need your help.

We’ve given up giving out briefs, as we find them tantamount to receiving stories; we no longer talk about ‘assignments’ as we find them to be a content killer… but what we do want, is your adventures from deep inside the pockmarked guts of this sunny, summer city.

We don’t care what you did, we don’t care who you are; but if you had yourself a good night – we want to hear about it.

All my unwell,
George Bannister

…

Being told to ‘Keep walking champ.’ after trying to enter through the wrong gate, confirmed my excited suspicions we were to be seated firmly in the SCG yob section. And while it’s reputation stems from a cricket ground south of the border, the SCG’s very own Bay 13 was not to disappoint.

Situated behind deep backward square leg, the yob section was to mirror the on-field action before lunch. Steady but still warming up on the VB mid-strengths. Lunch set the scene for the afternoon as a bunch of young schoolgirls were subjected to the harsh (but fair) running commentaries from the best Bay 13 had to offer; during what was intended as a cute demonstration of young girls playing cricket.

The Yellow Shirts, in a desperate attempt at improving public perceptions, had dropped the ‘Security’ title and re-branded themselves as ‘Crowd Safety.’ Yet in a world where SCG management are rivaled only by the Taliban in compiling lists of things to prohibit, touchy/feely name changes were destined to do little to turn yob sympathies in the Yellow Shirts favour.

Such prohibited items include (but are not limited to):

No Mexican waves.
No Beach balls.
No throwing anything.
No Cup-snakes
No racial vilification or abuse of any kind, on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, or skin colour.

ED: Cupsnakes are a tradition whereby yobs pile-up all of their empty cups and connect them. Story has it that he with the biggest snake is the biggest yob; and may take the wife of his choosing… or something like that.

The rules could fill a leather bound book with paragraphs and bi-laws. Constantly updated and exponentially expanding. My QC assures me however, that at the time of writing abusive critiques regarding players’ or punters’ haircuts, fashion, demeanor, mothers, girlfriends or political persuasions should not be grounds for incurring management’s disdain. Despite my excited inquiries, the current advice from my QC holds that the throwing of tantrums is ‘inadvisable.’

Several Mexican waves emanated from behind our 4th row seats, shooting out in both directions to the delight of yobs and snobs alike, before the Yellow Shirts singled out a scapegoat for removal. Unhappy with his situation, the scapegoat counted down a final wave as one last hurrah while being escorted away.

Yellow Shirts walked the beat attempting to confiscate cup-snakes in their infancy. Escorting from the yob section many a near complete snake, and somewhat bizarrely; a drinks-tray-stack (Ed: cheeky and inspired) that held massive potential. Knowing they had to some extent beaten the system, yobs held cup-snakes up with pride, resulting in acclaim and a shower of additional cups.

Beach balls bounced over the yob section as we got to know a bunch of yobs in front of us, not through a boring Q&A session, but through the unsung art of eavesdropping and blatant listening-in. Little time was required to suss their crew:

Karley had sometime previously banged Matt and was the one-time girlfriend of Bryce who she was “still rooting.” Against this backdrop, Karly had resolved to go to the cricket with Bryce and his yobbo mates. Lack of foresight having Karly and her tag-along friend seated somewhere removed from her yob crew. At one stage Karly offered 20 bucks, then a possible 50 to swap seats with my sister and I.

My sister was at first inclined to take up the offer. But Karly was a mole, acting high class in demeanor and style, squeezing an educated accent through her Dubbo mouth – and we were comfortable where we were.
Karly did herself few favours, getting drunker, more annoying and paying out on the boys in their own environment. To which the inevitable followed:

‘If we’re all so shit Karly why did you fuck half the boys? You even did me twice!’ – Matt

‘No! I Slept with you once and gave you head once!’ – Karly
‘Ok, put your hand up if you’ve had your cum in Karly’s mouth. She ain‘t aging well either.’ – Matt
‘I might be getting older but your dick ain’t getting any bigger Matt’ – Karly

Feeling slightly dejected and in need of validation, Karly staggered down to chat up Constable Klein sitting down the front:

‘So where are you from?’ – Karly
‘Oh shit Karly that’s original!’ – Johnno
‘Karly! What’s takin ya so long? Just get on ya back and wet up!’ – Matt

After protracted heckling Karly abandoned her police pursuit and was then ordered to the bar. Upon being asked to pass her wallet, Bryce threw her fancy Oroton purse over the rail in Klein’s general direction.
‘Constable Klein! Karly threw that there cos she wants ya cock!’ – Johnno
Unfortunately for Bryce The fancy purse landed on Senior Constable Care who jumped the fence to demand answers from Karly, amid shouts from the punters to press charges.

Things lost clarity sometime after tea, but I’ll leave the last word to my little sister…

Following the departure of Bryce’s crew, we wished Karly good luck as she scurried after the boys in a ditzy, drunken stupor… flailing her arms about as my sister regally remarked: ‘Well she’s getting plenty of cock tonight.’

There was also a cricket match.

M. Radcliffe

1. The Glenmore
2. Sweeney’s
3. Market City Tavern
4. The Edinburgh Castle Tavern
5. Gaslight Inn
6. Zanzibar
7. Ching-a-lings
8. Astral Bar
9. Pyrmont Bridge Hotel
10. Zeta Bar

Summer is a time for rooftop drinking.

Hell, summer in Sydney is so fucking fabulous, that it becomes a time for day time drinking and night time sleeping – a mirror image of Winter’s owl-like living arrangements.

However, with Roof Bar out of commission until late 2010, we decided it was time to review this city’s other roof-top establishments and decide which will be the new, top floor point of call.

And as we’re nearing the end of our first year of professional stupidity, we hoisted the flag and hit the tenement tops of our Sydney, for our first team drinking expedition – and so went the invitation:

Friends, glow-worms, ombudsmen, lend me your beers,

Impeded by sobriety, I write to you today; and coerced by thirst, I extend you this invite:

Simon, Tom and I will be dust off the city maps, plot our course, hoist the sheets and embark on SINK’s maiden ‘Rooftop Review’ – next Saturday, the 12th of December.

Their goal is to visit as many of Sydney’s rooftop bars in one day, as is drunkenly possible, and from the top of our fine city’s many hats, assemble something like an article. And sporting Gunda Din grins and drug-crumbed chins; seems like a perfect opportunity to meet some of you sassy contributors and buy you a beer in the sun.

The aim was to hit TEN rooftop drinking holes in Central Sydney, in one day – and systematically review them to the best of our drunken ability.

And while booze and sleeplessness has distorted our collective memory of the day, this is how it feels:

ROOFTOP ONE: The Glenmore

On our way to our first bar, Cookie and I had to pick up Tom, our bitter photographer; who we found drinking with Belgian prostitutes at Lounge Bar… I’m still not sure if they were prostitutes, or if it was simply a language barrier… but Tom was abnormally angry for such a time in the morning, complaining about his lost shoes and lonely evenings.

We only managed to wrench him into a cab by promising him shoes and booze.

And after pulling over at a shitty souvenir store to get some thongs on his tipsy feet, we fell into the Glenmore and stole ourselves a sunny aspect on the astro-turfed roof.

I adore the Glenmore… it was once my local when I worked in the Rocks, and her fantastic rooftop holds the perfect amount of sunshine, fabulously frocked females and a view that even the blind can appreciate. The beer is cheap (as long as you stay away from Coronas), the crowd is unpretentious and the food is decent (though we only sampled food from other tables).

It also costs nothing to reserve yourself a table on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, but that involves the kind of forethought and planning that we are yet to accrue, so we had to settle for stealing other people’s stools.

And as our little group of misfits grew to a healthy team of five, we set off for the next destination.

ROOFTOP TWO: Sweeney’s

The problem with a pub run, is that you have to spend a large amount of time, walking between pubs, with no drink… but the weather was far too brutal for such a dry thought – so we loaded up on cheap takeaways as we stumbled to our next destination – Hotel Sweeney’s.

