Junkies running dry

 

Gooooood times last night. I don’t know why, but I haven’t been going out much in recent times. I’ve hung out with a lot of people but I haven’t been going to many gigs, or consuming much alcohol, or spending late nights in the city, and I’ve really missed it. & I certainly can’t blame my financial situation because that’s hardly ever prevented me from going out before. I just haven’t been in the right mood, I guess. But I certainly did miss it & that’s part of why yesterday was so much fun. Annie, Zig & I started the night in Hyde Park with a bottle of wine, which was really good as it was kindly donated by my parents (who didn’t know it’d be used in such trashy circumstances…hehe). We were joined by Morgan and soon after headed off to 77. Reasons why I love 77: it’s dark and dingy; the people aren’t as pretentious as in some other venues; people that work there are always friendly; did I mention dark and dingy?; everyone smokes inside and no one gives a fuck; good bands play there. Nhomea and Dead China Doll played last night, but the band I was there to see was Ghosts of Television and they were fucking amazing, as always. I came home with my arms covered in Sharpie writing like the classy young lady I am.

(The top photo was taken by ANNIE LY. More photos from the night here.)

Are we human or are we dugong?

Things have been good. I’ve been in a good mood most of the time. I find myself smiling ridiculous amounts, listening to my favourite band of all time, The Doors, a lot and just generally being happy, even when broke, unemployed and somewhat stuck in the suburbs. (The only thing getting me down is a chunk of the Serbian community that has been gossiping about me being a junkie. Thanks a lot, folks. As if I didn’t feel removed enough from that community already!)

Nikola and Jasmina are still in Byron Bay, making the south-west a little less fun, but Zig is back from Kempsey, making Sydney ten times better. We hung out in Newtown the other day, my Happy Place where I need to move to soon, and I saw this girl I once met in Hyde Park when she and a bunch of others asked Morgan and me to join their ‘party’. (Read about that here.) She calls herself Poppy Salmon and is really adorable and wears lots of bright colours. She recognised me before I could figure out where I knew her from.

Also, I got to hang out with Emma, finally – it had been too long. We + Morgan went to the Aquarium to see the greatest creatures on the planet – my beloved dugongs. I was so happy, I almost cried! They are so fantastic! That was a really good day. The Aquarium is such a relaxing, lovely place to be; entry should cost less because if it did, I’d be there every day! Emma changed that Killers song into “are we human or are we dugong?” because she is brilliant like that! (Photos here).

I finally wrote that review that was taking forever. It’s up on The Dwarf: here.

Also, help me decide. 5^th April – to take part in a zine fair in Wollongong OR to see Evan Dando at the Annandale? Or to somehow squeeze both in?

I love all of you

Annie & I saying bye to Marie on Oxford St after we saw The Wahas play at Spectrum on a Wednesday night.

Seeing Galija play at a Serbian venue in Canley Heights with Jasmina, Nikola, my sister and her friends. I was sick and didn’t have a good time but the music was beautiful. & I had Kitty Power on my side!

More photos from our lazy day at Stanwell Park.

Hyde Park day.

Adventures in Liverpool with Jasmina & Nikola.

UPDATE!

Some things I’ve been up to since I last remembered to update…and with my memory, I bet I’ll forget about a bunch of things:

 

- Hung out with my friend Anni from Albury-Wodonga. I’ve known Anni longer than I’ve known most people, yet we’ve only actually seen each other in person twice. We (plus her boyfriend Dan) hung around Hyde Park a bit before they had to head back to the airport.

 

- Went to Drazen’s Slava which was…uncomfortable. I really dislike his parents and the people they know. Jasmina, Nikola and I left soon after, hung around Black Rose for a while before Nikola had to go to work, then Jasmina and I went to her place and watched Family Guy for a while.

 

- Hung around a park near my house in the early hours of the day a few times.

