Brisbane: The Musical

by Datazoid, some time in December 2004.

Here's a somewhat vague travelogue of my trip to Brisbane, and the three days during which I met Positronbob, Felicity, Yahtzee and Rhubarb Celestial. Click on the pictures for bigger ones.

DAY ONE (Sunday)

Having determined where Positronbob and Felicity were staying, went and collected them. Drove to Kingston railway station, deposited car in car park. Took the train into the city, after bumming train fare from Positronbob. Spent most of the duration of the train trip discussing online activities on the Home of the Underdogs Forum (which unfortunately no longer exists in any recognisable form, alas), and the remainder of the time musing about how ridiculous it was to be discussing those things to begin with.

Arrived in the city to discover that at some point between Kingston and Brisbane it had become fucking hot. Wandered out of South Bank station, where we were stopped - all three of us - in our tracks by the stultifying stupidity of this sign:



Although on later reflection we realised the sign is probably there for the benefit of commuters passing on the road to the right.

On further reflection on the above realisation, we again noticed that even if the sign is for motorists, there's still the issue of how the blind people know where to cross.

It hurts my brain to think about it.

We ate at a small cafe near the Energex Arbour. The Arbour is a massive winding footpath covered in with a hideous metal framework with bouganvilliea growing all over it. Eventually, I postulate, it will form an impenetrable forest of thorned and vicious plantlife, to be traversed only by warriors dressed in khaki and weilding machetes. As it stands, it's a poor attempt at even blocking out the sun.

Felicity managed to rip the small cafe off, in that she ordered a custard muffin and two drinks and somehow got the muffin for around fifty cents. We were all fairly proud of this. Apparently custard is a rare commodity, as the serving she recieved would not have overflowed from a teaspoon.

We waited under the Suncorp Piazza for Yahtzee and Rhubarb to show. We kind of realised that we knew nothing about their appearance apart from some really old online photos, which lead us to wonder whether the photos were even of them at all. Perhaps they just typed a random name into Google Image Search and used whatever photos popped up.

To cut a long story, uh, less long, we found them. And then we stood about. Awkwardly. For quite a while.

Then we ate. Again. Yahtzee ordered chips. We fed several of them to a hideously unattractive bird that was hovering about the table. Then her husband told us to stop. Ba-dum-KSH.

Brisbane is a complete arse of a city when it comes to things to do. Basically, once you cross the border from New South Wales into Queensland, the passtime of "do things" mutates into the passtime of "do fuck all". People in Queensland spend 99% of their time doing nothing. The rest they spend sleeping. Having come to no conclusions whatsoever as to what to do to pass the day, we headed vaguely towards the city. I kind of recall having visited the museum a few years earlier, specifically due to said museum having a button on the wall that replicated the sound effects of a whale's bowel motions. We figured the museum would be a decent place to start.

Brisbane Museum appears to have been organised by blind syphilitic chimpanzees. There's no system of order to it whatsoever. One second you're staring at a dinosaur's femur, the next you're examining a tandem-bicycle-powered-fire-engine and wondering where the connection was.


Firecart. Neener, neener.

Alongside the fire truck stood an array of cardboard cutouts.


IT'S A MIRROR IMAGE


Positronbob assists a breast self-examination.

On the top level of the museum stood the beginnings of the "How To Make A Monster" display, which was to deal with animatronics and special effects. Sadly, it wasn't open yet. We asked a kind tourist to take a photograph or two for us. We didn't realise at the time that said tourist didn't speak a word of English. I was somewhat concerned when she started gibbering in some Asian language, and I hoped dearly that she did not think we were complimentary camera handing-out people, or something.

I got my camera back, for the record.

Moving away from the animatronics exhibit, we found....animatronics. In the form of a stuffed leopard mounted atop a papier-mache rock. Unassuming, you may think, until you realise (under close scrutiny) that the cat has a half-eaten sausage roll jammed up its bum.


Sausage Rolls: To be consumed orally

But wait, there's more! (More animatronics. Not more anal pastry.)