Now Sweeney’s is a brilliant, run down little shit hole, the kind of place you wouldn’t go for a date, but I’d be happy to raise a family.

As you walk in, you’re consistently greeted by 8, bearded barflys who’ll do their very best to either stare you down, or avoid you at all costs… but skip this gloom hall and head up the stairs (though you should buy your drinks at the first available bar).

The next level, is a bistro; where I have never seen people eating, or cooking…
Then there’s the empty pool room arena, kitted out with modern chairs and yellow felt tables, but avoid the temptation of quiet time, for the next flight of stairs takes to to a tasty, little rooftop.

It’s a brilliant little terracotta oasis on the top floor, usually empty, but always surrounded by music. The staff usually leave you alone and no one will annoy you, but today; there was quite a crowd.

Once again, it’s easy to reserve a table, and I’d suggest nabbing one of the lots at the edge of the roof, where to can look down to the roads below and really feel like you’re above it all.

We then found out that the sexy, white Canadian that one of our writers was bringing, was not in fact code for drugs, but a small, Canadian woman… this brought on a bout of mass panic and people started snorting crushed caffeine tablets and, eyes watering, winced at one another…

We lost all control at this point, our little crew had grown to ten people and the ten dollar jugs (oh yes, ten dollar jugs) were arriving at our table in a United Nations, sand bagging daisy chain of drunken desperation. In retrospect, we over did it at this point.

ROOFTOP THREE: Market City Tavern

Situated on the roof of the Market City Tavern, The Macau Bar (as it was once known) used to be a brilliant spot for a beer. You’re eye level with the rooftops of China town and the smells that fill your nostrils make it impossible to ignore your hunger, and the bustling intersection below is always filled with buskers, nut-bags and a preacher or two (one of which had his sign stolen by Cookie on the way through).

However, with the new smoking legislation forcing people away from their pokies, the Macau decided to move most of their machines outside, onto the roof.

Meaning that what was once an empty, peaceful little joint for a lager or two, is now a pinball cacophony of blips, blerps and amiga-esque music, coupled with angry, mobster looking gentlemen; who do not take kindly to young, dirty hipsters or anyone who disturbs their pre-jackpot prayertime.

Luckily, most of us were disallowed from the bar before we had a chance to stick around for too long… so it was on to the next bar.

ROOFTOP FOUR: The Edinburgh Castle Hotel

At this point, whether for prior appointments, drunken stupidity or angry annoyance, we lost just about everyone, weening our little gang of ten into a bitter crew of 5.

And this bar, while I’ll never get to properly know the inside, I can safely say this was the shittiest “roof terrace” I’ve ever been conned into drinking at.

The man on the end of the phone had promised us a rooftop area to drink in, a “quiet, sun-drenched plot of tiles” – but what we got was a tiny strip of shit with no roof.

This is where we (drunkenly) debated what makes a rooftop bar.

It takes much more than a top floor and and open area, these types of spots are rife thanks to the new smoking legislation and so on… but they are not rooftop bars, as they don’t make you feel like you’re above everything.

For example, the terrace at The Dolphin makes you feel good, and the sun will kiss you in all the right places, but it never feels as though you’re on a rooftop… The same goes for Darlo Bar, and even the Gaslight… but in saying that, it was onto the next bar.

ROOFTOP FIVE: Gaslight Inn

Right about now, I had lost everyone… Tom had gone missing, Cookie and the girls had gone to Newtown to hit up the rooftop at Zanzibar (a fucking fantastic rooftop), and the Jack had pissed off after hearing about a Santa Pub Run in Manly.

It was still early-ish, so the security at the Gaslight had nothing better to do than all congregate around one of their doors… which was sadly, the door I tried to enter though.

They took one look at me, a mess of a human with a filthy T-Shirt tan, a bag full of booze and an old map of Sydney (a pirate map purchased by Tom) and they ushered me back onto Crown Street.

So, alone and on my last $3… I found myself an empty stoop nearby and wrote some garbled notes, which predominately consisted of paranoid complaints.

But all a sudden, Tom arrived out of thin air, bringing along a crew of noisy creatures, ready to party and with wallets as big as the moon.

It was just what we needed, and the Security at Gaslight no longer recognised me, as the girls by my side seemed to render my reflection invisible.

However, there was no need for my attendance at this point… i was simply too drunk to commit to conversation, too tired to debate, to poor to drink.

ROOFTOP SIX:Zanzibar

While not at all within walking range of the city, and therefore originally vetoed from our pub-run plans, a large cohort of our crew left me for Zanzibar as the sun began to set.

This is Cookie’s retelling of the delicious sun-drenched rooftop at Zanzibar in Newtown:

“When the sun set, and there were only two men left standing, I found myself hustled into a taxi heading to Newtown. I was beginning to notice that I was becoming too intoxicated to be of use and was increasinglymaking less sense, as the three girls, one of whom was called Kayleigh but I have no idea which one, force fed me wine, cheese and Nena’s “Nanena sic luftballoon” at their house.

Around 11:00 I finally talked them into taking me to Zanzibar, pretending I was ready to party the night away when in fact I just wanted to find a landmark from which I could navigate my stumbling way home. The four of us walked in the front door together and they all went straight to the bar while I kept walking out the side, bought myself a chicken drum stick and went home to pass out on the lounge watching South Park.

That is the absolute sum of everything I remember after leaving. I wouldn’t call it a failure – but the ending was definitely a drunken letdown for all those of us who drank ourselves into a stupor.”

ROOFTOP SEVEN: Ching-a-Lings

Back to the story at hand…

After once again losing Tom (last seen at the Columbian), we (i.e. my magical girls) persuaded the Security Guards at Ching-a-lings to let me head on up before they closed the rooftop.

Now Ching-a-lings is a delicious little joint, a perfect mix of unpretentious management, pretentious clientele and unpretentious bar offerings. It’s a great night when the right crowd shows up, and the rooftop sections feels like a cubby house amongst the corrugated hats of Oxford Street.

However, after sucking back a frosty long neck or two, failing to spark a conversation or two and alienating one or two bartenders, we decided it was time for the next destination.

ROOFTOP EIGHT:Astral Bar

We found it hard enough to find a cabby to take us, so it should come as no shock that the fine management at Astral Bar (at the top of Star City Casino) were not going to let two, drunken males, with a combined total of three thongs, a ruck sack and a treasure map, into their classy establishment.

However, I can safely say that this is one of my favourite rooftops in Sydney.

As it’s on the top of the Casino, you can be assured the crowd will all be from out of town, and the only thing more gregarious than their suits will be their snakeskin shoes and everwet hair; but the cocktails are fucking fantastic and the roof section has an unparalleled view of the City’s Western face.

And if you get there on the right night, the piano player will have you feeling like Humphrey Bogart, as you suck back a martini to match your old-timey desire.

ROOFTOP NINE: Pyrmont Bridge Hotel

Having failed to get in to the Casino, but being in walking distance to another hotel rooftop, we decided to try our luck at one of the few, remaining 24 hour joints in town – The Pyrmont Bridge Hotel.

Once known as the Roughest Pub in Sydney, the Pyrmont Bridge Hotel has quietened down since a great deal of the dock work went South and took the wharfies with it.
These days, however, you’ll still find a brilliant collection of fuckwits, thanks largely to it’s all hours license and it’s distance to Cargo Bar (if you get kicked out of Cargo – you know where to go).

The rooftop is a brilliant bar, as are the myriad of tiny, private rooms which litter the pub – usually reserved for private functions. Luckily, however, if you posses the gift of the gab, you can usually blag your way in to a great night on the roof. Sadly, however, my usual “talk the knickers off the queen” abilities had been replaced by “can’t talk like a human being” abilities.

So this was another failure, but well worth the lesson: pub runs are fucking retarded.

ROOFTOP TEN:Zeta Bar

After not getting in to ASTRAL BAR… We didn’t bother trying Zeta, we’d been refused entry enough to know that we’d need at least $20 and a pair of shoes to get in.

