Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting

I've talked before about how much I love Street Fighter II and beat 'em up games in general, and when I was a young wan playing my cousin's SNES, I'd always play as the girl character. Mortal Kombat? I'm Kitana or Mileena (Sonya just seemed kinda boring in comparison). Killer Instinct? I'm Orchid. Street Fighter? I'm obviously Chun Li.


She's a character I've wanted to dress up as for a long time, but it always just sort of seemed like it would be a bit too hard. I mean, the dress! The spiky bracelets! All that kicking! However, after taking a look on Adverts.ie, I found a short blue cheongsam being sold not too far from where I live, and by a weird stroke of luck, it turned out that I knew the seller, who very generously offered to give it to me, so I swapped with her for a bottle of wine. It needed a little bit of altering, but thankfully my mam is handy with a sewing machine, which was just as well as I can hardly sew a button without stabbing my finger with a needle.

The spiky bracelets needed to be huge and cartoony. I didn't want to use the small studded leather type ones that I wore back when I was a nineteen year old metaller in a homemade Slayer t-shirt, so I was going to have to make them. Which I did! Out of foam, duct tape and party hats, of all things.


I'm not going to lie, I was pretty excited with how they turned out.


The pigtail covers were white circles of fabric with a bit of elastic to keep them over my hair and I stuck some gold star stickers to the ribbons, which isn't strictly canon but I figured if anyone deserves some gold stars, it's Chun Li. Plus they matched the gold thread in the dress, so why the hell not.


I wanted orangey-red coloured tights for the old school Chun Li look and found a pair that were just the right colour. Unfortunately they were from American Apparel, a shop I dislike quite a bit because their ad campaigns look like they've been shot by a sex offender. However, there was 20% off on the day I went in, so that was some consolation. The runners were from New Look and reduced to €6, in fact they were the only pair left and just happened to be in my size. I have to say, this costume mostly came together through blind luck and duct tape.

Anyway! Off we went to Rocky Horror in the Sugar Club for their Halloween show, we had a blast, there was a lot of pretend fighting and I managed not to fall over, which is most unlike me. Speaking of pretend fighting, here I am squaring up to my friend Fi, aka Harley Quinn on the night.


If that was a real video game I'd totally play it.

Stradbally Shenanigans

Ah God. Another Picnic over and I had forgotten just how utterly banjaxed I tend to be after it. I appear to have developed a weird neck-pain-and-headache-combo two days later and I'M JUST SO SLEEPY.


It was however one of the best Electric Picnics yet, thanks to a combination of deadly people to hang out with, an excellent line up, mostly dry weather and just somehow managing to get loads of acts in without any stress or disappointments. And here are some of the things we saw.


A very angry girl wearing a floral headband in the Oscar Wilde campsite furiously declaring "I just want some fucking chocolate. THAT'S ALL I WANT."

Booka Brass Band's cover of Talk Dirty To Me. A terrible song made awesome by a ton of brass and whittling the stupid lyrics down to the song title. Amazing fun.


A nice bit of camping in the Janis Joplin site (or the Jackie Jormp-Jomp site - hello 30 Rock fans!) with actual space between the tents and no screaming teenagers covered in marker and stickers and Native American headdresses. Just lovely.

Sitting in Body & Soul when I Want You Back by the Jackson 5 came on, resulting in me dancing like Baby Groot, while Billy played the part of Drax.

Crow Black Chicken in both the Electric Sideshow tent and Jimmy Lee's Juke Joint, who you'd swear are from some magic Louisiana blues swamp, rather than Clonmel.


Pie. Pie pie pie. I LOVE PIE.


Rubberbandits tearing the fucking roof off the Comedy Tent. Their set was without doubt one of my all-time festival highlights. The usual sit-down affair that the comedy tent tends to be was immediately thrown out the window, as we all clambered onto our feet to dance and sing/scream along to Spoiling Ivan, Dad's Best Friend and Fight Me At Mass. Their creepy Gabriel Byrne puppet made an appearance for Fellas and they even knocked out a crafty, hilarious and perfectly-aimed song about abortion (or to be more specific, a song about trying to avoid conversations about abortion). It sounds impossible, but if anyone can do it, Rubberbandits can. I wanted to jump onstage and shift the pair of them for being such utter fucking legends.

