Projects

Hot on the heels of Launch comes MoJ2006. Check it out!
MoJ2006

And read about it here.

I don't normally give my boarding pass a second look but as I was waiting for that tiny Qantas plane to take off to our next tour destination, I noticed in the bottom corner: FF SLVR. When did that happen?

It's no surprise, really. This particular tour has had us flying all over the country already. So many planes. The upgrade from Bronze to Silver quietly slipped past unnoticed. Great! I haven't used any of my points yet, maybe I should see if I've got enough for an upgrade for when we go to the UK (which seems to be going ahead now, despite the tour being reduced to only three venues, it doesn't matter 'cos I'm finally going to London which will be really cool).

We've taken to the skies again. We seem to be on tour forever. The injury seems like so long ago. Although we've spent a total of five weeks away from Sydney on this tour, these weeks have been in periods of one or two weeks and we actually spent a whole week at home last week. It's better than the marathon regional tour we endured in 2004, where we were away from home for five weeks visiting on average two towns every week; by about halfway the towns seemed to look all the same. (The whole tour went for seven weeks but the last two were practically in our backyard: the 'Gong and Newcastle.) At least I got some good pictures! But the agony of not having a decent cup of coffee every day and the monotony of seeing the same faces day in day out got really tiring. The numerous times we've been home through this tour have been a welcome opportunity to recharge. But we haven't done Clan for over a week, indeed we've been rehearsing a different program altogether, hopefully getting back into performance mode won't be too difficult.

Where are we now? Gladstone. We were here almost three years ago and, prior to our return, I could barely remember what it was like. There were tall chimneys (the aluminium industry) and all the nice beaches were way out of town. Oh, and there was a Mexican restaurant. If I didn't take a photo of it back then, I probably don't remember it.

Technorati Tags: Photos, Travel, Bangarra, Qantas, Frequent Flyer Points, Silver, Aluminium, Gladstone, Queensland

Listen: JhunyTheBoy - Launch
1. Madonna - Jump (Mishift Remix)
2. Coldplay - Talk (Thin White Duke Remix)
3. Bob Sinclar ft Steve Edwards - World Hold On (Children Of The Sky) (Club Mix)
4. Bananarama - Move In My Direction (Bobby Blanco & Miki Moto Vocal Mix)
5. Meck ft Leo Sayer - Thunder In My Heart Again
6. Mish Mash - Speechless (Kink Unique Remix)
7. Syke 'N' Sugarstarr - Are You (Watching U Watching Me) (New Master Mix)
8. The Source ft Candi Staton - You Got The Love (Shapeshifters Alt Mix)
9. Loleatta Holloway - Love Sensation '06 (Hi_Tack Burnin' Up Club Mix)
10. Mind Electric - Dirty Cash
11. Röyksopp - What Else Is There (Trentemoeller Remix)
12. Freeform Five - Electromagnetic (Tiefschwarz unreleased vocal remix)
13. TV Rock ft Seany B vs Vandalism - Never Say Flaunt It
14. Atomizer - Hooked On Radiation
15. Microfilm - Sex Education
16. Goldfrapp - Ooh La La (When Andy Bell Met Manhattan Clique Mix)

To celebrate the launch of the new site, I've done a new mix. It's very, er, *club* but it gets a little bit edgier near the end. Anyway, if you don't like it, tough! But I hope you still check out the site...

Notes about the mix:

• I quite like Madonna's newly released album track Get Together but didn't feel like I could use any of the mixes. But this mix of Jump sounds alot better than the album version, it's great what a little bpm increase can do!
• I'm really into Coldplay dance mixes at the moment, they've got such catchy riffs!
• I actually prefer this Bob Sinclar track to Love Generation. I dunno, I guess it's because this one doesn't try as hard to be so feel good.
• Considering the number of tracks that have sampled it, it's about bloody time someone re-released it in its own right, albeit remixed. Strangely, though, it kind of sounds like a mashup, one moment its all "Black Box" the next it's all "Marky Mark". hehe. It's almost as if all of those samplers used Holloway's vocals better than her producers did...
• Seany B, whoever he is, totally shits me. Very Unattractive Man. I had to mix something else over the top to distract me from him...

Enjoy. It won't be here for long...