So, here is Tom’s review form a previous night at Zeta Bar:

I hadn’t been working this particular job for long but my work colleagues seemed fun enough to have a few drinks with. Of course, livers being the unreliable filters they are, a few drinks quickly avalanched into five of the dirtiest Martinis imagined, and that’s why we were in Zeta.

Architecturally, Zeta bars biggest draw is a gaping opening which leads to a largish patio with a single tree, I don’t believe any seating was available but the unparallelled view of a well lit Queen Victoria Building will probably draw you to stand against the edge anyway.

Sitting was a chore in this joint and dancing could’ve led to an untenable Hilton Hotel bill and a jewel draped, fur caped problem so I stayed outside with several smiling Rose Bay blondes whose company was as pleasant as could be.

I’d certainly recommend going, but due to it’s lack of feasible beers and 5:00 opening time I’d wait till later in the evening, when you’ve forgotten about your overdue rent and any dependants you might have.

CONCLUSION:  Fuck pub runs, they’re fucking retarded.

All our love for the silly season,

The Quivering Team at SINK.

Why are we all so obsessed with going out?
Is it to create intensity in our lives? To escape our bourgeois destiny?

Or is it because I just used the word ‘bourgeois’ and what you need most in the world right now is a drink to erase the horror of such pretention from your mind?

For me it’s CFOMS (chronic fear of missing something), which unfortunately often leads to CVDTIOI (chronic vomiting due to inevitably overdoing it.) I also have an abnormally overactive boredom gland (note in terms of human physiology the ‘boredom gland’ is totally incorrect and in fact something I just made up).

I often treat this hyperboredomemia with exhibition openings because they are a) free and b) I do actually like art, I’m not totally bitter (yet).
A few weeks back, I figured that a nice orgy would be a good way to blow off some steam after a lame week. By which I mean, Orgy, the exhibition which was showing at Palmer Projects gallery in Darlinghurst.

Ben Frost was the big name in this group show. I like Ben Frost, even if he does have pictures of Brandon Davis and The Veronicas with his work on his website. Frost didn’t disappoint with this effort; a pornographic, anime style acrylic painting in which the infantile looking protagonist has her vagina censored with an Australian Idol logo. Nice.

The rest of the work is fairly unremarkable hipster-kid collages and photographs. One artwork referred to Manly as ‘The Valley of Scum’, the accuracy of which I (being a northern beaches girl) can attest to; a phrase that made me smile and has since caught on.

The only annoying part about this opening was how overcrowded it was. Indie kids spilled onto the street with their artists friends. The two boys I was with and I couldn’t even get in to look at the mediocre art until after the bar tab was well dry (annoying). Of course this necessitated drinking at the Four in Hand next door whilst waiting for the crowd to clear, so maybe it wasn’t so bad after all.

Anyway, I have literally no idea what will be showing there next, as the dodgy hips at Palmer Projects can’t even be bothered to list new exhibitions on their website. But whatever is showing, the opening night is December 3… And regardless of who or what is showing, I’ll be there to pilfer every bit of booze and culture that I can get my thirsty fingers on.

Eliza Milliken

When our editor discovered that I knew fuck all about the Opera House, two things happened:

A – He vehemently refused to buy the round of beers I was owed.
And B – He suggested I write this story…

Feeling like a schoolboy writing lines for being a smart arse, I started looking at the Opera House, it’s historical saga of politics; Millions of dollars and a Danish bloke called Jørn Utzon.

For those blissfully unaware, the abridged tale goes something like this:
The Sydney Town Hall was outgrowing it’s boots as Sydney’s best concert venue and a bunch of the city’s head musical types petitioned the government for a new venue… The thumbs up was given by the state government and an Opera House design competition was held, and out of 233 entries they picked Utzon’s and started building it in 1958.

Roughly halfway through its construction in 1965 the Government changed hands to Liberal and the new regime decided to tighten the reigns on the project, appointing a bloke called Davis Hughes as the minister in charge of public works.

Due to continually escalating costs, and a discontented public bleating about a bloody foreigner wasting their money, Hughes pulled all funding from the project to the point where Utzon could not pay his staff and was forced to resign. At this halfway point the cost sat at 28 million… the original quote was for 7 million.

A disgraced and dejected Utzon packed up his office and returned to Denmark, while Hughes re-initiated the project under the watchful eye of Aussie architect Peter Hall. Hughes oversaw the project and ensured the second half of it would not waste any more of the taxpayer’s money. It was finished in 1973 at a total cost of 108 million bucks.

Now, it has to be remembered that it wasn’t merely Utzon who set the prices here; there was a whole league of number crunchers and labourers alike who were responsible for that estimate. And in an effort to also defend Hughes, I began reading his side of the story… but the more I read into that bureaucratic bastard – the less I liked him.
Firstly the man was a fraud. To get into politics he’d claimed to have a university degree, but he was discovered by his opponents to have no qualifications whatsoever! As a result he was punted disgracefully from his position as leader of the Country Party. Then, as only a politician could, he lurked and weaselled his way back in to politics and ended up as the bloke in charge of public works for the liberals.

Records tell that Hughes flat-out didn’t like Utzon, and did his best to label him as ‘a useless dreamer’ and an ‘impractical project leader.’ Hughes owed Utzon around $100,000 by the time he was forced to quit, yet after he had resigned as the project leader; Hughes callously offered him a middle-tier designer’s role in the project.

Insulted and unemployed, Utzon left the xenophobic public, the political clusterfuck and his Opera House behind to return home.

Unfortunately I deal with architects in my line of work and they are a famously impractical lot, style over function to the very end; but a rare genius was Utzon. He had the balls to take a ridiculous modernist shape inspired by sails on the harbour and make it into a physical entity now treasured by millions – yet he wasn’t invited to the opening.
So we got a building and an icon that has attracted millions. But Utzon, the foreigner, was so heavily bad-mouthed by the politicians and the press of the day that his reputation was all but destroyed. Other countries refused to award him work, regardless of his brilliance, as they feared that projects would run over-budget by millions! If only they’d seen through the politics, imagine what could have been created.

If you read into Hughes’ thoughts on his role, or the political opinion on his doings, he strongly took the standard political defence: “I was just doing my job.” That job was to put a financial cap on Utzon’s Opera House, and to be fair, that’s exactly what he did.

What Hughes had missed in his blind quest for self importance, was that the very design and ambition of building the Opera House was a fantasy and an artwork in itself, something that stretched beyond numbers and budgets. But, Davis Hughes was a professional Liberal, a numbers man, a hard-nosed civil servant to the very end; still door knocking for the right wingers well into his eighties.

I think we’ve come a long way in the last 30 years, but fight it all we want – creatives and bureaucrats will always clash, and though I don’t like it, it’s fair to say that each side secretly needs the other. The world would be dull without creatives and dull without the ‘crats… ‘crats and the creatives… what a lovely name for a band.

Anyway, while I don’t think we should slap the blame of this unashamed tragedy on a single person, or a government party, I do think it’s worth a thought… what mastery could have been accomplished had we let Utzon finish his concrete canvas? Imagine what incredible buildings could have been constructed…

Imagine if the lust for bureaucratic popularity didn’t creep under the skin of men, and make them impede beautiful things.

Jack.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As this weekend marks the one year anniversary of Jorn Utzon’s death, we are going to drink champagne around the back of the Opera House… followed by a quick pee around the back of Town Hall.

With this in mind I was delighted to receive and invitation to a session of Antichrist at the State Theatre from two friends who are respectively ensconced in the film department of UNSW and UTS. To me Lars von Trier is like a junkie boyfriend, I don’t want to be drawn into his self-serving shenanigans but I love him and I can’t help it, and so I jumped at the chance. I’m suspicious that he may have conceived of the film Antichrist as a way to splatter the phrase ‘Lars von Trier: Antichrist’ all over movie posters and festival programmes.

However, there were no posters to be seen as we crawled into the bowels of the State Theatre. This subterranean locale turned out to be a very fitting locale for the diminutive Dane’s latest work.