Realising that pretty much every fun party song from the last forty years was written by Nile Rodgers.


The joy that glowsticks bring to people. They're the best €2 you'll spend before heading to a festival and you get loads of them in a cardboard tube. After the weekend I now have a new system that ranks happiness on a scale of 1 to Aoife With Glowstick Bracelets.


This Side Up at the Salty Dog at three in the morning, bringing their Sligo Shtyle hip-hop to the Stradbally forest and tearing it the hell up. I particularly love their "These lads/Are feckin' class" refrain, especially when it's followed by "See you? You're feckin' class", which is something that I then proceeded to say to everyone for the rest of the night. Or morning, as it were.


Lily Allen putting on a hell of a show, with bloody gorgeous purple hair, great stage banter and rows of giant milk bottles.

My friend Gary being held aloft in the Comedy Tent by some big strong lads, including the Bear for Abandoman's last song, which was about Gary having a jetpack and meeting Bill Clinton.

Catching Kelis just in time for Milkshake.

Beck opening with Devil's Haircut and setting the pace for a fantastic, outrageously entertaining set that included a guitar solo ending with the guitarist being good-naturedly dragged offstage by the legs, Beck proclaiming that "There's nothing quite like a moist crowd" (the Sunday night drizzle had just kicked in) and the entire band's shuffling group hug exit from the stage.

All in all, it was a blast. EP 2015 had better bring it.

Handbook For The Recently Deceased

After being infatuated with Miss Argentina from Beetlejuice for YEARS, declaring in February of last year that I was going to dress up as her for Halloween, spending ages planning and making the various parts of the costume, unceremoniously fracturing my ankle two weeks before Halloween rendering me couch-ridden with a plaster cast and then waiting a WHOLE OTHER YEAR...I FINALLY DID IT!
 
Last weekend we hit the Rocky Horror Picture Show in The Sugar Club for their Halloween shindig, where I had an absolute ball, found a dude dressed as Beetlejuice to get a photo with (although I had to explain who I was dressed as to him - worst Beetlejuice ever), completely confused some Spanish dudes as to why I was green and what exactly made me Miss Argentina when I'd never even been there, Time Warped my turquoise face off and won Best Costume!

I was so delighted with how it all turned out. Which was a relief, considering that I'd been planning and waiting for a fucking year and eight months to do it. The body paint colour was Snazaroo's Sea Green and looked blue in some photos, green in others and bright turquoise in real life, which was kinda perfect because in stills from the film, the actual Miss Argentina character seems to alternate between blue and green depending on the shot.


It was so much fun painting myself turquoise, that even when the Bear got worried that I was going to end up dyeing my skin in the process of layering on the paint, I just shouted "I DON'T CARE! LOOK AT HOW COOL THIS IS!" I almost lost the run of myself with excitement when I finally got to the point where I could put the wig on, as that was when it all came together.

I made the red collar out of wire from a craft shop, which came already wound in two spirals, so I just took the centre point and bent it into the shape I wanted, then covered it with red tulle and glued a fuckload of sequins to it. The sash was just a big wide ribbon that I painted the letters on and the wig was borrowed from my lovely friend Lili and then pinned into a haphazard updo with a bajillion bobby pins because I have no idea how to style an updo properly.


Miss Argentina's wrists are cut, which is the dark little gag that shot right over my head as a kid, so being a sucker for detail I made those with special effects wax and a bit of fake blood.

Me on stage getting a prize and being momentarily scared that I might have to say something. These two were taken by Hector Heathwood and yoinked from the Rocky Horror Facebook page.

It was quite weird when I'd catch my reflection during the night, as I'd sort of forget that I was this crazy bright colour and more than once found myself coming away from a mirror thinking "I'm so GREEEN!"

I absolutely loved it though and didn't want to take it off at the end of the night, so before going for a shower at all hours of the morning, I went on a selfie rampage (something I NEVER do), because the last thing I wanted was to end up wishing that I'd taken more photographs of the costume.