 

 

 

 

- Hung out with Morgan in Hyde Park & went to Big Day Out with Morgan, Mark and Nina (and some of their friends), which was a lot of fun, minus the intense heat. We saw bits and pieces of Tzu, The Grates, Lupe Fiasco, The Ting Tings and some band inside Lilyworld, but the bands we actually saw were Pendulum, Simian Mobile Disco, Hot Chip and The Prodigy. Pendulum and Hot Chip were both really good but Simian Mobile Disco and The Prodigy were fucking amazing!!! During The Prodigy someone broke a giant glow-stick in half and started pouring it all over everyone…for like a minute it was the most fun thing ever but then it started to burn our skin and we had to frantically look around for water to wash it off. I sustained many little injuries on the day…some of which I’m still recovering from, a week later! But it was a really good day and I don’t even mind that we missed Neil Young, because The Prodigy were so insanely good and perfect for how I was feeling.

 

- Saw The Prodigy at the Hordern Pavilion with Jasmina, Nikola and Nenad which was once again, totally fucking amazing. I could actually focus on the music this time which was great. They are just….so, so, so good! I got a sweet Prodigy bag! At the end, as the crowd was leaving one of the songs playing was that Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You song and everyone was singing along. It was pretty great! Also, The Prodigy ended with Out of Space and cut off the sound right at the end to leave just the crowd singing! Was awesome.

 

 

 

  

- Spent three consecutive days in The Ghetto. Day 1 was spent hanging around Liverpool with Jasmina and Nikola, then playing pool in Bonnyrigg (and being patriotic because it was the Bonnyrigg Serbian Club!), then after Nikola went to work, going to my place to eat, then back to Liverpool where we hung out with Nenad, Drazen and Milan (Nenad’s brother) in Memorial Avenue…then Drazen went home and we went up to Nenad’s to watch Resident Evil & How I Met Your Mother.  Day 2 was Nenad’s Slava which was mostly just a lot of hanging around Nenad’s room looking up hilarious, horrible ‘music’ video clips from Former Yugoslavia. So bad yet so fucking funny! And completely, completely inappropriate. Day 3 was Nenad’s 20^th birthday. We spent the night drinking at his place (well…I wasn’t drinking but I was so sober, I felt completely out of it!) which was a lot of fun until someone who shall not be named got too drunk and too loud and we got kicked out of the apartment by Nenad’s scary mother. But before that happened, lots of all-male nudity and bonding managed to happen… (More photos here.)

Catching up…

Friday, 16^th  January,  was nice. I woke up to ridiculously hot weather that made me unwilling to leave the house during the day. I was home alone, had learned how to roll proper joints, and the weather was nice – therefore there was only one way to approach the day: get stoned; laze around in the sun; read; swim; laze around in the sun some more. It was so lovely. In the evening I met up with Morgan in the city. We were sitting in Hyde Park smoking when two girls came up to us and asked if one of us could accompany them to buy alcohol…I assume because one of them didn’t have ID or something. Anyway, they ended up hanging out with us for a while and were rather interesting. They’re called Chelsea and Kat and are starting a site called Tea Darling. Apart from the good side which included interesting conversations, cigarettes and champagne, there was also a slightly terrifying side – there was a creepy man who’d apparently been sort of following Chelsea and Kat around Hyde Park, and he sat near us and….now prepare yourselves…exposed himself and….pleasured himself….then walked off to a tree to, I assume, finish his business… It was the most disturbing thing I’ve ever witnessed and really quite frightening and disgusting. Then when we thought he’d disappeared, he stood in some bushes behind us until, thankfully, Chelsea yelled at him that he was scaring us and to please go the fuck away. Anyway, so we hung out with them a bit, then headed off to Luna Park for Lee’s going away gathering at the bar there (I had no idea there was a bar at Luna Park!) which was nice, except I didn’t really know most of the people there so I was sort of in my own world. Morgan and I bought light-up Hello Kitty lollipops…. KITTY POWER!

 

On Saturday, 17^th January, I went to see Galija again, except that this time wasn’t as good because there weren’t as many people and I felt really sick. Not even the company of Jasmina and Nikola, nor Sasa’s crushing hugs could make me feel better, though his dance moves did improve my mood a bit. I still felt ill, though. The music was amazing, of course.