Von Trier’s new feature film debuted at Cannes to a tepid response. If you have been living under a rock you may not have heard about the media circus that was generated by the graphic scenes of genital mutilation portrayed in this film by one (very brave) Charlotte Gainsbourg. I thought an on-camera clitorectomy would be the moment that turned me off von Trier for good and fronted up at the cinema fully prepared to dislike this film. However, Antichrist is actually very difficult to dislike. The values of the film are very complex, if a bit melodramatic. Von Trier critiques psychotherapy, religion, academia, motherhood, relationships and even the nature of reality. Just when you think you can finally pin him down on a narrow-minded generalisation the director changes track again and the viewer has to reassess the moral structure of the film several times over. Indeed, it is very difficult to discern who the real villain of the piece actually is, which keeps it interesting.
Other redeeming features included how visually stunning Antichrist is. Antichrist’s menacing atmosphere is a fitting tribute to Andrei Tarkovsky, the Russian director of films like Stalker and Solaris to whom Antichrist is dedicated. One character, a talking fox who feasts on his own gizzards, should go down in cinematic history as one of the most disturbing things ever put in a film.

However, it’s not all positive; for example it’s annoying when characters don’t display realistic reactions to their physical injuries. Willem Dafoe seems capable of a quiet chat with his wife whilst missing an ankle. Also, whilst Defoe and Gainsbourg are two examples of the finest acting talent this generation has to offer their stop/start, slightly bizarre conversations make the improvisation seem a little obvious and forced.

If you’re up to intense cinematic violence then I highly recommend giving Antichrist a look. If nothing else it will give you hours worth of conversational material for the pub. For us, a pub seemed like a meagre offering in comparison to the rosy pink noodle markets happening in Hyde Park next door. What better place to discuss genital mutilation than under a tree with wines and japancake? The worst part of the night was when it took me twenty minutes to realise jaPANCAKE was a play on words. Seriously.

Eliza Milliken

I already had life bans at Fraser Suites, Westfield Chatswood, Kam Fook Chinese Restaurant, Rebel Sport NSW and Paradise Resort on the Gold Coast… but Last Friday, I was lucky enough to add Four Points Sheraton to this prestigious list.

You see, last Friday evening, two girls from the country who I had met the week before, came down to Sydney for a visit and asked a friend and I to take them out on the town (first mistake).

We arrived at the predrinks at the Sheraton at the prompt time of 11pm, having already consumed close to 6 bottles of wine before arriving at the ‘predrinks’ (second mistake).

We laughed at the girls attempts to keep us under control as we decimated their minibar, sucking back tiny bottles of wine, gin, beer and vodka. This extra bout of booy confidence enabled us to remove the smoke alarm, soark up a few cigarettes and begin to really run riot in the hotel room.

Some harmless damage was done, and somehow the phone landed in the toilet and was flushed several times (third mistake). That’s when there was a loud bang at the door.

The security guard troop barged through the room, glared at the collage of bottles and rubbish that was once the floor and informed us that by removing the smoke alarm we had sent an automatic call to the fire brigade.

Receiving no help from the girls, security informed us that the fine would be a quick $200.00 and asked us to leave the hotel room immediately.

We packed up our things and left with our pride in tact, popping the fine in the bin on the way out and burst back onto the street to prance around the city, with my junk free as a bird.

We drank and free-balled from club to club until approximately 6am, when my compadre made his way home. It was too bright to continue clubbing, so I made my way back to the hotel to continue my path of destruction and possibly try my wares with the young country lasses. (fourth mistake)

I stumbled into the Hotel foyer liquored up beyond belief and, my bladder bloated with booze, I patted down the walls in search of the mens. However, before finding a urinal, I found a rather elegant elevator and, appreciating that I may not find another lift with quite the same quality of solitude, I began my Spartan piss (fifth mistake). Whilst the lift took quite some time to reach the girls’ upper level room, my piss took considerably longer.

Careful not to electrocute myself I rinsed the grubby finger-prints from the buttons with my ethanol stream when the doors opened. I imagined some poor family was going to find me wrapping up my marathon urination, no such luck though, the hallways were empty and after shaking off I gleefully zipped down to the girl’s hotel room, got nude and hopped into bed.

Within minutes, there was a knock at the door, and having forgotten the earlier altercation with the security entourage, I got out of bed and opened the door.

It was the same crew of rent-a-cops from earlier in the evening and I watched the young man in charge visibly tremble with rage as I stood before him naked. He informed me that he had video footage of my elevator release and I was apparently in some serious hot water. He asked me to leave immediately and slapped me with another $150 cleaning fee fine.

As you do with Any rent-a-cop – I called his bluff. (Sixth and final mistake.)

I was hauled downstairs and put into the office where I was photographed, yelled at and the police were called as I was shown the evidence in question of my night’s antics.

I was informed of my life ban from the Sheraton – My picture and details were hung up upon the wall and the police (who were actually very jovial and understanding about the whole situation) simply drove me back to my friend’s house as “They really couldn’t do anything about what I had done” as it was not illegal (this was a luck surprise) but as i was such a mess they, thought it would be best for me to be put into bed.

Anyway… I now hang a copy of my life ban on my bedroom wall, it sits above the others, like the Oscar Statue amongst my Emmys and Logies. I’m not sure where I’ll get banned from next… but I can assure you, it will be all class.

Malakai Isadorable

“You’re supposed to be dead,” were the first words that sprang to mind.

“What do you mean?”

“They found your body underneath your shop at Burwood. We went to the funeral service,” McCarthy incredulously said, before he realised the full implications of this chance meeting. “But if you’re alive, who was the body? And why did you run away?”

Instead of responding, the man once again ran, this time literally, fleeing along the footpath and out of sight. At that point he was using the alias Allan McDonald, though his workmate had known him as Allan Brennan and he’d arrived in Australia calling himself William McDonald. History would come to know him as the “Sydney Mutilator” but that wasn’t his real name either.

He was born Allan Ginsberg in Liverpool, England, in 1924. The defining moment of his life came in 1943 when he joined the army – at the height of the war and the tender age of 19 – only to be raped by a corporal in an air raid shelter and threatened with death if he reported it. The horror of such an event is easy to imagine, yet his shame and humiliation were only heightened by the realisation that he was himself homosexual. From that point onwards his life lurched from one misfortune to another. In 1947 he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and spent six months locked in an asylum where he received daily electroshock therapy. In 1955 he emigrated to Adelaide, adopting the name William McDonald as a sign of how much he wanted to separate himself from the past. However, he didn’t exactly get off to a clean start and was almost immediately placed on a two-year good behaviour bond for propositioning an undercover detective in a public toilet. A subsequent move to Ballarat resulted in him being the victim of a violent gay-bashing.

By the time he moved to Brisbane in 1960 there was a rage building inside McDonald that even he didn’t seem aware of. It surfaced one night in the hotel room of 55-year-old Amos Hurst, an alcoholic he’d befriended and was in the middle of a heavy drinking session with. McDonald was suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to kill and wrapped his hands around the other man’s throat, strangling the life out of him. When it was over he stripped Amos naked and put him to bed, then quietly went back to his own room. For days he waited in terror for news of the murder to break. However, when the obituary was finally published it said that Amos had died of a heart attack. McDonald could have safely stopped there but he’d gotten a taste for murder and found that he liked it. The first killing was just a hint of what was to come.

In January 1961 McDonald moved to Sydney and over the next two years he terrorised the city with a murderous rampage the likes of which the nation had never experienced before. His targets were alcoholic derelicts like Alfred Greenfield, a vagrant he befriended on the night of June 4, 1961. They walked together to the Domain baths and drank until Greenfield passed out, at which point McDonald calmly donned a plastic raincoat and stabbed him to death. He then removed the dead man’s pants, took hold of his dick and balls and sliced them off, throwing them in the harbour on the way home. At first police assumed they were looking for a jealous lover but that theory was quickly quashed on November 21, 1961, when Ernest Cobbin was found in a Moore Park public toilet with more than 50 stab wounds and no genitals. This time McDonald took his grisly trophy home with him, carefully washed it and took it to bed with him before throwing it off Sydney Harbour Bridge the next day. He followed a similar pattern when he struck down Frank McLean on March 31, 1962, in Bourke Lane, Darlinghurst. It has long been speculated that the murders – and particularly the ritualistic removal of the genitals – were caused by McDonald’s desire to take revenge on the corporal who had raped him and (to his mind) turned him gay, but there’s an equal possibility that he was just a fucking psychopath.

