Candy

I finally won tickets through City Rewards and went to see Candy at Nova. I should have guessed from the fact that Abbie Cornish was starring in it that it would be an emotionally draining film... the kind of film that mutes the rest of the evening.
It tracked the lives of 2 young lovers through their heroin addiction: from heaven, to earth, to hell.
For me, the movie seemed to take a little more than it gave. While other viewers could probably detach themselves from the characters and see them as druggies who would never escape the cycle, I couldn't help hoping that this time, they'd pull through.
Good movie, but I was glad to go back to my boring little life.

Chocolates...

Dragged myself out of bed this morning to go to the Level 1 Choc and Pralines school at Savour in Brunswick. It was probably a little too early and tasting choc / choc ingredients at 9am probably didn't help my stomach.
We made cut praline, frozen mint, vanilla ganache, strawberry ganache and caramel, learning to temper chocolate (through the innoc and 'table' methods - yes, you just throw the chocolate onto the table and try to keep it moving and off the floor), dip chocolate and use moulds.
By the end of the day (it was only 5 hours, but it felt like the whole day), I could not face a single piece of chocolate - we didn't eat that much, just being around it and inhaling it was enough.
Even though I didn't do the hard bits (ie. making the fillings), it's still great to eat and give away chocs that 'I' made.
Will I try it home? Probably not, considering the ingredients and equipment you need, but it was still a lot of fun!

I want my money back!

Having decided a little too late that we wanted to go to the Comedy Festival, all the big names were sold out, so we bought tickets for Mark Watson and the Best of the Edinburgh Fest... we figured there were 3 acts, so at least one had to be good.

Mark Watson was fantastic! Loosely based around approaching death, with every ten minutes equating to the next ten years of his life, it was basically a funny rant. He made an effort to localise his show, commenting on how Australians are so laid back, we actually take the time to vote that we 'don't care' on a survey of Howard's involvement ithe wheat scandal. He probably spent a little too much time getting off track with 'admin', but I did love the fact that he chose someone in the audience to go into a draw to go into his will.

We rushed across from the Powder Room at the Town Hall, to the much less intimate RMIT Capitol Theatre for the Best of the Edinburgh Fest. There is no way this could have been the best... Gordon Southern and Rhod Gilbert were good - funny, but they didn't have anything special to make them a fantastic comedian. However, the Doo Wops were terrible. I rarely feel like this, but if F & J weren't there too, I would have walked out. Their songs were pretty repetitive, not that original and almost offensive. They were trying to be cool and daggy at the same time, which really didn't work and were way too arrogant to be funny at all.

Danny Bhoy

Arj Barker was a disappointment last year, so I was hoping Danny Bhoy would be better. And he was.

He had some very very funny parts, including a great sketch about an orchestra, although some parts (like the chicken impression), he took a little too far. I think it would be interesting to see him again at the end of the festival, since he seemed to be still figuring out what worked in Australia.