Also, it turns out I'm terrible at taking selfies. Do I look at the camera? At my reflection? Down at the phone? Is my hand meant to look that gammy?

My wig was a little bit askew at this point though, as by then it was half past several mojitos in the morning and I didn't really notice. I never usually post photos of myself here, but then again I didn't really look like me on the night, what with the bluey skin and the wig and the fact that Billy and The Incredible Mulq didn't recognise me at first when I walked up to them in the queue outside The Sugar Club.

Also, the hamper of fun stuff that I won was pretty deadly, what with the mulled wine and prosecco and horror DVDs and chocolate. There was also a box of Milk Tray but when a Sunday hangover and gallons of tea collided, that particular box of chocolates didn't stand a chance and got kinda eaten before I could take a photo of my victory swag laid out all nice and pretty.


The only problem now is how the hell do I top this next year?

There's Been A Murder

In a stroke of total genius, my parents got myself and the Bear a murder mystery weekend as a Christmas present. Having been itching to get my Jessica Fletcher on since the start of the year, the weekend in question finally arrived and OH THE FUN. It took place in Faithlegg House Hotel, just outside Waterford city, which is probably the fanciest hotel I've ever stayed in and perfectly lends itself to a weekend of murder scenes and clue-solving, because, y'know, LOOK AT IT:

It's just so...murdery.

When we were checking in on Friday evening, the people ahead of us were duly sent off to their numbered rooms, but when our turn came we were handed a key and informed that we would be staying in the Cornelius Bolton room. The whatnow?

HOLY SHIT OUR ROOM HAS A NAME AND NOT A NUMBER, thought I.

It turns out I wasn't getting excited for nothing, as the room was MASSIVE, had a super high ceiling, four huge windows, an enormous bathroom and most importantly - A MOTHERFUCKING FOUR POSTER BED. You see, it has long been an ambition of mine to sleep in a four poster bed, so my parents, the big legends, only went and saw to it. Achievable goals, people. Achieveable goals are entirely the way to go.


After jumping up and down on the bed for a bit (because...obviously) and having The Best Steak Sandwich Of All Time in the bar, it was time to get acquainted with our host, Detective Inspector Lazarkie. The theme for the murder mystery was a medical one, as it was set in a Chicago hospital. We were informed that a hotshot surgeon had been murdered, handed a list of suspects and split into named teams. I was raging that we weren't on Team Fletcher. RAGING. Instead, the Bear and I found ourselves on Team Ace Ventura, which was ok really, seeing as he's probably my second favourite detective. I guess.

On Saturday, we could inspect the murder scene, while different clues were posted on the wall of the "incident room" (i.e. hotel ballroom) throughout the day, which provided bits and pieces of backstory and motive for each suspect.

Dun dun DUUUN!

We had most of the day to ourselves, so we hung out in our amazing room, had a go of the jacuzzi, steam room and sauna and generally lolled around the place like fancy bastards. The only time we left the hotel was to procure a bottle of Jameson and two dusty bottles of ginger ale from the nearby shop. Best. Day. Ever.

On Saturday night, there was a press conference where we were introduced to the suspects, and got to question them between courses at dinner. It was a fancy dress dinner, so in the week beforehand, we decided to use costumes we already had in the house, namely a dog suit for the Bear and a sheep costume for me. Not just any sheep though, Chris the Sheep from Father Ted, as in KING OF THE SHEEP.

However, as the rest of the sixty-odd participants filed into the room, it turned out that they either didn't bother dressing up, or adhered to the hospital theme and arrived in scrubs or sexy nurse outfits. While the Bear and I sat at the table dressed as a dog and King of the Sheep.

ANYWAY.

By the end of dinner, the suspects had been narrowed down to two possibilities, so we had to fill out solution sheets with who we thought the murderer was and what their motive might have been. After a bit of disagreement with the rest of the team, in particular one woman who wouldn't let go of her theory that the male murder victim and one of the female suspects were the same person and then insisted that it was actually a particular character's mother who WASN'T EVEN A SUSPECT, LADY we settled on an answer. (The same woman said she didn't like Jessica Fletcher earlier on in the day, which elicited gasps of horror from both me and the Bear. Seriously.)