By November 1962 McDonald was still on the loose, despite the massive £5000 reward being offered for the killer who had become known as the Mutilator. Spurred on by his success so far, he brazenly took his fifth victim, Patrick James Hackett, home to the residence above his shop and stabbed him with such ferocity that afterwards the knife was too blunt and bent for the usual castration.

When McDonald awoke the next morning to find the cold body on his floor he panicked. He stashed it under the building and fled to Brisbane, changing his name once again. It took three weeks for the smell of the rotting corpse to attract the attention of neighbours, by which time it was so badly decomposed it was unidentifiable. Police assumed the body belonged to the missing McDonald and buried it in a pauper’s grave. Some of McDonald’s co-workers, John McCarthy among them, attended the funeral and even threw in money to buy a wreath.

Yet again McDonald had gotten away with murder, although he didn’t realise it until he returned to Sydney and bumped into McCarthy on George Street. Even then his fiendishness wasn’t immediately unravelled. McCarthy went straight to the police and told them he’d met the supposedly dead man, but wasn’t believed. It wasn’t until he went to The Daily Mirror, which printed the story under the famous headline “Case of the walking corpse”, that police began to put the puzzle together. Hackett’s body was exhumed and correctly identified, as were the stab wounds and attempted mutilation marks that had previously been missed. A sketch of McDonald was published and he was soon arrested in Melbourne, finally ending the rampage of Australia’s first serial killer.

During his trial McDonald expressed no remorse and attempted to defend himself on the grounds of insanity. However, the jury was unconvinced and he was found to have been sane at the time of the murders. He was sentenced to life in prison and is still there, as New South Wales’ – and possibly Australia’s – longest-serving inmate. He is currently at Long Bay Correctional Centre.

William, on a recent prison vacation at Bondi Beach.

In 2000 the aging mutilator gave an interview to author Paul Kidd, during which he claimed to have no interest in ever being release from prison. He said he was entirely institutionalised and did not feel he would survive on the outside. “It’s terrible out there,” he said, apparently with no hint of irony, “People aren’t even safe in their own homes.”

Cookie

]]> http://sink.es/william-macdonald/feed/ 3 http://sink.es/kirin-callinan/ http://sink.es/kirin-callinan/#comments Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:16:08 +0000 simon http://sink.es/?p=1034 It was around 9 o’clock on a Wednesday and I was just too drunk enough to be strutting around midweek and telling my liver it was a Friday. We were on our way to catch the final night of Kirin J. Callinan’s album recording at the Coachman.

If you’ve never been to the Coachman, you probably aren’t aware of the atrocities committed by the Ottoman empire in the way of design. It’s a tawdry cacophony of tacky furniture and marble flooring. With red velvet seating and golden accents everywhere the eye can see. However, it should also be noted that the food is good, the vodka is superb and you can wrap your mits around a pint of Russian beer for seven bucks. Which makes it a brilliant venue in my opinion.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from Kirin, though as he was the guitarist for Mercy Arms, I was expecting something similar. But as we tripped through the front doors of the venue and into the glaring eyes of an already edgy crowd, I realized that my assumptions had once again lead me astray.

Kirin’s music is best described as epic, aggressive, emotional noise. Now, I don’t mean ‘noise’ in disdainful sense, his music is incredible – but for the best of my vocabulary, I’m unable to pigeon hole it under any known category.

His guitar has the raw, stripped down echo of Buckley’s Grace sessions and his voice sounds like David Byrne’s early vocals making out with David Bowie’s later vocals. Kirin himself is a frenetic, skeletal performer. With a quirky, epileptic way of moving and home made tattoos dappled over his avian body.

Now, as mentioned prior, this was an album recording. More specifically, the third night of an album recording and Kirin was not holding back for the sake of a cleaner recording. The music always felt free and improvised, though I couldn’t tell you which of the songs were old.

Like any album worth it’s listen, it took me a few tracks to get into, but by the time Kirin got to ‘Love/Delay’ (a flagship track, judging by the sea of nodding heads) I was hypnotized and slightly obsessed.

At the crescendo of the recording, Kirin pulled Josh Bush (the drummer from Bridezilla) out of the audience to play drums for the final track. Josh did shockingly well for a young lad full of booze (who hadn’t played the song before) but eventually, the cymbals were knocked over, along with the microphone and all seemed lost.

Kirin just played through, kicking the fallen symbols and shouting to make up for the fallen microphone, and I hope the ensuing jazzy, chaos makes it through to the album.

It was freewheeling, spoken word, broken-hearted wonder and muddled with the booze in my belly and the alumni of beautiful scenesters, I became a teenage goupie by the end of the set.

Kirin is getting to the studio to start editing the Coachman recordings this Monday and will attempt to produce the album in between gigs.

He’s in Sydney for a few more months before he scoots off back to the U.S, and I definitely suggest catching one of his live shows while you can.

He’s also playing guitars for Jack Ladder, who will be supporting The Scare this Friday at the Annandale.

http://www.myspace.com/kirinjcallinan

http://www.myspace.com/jackladder

http://www.myspace.com/thescare

Rob Scattergood

Simon and I were in hot pursuit of a research assignment; Old Sydney Town, the Colonial Sydney based attraction several hours north of the city. It had closed down ten years prior due to a confounding lack of interest from kids, whose Schools carted them there to see unenthused, out-of-work actors feigning farm skills.

We had brought Joel, a hairy affirmation of natural selection’s quirky side, whose opinionated conversational style paradoxically assisted his considerable charm. And Ben, a tall bald beacon of weird, whose ability to confound the general public with his amputee sentences was unrivaled.

We were acutely aware that to do this thing correctly, we needed somebody to transport us, in the tradition of our convict forefathers. All four of us have driver’s licenses, and the only rational way to encourage a stranger to drive us seemed to be by getting very drunk very early, and such was our necessity for the delightful Cab Sav.

To add an old timey feel to the proceedings, we’d be needing tobacco pipes, so we continued to Saul’s Tobacconist on George Street and had our faces fitted with old Briars. And so, puffing away we settled into a beer at the Great Southern Hotel, where Joel began the search for a willing driver.

While we sunk into a local down-and-outer’s indictment of ‘The Man’, Joel wove tales of adventure and grandeur around the pedestrians, hoping to entice them into the driver’s seat of my ’94 Daihatsu Applause. No-one was biting, and as the hours wore on I wondered (thoughtfully puffing my morning pipe) if we had pushed this idea too far?

Suddenly… “Another Tact!” announced Simon standing loudly, clearly disappointed with our disintegrating resolve. And with no better option on the table, we stood in unison and followed Simon’s defiantly pointed finger in the direction of a youth hostel.

One-by-one, with wild smiles and jumbled explanations, Ben and Joel asked the travellers if “adventure [was] their shoe”. The travellers, each quietly dealing with a compound hangover, looked at us pitifully before turning their attention to the security guard who was already making his way over.

Moments later we were kicked out into the street along with a young German guy who couldn’t escape the deaf plough of the guard. The German was a curious looking kid with a flexfit hat and fizzy hair who was initially against our offer to drive. However, after repackaging our request with a healthy $50 bonus, Stefan (as we would come to know the German) agreed to drive us to Old Sydney Town.

And after picking up my car and strapping the German to the wheel, we set our sights on supplies. We had forgotten to quiz our new chauffeur on his driving skills, but as we tore off down the wrong side of Bourke Street, it quickly became irrelevant (it was discovered that the 19 year old had only scarcely driven, even in Germany, although he did possess a license).

