Walking Arcadia part One

When I was a kid, my parents always went out of their way to watch an extremely boring British soap opera named Howards Way. This was not because they found it particularly compelling, but because it was filmed in the vicinity of the Hampshire village resided in by my Aunt. As such any given episode would feature glimpses of places they knew, with an outside chance of spotting someone they’d met walking past in the background.

The idea that we all eventually turn into our parents is a cliché, however the problem with clichés is that they only become clichés in the first place because they’re true. As such I now find myself in a similar position, making room every Thursday night to watch the ABC’s The Heights, solely because it’s filmed just down the road.

(Excuse me for a minute, I appear to have been bitten on the wrist by a spider or something and have to go put some cream on it. If I never post again you’ll know why.)

Anyway, yes, The Heights. Needing both some exercise and some direction in life I decided yesterday to go on a walking tour of Heights shooting locations, and take some photos along the way.

My first stop was Arcadia High School, which is actually the Mount Lawley TAFE college on Lord Street. I caught the bus down there and arrived just as it started to rain.

A short walk through the drizzle to East Perth train station and an equally short train trip bought me to Arcadia Hospital, which funnily enough is another TAFE college, this time the East Perth branch at Claisebrook. Along the way I realised my camera lens was filthy and cleaned it – hopefully making subsequent pictures a bit sharper.

The fact that it’s directly across the road from Perth’s ABC headquarters is surely a complete coincidence…

A short walk along the reconstructed Claise Brook – which doesn’t seem to have had any maintenance in the last 10 years, seriously, can we do something about that? – takes us to the steps that I think are where Shannon got bawled out for arriving late for community service. It was certainly somewhere along Claise Brook anyway.

Following the steps upwards takes us to the old Boans furniture factory, home to the apartment inhabited by Claudia and Sabine.

By now the rain was starting to get serious. I had plans to walk down to the river and take some shots of the parks and bridges which often show up in episodes, but instead decided to stop in somewhere dry and have some lunch. I had a quite decent pizza at the Royal while drying out and reading the latest Fortean Times, then considered my options.

My original plan included a trip down to Trinity College (AKA Embleton) then across to Wellington Square (location of many open air scenes), hitting up the Towers themselves just behind the Old Mint, then getting a bus across to Iris’s store near Hyde Park. But the weather didn’t look likely to improve much, so I decided discretion was the better park of valour and I’d be better served by taking a quick jaunt directly to Wellington Square, see if I could grab a long shot of the towers, then head home. This turned out to be complicated by massive roadworks all along Wittenoom street, and work being done on the square itself but I did my best.

And thus ended my grand day out.

Sooner or later I’ll get around to some closer shots of the towers, the river parklands and Iris’s store. In the meantime I did take some shots last year covering the old Perth Enterprise Centre that serves at the exterior of the Railway Hotel, and the mural on Moore street that’s often seen as an interstitial with trains rushing past it. I stepped in an actual human turd (the city really needs to do something to support the homeless population) getting these pics, so appreciate them!

And that’s your lot! Be sure to tune in to ABC at 8:00pm Thursdays to see these places on air. Or not, I’m not your dad.

I’m serious as eczema when I’m playing on my decks!

And, because why not, here’s another attempt at transcribing a Moped track. This time their incandescent version of Abba’s Dancing Queen (including a sneaky shout out to Snap!)

(By the way I’m not terribly excited about the shout out, the band Snap! actually included the exclamation mark in their name, making it rather difficult to discuss them in a calm manner. It was the nineties, we did things differently then.)

Dancing Queen – Moped

Two-thousand and four! You know the score!
Come on people! Let’s get busy with the fizzy!
Insane-ia-ism!

You can dance, you can dance,
Party people!
Having the time of your life,
I wanna see you shake your booty with a significant degree of confidence tonight! Yes!
Ooh, see that girl, watch that scene,
Digging the dancing queen,

In dancing queen!

Oh yes!

That’s right!

