Anyway, we'd only met during the Good Friday Exodus of the Drunk Damned so Monday, instead of drinking, we'd be seeing a movie.

A note to anyone who's at all interested in seeing Before The Devil Knows You're Dead: don't.

Wait for it on DVD. We should have.

You'll have more fun going out and taking pictures of whoever you planned on seeing the movie with so go do that (unless you're seeing it by yourself in which case you can keep your roll of film…)

Ash leaning against a wall. You can click on it to see it bigger if you like.

Seriously, Before The Devil Knows Your Dead has superb acting, superb direction, superb cinematography, and an absolutely lousy story. Christ. What the hell was Sidney Lumet thinking helming that pile of trash. Everyone did their job except the bloody writer who made this completely pointless tale that left you depressed.

My serious advice would be to bring some chocolate to counteract the effects of how depressed you'll be when you're done watching the movie as well as how depressed you'll be that you just wasted your money on it too.

Ash has a very French look to her in this. Very arty, very meeeooowwwww.

More importantly, Ash is lovely. She's a gifted artist with a sexy Canadian accent and a great personality.

And here are some pictures of her because I don't have a lot to say.

It's the end of the night and I'm tired. I apologise. 

Ash again in another intentionally-slightly-soft image. Click for a bigger one.

You can't click on this for a bigger one. So there  

Ash shoots my feet, pants, waist… my torso and stuff! 

Finally, here's a pic of me in colour-ish at Ash's place!

Something happened on Easter Friday night. Something terrible. Something terribly un-Australian.

As people across Sydney were enjoying a Good Friday – and in some cases a Great Friday – they got sent home.

It's probably safe to say that 99.5% of us out here drink. The lot of us are usually down for a bourbon, beer, or something else, and being a religious day, Easter Good Friday seems like the perfect night to shout someone a drink.

Hey Jesus, it's my shout! 

But then something awful happened as 10 pm neared on Good Friday-night… 

People – otherwise happy people, happy from excess pre-Easter chocolate, liquor, and a nice long weekend – got evicted from their drinking holes.

Across Sydney bars closed up, clubs said piss off, and everyone shut their doors while people still had drinks in their hands.

I was at The Three Monkeys on George St. with new friends Louise & Ash and we saw it from a somewhat managed view.

About 10-15 minutes prior to the closing, we had bought drinks and then made our way up stairs while we looked for somewhere to sit, chat, do the whole pub thing.

We got to the third and top floor where pretty young things and guys with ugly pastel-coloured shirts were making awkward body movements as if parts of their arses were falling off to a bunch of loud music under the glare of black lights with the occasional strobe flash. And about thirty seconds in when we figured it was a bit too noisy up here and we should try the second floor again, the lights on this top floor reset back to the crappy tungsten glow that said "the end is here".

More or less, it meant "fuck off; the club is closed."

The jams stopped pumping and we could hear complaints as people were ushered out. We found somewhere to sit on the second floor but that then started to clear out too. We tried taking advantage of the now uncrowded bar and relaxed for a second until management's people forced us down the stairs into the ground floor like everyone else had with drinks in our hands.

That lasted all of two minutes.

"Time to go," one of the guards shouted as people were forced from their Easter drinks and removed from the pub.

Including us.

I know The Three Monkeys were following some severely stupid law, but the least they could have done was stop themselves from being greedy and selling drinks that we couldn't finish. Hell, they could have warned us that the bar hadn't long to go.  It takes at half an hour – at least! – to have a beer and here they were serving beer until people were literally kicked out.

Further:

What sort of fucked up law suggests pubs in Australia close at 10 on Good Friday?

We're adults. We drink. We make decisions. We choose to drink when we want to.

And it is un-Australian to have a law removing those who worship the drink from their house of worship.

As Ash, Louise, and myself left, I said to them that had there been a Jewish pub, we should all go there. There isn't, or none so far as I know anyway.

So as pubs & clubs closed for the night, along came the Exodus: an almost biblical movement of adults looking for somewhere to go now that everything had shut all of a sudden.

Ash, Louise, and my hatted-self made our way to the park where the bitter cold wound its way around our necks and ears while it worked out when to sink its teeth into whatever flesh it could find.

We shot noisy pictures on my bloody awful two megapixel phone camera while we laughed, chatted, and the two girls stretched from their long day at the job.

Some of the noisy photos from the Nokia 6110 at night with Ash…

…and Louise. Yes, it's such a great night camera heap of crap.

And then knowing Ash and I were both headed in practically the same direction, we left left Louise with some of her friends (after I'd bought them both some much needed chocolate ) and eventually, eventually, eventually found a cab to take us home. Ash and I exchanged numbers and then the cabbie drove me home.

And remember the comment I made a few paragraphs ago about the Jewish pub?

As Ash, Louise, and myself left, I said to them that had there been a Jewish pub, we should all go there.

Well, the Jewish cabbie agreed too. And he's not the only one…

Exodus definition source:
exodus. (n.d.). The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition.
Retrieved March 26, 2008, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/exodus

She seems bored as hell as she's doing the scan-BEEP!-scan-BEEP! checkout role in that line of work and as I'm paying for some things, I do my natural reaction to people today and say "Happy Australia Day" to her.

She tells me that so far I'm the only one to say "Happy Australia Day" to her. She's been saying it all day to people and not a single one has said it to her first.

So she asks me how my day's been. I reply "mediocre; how's yours?" and she tells me that it's been okay aside for a bit clumsy.

"Clumsy's fine," I say, "as long as you're okay."  She smiles a bit.

And then I pay and say "Have a good Australia Day, or what's left of it anyway" and leave the store. 

The problem with checkout transactions is that you don't exactly get to be in a conversation with people. You don't learn their name and the single-serve relationship that you've taken part in doesn't really allow you to say "hey, you wouldn't mind getting a drink later".

Not that I could anyway. I'd love to, but as much as I want to be nice to myself, that sort of simple straight-off-the-bat courage isn't something I actually think I have in me. 

As I wandered the road of Bondi looking for salad and finding nothing, I realised that maybe I should go back in, buy something like a bottle of champagne or something and say "hey, you wouldn't mind getting a drink later or doing something" but I figured that with my crappy luck, she's probably find me weird, call the manager, or just tell me no, she's got a boyfriend.

I walked after buying crappy salad and thought that she'll probably go home, put her feet up, maybe eat a chicken dinner (because that's what you do in Bondi) and exchange a couple of words with a roommate who will tell her to come out to the pub and see some friends.

… 

It's weird what you can create in your mind with words and people you've never really met.

What would you have done? 

Nah… it couldn't possibly that Will Smith is tall, dark, handsome or loaded with money, fame and success. Couldn't possibly be any of that.

Seriously, if laughter was a great way to get women then I surely would've had some success by now. Surely.

As it is, I have to wrestle with a hand… and often I have to get it drunk.

Geeze, I have to drug my own hand. That's just sad.