The German pulled up at the East Village Hotel in Darlinghurst, and after twenty-five minutes of running the streets I found a place that would sell booze to a drunk man in an overcoat, bowtie and a sailor’s cap at midday on a Friday.

With a driver and booze to match, we were off – and quickly reached the roundabout at the end of Crown Street; which the German charged around in the wrong direction. We all began instructing him loudly on his errors by screaming in fear and, accompanied by an orchestra of horns, Stefan simply ignored us all (to a halted truck driver’s amazement). This was already resembling a bad decision.

We didn’t hit the highway until some time after 3 and, knowing our light was fleeting, we urged Stefan to ignore the speed limit. We tore up through the North Shore and onto the Pacific Highway , a sleek channel of road that carves straight though the high hills. The radio blared above our drunken yawping and as FBi crackled out of sight, we tuned the radio in to some Central Coast Jazz station which, combined with our odd attire, seemed to make our German uncomfortable.

We were making great time on the road and good distance with the booze, and as we sliced across the Mooney Mooney bridge Simon slapped me on the back, “It’s happening ol’ boy,” erupting into a barbaric belly laugh.

Over Mount White, past Peats Ridge and the our exit (Sydney Reptile Park) made a prompt appearance, sending a nervous Stefan (we had remembered his name by now) flying up the exit ramp.

Our map, being on an envelope, watermarked with pinot noir and rather abstract – didn’t prepare us for the sea of industrial complexes that erupted from the highway. In the absence of the colonial welcome we were expecting, we ordered Stefan to pull into a warehouse car yard and we continued on foot.

Following our noses across the concrete drains and tractors for half an hour left us stumped and, resting on a boom gate we quietly felt defeated. After ten minutes of glum frustration we noticed, peaking out the top of the bush, a Windmill sat not 200 metres from us.

Assessing the Windmill’s dilapidated appearance from afar, we remembered the old school excursions to Old Sydney Town, the working windmill dancing in our memories. And so, with hope renewed, we ran through the bush, jumped a fence and we began to explore.

We first climbed up into the roof of the Windmill, Simon’s notepad began filling with notes on construction techniques and other points of interest. Next, we investigated the gallows, the houses, the school, and finally the gaol. It was insane to see… a 17th century replica of Sydney, intact, abandoned and overgrown – not more than a few hours north the of real thing.

In our drunken excitement we spread out over the town, and as the sun waned and the rains came over the hills, I heard the others running from security – I bravely followed.

Once we re-grouped and compared artifacts (Joel had found an original, 17th century price gun), we decided it was time to go. Giddy in the dark, we wobbled back to the car.

Anxious to get back to the more recent Sydney Town, we charged back down the Freeway. The trip was more or less uneventful aside from the odd bit of marching through traffic jams singing, Tequila deciding that Simon should get naked, the police pulling Stefan over (for racing down the Dee Why waterfront) and our uncomfortable entry to a friend’s dinner party (while it’s customary to show up drunk to these things, it’s not advised to bring strange Germans).

Curling back into Bourke Street we dropped a burnt-out Simon on a bed, before taking Stefan out on Oxford Street to repay his attempts at driving with booze. My memories of the expedition are non-existent but Simon recounts me arriving back at four in the morning… taking two steps into the apartment… and falling like a redwood onto the floor (where I would awake horribly some time later).

Like any good amusement park, there’s lots we didn’t get to do – you can’t see it all in (two drunken hours of) one day. Never fear though – we’ll go back… As the commercial said:

“I wanna go back to early times, go back in history,
I wanna go back to Old Sydney Town, to find out why I’m Me.
I wanna go back to Old Sydney Town, I’m an Australian,
I wanna go back to old Sydney Town, to where it all began.”

Tom.

It wasn’t the first time a stranger had asked me that, but it was the first time a Jedi with a handbag at a Burrito stand had asked me that.

It was a breezy Sunday night on King Street and I was catching up with our editor and a photographer. We’d seen a total of six bands over eight hours, but no one had any photos or lucid memories to show for it (read: we had no story). So, when we were propositioned by a robed Jedi, asking us to buy him a beer – we swiftly finished our burritos and walked with him to the Marlborough for another round.

The Jedi was an interesting creature, with a sharp face and intelligent voice… but I couldn’t take my eyes off of his robe (which he consistently corrected was a “cloak”) and I listened intently as he spoke about medieval metal bands from Norway and the inner workings of Vladimir Nabokov and Tom Waits… he was definitely a brilliant conversationalist.

Then, as we finished our round, the Jedi cast curious eyes at each of us and asked “so… who’s getting the next round?” At this point, it became obvious that our Jedi was a pro. A witty, interesting, freeloading booze-hustler. A penniless, scumbag drunk, who swaps stories and smiles for drinks. I know this type of dirt-bag all too well, because that is exactly what I was trying to do that evening.

Anyway, things got awkward, so we made an awful set of excuses and frittered off, down King Street (in the opposite direction to the Jedi). This unusual altercation left us desperately needing another drink, so we decided our only option was to pop in to the Vanguard for a night cap.

We arrived at the Vanguard in high spirits, having skipped hand-in-hand down King Street (which also left me out of breath and dry-mouthed) and the marquee by the door had three words plastered on it: “Beer Drinking Woman.”

It seemed like an odd thing to advertise, a solitary, alcoholic woman… but we were three, beer drinking men and it felt reassuring to know that our kind of people were inside and on stage.

Tripping through the doors, we were greeted by the wry smile of the ticketress and informed that we had made it in time for intermission. We were still unsure exactly what we had missed half of, but bargained the her down to half price tickets and took three seats by the bar and ordered three matching drinks.

A good looking crowd lined the walls of the Vanguard, seemingly a mixture of mid-thirties set-designers with incredible jackets and aging audio engineers with immaculate beards. Everything about the place was making me feel incredible and we cuddled up to the old-timey bar like needy children.

By this stage we were all comfortably drunk, apart from our editor, who seemed to be slipping into disorderliness, getting louder and louder as he did his best to better the crowd’s building rabble.

But the hubbub was swiftly silenced, as a foxy, looming red-head took to the stage in an orange satin cocktail dress. She muttered a few words in cabaret characters and with a drink in hand (and more by her side) she slid right into an incredible cover of Tom Waits’ boozy croon ‘The Piano Has Been Drinking.’

It was an amazing version of the song, and I found myself frozen in enjoyment, unable to make a murmur or cough for fear of missing a note. I remained that way until the end of the song, when I began to carry on like a trained seal, clapping and yipping uncontrollably.

We discovered from the ticketress that the musical Mata Hari behind the microphone was Christa Hughes (AKA: KK Juggy from Machine Gun Fellatio) and the pianist’s name was Leonie Cohen. We were told more, but the next song began and I swiftly trailed off in a doe-eyed daze once again.

To say that Christa is talented is unfair, as it would suggest she could be placed in the same category as 12 year old violinists… but take my word for it, if you haven’t seen her perform you should do so immediately. Christa’s hold on the crowd is incredible and her sleazy, honest charm is instantly addictive.

However, while Christa crooned her way through the booze-soaked stories of her life, from fat creeps and bad shags to a speed-ball overdose on a bathroom floor (where else?), our dear editor was getting more and more rowdy… eventually getting himself disallowed from the bar.

A blatant frown draped across his walrus cheeks and he sipped on the water given to him like a misbehaving child. He looked mad and glared at the water, only breaking his stare to shoot similar eyes at the bubbly bartender.

Once he’d done enough glaring, he shot up and stormed towards the stage with his empty glass in hand, marching with the cocky confidence of a fighter pilot. Christa had left a cask of wine on the edge of the stage to encourage audience inebriation, and our dear editor stormed up mid-song and topped up his empty cup with some ghastly goon. Christa loved it and the audience followed close behind.