The next room featured a warning sign in a large font, reading something to the effect of "PARENTS: THE NEXT EXHIBIT FEATURES A VERY REALISTIC LIZARD WHICH MAY FRIGHTEN CHILDREN". And behold:


Murrr. Shudder. Thud. Crunch.

Somewhat disturbingly, it moved right as my camera flashed. Yet more disturbing, though, is the rest of the exhibit. Surrounding the giant lizard is a large papier-mache dinosaur corpse with several Tasmanian devils feeding on it. One of them tugs back and forth on a chunk of rubber intestine, while another appears to perform oral sex on the dead reptile.

The rest of the museum paled in comparison. Several rooms containing spiders in jars. Several rooms containing randomly placed fibreglass animal replicas scaling the walls. If nothing else, a new theme song emerged:

Dugong man, Dugong man
Does whatever a dugong can
Which is basically nothing
As dugongs are large and stupid


CRAPPY SIGHT GAG. (Sight. I'm just so fucking funny.)

Additional kudos should be served to Brisbane Museum for featuring an entire wing dedicated to nothing but roadkill.


A cassowary. Deceased.

And that, in short, sums up the Brisbane Museum. Here's one last photo, just to give you the entire Brisbane experience in a nutshell.


Sign reads "Please be patient while we get our new exhibits up and running".
AND THEY PROVIDE A COUCH FOR YOU TO WAIT ON.

Having wandered aimlessly through the entirety of the poorly organised Brisbane Museum, we headed next door, to the Brisbane Art Gallery. Their official website is here, and it's actually fairly informative.

After surrendering our bags to the cloakroom nazis, and receiving a lecture on proper camera usage within the gallery, we moved on. The entranceway consists of a staircase leading down to a white boardwalk surrounding a pool of somewhat greenish water with several squillion silver balls floating in it.


Silver balls. Consume less iodide.

Now, this is an art gallery, so any interpretation of purpose is to be taken with a grain of salt. HOWEVER. I think the idea here is that the balls are "powered" by the fact that people cannot resist swooshing and tossing them about, so they kind of swill in a vague spiralling motion about their pond. Closer examination revealed several points in said pond where the balls would form eddies, suggesting pumps beneath the surface were egging the spheres on. To be honest, I don't really care. It's art.


"I dare you to toss a ball!", whispered I.
"Eh, okay." grunted Rhubarb. Ball ahoy.

The next room comprised a white passageway with a large square pillar amid, projected onto which was a large anatomical animation of a woman being dissected by a CT scan. We stared at it, giggled at her breasts and moved on.

Around the corner we were ambushed by a museum staff person armed with an array of battery operated cats.


Yahtzee gets friendly with a digital feline.

I had hopes that the cats were going to be of similar quality to the AIBO dogs from Sony that I'd seen a few years prior at Fox Studios in Sydney (I have a photo of me with an AIBO somewhere), but they appeared to have been purchased at K-Mart. We attempted to get two cats to mate.


Oo-er.

Unfortunately, the cats "switch off" whenever their noses touch something, so not much went on. I discovered that repeatedly stabbing at the button on the tip of the cats' noses causes them to meow in an increasingly angry fashion.

Behind the "Battery Cattery" (Jesus Christ) we found a series of fairly inane exhibits armed with telephones, which provided audio cues to the artwork. One exhibit, which appeared to be a piece of pipe plucked out of an air conditioner, featured a soundbyte of someone belching loudly into a microphone. Genius, thought we.


PoochCam.

In further extension of the household pets theme, we found this small cinema behind a wall at the back of the hall. Six screens at odd angles had onto them projected footage that appeared to alternate between a camera strapped to a dog's head, and a car hurtling down a road in the snow.

The rest of the gallery was fairly lacklustre, comedic-entertainment-wise. I'd like to know how one goes about getting the job of being one of the people who wanders about the museum shouting "DON'T TOUCH THAT" whenever someone gets closer than fifteen yards to a sculpture. The item in question was a massive chunk of welded metal that appeared to consist of former typewriter parts. It's welded, for fuck's sake. The best one could hope to do is to push it off its pedestal and perhaps break the floor. But anyhow.