PS Good luck to the crew of Space Shuttle Discovery for their very own Launch.

Tags: Mix, Jhuny, Dance, Pop, Space Shuttle, Discovery, Launch.

Firefox was rendering my site quite nicely. I had all just cleaned up the mix. I had set up some of the blog topics and had categorised some of the posts into them. I had set up a link from the old blog to here so that all my readers knew where to go. All was well...

Until I checked the site out on Internet Explorer.

The sidebars were in the wrong spot and Internet Explorer had decided to add indents to the start of each post. Initially I wasn't too concerned with the indent and wanted to fix the sidebars but it took an hour to realise that the indents were causing the problem. Once that was fixed, all was fine (well, not quite... but I'm not telling you what's wrong! It'll all be fixed soon...) but it sucked that it happened in the first place. And I've only checked it in ie6 and have not had a chance to look at it in ie5. But do I really care? If you're still using ie5 you obviously don't care that much about the internet so there's no point in hacking the code for you lot. Upgrade goddammit! If not Firefox then try Opera. It would make life a whole lot easier!

Tags: blog, browser, internet explorer, firefox, opera.

No amount of pink stripes and headings can disguise the fact that this blog has not been very gay lately. That thought occurred to me as I'm reading the various blog posts collected at Pinkboard and through all the whingeing and carrying on about rehabilitation, and touring around the country, all I've got in the last three months that suggests same-sex orientation is a cursory mention of the mystery man JPB and some random comment from an ex-housemate.

Well anyway here goes nothing: I AM GAY.

I'm so happy (gay, even) to hear that Kylie's touring again. I think that my ticket is for her first performance back, which will be amazing to go to. I was sitting in a cafe in Toowoomba and they were playing Kylie's Showgirl DVD and I was watching her perform Red Blooded Woman thinking "wow this is so gay".

The movie channels at the hotels that we've stayed at have all been playing Brokeback Mountain.

I'm glad I got that off my chest.

Tags: gay blog Kylie Minogue brokeback mountain.

PS I know that QP did a similar kind of post yesterday but at the very least he was being QueerActivist. I've just been a dancer (and, no, I've met enough straight male dancers, you can't just make any kinds of assumptions!).

A couple of the other dancers had made the trek up Anzac Hill in Alice Springs to see the sun rise over the Alice. Although I have only a limited role in the current Bangarra tour I still didn't think it was a good idea to head off when we're doing full days in the theatre. The morning of our travel day to Darwin seemed like the perfect opportunity to make a trek. As with Castle Hill in Townsville, it seems like the only reasonable reaction to a big lump of rock is to climb it so at six in the morning I found myself rugged up and bleary-eyed walking in the pre-dawn darkness along the barren Todd River, racing to beat the Sun. Fingers frozen because I had neglected to pack my gloves and because I was holding my icy cold tripod in one hand.

But the effort was worth it. The streets of the Alice were slowly waking up and the sky was growing bluer and brighter. Three of the other dancers finally made it up the hill after me just in time to get front row seats for the daily spectacle, my tripod already set up and capturing the view and there were already a handful of random people also waiting around. A band of pink slowly swept across the sky to herald in the Sun, which finally emerged above the horizon as a piercing and brilliant glow. Several cameras suddenly went into action, including mine.

About an hour later we were back at the Alice Springs Resort tucking into a well-deserved hot breakfast, feeling energised from seeing such a glorious view. It was a good way to top off a pretty exhilarating few days in the Alice. The night before the company was receiving rapturous applause from an almost packed house at the Araluen Arts Centre. We even got a second curtain call, which is pretty special for a regional show. It was especially good because an hour prior to that there was serious drama going on backstage as the directors were trying to work out how to replace one of the dancers who had just received a blow to the nose and was off to get it checked out by a doctor. Conveniently enough DB has quite a big role in the second half including a solo that nobody else in the company had gotten around to understudying. None of this applied to me as I have such a reduced role in the show already but when the second half commenced there was quite a bit of anxiety as to how the show was going to go.

Half way through "String" there were a couple of strings in the wrong place. We were all able to work around them but it was clear that we were all on edge.