The evening continued at this rate, and from melancholic boozey tune, to triumphant boozey tune, the entire audience watched on with wistful eyes as Christa sauntered through each song with her aggressive, offensive forte – right up to the bogan barn dance finale of Cold Chisel’s ‘Cheap Wine.’

All in all, Christa sings like a demon, the crowd loves her and she’s fucking gorgeous.
Once she becomes rich and famous, I’ll have every reason in the world to hate her.

She’ll be playing the Vanguard every Sunday for the rest of October.
Catch her before she hits the entertainment centre.

James Bloodworth

It didn’t help that I was wearing purple riding boots, but mainly it was because of the dense cloud of smugness that filled the joint like cigarette smoke in a ’50s RSL Club. The stench of self-satisfaction, in that auditorium within the bowels of the Masonic Centre, was gagging.

This was the political literati, the people who compulsively read everything Glenn Mine spatters in tabloid ink and take every word from Laurie Oaks as gospel truth.

Paul Kelly (the editor, not the singer) was being interviewed about his new book, The March of Patriots, which had been the hot topic among commentators all week as they fought a protracted history war over which recent prime minister was most reformist. The interviewer, former ABC reporter and keen interrogator of yore, Maxine McKew.

Yet for an event that was hosted by Gleebooks, there was an alarming absence of glee in the uniform ranks of straight-faced suit-wearers. The crowd would no doubt describe itself as “intellectual”, while a less charitable observer would call them “pretentious”. “Aspirational” might be a good compromise.

The distressing lack of alcohol, at the supposed happy hour of a Friday evening, was only emphasised by the Jagermeister and Red Bull that was percolating in our own otherwise empty stomachs as we took our seats in the back row.

We watched over a sea of bobbing bald patches – and one impressive silver mane that looked suspiciously like it belonged to Bob Hawke – as the pair of them took the stage in what looked, at first, like a production of Lateline: The Stage Show.

However, that impression was immediately dashed as Maxine fed Kelly one Labour-leaning set-up question after another; “Kevin Rudd can go to Pittsburgh with a very good story to tell,” Maxine intoned a comment like a question, “He certainly can,” came Kelly’s reply (clearly feeling the heat).

This guided tour of Kelly’s political ideas seemed vaguely familiar. My mind ticked over as my neighbours shifted restlessly in their seats, one picking his nose, another surreptitiously read The Australian. Then it came to me, “So Moira, tell us about this new carpet cleaner”, I immediately expected a knife-set.

Thankfully, at the half-hour mark, things began to get interesting. The door burst open, a tall man in a white robe loudly entered the room in a sea of latin before, stilled by left-wing stares, he apologised for entering the wrong room and slowly backed out again.

The interruption threw Maxine off her script.Meanwhile, Paul Kelly – who had clearly been waiting for this opportunity – produced a guitar and launched into a version of “Dumb Things” that would have made his namesake’s testicles explode in horror.

All right, we should be honest. We’re pretty sure that’s how the meeting ended, but we’re not certain because we couldn’t endure more than half an hour (not without more booze). When the big hand got to the six we stood and, amid a barrage of condescending looks, made our escape to the bar next door.

Once there, a few more drinks helped us recover from the Chinese water torture of Kelly’s halting monotonal speech pattern.

I couldn’t stop asking myself what had drawn them there? Did those people honestly have nothing better to do on a Friday night? And yet sitting on the curb, discussing our superiority to these people, we opened another long-neck and realised; could we really criticise their itinerary?

This concept hung over our heads until the wee hours of the morning, haunting us like teenage addiction… until we were stumbling through the Rocks and reached the defining moment of our night.

A looming construction crane hovered over The Rocks, winking at us with it’s steel eyes, slightly swaying like a girder eucalyptus – It had to be done, whether we liked it or not.

As I took my first, uneasy steps up the ladder I suddenly got a startling insight into the motives of the people who had flocked to the Masonic Centre.

None of us particularly wanted to climb the crane, yet we all wanted to be seen as the kind of people who would, knowing – as we held each rung in a death grip – that the story of it would likely outshine the actual experience. Bizarrely, this flash of empathetic understanding made me feel even less respect for them, because then we reached the top.

The view, from that exposed position atop 100 metres of steel scaffolding, was breath-taking.

The Bridge and Opera House were postcard-perfect, brightly illuminated in stark contrast to the inky blackness of the harbour, while the lights of the city were sparkling jewels that glittered and shimmered in the night air.

Did the literati get the same reward from their own evening “adventure?” Were they in bed at that very moment, with their freshly-signed copy of ‘March of the Patriots’ on their bedside tables, grinning at the new ammunition they’d soon fire off at the next, left-wing cheese dinner?

The sad answer is – probably.

Cookie

Okay, so I get it, Lisa Mitchell is cute, her songs are cute and she’s a shy, quiet, cute chick. And even though she came out of Idol, I have no hesitation is saying that I dig her songs (though there is an underlying hint of shame).

She’s a nineteen year old kid from Albury, with a guitar and a wavering voice – what’s not to like? Well, for one thing – her gig at the Metro last Friday.

I’m not going to lie – it was horrendous.

Now, I’m aware it can’t be all of her fault, but I couldn’t hear a god damn thing, it was as though my ears were full of Vaseline – it was a joke. I know Lisa Mitchell is no wailer, I get that she’s quiet… but for fuck’s sake, this was ridiculous. When I spend my Friday night catching a band, I have certain expectations. And a decent sound set-up at the Metro Theatre is just one of my very, basic demands.

From the moment she stepped out on to the stage, it was clear something was wrong. Her voice was meek, too meek, garbled by the drunken cacophony of the theatre audience. However, all around me people were watching her, nodding their heads and smiling at her jokes.

I started digging at my ears with a finger nail and wrapping at my head with my knuckles, actually wondering if it was a problem with my hearing, but nothing fixed the issue… I couldn’t make out a single word she was saying… Eventually, after wooing the pie-eyed audience with her murmering, she burst into her first song, which sounded quite nice – although I couldn’t make out any of the lyrics.

In a recent interview with Yumi Stynes, Lisa claimed that all she wanted was “…for people to hear my songs…” which actually made me chuckle to myself as the drums bled all over her vocals and drowned out her lyrics.

I asked the people around me if they could make out what she was saying, assuming they were as angry as I was… but no-one could understand, and they seemed okay with that. The guy next to me tried to calm my anger, his pony-tailed girlfriend cooing “isn’t she cute?”

This stupidity was really getting to me, an entire audience of music lovers, blissfully accepting that they couldn’t hear the person they had paid to see. I was getting angrier with each passing chord – so I stepped outside for a drink… forgetting that we had already been banned from the bar for a prior incident.

So… I simply stood there, slowly sobering-up, unable to hear a word from Lisa-Mitchell’s mouth, surrounded by hypnotised retards. I felt sorry for Lisa and angry with everyone around me.

To summarise, I’ll simply quote the drunken scrawl I discovered on the back of a beer coaster, folded in my jeans the next morning:

“This is like September Eleven… I’m not really sure what’s going on, I’m not sure who to blame – but I know that I’m angry.”

With that said… fuck she’s cute.

John Wisehammer

I don’t particularly care for football – which is why I spent the first night of the NRL Finals in a pub pool competition, blatantly cheating every time my opponent was distracted by an especially exciting display of testosterone-fuelled homoeroticism on the big screen.

The $100 over the bar that I won came very much in handy that evening, when I went out with Fanny, a friend of mine who frequently arrives home from a night out missing one or both of her shoes.

By the time we finished the tab, having heavily augmented it with donations from our own wallets, the evening was on its way downhill, so much so that we decided to get tattoos saying “Why not?”

It was a serious plan and we made the phone call, booked the appointment and were soon on our way to a late-night tattooist.

Luckily, the cool air in the taxi, as well as the thought of hepatitis in some dodgy midnight operation, helped us come to our senses and we decided to go to Oxford Street instead.

We stayed there, drinking in some clubs and getting refused service in others, until about three when we went outside so Fanny could have a smoke. That’s where we met a weedy little guy who looked a bit like a cross between Woody Allen, Screech from “Saved by the Bell” and a hobbit.