Friday night and the lights are hot,
Hangin’ with Moped give it all you got,
Little bit of fresh flavour, I’m gonna make you dance,
We’re in the mood for some trance,

Only Moped could be those guys,
I’m quite small while the other two are high,
Bumping in your disco, we’re coming in your ears,
In brand new underpants,

And when you get the chance,
You are the dancing queen, young and sweet only seventeen,
It’s not eighteen but it’s legal!
Dancing queen, feel the meat from a tangerine, oh yeah!
Arrr-aargh!
You can dance,
Yes!
You can jive, having the time of your life,
You’re twisting the lemons man!
See that girl,
My lemons!
Watch that scene,
Whip it!
Digging the dancing queen,
Arrr-aargh!

Urrrrrrrrrrrrr!

You’ve got to push the groove and pump it up to the max,
We’re like a train to your brain laying down nineteen fresh tracks,
We’ll always run to the rhythm, get down with the flow,
We’re bigger than the Beatles! You do it – Darius!
Duh-uhhh,

Yes! That’s right!
I’m serious as eczema when I’m playing on my decks!

Huh!

You are the dancing queen, young and sweet only seventeen,
Dancing queen! She’s bootiful! Really bootiful!
You are the dancing queen, young and sweet only seventeen,
Inhale! Exhale! Don’t forget to breathe!
You are the dancing queen,

Thank you! I love your English face!

And your butt,

Sweet Child of Moped

It is, in my opinion, a great crime that the lyrics to Moped’s various reinterpretations of rock and pop classics do not seem to be available online.

To understand Moped there are a few things you need to be aware of. For instance, the existence of Scooter – a German dance group who specialise in taking samples of other people’s songs, putting a dance beat behind them and then shouting random nonsense over the top.

It also helps to know that Scooter had a mainstream hit in 2002 with a piece based around Supertramp’s Logical Song.

And the final piece of the puzzle is that in the wake of Scooter’s Logical Song, some fun loving British lads created a parody group named Moped and sent a pastiche of Scooter’s style – based around Coldplay’s Clocks – into the popular Chris Moyles radio show, which inexplicably decided to play it.

And then Moped kept doing it, and the rest is history.

Anyway, I find their stuff hilarious and thought it was abut time their unique interpretations of the modern dance form got some love, so here’s my best attempt at the lyrics of their spectacular cover of the Guns N’ Roses classic Sweet Child of Mine.

Sweet Child of Mine – Moped

Yes! Moped are back, going back in time like Doctor Who! But we don’t have a TARDIS. But we do have a Talbot Horizon…

Oh-wo-wo-wo sweet child of mine!

This time we’re rocking for the UK Posse. Cream! Gatecrasher! Nexus Wine Bar! Crystal! And Joker! In between the kebab shop and the taxi rank!

Guns n’ Roses are hot, and it seems to me,
That we’re back on the remix in 2003,
Yes, Moped are phat! It’s satisfaction guarantee!
(Moped are subject to status, terms and conditions apply, ask for written details)

Now and then when I feel the base,
It takes me away to that raving place,
And if I rave too long, I’ll probably miss my last bus and it’s a long walk back to Battenburg let me tell you…

Yes!

Oh-oh-oh sweet child of mine,
Irritation for the nation!
Oo-oo-oo sweet love of mine,
Mmmmm-nice!

She’s got flavour and she’s all gravy,
But I’ve absolutely no idea what that means, and, and now I’ve missed my place in the verse, and, I’ll catch up, it’s coming up in a little bit there, eh, here we go!

Her hair reminds me of the one safe place,
Like Ibiza or Clacton-on-Sea,
We go there all of the time you know,
To get fresh with the Moped Posse,

Here we go!

Oh-oh-oh sweet child of mine,
Fresh with the flavour!
Oo-oo-oo sweet love of mine,
Freestyle! Key-change!

Oh-oh-oh sweet child of mine oh-oh-oh!
Bring back thats beats!
Oo-oo-oo sweet love of mine,
Moonshanka!

Arrr-agh!