But once it was time for DB's solo, the anxiety started to lift as PT took to the stage. He had volunteered to improvise to fill in the time. It was both amazing and funny to watch from side stage, with the knowledge of the extremely late "casting change", just about the entire company were watching on the sides cheering him on as he proceeded to twist and turn to the music. The energy onstage had changed, it was another one of those amazing electric moments that I hadn't seen since Ground Force in Melbourne. And no one in the audience besides the directors were none the wiser.

In the space of half a day I had been blown away twice.

Tags: Dance, Bangarra, Alice Springs, Anzac Hill, Sunrise, Northern Territory, Clan

Sorry for not blogging for so long. I've been taking my time with a revamp of the whole thing. It's hopefully coming in the not too distant future...

MoJ2006

This mix was probably finished about three weeks ago but I've only just recently decided that this would be the final version. It's just that in that time I've tried to make changes to the mix but ended up not liking it so undid them. The main problem was when I mixed the Pussycat Dolls with Freeform Five: it sounds interesting only for a short time then I get bored. But I really wanted to have a *new* song in there (I started the mix a few weeks before Madonna released her new single, complete with remixes, in Australia but the mix took so long the remix has since been flogged to death) and there was nothing decent to fill it in. I had tried to fit Vandalism's Never Say Never but it didn't really mix into New Order well and I really wanted to keep those tracks in.

The New Order Jetstream section is a bit much but I especially like the Richard X remix of the track though I think for the general listener it may be too much. Also, it's a bit odd but I really like the ending, it goes on some crazy tangent and ends up with a mad rocking bouncy-breaks of a tune. It can't all sound like a night out at the Xchange! Probably my favourite moment was when Gloria turns the beat around and knocks Dannii out of the picture. I mean, what's up with her laying her voice over random instrumental club tracks anyway? The only problem is that I've played that section to death and I'm a bit over it now.

In fact, that's the big problem. I've spent so much time on the mix, and I've listened to it to death on my iPod to make sure it sounds okay, that I've just gotten sick of it. It's only just been finished and I'm over it already.

PT likes it, though. He's the only other person to have heard the mix.

Anyway, here's the tracklisting:

1. Kelly Clarkson vs Depeche Mode vs Rex The Dog - Since U Been Gahan (DJ Earworm mashup)
2. Coldplay - Speed of Sound (C-64 Remix)
3. Madonna - Sorry (Pet Shop Boys Maxi Mix)
4. Dannii Minogue & The Soul Seekers - Perfection
5. Gloria Estefan - Turn The Beat Around
6. Missy Elliott - Lose Control (Jacques Lu Cont Mix)
7. Black Eyed Peas vs Armand Van Helden - When My Lumps Go Down
8. Mylo - Muscle Car (Freeform Five Remix)
9. Mylo - Muscle Car (Sander Kleinenberg Pace Car Mix)
10. Freeform Five - No More Conversations
11. Rogue Traders - Watching You (James Ash's Club Mix)
12. Pussycat Dolls ft Will I Am vs Freeform Five - Beeeaaoowwp
13. New Order - Jetstream (Jacques Lu Cont Remix)
14. New Order - Jetstream (Richard X Remix)
15. Tiga - You Gonna Want Me
16. Gorillaz - Dirty Harry
17. The Prodigy - Out Of Space (Audio Bullys Remix)
18. Pendulum ft The Freestylers - Fasten Your Seatbelt
19. Ordinary Boys vs The Freestylers - Boys Will B-Boys (Dunproofin' Mashup)

Tags: Mix, dance music, CD cover, Ministry Of Jhuny.

Closing Ceremony Fireworks 15
Originally uploaded by Jhuny.

In the end there was no Ms Minogue and we had to make do with John Farnham back from retirement once again. The best thing about the Closing Ceremony was the Bollywood at the 'G, so much colour and movement and pretty people.

It's a bit of a shame that it's all ending, though. It was great to see the city so alive and packed full of people the last couple of weeks. Who cares that sometimes it takes twenty minutes to cross a bridge or that blue-shirted well-meaners yell at you to "Keep to the left!" I wasn't in Sydney for the Olympics but this was pretty good. If only I wasn't so busy with the show I could have gone to more events. Like the Big Top. Or Bollywood in the park.

At the very least I god some great pictures with my new camera and tripod.

Tags: Commonwealth Games, Melbourne2006, Fireworks, MCG, Closing Ceremony.