Melbn gets pretty

Well, that’s over. The Commonwealth Games closing ceremonies were last weekend, and it’s taken me about a week to get over the acute embarrassment they caused. If the opening ceremonies were a bit over the top, the closing ceremonies were a wankfest of epic proportions. Ungracious bad taste abounded. The weirdest part though was the John So fan club. Every time the Lord Mayor of Melbourne’s name was announced, there was a huge cheer. No one else got that. Very strange.

My favourite part of the Games was all the free stuff. The Luminarium, for one, was fantastic. It was a huge inflatable environment with rooms and hallways and music and light, and they were handing out acid at the door (no, I made that up). Here’s an actual photograph, no fancy Photoshop tricks here, this is how it looked:

Image unavailable.

On Saturday night, we went out to see Not Drowning Waving and Shooglenifty as part of the arts festival. I’m a big fan of both bands, and having them on the same bill (we didn’t even have to move the picnic rug) made up for missing Womadelaide this year. NDW was great as always – I’m looking forward to seeing My Friend the Chocolate Cake (a kind of off-shoot of NDW) at the Prince in a couple of weeks. Shooglenifty was so good and I danced so much that on Monday I was hobbling around the office. Their show was so full of energy!

Between the two bands, “Strange Fruit” did a, um, thing. About a dozen people got up on bendy rubber poles several meters tall and danced and clowned around. Really pretty and relaxing, especially following on from NDW.

Image unavailable.