Idea Fix - The Blog

I decided about a week ago to have an informal gathering at Katarina Zrinski’s restaurant, at the Croatian Club, in Footscray to celebrate my 39th birthday. This is the same restaurant proudly hanging a portrait of Croatian fascist leader and state founder Ante Pavelic. We applaud the bravery and steadfastness of the restaurant to not take down this portrait after public pressure. We recommend all Italian and Spanish restaurants to start sneaking in portraits of Benito Mussolini and Franco, respectively. Closely followed by German Restaurants hanging portraits of the chap with the small moustache, eventually. If its good enough for Mao and Stalin to have their visage’s gracing restaurant walls the same privilege must be given to those on the other end of the political spectrum.

How was the night? All good. The food was tasty, hearty fair enough to make you want to invade a small country, company was good (see below), no Croatian beer though (drat!) they had run out. We then hit Toff In Town, Madame Brussells and back to Bill’s house for more wine, women and song. We wanted to attend the dawn service service for ANZAC day plastered… but by 3 am wiser heads prevailed. A most enjoyable way to welcome in the last year of my thirties.

Go dine at Katarina Zrinski’s - it gets 5 stars here at Idea Fix for its wall art alone. Its got nice new decor, but an old school atmosphere.

Photo of me below with Ante Pavelic imperiously looking on, next to other Croate national hero’s. Followed by two happy snaps of some of the guests.

Today is my birthday. St George’s day.

I was born on St.George’s day at St George’s Hospital, Box Hill.

I find that somehow significant and have since I was a child. I’m just looking for my Dragon to slay, I guess…

Happy St.George’s Day to all!

Here is the wonderful St. George Flag. Symbol of English Patriotism.

Faithful, territorial, smart, quick and cool animals.

Like this one…

Well, I spent Saturday night at the Sandown Park Tet Festival (held around the same time as Chinese New Year) and it was a lot of damn fun. Celebrating Tet, the most important Vietnamese holiday, it is a three day festival held out at Sandown that must have had close to 15,000 Vietnamese Australian’s in attendance with a smattering of interested on lookers like myself. I was there shooting a Malaysian friend’s concert on the main stage and as you might guess, it wasn’t my first choice for a choice Saturday night out. I remembered also the excellent Tet offensive scene in Full Metal Jacket that had me grinning all evening.

On arrival, I told the ticket box manager that I was here to shoot the concert. The manager inside the box was as belligerent as one of the referees in that Russian Roulette match in The Deer Hunter… not believing my story, then refusing to even speak on the phone to an official from the concert area. I hunted down a non Vietnamese security person, who spoke to the official and got me inside the venue… alpha bravo charlie.

The place was packed. It was like a mini Melbourne show. Rides, show bags, markets, clowns. I tried my luck at the food stands and had delicious Bang Chung and a meat on a stick deal that was tasty. I then made my way to the stage and worked out the shooting details with the two cameramen. Then I moseyed through the mini Saigon market and bought some pirate DVD’s, mostly crazy Asian action stuff at 5 bucks a pop but with Lust Caution there too for five smackers. I couldn’t help noticing a lot of Madman Eastern Eye titles being happily pirated by the less than copyright abiding stall owners.

I hung out with some Aussie security dudes killing time and heard this come over their intercom speaker system, no shit - “All we need now is some Napalm”. The security guards laughed and looked at me, in suspicion, as if I would report them and I just laughed at their sick humor. It further confirmed my own observations of the racist nature of most Anglo Australian’s. We shouldn’t forget (..and I don’t) that Australia was at war with Nth Vietnam when I was born and I guess some Australian’s remember little things like that and might hold a grudge. I don’t though, of course.

The Vietnam war was a interesting move in the grand chess game between Russia and the US and not entirely in vain. Ho Chi Minh too is cool. I find him interesting and the war in general was fascinating, from French Colony to American pawn in the Cold War to finally Communist State and victory against the US… then detente post cold war.

Anyway, the concert went well and I had fun shooting the antics of performers and crowd. Two Us Vietnamese singers had the crowd eating out of their pocket. I then looked around some more at the festival until the second performance of my friend closed out the night. The Tet festival is on again tonight at Sandown. Good food, crazy atmosphere, check it out.