 

…so I wrote these things right after they happened but forgot to post them, and have forgotten to update since so I’ll try and remember what I’ve been up to and post it later on.

Update…

I received this email the other day and it made me pretty happy:

 

 Hi Ivana,

 

elle from sticky here. I am really enjoying Feels Like Friday. please
keep it going. I really like your writing. and now I have a query for
you….
 
I was wondering if it would be OK to use a scan of your work for a
powerpoint file to be submitted to australia council as examples of
the types of work that we (as an arts organisation) support.

…

 

Sticky have been very good to me and I am really excited to go to Melbourne just so I can hang out at the shop all day long!

 

Two new pieces of writing by yours truly are up on The Dwarf: my not-so-nice review of Iglu & Hartly’s album & Then Boom. Watch me turn “this is a pile of shit” into 350 words. Also, my fangirl rant about the Tegan and Sara concert is here.

 

Yesterday was a nice day. I dropped off some photos to be developed in Cabramatta (never, EVER will I develop photos in Liverpool again. Rabbit Photo charged me $18. My awesome people in Cabra do it for $12). Then I went to the city, obsessively listening to Alisa and Azra on the way. I wandered Basement Books and bought Junkie Love by Phil Shoenfelt which looks pretty interesting – the cover has a syringe and love hearts, and on the back is a quote from Nick Cave about liking the book, so…how could I resist? (Also, it was only $7!) Then I went to Hyde Park and was writing/reading/smoking/drinking coffee/minding my own business/waiting for Morgan, when this random dude with no shoes comes to talk to me. I figured he was just a random drunk who was bored, but then he says he was sent over to invite me to “join their party” and points to this group of people sitting on the opposite side, one with a guitar, one a hippie looking girl with glitter on her face, etc. I say I’m waiting for a friend and so he stays around to talk. He’s from Brisbane, has been in Sydney for a few months, slept in Hyde Park last night. Then Morgan arrives and Dave (I think was his name), the shoeless dude, continues talking to us, then the hippie girl (Elise?) joins us and they convince us to join them. So we sit with them for a while and they’re all random people that met each other that day in the park and have been ‘recruiting’ other people to hang out with them. It was so incredibly weird and random and funny. Morgan and I were a little anti-social so we didn’t talk to anyone except Dave and his girlfriend (I assume she was, anyway) because they kept talking to us, but the sunshine was nice and we hung around for a while before we left to make use of my ‘present’ of which we didn’t have enough to share with everyone. Then we smoked across from a church which made us feel pretty good. So we hung around for a while and discussed how amazing Josh Beech is, and then Morgan had to leave, and I wandered the city a bit more but it was a Sunday evening and everything was closed so I got some food and headed off.

 

I went to Liverpool where I met up with Jasmina and Nenad and we went to the cinemas, and with very little movie choice, watched The Day the Earth Stood Still which was SO BAD; it was hilarious. Keanu Reeves cannot act. At all! It was too funny.

 

Today I had to get up at 7.30 because I had a ‘job training’ appointment at 9. The only reason people go to job training is because they will stop getting their Centrelink money if they don’t. I don’t GET money from Centrelink so I realised it is completely fucking pointless for me to go. Oh and not to mention USELESS. The trainer is a condescending asshole who treats us like we are retarded and/or five years old. It was incredibly painful to sit through. I’m going tomorrow to ask them whether I can get money for going, and if I can’t, they can fuck right off. Seriously – he SHOWED US HOW TO USE A COMPUTER. He showed us an inspirational video then asked us comprehension questions. He says things like “ok so if you do three hours in the morning, then three hours in the afternoon, how many hours is that – anyone?” UGH. I wanted to shoot myself. But it’d probably be a better idea to shoot him.

 

I’m making Feels Like Friday #9. Yay!

Where is my mind?

