Melbourne is beautiful. There are a handful of cities I could happily live in with my cursory experience of them - New York, Austin, Portland, London, Paris, and now Melbourne. I still can't quite put my finger on it. This city also is completely distinct - some remind you of others or there are places like them. I can't think of any place I've ever been to that has Melbourne's character.

I found a place to stay - the last place that wasn't a hostel in the city that had rooms available - but it was this awful hotel akin to the Australian version of the Shining hotel. It dates back to 1833 and hasn't been vacuumed since about then, I'd say.



I needed to write this damn treatment and the place was creeping me out and I was honestly out of ideas. Treatment writing is the bane of music videos - most of my director friends and myself averaged about 50 treatments last year of which a handful will get picked. Deadlines on them are very short, so you tend (as my buddy and very talented director Keith Schofield commented here) to let the ideas sit all day long and finally get something down very early in the am hoping that you finally got it.

Mary had job interviews, so I headed out for the day with headphones listening to the song on a loop. Just wandered the streets randomly. She got a job on her second one for a newspaper out here. Her boyfriend got his on the first interview. The luck of the Irish?


odd little signifier on the sidewalk

The city has a tram service that acts as its public transport that is convenient, simple, and hard to get lost on.


mary checks out the song


alan

Alan had to split so Mary and I ate Sukiyaki and caught up on five years apart. We realized that we had first met fourteen years ago. I'm very good at giving a first bad impression, and it was only two years after we first met for one night - teenagers on a suburban close my first Christmas I spent in Ireland, looking for something, anything to do - that we actually found each other. She thought I was a right awful nerd immediately. I thought she was cute. How it usually goes.

There was a lot of sadness in our breakup but we were both going in completely opposite directions with our lives at that point, just nearing our mid twenties. And now we have happiness and more than that have both fulfilled all the dreams we had way back when before we could even get close to them and chase them together, and an even better friendship free of being in a relationship. It's good to have someone who knows you ridiculously well who you aren't complicated with and I don't think I ever got the value of that. I just wish I could see her more often. And Alan I liked instantly - he's a graphic designer whose eyes light up when he talks kerning, and I dig that.

We hit this one street and kept getting all these cats following us. This one was my favorite - absolutely terrifying:


alan said it had fur like a sofa from the 30s




a through road is a dead end. so this is basically dead end street.



After dinner we wandered more. When it rains in Melbourne there's something about the way the city is lit that is just gorgeous, and it rains full but not hard, slightly tropical. Mary took me to Pellegrini's, which is one of those legendary city institutions complete with surly service but mindblowing coffee. If you ever hit Melbourne this is a place to drop by.



Even my decaf was some of the best coffee I've ever had.








i am spit out


i am born again newly from a city sculpture of... you figure it out


Asian bboys and girls in a closed up shopping center at 1am, using the shop window glass to practice moves.

After Mary split I finally came up with an idea for my treatment. Since I couldn't use my laptop, I had to write it on my blackberry, a very frustrating experience. And the room was still creeping me out. Walked outside and crossed the street and on the steps of the state parliament I wrote. While I was there I bumped into this gang of students who were protesting their university ripping them off. I'd seen them there way earlier that day. They were still there, said they were going to be there overnight. Advice to colleges: do not practice accounting irregularities on students of accounting. They were going to demand justice by being on the steps of Parliament as the MPs came to work in the morning.




at 2am i finally got it, and wrote it right there. one of the protestors took this picture of me. this one's for you, emily and ross.

I was even happy with the treatment. Sitting on the steps typing on tiny keys made me refine and make my ideas smaller. Not going to do it again, but another great, full day down here. I'm splitting tomorrow and will be sad to go. This is a great city and if you come to Australia make the time to come here.