I’m the wide runner, I’m the big hitter,
You can’t get better than quick-fit fitter,
Up, fork, you know the score,
Don’t leave towels on the bathroom floor,
Clunk, click, Chas and Dave,
UK Posse gonna hear me rave,
I’m the rhythm police, the baseline protector,
When I say ‘bo’ you say ‘selector’,
Hick, schlep, bacon and eggs,
Guns N’ Roses, they have legs,
I’m the lord of the dance, I’m hung like fire,
This Moped vibe gonna take you higher,
I-I-I-I can’t find my way out of the recording studio, where do we go now?

Arrr-agh!

Real mega-nice!

Where do we go?

Get fresh with this!

Where do you go kids?

Sweet child! Of moped!

Urrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

On Horny Space Salamanders

Horny Space Salamanders Batman!

You know, Threshold – the infamous episode where Tom Paris travels really fast, turns into a salamander then has salamander babies with Captain Janeway) really should have been the last episode of Star Trek: Voyager.

I don’t mean production should have been shut down, everyone fired and the sets put to the torch – although a case for that can certainly be made – I mean that they discovered a perfectly plausible way to get back to Earth in no time flat.

The souped-up, transwarp shuttlecraft that inexplicably turns people into horny amphibians moves at infinite speed – it occupies every point in the universe at once until the pilot decides where to drop out of transwarp. As such there’s nothing stopping the pilot jumping instantly from the Delta quadrant to Earth orbit. The transformation into a space salamander takes some time to start, so they can land at the nearest medical facility and explain that they’re about to grow gills and cough up their own tongue, but that their doctor has prepared a complete treatment protocol and it’s right here on this PADD. A couple of days later they’re back to normal with no harm done and they’re home.

Janeway should instantly have devoted all of Voyager’s resources into building transwarp shuttles, packing them full of crew members and sending them back to Earth. The last person to leave the ship sets the self destruct to avoid contaminating the Delta quadrant with Federation tech, and everyone arrives back home safe and well with only the slight inconvenience of turning into an amphibian for a couple of days.

But no. Gotta hit that end-of-episode reset button! How else would we have been treated to the exquisite cringiness of the Doctor and Seven-of-Nine duetting on You Are My Sunshine?

The Herkimer Pattern Chimera

And while I’m posting homebrew Warhammer 40,000 content, there’s this…

The Herkimer Pattern Chimera was created in M41.338 on the order of Lord General Casanova Herkimer who desired a suitably martial – yet comfortable – personal transport to be used for post-battlefield assessment and ceremonial occasions. In the centuries since it has become a favourite vehicle for high ranking Astra Militarum officers, Ecclesiarchy officials and the occasional Inquisitor who value its enhanced sensor suite, extra armour and luxurious interior.

The Herkimer lacks the multi-laser turret and lasgun arrays of the standard Chimera, retaining only a hull mounted heavy bolter for defensive purposes*. The passenger compartment lacks a rear ramp or top hatch, with entry and egress only via a reinforced rear door – it does however feature heavily armoured windows and an optical periscope for comfortable surveying of the battlefield. The vehicle’s extra armour is compensated for with a souped-up engine, and the enhanced communication and sensor suite allow the occupants to keep in touch with their base, or easily issue orders to their underlings.

Herkimers are most usually seen in parades or during the mop-up after combat, however some desperate commanders have been known to throw them into battle, where they can act as surprisingly effective makeshift command vehicles. A few more eccentric Astra Militarum commanders actually prefer to control their troops from a Herkimer, although they will typically receive (carefully muted) ridicule from the common troopers for riding around in a “General Jitney” or “Chicken Chariot”.

* The Heavy Bolter may be swapped out for a heavy flamer, however this modification is unpopular as it requires the drinks cabinet to be removed to make room for promethium tanks.

Servo Skulls for a Crown Additional

I’ve formatted up my 40k rules for Saint Sabbat, and included an option to give her a retinue of Servo Skulls, as she had on Herodor. All still completely untested and probably badly overpowered. Enjoy!

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