We got to play Operation at dinner. Most fucking fiddly game ever.

The next morning, the killer was revealed, but all the teams had chosen correctly. So the winners were determined by two quiz rounds from Friday night where we had to identify celebrities from photos where we could only see their eyes, and name the TV shows and films that ten theme tunes came from. Team Ace Ventura kicked ass at both rounds and we were declared the winners, snagging a bottle of wine each for our efforts. Hooray! A tremendous weekend was had by all.

London Fundon

The weekend before last, The Bear and I skedaddled off to London for a lovely long weekend. Arising at stupid o'clock on the Friday morning (the Bear kept waking up through the night as he was too excited to sleep properly - aw!) we made our way Londonwards, the first stop on the agenda being the Harry Potter Studio Tour at Leavesden Studios. (Hence all the excitement.)

YOU GUYS. Every Harry Potter fan needs to go here. The tour took us around three and a half hours and you get to wander through at your own pace, which is totally perfect. The only problem was all the fucking PEOPLE, as you accidentally bump into them and get bumped into approximately four million times as you make your way around. But it's a really great setup and even though, as Nicola informed me on Twitter, they don't let you fondle Snape's robes, we had an absolute blast. I'd suggest that anyone who plans on going should try to avoid looking at too many photos of the tour, as the less you know, the more amazing surprises you'll get and the more often you'll exclaim: "Holy crap! It's THIS THING THAT I LOVE! LOOK AT IT!" As such, I'm only putting a handful of pictures up here and they don't really give anything major away, so it's safe to look.


There's a deadly gift shop at the studio too, where you can buy all manner of overpriced Hogwarts paraphernalia, but they don't quite seem to have gotten the hang of sufficiently stocking the shop just yet. I wanted to pick up a few fridge magnets as small presents, but there were none left. So I figured a little keyring might do, but they were completely sold out of Gryffindor keyrings, or indeed anything small and affordable that was Gryffindor related. And I was hardly going to give someone a present of a Hufflepuff keyring, sure I might as well just slap them in the face and be done with it at that rate.

Our lovely friend Brenda was kind enough to put us up for the weekend, although on the first night I woke up at one point to find her cat, the bauld but very cute Ógie standing next to my head and eyeballing me. I may have told him to fuck off. Sorry Ógie.

This was the view from the back of Brenda's place. AMAZO.

Saturday's entertainment came in the form of the British Female Crown performances for the World Burlesque Games, which just HAPPENED to be on while we were over. It was a total coincidence, I SWEAR. There was also much entertainment derived from the fact that the show was taking place in Bush Hall. Heh. Bush.


The show was fantastic fun and each performer did a truly amazing job. My highlights were Chi Chi Revolver, a goofy, tattooed, hula-hooping dynamo that looks not unlike Lady Gaga and definitely deserved a place in the top three. Robbed, she was! Here's a video that shows just over a minute of her act (I don't know why the person filming didn't record it all, because they bloody well should have) :



Billie Rae, a red haired, fire breathing ballerina doll was another of my favourites, you can see her Forgotten Ballerina routine here:



The winner of the competition was Eliza Delite, a dead ringer for Lynda Carter who blew everyone away with a beautiful Virgin Mary routine.



While it sounds deliciously sacrelicious to combine Holy Mary and burlesque, it was actually just gorgeous and the crowd went fucking nuts for it. The glittery sacred heart was a nice touch too.


On our last morning, I plotted our route back to the airport via Holborn. For I had previously found a Krispy Kreme donut shop along High Holborn a few years ago and you may recall how obsessed I am with these particular roundy Original Glazed hoops of happiness. After traipsing up the busy street with our suitcases in tow, I was getting worried. There was no sign nor smell of a doughnut to be found. It turned out we were at the wrong end of street, for as soon as we ventured to the other end, LO! There it was! The Bear had walked straight past it, but my doughnut senses were on the ball and I spotted it in time.


We bought twenty four doughnuts that morning and after a quick spot of suitcase Tetris at the airport, we managed to make enough room to stuff the two boxes into the Bear's suitcase. It was a GOOD DAY.