Some things that have happened since I last updated…

 

I saw Galija live in concert which was really good. I hadn’t really listened to Galija much before but I knew the music thanks to my sister (who also paid for my ticket because she really wanted me to see them play). It was a really great concert; I’m glad I went. The three musicians are all extremely talented and the frontman especially looks so happy when he is playing. They make incredibly beautiful music. Beforehand and in between there was a really great band playing. They did gypsy-d up covers of various Serbian songs, and a couple of songs were sung by an African man! In Serbian! It was amazing. I was with my sister and her friends and I worried about feeling a little……out of place? But it was actually a lot of fun and I really enjoyed the night.

Galija – Dodirni Me

Galija – Pege

 

I hung out with Jasmina & Nikola twice. Now that I am on good terms with Nikola again, I’ve remembered how much I actually enjoy hanging out with them. I’ve known them for a long time and I feel very comfortable around them. Last week we watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button which wasn’t too bad (but not too good either – luckily Brad Pitt is pretty much perfect). Then today we had dinner at Black Rose where we also ran into Bodin and Nenad’s brother Milan. The pizza and tiramisu at Black Rose are really fucking delicious. Later we drove around a bit looking for a place to play pool and when we didn’t find any place we wanted to go, we hung around a park/graveyard for a bit before heading home. They have some great music in their car, including System of a Down covering Wu Tang Clan’s “Shame on a Nigga”. Fucking brilliant!

 

      

 

I also hung out with Kylar before he left for Amerikkka. I met up in the city with him, Morgan, Thea and Josh and we hung around Hyde Park, had coffee, etc. That was fun also.

 

Zig came over from Kempsey for a few days, from the 30^th to the 2^nd! She stayed at my place and I showed her around suburbia. We got stoned in a park in St Johns Park and walked to the Bonnyrigg McDonald’s to get ice cream when the Plaza was closed on New Year’s Day. We also watched a lot of bad 80s video clips and came up with a dance routine to Wham’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go”. When we got stoned in the ‘burbs we came back to my house, still stoned, and hid in my room away from my parents, with only my fairy lights on, lying down on a mattress, listening to Neil Young. It was….so fucking lovely! Neil Young is amazing. We also saw Twilight on the day Zig was leaving, because it’s not out in Kempsey yet. Robert Pattinson’s jawline remains as perfect as ever.

 

I found out that a kid I knew died. That really shook me up.

 

I went to a wonderful New Year’s Eve party. It was at Alex’s house and was a night of blazing and crazing…of course! A lot of wonderful people, conversations, music and Mary Jane. It was a lot of fun. We went to see the fireworks in the city and it was the first time I’d seen them live. I may have gotten more excited had I not been so stoned. The night ended with “Ignition” by R Kelly. Oh yes! As soon as R Kelly came on, there were complaints about the music! haha. I don’t really remember much of the night to be honest, except I think reciting the lyrics to White Rabbit with Alex, talking about pole dancing with Lachlan, being the Bong Master (then spilling bong water all over myself), walking to get hot chips because I HAD to have them, attempting to air guitar to November Rain, seeing the sunrise, bucket bong at 6.30 in the morning, waking up my parents at three in the morning because I was worried when they weren’t answering my midnight call….and just generally having a good time. We left around 7 in the morning and the city was COVERED in filth. It was disgusting. Then Oz Turk pizza….nothing better for when feeling seedy. When I got home, I crashed, still in the previous night’s clothing, and slept until 7 in the evening. And I would have continued had my sister not woken me up.

 

So yeah…it’s been mostly good times around here.

Update…

Thursday, 18^th

Up early, lift to the city from parents who were driving to the fish markets, walk from Pyrmont to Town Hall…overly nice Red Cross money collector complimented my hair (and noticed it was dreadlocked…most people just think it’s a manic growth on top of my head) and my fork bracelet…met up with Kylar, coffee and cigarettes all over the place, Hyde Park and Bill & Toni’s and Hyde Park again….home, Slavica and Jasmina helping my mum cook for Sveti Nikola, but had to leave soon after I arrived…all day running around helping with whatever needed to be done around the house…late night Oz watching. Consumed five coffees and was still dead tired.

