This one got created on a night out into some of Melbourne more back alley cocktail bars. I got a bit too drunk, don’t remember the exact recipe that I made up on the spot, but I do recall that it ended up being a $22 cocktail and it went a little something like this:

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So it’s not like there are really enough people reading this on a regular basis to care, but I’ve decided to create a new category: Drinks.
The reason? Well, I used to be a bartender. A fucking good one. And I still like to invent drinks, and try them out on my friends as well as myself.

So, from now on, every Friday, there will be a post of some fantastic new drink. And just to make sure that does happen, I’m going to write a few and just set them to auto post.

Oh yeah, if you’ve seen some of these drinks before at other bars, like the Comfort Crop Duster, it’s because I’ve been nice/naive enough to give out some of my recipes to other bars which then pretend like their own staff made that shit up. I’m looking at you, Antiques Bar in Elsternwick (and, to a lesser extent, Eurotrash in Corrs Lane).

It’s not often that I go to a public event where my faith in the youth of today actually gets restored. As some of you are aware, I also run a small manga publishing thing called OzTAKU, and we fund that by running drawing classes all over Victoria.

So, when we were contacted by the City of Melbourne to do a class, it wasn’t really a surprise, and we readily agreed. The class was yesterday, at the Osaka Twilight Festival.

It had all the regular assortment of stuff you get at a cultural festival. Cheesy music, deep fried ethnicity and teeny whores running around. There were a couple of Loligoths, which were pretty easy on the eye, but over all it was mostly a family affair.

So Trey & I are doing our schtick, teaching people how to draw and traumatising children in a process we’ve termed “Edutraumatization”. Along with explaining the rigidly geometric way in which Manga comics are actually constructed, we liberally pepper in horrifying facts about why Barbie would die writhing in agony, and how all the children have freakishly large ears.

We’re between classes when we notice one particularly bright young spark who is actually well above the level that we teach classes at just sitting their idly doodling. A small, 14 year old Asian emo (we knew, because her Tshirt said so, and she was wearing socks on her arms) nicknamed “Pie”. As in the kind you eat. Draw what inferences you like. She also had a brother, who was nick nameless.

These kids were, for want of a better word, precocious. Actually “fiercely intelligent and cynical” would probably express it better.

Now, Trey & I, we’re educated guys. Voracious readers of political, philosophical and scientific literature (also known as “subscriptions to FHM and Wired magazines”), and these kids were managing to go at us toe-to-toe, talking about Nietzsche & Dostoyevsky.
It was actually really quite refreshing, and gave me some hope for the youth of today, to know that they’re not all slack jawed morons who are picking up on MySpace when they take time out from their busy iPod schedules to SMS someone and complain about the latest Veronica’s album.

And I get the feeling that in turn, these kids appreciated some adults not talking down to them and assuming they were idiots because they weren’t old enough to legally vote or commit vehicular homicide due to being DUI.

So after the Framing Hanley thing, apparently I’m the music review bitch now.
 

Do you like games like MegaMan? Not the new ones. Old school ones from the original NES. Because if you did, you’re going to freakin’ love the new Prodigy
album: Invaders Must Die.
I mean, the name itself is a bit of a give away as to what it’s going to sound like after all… Or maybe they’re just being racist, I dunno.

Technically, the album isn’t being released until March 3rd, but with TripleJ playing it all the fucking time, I felt I needed to get it.  I mean, haven’t you heard Omen at least 6 dozen times now? But a bit thank you music pirates that leak shit onto torrents and 256kbs! Bless you, one and all. And also to the Prodigy who actually want you to hear their music online:

 

Anyway, it’s great to see that after nearly twenty years (that’s right – two decades) a band is still able to deliver music that quintessentially sounds like them. 

In a way, it’s a return to their earlier sounding work. Much less industrial, much less violent, and much less over-produced and gritty. Whilst the majority of the tracks would still feel comfortable if you were to suddenly hear them come over the speakers at the club, there are others that are just straight up dance music with a bit of a minor key to the track. <em>Thunder</em> is a stand up example of this, sounding something like Trent Reznor suddenly deciding he was on a Reggae kick. However, it is very reminiscent of work from earlier albums such as Experience.  If you feel you missed out on some of their earlier work because the first time you ever heard them was on The Matrix soundtrack, you can always go here and buy the rest of their music. Mp3s are there if you scroll down.

Perhaps the only thing that’s arguably bad about this album is that not only is every single track in 4/4 time, most have a fairly similar BPM as well. It does make the album flow from one track to the next, like a good concept album where you can only tell the difference between the tracks due to the refrain, it does tend to just lull you into it. It’s not the kind of high “NRG” album that’ll keep you going the whole night because there’s nothing to jolt you out of the groove between tracks.

If you like Prodigy, and you liked the music in games like MegaMan (I’m really serious about that part, It really sounds like a Nintendo soundtrack in parts), this album is a must have. Just make sure you’ve got some good headphones and 40 minutes to relax, instead of having dropped a tab of E.

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