Thankyou for reccomending Intacto, Feisty. I skimmed the review/preview I read of it, only having a basic grip of the story before I went in.

Speaking of luck and coincidence ... on Friday night, after seeing Nosferatu with some Kibologists, and running into Harry at the Forum, I was given a media pass to The Grudge by the promoter of a well-known Melbourne cinema showcase Bonus! On Saturday I helped a friend Bi (pronounced beee as in "Oh my god! My dog's being stung to death by a giant BEEE!") move from Carnegie to her new house at Preston. Just as we were finishing, Small Ben called to see if I could help him move some furniture out of his place! Owing, as I still do, a debt to the gods of relocation, I dutifully made my way (with a lift in the hired 3ton removal van) down to Carlton to help extricate him from a mildly painful domestic situation, or as I liked to think of it, "evac from hot LZ!". See Harry? It's all about the bees.

Afterwards, we tried to get a standby ticket: while Ben parked the Toyota, I checked out the box office. Two ex-girlfriends drifted past, one (yes, that's her best side), still encoragingly hostile after our relationship ended, either didn't see me or avoided me; the other was delighted to see me. We offered her the spare Grudge ticket, which she eventually declined, and ended up scalping it to a skanky American thing at Greater Union. Take that, leader of the free world! We scammed you for ten bucks! It was a media ticket! We ended up indulging in some ultraviolence playing Counter-Strike at n2c above Hobby Japan, particularly enjoying the one that looks like this ...

... well, if you've seen it, you'd know what I'm talking about :)

Am proud to report the first instance of 'bullet time' in an arcade game -- Sega's Virtua Cop 3 uses a 'slow time' feature, accessed by a foot pedal, that slows down the proceedings and allows the player to shoot down approaching bullets and pump lead into the bad guys while they're slowed down. A one-way bullet time, really. As played at the little place between Jungry Hack's and Hollywood Karaoke near the corner of Bourke and Russell.



I wondered what it was that caused the two mid-session walkouts in my row during Momento ... but the dude next to me figured they had other sessions to get to. I thought they might have piked due to the marginal cheese/predictability factor in the plot ... anyway ... thanks Mrs Noodle for the tipoff!

And, just for the taste of it, here's Bill, four and a half years ago, chasing the adrenaline dragon in Treasury Gardens. Images from Zem's old skating page, bless him.