Also, I noticed that the lifts in the airport were made by a company called Schindler.


SCHINDLER'S LIFT!

I'm here all week. Try the veal.

Draw Baby Draw

At the end of April, the Bear and I finally got around to attending a Dr. Sketchy's Anti Art School session, in this case Disco Inferno, which was spurred on by the news that founder and art superhero Molly Crabapple was going to be in town at the time and giving a talk the next day. The Bear kept pronouncing her name as Molly Krabappel all weekend because he just loves winding me up.

The mirrorball-strewn sketching session itself was tremendous fun, upstairs in 4 Dame Lane is a gorgeous venue and with €5 whiskey sours on the go, what more could you want? (Seeing as neither one of us had done life drawing since the Leaving Cert all those years ago, we practiced drawing each other while drawing each other a few days beforehand because we're SO GODDAMN META.) Once I settled into it and stopped panicking because the poses were only lasting a minute to begin with, I really enjoyed it and the three hour striptease (as host Scarlett Nymph referred to it) totally flew by. I used to be reasonably good at life drawing and this has made me want to scrape all the rust off and get much better at it.

Sade O'Sapphic and Sophia Disgrace were the disco diva models.

Some delightful drag king action from Phil T. Gorgeous. Note the dude in the red scarf, because that's Alan Cumming, who was there to film a documentary. ALAN CUMMING! Sebastian from The High Life and/or Nightcrawler! So brilliant.

The idea of Dr. Sketchy's is a brilliant and empowering one and it was fascinating listening to Molly herself explain at her talk the next day how the idea was formed. As a model herself, she was annoyed with how drawing class subjects were faceless and unnamed, with Female Nude Model #1 being the height of the credit they got. Dr. Sketchy's revolves around the models, they're the stars of the show, being whooped and cheered for every saucy pose they strike and deeming which sketches are to be rewarded with cupcakes or tequila shots.

As the poses got longer, my drawing got less frantic and I slowly got somewhat into the swing of things. The last two 20 minute pose sketches are the ones I'm happiest with, so they're the only ones of mine you get to see.


I was always going to love it though, something that can be described as a mix of art, burlesque and whiskey is like pulling my favourite things out of a sparkly top hat at random and having them all work spectacularly well together. The next Dr. Sketchy's session is Miss Havisham themed, which sounds utterly fantastic. It looks like I'm not going to make it to that particular one unfortunately, but you can bet your sexy ass I'll be at the one after that.

All session photos are from the Dr. Sketchy's site and were taken by Cherry Sedition.

Paddy's Day In Polaroids

Alternating between cider and Lemsip for my snuffly cold in the name of powering through for our national holiday. The Bear humming Sleigh Ride and putting Christmas songs in my head. "Stop that!" "But I don't know any Patrick's Day songs!" "Sure you do! Dóchas linn Naomh Pádraig, something something Éireann..." "Paa rum-pa-pum-pum!" "No!" Hanging out of a marvellous first floor Dame Street window (same one as last year) to roar "GO WILDCATS!" and the like at the American high school marching bands. An unfortunate clarinet player from one of said bands stopping and getting sick on a Garda's shiny black shoes. Natural Confectionery Company Snakes and Shamrocks jellies. Getting overly excited by the bubbles emanating from Spraoi's steampunk ship float. The Bear and I hungrily horsing pizza into ourselves after a hard day's parade watching and rugby disappointment. Collapsing on the couch and falling apart by around half seven, because powering through when you're not altogether well takes it out of a girl.

Hectic Picnic

I think it's pretty safe to say that Electric Picnic is essentially a weekend of guaranteed merriment, regardless of how demented the weather has decided to be at that given point in September. Of this I am convinced, having had spectacular fun at the the wet, muddy, cold version in 2009 and the earlier ones around 2005 and 2006 where there was actual honest to God SUNSHINE for most of the weekend and I have the photos and rather hazy memories to prove it. Anyway, that's enough preamble. For this was yet another shenanigan-filled three days, which involved the following...


