Brisbane comedy festival, queer spaces, and EV races

This weekend has been a blast. It’s the Brisbane Comedy Festival so on Friday I went to see Josh Thomas’ Lets Tidy Up.

Comedian, gay, neurodiverse, and ex Brisbane kid. I loved his TV stuff and I just find him endearing, so I booked two tickets and couldn’t find anyone other than Ben who would go with me.

This is a show where Josh tidies up. Tidying up is not normally the stuff of gripping drama, it wouldn’t be a propulsive narrative for most people, but for Josh it’s Everest, a fundamentally impossible task, like trying to defy the moon and control the tides.

Brisbane Comedy Festival Program

We had Korean for dinner, then decided to drive because the Powerhouse is not well connected to public transit (the CityCat takes AGES) and it was threatening to rain.

We couldn’t get parking so we ended up driving around and taking scooters the rest of the way anyway. But it was a fun night.

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The next day I was going to have breakfast with another friend and I’m actually kind of glad it was cancelled because I was not prepared to wake up that morning. Thankfully neither was she, so I had a bit of a sleep in and sat around doing not much until the afternoon.

Then I caught up with Dan who was in the area for the grand opening of a new local queer bar Come To Daddy. Hilarious name, puns abound.

It’s a 5 minute walk from my place but I hadn’t heard anything about it! It’s not really in Google and it seems like they’re only on Instagram. And even so, only barely ¯_(ツ)_/¯

But we wandered down shortly after opening, grabbed a drink and a seat, and people filtered in until it was standing room only. Then there was an amusing welcome to country to christen the bar (yarma!), and I saw my first ever drag queen pianist (playing “Daddies Everywhere” to the tune of “Love is in the Air”).

The queue for the bar was super long so we only had a couple of drinks before calling it a night. But I’m keen to head back soon.

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The next morning I went to the little “health food store” and bought some “health food” (chocolate coated freeze dried strawberries and ginger), then headed down to Amanda and Colin’s place in my new EV.

I got the MG4 EV because I’ve been doing a lot of travel back and forth to my parents place in Maryborough, which emits about 70 kilos of CO2 round trip. Apparently when you burn fuel in an engine it doesn’t just disappear, who knew! Also it’s a lot more comfortable than the Hyundai Getz I was borrowing from my folks, with all the mod cons like cruise control and headlamps that actually illuminate the road.

I arrived a bit early so when I took a wrong turn I was happy to just meander around the streets admiring how much the suburbs of the Gold Coast look kinda just like the suburbs where I grew up north of Brisbane. I also went up a hill and cruised right back down, excitedly watching the regenerative braking put a bunch of power back into the batteries.

I said I would bring “some sausage rolls or something”, but Amanda really wanted to put on a Scottish lunch. So we had scotch pies with mash and beans, and Irn Bru as a palate cleanser. It was amazing and I felt very special.

I don’t have any pics, other than this one where I found the cap for the charger had been flapping around where I forgot to replace it for the past week.

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By the time I got home it was already kinda late so I made dinner (I got the tastiest turkish bread from Coles yesterday after visiting Daddy), then started faffing around with my web site.

I wanted a place to share links to stories I’ve enjoyed reading, or would like to refer back to. So a few weeks back I set up a bookmarks page, as well as an RSS feed that you can subscribe to wherever you get your feeds.

But as I was testing the RSS feed I had to go digging around in my subscriptions, and it was kind of nice to go back and see all the feeds from various people I’ve subscribed to over the years. If I stumble on an interesting looking personal site I try to subscribe, and keep that small web spirit alive.

Some people post once every few years. Some people never post again. And long story short that’s why I took a moment to write about my weekend. Also it’s #WeblogPoMo2024 (HT rachsmith.com).

So how about you, what have you been up to?