Let's see...well we bid farewell to two very good people in Anneloes and Wouter. Anneloes finished her MBA and Wouter has been posted back to the Netherlands by Shell. Good timing by both! We are sad to see them go, Anneloes added a particular something to Melbourne Business School and everyone is missing her sense of humour already. Student nights will just not be the same without Anneloes, glass of good Australian red in hand, vying for loudest laugh before 9pm. After 9pm, well that's another matter. In the interest of maintaining the friendship we shall not go into matters over the internet. He he he.
Their farewell party was very pleasant, Wouter thinking ahead and hiring a bloody big heater to keep the Geelong chill from the bones of the 50% MBS/50% Shell crowd. After leaving Mobil Grant had largely buried the memories but they all came flooding back...one forgets how badly petroleum engineers dance while pissed!
What else, oh nothing much. School started. Grant had a birthday on 20th May. Just the usual.
As a present Dale bought tickets to see Thelma Houston and Dionne Warwick at the Melbourne Concert Hall.
Thelma was in fine form, adding a couple of great blues numbers and an unaccompanied (in fact, unexpected by the band) tribute to her gospel roots in deepest Mississippi. What a voice! Damn near blew the wigs off the matrons sitting in the first 10 rows. Why have we not heard more from her like this? Also bought the house down by saying despite the horrors of growing up black in Mississippi she still liked the place. "Mississippi is a nice place to be from...".
On a different note, Thelma decided to throw in a few different dance steps. This involved tripping on a towel and crashing down over a cue-prompter box. Saving herself, she lifted a hand to the band-leader for help up - and promptly had her stilletto slip sending her nose first into the wooden floor. "Oooh, that would have hurt...". That did it. She was now floundering about on the floor in a very undignified manner, legs and arms flailing and evryone seeing rather further up her gold frock than she had probably intended. But she continued the show and earned the respect and affection of everyone. Great performance. All of it.
But there comes a time in every girls life when she has to think about the mortal danger and humiliation in store if she continues to wear the 5 inch heels of her youth. (ref. Margaret Thatcher, her visit to China, a very long flight of steps and TV cameras).
And so onto Dionne. If you are thinking of seeing her, do so quick. She may have had voice problems (she kept gulping down something) but the performance lacked that certain something. One hopes it isn't her voice aging faster that her body is. The sound was there, obviously Dionne but the performance was just a bit, well, flat.
Dionne tried a few 'new' numbers from Brazil that just didn't seem to work. Then back to the Bacherach we'd all come to hear. Loud applause. That thankfully ended the Brazilian experiment. Trying to whip an Australian audience into a sing-a-long also didn't work. We are just too self-concious to be singing along in public except when fried.
Wish the same could have been said for the messy lesbian sitting next to Grant who commenced to hum and clap along with songs. Fortunately her girlfriend had a word to her and she restrained herself to obnoxious clapping at the beginning, middle and end of songs - in fact it seemed like every bloody key change. Oh Lordy, it's because of people like you that people say lesbians have no social graces...
To the other extreme, the prissy little queen in the row in front was a perfect example of why people say poofs are pretentious. Hmmm, Dee-own-ee is a very fascinating way of pronouncing Dionne dear - but please don't say it again or I shall have to forsake one of my socks because you are an embarrassment.
We then wandered off hand-in-hand to the 'wonderful' new Casino for a late dinner and a few beers to celebrate Grant surviving another year. And NO we do not gamble. And YES the Casino is, to rephrase the sadly departed Kenny Everett, it's all done in the worst possible taste. Like being trapped in Emelda Marcos' trinket box.
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