I'm as red as a barber pole and can hardly move my neck. That's two Yay!'s way up for the Big Day Out. The run-down:

Thursday night — much-anticipated arrival of Dani and Celia. Anna came too. Smoked some lovely pot and made some lovely spoons on the airbed. Poorly inflated airbed + pot = do try it.

Friday — girls take ages to get ready eh. I mean, it's sweet commanding an army of hawt biatches, but they really take ages to get ready. So despite getting up at 8.30, we didn't make it out to the stadium til 1.00, just in time to see Pluto suck some ass. Dani, Anna and I proceeded to get gosh-darn muttoned (Being 'muttoned' is the state where you try to say 'munted' but are too muttoned to do so.) off about three beers each while Celia and Daniel (with a beard!) enjoyed a very sweet Living End show. Suprise Hit Of The BDO Number One: Mudvayne. They were loud and hard and tight and totally for-reals, and the crowd was a bundle of laughs.

Hanging out with Blair (Yay! Blair!) prevented us from seeing Brakes Coup but we did make it to the smaller stages in time for The Go! Team. Can I just say, "Holy Crap!" They've got a whole new genre all to themselves and it makes me extremely happy. Pretty black lady with singing and dancing! Two drummers! Noise! I was so excited to have stumbled across these gems that I just surrendered to the Pretty Black Lady and embarked on Operation Dance Like No One's Watching. Joining Daniel and I in this was a little dude on Lord-knows-what: everytime he clapped his hands he could apparently see some sort of ejecta coming out of his fingers. After the show he gave me a hug and I picked him up and swung him round and it was flippin' sweet. Napoleon Dynamite on acid.

We gave The Brunettes a fair hearing but seriously, 21 people on stage does not a good festival act make. Too bad. Henry Rollins' spoken word act was next. We expected poetry or prose but got inane anti-American standup. This just in, flying from the States to the other side of the world to bad-mouth the States is lame. But it didn't matter too much because Shihad was on, playing some weird Happy New Year's show. Yes John, 2006 is going to be great. Thankyou for pointing that out. Perhaps next time put more effort into your vocals and less into being a sentimental, over-the-hill, never-quite-made-the-mark hasbeen. You could start a club with Shirley Manson. Still, that said, My Mind's Sedate was ground-shaking and terribly exciting; they really did push the overdrive to 11.

Predictably, I guess, the crowd for Franz Ferdinand was composed almost entirely of 14 to 17 year old girls. When Dani and I joined a faux conga line to push through to the front the chaperones of said girls made it clear that they were very displeased with our rude behaviour. I maintained my cool while one Dad lectured me about his daughters waiting an hour and a half to get near the front for this show. (I told him that's a shame, an hour and a half wasted, when I just turned up 2 minutes ago and look at me, I'm front row centre!) I also maintained my cool while one of his minions poured her drink on my head; I calmly explained that the front few rows are no place for impressionable (crushable) young girls. Whilst maintaining my cool, I resolved to be the designated Obnoxious Guy, which worked fantastically. I was already Obnoxiously Large Backpack Guy, and Obnoxiously Pushy and Selfish Guy but Bam! I whacked it up another notch with a stunning Obnoxiously Protective Of Female Companion Guy and Obnoxious Heckler Guy combo! My best heckle of the show: "Play another hit single!" I also yelled 'Yay' a lot. Franz didn't exactly play a stonker but the show was saved when they got three guys onto the one drum kit and made it sound good. Also Bic Runga was on side stage for some reason, and she is nice to look at, basically.

I missed Iggy & The Stooges and most of The White Stripes in favour of The Mars Volta: best decision of the day. I've never been in a crowd that was more in love with the act, and I've never seen a better performance, period. No talking, or even stopping between songs, just an hour and a half of full-force rock and roll baby. That guitarist actually plays like Hendrix. And the drummer! And Cedric! And that black guy on keys! There's not really a lot I can say besides Best. Concert. Of. My life. The security guys were literally trying to start fights which was stupid and potentially dangerous, exspecially with certain unnamed members of the crowd shouting 'Riot! Riot!' I was disappointed I didn't get to fight the whole day but I was sun-stroked as all crap by this stage and besides, I drank at least four beers over the course of the day so it was probably for the best.

We had a logistical nightmare meeting up at the end of the night featuring lost cellphones, dead batteries and a mammoth walk for Dani and I, almost entirely around the stadium complex. And the taxi driver didn't even know how to get to Avondale. The night was capped off beautifully with another pot/spoon/airbed combo and I woke exhausted and impossibly sore. Oh yeah, that's the other thing - it was sweet to be bigger and stronger than the average person in the mosh pit for my first time. It makes getting around a lot easier.

The girls left me fairly smartly on Saturday and I slept through the day like an orphan. Daniel came over later for pizza and wine and the luxury of my couch; he bailed on me this morning so I am left here alone and worn out but satisfied.