 

Friday, 19^th

Sveti Nikola, my family’s Slava. I am horrible at getting into the spirit of things so I mostly hid in the living room and avoided all the guests who were in the sun room. I get really awkward every year because I rarely see a lot of those people, and there’s the confusion of whether I should just shake their hand or do I need to kiss them as well, and do I kiss them once or three times, and what the hell should I talk to them about, etc. Plus, every year someone makes a comment about me losing weight, which makes me wonder if I was obese as a child or something… Towards the end of the night I managed to get away with sitting on the couch and reading as most of the guests had left, my parents were with the older ones and my sister with her friends, and Jasmina had left – these days I have only a few Serbian friends, and those that I do have go to Nikola’s house because his Slava is also Sveti Nikola, and as they’ve been going to Nikola’s well before they met me, they of course still go there. Plus, everyone gets drunk there so it makes more sense anyway. Our house tends to be a bit quieter. Sveti Nikola reminds me every year, very blatantly, just how hard it is for my family to spend a day together and get along. The upside is waiting for midnight so I can eat chocolate.

 

Saturday, 20^th

       

 

Kalaediscope fun; Emma; Kylie; Seeta & T-Nev; Katie & moi; Arex

 

During the day, Annie and I went to a small zine fair that was happening at the first Voiceworks launch to happen outside Victoria. It was nice. Small and kind of quiet, and the people that came along didn’t really seem to know what zines were, but it was chilled out; I mostly sat around reading and occasionally talking to the kids from Just Like Candy & the Black Rose Anarchist Bookshop (on Enmore Rd, Newtown). Afterwards we wandered around a bit, bought a present for Emma which was directly responsible for us speaking Engrish all day – part of the present was a Guns n Roses cigarette case. On the side it had a warning label against smoking but it said something like “cigarette smoke the harmful health”…what the fuck? So all day we were speaking Engrish – replacing every L with an R. “hero, may I have a rarge vanirra mirkshake?” Then I went home, frantically rushed around for an hour getting ready to leave again, then off to Scary Canary…which is a terrible venue but Up the Bracket happens there and it featured good people + vodka and therefore wasn’t horrible like the venue is. Good company featured: Emma (we were celebrating her birthday), Alex (Arex), Katie (ok just quietly, I’m sort of in love with Katie), Kylie, Seeta, T-Nev, etc. Seabas played a bit of November Rain – hell yeah! After a while we went to Emma’s (new) place which I really like. Stairs everywhere! Emma put on The Doors and packed a cone as soon as we walked in which made me very happy.  Katie asked me why I love The Doors and I really couldn’t put an answer into words – they are just so special to me. Bit of hanging around, being lazy, that sort of high when sitting on a couch with a blanket is just like the most perfect thing, then we wanted to watch That 70s Show but the speakers connected to the fancy-computer-TV weren’t working so instead we watched so-bad-it’s-good Stripperella on SBS, then something else I don’t remember, before we went to sleep.

 

Sunday, 21^st

  

 

I woke up around 9.30 and Annie was already awake. We sat on the little balcony smoking – I really wanted to have a cigarette first thing in the morning because I can never do that whilst living at home! Then we wrote a note for Emma and left before her housemates, who we don’t know, got up to find two weird kids hanging out in their living room. Wandered the city in search of a pretzel (nowhere to be found!), then went home. I napped on the couch, watched Oz, and otherwise generally lazed around.

  

Monday, 22^nd

Spent the day in a really unexpected unbelievably happy mood. I don’t even know why! I just feel good all over. Have lazed around in the sun, reading, listening to silverchair’s Live From Faraway Stables, Love, Alice Coltrane (the last two thanks to Kylar), dancing around the backyard like a character from Hair, discovering Gogol Bordello and reconnecting with my Eastern European roots with mad gypsy music. Good times.

 

(Photos by ANNIE LY.)

