Sydney, FourPlay and Movieworld

That was my weekend last weekend.

I flew to Sydney Friday afternoon, met up with The Vegetarian (who I was staying with) and we wandered around Newtown for the afternoon.

That night was FourPlay's 10th birthday gig. I'd been promised Suede's The Two of Us, and I got it. That in itself was enough to make this little chickadee smile for the rest of the night, but the rest of the gig was awesome as well. They did two sets, which means they were able to play a heap of old stuff from their 1st CD as well as their newer stuff from their up and coming CD. But The Two of Us was the highlight for me - it's just such a lush piece of music and I'd been looking forward to it for so long. FourPlay's cover of this song was what got me into Suede in the first place and I've now heard both Suede and FourPlay play it live. I can die happy. ;o)

The Childhood Friend (CF), that I've talked about twice before, and his girlfriend, also came to the gig with myself and the Vegetarian. I know that CF loved it (and he said he could understand why I so wanted them to play The Two of Us since it was a beautiful piece of music), but I'm not about his girlfriend. She said all of the right things, but there was no enthusiasm. But I haven't really seen her enthusiastic about anything - like many Germans, she's very serious.

Other older stuff that I haven't heard them play in a while included The Simpson's theme, Metallica's Enter Sandman, and possibly the Depeche Mode cover? It's been a while now and I was very focussed on that one song. Of course, other favourites like Gypsy Scream, Corrosion and Jeff Buckley's Grace were played. The fact that they hadn't played Grace yet meant that I knew there was going to be an encore.

And new favourites like Radiohead's 2+2=5 and the two that Lara sings - one that was the background music to a dream I had last week about a nuclear bomb going off (I can't remember the name), and the other one (whose name I also can't remember) that has the chorus line "one false move and you're dead" - I love both of those songs.

Anyway, enough raving about FourPlay. The support was Mal Webb, who I could also rave about. I saw him perform at Woodford and he even managed to get me responding to his audience participation songs (like Packrack, I liked the Auslan symbol he made up for it! ;o)) - and I'm a girl that doesn't usually do audience participation - at least not sober. He didn't do that one this time, but he did do Tim Tam Slam and Doona Hog, which seemed to be crowd favourites. He was a great "crowd warmer" act - he's very funny and different and not at all like FourPlay.

Anyway, onto the rest of the weekend.

Saturday we slept in late after not getting back home until about 3am or so. Then we headed into the city for The Rocks Markets where I bought lots of stuff for other people and nothing for myself. From there, we pottered up to the SH Ervin Gallery on Observatory Hill for the Salon des Refusés exhibition which had started that day. I really enjoyed the exhibition and voted for the painting of Katie Noonan for the People's Choice Award. I just thought it was a completely lush piece of artwork.

Saturday night we caught up with friends - some of the Vegetarian's friends were in town for the weekend from Adelaide and had a room at Potts Point. And I invited the guy from Prague. And a little party in their room took place. It was originally going to be that we just met up there and then went on to a pub or something for dinner and more drinking and catching up, but we were all having so much fun in the room, that we just stayed there. We did eventually move onto a pub and a nightclub, but that was much later, after we'd had pizza for dinner and generally settled in to the night. It was fun. I enjoyed chatting to the guy from Prague again after not having seen him for 18 months. I like the Vegetarian's friends and chatted to them quite easily as well (especially after a glass or two of wine). Surprisingly for me, I didn't dance at the nightclub. I think I was just a bit too happy watching the soccer and the fish.

Sunday we headed into the Kings Cross Food and Wine Festival, where we met up with some of the people from Saturday night again, and pigged out on food (none of us were up for the wine). Then we headed into the Queen Victoria Building and checked out the architecture and window shopped. Back to Newtown for some more strolling and coffee at one of the many coffee shops and then I had to head off to catch my flight home.

Monday I headed off to Movieworld with my cousin, her husband and their kids. I haven't been to Movieworld since it first opened (so over 10 years), so obviously all the rides were different and the whole place had changed a lot. We spent a lot of time in the Looney Tunes Village because of the kids, and went on most of the tamer rides. We had planned to spend the whole day there, but rain set in and that's no fun with two little kids, so we left early and headed home. I think the only things I missed were The Matrix exhibition and the Lethal Weapon ride, but I wasn't too concerned. Of the other rides, the only one that I'd really enjoyed was the Scooby Doo Spooky Coaster, part of which was a roller coaster in the dark which probably wouldn't have been scary except that you couldn't see what was coming. Of the others, the Batman ride threw me around too much (I nearly came off my seat at one stage), the Road Runner Roller Coaster was good, but not particularly exciting, and the Wild West ride was only really fun right at the end. But it was a good day and the kids really enjoyed it until it got too cold and wet for them.

Thinking of kids. I'm an aunt again. My sister-in-law had a little baby boy yesterday. I haven't seen him in person yet, but he looks pretty cute in the photos.

Listening to: FourPlay - The Joy Of