> Santigold taking the roof off the Electric Arena on Friday night, such was the ferociousness of her electro/superfunk set, sending the crowd into a frenzy. Her show was made all the more amazing thanks to her two backing dancers that would out-fierce Tyra herself, bopping along in perfect time with matching golden pom-poms which were soon exchanged for giant hammers, which then gave way to lassos for the part when the pantomime horse came onstage and danced to the music. Yes. A DANCING PANTOMIME HORSE. I want to live inside Santigold's head.

> The Salty Dog shipwreck stage being its usual decadent, dreamy and brilliant self, where we caught Jerry Fish and The Mudbug Club, a Cajun band I can't quite remember the name of and most importantly, the three delightful cancan dancers that frequent The Burlesque and Cabaret Social Club. Jackpot.


> Getting our disco on at the glittery, sparkly wonderfulness of Bitches With Wolves. I seriously can't get enough of this band, not to mention frontman James O'Neill's AMAZING Eighties Madonna dance moves. Eighties Madonna but miles better, in fact.

> Ambling past someone in the full bespectacled, stripey jumpered Wally outfit passed out asleep under a tree.


> The sheer joy of getting to see the very lovely and tremendously talented EleventyFour play both the Peace Pagoda and the Love Letter Stage in Body & Soul. Both of her sets seemed to attract the most random, bizarre and brilliant of happenings, what with the man dressed as a tiger raving to her sweet, funny, folksy stylings, a zombie bridal party stopping by for a listen, a conga line of people disguised as a deck of cards scampering through the audience, and that's actually only the half of it. She handled all the distractions marvellously with her witty banter and the audience most firmly on her side for the Eleventy vs Loud Drumming Bastards debacle. She's recounted the whole thing on her own site and it makes for most surreal and entertaining reading. Also, I completely missed the fact that I had been sitting near Pop Culture Monster at her gig, who I would've loved to have met properly. Next time, purple monster!


> Mr. Billy Flag distracting the drunk-ass headwrecker that kept asking us all what our favourite Bruce Springsteen song was by pointing to the middle distance and shouting "What's that over there!?" whereupon we all legged it in the opposite direction. It was the only way, there was just no getting rid of this fucker.


> Tieranniesaur stomping some amazing funk pop into the main stage of Body & Soul, with bass lines so big and delicious I wanted to eat them. The bass lines, not the band. There was also a brief appearance by frontwoman Annie Tierney's brother Mick Pyro, which was rather class.

> Discovering the genius that is Abandoman in the Comedy Tent. An improv hip-hop duo that stormed through a series of amazing on the spot songs, earning themselves three standing ovations from the delirious crowd. After that astounding performance, MCs Andrew Stanley and Damien Clarke led the audience through the first verse of Fresh Prince Of Bel Air, with the entire tent taking over when they forgot the rest of the words because we all knew it by heart, obviously. David O'Doherty's meandering lo-fi whimsy followed, which was hilarious as ever and topped off what was possibly my favourite ever stint in the Picnic's Comedy Tent.


> Lords of Lightning BLOWING MY MIND entirely with their genuinely awesome lightning bolt performance as they duelled atop a giant Tesla coil each alongside the fire-breathing Arcadia stage. Yowza.

What the Jaysus fuck? Amazing, is what!

> Dancing my socks off in general, but particularly to Gordon Gano finishing out his set with Blister In The Sun, Public Enemy lashing out Don't Believe The Hype, Pulp treating us to Disco 2000 and pretty much all of Beirut, as I do love a bit of brass.

> The Brownbread Mixtape knocking it out of the park in Mindfield with their inspired comedy sketches (in particular the reconstruction of Amanda Brunker's already laughable appearance at Oxegen, punctuated with the YouTube comments from her video. There's really nothing like seeing the unnecessary rage of the YouTube commenter brought to life) the gorgeous poetry and music and the most rousing end to a performance that I've ever seen, in the shape of their alternative Irish anthem My Blood Is Boiling For Ireland. It mostly involves the crowd shouting "Ireland! Ireland! Ireland, FUCKIN' IRELAND" and a fantastic call and response bit as Gaeilge. Go h-ana funky ar fad.

All told, it was a typically fantastic Electric Picnic weekend...'till next year, Stradbally!