9th December

 

Tuesday

Because Zig made last-minute changes to her going-home plans, Tuesday was the last day I got to hang out with her before she left. I walked down Oxford St looking for a present for Drazen (ended up buying him a Richard Pryor DVD) and then met up with Zig near COFA, we went to pick up her photos (which you can see here) and had coffee at my new favourite café – new favourite simply because it’s called Ampersand. (When I grow up I’m going to tattoo an ampersand and a semi-colon on my left arm, just below my elbow on the inside.) Then we wandered down to Hyde Park where we hung out and watched army helicopters do rounds through the city – it was probably just training but I imagined that perhaps we were under attack… Annie joined us also and we hung out some more before Zig had to head off. We walked with her to COFA where she was catching a shuttle bus, then I got all mopey when she had to leave. Everyone seems to be leaving Sydney. Annie and I walked back towards Central-way. She headed to Ultimo to meet up with some people and I got cake from Chinatown and then literally ran to Central to make the train which my sister was also catching so that neither of us would be bored and alone on the long journey home. I had underestimated the distance from Chinatown to Central Station but I made it on time!

12.51

 

This arrived in New Zealand today so now it’s safe to post it here without the surprise being ruined – mail I sent to Dee with a mix I, just quietly, think is some of my best mix work yet.

 

Straylight Run – Hands in the Sky (Big Shot)

Bjork (feat. Kelis) – Oceania

Tricky (feat. D’na) – Call Me

The Weakerthans – Without Mythologies

Die! Die! Die! – Whitehorses

Kicks Joy Darkness – Collapse of the Wave Function

MGMT – Weekend Wars

The White Stripes – I Want To Be the Boy To Warm Your Mother’s Heart

The Magnetic Fields – With Whom To Dance

Patrick Wolf – Lycanthropy

The Dandy Warhols – I Love You

Bloc Party – Selfish Son

Pulp – 97 Lovers

 

Speaking of mail, this morning I received a lot of zines and it was so good; it felt like back in the day when the only zines I knew of were from overseas or from elsewhere in Australia and the idea of zinester friends in person seemed so far-fetched, so I’d get really excited every time I got mail addressed to “Ivana Stab”.

 

I chopped off more of my hair yesterday and have started straightening the ends so it fluffs out more and curls less and it’s pretty rad.

 

Aside from the inconceivable pain caused by my menstrual cycle, today was a pretty good day. I had plans of going to uni to return some books but the thought of climbing up all those steps was just too much. All I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and clutch my stomach. I got to the city around 1.30 and hung out at Hyde Park reading zines – Brainscan #23 by Alex Wrekk is absolutely fucking amazing and everything I love about zines combined into the one well written, amazing-looking zine. I bought a World AIDS Day ribbon, leaving me with $1 in my wallet. The man that was selling them said “excuse me sir” before I looked up…then he apologised quickly. Hah. I was wearing yet another shirt stolen from my dad, though. The man has a much bigger wardrobe than I do and he’s got style! Then Kylar joined me and brought some tube of neon green goo which was apparently candy – didn’t look very edible and neither of us wanted to try it. Kylar also brought presents. Then Morgan joined us, bringing Panadol thankfully (which sadly didn’t end up helping at all). We hung around for a while, put Kylar’s present to use, though it didn’t really do much for me, then left Hyde Park because they wanted food, then wandered aimlessly before going into Red Eye where I saw lots of CDs I wanted to buy (although the one that really interested me was by a band I’d never heard of but loved the name – Agnostic Front! …also, why are bands like Cobra Starship and Fall Out Boy and Simple Plan in the Punk section…?). Then Kylar left and Morgan and I went to Hyde Park again where we ended up staying until 7, I smoked an entire packet of cigarettes and it was decided that I have to go to Mother Russia before moving out, and I can move out after I’ve discovered the meaning of life in the mother country. Yes!

 

I came home to realise mother has completely stopped talking to me and I have no fucking idea why. Something about how I’m not taking care of my health and don’t listen to her? Lollerskatez.