TRASHED: HOW TO GET IT

With Safari Bob and Raoul away in Bangkok (gee, and do you think they might be having a good time) it is left to Slippery When Wet photographer Feisty and the Art Director to paint this town a fresh and lurid shade of vermillion. When Feisty turns up at The Newspaper to pick me up, i figure i must have been very good in a previous lifetime. There's no other way to explain it. I could get used to being picked up by these beautiful girls in fishnet stockings, black boots and fab new hairdos, i think. At the SunMoon it's straight out to the hotel pool for a sunset photoshoot.

There's something about shooting a sexy girl by a hotel pool. All the male guests at the hotel will suddenly find a reason to be out on their balconies. "I'm not very photogenic," says Feisty. Mmm. And petrol is not flammable.

Plasticene modelling, bending models into shape this way and that, does not come naturally to me. But i figure the only way to get better at it is to adopt a hands-on approach. What better way to learn than on the job, so to speak. The tactic results in some reasonable photographs, and of course does my mojo the world of good...

But after the clean lines of the hotel pool, things can only get messier. After two exhibition openings (read: after many, many free drinks,and yes, the words "exhibition whore" were bandied about in my general direction) and the third straight tequila at the Mustang Bar, things become a little blurry. I remember viewing some nice pictures from Duncan Barnes' Alaska at the PCP, very Twin Peaks, and i remember leaving with Feisty because the wine wasn't even up to the PCP's usual woeful standard. I can't remember if we vomited on the landscape photographs upstairs at the Brass Monkey, but it was certainly on our agenda. We run into Roly Skender of Electric Umbrella and Circus Murders fame, and i have a bitch to him about ex-Circus Murderer Seb as i get progressively more and more trashed. Andrew, the guitarist from the hair-farming band Thumb is there!
... as is Rachael Dease from the Schvendes. It's a regular music festival. Grapeskin manager Lithuanian Ausra is floating around, looking absolutely stunning as usual. But then, a tray of free food and drink always makes a girl look desirable ... as i help my self to my 222nd beverage i run into Taryne with her shocking pink hair. "Last time i saw you was with Bilyana at Sylvana's!" i exclaim drunkenly. "That was a few years ago now i suppose ... i took some black and white photos of you two. You were pregnant, showing Bilyana your ultrasound pics..." Taryne nods. "Yes, he's twelve now." Holy Cosmic Christ! As Marx once said, "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." (Do click on the link, and see Groucho as you've never seen him before).

Phil England from Terrace Photographers gives Feisty and i a lesson in how to shoot a girl (think Antonioni's Blow Up with Austen Powers in the lead role) as he grabs the Melburnian girl in the red dress and, at Feisty's suggestion, gets her up against the wall by the fire hose. Something i wouldn't have minded doing myself. After a few dozen more free beverages, i vaguely recall thrashing about on a dance floor with Feisty and a nice girl from Melbourne in a red dress,
probably at the Mustang Bar. We carry on out the front like bit-players in Reefer Madness before Nikki and i swing by the Moon, order a strawberry pizza and run into Blake and the omnipresent Paddo ... then Justin Spiers, the misbegotten, illegally non-elected chairman slash control-freak from PCP sees me and bolts out the door. Possibly because of the $500 he owes me, but more probably because he is a wanker. And then, suddenly i am awake in a strange house, thinking "Thank the Cosmic Christ i don't have to go to work today." Before realising that i do, in fact, have to go to work today. Dont you just hate that? When your brain instantly and incorrectly equates "shocking hangover" with "weekend"?
It's going to be a slow day. Nikki's nice partner makes me a breakfast and i stagger out in search of my bearings.