Along one of the walls, in an innocuous looking darkened doorway, we found a small cinema, onto the wall of which was projected a film. At first, we had no clue what it was, apart from a small placard outside which read "One Minute Sculptures". I really have neither the want nor the need to further describe this phenomenon, as anything I add will only pale in comparison to Yahtzee's essay on the subject. Needless to say, our lives will never be the same again.

Here's a colonpipe.com exclusive still from Erwin Wurm's masterpiece:


Yahtzee attempts to fondle Erwin's bottom.

DAY TWO (Tuesday. Where did Monday go? Fuck knows!)

I spent most of the morning in Surfers Paradise. There are a lot of reasons I dislike Surfers Paradise. One of them is grammatical. Y'see, it's missing a possessive apostrophe. It's something to do with naming conventions, in that suburb titles should not contain punctuation marks. Pop quiz: What is the only location in the United States to have a posessive apostrophe in? If you give a fuck, the answer is at the end of this page.

So. Surfer(')s Paradise. 9AM. NOTHING IS FUCKING OPEN. I guess the surfy culture doesn't wake up prior to, oh, 4PM. Anyhow.

Got back from the Gold Coast around lunch time. Went to collect Positronbob and Felicity, with the plan being to go Christmas shopping at the Logan Hyperdome.


It has three "r"s in! And it looks like the ABC shop won out.

This evening we went bowling. Dan won the first round, I won the second. I can't remember who wound up with the scorecards, so you'll have to take my word for it. Truth be told, no one cares anyway.

DAY THREE (Wednesday.)

We basically started today with no clue whatsoever what we were doing. I drove around most of the morning trying to figure out where Pbob and Felicity were, due to missing one pissy little side street and thusly becoming lost.

I found them, eventually. Called Rhubarb, arranged to meet in the city. Decided, in a rare moment of braveness, to drive into the city. The guy I was staying with suggested a spot for parking, and having glanced at a map I figured it was a fairly simple place to get to. So off we went. Found ample parking. Everything going well.

Met Yahtzee and Rhubarb in the same location again, generally minced about looking confused and sounding unconversational. Somewhat photojournalistic article to ensue:


The Wang Dynasty!

My exaggerated pleas for someone to place their hand casually over the "cha" were not met with good graces. Sigh.

While snacking at one of the small cafes along the Energex Arbour, we also happened upon a freak occurance, Santa Claus on his lunch break, snacking merrily on a parcel of hot chips. It's nice to know it's Queensland fried foods that keep Jolly ol' St. Nick's arteries so joyously blocked.


Ho, ho, ho. Also, Lt. Uhura spots someone she knows.

Here're some random photographs:


Everyone under a tree. Everyone looks bored except me. I look lethal.


Yahtzee bravely purchases a snowcone.


Statue torture.


I stole Yahtzee's hat.


Fireworks over Brisbane. Yawn.


Yahtzee + spotlights = delusions of grandeur.

And here's a brief summary of the rest of the evening, due to the fact that this all occured a month ago and I don't recall specifics:

Fireworks. Sat on grass. Watched someone in Brisbane desperately try to signal for Batman, but fail due to forgetting to put the bat-shaped mask over the spotlight. Nonetheless giving it a valiant effort with not one, but four spotlights waving about the sky. Presumably under the assumption that Batman, not seeing his signature bat-shaped-silhouette, may respond to a very adamant display of non-bat silhouettes.

Wandered back to the car park under the impression that it closed about two hours prior, possibly leaving my car buried beneath Brisbane until 6AM the following morning. Arrived at the vehicle to see this was indeed not so. Duly relieved.

Bid farewell to Yahtzee and Rhubarb in a predictably awkward fashion. Developed secret relationship with Yahtzee that's destined to bloom into something marvellous. In another quantum universe. Where things like that are okay.

Returned to car again. Somehow managed to get out of extremely crowded car park. Took everyone home. Ran a red light. Scared the shit out of Spock. All's well that ends well.

UNTIL NEXT TIME.

Oh, yeah. Answer to pop quiz: Martha's Vineyard.