He seemed about mid-thirties, though his leathery, hard-drug-user face made it difficult to guess his real age. He was also completely off his face and had just that moment received a lifetime ban from the club we’d walked out of (for reasons that were never made entirely clear to us, now I think of it).
I’m not sure how we fell into conversation with him but it wasn’t long before he mentioned he had some pills at his house around the corner and suddenly we were following him back there. It was obvious that he was lining Fanny and I up for some kind of threesome – with subtle comments like “you never know what kind of crazy sexual things might happen once we get there” – but it was also obvious that we were willing to exploit his over-optimistic hope in order to get some free drugs.
By the time we got to his house our blood was once again starting to cool and we realised we may not be making the smartest move. As this strange, prison-esque arsehole lead us up the stairs towards his bedroom (which smelt like caravan surgery) I clearly remember Fanny whispering (several times); “Oh God, we’re going to die in this house.”
In the bedroom he poured us a petrol/wine each and was keen for us all to relax on the bed. I, on the other hand, was keen for him to produce the cunting pill he’d been talking about… so I told him just that.
He finally got the incredibly blunt hits I was dropping and asked us for $20 each before producing them. That was a let-down from the free gear we were expecting, but I was glad to give him $50 because it let us get the fuck out of there. It was now a commercial transaction and, once it was over, I was free to run all the way back to Oxford Street.
He wasn’t willing to let us go, even when we told him Fanny had left her phone at the club and we had to go back to get it. I used slow hand gestures and assured him we were going to come back, to which he responded that I should go and get the phone… while Fanny stayed behind.
I didn’t need to see the panic-stricken look on her face to know there was no way we were getting separated at this point… there was no polite way to leave so we just started walking out, repeating the obvious lie that we were going to return.

We managed to get out the front easily enough but then the situation suddenly changed when he began demanding that we give him $40 for the pills. We tried to explain that we’d already given him money and even convinced him to fish our $50 out of his pocket to look, but he still didn’t believe us. With anybody else I would have thought he was lying, but one look at his twitching cheeks and mad-cow rolling eyeballs convinced me he seriously thought he had been ripped off.
Only that wasn’t as easy as we thought it would be.

We probably could have walked away at that point but Fanny decided to save trouble and give the guy forty bucks to shut him up. That’s when I got angry and refused to let her. I got all cool about it, thinking I was John Travolta in Pulp Fiction:

“Fanny, if you give that fuckin’ nimrod forty dollars, I’m gonna shoot him on general principles”.

She’s not the most obedient girl, so I snatched her handbag to make sure she couldn’t pay him (it wasn’t until hours later that we realised there wasn’t even any money in it).

Frodo the Angry Pusher shaped up and tried to fight me, but the fact that he wasn’t much taller than my shoulder and could barely stand up gave me the confidence to try staring him down.

I even upped the level of coolness I was trying to exude, acting like I was some kind of professional heavy-weight boxer who has a responsibility not to belt the crap out of belligerent drunks, saying things to Fanny like, “Should I just knock him out? I don’t really want to. What if I hurt him?” It’s a tough line to push with a woman’s
yellow handbag over your shoulder, but I was drunk enough myself to think it might work.

The pill was starting to work, the alcohol had reached its full effect hours previously and I was now feeling like Mars and Zeus’ adopted love child. I charged back and smashed his hand away from her. He stumbled back a few steps, then recovered himself and came charging at me. It was on.
It almost ended there, but then he went a step too far. As Fanny moved to follow me down the road he grabbed hold of her arm, quite forcefully, and wouldn’t let go. That was the final straw.

To say it was a good fight would be a blatant lie. I suffered from my usual fighting handicap, landing only one in every five punches and even then seeming to do no actual damage.

Meanwhile, he didn’t seem to be trying to hit me at all. Instead he clutched a chunk of my hair in each fist in an apparent attempt to lift my scalp off. It would have been quite funny to watch, at least to anybody but Fanny, who was directing irrate taxi-drivers around our flailing bodies. The undoubted highlight would be the moment when he sank his teeth into my chest and the shout went up, more astonished than angry, “You’re BITING me?”
We went to the ground and, after an anxious moment when he almost got a thumb into my eye socket, I ended up straddling his chest in the middle of the road. At that point I was in a clear winning position and would have been happy to walk away but the fucker still wouldn’t let go of my hair.

Ultimately it was a relief when the police arrived and ended the stalemate.

When we got up I was pleased to see how upset and hurt he was, with a bleeding nose and split lip, while I had little more than a badly torn scalp and some bite marks that would almost certainly need a rabies shot. The worst thing was that my best pair of jeans had been torn open when we fell to the road, something I got very little sympathy from the police about.
The interviews were interesting. I tried to act very sober and rational, attempting to convince them that it was just a dispute between mates that got out of hand, while Fanny tried to become their best friend, speaking at motorboat speed in a babble of tumbling high-pitched words that made it clear the adrenaline of the fight had boosted the effect of the ecstasy on her as well. Our case wasn’t helped, though, by the hysterical ravings of the drug dealer, who was nearly in tears as he begged the police to charge me with assault. He kept telling them the fight had started because I owed him $40, only remembering who he was talking to when they asked him what it was for.

It was obviously a drug dispute, even before the cops found the pill he had jettisoned from his pocket when they first showed up. In the end we were lucky to walk away with a $200 summary fine, for public misconduct.

Anyway… Parramatta beat St. George.
Apparently it’s a big deal.

Cookie

I was waiting to park my car (and had been for 1.5 radio songs), in the hope of catching the beginnings of one of Ben Folds’ last gigs at the Opera house.

However before that, I was faced with a 30-something dunce of boggling ineptitude in a Lexus 4WD, and the dawning realisation that she had no idea how to operate a motor vehicle.

It was awful… watching this woman dumb her way around that torrid tank of a truck, like watching Arnie Grape operate a Mac Truck.

Finally her husband arrived and thankfully brought his ability to turn a key with him. After a heated exchange of foreign blurting, he banished his incompetent wife to the passenger seat and got the fuck out of my new parking spot.

God it was a good parking spot… It was as though Jesus himself had laid the asphalt, marking the white lines around it with the ground bones of unicorns… looking at the Opera house through my windscreen – I almost wept.

Having secured this fantastic square of tarmac so close and so cheap, I waltzed into Utzon’s Opera House.

…

On stage was a simple layout consisting of a grand piano, some suspended light bulbs and an empty fish bowl on a small table.

There had been talk of a ‘request box’ for this gig, a simple premise as explained by the sign: “Write down the song you would like Ben to play on a slip of paper, and he will draw the songs out of a hat”
As show time approached and the room was filled with excited chatter, a lady walked out on stage with a black bag, and as the crowd hushed, she up-ended the bag and out fell at least a thousand pieces of paper. So many that they covered the fishbowl, the table the floor surrounding the table.

Ben walked out on stage wearing a simple sport coat, shirt and jeans. He kicked the pile back a bit, picked up a piece of paper, said: “This one is called ‘the Luckiest’ and the show was underway.

The crowd was almost completely silent during the songs, occasionally he’d forget the lyrics, stop mid-chord & mutter: “Fuck, I cant remember what comes next…”

The crowd would chuckle and someone in the audience would quietly prompt the balding soloist. The show gained a strange rhythm with his slap-dash set list, but all the old favourites and solo stuff turned up eventually.

Then, as the luck of the draw would have it, he played an acoustic version of the Postal Service’s “Such great heights” which was fucking incredible to say the least. He followed this with a cover of Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” and a lovely, melodic rendition of Dr. Dre’s feminist anthem: “Bitches Aint Shit.”

Ben absolutely captivated the whole crowd, but in such a personal on-the-level way that I’ve never experienced anything like it. I think there was no reference to the audience as a whole, there was no “Thanks everyone”, it was just “Thanks” not the usual “You’ve been great Sydney,” just “thanks for coming.”

Did I mention the parking spot?

Jack