waltzer.net:w:
Dublin: you're never more than 100 metres from a pub | 11 Feb 2003 | week 307
John out on the balcony the morning after.
30701.jpg Video Stills: Videos were taken around the party and here are some of the stills.
30702.jpg In the kitchen: Mandy and Molly chatting to boys in the kitchen.
30703.jpg Isabelle and Faela: Isabelle djs as Feala chills out on the sofa.
30704.jpg Matt and beer: Matt sampling the new flavour of Heinekin.
30705.jpg Brian asleep: Matt plays Golden Axe as Brian sleeps on the floor.
30706.jpg Jody, Billy, Mandy: Jody, Billy and Mandy in the lift on their way home.
30707.jpg John on the balcony: The morning after, John on the balcony
FUN AND GAMES
WaltzerLounge Party
The Saturday night party at WatlzerLounge went well, kicking off in Nancy Hands at 8pm, finishing up sometime on Sunday afternoon. There was a nice crowd there, lots of dancing, spilling drink and eating hot dogs!
During the night, I took people aside and asked them on camera if they were having fun, which they generally were!
Two unusual guests were Faela and her friend Isabelle. I know Faela because she lives downstairs from my old flat in Ranelagh. She's a photographer, and would have been in the class ahead of me in Kevin Street DIT, had I not dropped out.
One day in my new college Isabelle came in to give us a lecture and show us her work. It turned out that not only was she was in Faela's class, but was a good friend of hers.
Isabelle took over the decks for a while, with a selection of music that pleased the dance music connoisseurs, while upsetting the poor auld MTV pop music crew!
While the party was officially to celebrate the re-launch of Waltzer.net, nobody was talking about the Internet! Imagine not wanting to talk about the Internet when you're drinking! What's the world coming to?
As usual when I get together with Matt, we talked about t-shirt design and printing. Matt, let's do it! (We also usually talk about the meaning of life and the coincidence of the planet being the right distance from the sun to support life, and the chances of other planets being similar to ours, but this night we didn't get beyond fashion!)
Ruth from 32 was there, she'd never been up before and she's never met Mandy before, so it was cool to witness the miracle first hand.
At one stage, I started drinking out of a can that was on the table, a Coke-can sized Heineken. It tasted funny, so I poured some out only to find a cigarette-butt floating in it. Nearly made me sick!
People started heading off between 4 and 6. Surprisingly I managed to stay up until after six. Usually I get tired at around one, as some of you know too well.
The next morning I woke to the sound of an unnamed chap loudly puking in a Scottish accent. My brain kept saying "status report" over and over in my semi-conscious state. After having a look around, I could see that Molly, Brian and John had stayed over, as had my bruv, Steve, and his mates Sarah and Mick. Then the magic started: Molly cooked up a huge fry, which went down lovely with some orange juice, tea and Alka-Seltzer. Wonderful!
I had a quick game of pool with Brian while John read a magazine, and then everyone went home, leaving me with my tired head and a messy house to clean! But it was worth it: so good to see all my friends, especially at a party. Next WaltzerLounge party: July 25th!
THAT WRECKS ME BUZZ
Why aren't we having more parties?
Look at the state of pub culture these days: Drink is gone far too expensive, town is getting rougher, pubs pump out bland pop music that's too loud to talk over, it's riskier getting a taxi, you get kicked out onto the street at closing time, and now they are about to bring in a no-smoking policy into pubs. It's all gone mad.
When you compare pubs to house parties, it's a wonder we ever bother going to the pub for a session. Consider the benefits of house parties:
- Smoke whatever takes your fancy
- Get your beer much cheaper
- Not be tied to closing times
- Be comfortable with strangers because you know they are a friend of a friend
- Listen to whatever specialised music you like, at whatever volume you like
- Play games not allowed in pubs, like Twister, Poker or Pictionary!
- Easier atmosphere for non-drinkers to not look out of place
- Socially more dynamic as it's not table/group based
- Food is always available
- You can often stay the night, or keep partying until the early commuter busses start running
- No waas, knacks or scangers
- You can sneak into a quiet corner to kiss girls if that's your buzz
- You can fall asleep without being kicked out
Of course this argument would be very one-sided if I didn't admit the benefits of pubs:
- No need for any pre-planning, just decide where to go and walk in
- There's always a pub near where you are
- You can drink whatever you want, no need to carry a bag of cans around
- No messy gaff to be cleaned afterwards, just walk away
- Plenty of toilets and clean glasses
- Staff clean up around you
- More variety of venues
A lot of the above benefits can be overcome with a bit of organisation. So considering the two arguments, particularly the price of drink and the banning of cigamarettes I think we'll be seeing a lot more house/garden parties this year. :w:
Interesting discussion on smoking in pubs at ClareHurlers.com
TOP STORIES
Art Auction!
Some of you know my brother Steve. Well support him and his mad Architecture class by sending them to Berlin, and get a nice work of art in the bargin. They have been painting pictures and creating art all month for an auction which takes place on Saturday Feb 15th at 4.00. A wine reception kicks off at 3.00, enough time for you to decide which paintings to buy! RIAI, 8 Merrion Square
New web discoveries: Opera
Every now and again something comes along that gives me a better web experience. Last time it was that wonderful search engine Google, and this time it's the truly remarkable browser Opera.
The past week or so I have been checking out some of my sites on various browsers to see how they perform. I was using Lynx[http://lynx.isc.org/current/], a text-based browser, on Tuesday, and on Wednesday I tested it in Opera. I'm telling you, after ten minutes I was converted to Opera. It's so intuitive, handles pop-up windows really well, allows images to be turned on and off with a toolbar button, zooms the entire page (not just text), has some really handy toolbars such as a complete list of links on the page, and an interesting feature called Mouse Gestures.
Mouse gestures is cool: if you want to go back, you just hold the right mouse button and move the mouse from right to left, as if "drawing" a line backwards. There are a few commands available like this, for example, to close a page you just scribble on it, to go up a level you draw an up line, to start a new page, draw a down line, and to minimise, you draw down and then left. It sounds a bit mad, at first it's like magic, but once you get used to it, you'll wonder how you ever lived without it. When I was using explorer later, I was attempting to close pages and go back with Opera Mouse Gestures. I missed them! A quick Google Groups search for Opera Mouse Gestures reveals how popular this idea is.
Opera's main feature however is it's speed. It shows all the text first and then goes about getting the images, al the time displaying it's progress in a full featured status bar. Give Opera a try, you'll like it! (I don't work for Opera!)
Last year
This week last year I went to Guinness's with Brian for and art exhibition opening. I was taking photographs of everyone, pretending it was for a project on "Retro Hairstyles". Last week last year we had a party in WaltzerLounge too, funnily enough.