Queen of the Cheese, and buskers with websites

Tonight I went out to see Queen of the Damned with people, since my regular Thursday-night roleplaying group had been cancelled due to the pagans doing some big Ostara (autumnal equinox) pot-luck thingy. I ended up being the only one who turned up though, so Kat and I traipsed through town to see the film.

I haven't read the Anne Rice book, but I get the feeling that probably helped me enjoy the film more. Lestat looked like he was trying to be Brandon Lee and failing. His sire looked a little too much like Billy Crystal for me to be able to take him seriously. They had cute gypsies and sexydethchyxx. A couple of the extras looked familiar, but I'm not sure where from. Maybe clubs in San Francisco when I visited there, maybe Melbourne people I've seen online. [shrug]

There's one particular scene at which we cracked up uncontrollably - much to the confusion of the rest of the audience in our proximity; primarily comprised of Aaliyah fans, we presumed. At one stage during the film, there's a large concert. There are some nice swoopy panning shots of the crowd (at least the cinematography was quite good), and there are many people waving things. The things they are waving appear to be plastic pitchforks, scythes and axes. It was upon seeing these that we cracked up - you can buy them locally at the $2 shop. They're the cheapest cheesy props around. We figured that the person responsible for the props was either (a) completely, mind-shatteringly lame, or (b) a tongue-in-cheek genius.

We had rather nice stop off at Honeypot Cafe - iced mocha and carrot cake. The carrot cake ended up being around half a kilo of cake with icecream, and I couldn't finish it all. The waitress apologised for cleaning up around us, since it was getting late. As we were leaving, she asked if we were in a play, or something. My response: "No, we've just been to see a film. This is how I normally dress." Hee. Several passersby at different stages asked us if we'd been to a marriage or something. I think that was mainly her white crushed velvet dress. Apparently I'm good at stopping her from being hit on in town - people seem to assume we're a couple. She did still get a "holy fuck your waist is small!" from one drunken passerby, though. She's one of those annoying people with a slim hourglass figure.

We stopped for a while to talk to a busker, and he played a couple of songs for us. We wrote stuff in his guestbook thingy, and chatted about everything and nothing. He asked us how long we'd known each other, and how long we'd been going out. Heh.

The man did some rather fun music, including making some sounds that I didn't really thing were possible with an acoustic. It honestly sounded like he had an effects pedal going at one stage. Still, I told him what my last job was, and he directed me to www.lukehurley.com, in case I wanted to look through it. He seemed pleasantly surprised at finding people who would stop and chat with some unknown street performer about music and politics and books and things.

Then we retired to Kat's place for chatting to flatmates Adam and Andrew, rather nice herbal tea, modem and sound driver installation, and throwing odd synthpop at her. From then, a pleasant ride home. I had a tail-wind for once, and nice empty streets to coast down.

On a completely different note, I finally found the lyrics to The Bastard Sons of Enoch by Shriekback. In fact, Shriekback finally has a website. Yay!

And the devil said "Cain, I think this will fly
I want this bastard deep and high
From the guts of the earth to the clean blue sky
Time to rape, spoil, scar up and petrify"
So shovel and pick they worked side by side
'Til they ripped out a hole in the Grandmother's side
And the city rose out of it bad and wide
Out to the east of Eden

Enough rambling. Final thought: I should sing more, to improve my range and mature my voice a little, I think.